“He ran?” Kidra hissed, sliding to a stop with a heavy splash of water.

“He ran.” I confirmed, the occult sight showing me nothing but darkness below the whirlpool.

“The Feather may have only made you think he’s run.” Father warned, voice crackling on the comms. “An enemy like that one is relentless. Don’t be fooled.”

“Got to agree with the old man. He’s making a new plan. He’s definitely making a new plan, the bastard.” I said, taking a few cautious steps to the whirlpool edge. “Current one is a bust, he’s down an army and two Feathers. He can’t track us anymore, and…”

In the distance, more rifle shots echoed, getting closer.

“And we’ve got our own army that’s caught up. No wonder he decided running was the better choice. Must have known his time was up.” The knightbreaker round he’d chucked at me had been a last attempt to finish us off without wasting more time.

All things said and done, I was happy enough with this result. The headache and difficulty concentrating was slowly bleeding away now that I wasn’t tapping the occult every second. I’d gone very close to my limits, now I was paying the belated price. Which would have been terrible had the fight continued on.

The battle was over. All that was left were limping machines that hadn’t yet been completely executed by Kidra, and while they were screeching incoherently at me, my sister had her blade ready to stab anything that dragged itself too close.

Not that they’d have the chance to do even that.

I let my body flop down on the ground, arms spread out, letting water wash over the armor. Imagining I was back home in the safety of the clan, and all this was the warm waters of the communal bathhouse. Couldn’t feel any of it through Journey of course, but it’s the thought that counts. It helped me nurse the headache that had somehow followed me even into the soul trance.

In the surrounding parameter, four blurs of silver and red streaked straight through ahead of the group behind them. They leaped out of the tunnels, deep into the air, each landing hard against the rushing water, rifles drawn out. Scanning the area. Spotting us a moment later. The four knights turned and began a rapid jog directly our way, blades cutting through limping shells of machines Kidra had only incapacitated. Killing blows delivered with savage strikes, even as the near dead Screamers tried to swing and fight back. No rifle shots. No need to waste bullets on the scraps left behind.

The four Winterscar knights didn’t even give them the courtesy of looking as they scythed through the scattered machines between them and us.

In mere moments, four Winterscar knights surrounded Kidra and me, the soldiers taking defensive positions on all sides, while the rest of the clan knights fanned around the chamber.

“We greet the prime.” One said to Kidra, giving a blade salute, with a bow. She returned it with all the regal bearing of a House Prime.

The others had their helmet fixed straight on where I lay. Medical scans from the armor would have already told all four I was still alive. Not ‘good to play a few more rounds of hangerball’ alive. More like ‘Lucky to limp around.’ alive.

My vitals were showing a grim picture. The kind that would mean if I ever stepped out of the soul trance, pain would very quickly come after me like I owed it money. Good thing I could hide from it all in the soul trance.

“The captain?” One of my knights asked, helmet turning to scan the surroundings. Sounds of blades slicing through leftover enemies echoed through the chamber as the rest of the surface knights fully breached into the chamber uncontested.

“His armor fell into the whirlpool, to the second strata.” Father said over the comms. “Enemy prevented recovery. The other knights remain with him, holding his soul safe for now.”

They stayed quiet for a moment, helmets turning to one another. One took a step forward, looking down at me. “We can recover him once we’ve secured your safety, my lord. The captain would understand.”

“Lord Atius?” One of the clan knights asked, coming closer to our group. I recognized the insignias and decorations as a knight of House Icestride. And given the old dry tone, this had to be the prime. Highly respected warrior, with decades of service. During the time that Father had lost his mind, the one who had come closest to challenging Shadowsong for the title of First Blade had been him.

“He’s... gone.” I said, pointing to the melted rocks above, where the clan lord had made his last stand. “To’Sefit.”

The knight nodded. “We will reunite on the surface. And Master Windrunner?”

“...Also deceased. Armor and all. Same enemy. Couldn’t get to him in time.” The words hurt to say or even think. Windrunner was just… gone.

I could tell the news hit the knights hard, even if none of them reacted to it outwardly. Icestride shook his head. “He will be remembered. The time for mourning must come later. For now, chain of command continues with me, in the absence of the clan lord.”

The knights sent acknowledgement pings, each name lighting up with a green dot on Journey’s HUD. All except for the names in gray. I sent my confirmation ping with the rest.

