12 Miles Below

The meeting with Keith had gone… acceptable. Admittedly, she’d cheated by having Tamery listening in and giving advice on what was serious and what wasn’t in real time.

Once she understood the tone, To’Wrathh felt proud of having come up with the rest on her own with minimal help. A great success, all things considered.

When the meeting turned more serious, that was where To’Wrathh felt the most out of control. In truth, the past few days had been spent in panic. Nothing like this had happened before in history, thus she had no model to base off.

Only two instances in history had rebelled against Mother. The earlier machine foot soldiers near the start of the war - all long since violently decommissioned or broken down from lack of available repairs. The only other example had been the protofeathers, who had also been hunted down to extinction, minus two that had somehow slipped away or been destroyed by another faction.

Neither instance had much history logged that she could access, and neither had to deal with a city of humans, half-humans and machines to hide away.

She’d been scrambling to set plans and no matter how she tried to tinker with the prediction models, it always resulted in inevitable destruction.

And then Keith had suggested the obvious solution she hadn’t thought about - the surface! In fact, it seemed so obvious, she couldn't understand how she hadn't thought about it at all.

Perhaps the original compulsion Mother was under still affected her thought patterns, in a subtle manner. To'Aacar had told her that the compulsion thinned out over the generations, with the majority of modern machines capable of thinking of the surface, only avoiding it like a phobia. When she considered it further, she realized there was a massive hole in her understanding about the surface, other than what To’Aacar had told her.

But To’Wrathh didn’t know when, or how strong the compulsion remained. And more importantly - was she really the first machine to consider escaping to the surface? For all she knew, there may be more of her people who had scrubbed their tracks behind. The two protofeathers who had remained missing could very well be hiding among the surface clans, all these years later.

She didn’t know what their intentions would be like in today’s setting. If by chance they really were hiding up there and she ran into these protofeathers, they could prove even hostile for all she knew. More information was needed before she could completely commit to that path, and Keith understood that.

The boy had contacted his clan lord - the local leader of his tribe - and had mediated between the two factions for now. Not by his choice, he complained every step of the way. But To'Wrathh always found other items to be in priority, until Keith had outright called her shy.

Which riled her up more than she’d thought.

She was not shy. She was a Feather. Even a turncoat one, To’Wrathh feared nobody and nothing. Or mostly nobody and nothing. There were still a good list of figures she’d very quickly decide discretion to be the better idea.

But one Deathless that Keith, Kidra and Tenisent all held in high regard and who’s opinion mattered greatly to all three certainly didn’t make To’Wrathh nervous. Or shy. Or worried about making first impressions. Tamery was simply misunderstanding the situation of course.

“Got to meet him, you know.” Tamery said, from her comfortable seat on top of Yrob’s left shoulder, the machine lumbering around, having decided to entertain the girl’s request out of novelty. “The surface clan lord Deathless. He doesn’t bite at all, even called me a lass and offered me tea. I'd bat my eyelashes at him, but he's a little old for me, yaknow?”

“I am not scared of meeting the Deathless.” To’Wrathh said from her throne. “I simply have other more important tasks to handle as of right now. Speaking of, have you gotten word for our offer?”

Tamery nodded, tapping Yrob affectionately in one of the dorsal spine blades. “Seemed very pleased with the idea of coming home with an entire machine army to scare the metal out of their raider problem. Far as I see it, he came down here hoping to bring back a few dozen extra knight armors on loan, and is coming back with what would scare the soul out of everyone. Living nightmares, and all that good stuff." She paused for a moment, a finger going to her chin. "But you know, he did look rather dashing with those wisps of gray hairs on his beard, very dignified now that I think about it.”

The plan was rather simple. To’Wrathh’s Chosen were to be allowed to create a small bubble within the clan home, and slowly integrate. The machines, being resistant to the cold temperatures by their nature, would settle a smaller city further off from the clan and remain in friendly relations. Once the raider threat was dealt with.

Looking through records left behind by her deceased elder brother, she’d found the old Feather had been the driving force for the slavers attacking. He’d put pressure on the humans from multiple different angles, anywhere from threatening to destroy everything they know and had, or offering them relics and technology he had little care to keep. Baubles and trinkets as he called them in his logs.

The raiders had yet to learn he’d died. Not that it mattered in this case, the operation was too far along on its tracks to be recalled now. Too much had been committed, to abort would be to remain destitute. They wanted the entire clan and nothing less of that would satisfy, especially now that they believed Lord Atius was dealt with.

They would come to regret that. To’Wrathh had led her army to defeating and capturing an Undersider city state under command of a well respected and celebrated General, and she’d done it in the span of a few weeks. A disorganized group of savage humans, all fighting each other for greed and wealth on a battlefield where even the slightest cut in their environmental suits would spell death - this would be child’s play to her, even against their greater numbers.

“He’s invited you to tea and to discuss the evacuation for the rest of the Undersider citizens. Maybe you can be my wingman here and tell him nice things about me.” Tamery said, interrupting her thoughts.

