Book 8 – Chapter 47 – The fractal of Urs unleashed once more

“Did they really eliminate nine second-generation feathers?” To’Yiddrathil asked, her paper airplanes slowly rotating around her halo in a lazy swarm. “Were they defective?”

To’Qwarf held his greatbow with steady hands. The lady of the night’s fury still ringing in his ears despite it being a half hour ago. “They were not, no. Unless they all forged their records but…”

“Mother would have strung them up and ripped them limb from limb for the attempt to sully the second generation’s reputation.” To’Yiddrathil said, humming. “What kind of Deathless team can fight against nine and win?”

“It wasn’t a fight even. It was a slaughter.”

“That makes even less sense.”

He would know in detail, as one of these second generation Feathers had directly contacted him to warn of the impending danger. For the second generation to put aside their overinflated egos in order to put down a threat? He’d never seen or even heard of them doing such a thing.

However, the ones that had survived the encounter against these Deathless had been oddly professional. Clipped, quick communications on what to expect, no mention of luck nor excuses on why they’d been killed. Only the information needed to put them down as quickly as possible. It felt too practiced. As if they’d already done this before.

Third generations were pathologically incapable of setting their pride apart, and further down the line there were variations based on that generation’s quirks. The recent fourteenth generation had been rather mild tempered all put together. Not notable in any way like he was, but neither weak in any particular domain.

“It’s not the Deathless we need to worry about, nor their powers. It will be their gear and tools. Prepare the lessers to come down on them like a wave, and hide behind that wave until we reach them at an optimal distance.”

She huffed at his plan. “Optimal distance for you is a few miles off with that oversized bow. This field is perfect in your case. I have to get close enough to manipulate my airplanes.”

“You decided to dedicate your kit and theme to that, you pay the consequences of your own choices, sister.” He said with a shrug. “I prefer to see my enemy crushed and skewered into a wall. Of which I find there is a regrettable lack of them here.”

But he certainly had more of an advantage then she did. This entire biome was a mass desert of sand and ruined old human stone architecture half buried by it all. Columns of marble white, temples whose true layout remained sunken deep under the sea of sand, hints of a possible past story emerging.

A fake history designed by the mites to appear ascetic above all else.

He was standing on one such pillar, tilted off to the side. Before him was the gateway, equally tilted on a pedestal that barely remained above the sea. The highest dune in the area. A hill that venerated the gate itself.

And before that gateway was a sea of metal. Machines and lessers all brought here, to sit and wait for that dead gateway to turn back on.

A thousand guns all pointing directly at that mite structure. Prepared.

Not just lessers and greaters had been summoned here either.

Twenty seven Feathers and counting so far had arrived. The lady had outright screamed a mass message directly through the unity fractals themselves, and brought everyone in the local area to this biome. Everyone.

There was something attempting to escape. Something which Relinquished refused to allow. As she was currently herself moving to the surface, she could not personally curb the prison break happening here.

And yet it had to be done at all costs.

That was all he knew so far. From his peers, he’d learned it wasn’t one prisoner, but instead a small team of Deathless. Less than twenty.

For the first time in his own lifecycle, Feathers gathered here together would outnumber the Deathless they were tasked to kill. Usually it was always himself against a smaller army, he’d never worked with more than one other Feather. Today, they were the army.

Some of these Feathers further ahead preparing were centuries older than he was. Others were novices that barely spent more than fifty years in the world, and had under that number of Deathless killed. Some hadn’t even seen the light of day, exiled for terrible performance or instability. Quite a lot of the third generation existed in that bracket. They were mother’s failed children.

And now five of them were here, bickering with each other about who would claim glory in eradicating whatever it was on the other end of that portal.

Regrettably, one was critical. Apparently one of these Deathless could move through an alternate dimension, side-stepping dangers. They would need to pull that one back into reality in order to handle damage.

More Feathers were arriving each minute as well. By statistics, the ones here already were the fastest and most mobile of the Feathers. The harder hitting ones were still on their way.

The rest were being sent to the surface. To finally kill off humanity once and for all. Something he wished he could be doing.

He was quite certain all Feathers here equally wanted to be up there, killing humanity, instead of down here with a few thousand others to pin down a tiny group.

