12 Miles Below

"Only Urs had the fractal at that time, so they had no idea about that limit. When he tried it out and saw just how utterly powerful his abilities had become, they all thought it would remain constant with everyone it was given to. Why wouldn't they? First person in line to be granted that fractal was the person that would best wield it in the entire world: That time period’s greatest occult master, a brilliant tactician, current leader of a budding empire, and royal pain in my ass that personally squashed me twenty seven times at my peak: Talen, now turned into occult-god Talen, first true emperor of the Imperials." Aztu gave me a thumbs up, “The man was insane, or rather way too sane. Even went through old history books to dredge up old human history, something poetic about bringing back the greatest empire humanity had. But, you know how the history goes in the end. He almost beat Relinquished with half the power he could have used. If it had been the full fractal of Resolve, he'd have done it.”

"Why didn’t Urs didn’t pitch into the fight?” If Talen was one half, it only made sense to pull in the other half. Urs was a warrior too, he’d lived a life exploring and fighting machines at that point.

“You’re forgetting, Urs wasn’t a warrior.” Aztu shook her head, hand then pointing at me. “You are maybe seven or eight times more of a warrior than he was. And that time period required people who could both fight and build. He could do the building, but if his weapons didn’t immediately outright kill his enemy, he wasn’t winning that fight. You spent your life learning to fight, he spent his life hiding away and focusing on building things.”

I could follow that, “Different skillsets.” I said, setting the bottle down again. This one I’d tried to pulse the occult out while thinking of all drunk shenanigans and trying to have it flow through the occult pulse into the bottle. Occult whisps flowed away from the bottle, rapidly dissipating out into the digital sea.

She brought my bottle up to her nose, and sniffed the top of it. Then shook her head and put it back down. Another failure.

“If they could go back in time, I think Urs would have ended his life early, so that the full power of Resolve would imbue Talen instead of being split between them. Unfortunately, Tsuya and him were hard at work to modify the fractal into something they could imbue the regular soldiers without the drawback, thinking that was the direction they needed to go. And Talen was winning at the time even at half power. The human empire spread across almost all of the world for a reason. They never thought things were doomed enough for one of them to die.”

“But after the first Feathers came out?”

Things would have taken a turn for the worst at that point.

“No, even with us out in the field we were still slowly losing ground. Once A57 came out, his investigation uncovered what Resolve was and its limits, his priority was to lean into that instead. Intentionally done so that nobody would ever think Urs had to die. His second priority was making sure that neither Talen or Urs ever truly died either, else he might have to deal with a fully powered human emperor in the future.”

Aztu nodded. “That’s how A57 both beat the emperor and made sure he didn’t die to empower Urs. Stripped him of memories, identity - everything but the most deep aspects of his mind that were too closely tied with Resolve. Then led him away from anyone who could help, having him wander around at the very bottom of the world where no human could get to him. He's now the living embodiment of a fractal, with fragments of the man named Talen. Rest of his soul is gone. It went from humanity slowly winning, to instant defeat. Urs tried to step in but, well…”

“He wasn’t a soldier.”

Aztu looked mildly amused at that, shrugging her shoulders, hands spread out to match. “Nope, very first attempt to lead an army, and he was caught and trapped by A57. I don’t know where he is, and I think Relinquished doesn’t know either. A57 knew anyone could be killed, including himself, I think he stuck Urs somewhere nobody could find him again and then deleted all records of it from everyone’s minds including his own.”

“Ultimate asset denial.”

“Yep. They did that a lot back then, on both sides.” Aztu shrugged. “Tsyua could try to give the fractal of Resolve to a third person, but she’s holding off on that in case they could find Urs and Talen somehow before. Not sure why, I’d have done something different personally, but Tsyua’s Tsyua.”

“Maybe she did? The Deathless came after.” I said, thinking it through.

“They were around at my time, I got to fight side by side with many of them. All trapped or insane now, humans don't survive seven hundred years with that much grace. But I did see how the generations went. I know they didn’t inherit the full power of Talen and Urs. It’s a derivation of it that Urs came up in theory, and Tsyua expanded it out, tinkering with it constantly.” Aztu stopped and hummed. “You know the division fractal you use in your blades? That’s just the basic version of it.”

“I’m aware, I saw the full version in effect.”

I’d used it to destroy To’Aacar. And nearly To’Sefit too. The destruction capable from the true fractal of division was leagues beyond what the derivation inside occult blades could do.

“Fractals are like that, there’s alternate versions of them that do more or less. Don’t ask me the specifics for that, Tsyua didn’t tell me every single plan she had. But she does tinker with it a lot. I just think she never messed with the full fractal of Resolve, in fear of messing it up.”

