The time it took for the Winterscar knights to all get the message, go looking for Father and deliver Drakonis ended up being three days.

Three entire days, left unsupervised with a workshop, Wrath, and nothing out there trying to kill me.

During which the only question I had running through my head during all three days: Why be the heroic intrepid hero who fought battles fair and square when I could just win?

And so three days of the most insane engineering projects mixed with the occult came about. I’ll be fair, most of my ideas didn’t pan out or ran into physical limits. Or Wrath simply told me it would be just as likely to kill me and everyone else as it would my enemies.

Bummer there. But I had my wins.

First, was the heavy hitter. Hexis’s passed down knowledge of fractals, of which I had about a good fifteen selected out as useful for the war effort.

There were a few variations to the shockwave fractal, for example one wave that would be more of a magnetic wave forward rather than a physical one.

To’Aacar’s displacement fractal also showed up, but it was tricky to use. Listed as a higher order fractal that required a particular pattern of thought in terms of space and time. I might have had a shot at it, but decided to focus on other fractals and weapons crafting.

“Attempt to fly, test seven.” I reported, giving the new aerospike jets hooked by my legplates a few pats. Bell nozzles had been tried, but we found the best results with the aerospike design due to sheer versatility with ambient pressure ranges in the underground. Mite biomes could have just about anything.

An external power cell was affixed right on my lower back that fueled both jets that way the system didn’t tap into Journey’s own personal power draw.

“Ignition in three, two, one.” The jets to my side hummed to life, burning within at the lowest possible speed. It was enough to give a small gust of air on the ground, but otherwise hardly noticeable. “System shows green on my screen.”

“Journy confirms they’re working just fine.” Cathida said.

The last few models went with less moving parts for more sustainable long term survival, but the limits had been too much, requiring me to compensate with the occult grapples.

We decided since we were traveling together for the most part, Wrath would simply do daily maintenance with her nano swarms to keep these working right. They now had plenty of vector motors attached, slaved up to Journey’s HUD and controls.

The real problem had been power to weight ratio. These jets were still the size of my legplate, which sounded large but in the scheme of things was rather tiny. Relic armor weighed past four hundred pounds, without factoring my own weight. Too much to handle for two engines, especially on more fragile motors that could vector around.

But I’d fixed that.

“Ready to record trial.” Wrath sent back. She was currently on the other side of the village tending to admin duties, which meant talking to the people there and spending time with her citizens. But she could multitask pretty well, which meant watching through cameras and data from Journey. “Begin at will.”

I took a running jump up into the air and the occult surged through me as I triggered the fractal of gravity, sending me hurling forward in my last direction. The aerospike engines roared from the dim sparks of heat into something that would actually propel me forward, and wow did it do that job well.

Outright physical force pressed me backwards into my armor. I felt my breathing stop, vision starting to narrow down. Cheeks, skin and everything was being pulled in one direction.

Journey compensated for my loss of control, the admin password letting Cathida adapt some movements as needed. Such as locking my spine up so that it wouldn’t bend backwards and ruin my posture. Which I needed, since this system could accelerate me past six G’s of force and that was starting to be above what I could handle.

The acceleration ended and I found myself zipping straight through the air, steadily slowing down and veering off course as the air was both breaking my speed and moving around me in non-uniform ways.

“So far so good.” I said, letting the engines go back to idle as I slowly turned through the air on prior inertia and a few small vector changes. The HUD showed me the numbers I needed. “Zero to sixty in 0.42 seconds. Journey is registering just about 6.5G’s, and wow did it feel like that. We might have to tweak the top speed down a little more, maybe keep it at 6G’s max. No way I could pull off multiple attempts at that speed. Maybe we don’t need engines this big and can reduce their size some more?”

Wrath could certainly see all the numbers already, but it felt better to talk out loud.

“Just let Journey handle how fast you need to go to avoid things deary.” Cathida said. “Keeping top speeds available for emergencies is going to be needed. Probably more than anyone normal would want, but you are you.”

