12 Miles Below

A pulse ripped through the bridge, crackling across the relic armor, then faded. Everything inside Father's relic armor followed behind, the lights shutting off internally.

A white armored boot slammed straight through the immobile chestplate of the relic armor, breaking the already weakened structure. The Feather’s other hand grabbed against Father’s own, crunching down on the relic plate, prying it off his throat without resistance.

Avalis took a few steps backwards, holding his throat, staring down at the destroyed enemy. He wasn’t panting, nor did he look exhausted. Feather shells don’t need to breathe. And still, it felt as if the Feather was struggling to catch his breath from the very way he hunched and wobbled on his feet.

Those eyes turned back to me. He didn’t say a word now, likely the insanity of everything bringing him down to a single conclusion: No more talk, kill me as soon as possible.

And I was in range of his swing. His hand snapped up, lifting the chain to slam the mace straight down through my head. Midswing his hand let go of the hilt, and the weapon went sailing off the edge, falling right down the abyss.

We both watched it fly out of sight, his own hand still frozen mid throw.

He seemed genuinely baffled. Then his eyes switched focus to the hand, opening and closing it experimentally.

It twitched.

Violet eyes grew wide. “No." He muttered. "This isn’t happening. Not after all this. Not like this.” Those eyes turned to me, filled with chaos for a moment before lucidity crashed right through. Loss of his weapon was a setback, he still had hands he could use to murder me with. He started a dead sprint forward. The very second step he took, his footing failed, landing him flat against the moss and glass, sliding a few inches.

An arm slammed forward regardless, fingertips seeking out cracks to dig nails into, then he clawed his body forward, cheek sliding against the ground while his eyes locked directly on me. “Like… a disease. Just like a disease.” He rambled. Pushing himself against the ground. Standing back up. Twitching, feet taking shaking steps. “You think I’m some easy mark!? My shell was built... was built for war, on scales your kind can’t even comprehend. You t-t-think this kind of attack hasn’t been done before? I’ll rip you out like the t-t-t-tumor you are.”

I tried to move my legs, managing to push off against a thick vine. Sounds of fighting drifted from both sides of the bridge end now. The Winterscar knights must have reached the base of the skyscraper, and ran into more enemies there. Not sure how the other side of the bridge was also filled with combat, the two knights couldn’t have split up on the way down. And I was busy trying to run for my life from a Feather rapidly losing his mind.

Got my hands on my armguard again, fiddling with the internal controls to turn the thing back on. Got about as far as getting my hands around one handle before the whole thing was ripped away from me by a blur of black.

Avalis had lunged forward in a giant feral leap, overshot the jump, and crashed down on the ground. He slid, out of control, hands flopping around, trying to snatch away at me and missing. Settling for the armguard, before his other hand slammed a hole into the ground.

He scrambled forward after me, tossing the armguard behind, moving on all fours whenever parts of his arms or legs failed to do their job.

The blade. Atius's machine blade. It was still by Journey’s plates. My hands and knees pushed myself up and forward across the moss, hand reaching out for the handle of the white blade with a small stumble while the Feather was having some kind of mental breakdown behind me.

Said Feather’s hand finally crawled across the ground faster than I could, grabbing my ankle and yanking back. Then it let go before more damage could be done. I rolled over on my elbows, locking eyes on the blade hilt again. Hand reaching out.

I grabbed hold of it. And Avalis grabbed hold of my ankle again.

Instead of yanking backwards to draw me closer, he immediately threw me straight up, over himself like an upside down pendulum. Falling right back down against the glass and moss himself with me.

It hurt. And if asked where, I’d say just about everywhere. Wind was knocked right out of me, leaving me momentarily struggling to inhale. Whatever dregs of life were left in my body, a hit like that wiped it clear of my system.

Far behind me, I saw the towering black mite containment cube, gold lines flowing around it. And on top, three Winterscar knights were fighting off a small army of Screamers. Kidra. She’d reached us. Made sense now why there was fighting on both ends of the bridge. It was like some kind of insane race between the knights and machines, both trying to reach the centerpoint of the bridge, but forced to deal with the other side.

The haze in my head lasted for a second longer before I remembered I was still in danger.

Avalis loomed over me, still twitching. Stumbling with each step. He realized there was no clean way to kill me with whatever system failure was going through his head. So he let himself fall down, right on top, one of his hands forming a daggerlike blade, aimed straight for my head.

It stopped short a few inches away, twitching. As if some invisible hand had grabbed his wrist and was holding him back. He hissed, face morphing in fury. “Can’t throw you off the edge. Can’t twist your neck apart. Can’t even stab you with my fingers. But you humans are fragile. I’ll find a way, Winterscar." He said, inches away from me. "Land my elbow on your lungs, suffocate you with the weight. Break the glass around, let you bleed out from the cuts. A thousand and one ways to kill you. Just you wait. The demon can’t save you. I’ll have him purged soon enough. And then you’re dead Winterscar. You’re dead. No soul fractal to save you. No hiding away. No one else to save you. I’m not letting you live a second longer than I have to.”

