Adamant Blood 323

The death tal kaiju had seed truly dangerous in the first few hours, with Mark flying fast to keep up with it when it jerked out of control, and to put nuance into his Union of Glory and Fear to keep it further under control. Mark had been truly worried, especially when the thing grew into its tertiary form. But now it was casually rolling forward, ripping the land to pieces with tearing, cutting tals, and Mark knew he could break it apart in monts, if necessary.

The key to control had been a shifting of Union, to gather more Glory for himself, and less for the kaiju. And that’s all it really took. With that sort of shift, Mark started gathering adamantium quite quickly, as well.

Quark had calculated that Mark had about 278 kilos of adamantium flowing around his body right now, mostly growing like small crystals, or frost, on the surface of his flying sphere. The whole thing was invisible, except for those new growths, so Quark was applying invisibility over and over again when the new growths got to be too much.

Mark wasn’t sure how he was making his adamantium grow more adamantium, but that’s what was happening.

Goofy a spot in a separated alcove behind him, with an opening to the outside if he needed it.

The kaiju had outgrown its slender, spoon-like form a few hours ago. Now it was like a deford dragon-thing, walking on four legs, with a maw for a face and with wires for wings and a tail. Everything about it was a moving cable that it continued to rip out from the ground as it walked.

Aluatha Central Command, who was in contact with Mark through the settlent, through Quentin, had classified his kaiju as a Cat 6, and had called it a general-purpose tal Shaper with tal Body.

Cat 6 had been a bit scary. But…

Mark could handle it.

The thing stomped across the land, moving at a rather sedate 40 ters per second, following the border, ripping up all tals within 4 kiloters of its travels. It was cruising at about 150 kiloters per hour. That was nothing compared to how fast it could move, when it wanted to move, but there were about 1,200 total kiloters of border to clear, and the kaiju only moved fast when things were actually attacking it. For a while now, the Goblinho had been sending goblins after goblins, bomb after bomb, but so ti in the last hour, when the sun started to rise, the goblins stopped attacking.

The border towers were more empty than full now, too.

Mark flew high overhead of the kaiju, and he glanced at the map. Of the 1,200 kiloters of border, they had gone through about 80% of it. In a few more hours they’d complete the entire circuit and then they’d be back where they started. Mark would need to lead the kaiju inward by then. That shouldn’t be too hard.

So far the ‘peace plan’ was Mark clearing out the whole place of tal and then leaving.

Mark assud the goblins would attack, though. It was just a matter of when.

He had started off this kaiju’s path of destruction right before a corridor of towers, and every corridor there were big cables laid under the ground, leading down the goblin corridor into the inner lands of Goblinho. So of the corridors were lesser than others, and the corridor beforethat first one was a big one, coming up in 75 minutes, so Mark couldlet the kaiju follow that bigger corridor into Goblinho, right into a power plant that Aluatha had discovered and recorded like, 50 years ago or sothing like that. Everyone had been surprised to discover that that particular power plant was still there, and still in operation.

Soone had told Mark the particulars of all of it, but Mark hadn’t paid much attention to that.

The plan wasn’t set much beyond ‘destroy their infrastructure’.

He was kinda busy keeping track of the kaiju’s every possible desire, making sure that it stayed fully under his control. He could split it in half right now if needed, and from there he could find more fractures, for sure… hopefully. The goblins of Goblinho were busy, too, organizing sothing far outside of Mark’s sight.

Others were not so busy.

“I know I should be thankful that we are dismantling evils,” Goofy began, breaking a small silence he had imposed upon himself for the last hour, “But I feel the evil is rely coiling, preparing to strike, and all of this is nothing. We should advance inside the demon’s den right now, when they are not expecting it.”

There was rit to that, to attacking before an enemy expected, but Mark thought the current plan was working well. As long as the goblins weren’t fighting directly, anywhere, then humanity was winning. But they probably should advance. Goblinho was up to a trick, for sure. Goofy was not wrong about that.

So Mark said, “Command. We want to move into Goblinho now to prevent possible planning on Goblinho’s part. Please advise.”

