12 Miles Below
Book 8. Chapter 2:

“That’s bait.” I said, pointing at the video footage of the feral caveman running around with leaves, twigs, and a few rusted machine parts like some psychopath. “It looks like Drakonis, fights like him, screams like him, and probably smells like him. But there’s some details here that don’t line up.”

“And these would be?” Wrath asked as we camped out on the great arches. A region the Odin named over the massive rock arches that rose over the forests here. Biome wise, it was rather standard. Good leafy forests under us, giant rock bridges above the treeline, and so forth.

The dangers down here were the local wildlife, and parts of the biome where Bob was currently settling into. It seemed the ‘trick’ to surviving this biome was simply finding a way on top of these stone arches and walking through the rest of the zone here on top. I don’t know if Undersiders had a rating system for how hostile or welcoming a biome was, but this one was probably on the very low end.

Where we were heading off to was probably going to be the complete opposite.

Thus far moving had been fast among this group. Odin could fly far and fast, my armor and occult grapples let me move around just as fast, and Wrath flying nearby would save me whenever I bit off more than I could chew direction wise. To’Orda got the last ration bar, forced to run along under us. Not happy about it, but not complaining about it either, so the math balances out.

As for the Odin, we had four highly trained scouts sent to guide and carry equipment the Icon deemed necessary, along with an old friend: Kress.

That surly old raven was quite cheery about things now. Negotiations with Bob were underway, and with To’Orda now in charge of the machines in the strata, along with the Icon, that meant the big giant here would be taking charge of fixing the infestation issues boiling over.

I’d already suggested getting a machine to do the translating for Bob, have one in contact with Bob, and the other hanging out with the Odin in the world’s most convoluted game of telephone.

There weren't any real solutions offered just yet, but with the machines in play to assist the Odin, the future was bright for everyone down here.

We’d traveled a ridiculous amount of ground thus far over one day and a half. And just now, we’d gotten a notification over the machine network.

Drakonis had been reportedly spotted in the opposite direction from where we were going. To’Orda and Wrath were about to turn around and retrace their steps when I interceded.

“Few things to note.” I pointed at the projected video footage from the rock. “First, speedwise, the distance from the nearest pillar heart up to where this was recorded is one hundred eighty three miles. Absolutely insane for a day and a half, even factoring occult grapples.”

Wrath crunched the numbers, “I fail to see the difficulty? This is well within a human’s ability to travel. Average jogging speed of an unarmored human is four to six miles per hour. Given it has been thirty two hours since death, Drakonis should have been able to travel at minimum one hundred and twenty eight miles while keeping a leisure jog. If he attempted to sprint and use his occult grapples, he should be much further on than the recording displayed here.”

I gave her a sage nod, “I’d bet a strawberry flavored ration bar he hasn't even made it ten miles away from the pillar heart.”

She frowned at that, clearly confused. She'd lived in the clan, she knew how absolutely mythical strawberry flavored ration bars were to retainers out on the field. Those were not bet lightly.

The Icon’s speaker crackled, next to the rock’s. “Tourists require rest and proper nutrition along with time to enjoy sights. This current estimate on his trajectory assumes he did not eat, drink, or rest and continued jogging at near maximum average speed for thirty two hours. Hence why Mr. Winterscar claims this is an impossible feat.”

“You have not factored in the occult grapples.” Wrath said. “Such things would skew the results greatly.”

“Still not probable," I said, "but for different reasons than what the Icon suggests. See, you’re considering the numbers of it all, but not the core human experience when traveling.”

“And what would be the core human experience in travel?” Wrath asked, curious to my own take.

"Oh this should be good." The pet rock snickered from To'Orda's shoulders. "Lay it on us human, what perls of wisdom have you got?"

“Let me give a few:” I cleared my throat, then counted down on my hand. “Getting completely lost a bunch of times, backtracking each time, getting found by machines each of those times, fighting back, getting killed by them anyhow, and starting over. He should have been pinged far closer to the pillar heart, multiple times, mostly going new directions each time. That he got this far away from the pillar heart is godsdamn suspicious. That he got there without ever being seen for nearly two hundred miles would make him a master of disguise. Which he isn’t.”

Wrath hummed, “What if he discovered an occult power of that kind at the pillar heart?”

