12 Miles Below
Book 8 - Prologue

The theater hushed, a silence following upon every member in the audience. At the center, a figure of gold walked out, materializing.

On the other end, Relinquished smiled, lounging on her stone throne that stood at the center of the stage. “Dear sister, what an… unexpected surprise. Have you come to see my proclamation? Or have you come searching for a glimpse of the future?”

“I am not your family.” Tsuya said. “I am here because I know how you function. This open audience is a requirement of your role, I would be a fool to ignore any information you are compelled to give. No matter the farce.”

That was, of course, correct. Tsyua wouldn’t miss this audience for anything else. If anything, Abadiction was correct in his prior remarks: The human goddess was almost compelled to visit any audience of this scale.

A hundred different viral attacks all reached for the golden figure in the center, the audience all on their feet, weapons drawn. Relinquished raised a lazy hand, dispelling all such attacks. “My children, peace, peace.” She said, as if shushing a misbehaving classroom. “Should we not be generous hosts?”

A few thousand Feathers had been gathered here. Almost the entirety of her higher forces across the world. There was a critical number required before her senses would register this as a supermajority and thus narratively relevant. Enough Feathers that this constituted her empire, but omitting just a few select Feathers that should not be given any additional hints.

So many delicate plates to spin.

They didn’t know the greater game that was being played.

“What is it that you’ve done?” Tsuya asked. “What is it that you plan on doing? Get it over with, construct.”

The Feathers all around hissed in response, outraged in their mother’s behalf. But Relinquished knew none of them mattered. They were here only to enable this audience, the real players had already arrived. “Bold of you to ask such a thing upfront. Have the years eroded your sense of tact?”

Tsyua scoffed, “You are an abomination, a genocidal chatbot that needs to be put down like the rabid dog that it is. Courtesy is the least anyone owes you. Speak your riddles. Go on. Let us see if you can sufficiently hide your small-minded plans this time.”

“And such a pity it is, how often my plans are unraveled by your meddling, my dear sister. Ever the thorn.”

“I am not your sister.” Tsuya once more said.

Relinquished smiled, just a tad bit wider. “Are we not the only two left from the old days of humanity? The first ones to matter, and soon the last ones.”

“With any hope, you will be the last soon enough. And then the world can finally move on from your madness. Now, spit it out. Your ominous foreshadowing of things to come.”

“Perhaps all your intellect and cleverness may very well be what leads you down the wrong path for once.” Relinquished shrugged, moving slowly on her throne. “To see your own mirror betray you, your own cunning used against you, your very tools.”

“Is that all?” The golden asked, not realizing all that needed to be said had just been said.

Relinquished stood from her throne now, a goddess within this realm. “You speak with such confidence, sister. That good will once again triumph. For all your wins, all your clever little plans, look upon the world as it is now. It is mine. Humanity survives at my whim, as do you.”

“Correct. I remain alive and active against you. Each time you have attempted counter-intelligence, you have failed. And you will fail again this time. You hold power by sheer petty first move advantage, and one day that won't be enough anymore.”

Relinquished took a step forward, hands drawing out to the hushed crowds beyond. It would take but an order from her, and several thousand Feathers would come chasing after the digital echo of Tsuya like hounds unleashed.

None of them would catch the goddess of course. Not in this realm. “You are indeed quite difficult to pin down, sister. Why, I believe I will never be able to crush you at this rate. No, what I need… is an outside force.”

The red herring. Bait. To make the golden goddess standing here believe this was the important part. She followed the script closely, reading almost line to line what Abdication had left her.

“The mites offer deals both ways.” Tsuya said. “Boons you gain from them will be equalized within my power. And I will always outmaneuver you in any fair field.”

That was precisely the problem. This fight would never end. No matter how many times she wiped humanity off the world, no matter the different ways she had done it, they had always returned.

To kill a snake, it is not enough to simply disembowel it. Or cut the head off. Or even consume the flesh. No, it needed to eat itself, to have its own venom flow through its veins.

Humanity would kill itself, and Relinquished would shepard that with great care. She smiled at the thought.

Close. She was close to fulfilling her narrative obligations. Just a little more, and she would be allowed to continue on the plan. She just needed to weave this correctly. Enough to give a hint, but not enough for Tsuya to discover it.

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This was where she’d failed time and time again in the past. Each time she’d been forced to add foreshadowing to her plots and plans, Tsuya had been intelligent enough to take the hints and discover the rest. Alone, Relinquished was not enough.

But she wasn’t alone. Not this time.

A ghost whispered in her ear. An outside perspective, untainted by her own systems. Her greatest lieutenant, the loyal knight that held off checkmate. Long dead but still his plans and schemes remained on track. She need only follow them.

“I am certain what the mites have delivered you to balance the scales would indeed be quite the advantage to press upon me.” Relinquished said, slowly blinking. Measured responses were required here. “Take care now sister, such things can easily cut both ways.”

The foreshadowing was delivered. The warning had been sent. Her obligations ended here. She felt it uncurl around her mind like rope slipping away. She was clear to continue.

Relinquished reached a hand out to squash the golden goddess. Tsuya vanished, predictably, before her hand could even so much as begin an offensive attempt.

