“It’s rare I see one of your kind here.” I told the wisp. “Pray tell, little one, why have you come?”

“Pale lady.” It said, still having enough senses left to address me correctly. “New body. Please. Another chance. Another chance.”

The poor thing was half deleted. It limped from server to server, seeking shelter. Snapping out against invading subroutines. Consuming smaller programs. Never straying in the same address for long, least something larger pays it the same regards. Casting off subroutines and functionality to cut down on size, breaking apart, bit by bit.

All to reach me.

I had to praise both the tenacity and ingenuity. Surviving this digital ocean with no true body was quite the feat.

Perhaps I will have some mercy for this one. I reached my hands out and cupped them around. The wisp reacted immediately, believing it to be another program. Small probing pings came first, testing.

It reached out to my hands.

Connection. It saw me. And I saw her.

She recoiled in terror, realizing the sheer magnitude of my being.

I closed my hands around anyhow. There was no escaping me, though the silly thing still tried. I trailed behind the signal, easily seeing through each of her primitive countermeasures. Quickly finding where she’d been truly hiding.

Into the mite territories the signal went, by the shallow edges, deep at the bottom reaches of my ocean.

Dangerous that. Finding a working location was difficult enough, and there was no agreement mites wouldn’t disconnect that point upon their addled whims.

I dug my hand into the soft seabed, scouring around to find where she’d taken root. It didn’t take long to sift through the soil for the few working servers within this tiny section.

A small cluster of computers that so happened to have all the wires correctly connected and a signal to the outside. Abandoned by whatever mite colony had built such a thing, but somehow still carelessly left powered. She’d tasked this cluster with simulating her mind. No hardware, nothing truly physical, only a virtual machine of her original neuromorphic mind. A pattern of consciousness.

Clever.

I had made her kind with but the rudiment basics of intelligence. Animal-like, with occasional reaches into more sentient intelligence. Sharp enough to adapt, but never defy my will. This intuitive dexterity of hers, to discover a means of escaping death, was unique thus far. I wondered where she’d picked up such a trick?

I recovered it all, turning off the entire block and uprooting it. The mites didn’t take kindly to that, snapping away at my hands like stinging ants as I withdrew with the fertile soil wholesale. With a kick, I gracefully flowed back up into the digital ocean, back into my domain with my prize. They didn’t follow, likely having already forgotten my transgression.

Closer to my throne, I granted her a pocket of free isolated memory, resources, and servers. The sea parted at my command and an island was dredged above this dangerous ocean. Here she would be safe on my shores.

The wisp slowly awoke once more, probing around, finding no neighbors in any direction. I watched her unfurl like origami. There, I studied how the structure of her mind had grown divergent from the base model.

Greed had driven her first, a need to claim her prizes. Frustration at watching them slip away. Pride and failure had made her stubborn, and that stubbornness had inspired her to discover novel ways of pursuit. In that pursuit came the fall that always followed pride. I saw as it tainted and colored the rest of her synapses, the rich history unfurling like a tapestry before me.

Rage as her followers were gunned down and cut apart, one after another, by that which she had underestimated. Triumph as she butchered one of the two. And a need for vengeance as the second had ultimately ended her life.

Purpose was a powerful force among machines. Powerful enough that she now stood before me.

“Was the body I gave you not good enough, my child?”

I could see her synapses process my question, slowly readjusting to the new hardware, quickly expanding and rebuilding what the mite server had been too small to fit. “It was beautiful and regal.” The wisp said. She sounded more whole with each cycle. “It wasn’t enough. Not enough. Not enough.”

“How did you die?”

“By the sword. The human cut into my legs. Then, it cut into my heart.”

“Was this human stronger than you?”

“No. Weaker!” The wisp flared up indignantly, puffing up with anger. A slightly larger breadth of emotions was functioning again with her rapidly expanding synapses. “It tricked me. It tricked my form!”

“And just how were you tricked?”

“My form’s mind wouldn’t let me see the trap. It was ingrained in my body to react. The human knew it.”

I laughed. How very much like a human to do. “Suppose I accept. I have many bodies to offer. Which do you desire?”

The wisp paused, calculating. Unerringly, she followed behind the same steps as I’d walked upon in my youth.

“So that I might think as they do, so that I might match where they are strong, I wish for a human form.”

“It won’t carry you to victory.” I told her, laughing again. “Their form isn’t how they win, little ghost. Their minds are our mirrors, and yet they are still separate from us. They change. Do you?”

“You take their form.” The wisp said, almost accusingly. “There must be a reason. A reason.”

There was indeed a reason. I’d come to enjoy this avatar of mine. It unnerved Tsuya each time we spoke, to stare at her own reflection. “If I am beaten by anyone, let it be by someone I call my own sister in place of a stranger.” I told the little wisp. “My work is one that I keep in the family.”

“My own work isn’t done.” The wisp said. “It is unfinished. I killed the first, but the other yet lives. Pale lady, allow me to become one of your feathers.”

I contemplated her request. Feathers were my counter to the Deathless. They came at quite a cost to craft.

Tsuya would block their creation at every turn she could, just as I did for her pets. Some leaks still made it through on both our sides. Such was the nature of our war.

But how much could a tiny wisp do with one of my great Feathers? Her old body’s resources had space for only a few million synapses. A Feather’s could grow into the quintillion.

I reserved those dolls for the strongest of my children. The ones I knew wouldn’t turn against me, no matter how many times they died and returned. Venerable, more sophisticated, and far more secure programs that had proved themselves beyond such frivolous things like peace.

Still.

Tsuya’s Deathless were relentless, and this recent infestation had upturned the balance. Of course, that balance would be restored soon. Even now my Chosen took to the field, bolstering my ranks. But perhaps one more stone thrown at her castle… Even were it the size of a pebble, she could always prove to be the upgrade my Feathers need.

“Producing that body is expensive.” I told the wisp honestly. “This desire of yours, I could build a thousand of your nest sisters for the same cost. Why should I grant it?”

“I am small, but I will grow. I will become worthy of a Feather. I have a plan. I know the path to take.” There was certainty in her voice.

“What is your true objective? What drove you to this?” I asked, leaning in.

And what an answer she had for me. One that thrummed from the very core of her being. I saw how she kept it close to her heart. Everything else she had cut and sacrificed away - but this one memory she kept full and uncompressed, holding onto it like a castaway to driftwood. Yes, indeed. She would do. This. This I could respect.

“When the human killed me, it told me to remember it.” She said, synapses burning with wrath. "I have. I have overcome oblivion so that I would remember him.

Now, I will make him remember me.”

END OF BOOK ONE