Adamant Blood

Mark spun a tri-toroid fast, straight ahead of his body, while two wings of adamantium were to the side, providing most of the lift. They were big wings, with a big prop, along with a few long strands of adamantium that served as stabilizing structures to hold the wings together as one unit. Mark was down to some boxers he had found in the basic clothes pile, a helmet for both him and Quark, and a few more bits and pieces of adamantium hovering around him. It was enough.

Tartu got to ride behind him, on an adamantium seat, while also providing a Domain of something that was good for air travel. The wind whipped past them. Tartu didn't say much of anything and Mark didn't say anything, either.

They had left the temporary command center a few minutes ago. They were already at the part of Memphi where the old city wall had been. The whole thing reminded Mark of the edge of a man-made forest. There were buildings, old and large. Dominant over the space. But then the wall had been moved far north, the area of the 'forest' expanded, and now new streets and buildings were blooming northward, like saplings among the plains.

Mark passed over the Slayer HQ and old hunter's district. He had done missions out of that place for 3 months and Mark was surprised to see it standing… mostly. It was mostly on fire, too, but people were putting out the flames. Mark Unioned with every single person he saw, every human-feeling vector, while he crushed every monster vector he felt at all. There weren't many monsters; most of them were dead. But Mark sensed clumps of people fighting against clumps of uniquely-singularly-pointed 'hungry and hunting' vectors, and those types of vectors were almost always monsters. Mark didn't kill anything, because that would take time and he wasn't sure what he was really targeting, for the most part, so he didn't go for lethal Unions.

Mark helped a few people survive a few more horrors, though, as he flew on, faster and faster.

He had to save his uncles.

Central Command had been 95 kilometers away, through two radioactive zones, and Mark was flying at around 1100 kilometers per hour. Average hovercar traveling speeds. It was going to take him 10 minutes to reach Central Command, avoiding all of the fallout zones. With Tartu here, deploying some anti-radiation Domains, Mark could ignore the radiation even more than he already could with his Body in the 60s, so the trip was only going to take 5 minutes. It had already been 3 minutes and 45 seconds. Central Memphi was coming up into view right now, right beyond a major crater in the landscape.

It was a hellscape, same as the rest.

Even if the initial nuclear blasts had killed millions, the fires that they started would kill many more. Most things were on fire, and what was not on fire was well on its way to catching flame. Buildings with glass exteriors were fully shattered, offices and meeting rooms and penthouses were completely exposed. One particularly large office chair was hanging on the edge of a railing of a tilted building. Just hanging out there, out in the open. Mark watched as the office chair fell, due to wind whistling through the whole building. More office chairs fell as Mark passed.

Up ahead lay Central Command, the destroyed top floors, and the Mayor's former technorganic body. The technorganic core was a tangle of glass-covered electronic-tentacles draped over the whole structure, like glass noodles draped over a silver brick.

Mark's uncles were up there at the top, crucified and still alive.

Kardi was there beside them, standing tall and pink in a brand new pink webweave with a bright white handprint over her chest to match the hand over her face. She smirked.

Mark had received instructions for approaching this location. He was under no illusions that he could approach unseen, unheard, unknown, so he was going along with those instructions, for now.

Basically, he had an hour to get here, and if he did anything against Kardi or anyone else on the premises, then his uncles were dying. Anyone who came with him was subject to the same restrictions.

Mark hovered a few kilometers from Central, Quark providing him with a zoomed-in view of the land ahead, while Tartu's vector swirled angrily behind him. Mark adjusted the wings of the transport, gathering up most of his metal back into scale armor, shredding most of his boxers. He left the tri-toroid spinning overhead while he moved Tartu's seat to the side. Mark's stabilizing prop stopped a counterspin, and so they hovered. Staring.

Tartu's Domain shifted around them, taking off much of their collective weight while also lensing the air in front of his eyes. He gazed upon the battle to come and he was furious. He was also quite contained, his voice calm as he asked, "You're expecting everyone here to die, yes?"

