The armor was nearly identical to the original Winterscar family armor, but there was something more to it. The angular curves of the plating just slightly sharper, looking more feral than any armor. The red sigil looked more like old blood dried out rather than a fresh coat of paint. The way the knight walked resonated with silent danger.

Journey’s HUD linked up to it, name appearing under. A familiar callsign.

“Ah, you must be the third. I was wondering where you were hiding.” Avalis said. “I’ve heard your voice advising him again and again, but no matter where I looked for you with my forces, I couldn’t find you. It’s a statistical wonder you’ve managed to hide from an entire army.”

“I don’t hide.” Father said, walking across the bridge, closing the distance, drawing two longswords in a flourish, a twin halo of blue I’d seen hundreds of times before, only far longer than his dagger. Occult crackled around him, the shield fractals inscribed on the plate like all other knights in my House.

Father passed by my side, armor somehow looming over me.

“Fine.” Avalis said, as if he couldn’t be bothered with anything anymore. “What’s one more human to the talley? If you were any true danger, you’d have been at his side fighting earlier.”

Father didn’t answer, instead he began to sprint forward.

Avalis met the charge, swinging the chain forward, mace end flying off course, before his other hand yanked the chain back to hook out for Father.

With a side step, the mace end missed the mark, landing right by his foot, deep into the ground. Father plunged down with one longsword, directly through the chain links. His armored greave followed behind, down on the fanged tip.

The mace detonated a pulse of occult. Father’s boot stomped straight through the explosion, the fractal of shields lighting brightly on his heel. His other blade snaked for the exposed parts of the pinned weapon.

Avalis screamed in panic, yanking his weapon back with every bit of power the Feather had in his system. It was enough to rip the ground apart.

And also anticipated.

Father leaped with the pull, leaping forward, sprinting across the gap the moment he landed, the other blade readying in action to cut through Avalis as he soared directly in his path.

Avalis couldn’t go invulnerable. Not with Father keeping pace with the retreating chain, his blade still firmly lodged inside one of the links. Connected back to him in the end.

And the Feather had no shields, he’d lost those in the fight with me. His longsword snapped out to parry Father’s, the melee beginning in earnest. The Feather snarling with each strike, while Father matched him, a silent opponent.

Cathida had held her own against him for the short while she commanded my armor. With my added occult mirrors, she was even winning.

Father was winning all on his own. His strikes were savage with fury, each powerful enough to ring out in the air. He swung the weapons faster than any man could, and with more force than any occult weapon should have been able to handle.

Avalis fought back, straining his systems to the limit. The battle was one of survival for the Feather, as Father wasn’t after a lucky blow or a surprise strike - he wanted Avalis dead, and every move he made was to tie down the Feather’s ability to fade away long enough for a killing stroke.

A failed dodge forced Avalis to parry, and Father raked at him with both swords in tandem, striking with each at slight angles to the other. The machine blade blocked one angle, and Father flicked his other blade out of his hand, letting it flow with the current motion, wrapping around the flat of Avalis’s blade. The occult edge cut through the unguarded flat, and Avalis was forced to backpedal further or be caught by the freely spinning blade.

Avalis was left with a glorified dagger. He stared at it, as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. The new shortened edge lighting bright occult blue.

But failing to pay attention to Tenisent Winterscar was a fatal error for most people.

The occult dagger flashed through Avalis’s head, the Feather just fast enough to fade away a second before that blade could cut through his forehead.

He reappeared quickly, instantly pulled back into the melee with Father’s blades seeking out weakness. Air vented harder behind the machine armor. Whenever happened when he turned immaterial - heat didn’t escape anywhere if what I was seeing was right. It remained trapped inside his systems, burning away at him.

Avalis battled back against a flurry of surgical strikes, finding his chain once again locked. A swift kick in his knee joint had forced the Feather down on the ground, where the other longsword stabbed straight down through Avalis’s dagger hand, pinned him against the ground.

Violet eyes snapped up, staring at Father’s own faceless helmet inches away, realizing the danger. A fractal lit to life on the relic armor, covering the entire helmet, looming over him.

A torrent of superheated air and flame streamed forward, wrapping around Avalis point-blank, licking past his neck, burning into even his chest and arms. He turned invulnerable again in panic, diving down into the skyscraper to escape. And Father was dragged with him, connected between their locked weapons.

Last thing I saw was his disembodied hand stabbing one mite-made sword straight down as the two sank down into the skyscraper, like two condemned souls dragged down into hell, eternally locked into a bloodbath.

The world went oddly quiet. Nothing but screamer shells and broken ground remained around me.

“Journey?” I asked in the quiet. “Can you unlock yourself now?”

“Negative.” It answered back.

All right. I got this far, just needed to survive a little longer. It was fifty fifty odds if Father could single handedly defeat Avalis. The bastard was a Feather, that automatically put him above the paygrade of every single knight in the clan. Though he had taken a heavy amount of damage against my images and was at his limit with the heat situation.

Father was a disembodied spirit of the greatest swordsman the clan had ever seen, piloting a relic armor without any limits to speed other than sheer hardware, and had full access to the occult the same way the rest of us did. Was that enough?

I wanted to believe. But deep down, I knew I had to prepare in the event it wasn’t. Father was still only one person. Feathers were in a different league, and our own wasn’t returning anytime soon.

“M’lord!” The comms crackled. The Winterscar knights. “We’re on our way down, hold tight for a few more minutes, only need to eliminate some stragglers. We’ll get you out of the field soon enough. Hold tight. If you can, remove the dead armor. We’ll cut you out of it if you can't.”

