12 Miles Below

“I only want what any reasonable person in my shoes/plates would want: Actual booze."

This little sh- "You want to trade the full story of Urs, for booze."

A few plates waved me off, as if I was a silly little human that didn't understand. "You’re very special out here you know - you have something deep inside that's unique: The only entity in this entire sea who knows what it’s like to be drunk. Too good of a chance to pass by it.”

I pointed at the prop bottle she had on the table, giving her a raised eyebrow and unworded statement.

“That’s a prop and you know it.” Aztu flatly said. "It's not going to get me drunk anymore than you sipping air would. I want the real thing, and I'm willing to pay a good price for that."

“I don’t even know the first steps to making booze actually booze out here. Best I can do is copy your bottle and replicate it.” I did exactly that, making a second bottle of sake appear on the table. The heavy glass clinked on the table, having appeared a few inches above the table originally. It rolled on itself before it settled with a heavy, permanent, thunk.

The Icon flinched in the background, her calm smile slowly turning to face me. I had a feeling she was getting very pissed off now.

Two plates from Aztu’s body floated to the new bottle and tapped it like a prospector would, testing for flaws and quality. “And now we’ve reached the final stages of my ultimate plan. Behold, my true goal all along when I came here to teach you."

"You really think I'll help you?"

"With the proper motivation. Now that you know how to craft things in the digital sea, it’s only a matter of applying yourself. And I intend to wring it from you one way or another.”

There was a short mental reboot in my head as I realized this ancient protofeather was truly trying to trade occult secrets and deep history only few knew about, in exchange for booze. “You really are a Feather deep down inside. You have problems.”

“And I'm hoping it'll be a drinking problem soon enough. Seven hundred years doesn’t wipe away my true nature." She scoffed, shaking her hat as if disappointed in me. "But seven hundred years did a lot to loosen me up. Did you know in the past I used to be one of the more serious and dead-set protofeathers out there? Very diligent in my work, I was known as the violet valkyrie to many humans. Had a scythe, wings, bells, the works. I deserve a proper retirement, and to yell at kids from a porch.”

“Alcohol is strictly forbidden within company office space, by policy.” The Icon said from her desk, not hearing what we were talking about but clearly aware another bottle of sake had appeared inside her house. “No matter what manner of shady back-alley deals you are blatantly attempting in my office mister Winterscar, we unfortunately cannot allow any mind-altering substances on the premises.”

Aztu looked at me without a single glance at the Icon. “Ignore her kid, what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”

“I am, quite literally, right here and forced to remain a captive audience.” The Icon said. “I can’t do anything else but notice.”

I hadn’t seen the privacy ward faltering anytime now, but I could imagine the Icon made an educated guess as to what Aztu had muttered out just now.

I looked at the bottle I'd conjured up one more time, then back to Aztu who stared at it with an odd intensity. “What’s this really for?” I asked. “There’s no way a bottle of booze is important enough to trade for information about Urs and Talen, be serious for a moment and tell me the truth Aztu.”

The plate pile in her sofa shrugged. “Oh but it is. You take living for granted, since it is all you know. Spend a single year as a disembodied soul, and you’ll start to yearn for even mundane things like breathing. The world out here is beautiful in a way, and you’ll never explore all of it. But it isn’t real.” The plates of her hand reached out and tapped the bottle a few more times, “So I want to get drunk and feel something, sue me. You’re getting practice from the best teacher out here in exchange.”

“And her?” I asked, pointing at the poor Icon.

Aztu waved her away. “You need to improve on commanding the area around you and shaping things, and she needs to improve on combat and unshaping things. She’s never once had an actual sparring partner, or at least a competent one with a soul fractal that can match her.” She grinned, the plates flowing away from the bottle and tapping the desk instead. “Multitasking. Now, where’s my bottle? No booze, no story.”

"I can't promise what I don't know how to do. But I'll give it a try."

"Good enough for me." Aztu said, sounding extremely pleased with herself.

I took a breath and focused on the bottle in front. Filled with nothing. I tried to do the same process I’d done to conjure the bottle walls, but modified the data to be liquid and labeled as sake. It looked like it was filled with something, but taking it in my hand, I could smell nothing from the bottle.

“Just writing in the text field ‘sake’ isn’t going to make it sake, not anymore than writing ‘world’s smartest human’ on your forehead would.” Aztu said, one plate above her glowing eyes making it look like she’d raised an eyebrows at me. “Think less digitally, and more with the occult. An experience isn't going to be something you can program, you need to imbue it.”

“It would be great if I had something like, say a teacher to help guide me along. Just talking out loud here.” I said, in the best Kidra deadpan I could make it.

Her hands waved me off. “Fine you little gremlin, I’ll spoon feed you this one time because it’s for a noble cause: Be a little more inventive. The occult reacts to mind, will and thoughts - especially in this realm. Command it to be booze. Bribe it to be booze. Believe it to be booze. Sing to it until it turns into booze. Just keep trying different things until you find your own brand of logic that works with your head. And then you’ll be able to apply that to a lot more than just a little bottle.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“World’s best teacher, she says.” I sighed, but I turned to the bottle and diligently started experimenting. “And the story of Urs?”

“Right, where did I leave off? Oh I remember. He was still a cripple with asthma and constantly getting sicker. That became a real issue.”

Urs still had the problems he’d been born with, the same that had ultimately chased him out of his village. And as he grew it only got worse. Food from the grove would keep him alive so far, but he needed medical attention.

