12 Miles Below

Book 7. Chapter 1: Rough Landing

Dear elder sister,

Did you know flapping your hands while in mid-air does not help whatsoever when it comes to falling?

Thus, I have to conclude that birds are a myth and the few hundred that I saw so far must be a trick of the eye. Because take it from me, flapping hands around does about the same as putting a heater under the night sky.

I’ll ignore feathers and bone density for now, since that would ruin my argument. I’m sure you’ll understand.

P.S. - Being hit by a very large hammer is a surprisingly good way to get from point A to point B. Would recommend, seven out of ten.

Your extremely clever and handsome brother, Keith.

That’s what I’d send Kidra if I could send her a message right now. Also, I’d send her the video footage Journey was certainly recording right about now.

“You’re quite calm for someone flying faster than a thief running with church gold.” Cathida commented. “I assume you have a landing plan already? We are going at speeds where a collision with an immovable object would leave you as red paste inside the armor. Just thought you should know deary, since Journey is outright panicking about it for you.”

“Me? Without a plan?” I gave a quick false chuckle of security. “See the thing about falling off cliffs enough times for it to be a running joke now - is that I’ve got practice.” I said that last part with the flourish of a hanger magician. Which was somewhat less impressive when I’m doing it in midair, head already pointing downwards as gravity was quickly taking over.

Then my hands went right back to flailing around, while I desperately tried to angle my direction to the giant blue lake I was flying in the general direction of. As of my mental calculations, I would be overshooting it slightly. And I still had no idea if my hand flapping was actually making a difference or not. I think armor weighed too much for any kind of air resistance gained from outstretched fingers.

“Uh huh.” Cathida said, clearly unimpressed. “Last time you had a silver haired bimbo flying off to grab you out of the air while you were bleeding out. Today, I see no sight of fake-tits anywhere. Although you aren’t bleeding this time around, admittedly.”

“Worry not, I’ve evolved past the need for Wrath to fly around.” I was now flying closer to the treeline than I was from the underground ceiling. So I had about thirty seconds before impact.

And the lake was still nowhere in my target zone.

“That’s not how evolution works.” Cathida said.

“Shush you, I would admit perhaps a day or two ago I would be a lot more worried about this situation. But I have indeed evolved my own set of wings using the traditional method Winterscar evolves anything.”

“And by that you mean you stole something.”

“And by that I mean I stole something, yes.” I confirmed. “Gonna have to figure out what to tell Drakonis when he sees me using his lash spell, I’m sure future Keith will figure it out.”

“He doesn’t know enough about your family for you to flash your House name and have it make sense.”

“No, sadly, he doesn’t. That’s something I can only get away with in the clan. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a landing to not scrap up.”

Lake was slightly off to my right, so I threw an occult lash far ahead in front of me and yanked to the right, which worked just enough to get me lined up. But I’d still be overshooting the admittedly smaller lake than I’d thought it would be.

In my defense, everything looks small from up high. And I was going really really fast.

Was I nervous? Slightly - I’d have a single shot to run my theory and if it failed for whatever reason, I would have about three seconds to come up with and execute any new backup idea. Which I didn’t have right now.

It was plan A, plan bath-landing or plan pancake.

I’d been hoping for a mountain, or some kind of sturdy rock to latch to. Instead, it was just trees under me, which were sturdy but not sturdy enough. A single lash would make any tree trunk split in half when trying to hold back four hundred pounds of metal flying faster than an airspeeder and however much the squishy human inside weighed in addition.

My armor brushed against the first of the treetops, easily cracking the wood under me without even the slightest deviation of speed. Not even a blink later, I had already crushed through a tree trunk and gone out the other way, with only a minor decrease in speed. Still on track of flying right over the lake and slamming into the shoreline past it.

Now or never. Occult pulsed around me in one giant wave as I put everything I had all at once.

First, seven different lashes came out from my arm, legs, chest and head. Every direction I could think of. Drakonis had been a Deathless so his command of the occult had been instinctive. He likely couldn’t cast this lash spell from anywhere besides his hands as it wouldn’t feel natural to him.

Me on the other hand? I had Journey inscribe the lash a few dozen times among the armor, including my palms.

But seven lashes to something weak like wood wouldn’t be enough. At the same time those lashes came out, occult wraiths streaked out of my center chest and flew off in every direction, finding more trees to sulk around, pulsing to refresh the mirror and launching a lash of their own directly at the flying metal object.

If they had all hit me, I think I’d have been just fine. Issue was most of them missed and that really sucked. I had overestimated just how good I was at aiming without the assistance of Journey, and my armor had been going very fast through the forest.

Seven lashes from myself outwards to trees, and four lashes back from the trees to me. It slowed my speed up dramatically as the different trees all groaned and bent to force me backwards. Now I went from about to overshoot the lake to clearly going to undershoot it.

