Adamant Blood

Mark funneled power into Vern and that was the only reason the five of them remained alive.

Vern took over Mark's flying for him as he focused on keeping her strong and flying all of them away from the danger, away from the bombs. There were bombs everywhere, though.

Another bomb popped out of the wall and Mark tried to reach for it with an envelope of adamantium, but it went off before he could surround it. He blunted the explosion away from the team, though.

Vern's Group Flight took care of the rest of the shockwave and shrapnel. Her Power was like a solid cloud all around them, like a Tactile Telekinesis on the very air itself. New falling boulders ground on the edge of her Power, against the walls and floor, turning desiccated kaiju worms into mush.

Vern flew on.

Quark had been digging deep into a bunch of records of Sentinel that Mayor Ramirez had unlocked for everyone to use, because these kinds of bombs were going off everywhere and they were all from Sentinel Tower. The explosions Mark, Reba, and Vern were facing were all specialized in material disintegration and construction. Highly regulated bombs that could easily kill anyone trapped underground at all.

That first explosion had been an 'earthcracker' according to Quark, who was only able to categorize it all after it happened, after the explosion had chunked the land into broken shapes and evaporated half of the stone material itself. It was a bomb specifically designed to explode upward and collapse tunnels, and it had gone off right on top of Mark.

There had been a lot of those bombs since then—

Another bomb went off up ahead, a green light rapidly shifting red just as Quark caught sight of the light at all. That bomb shattered the world, turning wide, shattering 'veins' into the stone and concrete in every direction, turning it all into explosively-displaced sand. The sand hit Vern's sphere of influence first, blocking all sight, and then boulders crashed into Vern's heavily overloaded Group Flight, looking briefly like bobbing rocks on a weird ocean surface.

And then the sand and rocks were pushed away, Vern grunted, and the entire group flew away, back the way they had come, as the world to the south turned into millions of tons of falling rocks.

"We are 2.7 kilometers from Mark's team and what remains of Tartu's team. They are ascending," Quark said, to everyone, as the rumbling crash came to a close. "Kardi is somewhere near us, planting more bombs. Can you sense her? Can anyone?"

"Only shadows of her," Mark said, "Still shadows."

She was out there. Mark knew she was out there. She was using something to mask her location and vector, though. It was nearly impossible to actually connect to her, but Mark had managed it twice, when he had guessed correctly where she actually was.

"More than me," Reba said, tapping away at a portable keyboard as she read something on her visor. "We don't have to continue this way. If the kids are ascending we can go up and out and get to them through the surface."

As rocks still collapsed ahead, Mark asked, "What is the best field to fight her on?"

"Not the surface," Quark spoke up, "If she and Grey Phantom have Tinker tech then that includes sniper rifles. Anti-kaiju cannons."

Tom said, "I'm a Stonestrength Brawny. I'm strongest down here. Just not when there's bombs shredding the land. If I can get close to her I can stop her moving through the walls. That is why I am here. That's why Vern is here. We trust in the Gods and we stay down here."

The rocks slowed down their fall, so Mark—

A vector, right to the side.

Another light appeared.

Mark moved fast, wrapping the suddenly-there bomb in adamantium. The explosion did nothing to his adamantium at all, but he still felt it inside of the sphere he had created. It was like a slap to his skin. The bomb did not crack the earth, though, so that was good.

Mark focused on everything, and so did everyone else, as Mark quietly asked, "If she can move through walls with Lenny's spells, why can't she leave the bombs in the walls? Why does she surface with the bombs? Is there a weakness there we can exploit?"

Tom said, "They're earthshaker bombs. They're for deployment underground, which means there are safety measures to keep them from going off early, which has a high chance of happening when they're contacting malleable stone such as the stone under the effect of stonewalking. They won't go off without at least 10 meters of open space all around them." He added, "I need to get near her and I can shut her down, Vern." He pulled out a small hunk of metal from the small bag at his back. "At least within 10 meters." With a click the hunk of metal extended out several meters and his vector flowed along the metal, increasing his range for Tactile Telekinesis.

Vern said, "I can't swing you around that fast while I'm keeping the roof from caving in on us."

Quark spoke up, "I have a concern: She is trying to keep you down here for a setup of a different sort. Theory: You are her goal, Mark, since she is likely either Contracted with or receiving orders from the Demon Leash. Leash wants to put you into a Contract; this is known. Now that her attempts to kill us are falling in effectiveness and we distracted her long enough for your team to get away, she will either get desperate and bring out another nuke, or start trying to talk."

"I could talk," Kardi said, her voice and most of her vector coming through the tunnel, from the other side of the rockfall.

