First thing I did was get in contact with the air traffic control tower to figure out where the undersider knights had gone off to in the freeze and when they'd be back. I spoke with a rather bored fellow who gave me curt and quick info on my request. I swear, even with an attack right in the heart of the clan, the Logi and Reachers who ran the ATC can’t be shaken by anything except a coffee shortage.

The situation was a little more optimistic than expected - for once I had luck on my side.

The undersider knights left with two airspeeders four days ago. One ferrying the knights, and the other running a more skeleton crew who would observe and verify that the knights had completed their missions as expected.

Both airspeeders had been expected to return at the earliest this morning, though they’d missed that rendezvous timing, so it was likely they'd be returning within comms range in the afternoon instead.A lot could happen across the wastes that would slow down a return trip before they returned. Which meant I still had a few hours to negotiate something with the priest in order to placate the knights when they did arrive. Or even an entire day or more if their delay was caused by something more dangerous, like an enemy.

My idea was to have them stop a few miles from the colony, and camp out there until further notice. We could send delegations out to drop food supplies and the like. Not too comfortable out in the freeze, but they were big boys with relic armor. They could tough it out for a few days, right?

The Chosen camps inside the clan were an overturned mess on the other hand. While our knights hadn’t been brutal, they also hadn’t gone into it hands off. It had been important to go in fast and take control of the situation fast, before the clan's more extremist members started to gather up with rifles and a strong desire for target practice. There were heavy traditions and honor about sanctuary rules, and having our... 'guests' blood on the ground would cause a heavy rip in the clan culture at best, between those horrified at the idea and those capable of carrying it out. The camp I found was substantially different from the first time I'd been here. Overturned pots, stomped on personal items, ripped up tents, very little was spared. No blood anywhere though. Most of the damage looked caused by haste. I walked through that graveyard, one step at a time.

When the clan knights and soldiers came to arrest the Chosen, they had gone in all at once and without pause. The operation likely took no more than ten minutes before everyone had been rounded up and accounted for. Since there hadn't been a lot of them in the first place, the clan had been keeping tabs on each one and we'd confirmed they'd all been accounted for.

Further past the wreckage of the campsites, I found activity again. Clan members on patrol and other guards. Keeping an eye out on the rounded up prisoners, and a sharper eye out for anyone coming into the grounds. Most of the captives had been put in larger groups, inside cells. Through those bars, I could see them huddled up, vacant looks in their eyes. They didn’t appear panicked, more... resigned. As if they expected this to happen at some point.

The only one who had a cell all to himself was Lejis.

So far, reports sent to me was that he’d been sleeping during the raid and was roused awake as the clan knights stormed into the camp. He hadn’t fought any of them, instead he offered to surrender his armor and weapons on condition that his people were treated well and allowed to remain within their groups. A more critical person would note there was no way Lejis alone could handle that many clan knights coming in, not unless he had something on the power level of my knightbreakers with him. So he did the only sane thing and surrendered, making it look like he'd done it for the good of his people.

The clan knights in charge of the operation saw no reason to argue with those terms, whatever his reasons behind it, took him up on it. Promptly the fight was over and done with before anyone got seriously hurt.

The chosen priest sat in his cell, cross legged, looking more like someone meditating. He had his back to me, so I couldn’t tell what expression he wore now. Despite him being unarmed and unarmored and looking like an anemic monk, there was still that sense of presence about him. As if he was right where he wanted to be. Simply waiting for the time to pass.

There were a few guards idling around his cell. One of them gave a curt salute. "This guard greets the Winterscar prime." The man said, while the rest of the guards bowed.

"Temporary Prime, can't let power go to my head now. My sister would murder me when she comes back."

The guard glanced nervously to the sides, and for a beat, nobody said a word.

"That was a joke, she's not actually going to stab me in the back." I said. "Us Winterscars have changed a lot since the old times. Really."

They didn't look too convinced, but were far too polite to say anything about it. Tough crowd.

Got to remember that old history takes time to paint over, and unlike the Winterscars at the estate who'd gotten to know my sense of humor, others outside only knew me by my House's old reputation. I gave a nervous cough and tried to change the subject. "Moving on, I’m here to talk to the priest. Can you let me in or do I need to sign some papers?”