Fuck, I now wish I had sucked a little more aiming these lashes. If I’d done a few less I might have a chance at the lake. For now, there goes the bath landing plan.

Then each tree snapped one after another all in sequence, faster than the last. And I was once more flying right to the ground without any breaks. I activated my emergency landing procedure, which was to scream uncontrollably and trigger my (equally stolen) shockwave fractal into the ground, hoping the blowback would also slow me down a little bit more.

It did, a tiny bit.

Four more lashes came out from my back at the same moment, one of which completely missed the desperate tree I’d aimed at. The three good lashes started once more to slow my speed from completely deadly to potentially deadly.

And then I was out of time.

I slammed into the ground hard enough to trigger Journey's shields and bounce me back up into the air. Next, I went tumbling until I hit the lake I’d been aiming at with a massive white splash of frothy water. And following right behind me were giant ripped up trees slamming all around into other trees before rolling into the lake after me.

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They floated. My armor didn’t.

“Against all odds, you’re alive.” Cathida said over my groaning, as the armor continued to sink down, trapped air quickly escaping across the armor, bubbling up in a trail behind me. “Bruises everywhere, a few muscle contusions, and some bone fractures but you bled off most of the speed before landing. Congratulations, that was somewhat workable.”

I dove a bit deeper into the soul fractal to escape the feeling of my body’s very upset response at my current antics.

Was I hurt? Yes. The HUD was showing me a ton of red and orange from my botched landing. But it wasn’t serious and there wasn’t any internal bleeding detected anywhere. Just a lot of pain in the near future.

And that was a whole lot better than my fight with that giant Feather. I wasn’t out of ideas on how to fight and kill the Feather, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve to call on. But I also had wanted to save those for Avalis the next time I ran into him. Killing his mooks with my trump cards would be exactly why he’d want to send mooks after me first.

To’Sefit was dangerous yes, but she felt less dangerous than Avalis. The scrap bastard would plot something, while To’Sefit would simply show up and ask me to die.

Ultimately that’s why I decided to escape the fight when I had a chance. Avalis knew where I was, which meant To’Orda’s failure in killing me would have him come to do the job himself. Or bring all three of them up close.

Additionally, stalling for time would give Wrath and Father more chances to get over here somehow.

And finally, I hadn’t executed my escape plan until I saw Drakonis take out the drake that Feather had been riding on. Given what I’d seen of To’Orda, he struck me as the type to prefer walking to running. It’s possible he’ll try to walk after me rather than run or fly like Avalis or To’Sefit would have done.

Of the three, To’Orda felt the safest to buy time from.

Plus he… hadn’t felt like a Feather? I’d started to panic when I saw him next to the greyroamer cub, but the giant bloke hadn’t even bothered to use a hostage or squash the cub out of annoyance. Instead, he’d taken a pause and let the little scramp go free. Which was outside of anything I’d learned from Feathers and more closely related to how Wrath would behave.

…

Okay, so maybe I hadn’t wanted to use my full kit to kill him for less than sound tactics and I was making a bunch of excuses right now. Just my gut feeling that there was something more I could do with that Feather than simply fight to the death.

There was a thunk in the back of my armor, and I realized I’d stopped sinking. Light was shining from the top of the surface, occasionally obscured by floating trunks, but overall not too far deep. My hands patted under me causing mud and sand to billow around as I stood up on the bottom of the lake.

“No enemy signs detected anywhere.” Cathida said. “Lucky you don’t have to fight anything underwater. Speed is dramatically slowed down here and there are some machines that are built to fight in water. Nasty little things, the old bat’s got some terrible memories of one particular fight in the past.”

Fortunately Cathida wasn’t asking me why I hadn’t gone all out to kill To’Orda when I had the chance. Maybe she didn’t realized I could have.

The big loaf’s main combat was centered around his hammer and manipulating his enemy into bad positions using his gravity shenanigans. But those same shenanigans would mess up his footing if applied to him.

Which I could have. I had the magnetic gravity plucks. Could have sent him floating off into the air, and then shot him with the knightbreaker or at least slashed him to pieces with my wraiths. It’s hard to twist and turn in midair.

“Remember the temple?” I asked Cathida instead, feeling my lungs wheeze a bit with the sound. Ah, cracked ribs somewhere. Fortunately I can’t feel pain right now so I’m all good.

“You think I can forget anything?”

“I’ll take that as yes then, thank you.” I said, starting a slow walk through the currents up to the shoreline again. “Back then, To’Avalis left us a channel to negotiate with him, and that was shared by To’Sefit too. Which probably means it included To’Orda.”

“Yes? Where are you going with this.” There was an accusal in her voice. She already didn’t like where I was going with this.

“You still have the channel.”

Cathida gave a deep sigh. “I wish I could say I don’t. Because you’re about to suggest something monumentally stupid.”