“I get the feeling, that’s coming half from you and half from Journey itself.”

“The armor’s increasing your odds of survival by good numbers if you keep escape speeds at this range. The silver bimbo did point out this would be the near top of the bell curve in overall utility vs the damage inflicted on your body.”

“Yeah, but that’s factoring her healing me up every now and then after my spine’s been compressed ten or twelve times over.”

“I would agree with your armor’s engram and overall justification.” Wrath said over the local comms. “Manually set your speed at 4G’s maximum for your personal movement, with the ability to override such limitations when you truly need it. As for my healing, consider it paired with expected maintenance of your jet system as a whole. If I am not there to fix the engines, you will likely have more difficult events ahead of you than being restored to full after each excursion.”

I wasn’t going to argue too much, accelerating with the jets to that speed was fun. Sure the pressure on my body was harsh and it felt like my guts were getting squashed, but four G’s was perfectly fine to handle for constant changes, and the occasional emergency six point five G’s would work.

As for actually flying at cruising speeds or doing stunts in the air, Journey automatically adjusted and anticipated where I wanted to go, using a combination of leg, arm and head movements all linked together in some kind of predictive modeling net.

Just turning my head around wouldn’t be enough to trigger a direction, but moving my legs and head would pass a threshold. Or arms and head. Or legs and arms. An eye tracker was also added, and so forth.

It was honestly amazing how much tiny subtle touches Journey could pick up on just from having sensors by my neck pinging all nerve triggers. The longer I practiced with the system and corrected what I wanted, the more accurate Journey became.

And then I learned why: “You’ve been offloading your homework to Wrath?”

“Eh.” Cathida shrugged. “She’s got better processing power to crunch the numbers and her system is just better built to train models. Less data needed with more accurate results. Journey predicted your chance of overall survival would be increased with a better algorithm at the helm here.”

“Can’t be angry with that logic.” I said, zipping downwards and turning off the gravity fractal within my armor plate. That had me instantly start dropping like a rock onto the ground, which Journey handled without issue. “So, metrics?”

“You can keep flying at maximum thrust for about two and a half hours with one power cell. But since you basically only use bursts of speed or occasional continuous curving averaging out to five point three seconds of use, you could fly around for five to seven hours. Even more if you just glide through the air with minimal uses of it. The gravity fractal is doing the heavy lifting.”

She snickered at the pun, having picked up some bad habits from To’Orda’s rock.

“Right, what have we got for To’Sefit’s panels?” I asked, halfway through lunch with Wrath.

“They’re unusable, she has physically turned off all power to the fractals on the other end of it.” The glutton answered, having Yrob bring her another plate of food from his latest experiments. Apparently the loss of the machine network also meant the loss of their cooking forums and gathering spot. But that didn’t deter the machines here from recreating their own local copy from what they remembered or saved.

“Weird, wonder why she did that.” I waved the chunk of bread in her direction before dipping it into sauce. “If you ask me, that’s a little bit paranoid.”

“Probably has to do with you and your bombs deary.” Cathida said from the helmet speaker on the table. “They’re quite charming.”

“I’m about to become a proper gentleman real soon then.” I said, proud of my current work thus far.

“Indeed, since your fight with To’Orda exposed a flaw in her setup, she has amended the vulnerability with the assumption you would find your way to take more of her panels in the future.” Wrath said.

“Me? Why, I would never.” She likely had never thought anyone could be holding onto her plates, so the shut off switch on the other end hadn’t been built in. And now, after running into me, she’s acting all paranoid. “Rather rude of her to make assumptions I’d steal her plates a third time. Next time you talk to her, let her know I’m very upset she’d throw such baseless accusations at me.”

“I will inform her next time we meet.” Wrath agreed, finishing the latest trial cooking plate. The machines had now evolved their cooking style away from things that were edible by human standards, and were playing around with non-edible material. Metals and minerals that would break my teeth trying to chew on, for starters.

