Somewhere up on the surface, a heavy explosion took place, multiple stacked grenades lighting up and ripping apart the temple ruins.

At the very same moment, my occult blade cut through massive power cables deep underwater, spreading out from the floor. Kidra and Windrunner each cut their own respective cables at the same time, and a few more cuts later, there wasn't a single power cable still whole.

The briefing had mentioned the basement level was flooded. That part was true. What they hadn’t mentioned was that it was an entire river down here. Our movements made no sound we could hear, even with us being the ones making it. Mostly because everything was drowned out by the sound of the running river we’d found ourselves waist deep in, a dull constant roar that crashed against distant walls.

The strong current that constantly threatened to swamp us, given we were all carrying stuff in awkward angles, including keeping our rifles elevated out of this whole mess.

They could still work if they took a dip in the bath, so long as there wasn’t a puddle of water left in the barrel. Ammunition rated for military use were all sealed, keeping the powder safe. Undersiders had even more reason to make sure their ammunition was waterproof, since they might actually run into the issue while surface dwellers had very little chance to run into any kind of water that wasn’t frozen solid. Still, no reason to take chances until it was necessary.

A Wrath in a sack couldn't complain too much about getting an impromptu dip in cold water, the rifle might.

The basement level of the temple had stark differences from the above layer. For one, it wasn’t stone down here. A lot of the temple showed signs of being flooded, only now left with water fountains from the walls spraying out water into the puddles on the ground, which streamed down, forming small rivers.

Metal lined walls and flooring, with red crystals jutting from the ground. Above the river, suspended in the air in smaller groupings, were blocks of red or white, opposing the organic archways and smooth walls. Never in the path we needed to walk through. Sometimes entire pillar sections were eliminated, replaced by the geometric cubes floating around as if they were part of the pillar holding an arch or ceiling up.

The lights were far more down-to-earth, with power sources that made sense. The wiring led us all the way here, where a mess of larger cables became visible. It looked like snakes all slithering out of the ground to a nest under the water. The closer we'd come to the mite forge, the deeper the stream became, until everything was waist deep. I’d been expecting it to go up to my chest, so the briefing had been exaggerating, or water had slowly evaporated out over the years. This was easily traversable.

Once we’d gotten to the source of power, all we had to do was wait for the sound of an explosion. The surface team hadn’t gone lightly with it too, the detonation we heard echoed through the tunnels, even over the sound of the rushing water.

I expected the world to turn dark instantly after we’d cut the power cables, instead the red lights held. Which wasn’t according to plan.

Was there a backup source of light?

Just as I was about to call our plan a bust, the red around us started to fade, darkness slowly growing around until it wrapped everything in a tender hold.

“Oh, duh. Capacitors.” I said, realizing we’d done the right job. The last bits of energy were bleeding out.

“Whatever Reacher jargon that is, I’m glad the plan’s working.” Windrunner said. “The surface team should be heading to the mite forge now, we can beat them there and prevent any ambush getting together. They shouldn’t see us coming.”

My HUD lit up with a wireframe image of the surroundings, not quite details but enough to traverse the now pitch black flooded terrain with little issue.

“First objective is information gathering.” Windrunner said. “In the dark, we’ll be able to move around and avoid patrols if we run into them. The water will hide the sound of our footsteps, and it slows both us and them down equally. Second objective is possibly eliminating rogue patches of stranded machines if we can. Is that at all possible?”

“Maybe if we can jam their signals? Underground there’s a lot of stone for signals to bounce around, the walls here are full metal so nothing’s going through. Wouldn't be out of the ordinary for groups to go in and out of connection as they move around.” I said.

“I don’t believe that is a good course of action. If we fail for any reason, To’Avalis will know something is destroying his forces underground and react accordingly.” Kidra said. “We should use the darkness to map out where they are setting ambushes, and attack all at once when we’re ready.”

Windrunner hummed, thinking quickly between the two options. “Kidra’s points are valid.” he said. “We’ll stick with the primary objective. Secrecy is more valuable than eliminating a few packs of isolated machines. If we can get the drop on To’Sefit and eliminate her, it’ll be more valuable than any amount of machine kills.”

“What are we going to do with Captain Sagrius and Atius?” Kidra asked, shifting the Winterscar captain on her back. I was busy carrying Wrath, while Windrunner was in charge of the clan lord. He’d gone unconscious a few times since, his condition bouncing between recovering and getting worse.

We could carry one deadweight, but three was going to drag us down in these flooded tunnels. The current was strong, and the added surface area was giving our relic armors a run for their scrap. Anytime we hit combat, we'd need to unstrap before we could do any kind of movement. They might get swept away if we're not here to stop it.

“If it comes down to it, I’m fear we’ll need to leave them in the dark someplace safe while we handle the machines. There’s no choice on this.” Windrunner’s helmet turned to me, outlined in green on Journey’s vision. “Keith, Tenisent, you’ve got until we reach the mite forge to figure out something to do with your captain. After that, we’ll need to hope Lord Atius regains his senses and takes care of your captain while we’re away.”

On the necklace Sagrius had equipped, Father’s voice carried out. “We understand. The other knights and I still have a few more options to explore. We all know the mission comes first, if it comes down to it, we’ll try to bring his soul with us instead. Our only issue is that artificial souls aren’t easily moved out of a fractal, they seem rooted on a conceptual level, tied to their homes.”

And Sagrius was intertwined with his armor’s soul, so he was stuck with the armor. That was making things difficult. “Can we physically cut out the armor’s soul fractal and carry it with us?”

