12 Miles Below

Finding a portal wasn’t the hard part. I could throw a rock in any direction and if it could fly through walls, it would eventually zip right through a portal or another.

Avalis had basically thrown them everywhere, all at once.

It had come at a heavy cost for our side from the immediate ambush. But the survivors had taken up defenses and were now holding off the onslaught. Resistance was far higher than he'd probably expected. Deathless, warlocks, Imperators, and every single Crusader here being among the elite.

We could work with this.

Our group stormed through the hallways, picking up further Crusaders and a group of Deathless duking it out with one last surviving Feather.

The look on that asshole’s face when we ran right for him, didn’t bother to answer a single taunt or speech, and just shot him right out of the air. Never gets old, and I'll take my wins where I can get them.

The Deathless too were happy to see us, they weren’t the strongest Deathless on our side, but one was in Lord Atius’s generation and he’d been the vanguard keeping everyone here alive so far. Adding him to the small army we were collecting was well worth the detour.

The more people I had between me and the enemy, the more I could focus on sending myself up into other dimensions to help out - which meant every other Keith was equally doing the same across all parallel dimensions.

All leading to a root dimension we considered the ‘true timeline’ where all the Keiths and Superiors joined battle with this entire army here already.

We moved like an unstoppable wave now, breaking the jammer in this room and taking down the defenders.

One by one, the portals here were sealed, all except for a final one left standing intentionally - where Father and the Winterscar knights all formed up as one and charged straight through.

I could see Father and the knights start scything a path forward on the other end of the portal, using up bullets and gear as sparingly as they could while they searched for expensive things to break.

That left Urs and myself along with our bodyguards here plenty of free time to do our part of the plan: We studied the portal itself, and on this part I admit Urs was leagues above me in understanding things.

“These are fixed point portals," He said, having discovered some additional information from his own occult sight that I couldn't. "Once a mathematical formula is calculated, they will spawn and remain in place for ten minutes and twenty three seconds. The calculations require also taking in universal constants, such as our planet’s rotation, speed, and the universe's motion. It needs to be so exact, To’Avalis was unable to calculate it himself. He has made a workaround.”

"A workaro- oh."

That part I could see. And the solution was… well, the saying ‘if it’s stupid but it works, then it’s not stupid.’

“Rocks? Really? A Feather of his skill using random rocks?” I shook my head, but I can’t help except to feel like he’d done something actually clever outside the box here.

"Conductive rocks and scraps of metal, yes. It does not require much else, there was no need to create dedicated infrastructure for this task." Urs concluded.

He couldn’t calculate that many variables himself, not for how many different times he’d spawned these portals out. So instead, he’d found rocks nearby in this strata, and inscribed the equation fractal on those, just moving the final coordinates into the citadel instead. Where the rocks moved in space and time, the portals equally did the same, except offset by very specific calculations.

Random pet rocks he picked up off the ground would do just fine in coordinating the most deadly assault on mankind's final fortress. Well, he was a resourceful one.

I could see where the rocks were in Ur’s sight, almost seven miles away. All made in hastily built replica version of the citadel.

He'd outright rebuild the citadel in sticks and struts, with the most barebones floor plan, just to layer his rocks everywhere there.

And we’d probably find the Feather himself among that scale replica, organizing the entire war effort from there.

It was the most jank bit of engineering I’d ever seen done, but can’t argue with the results, it did work given he didn't have the processing power to handle even a single portal.

A few minutes passed and I heard something on the other side of the portal. Or rather, the lack of sound. And then explosions.

On the other end of the portal where Father was currently running amok in, what lay beyond was a machine outpost.

Most of the 'infrastructure' building his jammers to replace any broken ones were just Lessers organized into a quick assembly line, taking scrap parts from a stockpile of mostly raw material brought there. Nine hours had been a long enough time for him to organize everything.

This was all likely segmented and isolated. Probably so that if any of these were backtracked like this, then the full scale of damage would remain isolated to that one outpost.

...

