A single two second slice was all it took to break apart surface clans.
The fortress would continue on its insane speed above orbit and lance down at the same moment, cutting an entire chasm into the world a few miles wide.
Two seconds.
And an entire people would be wiped out, burned beyond ashes.
The beam ahead of me lasted for two minutes.
Two entire minutes of pure power, all drilling into a singular location. And then empowered by occult magnification designed by the greatest mind on the world.
I watched as she burned from a few hundred yards off, far too close for anyone else to survive.
If I threw anything into the fray, I might break everything. Cut a chain or force Wrath to lose focus at the exact wrong time and let Relinquished escape.
As the world burned ahead of me, I felt numb. Cold.
I couldn't hear her strangled cries, halfway through the heat broke apart the final parts of Journey's still hanging on helmet, the comms systems within it fried. The armor was forced to retreat back into it's soul fractal, hiding from the world now.
A single line of bright light, visible from hundreds of miles away, cutting the cancer from this world.
And with it, Wrath.
I think that's the only reason I held that shield up and decided to live through instead of giving up and letting the light vaporise me alongside. That and a single lingering attachment to the armor that had seem me through everything thick and thin. I held one hand forward, powering Urs's layered defenses, and the other hand held the ruins of my chestplate, as added protection.
But there was a third reason.
I had to see this to the end. So that if by some unholy miracle, Relinquished survived, then I would be here to crush her mangled body and end the threat. So that Wrath’s sacrifice wouldn't have been for nothing.
It could not have been for nothing. The chill around me grew as I waited for the end. Occult before be raged in conflicting forces. I sensed layer after layer of shielding break further ahead of me, until something changed. And there was no longer any conflict or forces fighting one another. Only the continuous beam downwards, drilling further and further into the world.
The layered defense ahead of me held off the power splash, layers breaking and being restored like shark's teeth, each one pushing forward. One minute died. And then another.
The beam followed behind. Ending all at once.
I couldn’t tell if that was by command or simply the station having finally run out of power to channel down. I didn’t think to look up. My sight was fixed only where I had last seen Wrath. Held in that monster’s hand, both of them frozen.
Now, all that was left ahead of me was a single glowing hole. Burned so deep down, it would take the mites years to rebuild through all the layers that had been cut.
There was nothing there anymore.
Relinquished was gone.
I was too far away to see with my soul sight for certain, but there was no trace of her shell beyond the hole. And further ahead, her army now lay still.
Groaning and the sound of thunder came from far above, and when I finally looked up to see what was coming, I saw the fortress break through the last few clouds that were left.
Or rather the pieces. The cannon had been fired for far longer than it could sustain. And it had kept firing until the station ripped itself apart.
Massive pieces now crashed into the field, until the center hull itself loomed above my head, a burned down and mangled skeleton.
I felt oddly at peace, standing right below certain death. Urs’s shields flared out.
My world once more filled with nothing but light and fire as the corpse of a dead god slammed into the world at terminal speeds.
It felt like hours passed, as I stood within that vortex of fire and collapsing metal, feeling numb to the core, before I noticed the freezing surface had finally reclaimed control over the flames.
Darkness was all that surrounded me now.
Numbly, I figured I needed to go to the centerpoint. To make certain it was over.
With a pulse of occult, metal above me cracked and split apart like a cocoon and I rose up and out, floating above to watch the world below.
A massive spine of Tsuya's fortress remained floating on the edge of the hole that had been drilled into the world, but far more of it lay flattened on the ground, making that piece just a small part of the massive destroyed fortress. Pieces and debris littered the wastes all around, far beyond the center hole.
And I knew we had won before I even went to search for any signs of life by the center strike.
Far beyond, by the machine citadel, I watched as the legions of machines turned and walked back to the walls. Finding holes and chasms, climbing back down. Leaving the cheering human army untouched behind them.
The fight had gone out from all of them. Relinquished would never allow this to happen. Not in a million years. Which meant she was no longer here to rip them to shreds for abandoning the battlefield.
Behind, the largest piece of the destroyed fortress still remained bent but standing. Decks flattened into one another, exposed in the air, rapidly freezing over. I could see exposed wiring and cargo all expelled out.
It seemed almost at peace. The guts spilled all across the world while it curled around the single massive hole at the very center. Small gouts of flames were left, rapidly dying away.
The remnant of a soldier that had done their due.
Slowly, I landed on the top of the rubble and began to walk to the center of the crash.
And inevitably, without noticing it myself, I found the end of my journey on the ruins of a ripped deck, a makeshift gangplank extended out above the center hole burned through in the aftermath.