"I'm going to try and get through this with whatever way ends with the least amount of death, but I'm—" Mark's voice cracked, "I'm aware of what demons do." Softer, "I want to save my family, Tartu. They're all I have left after…" He didn't finish. He couldn't.

Tartu just nodded; seemingly resolved. "Play it however you want. I'll be backup. Kill me if you have to; I don't care."

Mark felt a little better to hear that, but...

There was another reason to bring along Tartu, even if Mark didn't like him, besides the fact that he was clearly suicidal and willing to do whatever it took to take down Kardi and all the other cultists, just like Mark.

Mark asked, "Can you tell if she's Contracted with Leash or any demon, yet?"

According to what Mark knew, being possessed/Contracted with a Demon would automatically make someone an archmage. That sort of action would boost a person's PL to 100-ish in every Power Category; Body, Kinetic, Mind, Natural, Arcane, and Arch. Isoko had the same sort of Power Levels, but lesser, for she was not Contracted. She was just a Platinum Body, and that particular Power did that sort of thing. Mark was pretty sure Isoko was at PL80 in everything.

Tartu had specifically shut down Isoko for Episode 2 using anti-Archmage Domains that would negate that all-category PL buffing that both Isoko and demon-Contractors shared.

But no one was able to tell if Kardi was Contracted. Not yet.

Tartu answered, "Not sure. Not close enough. Want me to risk it when we get to her? Your call; it's your uncles."

"… Can you do it without putting her into a Domain? Can you argue that it wasn't a hostile action?"

"Yes."

"Then do it." Mark felt hundreds of vectors in the nearby buildings, but he knew he would feel a thousand or more, once he got closer to the Mayor's tower. "… And we're going in."

Mark flew forward, supported on a spinning tri-toroid and a counter-prop. Tartu floated on a seat of adamantium right beside Mark, his weight removed by his own Domain.

Soon, Mark crossed a threshold and he felt Kardi's vector right there on the edge. He wanted to kill her right then and there, to eliminate her from the world. But he also felt his uncles. They were alive and hurt and both drugged up on shavallian. They were also blessedly unconscious. Mark hoped they would stay that way, and that he could get them out of here without issue.

There were going to be issues, though.

Kardi waved with a hand that held Tartu's Wand of Destruction, while her other hand was at her side, touching a pad attached to her thigh. It was some sort of controlling device of some sort, for sure, but it was not the only controlling device. There were hundreds of cultists or… No. Hundreds of other victims in the building down below. Only a few cultists.

Ah, shit.

Now that Mark was here, now that his Unionsense could tell what the Mayor's machines could not, he could tell that most of the people in the building, in the masks, were freaking out. They were tied to the chairs, hands glued to keyboards that were attached to nothing. They couldn't see, or hear, or do anything at all, because they were either so low Powered that they were just victims, or they were dosed up with shavallian and tied up to machines to make them look like threats.

Some of the cultists were actual cultists, though, but not nearly as many as it had appeared on the screens, in the surveillance of this place.

Four of the 'cultists' on the roof were drugged to fuck and tapping away at computer games, locked in to playing cards or pinball. Some were actually working real equipment, though, such as the gun turrets that uncurled from the glass-covered tentacles on the roof.

Those gun turrets focused on Alexandro and Gabriel.

There was lots of space on the roof to land, so Mark landed—

"Hello, Mark!" Kardi called out. "Glad you could make it!"

"Please do your spiel and give me back my uncles," Mark said, trying the most obvious path to getting what he wanted.

Tartu was already doing his Domains to check on Kardi being possessed or not—

Kardi said, "I'm not possessed, first of all. Just got some of that Wild God in me. It's been like that forever, actually, though I didn't know about it until recently. It makes a whole lot of things a lot clearer!"

Mark cut to the chase, "Where is Leash? What does he want?"

And then Tartu said, "Not possessed."

Kardi grinned. "Leash is very close! He's right here, actually."

