12 Miles Below

The slaver knight's blade raced for my heart. Death was a single second away.

But Lord Atius had offered me knowledge.

The powers of a Deathless.

Deep inside my chest, the fractal of mirrors flared out. Occult blue rippled around a translucent hand lifting forth from my seized arm. The mirror hand raced forward, executing one single perfect block.

The arm had been a full imitation of Journey's gauntlets and armor, all in pale blue. It had soundlessly moved right through the net, immaterial to reality, directly on a path to intercept the slaver's lethal attack. Held firmly in that spectral hand had been an exact mirror of the Occult blade my physical hand carried. The edge of that translucent blade shining a deeper color like the real version of the blade would. That was the only part of the manifestation that still seemed to affect reality. Everywhere that edge scythed through was cut, air and metal net both.

The slaver knight stumbled backwards in shock as the arm faded from existence, dissolving like powder swept away in water.

A half breath passed. The two slavers on my side held firmly on my arms, helmets slowly turning to stare in horror at me. They let go an instant later, as if I was burning to the touch. Trying to put as much distance between me and them as they could.

More pulses of occult rippled out, and three more wraith arms sprang superimposed on my body as I rapidly threw my will into the fractal again and again and again. Everywhere the ghostly blades scythed through, the net fell apart into chunks. Like a hydra of old, each arm struck out as if independent. Each performing one single action, one single swing.

It was enough. The metal crumpled around me, weight now snapping the chains apart as a blur of occult blue shredded through the mass.

Cathida rose from the ruins of the metal net. The real knife and longsword struck out, slicing through the rest, further breaking apart the weakened chains. She leaped up, relic armor ripping loose from whatever chains were left.

My body landed back on solid ground in a heavy crouch, free again. Cathida brought us back up, longsword and knife casually taking the familiar stance of an imperial crusader. “Nice trick, deary.” She whispered in my ear. “I'll admit your little hockus pokus might have been worth spending time on."

The slavers scuffled up together. I could see them shaking. Uncertain. She let them take their positions. Helmet tilted slightly, almost as if mocking them.

"Now watch closely." Cathida said to me. "I have tricks of my own."

I couldn’t speak. Too much of me was disconnected from my body, too far removed.

The slavers tried to rally. They gathered together, executing techniques for handling an outnumbered foe. Once more trying to surround and corner us. I could tell they were well practiced at this. The old imperial crusader didn't spare any of it a second thought, she sprinted right into the mouth of their formation head on.

In life, Cathida had been fast.

I’d seen the video archive. Her single minded dedication to the combat arts had allowed her to master moves to their limits. It made her deadly underground, capable of striking out with some honed techniques at speeds only masters could reach.

In death, she had none of those limits.

Every movement she made was at a master’s level. All the commands coming directly from the armor itself. There was no limiting factor. Speed wasn’t the only thing crashing into the slaver knights either. Cathida had only known the imperial style of combat when she’d died in that cave.

But she’d been watching over me. And she’d learned.

With Journey recording the exact data, she only needed to see me perform a move once in order to replicate it. The mixup of the regal imperial technique and cutthroat surface style was something the slavers hadn’t seen before. Telegraphed attacks instantly turned into a ruse, flowing right back into stream like attacks, and then to heavy handed swings. It jarred them, forcing them to fight in unnatural ways. Worse - I recognized moves only Kidra had delivered while sparring with me.

Cathida hadn’t just learned from me. She had learned from everyone I’d ever fought since her inception. Kidra, Ironreach, even Shadowsong. Journey brought their styles to life, Cathida moving with far more grace than I ever could, back straight, sword strikes sent out with noble bearing as she wove the different techniques into a cohesive whole. Occult raging around the armor the whole while, ghostly manifestations striking out against anything that drew too close with far more primal and simpleminded strikes. There was no technique to my part, only wild swings.

I didn’t need to pay attention to what my body was doing, I stayed limp within the armor, too detached to feel anything. Instead, my focus was completely on the mirror fractal and the ability granted through it. No small feat by itself, I had to imagine and ‘program’ each movement the images would take, one after another, as quick as I could think. When I’d seen Atius use the skill, he could send out entire phantoms, moving for whole seconds out in the world, striking out.

At my skills, I could only make partial manifestations and only long enough for a single quick swing. Arms and the blades. Occasional parts of the torso. But I made it work.

Any attack that the slavers launched from behind Cathida, I manifested a counter defence. She, in turn, went on a single-minded attack. I followed behind her strikes with equal ferocity from all kinds of angles that couldn’t have been physically possible. Her already quick slices had nearly doubled in lethality with my additions superimposed over.

A rhythm of battle wordlessly clicked into place between us as we crippled the formation arrayed against us, like a hammer against nails. The armor focused fully on taking out one slaver at a time, putting all of her trust on me to hold off the other two. Neither of us spoke the plan to one another, we both understood, as if we were each one part of the whole.

The fight turned hard against the slavers from the start. Another set of swings and the current target’s shields flashed and broke.

The man broke with it, turning all the while screaming incoherently, trying to sprint away. He got one step in, before he found himself staring at the end tip of a longsword skewed right through his chest and heart. His last sight of the world, before the sword was pulled free and the man collapsed onto the ground, dead.

She brought herself back into stance from the lunge, slowly, almost like a predator playing with her prey, twisting the longsword around on her palm with casual apathy. The last two slavers held back for a moment, glancing to each other, as if contemplating their chances on running.