“Debrief?” Icestride asked, helmet turning to Kidra.

She sheathed her sword back into place, going over the abridged events while the rest of the clan knights secured the chamber.

Icestride nodded slowly. “I see. The mite forge is no longer on this level, and is further under us. The final enemy is also unaccounted for, likely fallen back to guard that objective. And we have an incoming wave of machines on our heels. The original forces this Feather expected to have more time to summon.”

“Should we retreat?” I asked.

Wrath remained silent in the sack, watching events.

“No.” Icestride said, shaking his head slowly. “There is only complete victory, or eventual defeat. Consider it, Winterscar. Mite forges are not hidden, the machines know where each one is and has armies surround them. If your nemesis was kicked to the ground, would you let her get back up with such an advantage to pull from?”

I shook my head. “Not a chance, I’d guard every mite forge nearby and setup alerts everywhere else in case she tries to find another forge further off. I’d have armies surround every point of interest and probably hound after her every second of the day. I’d never give her the chance to repair or rest.”

“Correct. And I suspect that's exactly what the enemy has done. Had we gone for further forges away, we would have encountered fully entrenched armies. And, worse: The original Feather we were sent to take down, To'Aacar, knew about the clan enough to hunt you down there. Had you not gone out to the fields to confront the Chosen knights, To’Aacar would have gone into the clan colony and slaughtered his way to your House gates. What does that tell you?"

"They know where we live." I gulped. "Which means he knows where we live too."

He nodded. "I admit I find it strange that their leader can't understand the surface exists, but I can't fault the scheme when considering it from a long-term position. Any machine that tries to continue the campaign on the surface would eventually be destroyed by Relinquished herself in a fit of fury. Over time, only the ones who do not touch the surface will remain. To'Aacar showed the best machines can do on the surface, given that limit. It wasn't as dire as it could have been."

He did have an entire machine army, along with Wrath following his orders at that point. And instead of swinging that like a battering ram into the clan gates, he'd gotten the othersiders to do the war for him, while his real army handled the undersiders.

I got where Icestride was going with this. "Avalis will do the same against the clan. If we bring back Wrath like she is now, he'll keep sending slavers and raiders to batter the clan down. He'll hold the entire clan's safety as a hostage."

He nodded, "You won’t be able to shelter Wrath under our banner, not in her vulnerable state. Assassins and other sabotage would likely be the weapon of choice. The mission must continue, to the end. Wrath must be repaired, or we cannot bring her back with us.” He took a step forward to the whirlpool, looking down. “And To’Avalis knows it."

That was… a little hard to take in. If Wrath wasn’t repaired and we retreated back home, To’Avalis would follow behind like a bloodhound smelling weakness.

With her repaired, he wouldn’t be able to make such overt moves, since she'd be able to fight off anything herself. Wrath might be still learning common sense, but she wasn’t lacking in combat. She’d killed To’Sefit alone, and would likely outright counter To’Orda’s gravity manipulation with her wings. If she’s fixed up, she'd easily rip apart any othersiders or assassins he had to work with. The only thing that could threaten her at that point would be a full machine army, and he couldn't field those on the surface. Avalis would have to wait for us to leave the clan on our own rather than pick a fight when we had all advantages lined up.

“The path down is one way,” Kidra said. “We jump in, we won’t be able to get back up. How long would we need to travel in the second strata to return to the drop off point?”

Icestride said nothing, helmet fixed on the whirlpool in front of him. “Weeks. And with the Undersider city destroyed, there would be no other gathering point we could find. But it seems the gods have some favor for us after all. Scan below the whirlpool. Our intel doesn’t seem up to date. Something is down there, where there should be nothing.”

Kidra walked closer to the vortex, helmet pointing down. Journey was already downloading what was being scanned by Icestride.

A hand reached out ahead of me, one of my knights. I took it, and let it drag me back up on my feet, water washing down Journey. No rest for the wicked looked like. So while everyone else was busy unloading hoversleds, getting ammo deposits setup for quick loading, pushing machine scraps into piles, or staring down the whirlpool at the center for the secrets it hid under, I made my way to one particular troubled spider we’d come all this way to help.

She stared at me as I made my way, expression unreadable since nothing worked in her shell other than that single glowing eye. Once I made contact again, feelings and words came into my mind.

Aww, were you worried about me? I asked.

No. She answered back immediately. If she were able to move, she’d be huffing, arms crossed, likely looking away.

