“Quick raise of hands here, anyone got Tsuya’s personal address by chance?” I asked the room.

Father didn’t react to that, just a grunt instead. “Stand aside boy, there is a reason I came down here.” He simply stared at the console like it owed him something and it better comply or else. Oddly effective, since the mite terminal proceeded to do exactly what he wanted it to. “I do not carry the Unity fractal, I ripped it out of this shell within the first moments I could. Tsuya understood her secrets would be safe with me when we spoke. This was what I came here for.”

A ping went out into the mite sea at a very specific endpoint. And from deep beyond, something responded back.

Father turned to Wrath. “If the pale lady appears during this discussion at any point, you know what to do.”

We had a few basic plans in case that would happen. Of all times for Relinquished to appear, it happening right as we’d reached the end goal was a strong possibility.

We’d planned on her simply shutting down into deep sleep the moment Relinquished showed up. She could reboot Wrath using terminal commands from the machine network - but that was down right now. Which meant Wrath could hide from Relinquished by turning off everything. Relinquished would be uniting herself with inert metal at that point.

Would it draw attention and make Relinquished question things? Absolutely, at that point the game would be up. But she couldn’t get an army here fast enough to stop us from using the Division Stone.

A set of passwords were exchanged, the data feed flashing through on the display. Then the speaker crackled to life. I recognized the voice. Tsuya.

We really did have her personal address. And with her here, that meant the Division Stone plan was good to go.

She, of course, was all business from the start. “Tenisent.” She greeted curtly. “This line is secure on my end. I can see she is completely blind with the network turned off. There is no tracer or attempts by her to track my movements as of now. Is the biome on your end secure?”

The Winterscars all pinged green on their huds, the scouters on the rooftop and city proper hadn’t spotted anything on approach.

And around here, there were only dead shells of long unpowered machines. No concepts of power or life were here, and the Occult couldn’t be fooled.

“There is no machine presence here, only death and ruins.” Father said, equally agreeing with my own search.

“Understood. Is the Division Stone still intact and functional? What have you found on this biome?”

“It is functional. This biome is buried in snow as you claimed. We found more, a city. Old. From the golden era. And the ruins of a protofeather.”

I looked down at the dead protofeather laying up against the Division stone from here. Tsyua didn’t know this location existed, which meant she also couldn’t have known about A01’s ultimate fate.

I didn’t know who A01 was as a person, but I did know he’d fought for what was right at the end, and without him, I wouldn’t be standing here. Someone at least should know. “We believe this is the final stand of A01 before he was killed.” I said.

Tsuya’s reaction was different from what I expected: “That is impossible. He is in stasis, alive. And it is not in your current location.”

“Wait, I thought the records showed him wounded in a way that would be fatal?” I asked. “That’s how this guy died. If that’s not A01, what happened to him?”

“A01’s current status is not something I will disclose. I have a suspicion on who this may be, and I will need video or picture data to confirm.”

Father frowned, then sent a quick picture and recording snipped for just this moment. The rest of the Winterscars remained on alert. I could tell they were listening in, since this was Tsuya after all. One of the gods herself.

They still kept a tight hangar, teams keeping an eye for any signs of trouble around us. Captain Sagrius remained nearby, eyes on me. Waiting. Of all the knights here, he seemed the least affected by the goddess being with us.

“I see.” Tsuya simply said. “There were 56 other protofeathers in the conflict against Relinquished, many of them had their own goals and agendas separate from humanity. This was A07. He died during the fight at the Division Stone, along with his squad and the remnants of his army, which I see surround him now.”

His… army?

“A failsafe was triggered and nearly the entire biome was left a charred ruin.” She continued while I ruminated on what she meant. “Nothing could survive through that, not even a protofeather.”

The war in the past had many dead legends, and his group was one of many as Tsuya explained.

Like the other protofeathers, he’d turned against Relinquished. But unlike his fellows, A07 was apparently a dumb hothead who hated the idea of working under anyone else. A rebel with a cause, and that cause was mayhem and destruction.

