12 Miles Below

The world rippled around me, a wind of energy and chaos flying past. Belatedly, I realized it was me that was moving, soaring through a bridge in the universe. As I flew through the air, the reality around me chipped away, I felt it’s hostility.

Outside was no place for a soul to exist. It took an act of willpower to remain cohesive, something I realized instinctively how to do.

Rapidly falling away behind me was my body. And rapidly advancing towards me was a metal shell, a colder more unthinking body. Somehow I knew with every fiber in my being this was a safe harbor to moor at compared to surviving outside. My soul settled into it comfortably enough.

I could see in a way that I wasn’t quite able to put into worlds. Around me the world appeared as concepts. The floor wasn’t such a thing as a true floor but the knowledge it was a floor. Everything around me was a blob of concepts, only when I focused did I start piecing together what was around.

It took a bit of time for me to acclimatize to the new soul sight. A mental greyscale image of the world came into focus, in a manner of speaking. My body was one of two items of note that seemed to ‘glow’ in pale color. A warm amber for my body, and a cool blue color emanating from a chestplate within Journey. However, I noticed that there were more appearing into 'sight.' Further focus revealed what they were: Fractals. Different kinds, spread all over the armor.

The central fractal at the chest however remained the one that glowed brightest.

This felt like a possible home destination my soul could harbor in, as far as I could feel - and it was occupied. Journey’s own soul fractal I’m assuming. I knew these armors were working hand in hand with the Occult, but this confirmed it beyond doubt. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I tried to fly there, I strongly suspected this was what Father had done.

I still felt a connection to my body. Or rather, I hadn't fully committed to the soul fractal, leaving a part of me still connected home. Enough that I could sluggishly command my arm to move, bringing the plate I now existed in closer to my body.

I was a little afraid of what might happen if I dropped the plate on the ground. If that electric connection broke, would I be stranded outside of my body forever? What happens to a soul when the power is cut?

The thoughts began to plague me, fear of death taking root in my heart. Sheepishly, I decided it was time to return home. Maybe I hadn't been exactly... uhh, thinking when I picked to jump headfirst into the fractal.

Once more the ability to move was there and without effort I found I could thankfully fly from this soul fractal back into my body. It accepted me wholly, a far more snug and perfect fit compared to the dull metal sheet.

My soul dug back into the roots of my body, almost like sinking into warm water, submerging under. When I opened my eyes next, the world had returned to normal. The sheet of metal in hand remained glowing softly in the room, still powered in my hands. Empty. And waiting.

Gods above, that was a trip. “Journey, turn off the current.”

The light died out in the room, replaced only by the heater’s own yellow glow. The soul sense faded away with it.

Already, there were dozens of possible experiments I could take this. And almost all of them could cause me to instantly die off.

What happens if I use the soul fractal to free my soul, and then dive into another person’s body? What happens if I try to jump into Journey’s soul fractal? What happens if the glyph is destroyed while my soul is inhabiting it?

Some of those questions I don’t think I’ll get an answer to.

I set the sheet of metal back into the book bindings, then picked up my helmet and equipped it. The armor brought out a full display on my HUD and the information I was looking for was a few clicks away.

Journey noted no great abnormalities within my body while my soul was partway gone. Instead it seemed like I had gone into a deeper meditative trance. As far as the tech was concerned, nothing strange had really occurred at all.

I dug with new hunger at the pages inside the book, flipping from metal page to metal page. Journey still had a mental block of sorts that prevented it from displaying the contents of the book. In order to get anywhere, the helmet had to be off.

The rest of the book had fractals. Each page detailed a new fractal pattern and it's uses. And while it was clear Talen hadn’t been a researcher of the technical kind, he still took care to write out the actual math equations if he managed to discover them.

Fractals could apparently be tweaked by changing the constants slightly. There was a ‘true’ pure fractal in which the results were perfect, and slightly changing the constants around that equation would reduce the effects but maintain the spell.

Talen related it to writing. Language was a series of symbols the human mind was trained to recognize. There could be hundreds of fonts for a single letter, all of them uniquely different or extravagant, but still clearly recognized as a letter. The same of fractals and how reality recognized it.

The fractal of heat was one of the early spells covered in the book. This Occult sign looked far less structured and rigid compared to the graceful lines of the soul fractal. Instead, it was a floating mess, looking more like clouds. The inscription itself required different density of cuts, which would affect the result. The pure fractal would generate invisible flames. Slight modifications would have the flames become something more pale translucent blue, and onwards down until actual normal fire would appear.

This could be called upon without intent, though the result would simply be fire. If I was reading the book right, executing this while the soul fractal is active should give me a lot more command over the fire, though Talen hadn’t explained exactly how to manipulate the flames. It seemed the book was more a jumpstart, giving the basic instructions along with a handful of useful fractals to begin with. It was clearly up to me to experiment with what I had to work with.

“Journey, if I gave you an empty piece of metal, could you inscribe a fractal pattern into it using your spirit to eat away at the metal?”

Journey chimed affirmative, exactly as I’d expected. Winterscar had done it to the side of the console in the bunker. There was no reason Journey couldn’t follow through with that.

With the occult knife, I cut a small section of metal off from the room. Most things were made of composite wood and other 3D printed construction goods that had good enough insulation compared to sturdiness, but there was still plenty of metal to go around.

