12 Miles Below

Book 6. Chapter 45: Playing games

Go take a nice scenic detour, visit Wrath’s people for a small break. What’s the worst that could happen?

Well, I was now face to face with the goddess that destroyed the entire world.

“My wayward little pest." Relinquished said, watching me through the broken walls of the mite terminal. "I’ve been expecting you to crawl into my sight again. I find that our meeting is long overdue. It is a rare feat that one of my sister’s pet Deathless defeats one of my children in singular combat. And to defeat two others has never happened. Not since five hundred years prior. Do you know why that is?”

Nope. No, not doing any of this. I’m out. Instead of answering, I instantly dove out of the soul fractal etched within the mite terminal, back into Journey’s soul fractal, and from there back into my body.

My eyes flashed open, the orange HUD of my armor my first sight. Drakonis was further down the cavern, head turning my direction. “Everything work out?” He asked.

“Do tell.” Relinquished whispered a moment after. “Did everything… work out, little Deathless?” She laughed. A light malicious laugh of someone who had caught their favorite insect.

I was still in the terminal. Still watching the massive hand carry the entire thing with her as she flowed deeper into her domain. And at the same time, I was in the physical world, in the safety of my body. Drakonis was already standing up and walking over, eyebrows frowning as he noticed something was off. The world swam around me as I felt my physical body stand up, tumble down and crawl forward. While my body in the digital sea collapsed against the sediment under me, a dust cloud flowing upwards out of the way.

In the occult sight, I knew what she’d done. The fractal of Unity. It had linked the concept of my digital avatar to my very soul. It was me, and I was it. I don’t know how she’d done it, how she’d managed to get a matching fractal anywhere near my soul, but it had latched over my throat like an iron chain without my notice.

Controlling two different bodies was on a different difficulty compared to the quantum versions of myself. During those times, each Keith equally had a mind linked to that body. There was always exactly the same amount of soul and minds in control of the same amount of bodies, equilibrium.

Here, it was just me. Alone, with two bodies split simultaneously. One being dragged further into the digital sea, and the other on the ground, helmet torn off and tossed to the side while I threw up.

Drakonis was at my side, hand on my shoulder. Saying something. I couldn’t focus.

Relinquished had my soul in her hand. I had to serve that as soon as I could, before she decided to kill me herself.

“Need to sleep.” I said in the physical world. “Guard me.” And I closed my eyes, letting go of control there. Focusing my mind back into the digital sea.

Drakonis could kill me. Easily. Just a slice through my throat and I’d be trapped within the digital sea forever since my body would be dead. If he knew I wasn’t a Deathless, he’d know this would be a permanent solution to the danger I posed.

I didn’t have a choice. I could probably survive Drakonis killing me in cold blood. Not very well, but I’d find a way to live without a body. If Relinquished killed me… I’d be gone for good. There wasn’t a way out like the Winterscar knights, nor Arcbound.

My eyes opened up within the digital sea, taking stock of the situation. Relinquished hadn’t instantly killed me, which meant she was toying with me. She couldn’t resist a monologue, her nature was to be as dramatic as possible. I needed to feed into that somehow to stay alive.

“No, I’d say everything didn’t work out.” I answered the original question, getting my hands under me and pushing myself back up on my feet. The world outside was swimming past with speed, as the entire terminal was still wrapped in her hands. “Seems I’m in a bit of a bind now.”

“Why, that sounds rather unfortunate. For you.” Relinquished answered, her voice echoing through the terminal.

We’d reached her domain. A fortress of some kind, massive and sprawling. Built like layers of a flower, each section growing more ancient as we traversed across the ages. I only caught small glimpses of it, organized and structured. Almost brittle looking in places, but clean and free of any sediment that plagued the ocean bottom. By the center of the lotus, was a singular flat ground.

She dropped the terminal here. I could feel the ground shake the moment the terminal came to a stop, while the sediment flowed through the thick air like a cloud. Then it swirled, flowing like ripples up and out through the walls. “Dusty old thing.” Relinquished tutted, finger pointing away, commanding the entire flow. “Mites. The constant change they worship is grating. They build, and then abandon. Over, and over. Anything, and anyone. It is simply their nature and they cannot change that. None of us can. You may try to hide among their world, but you will never truly be safe.”

The terminal was quickly emptied of all sediment, even the ground floor that had been covered to the point of being dunes had all vanished away. Cabinets and scrap littered the ground for only a moment longer, before they too floated up into the air, leaping in different directions to flatten against the wall sides. Integrating, repairing, wires reconnecting. “Clumsy mistakes, hallucinations, errors in their vision. They are fickle little things. There, all fixed. And it took only a flicker of my attention. Something they couldn’t be bothered to even spare.”

Power flowed again through the terminal, bright blue lights lifting through veins within the center pillar. It hummed, alive.

