12 Miles Below

Book 5. Chapter 38: Polish

"Oh, you really pissed him off this time." Cathida cackled as I sprinted for my life through the catwalks. "Shouldn't have tried to run! You know he absolutely hates cowards above all."

"I'm not running!" I yelled out, "This is a tactical retreat, to get range, and... more range."

“You have no plan.” She said.

“We were in these tunnels just yesterday you crazy old bat, you know exactly where I’m going.”

Now who’s being dramatic?

"Convincing argument, pleshsquire. But hiding in a corner is a silvered plan at best."

"Actually, that's a viable strategy that I used against Avalis before. And guess what? I’m still alive and he’s a scraphead floating around the digital sea somewhere."

Now, Journey could run fucking fast. But Feathers could run really fucking fast. Regardless of the bickering, I was trying to build space between me and a Feather, and that was not a viable long term strategy.

I swung straight off of the catwalk, down into a deeper section. Rime and frost coating everything since this was the unheated sections of the clan. It also meant they were practically uncharted, so I was making use of my prior map knowledge against his speed.

The blast door up ahead had a green light blinking in standby. These doors were built to isolate sections of a colony that got compromised. Thick and thermal proof, with connecting walls that followed that same rigid requirement. An entire clan could get wiped off the face of the freeze if any of these had weakpoints.

I reached the final stretch just as I could see the concept of a Feather drop down behind and begin a full on sprint to catch me.

Father was many things - but the only ranged means of attack he had were rifles, and those didn't work on armor. He'd need to be up close in order to be effective, so that was my main plan - keep him anywhere else but up close.

Past the blast door I slipped, sliding under the half-closed gateway and triggering the rest of the door to seal behind me. It clunked into the ground right as Father reached stabbing range.

And so did the blast door further off behind him. Sealing him in. I'd mapped many of these old doorways out, and had made sure power was reconnected down here for this exact reason.

"Good job deary." Cathida said. "Now you have a few inches of metal separating you from someone who can rip through metal with his fingers - and doesn't take too kindly to being trapped in a box. What next in your brilliant plan this time?"

“Everyone's a critic.” I muttered, already getting on with phase two. There wasn't any punching behind me anyhow, Father was a lot more pragmatic than that. Instead, an occult blade sliced straight through and began to slowly cut a pathway through. He hadn’t wasted any time testing if he could open the door or not the normal way.

Maybe about ten or twenty seconds to work with. I unhooked the knightbreaker launcher from my back, and yanked out the round itself. Small thing for such a massive damage payoff. A few clicks and the chains unwrapped. Then I took one of my blades and rammed it straight through the round, breaking the craftsmanship inside but leaving me with a cudgel like abomination held on a hilt.

Was this effective? Absolutely not, if I tried swinging this, it would slide right off the blade and go flying. But keeping it together wasn't the main idea. What really mattered is that I had a safe hilt to handle it from, and I didn't slice through anything that powered the chains themselves. And that was all I'd need.

A wall between me and Father. And a safe way to handle a stupidly dangerous weapon.

Occult pulsed around me. The mirror fractal surged to life, copying ghosts of me. They walked straight through the doorway being sliced through, arms swinging their copy of the improvised anti-Feather prototype weapon, number 03, name pending.

Father was not pleased. And not blind either. He instantly peeled off, right as the ghosts all sliced through the air like a horror movie.

The imrpovised weapon, at least, worked exactly as I'd hoped. Friction, gravity, none of that mattered or affected occult ghosts. There was no threat of the knightbreaker round slipping off, even with the ghosts swinging far faster than I could with a relic armor. The chains lit to life at my side, and equally lit to life across all the mirror images.

A few dozen chains all crashed through, some ripping across other mirrors, breaking their cohesion. That didn't matter since I was now stationary, safe and had plenty of breathing room to really focus on hammering down Father.

Flames and occult chains raced after him. He moved, twisted, ducked, and leaped from wall to wall like a trapped cat in a bag, and the ghosts followed behind him just as fast. His own speed was slowing down as the superheated air began doing the work of stripping away his overclocking.

