12 Miles Below
Book 8. Chapter 4: Heart of the Biome

Hexis had left me probably one of the most valuable consolidations of knowledge in the world. A little over four hundred different fractals. Although the quality varied between absolutely amazing to about as valuable as snow.

About two hundred and fifty some were absolutely useless for everything, like that color changing fractal. Why there were so many useless spells out there to learn was pretty easy to guess: Relinquished had no need to hide useless fractals, so she put her attention on tampering down the more dangerous ones out there.

Another one hundred and fifty some were useful, but not for any military sense I could tell. And some of them I would very loosely claim usefulness. A fractal that ended up emitting a scent of some kind a very specific strand of insects tended to flock towards was considered a useless fractal, but surface clans could probably find some cooking technique with these bugs, and I could see the agrifarmers using these fractals to make their job harvesting insects slightly easier. Maybe. It had potential use so it got tossed into the pile of industrial fractals.

Another seventy five or so had uses, but more for philosophy and spiritual tourism. Such as a fractal that made you hallucinate your own imagination out into the world. Zero effect on anything, but with a good enough imagination, one could have a lot of pretty colors and strange sights. Another would change some food tastes, or warp someone’s mind to feel more attracted to trees. But not by that much, only giving ‘mild feelings of attachment’ to very specific looking vegetation.

Yeah that one was an odd one.

And of course, to no surprise, I found every single fractal Talen’s book had contained. Neatly organized among the rest of the learned spells. Goes to show I wasn’t the only one who was led to one of these books. I didn’t even think the trove was the last book he’d ever made either. Humans really did have plenty of ways to pass information down the line under machine eyes.

In total there were still a good fifty or so fractals that could be used for combat, in loose ways. Anywhere from giving everyone around a feeling of anxiety and doom including the caster, to the humble fractal of heat. Quite a lot of fractals discovered by Deathless were accounted for, including everything Drakonis had on hand and detailed explanations on how to make them work. Mostly. Some of it really could have used a little more writing, however this was all coming from Master Hexis’s memory. The book outright included a section on how to maximize the human ability to memorize items, and that hadn’t been part of the hidden sections but rather a full chapter in the public facing part.

I had Cathida take charge of moving the armor and jogging along with the crew while I meditated and plotted out what fractals I’ll learn first, and debated which were the most efficient ones.

Some combat fractals were made of multiple different fractals put together. Other fractals required specific sound waves to be done, or specific ‘soul resonance frequencies’ to match. To which Hexis added his own notes on how some of these were only conjecture and hypothesis on how things worked. Sometimes visualizing and moving the soul while casting the occult helped human minds conceptualize or connect to the occult better. Airspeeder was still out on expedition when it came to all that, nobody knew why things worked the way they worked.

On the other hand, I was reasonably certain I could cast lighting out of my hands if I wove a few different fractals together at once. With enough cheating around using Journey’s speakers, Keith Superior as additional support, and my own abilities.

There was one large cricket on the dinner plate left here: The Icon had cracked this book. Which meant she had a full copy of it in her memories. I wasn’t sure what her ultimate goals were, I did feel she could be trusted - but I wouldn’t be surprised if I came back to the Odin after a few years to find them all using occult powers as day to day additions.

She did read through the entire history documents listed within this book, so she’s aware the occult isn’t to be tampered too much without drawing machine attention.

… But she was technically ‘hired’ on their side now with To’Orda.

Thus far, Wrath told me she’d hashed out a good set of deals with To’Orda and he’d be somewhat on our side of things.

I’m still sleeping with two eyes open around him. Given Relinquished runs on narrative logic, waking up to his inevitable betrayal was very likely to happen at some point.

-----

“Lovely place.” I said, looking up at the next biome and where we planned on vanishing off the maps. “Nobody thought to make a lodge here or some kind of vacation retreat?”

Kres pecked my helmet in answer.

The Expanse, also known under the names of ‘The silent fields’ and ‘The realm of glass’ - nice names that didn’t inspire any omens whatsoever - that was the next biome we had to pass through.

After that, the Icon would deploy her mess-with-everything plan and send video footage for a few thousand different machines to report from random locations all over the local area. That’ll make enough noise that we can continue to make our way to Drakonis without being sniped.

And ironically speaking, noise was something we should not be doing while traveling through this biome. It’s not called the silent fields for nothing.