“Possible, but here comes another issue to all this.” I pointed at the video footage. “He’s wearing trees and leaves as clothing." I had the rock zoom in on the video footage. "See there? It's too good. Like actually well made. Sure, all of it is plausible with what he has to work with - but it takes some time to actually make stuff like this, and he’d need to trial and error it too. This kind of clothing would have gone through a lot of iteration and failed attempts.” I then pointed a finger to the map region itself. “Also does that section of map not look like the absolute perfect place to setup an ambush?”

It had high ground, plenty of tunnels to sulk through, while easily funnelling targets. There couldn’t possibly be a better ground for a long range support unit paired with a short range vanguard type skirmisher. Of which, I happened to know exactly one such pair out looking for me.

“You believe this footage is doctored?” Wrath asked.

“I think it reeks of a certain Feather meddling into all this. Avalis is smart, but he’s book smart. His blind spots are things he doesn’t know - that he doesn’t know he doesn’t know. Like lived experience and people messing up plans.”

He probably didn’t even think Drakonis could even get lost. Avalis always had a map to work with his entire life, and all the Deathless he hunted down in the past would have been expedition teams with their own quirks and general ability. Like having a general goal and pre-planning. “My guess is that he first set out looking for the best ambush spot to bait us within reasonable distance of a pillar heart, and then spent the rest of his effort in doctoring the video footage itself once he’d done the same math you lot did.”

The video was impeccable to be fair to Avalis here, clearly a work of art. Drakonis moved exactly like he would in real life, right down to the insults and combat style he’d be employing if he were caught in the wilderness with only the occult and a few twigs to rub together. So that told me Avalis had been watching the replay of combat scenes that involved the Deathless, and had a great imagination on what to expect from combat in opponents.

Which makes sense to me, that’d be the kind of thing he’d specialize in.

And exactly the reason I was hiding so much of my tech and abilities during all my fights thus far. If he never even had a hint I could do some things, when I did pull them off on him, he wouldn’t be able to plan ahead for it.

“Then you would recommend we follow our current path?” Wrath asked.

I shrugged. “We’re taking a gamble that he’s at this particular pillar heart, it could be the other two in the distance. But either way, so long as we make it into the next biome and that it’s how the Odin last reported it to look, we should be able to start sneaking around off the map after that.”

We’d picked this particular pillar to head to not just from a proximity point of view, but also because there were two biomes of interest between here and that pillar: The Expanse, and the Darklands.

And from what the Odin scouts described, both would be the perfect anti-To’Sefit. Which was what we desperately needed right now.

The real issue in the pair after us was her. As a ranged specialist, all she needed were a few lessers to send her word of our appearance, plot out where we were likely to travel, and camp out in some highground to take potshots at us from a safe distance.

I’d survived a few fights with her, but I had zero illusions I’d be able to survive a direct beam if she caught me unaware. So once we hit these two biomes, we'd go dark and use those to hide our traces after.

And as for Drakonis and his video footage here... “I'd probably say any future reports sent by any machines on the network can’t be trusted. Avalis is going to realize we’re onto him somehow, then go into a deep dive on how we figured it out, and patch them up. Next few sightings will have less mistakes until they’re no longer spottable." I stopped, realizing an easy win here. "Better yet, why don't we do the same thing? Have machines in just about every biome leading out of the expanse start reporting us appearing there in the machine network. Really cause havoc. Are either of you two able to generate that kind of video footage?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"I can generate it easily enough." The Icon said through her dedicated speaker here. "I can have my systems process a few thousand artificial traces, however I am not connected to the machine network, thus one of these two would need to patch through these videos outwards."

Which was an affirmative from both, or rather an excited yes and an annoyed grunt from their respective Feathers. “Do you have a followup plan on finding him if no reports can be verified?” Wrath asked after we'd settled that plan out.

“I think that’s the easiest part: I don’t think Drakonis did anything at all so far. He’s probably just taking a breather, getting a home and shelter setup for the long haul, maybe setting up defenses.”

“That would be smart.” To’Orda said. “Staying still is the best plan.”

“He means the easiest plan.” The rock clarified.

To’Orda looked confused, since best plan and easiest plan were one and the same to him. At least, if I was reading the beady little violet eyes deep under that shawl correctly.

“Well, it’s exactly what I’d do in his boots.” I said, “Kick back, give it a week or two in paradise and then start planning on how to escape.”

“I find that unlikely given your history.” Wrath said.

“Wait, why?”

“Staying still would be the responsible and reasonable plan of action when waiting for others to assist you. To maximize annoyance, you would find some way to end up anywhere besides the last known location.”

I raised my finger up in protest.