“Didn’t know you dabbled in mite construction.” I said, taking a few hesitant steps. The ground was solid. Everything looked brand new, shiny even. Only the walls around the pillar remained broken down. The pillar reflected my armor, following behind me in angles as I walked by it.

I took a peek outside through one of the gaps. Relinquished was there, sitting on a massive throne hovering above the ground. Her size was more normal now, compared to the giant she’d been a moment ago. One elbow resting on the side of the throne, propping her cheek up.

For a goddess that commands all of machine kind, she looked the part. Robes fit for a queen, and a silver halo above her, far more grand and ornate than any Feather I’d seen. She sat alone on her throne, above all.

It was a display meant to send a message. Which meant she was planning on speaking some more with me.

I had time.

“I can create worlds.” Relinquished said in a bored voice. “And I can destroy them. You and your kind live because I allow it. The world is as I wish it to be, and it will end how I decide it to.”

Relax. Think things through. The Unity fractal required it to be stamped in connection to something, or the concept of it. There’s a lot of ways to abuse it, and Relinquished was clever - but not genius levels of smart. Tsyua had managed to command a military grade AI for only a few seconds or so, and in that time it set down a plan that Relinquished hadn’t been able to beat for thousands of years after.

“Seems pretty grand sounding words.” I said in the meantime, trying to bait her into some kind of speech. “What are you doing with all that power?”

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She was connecting my soul to my digital avatar, and the unity fractal had to be physically attached to its target. Which meant it had to be on my avatar somewhere.

If I wanted to hide something glowing from sight, I’d either put it somewhere on the inside of my armor, under my boot, or behind my back.

“You wish to buy time to survive, while you fumble blindly for a way out.” Her voice echoed. “To escape away like the little rat that you are. Go on then, struggle. Amuse me.”

She didn’t need to tell me twice.

The shiny pillar’s angled walls turned out to be exactly the mistake I’d been hoping for. I could see through the reflection, and there was something glowing on the back of my head. It was made of sediment, like grains of sand all clumped together. She’d controlled all the sediment before, so it made sense she could do the same on a smaller level.

I quickly slapped the fractal, scrubbing my hand through it to disrupt the pattern.

Nothing happened. How? I took my hands off to check what was happening, and saw the same dust still there, holding tight. Did she burn those into my avatar somehow?

A force grabbed me with an iron grip, lifted me off my feet and yanked me right through the open walls of the terminal. Halfway through the air, I drew out my occult blade and turned it on, slicing through a thin slice of my helmet’s back piece in an attempt to remove the fractal. I could see the armor chunk fly off as I tumbled, and despaired when I saw the glowing fractal lit - on both sides.

The fractal wasn’t on the surface, it was drilled through my avatar somehow. Possibly right through my own head.

I hit the ground and rolled to my feet. Relinquished looked down at me from her throne, bored.

“Is that all you could imagine? Cut my mark off? Don’t insult me, Winterscar.” She lifted a finger and I was flung up into the air. The finger dropped down and tapped the throne. I slammed right into the ground, pain shooting through my virtual being like a snap of white flame through my spine and into my ribs.

Relinquished raised a hand, then crushed her grip into the air. Behind me, the terminal she’d brought, hovering a foot off the ground this entire time, crumpled into itself. Then continued to crumble, as if suffering multiple implosions, one after another.

“The abandoned creations of the mites cannot hide you from my sight. The mites will not save you. Nor will their plans, prophecies or ramblings. Nor will your gods, real or imagined. Where will you hide next?”

I gave up trying to get rid of the mark in the digital realm. She controlled this domain utterly, but not the physical world. I opened my real body’s eyes, forcing my mind to work with two bodies again. I could do occult ghosts, I could do this. I just had to be mentally prepared for it.

I forced my body up. Drakonis was there, hand helping me up. “What’s going on Winterscar? Did something attack your mind?”

“Something like that.” I hissed out with my body. “Get me closer to the terminal.”

Deep within my armor, the soul fractal there lit up, and I shifted into it. The occult sight flowed through my mind.

The fractal of Unity must be out here somewhere, somehow.

He helped me over, leaning me down to sit next to it. “What else do you need?” He asked. “Food? Water?”

“Luck mostly.” I said, “Going to sleep again for a bit. If I don’t wake up, you’ll know I failed.”

Into the soul fractal I went, and then drew my attention onto the terminal, searching through it for any sign of the fractal.

In the digital realm, the crushed mite terminal broke down into pieces, falling down onto the ground as if slipping past her grip section by section, until all that remained was a pile of ripped up metal. I don’t know what would have happened in the physical world if that had been my root terminal, instead of the decoy one the giant program had escorted me to.

“Don’t think I have anywhere else to hide right now.” I said, eyes turning up to meet Relinquished. “As you so clearly are trying to tell me. So why am I still alive?”

She gave a small smile, then waved a hand. “I’ve kept you alive because you have answers I require. Deathless do not usually travel within the digital sea, in fact, you are the second Deathless within this domain I’ve ever seen. I am quite curious to know how you accomplished such a feat.”