"Just get hit once you stubborn old bastard." I hissed under my breath, focusing on sending more and more mirror images, or outright replicating my occult cudgel in two or three mal-formed arms off some images, just for extra swings of the chain. “One single hit is all I’m asking for.”

All I needed was to strip his shield. If I could do that, the occult shotgun would end him up close if he managed to catch me, and if he lurked further off, the occult submachine gun at my side had a full clip of occult bullets ready to rip into him from a distance.

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His shield was all that was stopping me from winning. And that's exactly what the chains and confined space was made for.

I couldn't see exactly what was going on behind that door, only the occult sight gave me anything to work with. So there was some surprise to see a blade being thrown by him directly upwards, seemingly into nothing, only to have it arc straight down and slice an entire vertical line through the blast door entry, before flying back into his hand as if pulled by some invisible hand.

Took me a few seconds to understand what the hell happened, and only after he'd done it a second time, cutting another vertical line further right.

He had some kind of wire attached to the hilt. Then he'd swing it like a whip, probably using Feather ratshit abilities to calculate exactly how much string he needed to execute a perfect cut. Great, he was also adding more tricks to his pool of bullshit to pull from. That should be illegal.

The next cut came at a horizontal line, connecting the top of the vertical lines, and showing exactly what he planned to do - slice a square into the wall and shove it straight in. At which point he'd be free to beat me up to a pulp.

So the moment the slice came, I had my mirror images all dogpile and swing through the air between his hand and hilt. One of the swings must have caught the wire, because the sword didn't cut a complete line from point to point, ending up halfway through before the blade remained embedded into the doorway, occult power turned off.

My ghosts all turned and dogpiled further in on him, chains flailing around wildly in every direction. Rat bastard still managed to avoid it all, although not without paying a price of being out of position.

Keeping this many occult ghosts running around was taxing me heavily. I couldn't do a full twelve like Atius, but four of them constantly recreating new images was manageable and somewhat sustainable even.

His second blade spun through the air in the other direction, slicing through the doorway and reaching where the first one had, cutting it in half in the process before ending up stuck as well, once I severed the wire. Could even see it in the occult sight now that I knew what to look for.

Down two blades, one broken. Stuck in a room with four occult ghosts constantly swinging a dozen deadly chains at him while filling the room with flames.

He ran a straight line, directly at the half-broken down blast door. I moved all four ghosts in his way, chains sweeping down in all directions as if I were warding away the devil.

Occult pulsed around him. A trail of blue followed behind his eyes, and his movements changed.

I recognized that occult spell. One that Atius used to temporarily equal his skills with To'Aacar's own stupid speed.

He leaped straight through the four occult ghosts, twisting in midair in just the right way to avoid each chain, one foot outright kicking one of the ghosts, dispersing it and the occult chains that were about to wrap around his chest.

Then he was past my wall of occult blades, and slammed straight into the half-broken doorway. One hand grabbing the hilt of his discard sword, a cloud of black twirling around the hilt as he swung it out in one swift motion that both cut the remaining section of wall, and let him then swing the blade out in one large semi-circle, the wire remade on the spot.

The arc cleaved through a few ghosts, but not all.

He continued the twist, reeling the blade back into his hand while he turned the full motion into a roundhouse kick that slammed straight into the gate segment, launching it right off the moorings.

Bad luck on my part - I was just about a foot behind it. Which might have been his intention. So, the giant chunk of metal slammed right into me, carried me off with it, and then flattened me under it as we skidded together, like a terribly cooked pancake.

I let Journey handle keeping me alive from what would have squashed anyone else. Sparks and painting getting ripped off as a few thousand pounds pushed down against the armor. My focus was on the occult ghosts, trying one last time to just touch him lightly. This time, I was ready to avoid a swinging pendulum sword.

The ghosts leaped for his head. He continued the turn, foot slamming back down on the ground for stability, blade lifted up. Occult pulsed again, and flowed into the weapon. He swung right as the ghost closed in.

A thick wave of occult arced out from his swing, flying out and slamming through each ghost on the path out. They vanished, dispersed. Leaving him free reign to move about uncontested.

The doorway pinning me down was slowly pushed up and off of me. Relic armor was powerful, but that was one heavy chunk of metal to push against. By the time I was free, Father stood above me, glaring down.

