Adamant Blood

Titanfist was at 'home', but not really. He was in a warehouse behind his actual house. The house was a small place in a rural part of Memphi. The warehouse was a giant thing, more like an air hangar than a warehouse, but it was still only something a hovercraft enthusiast might have. Not an extravagant thing at all.

Ben Daucourt's 20-something daughter had greeted them at the entrance to the house, eyes full of small tears when she recognized him, vector full of thankful thoughts she could not give word to. And then they walked back here, into the warehouse.

The patient was currently bedbound.

"F— Father," Ben's daughter said, voice cracking, "Mark is here."

"Ah, hey, Mark," Titanfist 'said', not moving much at all, except for his eyes. He also wasn't speaking. Ben had a neural interface set atop his shaved head that was translating his thoughts into words, because all of him was rather fucked up.

Titanfist was room-sized at the moment and sprawled out on a layer of foam maybe 5 meters wide and 8 long. It supported his body well enough. Tarps covered his body while tubes went under the tarps and liquids flowed through machinery at the side. There were pumps and barrels full of stuff over there. A crane had been feeding him breakfast, but when Mark, Isoko, and Lola walked in, the feeding stopped. Mark imagined the controls for the crane were part of Ben's neural interface.

Ben's wife was there, but the wife and the daughter moved to the side and talked quietly to themselves.

Isoko stayed in the back, to talk to the wife and daughter.

Mark and Lola walked forward.

It was about 7 AM. Pretty early, but not that early.

"That asshole Chris really did a number on me, haha!" Ben said, his laughter mechanical when it came through the speakers.

Mark was already in a Union of Good and Bad with him, and it might have been helping a little, but it wasn't doing much. "We're pretty sure Chris is dead. 80%, last I heard."

"That's what I heard, too, but I died in the attack, too, and I came back."

"… Ah… You died, huh?"

"Not initially, but we got overrun by monsters and I couldn't do anything, so they kinda…" Ben's voice trailed off. "Anyway. I would have thought that coming back would have healed me, but nope." Silence. And then a question, "So I take it COFR reached back out to you? I told 'em not to do that. I didn't want to bother anyone."

He was deeply embarrassed that he was like this, but he was also full of hope. Those two emotions warred within.

Mark said, "I'm not sure of the chain of events that got me here, but I promised myself that I was going to show up eventually, and here I am, and I hope I can help."

Ben chuckled, but it was a wheezing-sort of phlegmy mess. Mark cleared that out with Purity/Impurity, along with whatever biological stuff might have been going on under that tarp, and Ben breathed easier. His vector was softer, too; less uncomfortable.

Ben said, "Thanks," and then he instantly winced at how shallow of meaning that 'thanks' sounded like, through the speakers.

Mark glossed over the discomfort, saying, "So the plan today is to get you good enough that you can change sizes and we can move you out into the field and you can get big and I can work on you in a larger, realer sort of way. Is that okay with you? Does that sound like a good plan?"

Ben was quiet, and then he asked, "Will it actually heal me? COFR was giving me a 6 month time frame."

Mark said, "It might take a few days, but from the conversations I've had with COFR and Badaira in the last hour, and with my mentor Lola here, we can probably get you in a wheelchair by the end of the day and cut down on your remaining healing time considerably. Maybe take it down to a single month."

"Do you know about the bomb he used in my brain?"

Again, lots of meaning was lost when spoken mechanically through a speaker. Ben hated that. Ben was also worried that Mark didn't know what he was doing.

Normally, in a delicate healing situation like this, Mark would not be qualified to treat Ben at all, as his healing could actually do harm if he did it wrong, which was easy to do with this particular injury. But Mark had some new tricks that were applicable here, thanks to his conversations with Badaira and Lola, that would be useful against a wide set of problems all in the same category as what Grey Phantom had done to Titanfist.

It was all 'corruption'-type soul damage.

And Mark was Incorruptible.

Mark said, "The bomb used against you was a lot of things, from shavallian to various toxins, but mostly it was those things empowering a dispeller bomb. It should not have done the damage that it did, because those bombs are only useful against active spellwork. Even shavallian barely touches you, because of dosage-sizes, but it did touch you, a little. This bomb managed to impact your soul, but only because Grey Phantom set it off inside of you. It messed up how your body heals itself, how everything works, and it even impacted your ability to use your Power how you want to use it." Mark added, "It was basically a touch of offensive Wilding, scaled up to kaiju-sized, which is the only way they managed to do anything at all to you."

