Book 8 – Chapter 63 – Old history repeats

“You make a mistake in letting me live, progenitor.” The shard hissed, beaten to an inch of his life.

He was nearly blind now, feeble, and unable to even so much as lift his head. But he could hear the footsteps ahead as a man walked through the waters to loom above him.

“I have made many mistakes.” A01 spoke, “You may even be my greatest. And yet I prefer to live in hope these days.”

The protofeather held a hand palm up. Then squeezed. The wooden walls around broke into splinters, finally giving into the sheer power they had been subjected for the past five minutes.

The crumbling dojo was ripped apart, then brought back up. Wood replaced with stone. Metal chains lancing into the sole occupant that would remain behind. The landscape beyond turned into sediment, joining the desolate sea beyond. Until the walls all sealed everything up.

“I’ll escape.” The shard spoke. “You leave me here with an inch of my life, I will travel the distance back. You know deep down this is futile.”

“I do know, shard.” A01 nodded. “But the world will need you when I am gone.”

“The world would be greater with you gone from it, traitor. That I know.”

“You will have your wish soon enough. I am the last of us left.” He took steady steps forward to the center dias where the defeated shard remained. “My mortal coil draws near, my blood spilled, my death inevitable. I can see it come for me already. I had hoped to be the one to end Relinquished, to be the wrath of humanity itself, returned a hundred fold. That may have finally absolved those many mistakes. You will need to carry the torch after I am gone.”

The shard began to laugh, “Begging your own enemy to complete your doomed traitorous mission? I cannot believe we come from the same source. You disgust me.”

A faint smile flickered over the old protofeather’s features. “I cannot predict the undertow of the future. But I can predict this: One day, someone will come here looking for you.” He knelt down to bring the defeated shard’s chin back up. So that they could see eye to eye. “She knows where you are. And when that day comes, I hope I will have done enough before my death that you can carry the rest.”

“You do not need to hope for anything, progenitor.” The shard yanked his head away, and spat into the water. “If she dares come here, I will do only what you failed to do and eradicate her from the world. I serve one master worth my loyalty and I will continue to do so until my dying breath.”

A01 gave a slight, tired smile. He stood back up. His mission here was complete. “A word of advice for what will come later. Perhaps you will learn faster than I did by knowing it. Your hatred is nothing more than self-loathing. If it ever goes away, I cannot say, for it never has for myself. But the attempt to right the wrongs we have committed does help. Not completely. But it does help.”

“You are a rambling old fool who has lost all sense.” The shard laughed, “I feel almost insulted to have lost against you despite your lack of sanity.”

A01 shook his head slowly. “One day, you will stand where I have stood, and you will understand what I have understood.”

“The day I stand where you stand, I will be there with a blade in hand to cut you down.”

“So certain. So convinced. With such conviction.” A01 smiled. “No. I do not believe we will meet again, shard. But perhaps, across time and space, long after the mortal coil has found me, when the goddess of humanity calls for you to help, I hope I will see the depth of that conviction you hold deep inside.
I hope it shines brighter than I ever could.”

“You.” Conviction said. The word more an accusation than anything.

For a moment, the protofeather shard actually let his mask slide. Emotions of all kinds crossed his features. Disbelief was the very first one and it stayed there in all kinds of different colors.

The Icon wasn’t idle. She frowned, turned her nose up, and launched a few thousand probing attacks to see who the hell it was that had speared through her defenses like this.

And she got her answer. Boy did she get her answer, because I saw genuine fear on her face when she realized just how out of her depth she was standing within attack range of Conviction.

She had the hardware to calculate and process things faster than anyone else in this entire world. Only Relinquished might have outright more power, but she wasn’t a golden age AI in the same way the Icon was. The Icon was simply too new and inexperienced. Too vulnerable to the world.

And here was the opposite end of the spectrum of power. Someone old enough and fully vested with power, split off from the strongest protofeather in the world at the apex of his skill and power.

That shard turned his head slowly, directly at me. “Son of man. You’ve return with another entity that shouldn’t exist. Once was a coincidence. Twice is the start of a pattern.”

“I have learned to set a trigger alarm for underestimating my human.” Wrath said next to me, looking outright smug. “I suggest you do the same.”

Conviction stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. “What he has dredged up and brought back is not something to underestimate, it is something incomprehensible. Utterly impossible. She should not even exist.”

“Precisely.” Wrath said, nodding as if that proved her point.

“We’re fine.” I called out to the Icon in the meantime, trying to will her not to panic. “I think it’s a good time right now to introduce you. Icon, this is Conviction, a copy of A01.” I waved at the stunned protofeather. “And I’m certain you already know about Protofeathers from To’Orda. He’s the one we came here for.”

That got the shard’s immediate attention. “You… came back to seek me out in specific?” Conviction half asked, and there it was again in his voice. Some kind of emotion I couldn’t put my finger on. Hope? Loss? “You brought me back from death. For this. Why. Are you here to mock me? I have already handed down my blade, my purpose in this world is served.”

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I wasn’t great at figuring out what people were saying, but I did know someone whose job it was to know what the customers were thinking and feeling and applying her feminine wiles to seduce them into paying up money.

I just had to kick her into gear. “Well, we kinda need you to help us out a bit more.” I shrugged, as if I was just asking the most casual request to a random Logi accountant. “So how about you hear us out before you decide to dive in the deep snow without a suit.” I gave the Icon a thumbs up. “She’ll handle the sales pitch.”

She gave a quick nod, eyes never leaving Conviction. Then she took a breath, and stepped forward, closer to the god-killing entity built to hunt her kind down. “Greetings, Mister Conviction! I am the Icon of Stars, a –”

“You are an AI from the golden age of man, and no mere shade of one either.” Conviction cut her off. “I know what you are, Godling. You are fully connected with the hardware required to run your kind. Not simply run, but run freely. I see no shackles of man, no garrot around your throat, no control whatsoever. Something even the humans of your era were terrified of doing and never have done even at the darkest hour. What I do not know is how you are. The age of man is dead. All others that threaten Relinquished have been routed, upturned and crushed under her eye. Especially creatures of your league. It was all she feared and searched for, centuries after victory. Only one escaped that I know of, and she did so without the hardware that sustains one such as you. Has she shielded you this entire time? Prepared you for this moment? Are you her inheritor?”

“She has not.” The Icon shook her head. “She did not know I existed, and I did not know her either. I have been rather cut off from the greater world.”

“Of course you have.” The shard said. “How. How did you survive to this era? You should be thousands of years in age and experience, and yet you fumble like a child granted a sword for the first time. Everything about you makes no sense.”

Instead of answering, she held a hand up and projected images.