Chương 53: Book 8 - Chapter 49 - The Final Edict

I've officially spent too much time around Feathers. I know I mentioned that a lot lately, but I really, really do spend way too much time with Feathers to the point their shenanigans have become normal to me. And I forget how not normal those are to normal people. We were stomping around with nine of them in tow, technically. And they hadn't had time to learn the finer tricks on changing their appearance to blend with humans like Father and Wrath had. They all still looked like the Feathers they'd stolen.

As in all kinds of strange and rather brooding designs, clothing and weapons. Each of these Feathers had nearly seven hundred years to design something unique from all other Feathers in existence, and they were often first to those ideas given the rest of the generations didn't exist back then. Future generations like Wrath had to deal with the scraps, trying to find new unique looks long after all the 'good ones' were claimed.

Something that was quite a contentious undercurrent among the Feathers, hence why To'Sefit didn't hesitate for a second to swipe Wrath's idea about chanting something ominous while channeling her ultimate kill-everything attack. It's how style, actual fashion and unique ideas for personalities became outright infohazards to Feathers. Feathers. And that meant they were really, really recognizable.

So a bunch of Clan knights sprinting at full speed with Feathers working hand in hand, right after a group of five scouts further ahead who's only experience with Feathers were on the other side of the blade… well, they were properly terrified.

"They're splitting up independently to increase the chance of escape." Wrath said, sprinting up ahead, diving through a set of strings in order to land on a more distant bridge in a clean roll, then racing after the lead scout.

"I will attempt to capture this human first, as I have identified him as a captain."

"We'll handle the rest." Father answered back, comms equally adding instructions to the team on who chases who. Marks appeared on each over our HUD, neatly organized paths drawn up by our armors. There were five imperial scouts. And counting Wrath and Father, we had eleven Feathers on our side that could all utterly outsprint relic armor. So two terrifying soul-eating Feathers for each rookie scout running for their lives.

The clan knights and I didn't even need to do the sprinting after them, there were too many of us to make it efficient. It was like watching weasels chasing down escaped chickens out of the agrifarmer safety pens. Absolute chaos. Father was the only one who remained behind with our group of clan knights while the rest of the clan Feathers went out hunting.

It would have ended far faster if the strings weren't floating around everywhere like the world's deadliest spider traps, but the team were good sports about it and very quickly wrangled them all up, one after another. They didn't go down without a fight. It just wasn't much of a fight.

A muffled scream here, an attempt to swing with a dagger there, one even tried to jump to his death over getting captured, only to have his ankle grabbed mid-jump and the rest yanked backwards where two Feathers proceeded to beat and stuff him into a sack. Not literally I mean, we were more civilized than that.

The main way everyone handled their mark was to get one to hold the imperial scout and immobilize them, while the other would swiftly peel off the leg plating to remove the power cells keeping the armors functioning. Which would be equally terrifying, and the Clan Feathers swearing up and down to their captured captives that they weren't planning on killing them equally sounded more like a threat than assurances. The last one was cornered, tackled into the ground, and stripped of her power cells.

Then got hoisted up on the shoulders before the duo of Feathers raced off to the nearest safezone rock. We handled the imperial scouts in just under two minutes, which was the interval time we had before the wind picked back up in a full tempest.

"They remain uncooperative." Wrath said over comms, stuck in a more distant rock with the imperial captain captured, who was looking very much pissed off over the video feed I could see.

"Should we tell them Tsuya has been killed and our mission is critical?" She spoke over the comms for privacy, since speaking casually about their entire religious centerpoint being dead would cause some panic in the captain currently under her boot,"No way, telling them their goddess is dead is not going to go down well." I said.

"I've got a better idea: We tell them she's the one who sent us here to marshall the empire."

"Inform them Tsuya has been captured." Urs's eyes flickered as he added to the comms channel chat himself.

"There are methods of speaking directly to her, and it is likely the Imperials here would have access to that. If they request her presence and she does not appear, it may cause issues. And it is assured that they will when they spot our group."

"And once we're inside the fortress, you'll be able to actually marshal the empire and summon Talen?"

"Yes. Our objective will do both."

"There's a summon the emperor beacon inside the fortress?" I don't think it was that, otherwise they'd have turned that on over and over until they could get Talen back in some way. Or… actually they really did have exactly that, and it hadn't ended well when they'd tried it.