Grey Phantom flowed out of the air right next to Kardi. He had been invisible, intangible, unseeable, and then he was there. His vector was even there. He looked the same as before, with his grey suit and everything, but his grey full-face webweave was gone, and his actual face was on display. He looked normal, except for the white handprint across his face like Thrashtalon had grabbed him like a bowling ball.

Mark could tell a lot in that moment.

Grey Phantom was looking strong. Like he could do whatever he wanted. Not worried at all. With Kardi saying that Leash 'was right here, actually', did that mean… ?

Fuck.

Tartu gasped a little, softly saying, "Contracted archmage."

Yup.

"Kinkiller, too," Mark said, his anger flaring.

Grey Phantom's face was already serious, but his countenance fell slightly when Mark named him how he named him. Grey Phantom, AKA Christopher Powell, the man who had killed Sentinel, Jeff Powell, said, "Mark, will you summon Addavein right now, so that we can kill him, rip him apart, and destroy Kanda's remnant?"

"No thanks."

Chris expected this. He moved on, "Your first summoning of Addavein probably means that if you summon him again, in the same way, you'll end up with a dragon's body without being an archmage first. That probably fundamentally hurt you. But, in time, you even learn how to control such a large body; to grow into it. Are you sure you don't want to take that power for yourself? To damn Addashield and all he has done? To eliminate Sloane? Because when Addavein was in your body, he was Sloane. He was not Addavein. 'Addavein' is a convenient fiction for Sloane to maintain, but that fiction falls apart when he's not in dragon form. When in human form, he becomes who he is, but with a tiny Kanda-shaped tumor on him that we want to extract and eliminate. Will you please cooperate with us?"

"Fuck you, fuck him, fuck all y'all," Mark said, without passion.

"Fair enough. I wouldn't want to work with me, either, but I must try, and so I have," Christopher Powell said, "Offer number two: Will you Contract with a demon of our choice, who is not Leash, but who is one of Leash's contemporaries? It will be a good Contract, as far as Contracts go. You will have to work to pull Kanda out of Addavein, though. That will be a big stipulation."

"Fuck off," Mark said.

"Third option: We'll be putting Alexandro's Power into Kardi here, and hopefully she survives it. We think she will. Alexandro will not. If you want to go back to the other offers, please say so now."

"… Why are you doing this?"

"It's comically easy to destroy things, Mark. Too easy. The world is always one bad day away from destruction. A billion people create. One big monster destroys. Sometimes the monsters are just humans. Normal, stupid, selfish humans. We learned that in the Reveal and in the years that followed. A lot of people think that we've moved past that, but we have not. For all the power humanity has gained, it only amounts to so much. So it's only right and proper to be aligned with the powers that are capable of actual power. That means the demons, and more importantly, Thrashtalon, the God of Realized Dreams," Chris said, awe and resignation in his voice, as he looked upon Mark. "That is why I am doing this. Because all humanity is nothing compared to the bigger powers out there. So, I ask you in turn: Why are you protecting Addavein?"

Mark easily said, "Because he scares the demons and cultists, and it's the demons and cultists who are the ones actually making the problems. If you didn't exist, if all of that didn't happen, then where would we be today, huh? Maybe the solution isn't allying with the enemy, Chris. Maybe the right solution is murdering all of the demons and destroying Thrashtalon."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Mark got heated there at the end, his hands twitching, ready for anything, because Unionsense was probably lying to him. Kardi and Chris seemed completely calm, and that had to be a lie.

Chris even smiled.

Chris said, "Thrashtalon and you have a lot in common, Mark. All of the specifics are different, but a lot of the base stuff is the same—"

"Oh fuck you. 'We're the same'? Fuck—"

"I'll kill them right here and now, Mark," Chris said. "But this history is important to be told when it can be told, because you're never going to hear this truth from anyone in power, ever. They lie, they obfuscate, they have AIs that lie for them. So you will listen and you will listen well."

Mark fell silent.