“I think we could use that channel to talk to To’Orda. See if I can convince him off this course somehow, or pick his brain a bit.”

“You want to negotiate. With a Feather.”

“You could probably tell he didn’t behave like one.”

The surface was getting closer and closer now, each step making the world slightly lighter.

“Lies and deceit. Feathers do anything to get ahead.” She said, and had a point.

Except. “Feathers are all universally prideful things that can’t be anything but authentic to themselves. Pretending to be anyone else is against their nature. Even Wrath had a hard time pretending to be human at first. You really think To’Orda is pretending to be different so that I would slip up and talk to him?”

She refused to give me any answer to that, which meant I had a point.

I walked out of the lake, feeling the water fall down my armor like small fleeting waterfalls up to my feet. The surrounding forest was still the neon purple haze of tree leaves, interspersed by dark wood bark and white polished stones intermixed with patches of purple moss, and regular actually normal looking dirt.

HUD showed no nearby enemies on a probing ping and neither did my soul sight show me anything hiding out in the colored bushes.

So I let myself sink to my knees and flopped around on my back, taking a moment to breathe and let the adrenalin flush out of my system. “Once again stranded in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the armor on my back. How did it get to this?”

“You want a detailed breakdown?” Cathida asked. "I’ve been keeping a list."

“No, I want to complain in peace about it, thank you. How many bruises do I have from all that?”

“Thirty two. Although Journey counts a lot of small ones as full bruises, despite me letting it know it’s being a baby about things. Young people should be sturdy. You’re not even thirty yet, come back to me when you start aching just from sleeping the wrong way for thirty minutes. Then we’ll start counting the smaller bruises.”

The HUD on my left showed me a rotating wireframe humanoid body that represented me, and as she’d mentioned, thirty two red spots were interspaced all across. Mostly by my chest and legs.

Getting back up and letting the last bits of water drip down, my HUD started lighting up red with notifications. Biohazard, it said. Which is the first time I’d ever seen a notification with that error tag.

“I know I’m a little banged up Journey, but is it really in danger of being infected?” I asked, while bringing my hands down to unhook the medical kit from my belt.

Cathida blasted up into my ear. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you deary. Gonna have to tough this one out, like a real man.”

“Har, har. Jokes aside, I should at least apply basic first aid while I’ve got the peace to do it given the notification of infection. Knowing my luck, I’ll be neck deep in danger in a few hours and this isn’t something I want to sleep on.”

“Oh there’s no joke here. And you’re not wrong about the danger part.” She chuckled. “You are wrong on the timeframe though. See, it’s not in a few hours. It’s right now.”

I narrowed my eyes out of habit. Which was a frustrating experience right now because it’s difficult to glare at a disembodied voice on the speakers. Might have a solution to that problem however, on second thought.

First thought first though: Figuring out what Cathida was hinting at. “Can you be more direct? What kind of danger are we talking about? Ominous danger, physical danger, financial danger, stranger danger, Logi with a hoversled and coffee danger? Lot of different ways for me to be terrified, I need a bit more direction before I start properly screaming.”

“Biohazard danger.”

Which, again, told me absolutely nothing new that Journey hadn’t already put in front of me. I looked around, but the entire forest looked the same as usual. Lack of animals around here though, and no bird calls. Nothing anywhere on passive sensors so no idea where the threat it was worried about was coming from.

I folded my fingers together, and tapped the indexes together in a deep show of patience. "I can see the biohazard notification on the HUD, it's very clear and congratulations to Journey for picking a lovely shade of red for it. Now, what’s it supposed to mean exactly? There’s nothing else on the prompt. Secondary notice just says ‘Foreign contaminant detected.’”

“Journey’s stating it’s noticed a high concentration of unknown biological material around you. In the air I mean. The armor’s scrubbing your personal supply and keeping the contaminant from getting in, but it’s quite pervasive. Enough so for the sensors to claim breathing here might impact your body. And since it has no medical suite to test what the heck is in the air, all the armor can do is give you the generic warning. But… if I had to guess deary, you might be in the center of the bioweapon your little bird friends were talking about. The one likely designed to kill humans. Specifically humans. Which you happen to still be, somehow. Journey’s a little stressed and anxious about that bit of knowledge.”

Oh. “Journey, Have I ever told you how happy I am with the job you’re doing? My best friend and stalwart ally in all this. Excellent work, couldn’t have lived this far without you. And I do mean that literally.”

“It wants you to know that taking off your helmet right now is highly inadvisable. But I’ll certainly take the flattery for it, go ahead and compliment me some more.”

I looked around me with renewed apprehension. Everywhere in the air was something possibly deadly. And the only thing between me and death was the relic armor, which was currently powered by a finite supply of energy.

I’m miles away from the surface, and somehow back in the same situation all the same. One bit of failure from my equipment, and the environment around me would kill me.

“Better start moving.” Cathida said, as if reading my mind.

I did.