Adamant Blood

"Ah hahaha!" Kardi laughed, her voice echoing in the massive underground chamber. "He's getting close! I can finally start killing you all!"

Kardi was in the walls, teasing them.

Isoko Unioned both breath and blood with Purity/Impurity, and it was the best thing to do right now, even though all of them were hurting and in pain. Freshly broken pipes lined the walls, spewing magical poison into the air, creating a death trap if Isoko were to stop.

The rescue of Tartu and Shawn had not gone well.

The chamber was a setup, because of course it was. Isoko wasn't sure how Kardi had even done it, but she was sure that she had had help. A lot of help. Where was that help? Who the fuck knew.

The 50-meter wide chamber had been filled with electronics and piping and it had been an underground nerve center leading from Memphi to the gate district. Most of that stuff was gone. The pipes remained, and they were rigged to explode and drown this whole place in a Mississippi's-worth of water. All the rest had either been removed or trashed, leaving a deep depression at the joining of several tunnels both big and small. At the center of that depression was a hole that had led down to something, maybe tunnels down there, but now it was just piles and piles of destroyed and twisted metal. Kardi —or someone— had put a big platform of solid metal atop that trashed metal. That platform sat askew.

Tartu and Shawn had their hands and legs tied up with strong metals, both of their bindings welded onto a broken twist of metal that rose from the main platform. Both of them were alive, awake, terrified, and dosed with shavallian. Neither of them were capable of using their Powers at all. They were little stronger than baselines right now.

Poison seeped out of broken pipes to the sides of the room, filling the space with gas of some sort. Monster-made gas, if Eliot's inability to do anything about it was any indication.

Isoko had some blast damage from a grenade that had gone off next to her face, but it had already healed.

Eliot's survival tank kept him alive, but Isoko didn't want to think about how pained he was in there, and how little he could do in this space. His Castellan fire-thingy was over and gone. Isoko suspected that the entire city's Castellan defenses were down, too.

Sally was still on her ankles, one arm gone at the bicep, other at the elbow. She had managed to TT some rubble into 'feet', and she was wielding a length of rebar like a sword in her elbow-arm, while her bicep arm had some scrap that was TT'd onto her body almost like a shield. Eliot had turned the rebar into a blade. Sally was battle ready, as much as she could be. She was 'okay'.

Nothing was actually okay.

The metal ties that held the arms of Lenny's headless corpse were still welded to the same support that affixed all three guys to the platform. That body was slumped against Shawn, and Shawn wasn't moving at all. Tartu was still alert and looking around, but he was unable to do anything at all, and Shawn was resigned and terrified, staring down at his dead friend. Shavallian was a bitch.

Kardi was a bigger bitch.

Eliot's voice crackled in his speakers, "Now what?"

"Now we die, I guess," Sally said.

Both of them were lying. They had a plan. They had reached Tartu and Shawn, anyway. That part was done.

And now Eliot was making countermeasures against the poison and there was a hatch down the way that was timed to explode and release a flood of worms into the room. Once the worm-kaiju's body was anywhere within Isoko's range she could Union a whole lot better. Right now the poison was killing all other living things and making Union difficult. Also, Eliot was currently working his way through the block of metal underneath them, his vector twisting into the pillar where Tartu and Shawn were welded down, weakening the structure so that Sally or Isoko could shatter it and they could get away with the guys.

He was also checking for more bombs under the structure, and based on how his entire vector narrowed intently on something below the structure, he had found a big one.

Right as he found it, and he started to freak—

Kardi laughed, "You like the toy down there? It's a nice little trinket!"

Kardi was in the walls and she was fucking up Isoko's Unionsense because when she poked her head out of the wall over there, near the water line, Isoko had been looking ten meters away at an open wall that looked like a much better place to attack from, and where her vector had seemed to be. Isoko whipped toward Kardi just in time to watch the Thrashtalon-marked bitch slide through the chamber wall, toward the left, as Sally kicked her foot and threw a large, sharp hunk of metal right where Kardi's head had been. The bit of metal thunked into the wall, sinking into the liquid-like surface, and Kardi moved faster to the left, laughing.

"It's an arcane nuclear bomb," Eliot said. "There's no human tech involved in that at all."