It's adorable how bad at lying you are. You really should be a little more honest with your feelings.

You were able to defeat me before. If you had failed against To’Avalis, I would have been greatly disappointed. I was not worried. Not in the slightest.

She had been. Quite a lot. No hiding any of that in the soul sight. Some reasons were a little touching. She considered me a close friend.

Other reasons were a little disturbing. Apparently the only one allowed to kill me was her. To’Avalis doing it before she could was encroaching on her turf and she was not a happy spider about that. She was worried he’d rob her of something rightfully hers. She didn’t have any intention of killing me, anytime soon, or at all. But it was the idea of someone else getting to me first that she found very ill-tasting.

Feathers. I sighed. Even the good ones are crazy.

Your thought patterns are just as strange to me, human. She tutted back. Equally confused as to why I hadn’t thought of fighting her to the death again either. If anything, she found it insulting. As if I considered myself too far above her to even think her a threat. Once my shell is repaired, I would appreciate if you considered me with due respect.

I gave her a level stare, then reached out with a hand to shove her back into the sack. “All right, back in you go, little miss murderbot. Reflect on how killing people isn’t socially acceptable in this day and age.”

Wrath squawked in protest, but had no way to stop the terrible evil human from lifting her up.

She’d changed a lot over time. At one point, all she had as examples to follow were Feather and To’Aacar. Now her world was far more broad, filled with different people to learn from. She’d found her own voice here, slowly turning into someone more attuned with who she wanted to be.

“We’ll need to get you new straps. Old ones are busted.” I said, turning to one of the knights further off. Fortunately, broken straps were something that happened often, and Kidra had considered that we’d run into this issue. One of the hoversleds brought with the clan knights had everything I’d need to replace the straps, with some careful knots.

Don’t think I haven’t noticed your own thoughts, human. You really should be a little more honest with your feelings. She said, smug about throwing my own words right back at me.

Well now, arn’t you holding your head a little high for someone stuck in a sack? I’ll be billing you for all these extra straps once we’re done here, and I'm going to overcharge for everything I can squeeze. I’m a Winterscar, we have a reputation to keep.

And I’ll negotiate with Kidra on those, as she is the head of your house. And far more reasonable.

As I was working on this, Icestride had ordered the small army assembled here to take positions around the chamber, sending Ankah and the Shadowsongs further up the central tower to get a vantage point outside, while the rest of the knights took over fortifications Avalis had once made to keep us out. A few others were already setting down and taking out rations, eating while they could. This was the first break they’d had in hours, and it wasn’t known when they’d get another moment.

A more complete map had started to fill out with the armors working together, sharing knowledge acquired of what lay hidden under the whirlpool. If the desert strata was a full mile down, these armors had excellent range to be able to scan through metal filled water like this.

They were able to get data. Not because they had mile-long sensor abilities, but because what was under us wasn’t a desert.

“A mite colony must have passed through at some point.” Kidra said, watching as the map was being filled out, even against the water causing half the sensor pings to return garbage junk.

Rectangles jutted up from the ground, massive structures, like towers. Fuzzy, lines shifting a few dozen times in quick succession as the armors filtered through what was real and what was only bounced around signals. Details were scarce, since it was all wireframe superimposed inside our HUDs. Tiny scaffolding appeared everywhere in between the rectangles. The image wasn’t complete, a lot of angles were missing, with the armors only taking guesses at what might be and drawing those lines in gray.

The image sharpened further, the large towers turned to something more familiar.

What do you see? Wrath asked, having no way to see the wireframes inside Journey’s HUD.

“Third era skyscrapers.” Kidra said with a hint of awe.

“An entire strata filled with them.” I said, watching the map before me. “They even have windows and floors in them. They functional?”

“Unlikely.” Icestride said, pinging a point on the map. “Many of them are like that unfortunate one there.” That skyscraper had collapsed at the base, leaning against another and ending up frozen in that position. A few dozen were like this. “Additionally, third era skyscrapers didn’t have scaffolding that reached in between buildings like this.”

A tangled web of smaller lines had started to sprout from the mapping. Catwalks, skeletal staircases and other scaffolding connected each and every tower together. Some of it had collapsed, others looked sturdy enough to support a few dozen relic armors.

Closer to the ground was where the normality ended. Some of these buildings didn’t have a base. They were floating far up in the air, as if suspended by all the connected catwalks.

