Book 8 – Chapter 11 – Migration (Interlude)

“And that leads us to the final, and most important metric of the campaign spoils as a whole: Three hundred thirty seven armors in total, my lord.” The Logi accountant confirmed. “We have also increased our population ranks by five hundred and seventy two. Thirty six percent of all power cells acquired in the raids have been turned to use in heating operations.”

Lord Atius hummed in thought, looking over his assembled council. Youngest of which was Kidra Winterscar, sitting off to the side, simply watching the procedures. “I will leave the military affairs and distribution of the relic armors to my First Blade.” His head inclined to Shadowsong at that. “What of the migration status?”

All reports returned by just about every House showed the people within the clan would have a near unquenchable taste for moving underground now that so many armors were in their control. A fact Atius had long deduced was intentional.

Their intelligence teams had tracked down where the slavers had obtained their freshly printed and unmarked relic armors: Mite forges under the control of machines. Outright delivered and carried by them out into the open, where raider teams would come down to collect and bring them up to the surface.

Given To’Aacar had been killed, that the supply of relic armors hadn’t halted but outright increased in amount led to one conclusion: To’Avalis. He’d taken over the reins of the operation, and needed the clan to be flushed out of the surface underground, so that two fugitives would equally be carried down with the clan.

Shrewd plan. To’Avalis didn’t care if one small clan of humans had more armors than normal. In the grand scheme of things, that wouldn’t tip any needles, nor would it be his problem to deal with. What he cared was that this clan of humans were those who could be used as emotional weight to play against To’Wrathh and Keith. Neither of which would stay hiding on the surface or escaping away to some other clan.

Outright feeding the clan this many armors would inevitably force a schism. Even if Atius himself ordered the clan to remain above on the surface, more than half the clan would certainly rebell and go their own way down.

The only winning move then had been to take complete ownership, and announce the official migration himself. Get ahead of all that before it began to tear the clan apart as Avalis expected.

Much to the dismay of the local alcohol production, as if To’Wrathh’s passing hadn’t already tapped the clan dry.

This announcement stretched their last remaining rations even further. Bootleg and unregulated product were now flying off the shelves, making an entire new logistics problem.

But so long as the Reachers in charge of retrofitting the airspeeders weren’t getting hammered or going blind from poorly made moonshine, Atius could forgive some revelry from the clan and look the other way.

There hadn’t yet been a case of blindness from the homemade booze, as there was an unworded understanding between the clan Chenobis and the bootleggers: Make bad product that is harmful to the clan, and they’d get shut down and jailed faster than they could say ‘cheers.’

Otherwise, the Chenobis were instructed to mostly look the other way. Including the odd increase in homemade projects from the forges printing out metal and glass distillation equipment for ‘science’ as the Reachers swore up and down about.

“So long as they’re not drunk or hungover when the time comes to depart, that’s all we require.” Atius had said. “They know better than to endanger the clan.”

Shadowsong huffed. “The Retainers will be distributing messages within the next day to remind the clan the departure date is imminent and no one should be hungover or hammered during such a time when duty is called on. I have full faith in my House, and the knights I have served with. We will be present and prepared without fail.”

His gaze looked over to the rest of the council chambers, where each Prime readily shook their heads in agreement, implying their House certainly wouldn’t be the ones to be caught having problems.

“The Houseless and Castless are now the population majority,” One of the Logi councilman said. “Given the new influx of clan members who are still applying to multiple Houses for acceptance, they will likely be the most undisciplined in comparison.”

“And your proposed suggestion to counter this?” Atius asked.

“Respectfully, we believe an appearance by yourself may galvanise most members. They are already excited about the idea of the Houses increasing in size or new houses being founded with the spread of additional territory underground, however all surface dwellers respect the Deathless above all.”

“Aye, that can be arranged.” Atius agreed. “Are other preparations for the migration complete?”

“The Logi have already prepared a five thousand three hundred twenty step plan for adapting to the underground, given the topology scans and data returned from scout teams underground.” The representative said. “All great castes have been contracted and their expertise weighed into the document, and all have signed off on it. We expect basic housing to be setup within three weeks, and the full settlement operational within four months after arrival. It will still take a year before all items are settled, accounting for new construction mostly taking the time.”

Atius had seen the document already. Exhaustive, written by multiple houses all working together, including anything from how to transport and re-install aquaponics systems within the new territory, to mass construction plans and city layouts to be added to the fortress they’d scouted underground and House expansions.

Already the Logi had completed most of the mothballing steps required to seal this clan colony up and leave it sufficiently prepared for the next migrating clan to take over, however many centuries that would be.

Most likely what would happen would be future clans in the area choosing to migrate downwards and join clan Altosk’s new city.

After all, the only reason clans didn’t migrate down was that Undersiders rejected them as barbaric. Clan Altosk would not.

And despite the songs about prior clans traveling down to settle, Atius had never seen any recorded history of that actually happening.

Most likely, those songs were simple hope to give people something to work forward to. What ended up happening anytime there were more than seventy relic armors, was a schism between those who wanted to already migrate down, and those who believed that number of armors was too low. Of which, Atius knew from experience, was correct – far too low.

Their clan was in the unique position of having three hundred and thirty seven armors all recovered before any schism could happen. Nobody, including himself, could argue the clan was not prepared for the migration with that number. “Three hundred thirty seven armors.” Atius muttered, his pen tapping on his old desk. A number that rivaled smaller Undersider cities. His own city, five hundred years prior, had only two hundred ninety three armors, and they had survived for decades under the pillar heart. Would have survived even longer, had To’Aacar not taken notice of his existence.

Three hundred thirty seven clan knights, all trained on the winterblossom technique and brimming with occult powers, knightbreakers left by Keith, and all the occult blades the clan could produce. Even if they intended to settle on more hostile lands outside of To’Wrathh’s sphere of influence, Atius was certain their little clan could fight and hold off almost indefinitely against any amount of machines. To the point Relinquished herself may be forced to send more than one Feather at them.

How long could they remain unnoticed by the machine empire? His instincts warned him to remain on the surface, where his people would remain safe and alive.

Alive. But not living. He knew what his people needed, and even if he sat them all down and explained how death was inevitable on a long enough timeline for their descendants, they would all still decide it was better to take fate into their own hands.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

And their descendants would inevitably survive one way or another. They were surface dwellers after all. Survival was what they did.

“I will appear in person to the Houseless later tomorrow, and make an appeal for everyone to be on their best foot. Perhaps the saying that the next time they will be drunk would be underground in a large home of their own might be appealing to most.”

He turned to the Logi, who quickly flipped through the presentation. “We do have increased distilleries and an entire district dedicated to revelry already penned and allocated for in the documents, my lord. Perhaps you would like a copy to display during your announcement?”

Atius gave the man a wry smile. “Aye. Perhaps I could fit that into the speech, lad.” With a little more flair, that could work.

—-