My next attempt at the occult bottle was just to pulse the occult and try to grab it with willpower, shoving it into the bottle along with my memories. Like pouring two different drinks from both hands into one cup. Wasn’t sure if it was working, but it certainly looked interesting.

“On thing I’m not following on all this.” I said, as the occult crackled around my left hand, flowing like mist down all over the virtual bottle.

“Wow, really? Just one thing? What a smart little human you are.” She said just as I’d considered my experiment mostly finished.

I saw where her gaze was, and held up the bottle, shaking it. “You’re just sweet talking to me for the bottle.”

The empty bottle in my hand. The occult was certainly pretty, but I also knew ripples and crackling around me tended to be just visual. Like light being released from an explosion, spare energy that had to go somewhere.

“Of course I am, there’s no better cause out there for an old crippled retiree like me. Anyhow, your question?”

“Why didn’t she take on the fractal herself?” I asked. “Tsyua I mean. She knew about it, and she’s still kicking over heaters and insulting logi around here.” I handed her the bottle, which she snatched out of my hands as fast as a snake.

“Right, but you’re forgetting one tiny little detail - she doesn’t have a body.” Aztu sniffed the top, then put my bottle back on the table like it was a hissing snake of its own. Not that way either then. “She’s like me, trapped in the digital sea. If she’s caught by Relinquished, that fractal could be torn out of her and then humanity is screwed. Imagine a Feather with the full power of Resolve? Or Relinquished making a body for herself and then imbuming herself with Resolve? Too easy in the sea to work around souls, as you’ve no doubt learned from experience.”

That… made a little bit of sense to me. I knew Wrath had a hard time moving anywhere outside her soul fractal. Machines were built like a mirror to humans. We could reach out to occult fractals, while they had to make occult fractals reach out to them. One way was clearly easier in general. The digital sea seemed more loose and inter-connected like the machines needed it to be. “And I’m guessing Urs was barred from the sea after he stamped the Resolve fractal into his soul?”

She gave a thumbs up. “Yep, soon as Tsuya and Urs realized what they had on their hands, Urs made a vow never to step foot in the digital sea again. Nowhere where any machine could ever see his soul. And Tsuya probably made a few kill switches within herself so if she's ever compromised that information goes poof.”

Thoughts came through me, and I felt I could see Tsyua’s ultimate design. The Deathless. Clan Lord Atius couldn’t feel his soul, or move it around. It wasn't some limitation to prevent them from using more than four occult spells. It was a byproduct of Tsuya restricting their access to the digital sea. So that they'd never be in a position where Relinquished could examine their souls. Even with the weaker versions of Resolve, Tsuya didn’t take any chances.

"Relinquished couldn't just cut a fractal of Unity into their skin and then attack them from there?"

Aztu shook her head. "She'd connect with the concept of a human body. Not the soul. Can you think of any other way?"

I thought about it. If I reached out with a soul tendril, then I'd easily touch someone el- oh wait. Machines can't do that.

No, Relinquished would need a human traitor of some kind, who knew about soul fractals, could move around and... how'd they be able to understand the mathematics required for a meta-fractal etched on a soul from just how it looks to their vision in the soul sight? Or worse - what if this was an equation that couldn't be mapped to mathematics? Something that required a soul as the writing medium might have very strange properties required that didn't map to dimensions mathematics could model.

“And that’s that for Urs as far as my knowledge goes.” Aztu said, leaning back on her couch, arms behind her back. “Half-machine half-human feral little loony hermit who’d learned everything from the mites and somehow discovered immorality along the way by thinking real hard alone in a grove.” Aztu leaned forward, waving my last attempt’s empty bottle at me. “I hear he was a rather gentle person from what Tsuya told me. Whatever gods or mites out there, rest his soul in peace. If he’s not insane himself by now.”

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“You think he’s still alive out there?”

She shrugged. “A57 could have killed Urs off for good somehow, just to make it twice as hard for anyone to beat Talen. Or he left Urs alive somewhere, so that if anyone killed Talen, they'd still need to find Urs to get the full fractal working again. I’m not sure, he never told a soul about it. Pun intended.”

We went quiet for a little bit as I focused on the next bottle to work with. I felt there was something I was missing with the occult. It was all tied to concepts and fractals, so I had to think more in terms of that. Maybe try and imprint the very concept of ‘being drunk’ rather than my personal memories? I tried that next, with the occult waterfall technique of gathering up all the spare occult light and feeling around me and pouring it all over the bottle at the same time.

“Do you know where Talen or Urs are now?” I asked, handing the new bottle to Aztu for study. I was pretty sure the answer as no, otherwise she'd have already done something.

