12 Miles Below-Chapter 32Book 7. : Legacy of the great warlord To’Wrathh

Several hundred and twelve gigabytes of data were downloaded within seconds, extracted and compiled. To’Orda’s processing drives spooled up, unpacking the rich data and funnelling it through hyper-optimized processes, passing through thousands of logic gates each instant, feeding directly into his neurocortex, returning one final inevitable answer: “Nnnn… six out of ten.” He said.

“Eh, sauce was pretty good in my opinion, I give it a six point five out of ten.” His rock argued, sitting under the mite sunshine, shade occasionally flowing over it from the trees above.

On the other side, one Deathless crossed his arm, eyes narrowing down in hatred. “You dumb toasters, seriously? How the fuck could you rate Morrokofer craw crab at a six? Are you defective or something?”

A raven above watched the process with curiosity, as the rock both answered back in a strange dialect of human he had never heard of, while the images of a stylized Odin flashed through and translated the discussion between machine, human and rock-machine.

“No you dumb meatbag,” The rock’s images spat vitriol. “Ain’t no taste of the crab in any of that, it’s all Morrokofer. What, you also like ketchup pasta swimming in ketchup and a side of ketchup as garnish, toasted on a bed of ketchup? Maybe pair it up with a nice vintage bottle of three year aged ketchup mixed with some mustard to taste? Disgusting.”

“That’s different.” Drakonis said. “This is good cooking. The Morrokofer is the entire point of that dish, the crab claw adds a little extra flavor to it, and something to bite in that can hold the sauce in.”

“The goddamn crab claw is swimming in my sauce Drakonis.” The rock said, doodled up image tapping a finger down onto a crudely drawn out palm, a separate set doing the same with the odin iconography for Kres to follow the events. “Swimming in it. You promised us a crab dish. Where’s my goddamn crab dish Drakonis?”

“Look you daft cun-” Drakonis stopped, took a deep breath and held his hands together. “You’re not supposed to drink the fucking sauce like it’s fucking wine dumbass, you use it as a dip for the bread after, so the more you got of it, the longer the meal lasts. What went wrong with this one? How many memories does she have?”

What went wrong with the dish was To’Wrathh. As To’Orda had usually discovered, his feral little sister had great genius in trying new things, and that same genius cut both ways, with her lacking the common sense age and experience gave. She was only a few months old after all, excluding her time as a spider.

“Three.” To’Orda said, one finger reaching to his ear and digging into it. There was no wax in his ear of course, the act was purely artificial. He flicked off the imaginary clump without looking at it.

Kres craned his neck above, looking at the small campfire. He’d done his part in gathering a few herbs, following the orders of the machine god before them all. He’d been unable to do much to help save Drakonis, but it seemed like the Deathless had his own way of fighting back.

Beyond the forest, greyroamers were equally hunting down deer, with the intent to bring it back to the machine, under orders. Once the rock could generate images, it could equally work with greyroamer body language. Possibly even odor, if the machine’s abilities were to be believed.

Human cooking was an interesting topic, and Kres did feel curious about it. He had followed the events up till now, being kept in the loop by the rock that stayed at the giant’s side. Another machine had been steadily collecting information on cooking and eating, then shared such information with the rest of machine kind.

To’Orda waited for the rock to relay his personal thoughts, but the rock was busy replaying the three dishes inside its expanded processing space.

When it was clear the rock had gotten too side tracked, the Feather reached out, grabbed it with two fingers, and shook it. The glutton was supposed to be talking for him right now, not gorging itself with food memories.

“Okay, okay! Easy there,” The rock yelped out. To’Orda grunted, stopped shaking it, and set it back down on the larger boulder it had been sunbathing in prior. “First dish, like you see in the video here, To’Wrathh just ate the entire thing in three bites.” It was generating different images to describe each mini-disaster, along with a full video recording from To’Wrathh’s point of view as his little sister seemed cursed to find every possible way to incorrectly eat the meal.

