Book 8 – Chapter 43 – What was left behind in Pandora’s Box

The darkness within the mite containment cube was exactly as oppressive as Father mentioned.

Our group of Winterscar knights, led by Captain Sagrius and Father kept clear spacing, taking turns clearing away the miasma.

Every headlight was turned on, and it felt like we were stuck in some tunnel. Shockwaves would pulse out, shoving the darkness away, but it wasn’t going to last forever.

Already the path behind us was slowly filling back in, the light from outside the cube being strangled away.

We didn’t run or move in a panic rush, anything could be lurking inside this giant black box. Rushing ahead without sight would be a one-way ticket to getting separated and killed off by something.

The soul sight equally didn’t let me peer deep into the gloom. Or rather, I didn’t want to do that. The time I had, I’d felt like the darkness had stared back, eating my willpower. Filling me with dread and despair.

“This feels intentional.” Father said when I’d reported my findings. “That this gloom can sink its teeth inside you for simply observing it.”

“For what reason?” I asked.

“For one, it would prevent you from doing what you’ve attempted just now. To study it.”

Obfuscating itself from the occult sight. And simultaneously attempting to attack back. Up until Sagrius walked forward, pulsed with the occult, and then threw an orb high up where it imploded. Sucking away the ambient occult.

Drakonis’s skills.

That affected the darkness immediately, not just pushing it away but eating it completely. Revealing behind more parts within the cube that the mist had been obfuscating.

A massive mechanical foot, connected to a leg. But that was all the headlights could reveal.

The knights all took formation, rifles snapping to attention.

Sagrius once more charged the occult and tossed an implosion ahead, in the direction of the leg. The blue pulse flew into the mist, and vanished. Before a flash of pale blue light came from there, detonating and consuming another section of mist. Revealing more of our target.

A massive behemoth of a titan lay slumped down, back to the wall. Broken down, parts of the chassis completely exposed and sliced open or blasted through. I recognized the machine as one Relinquished used.

“Is that thing sending the distress signal?” I asked. Maybe an old turncoat?

“It is not.” Captain Sagrius said, then held a hand and finger out, pointing deeper into the gloom, past the giant. “The signal comes from there.”

We advanced inwards, slowly. Relying on the occult implosions Drakonis’s Deathless had taught us. Slowly opening up the terrain.

It was a mix of dirt and plating under our feet. Into what I realized was a few pathways. Like this had once been a garden of some kind, empty rectangular boxes of soil left with nothing alive in there. Not even ash. Most of these were also shattered away at some point, dirt sliding down the incline that the cube had been. Not too far, or impossible to scale, but enough to reveal an effect.

Within this sealed cube, we uncovered the evidence of a fight. Dead machines just about everywhere from different sizes. But still the signal led deeper into the cube. We advanced.

By this point, we passed through what should have been the majority of the cube. This would be the other wallside.

Sagrius once more threw the occult orb far up into the mist, and this time it imploded far earlier. Clearing our view again.

The back ankles of another behemoth, body frozen in a final pose. Knelt down as it looked like, one knee supporting the weight while a leg to the other side stabilized it. As another set of occult orbs cleared the sight, we saw it was slumped over something.

A spear. Though given the size, it looked closer to one of the pillars I stood on outside.

Sagrius launched another orb off to where the base of the spear should be, and that was equally revealed in one occult explosion, eating away the miasma.

The spear base was embedded deep within the dirt ground, propped up to remain in place. Impaling something further up the wallside. We couldn’t see the tip of the spear yet.

Journey’s HUD instantly ran numbers, lighting up all over with trigonometry and zooming in a section of the screen. The signal was coming from higher up, by the speartip.

Sagrius powered another orb and launched it right at the final part. It landed against the wallside of the cube, exploding in a half-sphere. Finally revealing the blade and endpoint. Along with what was skewered against it.

A dead mechanical body. Human sized. But missing just about everything save for the head and ribs. One arm had been clearly ripped off the hinge, parts of the metal there looking bent. The other arm had been cut clean off, far above the elbow. More like a small stump.

No legs at all, just a spine dangling down, ending right where the stomach would have been. The skull remained lulled backwards against the wall, staring up nowhere. No jaw at all either, likely fallen off at some point. The husk looked comically small compared to the spear. Like a fly stabbed through by a full sized kitchen knife. Although at least the tip hadn’t gone far. For all the power this weapon had, it couldn’t dent the mite metal on the other end.

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It looked completely lifeless, despite a distress signal somehow coming out of it.

Worse yet, we realized where the source of the miasma was. Not the dead creepy body like I’d expected: It was from the spear. Black mist was sweating out in puffs all across the metal, running down the edge, falling off like a small waterfall out. Even after we’d cleared the area of that miasma.

As for the body, there’s only one kind of being that had both a mechanical body, could send out a distress signal like that long after death, and was dangerous enough to leave sealed up in a mite cube as a limbless corpse impaled on a massive spear.

A protofeather.

And one tough bastard to spook Relinquished that much. Maybe she expected it to come back to life even after all this? Or she wasn’t able to kill this protofeather permanently.

The question was why Tsuya had gone this far to recover this specific one? They were all powerful, I knew that. But the only one that seemed worth going this far to recover or imprison like this was A01. And we’d already seen him in the…

In the digital sea.

Not in person.

I felt a chill go down my spine as Journey zoomed in on the dead body. “We need to cut it down.” I said.