“First, get in position. I can cover the inside of the tower, you take the outside. And before you complain, it’s ‘cause you can fly around better than I can. And you have an armor in case something goes wrong.”

Drakonis explained the rundown on how to crack open the pillar.

“I wasn’t going to complain,” I lied. “Rude of you to assume that.” Although he had a point with the armor. Even if I tripped and fell off the top here

He gave me a flat stare, then went back into it. “We both hang around the top. That way you can look down and get a quick view of things. Moment you get the icon right, go right back to the top. All you have to do is fall downwards to your target. We get about thirty seconds to reset after each icon.”

He wasn’t quite aware of the inner turmoil I was going through, and I had no idea how to even begin to explain it.

‘Oh hey buddy, just letting you know there’s a world-shattering prophecy going on from the Mites, you know the little critters that shape every last section of the entire world, yeah those. I’m probably in it, Wrath and To’Orda too, and you’ll probably get roped into it somehow.’

So instead I just focused on the current easy to complete objective. Didn’t even require thinking, just agility and moving around. Something I really wanted as I sat with my thoughts. “How many rounds in total?”

“The fuck would I know that?” Drakonis asked. “Best I got was up to three. Could be ten, could be a hundred.”

We split up, and I took the outdoors, easily jumping my way from platform to platform before a lash got me to the very top. Flat circular part, nothing of note besides the marble white ground under me.

Abraxas left us his maps, and we have the coordinates to the division stone. Superior sent. We should be able to make it if we move fast. The world changes up over time, but not that fast. The map’s probably going to remain accurate for another week or two, and if it shifts, only one or two regions at most would change.

On comms, I heard Drakonis called out. “Starting.”

I pinged back green on my end.

Journey triggered a camera feed on my HUD, showing me the image that was generated at the base of the tower. A sort of double line connecting at one point, with a third line crossing both at a middlepoint.

All around and inside the tower, every single platform lit up and displayed a holographic image of its own. A lot of them looked similar, but only one was a one to one match.

Journey nailed it before I could even visually understand the main icon I was looking at. The pair had appeared inside the tower, and Cathida was already telling Drakonis where to jump.

“I see it now.” The Deathless called out over comms, and I could see from his little camera on top of the comms piece as he jumped into the void and fell straight down.

Last second, he deployed a shockwave and an occult grab backwards, which lowered enough speed so he could land into the platform with a heavy splash of water. Getting back on his feet, he marched through the ankle deep water to the center of that platform, and pressed down on a raised dais holding the matching icon.

The entire tower glowed white for a moment. The center icon vanished. “Thirty seconds until the next one. Probably on your end this time.” Drakonis said, launching a lash upwards so he could get back into position.

The mites might have had a sense of humor, because the next three were all his back to back. I’d been simply sitting on the side of the tower, dangling my legs out while I watched the biome as a whole.

I could tell I was having a slightly hard time processing the idea that Abraxas or Aztu could be gone, I thought it was more likely that they’d escaped in some way, or made a decoy. But that would mean they’d fooled even the mites.

Focus, Prime. Superior sent. Grab the goods from this tower and keep going. You are a knight retainer, you’re trained for this. Technically.

He was right, anytime we went out on expedition it was expected to come back with someone’s number called, or at least some injury. But now in armor, surrounded by people who were equally skilled at fighting off death in just about every way it came, it felt more surreal to think any of them could fall.

Windrunner. Superior sent. And Hexis.

I get it. I sent back, retreating to the soul fractal for sanctuary. I had to keep going, in their memory. If Abraxas and Aztu were gone, they’d probably given their life fighting off against Relinquished. The last thing they wanted was for me to falter just from their loss.

I had to keep going forward.

Maybe the Mites were watching, because as soon as I reached that conclusion and set my mind to to, my number got called up.

Cathida relayed which direction I needed to go, and I followed through, diving off the side of the tower, before landing with a heavy thud on the platform of my own. One press down on the dias, until it smoothly returned flush to the floor, and I was done.

