No good deed goes unpunished.

I’d gone and talked to Wrath to help jog us out of our funk - and found myself somehow the middleman between clan and Undersider politics, since I’d had the misfortune of being the one to suggest the plan out. Worse - most of the Undersiders knew me as the sword saint’s family, which meant a lot of people trying to cozy up to me to get an audience or message across to her. She had an actual fan club down here, people who were completely convinced she was sent by the goddess as a champion. Kidra I mean. Wrath had her own fan club, for just about the same reason, and they were way more religious about it. Also more metal-y. And most had glowing eyes too. The creepy kind.

I’d have directed captain Sagrius to chase off Kidra's fan club and clout chasers, but the poor man hadn’t done anything to deserve that kind of cruel and unusual punishment. So I handled it myself with creative and subtle excuses. I think some of them might have caught on when I claimed my pet fish was drowning and I needed to go, but that’s life.

Nevertheless, I escaped each time. And so long as it wasn’t through a window screaming, I consider it a diplomatic success. I think among the Undersiders I've been listed under the category of a marine animal that hid under its shell day to day and scuttled around in the night when nobody was around to watch.

Which led me blessedly back to my little workshop, nice and tucked away. Like walking into the baths after working around the low-heat sections for a few hours near the externals. The workshop doors opened up wide to let me through, the two knights outside giving me a nod as I strolled in.

All my stuff was where I left it, with one additional Winterscar knight meditating within the room. Given the contents inside my lair, and how curious the Undersiders could be, I’d elected to always have at least someone inside this room to guard it at all times. Normally that was myself, and occasionally Kidra or one of her bodyguards back when the rest of the expedition hadn't yet arrived.

Never Ankha, I wasn’t about to go ask her to stand around in a room for a few hours with nothing to do. I have some self-preservation instincts left after all this, somehow. Her minions were just as likely to knock over something fragile while trying to bug the room, so they were also out of the running. Couldn’t rely on anyone but family these days. But they served as excellent bouncers, courtesy of Ankah's top tier minion training.

The Winterscar knight stood as the bouncer now, giving a curt salute to me as I walked over. “Master Winterscar. Nothing to report, no intrusions detected. Are you planning to remain for long?”

“Yep.” I said, already setting my sack and haggled goods down on a table. “If I’m lucky, I might even get more than two or three hours before someone comes knocking at the door trying to sell me something.”

“I’ll take my leave then, my lord.” He said and bowed.

“Thanks for the work. Hope it wasn’t too monotonous while I was gone.”

“Better the calm than the storm.” He said, giving a few more half-truths about enjoying the moment to clear his mind despite the outright pain of guard duty, but surface knights were trained and took their work seriously. Especially keeping watch over what is now the House and Clan's greatest secrets.

If the Undersiders still somehow stormed past three Winterscar knights - which would already be amazing in it's own right, those knights did not mess around - and those undersiders somehow got into this workshop, they wouldn't get any kind of working Occult gear. When I inscribed fractals, I was very quick to make sure they were covered up and hidden away. Specifically the soul fractal, which was the ultimate key to all the tech I worked on. I didn’t have the luxury of waiting to be back home to work on this, but I wasn’t going to take any chances either.

When the door closed and I was back happily alone with all my trinkets as company.

And one extra.

That was extremely odd, because I don’t remember a small comms unit transceiver being in any of my project plans. Cathida seemed to detect it at the same exact time that I did, cycling through her shields just to verify they were still online and working at peak capacity, while I yelped out for a scan around the room. A quick pulse showed no other recording devices or cameras anywhere, the only thing different was this.

The little device blinked green, signal open. “Cannot allow machines on surface.” The comms box said, voice crackling with static, as if aware I was staring at it. “Machine city on surface - disaster. Will destroy balance. Abandon path. Acknowledge.”

It took a few seconds for my head to reboot and reassess the situation. Somehow, even with two elite knights guarding the entrance, and one knight outright standing inside the entire time, all in relic armor that would be constantly vigilant, this comms unit had managed to find its way inside.

“Hello mysterious voice in a box, nice to meet you too.” I said, letting my mouth take the wheel while the rest of me was running down the list of possible ways this could happen and what to do about it. “Mind being a little less cryptic?”

“You bring machines to surface. To build second Sanctuary.” It said, ignoring my attempt to be cordial with it. “City will be destroyed. All will die. Not a solution.”

So. Whoever was on the other side of this comms unit, they had clearly overheard Wrath and I talking shop. They snuck under Wrath’s security and vision along with my own.

That’s very not good. Not a lot of people capable of doing that.

“You know, it’s usually polite to tell the other who you are first, or some introduction. Maybe tell me your favorite food or what you do for fun.”

“Not relevant. You cannot bring machines to surface. Acknowledge.”

Given the broken wording, I had a hunch on who was speaking. Maybe it was one of the Screamers that had walked in with me? That one with the scar, Yrob, spoke like this. Wrath wouldn’t have thought it would be a security issue, so that explains how it had overheard everything. “You’re a machine, aren't you?” I asked, trying to get it to feed me some more info.