“Urs, no. But I do know A57 couldn't break Urs's soul the same way he did with Talen, so whatever happened to Urs, it's a different fate than Talen. As for Talen, we sort of do know where he is. He wanders around anywhere from the eighth to twelfth level. He can’t tell friend or foe anymore. He’s still got all the powers he used at his peak, and nobody’s been able to put him down since his fight with A01. Seven hundred years of him walking around aimlessly looking for Relinquished while destroying any machine in his way.”

“Was there no attempt after to save him or bring him back?”

She was examining the bottle up until I asked that question, to which she looked up at me, upset. “Of course we tried. But you gotta understand it took dozens of us on the field at the same time to kill him at our best. And that was with us being hyper-aggressive since we knew we couldn’t die. After we turned on Relinquished, we all had one life without the unity fractal to grab us before death. You try running around with twenty of the most wanted criminals in the entire world, looking for one man among several trillion miles, within the most guarded stratas of the world.”

“Ah.”

“Not to say we didn’t succeed. We did manage to find him once during an expedition. Five of my kind led by A12, and done by accident. Only A12 survived to tell us what happened. We could never find him again after, just too much of the world to look through.”

I thought about that, my head clicking items together. Then I reached out my hand, and on top of it appeared the miteseeker I’d been holding onto. Aztu saw it, then caught it in her hand when I tossed it her way. “You said earlier that what I had was a miteseeker, and that they all lead somewhere. What if this doesn’t point to somewhere, but someone? To Talen?”

Aztu hummed. I could tell she was seriously considering it. “It’s… possible. Tsyua did say she was making the attempt to find him, but never got back to us until we were all wiped out. Could be she wasn’t able to get these out in time. We won’t ever know until you turn it on and attune.” Aztu stared down at the lantern. “Maybe I’m here specifically to teach you this, or hell, for all I know the mites expected Abraxas to do it and when he got stubborn they moved things along so I’d bite the bait.” She sighed. “Can’t predict them, half the time it just seems like utter coincidence that everything lines up the way they want.”

She tossed the black box my way, letting me catch it. “Fine, I’ll tell you the steps to being a mitespeaker. First would be to turn that on and attune to it. Find a mite colony, physically grab some of them and stuff them inside. Once you get enough inside, you’re going to be in contact with the other copy of your soul.”

“The what? Other copy of my soul?”

“You sold your soul to them, remember?” One marble white finger pointed down into the ground. “On the other side of the mite wall deep below us, is a soul fractal shaped purely from your drop of blood. And within that fractal is the copy of your soul you sold to them, probably half-insane already but attuned to the mites by this point. I’m sure you’ve already tried to separate your soul a few times, see if a copy takes place and found it didn’t work?”

“Uh, not yet.” But that was a great idea. Alternate Keiths on my armor helping me out would… honestly be a game changer. It’d be like the bridge fight against Avalis, where other Keiths were all pooling their efforts to summon wraiths into this current timeline. “Can’t believe I haven’t tried that yet. I almost feel embarrassed to have not thought of it.”

Aztu’s eyebrow raised up, “I’ll save you a bit of time: It won’t work. Talen already tried it a few times, and logged the results. If you figure out a non-destructive way of cutting your soul in the first place, the receiving fractal has to be made of your blood - still alive on top of that - since it’s part of your body. Don’t ask me how he figured that one out. More an edge case I guess, and good luck finding a way to keep a drop of blood in the shape of a soul fractal forever, or alive for longer than a few hours.”

“Give me a big enough lever, and I’ll find a way.” I said. “Having copies of myself help cast occult spells isn’t something I’m going to just give up on.”

Aztu watched me for a moment, then shrugged. “You do you kid. As for the mite lantern, you’ll reach out to that soul through the mite lantern. And then you roll the dice and see if it doesn’t make you go insane.”

I ran through the logic, realizing exactly what would happen. “When I touch another copy of my soul, we’ll merge instantly. And if the alternate version of me has been stuck with the mites this entire time, all that crashes into my own memories, doesn’t it? Is that why they go insane?”

Aztu looked up, narrowing her eyes. “That doesn’t sound like a wild guess. How do you know what happens?”

I gave her a cheeky grin, opened my mouth and she immediately interrupted me, hand out. “Don’t tell me you have experience with merging copies of your own soul together. What the hell.”

“Well, okay. I won’t tell you.” I said. “I’ll just imply it and wait for you to ask again.”

I could see her eye twitch at that. “How? You just said you never once yet thought about even splitting your soul up.” She closed her eyes and groaned. “I’d understand if you were a machine, I can think of ways to ‘copy’ the soul from the base hardware but a human? Do you have some kind of clone out there? That’s insane. When would you ever run into that kind of situation?”

“Twice so far.” I said and left it at that.