"No sir, the First Blade sent word to cooperate with any requests you may have." The guard said, while the other guards worked on the locks, opening up the cell.

“Has he been behaving?” I asked.

“He hasn’t made any motion to escape, at least that we could see.” The guard said. “He's asked us a few questions on the overall situation, but none of us broke our silence. He stopped asking once he got the message.”

The cell was dark, and when I took off my helmet, I felt a good chill in the air. This section must be low priority in terms of energy draw. A few more steps and the guard closed the door behind me.

Lejis didn’t turn, still sitting in his lotus position, still staring at the back of the wall. But he spoke out as I approached. “I presume you’re here to discuss the expedition of my knights, sir Winterscar?”

That gave me pause. But I shook it off. It wouldn’t take that much effort to number out all the reasons the clan would send a diplomat to talk to him, and among that list, the undersider knights out in the freeze were the most important. He didn't have much else to do in the meantime. And he'd likely heard my early discussion with the knights, so that's how he knew who I was.

“You guessed right.” I said. “Twenty three knights, all outside in the freeze, and probably not going to be too happy to hear the recent news.”

He chuckled, though it held little mirth. “I suppose something drastic must have happened for the clan to forgo their agreement to protect my people in the absence of my knights. Lord Atius did not strike me as the type to betray his word. If you are looking for a resolution to all this, I need to be filled into what exactly happened.”

“You don’t need to play coy with us, you already know what happened.”

“I can assure you, sir knight, that I do not. One moment I was in my tent getting rest, and the next people were shouting for me to protect them. A jarring moment. I did what I could.”

There was a fifty fifty chance he was telling the truth or lying. Technically, the enemy that hit were slavers. But my gut was screaming that the Chosen had done something to let them sneak into the colony as stowaways. The enemy had let it slip that undersiders were connected somehow, and the only ones that were around were the Chosen. It had to be them.

And if I were in his shoes trying to weave a web of lies, this would be exactly how to start it.

“Tell me what you know.” I asked. No reason to tell him anything yet, he might reveal his hand early on.

Lejis turned his head to watch me, then motioned to sit by his side. I figured I’d humor him, after all Journey’s shields were full and those were far stronger than the actual armor itself. My helmet might be off, but that wouldn’t stop the relic shields from triggering, if Lejis tried anything.

“Let’s play a game. We trade off questions.” He said.

“How about no.” I said flatly. “I’m the one wearing the armor here.”

“And I am the one who can broker a peace with my knights. All negotiations are give. And take. And I’ve given a lot, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Not a chance.” I said. “This isn’t a negotiation, it’s an interrogation." This pipe weasel, playing off leading questions as if it were fact. Very conniving, I’ll hand him that. "I’m here to shake you down for your money. But since I’ve been beaten to the punch," I waved around the cell he'd found himself stuck in, "I’ll settle for some answers.”

He smiled, a strained kind of smile I was well familiar with. The kind of smile that would have become a genuine one, if they could squish my head in right that moment. “I see you’re dead set on this.” He said. “I will call this a favor to you, and I expect it will be returned back. Or you’ll find that I’ve sadly stopped being quite so cooperative.”

I gave him a non-committal nod. “So, tell me how this morning's been for you.”

He gave me a summary. There weren't any holes in it that I could spot. He’d done some volunteer work earlier, to which there were many witnesses. After that, he gave a small sermon to his people and went into his tent for the night to pray and sleep.

“Does she answer back?” I asked. “The pale lady of yours, I mean. When you pray to her.”

He smiled. "Only once so far."

"Why pray at all then if she never answers back?"

"Why do you pray to your own gods, when they don't answer back? It's not so much about being devout, prayer for me is a ritual that calms my mind. A meditation of kinds. A reminder of the unique position I stand in history, and of the duty that comes with it. I am not so much devout as to believe the Lady has a plan for humanity, but rather that now is the moment where we must forge a new place for humanity to exist in this world."

"So you admit that Relinquished doesn't have humanity's best interests at heart then?"

“That was never the question, sir knight. The question is where we go from there. And how do you know the lady's true name? Most only know her titles, you have me curious here.”

“Someone in her family mentioned her by name.”

He hummed at that. "Cryptic. You've a very reserved man when it comes to sharing knowledge, Winterscar."

