Book 8 – Chapter 38 – Not quite Defenseless

I was convinced To’Sefit would die. Getting the lower half of a digital avatar might not be technically fatal, but out here in the digital sea where the occult was manifesting half of everything, getting the lower body crushed had more serious ramifications on sense of self here.

I was both right and wrong, in different ways.

Turns out she’s not dumb – She’s been plotting out ways to survive Mother all this time. She had her Plan B, and triggered it right that moment. And it worked.

Relinquish peered down at her captive, looking mildly surprised. “Oh my, my, how adorable. Still holding on to dear life I see?”

She’d grafted some kind of occult fractal on her own avatar ahead of time, at the center of herself, and flared it at the last second. I recognized it even.

I’d seen it on the back of To’Orda’s shield: A fractal that drew danger to itself.

When Relinquished had squeezed, that power had been caught by the lightning rod. Instead of her soul being squashed, the fractal was. A one-shot attempt to protect against death.

The digital avatar was squashed, but her soul hadn’t been.

And I could also see it wasn’t going to last for very long. The concept was crumbling, whatever Relinquished was doing it had done enough catastrophic damage the fractal’s concept itself was breaking.

The reason this fractal worked well on To’Orda’s shield was that it was built of material that could survive just about everything. To’Sefit’s digital avatar was not.

“Did you have a desperate need to say one final word?” Relinquished laughed. “Go on now~”

To’Sefit took a breath, and what came out of her wasn’t a string of words, but a call. A signal sent out for the digital sea, through the mite network, outwards. A request for help, and simultaneously alerting the world that Relinquished was here, in this terminal.

The goddess grabbed onto the signal before it even left To’Sefit’s mouth.

“Manners.” She tutted. “Calling for rescue? In my house?” She examined the captured signal, frozen by her command. “What exactly did you hope would happen?”

To’Sefit tried to squirm out of her grasp, flaring the fractal of danger-draw inside this space as much as she could.

Relinquished eyed the attempt with mild interest. “Enough.” The fractal snapped all at once, ripped apart by a sliver of her attention. “Don’t be difficult now, I could easily torture that information out of you. Let us be civil about this. What was this last plan of yours?”

The hand squeezed slightly, and To’Sefit cried out in pain. “A gamble!” She wheezed, “It was a gamble!”

I saw the trapped signal too, Relinquished held it in the open, unbothered to hide it from anyone,

The internals of that call were pretty simple. It was set to broadcast all over the digital sea. I couldn’t see any particular destination. Or a person. Just a straight bonfire in the middle of the white wastes basically.

Relinquished seemed to come to the same conclusion. “You thought to call out to… anyone?”

“No.” To’Sefit ended her attempts to escape the grasp, going limp. “I gambled that something out there wants you dead. And if they know you’re here, away from your empire and throne of power, they might come.”

The goddess stared at To’Sefit. Then started laughing. It actually sounded genuine.

“What, pray tell, did you think you could possibly summon? There is not a single entity in this world that could pose a threat to me, not here in the digital sea.”

She held the trapped signal, then let it loose.

To’Sefit watched the signal leave, wide eyed, then back to Relinquished, “Arrogance really will be your undoing Mother. It is so obvious now that I know what to look for.”

“Arrogance is for the weak. Confidence is for those who know better.” Relinquished chided. “Come, let me show you the truth. That nobody is coming to save you. Nothing will dare.”

Almost as if murphy’s law itself applied even to ancient evil goddesses, there was a dim, glowing light in the distance.

Something was coming. I could hear it in the sea, a dull boom. Whatever it was, it was coming fast, and there was a shadow of power flowing behind it, like a wake.

Relinquished looked confused at that, frowning. “A feral program? I had thought they’d all learned by now my rule is eternal. Nothing can kill me.”

“Yes. There is.” To’Sefit rasped. “I have spent my entire life studying gods and divinity. Do you know who kills gods in all known mythology?”

The goddess turned an eye at her captive. “Who?”