Segmented and isolated. With only enough material to replace a few jammers but nothing more. I raced straight through the HUD interface and sent an instant message through the portal, out to the other end where Father was rapidly finishing off the last remnants of this outpost. "Father! it's a tra-"

The portal collapsed by itself.

Stranding him and the Winterscar knights a few miles away, in that remote machine staging ground.

And another portal opened up, spilling out more Feathers and Lessers right after us. This one closed up almost immediately after it had sent in the wave.

The real staging ground for his reinforcements. He was opening portals on demand, and cutting them off right after. All the other portals were bait.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I cursed hard as everyone opened fire, and we met the charge head on.

Avalis knew we’d backtrack his portals, he’s prepared for it by having every portal connected to its own outpost. And if the portals were all connected to those rocks on his diorama back on his real command center, then all he had to do was reach down and break the rock. The portal was already a single cough away from collapsing, he could shut them down anytime.

So he’d probably been waiting for one outpost to report I’d gone through it in order to break something shiny enough to draw me out, and then he’d turn the portal off and strand me out of the citadel.

He didn’t need to kill me to win. He just needed me far enough away so that I’d never get to Talen. He probably had an entire plan to lure the mad emperor away from the citadel once he arrived and couldn’t find Urs here.

And seeing me get close to his portal, look through it and realize how remote it was - he realized I was onto him, there wasn’t any more point to keeping the portal open.

If he couldn’t nab me in his trap, Father was a good enough consolation prize. And so would anyone else I send through the portals to break his infrastructure. Shit. “Well played you little asshole.” I hissed, cutting down the final dredges of this desperate attempt to beat me in the prime reality.

His forces were growing thin, or the Feathers he'd sent here just didn't work with each other correctly. Or they might have opened the portal up by themselves and rushed in outside his plans.

I can't quite tell what Avalis was thinking or doing on his end of the map, but this counter-attack attempt was flattened out in under a minute.

With a sword stab into the throat fractal of some delusional Feather thinking they'd be able to get an easy kill on me, I turned to the rest of the gathered forces. “Whoever we send through the portals will be cut off from the main base here. You’ll be sent miles away, into a separated staging ground. And we can't just ignore these portals either. They'll be bringing back Jammers into the citadel the moment we have our backs turned."

Avalis was absolutely meticulous enough to have multiple extra portals prepared in reserve from those staging grounds, to open up into the prior rooms. So even if I raced through, broke the jammer, and then ripped down every portal there was, the moment I was gone, he'd just reopen another portal and have his goons carry into the chamber another fresh jammer.

Those outposts had to be destroyed. "We’ll eliminate the jammer sources and any chance of him building more, but it’ll come at the cost of whoever we send. And if we send too small of a force through, they’ll be killed before the jammer infrastructure is cut down. Avalis is also just as likely to cut the portals short at any moment that works best for him, which means the strike team needs to go through at the same time, probably through multiple portals.”

It’ll be tough. And I realized I wouldn’t be able to help anyone. I had to stay in this fortress and survive long enough for Talen to get here. The moment I walked through a single portal, I was getting instantly stranded.

I fortunately did have a good number of forces to call on.

Crusaders, imperators, imperial warlocks, the occasional Winterscar-stolen Feathers who were dispersed around the gateway earlier, Wrath herself here, and Deathless. If I made it to the vault, I’d get Sagrius and a few other Imperators and Winterscar knights.

Those were who I could build up away teams with and send off.

“There is hope.” Urs said. “I believe with enough samples of these portals, I may be able to reverse the fractal equation itself. After which, we need only to inscribe it somewhere with power.”

“You heard the man.” I said, “We get to the vault, secure the Icon’s line of communication, and then feed him enough of these portals he gets the secret out of Avalis.”

And after that, we’d be able to recover the missing away teams.

The soldiers here gave salutes, and we got to work making our way to the vault.

I had expected Avalis to do some kind of heavy resistance play on the vault itself. What I hadn’t expected was for him to leave behind the world’s most obvious trap.