“One mont, Mark,” Quentin said.

Silence.

And also crashing, swiping tal. tal that scread across the air and rippled up from the land like a constant avalanche. Quiet roars and things dying. The normal stomping of kaiju was absent, though. The kaiju did not stompdown the path so much as writhe, undulate, and whip. Most of the sound was muted by the adamantium all around Mark and by the Glory suffusing him and also Goofy.

Goofy didn’t seem to mind the noise coming through his open ‘pillbox’, set against Mark’s bigger pillbox.

Walaria answered, “Negative for diverting of the plan, Mark. Proceed to rip up the border. Tear the border all down, and thenmove inward. We also want you to take that power plant coming up in 70 minutes, too, afteryou take down all of the border. If you can make the kaiju backtrack across open ground between corridors to get to the power plant then we want you to do that, but there should be a connection between corridors, and you should be able to make the kaiju take one of those paths. With the border coming down our scanners are working a lot better, so we’re gathering a map of all known infrastructure and listing out a proper order of targets.

“Power plants, refineries, factories, and then estates and capital structures; that’s the general priority.

“You’ll be going from that first power plant to a tertiary city, and then to a secondary city, before finally reaching Goblinho, and Hive. Hive is their central command. There are several armories along the way and you will be hitting all of them. Understand?”

“Understood,” Mark said.

Silence returned.

Goofy said, “That path will take us across the human district. It will be grueso. Goblinho will kill them before we can even see the place.”

Mark faltered for a mont.

The kaiju roared, and the tal in its body and for kiloters around turned sharp and destructive, briefly ripping up everything in every direction, including overhead.

Mark closed up Goofy’s exit to the outside, and then Mark centered himself and the kaiju stopped roaring. In that brief mont of loss of control, many things had happened. Forests fell where they had been cut. Hillsides slid down into valleys. And the kaiju had scattered spaghetti-like strands of tal everywhere, including on the sides of Mark’s flying pair of pillboxes.

Back under control, the kaiju sucked that tal back into itself, slicking off of the adamantium shell around Mark and Goofy like silver blades turning to rcury. The kaiju continued to gather tals for kiloters around, and it kept walking.

Mark opened Goofy’s entrance to the outside back up, saying, “I’m not sure what to do about the humans.”

Goofy was silent, looking at the opening of his alcove, watching silver-ish tals slick down and slurp back outside.

He stuck his head out of the hole in his protected space, looking down at the kaiju again, his vector feeling weird. For a while he just stared at the kaiju, his vector undulating weirdly, but then his eyes focused on sowhere in the distance. Mark wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but his vector turned sad. Goofy had a great deal of Power to him. More than Mark thought soone should have. He had excellent senses, the ability to fly freely, and incredible strength. Whatever Power he had might have been a very good Bi-Talent, or even a Tri-Talent, or maybe not.

Goofy stared at sothing in the distance, back the way they had co, and said, “This doesn’t feelheroic.”

Mark asked, “What do you see out there?”

“Destruction unparalleled. Humans won’t survive it.”

The land behind them looked like tilled soil, for sure.

And then Goofy asked, “Couldwe rescue the humans?”

“They’re considered already dead,” Walaria said, speaking through Quark, entering the conversation. “And even if they weren’t considered dead, just by virtue of being born in Goblinho, the humans that you see out in Goblinho are all either ghosted, or indoctrinated, and the ones inside the human district are even more brainwashed than the rest. There is no saving them.” She added, “Attend this scene, playing out right now.”

Quark displayed an image that he spread in Mark’s sight, and on the little screen setup that he had put inside of Goofy’s adamantium pillbox.

Mark closed his eyes, but he still saw what Walaria was showing him. Mark did not want to see.

Goofy was concerned when Walaria started talking, but now he was frightened. He stared at the images Quark showed him, and he felt rage and sorrow at the sa ti. He whispered, “They’re culling the population.”