"Excellent. Anyway. As I was saying: Thrashtalon's original name was Malcolm Shaw. He was in the United States Army at the time of the Reveal, and he Awakened to the Power Wilding. Wilding is a soul shaping skill that is better than most others. The empires of Daihoon have their Skillers, but for a short time there, the United States had Malcolm Shaw.

"Like the Skillers of the Empires, Malcolm fixed up a lot of people when he was mortal. Made them a lot stronger. Made my Power a lot stronger, too. I went from being a simple ghost to having superspeed while intangible, a Strength modifier of 10x, and a few different things. He did a lot for a lot of people in the American army, back when there was still something that called itself the United States of America.

"A few years after the Reveal, at the end of World War 3, Malcolm Wilded his wife and 19 year old son, granting them adamantium blood. He had done this for several other people, but granting his family this capability made him a target. He broke op-sec doing that. He could do a whole lot more than that, Mark, but that's what caused a lot of people to come down on him.

"The empires of Daihoon captured his wife and son and turned them into monsters in an adamantium farm in Okuana. At that time, the United States of America was still working strongly with Okuana, and Malcolm had his second home there. It was actually his second home that kidnapped his family.

"Malcolm did not get help from the United States when he asked for it, so he left for the wilds, to assault Okuana's cities, to find his family, but what he found was horror upon horror. He was unable to save his family. He was unable to do anything at all, except escape."

Chris wasn't smiling at all anymore.

"Malcolm was lost for a time, and then he came back a god. Thrashtalon. The exact nature of that event is unknown. Maybe you'll find out about it someday.

"What is known is that Thrashtalon began working through the demons, changing many of them from the strange, orange/blue mentality they used to have to something more mortal, something more relatable. Leash was one such demon. Thrashtalon has many others. And they are his messengers. His demons. His angels, if you want to call him that. And through them, he began working against the people who set him up.

"To butcher a tale down to something digestible: Thrashtalon began systematically murdering and killing everyone who had anything to do with the supply chain of delivering his family to Okuana.

"This chain of events put him at odds with a lot of powerful people.

"Those same powerful people were also trying to kickstart World War 4 and consolidate all of Earth's political power into themselves.

"General Alexander Volkov, the man who would become Drakarok, killed those political leaders instead, turning World War 4 into World War Not.

"But Thrashtalon still seeks to kill Okuana and all of the remnants of humanity that spawn the horrors that would entrap people like you, and all other people who fight against him, and his ultimate power." Chris finished with, "Because you see, Mark, it's not Thrashtalon making the war. It's everyone else not accepting demonic rulers."

Delusional.

Everything about that was delusional, especially that bit at the end. 'Everyone else not accepting him as ruler means the war is their fault'? FUCKING HELL!

Maybe if Mark wasn't watching his uncles bleed from the wounds in their hands and feet, maybe if there weren't nuclear bombs everywhere, maybe if Thrashtalon wasn't a total… 'asshole' did not cover it. Maybe if all of that was different, then he could have entertained whatever-the-fuck kinda history that was.

But.

The world was as it was, and learning motivations did not change much.

Not right now.

Probably not ever.

"Actions matter more than words," Mark said. "The actions you have shown today… You're evil, you know that? … Maybe you don't know that. But you are. Evil. Thrashtalon is evil. Demons are evil."

Chris smirked. Mark could tell his words had had no effect at all. Chris said, "Evil is a matter of perspective—"

"No. It's really fucking not. Some things are evil and will always be evil."

Chris sighed. "Foolish children. You have no idea of the forces you're touching. You have no idea—"

"Die in a fire and take your evil with you, son-killer," Mark said.

Chris's countenance darkened. He turned toward Tartu, saying, "Feel like making some deals to kill Mark and his brother?"

"Fuck off and die," Tartu said, with surprising conviction.

Or rather not that surprising at all, Mark realized.

… Still kinda surprising.

Mark felt better about Tartu already.

Grey Phantom said, "Then we do this the hard way—"

Mark prepared for a fight.

Tartu was ready, too.

But Grey Phantom just gestured to Kardi, saying, "You're up."