How was she projecting her voice through the rock? Who the fuck knew! It was probably an illusion, stripped from Sentinel's armories by his father, Gray Phantom. Kardi was absolutely doing some Union-distracting, too, so maybe she was on this side of the rockfall, and all the illusions were over there. Mark looked around and Quark had cameras going, trying to find her, but he was having as much luck as Mark.

Everything was dark and rumbling and broken.

Kardi continued, "But I don't think you'd listen."

Mark threatened, "I'm going to cut off your head and find a way to extract Leash and then burn him in dragonfire."

Kardi said, "What a silly order of operations! You have the whole thing backwards, and only the last two could possibly be transposed. Cutting my head off should be last thing you do—"

"Talk more, Cultist," Mark said, "I'm sure it will go well for you."

"Oh you can't find me for shit so don't front, dragon-boy. You think Sentinel is good with misdirection? He had Tartu flailing about in his Episode 3, for sure, but Tartu almost had him and the cameras never showed that. You think that Eliot is anywhere near as good with this shit as I am? You wish."

"Gods, I can't believe I ever partied with you. You killed Lenny to move through the stone like that, didn't you. He must have saved your life at least a few times in battle!"

"And I saved his life about a thousand times—"

"Not logistically possible. You were only teammates for two fucking months."

"Maybe like 3 or 4 times, then!"

Mark said, "I saved your life out there in the woods at least 10. And now you pull this shit? What the FUCK happened to you, Kardi?!"

Kardi was silent.

Quark blinked a message in Mark's eyes that he was still searching. He was using available wavelengths and also the looks of Mark's temporary team upon the tunnel all around. Mark was sensing as hard as he could while also in a Union of Adamant and Ethereal, and he wondered if he could do better, somehow, but he had no idea how to 'do better'. Tom, Yorl, Vern, and Reba were all scouting the areas in their own way… Well. Vern was mostly trying to hold back the world. Mark and his entire team all suspected that Kardi's attack, if it was coming to kill, would be aimed at Vern. Tom and Yorl were already wordlessly coordinating to protect Vern's front and head, and back and bottom. Reba was using the tech on her helmet to try and do something similar to what Quark was doing. Maybe she was communicating with others out there.

At least they hadn't seen any goblins out there.

Mark was pretty sure that Quark was communicating with Reba at near superspeed, for Reba's vector was moving around fast—

"I never got to return the favor, Mark," Kardi said, her voice solid. "That's the real reason I'm doing all of this. It was always you saving my life, and never the other way around. You were a god out there, for every single mission we ever went on, and I was a follower, doing little more than running to catch up. I didn't care about you being stronger or so far ahead. I loved it! Don't think of me as petty as that. I'm not some fucking 'Isoko'. I was pissed at myself, because I couldn't return the favor at all. I couldn't save your life in turn. That's what really pissed me off...

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"You're a big damn hero who I couldn't help as much as you helped me, and we were both in the HVP, and I knew I would never see you the very second we split for the first time, after we left the Slayers. We'd never be on the same field ever again, even if years later we might have been making HVP productions together. You'd be a god, and I'd be a follower, unable to help you at all, and I hated that.

"I once thought I could have been like Credenza, you know. But that's not me.

"It's so damned petty and stupid...

"And then you left for Daihoon and that was the split I saw coming. That kinda broke me. It also helped set me on a brighter path to someone who is an actual god. Thrashtalon, the God of Realized Dreams. So here we are, on the same field, and I'm gonna save you so damned hard, Mark. Because that's my dream. To save everyone, and I'm starting with you.

"I am the hero you need right now, because you have no idea what is coming for you, and if doing this costs me my life then I'm fine with that.

"You deserve nice things, Mark."

Mark was floored.

The inquisitors were wary, both about Kardi and also Mark and Mark's reaction.

Mark's voice was a hateful rumble as he asked, "And what are you gonna save me from, Kardi?"

Kardi chuckled, her tittering laugh echoing from behind the boulders and also the way that Mark and them had come, and also from all other directions, one laugh after the next, always changing location. Her voice did the same jumping around as she said, "Being used forever by everyone! And you're gonna walk right into it, too. You already had plans to…" Kardi gasped a little. "You already had plans to walk right into chains after the original Attack the Gate finished." She exclaimed, "I didn't know that! Mark! The fuck are you doing walking into custody?! Villains don't let themselves be captured! You even said so yourself."

Quark was writing in Mark's vision, 'Keep her talking. Countermeasures against Anti-Unionsense are being deployed and your people are almost at rescue on the surface.'

Mark frowned, for any number of reasons. Too many to name right now. Mark said, "I was never going to walk into chains, Kardi. I was going to dare them to try. I was going to face the world openly, and prove to the Collective that they were being used by the empires in ways that they would never agree to if they knew the truth."

