12 Miles Below

I fully own up to being dramatic about current events. I would blame it on how I handle stress, new situations, and having to wait in lines: Namely, running a bit about it somehow.

And, for the record, I am trapped out in the middle of nowhere with machines possibly aware of where I’m at, in the middle of very strange creatures that consider me a myth in the same way I considered flying birds a myth a few months prior.

Therefore, I deserve to be dramatic. As a treat.

The Odin had me camp out in the courtyard right near the tower, and if they didn’t want me to spy on what they were doing, they shouldn’t have done that. It's their fault they didn't know I had ratshit space magic capable of seeing through walls, and had that turned on at all times.

I saw them cart over their power cells to keep them from anyone else’s clutches/talons. And I also saw them start beating each other up in a mini civil war.

At this point, it doesn’t take a genius to realize the birds are up to something.

But more importantly - all of the above events were happening while I was leisurely eating my meal.

I waited until they’d exited the tower with my power cells and were hurrying off out of range. That’s when I went from sitting around licking my fingers, to actually moving like a proper relic knight.

I could see Journey instantly crank up the power draw on my armor, the moment my legs bent down to give myself a running start.

In one second, I was already halfway out of the outpost and past the tower. In the second second, I had taken a massive leap, flying over power wires dangled in my way like a giant running through a small city. Three seconds and I was out of the outpost, sliding down the slope and into the forest.

Behind me, Odin started to cry out as the human who’d been sitting around pretending nothing was going on in the background suddenly up and disappeared.

Not even a half second into the forest, I’d found the small convoy trying to steal away my power cells before I could steal them for myself. They’d hardly left the outpost.

Their little cart with adorable wheels was trucking along down the cleared path like a Reacher’s toy airspeeder hangar taxi. No roof or anything, just a very large flat bed that had two heavily strapped power cells, and Odin holding onto those straps like scavengers on an expedition.

I slid out of the forest trees, directly in their path, shoulder aimed in their direction as if I were about to body check them all. And in my hand was my sidearm, quickly dispatching two small burst fire shots at the wheels mid-slide.

They connected, causing the truck to start losing control. It collided right into my boot, the back of the flatbed going off its wheels for a moment before falling back down, heavily testing the suspension.

Before the driver could put it in reverse gear and try to get away, I had my sidearm back in its holder and an occult blade stabbing through the little vehicle’s engine compartment. That left it pinned like an insect into the ground, with a comically large sword looming over them all.

Seven Odin and one driver stared up at me in what I assume was abject horror.

These must be the Gungnir, and it was clear they were war birds of some kind. They all had those metal pebbles on the wingside, flak vests with filled pouches, and gold silver motifs colored into their feathers. Weirdest trait they all shared was some kind of metal contraption flush to their beaks.

“Evening gentlebirds.” I said. “Is that a delivery for me? Why, you really shouldn’t have.”

To their credit, four of them flew right at me, trying to slap me with the side of their wings where those metal pebbles were affixed. The rest scattered from the cart in different directions and two raced to the back of the cart to remove some kind of weaponry held in a few straps. Ṛ𝖆𝐍O͍𝖇ĘS

I doubt Journey even needed to trigger shields for the four birds flying right at my face, but I still took the time to duck and sidestep away, and reached out with a free hand to yank one of the birds out of the air. Interestingly enough, the bird actually managed to dive roll away from my outstretched hand, with superb reflexes.

The metal contraption on their beaks was more subtle, and I saw it used in the soulsight. It was an extendable spring-loaded metal needle, which - and I am not joking here - was triggered using their tongue. They licked a small lever to the side of their beak and the spring would do the rest. Not a very powerful spring, but enough to bring it out and lock it in place.

The driver of the cart didn’t bother joining the shenanigans, and instead promptly ran for it. Or flew for it. The bird equivalent of retreat. Considering that driver was the only bird who didn’t have weapons on their wings, or a metal needle affixed to the beak, I had a feeling this wasn’t a soldier of any kind. So I let that one run off freely.