I looked down at the plates with a bit of sadness. Firing beams that would rip apart just about everything in the way would have been pretty good to have. Maybe at some point in the future I could blackma- I mean convince her to let me play with these again. So I kept the pocketed within my collection of stolen goods for now.

“Unfortunately the Odin frequency weapon will be too difficult to carry around.” Wrath said. “I have studied the schematics and requirements, it is not possible to scale it down without removing its intended effect. The only option is to scale it upwards.”

The Icon had sent us a small list of all the different tools and plans the Odin had built up over the years to prepare for their upcoming inevitable fight with the machines to protect the Icon.

Bob had been an unexpected threat. But the machines? Known threats, with centuries of time to prepare. The Odin had done just that, and deployed quite a lot of it when fighting off To’Naviris and his minions.

The best of the best were very large near stationary radar-like weapons that would send a frequency directed wave forward. One that matched the exact resonance frequency of general power cell containers.

It would make those shatter. The weapons would alternate pitch and frequency until it penetrated the enemy machine and the rest was history. Very effective. It’s a shame the power cell fluid itself was stable in any form besides super-critical, so there wasn’t a way to detonate those from a distance.

Unfortunately, Wrath was right that the entire weapon system would be too large to use anywhere. The Odin had to outright move those around using full mechanized vehicles and then set them up ahead of time.

So, best Wrath could do was build them up as point defense systems within her city. Waste not, want not.

“Shame we don’t have occult portals like To’Sefit has.” I said, looking at the stolen plates. They were unfortunately, one to one. And despite our attempt to replicate them, there was something missing in the way to connect them together. Some step To’Sefit had.

Secret knowledge that Feather hoarded in some way.

Which sounded like a perfect target to steal.

So I had Wrath build up the Odin weapons, not just to protect her city here, but on the off chance we managed to sack To’Sefit’s secrets. We’d need the firepower on the other end of the portal to use.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I figured out the time fractal Drakonis and I had discovered at the pillar heart. By day two of diving into it each night, I’d found out what it wanted as payment.

See the issue with non-linear timeline, is that payment was demanded at a different time period rather than upfront like all other fractals. And what it demanded back, was time itself too.

Standing before Wrath, her swords lit up, I charged forward with my own blade. She met my charge, overclocking her system. I could already tell I’d be losing in a few seconds flat from now.

Occult pulsed and I triggered the time-warping fractal. A ring of power expanded around me, in a large sphere. Only one thing within that sphere was caught - Wrath. She began to move far slower, as if underwater.

There was another concept deep within this fractal. I thought it had been about just my own soul, but no, it affected all souls. Anything within this bubble of space that had enough identity to form the concept of a soul was caught and had their time slowed down - except for me.

Even with her overclocks going at full speed, I was able to keep up with her inside this domain, albeit not for very long. A Feather moving at full speed on an overclock was stupidly fast. Even slowing them down by half their speed was still slightly faster than I could move myself.

The range of shock and surprise on her features was excellent, something Cathida was gleefully recording to replay. But Wrath quickly realized what was going on, and simply leapt outside the field of control I had going.

It did not move when I moved, instead it remained in place relative to the planet itself.

“I see you have discovered new methods of madness.” Wrath said from outside the domain. “This is indeed an interesting trick. What are the downsides?”

“This.” I called out, then took a step outside the field.

It collapsed, and the payment was demanded upfront at that point. Time for time.

The world around me started to blur in speed. People walking in fast-forward. Wrath outright looked to have sprinted up to me, a finger tapping my helmet a few times far faster than I could even keep track of.

And then the world returned back to normality.

I could slow down time for anyone within the domain that I marked personally. But then I had to slow down time for the same amount as when I stepped out. On top of the field collapsing. The longer I spent within the field, the longer the payment required at the end was.

“It would indeed assist with evening the odds of combat.” Wrath said, sounding skeptical. “However, the payment required would be too steep. If the enemy is not defeated in time, then you will likely be too vulnerable at the end. Are you able to remain within this field indefinitely?”