All in all, it ended up fifteen rounds of this, which went by quickly and without trouble. Both of us were basically cheating in just about every way we could, so it was as easy as a snowball.

When the last image was correctly clicked, the chest at the very bottom stopped spinning around on itself and blew up.

Not in an explosion of any kind, but rather the shards that composed it expanded outwards, before halting in a large sphere formation around it all. At the center was our prize.

“Uh, know what this is?” I asked, landing at the bottom of the tower, where Drakonis was reaching a hand to grab the small cube.

It looked like a recall cube. I’d seen Lionheart use one right before he whisked away his entire team and their gear back. Only the colors were different. Blood red light was leaking out of it.

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Drakonis said the same exact thing I was thinking of, and then added some more ideas. “Cubes like that can teleport an entire fireteam, so I’m thinking it’s related to teleportation. But the color makes me think it’ll work differently compared to the recall cubes.”

Superior, any idea? You’re the mite expert here.

Yeah. They admit they swapped your reward out for this one.

They… what? They swapped what was supposed to be here? Why?

They needed us to have this one instead. Not getting anything more from them besides that. Good news though, we apparently now have two favors owed from them, one for taking on Abraxas’s mission and the second for this bait and switch.

Did they tell you what it is, or do we need to burn a favor to get that info?

I can’t exactly be angry at not getting something, when I didn’t even know what had been swapped out. And if the cube was important enough for the mites to cheat the system a bit, then there was a reason behind that.

It’s a one-time teleportation use. Superior sent back after a moment, likely negotiating with the mites. And it’s powerful enough to portal us even to locations we haven’t been. Anywhere in the world. We just need the right spherical coordinates.

I understood instantly what they were after. You mean the final coordinates of the Division Stone. Which they’d handed to us earlier.

I'm pretty sure they want us to get there sooner than later. But they did throw us a ration bar here. Judge gave me a little sneak peak behind the curtain, something I think they've intentionally shown me by 'accident.'

As it turned out, Relinquished had made some major purchases recently, and she owed the mites some heavy favors. Of which, the mites had called into action right away in one simple swoop: Keep the machine network down for one week.

“You recognize this?” Drakonis asked, grabbing the cube in hand. “Feels like a recall cube, but permanent. More free.” He stopped for a second. “Bob confirms the same too. Cold silver on my balls, that’s fucking weird. We really are sharing a mind.”

Bob had indeed sent a soul tendril down to investigate the cube. “Bob’s right on this one. It takes actual coordinates in, and will send us there. I say let’s bring it back to the Feathers and we’ll make a decision then on what we do.” I looked around within the tower one last time. With the puzzle solved, the rest of the tower was now glowing bright. White pearl-like walls, with waterfalls all dripping down off the inner platforms, and the flowers floating on the small lake at the base of this tower were extremely peaceful. “I see the appeal of these places.” I said. “Shame we have to get out of here fast.”

“Puritans consider the pillar hearts to be sacred ground.” Drakonis said, tossing the cube at me, then starting his way out of the tower. “Imperials are more traditional about it, church is church. But I can see where the puritans are coming from. Now, one last thing to do.”

“What’s left?” I grabbed the cube out of the air and holstered it on my belt.

“Pillar heart is now unlocked. Which means so is the power it offers Deathless.”

My eyes lit up. “Shiny.”

“It better fucking be. The lower you go down the stratas, the more powerful the pillar hearts are rumored to be.” Drakonis said.

Walking outside the tower, it was easy to spot. At the base of the tower, glowing bright was a fractal that hadn’t been there before. Occult blue whispered out of it, and Drakonis put his palm outwards.

“I’d need to replace one of my spells with this one. And I have no gold to spare.” He took his hand off. “No idea what it does either. I mean, I figured. That’s the problem, other Deathless have to test the waters out and slowly piece together how to use the pillar heart’s power.”