“Deep dish bucket-thing you serve it on included. So that was eighty percent sauce, fifteen percent claw, and five percent iron basically.” The video images flipped, another location from her memories. New house, new people, same presentation. “Second dish, she drank the entire saucepan like a cup, then ate the claws only when someone started frantically pointing it out. So she did it all out of order, sure, fine, we can put points back in there for that. Last one she ate a bit of bread and paced herself through it, things were going good until her minder got distracted for a few seconds and stepped out of the room.”

“What did she do?” Drakonis asked.

“You know that side plate with the lemon that’s served with the whole thing?” The video sped forward. “The one with the built-in grinding surface?”

The deathless slowly nodded. Then stopped, and sighed. “Don’t tell me she put that dish in there too.”

Rather than answering, the rock let the video answer for him. Why put in effort when there were better ways of communicating? Drakonis saw as To’Orda’s little sister grabbed the lemon, scrubbed it against the ceramic grater, correctly adding the zest and then incorrectly adding the rest of the grated lemon into the dish until only the plate remained, chunks of the grater breaking off when it reached her unbreakable fingers. She then balled up the plate, crushed it in her hands and sprinkled it into the dish like salt.

“She thought it was like that Yittram pasta you suggested earlier. You know, the one where you have those baked bread chunks you’re supposed to crush up in your hands and garnish yourself.” The rock said.

Her hosts returned into the room a little later, having put their tiny human girl to bed. Some political bigshots that had a project they wanted to speak to her in person about. As far as To’Orda understood, the man in the video had just wanted to brag about his wife’s cooking, with the wife equally smug about her version of the dish being the best.

The two were amicable speaking to To’Wrathh about topics not relating to food, until they noticed the lemon and lemon plate were missing.

Kres found the entire event fascinating. Here, he could see genuine humans in their natural world, how they ate and spoke to each other, the family structures they had. The entire thing was a treasure trove of knowledge. And the few greyroamers stalking the surroundings, spying on them all, would equally relay the entire thing to the others out hunting. 𝘙𝘢ΝọᛒЁⱾ

“That should disqualify all fucking three.” Drakonis said, hands rubbing his brow. “You can’t be as dense as she is.”

“And you can’t keep using that excuse each fuckin’ time.” The rock huffed. “At some point, you gotta fess up to having terrible taste.”

To’Orda had a feeling that Drakonis’s initial impression of To’Wrathh had taken a drastic turn after the third description of her culinary memories came out. The following seven only cemented that logic.

“Morrokofer is an incredibly difficult sauce to make, takes an entire day to cook it up.” Drakonis said, tapping his hand as if making a point. “It’s tradition for the Solstarian festival. Once a year you’d get to try it out, once. Don’t just take my word for it, nobody would be cooking each year if it tasted just six on your ten scale.”

“Eh, To’Orda rates the first and last one the best, same points I did.” The rock’s image gave a shrug. “The iron in the plate adds a little metallic tint and crunch to the whole thing that deshelled crab claws just don’t. Balances it out. The middle one lost all the points for us both.”

The ceramic chunks of the lemon platter with the citrus of the entire lemon ended up adding a nice crunch and bite to the whole thing so To’Orda believed his little sister had the right idea there. To’Orda replayed the three memories again, testing the plates like an expert connoisseur would, searching for additional notes to debate with.

“Nnn… bread was good.”

“Yeah, garlic bread with Morrokofer sauces that have that hint of crab baked in the aftertaste.” The deathless kissed his hand, with some odd hand sign after as if throwing away something. “Can’t get much better than that. What if you tried something simple instead? Like grilled cheese sandwiches? How many entries does she have on that one?”

To’Orda opened the connection again, and searched his filter for those three words. There were a lot of grilled entries, several thousand that mentioned cheese, and another set of hundreds with sandwiches. But all three specifically together?