A nuclear bomb.

Here.

In this place?

Fuck.

Isoko, Sally, Tartu, and Shawn, all tensed, and then their vectors wildly diverged.

Isoko went solid. Sally's vector reached down and then rapidly retreated when she realized that touching the bomb at all, in any way, was a bad idea. Tartu shuddered.

Shawn snapped out of it. Even with Lenny's corpse laying against him, he stared at Kardi as Kardi swam in the stone, broken pink and white outfit marred with the colors that belonged to the rest of the team. Green and yellow and also blue. Shawn looked to Lenny's head, still tied on to Kardi's belt, and he asked, "Why?"

Kardi laughed. "I never explained anything about myself to you! Why would I start now!"

"Because we're already dead and you're killing time waiting for Mark to show," Shawn said, cold fury in his voice. "And you're recording this because you still think you're going to be allowed into the HVP. That fame is still available to you."

Isoko tried not to let her joy show. Mark was on the way. Was he close enough to Union with yet? If not, then soon.

"The bombs are giving him trouble," Kardi said, a bit miffed. "Expected him sooner… And now that you mention it, I don't want you guys to be problems while I talk to him, so you have two options." She flowed through the chamber walls, vanishing completely. She reappeared almost instantly on the other side of the chamber, nearly 50 meters away, holding a case in her right hand. Isoko caught a glimpse of her spellgun in her left hand. She held up the case, saying, "Shavallian for all of you. Take them and I turn off the poison and let you all get comfortable in a nice room somewhere, instead of here in this deathtrap. The nuke will still kill you from here, though, so not too comfortable."

Kardi projected worry that she couldn't handle Mark and them all together.

Isoko didn't believe that Kardi actually believed that at all.

Kardi's vector was something that Isoko had been reading quite well, while they were still on the same side. Now that she was a revealed Cultist of Thrashtalon her vector was all fucked up. Appearing where she wasn't, feeling things that she wasn't. Isoko already didn't trust her Unionsense around people as much as Mark trusted his Unionsense around people. But around Kardi? Isoko didn't trust herself at all.

Everything always worked out for Kardi and her damned Luck.

Isoko needed more information, though, so she shouted, "Why the FUCK would we ever agree to taking shavallian?"

"I can just kill you instead," Kardi said. "Maybe keep Eliot around since he's bargainable to Memphi and otherwise. Mark will come after him, even if it is only him."

"Then go ahead and kill—" Sally started.

"No. Stop it, Sally," Tartu said. "Lenny taunted her and she killed him. She did that to the Multi-bolter, too."

Kardi smiled hellishly in the walls, giggling and laughing and saying, "Johnny Fiveguns! God he was a good one to recruit! Totally in love with me, too. Didn't think I would really do it! That look on his face was awesome—"

Shawn roared, "Fuck you, you fucking cunt of a cultist bitch, suck my dick and die in a kaiju's maw!" Shawn screamed, "Shit yourself to death and then decompose in the remains! Burn alive and die irradiated! FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUUUUuuuu..."

Shawn's voice trailed away as exhaustion claimed him, something breaking inside. He slumped, his arms and the welded-to-the-support bindings holding him up, while Lenny's corpse laid against him all the way. Shawn stared at Lenny's neck hole and Shawn lost himself again, unable to be here in the moment.

Kardi said, "Always the weakest of us. Always had an inferiority complex—"

"We all know who has the real inferiority complex, Kardi," Tartu said. "And it's certainly not Shawn."

"Certainly not me, either!" Kardi said, twirling through the stone, in and out of the room. "I always had God on my side, apparently! God and his angels! Because they're not demons, you know. They're just called that. They're not demons at all!"

Isoko was thrown for a loop for multiple reasons, aside from whatever kaijushit-insane thing Kardi was saying about demons being angels and Thrashtalon being 'God'. There were other vectors in the walls. Kardi paused and pulled back from the surface, soaking deeper into the stone. And also Eliot's explosion still hadn't happened; where were the worms to Union with?

Kardi poked her head into the room, saying, "Be right back! Need to kill a few problems. Talk amongst yourselves! And here!" She threw the shavallian box at them and it landed perfectly on the platform. "If you're not dosed up with shavallian before I get back I will kill Shawn and Sally!"

