Adamant Blood

Tall, white and shining, wings made of clinking white chains, sexless and ageless.

12 meters tall. Floating. Faceless and eyeless, like Grey Phantom while in costume, but fully white, like a person wearing webweave. The arms and legs were elongated, though, so not really human at all.

That is the being Mark saw when the shockwave of the destruction of Grey Phantom passed. Mark fell out of the flow back there, too. There were a lot of unanswered questions and concerns, but mostly Mark was worried about what came next.

What was this thing, floating before them?

All the land was covered in metal and glass sand, with concrete rubble interspersed throughout. A few people had died in the crush of the Mayor's tower, but whatever teleport magics the Mayor and Eliot and others had managed to cobble together had removed most of the people from the place. Mark was pretty sure that his Union of Adamant and Ethereal helped a lot of the people dressed up as cultists to throw off their masks and bindings and flee, too, though he's not too sure about that.

He had been busy.

It looked like he was going to continue to be busy.

Tartu rapidly gathered the wands he could salvage from his bandolier on Kardi's body, though the Wand of Destruction crumbled as soon as Kardi died. The only thing holding that wand together had been her Luck.

Mark stood strong, covered in scales, a few weapons already made. Quark came back online inside of his helmet. He wasn't ready for whatever was coming, but he'd do everything he could to stop it.

Blackthorn floated toward Mark, to line up with him in purpose and vector. Not too close, though, just not flanking the flying monster; just so he wasn't on the other side, where he could be singled out.

The demon-like thing hadn't moved, and he hadn't done anything except float there. His vector was mostly still, but it was flickering around inside and that was worrying. Was it doing… something to itself?

The only reason Mark hadn't attacked was because he could tell Blackthorn was terrified of many things, but mostly about anyone attacking the creature.

Mark asked, "Should we atta—"

"No, no," Blackthorn said, "Whatever the fuck it's doing isn't right. It's not a dragon. That was the first worry. We have Dragonwreck on tap for that, though, so of course it wasn't going to do that. It's not a fallen archmage, either… but it's close. It might be a reactive Fall; it will respond to whatever stimulus it is provided." Blackthorn pushed out magic toward the side and a bed unearthed itself from the pile of sand. It was a big bed, easily 10 meters across. "Want to sleep, big guy?"

The white being was at least 12 meters tall, so the bed would barely accommodate it.

The being shifted, chains clinking. It turned its head slowly toward the bed, and—

It jolted.

It paused.

It began to move easily, flowing, stretching its arms downward and outward, its chains curling against each other and the rest of its body like it was a bug cleaning itself. And then its vector coalesced, to stare at the remains of Kardi, beyond Mark and Tartu.

The thing floated their way—

"Move out of its way, now," Blackthorn commanded, flying to the side.

Mark and Tartu rapidly followed his order, moving to the side. Tartu stumbled a little in the sand so Mark picked him up with an adamantium handle, and helped him move, too.

The white being floated to Kardi's corpse and instantly stabbed a chain into the place where Kardi's heart had been. Another several chains, thin as gossamer, rapidly advanced onto the broken brains and skull that Mark had made out of Kardi's face.

A thousand other threads moved out into the air around the body, gathering… something out of the air. Those threads were millions strong—

And a vector reappeared where Kardi's heart had been. It was small and nascent. But it was there.

Mark's heart crashed with worry. Thump, thump, thump. Mark realized what was happening, but he still didn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it. Blackthorn's vector became a furious thing, right under the surface. Tartu was strangely uncomprehending, and probably because he had no idea if what he was seeing was what he was seeing. The thing was either bringing Kardi back to life, or it was doing something else, and Mark wasn't sure which he wanted to happen more, or less.

The creature proceeded to gather brains and skull and put them back where they needed to be.

Tartu was the one to actually speak, to say, "Is it really putting Kardi back together?"

That's when two new people appeared.

Mark instantly recognized both of them, and his heart beat even harder.

One was Timeweaver, wearing his brown and gold pinstripe suit, his gold-tipped, dark wood cane sinking into the sand along with his fancy brown leather shoes. He spoke softly, "This is an inflection point. You two must do what I say, but since you do not listen to me, I needed to bring a friend. I am sure you all know this man here. Now please don't do shit except for talk, and do not interrupt the living spellform. Study it if you can, Blackthorn, and do nothing else. Use Quark for a full-spectrum view, Mark. This is the good ending. Despite it all, and the humanitarian crisis to come, this is the good ending."

Mark heard and understood all of that, but a lot of things were happening. Mark felt like he could only stew in some sort of furious, wonderful, horrible impotence. It was all too much.

Also Glorious Man was there.

The second person with Timeweaver was just about the most famous person on the planet and, even silent and looking mostly at the 'living spellform', the man known as Glorious Man was just as much of a presence in person as Mark would have expected. Mark was 6'5", and this guy was a bit taller. A bit bigger, too, looking like a professional bodybuilder. His costume was white and gold. Sleek. No mask, or cape at all. Just him.

