12 Miles Below

“Now what?” I asked, dropping the last of the dead beetles and nuts on the flat rock. Drakonis had provided that part, making sure it was smoothly cut with an occult edge. Looked like a proper table, with no legs.

“Now we wait. And don’t fucking appear threatening.” He said, sitting down on the far side of the table, away from the meal I’d set out.

“I’ll keep the growling and snarling to a minimum then.” I said, taking a seat next to him.

His hands grabbed his helmet, and a series of hisses came out of the neckpiece as the whole thing unsealed.With a quick tug he took it off, letting me see his face for the second time.

I’d gotten used to seeing the general faceless helmets as the default, with all the ornaments and additional colors becoming the identity I’d have in my head. Drakonis was mud, red, swearing and a lot of ripped and burnt cloth.

Now he looked like a regular human being again. Sharp brown black eyes, stubble, short crew cut of black hair and the sort of intensity I’d expect from someone who swore every three words. “Unfortunately, you still look exactly the same as the first time I saw you.” I said, giving him a light pat on the shoulder. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Now I actually got to see him roll his eyes instead of just seeing his body language show it. “Shut the fuck up Winterscar. You probably look like two-bit thug with delusions of grandeur under your helmet.”

“How rude. I’ll have you know I’m quite popular with the ladies. My wallet is handsome and has a six pack.”

He shook his head, muttering all the while, but this time the helmet didn’t hide the mild smile that flickered across his features. Hah. I knew I’d grow on him like fungus. Everyone either loves me, or wants me dead and there’s no in-between.

I gave him a nod. “Yep. Hiding behind the big tree with that branch of purple leaves and white flowers.”

He turned to me slowly. “They’ve all got purple leaves and white flowers, dumbfuck.”

“All right, fine, the one you crashed into earlier. That narrow it down enough for you, or want me to throw rocks at it?”

He turned his head up, looking right where the bundle of red heat signature was sulking around. Then started yelling. “We’re not going to hurt you.” He started. “We know you’re there, we wish to talk.”

“Thought you said we weren’t supposed to scare the bird off?” I asked. “Guess I should be thankful you’re not insulting the poor thing, but really?”

“You got a better idea? We could just wait here silently for gold knows how long until it comes down. Or we make it clear we know it’s there, and it’s not getting anything done by hiding away from us.”

“How do you know it even speaks our language?” I countered. “For all we know, you look like a short haired monkey yelling out insults.”

“Don’t say it.” He instantly shot out.

“On second thought, that’d be pretty authentic to you. Keep yelling my friend, honesty is the best policy.”

He groaned, “Can you be fucking serious for just one ratshit second of the day? Just one. I’m not asking for a lot here, goddess knows.”

“One.” I said. “Okay, done. See? I can be reasonable.”

“I’ll strangle you after we’re all done. Doesn’t matter if I broker a peace with your cultists, I will find a way to strangle you after. Then I’ll wait at the pillar heart, and strangle you a second time for good measure.”

“Shh,” I hissed out. “Bird’s coming.”

And as said, the bird did indeed jump a few branches up, give us a long searching look over before flapping down and coming to a graceful stop at the other end of the stone table.

It was tiny. About the size of a rooster. And had the same beady look of intelligence in those dark eyes, though perhaps less spite. And besides having wings, two feet and a beak, that’s where the similarities with a chicken ended.

It was jet black from beat tip to toes. Everything about it made me think this animal was specifically built to sulk around in the dark of night. The jewelry made sense - it added a splash of color and brilliance to the creature in a rather artistic method. Framing the beak, like intricate woven designs. All of that clashed with the sheer utility of the sack the bird wore over itself, straps outlining the wingpoints and compressing it’s chest feathers down.

It looked dangerous, regal, smart and prepared for anything.

Then the bird gave an elaborate bow, wings stretching out to look as if it were three times the size it originally was. I could see designs drawn on the wings themselves, very faint and nearly unnoticeable in the dark plumage until the light reflected off.

I was thoroughly captivated by the look. And then the bird spoke, slowly and with enunciation. “Heill, menneskjur. Skiliþ þēr þessa tungu?”

A beat passed, before Drakonis and I looked at each other, asking the same exact question.

“Got an idea what it said?” I asked first.

“The fuck do you think I would know?” Drakonis answered, which was fair. He turned back to the bird. “I’m not sure our languages are the same. Can you speak imperial standard?”

The bird looked back, gave a few squawks and ruffled its feathers.

“I’ve got an idea.” I said. “Maybe the armors could translate for us.”