Kardi happily lifted her Wand of Destruction and aimed it at Grey Phantom and fired it 5 times with only 1 activation, using Johnny Fivegun's Power, Multi-Bolt, to do all of that. It happened so fast Mark didn't even believe it when it happened. She fired again, and every single cultist on the roof, of which there were only 5 among the 15 cultist-looking people up here, all got a blast of the same Destruction, locking down their Powers.

Several other things happened all at once.

Grey Phantom looked surprised.

The air unfurled to the side, revealing an incredibly angry Blackthorn, black vines curling around his bloodied arms as he lined up a vector at Grey Phantom. He cast a spell so fast that it was impossible to track. Something broke in the air.

Lights flashed around Mark's uncles. Teleport magic. Alexandro and Gabriel's vectors kinda inverted, and then pointed elsewhere. They vanished first, blinked away, and more lights began to gather around the non-cultists in the space.

Grey Phantom was still disjoined. Kardi's 5 blasts from the Wand of Destruction were enough to trigger all of his major defenses and also soak inward to lock him down, too. But Grey Phantom still had some internal tricks up his sleeves. He danced away from suddenly-sprouting black thorns all around him, looking furious at Kardi before he dashed off of the side of the building, out of the sight of Blackthorn.

Kardi was pointing the Wand of Destruction at Mark and Tartu now, absolutely focused on them, while Blackthorn dashed across the sky, over the battlefield, right down toward the falling Grey Phantom.

Kardi didn't even try to hit Blackthorn as Blackthorn passed right in front of her.

"I'm going to rip out your soul and the demon within!" Blackthorn yelled, "Catch me unaware the first time, Chris! Never again!"

Mark was about to go into a Union with Blackthorn, against every cultist in the area, but he had been about to do that a few times. Every time he got close to actually connecting, the same thing would happen. Kardi would look at him with this look in her eyes, going from uncaring to focused.

Mark got the distinct impression that the stuff with Grey Phantom and his Contract to Leash, the stuff between Blackthorn and Grey Phantom, and even Mark's uncles, was all secondary to Kardi. She didn't care about any of them. She was taking Mark seriously, though.

And Mark was taking her seriously now, too.

All around them, the light of teleport magic pulled non-cultists away, while the cultists that Kardi had just shot were mostly gearing up to get out of there while they could. Some of them were waiting out the blast of disjoining, huddled down behind glass-covered-tech-tentacles, in order to join this fight that was about to happen.

But then Kardi said, "You can kill the cultists to make it easier for you, Mark."

Mark instantly made a Union of Vein Decay and Vein Integrity, blasting through every single cultist he could feel with his Unionsense. He focused on all of the non-drugged ones; the ones doing actual work to maintain systems of obfuscation power that was currently causing problems all across the city. Kardi's ability to evade and lock down technological-based information gathering around her was due to some of those guys.

Mark killed them all, blasting through their weak defenses with all of his power, each beat of his heart killing at least 7 or 8 people. Why was Kardi allowing this? Sanctioning this? Who knew!

Tartu helped Mark, somehow, with a Domain cast over him that was boosting Union, somehow. He wanted answers, though, because he asked, "What gives, Kardi?"

"You'll find out soon enough," Kardi said, her vector overlaying with some sort of vector obfuscation.

Mark had just been about to Union with her, too, but now he couldn't.

It was the same sort of obfuscation that prevented Mark from being able to Unionsense her at all, and it was probably due to the hoverbelt she wore around her waist. It was absolutely more than a hoverbelt, and it glowed a little already, as Kardi activated it without any visible instructions or action. Was it someone in the building helping her? Mark was killing cultists with every beat of his heart, but there were maybe 120 here, out of the several hundred that made up the actual population of the building, and killing 120 people still took a while.

The other people were getting teleported out, one after the other.

Mark asked, "The fuck, Kardi?"

Kardi happily said, "My plan is to die before Blackthorn kills Chris but I really want to see if I can win against both of you at the same time, so come on guys. Show me what you got!"

Mark did not hesitate.

He attacked.