The four birds made a return fly-by, a few trying to stab me with that needle to completely expected results against relic armor. I decided my first targets were the two Odin trying to unstrap something out of the cart rear. I could see explosives in the soul sight, and the item looked like it was made to lob them at me.

My hand reached out for the two targets. Too focused on their task to realize their distraction force had failed… but also who stops paying attention to a literal giant running amok a few feet ahead? One still managed to squawk and leap out of my grasp, but the second was halfway through cutting some of the rope, and in that moment of weakness my hands slipped around and nabbed the bastard.

With my first bird in hand, I ducked under a second pass from the group of flying rats, grabbed a heavy rock off the side of the road and then delicately squashed my captive slightly into the dirt. Haptic feedback built into my armor’s fingers let me tell how hard I was pressing on something, but it was set on an exponential curve and I had to be real careful with that. Difference between squeezing something with sixty psi vs six hundred can be a matter of milliseconds.

If I tried gently pressing a rock with continuous force, I’d only feel a mild resistance for about a second and then the rock would promptly explode in my hands from the internal stress as the pressure went from gentle to utterly crushing.

All that to say it was deceptively difficult to keep a hold onto the bird without squashing it, and multiple times it slipped my grasp because I’d been too light with my touch, and only working with one hand. But after two more narrowly foiled escape attempts, I decided to just let my heavy rock sit on the side of the road, and used both hands to keep the ball of angry feathers still.

I forced one of the wings open, and then grabbed my rock again and let it pin the wing down into the ground. Not anywhere near the wingbone or muscles, but holding onto enough feathers to keep it pinned for a bit.

In my defense, I’m sure there’s probably tools or a better plan I could have come up with besides giant rock, but I’ve never fought birds before. And when I let go of the angry Odin commando, I could see the giant rock plan worked as hoped for. The bird was simply unable to get a good angle on the rock to pull itself free, given it was struggling on its back.

The other birds were going for another dive at me, trying to aim for the back of my neck as if that was some kind of weakpoint. One even landed on my back while I was mid struggle with its friend, and tried to run around stabbing at different joints and recesses in the armor with that beak-needle.

I swiped my hands out to grab the little asshole, and it managed to leap away just in time. They were surprisingly fast.

“Three gods, how quick are these tiny assholes?” I hissed as I once more missed my grabs. I was fast using the Winterblossom technique. But trying to catch a twitchy little rat that could jump, wheel and fly in every direction was surprisingly hard. And I mean in every direction, one even flapped its wings to zoom downwards, hitting the ground at an angle, and rolling into the bounce, back onto its legs before racing off in a flying leap. Occult lashes also weren’t fast enough to yank them out of the air, their reflexes and twitch responses were on par with the winterblossom technique. To be fair, it’s not a lack of skill on my end. I wasn’t used to their motions. I genuinely had no idea what direction they’d come out of a roll or how they’d move in the air.

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It took a little bit of time until I managed to grab another out of the air without crushing the bird, where once again it was put under a time-out rock.

I could take my sword out of the mangled vehicle’s engine compartment and start swinging, but I didn’t want to seriously hurt them. And I wasn’t in any danger. The few times one of them managed to actually land a hit on my armor, I think it did more damage to them from the feedback. One was caught simply because it tried to peck with as much power as it could, and the feedback bent the metal needle, and clearly disoriented the flying pest. Easy catch, and under the time-out rock that one went.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Soon, there were only two left flying around, who had decided to land on the surrounding trees and plot how to beat me from safety.

Good luck to them. I’d say I wished them the best, but I had better things to do, like grand-theft power cell. I gave them one last look, which they returned, but we both knew who the winner was.

I was feeling fine, while they were panting and wheezing up there, beaks wide open to suck in as much air as they could. With all the mercy and grace in my black little heart, I allowed them their break while I sauntered over to the broken down cart to begin the time-honored tradition of looting things in front of its prior owner.