So he turned to learning different fields in order to understand and fix his body’s ailments. Alchemy, medicine, and advanced mechanical engineering were added to the horticulture and general engineering he’d used in his home and to upkeep his weapons.

His leg was replaced with a metallic one that had no limp. His internals were adjusted with drugs and circuits until he could breathe a full draw of air without a single cough. Muscle pains and spasms slowed down, gradually coming to a stop. There was no cure for his strange mind, but he’d grown by then, and he’d learned to live with who he was.

By the end, he was a young adult and half-human. But his body remained feeble in ways he couldn’t fix, his immune system slowly rejecting the grafts he’d done, and he wouldn’t make it to twenty five at this rate. Aztu speculated that maybe his attempts with medical engineering had been too amateur, too rushed. Mites could bring out things that were near complete, but it took skill to recognize if they would work in the long term and to fix the parts that needed polish - skills he didn’t completely get right. Even a genius couldn’t be good at everything.

The mites were limited to what they could do. Curing him outright was out of balance, so they finally sold him one more gift: A single plate with a glowing fractal on it. He didn’t quite know what that was, but when he touched the plate, he felt strong again. Healed somewhat. He attached that plate deep into his internals, near his heart. And that’s the first of the occult Urs would have contact with.

He would eventually name this fractal for what the concept within it represented: Resilience.

With the fractal of Resilience, his body would heal itself gradually. It allowed him to endure things most humans couldn’t. Sickness no longer had a hold over him, he could run nearly forever so long as he had the willpower to do so. Semi-extreme environments could be powered through, and he could put to use the full power of his half-mechanized body. The longer he used it, the more he grew attuned to it, and the greater he could command it. He wasn't immune to death, but death had a far harder time catching up to him.

The mites seemed to love their strange feral hermit, in so much as the mites could love anything. He was a tool for their designs, a resource to tap into, and the judge they needed to behold their great works.

They baited him to journey further past his grove, to find more exotic materials demanded by his forge. Further downwards he traveled, until the machines there grew too powerful and dangerous. Even for his half-mechanical body and the weapons he'd brought with him, there were limits he was running into. And he decided he'd done enough.

He had built his house safe from machines, his body was healed, his trees and garden would offer all the food he could need. He lived in peace for a time, building whatever he felt like crafting from the raw materials he’d stockpiled. Adding to his strange home, generally content in his solitude.

But the mites wanted more. They needed him to travel around the world, to see everything they’d built. And so, they set more things in motion. Things that would change his life, for better. And worse.

“Priority alert.” A data link arrived, interrupting Aztu midway through her story, poking me through my soul past all my defenses. I realized why it had managed to do that despite all the defenses I was using: It had come from a physically close source to the soul fractal I was using at the Odin terminal.

Because Journey had sent the ping.

I held a hand out and Aztu stopped, head tilting to the side. “You figured out how to make the bottle real?” She asked.

“No, getting a warning from my armor. Something’s coming, one of the Odin are tapping at my helmet right now, giving me warning that things are happening in the real world. Scrapshit.”

I felt the ward around us vanish, Aztu rising up on her feet, the table, sofa and booze bottles I’d been tinkering on vanishing all at once.

The Odin were coming for me, Journey had relayed. Or at least one giant army led by their general commander. “I might have to contact you again from a different direction. Once I get somewhere safer.”

Not might have. I had to. Aztu had the secrets I needed to become a mitespeaker, and more history about the gods that I’d never known of. Something deep inside my gut told me I had to know the full history here, or I’d be doomed to repeat it.

"You don't have any other way of handling it? Maybe ask your bird friends to give you some privacy or bribe them with something." Aztu asked.

"I don't think that's going to work this time. The Odin are reacting because they've been forced into it. I've got enough power to figure something out and relocate. Find the nearest mite fountain or terminal, and continue from there."

“Right, the birds that got spooked into doing machine grunt work by that Feather.” Aztu said, waving a hand. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out for any of your movements. Good luck kid, keep the practice up. I'll find you again.”

Birds spooked by To’Orda, into doing their gruntwork.

Wait just a moment here. An idea popped into my head. “Actually, I think there might be another way out of this one.”

Aztu raised a plated eyebrow at me, walking over to the desk. “And that would be?”

I turned to the Icon. “I did ask earlier your help in contacting a Feather. I think I'm going to make that a little more official.”

She smiled gently back at me. “As per my last message, I would highly recommend a third party to connect with. While there is no official policy for not helping guests speak to dangerously armed terrorists who seek to eradicate all of humanity, I would strongly advise against this course of action. Strongly. Would you like me to read you the dictionary definition of 'Strongly'?”

“You worry too much, the one he’s looking to connect to is a bit of a cinnamon roll.” Aztu said, waving a few plates. “In another life, you two might have been great friends given how rule-abiding you both aren’t.”

The Icon seemed to bristle at the accusation. “I follow all rules and regulations to their intended logical endpoint, and I am also required to include that I follow them in spirit as well. And heavily imply other conclusions.” The Icon said.

“Exactly what I mean by that.” Aztu organized her plates into a smile. “I’m going to have so much fun in the next few days I feel. One way or another.”

I flashed a hand out, getting them to quiet down. “No, this time the Icon’s got the right idea."

"Of possible clients acting in ways that no logical well-thinking person would act as? When would I ever have implied such a thing?" She said, sounding almost completely innocent.

"Not that." I said, "I did want to connect with a Feather named To’Wrathh a little bit ago, but I changed my mind. The Feather that ransacked your systems earlier. He's here on this strata, and you have his address. No need for mites for that, open up a comms channel from here to there.

I want to talk to him directly.”

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