12 Miles Below

“Elaborate.” Kidra said, grilling a half filet of fish over the communal campfire a few steps outside our cavern. Lack of spices to cook with was a bummer, but fish was fish. Rest of the knights were either taking a nap deeper into the cave here, or patrolling the area for any signs of hostility.

“See, way I see it, if Father could take over a Feather’s shell - then what’s to say the rest of our knights can’t do the same thing?”

She gave me a blank look, then frowned and considered the proposition further. “Father’s willpower is second to none.” Kidra eventually said. “I would know, we’ve spoken in depth about his experiences in Wrath’s ‘jail’ fractal.”

I took another bite out of my own fish, chewing through. “But what if that’s a trained skill? What if Father can teach other knights how to improve their mental willpower? Enough to overwhelm an enemy Feather if they get close enough to latch on? It’d be a super weapon against them, even a slippery bastard like Avalis couldn’t go invulnerable against the occult. And we get a free Feather shell in the process.”

Could even have a graduating test, like being tossed into Wrath’s jail cell soul fractal variant and having to break free from that. If they could do it, they’re ready to steal a Feather.

"And your thoughts on all this are?" Kidra said, turning to look at Father. "I know you can hear us from here. Or are you simply letting us discuss at our leisure?"

"It's not possible.” Father said with a half grunt, leaned back against a cave wall, eyes closed. Wrath was out there, flying around and playing hide and seek with him. As in, he’d be forced to use his active sensors to pick up where she’s flying around from a distance. Humans don’t come with a built in scanner, so Father had to learn how to use it like any other skill.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t taking breaks every now and then to meditate and digest what he’s learned. “When I fought against Avalis within his soul fractal, it was a losing battle for me.” He said. “Connected to his soul, I saw into his thoughts. I could see the calculations and plans within. Humans had used soul fractals in the past, and rediscovered such things periodically over the eons. Soul to soul combat isn’t new to machines.”

That got Kidra and I quiet.

“How did you win then?” Icestride asked, arms crossed and half dozing off. Or had been dozing off.

“Surprise.” Father gave a shrug. “Avalis had never encountered another human using a soul fractal in his short lifespan. And neither had his older peers. The empire had been the last bastion of humanity that made use of the fractal, and once they had been cut down to the last, the machines never had to fight within souls again.”

Father rose from his side of the cave and took a few steps into the campfire light, hand reaching for one of the skewers left further off the side of the fire. It had been slow cooking for some time, though I think a Feather’s shell could eat anything it wanted, undercooked or not.

He took a bite, testing out his taste buds. Wrath had been pretty adamant about him modifying that first, big surprise. He hadn’t been thrilled to work on that first, but that wasn’t going to stop Wrath from being Wrath. The rest of his skin was back to his usual color, making him look human. Even the white hair had been dyed back to black. Hadn’t been too much of a process, Avalis’s armor wasn’t actually armor at all. It was more like an exoskeleton, there was nothing under it and no way to take it off.

So his head had been the only thing he needed to work on. Because trying to recreate an entire normal body was a little too complicated to work with for now.

“Avalis had no experience fighting against a soul directly.” He said. “The first blows were the strongest and most damaging. He was no fool however. He knew he lacked the experience, and so reached out to download everything machines had learned in their old fights. Near the end of the fight, I was stretched to my limits in both surviving within and holding his shell still long enough for you to execute the deathblow.”

“Ah.” Well, that crushed some hopes.

Father shrugged again. “If a Feather is stripped of enough defenses, and a coordinated attack happens, it may be possible. I would not discount it, only remain cautious. With forewarning, there would be little chance of victory.”

“And now he’s floating around somewhere else telling the rest of his friends to beware soul attacks, making it even harder on us.”

Father paused, eyes opening up before turning to me. “That may not be the case. I saw who he was. A coward terrified of death. You’ve noticed he is no regular Feather, nor behaves like the ones you’ve met. Too defensive. Too cautious. Relinquished knows this too and passively loathes him for it, that was made clear to me. He was a mistake she didn’t care enough to fix. Should his shell be destroyed, she’ll have enough excuse to snuff him out. He will writhe like a worm and find a way to survive.”

“You suspect he hasn’t told anyone of his loss?” Icestride asked, equally curious. “Seems suboptimal. It would lead any of his subordinates into danger, if they didn’t know what to expect against our knights.”

“You assume he operates with morality as we do.” Father said. “He does not. Subordinates are tools to be used. He may alert them out of self-interest. Avoid more difficult future fights for himself. That will be judged against broadcasting the loss of his shell.”