And then she vanished into the stone, her vector flying away.

Isoko didn't believe she was flying away at all. She still said, "What the fuck, Eliot?"

Eliot knew what she meant. His speaker statick'd, "The bomb at the grate fizzled. I don't know how." He continued, "I'm trying to disable the arcane nuke, but I don't know if I should. It has ten different failsafes that make it explode under certain conditions once it's armed, and it's been armed. The conditions are 'verbal input', which probably means whenever Kardi says something specific, and also 'tampering'. Considering her luck, this means she can set it off whenever she wants, which might also mean 'if we try to escape right now'. I can barely interact with the thing as-is."

Tartu asked, "Messages to the outside?"

"Not right now," Eliot said. "I had some, but it's gone. The worm kaiju is literally everywhere, and this poison smoke is from some miasma monster. Probably a sewer slime. I can barely interact with anything outside of this life pod."

Isoko breathed deep Purity and exhaled Impurity, clearing the air around them, even as she said, "We're not doing the shavallian. Can we use it against her? Bullets, Eliot?"

Eliot said, "Already tried to do anything with it. There's monster goo over that entire thing and mixed into it, too. Probably from the slimes."

A moment of silence happened.

Sally said, "If we stay here on the platform then the bomb doesn't go off because it won't, but if we run it goes off, so we have to stay because Kardi is probably already too far away to kill with a suicide attack."

Isoko wasn't sure what Sally was saying right now. Isoko was pretty sure that Sally didn't understand, either.

Tartu said, "You guys should risk running, anyway. Bring some weight down from up above or something if there's a weight sensor and then get away."

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Isoko said, "We're not running. How are those air cleaners coming, Eliot?"

"Not happening," Eliot said. "I did manage to communicate with the network again, and I'm working on some action in the walls. There's lots of buried tech in the walls and some of it is still usable."

"Keep talking, please, Eliot," Shawn said, not moving much at all. He was still looking at Lenny's neck hole. "What's going on out there?"

"The kaiju stopped breaking everything," Sally said. "Someone killed them and left us here."

Eliot said, "Mark summoned Addavein and the dragon couldn't stay. Mark is coming back for us with some Inquisitors. He's north of the gate right now. That's like… super condensed."

Tartu sighed, "Of course he summoned Addavein."

Isoko, Sally, and Eliot all decided independently not to touch that comment.

Shawn said, "The dragonists aren't the problem. You can see that now, right?"

Tartu said, " 'Any port in a storm' always becomes 'I like this port' which becomes 'this port now demands your fealty to be welcomed'."

Sally said, "As if the empires are any better. You're all the fucking same."

"Yeah," Tartu said. "But humans are human. Look at Kardi and see what relying on non-humans gets you."

Now Isoko was getting mad, and so was everyone else—

"Look. I know," Tartu said, "I know it's fucked up. All of it's fucked up. I wish… I wish the world was better, so I moved toward things I thought were better, and… and Kardi was easy to have as a teammate and a power on the battlefield… And I guess we're talking, so... You saw how it was when Kardi was on our side, right? Calling shots, saving us all, getting us down into the bunker and then out of the worm spill. And then she gave herself up to the demons who had always been calling the shots for her, for her Luck. That's what happens when you ally with dragons, too. When the power disparity between parties is too great, then the stronger one will always abuse their power against the lesser.

"Is this different from the nobles of the Empire? Not on the surface. But underneath it all, at least I know the Empire has a human-based ideology. The Empire has a human family at its head, and they walk through doors that are less than 5 meters tall, and they eat at the same sorts of tables I eat at, and our lives are so very different because that's what power does to rulers… but they're human. That matters. Demons don't care about people and cannot relate to people because they see us as toys. Dragons see us as —at best— stupid cousins that they need to take care of." Tartu looked out, past the green lights glowing in the horrific fog, past the sharp trash all around that they couldn't navigate even if they were freed because they were baseline right now, past the tunnels. "If you guys escape then please… Please at least think about stuff like that. I will die to kill Kardi. Shawn will, too. We decided that before you got here. We didn't know how, but there's a bomb, so that's how." He looked at Sally, at Eliot's capsule, at Isoko. "Escape and don't look back."

