I crouched in the underbrush, stalking my unwitting prey. Journey highlighted the little bundle of fur, using infrared vision to spot where it was.

Lunch.

A breath in and then I began my routine. The pulse of occult startled the little critter. It stood on tall legs, sniffing the air, eyes turning left and right for danger, trying to figure out which way it should run. Unfortunately for the little bugger, I was too far away and well hidden by all the foliage. Even if it had infrared vision, Journey kept a vacuum seal. In this tiny little pillar ecosystem a mile underground, humanity was the apex predator.

A pale blue wraith of myself flew out at rapid speed, flying across the ground and right through all of the shrubs. It came to a complete stop right behind the critter, who only had time to squawk and leap on reflex.

Occult pulsed again, and a second mirror image manifested from the ghost, this one swinging a sword in a quick and deadly arc through the air. The speed faster than even the Winterblossom technique. There was no such thing as air resistance to a wraith.

“Focus more on your accuracy.” Cathida huffed. “You sliced half it’s shoulder off instead of just the neck."

“In my defense, I didn’t think the chunky thing could jump that high.” I grumbled, standing up and making my way over to the decapitated rodent.

“How could you not know? You’re part rat if I remember right, deary.” She said. “Or was it a weasel? Eh, same rodent family.”

It was far larger than a pipe weasel, but smaller than a dog. Hand-holdable. With very long teeth to gnaw at the trees and dirt around here. The tail was completely bald, with little dark rings. A rat, just much fatter and more aquatic. For the past few days, they were my main source of protein, and also spare occult practice.

"In a fight, the inches between neck and shoulder isn't going to be enough." Cathida continued. "Machines can still run around with entire parts cut off, so you have to make sure you cut off the right part. And they'll also be leaping around and trying not to get cut, naturally. If they can trade a hand for a neck, they'll do that. So don't miss.”

"Yes, ma'am."

Lord Atius had banned me from using my actual weapons while searching for food. I had to use the mirror fractal for everything, right down to setting up a camp, cutting wood, and all the other mundane parts. The more I used the Occult spells, the more I grew familiar with making the best use of them. The ultimate goal is to have them be second-nature to me, like muscle memory.

For now, I had three rats, a bird, and some mushrooms with a few herbs. Should be good eating for tonight at least.

Speed was the current target now. If I used my mirror fractal and launched a regular attack, the rats would scamper away. So I had to make use of speed.

As we’d come to discover, the occult had a very strained relationship with physics. When it showed up to the playground, physics ran home crying. But occasionally, some things still made sense.

The occult ghost made by the mirror fractal had no weight. No mass. I could replicate a gun, but the occult image wouldn’t fire it even if I followed all the motions of pressing down the trigger. There was no matter to trigger a reaction, no actual bullet to fire from. And while the ghosts could phase through anything, they could still be dispelled by kicks or punches, as if enough force was enough to destabilize the occult. If fractals hadn’t been a thing, the mirror powers would be worthless. A party trick at best.

But they were a thing. And the mirror fractal did copy whatever patterns were within my armor, making them reusuable wherever it floated. Never let disadvantages get in the way of cheating. The mirror having nothing substantial about it means there’s no wind resistance either. No inertia. Gravity itself wouldn’t affect the ghost.

Thus, the ghost could move as quickly as I wanted it to and stop in ways that would shear Journey in half. The only reason the mirrors had worked similar to my own body was a built in mental model of the world that was unconsciously guiding my expectations. All it needed was a change of mind. The moment I focused on getting rid of those weights, I could start doing a lot more with the mirror fractals.

I made my way back to our cave, where Lord Atius had setup shop.

“Caught some food. Cathida can vouch I did it the right way.” I said, sitting down by the game and unhooking the fruits of my effort. Cathida had ratted me out before, early on when I just wanted to eat and hadn't mastered the mirror fractal enough.

Atius nodded, taking one of the rats and trimming the meat into sections we could eat. Leaving the rest as fish chum for later. Waste not, want not.

“You know, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing a clan lord eating scraps like this. Out here in the middle of nowhere, spending time teaching someone who’s going off to explore the underground and probably end up in a ditch, dead or worse.” I said, sticking the skewers up with mushrooms, spices and chunks of our catch. “You sure this is the best use of your time? I'll be out of the clan after Wrath is ready to continue her quest. And I have no idea where that quest ends, or how long it'll take.”