There were… a good number of hits specifically for that. Huh. To’Orda downloaded all entries and then tested each one, crushing through the data with lighting speed until he reached the final entry and felt empty once more.

“Nnn… eight out of ten.”

“I give it a nine personally.” The rock said. “With a good dipping sauce and hot off the grill, some of them were the best I’d tested out. Good pick human.”

“I got it.” The Deathless nodded to himself, a mild unhinged giggle coming from him. “You both have the taste buds of a fucking toddler. How many entries were there?”

“Nnn… Twenty seven.” To'Orda answered.

"No we don't," The rock answered at the same time. "We got a refined pallet, simplicity is just as valid eating as your fancy meals punk and if you were at all educated or cultured, you'd understand that too."

"Rich coming from a rock that didn't know jack about this topic two hours ago." Drakonis said, and turned to To'Orda before the rock could start yelling back. "Most times she only has four or five entries in total. What’s the change for that one about? How does she have twenty seven different cases for this?”

There was a lot of food, and even eating as often each day as To’Wrathh had done, there were only so many dishes she could consume in the short months she’d had. A lot of other entries were clearly from the surface, given the enclosed space everywhere in those memories. Along with the drastically different people and clothing worn. But none of those were things Drakonis could suggest or knew about.

To’Orda grunted, but took a moment to parse through the data. Then reached a conclusion, and sent it to his rock to explain. It sent him a rude image, upset at having to do all the work, before To’Orda reminded the little brat that was his entire purpose.

“Looks like it was just easy to make.” The rock said, giving up on the earlier argument. “So lot of families had their own spin to it and demanded she drop by their house to try out their ‘super secret family recipe.’ Oh To’wrathh, they’d say, you haven’t lived till you tried my mum’s version of it.” The rock went into it, even upping its voice pitch as if to mock the humans. “Ridiculous, it’s a goddamn sandwich with cheese in the middle of it, how complicated can it get to cook?”

To’Orda turned to the rock.

“Yeah okay, you don’t need to tell me.” The rock immediately answered. “They did taste different, sure, but that isn’t the point I’m trying to make here pal.”

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Drakonis had been thinking on a different trail of thoughts. “....What do you mean families asked her to drop by? Like walk into their home and eat with them? As if the warlord of Capra’nor is a fucking dinner guest?”

To’Orda checked the archives. Most of the grilled cheese sandwich entries seemed exactly like that. He turned his gaze to the rock, silent instruction in place.

It generated a few images as it spoke, mostly doodle drawings. “When you got a personal penpal that answers back the moment you send her a single text, and you can talk to her everyday, aren’t you eventually going to end up asking her to come over and try something out? She had a fucking fan club back in the city. A giant one. Don’t remind her if you see her by the way, she’s beyond vain about it.”

Drakonis stared back, mostly in shock. “She’s a Feather. A straight machine enemy. How would regular people just ask her to walk over to their house like that? And how did she talk to people that often?”

The rock cleared that up in a moment. “She’s a machine, not some human. Defective maybe, but still a machine that can do several thousand things in parallel. You’re a meatbag that’s stuck with one mouth to complain with. Of course she spent most of her time directly talking to the people in Capra’Nor. Actually organizing and doing politics there took only a few seconds a day for her. Move a few numbers here, balance a budget there, send a few Runners to help out here, and done for the day.”

To’Orda shrugged. To’Wrathh’s work seemed exhausting to him. It might have only taken her a few seconds to crunch numbers and assimilate reports, but she’d have to do that several dozen times per day. And then talking to humans day in and day out, constantly walking down the streets to visit multiple houses each day, just to talk further in person. The only redeeming quality of all this is that To’Wrathh got free meals from the humans each time she walked into someone’s living room.

