What we found at the top of the elevator was a smaller set of welded buildings, same architecture. The bit of mountain that remained visibly connected to the surface, which means somewhere in this winding city, there’d be cracks to make it back to the surface.

The comms flickered to life. Atius’s voice came out. “Search party to Winterscar.”

“Go ahead, we copy.” Father responded.

“We found a possible descent point, are you two still rising at the moment or stable?”

“We are currently stable. The elevator worked and brought us up as far as it could go.”

“Confirmed. We think we’ll be able to level with you after we descend down this point, assuming it drops to that level.”

“Understood.” Father answered back.

“We’ve got a good signal from here already. Stay where you are, we’ll be reaching you soon. Anything to report on your end, Winterscar?”

“Negative. Nothing new since last.”

“Understood. Search-party out.” The comms clicked shut.

Father and I walked over to an empty house, a metal table sticking out of the side, complete with stools. We sat down and unpacked our rations, both working without a word.

“How are you doing time wise?” I asked him.

He gave a positive nod. “Nowhere near my limit. At this distance we might even make it to the surface without having to knock me out.” He gave a quick tap on the metal table for luck.

“That meadow you talked about.” I asked him, taking my helmet off to nibble on the leftover rations. “Was it built by mites or the undersiders that lived there? I’ve been thinking about it, but if there’s a meadow and other biomes down here, does that mean that mites can create living tissue? Or at least a facsimile of it.”

Would be interesting to consider Deathless might be artificial humans. If mites can create living tissue, who's to say they're the only ones?

"Mites are ambitious builders,” Father said. “But I've never seen them create plants or animals with my eyes yet. However, the vegetation seem more... planted, for lack of a better word, in those biomes. There's an order to it, hard to spot, but still there. Perhaps the mites create the seeds and then let the plants do the rest?"

I thought about those little enigmatic creatures. So tiny and yet responsible for everything around me. Layer after layer. It felt like there were a lot more answers behind the mites then anyone could suspect.

"How far down deep does the underground actually go? I heard twelve miles before, but is that really true?" I asked instead.

"It goes deep.” He said. “So deep nobody knows where it ends. Twelve miles is a rumor, unconfirmed but commonly said. Even the undersiders don't explore past the third layer. The machines we fight up here are considered weak compared to what you find further down. After a certain point, even relic armor isn’t enough to balance the odds out. And the larger the group you travel with, the easier machines find the group."

“Undersiders have access to a lot more relic armor and tech than we do, why haven’t they explored all the way down?”

“The further down you go the more dangerous it gets. There are sanctuary points, places where a large pillar stands at the center with a few glyphs, glowing blue. Occult things, and not made by the warlocks. Around those pillars machines don't cross, though the radius is small and they're hard to find. Deathless have another use for it, they gain and exchange their powers at these pillars."

The elevator shuddered to life again, descending back down, empty. It cleared the view on the way down, revealing the city again. Father pointed out the distance. "Most undersider cities exist in the first three layers. After that it becomes too dangerous to hold off automatons. The rest of the layers... it's anyone's guess what you find down there. Weapons, treasure, power, but usually death for those of us who only die once."

"The Deathless, are they able to make it further down?" I’m guessing that’s a 'yes, but no', otherwise they would have confirmed for fact how far down deep we go.

"You’re on the right track, only Deathless go deeper. They gather together on the third level cities, and then set off. Usually in groups of five. Perhaps they're the reason we say twelve miles is the limit. I don't know how deep they've gone. It's grim work, and many are exhausted, especially the older ones. Some of the Deathless like Atius never delved deep into the underground. He instead went on to protect and lead people. Other Deathless have sequestered themselves into undersider cities, where they’ve taken year-long breaks from the fight. Whatever they are, they’re still human at their core, in my experience."

I tried to wrap my head around that. The machines we'd run into already were hard to fight off. If we didn't have relic armor, we'd have died dozens of times already. And he’s saying there’s worse below.

But then again, the machines up here weren’t optimal. If I had been in charge of designing killer automatons, I certainly wouldn’t be picking these sorts of forms. The spider had merit, but glaring weaknesses in the number of limbs.