He smiled jovially, like a grandfather. “Lad, you think too much. Who’s to say I’m not doing this for myself?” He waved a hand around. “More of a vacation for me, really. No paperwork, no clan politics, only nature and training. And best of all, no hint of snow anywhere. Perhaps I might stay down here for a few years, enjoy the scenery. Stress and pressure get to us all.”

“Somehow I don’t think you will.” I said, waving a skewer at him before sticking it over the fire. "I can't imagine you doing the whole hermit in the mountains shtick."

“Questioning my aura of mystery, are we?” He asked, giving a light chuckle. “Do I seem less mythical sitting around a campfire cooking up rats to eat?”

“Well, yes.” I said, putting on the last skewer over the fire. “Hardly lordly behavior here. But, I'm open to bribes of course. We could walk back home and I'll wax poetry about sitting under a waterfall cultivating the mystery of the universe."

He chuckled. "I'll leave that to the poets to embellish. Stories generally all are."

I scoffed, "Fine, be stingy about your donations to the Winterscar cause."

"I hardly have to pay for any creative editing, lad. Whatever you'll say will always end up looking far more grand than it started as. That's how tales are told."

He had a point. "I can imagine heroes like Levitus and his golden horn laughed with their friends about stupid scrapshit in the baths in between the great trials. Maybe he even lost the horn a few times while drunk." I said. "But back to the point, why are you going this far to help me? You're still a clan lord, and have a clan full of people to look out for over a single rogue knight like me.”

“You are my people, Keith.” He said, as if it were an obvious fact. “The clan isn’t simply something I administer over, it is my home as much as it is yours. A clan teaches and prepared it's people for anything. No matter where you go, you are still part of clan Altosk. It's your birthright. Besides, a whelpling like you needs a bit of guidance before you go down there. It's quite dangerous, take it from a veteran like me. Slavers and pirates are far easier to handle.”

I thought for a moment. “Is it that dangerous?”

“Yes.” Atius said immediately. “Beyond the third strata, only Imperial crusaders, Deathless and trained mercenaries dive down. No traders, or caravans go past that point. The machines grow stronger the deeper you go. Some larger, others smaller, but all more dangerous. Past the seventh strata, only Deathless go and only because we cannot die. Most expeditions fail with a full wipe. Part of the questions I had for your friend, To’Wrathh incidentally.”

“Oh? What’d she say about it?” I know that airheaded Feather tended to hyperfocus on some things and completely miss the mountain for the snow.

He brought one of the skewers out of the fire. Fat had rendered out, dripping down the steaming chunk. With quick hands, he brought a chunk and dipped it into our makeshift sauces. “She claimed Relinquished was holding her stronger forces in reserve, leaving the humans to the cheaper lessers." He said in between mouthfuls. "They don’t have an enemy down there to fight, as far as she’s told me. Most just wander around, eternally patrolling and fending off expeditions of Deathless. What is she hiding down there that's more important than waging a full war on humanity?”

“Maybe they’re doing like the imperials are, gathering up forces for some final cataclysmic battle. Cathida won't shut up about that, all doom and gloom.”

"That sounds far more terrifying in context. Originally, To'Wrathh explained that Relinquished would send everything she had, and eradicate humanity off the map. After the protofeather rebellion, she's become far more tolerant of humanity, letting us mostly live within the first three stratas, and using the lessers to trim any city growing too large. If she is preparing for a final confrontation, how large has her real army grown over so many years?"

"Relinquished isn't quite as put together as you think. There's more going on in the background." I said, taking a chunk to eat myself. Rat meat was gamey and had an aftertaste of grass and dirt. The herbs I’d found did a good job to push that flavor down, at least a bit. Ultimately, I’d need to marinade this sort of dish in order to fix it up, which was time I didn’t have.

Lord Atius ate without complaints, two ghost images behind him practicing how far they could jump. Flying wasn’t something we’d unlocked yet, though there was no reason the images couldn’t actually soar through the sky. It was just a matter of imagination.

Another chunk was dipped into our hastily made sauce and I talked in between mouthfuls, waving the skewer around. "See, in a world controlled by mites, any machine factories she constructed could be eaten up by a passing colony the moment they found her out, and there's nothing she could do about it. A lot of logs mentioned destroyed forges and machine factories being swarmed over if she didn't bargain with the mites to hold onto it. Some of those demands are more than she could afford, the powerful the factory is, the more they want. There's a limit to how large her forces can grow each year."

