12 Miles Below

The undersiders spoke of her name in hushed words, like a curse behind closed doors.

A word of omen, dark news, a weight that the citizens of the city felt. And none more so than those in command who had to deal with her directly. The campaign had not gone well for them thus far, and good news was a scarce commodity.

To’Wrathh’s forces were breaking past their armored exterior while her words seeped into their hearts, breaking moral. It was almost too easy, given her preparations. Outposts across their sphere of influence fell before her forces over the past few days, with no counter-attack in sight.

Rather, they had retreated, collapsing onto the more easily defended positions. The rest had been abandoned. Those newly fortified positions had taken more effort to wrench out of their hands, with trained soldiers being far more disciplined and prepared.

In this regard, her earlier efforts bore fruit. The enemy defected the moment the tables appeared to be turning, even if they were trained to fight. She estimated around ten to twenty five percent of the enemy forces needed to be either wounded or killed before the unit lost cohesion and began retreat.

Left with a way out, the soldiers fought with far less desperation, which made them weak.

Yes, even now she watched as the last outpost’s fight died down, the soldiers surrendering in waves. She raised a lazy hand from her throne, disconnecting her sight from the overarching view across her machine forces. They had it in hand, the current battle’s end was a forgone conclusion now.

“What do you suspect they will do?” She asked, a note of curiosity in her timber. The new modifications to her vocal chords had given her more inflections. Unnoticeable to anyone else, but she could tell.

Tamery had been equally vocal at all points of the campaign, giving valuable insight to human psychology and pointing out the best ways to break morale early and quickly. To'Wrathh had seen why. The ex-human hadn't yet really processed that her allegiance changed sides for good now. She was still trying to save as many lives as possible, and having them surrender early was the best way the girl had figured out. Still thought of herself as human.

She was just confused, To'Wrathh thought, but the end results still paid well so she didn't see it as a priority to reaffirm commitment.

“Probably they had a war assembly between the major guilds and settled on giving marshal power to a general at this point.” Tamery said. “A good one, rather than a politician. They got their backs up against the wall after all. Hardly a time to let a clown lead.”

“A general?” She tilted her head, humming, eyes peering far away through the lenses of her scouts. She’d positioned a few Runners to keep a closer eye on the city itself, though what lay beyond its walls was still a mystery to her. Somewhere inside, a human had been selected to be her opposition. "I suppose I will meet this person soon enough."

She wondered if such a person would stand up compared to the legacy of wars the past humanity had produced. To’Wrathh had been studying from their exploits exclusively. If this human had access to the same books that she had, then the match would see some creativity.

The thought gave her an odd tingle of excitement. As if she was looking forward to a competent opponent, even though logically she knew she shouldn't be happy for such an event. A weak opponent would be optimal.

"They're not panicking yet, not so long as they have the Stretch under control. They can use that to keep trade routes open, along with connections to other cities." Tamery said.

The Stretch. An obstacle she would need to contend with soon enough. Leave it to the mites to make impossible geometry that only got in her way. Insufferable little pests.

"What's your next step, Lady To'Wrathh?” Tamery asked, looking at the large screen table displaying the machine advance.

“Complete the blockade around their city, reusing their own outposts as staging grounds. I expect them to be sending for help soon.” She stood from the stone throne, letting her wings carry her further up with a beat and then walked the rest of the way to the display. “You are correct that the final piece to all of this is here.” She said, pointing at a wide black stretch of land, almost like a massive wound on the map that passed through a small section of the city’s location.

But more importantly, it continued for miles, far past the outskirts of her own map. This field, which the humans had simply called The Stretch, was a desert. Dry arid ashen earth lay as perfectly flat as the mites had chosen to make it, giving unobstructed view from one side to the other.

To'Wrathh had no idea how the mites had managed to make a ceiling a mile wide, hinged without a single support pillar, but she suspected it had been done by paracausal power.

The mites did not think like machines and humans did. They were logic incarnate, gone insane, dedicated only to crafting and creating. They had no soul fractals as far as she'd seen, neither artificial nor natural souls, and yet they used fractals as easily as a human would breathe.