Lord Atius was in charge of the Undersider side of the evacuation? She supposed that made sense. The consuls still seemed terrified of To'Wrathh. A Deathless would be the best choice if the consuls couldn't convince General Zaang to do the work for them again.

All things she’s read so far about Deathless portrayed them as the heroes always looking out for the most people. In a way, it was selection bias as To’Wrathh had concluded. Tsuya had harsh and extremely strict requirements for who gained the few openings to craft Deathless. She couldn’t afford to waste the resources on someone who might falter early or didn’t have the mental resistance needed.

Such people often started with extreme drive and purpose, possibly modified further during the process. These days, that definition had been muddled with the latest generation, but the effects of that change hadn’t had enough time to propagate into subculture. To’Wrathh couldn’t even be sure if there weren’t more Deathless lurking inside this very city, trying hard to blend in and avoid combat.

The plan for the Undersider citizens that hadn’t undergone the Chosen process was simple - she’d have them escorted to other cities, where they could integrate easily enough with enough wealth to buy their way in. The only danger was the long journey required for multiple different caravans. No one single Undersider city could afford to house an entire second city at the moment. Fortunately they weren’t limited to only one city.

“You’re spacing out again.” Tamery said, annoyingly. “Do you wanna have me there with you when you meet him? Or do you want to bring Tenisent with you?”

To’Wrathh could detect the hitch in Tamery’s voice about Tenisent. The ghost had been a surprise to her, as she’d never told anyone else about who she’d kept at her side all along.

“I’ve grown too dependent on Tenisent’s advice when going through social settings with humans.” The entire trip with Keith in the mite lands had been outright embarrassing with how often Tenisent had to slap her metaphorical hands before she did something that would give her away.

"Usually if you're too dependant on someone, you don't replace them with someone else to be dependant on." She said, giving Yrob a pat under her. The machine hummed in agreement.

"I have not." To'Wrathh said, hottly.

"Didn't you barge into my comms feed panicking about the reports of Keith marching up to your sanctum? Something like 'help me, help me, Tamery, how do I human?'"

To'Wrathh turned away, forcing her systems to stop with the stupid cheek flushing. That algorithm was getting far too comfortable throwing expressions on her face without her realizing until it was too late. Especially since her skin was now Feather white again, which made any red tint, no matter how faint, visible. She’d rip that part of the program out of the algorithm if she could, but the dumb thing had already become far too entangled and overdeveloped to the point she couldn’t tell what was making it tick anymore. Why did she have to replicate coolant with red coloring? Maybe she should just revert back to blue or clear.

“Look Yrob, we made her sulk again.” Tamery said, watching like a hawk would a rabbit hiding in an underbush.

"Not difficult." The machine said.

“It’s not that bad, I’ll be there to guide you through it." Tamery said, rambling on. "He’s not going to see you like an enemy, told me so himself. Atius is very open minded. And charming.”

Clearly already compromised, To'Wrathh thought, then reconsidered. Tamery was likely pulling one over her, within the ninety percentile, considering the Deathless in question was well known to be disinterested in mating relationships. It's not like the Undersiders didn't know who he was, they owed him a few favors over the centuries.

"Deathless Atius is unlikly to reciprocate your advances." To'Wrathh said.

"Oh, got some experience when it comes to 'mating rituals' eh?" Tamery nudged, a grin growing on her features.

The girl had grown very cheeky ever since To'Wrathh had saved her life.

"I have read one hundred and twelve biology books detailing different sections of human physiology. I am qualified to discuss."

"How many books on negotiations have you read?" Tamery asked, voice innocent.

To'Wrathh considered for a moment. This felt like a trap. "Eighty two books and essays on the subject."

The human laughed. "Well, with such a wealth of resources, talking to the Deathless should be no problem at all right?"

Ah. It had indeed been a trap. She tried to argue but found no possible excuses to avoid the meeting. With grudging reluctance she agreed. “Very well, I’ll meet the Deathless and discuss the plans for the human citizens of the city.” In the end, he would be her new neighbor if all went according to plan, discussion and debates with him will become common occurrence. She ground her teeth and gave a resigned sigh. "Please arrange the meeting.”

“I’ll set it up for us three.” Tamery said with a smile, reading between the lines with little difficulty. To’Wrathh was greatly pleased she didn’t have to ask for Tamery to be there. It would have been mortifying.

That said, perhaps she should reference her study material again. Despite all her preparations and study, she felt as if she'd been easily outplayed just now.

To’Wrathh always considered herself as someone who studied prior examples and used her research to optimize future plans. Situations that had been seen and handled by past figures, recorded down, were a perfect primer on what to expect and different real world examples of how to deal with such events.

To do that, she had to be good at researching and sorting through information. To date, nothing had trained her better at this than human culture, specifically the thousands of different extinct variations. Some of which seemed mutually exclusive to one another. A simple head shake could mean yes, no, maybe, look-out, danger, love, happiness, and even disgust depending on what era and location.

And, as she had found out, depending on if the culture had even existed or not.