I liked to imagine mites having spent months crafting a beautiful exotic shoreline, only to find out months later some machine punks had showed up, kicked all the sand, and put down an ugly factory to make their war machines. Of course the mites would take offense to that. But that was still a month that Relinquished got free reign to print out as many units as she could. Span that across the world, and add in a few centuries, there could be a sea of monsters waiting for us down in the depth.

Atius hummed, taking the last bite of his own food. "I'd heard stories about an older humanity, from before the Deathless, when Undersiders didn't have pillar hearts to hide behind. They too had to make deals with the mites to build small temporary safe spots. If the machines didn't kill them off, a mite colony returning to eradicate their village would chase them off. Mites may seem harmless, but they're a force of nature unto themselves."

"It's odd how they don't appear in any of our stories." I said, thinking back on surface traditions and songs.

Lord Atius raised an eyebrow. “That would be my doing, or rather part of what all clans must do. Mites and machines appear in quite a lot of Undersiders stories. But, part of the clan traditions is to bar the spread of such stories above ground, and pilgrims agree not to speak of the underground as a requirement before they come to the surface. It doesn't stop some leaks and rumors, but there's no need to give children and curious troublemakers more reasons to journey down and die for it."

"After learning some of what Tsuya's been up to, can't say I'm surprised." I shrugged.

Atius sighed. "It's a morbid topic that involves statistics where one decision simply saves more lives on average, while another only creates resentment, envy, and death. A net loss in almost every respect. I can't argue against the centuries of evidence surface dwellers accumulated about which traditions work and which don't, not to mention the outright lives it cost them to discover the right path forward over generations. I'd rather change the subject, it frustrates me even after all these years. Uncover anything else in the archives during your dig?”

“Other than finding out the empire was a real thing and the emperor was some kind of deity that crushed armies, nothing much. Wrath should have more info for us when we come back." I said, taking another chunk and licking my fingers. Maybe a few months ago, I'd have been more pissed off hearing that so much was kept from me just because on average more people lived. Suppose now I both had my cricket and ate it. The clan kept their traditions, and I was free to roam anywhere I wanted. "Hard to imagine people still manage to live in this world given what we lost. Without the Undercity pillar hearts they have, how would people even survive down here?”

“Very carefully.” Atius chuckled. “And with deliberate control. Undersiders have their own set of rules to maximize survival, they just happen to have far more resources to work with. You'll find on the lower stratas there are a few nomadic human settlements that still survive out in the wild, I've visited some of them even. It depends on the land and what the mites have made that could be abused. Speaking of making the most of things, while we wait for the next set of skewers to cook, it seems good time to continue control exercises, no?”

“Was hoping you'd forget if I kept bringing up random topics.” I admitted.

“I’m ancient, lad. You're not the first troublemaker I've taught. Now, go get a stick.”

Training with Atius the swordmaster was something I could win against if I threw enough of my cheats into the mix. Compared to Shadowsong or Kidra, his style was more inspired and instinctive. The long years of fighting all kinds of opponents had shown him a pattern that people tended to follow through on.

Evidently, even I fell into some category he recognized, even if I tried to break out of that mold.

With the Winterblossom technique, I would hold my own for a good amount of time until he battered past my defenses. At least the first time we had a mock duel. The next few times after, he’d already figured me out and didn’t need to do all those probing attacks to get a handle on my actions.

Once I mixed in the Rakurai technique that my knights and I had invented, the fight went lopsided in my favor. Even centuries of experience couldn’t fend off against an optimized style of combat tailor built to counter and exploit every possible weakness in the three standard styles. It technique had been deliberately made to give no chance of victory, putting the enemy into a set of checkmates that would end with them dead no matter what counter attempt they tried. Regular knights simply could not move fast enough.

If he had been able to move at the same speed as I did, that would be a different discussion completely. There’s a reason the Rakurai hadn’t been invented up until we’d gotten the winterblossom technique. The lighting style heavily relied on the enemy being physically unable to match speed, even if they knew exactly what would come. At equal speed, everything went right back to normal.

That said, training with Atius the Deathless was entirely different. With access to the Occult, weaknesses from speed were nullified when he sent out a ghost to fend off the hits he couldn’t physically get to fast enough, and he did that with ease.

If anything, it made me realize just how dangerous someone using both Occults and combat arts could be, especially when they used them interlinked at that level.