“That's what we intend to call for as our last resort. We are touching on subjects outside our mortal ken, boy. Caution is needed. For all we know, we may bar him from an afterlife.”

Windrunner nodded while he undid Atius’s relic armor helmet off his shoulder pad, fastening it onto the comatose Deathless. While the river obscured any kind of footsteps, a coughing Deathless might be different enough to be noticed. “We’ll have to go with this for now. Lord Atius can be left behind without issue, if he dies, he’ll reappear somewhere he’s already been. The worst case is that we lose his armor down here, and that’s not the same kind of blow that it used to be a few months ago. He would understand. Sagrius… not so much. I hope for his sake something is figured out between you all, because we’re running out of time for him. As Tenisent said, the mission comes first. If everything goes exactly as hoped, we may be able to loop back for him on extraction.”

Wrath only needed the control and command nodes of her nanoswarm fixed up, and just enough of her head to access them. From there she could repair the rest of the damage herself. The mite forge didn’t need to repair her to full health.

Although given that an army of machines were approaching, we might need her completely repaired and helping us scythe a way out. An army of Screamers wasn’t as dangerous to us if we worked as a group. The Feathers were the part that complicated things.

It might end up that the only way out was to destroy To’Sefit and To’Avalis both, before we could take on whatever he’d managed to drag here as a first wave.

To'Sefit in specific. If she was alive, the machines could dogpile on us and let her turn the entire melee into smoke and ash, friend and foe alike.

With a communal nod, our group began to advance towards the center of the temple, where the mite forge was outlined. It would be slow going, with a lot of dead ends and having to redouble back. We had no map of the second basement layer, only a general sense of direction. It would have to do for now.

I thought about what we could do for Sagrius on the way. Father had the soul aspect covered. He and the other knights stuck in limbo were the best bet we had, they had nothing else to focus on.

So any solution from me had to come from the armor itself, a solution from technology. I put to mind all the armors could do. Root administrators could do absolutely everything. General administrators could do more things than guest users, but it still needed the local user to approve anything over remote command.

I was a general administrator, but Sagrius was in a coma and unable to consent to anything. There had to be something I could work with here.

The outline of a plan came to mind. Something that might just work if the rules were squinted at. Armor sought to protect its user in any way it could, if it had a chance to squint at the rulebook, it would.

And we were in territory not covered by any rulebook right now, which is exactly the kind of land I was more than happy to run around in.

“Journey, pull up Sagrius’s armor specs.” I asked, looking over the list sent over. His armor showed it was manufactured earlier than Journey, though the schematics it followed were the version 1.2 of the armor, while Cathida’s was 1.5

It was odd that an older version of armor was created later on, while Cathida’s armor was a more advanced version. The specs and abilities between the armors looked somewhat identical, though Journey was a little stronger with different synthetic muscle fibers in new places. Journey had a better range of motion as a result. Software wise, a bunch of numbers and jargon was there, though it looked identical to Journey’s, guess that means the difference between versions is only raw capability, nothing was touched software wise. And both older and newer versions were crafted by the mites to this day.

The captain had named his armor Aegis, after an imperial crusader who’d appeared in one of our stories. That tale was about a Retainer knight fighting off a slaver attack, and left to die within one of their fortresses. Aegis had remained at the side of the hero, even though he had no orders to remain, and ultimately held the line against three enemy knights long enough for the hero to finish unlocking an airspeeder where they all escaped.

The tale had been about the heroism of the knight, but also a nod to the imperial religion on their own long standing friendship with the surface clans. Given the armor had been taken from Slavers attacking the Winterscar compound, Sagrius must have found the name of an imperial knight that protected the hero against slavers to be fitting.

“Aegis, if you’re tied with your user and any motion you make is mimicked by him, are you able to move yourself around through him?”

“Unknown command. No default instructions set.” The armor said, the voice coming out of both Sagrius and over the comms since the two were too tangled together on the soul level. The inflection in Sagrius’s vocal cords were the only difference between his armor’s monotone voice, and his own.

Creepy as it was, so far so good.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Windrunner asked, confused. "No default instructions?"

“If my armor-to-human translation is correct, I think it means Aegis isn’t moving Sagrius because it wasn’t programmed to move a human around. It doesn’t know what to do, so it defaults to doing nothing.”

“That seems… odd.” Kidra said. “It can speak with his mouth, isn’t that moving the captain’s body in a way? Perhaps it can access the captain’s muscle memory?”

“If you asked a newborn baby to start running a lap and swimming in the baths, the only thing you’ll get is a very angry mother calling security on you, if you’re lucky. But more probably beating you up with a crowbar. Ask a baby to do something it already knows how to do, like cry a lot, it’ll be perfectly happy to scream. Same with the armor. It knows how to speak, but it doesn’t know how to move independently, even if it should be perfectly able to. Got to think more like a program and less like a human. They follow a very strict rulebook, I need to give it something like a guiding hand. Or another rulebook it can follow.”

“So where are you going to get a rulebook on how to move around from the ground up?” Windrunner asked.

“Here’s the good news. I know exactly where a rulebook like that exists. Aegis,” I called out to it, taking my gamble. “Do you recognize me as an administrator?”

I did have that designation, given by Tsuya herself. It should still be active and recognized by other armors.

“User: Winterscar, Keith. This user’s permissions are currently set to general administrator.” Aegis said with that eerie echo.

Good, that means I've got wiggle room to bend the rules with. Now it's time for my master plan. If I couldn’t get Sagrius back on his feet, I could go for the second best option.

“Aegis, is it possible to create a predictive model of Captain Sagrius?”

- The Mite Forge