"Knowledge has a bad habit of becoming dangerous to carry around these days. And I still like to hoard it like a pipe weasel despite knowing it's hazardous to my health. No idea how I've made it this far, I'm a very lucky man."

To that, he gave me a smile. "Then I suppose I have died three times over myself at this point."

He must be talking about what he's learned from Relinquished. I was admittedly curious about the depths of that, how true any of it was. Curious enough to take a gamble at it, even if he might use this window to try and leverage something out of me. "You mentioned she'd shown you the heart of the world? What was that about?"He nodded, standing up and stretching his arms to the side. “The one time she answered my prayer, I asked her for knowledge, history, to reveal what I didn't know about the world. I was but a passing quirk to her mind, a novelty. She didn’t see any reason to deny me and entertained my request. She connected me to an ocean of sorts. A digital one. Inside I found wonders of all kinds." Then he turned to look me in the eyes. "I never spoke to her again after that brief moment, though I still pray. She opened the path for me, and then left me alone in it to do what I wanted. Like a castaway thought.”

“In a digital ocean?”

He nodded. “A vast repository of knowledge that the machines keep. An entire city, or a world that lives in parallel to our own. Filled with programs, large and small, living in an ecosystem unlike any I had seen before.""An ecosystem? That doesn't sound anything like what I'd find in a computer." He tapped his chin, thinking. "Thousands of small programs darted around me, like a school of fish. I saw them compete with one another for resources or space. They move from pool to pool, searching to expand and grow. If they're eaten, they break apart, and some of those parts still remain lucid enough to continue. Like a parrallel to life, they had all developed in a thousand different ways to survive. Some did better than others and grew over the years. Those larger programs still swim by, almost blindly, without care. Too big to be challenged by anything anymore, and too big to fit into the smaller spaces I explored.""None of them saw you as... food?" "I was protected by a cypher-shield she layered into my signature, I never had any fear. I was free to explore and touch everything I wished, all dangers fled before my presence. I spent hours, days even, until my body demanded food and water and I could no longer remain within the digital dream.”

“What sort of connection would plug a human mind into a digital space like that?”

He hummed, pacing around, one hand on that chin again, as if deep in thought. “I don’t quite think you’ll think of me as sane or rational should I tell you. I don't quite believe it myself, and I went through the process.”

“Try me.”

He shrugged, looking away. “Magic." He said, waving a hand loosely through the air. "I felt as if my soul was plucked out of my body, and thrown into that new world. Perhaps it is more than magic, some technology leftover from the golden age. They always did say sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But this felt... different. That's why I say, it was magic.”

That sounded a lot like a soul fractal being used in some way. Given that the sword that ended Atius’s current life looked freshly forged, it wouldn’t be a stretch to consider the Machines having access to their own repository of Occult. And that the soul fractal might have more powers than I suspected.

Wait - in the bunker, Father's soul fractal had been etched on the console and from there he'd been able to control the defenses. Perhaps the soul fractal could connect to digital computers? I would absolutely need to look into this the moment I was done handling this problem. “Did that machine archive have the technique they used? Any hints about how they did it?”

“I attempted to look for it at some point in my dive. To see what kind of technology and... and magic they used. She allowed a lot of history to be accessible, but there were still locked boxes. Massive archives which were password protected, though I felt they were old and rotting away. Compromised bit by bit in the harsh environment.”

"I assume they would be. Isn't she some seven thousand years old by now?"

“Yes. And that's the problem.” Lejis said somberly. “She's ancient. Unfocused. Distracted and no longer meticulous about anything. They all are. The gods are growing old." He turned his back to one of the walls and slid down to sit. "This whole world is teetering on the edge of a new age, creaking at the bones. History has remained static for so long, old powers that held the world together are starting to crumble apart into dust. Can you not feel it in the air? Change is coming. Whatever age comes after this one, I do not know how it will look. And I fear that humanity may finally be wiped out for good unless we do and try everything in our power to survive the transition.”

The way he spoke, I could understand why he’d been chosen as the head priest. There was a fever in his eyes. And while he was but a small scrawny man sitting in a damp cell with no armor or resources to his name, there was a feeling I was sitting by someone who had the willpower to change history. No matter how many times the world beat him back.“I said this before, and I stand by it.” Lejis continued. “The machines no longer care about this war, if they ever did in the first place. I see them behave like actors on stage, playing their part and following their lines, without knowing why they do so. I was but a throwaway thought to her attention when I stood before her for the first time. The pale lady, she cares about something else than the extinction of humanity, and has for a very long time now. This war that makes up every day of our life - it's a footnote to her, a backdrop. An annoyance she has to deal with.”