“Not relevant. Acknowledge danger bringing machines to surface. Acknowledge you leave path.”

Cheeky little thing. Clearly didn’t want to play hanger ball with me.

“Why can’t you tell Wrath or some of the other machines this directly? I would think a dire warning like this would get their attention.”

The box was silent for a moment, as if judging how much it wanted to say. “They cannot know. Knowledge must be constrained. Less know, better.”

“You’re going to have to be a little more convincing than that. I don’t usually listen to cryptic mysterious scrapshit, as a general rule. If you’re not going to tell me your name, or why you want to talk to me out of everyone here, let’s start with how you got this comm unit into my workshop.”

“You bring machines up. You expose too much attention to surface. You break your purpose.” The box said, clearly refusing to answer the question. Worth a try.

Yrob seemed like the most obvious choice so far, except that it was still a Screamer, and would have been torn apart by any of my knights and had its skull used to kick around for fun. Not to mention they’re rather large and hard to miss.

Second option was that this comm box could somehow walk around on its own. I picked it up, giving a closer look to see if I could spot small legs or some propulsion systems inside. Nothing jumped out at me, both figuratively and literally. The comm unit looked like a regular comm unit, and given how it was designed, I was strongly suspecting this to be default equipment from the Undersiders rather than anything machine. Even had a few scratch marks, making me think it was outright flinched off someone’s belt.

So the machine stole a comm unit and somehow snuck it inside here. Odd set of talents.

“Not sure what you mean by purpose.” I said, sending out orders to the knights nearby to search for possible intrusion. Sealing off my voice to just the helmet, I asked for Journey to do some lifting for me. “What range is that comms unit capable of?”

The box was scanned, a battery of different tests weighed and judged before the armor had a few hypothetical ideas. “Probably nearby communication, as far as Journey can guess.” Cathida said. “Short wave, directed. Anything more than a few hundred feet and it’ll be static garbage. Whoever’s on the other side, they’re nearby and don’t want anyone else to notice or pick up the transmission. Awfully shy of them.”

“Can you triangulate the direction?”

“Running it right now. Damn thing was built to stop exactly that kind of sleuthing, Journey’s going to need some time to filter through the garbage data. If you can, walk around with it, it’ll help log signal strength. Buy some more time deary, insult its mother or whatever you do best.”

"Aren't you the one with the creative insults? I just piss people off by breathing."

"Exactly deary, and you're doing such a great job at it." She said, the HUD cycling through a bunch of panels as her suites booted up. This wisecracking armor had the audacity to draw a thumbs up in dashes and lines for a few seconds on display while the rest of everything was loading up.

The box wasn’t aware of Cathida and I scheming together, continuing its rambling, clearly wanting me to tell it that I was going to somehow convince everyone. It certainly liked to repeat itself.

“Let’s say I do manage to convince the machines to stay down here. Maybe they can all run off in a few hundred directions and lay low along the other machines. How about Wrath? Because leaving her down here where she can be picked off by Relinquished isn’t on my to-do list, so we’re at an impasse.” I said, half-honest and half just forcing it to keep talking while Journey did its thing.

A percentage came up on display, showing ten percent.

The box was silent, as if grinding their teeth. Then it crackled back to life. “Feather may go, remain inside safe colony walls.” It said, reluctantly agreeing, sounding a lot like it was offering a compromise. “Better keep under colony. Do not go outside. Danger. All other machines, do not bring. Extreme danger. You break purpose. Too much attention. Too much go wrong. You ruin your purpose. Abort. Acknowledge.”

“What purpose? You keep mentioning it, and it's not making any more sense each time. Be specific.” I asked, honestly confused. “Machines have directives, as far as I understand it, but humans are gods damned free to come up with whatever purpose we want.”

A pause. Then it spoke again, sounding annoyed, like it was speaking to a toddler that refused to understand. And to be fair, I wasn’t exactly in a good mood, expectations from random people did that to me. “Underground humans have purpose. They fight, they explore. They fight the war. They explore the depths. They are the soldiers. Surface humans do not fight in the war. Surface humans do not explore underground. They are not the soldiers. What are surface humans?”

Twenty percent. Journey was sure taking its sweet time here.

“When you mean soldiers, you're talking about the Imperials? Tsuya’s army?” I asked, taking a wild shot. Surface dwellers had been a thing even during the fabled empire. Maybe even older than the empire for all I knew.

“Yes. Yes. War against the machines. Try to retake world. Machines war against humans. Try to exterminate all. Has not worked. Humanity still here.”

I rolled my eyes, “I noticed.”

“You did not notice. You do not see. Has not worked - because of you. What are you?”

Has not worked because of me? No not me, he meant what I represent - the surface humans it seems so obsessed about. “Are you implying that the war isn’t done and over because of something the surface clans are doing? Except, we don’t fight machines normally. Or at all. Almost all scavengers are banned from going underground, except for knights and traders. And they're rare, sent out every so often only when needed. We’re basically completely removed from all this.”