Thus far, his favorite foods hadn’t been homecooked, but done in a ‘restaurant’ as Drakonis called it. That seemed the greatest thing humanity had created. An experience where one would walk in, and have an entire team of humans specifically take care of the guest with no effort spared. Food cooked for him, humans to tend to every need and request, the entire establishment dedicated to it. There were some holes in those recordings, likely to hide the hyper-weasel eating with her on those occasions, but besides that eyesore, the few memories he’d visited had been rather cozy.

Having minions who cared that strongly about giving service was something To’Orda felt envious of his feral little sister.

“Boss wants another recommendation.” The rock complied. “Pick something you’d find in a restaurant this time, he wants that fine dining experience, the big snob.”

Drakonis muttered to himself, leaning back on his rock, thinking it through.

This was good. To’Orda didn’t need to go through the process of selecting new things to test out, his captive Deathless would simply recommend something directly.

“Can’t get it through my head that the machine warlord of Capra’Nor herself was running a golden-rat cooking show as her side hobby. ”

That wasn’t a restaurant recommendation. To’Orda grunted. The rock took it from here.

“It’s not a cooking show you slow bastard. It’s a cooking forum.”

One eyebrow hidden under his linen shawl raised up. This wasn’t asking the captive for restaurant recommendations.

“How’s that any different? Still a bunch of toasters all gathered around watching her write down recipes, eat and talk about what she ate, far as you explained.” Drakonis said.

The rock rose to the bait, unaware it had deviated from its original mission. To’Orda gave a grunt, hand reaching out with two fingers to once more shake the rock into getting to work. He wanted a restaurant recommendation, not bickering.

But before he could wrap his hands around the faulty minion, he got a connection ping. More than came out, the intrusion outright rammed past his doorways, entering into his systems without so much as getting permission. Which meant the intruding program was using the occult in some way to bypass logic.

To’Orda sighed, it was going to be one of those times. He looked inward, and fell into his own mind before the intruding program could start doing damage.

Digital lines blurred from electric signals into concepts, he didn’t need to close his eyes in the real world, but he found it helped. When he opened them again he was slowly sinking downwards, the world around him manifesting.

His old self had a mind of the postmodern third age architecture - brutalism the humans called it. The simplicity appealed to his old self. Regal, organized and powerful. Glass had been interspersed all through the compound, forming massive walls, ceilings, and walkways. Colored foliage intertwined the space had been a touch his old self had added as he’d grown and developed further past his original bounds. One massive tree of ember flame had slowly descended upside down from the sky, blooming downwards, the roots vanishing into the vast upside down waves of the digital sea beyond, while the glowing leaves and foliage were filled with molten veins running across the trunks, concrete buildings caught within the trunks and scattered around. It had been a mirror world to simply look upwards. He had memories of his older self retreating here to meditate and ponder on future plans.

But that had been when he was To’Ori, the one of resolve ignited.

Today, his mind was different. The trees above had been burnt out, charcoal floating downwards from them like an eternal rain. Pieces of his old mind still breaking down even to this day. The leaves of fire that once bloomed all over the branches had all vanished, and without them his guiding tree looked more like frozen lighting, black branches going in every direction, occasionally still holding a glimmer of ember deep inside.

Walls and structures on the bottom had all crumbled down leaving no room truly enclosed anymore. No glass remained unshattered. His inner sanctum was a charred vale of geometric cracked concrete outlining a skeleton of possible buildings. A bed of thin ash leaving footsteps behind.

Or so it had been the last time he’d been here. Now, there were cracks that had appeared deep under the bed of ash. He knelt down, a massive hand sweeping away the black soot and revealing a glimmer of blue deep within the cracks. He wasn’t sure what it meant, likely a result of his earlier patch job that had reset a good portion of his mind. But he didn’t have time to consider it further.

The intruder was there. And To’Orda felt his gut drop like a rock in his stomach.

It was the hyper-weasel.

“What kind of war happened here?” Keith Winterscar asked, a few footprints behind him in the ash. Whistling like a tourist, examining the world around him.