If there was one force in this world that had true command over the strange reality warping powers, it was them. They never played by anyone's rules. From a strategic point of view, they were simply another feature of the landscape, to be worked around.

Dark sand blew across the wastes they had created, low to the ground in such a way the very ground seemed more like a massive river, each step covering any sight of feet. An occasional obsidian pillar sprouted across the stretch, made of glass, cut across odd angles. She'd tried to pinpoint where this low wind had come from but found no explanation.

The Stretch was simply another impossibility among many. Here the humans had created a tower, protected at the center of a fortress. The tower itself was inconsequential. What wasn’t were the railguns the tower held primed.

Capable of firing massive rounds across the unobstructed terrain, any convoy passing through the Stretch would find itself constantly under watchful protection of the tower. Even with her numbers, she could not attempt to blockade all exits of that zone. Not without quickly depleting her army faster than the mite forges could be used to recreate them.

No, the tower and it’s fortress had to be taken out, something their military had very quickly realized as they rushed to reinforce. She’d attempted to take it by subtlety at first, a smaller strike force that wove its way past the outpost early detection. They had failed.

The humans didn’t keep hunters and plainfolk in this fortress, rather their center of military was based around it. Here was where they trained their soldiers, using the flat lands as perfect grounds for any exercise. It had still been worth the attempt, though now she would have to take this obstacle more seriously. Taking the stretch would require a true fight.

Tamery studied the map, eyebrows furrowed. “Won’t be easy. The tower’s stood for as long as I know the city history. Practically one of the main reasons the early founders chose to settle here. They knew any blockade would be next to impossible.”

“I don’t respect that word. Impossible.” To’Wrathh said. “Too many times, what was thought to be impossible was only improbable.” Her own existence was one such example.

Tamery shrugged. She knew the lady liked to wax poetry like that occasionally. At first Tamery thought these moments were to lecture or to start some kind of speech, but the longer she spent around the strange machine, the more Tamery started to realize they were all… dramatic. Larger than life.

From the way they dressed to the way they talked, the feathers were all oddballs, obsessed with standing out. Though she'd only ever met two, so maybe her sample size was too small.

She would have found it slightly comical, except she'd seen what was left behind To'Wrathh's wake. Relic armor helmets, with a single precise cut right through. The lady was still a machine, and just as deadly.

The only redeeming aspect was that To'Wrathh seemed to care more about doing things the right way. Which meant the destruction and death could be minimized, if Tamery played her cards right and convinced her it was optimal.

At least the Runners seemed more down to earth, more curious about everything and sticking their claws where it didn't belong. Like cats. She wouldn't be surprised to find them crawling over the ceiling to investigate something shiny come to think of it.

Wait. Tamery had a possible idea. "Maybe you can collapse some of the ceiling at a section?"

"Mites would be drawn into the fight, they react to breaches in the world layers above all." To'Wrathh said, shaking her head. "Small things can be destroyed in abandoned sections, but a hole to the surface or a breach between layers will bring them in swarm." And what they would create next would throw everything into disarray. Better the devil she knew.

"Can we tunnel under them? You did that a few times before on the other outposts."

"The fortress engineers positioned sensor suites both above and below. Any motion would be caught, where they would take swift and destructive counters. This direction leads nowhere." Her early probing attempts had been disaster for exactly that reason. The humans were not stupid.

"Well fine, how about… hmm." Tamery had run out of ideas. The fortress had been built from the ground up to resist an invasion from another warring faction of humans. It just so happened to work well against machines as well.

That wouldn't stop To'Wrathh.

She had a wealth of knowledge to pull from. Human history showed dozens of ways such fortifications were handled, but none better than to break the walls from the inside out. She turned and walked off, wings stretching and folding on themselves. With the last outpost under her control, only the Stretch was left.

She sw no alternative besides a direct confrontation. It was time to put the humans in their place.

“The tower will fall." To'Wrathh said. "I will see to it, personally.”