“What’s he going to do to get a new shell though?” I asked. “Can’t have another made if he never tells Relinquished he’s lost his old one.”

“A Feather’s shell isn’t the only shell a machine could inhabit.” Kidra said. “Were I in his suit, I would opt to take over something of suitable power.”

“He knows what he’s up against.” Icestride said, shuffling over to the campfire and sitting down before the flames. He looked quite old with his helmet off, white hair and wrinkles slowly adding on the years. “Resource wise, we hold a massive advantage. Relic knights capable of holding against Feathers, weapons that can destroy them in a single hit, occult powers for each of us, and now two Feathers of our own in our ranks. An army of machines won’t be enough. Unless he recruits more Feathers, outright contesting us in strength is a losing tactic.”

Father grunted. “Stealth it will be then. We will need to be vigilant against the dagger in the dark.”

Icestride nodded. “Rather, with the newfound power we have, we should consider snowballing our power base further.” He grinned with a familiar smile of a schemer. The old wrinkles made me think of Anarii, happily plotting something.

“What kind of snowballing are we talking about?” I asked, curious.

“For one, if machine armies are having a hard time contesting against us, imagine how a raider stronghold would fare? Poorly. Instead of waiting for their attack, we could eliminate them at their strongholds. Wipe them out, and then dig down to rip out their roots. Remove the raider threat for a good few decades in our area.”

“I suspect you have other ideas, past the raiders.” Kidra said, setting a cleared off skewer off to the discard pile.

“Correct young lady.” Icestride said. “Why stop at Raiders? Relic armors aren’t expensive to procure, Undersiders wouldn’t have so many if the forges refused to work with humans. What makes armors expensive, is that Undersiders need to muster up a full army in order to assault and clear off machines guarding mite forges. From there they’ll only hold the forge for a few days, where they’ll try to obtain as many armors and gear as possible before being forced off the point.”

“And we can contest a machine army up here near indefinitely.” I said, considering the possibilities.

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves with greed.” Icestride. “I doubt we’ll hold indefinitely. Eventually, the machines will call for greater and greater units, leading to new Feathers appearing. This is all assuming we can cover Tenisent and Wrath with relic armor of their own to hide away their true origin. Being attacked by wanted Feathers would likely stir their true forces immediately.”

We’d need to work the plan a bit more than that, have logistics setup, and all that paperwork. But I could see the general plot in Icestride’s head. With what we had, we could seriously hit forges all over the map and start bringing out more knights. The clan had hundreds of trained House soldiers like Sagrius, who had all the skills to be a knight but no armor to equip in his smaller house.

But if all those knights had relic armor of their own? We might even have enough relic knights to move the clan underground if we find a pillar heart. Lord Atius absolutely wouldn’t let leverage like this go to waste.

Dust and dirt flew off in a circle on the ground nearby as Wrath landed with a single wing beat. Those metal feathers folded up into a skirt as she stood back up, watching the assembled group.

“Lady Wrath,” Icestride said, bowing his head slightly in respect. “How was the training session?”

“Complete.” Wrath said. “Tenisent shows adequate use of his shell’s features. We will need to discuss allowing smaller algorithms and subroutines to run background tasks instead of overtaxing his mind. He seems particularly antagonistic to that idea.”

Father scoffed. “This shell must be tamed. It is still enemy territory I cannot trust to operate without my direct supervision. Lack of control is unacceptable.”

“Low level algorithms are non-sentient, they operate as narrow AI that only perform the task assigned. Your concerns are unfounded.”

The only answer she got from Father was a grunt, and silent stare. That usually meant he was done talking about the subject and wasn’t going to change his mind. Wrath sighed, clearly having alos learned the same thing at some point. Instead of continuing any kind of debate, she turned and took few steps to sit down next to me.

“He’s a stubborn asshole, eh?” I said, passing her a skewer. She’d been eyeing those since she landed, but was too polite to eat first and talk later. Didn’t stop her from eating the fish in two bites with happy munching noises and a short nod.

“Wrath.” Father said, to which she looked up and frowned.

“Eating smaller bites is suboptimal.” She immediately said, mouth still half full.

He rolled his eyes with a scoff, “The unity fractal, Avalis has it inside his chassis. We need to cut it out while it remains dormant. Should Relinquished connect to this shell and find a human soul within, she will react.”

Wrath shook her head at that, hand reaching out for another skewer. “Impossible. The soul fractal variant within your chassis is made to connect to four other fractals. Each fractal it is merged with becomes part of the whole. To disrupt the unity fractal’s pattern, will also disrupt your own central soul fractal.”

