Book 8 – Chapter 54 – Conviction

“At the first sign of danger, cut and run, boy,” Father said, holding my shoulder.

Something had Father’s hackles up. Might just be the ancient trap laid out by a protofeather that fought demi-gods regularly and later couldn’t un-trap whatever this was himself. Or possibly the creepy broken statues staring at us.

My ration bars are on the latter.

As for those statues, they were everywhere. The heart of the old empire turned out to be a barren terminal on the inside. Not to talk smack about mite architecture and what they liked to design, but I’ve seen crazier and grander from them.

Basically, it was a single hallway leading upwards, all of it one giant staircase from the bottom to the top. On both sides were the aforementioned massive creepy statues. The left side depicted the skeleton of mankind, while the other side featured the dead shells of various machines.

All about ten times my size.

I think they were going with poetry for this one. Having the viewer walk through the divide between man and machine, and notice the one thing in common between both our races is Death.

Last three times, we’d spawned in halfway on the staircase, and raced our way up to where the exit was.

But there was another direction. Downwards. Where light began to fade off, and disrepair started to plague the entire place.

The further our full team descended down this stairwell of giants, the more we started seeing signs of a fight. The statues now started looking crushed and shattered. Lashes had split them in half, and they’d toppled down. At one point, we had to jump over the skull of a machine, sliced off its neck, and clearly took a pretty long tumble down until it finally hit an equilibrium point on one of the steps.

Whatever fight had happened here, it had been titanic. And it hadn’t ever been fixed either.

Which led to where we stood now, looking at the very end of the stairwell downwards. A massive sealed vault.

I could tell right away it wasn’t built to protect treasure. It was built to protect the world from what was waiting inside.

Maybe the terminal itself detected our path here. Because the vault cracked in half, and began to pull apart, inviting us through.

First impression was that it had to be a massive cavern of some kind, all completely obscured in darkness.

Chains were the second thing we noticed. Large, bolted to the sides of the walls, they extended out into the gloom, holding something in the center. I could only see the first few feet of those metal chains, the darkness beyond seemed to eat away the rest of the details.

We took two steps into the vault room and found ourselves ankle-deep in water. Light finally happened, starting as a small glow beneath the surface until the room slowly came into focus. There wasn’t any coral here, no sediment; everything was functional and clean.

More chains jutted out of the water, and we slowly waded past. I could tell we were rapidly reaching the center point, where all of these chains converged.

“Son of man. You’ve come.” A voice inside the vault spoke. No hostility. But not from a personal quirk or the sound of someone benevolent. Rather from the position of one who had no reason to be hostile. For there was no threat.

Which meant whatever A01 had put inside the containment, it was clearly intelligent, active and still very much alive.

Father drew his blade, and held the flat edge out to block my path. The rest of the knights behind me equally drew blades, preparing.

“A handful of warriors, and one more turncoat among the damned. Is this all there is left to champion your race?” The voice from the center spoke. There was presence and command within that voice. Almost nobility even.

“Uh, hello.” I called out, taking a tentative step into the gloom, Father at my side with his blades prepared already. “How, exactly, did you know we’d come? And who are you?”

“I have been watching. I know why you have come. Your journey here is in vain. I remain loyal, and I have not broken.”

“All knights, prepare for contact.” Father said, slowly advancing forward.

The dim light in the water finally grew bright enough I could see the shape at the center of the room, held on top of a small dais.

Wrapped up in those chains that held him tied to the floor from all sides, the same ones that we’d passed by as we strode into the chamber.

He slowly lifted his head up, long, wet, unruly and dirt-filled white hair falling off to the side to reveal one glowing violet eye.

I’d seen his face once before. Exactly once, and far better kept together in appearance despite the cracks that had appeared all over his features. Wrapped up in light, like a god, fighting against Relinquished herself – and holding his own against her. So much so that she couldn’t keep track of us.

I knew immediately what A01 had left behind here as a trap.

A copy.

“I am Conviction.” The shard of A01 called himself. “Prepare yourselves.”

…

We heroically charged. And by that, I mean we all stopped in our tracks, then scuttled slowly backwards like crabs, weapons aimed ahead in case of any sudden movements.

‘Conviction’ watched us from deep within, still chained up. I could swear I saw him smile.

“We just need a quick team meeting before doing anything stupid.” I answered back, “We’ll keep in touch, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Maybe the chains weren’t for show, because he certainly didn’t come after us. Instead he simply lowered his head again, as if returning to torpor.

The vault doors sealed shut in front of our face, closing him off deep within.

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It had been Father’s command on that one, his instincts had immediately warned him this was going to be a losing fight if we weren’t smart about things. And if Father of all people made a snap decision that we were in over our heads, I wasn’t going to argue with that.

“So,” I said, looking around our group, “Who here votes that we not try to fight an evil copy of one of the strongest protofeathers ever made? Raise of hands everyone.”

Father grunted. “We need him. If not by his own will, then by the power he leaves behind once killed.”

I had experience doing this kind of thing before. When I first wanted to find Wrath in the digital sea, I’d met a massive titan of a program that had helped me learn more about the digital sea and how Relinquished operated deep within. With its guidance, I lured one of Relinquished’s spies, beat it up for its lunch money – and mostly programming/permissions – and then grabbed all the parts I needed and scrapped the rest.

Technically, we could probably do something similar. Beat up A01’s ghost, rewire a simpler version, possibly using Wrath’s own viral systems to handle the stitching, and then pray it would be enough to get us across the sea. We did manage halfway with Father, so long as it could take up at least three quarters of the way, we’d make it. I know Wrath had been able to copy Father’s skills directly from his soul fractal, so that was something we could potentially recover from this shard.

“Would it be possible to negotiate with him?” Wrath asked.