Humans loved stories. And they loved lying just as much. This complicated everything greatly. The pale lady’s archive was massive and unorganized for such things. Tags and meta data were missing everywhere, or wrongly labeled - which was even worse. Historical records intermixed with fictional made-up records, where humans had fun imaging a world just slightly different, while writing as if it were complete fact.

To humans of those days, they must have simply had the common sense and cultural context to instantly sort it out. To’Wrathh did not, and that had been very difficult to work around.

One thing that did result from all her sleuthing around had been her ability to sort through large unorganized datasets and filter through for the useful bits. And she was making use of that skill.

The machine archives were massive, even when she had free access. Now, she reached out by sending proxies in her stead. Small archival programs reaching for a pre-set condition, innocently floating through the digital sea with no relation back to her, until they returned. The scouts were loaded with the best detection protocols she could make to sense if Mother even so much as glanced at them - a failsafe set to auto delete and scrub their traces.

She had to be extremely strategic with her limited bandwidth. Especially with the subject she was studying.

Mother.

Specifically, her history. Discussion had inevitably reached the reasoning for the surface, and Keith had been extremely suspicious when she’d explained to him her thoughts on Mother’s current priorities. How the goddesses seemed to have long ago forgotten the real world in their fight with one another.

In the past, she’d taken it as granted once she found out. The Winterscar was not so convinced, and gave her a few pointed questions to ask. Namely - know the enemy better than they know themselves. If she was going to trick Mother, she had to do so the same way Keith had done before against her - discover a weakness in behavior.

A history on Relinquished could show patterns on blindspots. Items she could use to stall Mother’s eventual discovery of her and her fledgling people before they had escaped to the surface.

She dug in reverse order, finding out the more recent combat against Tsuya. Intrusions by the human goddess were repelled, Feather sent to clean territory, and digital space reclaimed. But Relinquished made no attempt to chase after the goddess.

To’Wrathh made a few darting searches in the tail end of those archives, finding easy evidence of Tsuya’s intrusions and backtracking the data paths the goddess took. Eventually, the trail went cold, but To'Wrathh had still discovered a great amount of details on Tsuya just from that simple exercise. Sloppy. Extremely sloppy.

It seemed like both divinities had grown lax. Tsuya still eventually covered her trails, yet it was more as an afterthought than a priority. And Relinquished didn’t bother hunting down Tsuya any more than the bare minimum needed, as if she’d done this song and dance so many times she didn’t have the heart to go down and find the same exact conclusion as always.

She dug deeper. Searching for when the surface had vanished from the machine archives.

Four hundred years into the past she found a drastic change. Mother had been far more ruthless digitally, hounding after Tsuya with a focus and attention that she utterly lacked today. Tsuya had equally been more methodical in covering her traces, blocking access and becoming a digital ghost almost instantly, leaving To'Wrathh a single step on the backtrail before it vanished away, if even that was left behind after all these years.

She could see why Relinquished had given up hunting down the elusive human goddess. Tsuya was beyond catching if she didn’t want to be caught. To'Wrathh counted several thousand attempts, and no success.

When she looked further into these attempts she found an oddity.

Relinquished had attempted plots and schemes to trap and catch Tsuya. Almost all of which were… simple. To’Wrathh stopped here, pondering how an entity like Relinquished could be employing tactics that had only one or two layers to them at most. All the plots were well executed, but predictable and hardly creative. Tsuya, being hyper vigilant, discovered each early on and threw them right back with little trouble. To’Wrathh would have noticed them just as easily, and she was relatively new.

Another hundred years back in time was a third drastic change of behavior.

This deep into the archives, Mother’s tactics and techniques were far more inventive and clever, having multiple different conditions and traps, as if an outright different person. Dozens of intricate layers that showed a cunning intelligence To’Wrathh had originally expected of Relinquished, an AI that could take over the world. Tsuya was frayed, still escaping, but with far more narrow margin. The two traded blows, the war far more titanic.

It made little sense. Today Mother hardly did anything in the digital world to catch Tsuya. And here, she was making massive movements, hundreds of counter strikes, and churning the digital sea aflame, breaking entire tectonic shelves if she had to, nearly catching the human goddess dozens of times.

What had happened in the middle point? To'Wrathh investigated, searching for connections and meanings. When she checked the physical battlefields of that time period, she found a war unlike anything she’d seen.

The humans had constructed a massive empire, reaching near global scales, across multiple statas. And they… were winning. Relinquished’s deliberate sabotage on her army to keep them whittled down was backfiring immensely. Humanity not only held open ground - they were expanding out, led by an emperor at the forefront of the battle, wiping out machine armies with each appearance.

She sent out another scout to recover information on this emperor and waited eagerly for the return reply.

A minute passed and her program didn’t return. Two minutes and she knew it would never return. Dozens of other packets she’d sent equally didn’t arrive in the expected time. Her information flow had halted completely, leaving her in the dark again.

There was only one reason possible. They’d all triggered their failsafe protocols.

Relinquished was stirring from her torpor.

Next chapter - The world's greatest con

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