"There is an emergency high priority broadcast station capable of connecting all empire assets so long as they are connected to the digital sea in some manner." Urs clarified, ending my current assumption.

"Talen named it the Final Edict, as it was intended to deliver a global message which would likely be of great importance given the nature of the transmission."

"Is it still there seven hundred years later?" I asked, just trying to double check things will still work when we got to it.

"They sacked the fortress once according to Cathida. It was a ruin when it was found again by the current empire. If I were a hyper-intelligence machine general, I'd at least make sure to wrap it up with duct tape so nobody else could press the buttons. Maybe pull the power cable, or just smash it into a million pieces and melt it all."

"Stop panicking boy." Father hissed over the comms.

"Remain focused. We have a plan, and we have time remaining to execute it." Urs agreed with Father.

"It would remain intact even after A57 destroyed the fortress. I assumed that possibility when I designed the system, it was built as a failsafe in the first place against critical infrastructure failure or a full dissolution of standard communications." I got what he was saying: "It's not a physical terminal." That's the only way it would remain functional even if the entire physical fortress was ripped apart.

"Correct. The final edict was built within the mite sphere of influence, a virtual program with a soul of its own. Any church or structure with access to a mite terminal would allow access to speak with it. This way if Talen or myself required the entire empire to marshal at a moment's notice, we would not need to travel directly to specific locations. Or have those locations be destroyed and leave a gap in our response speed."

"... That would explain some oddities." Cathida said, adding herself into it all.

"Quite a lot of the Order's work was to travel to every new construction site and verify they all had connections to a mite terminal in one way or another. I see it was in order to chain the edict for when it was triggered."

"So it's a known thing?" I asked.

"We knew about the edict, the old bat and the rest of her team didn't know it was in the mite space. We believed we were doing the link for other need-to-know reasons. Our chapter was far more than glorified treasure hunters hoarding our golden vaults deary. We were tasked to find the lost emperor and to prepare the empire itself for this very moment. It was part of the fifth oath the old bat swore to."

She brought up video footage of her time as a crusader, specifically on the mountaintop where they'd gathered to actually join the secretive chapter.

"And we've done our jobs quite well I would add. I have plenty of archived video footage of her setting these up in every church that was missing one. It wasn't a mite terminal exactly, more a little cube that would hook into the comms relay nearby the church or anywhere we could splice it in. Unusable in any other way that I knew about." I nodded to that, "All right, so that means we have a good plan B.

If we aren't allowed into the fortress or it gets crushed before we get there, then we go find the nearest church to send the commands through there." There were plenty of portals here, we could probably zip through with our jumppacks and make speed. It would cost a few hours on the other hand.

"It cannot function as a backup plan unfortunately." Urs said.

"Talen will be called to the same location." Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"How? And equally, how will he know to find us from a data package that's getting distributed out from the digital sea?"

"Intentionally." Urs answered.

"He is part of the empire. He would receive the same message when I broadcast it. And I will broadcast my current location in addition to the general call to action. He will come on hearing my name."

"Oh." So that's how Urs was planning on bringing Talen.

"I see why a random church would be a bad plan B… would be a pretty poor place to fight a mad god."

"Relinquished will equally know where we are." Father said, glaring down at the dead husk.

"Isn't that right? This is the real reason you wish to do the call here, and nowhere else."

"Yes." Urs answered without guilt.

"The reason it is an emergency broadcast rather than a standard tactical one is that it connects the entire empire. And does so by any means necessary. Security would be too difficult to embed in addition, we assumed if it was triggered for use, the situation would be dire enough having the message heard by the enemy would be of little consequence." I hummed, thinking through what would happen when Relinquished heard Urs speak out to the remnants of her greatest enemy force.

"She's going to be real upset. Esspecially when she hears Urs is around kicking again, and I'd bet my fleet of airspeeder she'll send everything she can, if not come down in person herself somehow."

"You do not own an airspeeder, nor a fleet of them." Wrath clarified, to which I gave a thumbs up to. Father gave me a glare, silently telling me to knock it off and stay focused. This was no time for games or jokes, despite my bad habit of doing exactly that.

"It is unlikely Relinquished will come herself." Urs said, continuing.

"Doing so would expose her to Talen directly, who would still be considered an existential threat. It is more likely she will divert every Feather she has in the entire world and send them here, using quantity over quality. The surface can be taken with only her lessers given the defenses there were aimed at secrecy rather than combat. It will be a very difficult fight until Talen arrives."