“Nnnn… Mother.” To’Orda shrugged. His right hand reached out to his side and his trusted hammer materialized from his memory of its concept. He lifted his left hand, and his golden mite doorway equally manifested. Properly equipped he turned his attention to the intruder.

Keith had appeared here unarmed. Only a helmetless human armor as his equipment. “Not here to fight just yet big guy, plus don’t think we’d accomplish anything by fighting in this domain.”

The human was correct. Even if Keith killed him in his own realm, he would regenerate his occult image within seconds. Enough time for a program with a strong overclock to deal damage to his unguarded defense, but nothing a human could work with. If it had been To’Wrathh in his mind, he would have been far more cautious. As it was, this was nothing but a waste of time. To’Orda lifted his hammer, wishing he wouldn’t have to use it. Any other fate would be better than to exert effort here in swatting the human away.

“I’m here just to talk a few terms.” Keith continued.

Ah. To’Orda was wrong. There was a fate worse than having to fight. He groaned, curled down on himself and leaped forward, hammer swinging for the human.

Keith reacted exactly as he had in real life, leaping out of the way and scurrying into the shadows of the shattered compound, running past the walls and out of sight. To’Orda stalked behind, cursing his luck.

“What, you don’t even want to talk or monologue at all?” Keith’s voice floated out past the entryway. “Just straight to beating each other up!?”

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“Nnnn… negotiation is tiring.” To’Orda said, looking for the hyper-weasel, passing past the entrance and entering a deserted lobby. The hyper-weasel had outright vanished when he’d turned the corner. Was that possible?

“And fighting isn’t?”

He heard the voice float from the inside of a wall. That was… odd. He didn’t remember a turn here, or any kind of room behind that wall. With a shrug, he lifted his hammer and shoulder charged into the wall, expecting to break through wherever Keith had been hiding. He didn’t care for damage to his mental sphere here, most of it was already rubble to start with.

The wall didn’t shatter, it instead vanished into digital dust. As if it hadn’t been any kind of solid wall at all. An illusion? In his own mind?

Keith was there crouching in the corner, caught off guard that his hiding spot had been exposed that fast. “Less tiring.” To’Orda answered the earlier question, hammer swinging out to crush the human’s head.

“Okay, okay, no negotiating then!” Keith called out, melding through the wall behind him, sprinting away as the hammer soared where the weasel had just been caged up.

That… was going to be very annoying to deal with. Even in the digital sea, this human just did not stop finding novel new ways to be a pain in the ass. To’Orda saw him running off in the distance, across one of the ruined walkways.

The Feather cracked his neck, lifted his hammer on his shoulder, squatted down and leaped.

Keith ducked just as To’Orda swung over his head. The human skidded to a stop on his boots, scrambling to turn his direction backward. The reaction had been fast, but not fast enough to avoid the followup kick To’Orda dolled out the moment he’d calculated his swing would miss. It launched the man up, and off the railing.

To’Orda jumped after, hammer swinging down into the ground, shattering it further, narrowly missing Keith as the man scrambled away a second time.

“Look, I don’t want to hurt you.” Keith called out, rolling on his feet, hands outstretched again.

To’Orda shrugged. “You won’t.”

He lifted the hammer casually back on his shoulder and lumbered after the human. The ruined plaza here had no walls to hide or phase through, just shattered glass under him, displaying rocks where a garden had once been. The cracks of blue in between were more obvious here. The human took rapid steps backwards, glass shards crunching under the boots, keeping the space between them consistent.

“Hey, hey, hey, wait, wait-” He said, hands trying to placate him, “I’ll come up to the Valorant like you wanted, that’s all I’m here to talk about. Swear on my grandmother’s grave.”

To’Orda stopped. “You will?”

He didn’t know if Keith’s grandmother had any value to the human, but generally that meant something to humans. Regardless, the small chance that the hyper-weasel would come to To’Orda made the giant Feather pause, hoping his plan would actually pan out.