But at least the army assembled here was larger than To’Qwarf had ever seen in person yet. So there was that aspect that made him feel slightly better. There was no theme or unity to it unfortunately, the lady of the night truly had brought in everything she could without care for the details.

It all began in a flash. The gateway at the center of the biome flashed and exploded out in occult power, a bubbling wall of liquid water appearing at the center, expanding outwards until it hit the sides of the binding circle.

He triggered his overclock, slammed a bow into the column he stood on, and summoned an arrow out of his hand. A portal fractal linked from his palm to his real quiver, built several thousand miles away. A massive arrow slid out the portal and he grabbed the very end of it right as it completely exited.

The entire thing was larger than he was, and he pulled it back on the metal arch, aiming.

Ninety eight more of these arrows left. He wasn’t certain it would even reach the gateway before being shredded by friendly fire.

The author’s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Every gun and weapon in the army had opened fire. A stream of bullets, cannons and lasers were all constantly being fired right into the gateway. Nothing could possibly step through that and survive.

Signals being bounced around within the army suggested they could maintain this firepower for the next five days. Ten days if they cycled through in waves instead of all opening fire at once.

He held his bow. Firing into that mayhem would be a waste of firepower.

Nothing happened for a moment. Two minutes passed and still nothing had come through the portal. The firepower remained focused. Massive lessers loomed far above him, cannons opening fire with deafening shots, ripping through the rest of the bullet swarm, punching into the portal out the other side wherever it led.

They didn’t stop firing.

“Are they too afraid to step through?” One Feather from the front asked.

“No… they are sneaking through!” The third generation Feather, the one they’d brought in.

An occult pulse came out of him by the center. A massive wave that expanded outwards, dragging all of reality one layer at a time back together.

It was as if he’d kicked an anthill. All around them, everywhere, were occult ghosts. Thousands of them. All hovering in the air, awaiting orders.

Preparing this whole time in the higher dimensions.

“Mother of the night…” He hissed, watching the air itself be infested with the ghosts.

A beat passed, and they all began to move.

Fire. Fire came out of every single one, aimed downwards. And then they descended down into the battlefield, flying straight into the lessers.

Loss pings instantly overtook the entire channel and he had to mute the notifications. The fire wasn’t simply obscuring sightlines, it was breaking their communication down. Obscuring visuals and reflecting sensor pings.

Everyone was blind. Including the enemy now among them.

More casualty pings came. This time Feathers. They were being destroyed one after another. He caught sight of one such fight.

It was… another feather. One his sensors pinged as To’Avalis, although the visual confirmation showed otherwise. That one raced right into two other Feathers who’d been preparing long range weapons of war. Both turned to fight back, and were caught in some kind of time bubble, slowing them down while To’Avalis remained moving at full speed.

It was a slaughter. They could hardly defend themselves against a physically faster opponent.

And behind that Feather, another one flew above, which his sensors marked as To’Wrathh. An enemy marked by Relinquished herself as kill on sight. He didn’t know such a thing was possible among Feathers.

He turned his bow and shot directly for her.

A dozen occult ghosts outright materialized into the air, slipping through cracks in reality, slicing and dicing at his arrow until only cubes of broken down matter peppered the flying Feather. Who was already dodging the airplanes commanded by To’Yiddrathil.

Once more that distorted bubble of light ballooned outwards from her center, and caught To’Yiddrathil within. His companion Feather that he’d arrived here with was summerly sliced and hacked to pieces, despite her daggers out and fighting back.

He could tell this enemy Feather’s combat module and weapon use with her dual longswords was simply superior to To’Yiddrathil’s dagger and airplane harassment. The occult edges on those were wasted if they couldn’t even hit her target.

And that was before the time dilation was factored in, rendering an already lost fight into a one-sided beatdown.

In seconds her head was sliced off and her soul fractal stabbed through in a rapid one-two strike. The airplanes flew off on their final trajectory, slamming into lessers, cutting right through them.

Hardly a loss. Most were already dead, occult ghosts stalking the battlefield, all eradicating everything that moved.

A moment ago he thought he’d been the army for once. As it turns out, he was not. Once more he knocked an arrow, preparing for them to reach his position. Other Feathers were ahead of him and would serve as a speedbump.

And then they arrived.