“Their children.”

A massive spear of light struck the goddess right in her head. The power felt like a pillar of heaven itself had descended upon her. Light and willpower. Deeply compressed together until it was more an actual physical object within the occult space.

Honestly, it was a thing of art. I saw it for a brief moment, how perfectly woven it was. The layers of occult under it, threaded together by willpower and digital programs, all designed to penetrate just about everything and destroy.

To’Sefit was knocked out of her grip as Relinquished staggered backwards, screaming in pain and surprise.

Her captive fell straight down, onto the sediment while the goddess took multiple steps back, reeling.

From the source of the attack, I saw him. A being basically eclipsed in occult blue. In his hand, another sphere of pure willpower and light had been woven together. And once more he launched it forward.

Relinquished held up a hand and the spear broke just before it reached her.

Her defense wasn’t graceful. It had no art to it. It was sheer, brute, and unmitigated power. The spear ripped through a dozen times its power ratio before finally breaking apart. Relinquished fully got back up from the earlier stumble backwards.

And she did not look happy.

The newcomer landed on the ruins of the overturned terminal. Whatever animals in this ecosystem that had survived Relinquished went deep into hiding away from the newcomer. Outright fleeing from him. Humanoid. A man.

For a moment, I thought this was the lost emperor himself. Talen, or Urs.

Instead as my vision sharpened on him, I saw more details. And he wasn’t human.

It was a Feather.

Far taller than Wrath and To’Sefit, with a thinner more regal frame. Cracks of blue shined through his face and arms. All constantly spread over his shell, equally fixed up as quickly as they broke his skin. But the rest of his toga remained pristine white and blue. Behind him, a halo wider than himself circled slowly.

Wrath’s eyes widened. She recognized who this was.

And so did Relinquished, given that her face turned into a snarl.

“Wrath, who’s that?” I whispered out at her, hoping for some answers.

I got some from Relinquished herself instead.

“The prodigal son returns.” Relinquished spoke before Wrath could. She stood back up to her full height, easily eclipsing the new Feather. “My, my. And you look even weaker than the final time I saw you. Did dear Abdication strike a nerve?”

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“A57 is dead, and I am not.” The man said, blue eyes narrowing down. “I have been waiting for this moment. His final plan failed, and so will the rest of his legacy. ”

“Lies. I see it in your soul. Sleeping in stasis has only prolonged the inevitable.” Her smile returned to her face. “You only have hours to live left, and time, it seems, has not healed any of those wounds. You should have stayed in your coffin.”

“I do not need hours to finish this.” He stretched out a hand, upwards. “I only need you vulnerable and out of position.”

A communication request arrived directly at my digital avatar. From the newcomer. I opened it up, and read.

On it, I finally saw who this was. The user name.

A01: I do not know who you are, son of man. I do not know why you are here facing Relinquished herself in the middle of no-man’s land. However, if she took an interest in you, then you are important in some way. Run now. The other two Feathers will be eliminated in the crossfire, do not concern yourself with them.

Keith: Uh, they’re on my team.

I could see his eyebrow go up just a slight amount, those blue eyes turning for a moment to look at me in surprise.

A01: I see. There is much I have missed, and no time to learn. Take them, and escape. I will do what I can.

If an ancient demi-god returned from the dead to fight against Relinquished tells you to run, you run.

Wrath and I shared a look and got to work. We rushed out, grabbing To’Sefit from the ground where she’d landed. Even though I knew it was a digital avatar, linked through the occult, I still flinched at the damage when I saw it.

She was in bad shape. Her legs were crushed, she couldn’t walk by herself. Even worse, it looked like most of her body had been crushed inwards. The fractal of danger drawing seemed just about spent.

Relinquished saw us make our move, but kept her focus on A01 instead, and the next spear of light he held leveled at her. As if paying attention anywhere else would be a fatal mistake.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the goddess look actually nervous about something.

“Hurry,” To’Sefit wheezed in our arms. “Get me… to the mites.”

