Book 8 – Chapter 53 – Relics within Relics

“Feeling accomplished?” A22 asked, walking side by side with him now as they reached the massive elevator lift shaft. “Your greatest enemy, the very heart of their empire, we’re finally walking close to their most treasured vault. Tell me how you feel A01.”

There was no rush of victory. Only… loss? He didn’t know how to process these emotions, the logic simply was not there.

They’d won. And he felt defeated instead. Worse than defeat. He felt as if his own soul was fragmenting at the core.

A01 took one step off into the void, letting gravity take command of his shell as he fell directly down the shaft to the bottom.

The metal and human workings here had been so warped and twisted, he could already tell his entire lift was offline without bothering to double check with his sensors.

In seconds, he slammed at the base level, using a pulse of occult to force the material under him into stability. Everything here had been so weakened by the caustic agents, this amount of force would have shattered under his feet.

That he had to use some of his power to keep the defeated human fortress together was an odd thought to his mind. But if there was a deeper metaphor behind such an act, he had a gut feeling exploring in this direction would lead him nowhere good.

Instead, his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting here. Mite lights, still functional despite the rest of this vault being filled with brittle warped metal. Almost organic in shape now that the acid had burned away any precise human measurements.

A22 landed behind him, far more silently and with elegance, her six wings once more folded behind her. She stepped out of the shaft and walked with him.

At the very center of this vault, was a mite terminal. Unmelted and untouched by all the caustic agents in the air. Human remains were scattered all over, including ruined tents and signs of survival.

A dedicated few had chosen to remain behind, trying to hold this vault against the inevitable. Waiting for one last battle. To die fighting. To give their final days in life meaning.

Instead, they’d waited, and slowly died, here.

Against a merciless enemy that couldn’t be fought or held back.

He put them out of his mind, trying to focus on his center task. The terminal. One that Tsuya had often used to communicate directly with the empire. If the humans returned and retook this location, they would equally return to this terminal.

Where Tsuya might return to speak to them once more. A57 had the right idea: Leave a strong enough trap to hold down a goddess, while the rest of the protofeathers mobilized in the digital sea to catch her.

She was the last guardian humanity had against complete extinction. A57 had layered hundreds of traps, all for different timelines and timeframes far beyond their operation. And he always won in the end.

One way or another, Tsuya would be caught in one and killed.

A01 took the final few steps to the terminal, and hoped her eventual defeat would not feel as hollow as this one did.

“I have heard of the fabled digital sea.” The Chaptermaster spoke as he noticed my vitals went from coma patient back to normal panicking human. “The technique was once widely spread among the imperial church, the old empire in its glory days. We have since only kept records of how it was done, in theory. Tsuya warned us not to meddle with the forbidden fractal, nor step into the domain of machines. Something we have followed with great care, and that our others in the Warlock guilds seem to have equally learned over time. The danger on the other side was overwhelming.”

“She was correct in that assessment.” Urs said, having stayed on my back the entire time. He was getting comfortable there, since he’d rejected being moved around or given better seat, despite the Chaptermaster hovering over us both. “The digital sea’s true danger is the direct access to a human soul. Relinquished was developing weapons to destroy memories, or rip apart souls, it was no longer safe to exist there.”

“Well, it’s not safe for anyone right now anymore.” I said, rolling my shoulder and preparing for round three.

It had been a good stretch of time since we’d first uncovered Relinquished had plotted stuff in the background, and I’d been slamming my head at this terminal ever since, with nothing to show for it. Not even because of something specifically from Relinquished, but rather the byproduct of her going on a rampage: “It’s not just the surface or the world out here she’s after. She’s launched a massive campaign across the other side of the sea, basically expanding her domain in every direction, consuming everything in her path. It’s mass panic.”

And the machine empire out there wasn’t only eating everything; she was also terraforming the very land. The digital sea was all about ecosystems within ecosystems – a tentative balance that was both hyperlethal and yet somehow stable. She was destroying everything, breaking the balance and tipping entire ecosystems into self-destruction. It was causing some kind of catastrophic knock-on effect, where neighboring ecosystems were disrupting others. The entire sea’s currents were all broken down, no organization or structure anymore.

I wasn’t sure why she was making these moves, but it was more than just searching for something out here. She wanted to make sure nothing could hide from her again. At her rate, I’d give it maybe a few years before she managed to consume the entire digital sea that wasn’t controlled by mites.

Everything was going into a frenzy in an attempt to evacuate from machine territory. They were used to the law of the wastes: if something was hungry and larger, run the other way and run faster than one other. Which meant complete chaos, since everyone was trying to throw others behind them, and so forth down the chain of panic. Waves of programs would slam into me, and inevitably something bigger would seize the opportunity to snap its mouth shut with me inside while I was too busy with the wall of distractions.

So that’s how I’ve been killed three times over trying to cross through the digital sea up till now. The furthest I’d managed to move would be halfway to the address point I had in memory for the Icon’s little shelter external terminal. If the current situation didn’t already feel like the end of the world despite the outright army of Feathers I’d just fought, seeing the digital sea on metaphorical fire was the tipping point.

It was serious. Relinquished was going all in and using everything she had planned out.

Tsuya’s infrastructure might be impervious and resistant to Relinquished, but the rest of the sea sure as hell wasn’t.

Wherever the final edict was, it was completely entrenched from all sides by Relinquished, expanding outwards.

Even if she hadn’t already fortified the entire place, I doubt any communications request could be sent that far without getting caught and eaten by something equally running the opposite direction. Opportunists were everywhere during the complete chaos.

But we had to keep trying. Once I got to the Icon, she’d be powerful enough to slip like a knife through all of this noise and get through past the encryption and defenses Relinquished was layering on her territory.

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She’s basically our only hope at this point.

“We try again, maybe we can tunnel under the loose silt at the bottom? Use the dirt to keep us invisible from the migration above?” I was throwing out ideas of all kinds. “Or we try to create some kind of wedge to slam into things for us and clear a way?”

Snowplowers would do that for hangers when airspeeders launched into a blizzard. There’d be too much stuff flying into the hangar that after the doorways closed, the entire place would be covered in snow.

“We need more power and strength.” Father said to my side. He’d been the frontliner for us, Wrath and I fighting off the sides, and all together we’d still only managed to get halfway. “Might is the limiting factor.”

His eyes turned to Urs.