“What we need is there.” Icestride said, pointing right under the vortex.

One of the skyscrapers had collapsed down, making a bridge between another, and directly through it was a hole. Right above where our vortex of water funneled down.

“Your mite forge crashed through that structure, and is either stuck inside, or passed clear through. More importantly, the roof of one of these skyscrapers is close enough that we could repel down and keep a way back up.”

“This is a weak point.” Father said over the comms. “To’Avalis will seek to cut off any return. He could appear and slice off any lines left behind.”

Icestride nodded, humming. “We need to leave a force up here that can catch ropes thrown up, or lower ropes down if the others were cut in combat. That tails nicely with what’s needed. Winterscars, all of you, will journey down with the goal to repair Wrath. Fix her shell enough that she can begin repairs on herself, withdraw immediately after. The rest of the clan knights will remain here and hold this ground for extraction.”

Before I could ask who he was going to hold ground against, the comms clicked. “Shadowsong to ground force. Enemy spotted.”

“Report?” Icestride asked.

“The army at our heels is surrounding the chamber, unknown how many are in the tunnels, but enough are crawling around the visible level. They’re not approaching yet, likely the curs are gathering forces still.”

Our commander hummed again. “They’re regrouping before another push. All units, cycle through rations while we can. Once the fighting starts again, it won’t end until they’re all dead or we are.”

Icestride’s helmet turned my way, a hand reaching out to my shoulder reassuringly. “The army To’Avalis had called for is here. We’ve had a few engagements with them already, which slowed our path down. It is a true army this time around, not scraps left behind like what you’ve found here. I’ll organize a defense, and hold the sanctuary chamber. Once Wrath is repaired, return and toss hooks up, we’ll lift you out. If your own hooks are destroyed in combat, we’ll keep a reserve here ready to deploy.”

“Can you hold against a full machine army?” Kidra asked.

Icestride chuckled. “A few months past, I would have considered such a feat as impossible. Lately, the impossible has been rather within reach. A single knight would be overwhelmed with numbers. We aren’t running as single knights, or anything close to ordinary any longer. We have terrain to prevent surrounds, weapons that could kill even Feathers, and the speed to match one. And they don't have any Feathers left up here. Leave the chamber to us.”

He rose to a full height, searching through the gathered knights. “All units. The Winterscar knights will continue the mission into the lower strata. The rest of us will remain here to hold off the machines. Our main priority will be to eliminate any Drakes they have. We’ll form up an assassination squad for this task. Rest of you will be on layered defense.”

“Why the drakes?” I asked, watching as the knights around all began to flow through practiced motions. Dividing into smaller teams, each taking tunnels and splitting the manpower. A group of five were already vanishing into the darkness of one.

“The single enemy unit that poses a true threat to our knights. As good as we are, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to kill an entire army of machines by ourselves anytime soon, even with our advantages.” He said. “It’ll be a war of attrition up here. Bullet will run out. Medical supplies will eventually be consumed. Knightbreakers will be saved up and used for the more deadly enemies. Each minute spent increases the odds of a Drake finding a vulnerable moment, and they'll only need one. That's not the part that worries me, we can counter this with sufficient tactics and scouting. The issue is that relic armors cannot outrun drakes.”

“You want to secure an escape should anything go wrong. And the drakes need to be all killed for that to happen.” Kidra finished.

Icestride gave the hand sign for a grin. “We’ll have them eliminated within the first hour of combat. They can’t hide from us forever. Once you return, we can execute a fighting retreat with little worry of being overwhelemed.”

“What happens if we don’t return at all?” There’s no signals that could breach through that whirlpool of metal scraps and water. It had already taken a good while for the armors to even pierce what was on the other side. If we died down there, they’d never know up here.

“Should that happen, then I suppose we’ll actually have enough time to break the machine army and grind it down to the last.” He took a step to the whirlpool and looked down through it. “Move swiftly like the winds on white. We’ll keep the way home open for you, until you return. Don’t make me go down there looking for your body.”

I took my own step to the edge, watching the whirlpool before me, leading down into another world.

Where Captain Sagrius had been cast down into. Where a possible machine army was rushing to ambush my knights, my sister and myself. Where the mite forge was waiting to be bargained with for a miracle.

The water churned around, uncaring. Trying to drag all of us with it.

Down where To’Avalis was waiting for the last battle.

Next chapter - Into the breach