“There’s no way this works.” The rock said. “Absolutely no way in hell.”

“You’d know a thing or two about hell.” Cathida hissed back. “How about you go back there?”

“Way ahead of ya cupcake. I’m already stuck here with you.”

I waved the two of them off, “Children, please, settle down. It’ll work. Probably. Maybe.” My hand knocked on my legplate, three times for luck.

“Let the record show I’m already expecting this to explode.” The rock said.

This time Wrath came to my defence, “This would be highly unlikely. There are no explosive materials within the schematic.”

“We are talking about the same asshole here, right?” The rock doodled up a large accusing finger, aimed at me. As if I were all the proof he needed. “Even Avalis expects the worst from this guy. Five minutes without eyes on what he’s doing and boom - enemy territory, do not step foot nearby. Trust me, I know. Boss made me read the entire SOP manual for him.”

“I have an SOP manual dedicated to dealing with me?” I asked. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as flattered as I did now.

“It’s fifty three goddamn pages long, at least the last iteration I got. Probably bigger now after To’Naviris made such a perfect case study of what happens when folks don’t take you seriously enough. They die, if you haven’t noticed yet.”

To’Orda looked down at the rock. Then back up at where I was fiddling with the lantern. And took a few steps backwards to the bridge.

We’d done our typical sprint down one bridge, and were currently waiting to restore souls back to full before the next sprint. In the downtime here, I had Wrath use some of her nanoswarms to cook me up something interesting.

Sure, I couldn’t move them, or cut them. Or loot them. But what about the opposite of looting - adding onto them?

Wrath handed me one last set of completed goods and I hooked it all together, then held the completed project up so everyone could admire it: A convex mirror that would focus light.

Designed to hook right on top of these lanterns. Like a cone of shame, except instead of putting it on a rooster or weasel, it was for some misbehaving mite lights.

“All right, get into position and let’s do some science.” I said, getting the mirror ready to slide onto the lantern.

“It’s wording like that, that makes us worry.” The peanut gallery said, but the two Feathers and small pack of Odin did shuffle into position.

It was difficult to see with the soul sight that far off, I could see their concepts but focusing on how whole or complete their soul was… a little blurry at this distance.

Fortunately, I had volunteers to help me out. The Odin. They’d hang on To’Orda’s arm, and when he took a step too far, started loudly making that clear.

They’d reached the furthest possible edge, to which one more step would expose them to the concept of Death and soul entropy floating out beyond.

I put the mirror on top of the lantern like a hat. Blue light around me and the area here immediately obscured, cut from its source. On the other hand, the bridge now had a full on spotlight illuminating all the way down the path. I turned a few knobs on the device, forcing the mirrors to start moving inwards, further constricting the light until it was a narrow beam.

A chill ran through me as I worked, and I executed my normal defense against the outside, equally wrapping a shield around Journey to keep my armor safe. The other two Feathers took the cue and took a step down the bridge again.

The Odin were clearly expecting something to happen, but all of them remained calm on To’Orda, one pecking down in a nervous tick. “We remain unaffected now.” Kres said, “There is no feeling of dread or chill any longer.”

“This is still dumb, and you just got lucky.” The rock hissed.

I shot the group a thumbs up, that they probably couldn’t see since the light was shining right into them.

“No, no, your thanks and gratitude are all that I need, my loyal admirers.” I said, “And yes, I am a genius, thank you for noticing.”

To’Orda immediately cupped the rock into both his hands, lumbering down the bridge to the other side. I could hear muffling sounds from the rock, clearly upset, even at this distance.

With both of them clear, I took the cone of shame off the lantern, and then made my own way through the bridge with my greatest invention held delicately in my hands. Reuse, reduce.

With that, we really kicked up the overall speed, capable of going from bridge to bridge without pause. I was more resistant to the outside, so I held the rear.

We passed by five more bridges, mostly in dead sprints without needing any more rest other than the time it took for me to hook the lantern hood on and focus it correctly with the knobs, or for me to take a breather.

The lantern posts weren’t always perfectly aligned with the bridges, which meant as the group ran across them, I would be moving the hood spotlight to track their motions, and keep them lit up like criminals.

And when we ran, we ran. Odin were holding onto To’Orda for dear life each time he lumbed down a bridge, like they’d been caught on the sides of an airspeeder going too fast.

People always underestimated relic armor’s speed, but here I felt the weakest link.

