12 Miles Below-Chapter 61Book 8 - - Friends in high places

Power in this world was a ladder.

At the very bottom, mankind first fought each other with hand and fist. Then came swords, which made hand and fist obsolete. And then came guns which made swords obsolete. And so on up the ladder until we hit the occult, which oddly enough cycled back to making swords the word of the land.

What I had in my hand here was a weapon used at the very top of that ladder, beyond combat schools using occult blades.

Urs was at that level. He hardly knew how to swing a blade, but his power with the occult was on a league above the need of an occult blade like what Father mastered.

Conviction had swiped his blade across the air, and all of us fighting him had been thrown off our feet and slammed into the side of the walls. What could he have done if he’d actually been trying to kill us?

This was the kind of combat that was waiting for me further down the line. Against Talen.

And I wouldn’t get years of practice and training to fight at that level. I had to work with what I had now and pick every bit of advantage I could.

Which meant taking this blade that was made to be wielded by someone seven feet tall, and learn how to make my own use of it. Not by swinging it like a barbarian, or stabbing people like I was famous for. But actually figure out what it was used for and reverse engineer something out of it by the time I had to fight against Talen.

And what I’d learned so far is that putting an occult trained by Grandmaster Hexis with all the processing power of a golden age AI, led to unpredictable results.

First: Conviction’s blade was dense, and as I studied it with the Icon, we discovered another interesting quirk to it: It was a replica. Not the actual blade A01 used, but a shallow copy of it, which was then modified by Conviction into his own proper weapon.

And second, using this blade as an actual occult blade was like using a rifle like a bat. Technically possible, and it would deal some good damage if I whacked someone without armor. But an absolute waste of its true potential.

The occult was truly spooky. The more I meditated in that terminal, using the occult sight to examine the blade before me, the more I found oddities within the very concept of it.

History was a factor for example. As in how people thought of this blade over the years had an actual genuine effect upon the concept of this blade.

I could tell it was feared. By people who had long since died off from old age, sure. But it had been feared once and that was enough for the occult to keep a memory of it.

That fear was a shadow lurking in the blade. Not quite to the same level as the original blade had, it felt more like an echo of that was present within this sword.

Wrath had told me weapons the protofeathers used were more a platform to cast occult spells from. Their base concept of a weapon facilitating that aspect. But as machines, they had limits in how they could see the world. They lacked the occult sight I was using this very moment to study these weapons. Which means there were entire aspects to these weapons they couldn’t have understood.

Hexis had explained far more on the occult itself and what an entire history of studying the occult had come down to. But no man had ever been able to take one of these weapons and study them this close. Or if they had, they’d been unable or unwilling to pass that knowledge down in places the warlocks could find them again.

My own contribution to all this was in mathematics instead of anything more conventional.

Of which one branch of mathematics was far closer to the occult in my mind than even chaos theory - Quantum physics.

In which even just the act of measuring or observing something changed the result of it according to the golden age humans who had access to every lab and experiment techniques that none of us in the modern day had.

Reachers were divided on the subject. The dumb ones said it was spooky, strange logic that made little sense. The larger Reacher community had faith that good reasoning and mathematics would explain everything, old humanity simply hadn’t had the time to dig out the true answers. And the most brilliant Reachers I knew, like Anarii, said it was spooky, strange logic that made little sense.

And the occult followed that pattern oddly enough. Knowing something existed would affect that thing in very faint ways. Even separated thousands of miles away.

It was faint, but I could pick up a very tiny sense of myself within the concept of this blade. I couldn’t see further, as it was like picking apart a single strand from a million others, but there was some recognition that parts of this blade’s history had me attached to it before I’d even encountered it.

Which sounds very spooky until I considered it further under the lens of the occult.

Hexis had taught me many different paths that considered the occult itself, but my current favorite interpretation was to see it as a gestalt entity. Something that saw everything all at once, and was influenced by everyone’s thoughts to equal amounts. It existed before humanity did, and it would have continued existing after of course. But humanity and living beings in general still had an effect on it, in the same way I could grab a rock and move it. Exerting a change in the world that would never have happened if I hadn’t existed to move the rock.

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I knew A01 had used a blade.

I knew A01 was incredibly powerful, and so his sword must be equally powerful.

Which meant the replica of his sword would also have a shadow of that thought attached to it.

That train of logic had affected Conviction’s blade, thousands of miles away, without me even knowing he existed.

Not by huge amounts to be clear, my influence on the occult was a tiny dot on the map. Everyone’s was.

Even an entire city wouldn’t be enough presence to have any kind of true impact on the occult. But an idea like combat was reinforced across not just a single city, but an entire civilization over the centuries. So many people knew and thought about combat, it had a gravity of its own now.

This kind of conceptual reinforcement was more like rope. Stands that were so faint they could be snapped with a mere thought, except if there were millions of them put together, the rope they made became incredibly sturdy.

That’s how these weapons functioned, building on the original rope behind combat and danger. An alternate branch within that concept, solely for this one thing.

This was the next level of occult mastery. One went from using and discovering fractals, to using the occult directly and commanding concepts that had already been built up within the world. Like groves of power, tapped into.