Additionally, their reflexes didn’t seem on par with actual machines. Things from even the late third era could already track and calculate options within nanoseconds. So why weren’t the machines just as fast up here? And there was also something odd about their memories. "Every machine we've fought so far, it felt as if it had never fought a human before. But machines are just code. And memory is data. Why don't they all share collected memories? Or at least pass on their data to their next chassis?" And come to think of it, “Why are there no machines on the surface?”

Father shrugged. "Atius has asked the same questions you did, he asks each time we dive down into the deeper cities. No one has any answers, only theories. As for the surface, they seem almost... oblivious of it I suppose. As if they can't comprehend that the surface exists. Atius has a theory that it's all an artificial limit. Implemented likely by either the machines themselves for some arcane reason we don't understand or by an enemy of the machines. They might have failed to wipe out the machines, so they've settled on harming them in ways to prolong the world."

If this entity had been strong enough to modify the very core of how the machines behave... It was hard to put it all in context with what reality looked like now. It’s almost like these monsters up here were made specifically to be opponents to fight, rather than a pest control measure.

And the only opponent I can think of, would be the Deathless. What is their relationship to the machines?

"What exactly are they? Deathless I mean. Is there some sort of secret us relic knights are supposed to know? I'm no longer just a scavenger now."

"Were that I knew. I told you most of what I knew about them earlier. If there are more secrets, then Lord Atius is keeping them from me as well." He answered back, dashing my hopes. "What I told you was the truth. This last year has been... different. More different than any. The Deathless have truly changed for the first time in a millennia. They’re strange, Keith. Lord Atius is worried about it as well. He talks to his fellow Deathless when he meets them, and none of them can make sense of this new generation."

"Are the imperials right, about this being the end times?" What a gods damned century to be alive in. Right when the apocalypse appears over the corner of this scrap pile.

He shrugged again at that. "This new generation at least fights against the machines, most of the time. They’re just different from us. I spoke to one in a city a few months back. They see the world as a game. They act less like soldiers, more like children. I’ve seen them fight and bicker among each other constantly. Complaining about things that don’t make sense."

He drew out the sword, examining it while he spoke. Almost as if to distract himself with something. "But they have already discovered things further down than any have before. Some of the Imperials I’ve talked to believe the sun goddess is desperate, or trying something new to break the stalemate. The crusaders are mobilizing, regrouping together already. Large pilgrimages are happening underground, not to the surface, but to the grand cities, the ones on the lower level. The same places these new Deathless are flocking to. I’m not sure where they will go from there. So far, they’ve been joining expeditions further down, following these Deathless. The other surface clans are still trying to make sense of it."

I’d heard the songs dozens of times of course. The Deathless are demi-gods, old dead heroes brought back to life by the gods and sent down to protect humanity. I could see why the new ones acting much less dignified put a wrench on that explanation.

“Do we know why they’re trying to explore the lower reaches?”

Father nodded. “As a matter of fact, the one I spoke with did tell me. They say the key to the world is beneath the last layer, the grand prize. And whoever gets past some final challenge 'beats the game' to hear them say it."

The key to the world? It probably wasn't a physical thing. Maybe some sort of digital signature? But what sort of permissions would unlock the entire world?

Oh.

The answer seemed so obvious in hindsight, it almost smacked me off that table. There was one machine that shaped the world as it is. "The administrator keys to the mites."

"Perhaps.” Father said. “There's a lot of speculation on just what 'key' means in this context. Controlling the automaton. Or the mites. Or even other Deathless. The one I spoke with only said it was to win the game. Whatever it is, there is something deep down under all the layers of the world. The new Deathless want it. The crusaders are following them down underground, taking the fight to the heart of the enemy. The world is changing."

“I can’t say I’m too thrilled about the idea of some unhinged Deathless controlling the world itself.” I said, bringing back the conversation.

“Neither am I. I trust the gods have their plans. Surely they were behind this. Whatever the Deathless are, they fight for humanity for the most part. And you'll meet them soon enough. After the expedition, we were slated to protect a trading convoy into the lower levels, a joint mission with Clan Ja'dok. Meeting the new Deathless is unavoidable now with their numbers.”

So much of the world seemed... fought over. Intentionally shaped. And over the eons, shifted into the balance we have now. The machines seemed like a result of different powers trying to either weaken them, or empower them. The mites might as well have come out of the same result. Gods, the mites might have once been aggressive machines themselves at one point. If it was the gods trying to modify the machines - and I can't think of any entity powerful enough other than the gods - they surely would have tried to go all the way. So what had stopped them?