"And what truth is that, Mark!" Kardi announced, as though she was setting up a tee for Mark to swing for the fences.

"That I'm adamant blooded."

The inquisitors all had a moment. They suddenly focused on Mark, their vectors flickering with weirdness and depth. Reba muttered a soft, 'oh', while the two guys refocused on the world around them. Vern's Group Flight faltered, sending pebbles falling down for a moment before she recovered her surprise.

It was enough of a distraction for Kardi to finally do something.

It was a bomb, and everyone was ready for it. Mark in the front, then Tom, Vern, and Yorl in the middle, with Reba in the back.

Mark and Reba were the only ones that survived.

All Mark saw was a void where the two brawnies and the one supporting the tunnel had been. The void shimmered, darker than black. The same color as his own adamantium, or maybe darker. It wasn't metal, though. It was a true void.

The world and everything in it vanished within a sphere about 20 meters across. Mark didn't fully recognize that fact, but it was likely exactly 20 meters across, because it was a contained explosion made by a weapons company. And then Quark provided the readout on Mark's vision as the void rumbled in a perfect sphere.

'Sentinel Industries Kaiju Carver, Void Sphere Bomb, 20m diameter.'

Quark instantly added, 'Friends are on the surface, fighting cultists who are trying to reclaim them. Escape now.'

Mark dodged the void sphere and hovered fast through the collapsing tunnel, back the way they had come, grabbing onto a stunned Reba with an adamantium hand in her hand, and then Reba was present again and Mark still hovered fast with her in his grip. Their group flyer was dead. The tunnel began to collapse, rocks burying desiccated worms—

The world slowed, and then almost stopped. Mark hadn't gotten 20 meters down the tunnel. Mark couldn't go any further at all because he couldn't move that fast, but he could listen at this speed. And then he realized that he could still move his adamantium—

Reba, the speedster, was doing a Union of speed. Or rather, the golden glow in her vector was.

Reba, and maybe a little bit of Freyala, said, "You're right. We wouldn't have acted against you on behalf of Aluatha or Okuana if we would have known what they were setting you up for, but summoning Addavein introduced another problem. You need to publicly tell people that you are adamantium blooded. I will likely not be able to tell anyone at all.

"I don't think I will survive this, but Freyala has entrusted me to tell you some things that only Inquisitors will know.

"The Words of Power for stopping people flowing through stone like Kardi is doing right now are Earth and Bubbles. I was trying to find her and force this action myself, but I couldn't, and I think she was way out of my range the whole time, so you need to do this Union instead. There will be more bombs going off when we surface.

"You must embody the solidity and stability of Earth and expel the ephemeral nature of Bubbles into the world, threading it into everything in the local area. This will cause massive destruction in the local area and all of us will rise to the surface very fast. The trick to starting this Union is that you must be stiller than you have ever been in your entire life, and the Union itself must be faster than thinking. This will be easy, right now, because you're very still while sped up in your brain, and not in body.

"There are lots of tricks to deeper Unions like this. You could become an Inquisitor and learn all of them, but please do a Union of Life with Earth and Bubbles right now. You would call it a Union of Brain, but that is so much smaller than what a Union of Life truly is."

Parts of that had been Reba. Other parts had been Freyala.

Mark braindanced with Earth and Bubbles, which is something he never would have done under any normal circumstances. He focused on the solidity of the world and on everything else becoming bubbles to rise through the rest.

Black lightning pulsed from his skin, threading into the world and crackling against the background. Weird bursts of something roiled through the stone and the falling rubble and the concrete tunnel. And then Reba did the same Union, and all of those bursts of earth became effervescent bubbles. Her Union was like an anchor in a growing storm front and Mark was just some hot air, but Mark adjusted himself, lining up with Reba—

Black lightning cracked the world into roiling dust.

And then Reba dropped them out of a Union of speed.

Everything turned to dust and sand and Mark was there with Reba, holding on to her hand with his adamantium hand, holding on to her Union with his own Union. Mark almost lost it, the world turning solid, burying them all in an early grave, but he realigned with Reba and spread out the dust storm into the stone all around.

Mark was as solid as the Earth, letting everything roll past him, and everything else became ephemeral and floaty.

It was the weirdest Union Mark had ever done.

He felt Kardi out there, though. She was 200 meters away, to the south, headed up toward Mark's people. She wasn't moving while Mark was in a Union of Bubbles and Earth, but thinking about her caused Mark to fall out of the Union and Kardi fell out of sensing again, so he focused on the Union and Kardi reappeared as the world turned back to a roiling sandpit. Kardi flew upward and so did Mark and Reba and about 30 other vectors that Mark had not noticed before now.

"Do not hesitate," Reba/Freyala said, her vector solid with golden resolve—