12 Miles Below

I split off a dedicated group of ten images, letting them constantly harass Avalis. He fought them off with everything he had, eventually forced to leap away from the one on eleven melee with me. Landing a safe distance ahead, heat venting out from his sides.

Funny enough, now in all the dead-end timelines, Avalis didn’t immediately behead me from this point out. Seeing an army of wraiths all vanish at once didn’t fill him with any amount of confidence. Instead, he suspected I was going to come up with something even worse and kept his distance. In the true timelines, those wraiths from all the surrounding dimensions remained, finishing off the last dredges of Screamers, turning their attention back to Avalis.

They crashed into him like a warhammer, following my lead.

Whatever scrapshit cosmic space magic powered Feathers, it was clear Avalis had tapped into every bit he could grab, given the heated air flowing off his shoulders and head. Vents on his back opened up, channeling further heat out of his shell. His glare intensified, focusing on trying to beat down the immovable stubborn wall of images in his path.

His only hope at breaking free, was to kill the root cause of it all - me. Avalis twisted under a swing, stabbed out for one of my wraiths, and fought his way forward, seeking me out. I steadied my blade and matched him.

Moment I got into range, a kick struck out directly for journey’s chestplate. I twisted to the side, avoiding the main blow, but got hit by a follow-up heel swipe. Other Keiths did better, but ended up in a worse situation for it, so this became the new main root - not because the other Keiths had hit a dead end, but because this was finally the point where I drew blood on the metal asshole. Three other wraiths all attacked at the same moment, and each of them cut through. His shields flared, fighting off the combined occult edges of all armguards, even as he twisted the chain around to dissipate the harassers.

He'd taken a gamble to commit to an attack at the cost of tanking a few hits. Problem was, a few hits weren't what I was offering. And I wasn't using a standard occult longblade with one single cutting edge. My armshields had dozens of edges. That added together quickly.

The wraiths dogpiled after him, forcing him to dance, duck and weave around at full speed. By the time the last image was destroyed, his shields had broken and one of my wraiths had managed to sideswipe a tip of the armguard through his right ribcage. That weapon was paying me a clan lord's ransom at this point.

On the other hand, that expensive kick of his launched me up and away. I landed hard on the ground, rolling, two hands clawing trails into the moss, occult lingering inside, causing the trails to glow faintly. Didn’t fall off the edge or lose the cube, thank the gods. If his initial kick had landed, I think I'd have been thrown into another skyscraper and been forced to abandon this timeline. The heel tap was manageable.

Avalis snarled, leaping out of range from the images, chain scything through a crowd, opening up his landing spot. Back on solid ground, his eyes snapped up, glaring at me. “You truly are a nightmare to deal with.”

“Greatest compliment I ever got.” I said, feeling genuinely proud. The last bits of Screamers in his army began to run, probably at his command in an attempt to preserve forces. “Sorry about your friends.”

“I have more coming, soon enough.” Avalis hissed. “They’ll regroup and return.”

A rifle shot roared out from above, and the furthest Screamer running away was shot straight through the head. It slumped down, broken. A stream of follow-up shots came from above.

The Winterscar knights weren’t going to let the enemy escape. They’d wrapped up killing the last of their own army of Screamers, completely unhelped by any kind of dimensional shenanigans, getting it all perfectly right in one life and wordlessly taking their old sniping positions back. Hadn't even heard a word from them over the comms, they worked silently and effectively, reading each others movements and coordinating with the landscape.

I left them to the cleanup. My job was to kill Avalis, and by the gods I’d do it. Every Keith was focused on that one singular task, sending all the images I had, barreling down. The quantum cube in my hand cracked slightly, power beginning to overwhelm it. Occult shone through the fractures, but the internal held. Time was running out, more cracks forming around, the metal straining. I just needed it to hold for a few more seconds.

He watched the tide of ghosts entered a dead sprint across the broken ground, and made a snap decision. He turned, and ran.

In most dimensions, the Feather bolted straight off the bridge, diving into the abyss. In others where the images blocked off the easy escape with gouts of flames, he broke his way through into the floor and sprinted through the maze inside until he could reach a glass wall to break through.