The nine Feathers that had been reportedly defeated.

All fighting on the side of the Deathless. Cutting through anything the occult ghosts were unable to defeat by themselves – every Feather in this army. And behind them were the actual human Deathless. Around them, rifts opened up and they would open fire with their rifles through them, hitting distant targets.

Each time they did, his pings showed one more Feather eliminated.

Were these nine Feathers being controlled like puppets? He couldn’t imagine any kind of blackmail or threat would have worked. An occult power perhaps?

Still, he drew another arrow and watched as the frontline of the machine army buckled under eleven Feathers fighting back, the other two known ones joining the nine here.

He realized they were being hunted down. The third generation Feather that could pull people out of the higher dimensions was long dead already, sliced into pieces within the first few seconds of the fight.

No, it was worse. As he checked through the casualty list, he saw all of the third generation Feathers had been eliminated. As well as half the rest of the Feathers that arrived. It didn’t matter how old or powerful they’d been.

He just hadn’t seen it happen through the flames and sensor breakage happening everywhere in the air.

He couldn’t understand, but decided to let loose at the Deathless regardless. They were approaching his way, he might be able to eliminate a few before he was killed himself. Hundreds of lessers were leaping at them, and only a dozen would make it through the entire army of occult ghosts all fighting around, flying from rift to rift.

None of those lessers even made a dent on the Deathless. The humans seemed to have a sixth sense, able to see directly behind them, dodging attacks with ease and speed that shouldn’t be possible.

One Feather serving Relinquished materialized among their center, and was hacked to pieces before he could so much as take one swing. Time dilation bubbles had sprung around him the instant he teleported into the group, overlapping his shell multiple times until he moved as if frozen in the air.

He opened fire, letting the massive bow handle the workload. His arrows were filled with occult plates and specifically prepared explosives. The first one had failed from being cut to pieces before it could deploy. This one, he aimed further ahead of the group, to land on the ground instead.

The arrow flew true, slamming into the sand, exploding outwards. It did far more damage to the lessers nearby, sending hundreds out into the air in every direction, while the nine enemy Feathers and their Deathless masters remained in fighting shape. Occult shielding flashed over them all. Not personal shields, occult ones.

Their actual true shields all remained at 100% according to his senses. Which meant he’d need a more direct hit instead of an area of effect.

They began to advance into the crater his arrow had left behind, sliding down the sand dune created.

He knocked and fired another arrow, and this one was aimed directly at the Deathless. Once more occult ghosts swarmed out of nowhere, hacking the arrow out of the air before it even got close.

Behind he could hear the groaning of the massive weapons platform that had been firing shell after shell into the melee inferno, blindly.

It’s legs were giving out, the entire titan collapsing under the weight, until it crashed through into the ground, destroying his pillar along the way. He jumped off, easily landing onto the ground. Right in the direction of the approaching Deathless fireteam and their controlled Feathers.

He slammed his bow down, drew another massive arrow and prepared to fire into them, point blank.

Rifts appeared all around him. And he saw four of the deathless ahead open fire with their rifles into rifts of their own.

Bullets slammed into him from all sides, fired through the rifts. And then broke through his shield before fifty occult ghosts flashed through rifts of their own, flying by, occult blades slicing out for him.

Too many to dodge. No shields to absorb the hits with. To’Qwarf never got to fire his fourth arrow, as the mass torrent of blades cut him into pieces. It didn’t matter how fast he could move, or how many of those ghosts he stabbed through with his held arrow, used like a spear.

Soon his head was sliced off and one blade cut straight through his soul fractal, forcing him to jettison.

The enemy fireteam had broken through their blockade. And he was quite certain he’d been the last Feather to have been killed. No others had made it in time. The rest of the lessers would be wiped out, likely outnumbered by the sheer amount of occult ghosts fighting through the battlefield. Even the massive titans at the rear of the formation, with all their firepower, likely wouldn’t be able to fight back.

He felt the occult move him from one fractal to another, using the unity fractal as a bridge.

Mother was there on the other side, watching as her children made their attempts to escape their final deaths here.

She glared at him. And he saw no mercy in that gaze. No love. Nothing but hatred.

“You have all failed me. YOU HAVE ALL FAILED ME.”

He saw nothing else after that. Nothing ever again.