She glared at me for a moment more. “It’s not the soul merge that makes them insane, it’s the fight that’s going to happen between you and your copy. The other Keith is currently trapped in mite space, bodiless and going insane during the attunement process. The process will change him enough he won't be compatible with your own soul. He’ll be trying to escape mite space and fully move back into your body here, which only has space for one soul. You’ll have to fight some warped version of yourself, and leave him behind with the Mites each time you connect with the lantern.”

“I don’t think he’d fight me.” I said.

"Sure, you tell yourself that kid. I'd hone your ability to fight soul to soul if I were you."

“No, I know that I’d work with myself even to the point it killed me in order to help the greater whole. I don’t think you understand the vows a Retainer takes.”

She tutted. “And you really know that’s how you’d react? All humans like to boast about being ready to give for the greater good, but very very few of them have the mettle to actually give their life for something. You can’t just sit here comfortable on a couch and say you could.”

I smiled at her here, “It’s already happened. More times than I can count, literally speaking.”

She stared at me again. “You’re serious.”

“Dead serious. Pun intended.”

If she had veins, I think a few on her forehead would be throbbing right now. She waited a moment, then threw her hands in the air. “Fine! Fine! Quit being cryptic with your revenge puns and just get it over with. Tell me how in all twelve hells did you ever run into a situation that involved another copy of your own soul?”

“For one, it wasn’t just a copy of myself, it was an infinite amount of copies of myself I had to work with. I did say it was more times than I could literally count for a reason.”

Her eyes seemed to boggle at that. “And how, pray tell, do you have experience merging infinite

“Eh, you know the drill.” I waved her off, “Deal with enough machines and Feathers, touch quantum reality-bending powers every now and then, the usual.”

She wasn’t amused with the antics. So I went through both times I had to deal with it, and how I’d gone about the quantum nature of it. The infinite amount of Keiths all working and dying together without hesitation. I was prepared to die even now to help another theoretical me out there, which meant every other Keith was equally ready for it.

And so would the Keith stuck in mite space.

The fight with To’Aacar, and the fight with To’Avalis on the bridge, all of it was explained. Surprisingly it only took a few minutes to recap. “Incidentally, that’s what I paid a copy of my soul for. One-use item that was supposed to help me beat him down. Only got halfway through it, I’d demand a refund, but the mite forge didn’t see eye to eye on that.”

“I’m going to strangle you.” Aztu said, in the most serious deadpan voice I’d heard her use so far.

“I’ve got experience with that too, believe it or not.” I said, with a finger up in the air. “Strangling I mean. Angry screamers, angry Feathers, angry Father, angry older sister, I could go down the list if you’d like?”

Aztu rubbed her head, and massaged her hair. “All right. So, they’ve been steadily pushing your strings in this direction and now there’s no being coy about that. They have your blood and soul, you somehow ended up carrying a functioning mite lantern built by the Tsyua herself, and you have actual experience with the soul-fuckery along with the personality to make it work, which means the copy of your soul on the other side might actually willingly remain trapped in the closest thing to hell instead of trying to take your body and escape. Maybe you really do have the best chances of speaking to the mites without going insane.”

“You really should be careful with all these compliments, they’re going straight to my ego here.” I tapped my chest proudly, “What else do I need to do after I’ve got the mite lantern working?”

Aztu shrugged with a deep sigh. “For machines, we’d need to wait for the mites to reach out to us from the lantern since our souls can’t move. I don't know how they manage it since they're also machines, shouldn't be theoretically possible but mites. At least, that’s how Abraxas described it. Some humans are skilled enough to move their souls around in reality. You’ll have to find one of those warlocks, learn from them, and practice being able to do it yourself. And I mean outside of the digital sea. Out here, it’s like training wheels. In the real world, just being outside the soul fractal will start breaking you down. I only know it’s possible to move around beyond the soul fractal, but I’ve never done it obviously.”

“Oh yeah. That. I can move my soul around in the real world.” I said. “I do it all the time. Part of the reason I’ve been able to fight this well.”

Aztu gazed at me without comment. Then stood up, digitized a bottle in her hands, and threw it at the wall with a short frustrated scream. “Of course you have experience doing that too. Sure, why not? Let me correct the discussion then - the only thing you’re officially missing is to find a mite colony and kidnap a few for your lantern. Grab a few dozen mites until the lantern can’t hold more inside, and you’re good to go mess with reality itself.”

“Do you know any other mite colonies in the area that aren't near the Icon? I don't want to stick my neck around a civil war.”

She waggled a hand at me, "Wish I could help, but no clue on that one. I feel for the birds though, having to deal with you. Mites don't usually share their maps with outsiders."

I tapped the table a bit, hummed and then realized I did have options. “Oh! Might have another option. In fact, I can think of one entity that’s rather obsessed with mites and their lights. Enough to keep track of where they go.”

Bob.