“Nope.” I said. “Lasts a minute at most. I can summon another one easily, but in between it collapsing down on me, paying the price for a full minute of time slow, and then recasting the bubble, I’d probably be stabbed and killed several times over.”

There were some directions I was considering. Like staying within the higher dimension safely and executing this bubble from that point. I could tell it would work similar to sound and light in that all dimensions were equally traveled through.

Problem: I’d used this card already on To’Sefit, which means To’Avalis knew about it now too. So he’d have figured out a counter, or I could assume he had. And if they caught me in that higher dimensional space, moving like I was a surface popsicle, I’d be dead before I could even trigger the field a second time.

“Could be used as a trump card. A sort of execution move, when I’m certain I could finish the fight before I had to pay the price.”

Wrath gave a slow nod. “I would still take great care with thoughts of that nature. If you are even slightly incorrect with your calculation, you will be killed.”

Which is why I needed to workshop this idea more.

But in the end, it wasn’t me that discovered how to really abuse this.

It was Keith Superior. As he correctly pointed out, this fractal was outright evil when the power of friendship was applied.

Wrath was going to go from a Feather that could fight toe to toe with most of her peers into one that literally could never lose a mirror matchup ever again.

Talking about a workshop, I had one again. Filled with all the tools and metal I could use to my heart’s desire.

I’ve tinkered on a lot of stuff so far. New bendable swords, bombs, occult powered bullets, occult shotguns, napalm, bigger bombs, armguard that served as an occult spellbook, arm cannons, creative ways to slice things, even bigger bombs. Traps too. With bombs attached I mean. Lots of those.

Problem was that all of them had this issue where fair play was possible, and that just didn't sit right with me.

But here? I had access to a chemical printer. And that changed everything.

“It’s done?” I asked, walking right into the workshop where Wrath had handled the more complicated parts of all this.

She gave me a quick nod, then tapped the screen of the printer where there was a full green bar. “I have also completed the metal parts of this, we need only to mix the two together.”

We took the little hand-sized container of clear gel-like liquid inside, and Wrath dumped a small amount of silver sand-like powder inside. “The fractals were carved deep within the structures, I believe they would survive the mixing process, however slow and steady addition may be preferable.”

We did exactly that, sprinkled a bit of metal powder into the solution, slowly mixed it up, and then repeated the process multiple times until what was left was a glittering stable liquid.

Wrath was giving it a critical look, then handed it off to me where I brought it to the workshop table and moved the macro lens scanner over it for a zoomed in vision.

What I saw were several thousand small metal three dimensional caltrops. And on every single one of these was a micro-fractal of division. Wrath was correct in her simulations, the mixing process had been delicate enough that a very small percentage of it had hit one another and scratched the fractals in some way to break the pattern, but the little terrors all looked mostly good everywhere I moved the vision. Maybe less than one percent had issues.

I’d removed all the power sources possible, since that’s what really took up space, so they were as simple as could be. Which meant they weren’t active right now and never could be active on their own. Not unless there was a current of energy going through them.

Or a wave of energy like a microwave absorbed by the metal here in order to induce a very slight charge.

Power was power, and fractals didn’t need much of it at all. I moved the lens away, then triggered Journey’s HUD options with my eyes quickly blinking through the menu until I got to my experimental items, and turned the projectors built within the armor while looking dead on at my target.

It started to glow bright occult blue as a few thousand fractal occult edges lit up within the caltrops suspended inside. The entire thing even started to sink very slowly downwards as a cloud, as each caltrop cut into the liquid it was suspended within, slowed down just by all the other surface area.

I turned it off real fast. This thing was dangerous. “Right, time to move this somewhere safer.”

Wrath was at my side, carrying with her the ammunition tubing that would hold and shield this from possible interference until it was deployed. All prior tests we’d done together showed each individual part worked out, but this was the first time we’d put it all together.

