Adamant Blood

Mark landed on the ground, half a kilometer away from Titanfist, from Ben. Ben was still in Mark's range and some monsters seemed to be trying to bite him here and there, but he was fine. He would be fine. Ben had even started flickering out his tactile telekinesis to reinforce what remained of his clothes, and then the ground, and then the air, like he was feeling out the world, which is what it probably was. He couldn't consciously move anything right now, but he was still in there, still realizing that he was awake and able to do things.

When Addavein got here, Mark could heal Ben faster by using Addavein as a source for Union.

And then they could… Mark didn't know. Go out and kill traitors and kaiju? Ride on his fucking shoulders or some shit? Mark could probably survive being in the presence of most kaiju now… mostly. His entire body was covered in black scales of adamantium. Most of them were 2 centimeters across, but many of them were much finer than that, and some were much larger, like plates.

Mark looked out at the cratered land, at the cloudy sky, at the burning city and the alarms flashing on the wall, indicating monsters attacking the walls. Just like with Ben, the city was defenseless and the monsters that normally lived out here, in the wilds, were attacking what they never got to attack.

There were probably hunters and slayers and AI with good weapons and all sorts of stories happening in all of Memphi right now. People were dying, and people were surviving and helping. How many were hurting? Too many.

Mark wondered if the people would blame Mark, or the settlement project, or the Mayor, for all of this right here. If they hadn't tried to make a gate then the demons wouldn't have attacked. Mark hoped that people wouldn't be so shortsighted to think like that, to think that they could appease the demons with non-threatening actions, that if they stayed small that this never would have happened. Demons were demons. There was no negotiating with them… not really. Not even with a Contract.

This was a war.

The war had come to Memphi because Memphi tried to do well, to do better.

It was not wrong to want power and capability.

But it was also not wrong to want to be safe.

"It will be better," Mark told himself, "Because we're handling it," he said, raising one hand upward, "Death to all monsters."

Mark grabbed the hand of a goddess, waiting right there for him, for his request. It was like grabbing the sun; golden, warm, relaxing.

Mark requested, "Addavein… Talzarki. Please help save Memphi."

"We do a little exchange, Mark," Freyala said, as she pulled Mark's very soul out of him. "It's temporary, and you could use the experience."

Mark ascended into the gold, into the light.

He glanced down.

His body was down there, and his body was looking at his hands, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

And then his body looked up at him and smiled.

Incisors too big. Eyes too silver. Claws on his hands too real.

Addavein waved.

And then Mark fell into warm darkness.

- -

Addavein watched Mark ascend, so he waved.

"YOU ARE NOT MARK! GET OUT OF HIM RIGHT NOW!" roared some voice in Mark's ears.

"Spare me your threats and your yelling!" Addavein said, looking at his tiny human body. He peeled back his scales just as easily as he would have peeled back his spikes, and yeah, this was a human body! "He'll get it back soon enough! It's not like he doesn't have leverage on me. He has my body right now and I expect it back! When I leave this one it will be as good as when I got here. Probably better."

Two hands attached to two arms. Check. Shoulders that rotated well. Check. Wings… Wings? No wings. Okay. Now there are wings. Adamantium wings, but wings just the same… No tail either? Well that is simply disappointing.

… Mark needs a tail—

Nooooo.

No tail.

"Is this really all the adamantium Mark has? This is intolerable… but I can manage—"

"Get out get out get out!!!" complained the voice—

"Oh! Quark, right? Hello. I'm Addavein! I am being sneaky right now! I retain most of my capability but this way I'm less prone to getting a nuclear bomb in my face. Those are not fun to heal from, let me tell you— Ah! You're an AI, yes? I haven't ever used one of you, but dad certainly did… Say? Can you give me a full list of the biggest targets— Wait! Nope. I can already tell what I need to do."

Quark had never stopped telling Addavein to get out, but that was fine.

"There's a rift! Not a very healthy thing to have in a city, you know—"

Quark suddenly shifted tactics, asking, "Are you really only staying for so long?"