Glorious Man's real name was Renjiru Furusawa. He was 38, though he had recently been de-aged back to 35. He had started off his superhero career by going out and hunting kaiju by himself at something like 19 years old. He rapidly ascended through the Japanese Self Defense Force into the Kaiju Division and then he joined the Hero/Villain Program sometime during all of that, to rapidly become Earth's Number One Superhero. He usually worked a few days a month, during the gate opening in Tokyo, while all the rest of his time was spent helping other cities and making appearances for various things.

Credenza had been working with him recently.

Glorious Man's vector was calm, controlled, and fixated on the land below him, his Power holding on to the sand like a contained pressure point. He was focused on not letting his Supreme Body get anywhere near the 'living spellform'.

Mark had a lot of conflicted emotions right now.

And then he looked toward Kardi's rapidly reassembling corpse—

Tartu softly asked, "We're supposed to let this happen? For Kardi to be put back together?"

Glorious Man spoke, "It's a Living Resurrection, according to Timeweaver. The hope is that Archmage Blackthorn can learn this magic right here and now." He barely took his eyes off of the living spellform to glance at Blackthorn. "Can you?"

"Planty is watching intently," Blackthorn said, "But this is beyond anything I've ever done before. It's soul magic of the highest variety… also some time magic. I don't have clearance for that spellwork."

"… 'Clearance'?" Mark found himself whispering.

"Demons have agreements with each other," Glorious Man said, "Time magic isn't allowed out of the reservation."

As if that explained everything—

Multicolor smoke uncurled from Blackthorn and Planty spoke, "They're not agreements. They're understandings. The release of time magic into the wild is a declaration of war untold, or, such as it is in this case, a threat, a propaganda piece, and an undo-button being pressed. This magic was used all the time several thousand years ago when we got too rambunctious, but this magic is a curse for the living. Eventually stuff stopped mattering to most of us because of this magic, so it was understood that this magic was never to be used again. This is the first time it is being used in the modern age. I won't let you learn it, Blackthorn. Please turn and close your eyes."

Blackthorn struggled so very, very hard, and then he turned away, breathing hard.

Planty said, "As long as the spellform isn't interfered with then everyone who died today will be brought back to life and placed in safe enough locations. Monsters and such will still be a problem. Infrastructure will be a major issue, as well as emotional aftermath."

Without taking his gaze off of the living resurrection magic, Glorious Man asked, "The goblins?"

"No. They'll stay dead." Planty faded into Blackthorn's astral body, the colors of her smoke vanishing. "They weren't the initial target of this magic."

Silence.

And staring.

Under the smoke-choked sky, with radiation in the air and soot falling from dark clouds, the glowing white living spellform continued to piece Kardi Shale back together.

And then Kardi was whole and living.

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Heart beating, breath pumping, brain alight with life. Kardi opened her eyes and looked up at the living spellform, hovering over her.

Kardi smiled, and said, "Thank you, Leash. Can you please help everyone else, too?"

The living spellform tilted its head—

And then it popped like a soap bubble. Here and then gone! Leaving behind a vector that glowed with the intensity of its own creation. Its vector was a tangled density, and then its vector multiplied. Exploded outward, shocking the world with its passing. It was a ghost, moving in a million directions at once. Each ghost found something here or there under the rubble or out in the open, and it stopped. The resurrection ghosts began to reconstruct what they found, and everywhere they found something.

Someone.

Two ghosts stopped next to Kardi, touching her with strange vectors, and Kardi winced at the touch.

Mark, Quark, Tartu, and Glorious Man, watched as two people began to coalesce onto the sands next to Kardi.

Lenny, and Johnny Fiveguns.

They were pulled from nowhere and remade, whole cloth—

Kardi looked over to Mark— And then she noticed Glorious Man and her eyes went wide. "Oh my god, Glorious Man?! Big fan!"

Mark was horrifically confused right now—

Glorious Man reached out from 40 meters away and crushed Kardi's body inward, splattering her across the sands. Glorious Man sighed, then said, "We're about to have an unprecedented humanitarian crisis on our hands, gentlemen, as if we weren't already. Make…" He paused.

A 'resurrection ghost', as Mark just decided to call them, flowed into Kardi's destroyed remains and began putting her back together.

Glorious Man, Tartu, and Mark, all stared.

Mark asked, "Is she… is everyone... incapable of dying, as long as there are resurrection ghosts?"

Planty answered from smoke around Blackthorn's body, "Yes. The magic will last until the sun reaches the center of the sky tomorrow, so roughly 17 hours. Not at noon! Your human time schedules do not dictate how magic works. During that time a lot of people are going to die and come back to life a lot of times. The actual battle is now securing the city in the next 17 hours. I suspect all cultists will try to flee."

Blackthorn was still turned away, but his vector surged with joy. "They're going to live? Alistair will be back, too?"

"Yes," Planty said, "There will be some memory issues, but they'll be back."

He was getting his family back, huh? His girls and guys, and his son, the High Mage of Memphi, Alistair Blackwood, who the cultists had obviously killed along with a lot of other people—

Glorious Man asked the air, "Am I still needed here?"