Tsuya saw him as a liability. Four other protofeathers saw him as a role model. Their squad had been rather infamous for showing up unannounced and keeping things barely civil with the other protofeathers. That only got worse as they collected followers. “Huh, I always thought the protofeathers were all working together?”

Tsuya tutted, “The Empire and the Protofeathers had been fighting each other for years prior. There were deep grudges that remained. True cooperation was a rare thing. Many of them had different reasons for defecting. Some were far more self-centered. I freed all of them regardless of motive from the unity fractal, even knowing some would continue to be a thorn to everyone.”

“A07 was among that number?”

“A07 was… unstable and worshiped martial power. Relinquished was seen as a coward hiding behind her pawns, while A01 was seen as the pinnacle he wanted to reach. When A01 defected, he followed. And took steps to create his own faction.”

“That’s the machines here? His army?”

“They were. I recognize the chassis of these models. A07 seized factories used by Relinquished for a few moments, and he drew half-feral programs directly from the digital sea. None of his forces were ever under Relinquished to start with. I am uncertain why they are all killed here. Perhaps they dragged their dead together before the Division stone was transported and those who remain alive have left long ago.”

“You think he was trying to get the stone for himself for future use? If he didn’t tell you anything about the plan he had or where he was going.”

“He knew it cannot function without me.” Tsuya said. “I cannot accurately guess at his motives. Regardless, it was clear my failsafes had been triggered. Which would have obliterated the Division Stone alongside most of the biome. The four protofeathers who followed him were all found destroyed in different locations, while his chassis was never recovered. I assumed he had detonated the failsafes himself. I would recommend searching the location here to discover what he had done. Send me data and I can take more guesses given my own knowledge.”

The Winterscar knights snapped to work, cataloguing the area and what A07 had left behind. There was something off about this. “How did he actually die? There was no killing blow on his chassis.”

“I have a hypothesis.” Tsuya said as she studied the feed. “A57 required testing for his soul-rending weapons against protofeathers, he was the type to never take chances or gambles. However, that same testing could not be discovered by A01, or else we would have developed countermeasures. I believe A07 was wounded during the battle for the Division Stone, and realized he would be dying within the hour. Hence why he had time to bargain with the mites, move the bodies of the dead, and die on his own terms. We will not know until you connect directly with the chassis and download the logs.”

“You will not.” Father said, holding a hand out. He did have Avalis’s memories, and apparently one distinct memory of that asshole nearly getting killed by the dead body of a protofeather he was graverobbing. “No one is to touch the chassis. His fate is his own.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

There was still one more source of information on this. I dove into my soul fractal, and stretched a tendril of soul into the miteseeker, looking for Superior.

Know any other details about this guy? Specifically if there’s anything off about this. Anywhere A57 had a hand in, we should be careful.

Give me a minute to figure that out. Asking the collective now.

Father turned to the terminal while Superior was working.

I saw data being sent. Video data fast forwarding. He’d sent both his own data, and Journey’s entire dump. She jumped over the timeline rapidly, the video feeds fast forwarding on their own in the small screen.

The Odin.

The Icon.

A22.

To’Orda.

To’Naviris.

Abraxas, and the mission I’d inherited from him.

“You have been busy.” She simply said. “It will take me a moment to process and obfuscate this. Fortunately, we have time.” The videos started playing back from the start, but I noticed changes were being introduced into it. Things I said were wiped out, subtle changes that shifted the meaning of things.

“Covering your tracks?” I asked, as I watched section by section getting rewritten.

“Prior combat with Relinquished, especially after A57 entered the playing field, have drastically changed how I need to organize and prepare countermeasures. He had attacked my memory directly, and it was a critical vulnerability. I was forced to execute drastic measures. Case in point, the seeker on your belt. I no longer have any memory of the seekers I constructed, in addition to multiple scrolls and artifacts. All except for a single memory: That I was the one who made the choice to eliminate knowledge from my mind in order to protect it specifically from his discovery, until the time he was eliminated and it was safe to begin operations in recovering these caches. Since then, I have taken great care when saving anything digitally in case Relinquished kept unused weapons close to her hand.”