"Yes. Mark's body can't handle me, and he can't handle my body. Our problems leave us with different issues, though. He's insensate, located inside of a structure way, way too big for him, and I'm gonna start cracking this flesh at the seams in an hour, or if I do too much. I promise not to do too much. I will only be using Adamantiumkinesis and my own spellwork. None of what I do should harm him… I think."

Addavein's astral body remained as large as it usually was, though, which meant he was very, very large but in a very, very small package. Mark had the opposite problem. Addavein foresaw no problems moving quickly if he had to, or creating large-scale magics, either—

Stuff populated Mark's eyes, and Addavein instinctively shifted his view elsewhere, but he pulled back into Mark's body and looked at the stuff he was seeing because it was good information.

"Ah, yes yes. I know this. Ramirez always had a good tactical mind. I'll play along. I will be making a few adjustments to the plan, though. You should know I am using my own astral body, so I do not have access to Mark's Talents and I will not be sharing much of mine, no thank you. All of this projection for me killing with Union will not work.

"I think Mark's body can handle a few teleports, though, so we can move this time schedule up based on that. We'll be done in 20 minutes! 15, maybe. Tell her that, and keep a good readout of what you see, Quark! I think I might spontaneously generate wings and a tail if I don't watch myself, and I will need to fix that before I leave." Addavein had already seen the first task, laying over there on the ground, just a few hundred meters away. He had been preparing a spell while he had been talking to Quark and thinking that it was quaint that a few hundred meters was a large physical distance. Not a large distance for Addavein's astral body, though. "Let's get some temporary healing done, and then teleport this guy somewhere to rest."

Addavein finished casting his spell and a Greater Essence Rejuvenation soaked into the boy's astral body. It was like a drop of black appearing then dissipating into the ether. The guy jerked and then groaned. The groan transformed into a sigh, and he began to shrink.

"Please don't ruin Mark's reputation," Quark requested.

Addavein smiled. "It will build character!"

"A costume at least, please."

"Oh! … Ohhhh… I like that idea." And then Addavein did a bit of coloring magic and transformed all of his black scales into silver scales. "There we go! Ahhh, I actually feel more like myself with my own coloring. This was a good… idea… hmm."

Addavein looked at himself, at his scale covered arm, and then he removed the color magic and shifted all of his adamantium into a threaded robe. It was black as adamantium, because it was. Addavein added some gold touches here and there, in the hems, in the lining, in the embroidery.

Addavein was still Addavein.

But he felt like Addashield, during the Reveal, when he had broken out all of the good shit from the vaults of the Aluatha Empire and he went to war for all of humanity.

He had to use some Adamantiumkinesis to keep his robe flexible, for a real Archmage's Robe was enchanted to keep it flexible, and this one was not enchanted at all. It still felt natural to have it on Addavein's skin, though. That bastard High Archmage Durnd had always worn the adamantium garb for every special occasion, but he had never allowed Addashield to use it even for war.

Addashield had had his own made by his own hand, of course, but it had never been as beautifully functional like the official garb of the Empire's Archmage.

Durnd died late in the Reveal, in the reordering of the Empire. He was too political and dragonist and not violent enough —a triple weakness— so the Aluathas assassinated him in their ascent to power.

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Addashield sighed a little, looking at his Talzarki's hands, and remembering his own. And then he shook his head and said, "Maybe he'll let me borrow the body a few more times when this is over. It's nice being human again." He frowned. "I really need to figure out how to make a human body for myself, though. Maybe I'll… Hmm."

Addashield thought.

Quark asked, "Do you always talk to yourself this much? Or are you experiencing what is known as dragon loneliness, as outlined in the dragon carer's handbook of Aluatha?"

"… I was mostly explaining myself so that you could tell Mark what happened with his body when I was gone, but perhaps the loneliness is real. We destroyed their entire culture, Quark. Every single ingress any of them could ever take for regaining access or culture, too. I'm making do by watching movies and spying on HVP to find kaiju on Earth, and then killing them. It's rather entertaining to kill kaiju. Always has been, but it's especially fun these days when it's so easy.