Timeweaver stepped out of the air, looking a whole lot more relieved than before. He actually had a smile on his face, too, as he said, "Looks like I got this one right, too, huh, Renji? Maybe it is okay to follow my advice when I give it?"

Renjiru Furasawa glared, saying, "This is now a nightmare of a different sort, and I still cannot believe this is the best outcome. You're walking a line, Zaid." He held out a hand.

Timeweaver easily said, "And you're always bitching at me about people dying, so I saw an opportunity and I took it!" And then he took Glorious Man's hand—

And they were gone.

Mark and Tartu were speechless. Neither of them had any idea what to make of… of any of this—

Lenny jerked awake, gasping, saying, "FUUUUuuu… uck?"

Johnny snapped awake, too, looking around, looking at the sand, the sooty sky, the skyline of buildings, and then at his own nudity, and then at Lenny's nudity, and then at the recomposing pile of Kardi off to the side. All he had to say was, "Uh?"

Tartu instantly rushed Lenny, crashing into the sand and grabbing Lenny, saying, "Oh my gods." And then he was hugging his friend and holding him tight.

Lenny was asking small questions while Johnny had no idea what to make of anything, and then Tartu was talking to Lenny and Johnny and… And stuff happened. They talked.

Mark felt lost.

Mark said, "Quark. I, uh, need some overall directive guidance from… the Mayor, I guess? I need to uh… What should I be doing n—"

Kardi came to life again.

Mark sliced off her head right as Tartu placed some sort of incineration Domain on top of her, burning her to death at the same time. Lenny and Johnny both stared at the burning pile of corpse and the head that had rolled out of the burning. Tartu added another Domain on top of the head, setting that on fire, too.

Tartu pulled Lenny to his feet, telling them both, "Let's get away from the cultist— Ah!"

Mark saw it already. Some cultist pulled themselves out of the sand. Mark cut off his head, too.

Resurrection ghosts moved in to start putting both Kardi and the nameless cultist back together.

"That was… Kardi, right?" Lenny asked, looking at Mark, and then at Tartu. "And Mark killed her and you're, uh, okay with that?"

"You have memory issues, Lenny," Mark said.

Tartu solidly asked Lenny, "Do you remember much of what happened in the last several hours?"

"The last thing I remember was… was being in the worms at the gate district," Lenny said, looking around. "But this is not the gate district at all, is it?"

Mark said, "Kardi was a cultist… 'Is' a cultist."

Lenny gasped, and then laughed. "The fuck? Kardi? No… No way? Uh?" He looked at Kardi's corpse. He looked at Tartu. "Really?"

"Yes," Tartu said.

Johnny was there, too, and he kinda had no idea what to do with himself, or with the fact that Kardi was a cultist. "She was?"

"Still is," Tartu said. "She'll get resurrected for the next… till noon tomorrow."

They all went silent.

Mark had an idea. "Blackthorn? Can you, uh, make a big box out of some stuff? And we can let the cultists resurrect inside there?"

Blackthorn, still with his back turned, said, "I can't even open my eyes right now, Mark. I'm just gonna… I'm just…" He floated into the air and said, "Planty is telling me that Kardi won't resurrect here anymore. Not with her being killed over and over again. Containment is not possible, either. She can just kill herself in whatever cell we make of her and every other cultist will probably do the same. It's going to be a mess. So I'm gonna... go. I'm going home to be with my family. Find my son and his family, too."

Mark and Tartu waited for Kardi to show up, both of them simply nodding at each other, wordlessly agreeing to put her in a box of their own making.

A few other people pulled themselves out of the sand over the next few minutes, but only one of them turned out to be a cultist, as pinged by the Mayor, by a message through Quark. Mark sliced off the cultist's head and let them resurrect somewhere else. Was that the right response? Mark had no idea!

Kardi surely resurrected elsewhere, but not here.

Quark told Mark, "Help is needed to kill the hivemind worm kaiju and all of the goblins that are feeding it and feeding on it. The entire gate district needs cleaning."

"Okay… Okay…" Mark told himself again, "Okay," as he stood there on the sand, watching people pull themselves out of the broken building… "Should I turn the place fully to sand? I think… I think people are trapped under it all?"

Mark hadn't sanded the whole place before Kardi stopped his Union of Earth/Bubbles. He had gotten a lot of it, but not all of it.

The people down there weren't trapped far down. Just under a few meters or tens of meters of dirt, in some bunkers down below, or something like that. Mark felt them worried as fuck about how they were going to get out and about what had happened, and… And a lot.

A lot was happening right now.

Quark answered, "One moment— The Mayor says to sand the place completely. She wants all possible cultist tricks unearthed."

Mark did what was asked, and soon there was a bomb going off to the side, killing a few people that the bomb had been near. Then those people got resurrected again atop fresh sand.

Mark stared at the corpses as ghosts put them back together.

… Mark was having difficulty right now.

A lot of difficulty.

Tartu started rounding up people in the area.

Mark leveled a good several square kilometers of Central Memphi.

As the sun began to set Mark moved on.