The Odin settled around finding perches on To’Orda, and my own armor for Kres. “Besides the difficulty with gravity, the other danger is endurance.” The bird said, eyes looking over what lay beyond. “Nothing grows in the Expanse and the domain is large.”

“You don’t say.”

Because there wasn’t any dirt for anything to grow on. Or a ground floor in the general sense.

It looked more like a maze of floating metal and glass slabs, all moving in different directions from one another. Massive landmasses, with crystalline spikes and rough terrain. Pieces would slowly collide into one another, crush apart, then merge and solidify again. Like ice refreezing.

“How do we even get onto the first landmass?” I asked, taking a step out of the cavern entrance. Beyond me was simply a solid metal drop. No handholds, nothing. And under was simply more floating landmasses. A few had smashed into the walls of the mountain exit here, merging with it, and finally remaining still.

“Landbound cannot traverse the Expanse at any good speed.” Kres said, ruffling his feathers. “None of the Greyroamers, Ringtails or others have ever made an attempt here. However, there is a path to starting.” He flapped a wing, then hopped off my shoulder, flying down to the edge, landing with two hops before looking down the cliff. “Beyond, each landmass has its own field of gravity. And this cliff is a landmass of its own.”

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The bird hopped one more time, directly off the edge. Then fell straight down. I took a few hesitant steps forward, but I already saw what happened in the soul sight. He’d simply fallen down the cliff and instantly fell back onto the cliffside. As if gravity had swapped its polarity.

When I actually looked over the edge, Kres was there a few feet down, perpendicular to me. Bobbing his head. “Be warned human, once you step foot on the actual land masses here, the other rules of the Expanse will come into play. And we will need to remain vigilant for the machines that fly through this part of the world.”

The other rule of the Expanse was sound. All noises that involved the landmasses themselves were safe. Anything foreign would cause issues.

I looked up, zooming Journey’s vision on one of the floating masses. The underside of something, massive spikes jutting out in a few different directions, crystal shards raining downwards from the collision of another landmass much lower, shards raining upwards.

Any strange sound would shatter the glass part of these crystals. The metal was safe from anything and would form the center seed. But the glass crystals that grew and eventually expanded out into the full terrain here would start to crack from the origin of the sound outwards. More sound, more cracks.

And while the metal remains impervious to any sounds, it also wasn’t where the artificial gravity was being generated from. That was all in the crystals.

Illegal sounds anywhere near these finicky things and they’d form breaks. Gravity would start to fade right after. Not completely gone but greatly reduced. If the entire thing broke apart into smaller chunks, gravity would vanish completely. Those shards of crystal would float out in every direction until they were drawn by another landmass and absorbed into them.

The only thing making this biome even remotely traversable was that everything moved as if it were stuck in thick syrup, and the landmasses weren’t overly huge that I couldn’t sprint my way across a few in under a minute or two. Largely enough time to get out of the way if any were going to pancake me.

On the other end - I couldn’t see more than a few hundred feet ahead, because inevitably a landmass or another would be floating in the way. So what we were looking at was a massive constantly moving wall.

“I can see how it’d be a pain for you to travel to this place. All the changing gravity fields here must make flying difficult.”

Not to mention as a final fuck-you to anyone trying to travel through this biome, it was cold here. Just a little under the freezing temperature of water. Fortunately, Journey handled most of the issues on that front.

Kres ruffled his feathers out, “It is the glass shards that float and fall from mass to mass that are the most dangerous part of this all. The glass is extremely sharp. Flying is not something that can be done at slow speeds, as such if a mass breaks somewhere nearby, the shards will rain down. Any caught in the path will be cut to pieces. Any that accidentally fly into such storms will equally die. We do not have armor to protect our bodies.”

This was probably the single most hostile biome I’ve ever seen. Everything about it was manageable when taken in isolation, but all put together made for a serious barrier.

“What’s the range of sound down here? Because we’re talking just fine and a few hundred feet out I don’t see that floating hunk of sleeping doom breaking down about it.”

“As the machines report here,” Wrath said, walking next to me to look outwards. “Any sounds within twenty feet would be enough to cause the glass to crack, which will begin to weaken gravity. Sounds within ten feet would cause shards to break off completely. Those will drift upwards and float out. And sounds under five feet could cause the immediate chunk one stands on to shatter completely. Volume and strength of the sound will also affect it, sharper sounds causing more damage than lower ones. The Icon postulated that the crystals here have a set of harmonic frequencies they are attuned to, although some of their behaviors simply do not follow physics.”