“What else could she care about?”

He shook his head at that. “I do not know. She certainly doesn’t like humans, I do not debate that point. We are but pests in her home. What it is she wants to do in such a home, I wish I knew. If I did, perhaps I could find a way to co-exist better.”

“Saying the gods have gone senile. Are you sure you’re not some heretic tossed out to the surface for saying such things?”

He shrugged. “Time breaks all things, eventually. Even gods. It is my hope that time will eventually break this war as well. That we are living at that crossing point where this war will finally end, for good.”

He did raise a point. This doomsday AI had been made seven thousand years ago, were they ever designed to remain in operation this long? Do they change over time even? Do machines evolve, or do they stay the same no matter how many centuries pass? Or did it depend on the machine itself and what software it was running? A calculator program would remain a calculator program a thousand years from now, but they were certainly more complicated than calculators. There was a lot about the enemy I didn’t know.

“And where does that leave you?” I asked. “I get a feeling when Lord Atius mentioned you could just be a disposable tool, you didn’t quite argue that fact with any heat.”

He shook his head. “Ultimately, I stand somewhere no other human before has stood. There is a chance for peace.” He said that word with such conviction, like a desperate man stubbornly clinging to the sides of an airspeeder. “Even if it is a small one, with little hope, cast out on the surface, I must still see this path through to the end. I don't care if it costs me my life. My existence is meaningless in the grand scope of time, but should I succeed with this one task, everything could change. You understand don’t you? You would do the same if you stood where I stand. There is no one else other than us to follow this through. If we don't stand up and do our part - who will?" He reached a hand out to me then, as if pleading. "Would you join me and help? Help me turn the wheel that steers this ship? Even just a small effort more might be the tipping point we need. Even if that wheel is seized up from rust and cannot turn, we can't know, not until it’s all over. That effort is worth everything.”

I chuckled, more out of surprise. For a moment, his fervor had reached down into me. I could feel it. “And what would you have me do?” I asked, more out of morbid curiosity. I had to remind myself that this was the enemy.

“You don’t have to become Chosen to help.” He said, dropping his hand. “You are of House Winterscar, their current prime, yes?”

I gave him a nod.

“I haven’t been spending my time here idly. I’ve studied your culture. Your laws, and traditions. I know your house has a heavy hand on power. You could send out colonists underground with us. Help us build a new city. There aren't many Chosen. We are like... kindling. A harsh wind could blow us out. But with enough tinder, we could light a fire that would warm all of humanity.”

“I’ll pass that along to the clan lord. He should be coming down to visit sometime soon.” I said offhanded. Watching for any signs on his face.

“I have been looking forward to debating with a Deathless. If only for the novelty of it. I don’t expect I could sway his mind, especially not if I request for some of his people to follow behind with me to what he would consider a time-locked enemy.”

Not a single blink, either he was the world’s greatest actor - or the Chosen really didn’t know anything about what had gone on.

No. Not the Chosen as a group. It struck me then, all at once. The obvious.

I’ve been so stupid all along. Correctly suspicious - but of the wrong man, exactly as the enemy had hoped for.

Lejis was the public leader of the Chosen. The charismatic man with a dream and passion to follow it to the ends of the earth, like a pipe weasel chasing down a rat. But there was one man who really ran the operations while the priest was the public face. Arms crossed across his relic armor, standing in the priest’s shadow. Always calculating the numbers. The logistics officer, the captain of the undersider knights.

The one currently roaming outside, free, with a small army of relic knights under his command, directly in contact with the slavers and raiders in a supposed skirmish against them.

If the slavers had somehow managed to sneak into the clan, with no sign of any airspeeder for any of them to stowaway, then there had been another path into the clan colony. And the only other way was... the underground. The machine controlled underground that no man could cross safely in all of our history, and had always been considered a footnote.

Until now.

The Chosen knights hadn’t yet been spotted returning from their mission.

It wasn’t because they’d been delayed.

They were already here.

Next chapter - Self delusion (T)