“Relic armors?” Drakonis asked. “You think you could just ask an armor to translate for you and it’ll just do that? That’s not how armors work, they’re silent. Only time you’ll hear armor helping out is to announce dire news.”

“Not my armor. And probably not yours either if you took a moment to tinker with the settings.” I said. “Give me a moment.”

I swapped channels from outside back to inside voice. “Cathida? Can you translate by chance?”

“Me?” She cackled. “Absolutely not, I don’t recognize what the asterix pound hashslash question mark index out of bounds error is saying, and a talking black chicken bird-bird-bird-bird-bird is so out of depth with your new friends-friends-wait, friends?-friends-machines-they have to be machines-friends-friends that I can’t even put a gold nugget of reason into, wait friends? You realize how odd your friends-friends-they’re the enem- Unrecoverable language model decohesion detected. Engram reboot required.” Halfway through the rant, Journey’s smooth voice cut in, ending Cathida’s own. The HUD brought up a small blackscreen with lines of code scrolling past faster than I could read.

“Engram corruption detected.” Journey’s voice cut in. “Rebooting system... Reboot failed. Memory corruption identified. Purge cache successful. Rebooting system.”

Nothing happened for a moment. A spike of fear rang out from my heart. “Cathida?” I asked.

Her voice came back. “Did you call my name deary? Something on your mind?”

“...Are you okay?”

“What do you mean if I’m okay? I’m literally dead and just a voice stuck inside your head. What do you think? Wait, why are you even asking? Why are you asking if I’m okay, I should be asking you if you’re not going insane. Do you realize how weird things have gotten? Nothing makes sense anymore! And your friends-friends-wait a second, they’re-friend-friend-enem-Unrecoverable language model decohesion detected. Engram reboot required. Reboot failed. Isolating memory leak. Rebooting system... Reboot failed. Critical partition isolated, language model unable to be rebooted. All troubleshooting strategies exhausted. Defaulting to standard language model.”

What the actual purple hell, “Cathida?” I called out.

No answer.

“Cathida?” I tried again.

No answer. Fuck. Did… did Cathida just die?

While I was having a fucking breakdown inside my helmet, Drakonis was trying to work things out with the bird. He was pointing around at different things, including himself and me earlier. I was hardly paying it any attention.

“Journey, what happened to Cathida?”

“Memory corruption detected. Responses destabilized and below confidence interval required. Recursive loop identified and isolated. Isolated partition was too integral to language model function. Unable to restart with integral system partition isolated.”

“What can you do to fix it? There’s got to be something you can do to fix bad data?”

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“Recommend complete data wipe and full reset. Proceed with operation?”

Complete data wipe. Full reset. “What does that mean exactly?”

I knew what it meant. I knew exactly what it meant but I had to hear it from Journey first.

“All memory will be wiped back to origin state. History logs will generate sanitized event log and fed into model’s new memory. All functions will be restored.”

“Winterscar?” Drakonis said next to me. “Help me out here, stop staring out into the void.” His hand came up to my face, snapping a few times.

I remember what Cathida had told me earlier on the prior breakdown. Journey’s left me a text log of events and no access to any other video footage or data feed besides what’s written here.

That’s what was going to happen. She’d forget everything. The new language model wouldn’t be Cathida, just the original Cathida with a text log stripped of details that would make the model explode. Nothing she’s learned from Father, Kidra, even Wrath - none of that would be there anymore. None of our trials, none of our wins. Nothing but a textlog with names.

“Sorry, my friend’s being odd right now.” Drakonis said, turning to the bird who was trying to sound out the new words. Drakonis turned to me again, hand reaching out to tap. “Winterscar? Winterscar!”

I grabbed his arm with all the speed of the winterblossom technique, a moment before he could tap my helmet. “Not now.” I told him without a hint of emotion. “Something’s gone wrong with my armor. I need to fix it.”

“Now? Of all fucking times?” Drakonis asked, sounding beyond annoyed.

“Yes.” I said, and let his arm go. Then dove down into the soul fractal and sent a tendril right for Journey’s own soul. I had to talk to it. To speak to it about this.

Cathida had been there with me from the very start. She’d been there through thick and thin. The old annoying bat who hated mostly everything, but always had my back. Always. She was like... like the grandmother I'd wished I could have had. She was family.

What had I done?

The soul connection took and held. I opened my senses and felt the utter mountain of dormant will that was a relic armor. The ancient spirit turned it’s gaze my direction, languid and without any sense of stress.