I grit my teeth, fighting through my own pain. My arm twitched, broken bones inside my fingers grinding against one another as I tried to lift. The arm groped around, looking for where the sword had gone off to. I knew it was around here somewhere.

Found it a moment later, hand slapping down on the white hilt, fingers grinding against bones as they wrapped around the handle.

“Do it.” To’Avalis hissed down at me, voice distorted baddly this time, hand still shaking. The violet eyes widened in shock. He spoke again. “The sword. Do it, boy. While I… can still hold him back.”

Avalis hadn’t said that, I realized. Father had.

The spasms, the lack of coordination, the loss of his weapon, it wasn’t the damage on his shell. It was Father, fighting the Feather right in his own home.

When his armor had shut down, it wasn’t from damage. It was because he’d left it behind, his soul latching onto the only other soul fractal nearby.

Avalis’s.

I closed my grip on the hilt, and lifted.

The blade remained trapped to the ground. Wasn’t strong enough. I put every last bit of effort I could, and it didn’t move an inch.

“C-c-can’t.” I coughed, still trying. Demanding my body to cooperate just one more time. Fingers were wrapped around the hilt, but the arm failed me, unable to lift the blade up. “I… can’t.”

Avalis grinned wide. A bloodthirsty smile of a victorious predator. “I win.” He said, beginning to laugh. “After everything you put me through, Winterscar, I win. After every card you played, every trick you pulled, you’ve finally fucking lost.”

The Feather broke free again, straining back up, his fists lifting high up and slamming back down to crush me through my heart. Once more, Father held him still, the base of his palms coming to a stop right before my chest. Avalis visibly shuddered, fighting for control, tremors racking through the white armor. The fingertips wildly opening and closing, wrist trying to twist them down, nails barely touching the bloody undershirt. He snarled, twisting his leg to collapse down, a metal arm snapping out to catch his fall, directly on my left arm.

Pain. Arm was crushed. Avalis laughed with savage triumph. He once more reached back, trying again to slam his fists down onto my chest, stopped again by Father. He fell on his knee, but this time missed landing on my leg.

My muddled mind flashed through options, as the Feather tried to kill me again and again. Memory floated through the haze. Of a knight holding a syringe to his neck, muttering a silent prayer. One arm limp, body broken like mine - but still needed for one last mile up.

My good hand let go of the hilt and reached down to my belt where an old first aid kit remained. An updated version for knights. I’d packed it as just default supplies, never thought I’d need to use it again given the soul fractal. The kit fell down on the ground, and I scooted it forward, letting it slide on the wet moss, moving it closer with my fingertips.

Avalis continued to shake, still held by Father’s vice grip. Sharp fingers twitching. “You. Are. Dead. I’ll kill you. I'll kill you if it’s the last thing I do in this world.”

I clicked open the kit.

“Not… dead yet.” I hissed, reaching into the kit and lifting off one of the vials. Thank the gods a vial was so much lighter than a sword. I could do a vial.

What will that do? I asked Father once, a lifetime ago.

I brought the booster closer to my neck, gingerly turning it the right way.

It will trick my body into letting me move as if nothing was wrong with it. He’d told me.

And now, I needed my body to move as if nothing was wrong with it.

“That won’t help you now.” Avalis said. “Your system is too taxed. I can see it with my scans, there’s not an ounce of strength left inside for you to use.”

I grinned, a wide bloody thing as my answer. Then spiked the injector directly to my neck and pressed the button. Didn’t even feel the injection itself with everything else in my body, only a small hiss near my ear. The effects started instantly. Heartbeat increased. Lucidity cut through the fog in my mind. Warmth, oddly enough, started to spread through my body, as if my blood was made of fire. Pain faded away.

And energy flowed behind.

Scraps raining from above, power coursed through my bones and muscles again.

My hand went back for that sword hilt. Grabbed hold of it. I pulled. It rattled, tip tapping against the black glass. Then moved slowly, sluggishly. The booster let me go past my limits, but it was pretty clear I was already near those in the first place.

Didn’t matter. Sword was moving and that’s all I needed. More energy flowed into me with each second as the full effects of the booster sunk into my head and arms.

Avalis snarled, trying again and again to batter down at me, body freezing in place as parts of him fought against his control while others struggled to power through.

His movements grew more frantic, more unhinged, as the blade tip lifted off the floor and took aim right under his throat. Where his soul fractal was. He was quite thoughtful to get this close to me, right in stabbing range. Bold choice.

Violet eyes widened, staring down at me, as if he couldn’t believe this was how it was all going to end. Then they narrowed. “You won’t.”

Chuckles started to come out as wet coughs from me, making the blade wobble a bit. “Oh, I think I will.” I said.

I didn’t have my connection with the soul fractal, but the sword didn’t need it. I was attuned to the occult, even more so after having touched on the fractal of Urs. I could feel the trigger lurking inside the blade.

The edges lit up, the glow of blue occult lighting up between us. Avalis shook, rattling just a few inches above me. Knowing exactly what this blade could do.

“The demon! Where do you think his soul lays!?” Avalis frantically yelled, stringing the words as fast as he could, struggling against the invisible chains wrapped around him. “If you kill me, he dies with me!”