More or less beat at this point, I decided to go for broke. Actually lifting my hand up to aim the shotgun at his face would telegraph my attack with about the same subtlety as a wasp flying around the canteen center table. Instead, I lifted my forearm, using the elbow to stabilize my aim and opened fire with my occult shotgun, all in under a second.

Given the superheated air around us, that really was a second to him. Thirty seven compressed disks were outright cannonballed straight out, slamming into his shield and flattening out into straight lines, occult edges across each of the flexible materials.

Father flared his shields, tilted to the side and let the majority of the shells slide across and off. Which gave me some great ideas on what to improve on to avoid this issue, and absolutely nothing to survive the current predicament. Took out about thirty percent of his total shield in that glancing hit, and still seventy percent left to go.

"Dead." Cathida said.

Father tapped his remaining blade on my helmet. "Dead." He agreed.

"I was so gods damned close. Seventy percent!" I hissed, nursing the tea in my mug. "Just had to land one hit on him. Just one gods damned hit. That's all I'm asking, strip his shield off and then I can just hose him down with bullets, grenades, trashcans, doorways, weasels, anything. It’s all open hunting at that point."

"You are on the correct path." Wrath said, equally testing a set of drinks before her. She'd come a long way, now knowing not to eat the cups even if I tried to goad her into it. "However, given the footage you’ve provided, I would make a case that trapping a Feather is not always possible or reliable. Success in this condition would not have passed Tenisent's requirements."

"It would give me a moral boost to see him die. At least just once. Just a little bit of murder, I'm not even asking for that much." I said, pinching my fingers together. “Partially just to know he can be killed in the first place. Him being able to use the occult like I can complicates things by a ton already."

"That he had to use those abilities means you are getting closer, deary. Good job on that front."

"... Was that actual praise from Cathida of all people I hear?" I asked, turning to Wrath. "Am I hallucinating?"

Wrath shook her head. "I heard the same message and confirm."

"Peh, settle down kids," Cathida grumbled. "I can't always stomp all over you two." A pause. "It is an elder's responsibility to be gracious after all."

I took another long swing of the caffeinated tea, hoping it would give me that extra bit of energy for the rest of the day. "What am I missing? How do I even counter him using my own set of occult spells against me?"

“More occult.” Cathida offered.

“Additional specialized weaponry.” Wrath said at the same time.

“Also better defenses.” Cathida added. “Weapons you had were already sufficient, only that you can’t survive for scrap if he gets in close enough. If you can outlast him, eventually one of your hockus pockus spells will land.”

Wrath nodded. “I concur with the engram. Additional defenses with the intention to stall Tenisent may be the key to surviving an encounter with any Feather.”

I had to agree with them on that. Every fight so far has been a cat and rat game, where the moment his claws are close enough to yank my tail, I was done for. If I could turn that around, I might just make it. “Suggestions?”

“More. Occult.” Cathida repeated. “Think about it, you have an entire fractal dedicated to making a shield. Use that.”

“Out of every spell I’ve got to work with, that’s the only one I’m shit at.” I countered. “Can’t even hold a blade off for more than a second before it exhausts me. I’m not Sagrius.”

Wrath raised her head at that. She had an idea. “This is correct, you are not Sagrius. However, it is still possible to carry a Sagrius with you into combat. If I remember correctly, human souls are far more moveable than artificial ones. Why not request for some of the knights to assist you in the defense?”

“I… on hindsight, that makes too much sense.” I said, putting my finger down. Sagrius had a few dozen knights squirreled away in there, I could ask two or even three to come with me and help keep me safe. Would be weird to carry people so close to me, but Cathida was somewhat similar to that already and she was constantly watching everything I did. Having a few others do the same wouldn't be too drastic of a change. “I’ll go talk to him tomorrow morning. See if I can’t bribe any of the ghosts he’s got to pack up and move in here.”

Cathida stayed quiet. Then groaned. “All right, I admit, toaster-bimbo has a moderately workable idea.”

“All in favor of the new plan, say aye.”

Of course, I was already sending Sagrius a message before I even waited for an answer. I was going to drag every last bit of advantages I had, until I could put father down in the freeze.

Today, I got him down to seventy percent. Tomorrow, might get even closer.

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