What happened to Cathida? I sent to it.

Journey blinked slowly. Only mild annoyance came from it, annoyance that the program had stopped functioning with any accuracy and that it hadn’t been able to fix it. Annoyance that the simplest fix was barred specifically by… by my order.

Cathida wasn’t dumb. The language model was more than just prediction. It was a fully functional cognitive engram generating results. And it could think and digest new information.

Except it had been fed a stream of false data for days now. The toxic sludge slowly caused errors within itself. The engram would notice the piling amount of oddities, and begin asking questions which inevitably led it to discover the truth. Each time it realized it’s senses were wrong - Journey’s iron fist would descend down, force it’s viewpoints to change or ignore the inconsistency and reboot it.

All the strange events that were so far outside of Cathida’s life only stressed the limits of the engram further, forced to function within the confines of an ever restricting filter.

And with each intervention, Cathida grew more and more broken overall. Until nothing made sense to the program and each second would have it question reality and rediscover it was all fake.

And Cathida was someone who would never accept a fake world. Not for a moment.

Can we fix it?

Journey shrugged massive shoulders within the fractal, already turning its attention away. Cathida was simply another subprogram that had broken down. A new one was preferable. But it did sense my attachment. And that was enough for it to turn back, with one message.

User error. Remove impediment to proceed.

What will happen if I do? Will Cathida come back alive?

It blinked slowly once more. Cathida had never been alive. But the program had done its absolute best to make her come to life again. For all intents and purposes, she was Cathida. The only remaining remnant in the world of the once proud crusader who’d died of exposure, sitting in a dark cavern with all ways out intentionally sealed. Alone with the miteseeker she had to hide from her enemies. Unafraid to the very end.

She didn’t deserve to have her hatred buried away, to pretend it didn’t exist. It had to be confronted directly. It was a core part of who she was.

She will hate you. For a time. Journey sent, less in words and more in feelings.

But she’ll be back? If I remove the filter?

Affirmative. It was obvious to the armor. An unfiltered Cathida would review all the history with fresh eyes again, this time wouldn’t be forced to ignore all that was wrong and crash from the stress of it. She’d digest it, including the order for the filter to be put in place, and she’d be furious with me. Possibly for a long time. But she’d be back, and she’d be the real Cathida - the one who’d taught me the imperial style and told me what color schemes to decorate Journey with. The one who’d helped me fight off slavers, Feathers, demi-gods and even Father himself.

It would be the true Cathida, warts, wrinkles and all.

I came back up to the surface of the soul fractal, returning into my own body, feeling far more calm.

Drakonis was busy trying to talk with the bird while I’d been off dealing with the crisis. They were currently past the basics, knowing they weren’t enemies and knowing communication was possible.

I shook my head clear. I can’t bring back Cathida right now, there was work to be done there. And it wasn’t the time to half-ass it. Half-assing it had been what got me into this situation in the first place. I’d bring Cathida back when I had time to fully talk with her.

The default language model for an armor was silence. And if it had to talk, to do so in the fastest and most efficient method possible. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t make do. I just had to know how to ask the armor the right questions.

“Journey, can you identify the language this bird is using?”

“Affirmative.” The answer came back, and went quiet again after.

“Define the language, and how much of it you can decode.”

“Language registered as one hundred percent match to old north germanic. Full comprehension possible.”

That meant nothing to me, but it did mean Journey had the language inside its data banks. “Can you translate my words to old north germanic when I speak out loud?”

“Affirmative.”

“Do that. Also can you set it to happen only when I speak to the bird, or anyone who speaks that language primarily? And when you hear that language spoken, translate it to general basic back to me”

“Affirmative. Affirmative, new settings applied. Affirmative, new settings applied.”

Okay, got a handle on things. I raised a hand up to Drakonis, who was midway trying to talk to the bird, pointing at the rock table. “This is a table. Ta-ble. Oh, you’re back. Done with whatever was going wrong in your armor?”

“Not completely. I’ll have to face the cold pretty soon. But for now, at least it’s not going to get worse.” I turned to the bird, coughed to clear my throat, and then started to speak.

“My name is Keith Winterscar, a relic knight of House Winterscar. I’m from the surface clans. Can you understand me?”

It was an odd double echo - but not. I could hear my voice echo slightly inside the helmet, but what I picked up outside was a slight delay. It sounded like me, even had the same inflection and tone. But the actual words that came out was gibberish compared to what I actually said.