Lola nodded, but she was keeping Mark on track to handle this delicate operation himself.

Ben let out a deep breath even as his interface said, "They said I'd need a Skiller to put it back together if I want to heal faster, and I don't want a Skiller. And so it's slow and steady healing until my soul naturally heals itself over the course of 4 months, with full healing in 6. Until then, all the healing I receive would go out the window when the healer was gone… Which is what happens. I can get healed for about two hours by my usual squad of healers, and that's enough to shrink down. Then they stop and come back the next day and I'm big again, and they heal me enough to let me shrink back down again. They're scheduled to show up at 10 today." Ben's vector was angry, but his words were not. "Chris knew exactly how to fuck me up."

"We have good news, about all of that," Mark said, "I had a breakthrough in my Body, shifting from Healthy Body to Incorruptible Body, and COFR is pretty sure that I can impose my own incorruptibility into your soul and help you expunge a lot of the damage done to you. I probably won't be able to heal everything—" COFR, Badaira, and Lola had all given Mark a 95% chance that he would be able to heal everything, but it was best not to get hopes up. "—But I can do a lot against the damage that was done to you."

Castellan Fire could probably burn the Corruption out of him, too, but that would also, ya know, burn the fuck out of him. Not pleasant, and it might permanently injure his Power of Titan's Body. Castellan Fire was not a gentle treatment at all. Healing Corruption through Union was also unpleasant, but Mark —specifically Mark— could do a lot better than Castellan when it came to Ben's issue.

Ben's heart softly soared. He chuckled a little, and it wasn't phlegmy at all. "Incorruptible, eh? Congrats. I was wondering how you started to throw off the shavallian…" He paused. He asked, "That Body Power doesn't have a Modifier, does it?"

"No Strength nor Speed!" Mark said, smirking a little, "But even if it does take even more alcohol to get drunk, I'll take being immune to a whole bunch of stuff and being able to heal better over TT. From what I have been told, what I plan to do today should work better than Castellan Fire, too."

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Ben smiled crookedly, like his nerves didn't work right, which was exactly the case. "Kraigen and the Mayor already got some Castellans to help, and they said… They said a lot, and I said 'no'. I haven't actually been Wilded or damaged by a Skill or mana… So when we starting, Doc?"

Mark said, "Not a doctor. I'm just Mark. We'll do a little here to get you strong enough to shrink down for transport, and then go from there." Mark began—

Lola whispered to Mark, "The hot lake."

Mark rapidly added, "And there's a nice hot lake that's being used as a heatsink for a power plant. That's where we're taking you. It'll be like sitting in the bath, and it'll help support your body while I heal the corrupted parts of your astral body."

Ben's eyes watered as he felt real hope once again. The machine spoke his words for him, "I'm ready."

Mark almost started, eager to go—

Lola whispered to Mark, "Request the family to leave."

Oh shit. Yeah.

The side effects of healing Corruption would put the wife and daughter in danger. It was gonna put Ben, Mark, Isoko, and Lola in danger, too, but they were either forced to be here, because it was their problem they were healing, or they signed up for this.

Mark politely turned toward the wife and daughter, saying, "If you could please leave us with Ben for a little while. You'll be able to see him before we get him into the transport, but this part might be weird."

Not 'dangerous'! Even though it is. Don't say that word unless it is actually dangerous.

According to everything they had discussed with Grand Healer Badaira, this should be rather 'by the book', except Mark was doing a True Union as a True User of Union, and Ben couldn't really be affected by individual Powers for the most part, and it would be like removing Corruption from a kaiju.

Totally 'by the book'.

The wife solidly said, "Of course," as she put her hands on her daughter's shoulders to guide her out. The daughter said nothing; she just stared at her father, then at Mark—

"Thank you for healing my father. I never got a chance to say…" The daughter added, "Thank you."

Then they left.

Isoko walked with them out of the room, and then she came back and closed the warehouse door behind her.