Was I being a little too flippant against birds that are trying to kill me? Very. If I wasn’t wearing relic armor, the outcome of this fight would have been a lot more lethal and with far less monkey business. For them. I wouldn’t have the luxury of ignoring those metal needles that they’d surely stab my eyes or lungs with.

The power cells themselves were tied down in small twine. What looked like odd ratchet straps with comically large operation levers kept the twine taut and prepared to hold the cells in place. Wasn’t hard to find the release levers for that, and my fingers were small enough to use it without breaking anything. In a moment, I had the two power cells free, and ready to use.

Journey cycled one of the spent power cells out of my legplate, the entire section opened up to let me yank out the old cell.

That’s when the Odin decided to make their next move.

My soulsight caught the little scrapshit plan. One had been waiting on the treeside and flicked his wing as if throwing a knife in my direction. A small sphere of sorts, and the soul sight showed me gears and concepts of chemicals inside.

It would have landed directly into the empty power cell receptacle. Would have.

But I had my soul sight, I could see thrown behind my back. My hand whipped out and grabbed the thing without looking back at it.

An explosion with the strength of a small firework bomb happened the moment that little sphere struck my open palm, detonating before my fingers could close down on it. Journey didn’t bother triggering shields for that.

“A little inspired.” Cathida said at my side, looking up at the two birds left.

“A little annoying. What’s the damage I can expect if they’d actually pulled that off?”

Cathida hummed. “There’s a layer of metal between the cell holster and your skin, so you would be fine, maybe a bruise. But the enclosed space would have magnified the explosion and there’s some more delicate wiring in there.. Journey would have needed perhaps ten to fifteen minutes to fix that up before it could be used for power again.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for the next one they throw at me.” I said, putting the new power cell into the empty receptacle and watching it twist on itself as it descended down. Journey’s legplate then recessed the entire area back into my armor, nice and snug with a pressurized hiss.

I did the same to the other side, and the birds once again tried to toss garbage into the open port. This time both of them made the attempt from different angles. I took a step to the side and let the first detonation charge hit the ground in a spray of dirt and fire, and backhanded the second one out of the air. It detonated more like a shaped charge outwards from the inertia of the slap. With their attempts foiled, I removed the half-powered cell I had left, and replaced it with a full charge.

Journey’s HUD and helmet happily hummed as the power gauge meter filled up to maximum, showing a total of sixteen hours of operational time remaining. Sixteen full combat mode operations, so I had about a full day and some change if I was conservative.

Walking everywhere and using calm motions would stretch that time out quite a bit. And I’d still have an extra few hours of emergency use if I kept my half-spent power cell.

Which I absolutely would. All these power cells were now property of House Winterscar. “Well, if they’d been more civilized and honored my deal, I’d have left them these two to fill up and reuse.” I said, tossing the used cell up and down in my hand. “But since they tried to, you know, kill me, I think it’s only fair I keep everything for myself now.”

“Are you attempting to justify all this to me deary?” Cathida snickered. “You won’t see me disagreeing with looting the enemy. You’re too soft if anything.”

I gave a look at the struggling Odin commandos trapped under their rocks. “They’re lucky I’m not some panicking newly trained Undersider knight. I’m used to having my life threatened on a daily basis.”

…

In hindsight, maybe that wasn’t something I should consider a normal thing.

On the spent cells, I flipped the levers needed to change the power settings into long term storage mode, which would make them about as explosive as a well behaved rock. In case the Odin tried some cheeky attempt to detonate the half-powered one off of my belt, all they’d do is end up making the fluid spill out and leaving me some repair work on the cell itself.

So long as the bottom part of the cell wasn’t punctured or broken, cells could actually be repaired by some delicate welding. Difficult to do that on the surface, but a lot easier here where I could command Journey to just do the hard work for me.

But if the bottom part was cut, that’s considered irreparable on the surface at least. And now that I think about it… I focused my occult sight into the cells themselves and found something I really shouldn’t have been surprised to see: Power cells had occult ratshit inside them. Of course they did, how did I not think of this in the past?