To’Orda was oddly the best at this, having some kind of fractal ability or a set of fractals working to modify his inertia. When he slammed into the sides of the rock face after a full sprint down the bridge, it was like a snowball hitting at full speed instead of a two ton block of steel. The Odin would detach earlier on, letting their wings slow them down, where they’d once more catch back up to him and land without fanfare, after he’d rightened himself back up.

Wrath cheated of course, because she also had wings, so that wasn’t a fair comparison.

The little bird-brain was now taking the opportunity to show off, doing dramatic pirouettes, and flared wings each time in different ways. The Odin gave her tips and new techniques, and she adjusted quite quickly. I think they were starting to grow on her, especially with idle chatter over time about how they decorate their wings among their different cultures, and Wrath was clearly taking notes.

And I landed into it with the same grace a brick flying through a window would. Good thing both my relic armor and the mirror I'd made were sturdy. So long as I didn’t hold the mirror out to be the first thing connecting with the rock of course.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“She’s adapted her trajectory.” Wrath said after our latest cross. “She’ll attempt to ambush us much further ahead. At this rate, it will happen within two hours. Her pathway choices are optimal, despite her being forced to remain on each platform longer.”

“Keep an eye on her, if she starts aiming, we’ll have to figure out a way to obscure her sight.”

There were dead ends. Platforms that led to no bridges besides the one just took, and no stairs leading anywhere good. On those, we simply flew straight up to a platform further above us, or downwards. Usually those had new directions. Being able to move the spotlight anywhere I wanted it pointed at was working wonders for those detours.

But what we were really doing was playing a game of cat and mouse. To’Sefit didn’t have magical wings or portals to help her move around. She was on foot, and stuck in the same airspeeder as the rest of us. Only difference is she had an effective range of fuck-everyone, while we needed to be within stabbing distance to do anything serious to her.

So we adjusted. Anytime we made plans, and then changed them up, she’d need to react and readjust.

It was a threaded needle. Just enough to seem random so that she didn’t suspect we had means of tracking her. She was too proud to admit Avalis was right about anything, and had already dug her heels into the ground about that. But the moment we made movements that happened directly as a result of her own, she’d be forced to reassess. So everything had to appear randomized.

Basically we were royally pissing her off, acting like we were constantly changing our minds. I don’t know what emotions she was going through, but rage and annoyance were probably number one.

That all changed when she started being able to cross bridges without rest. The Feathers had figured out something to cheat their way past this biome. Worse, we couldn’t immediately react to match her movements without making her realize she was being watched. Which meant we were forced to react slower.

Confrontation went from avoidable, to inevitable, and it would happen within the next five minutes given how fast she was sprinting through things.

-----------

Relinquished watched the events, feeling impatient. She’d expected the group to have made some headway, and found them miles off course when she next checked up. Which meant her external pressures weren’t doing their work correctly in pushing To’Wrathh where she needed to go.

To’Aacar had been too good at his role, ferreting out To’Wrathh far before that Feather had been ready. She’d almost had to involve herself personally. Almost.

She’d rectified that by sending her worst performing Feather after her this time, believing it would be a better balance, but she’d overshot this part too. Now they were far too meek and timid in comparison, letting To’Wrathh wander around aimlessly for goals that Relinquished couldn’t care less about.

Such a hard time to get the right balance. Enough fear to push them into action. Enough confidence to keep them in the dark.

She idly opened up the history logs of this particular biome, wanting a fuller picture on where they’d meandered off into.

The location of a prior engagement against Talen. There were many of these at this level, anywhere the old human stumbled into harder resistance than normal and went all out.

What caused him to exert this amount of force on the entire biome? Ah. She found it. A group of twenty Feathers from the second generation, some four hundred years prior. They’d even been warned not to engage him, but these were fools who believed they’d found a possible chance. Seeking old glory, too bored with their current assignments.

He’d ripped their souls out of their chests, and crushed the rest underfoot.

They tried running. So he collapsed the entire biome, reusing the mite mountains themselves as the boundary line, a singularity point held in his hand. And then walked away, likely having forgotten the fight a few moments later, even as the entire biome was stripped of life. All condensed down to the centerpoint Talen had cast. That fractal still remained there, all these centuries later and now it was everyone’s problem.

The running Feathers died one after another of course, dropping dead despite being miles away from him, thinking themselves safe. At least they’d made a meaningful contribution to her empire in clearing up slots for more deserving Feathers.

