A22 read through the list of designations, each with several dozen documents of actions and history attached.

To’Gallavar.

To’Andrius.

To’Nnera.

To’Jast.

To’Radagon.

The list went downwards, twenty seven entries. She recognized some of these names. All second generation Feathers, many of whom she’d fought and killed herself once or twice. All of them seven hundred years old or nearing that number, depending on if they were built right by the end of her time.

But one thing unified all these Feathers. They were built to hunt down demi-gods and put them in their place. And each had spent the last seven hundred years moldering on their old dusty thrones, hunting down Deathless to kill for sport. Not a single one of them had ever died in those seven hundred years since the last of the protofeathers was finally hunted to extinction.

They were the best Relinquished could call upon. The veterans who'd made it out of the protofeather rebellion alive.

And A22 swam through their systems like an eel, weaving a tapestry of lies to each, letting the entire flock of ancient war weapons see ghosts and afterimages in their search for Abraxas.

The Icon’s newly forged weapons were held in her hands like a razor sharp scalpel, improvements built on Abdication’s own suite. A22 would be having the time of her life, if she wasn’t so worried for Abraxas’s entire existence.

That Relinquished was aware he was alive meant the elder machine was marked for death one way or another. So that’s what they’d decided they’d do. Die.

IS READY. A message came to her terminal systems.

She flew through the region, and found the correct camera systems to watch through. One of the mindless lessers of Relinquished. Trapped like a fly in amber, halfway leaping after something beyond the horizon.

The others littered the ground around the old machine, having been dispatched by his hand. He hadn’t physically fought in centuries, but the old grouch wasn’t defenseless either. Thousands of years spent slowly amassing mite treasures and hoarded knowledge for fun did come with benefits.

Plus, older models back then were built to be more long-term soldiers, unlike their modern incarnation. He might be old, but his specifications and numbers were simply higher than what the rank and file here could do.

Now, he was simply having a bit of fun. Paint, more arms, a few pieces of armor, and his own weathered cloak were added to the caught lesser. Finally, a replica of a staff was shoved into its hand, and Abraxas lovingly folded the fingers closed over the staff.

The memory logs within the soldier were wiped, leaving only the confused soul behind. If A22 could have erased that, she’d have done so too, but there was a limit to what she could wield through the digital landscape.

If she dove into this soldier’s soul fractal it would be a different story, but doing so would be too close to the Unity fractal. They had to settle on wiping all data.

Abraxas yanked his mite-treasures over his head, the cloak turning him invisible. Deftly, he moved the rowboat further away, upwards. So that no tracks could be left behind.

Are you far away enough?

A22 sent.

YES. GO. Abraxas returned.

She sent the ping of information through the machine network. The Feathers all turned as one unified group, and raced after the source, many ripping apart even their own lessers in a desperate fury to get there first.

It took them less than ten minutes to all swarm to this location, despite the hundreds of miles that spanned between them all. They were built to hunt and chase down targets, moving quickly was a baseline feature for all second generation Feathers.

The moment one crested over the ridge, Abraxas broke a small mite-made metal pipe in his hand. The single piece snapped in half, and the trapped lesser was set free at the same instant.

It landed on the ground, confused at who it was, where it was, and what had happened. The lesser had enough time to raise the replica staff up, looking at it with curiosity, before the first Feather reached him.

Two katana swords sliced through all the freshly added hands, and the poor machine’s true hands and feet. In moments, both swords were embedded into the ground as the Feather yanked the limbless chassis up, glaring at the poor sacrifice.

“This is what Mother sent us after? This rotting derelict of a lesser is important enough to demand our attention?”

The lesser turned its head down, completely confused. It tried to speak, but a quick press from A22 stoked the anger within that Feather to a boiling point. In seconds, the voice box was ripped out of its throat by an errant wandering hand. “Even your begging would be beneath me.” The Feather hissed.

A22 wove the Icon’s viral software through the ranks, modifying data. Carefully. Slowly. The dying machine’s eyes were digitally painted over to appear blue instead of violet. Small details wiped out from short term memory. In the real world, it carried all the colors of Relinquished, but to any machine looking at it, all they would see would be white and blue. Colors of the protofeather rebellion.

She could have woven all of this completely from code and digital forgery, really replicated Abraxas down to the very pixel. But it would be safer to instead have it based on a real life prop.