“Microwave test complete. Might have to tune the wave frequency so that I can power this up from a further distance. Gods know whoever I nail with this is going to be running for their lives.”

“Journey can handle that part. The energy falloff is steep, but the metal here does most of the lifting.” Cathida said, as Wrath poured the liquid into the final container. “It’ll work out on that front.”

The metal wasn’t just primed to absorb energy. It was also magnetized. Which means once this glitterbomb explodes outwards and coats some poor Feather, all those shards are going to migrate straight for the skin.

Or so I wished. Real issue was that at that micro-scale size, the magnetic field was only as large as a thick hair. And even if it was larger, it still wouldn’t be powerful enough to move through the suspension liquid holding it. That was the entire point of the liquid, to be real sticky.

But here’s where Hexis and his beautiful last tome offered the solution. Remember that rather useless magnetic shockwave? While it’s far too weak to really send a Feather or anything bigger than a minor enemy out of the way, it was certainly powerful enough to carry away all those shards like a wave, blasting it through the solution directly up against my enemy. Like a point-blank shotgun shell filled with sand-sized deathtraps.

I took the liquid capsule, and locked it into place on my new sidearm Wrath had tailorbuild for this. “Let’s give this a proper field test.”

We both left the workshop, then reached the edge of the city, where target dummies lay in different definitions of ‘still together.’

The sidearm whooshed slightly when I flicked the safety switch off, compressors within the gun sucking in ambient air here and pressurizing a small tank within the gun. That part had been tested a few times by Wrath in different conditions, but so long as I wasn’t outright submerged, it would work. Which meant any condition where this weapon could actually be used as intended, I wouldn’t need to worry about ambient air running out.

The HUD populated with a quick status report floating right above the weapon, like a hovering tooltip attached to it in augmented reality. Including a small laser showing me where the weapon was pointed at.

A small processor automatically calibrated the nozzle size, adjusting for distance as I lined my shot up against the poor target dummy ahead.

When I pressed the trigger, it wasn’t a bullet that came out, but instead a spray of gas shot forward. It reached the mannequin, already defusing into a large cloud of glitter by the time it got that far. Sure, they might be able to dodge or deflect a bullet. But could they dodge a cloud of gas?

I don’t think so.

There was some complicated mathematics on Feather max speed, how fast the pressurized gas/mist blast could travel at, and necessary density of the whole thing to be effective, but Journey and Wrath had built the algorithm that would automatically do that and embedded it within the gun, so all I needed to do was get within minimum range, aim, and shoot in the general direction. Unless the Feather was capable of moving past the physical limits of the default model, if I had a lock on them, they weren’t getting out without a scratch.

The range was admittedly a little short compared to most of my other weapons, and if I wasn’t in range, the laser shown on my HUD would remain red, along with the entire tooltip just to make it more obvious. Once I was close enough, everything would turn green all at once in a way I found extremely satisfying.

The aerosolized mixture would float and stick to just about everything that wasn’t gas. Especially the skin and hair of a Feather or a machine. After that, it was lights out. They couldn’t scrub themselves clean of that with just a hand and a towel. This solution was beyond simply sticky.

I triggered two things back to back. First was the microwave generator within the armor. It was directional so I had to keep the target in my line of sight. The cloud of sticky residue all over started glowing like a thousand small stars.

And then I launched an occult shockwave forward. It hit the target, and went straight through without much movement. But as it passed through, it picked up and carried the thousands of occult caltrops and shoved them straight forward and into the target.

As if that wasn’t already bad enough, a rift appeared right next to the mannequin, where the ghost image of a relic armor hand extended out, fractal of heat lighting up like a flamethrower forward.

It started burning straightaway. And then continued to burn.

Because of course the suspension gel was highly flammable.

Just because I couldn’t outright use napalm for this, didn’t mean I didn’t go looking for the next best thing.

“Yep. This’ll do.” I said, holstering the sidearm behind my back until it was right next to the modified knightbreaker.