"You know the demons sent 3 kaiju to Orange City? Most of them came to Memphi, of course. But this war is happening everywhere, across the entire globe. I got those 3 because Orange City couldn't stop me from getting them, and then I got another 4 scattered across North America. I couldn't get any more because of the rightfully entrenched hatred of dragons among the powers that be, and getting those 4 had already taken me close to human lands, so I settled down and waited for Mark's call. Memphi, in particular, was telling me not to come at all, until the rift appeared...

"And anyway, I'm talking like this because I needed time for Titanfist to shrink and for me to line up a few more spells in my soul. Can you check if Emilia is ready to teleport Titanfist… wherever? Probably to central command, yes? Or south of central, since you got that infiltration-by-cultists-thing going on."

"In 23 seconds," Quark answered.

"Ah, good! Then I will be using this first Teleport on myself. I will be appearing in the north shortly. I'll close the gate first and then kill the kaiju, then proceed to north command if I haven't bulged out of Mark's body before then. I suspect Mark will need to do cleanup with the worms, but I will be able to get most of them. Please bring up some videos of the north, Quark."

Images appeared in Mark's vision, and Sloane Addashield knew where he needed to go.

"Thank you, Quark," Sloane said, looking the problem over, and then focusing on Mark's friends and enemies and newfound traitors. "You know, most teams don't survive their first traitor. Mark's friends are surprisingly competent, but let's go save them first… Well. Most of them."

Sloane looked over at Titanfist, who was maybe 50 meters large, still. He was groaning in pain and almost small enough to teleport.

Sloane waited for the guy to leave the field.

Soon there was a flicker of light and Titanfist was gone; moved elsewhere.

Sloane flickered and reappeared in the north, directly in front of the gate.

It was white and distorted at the edges. Endless Daihoon and all of its crazy geometries lay on the other side. Mana poured out onto Earth, likely turning bystanders in Memphi and normal beings in the wilds into monsters. The gate district was rather deserted, though, and the bunkers were warded against mana intrusion, so maybe not.

Sloane felt like he had been transported to 79 years ago, to the Reveal.

The rift to Endless Daihoon was large and getting larger, and soon more kaiju would notice the opening. Sloane counted four kaiju in the area right now. The worms in the dead flesh below, the phoenix eating the fire, the fire elemental feeding and feeding on the phoenix, and the skyscraper bear, which was eating the burning flesh and the worms that threaded throughout. The phoenix and the fire would probably fight when the flesh was gone. Who knew about the rest.

Sloane turned back to the rift.

79 years ago, it was an ordeal to figure out how to close these things efficiently. They had to invent a whole new branch of magic to do it. High Archmage Durnd had contributed the most to that new field of magic. Sloane was the one who actually did the closing, though.

Sloane flew up, up up up, past the clouds of smoke, the clouds of mist, and then he was in the sky, looking down at the crack in the world that was snapping upward, even now. It was a spike of white with a maelstrom of clouds soaking into the hole in the world and rushing back out into every direction.

Rifts grew and grew, releasing ever bigger kaiju as they split the fabric of reality. It was cat-4s now, but small cat-5s, and then cat-6s and upward would start coming through if this thing was allowed to exist for another week, and then another month. Cat-7s were the most that had ever appeared during the Reveal, and Sloane never wanted to see a Cat-8 from across eternity ever again. They weren't Bigs, but in a lot of ways they were worse than that, because they could actually come to Earth, or to Daihoon.

Sloane started at the very edge of the white crack, as it cracked upward and upward with every second. And then he looked upward, by about 50 meters, to a space that had yet to be affected by the crack in reality. Sloane moved there and then he cast a pretty normal mending spell but twisted in a few key ways, with spatial ideology. An orange-gold ring of power formed in his hands, about a meter across.

Sloane guided the ring downward, aiming for the beginning of the invisible, intangible breach in the worlds—

The ring caught on that invisibility and then Sloane let it go.