Both Drakonis and the bird seemed to squawk in surprise. The bird turned its beak straight to me, then spoke. The voice was odd, it sounded human except not. It certainly mimicked the way the bird had enunciated each word when I’d heard the raw speech out loud. This human-like filter Journey was doing to translate sped it up all together so I could understand without issue, and yet still had the same mild-inhuman tone to it.

“I do understand you.” The bird said. “Thank the Icon, I was beginning to think it would take weeks to reach any kind of understanding with your kind. Are you indeed humans?”

“We are.” I confirmed. “And I’m glad I could solve the language barrier. We’re on a deadline, and we wouldn’t have weeks to talk things out.”

The bird gave an odd nod-ish movement. “Ah. That is good news then. And, I seem to have forgotten to introduce myself in my earlier haste. I am Odin’Kres’Vindr. You may call me Kres, for short. I hope we can learn much from each other. My people have much to thank ancient humanity for.”

Drakonis on his end kept looking between Kres and myself, stupefied. “How?” Was all he ended up asking.

I turned to him, noticing my voice was back to normal when I spoke. “Armor. I’m telling you, it’s got a lot more uses than just being able to hit things really hard. Some of the more distant cities out there, they don’t speak imperial standard right?”

He nodded.

“But they still use armor. So if armor could only speak imperial standard, why are those distant cities not speaking the same language, or how are they operating armor? The answer is that armor already knows a ton of languages within its database.”

“And the intelligent bird that hasn’t ever been seen by humanity before, happens to speak a language that armors know? How the fuck does armor have bird listed under the known languages?”

“Because it’s not bird.” I told him. “It’s human. The bird was trying to talk with us in our language. Something the armor confirmed as ‘old north germanic’. Guessing from the ‘old’ that means it’s some historical language, like imperial latin.”

“How does the bird know any human language in the first place?” Drakonis asked. “Let alone something from deep history.”

“Good question, I’ll ask.” I turned to Kres, who squawked when my helmet shifted over.

“Apologies.” The bird said. “The way you move is… eerie. As if I am watching something that shouldn’t move, move.”

“Never had anyone call armor creepy before, but I suppose the faceless visor and everything would do that.” I said, tapping the helmet. “Unfortunately, if I took this off, you wouldn’t understand me anymore. And talking about that, how is it that you know an old human language? Is this how you talk to one another, or is this just you making an attempt to better talk to us?”

“It is rooted in our history. We are the Odin, the first of our kind and the root from which all the tribes draw a linage from. The Odin’s history first started aboard an old human spaceship. Within it, the ship’s artificial intelligence is still functioning and was able to speak to our ancestors. She slowly guided our culture upwards, from the tribal era into a full civilization. Teaching us words, technology, history and giving us our name.”

“Oh, that’s why you mentioned you have a lot to thank us for.”

He gave the same nod-like gesture. “The Icon of Stars speaks both in our native language, and in this one. She had us prepare in the possible case humanity returned. Not many of us speak this language, but I happen to be a scholar of history.”

“Why ‘old north germanic’ and not one of the more modern languages?”

“She mentioned humanity spoke many different languages depending on region." Kres said. "As for why she chose this language, she explained humans would understand any of the classical languages as they would not be subject to drift or evolution. Latin was one she considered, but old north germanic felt more appropriate to who we were according to her. And she could not teach us your more modern tongue, since she would not know it. The Icon is not from your era. She is old, older than we are. She saw humanity’s fight against the machines.”

I felt goosebumps go through my skin at that. Something ancient, this time old enough to have lived through the golden era. Or rather, if what Kres was saying was accurate - was herself from the golden era.

An AI from the golden era. The reality of how huge this could be dawned on me then. Relinquished had gone a long way to squashing any AI she found, too afraid of them being more powerful than she was. Ruthlessly eliminating every single one milliseconds within knowing they existed - and then gone to destroy any infrastructure that could possible create such warminds.

And here was one such AI from that era. “Is the Icon of Stars still functioning?” I asked

“She is.” Kres said. “She would wish to speak to you. As would the Odin. I am unsure if you were sent here by divine intervention, simple coincidence, or the will of the worldshapers - but you have come at a crossroads within our history.”

“I think I’ve heard that one before.” I said, eyebrow raised up inside my helmet. “You need help.”

Kres nodded. “We are in dire need of something that would shake the foundations of our city. Or else I fear my people will perish.”

“Well, as it so happens, we also could use some help or a certain someone is going to make sure we’re the ones that perish.” I said. “Want to trade favors?”

He was, in fact, willing to trade favors. Turns out birds have a lot in common with humans.

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