These weapons had at first been actual weapons of conventional war, and the longer the protofeathers used them, the more their legends. Which the protofeathers seemed to either know how to tap into, or did so by accident.

“I am receiving a transmission.” The Icon said, interrupting my meditation. “Your prior broadcast has been accepted and a return data package has arrived.”

“Oh? Show me the return package.”

That would be plan B.

I had some hope that I’d be able to power Conviction’s blade back to at least a usable shape, but I was well aware I needed some alternative plans in case this didn’t pan out.

After all, getting an unpowered ancient weapon used to kill gods - one never before studied by occult experts - to work on the first attempt was perhaps not quite so guaranteed as I'd expected.

But Plan B had a much higher chance of working out assuming I got an answer back, and plan C was the final backup in case everything went to scrapshit. I was well prepared.

She handed over the information package we were getting, and when I ruffled through it, I got everything I’d been hoping to find. “Good news," I gave her a thumbs up. "Our ride’s here. We should pack up our bags and get to the hangar before the Logi close their spreadsheets.”

The Icon gave me a strange look. “I believe this is an idiom I am unfamiliar with?”

“Ah, surface clan jargon.” I waved her off, holstering the giant blade behind my back before I stepped out the open archway, into the digital sea proper, waving her after me. “Just means we need to head outside this terminal, we’ve got a pickup coming. Let’s go, don’t want to miss this.”

The Icon had put her fingers on a lot of different places and learned a lot of undersider cultures now that she wasn’t as restricted by her base programming. At least all the ones that had been built within cities that had mite terminals or anything secretly connected to the digital sea.

But the one place that remained a black box to her were the surface clans. By default, we were all exceptionally cut off from the wider world in general.

Outside the terminal, the world was as we’d left it.

We exited the chasm of old structures slightly sunken into the sediment, and watched from those ruins as the sea far above us moved. Millions of programs all speeding away, and it never seemed to stop.

All except for one signal punching through the noise, directly aimed at our location:

Please enter your ten digit N-soft account number in order to verify your I.D.

I had the Icon send a customer support request to a very specific address location I had in memory. And I was surprised by something when I did: She was well aware of how to do that specific request, and had actually done so multiple times in the past.

I had no idea what N-soft was, but the Icon sure did.

“Do you have an account with them, or shall I use my prior credentials?” She asked, walking next to me, eyes up at the massive sea above us, before looking back at the waiting message.

“Naw, I made an account.” I said, then input a ten digit code that I had once made up on the spot, and included a seven in there - because why wouldn’t I? “I mean, technically I don't have an account. Their servers are long dead now, so no way to make anything with them anymore. But, my friend will know who I am if I reuse these numbers. It was there when I made them up.”

“Who is your friend?”

“I actually have no idea what the name is, or what it actually is. But what I do know this, it’s very big."

I sent the data package back, and promptly got an answer. It basically zipped right through the chaos without any issue at all.

Thank you, one moment please while we access your account history.

“Something is approaching.” The Icon said, looking up.

And by that point, even I could see the shadow. The entire sea parted for it. Millions of programs all at once banking away, revealing a massive leviathan approaching from the surface downwards, legs extended out.

The thing landed on the seabed as it had before the first time I’d seen it. Seven long feet extended out to support the weight, each stabbing straight through the seafloor. The size of this thing dwarfed the entire terminal here.

Although, now knowing more about how to sense things in the sea, I could somewhat see that the Icon was actually far larger. Only more contained and less organic in nature compared to my friend here.

I had once described it as a walking tree with red coral growing all over the main body, and that description remained accurate. More things change and all that.

“Hey buddy, glad you could come!” I called out, waving at it.

One massive eye at the very center of the body turned to stare me down. “Mite construct from the region Human. You survive. This is adequate.”

“Despite my best attempts otherwise, I managed.”

The Icon turned to stare at me. “Mr. Winterscar, would you please explain this to me?”

“I called my friend here to negotiate a lift through the sea. And given it could come here directly...” My eyes turned up to look over to the titan towering above us. “Did you find what you were looking for? You sped off last time before we could say goodbye to each other.”

The leviathan rumbled, the sea itself vibrating around here. It felt almost like there was a dome above us, where all the programs were hastily avoiding this titan.

The ecosystem it had on the back was still moving without issue, so at least the passengers on this thing weren’t worried for what was going on.

“I have.” The titan finally spoke. “It held nothing of use. Buried far under the seabed. Traces of a prior alternate region. All gone. Dust and ash.” The eye turned to the Icon next. “You, I do not recognize. Are you the Feather of Relinquished this mite construct was seeking? I see no trace of her hand in your being. I see a trace of far more strength than one of her creatures instead. What are you?”

She gave me a worried look. The Icon's defenses were sharp, she should have been seen as a smaller generic program out here. For the titan before us to tell there was more to the Icon here than what she was attempting to fool…

Well, that’s just proof I had the right program for the job here.

“She’s someone who’s worked directly with N-Soft.” I said, giving her a thumbs up. “Interested in trading for her knowledge?”

Now I had its undivided attention.