Specifically the concept of about five different fractals all inhabiting the same space. I had no idea what those were for, or what they did, but they were there doing something to the cell itself.

I filed it as a mystery for later, because I had an escapee attempt happening under my watch. By the time-out rocks, I could see one of the birds had managed to wiggle their feathers out from under it, with two or three outright plucked out to do so, including the longest flight feather with their pebble weapon affixed to it. They were in the process of trying to overturn the nearby rock pinning their next compatriot, and having a very hard time with that plan.

“They’re real dedicated to the wrong causes.” I sighed under my breath. This was like watching someone cut their arm off just to continue a hopeless battle.

The other two free menaces were trying to distract me by yelling in my direction and threatening to throw bombs at me given their wing movements. Also they’d moved to the opposite side of the time-out rocks, so their plan was a little too obvious.

My armored hand reached out for my blade hilt. I pulled the sword out of the broken toy-sized truck, lighting it up and scything through one of the trees the pair of free birds were sitting on, and then a second tree just for good measure. That’s for trying to blow up my armor.

While they were dealing with the falling trees, I ripped free the remains of the twine that held the power cells, turned on my heels and sprinted right for the rocks.

The one trying to save its friends squawked in surprise, leaped against the rock and jumped off it, wings stretching out to fly fast with the added leap. But with the missing feathers, they clearly had lost some amount of control and speed.

I got there, grabbed it out of the air and pinned it down to the ground again. The bird objected, violently, and tried to peck at my armored fingers any chance it had, to exactly the amount of damage I’d expect. It was also the noisiest handheld ball of feathers I’d ever heard, probably because it’s been through this process once and knew the final destination.

The pest was cursing me with every breath it took, all the while flapping its wings and generally being a nuisance. “I’m well within my rights to smash a little harder.” I growled out, squeezing it slightly against the dirt. “You are beyond lucky I don’t feel threatened enough. Don’t push it.”

It couldn’t understand me of course. But I think the intention came through since with one final wingslap that did nothing against my armor, it finally gave up.

This time I had twine, and proceeded to wrap the bird up, giving a slightly harder tug than I needed to, just to make sure it couldn’t wiggle free later.

Mission done, I set the tied up bird on the side next to its other trapped friends, and left the two still flying around to keep them safe while I moved onto my next objective. Which was a nice leisurely stroll back to the outpost.

My job was done. I got my cells, and kept my old ones. None of the ravens were hurt, other than their pride and a few plucked feathers. Journey’s shields were still at full. My gear was still working without issue, and I had everything accounted for, including a nice full stomach and enough water to keep me running for another day or three.

This entire outpost had made their best attempt to take me out, and I was still leisurely walking back without a scratch. Made me think about why the Odin would even bother with the attempt. Their military had to have warned the homefront that there was no winning against a seven foot tall mech, so what was their game?

Maybe they ran the numbers, saw a single human against the entirety of the machine nation, and decided to put their bets on the machines? Maybe they banked that with all those numbers something was guaranteed to kill me, eventually? Like Murdershrimp. Or To’Orda riding a Murdershrimp.

Jokes on all of them, they picked the wrong bet. I’m still not dead despite the very best efforts of machinekind’s greatest planners. In fact, the machines even succeeded in killing me once, and I still weaseled my way out of that one. All by myself… and the help of an occult gifted warmachine with healing powers.

But mostly by myself.

I brushed my hands clear of dirt and made my way back to the outpost with a leisurely walk.

The power cell cart had been intercepted nearly right out of the gates, it didn’t take even thirty seconds to make it back to the outpost.

And it was on fire.

“Don’t say it.” Cathida said, arms crossed.

“It wasn’t me, I swear. I'm innocent, this is all an Odin conspiracy to tarnish my good name.”

She rolled her eyes at that as we paused to take in the sheer chaos that was happening inside that outpost.