They did generate gravity in a bubble around themselves, so I wouldn’t be surprised the mites had made some convoluted rules for these to obey. “Any machines in this biome? Seems deserted to me.”

“There are.” Kress said, and the rest of the Odin scouts all moved nervously together, as if remembering the encounter. “They are far more aggressive and territorial than other machines we have encountered. We believe it is because nothing else grows in this biome, thus anything foreign is very noticeable.”

“There are two models that are flying in between the landmasses.” Wrath said, adding to the scout reports. “As far as they’ve mapped the region, there are twenty mite power fountains within the floating landmasses, of which all machines patrol between. Of course any map becomes outdated within the next hour as things move.”

“Are they going to attack us if they see us?” We did have two Feathers here with us, and both weren’t technically considered rogues against the machine empire. Just pretending to be rog- ah, gods damn it. “Of course they’ll attack us. Because danger means you have reasons to stay on my side of things so that your plot can pan out.”

Wrath nodded. “To’Avalis and To’Sefit are likely petitioning for control over all machines within biomes nearby. After which they will be mobilized and seek us out. As of now, I see Mother has ignored their requests, leaving things as is.”

“All right, so what are they? How dangerous are the locals down here?”

“Piranha class flying models.” She said, To’Orda’s pet rock opened up a projector and showed me a floating little fish-like machine. It had several metal bands circling the whole thing, where the scales should have been. “These are standard for this strata, within biomes where air superiority is required. They move in as a group, much like their base template animal would. Their teeth are occult blades, and their jaws can all distend far enough to wrap around a human’s arm, letting them break relic armor shields rapidly if attached.”

“Nasty, but no occult shields that I can see.” I looked over the schematic. Besides quick agility and their teeth, they didn’t seem that bad. “This is the kind of machines hiding under all the stratas?”

“They travel in schools of three to four hundred.”

“Ah. There’s the catch.” Of course they’d travel in ridiculous sizes.

To’Orda’s rock swapped the image of the evil fish out to a massive serpent like machine instead, with exposed ribcages. Within those, I could see thousands of the new fish-looking models, all flying besides it or within it.

The giant machine seemed to move with lazy purpose, shards of glass breaking on it’s segments as it moved in between the landmasses. “That is their mother carrier.” Wrath said. “Since the Piranha chassis is too small to house power cells, they will return here to refuel. It is their home. A few dozen different schools will travel with these machines, although I can see the individual schools do travel from different homes, more nomadic.”

“I imagine their combat ability is very difficult to deal with?” I asked, looking over the machine. It also had two large gun turrets at every segment, along with a very pissed off skeletal face.

“I would not consider our chances of victory as favorable against a machine of that size.” Wrath said, then her wings twitched. “Although, my Winterscar alarm informs me that there is a good chance you would find some way to break these warmachines anyhow.”

“I think I’d need a war frigate to punch through the shields here.” I said, then looked through my bandolier. “Maybe a few cherry bombs and firecrackers too, just to be safe. I’ve got, like, seven with me I could throw at it.”

Cathida snickered at that, while everyone else stared at me as if I were insane. Tough crowd.

“There is a center in this biome.” To’Orda rumbled out, standing taller, spine unfurrowling. “My instincts are that we should visit.”

Wrath looked outwards into the maze, then nodded. “Yes, I see the report now. Further into the maze, there is a centerpoint, it seems stable and unmoving. A spherical fortress that appears to have human inspired architecture. It has a few dozen airlock doorways that do not allow machines to open the way through. The machines that have attempted to break their way in were crushed by the landmasses around here in ways that did not follow the natural patterns of this biome. Since then, no further attempt to break in has been done. There is no record of what could be inside.” She turned to To’Orda. “You believe we should venture there instead of simply traversing through this biome at good speed?”

The giant nodded. “Icon tells me it will be good to hide in, as she lays out all false trails. Drakonis is not stupid. He will wait for me.”

“What do you think we’ll find inside that fortress?” I asked.

The giant grunted. “Nnnnn… You are the first human to set foot in this biome. That means no others have come before you. No others could have found and taken anything. This land is untapped.

I realized right away what To’Orda was talking about. “You think there’s unlooted loot inside that fortress? What kind of loot are we talking about here?”

“Mite treasures.” To’Orda said. “This far deep, it is bound to be powerful.”

I hummed in deep thought. “Dibs.”