Keith didn’t lower his guard, but seemed relieved. “I have to pick up Drakonis at some point, right? I came here to let you know I got your message, and I’ll be up to the Valorant. But call off the Odin- the birds I mean. They don’t have anything to do with me and you, right?”

Call them off? “Nnn… explain.”

“Uh. You sent them to harass me.”

“Nnn… I did?” To’Orda frowned, thinking back. And then he realized he had. A passing demand on the Odin. “I did.” He nodded. It would be a better idea to call off the birds. They’d only die trying to catch Keith. He hadn’t considered them much before, but now he thought better of the birds. If To’Orda wasn’t able to catch the hyper-weasel himself, what chance did his future minions have? He needed them for later, a good boss did not let his minions go to waste.

Light under the rocks flashed blue, the cracks expanding outwards under all the ash, glowing brighter for a moment. “You will come to the valorant.” To’Orda said, feeling his back straighten up. “You have one day. I will call off the attack. If you do not come, I will demand they continue their chase.”

Keith gulped. “Can you make it two days?”

“No.”

To’Wrathh would arrive within two days at the earliest by this point. He had to make sure the weasel would be at the Valorant in hammer-smashing range before his feral little sister made it here. He sent a quick ping to check on To’Avalis and got a response packet.

The diversion plan was going poorly. To’Avalis’s Deathless had been all but hunted down, most opting to perform heroic last stands in the fight against To’Naviris rather than following To’Avalis’s hidden suggestions and guides. If they had, they would have run around that Feather for weeks. Instead, To’Naviris had mostly killed them all and suffered temporary fixable damage in exchange. Only a few were left still alive, trying to execute a doomed final plan with power cells while ducking between all the minions that Feather sent out.

At this rate, To’Naviris would return to his domain within the day, and then find To’Orda rummaging around here with two ‘Deathless.’

“You have one day. Fail, and my minions will do the work for me.” To’Orda finished. His order was final. He felt the strength leave his body after that, his shoulder slouching down again, spin curving slightly. Light around the room dimmed back to normal. Talking this much felt like he’d just used new muscles that lacked training. A good first attempt, but more experience was needed.

Keith stayed silent for a moment, then sighed. “All right, twist my arm and all that. Fine. How’s Drakonis, are you keeping him alive?”

To’Orda shifted his perspective. Outside the digital sea, the rock and Drakonis were currently arguing with one another about the merits of using butter instead of oil when it came to grilling.

The greyroamers had returned, dragging a giant buck behind them. Demanding they follow his orders had been rather simple and clean. They seemed more curious to what would happen later than suspicious. And he had told them he’d cook human food for them all, not just Drakonis, if they’d bring back the ingredients he’d demanded.

All he had to do was copy the instructions online, and follow through on butchering, cleaning and cooking the meat. All the hard research and field-testing was already done for him.

“Nnn… Alive enough.” He eventually said.

“All right, so long as he’s alive when I come to get him, I’ll come by soon.”

To’Orda nodded. “Nnnn... one day. Or else.”

The hyper-weasel vanished, returned back to where he’d come by his own volition, leaving To’Orda’s mind alone.

He stayed there for a moment, watching the events in reality as his shell moved around and began the process to butcher the deer and prepare the herbs his first minions had flown around to gather. The wolf-minions were all sitting on their haunches a small distance away from the fire, watching intently.

The Deathless would be fed, and continue to give him good suggestions on food to test out. The hyper-weasel would be here in a day, he'd crush the human's head and be gone before either the current ruler of this domain showed his face, or To'Wrathh appeared to make things worse. Everything was on track.

To’Orda still felt like he was forgetting something.

Then he remembered what he'd been putting off - he still needed to visit the Icon and inform both her and the Odin as a race were his property now. After that, he could give the order to abandon the manhunt for Keith and wait for further instructions.

Easy enough fix. He’d get to it after he got his restaurant recommendation from the Deathless.