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 pearls 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?”

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“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.”