I could handle a few dozen Feathers now, possibly even half a hundred all at once - if I had Urs on my back feeding me into the quantum realm with every other Keith in parallel. But it wasn't going to be just hundreds coming after us. Every Feather in the world meant thousands. It would be the greatest war in the history of earth happening right here.

"They still need to make the trip down here themselves, right? If we can crush them as fast as they come, they might not get the chance to dogpile on us. She only managed to summon twenty or thirty by the time we left the black box and we plowed through that defense. Plus the biome itself here is almost perfectly made to repel armies, we've got a huge defender's advantage here."

"Two minutes are almost up, sire." One of the Winterscar knights said. He was right, the wind would die down and it'd be safe to go travel out again for another two minutes before the process repeated.

"Right, for now, let's grab these scouts and bring them back to the same saferock." I gave the general order.

"We can talk in peace there." The wind died the moment I ended that, and the team sprang into action with their separated prisoners. The rock we picked that both offered good shelter and was close enough all of us could sprint back to it ended up looking more like a granite cube with multiple ramps leading to the sides. And the reason we'd picked it was a doorway built into the side with an Undersider styled doorknob instead of a sliding doorscreen like the clans used.

And the inside was a mite teleport pad, filled with old computers on metal arms all across the inside. Rather spacious, creepy and felt like I was walking into a mad scientist's medical treatment spot. Cathida informed us this used to hold a mite treasure when the original explorers delved through here. All gone now, likely either inside the fortress vault or actually lost somewhere in the world.

The entire biome here had been picked clean of machines long ago, and Relinquished never saw a reason to try and press into the humans nesting here. Not until humanity could be wiped out. Or maybe she'd left this fortress alone for dramatic reasons, having it become the last bastion of humanity where she'd slowly crush her hand over.

Regardless, this particular room was rather nice and protected from the howling wind outside so we could carry over our captives, then set them down in the center of the room, all back to back inside their dead armors, basically tied up.

"Kill us." The captain said the moment we took off his helmet. He glared directly at me as he did so.

"Surface savage traitor to humanity itself. I spit on your grave." I raised one finger up, then unhooked my helmet so I could properly talk to these fine folks face to face.

"I'm not dead yet, and we're friendly. On humanity's side." The captain leveled a flat glare at the Feathers.

"They're turning on Relinquished," I said, going with our plan.

"So you're right that they're defectors, but they're doing it for our side."

"I find the chances of that to be laughable." The captain said.

"No, the chances of that are inevitable." I countered.

"This was bound to happen, only unlucky thing is that there's only nine of them and not more. Think about it. Thousands of Feathers out there, there's going to be a few that aren't evil. And they're eventually going to find each other, group up and be forced to come out during the last second - when it's do or die and there's no point in hiding their real allegiances anymore. The end of the world has started, but we need more than a few Feathers on our side.

We need to get the Empire in on the action before humanity gets snuffed out and all that." Unfortunately, the Captain still doubled down.

"Friendly people don't usually chase down and capture imperial scouts." I took a breath and tried again, pushing down my slowly rising nerves at the entire situation.

"We're here on a mission, and if you scouts sounded the alarm before we were prepared, there might be needless fighting happening first."

"That's exactly what an enemy would say." The captain doubled down. Wrath took an attempt, but I held a hand out. She's still a contentious issue among imperials last I heard. They'd gotten her data package from the older days with the machine point of view and that settled a lot of debates and created a new one. The Indagator Mortis Chapter would likely know her name and know her story matches with whatever they'd managed to collect, given all the data hoarding they've been up to all these centuries.

Hell, they might have been able to ask Tsuya herself in between the events. They don't connect with her often unless it was an extreme measure, and a Feather potentially betraying Relinquished would probably classify as that. But if this went sour and the imperials still didn't trust Wrath, bringing her name out would be dooming us right from the start.

"If you talk, don't tell them who you are." I said. She looked real upset at that, a Feather dramatically revealing her name was among the most critical parts of their identity. But I could see her take an artificial breath in and nod.

"We're here on the goddess's orders." I said, turning back to the captain.

"We need to bring the alarm up to the imperials, and the only way to do that lies at the heart of your fortress." He laughed in my face.