“It hasn’t pointed anywhere yet.” I said. “Though it has been pretty useful as a mite lantern.”

“Nor should it have. Not without my personal approval.”

Ah. That’s why it wasn’t pointing anywhere. I remembered her prior instructions about this lantern. That the mites were the key and would show the way forward. Given there were some crawling around inside the lantern in geometric patterns and what they’d opened me up to, I got a hunch on how it worked.

“You expected the mites to help the owner find you, so that you could do personal vetting on if the mitespeaker was good enough for the task?”

Why else have the seeker require her personal approval before it could be used?

“Yes.” She confirmed. “However I do not expect the mites to help - I expect them to honor the bargain negotiated. They would have led you to a terminal that would allow me to verify who you are first. That was part of their required tasks, even centuries later. While the Indagator Mortis were tasked with handling seekers like this, I still needed to prepare for when they lost these assets and prevent them from being used against me.”

Now there was a name I hadn’t heard of in a long time.

“My old chapter.” Cathida said, sounding smug. “See, we really were doing the goddess’s work behind the scenes."

“They were more than simply valuable.” Tsuya said. “The Indagator Mortis was a chapter designed exactly for this: To search for and recover caches of prior weapons and tactical assets hidden away from A57 during the collapse. Once he was confirmed dead, that chapter began their work. Assets like the Division Stone here would have been among the kinds of caches left hidden for them to uncover and restore. Hold out the seeker and connect it to the terminal Keith. I should have unlocked its main ability when you were on the mountainside, however at the time, your involvement with a Feather that still carried the Unity fractal was too great of an operational threat. Thus, I kept my silence on the matter given its importance. Now that I have reviewed the footage, and that you have reached the Division Stone, I see no reason to keep the seeker offline.”

Wrath gave a guilty look, hand going to her throat where her soul fractal was humming deeper under her skin. The Unity fractal remained empty even now, Relinquished too busy elsewhere. Probably dealing with Aztu’s crash of the entire system. She did have an entire planet to run.

But if she came now, it’d be too late for her to stop us and Tsuya knew it too.

“It would be a little funny if the seeker ended up pointing directly at this Division Stone.” I said, getting her attention away from all this.

“That is a possibility.” Tsuya said. “Perhaps I had known the Division Stone was correctly saved by A07.”

“I do remember the scholars I escorted clucking about what it could lead to during breaks.” Cathida said. “Supposed to escort these bums solo, to the next fortress on the map. They were very full of themselves. Not so much at the end. If the seeker led them to a giant rock, I’d be laughing my old ass off.”

“What was the full story behind that? Why was it being carried out?” I asked, unhooking the miteseeker from my belt. “I think at this point I should get the full answer on this thing.”

The terminal flashed through a few items, before the seeker showed up. “Not carried. Used. The Indigators had recovered most of the weapons caches I had left behind during the collapse over the past centuries, however this particular one had been both the most important and still not recovered. I believe the cache may be far further underground than any other, as it constantly pointed downwards, however that was a hypothesis. There used to be a soul within the lantern, although it has long since decoupled now. They were on transit to the next fortress where a full scouting team would launch and continue the search. It was simply safer to travel on the upper levels.”

Oof, wouldn’t want to be that guy. Don’t drop me anywhere nobody can ever find me again Prime. I’ll haunt you.

“What makes it more important than the other seekers?” I asked.

“Redundancy.” She said, “It was one of the few seekers that I had multiple copies forged. Although I have no memory on why, that alone tells me it was more important than the others. And that it had to be a mite lantern meant the mites were involved, something I tend to avoid when possible unless absolutely necessary. Most other caches were inscribed into relics, or directly within writing. Each seeker required harsh deals with the mites. That I would repeat those same deals multiple times for the same direction meant the cache this seeker pointed was critical in some way to the war effort.”

The seeker looked tiny in my hands.

What’s your thoughts on this? I asked Superior.