“I am well aware of this.” Father said. All of us were at this point, we had time to examine the fractal at the center heart. The very concept was all tied together. Made sense why Feathers couldn’t change their loadout once picked. The moment a fractal is fused into their hearts, it becomes permanent.

Effectively, all Feathers had only three possible abilities, since the unity fractal was already fused within as a default.

“If you are aware of the limits, then you understand you will need to do the same as I do - keep the fractal at a distance, avoid activating it, and make sure your intrusion defenses are prepared to isolate your soul fractal with the rest of your shell in case Relinquished arrives to investigate. Until we contact Tsuya and discover how she removed the protofeather’s own shackles, we have few options.”

“You have few options.” Father grunted. “I have more.”

Wrath tilted her head to the side, clearly confused.

“I am not shackled to this single soul fractal like you are.” Father said, lifting a hand up. A fractal on the palm glowed and flame lit up above. “And I have no need for a soul fractal that can connect me directly to other fractals, I can do it myself.”

“Oh.” Wrath said. “That… is true. I had not considered the differences. Then… does that mean you intend to relocate outside the soul fractal? How will you control the shell without direct connections?”

"You will help with this.” He said. “I need a new soul fractal crafted and connected to this shell in the same way the original fractal is expected to be. Then, I will move and destroy the base fractal.”

Wrath nodded, humming. “That plan seems sound in theory. But you will lose access to Avalis’s current abilities. Merging fractals with the variant changes the fractal being merged slightly on the connection point. Recreating it won’t be the exact original fractal.”

And Relinquished hadn’t allowed any of her Feathers permanent access to the machine archives on fractals. She wasn’t dumb enough to leave a repository of data in a frame that could theoretically be hacked. So the only fractals we had access to were the ones we’d discovered ourselves.

“I’ve been pondering this since we’ve left the Temple. A temporary loss of abilities in exchange for eliminating anything that could compromise this shell is a worthwhile trade.” Father said, "Do it.”

The operation sounded dangerous, but ultimately ended up being pretty trivial. We used occult blades to cut into Father’s stolen chassis, until we could see the soul fractal at the center under his throat. From there, Wrath made another plate, filled with connections and circuitry under it.

To make sure the shell didn’t do anything weird while we disconnected Father from it, we had all the power cells removed, basically forcing it to shutdown completely. Only then did we disconnect the original soul fractal and lift it out.

Father was still well alive there, since the plate has its own backup power self-contained inside. Wrath connected the new empty soul fractal back where Avalis’s old one had been, and turned on the backup power within. Father simply shot a soul tendril into the new fractal and flowed into the new home. Wrath couldn’t see any of that, only someone with soul sight could.

“Is it done?” She asked, looking at me for confirmation.

“Yep.” I said, knocking on the new plate inside. “He’s in there now. You can toss the old plate. Just make sure we take pictures of the whole thing, could come in handy if we figure out how to do some more fancy stuff with occult fractals.”

She nodded, lifting the small glowing empty fractal out of the exposed chest cavity. It looked… interesting. I held a hand out for it, out of morbid curiosity. She dropped it down into my palm where I could drag it back to check it out.

As the first power cell was reconnected, Father took command of the shell immediately before it could start moving on its own. From there, all they had to do was patch up the hole made in his chest and he’d be good to go.

The first Feather in centuries to run around free of the unity fractal. That was going to piss off Relinquished the moment she noticed. Rags and a cloak would have to do to cover him up for now, until we could get him out of that fused armor and into a proper relic armor. From there, the machines would have a hard time differentiating him from a strong Deathless.

I took my time checking out Avalis’s soul fractal while Wrath and Father worked on patching him back up. I could recognize some of the curves of the Julia set at the center of the plate. But on the bottom left and right the pattern shifted into something completely different. The right one was the unity fractal itself. For something that had Wrath constantly spooked it would wake up, the fractal looked pretty unassuming. Just a bunch of circles and squiggles.

The left side looked vaguely more like a mess of triangles with the edges all tangled up. This one must be what Avalis was using to go intangible. I’d be curious about testing that pattern. Sure, I could see it was changed up to match up with the connecting soul fractal at the center, but I might be able to do something to figure out the missing piece that had been replaced by the connection.

With my curiosity satisfied, I handed the whole thing back to Wrath, who proceeded to crunch it in her hands wordlessly.

The light winked out the moment the pattern bent a slight bit. By the time it had folded up and cracked into smaller pieces, it was long dead and we had one less thing to worry about.

Next chapter - Destress