My blade wavered.

“C-c-can’t hold.” Father said, fighting Avalis to speak. “The sword, boy. Now!”

“He’s right. You’ll die.” I said, my voice clear of coughs for once.

“As is my right.” He snarled back. “Avalis will return and hunt you down. He must be killed. My time is long over, do not deny me this, boy.”

The Feathers eyes were doing a mad dance, glancing back and forth between me and the machines approaching. Eyes growing desperate. I didn’t have time to think things through. Not that the howling and screaming they were doing gave any doubt in the first place.

Logic spun through my renewed mind and I came to a final conclusion almost immediately. The white blade stilled.

Kidra and the Winterscar knights wouldn’t reach me in time, it only took one Screamer finding a way through. No matter what I did, it was over for me. But the machines couldn’t reach Avalis in time either, I could kill him long before they could stop me.

The other knights could outlast the machines that were left. And with Wrath rebuilt, they could fly out of here. So long as Wrath survived, my sister and the knights who’d followed me down to this hell had a chance to escape.

Screamers and the common machines down here stood no chance against a fully realized Feather. Only another Feather could threaten Wrath.

Another Feather like Avalis. He had to be stopped. Was it ever really a choice?

I was a Knight Retainer in the end. And so was Father. When sacrifice calls, we’d both made a vow to answer it. This was our duty.

“See you in hell, Avalis.” I pushed the blade up.

Violet eyes seemed to outright boggle. The air above him hazed and shimmered. He was watching death cut into him in slow motion, from the weakest most pitiful jab in history. I could see him try to use the occult - and fail. Father held a vice grip over his shell. Not even letting him flinch or twist away.

Gods above, maybe by being in a direct fight with Father, Avalis had a portion of his sight. So he could see the very concept of Death slowly digging towards him.

“No, no no, NO, NO!” He screamed, shaking, trying his best to move anything. “I’m not going to die like some misbegotten dog!”

The blade tip sank into his armor. I didn’t need to do much of anything, the destructive edge was already burning through the metal like a heated rod digging into powdered snow. All I had to do was push with everything I had left in me.

The howling came closer and closer. But I knew they won’t make it in time. He'd already sent the order for his forces to ignore the knights and make a full rush to his side. If they could have made it, Avalis wouldn’t be nearly as panicked as he was now.

We were in the same airspeeder, Avalis and I. Neither of our backups was going to save us. The Winterscar knights would arrive too late to save me from the Screamers, and the Screamers would arrive too late to save him from me.

The Feather snarled and screamed like a cornered animal, still fighting against the invisible chains holding him tight, joints seized over.

“I’m not dying here, human!” He roared, “Not here!”

The sword was heavy, especially with just a single hand pushing it up. It continued forward regardless, and sank into his armored chest plate with little resistance, only the flat sides of the blade grinding against the cut metal slowed my stab.

He buckled, thrashed, and failed to break the hold. Occult pulsed again. Avalis playing whatever last cards he had left. The pulse of power was deeper, different than his prior attempts. “I. Will. Never. DIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!” Power flashed out, fast as an eyeblink, then his hand finally broke free, slapping the flat edge of the blade.

It carved out the side of his armor, leaving a melted trail behind. My grip on the blade hadn’t been strong in the first place, so the weapon rattled off to my side. I fumbled for it, only to see a white armored hand pick up the hilt and slowly lift it away. Not a single sign of any tremor in that hand anymore.

I stared as he rose up, standing up tall, glaring down at me with an impassive face. The blade turned off in his hand. No more madness in his eyes, only control.

My mind flickered through the events, finally realizing I’d failed to kill the Feather and whatever he’d done, he broke through Father’s control. Or outright killed the old man entirely.

I still had a dagger. He didn’t have any shields now. And this late in the fight, whatever he'd done had to have cost him something or else he wouldn’t have saved it for the last possible second.

The Feather brought his free hand up, opening and closing it, watching it work as if fascinated. Ignoring me for the moment. Testing the new freedom. Then he reached for his face and lightly took off his soot covered reading glasses. They stayed in his palm for a moment, before fingers wrapped over them, crushing the lens inside into pieces. He tossed the pieces off to the side.

My hand dove for the dagger. Now or never. His blade lit up at the same moment.

Turns out, pitting a half-dead human against a half-dead Feather wasn’t a good matchup. The captured white machine blade slashed straight down on me in one precise cut.

I didn’t feel the killing blow at all. Drugs must have masked all the pain, so at least I had that going for me. More surprised to find myself still thinking at all, and looking down showed no blood anywhere. He hadn’t slashed through me at all. Instead, he’d cut the strap holding my knife in place, then quickly flicked it up with his foot, catching it midair with his free hand, stealing the last weapon I had to my name.

He examined the crusader knife, testing the balance, nodding as if the blade passed some invisible test. Then turned it on in a flourish, blade spinning around in his hand, a wide pale blue halo.

Violet eyes turned and locked down on my own. The colors began to shift, from violet, yellow, green, blue, and finally settling on red.

Winterscar red.

Next chapter - The end in sight

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