Chapter Text
The light was blinding, disorienting. When it finally broke his shields, Windrunner felt time skip a second ahead, along with some lingering pain, like he had just taken a particularly hard punch to the face.
The first thing he thought after coming to was, "this isn't how the others described it." The Winterscar Prime described death as a trek into the white wastes without a suit. A bitter and hostile environment where you died a very short time after entering it. Metaphorically, there was snow almost to your waist, slowing you down while you tried to find shelter. You could try and hold your breath, but it would only provide less than a minute of warm air before you collapsed anyway.
But Windrunner's own death wasn't like that at all. There was no spiritual wind or even cold; nothing tearing away at his substance or corroding it until it fractured. Everything around him was almost...pleasant. He couldn't help but feel like he'd gone to the afterlife in the time it took for his mind to recover from his shields being broken. He didn't even get to experiment with being a disembodied soul before he was destroyed. That was annoying, but he supposed he'd be grateful there was an afterlife.
"Transport." What? He tried to spin around, but felt no feedback. Right, just a soul. "Offer: One-way Transport." That voice somehow didn't sound like anything. No accent, no robotic tone like a drake's. If he had to guess, though, it was definitely some kind of machine. And considering they were close to a mite forge, it was probably mites.
Great, he thought. Either the mites are in the afterlife, or I've become the party's second mite speaker.
"Offer: One-way Transport." Oh, right. It was probably waiting for some kind of response, so Windrunner tried to figure out what the soul equivalent of speaking was. Maybe just thinking real hard.
His first attempt turned out as a message of agreement. Basically a "sure, sounds good." That wasn't ideal, but the mites were supposed to be trustworthy, so he didn't backtrack. He did manage to tack on an extra message of confusion. “What's this 'offer' mean, anyway?"
> Offer accepted.
> Offer: One-way Transport. (Vehicle: Wave-stabilized Fractal Echo.) (Quantity: 1)
> Payment Required: Human Fractal Echo (Service: Return when able.)
> Offer: One-
> Repeat message aborted.
That...well, Windrunner had read stories and myths about mite-speakers, but this sounded relatively straightforward. He hadn't gotten any answers, really, but this was familiar mite terminal language. He'd never gone to a mite forge himself, and rarely talked to Undersider knights, so whether this was par for the course was anyone's guess.
The trade seemed bizarrely favorable, but he wasn't going to complain. “Return when able” probably meant to just communicate with mites after the fight was over. He couldn't really do anything else for the mites, which probably factored into their deal.
He sent a message of agreement again, and he felt something happen. Whatever cousin to soul sight he was using right now, it got hemmed in. Hopefully that meant he was getting put into armor instead of just someone's extra soul fractal. Assuming that they made it to the forge to pick him up.
The others were still up against one or Feathers and down a clan lord...he hoped Keith had finished off To’Sefit. Even one Feather was a lot for him to handle without Wrath to help him tag-team.
> Fractal Echo assembled.
> Chambering acausal cannon...100%
> Constructing acausal bridge...100%
> Generating mission summary. Appending "Information on Acausal Physics, vol. 1".
> Goodbye, Human Echo. Find a way back. (File: 5 GB)
That caught him off guard. He'd brushed over the "one-way" in the first few messages; of course it would be one way! He'd be going into a soul fractal and be taken out of whatever storage they had him in! This was starting to sound like he was going to lose all contact with the offer maker entirely, which meant it either wasn't mites or they were sending him off somewhere else. Not back to the other knights. Not back to help.
"Where are you sending me?"
The only answer he got was a sense of acceleration, starting off slow before spiking and cutting out.