“Damage shows good number of shards have punctured the outer layers. On a standard Feather chassis, this might cause breakdowns and hull integrity issues that would weaken max output.”

As in they’d still move around, but now they had a lot of holes in them that would greatly complicate physical stress. Much easier to snap an artificial muscle when a quarter of it was empty space eaten away, and moving it constantly just slowly ate away more of it over time.

But that’s fine.

The entire combo wasn’t to just break a Feather down. It was tailor built to bust their shields down.

That many occult sand pebbles magnetized up against their skin would absolutely rip apart any shield. After that, they were easy pickings for my occult bullets.

I could have the cloud trigger occult fractals as soon as the Feather got caught in it to rip their shields apart, or set it on fire, or shockwave it into their system and cause a slow and catastrophic breakdown on internal integrity. Lots of options there.

Not to mention the ratshit I’ve done to the knightbreaker shells themselves. Those had been designed to kill slavers and relic knights with human reaction speeds. In today’s modern world with Feathers, it was slightly out of date.

But nothing that couldn’t be mathematically optimised with the help of a Feather.

While I’d love to sit here and say I came up with everything on my own, truth was, sometimes better ideas come from iteration and others pointing out how to patch up issues.

Most of the Winterscar Knights who’d been here when I arrived had been sent off to go fetch the rest of the knights from their current campaign of terror.

Most. Except for one, because I apparently needed supervision, or at least someone to shadow behind and act as a bodyguard. The other knights were all quite adamant about that.

Sir Elsee Winterscar, a soldier who’d been poached into the House by Kidra, had spent several years as a scavenger outside, and been in fights with othersiders already. So he had a different viewpoints on the weapons I was crafting.

Halfway through another round of testing to see if metal flakes would cause more damage vs the caltrops I’d come up with, he coughed in his hand.

I stopped, then looked behind. “Oh, scrap, is it already time for food?” Or maybe I hadn’t drunk water for the day yet. No, I’m sure I had one glass so far.

“Lord Keith, would this idea not equally work within bullets?” He pointed a finger at the occult gel I was working with, and then tapped his holstered rifle.

I stared at him for a moment. Then my head ran the numbers. “Holy scraps, you’re right.”

Proximity based bullets that would detonate into a spray of occult gas filled with all this scrapshit, after which I could slap the Feather down with my microwave. The bullets would be a little large due to fitting in the sensors, but that would work.

Or just more simply - regular bullets. They’d smash against the Feather’s skin of course, but they’d transfer the gel without issue.

And then my head bounced to the final idea. Occult bullets. Anytime Feathers detected those on approach, their shields flared up. The bullets would slam against those, break apart and that’d be that.

But what if those bullets were filled with the occult gel? It would slatter against their exposed shields, and then when triggered, would start eating through that shield.

I could make a range of different bullets for different situations. Anywhere from a shield eating bullet to one built to punch a massive hole through something.

On the console remained my latest three dimensional sketch. “Wrath, I’m going to be late for dinner tonight, or better yet, could you bring it over to the workshop? Elsee and I have some unfair ratshit to build up. You’re going to love these. Even more than the time dilation fractal kit you’re running with.”

On the third day of scrapshit engineering all of these projects, we got a comms ping. The knights who’d been sent out had completed their task in wrangling everyone back.

It should have taken only one day, but I got the feeling the Deathless had made a pain of themselves and spread out even further, forcing the knights to split up on the hunt to multiple different cities.

But now everyone had come back. And all signals were being reported green, which meant Drakonis had defused the situation and collected the rest of the Deathless together under Lionheart’s command.

More than that, a good chunk of the team and the veteran himself were already planning on diving to the layer under us according to the situation report, and going through the portal leading to the Odin lands, now that it was active.

Probably to go looking for Bob, if I had to guess. That fungus was about to have all its wild dreams of an undying swarm of humans with magic ready to tend and defend it from all evil.

But as for the crew and I?

We had a different destination.