Cathida didn't give them a chance, sprinting wordlessly at them. The armor began to methodically cut apart the next slaver. That one tried to hold back the flurry of attacks, failing to parry even a single blow against Cathida's technique. The last slaver had at least put up some kind of a fight, this one was clearly out of his depth. The shield was whittled away in instants as the two of us worked in tandem to rip him apart. Worse - he realized he’d been abandoned by his teammate halfway into the attack.

The slaver leader had decided discretion was the better part of valor, turning and sprinting straight out through the Winterscar gates, leaving the last man as a speed bump to slow us down.

We cut into that final knight without much effort now that he was alone against us with broken moral. In between the armor’s precise strikes, I wove out my own ghostly hits, from alternate directions like I’d seen Lord Atius do in his own fight.

His shields finally came near the limit with an errant strike of Cathida's knife. A ghostly strike a half second after completed the job, shattering the shield entirely and cutting deep into his bicep before fading from existence. The slaver never had the time to notice, as Cathida skewered him right through the helmet in a swift followup thrust. Quick and clean kill.

The body twitched, crashing down onto the ground. Another armor for House Winterscar.

“Well. Wasn’t that exciting?” Cathida said. “Almost unfair to the poor savages. I rather enjoyed that.”

“He died too quickly.” I growled, slowly returning to my senses, my soul returning to the Winterblossom configuration.

The courtyard around us was silent. Winterscar soldiers had surrounded the perimeter at the start of the fight, all of them waiting for the next autocannon to arrive, or the next moment where their rifles could potentially distract the enemy.

And then the fight had changed. Even the most battle hardened of them had stopped to stare once the Occult flooded into the world.

I brought my sword up, swung it clear of blood and turned it off, back into the sheath. At some point the alarms across the clan had stopped, but I couldn't tell just when that had been. A beat passed in the now quiet courtyard. The soldier closest to me knelt down, knee hitting the floor with a quick thump as he bowed his head. The rest of the Winterscars followed in suit, some making signs of the divine with their hands, many outright praying. Like a wave had spread out.

It felt a little surreal to me, turning around, seeing everyone kneeling to me of all people. I didn't know what to do in this situation. Every childhood fantasy I've ever had about being respected wasn't even fantastical enough to have people kneeling before me. Considering what they've witnessed, I probably looked more like some mythical hero out of a fairy tale to them, and this was the origin story they found themselves in.

Footsteps outside the gate saved me from having to say anything or make some kind of speech. In the hushed courtyard, those footsteps were louder than bullets. That seemed to break whatever spell had been cast on the Winterscars around me, they all leaped back up into a frenzy of activity at the shout of one of the sergeants. A dozen were sent out right away to recover the dead slavers and strip them of armor. Others were bringing the patched up wounded back into the safety of the estate, right to the hospital wing where they could be tended to.

Soldiers came to my side, setting up defenses, while others were trying to seal the gates shut once more with whatever scrap and welders they had on hand. I noticed they kept a short distance from me, as if not daring to get as close to me as they'd normally have done before. A figure walked to the edge of the ruined gate, and I threw away my racing thoughts to focus.

The man's armored gauntlet clamped tightly on the helmet of a dead knight, dragging the whole bloody body behind. The body being dragged was unmistakably a slaver knight. Both his arms had been cut cleanly off, and so had the legs.

The one dragging the body was none other than Shadowsong. He continued walking into the clearing, casually pointing a sword at one of my soldiers. “You.” He spoke. “Bring cauterizing iron here. Now. We brought wounded that need to be tended to.”

Two slaver knights stepped behind Shadowsong on both sides, but there wasn't any kind of fight brewing. These knights had makeshift Winterscar tabards draped across their chest plates, and both were carrying wounded soldiers in each hand. On the side of their belts were the carbon fiber blades I’d designed. This had to be my personal guard, returning from the dance hall.

In moments a whole team of medics descended on the two stolen armors, plucking the wounded soldiers out and getting to work on them. Shadowsong tossed the dead slaver's body to my feet, armor and all. "Yours by right. Your soldiers slew this one on their own."

Behind, a small troop of Shadowsong guards and the rest of my personal guard walked in next, including captain Sagrius. He looked haggard, with a white gauze bandage tightly wrapped around his left arm, but otherwise seemed to have made it in one piece. Great luck on his part, considering the last I’d seen of him, he and two others took on an entire army of six relic knights. An outright death sentence in all but name.

“I see I had nothing to worry for.” Shadowsong noted as he strode in, helmet shifting around, taking talley of the dead slavers and cut nets. “It seems once again someone has underestimated you and paid the price for it. You will have to tell me how you pulled off the feat of going five against one, and winning. No doubt some very clever tricks and tactics.”

“Six, not five. The last one escaped a moment ago. And it wasn't easy, I had to burn up a few secrets to survive.” I told him honestly, taking my helmet off to get some fresh air.

“Secrets?” Shadowsong turned to one of the Winterscar soldiers, who glanced up.

The unworded question was clear, and the soldier answered it promptly. “Lord Keith fought them all off with blade and some support from the rest of us.” He said quickly, almost rambling. “Was a display of sword skills I hadn’t seen in all my life, honored Shadowsong, only Lady Kidra could have matched it. I swear on all the gods above and under, he moved like the wind itself, as if the three had blessed him their champion.”

The other soldiers nodded, each adding to the story almost unprompted. And more oddly - with no mention of the Occult I had manifested. All of them banding together, making a convincing communal story on the spot. Trying to keep my abilities secret.

I glanced back up to the prime, looking bemused. Shadowsong listened patiently for a moment, humming. Then he raised a hand up, silencing the courtyard chatter.

“Lord Keith?”

Next chapter - Damage control

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