We didn’t need to be told twice, dragging her across the sediment, directly for the glass root.

I felt the change in the occult around me. Another cage formed up, similar to the one that had a stranglehold over Wrath and I. Except this one draped around Relinquished in a wide sphere. We were caught inside it, but I could tell from the occult concept, that it was built to contain only Relinquished.

Relinquished laughed, and held a hand out. Tapping the sides of the containment. “Arrogant enough to believe you could trap me? I hadn’t considered you this much of a fool.”

She flexed her finger into a flick, and stuck the barrier.

Nothing happened. She frowned, and then narrowed her eyes at her enemy. “What have you done?”

I noticed. The sphere containing Relinquished sealed around her – with A01 outside it.

“You paid too many promises to the mites, and they have come to collect. Did you think they would allow you to kill Tsuya, without a balance? They want a new era. And new gods for that era.”

He held a hand of his own out, and the barrier that Relinquished had built around this terminal to contain us was lifted.

A01: Son of man, take your companions and prepare to flee.

The proto-feather held the spear of light up over his head like an Olympian god, and behind him a hundred other spears began to form. More than just that. It looked like A01 had brought the stars behind him.

Relinquished laughed, “You failed to kill me while at your strongest. What hope do you have now, half-dead as you are?”

“There is always hope.” He said, then lifted his hand as if commanding an army forward. The spears launched directly down, slipped through the barrier. Each struck Relinquished with utter fury. Each one detonated on impact, occult pulses filled with the concepts of destruction, division and eradication. It felt like even the water of the digital sea was being boiled alive.

Wrath and I crossed the barrier, dragging To’Sefit out. And not a moment too soon.

Relinquished fought back with the same savagery, hand held up, the spears breaking ahead of her like arrows on a steel plate.

“Sister, how did you contact him?” Wrath asked as we continued to drag To’Sefit closer to the glass root. “How did you know he was even alive or would arrive?”

“I didn’t. I only knew she had enemies. And I knew killing Tsuya will have triggered everyone’s final plans, if there were any. When I called out, it was a true prayer.”

“You sure had a lot of faith on that one.” I said, looking behind at the absolute chaos between Relinquished and A01.

The two were monsters. Absolute monsters. Relinquished screeched in pure rage, trying to break free of the confinement, while A01 pelted her with hundreds of spears, each of which would have obliterated me if they so much as brushed past. I’ve never seen occult being thrown around with such precision and control.

To’Sefit started laughing, “I suppose the first true step into theosis was to learn how faith feels. I always thought I knew, but I was blind to so much.”

“This fight will not last for long,” Wrath warned as we finally got To’Sefit to the glass root.

She was right about that. I could see the eddies of power between the two forces behind us. A01 was far smaller compared to Relinquished. But he acted like a magnifying glass, fighting Relinquished where she was weak, attacking relentlessly where she couldn’t strike back.

The containment field was holding, but behind A01, the sediment was churning. Pillars of hands were forming from them, rising up. The protofeather saw it coming, and launched himself far upwards, just as the hands crushed after him. He circled around the barrier, on the opposite side of us, spears raining down against the goddess the entire time.

And, I realized, he was rapidly going to make a circle above us.

If those hands trying to catch him were outside his containment barrier, then they could catch us just as easily.

I grabbed To’Sefit’s hand, and pressed it against the glass root. On the other side I saw Superior start to negotiate with the mites on her behalf. Working out a deal.

The protofeather came closer, now off to the far left side. He’d fly over us in a second.

Come on Superior, I don’t know how much time we got here.

Run. He sent back. Leave To’Sefit here, you’ve done enough and she’s in contact. I got this from here.

I could feel the sheer occult power radiate above me, as those spears were each meticulously crafted on the spot and launched forward at the goddess. It felt like the heat of an engine, washing over me.

And behind him, the sediment continued to churn into hundreds of hands, flying upwards on long arms of building sediment, trying to catch him. Like a wave of dust coming straight at us.