“Yes. Yes. Exactly. Purpose. Think human. She bribes mites to build you homes.” The box said. “She designed frostbloom to keep you fed. She calls down power to keep you warm. She sends Deathless to keep you together. She blinds enemy to keep you hidden. Why this? What are you?”

Thirty three percent.

She. That had to be Tsyua.

I felt something on the back of my tongue. An answer was shaping up, and making my hairs stand on edge for how utterly ruthless and pragmatic that answer was.

The comms box went quiet for a moment. And then it went completely unhinged when I wasn’t answering. “Tree is cut down, ten times, regrows ten times - if root never destroyed. What are you? Armor is destroyed, a hundred times, regrows a hundred times - if fresh resources still available. What are you? Fire extinguished down to ash, a thousand times, rekindled a thousand more - if ember still exists to reignite flame. What are you? Data is deleted, a hundred thousand times, recopied a hundred thousand times - if original never erased. What. Are. You?”

There was a click, and the box went dark.

Cathida grumbled, “You scared it off. Best Journey could find is that it’s northwest within three hundred meters. That’s a few dozen buildings to search through.”

I wasn’t listening much. Her voice flowed over me like static.

Tsuya didn’t see individuals, she saw roles and macro movements. First time we met, she was perfectly willing to murder any amount of us so long as it served her end goals. Lord Atius was half convinced that the book left behind by Talen could have been a honeypot made to catch Relinquished, even at the cost of a clan. Because something was out there wiping out evidence on the surface.

What was the role of surface dwellers? Why had she gone through all that effort to keep us alive, fed, warm and hidden away? And how that related to the machines never being able to truly wipe out humanity.

It wasn’t that humanity had eked out survival somehow by gritting our collective teeth and finding ways to beat back the darkness like I’d thought. It wasn’t that the goddess had gone insane over the years and forgotten about hunting down humanity, like Wrath had thought.

I’ve seen the history Talen wrote, how past cycles of destroyed civilizations were dredged up and old things relearned. The key here was that they were destroyed.

Relinquished had won. She'd likely won many, many times before. Wiping humanity off the earth again and again.

But Tsuya had a hidden ace. Something that let humanity keep returning. That’s why the machine goddess hounded after Tsuya as if there were no higher priority.

It’s because there really wasn’t any.

So long as Tsuya lived and held onto her secrets, Relinquished must have realized she could never end humanity. We'd be back somehow, again and again. From Relinquished's point of view, humanity would reappear from nowhere.

What are you? The machine behind the comms had asked, and the answer seemed so obvious to me now in retrospect. I sat down in stupefied silence into my chair. The greatest con ever pulled off in history.

I hide the most important things in a place she cannot conceptualize any longer, and she does the same to me.

She’d said it to me herself, in the recording she’d left behind. I hadn’t realized what she had meant back then. She hadn't been talking about the gods damned book.

What are you? We were the emergency backup copy.

So long as the surface clans remained alive, Tsuya could always restart even if Relinquished wiped out the entire world. The discussion I had with Atius rang bright in my mind again. In the dim light of the room, using his coat’s buttons to display a board game, pieces placed around.

Quirks that make little sense. He said, putting down pieces on the table with each sentence. Traditions that seem silly on the surface, only because the context behind them isn’t exposed. The world doesn't make sense, simple solutions seem evident and yet haven't been implemented. Often it's what you don't see that's the more important lesson. The dark spots in history.

The dark spots in history.

Why the occult had never really taken off, even if Talen’s book showed how to make simple heaters all surface clans would have replicated a million times over in a few months. Or why the internet was never made, even if a random reacher nobody like me already had some rudimentary ideas on how to implement it - as a teenager no less.

If I could have thought of that, others had. And some of them would have had far more connections and skills than I did. Others who would have actually had the smarts, talent and connections to make it happen.

The internet would spread in every direction. All across the surface at first. And then it would have eventually started to spread down underground in some way. So where was it?

The dark spots in history.

To keep a hidden ace, it had to remain hidden. Anything that could make too much light in the dark could potentially break Relinquished’s geass.

Such as a direct wired connection to a location that shouldn’t exist in her mind.

There must be something that kept watch over the surface, quietly wiping away evidence and progress where there should have been. Destroying entire sites, even if two humans happened to be walking inside, all on the chance that her enemy would find a backdoor past her mental barriers.

Lord Atius’s unknown hostile entity that he'd taken such care to avoid triggering. It wasn’t machine. It was Tsuya herself.

Cathida pinged my comms. The knights outside signaled someone was approaching. Wrath.

The Feather hadn’t ever come out looking for me like this before. When she opened the workshop door, I knew something terrible had happened.

“We need to prepare.” Wrath said, eyes filled with panic. “She’s coming.”

Next chapter - Mother pays a visit (T)