I found a nice long branch, gave it a quick cut, and brought it back to the campsite. There, Atius had brought his own branch and had been busy digging it vertically into the ground. A few steps away, I did the same on my side.

This had been one of the training exercises we’d been doing. A game of sorts.

The objective was to cut the other’s branch in half. We both took our positions a good amount of distance behind the branches.

“Action, reaction, reaction for this round. Begin.” He said, and the occult pulsed around him. A ghost sprinted forward, zipping across the ground at the same kind of speed my own mirrors could reach.

I matched his move, making my own ghost sprint forward until they reached the centerpoint between the twigs. Here was where the real fight began.

Both mirror images flickered, each time spawning a new ghost that would zip out a strike. It wasn’t a real brawl, this was the warm up. It went back and forth, as if taking turns. He would make an attack against either my mirror or my twig. In reaction, I would make an image to block his attack, and then another image to follow-up with a counterattack.

He’d repeat my own pattern, making a mirror to counter my attack, and then another to press the attack forward. This exercise wasn’t to practice the chaos of combat, but rather to continually drill being able to move fast with the images, and constantly generate new ones.

Atius could keep his mirrors going for minutes at a time. But once we discovered the means to move those mirrors faster than the laws of physics would allow for, the best strategy switched over to generating a lot of mirrors one after another, each living only for a second with one very precise and quick attack.

This let us constantly adapt to the enemy’s movements. And also, I sucked at keeping a mirror image going for anywhere more than seven seconds. The constant refreshing of the mirror fractal kept that fatigue at bay for reasons I had no idea worked, but it still slowly started to weigh into my head.

After about thirty seconds of non-stop lighting fast combat between the Occult ghosts, my focus finally wavered too much, and the image I had been working with dissolved before I could trigger the mirror fractal within it again.

Atius nodded. “Good. Improvements remain steady.”

“Thirty seconds isn’t that much.” I grumbled, nursing my headache.

“Individual beats in a duel or a fight often lasts a few seconds at best. Thirty seconds is plenty enough. If anything, I believe we should begin to train multiple mirror image uses now.”

I paled under my helmet, and the Deathless must have realized it somehow, because he laughed out loud. “Don’t be so glum, lad. I don’t mean right now. And we’ll start with easy setups. The same drills as now, except you’ll keep another mirror image standing still next to you. Same drill that we started with all these days ago. Once you can maintain that all throughout the fight, we’ll start to weave it in.”

The very first drill we’d begun studying was to keep a mirror image standing still next to me indefinitely, by constantly generating an image for a second, and re-generating it once the second had passed. I was able to get to about half an hour like this, mostly because imagining a mirror image doing nothing but standing still for the next second was trivial. At least, up until the half hour mark where my headache would really dig nails into me.

“Physical exercise now.” Atius said, still sitting down. “Begin when ready.”

I stood up, and drew out my longsword, then stalked up to him, immersing myself into the winterblossom technique in full. This was my stress relief in a way, which was probably why Atius weaved this into the training rotation often.

I took a lunge at the stick ahead of me, and feinted the strike with a twist.

A mirror image of Atius flashed into existence, darting from his sitting body right up to the branch in a blink of an eye. The image’s hand rose up to intercept where my original attack should have landed, an invisible dome outlined by the lack of occult vapor around it.

The faint worked perfectly, going right by the image, the sword whistling away at the branch from another direction.

The current image blurred, a second image appeared, hand going right to intercept. This time, I hadn’t planned another feint, so the occult edge of my blade struck against the occult dome of the mirror image, bouncing my sword back.

“All right.” I said, taking a step back, and unbuckling the spare dagger by my chest. “This time I’m going to cut that gods damned stick.”

Atius smiled. “Less words from that gullet and more fire instead, whelpling. You have until the meat is cooked. Get started.”

I did exactly that. While I couldn’t do more than one image at a time without it being more than a hand or arm, Atius didn’t have that restriction.

So when I began to really let loose with everything I had, his images multiplied, again and again, until I was fighting off an entire cloud of images all constantly catching my attacks with that dome shield, no matter how I tried to weave between his legion.

In a way, he was making use of his training time just as well as he could, drilling his own ability to use that dome shield in tandem with his own mirrors. I never saw a hint of any ghost blade or dagger, all he did was block again and again.