But in some dimensions, the images had moved in just the right places at just the right numbers to pin him into a corner, herding him around with flames.

“Where are you running, scraphead?” I hissed. Stalking forward, pressing the attack.

In no timelines did he make use of his invulnerability except as a last resort to avoid a strike. Not even to escape through the bridge. I filed that bit of trivia in my pocket, behavior like that meant something. The fight was frantic as I cut off his escape paths. A shoulder pad sliced in half. Knee plates diced. Another part of his chest nearly sliced apart. Even some fingers. Fire was thrown everywhere, burning even the roots around the ground.

This was it, he was going to make another small mistake and be instantly sliced apart like so many of my other timelines had gone against his own army. His attempts to escape began to die away, as more timelines tightened the noose around him. As much as he jumped and leaped around, the images did the same, intercepting him, keeping him grounded, always one step ahead.

And then the images vanished all at once. The field cleared. My connection to the greater whole, gone.

Occult crackled around me, flashed and faded away.

The fractal had broken. Deep inside the mite cube, the little digital computer had made an error and deviated in generating the constantly changing fractal. It was over. Only junk data was being generated inside.

And Avalis wasn’t dead yet.

“You can’t win,” I bluffed, standing tall. “I’m more powerful than you could ever imagine. Run off to your boss and tell her she better send stronger stuff than you to kill me.”

Avalis stared back, hunched over himself, having fought for his life and less than a minute from losing it. He looked terrified. Violet eyes watching intently for any movement. Then they blinked. “You’re lying.” He said, as if shocked himself. “Tone and voice patterns match. Whatever you’ve done, you can’t do it again, can you?”

“All according to my pl-”

That’s about all I got out before Avalis sprinted right into melee distance. I answered back with my own desperate fumbles and then got slammed by a wayward mace end from that gods damned chain of his. The occult blast tossed me straight off my feet, rolling me over the ground.

I got up just in time to deflect another scythe swing with the armguard, pushing it up and into the air. Avalis was not going to give me a moment to breathe.

I’d died a few thousand times already to that very weapon, I knew exactly how it could - and would - murder me. There were some predictable movements from him that he’d repeated hundreds of times across the timelines, but Avalis was a gods damn Feather and I wasn’t. The rat was doing outright cartwheels and acrobatics while I was barely holding on.

I sent images after him, spitting fire, but those were fumbling attempts and his longsword dispatched them, flowing the motion directly back to his chain for follow-up attacks. He advanced on me. He wasn’t moving as fast as before, nowhere as quick as he could when he had to slip away from the hundreds of images fighting him each second. Moderating his skill, aiming to kill me without further straining his shell.

In desperation, I drew out the knightbreaker from my back, leaping over another chain swipe. It had been used countless times across all the dead-end dimensions, but in the true path it remained at my side for just such a moment.

Bastard outright jumped himself in the air to match, using his leg to redirect his chain, bits of occult blue winking out right where his boot made contact, keeping him safe from his own weapon as the mace end raced to spike me down into the ground.

Forced me to abort any idea of using the knightbreaker, using my armguard to shield myself from the mace instead, and its follow-up explosion.

I landed hard on the ground, still alive. Safety clicked off on the knightbreaker with a flick of my thumb. I twisted on myself, aiming the weapon downrange, only to have the mace end of that chain slam into the launcher, slicing it up to pieces, including the round inside. Bits of scraps flew off my hand, leaving only the grip and shredded skeleton of the gun.

“Uhhh, Journey!” I called out, trying not to panic. “Plan B, plan fucking B! Right now, right now!”

“It’s too risky, you’ve got to survive just a little more.” Cathida whispered. “You’re almost there. You need to buy a few more minutes.”

“A little more is about to get my head iced!” I hissed back, leaping away from another swing of his chain.

Journey’s HUD lit up, a single sentence scrolling on my right. Releasing safety locks.

Avalis was getting closer with each swing, and that usually meant the end for me in almost every situation. The chain could be held off at a distance, but when he went to pair it with a longsword in close combat, I always died.