The feather sat on a larger rock with folded legs, hands at rest. A few feet ahead, the rocky terrain faded into the black stretch, a few straggling rocks lay unmoving with their tips above the constant stream of obsidian dust that blew ever constant, low to the ground.

The tower hadn’t spotted her. From this distance, she would appear as a white spec to binocular vision. It would take one of their stronger targeting telescopes to spot her - and only then if they knew exactly where to point.

Among the silver metal of the mite city behind her, she was invisible even as she sat in the open. Yrob walked behind her, head now reaching eye level to her own, as the machine carefully stepped around the low ground. “Fight?” He asked.

“Yes. Soon.” She said.

“No dig?”

She shook her head at that. “They’ve adapted already to that tactic. They’ll detect machine motions if we try to creep up under them.”

“Wise.” The machine said. “Good move. For them. Ceiling?”

"Your friend Tamery had the same idea earlier. It won't work." To'Wrathh pointed up, high above on the ceiling were blinking yellow lights. She didn't know how the humans had managed to get those up there, but they had. “There is no way to approach their fortress besides by ground. I've eliminated all other options.”

“Get shot if go.” Yrob said. “Not wise.”

“I agree. Which is why I do not plan to grant them that option.”

Far past the ground ahead, she felt as her Chosen continued their work. This was what she was waiting for. Her mind flickered over each, her presence briefly triggering the fractal of Unity they each held, the glow hidden by their relic armors.

The undersiders hadn’t yet heard of her offer for them to join. They only knew she offered them the mercy to return home and deprived them of their armor and equipment.

The last they’d seen of her Chosen had been them leaving as a human caravan, walking out to an uncertain future, and greatly possible death. They hadn't been Chosen yet. Slipping in groups of Chosen behind their walls was child’s play. She had their armors, colors and all.

She had all the reasons as well: Small groups of hunters, chased away from their outpost but still holding on, trickling into the fortress over time. Perfectly understandable story.

No one questioned it. The Undersiders welcomed them in, happy to have more manpower to assist them in the coming assault. Sometimes those small groups really were hunters that had no ties to the Chosen. But most times it was her people.

She had spent hour after hour teaching this small group of Chosen how to wield the combat techniques of the savage surface dwellers. Fifty of them. For days they drilled and practiced, though progress had been… slow. It had taken a few days to smuggle them all into the fortress, where they began their work of sabotage.

Tenisent had blocked her way at each corner.

Memories becoming difficult to access, as he seemed to invent new fake memories to fool her senses. She supposed that since the demon had nothing better to do than attempt to fight her control, it would make sense for him to improve.

It was getting worrying. She would need to find better way to tie him down. But it would do for now.

They were… adequate for the task. The real gauntlet was between the walls and her. The humans knew she was coming. They’d done their best to fortify themselves. Cleared off any possible cover between their walls and the edges of the Stretch. A dozen heavy machine guns were posted at each wall face. Mortars were setup behind, and the ground in no man's land was filled with mines.

She didn’t need to destroy everything. Instead, what she needed was for one side to be taken out, and only a partial amount of defenses from that side. It would be enough. The railguns on the tower itself were not going to be destroyed. Too tall of an order for her saboteurs. But their rate of fire was too slow to pick apart an entire army swarming across.

The mines were mostly spotted and logged. Her army would stream around them. She would take some casualties due to poor luck, that was unavoidable, but the Tower must fall at any cost. She was here now in person because preparations were ready.

Behind her, hidden by the mite city, was her army, ready to materialize like water breaking through a dam, flowing out from the cracks. They remained motionless, none even so much as twitching. It went against their nature, but the runners were oddly pliant to her whims.

“It time? Humans done?” Yrob asked at her side.

"They are not humans, they are ex-humans." She corrected.

The runner grunted and shrugged. It looked almost comical on his large frame. "Okay." He said. A tone that seemed to disagree, but not care enough to argue for it.

To'Wrathh shook her mind back to the operation, felt out to her Chosen, sensing as the last team had finished preparations with the mortars. They were ready, or as much as they could be.