Shawn nodded even as he looked up. "This is our penance."

Tartu said, "You should all leave."

Sally frowned, but not much more than that.

"No," Isoko said. "We're staying. And you want to know why?"

Tartu sighed, "Not really."

"Because if you can get Mark in the blast radius, then you'll do that, too," Isoko said.

"Yup," Sally said, returning her eyes to the walls, to watch for Kardi.

Tartu said, "He summoned a dragon. Being killed would be the easy way out for him, too."

"The law doesn't work for powerful people like it should," Sally said, "So I'm pretty sure he'll get off just fine."

"Whatever," Tartu said, moving beyond any further emotions.

And then some shit happened that Isoko had not been prepared for.

Tartu wrenched himself free of the support pillar, breaking the weld that kept his metal manacles attached to the pillar like it was nothing, because Eliot had weakened the weld and Tartu had noticed. And then Tartu hopped off of the platform, into the sharp trash, slipping on some surface he tried to stand on and crashing on to a pointed thing.

He landed hard, right beside something that should have hit him right in the face.

Isoko was in the trash pile before she realized what she was doing, grabbing Tartu and… And standing there on the trash. She was suddenly breathing very hard, because they had left the platform and the bomb had not gone off.

Everyone stared at everyone else.

Isoko asked, "The fuck?"

Tartu laughed. "Kardi's controllers want Mark to agree to shit so of course the bomb wouldn't go off—"

Some parts of the walls unfolded, illusions vanishing, revealing bullet-turrets in every direction. The turrets aimed at them and began charging up. An all-alert had gone out earlier that Grey Phantom was a cultist, and he was Sentinel's father, so that explained where all of Kardi's tech came from—

An artificial voice said, "Please return to the platform."

"Get me that tech!" Eliot instantly demanded.

Sally smashed the platform manacle attachment with her sword-holding stump and then TT'd Shawn's now-freed manacles onto her back, holding him there while he could not hold himself. And then she was off the platform too, running right at the turrets. All of the turrets tried to miss her, but some invariably struck. Golden thorns spiked out of her body. Turrets sparked as Retribution struck them in turn. Sally could take some bullets, but the turrets could not.

Some turrets aimed at Isoko, firing bullets that didn't hurt that much, especially because Isoko stopped concentrating on Purity/Impurity and instead went for Durability/Weakness, focusing on Power Level and miasma resistance. The miasma instantly invaded her nose and her Union, weakening her, but not as much as it would have months ago. Isoko was fine.

Other people would not be fine.

Isoko concentrated on Tartu first, but only to push him into the trash pile. He would get cut up, but with Union bolstering him the shavallian that was setting him to baseline still meant he had like, a 20 in every part of the Power Hex. He complained with a yelp.

Isoko moved on, speeding twice as fast as normal brawny movement as she grabbed Eliot's capsule and TT'd with the outside of it. Bullets had made dents, but now those bullets plinked away.

Sally tore through the first turret and then the second, Shawn dangling on her back, along for the ride.

Isoko got right in there with her, breaking up shit as best she could and then grabbing a length of metal to do it better.

There was a hallway behind the turrets and Eliot said something about using that as a secondary exit to a clean space and also to put him down for a minute. So Isoko did that and went back to get Tartu. The Domainer was in a bad way, but Isoko grabbed him anyway and shielded him from all the bullets she could that were coming in from the other, uncleared side of the cavern. A few got through Tartu's legs and arms. They had to be high-tier alchemical silver bullets, for sure. Some of them were even hitting Isoko pretty hard.

Everything that hit Sally was returned two-fold, so nothing tried to shoot her too much.

Isoko dismantled shit and Eliot's capsule began to bulge out, oils seeping out of newly-made pores, and then the metal began to expand underneath that oil. He was using the oil to coat his creations from the fog. Isoko Unioned with Purity/Impurity again and Eliot had a much easier time setting himself up properly.

Soon, Tartu and Shawn were alive and healed as much as they could, and the whole team was running up the tunnel that was behind the turrets.