Loading predictive modeling…

Three more swipes of his chain, and he’d closed the gap. The third swing intentionally forced me into a suboptimal block, exposing my chest for a heartbeat. Avalis didn’t miss the chance, the occult longsword going straight for my neck. It connected, relic armor shields lighting up to fend it off.

Full cognitive engram, online.

My arms and legs locked up as Cathida took over. She instantly parried the deathblow, turning it back on the monster in one fluid motion. I dove fully down into the soul fractal, doing my best to escape the claustrophobia of being stuck inside an armor. It worked out.

Wraiths came out in full force again, fully formed this time, as Cathida struck out, the longsword swiping through the air with practiced movements weaving the Crusader stances and the surface ones.

It bought me some time, desperately needed. Better - it was actually working. Gods above, with my four wraiths harassing the Feather, and Cathida keeping tied up against his swings, it was actually working. Heat radiated from his chassis, from every joint. Cuts in his armor highlighted by dim red, illuminating from within the cracks. I wasn't in great shape, but neither was he.

We slammed into him. Four wraiths, six arms blasting fire, and Cathida at the center of it all. Avalis stopped fighting back, weaving through the attacks and gouts of flame.

He watched, eyes cold. “I see.” He hissed, blocking another hit, twisting under a swing from an image, and turning into a wraith himself as a gust of flame licked through, rapidly returning back to reality the moment the air was clear of the flames.

“A remarkable change in skill. A moment ago, you had no fractal powers active, no form, only desperate attempts to survive.” He said, twisting under another swing from Cathida, backpedaling, resetting the bout. “You oscillate between power and weakness. As if going through all your trick cards. Unfortunately for you, you’ve used the wrong one.”

“You can’t dodge everything forever.” I snarled out, my gut roiling with a bad premonition.

“I don’t need to. I only need to last until a download is complete. And it just has.” He smiled for the first time, then snapped his fingers.

Cathida froze in place. Fractals within my armor all shut down at once, killing every image out on the field. I was thrown out of the soul trance completely, into a world of pain. Journey’s voice rang out in my helmet. “Low power mode engaged. Warning. Shields disabled.”

“Familiar feeling, Winterscar? To’Wrathh did a thorough job eliminating traces of To’Aacar’s combat logs. But I unearthed most of it over enough time. Including one specific fight against you. You’ve used this particular trick before. And my predecessor already devised a counter.”

It was hard to think. While I’d been hiding in the soul trance from the damage building up in my body, said damage wasn’t just whisked away. Now I was paying the butcher’s bill as I felt all the hits I’d taken up to now.

There’s only one piece of equipment I had that was still powered and working with the occult. My armguard, which was held frozen by the locked arm. I'd made it specifically in case something like this happened.

Time to use the emergency escape.

I dove down inside the spare soul fractal within that armguard, slippinging into the soul trance, feeling blessed relief from the pain and ache of my body, leaving only a small enough tendril back to my body to move it around.

“J-journey!” I called out, struggling against the armor. “Emergency abort!” The armor didn’t answer back. Every extra fractal was dead.

Avalis took a few calm steps forward, the smile intensifying. Then staggered to the side as two bullets struck him in the head. The Feather paused, then straightened up, glaring up at where the two Winterscar knights remained stubbornly alive, aiming their rifles at his head. “Futile. They should know it’s a waste of bullets.”

The chain swung around. He got shot again, unbalancing him. Instead of annoying the Feather, he began to laugh. "Fight, struggle, use every last trick you have, humans. Death is inevitable. Despair away."

The winterscar knights gave no answer other than more shots. Going through their limited supply. Buying whatever time they could.

The chain began once more to swing. This time, no bullets came. The knights above had finally run through their entire supply. It had taken an entire squad of drakes, and the remnants of a machine army, but the last bullet had been fired.

Avalis kept his eyes focused on the faraway sniping nest. “Done?”

“No.” A voice on the comms said.

Across the bridge by the mite forge’s hole, a single Winterscar knight climbed up into view.

Next chapter - Lion and wolf