The way of the white, our scriptures, always talked about the threat being outside of the world. Like everything, it was all explained in the songs. But something was clearly opposing and counteracting the attempt to pacify the machines and it didn't make sense for that entity to reside outside the world when the machines were on the inside. Did these buckets of bolts have their own gods fighting for them?

The elevator made a creaking noise behind us, coming back up. I glanced back, wearily. Was something coming up? Father stood back up from the table, sword raised. “It should not be coming back up.” He muttered under his breath. Journey still caught the wording.

“You don’t think that...”

I heard the spider’s metallic snickering, echoing around the town, coming straight from the elevator shaft. That same dark chuckle of superiority, as if it had pulled a fast one on us. I scrambled to put on my helmet and pack my gear back up on my backpack. I had it fastened up and ready to go in record time.

“It’s followed us.” Father said, clenching the crusader’s longsword.

The top of a familiar barnacle turret soon peeked over the elevator edge, continuing to rise. It didn’t wait to say hello and simply opened fire without prelude. Both of us dodged the attack easily enough, splitting our respective ways off. Father barked out orders for me to get to cover while he closed in to finish the thing for good, swords and knife ready in action.

He skidded to a stop when he spotted extra heads besides the five legged menace appearing over the lip of the rising elevator. A lot of extra heads.

Great. It brought friends.

The spider wasn’t going to fuck around this time and it clearly remembered how we’d kicked it out into the cold last time. I had thought it would set up traps or use the environment, but there was a far more basic and easy to employ tactic to level the odds.

Minions.

I suppose the spider subscribed to the philosophy that quantity had a quality of its own when it came to minions. And it wanted to make absolutely sure we wouldn’t survive this time. Twenty-eight pairs of violet eyes glared balefully at us. A small army of Screamers against two worn down relic knights.

The screamers didn't wait for the platform to level; they leapt out. Half climbing, half jumping, and started a counter-charge against Father. The spider didn't follow into the attack, instead it remained behind, watching. The screamers would soon obscure the line of fire to their closest target, so the barnacle had already chosen to wail on me, again. I swear that thing had a personal vendetta against me.

I made a quick slide to the first cover I could get to. There were buildings all around, any of them would let me duck behind. Journey halted my movements halfway, letting a spike fly by right where I'd have passed by. It felt like I'd run into a slightly cushioned wall. Journey taking over the motions, utterly unmovable, disorienting me for a moment after.

Better than getting impaled.

In moments I'd made it to safety behind one of those welded together mite buildings. A second spike fired, whistling in the air. It planted straight through the metal, tip exploding out the other side. Almost damaging my armor, but not quite enough power to sustain the momentum. Ok, note to self: these metal buildings might not be as sturdy as I'd considered.

I could see the small minimap on the corner of my HUD showing Father hadn’t started sprinting back on the retreat.

Scrapshit, was he trying to hold them off or did he have some sort of idea?

With quick motions, I unstowed the crusader’s old rifle, flicked its safety off, spun out of cover and took aim. A burst of shots flew right where the targeting reticle expected the hit. The spider was immune to the small arms fire, using its legs as shields. So instead my snap action had been aimed at the turret on top - the eye.

The spider's leg was quicker, shooting across the air at the last second and stopping the attack.

Scrapshit. Neither its body nor the barnacle were getting downed soon. My aim went down, searching for other targets. The automatons covered the ground like insects, swarming across.

Father on his end had better ideas of how to handle combat now that I got a look at what he’d been up to. The long sword had been sheathed back, and his free hand was drawing out the last grenade he had.

A flick of a gauntleted hand and his last explosive flew straight at the charging mob, red light rapidly blinking.

None of them had seen a grenade before, so of course they didn't dodge. That turned into a very expensive mistake.

The explosion tore into the charging group. I saw the enemy counter tick down dramatically on Journey’s HUD. That had ripped apart five screamers off the bat, and likely damaged others. The machine charge faltered, staggering from the blow, the smoke obscuring the full scene.

“Cover fire, shoot the moment I retreat. Conserve ammo otherwise.” He ordered. “I need to thin their ranks.”

Twenty-three targets left. That didn’t seem to faze him at all.

No, instead he charged forward and dove into the smoke.

Next chapter - Nothing personal