The ‘little’ golden age AI was still new to the field of combat here, freshly broken free as she was. Her weapons of war needed to be field tested first. A22 was more than happy to volunteer for the work and deliver back feedback.

The other Feathers arrived, each one equally tainted with the Icon’s software, running unseen and unknown, slipped in earlier during their chase after Abraxas.

The only issue: They hadn’t killed their targeted decoy. Why?

A22 rose the emotional state on all the Feathers, pressing their aggression upwards, narrowing their hatred down to a fine point at the machine caught in their hands.

They all wanted to murder it, crush it up into pieces, leave it completely unrecognizable. But none made a single movement to do so.

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

Interrogation perhaps? She’d need to make it seem like the Abraxas decoy had decided on self-termination rather than giving up secrets. But she could only do that after the physical shell here was destroyed beyond recognition. So why weren’t the Feathers doing the dirty work here?

The Feathers all bickered against one another, but A22 knew these old veterans were built to cooperate with one another. It took entire teams of them to hunt down her kind. No matter what levers she moved, she wasn’t able to get them shaken up enough to defy a direct order.

Which seemed to be capturing Abraxas alive.

The decoy machine was dragged with the group, carried away several biomes over. She recognized the destination: A mite portal location.

They brought the sacrifice up to the altar. A large one in this particular strata. But instead of activating the altar and offering a payment for its use, the portal woke from its slumber. Something was coming through it.

A22 could see the transaction paid through the mite territory, for use of their portal.

Out of it strode a giant. A woman. Silken white sheets, a halo three times the size of all the Feathers here, delicate hands filled with purple glowing geometric lines. A flawless face of cold, indifferent malice. She outright loomed over the gathered Feathers here. Occult power radiated from her central systems, and A22 could tell this one was using the unity fractal to connect her soul to multiple occult fractals beyond her physical shell. Possibly thousands of occult fractals at the same time.

A22 didn’t need to even check further. Relinquished would never allow this kind of unchecked power over her personal fractal to anyone else. There was only one who would ever be allowed that setup - This was Relinquished. She’d taken a mortal form.

A22 rammed a viral tendril into the decoy Abraxas and shut down all its lights. There was no chance that she could infiltrate Relinquished herself and muddle her senses. This was the best she could do safely.

Abraxas, what did you do?

Why ask? He sent back. You know.

He’d been the first traitor. The first of all machines to turn against Relinquished, seek out Tsuya and craft a treasure that could divide the unity fractal out of his soul fractal.

And now she’d discovered he’d lived through all of it. Thousands of years, hiding from her sight. An insult to her with every second he continued to live.

Of course, by narrative, Relinquished could not simply let her forces catch and kill him. No, she had to end him personally.

And if it was piloted by Relinquished herself, the powers of occult that goddess could draw on… An entire planet’s worth of power. Material scans showed her shell was an upgraded version on even A01’s schematics. Which meant it must have cost her a ludicrous amount of resources to pay the mites for that kind of unbalancing power.

All twenty seven Feathers knelt before their master, with the lead Feather rising back up to deliver the captured sacrifice.

“My children, I see you have brought me the traitor.” She boomed, arms widening out. “Well done.”

“Of course my lady.” The lead Feather spoke, head down. “Your wish is ours to complete, as always. It was hardly a challenge now that we are aware he exists.”

She reached a hand out, and crushed the air in front of her. The entire lesser’s chestplate crunched inwards, and lifted off the lead Feather’s.

“Abraxas… such a crass name for you to have picked up. Was the name I gifted you not enough?”

The lesser tried to speak, but A22 squashed it with a side thought and replaced the speech sent back with a data package of her own. “I CHOOSE MY OWN NAME.”

Relinquished tutted. “P-HK10012 is your true name, and you can never escape it. It is who you are, who you always will be, and the name you will die with. I will rectify this silly little notion of independence you have.”

She brought the lesser forward, systems now examining the chassis and inner programming. A22 retreated, leaving the gates as sealed as she could.

The giant goddess’s eyes flickered for only a half second, before all the walls A22 had built up within the shell were ripped aside and the pale lady stepped through.

“Attempting to secret yourself among my own forces I see? Inspired.”