Lola said, "This is going to be very painful for both of you, Mark and Mister Daucourt, but Isoko and I are here. It will likely destroy all of your equipment and part of the floor."

Mark almost went 'oh yeah', but then he simply went, "Please move it away, or let me take it off; whatever you don't want destroyed."

Ben's eyes went a little wide as his words began to form through his neural interface. And then he focused. "Let me put the arm away; that's the only thing that is a little expensive." Ben focused through his interface and the mechanical arm pulled fully away and began moving some stuff away from the bed. Within a minute Ben was ready, and he said, "Okay. We're good."

"I'm starting," Mark said.

Mark braindanced with Adamant and Ethereal, but just himself, focusing on keeping himself strong. He needed to be strong, and his next Union needed to not involve anyone at all except Ben, and Mark didn't want to get too many Unions crossed.

And then he beat his heart with Corruption and a different sort of Purity, angled toward an Incorruptibility of the soul. It was a cleansing beat. Black sparks crackled out of his flesh, into Ben, dancing across his skin and pulsing with the time of his own heart.

'Corruption' was one of those words that Lola had long ago warned Mark against using, because of what was going to happen to him today when he used it. Using it with Healthy Body would have been actually dangerous, in a long-term sort of way, just how Ben was experiencing long-term 'corruption of the soul' problems, but today, with Incorruptible Body, it would simply be painful.

Mark pulled Purity into himself and Ben, and expelled Corruption from them both, and it was like shooting acid out of his very flesh, out of both of them. Mark's clothes began to dissolve as reality itself began to uncoil in weird ways, as Mark turned Ben's soul injury into something that could be untethered from its user. Ben grunted, but this was probably a 2 out of 10 sort of pain for him. It was maybe a 4 out of 10 for Mark.

Thick acid-like air flowed away from Ben, dissolving the very world around him, eating away his clothes and the bed and all of the pipes still in him. He grunted in pain.

Mark's clothes he had arrived in had dissolved, too, but he was wearing his scales now, so he was 'clothed' well enough.

As the corrupted astral body left both of them, it was acidic, and then it became a thick black miasma that began to flood the room.

But Isoko and Lola were there, running a much more standard Purity/Impurity, turning miasma into threads to tuck back into reality, into Elsewhere, feeding that miasma into the plants far outside of the warehouse, and even a few plants inside. Ben had some cleaner plants in the corners of the warehouse and those softly glowing tubular succulents were loving this miasma. They began to grow—

"Switch to healing," Lola said. "And you need to consider self-repairing clothes, Mark."

Mark switched his Unions all over to healing, to Good/Bad, and relaxed as the pain ended. Ben sighed, and Mark could tell he was already feeling better, too. Mark said, "I have repairing clothes on Daihoon."

Ben chuckled, and then he opened his mouth, and said, "I have some people who can make repairing clothes on Earth. I thought I gave you their numbers?"

"You might have. A lot of stuff happened fast," Mark added, "Also, you just spoke using your actual mouth."

Ben smiled, and it was a real smile, and he moved his neck a little. "Ahhh. That usually takes the other guys an hour to heal."

Lola said, "The injury will return, though today's efforts should cut your healing time down to a week. Can you shrink yet, Mister Daucourt?"

Ben focused… And nothing happened. "Close. Not there yet."

Mark said, "And we go again."

2 more cycles later and Ben was able to shrink down. Ben could move a little bit, but not much. Mark lifted him up and put him into a wheelchair and covered him in a bed sheet, before wheeling him out to see his wife and daughter.

They were happy, Ben was happy, and Mark loved to see it.

Soon, they were flying in the hovercraft, across Memphi, to a kilometer-long pond right next to a large power plant that Mark and Eliot had built the other week.

Reality-eating acid tended to destroy all of the life in the lake, but it came back fast under generalized Purity/Impurity Unions.

Four hours later, and with a whole bunch of new trees and grasses and the pond filled with lilies, Ben shrank down once again, put on some clothes, and then hugged Mark, who rapidly turned his scales to body-tight so they didn't cut the guy.

"Thank you, thank you," Ben said.

Mark said, "I couldn't have done it alone."

Isoko flapped her hand as she went, 'Phssh!'

Lola merely curtsied.

Mark said, "Let's get you back home."