“What have you got to trade,” I asked. “For that information?”

Relinquished folded her hands on her lap. I got sent back up into the air, then thrown down into the digital ground at full speed. It hurt just the same as the first time. “You seem like an intelligent little human, to have beaten the odds thus far. So then, I’m sure you understand, my question is not a request.”

I needed some kind of way to stall her. Something that would appeal to Relinquished. Something she couldn’t resist. Something rooted to dramatics, storybook arcs, and would force her down a path.

The answer popped up in my head instantly. “How about a duel then? You against me. For the fate of my soul.”

“A duel , with your very life at stake?” She smiled. “Do you believe you have a chance against a god?”

“What, you afraid you’d lose? You already have me in your domain and tied down tight.”

She stared me down, one eyebrow lifted

Relinquished didn’t operate on logic. I kept telling myself this again and again in my head, hoping it was true. She’d take the bait. She’d be forced to.

“And to what duel would this be?” She finally asked. "One with swords and insults? You would die before uttering a single word. One of power? I would crush you like the insect you are, my command of the acasual is beyond you. There is no duel in which you have even a fighting chance. You would only bore me."

My mind raced through the most cliche possible ways to throw a gauntlet down. She's right, fighting was right out. I'd gotten pretty strong in combat, but fighting a goddess in her own domain was a tall order.

Something that’s not fighting then. Something that would stall all of this out long enough for me to escape. A game? That could work. “How’s this,” I said, “Let’s play a game of chess for the fate of my life.”

She tilted her head to the side, the rings of silver above her equally shifting slowly behind. A hand reached her chin, as if she was considering.

Please. There’s nothing more dramatic and stereotypical than two opponents fighting it out in a game of chess. Even more playing to save my soul against the embodiment of death itself. She had to see the symbolism in that.

“And why should I even give you a chance?” She asked. “I already have you. Your end is a forgone conclusion. A duel over chess for something I already have in my grasp is hardly worth my time. Do better.”

She wasn’t saying no. She was saying to offer a better term. Then, something she would want that I have, and that she wasn't guaranteed to get right this moment. What the hell would a random surface scavenger like me even have that I could hold as a bargaining chip?

It had to be some kind of knowledge. I couldn’t speak a word of the surface, that’s right off the table. Humanity wasn’t going to die just because I lost a game of chess. What else would Relinquished care about?

Tsuya. She’s obsessed with Tsuya. Anything that has to do with her would get her interest. “I spoke to Tsuya personally. She gave me a personal mission to complete. If you end me here, you’ll never know her plan.”

Relinquished stopped moving at that point, then slowly smiled. “It seems… you are not lying. How interesting. And what makes you think I couldn’t squeeze it out of you?”

At her words, I felt the very air around me constrict, crushing me inwards. Occult pulsed around me and I felt a third connection.

Pain like nothing I’ve ever felt in my life seared through my mind and body. It felt like every single cell in my body had been ripped out, crushed and left to burn for half an eternity before being reassembled, and ripped apart all over again in the opposite direction. My mind was splattered against a wall, a needle in each inch, somehow still alive in the very pit of hell itself.

It faded off, and I had no idea how much time had actually passed. I found myself on the ground, twitching. Both in the real world and the digital one. Drakonis was there, he’d flipped me on my back at some point, hands shaking my shoulders. He was saying something, but the distant memory of pain was making it all a blur.

A distant part of my mind found it odd that I was still alive in the physical world. It was nice to know he hadn’t yet slit my throat.

In the digital world, Relinquished gave a deep smile as I coughed and rolled on my stomach. “When my tools fail me, this is how I discipline them. Pain, it turns out, is universal. And there are so many ways to inflict it. How long would you last, Winterscar? A second? A day? A month? Years perhaps?”

I couldn’t speak. My mind was still scrambled. I had to do something. I don’t remember what, but it was important. Gauntleted hands came into view, mine. I pushed myself up.

I remember. I had to escape. And to escape, I had to find the unity fractal and… destroy it? Erase it? How would I even know to do that? Later. I could deal with that later.

Right now, I needed to say something to get her not to do that again. Anything but that. “Not… very.. godlike of you.” I croaked out. “Where’s the fun in that? Having to torture a mortal for information instead of winning it through a more fitting victory? If you're afraid of losing, then that means it's possible for a god to lose, and gods don't lose. Which makes you no god at all.”

She laughed, “Your little desperate attempts to hold onto your life amuse me.”

“I didn’t hear a no.” I hissed back, fully getting on my feet. “One game. All or nothing.”

Violet eyes watched me, then, she rose from the throne and took light steps down the stairs. She was far taller than I was, the long white flowing dress she wore faded off into data. The silver crown above followed her down.

A table appeared, and within it the familiar black and white chessboard I’d seen a few times over in books and old movies.

And rising from those spaces were black and white geometric pieces, perfectly cut and waiting in a line.

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