When the next set of skewers were done cooking, I hadn’t even so much as coughed on the bloody stick.

One day I’d be at that level. It was going to be a long road until then, but at least I knew what the ultimate build would look like. And paired with my new weapons tailor built to abuse this, I’d hopefully be on the same level as Wrath or Kidra.

Days went by like this. Eat, train, sleep, repeat. Everything and anything could be turned into a practice exercise, and Atius capitalized on it all.

Halfway through a story about the fourth strata during one of our few breaks, Atius stopped midsentense and tilted his head. “Seems we have visitors.”

That got my head tilted. “Danger?”

The old Deathless stood up, grumbling under his beard. “If danger always announced itself like this, it would cease being dangerous. Nonetheless, get your sword out, just in case.”

My sword came out easily out of the belt loop, and Journey’s helmet was put back on, HUD lighting up again, pointing out disturbances further off.

Something was stumbling through the dense foliage. Had to be big, considering it was stopping every few feet to free itself of branches and other bits. A branch creaked, and then snapped out in the distance. Right after was a light yelp, like a woman’s voice. “You did that on purpose, you godless brute!”

That was… Tamery? Wrath’s secretary, friend, assistant-person.

“Peh, it’s that brat again.” Cathida hissed out in my helmet. “The machine-lover lackey. Lovely.”

A moment later, a white clawed hand reached out past the tree trunk, grabbing it firmly, and pulling forward. The metal mass moved up, appearing from the dim forest, trailing vines and broken branches.

On top was a very upset Tamery, fussing with her hair, trying to get things out of it.

The duo paused when they spotted us.

“Ah, well that was faster than I thought.” She said. “Figured we’d be walking around for a few days trying to find the sage in the mountains, or something like that. Little anti-climatic. I guess the smoke really was exactly what it looked like.”

“Lady Tammery.” Lord Atius politely greeted. “And, if I recall right, the machine you’re on top of referred to itself as Yrob?”

The machine in question gave a slow nod. “Yes. The lady has message. For you.”

A download icon appeared on my HUD and I accepted the request without issue. A moment later Cathida started laughing.

“What?” I asked, “Something funny?”

“That metal tit-job’s looking to speak to the goddess. She asking to get smited out of existence?” Cathida said, out on speakers. “Fine by me, I wish her all the best.”

“Lady To’Wrathh,” Tamery said, voice flat, “Is looking for friends. I had no idea the Imperial goddess was an actual entity, but she seems certain about it. Myself, I’m hoping the literal goddess is more civilized than the crusaders who serve her.”

Cathida cackled, “You think you can shame me into being nice? Lick my metal plated ass, deary. I know you’re good for it, practice and all that. The silver bimbo keeps you around for a reason.”

Tamery frowned for a moment, before giving an evil smile. It was clear to me she took Cathida up as a challenge. Which was not good.

“Hang on, let’s not start this up.” I said, hands placating. “Cathida never shuts up, you get in a row with her, she’ll keep going forever. Trust me, I tried once just to see what would happen.”

Nobody wins against Cathida in a game of insult chicken.

Yrob tilted his head. “Angry lady in armor.” He said. “We well know.”

“What did she mean by Wrath wanting to talk to the goddess?” I asked before Cathida could get started on this. Introducing Tsuya and Wrath seemed like a bad idea right now. For all I knew, Tsuya could instantly squash Wrath the moment they met, considering it a free meal. I know that gold goddess was absolutely ruthless when she needed to be, considering she nearly killed me without question.

“To’Wrathh said she needed to talk to the imperial goddess, and that the crusader in your armor would probably know how to. Since, she was part of the team holding some kind of bunker where you talked to the goddess? I’m not exactly sure the details, I was having a good night’s sleep before Yrob here woke me up.”

“Oh, that’s rich.” Cathida gloated. “The little calculator wants my help, hmm?”

“Cathida…” I said, warning her. “We’re on the same side here.”

She snorted. “Fine fine, she wants to talk to the goddess and get squashed, let her be my guest. There’s only one way I know that my order was able to speak to the goddess. Through shrines hidden from Relinquished. You’re going to need to find one of those first.”

“I know where one is.” I said, realizing what Cathida was talking about.

The same place Cathida took her fifth vow. The only place Tsuya would believe was safe to hide from Relinquished.

Guess she hid more things up there than surface clans. Looks like we get to go home early.

Next chapter - To'Sefit (T)