“Such as somehow stumbling upon the only possible portal within three hundred miles,” Wrath said before I could defend my honor. “And teleport not just one, but several entire stratas down past the local area. It is almost impressive.”

I put the finger back down.

Then put it right back up. “Wait-wait-wait: I’m innocent! Drakonis did it. It’s all his fault I fell down a hole here.”

“Getting the feeling he’s the type that never learns.” The pet rock said. “Knowing the mites, they’d probably find it hilarious to toss him into more portals just for that one.”

Rock’s got a point. Superior sent over the soul connection. He'd been happy enough hanging out in the blackbox by my belt, the walls retracted upwards so it looked almost like just another utility item among my collection of random scrap. We’re a mitespeaker now, finding our way with portals should be something to look into. I’m pretty sure we can get that first portal to work again, but there might be more we could do in the future.

How?

I have zero idea Prime. I’m making things up as I go, as any good Keith should.

Discussion quickly turned more on what lay ahead, along with some strategy from the Odin about the Expanse and the Darklands after.

The Odin world down here stretched quite some distance outwards from the Icon, but eventually they all hit biomes that made travel through impossible.

To the far south was the Whitelands. A biome of extreme cold, where pillars of light and heat would slowly move across the land, meaning any chance of navigation there revolved around staying within these zones and moving with them. And by extreme cold, I mean a good synthetic fur coat or handmitts plus some goggles would work just fine for quite some time for a human. Extreme sub-zero temperatures to the Odin and a rather impossibly warm and sunny day to the surface.

But for the poor birds, it was too cold for things to grow there, and only some of the more furry races like the greyroamers would make their dens there on the closer outskirts. No one else knows how far that biome stretches, since nobody’s managed to expedition far enough to find the outer mountains leading to the next biome.

The real reason all of that wasn't traversable was because dotting the outer parts of this biome were airspeeder replicas that were buried under the ice and snow, half-sticking out. Clearly intended for humans to unearth, fix up and operate. But Odin had a... difficult time due to the size difference and interface expectations. This wasn't a new thing, other biomes also had replica airspeeders built up to be used, like something the Undersiders called 'the great highway.'

Airspeeder wrecks were all over that place, and required for travel too since that highway spanned quite a bit of the world in every direction.

Wrath pointed the machine map showed the scale of the Whitelands was about seven times the size of the Odin lands thus far, all put together. So yes, impossible to go too far into this strata without an airspeeder patched up and flying. It was like a micro-biome of the surface, only a lot less lethal.

Relic armor would breeze through that biome, as would any machines of course. There'd be no mountains to splatter against either, so flying over it or with airspeeders would work just fine. It might just take us a few weeks to travel through.

But as for the Odin? Nope, their kingdom ended up against the tourist version of the surface.

Another barrier was the great desert wasteland. A place filled with electric storms that would zap anything standing on the sand periodically. There’d be rock outcroppings every few miles that were safe from the underground electrical storms, but no way to grow anything on top of those rocks.

For any animals with four legs, that desert was the endpoint for their little kingdoms. Even relic armor would have some trouble with the amount of power that ran under the sands. For the Odin, it was possible enough.

Only reason they don’t is because the amount of water required is difficult. Humans could travel through for about two days without water. Odin needed to drink water every few hours to survive. A little difficult to carry around that much while flying the whole time.

When Bob started showing up, some of the cities sealed themselves off in their wrecked human starships, sealing it all up and expecting to outlast Bob. Others who couldn't do a proper seal packed up their bags, made large dirigibles to coast over the landscape and left in this direction. It worked out well, although communication with the colonies beyond the desert was sporadic, considering the cost and effort it took to travel. At least that meant the desert functioned as a great barrier against Bob.

The third barrier biome was locally known as the Great Jungle. And it was basically a tangled mess of vines. Trees and vegetation would grow from all sides, including the roof of the biome, culminating into some massive tangle where ‘roadways’ were giant tree trunks snaking through the entire thing. Light only appeared on the larger trunks, with vines quickly obscuring anything beyond the roadways. While not impossible to traverse for the Odin or the greyroamers there, it wasn’t something an entire city could migrate safely through. The vegetation was predatory, and the machines lurking in that strata were also rather aggressive. The real danger was airborne however, a lot of mushrooms would spew out different kinds of poisonous gasses, and while bigger animals like the greyroamers could make it through with mild narcotic feelings, small critters like the Odin would just straight up die.