The entire hallway leading to the vault itself was left alone. The defenders here had retreated into the vault, likely fighting off intruders within, and that had left the entire hallways clear for the machines to swarm through.

They had. And earlier, we’d found the construction crew and attack wave hiding on the ceilings, looking to drop down on us.

Specifically me. The plan had been to grab hold of me, fade out of reality and continue to drop further down into the strata under. The Feather in charge of that plan tried his best, but we’d seen him long before through the soul sight, and I was already dismantling their attempt by the time we walked in there.

He’d done a mad rush to get to me, and was swatted out of the air by one of the Deathless, then my occult ghosts dogpiled him into the ground and one Superior launched a spear straight into his back.

The next trap was a lot less obvious. “Hold.” I said, one hand extended out.

Ahead was the actual vault doorway itself. Sealed up. And from what I could see in the soul sight, several human souls were standing guard around the Icon’s terminal. Including one I recognized as Captain Sagrius himself.

There were a lot of dead bodies around in that vault. Almost all of them machines and a handful of Feathers too.

He’d done real well then.

Problem existed between us and the vault - as in the entire corridor. “I think he doesn’t yet know much about the soul sight.” I hummed, giving the insanity ahead a more careful look.

“Indeed." Urs agreed. "Most machines I have met were unable to truly understand the gravity or range of it. They cannot leave their soul fractals, it is a sight they lack. Fortunate for us in this case.”

Ahead were a small minefield of fractals that had been buried under the flooring. And given how spotless the flooring looked, the machines must have cleared the hallway out, broken down the floor, embedded the traps, and then rebuilt the entire thing in just a handful of minutes.

Avalis really had prepared hard for all this in nine hours. “Urs, would you do me the favor?” I asked, raising a hand up at the hallway before us.

The fractal of Resolve pulsed within him, magnifying my shockwave several hundred fold. It ripped through the hallway, cracking the granite tiles, flattening them down into almost dust, and equally breaking apart all the metal fractals laid under.

I had no idea what these fractals could do, they hadn’t been triggered so it was anyone’s guess. But if Avalis had buried them under here and left them ready to power up at the last second, I didn’t want to see what they actually did.

Our team walked through the broken rubble, until we reached the vault. Chaptermaster Titus stepped forward, a hand reached out to a panel, and soon the entire thing rumbled ahead of him, opening up.

On the other end was exactly how I’d seen it in the soul sight: Captain Sagrius was there, front and center, blade out, ready for action. So too were a few Winterscar knights flanking him, and the rest were Imperators holding position.

He gave me a nod, accepting that I’ve returned safely. The other Winterscars gave a more formal salute. “Lord Keith.” One to the left said. “The terminal remains safe and operational.”

“Good work everyone.” I walked straight forward into the room, “We’ll need to talk to the Icon and get her back. Let her know we’ve got the vault secured and protected. After this, I’ll be remaining within the vault to keep it protected. If they manage to get past me, our fish is cooked.”

I could see quite a few floors around me with the soul sight, and that let me launch occult ghosts out into the surrounding area, but it wasn’t the entire fortress. I’d be locking this general location down hard and preventing machines from encroaching, the rest of the citadel will need to be fought over room for room.

I reached a hand out to the terminal, and Urs connected directly to it, following the final edict protocols to reach Tsuya’s old infrastructure. Now that Relinquished wasn’t holding that ground protected anymore, we could keep the connection going.

The terminal hummed, and I saw on my HUD that the Icon had reconnected.

"I am relieved to see you have reestablished communications." She spoke. "Status around the world remains the same as before, this attack on the citadel seems to be isolated only to yourself."

"I'm flattered they're going this far just to get little old us." I said, "How much of the citadel can you talk with right now?"

"Enough to begin a defense. I see from your armor logs you already know the source issues and have begun eliminating them. Continue to do so, I will increase my reach outwards with each jammer destroyed."

And now that we had both a base of operation again, a defended sphere to keep invaders out, and our own golden age AI tactician back on our side - it was time to take the citadel back.