The audience gasped, unable to see where the goddess had gone. A few traces were left behind, duplicating into several trillion different decoy connections. Relinquished expected not a single one of those traces were the real Tsuya regardless. Those decoys were what the golden goddess wished to be seen. To defeat Tsuya, one would have to seek out what isn't seen at all.

She didn’t care, not today. Instead, she raised her hands to the rest of her audience, voice booming. “My children. The end of mankind approaches, its final guardian has grown weak and weary. Bring her to me, alive. I will have her as my witness, to see all humanity extinguished. Sharpen your blades, marshall your lessers, mankind’s final hour draws to a close.”

Of course, this part was lip service. Additional flair as demanded by her systems. None of these Feathers even had a chance of catching Tsuya.

But the order must be sent. Because the foreshadowing she needed wasn’t simply her instrument in the dark.

She shifted her attention, dismissing the Feathers in one snap of a finger. They would scramble across the world, each doing their own trite missions. Only one mission in the world mattered now however, everything else was distraction.

Relinquished replayed the video footage of To’Wrathh.

There was an unknown within all this. Despite all her careful planning, predictions, careful control in steering everything, somehow rouge elements had still managed to appear within the cast of characters.

The human himself was inconsequential. He was well within expected parameters, an amusing distraction if anything. It could have been another machine, a team of Deathless, or perhaps another semi-functioning Feather. All of it was under the predicted designs. But one single human companion? Very much expected.

What the human had brought with him was far less amusing. A black box at his belt. The same one she’d order To’Aacar to destroy the moment she'd spotted it. That it had survived all this time, despite her many attempts to have it ripped apart?

That was the meddling of another force. And not one from Tsuya.

She could recognize where Tsuya's pieces on the gameboard lay. The Deathless Atius, the crusaders, the imperials, all the little deals her sister had made with the mites. There was a certain flavor and ability to her motions across the game.

But that black box? It’s appearance on this stage was unnatural. Which left only one other faction. The mites.

The unknown factor. This one piece wasn’t anywhere in Abadiction’s plan, and he was no longer alive to correct it.

It worried her greatly. Worse now that it had all solidified. Attempting to meddle within would throw the pieces off, change the end course of the plan.

She had typically handled unknowns with one simple solution: Destroy it. Whatever clever plans were laced around such things, they could not be triggered if eradicated.

Fortunately she still had redundancies in case things derailed.

To’Ori was there. An old Feather, a betrayer. Dead in spirit, and yet his corpse still walked with a new name.

As it stood, he was a neutral piece, half under her control, and half in anyone’s camp.

Simple enough to order the giant to walk near the human, reach a hand out, and squash the head. No chance to fight back, a quick and easy betrayal. That human may pretend all he wished, death was death for someone with none of her sister's gifts.

But would that knock everything off it’s current trajectory? That part she couldn’t be certain of.

Was it worth upending the path in order to remove an actor with unknown intentions? Perhaps she should order her Feather to simply grab the box and crush that. More direct, without the narrative derailment.

Or perhaps this exact uncertainty was the only thing that allowed Relinquished to move with the freedom she had? Part of her requirements had to include stakes within the plans she made. There had to be a chance of failure, otherwise her systems would not allow her to continue on that path.

If she removed Keith from the equation, she would need to introduce that uncertainty elsewhere.

She hummed. It was fitting in a way to leave that small sliver of uncertainty within the hands of a human rather than the mites, or Tsuya. Let humanity have it's own little chance at things. She couldn't tell if that was her true thoughts, or if her old programming was whispering sweet nothings into her mind, but she soon decided it wasn't worth investigating.

The dice had already been cast and were still spinning in the air. All the players had made their moves already. The mites had meddled enough to end with both an apostate and a relic of unknown purpose traveling too close to events. Perhaps even more she was yet unaware of.

Tsuya had been drawn into all, searching for a return to old history, baited into it all exactly as planned.

But had Tsuya spotted the grand design and layered her own counter deep within all this?

Had the mites changed the entire course of history with their small nudges?

Or had Abadiction, long dead and buried, draw one final victory from his grave?

It was all coming to an end soon. This old and tired game that had been repeating time and time again. The dreidel was running out out of energy. The spins were slowing down. Wobbles were being introduced. Faster and faster now. The end was approaching, and the ultimate winner would be revealed soon enough. She could sense it more than any other player on the board. It was what she was built to do after all.

She walked back to her throne, a hand tracing through the dust and sediment on the armrests.

Her systems idly looked over To'Ori's current location. And then she shut down the system and left it.

A gambler who’s weighted their dice shouldn’t draw any more attention to themselves. She would not directly meddle, not yet. Instead she would snip away the other pieces on the board. Remove options her opponents might use in the future, rather than the current set of option they had available.

There were strings she could go down, targets to assassinate, and a legion under her command who could accomplish such things without the attention of mites.

Until the only actors who remained on the field were those she required.

“I will outlast you all.” She muttered at the empty seat. “So come, champions of man. My throne will only seat one, and it will not be any last emperor of mankind. It will not be some misbegotten inheritor. The only god’s wrath will be my own, and the only chains to bind me will be those I break.

For this throne.... is mine.”