The orange ring flowed downward, into the rift, melding with the white, mirage-like edges. Orange infiltrated white, and then, with a great disruption and weakening of the Veil in every other direction, the rift suddenly clapped closed on itself, the great light and infiltration from Endless Daihoon ending with a snap and a crack. All of the rest of the Veil in the area was weakened, but the rift itself was closed.

With how healthy the Veil had been for about the last 70 years, Sloane expected the local weakening of the Veil would only last a day.

Sloane super-sped down through the sky, to the lake of burning flesh and worms, right in time to see the rift closing from down here, under the thick clouds. One minute there was normal-ish light, and the next the light was gone, and all was burning either gold or normal reds and oranges.

Quark helpfully provided intel on the issues out there.

Sloane looked to Mark's friends…

"Nope," Sloane said, "That's a Dragonwreck trap and I'm not getting anywhere near that; not because I couldn't solve it, but because I only have so much capability here. Sorry, Mark. Sorry, Quark. Tell him to evacuate his friends before he fights the cultist when he gets back."

Sloane proceeded to rip up the kaiju. That would give the kids, and Memphi, a lot more capability to respond to everything, and that would probably be the limit of what he could do.

- - - -

Isoko gripped the life support capsule that held Eliot inside and she ran through the underground.

Sally, with her left arm gone at the bicep and her right arm missing to her elbow, crashed through the construction zone barrier ahead. She was running on the remains of her ankles and she wasn't doing so well. None of them were.

They were trapped in a maze of uncompleted tunnels below the gate district, worms wriggling along the ground, gradually filling up the tunnels, and Kardi was gaining on them—

"It'll go easier for you if you stop running!" came Kardi's voice, from far behind.

Eliot's voice buzzed mechanically through the speakers of his life support, "Next left. Barrier up ahead. I need to be close enough to it to open that one. It's solid steel."

Sally declared, "I can open that one, too."

It had been chaos and it was still chaos.

Eliot had evacuated them to tunnels that he had been building and rerouting for purposes of power, but he had cleared out that shit to reinforce the walls once the 6-legged bear started breaking everything. The anti-Illusionist guy —Isoko forgot his name, fuck!— had even been alive. Kardi had pointed them down tunnels that survived, while others broke.

And then Kardi had shifted. She slapped her hand onto some dust on the wall and then slapped her own face, leaving a bright white handprint.

And now Sally ran on stumps.

Eliot was unable to Manipulate anything down here, and he was barely holding on inside of his life support capsule.

Isoko was doing okay. Isoko was pretty sure that Kardi wanted to save her for last, because Kardi was specifically mad at Isoko for reasons that Isoko didn't want to think about. Isoko had lots of Union targets to pull healing from, though. So that was 'good'. The white worms were getting deep, though, as more and more of them spilled through cracks in the tunnel's ceiling—

Kardi appeared out of the wall up ahead, smiling brightly, pink helmet shattered and revealing a white hand covering her forehead and left eye. Her superhero costume was broken and replaced by pieces of her former friend's suits. She had Shawn's sword in her scabbard on her hip, Tartu's wand bandolier on her lower back with wands sticking out and ready to be used, and Lenny's head hanging off of her belt.

So she had killed him, huh.

That was how she had stepped through the wall. Yeah. Stonewalking, or earth walking, just like Lenny had had.

Kardi had had the Darkshaper and Multi-gunner's heads on her belt, but those guys were gone now. Sally had managed to shatter them the last time Kardi had appeared like this.

Sally wasn't able to make that same mistake this time.

Kardi happily declared, "The spirits demand you give yourselves up! How else can our threats be taken seriously! Please stop running!"

They ran faster.

Kardi laughed behind them.

Freyala whispered to Isoko, "You must return to Tartu and Shawn and prepare for when the gloves come off in around 300 seconds. This is all the help I can give you anymore. Drakarok is preparing for the same, but we're tapped out."

Isoko spat to her team, "Plan rescue or die trying is a go!"

She did not need to elaborate. Her team was with her.

"I don't know if we can," Eliot said, through sparking coms on the side of his capsule.

With her vector full of waiting gold, Sally grunted, "We must."

"Then take a right; not a left," Eliot said.