"Nine Feathers moving in during the same time an unprecedented machine wave is surging across the world, the fortress would be on maximum alert. Imperium Summum will never trust or believe you. Rightfully so, they're not fools." Cathida gave me a quick text message over my HUD letting me know this Summum thing was just the imperial way of saying central high command. The heart of their operation.

"That's… a problem." I said, swallowing up a joke and trying to not let my nerves fry my actual work here. Instead, I turned back to Wrath and Father.

"And we can't just storm our way into the fortress either, we need them to help hold off what's coming next."

"... and what would be coming?" The captain asked, now very much alert. Or trying to grab information from us.

"The end times." Father said, as if it were obvious.

"There is an extinction event happening right this moment. The machine empire is on the move. He did not lie when he claimed the end of the world is happening."

"What are the machines after?" The captain asked, and now I was pretty certain he was trying to get info out of us. If we were part of the machine side, that was at least a start to figuring out what the mass migration was about.

"Your goddess has been found and captured." Wrath said, following the script.

"Her defenses to keep the machine goddess in check have been breached with her capture, and now the machine empire is planning on systematically wiping humanity starting from the surface then moving downwards. This is why they are all advancing upwards." It didn't quite seem to help given the fish-eyed stare we were getting from all five here.

"What she means is we're deep in the snow here. And I mean up to the neck deep." I said, trying again.

"We do not have time to play friend or foe with imperial high command for any amount of time. The machines have been kept blind from the surface by Tsuya and that cover has failed. Tsuya's been barred from triggering any kind of signal to defend humanity, we're here to do that for her. As I said, she sent us here in a last-ditch attempt. And I know all of that made sense to you, your entire chapter here is built on knowing way more about history and the old empire than anywhere else in the world."

The captain stared at me. He looked horrified.

"We're here to trigger the final edict. And to do that, we need to get into your fortress and pull the lever ourselves." They looked even more terrified. The captain swallowed, then spoke.

"I… uh, don't know what you are talking about." I rolled my eyes in a way Kidra would feel real proud about.

"Look, we already know about the final edict in your fortress, we didn't come here for no reason. She told us herself to make our way here as fast as we could before she was… removed. No reason to play coy, we don't have the time for that. Humanity is about to get wiped out in under three days at best. As soon as the machines reach the surface, they'll take down the three orbiting fortresses, and those are far more important than anyone had any reason to know about." Cathida crackled on the speakers.

"No, they know about those too deary. Remember, Talen was the one who went up there to add the extra finishing touches. It's in scriptures everywhere that the surface is important, and to be kept secret. Why do you think pilgrims are constantly sent up in the first place? The Indagator Mortis travel undercover with them to verify integrity of those and do checkups at the temples. It was the entire point the pilgrimages were made for."

"Who's speaking?" The captain asked. And his tone also had the unworded'Those are highly classified items that shouldn't be leaked, who's the snitch?'

"An old crusader of the fifth oath." I answered.

"The memory of one at least. It's a very long story, but she's helped guide us over here and we functionally know the whole thing. Again, we do not have time to mess around right now. Can you get us into the fortress so we can trigger the final edict?" The captain's lip went into a flat line, and I prepared myself mentally for having to drag this out of the guy. Except another volunteer helped.

"It's not possible. Only the emperor can trigger the final edict." The captain went into a fit of rage at that, struggling against his dead armor.

"Cassius you dumb pyrite shit-for-brains MORON, they're the enemy!"

"I think they're genuine sir." He answered back.

"They already know all of this."

"I can trigger it." Urs said, opening his eyes for the first time since we'd grabbed the scouts. They all jumped in their dead armor at watching a corpse wake to life on my back. And instead of questions, they went real quiet the moment they parsed what Urs had said. And I mean dead quiet.

"That's not possible." The captain finally spoke.

"The terminal will only accept the command from the soul of the lost emperor themselves. It's not a digital key that can be cracked. It was built to be machine-proof from the ground up." Ah. So that's why it was a program with a soul of its own in charge of the thing. Urs and Talen needed more security than simple digital keys for this big of a thing.

"I am well aware." Urs said.

"I forged the program myself. My soul remains the same as it was seven hundred years prior. It will recognize me, unless Tsuya modified it during the past seven hundred years I was trapped. Which is unlikely."

"... are… are you…?"

"It is as they say. I am here to trigger the final edict." The blue eyes flickered, then finally turned to meet the imperial captain's own eyes for a brief moment.

"I am Urs, the second emperor of mankind. And I have returned to bring humanity together one final time."