I couldn't just point at Talen's sheet of metal and tell Journey to copy that fractal - it was hardwired to see nothing. So I fed my armor an exact formula to inscribe on the cut metal. Journey’s spirit snaked out like tendrils of black mist, flowing up my arm and into the cut section of metal my hand held. The process took only a few seconds, after which the tendril retreated back, leaving the metal cutting alone.

What was left behind was the exact fractal I had hoped for. I’d done some modifications to the constants, which should have tuned down the purity of the fractal into something more adjacent. If I was right, this would be the traditional yellow orange fire and not something stranger.

I took a deep breath, then gave a command. “Journey, pass a small current of electricity through my fingers.”

The sigil began to glow bright blue and fire erupted from the fractal, flowing up into a long tongue. I stared at what I had in hand. Welp. This was outright magic.

The tongue of flame was perfect in every regard. It didn’t waver at all except when being moved or interacting with wind. The strength and power remained completely constant.

“Got any idea where the energy for this flame is coming from?” I asked Journey.

“Negative. Anomaly has been logged for further review.” The armor said.

“What, not even a guess?”

“Insufficient information for meaningful answer. Further analysis is required.”

“You know the same thing that caused this is running deep inside you. You’re made partially of the Occult. It’s curious that you’re able to use such things without knowing anything about them.”

The armor gave me an oddly cheeky answer. “Counterstatement: Does the user understand all actions red blood cells take?”

Ah. I got what Journey was saying. Sure, I knew I had blood running in my veins and I’d go as far as to say blood sure was important. Bad to have it leak out the body, some would claim. But as for how it actually functions to keep my body lucid and working? It might be written on some book that the Caretaker caste knew about in depth, but I certainly didn’t.

“Fine.” I said, still waving the flame around. Even up close I could feel the heat in the air on the sides of my cheek if I brought it close enough. “Say, how much modification can you do on yourself?”

“Within parameters, modifications are possible.”

“How about battle damage done in specific manner and then intentionally left unrepaired?”

“Within parameter.” Journey answered.

If I wanted to be a warlock, you gotta have fire. Had to be done. Maybe I might not know how to throw that fire in a ball yet, but the first steps were already forming up in my head and I wanted to take a wild shot at it.

“Inscribe that equation same as you did on this piece of metal, but on the palm of my right hand. Make it big enough to fill out the whole palm.” One of the things Talen mentioned when going over the fire fractal was that size affected how large the flame would be. He postulates that this shows size does have some relation to the effects one could expect, but it was more as an additional parameter some fractals used while most others did not. Something I would be abusing outright if I could first prove my little idea worked.

Journey did as ordered, funnelling its spirit across the palm and burning into it the fractal of flame, at least the modified version I’d setup.

“All right, so when I open up my hands dramatically, I want you to run a charge through the inscribed part of the plate.” I said, inspecting the fractal.

Journey chimed affirmative. Not really expecting anything to happen, but secretly still expecting things to happen, I brought my hand into a fist and extended it further away.

Then I opened my hand.

Fire sprung out of it like a furious power woken into the world. It curled around my armored hands, Journey being completely immune to the flame itself. Even further away the flame blazed on, the heat already reaching my exposed face.

I’m not going to talk about what happened next because it’s rather embarrassing, but let’s say the inner kid within me took command for a good fifteen minutes while I jumped around waving a fist made of fire through the air. Did you know fire makes a sound when passing by through the air? Like a whoosh that could be felt more in the bones than just the air. Don't ask how I know, let's say I read that in a book once.

When I calmed down, the full implications of what I could possibly do with this were already being crunched into my head.

Most fractals had no actual size requirement. So long as it could be inscribed accurately, it could function. Larger fractals had the advantage of fitting in more recursion patterns within, which would ‘strengthen’ the fractal in odd ways. Hence a larger flame fractal could fit in more detail and thus make a bigger flame proportional to the added detail.

Other fractals would work just fine so long as they have a minimum amount of detail setup. Which means I could start putting these fractals all over the armor in hidden spots, activating them on command.

Besides the combat applications, the more mundane applications were frankly so much more important they outright eclipsed anything I could do.

The fire required no energy source save for the current of electricity, and consumed no oxygen as far as Journey had examined it. It was simply the concept of heat itself made manifest into the world, which it would naturally appear as fire.

In a single hour of study, I had the means of solving the clan’s entire heating issues almost permanently. Occult heaters. It seemed like such a stupid use of an all powerful wizardry, but the mundane was how wars were won. Heating already tied up thousands of cells in the colony, freeing up even a fraction of them would have been life-changing.

Atius would be beyond pleased.

But we’d have to figure out a way to hide the Occult, there was still a specter that floated around all this. There was a recurring theme I’ve picked up on. The shamans before the wizards were recorded as powerful - and then something happened and they all disappeared. Going from tribal chieftains to wizards from a region didn’t sound like a natural progression of change over time. Talen said he'd searched through ruins. It sounded like the shamans had been abruptly removed from the world, at least that was my guess.

The wizards following in those footsteps were powerful - and then something happened to them as well since I hadn't heard of them at all.

The warlocks of the modern era were still around, but how long have they truly been around for? I didn’t know any history of the warlock guilds. What I could guess was that there was something out there that had ended entire lines of past Occult practitioners at their primes - and it had happened multiple times.

If I wasn’t careful, I’d find out first hand how they had met their ends.

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