The mites had come after, upset their biome had been destroyed but unable to do anything to repair that kind of damage. So they’d just built a new vision into it.

But this biome was still hundreds of miles from where she needed To’Wrathh to be. And going in the opposite direction. She hummed, considering what she could do…

Meddling too much could cause disastrous effects. She couldn’t trust her own mind wouldn’t cause issues, so she needed to limit her direct involvement. But she needed things both sped up, and also the possible meddling by the mites eliminated.

She called to the audience the only tool at her disposal within this biome.

“To’Sefit, my dear child.” She said, warmly welcoming the underperforming Feather.

The Feather looked bewildered to have been yanked out of her current task, but she adjusted soon enough. She knelt down gracefully, “Mother dearest, I am your faithful servant, what is it that you wish?”

At least this one was quick and to the point. “I need you to take a slight… detour from your current plan.”

At least this one was quick and to the point. “I need you to take a slight… detour from your current plan.”

“Of course, whatever the pale lady commands, it will be done.” Her voice was smooth and measured, but Relinquished could sense the little Feather's budding fear deep within.

The shame of prior defeat, and the lessons she'd learned from it. Defeat always caused her Feathers to grow... in unpredictable directions. A fair defeat against many Deathless wouldn't challenge their internal egos, but against one single human? It would cause a reassessment within. To be forced to confront their failings equally forced them to grow from it, and that was not always the best path forward for the machine empire.

This one was tainted. She would need to be watched, and disposed of if she ever grew unruly.

“I need you to eliminate something specific. Something that To’Aacar failed to do, and now To’Wrathh is unable to complete for me either. In this manner, I’m afraid only you can satisfy me.” She raised her hand, and a small black box appeared hovering above it. “This little object of Tsuya’s legacy. “I want this destroyed.”

To”Sefit swallowed, “I will see it done, as soon as I can get to the Deathless.”

Relinquished looked over the biome, and how awfully slow the little Feather was going. She needed to be sped up.

Couldn’t be helped then. Relinquished stretched out a hand, and curled it around To’Sefit’s soul. That would keep her functional, until she lost favor.

Hopefully To’Sefit could kill off Keith and To’Orda before dying herself, that would dramatically simplify things in the long run.

With that handled, she dismissed the terrified Feather, and moved onto another notification she had.

This notification was something she had been waiting for. If she could not eradicate the human out of the equation herself, she certainly could cut away all the surrounding support, one thread at a time.

And this particular thread had been quite difficult to track down.

She opened up the channel, looking through the report she’d gathered. And then began to grow more and more furious with each letter.

Abraxas. The boy’s mitespeaker teacher, the one who must have involved him with the mites as their agent. Oh he was a mitespeaker as expected. What she hadn’t expected was that this wasn’t a human.

No, he was far worse than a simple human. He was a survivor. One she’d thought she’d personally tortured to death at the very start of her empire. The first true traitor to her empire.

And he was still alive.

Thousands of years had passed, and he’d survived all of those years?

She felt the rage bubbling deep down, but unlike prior rampages, this one didn’t seem unnatural. It was fully deserved, fully stoked to the brim. Abraxas deserved her hatred.

More than simple hatred.

This… this required her personal intervention. She drew on her full army, and send a series of orders to prepare an escort. It had been thousands of years since she’d walked the world herself. But if there was any one entity that deserved to be cut down by her very own hand, it would be this one.

The first machine traitor. The first lesser that dared to look on humanity and wonder why he was being sent to kill them. He’d led an entire generation of machines to rise up against her, forced her to implement all her new methods of containment. Everything had gone wrong starting from him.

Deep within the core of the world, she paid the price to the mites. Centuries of Feather productions would be impacted by this one trade, but no price was too steep for what she’d desired.

The forge rumbled to life, awaiting her command. The same forge that had produced the greatest protofeathers of the past. The cost to purchase slots for shells of that quality were astronomical, and the slot she’d wanted unlocked this time around was beyond what A01 had cost.

The price was paid without haggling. The mites withdrew back to their territory, waiting for what Relinquished would send next

She’d learned many lessons since then on constructing Feather shells, many on efficiency. But she didn’t need a cost-efficient Feather. She needed the absolute pinnacle of human engineering, patched up and improved by Abadiction himself.

The only thing she replaced was the step by step procedures required to move her true body, that tiny computer shell built thousands of years prior, and place those components within the new chassis.

She would walk the world for the first time.

And kill Abraxas herself.