Eliot was in a spiderbot, clanking his way forward, saying, "The network reconnected in full. Kardi and some cultists are engaged with Mark and 4 Inquisitors right now. 2 of them are Executioners. She's demoralizing them. The Mayor is dismantling the nuke back there right now— No." Eliot stilled. And then Eliot started running as fast as he fucking could, saying, "She's dropping it down the shaft and it's going to explode! RUN FUCKING RUN!"

And then there was a rumble, and light, and Isoko had no idea where anything was or what was happening.

It was a great smashing of the world.

The roof caved in.

After five horrific minutes, the 5 of them were in another predicament: A domed room about 7 meters across and lined with metal. It was dark, except for the light on the outside of Eliot's spider-legged capsule. Those lights had not been there before, and as Isoko watched, a few more lights popped up.

"So we survived," Isoko said, holding on to the wall, TT'ing the surface to strengthen it against the weight out there, crushing down.

"Yeah," Sally said, laying on the side of the bottom of the sphere, TT'ing the inner surface alongside Isoko. She was doing A Lot right now. A lot more than Isoko.

Tartu and Shawn were both sitting down, with Shawn catatonic and Tartu observant, and not much else.

Eliot's speakers were better. They didn't sound like static as he said, "Good news: We survived that. Bad news: Leaving this space might kill us when the walls cave in. We should try anyway."

Tartu changed the subject, asking, "Do you all know how to beat a Luck Power?"

Isoko easily said, "Not really, but the lessons Credenza gave me for Episode 3 that never made it to the final cut make a lot more sense now. All they showed was the fight. Not the actual learning."

"Same with Grey Phantom," Sally said, her vector heavily conflicted.

Shawn spoke, unfeeling, "That must sting. To be so close to him and then find out he's a traitor."

"… Yeah," Sally said.

Silence.

Tartu said, "Let's talk about Luck. You know we have to move, even if it might kill us. Sitting still or even moving in one direction makes it too easy for her to get Lucky against us."

Isoko managed to hold in a sudden rage for a small moment, long enough for someone else to say something first.

Eliot made a disgruntled noise from his capsule. "Fuck. We do have to move, don't we."

Isoko spat at Tartu, "You fucking leapt off of that platform and— Ugh! You could have killed us all! The nuke could have gone off right then and there!"

"I took a calculated risk because what Kardi wanted was us under her thumb. If we're all dead then we're useless to her. She wants at least Eliot alive, like she said."

Sally and Eliot were looking toward Isoko, wondering what she had to say about that.

Isoko breathed, then said, "He's basically right. That's how Luck works when the person using it has a set goal. You find the goal and then you work around it. Individuals could have died there, but not all of us, and the bomb would have ended all of us, so yeah, it was… not gonna work until we were out of the range of it—" Isoko glared at Tartu. " 'Calculated risk', huh!"

More silence.

Shawn spoke up, "Credenza gets her Luck from Freyala, yeah?"

"That's not how Luck works," Tartu said, as Isoko said, "I don't know."

Isoko looked at Tartu and added, "It could though?"

Tartu returned the look, frowned, and said, "It's actually based on the mana itself. There are forces inside the mana, from demonic to godly, yes, but Luck won't interact with any of those directly. Sideways, though? Yes. Kardi is probably linked to the demonic forces in the mana because she chose to go that way. Credenza might be linked more into Freyala? Is she… actually a Union user?"

"I think she is, but she won't say," Isoko said, "Her vectors do go everywhere when she's deep into her Luck, and it looks sort of like Union, but it might just be a really good Luck."

Silence.

"So I've stabilized the stuff around us decently enough," Eliot said, changing the subject. He extended a pair of spider legs to hand out a pair of bright red buttons to Tartu and Shawn, saying, "Press these as much as you can. Sally and Isoko pound the roof."

Shawn took the button and started pressing. It made a clicking noise with every press.

Tartu looked at his own button. " 'Helping', huh?"

"Quite," Eliot said.

Tartu started pressing.

Isoko got a stick and started poking the roof of the spherical room.

Sally asked, "Can I just sit here, please. I am… not doing so well."

Eliot said, "Your TT on the walls is enough. We're bubbling up through stone and avoiding monster tunnels. We need to go well; not fast. And Mark is coming."

Tartu said, "Ah, good. It will be nice to see him again."

Everyone kinda ignored whatever that was.