Go for it. I’m safe on this side of the digital ocean, even if she borks the seeker somehow, that’s not where I live. Plus if it’s supposed to be used by normal mitespeakers, we should be fine. I also just got the answers on A07 from them, took a while to wheedle it out.

What did you find? Anything about A57?

Mites say A07 ‘foretold’ events into the future and attempted to prevent them from happening. He both succeeded and failed? Looks like A57 did kill him, that was the failure. And succeeded because the stone is still in one piece in time for us to arrive here. That part they’re making it clear was his main goal.

He foretold we’d be here?

Maybe not us in particular, but the next iteration of the cycle? Sorry Prime, they aren’t telling me any other scrap beyond that, not without us burning our favor up. Secrecy was part of their bargain with him for the portal out, I think that was a defense against A57, it just applies to us too all this time later.

Do you think A57 has his hands here anyhow?

Superior hummed, thinking. No, the mites would have told me or at least hinted at it. Plus they weren’t the ones who made an agreement for secrecy, that was an additional bargain that came after the request for the portal. They’re holding to their end. You should plug me in now though, they’re all staring at you and it’s getting awkward.

I held the seeker out tentatively to the terminal. Father grabbed the lantern, and then plugged it directly into the terminal via wire.

There was a set of clicks coming from the miteseeker. As if it had received instructions, and was doing something physical.

Superior showed up again almost instantly after that. Ohhh,very interesting, looks like some occult fractals running on the mite side and only connected when the digital locks here are lifted. Hadn’t even known it was lurking within the lantern till now. Like the boiler room vent.

Prior to the clan migration, I’d been a kid that had way too much free time on my hands and a tiny body to sneak into vents with. The boiler room had been a sizable older thing where hot water was generated for our personal use. We were rather rich back then before, well, everything, but anyhow - behind the hot water heater had been a vent linking to quite a few other compounds beyond the Winterscar estates. Discovering that vent existed after I’d mapped out the entire estate had been like discovering an entire new alternate map that laid over the prior one.

I became even more unpopular after that, just outside the Winterscar circles. That is how I met Anarii after half a year of sneaking around.

Operation tied to the nearest soul too. Superior sent. Which is me. So if you hand this lantern off to anyone else, they can’t use it unless they convince me. And I’m real safe on this side of the mite sea. Good security system all in all, it’ll last up until I go insane. Probably what happened to the last soul in this lantern. Ah, I see a direction now.

“The seeker is unlocked.” Tsuya said. “It should be active.”

I gave Tsuya’s terminal a thumbs up as Superior filled me in with what he learned. “Good news, it’s not pointing to the stone here. Bad news, it’s pointing far east, and not downwards, so whatever it was meant to guard is on this level, at the very bottom of the world.”

“I had feared as much. I hid my assets in locations that other humans could potentially reach and recover. This far deep means it cannot be one of my own assets."

“You suspect it is pointing to something hidden by Relinquished instead?” Father asked.

“I do now. Given multiple seekers were made for this exact search, it means something. Exercise caution.”

I had a slightly crazy idea. “What if it’s pointing to Relinquished herself? Where her soul fractal actually is?”

“Possible, but she has ways to evade death.” Tsuya said. “So long as she remains in connection with the Unity fractal, she is effectively everywhere that fractal is active. Destroying her original computer would only prevent her from ever being restored if her soul was destroyed.”

“Not if Wrath gets to her.” I said. “That fractal from the mites had concepts of unbinding, dislocation and artificial soul right? What if it drags Relinquished back into her original casing, and then cuts her connection?”

Relinquished would be a trapped soul inside her original computer. And we could kill her once and for all.

“That is… possible given what we have available." Tsuya said. “Although, Relinquished would have her personal location guarded by everything she could surround herself with. You are powerful, likely among the strongest humans in the world. However, she has not shown any fear reactions to your presence yet. It implies her fortress is greatly above your means to breach in.”

That’s true. She saw us as entertainment. If we were a threat to her, she’d be a lot more insistent on us getting killed off.

But there is someone she did fear in the past. Shambling around underground, maddened.

But still very much alive.