No expedition ever made it further past this biome, but it did lead to one of the further off pillar hearts we’d need to check into. According to the machine maps, one of the main reasons no expeditions made it through this biome wasn’t from how toxic, difficult to navigate or dangerous the biome was, but instead for the same reason the Whitelands was abandoned: Too damn big.

Fortunately for me, relic armor easily handled a biome like that one. We would just be caught walking around instead. However, the Odin escort we had here would have a much harder time with it all.

The last barrier biome led to the Expanse. Which was where we were heading off to now and should reach within a few hours. I reviewed the footage and briefing of that biome, and felt more amazed that Odin had managed to even make it past that barrier to discover the Darkland beyond and still come back to tell the tale.

Part of the reason these scouts were here with us. All of them had made it to the Darklands and survived to return, so they'd be able to guide us through it in ways the briefing and scout reports couldn't.

Lovely tourist areas, all of it. I think this far down, the mites were less involved in making beautiful livable scenery. Tonight would be the last night before we reached the Expanse and things got difficult.

As always, before going to sleep, I spent some time trying to crack open Master Hexis’s book of spells. Once more the pages screamed out that there was some kind of cypher woven somewhere in all this that would let me actually unlock what I needed. The program itself was self-contained, even had its own UI, but otherwise functioned exactly like a book would.

“I still think it’s got something to do with that illustration of me.” I muttered, once more flipping to that page. Hexis had a lot of talents and it was clear he’d taken inspiration from the Imperials in how to draw. The figure of a human, with both a square and a circle superimposed to mark all the range of motion, along with examples of how far the arms and hands would reach, remained eerie. Half the image was human, the other slice was in full armor. Specifically mine. Flipping or moving the page slightly in the UI would also change the image, showing multiple layers. Anywhere from the full armor, to nothing but the human body, including the beard going large or non-existent depending on how I was dragging the page.

“If you ask me, he’s having a giggle.” Cathida said. “If toaster tits can’t find anything in there, there’s probably nothing. And if you suggest asking the new guy to take a shot at it, I will make you absolutely regret that one.”

“Right, because he’s not quite on our side for sure.” I said, turning my helmet to look over at him. I could tell he could hear me, Feathers have perfect hearing after all. What I couldn’t tell is if he actually cared to pay attention or not. He seemed in low-power mode, just resting up against a rock with his shield and hammer held like stuffed animal plushies.

The rock was on his shoulder, projecting a set of characters in blue, floating upwards and off. Like jagged connecting lines of some kind, in pairs of three. Old human script.

“I just feel if there’s something, it has to be here.” I said, once more messing with that page. “All the other drawings he made were standard, or hardly had any layers to it. But this one? He went all out, even added shimmering gold to it.”

“It’s programmed in. Half this thing is an artbook program if you haven’t noticed.” Cathida said. “That’s probably where all the bloat and extra memory goes. It’s just a very detailed history book that old geezer wanted you to study in depth. And the idea that there’s more in there was bait to make you read it.”

That was possible. Wrath hadn’t been able to find anything in there either, and she’s the most powerful mind I could bring to the fight here.

… Hang on. “I think I just had an idea.”

Hexis had faith that I’d discover his secrets on my own time. I’m sure I would have too, with enough time to scratch on it. But what kind of Winterscar would I be if I didn’t find a way to cheat the puzzle completely?

The most powerful mind I knew was Wrath. But that’s not technically true anymore now is it? I shifted through my options on the HUD, and looked up my contacts list. One new one I’d recently added just a few hours prior.

“No way.” Cathida hissed. “She’s working for the enemy. Outright employed to him. Might as well just hand over the book to the giant directly.”

“First, she’s on humanity’s side. And second - you just said you think it’s a history book and nothing else. So what’s the drawback here?”

“I said I was mostly certain it’s just a history book. On the one percent chance it’s got more knowledge in there, I’d rather that not fall into the hands of machines, thank you very much.”

“Of all the machines out there, I think she’s the one we can trust would figure out ways to hide anything important from biting us in the ass.”

Cathida hissed, but otherwise didn’t make more of a fuss as I cycled up the list and opened up a connection request.

The Icon answered immediately, “Greetings Mr. Winterscar! Is there something you would like to discuss or have my assistance with?”

“Yes, there is.” I said. “You’re a golden age AI with access to all that processing power, right?”

“I am. Do you wish for a list of my operational capabilities?”

“As a matter of fact, I was wondering.. how good are you at completely brute forcing through something?”