And she sent the signal to begin the assault. Far ahead, across a field of black ash, explosions rocketed the walls of the Undersider fortress.

Mortar encampments behind were all ripped apart by explosives. Dozens of the machine gun turrets followed suit behind. A few enclaves hadn’t exploded, either due to difficulty of sneaking explosives, or lack of manpower on her end. The turrets had been secondary to the mortars, she hadn't expected them all to be taken out, rather she was pleased a few of them were dealt with as is.

Instead to deal with those turrets, the ex-humans overran the locations and barricaded the way while they worked on manually dismantling the weapons.

To’Wrathh rose, lifted her sword, and pointed it at the fortress. “Break them.” She said. There was no need for more words. The machines did as she bid, breaking through the mite city and streaming out into the open ground, howling and screaming for blood.

A hundred white figures. A thousand. Even more. She stretched her wings and leaped into the air, flying fast above the swarm of machines charging ahead.

Shouts and screams came across the walls, joining the war cries of her own army. The humans were now alert and fully awake. Only three machine guns opened fire on her forces as they barreled down. One shortly fell silent a moment after as she felt her Chosen overwhelm the defenders and break through into the turret. A second fell silent, leaving only a single one lighting the darkness with tracer rounds.

Everything was going well.

And then one of the machine gun turrets came back to life, spewing yellow lines of bullets into the white swarm. Another neighboring turret came to life, joining the second. A third came back online a moment later. The ones that had been destroyed by explosions remained lifeless, but the ones that had survived were being taken back.

They would need more than that to fend off her army, even as the Runners were slowed down by weaving in between the minefield. She pushed her mind out to see what was going on behind those walls.

Death.

Her Chosen were dying. Her forces were fading across the whole wall, like lights winking out randomly. But one part wasn’t random. The lights were going dark one after another from the right to the left. There was something wrong, it was too... systematic.

Her eyes caught something on the far right side of the wall ramparts. She diverted more power to her wings, soaring with speed above her army, quickly passing far past them across the ash.

More machine guns were turning on or off as some of the fights turned back to favor her saboteurs and others failed. They only needed to buy another few minutes before her force crashed into the walls of the fortress.

The more machine guns came to life, the more time the humans bought. They spotted her now, the turrets turning and tracking her approach. She barreled and darted across the air, avoiding most of the firing lines, and leaving her personal shields or skin to repel the bits that caught her.

It slowed her down only by seconds, she was in no danger.

Her Chosen had gone dark, the right side nearly depleted with only a few Chosen scattered around - hiding and seeking a better chance. What had wiped them out?

She came closer and caught sight of the issue. A group of five figures were scything through her saboteurs like a blade through metal. Undersider elites of some kind.

Perfect. She would handle these. Her wings angled and she sped across, on an intercept course.

Machine guns disengaged from trying to stop her approach as the operators realized the Feather was too nimble to take out. Instead they went back to harrying her army. Pity.

Taking the opportunity, she increased her speed, rocketing forward, air blasting at her sides, the walls growing closer and closer. Then her eyes got a good visual on the enemy and she almost stumbled out of the sky in surprise.

Three knights in maroon red, with the fourth carrying teal colors and trophies of machine parts wrapped across the armor. But it was the fifth knight that took her breath. The one leading the charge.

She knew that armor. Knew it implicitly.

He was here.

No. It couldn’t be. The armor moved like a gust, too agile, too quick. There was only one other possibility. This must be the sister.

To’Wrathh called upon her Chosen to gather further down the wall. She had them abandon the machine gun turrets if they had to, she needed manpower. Scattered as they were, they couldn’t hold a candle against the likes of this foe.

They did as bid, regrouping into a sizable force. Seventeen was enough.

The feather angled her wings, ripping like a missile through the air, eyes tracking her prey as the group of five knights and a handful of Undersiders trying to keep pace behind, clashed against her hastily assembled unit.

Against the din of the machine gun fire, the howls of her army rapidly approaching behind, To’Wrathh dove down into the melee like the angel of death. The pale lady had been clear in her orders.

She had a sister to kill.

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