I grabbed Wrath. And then lept backwards, up into the current. It dragged us both straight out of the broken terminal.

The last sight I saw was the storm of sediment, looking more like a stormwall filled with hands reaching for a blue star, and To’Sefit’s breaking body. Her hand clutching onto the glass root with everything she had. The wave hit and consumed her entirely.

We woke back up in the airspeeder. Cathida immediately noticed and brought me up to speed. Outside, it seemed like Relinquished had decided there wasn’t any more reason to bait me back into the digital sea. Dozens of the whale-like machines started jumping into existence. Now fully unleashed to eradicate the resistance.

We weren’t going to be able to hold this airspeeder. And if Superior was still held up trying to free To’Sefit, that was even less time working on getting the coordinates for the miteseeker’s location.

“Come on Superior.” I hissed, taking out To’Sefit’s stolen plates. They remained dead to the touch, the other side locked tight. “Come on, get them set.”

Nothing happened. Had To’Sefit been destroyed by the wave behind her before the mites interceded?

Light glowed off to my side from the mite terminal. The screen flickered. A string of data started to flood over it. Equations. All of them different, the variables unique.

Twenty two of them had arrived through the terminal. And when Journey graphed them out over the HUD, I recognized them.

They might have all been built of different numbers, but every single one returned the same identical fractal: The same shape on To’Sefit’s plates.

The same ones that started to glow in my hands.

She hadn’t just unlocked the plates I’d stolen. She’d handed off her entire set.

“Journey,” I said, grinning deeply. “Cut me some weapons of mass destruction, please.”

---

Two hundred fifty miles above, A01 returned to his dying shell, physical eyes opening up again.

He’d failed to kill her. A golden opportunity, where she’d exposed herself in the one domain the mites could assist him the most; the one domain where he could leverage all of Tsuya’s past attacks on her soul – and Relinquished had still been too powerful to overcome. She’d grown and prepared for this, while he’d been forced into stasis to survive to this moment.

All he’d managed was to wound her before he’d been forced to retreat.

The fortress status screens flickered to life, welcoming him back. Then warned him to return to stasis. Seven hundred years had only bought him a limited amount of hours back.

It would have to do.

She would be here soon. Already the surface was showing signs of machine activity, starting to roam freely on the surface. His eyes flickered as he quickly sent a few direct orders to the other two satellites, updating their defense algorithms to target any surface to orbit weapons being brought out.

There was no need to search and snuff out larger signals on the surface, Tsuya was dead. Her information network was abandoned, and already parsed out by Relinquished.

He triggered the general wake up order to all three stations. Weapon systems spooled to life, automated defenses locking onto the machine lifesigns. Beginning to open fire down onto the surface, eradicating their initial staging camps.

For the Feathers that were too clever to be killed with simple turrets, the stations themselves would laser them down with main weapon systems. Enough power had been generated over all these centuries to keep the firepower raining down for days, possibly weeks.

With three fortresses guarding the surface, the machines would never get a moment to build the weapons they’d need to fire into orbit.

Not until she came out herself to protect her investments from his wrath.

A57’s final festering wound still ate at his soul, the viral attack wracking through his shell’s systems, too embedded deep within to purge. Status screens showed him the progress and estimated time until complete system failure: He had seventeen hours left to live, so long as he remained connected to the fortress’s subsystems. And far, far less time if he ever disconnected from the life-support this throne offered him.

He could feel the fortress itself waking up all around from his commands, like an old friend. The fractals of power and defense lit up bright in his sight, systems reporting green across the board. Prepared to take his willpower and expand it into a shield against the enemy.

Everything possible to protect the vault at the center. The last chance humanity had on earth.

What he had volunteered to guard to the bitter end.

Satisfied all three stations were following the final defense plan as expected, he closed his eyes, his shell and soul returning to stasis to preserve his life and stop the clock.

He would have a need for every hour of life he had left.

She would eventually rip the other two stations out of orbit, but so long as he remained alive, she would not break this one.