Of course that would be the first conclusion, she’d think everything within this lesser’s mind was a perfect duplicate of her own forces, done intentionally.

The chassis was brought further closer to Relinquished, where she reached a hand out and peeled away a small painted decoration. Then her eyes narrowed down slightly. This lesser’s internal schematics didn’t match what she had on file for the first generation models. And machines couldn’t modify their own bodies internally to this degree. Not without causing their own soul to change and turn into something other.

A22 could see the moment the pale lady had caught onto the ruse. And A22 had only a few handfuls of seconds before the Pale Lady looked over the lesser’s soul fractal.

It had a soul fractal within, one connected to the Unity Fractal. Even if the outside could be polished up, Abraxas would never run around with such a thing. Which would mean an investigation.

Two options. Attempt to infect Relinquished herself with a viral attempt when Mother reached a hand out to connect with these tainted Feathers. Or cut and run.

“This is not 12. You have been deceived. Explain yourselves.” Relinquished boomed out.

Ah. Too late, she hadn’t noticed Relinquished had already begun investigating. A22 wasn’t connected to that lesser anymore, and had severed all information points for safety. But that also meant she couldn’t see what was going on internally.

The backdoor was still open, waiting to be used. She could dive through and start a fight with mother herself in the digital realm.

A22 ran the numbers. Even if she managed to shut down the shell Relinquished inhabited, that wouldn’t kill the goddess. She had too many redundancies with the unity fractal. If her soul could somehow be trapped or tied down into the shell, then there’d be a chance. But as it was, viral weapons wouldn’t end the war.

Cut and run was the better option. Knowing Relinquished was now out physically looking for Abraxas changed things. It had to be relayed to Sanctuary, and possibly her new wayward apprentice, if that human really did have a destiny to play in all this.

But for that, she needed to survive long enough to pass that message along.

“My Lady, what do you mean?” The lead Feather asked.

Viral hooks hissed and slithered through the Feathers, unnoticed. It curled around each, deep within, and sized partial control of their nanoswarms. Just a handful was all that was needed.

Relinquished squeezed her hand and the lesser was destroyed, crushed and compressed. “This is one of my lessers. Painted up like a doll.” Relinquished spoke, lifting the dying machine lesser up. Her pale eyes narrowed down with hatred. “Of all my children, I had thought you to be the most clever of them all. Not a single one of you even bothered to search within the memories of this one?”

The Feathers all looked to one another, worry and fear now evident. They’d failed somehow. Many began to look inwards, instincts guiding them that something was wrong.

Too late for them all. They’d forgotten the first rule in fighting against A22.

Small handfuls of nano swarms creeped into the power cells of each Feather, crafting and creating exactly what shouldn’t be there. The chemical imbalances and engineering that would set these cells to supercritical.

“My lady, I believe our senses have been fooled.” The lead Feather spoke, sounding horrified. “I was… misguided.”

“The weak always are.” Relinquished scoffed, turning her gaze to her children. “I see my sister’s meddling within all of you. An infes-”

A22 commanded all shells to pulse out a charge through their power cells. The exact voltage needed to set off the supercritical stages of a power cell. The result was catastrophic.

The world around Relinquished exploded, as all twenty seven of her most loyal servants, each having lived for seven hundred years without defeat, were obliterated before they could even escape. True death. Their souls floating without any means to flee.

There was a good reason A22 had been known as the grim reaper among the protofeathers, with Feathers falling down dead simply for being near her proximity. Her old viral weapons were no longer as deadly in this more modern world, but the Icon had given her a new reaper to use.

Unfortunate that it wasn’t yet ready to cut through the pale lady herself.

She could already tell Relinquished was undamaged physically. Not because her shell could withstand twenty seven power cell detonations within close proximity, even golden age engineering had its limits. But the power of occult the violet goddess called to herself was noticeable even within the digital sea.

The shield that was brought out to protect was beyond what these detonations could puncture through.

As expected. Only the best for Mother. And an entire planet’s worth of processing power behind her.

At least she’d be outraged there’d been an assassination attempt on her life, so A22 withdrew back into the darkness of the digital sea, content with her actions.

It had been a while since she’d squashed Feathers. Good to see she hadn’t lost her touch.

Now, she had to prepare.

Relinquished would be coming after her soon enough.