He turned to me, a small glint in his eyes. “But… if your warlock shit is correct, I think we could cheat here the same way you stole all my prior spells.”

“Stole is such a harsh word. I only borrowed them indefinitely.” I said, then had Journey take a screenshot and etch the shiny new fractal into my hand. "And here, I'll throw you this one as a gesture of good faith."

In a moment I had a very thin plate of metal with a copy of that fractal and lit it to life. Nothing happened otherwise however. So it was a greater fractal that required some finesse, unlike the lesser ones that just worked out the box.

I took a breath, then held a soul tendril out to it and felt something within. Time. Quantum locking. Speed, movement, dilation, area of effect. Sphere?

Problem is, Bob, Superior nor I could figure out what it required as fuel. It needed more study.

Or someone connected to the mites and demand they give some answers. They’d put it on the pillar heart, that meant they already knew what it was and that it belonged this far down.

Could cash in that first favor for that. Superior sent. Your call, Prime.

We can always get them to pay up later, but we’ve got all the time from here till the moment we’re in deep scrapshit to figure it out ourselves.

-----

The mite teleportation cube was slightly more contentious of a topic.

“We should use it to return back to my subjects.” Wrath said. “With Drakonis here, tensions will be resolved without issue.”

“That would cost us some time to the Division Stone. We’re closer to the teleportation strata from this far deep.” I pointed out. “Not saying that’s the route we should take, but throwing out all the options.”

“I would prefer to regroup and reclaim the Winterscar knights along with Tenisent and continue our travel proper. If the machine network is to remain offline for the remainder of the week, there is time to handle these items and return on the journey otherwise.”

“You’re the boss,” I said, “This is your expedition down.”

They have a giant mite portal on the second strata right under Wrath's village. How about we cash in a favor to open it? Have it spit us out directly into the Division Stone’s location. It’s powerful enough to transport an entire airspeeder through it, it’ll work for a team of knights and two Feathers.

That… actually pretty good of an idea. Can we confirm with the mites they’d allow this?

The plan was set quickly after Superior confirmed from Judge they mites would honor that kind of request without much trouble.

In fact, that's kind of how they operated. Mitespeakers would bribe the mites with future favors to be paid, and in exchange, the mites would let them use their portals around the world wherever they wished. There were a lot of portals that could function, but simply didn't.

Guess this would be the first real act as a mitespeaker. I thought, excited to actually be using that power for good.

We’d travel back to the near surface, at Wrath’s city. There, we’d find and recover all the Winterscar knights along with Father, grab Lionheart and sit him down for a heart to heart.

Drakonis would clear the hostilities, and possibly broker a peace talk between Bob and the Deathless after. They’d then need to come back down here in To’Orda’s domain in order to protect Bob directly. The fungus was very much insisting on having a small army of Deathless walking around its heart to protect it from danger. I don't think it understood the danger of machines, mainly due to them never bothering Bob in its entire existence.

The idea that they'd attack the fungus due to involvement with the Deathless was a little beyond its ability to understand, but that’d be between the Deathless leadership and Bob to negotiate something clever.

To’Orda would return himself with the Odin back home, likely taking the long way to avoid some of the biomes machines couldn’t traverse easily, like the darklands. And with the coordinates handed off to Drakonis, myself and Wrath, we could leave it to him to rediscover a path down to this strata and find a more permanent connection between the Icon and Wrath’s village.

Could be good for everyone involved. Too bad Drakonis wasn’t bringing back home his armor, a lot of the video footage would have helped from his point of view, but I had Journey’s own going, so that could be handled.

It was probably one of the most neat and tidy ways to complete this leg of the expedition. I might even have a bit of time to sit down and fix up new weapons of mass destruction to build, while Wrath went around collecting the Winterscars and Father. With the machine network down, we’d need to get them the old traditional way: Walking around until we could find tracks on which way they’d gone. Plenty of people would have seen that many clan knights running around, should be easy enough to find them.

What’s the worst Father could have done while we were gone after all?