My occult sight saw nothing. No trace beyond lingering defusing power. No life anywhere. No wandering soul fractal left in a corner, everything beyond was melted steel and broken wiring.
Father was gone.
She was gone.
And so was Relinquished.
Kneeling down there, the snow began to build on my back, trying to bury me with the rest of the ruins here. I could hear howling, and distant cheers. Explosions was what made me look off to my side for a moment.
Fireworks. And given how lopsided they appeared, some distant part of my mind knew they were jury rigged from leftover explosive equipment brought by the knights. Grenades and the like. Possibly using the relic armor nanoswarms now fully unlocked to craft the rest of the required materials for better detentions.
Occult detonations came next, far more varied in colors, as the Deathless and warlocks among the army beyond must have joined in.
It was a sea of colors in the distance, not just in the air, but all over the land as knights from all corners of the world turned to one another, hugging, jumping, cheering, shooting guns in the air. Moving around like a turbulent sea as many must be out there looking for their closest brother and sister in arms. To see who had made it to the end with them.
Some part of me felt I should walk away. Find my family, hold them tight and celebrate the end.
Most of me just simply didn’t want to think. The frost slowly sank with each breath I took. I stayed there on the top of that bending awning, some distant engineering deck. Rapidly getting covered in snow and ice.
Ahead in the white wastes, beyond the celebrations and fireworks from the army of mankind, there was still motion. Not from the dead god that lay shattered in half-melted pieces here. But instead, something far smaller.
A single figure walking across the land, now weaving in between the broken metal ribs scattered around.
No, not quite walking. Running. It only seemed slow from the distance the figure traveled.
And as it came closer, I realized it wasn't a relic knight.
The machine scampered over the rubble and ruins, now that it had come close enough there was far more warped metal than land. And soon there was nothing but metal to climb over, leap off of, and continue forward. It did so with single minded intent.
It wasn't a Feather. It wasn't even some hunter killer, nor a drake, nor any kind of more specialized machine. It was a single Runner.
Coming directly to me.
I let it.
It climbed up the ruined decks, climbing over the ripped up sections, and finally crawled up through to the exposed deck I had ended up at.
I stayed in place. I didn't need to move even an inch to handle a single runner, a spare thought from me would slice it into a hundred pieces. Occult still swirled around me, and the soul sight showed me the struggling machine through its entire journey across the husk.
Talen’s blade remained loosely held in my grip, the tip resting on the deck floor, barely held up by two fingers, waiting to see if it would be used one more time.
It slowly came to a stop before me, feet clinking on the frozen metal as it walked. Back straightening up from the earlier loping strides until it’s arms now swung like a human’s would. Standing taller, walking on two legs when it finally reached me.
It kept a good distance, a few feet behind me.
I sensed no hostility from it.
"Why are you here?" I asked, not bothering to look behind me.
“We have been sent. For the human emperor. To speak. ” The machine said. “Between our kind. Of peace.”
“The Pale Lady is gone then?” I spoke back, my voice feeling distant even to me.
“The throne has been claimed.” The machine spoke. “The pale lady is no more. Defeated. Many despair. Many more, joy.”
I took a deep breath. One more reminder that the world had been put back to place. That the plan had worked.
Relinquished was dead. Actually dead. And gone from the throne.
I didn't have it in me to do anything. I wanted to simply stay crumbled on my knees and stay here numb for a time.
I knew what it had cost for this victory.
“Tell To’Orda I will speak to him soon.” I said instead, looking down at the gaping void beyond. “I need… to rest.” For a century. To just freeze here in peace, sitting among the ruins. I'd get up eventually. But not right now.
The machine’s skull tilted ever so slightly.
“I know not that name.” The machine said. “I sent here. By the Empress.”
I blinked. “The… empress?”
The machine nodded at me. “Yes. The Scarlet Lady. The Red Queen. She who has transcended her history."
"She who has transcended her history?" Slowly, I rose off my knees, and finally turned to see the runner.
The soul sight was many things, but concepts of color was not something I generally focused on. The world had been black and white to me.
So I was caught by surprised on one thing: The runner did not glow violet. The eyes were instead a dim red.
The same red that remained stubbornly inscribed across my broken armor. Winterscar red.
"...Who is your new empress?" I asked, holding my breath.
The runner stood slightly taller, as if the name that came next required gravity.
"Our sovereign. Ruler of machine kind. The Empress To’Wrathh.”
I blinked again.
And my next breath felt… warm.