“Sounds good. Don’t worry, I’m not going to wander off this time. Swear on the gods.”

On my HUD I saw Father’s name go from green to orange. Damage reports returning. Integrity reports showing his armor slowly dropping, hits appearing in batches. Had to get off this bridge and crawl my way to the knights. After that, we could run around in circles in the world’s deadliest game of hide and seek until Wrath was fixed and then hope she could finish off Avalis.

Had to get out of Journey. Even now, even here, there had to be something I could pull out of my box of scrapshit. My head muddled through, an idea taking shape.

I’d been used to using the mirror fractal within my chestplate, almost to the point it was second nature to reach out for it. Now it was dead. But my armshield still had dozens of small fractals inscribed inside, copies in case this happened. One of those copies was the mirror fractal.

I tapped into it. It grew from the armguard instead of the chestplate, but the results were still the same. The images moved to my imagination, not my reality. I couldn’t move, but that had nothing on the images.

The armguard lit up, occult edge ready to cut. I brought it down with precision, right on my legplates. Where the power cells were.

“Sorry buddy, I’m sure you understand.”

“Affirmative.” The armor answered back.

The power cells on both legplates dropped straight down as I cut through their moorings. One hit a raised crack and wedged itself between a ripped up vine and a chunk of broken off concrete. The other bounced a few times, then rolled straight off the edge.

Journey went limp, falling on knees and then teetering forwards. HUD and vision going black, as the helmet turned off.

It left me stranded in the armguard, afraid of stepping back into my unconscious body. I knew what was waiting for me there. Pain and agony.

My body was not in the best state, and I’d gotten firsthand experience with that. Problem was that Journey was offline for good now. Which meant it wasn’t moving anymore. If I wanted to take the armor off, I’d need to do it myself.

I grit my proverbial teeth and dove back into my body.

The pain was there, reminding me of every broken bone and fracture in my battered self. I groaned. “Okay… okay. Point made. Stop the hurt please.”

Of course, my body being a dumb sack of meat, didn’t listen.

Extracting the helmet was an ordeal. Fresh air felt nice, but everything smelled like burned oil.

The rest of the armor was painstakingly peeled off with ginger hands.

Far above the overwatch tower, even without the helmet I could notice sounds from the tower overlook. One of the windows shattered, and the flailing body of a Screamer was tossed off, falling straight into the abyss below. That must be the Winterscar knights, making their way through the machine infested towers. Couldn’t contact them anymore, Journey was dead. Either way, once they got to me, I’d have that much more options.

Sound of glass shattered behind me. I flopped my head to the side. Eyes locked onto a soot-covered hand gripping the edge of the broken panel. A moment later, two baleful eyes of glowing violet emerged, followed by the rest of the Feather and I felt my heart sink down at the sight.

Of course he’d somehow survive and make it my problem again. “Couldn’t just keel over and die like anyone reasonable would have by now, huh?” I coughed out.

Avalis looked about as put together as I did. Armor covered in scorch marks. Deep cuts ran across the plating, segments outright missing. One massive gash ran from his throat down to his torso, leaking black oil. The glowering hatred was new on his face, different from the old impassive gaze. I think I really warmed up to him after all this time.

Behind him, the occult chain rattled up and out of the hole he’d crawled out of, slinking back into the Feather’s hilt. He dragged himself up, putting effort into the movements.

“What a coincidence.” He said, his voice cold with barely restrained anger leaking through the edges. “I’d been thinking the same about you. Unfortunately for you, I’m still walking. And you’re not. For the number of times you’ve managed to slip right past death, I think you’ve finally run out of lives.”

He took a step forward, then staggered, an occult longsword ripping through his chestplate. Surprised flickered for a moment, before he twisted and ducked, just as the longsword sliced up.

Father stood behind him, the armor looking like a barely held together mess. Synthetic muscles frayed in strands across the exposed plating. Seven massive holes had been punched through the armor, including one where his heart should have been. The pale blue light of occult fractals inscribed inside the armor were shining dimly through the holes.

The longsword still moved, cutting up, speeding straight for Avalis’s throat and head. The Feather moved quickly enough in his duck, letting the weapon rip free from his right upper ribcage instead.

A fatal wound for any human, and something a Feather could easily walk off.

The longsword redirected, falling back down on the machine like a guillotine, constantly seeking out his throat. Avalis was faster. He struck back, using his prior twist to slam an open hand directly around Father’s helmet. The force of a machine easily overpowered the armor, lifting him off his feet, the longsword losing its aim.

Father’s helmet slammed into the ground, cracks of black glass radiating from the impact point. “How are you still alive!? HOW? What are you?!” Avalis screamed, then immediately flinched to the right, narrowly avoiding another stab from the longsword.

He still held onto the helmet. His fingers flexed, the relic armor helmet breaking apart under. Then he slammed the hilt of his chain straight through the helmet, shattering it. The armor went limp.

Machine eyes stared down at the destroyed armor. Searching. “No blood? Where is the blood. There has to be blood. Did he vanish? How did he vanish? Mental attack? Hallucination?” There was an unhinged crack in his voice as the Feather muttered to himself, eyes searching through the shattered pieces of helmet.

The armor moved. A sword stabbed straight for the Feather’s head again. He slapped it aside with his own occult chain, the move done on reflex and without thought. In doing so, he left himself wide open for Father’s follow-up. He must have realized it a moment later, violet eyes widening as his other hand tried to protect against whatever was coming next.

Too late. The headless armor’s other hand snapped out. Grabbing Avalis’s throat in a vice grip, squeezing, occult crackling around the plated fingers.

Next chapter - Winterscar Red