It was a town square, all white marble roads and big green spaces, with big white fountains with blue water. Humans were everywhere, wearing flowing white robes that barely covered their bodies. They were thin and ‘happy’. They lookedhappy, anyway. There were pregnant won and children, but few elders or adult males at all. The people were lined up, headed toward a fountain, all of them with happy faces.

The center of the human district was red with blood and bodies, and Mark didn’t want to look at it anymore, but he still caught sight of a young boy walking forward from her mother, right into a machine of blades, situated atop the fountain. There were many such machines, all of them active.

The blades activated.

Red.

And then the smiling mother followed her son into the blender.

Mark couldn’t watch.

Goofy continued to watch, his rage deepening.

Walaria must have known Mark stopped watching, because she narrated, “Each fountain in the human district is connected to the others in a diagram of power. The witches are activating that diagram with the blood of humans. Even if you went right now, you could not stop it. They have it set up in such a way that it takes 20 minutes to empty the district, and that is what they are doing. Continue on your mission.”

Mark asked, “What magic are they activating?”

Walaria said, “Dangerous ones.”

“… Okay.”

Silence.

Mark muttered, “Shit.”

And then Goofy asked an interesting question, “Can you directly control the kaiju? Maybe we can fly there right now and make it kill the killers instead of the humans.”

Mark’s instincts were to say ‘no’.

But thinking about that was better than thinking about humans, so he gave Goofy’s question a Big Think.

Mark could barely control anything about the kaiju, except if it lived or died, and where it walked in relation to his own position. He could move himself and Fear it in the other way. Or he could Glory it and make it co closer, until the kaiju realized that it wanted to kill or take sothing in an area, and then it focused on those things. Life or death, away or closer. That was pretty much it.

And yet, Mark had done Unions of movent with others. He had done a whole lot of battlefield control, too. But only in general sorts of ways. He could, of course, control his own movent, and through that, matchthe movents of others. He could help people recognize where the best places to be in a battle were. He could let everyone flow with everyone else.

But he had never controlledanyone else’s movents before.

So, Mark thought about it, and maybe it was sothing to try later, but right now…

“Well I can certainly try, I guess,” Mark said.

Mark expanded his protected space to give him room to move well, and then he tried to match the movents of the kaiju down below. It obviously wasn’t a one-for-one thing, because the kaiju was dragon-shaped right now, but Mark moved his left hand outward, matching the kaiju’s front left foot moving forward, and he moved his right hand right, matching the kaiju’s front right foot.

The dragon-shaped tal kaiju did whatever it wanted, and Mark couldn’t match it in a Union at all, except in the most general of ways. Mark hypothesized that the purposes behind his existence and the kaiju’s existence were too great; the purposes too different. The kaiju wanted to eat tal and kill goblins, and Mark had made it that way, but now Mark was trying to make it go save so humans about 230 kiloters away, that it couldn’t even see, while there was still tal right in front of it.

The kaiju did what it was born to do; it kept on chugging forward, ripping up the border.

Mark kept trying to control the kaiju, though. Might as well, right? Trying to move the kaiju with his Union was easier than thinking about the humans that were already dead.

Goofy watched Mark for a while, but his vector turned more and more distraught. After 10 minutes of Mark trying, failing, and Goofy watching it all through the invisible adamantium shell, Goofy lost hope, and said, “They’re already all dead, aren’t they.”

“… Yeah. They are. But…” Mark had a thought. Maybe Goofy would have sothing to say about it? Mark said, “One of my long-term goals is to find the elves in Daihoon who know resurrection magic. We saw it once, in mphi, at the Battle for mphi at the end. So I know it’s out there. I’m pretty sure the elves are real, too. Endless Daihoon is too big and too full of hidden things for the elves to not be real. So… Maybe one day we can save all of the people who ever died.”

Mark specifically did not talk about Wongod and how he resurrected goblins. Mark wasn’t sure why he didn’t, but… he just didn’t. Seed like a box that didn’t need to be opened right now, not in the middle of all of this.

Goofy was quiet, sitting on the bottom of his adamantium alcove, his vector pulled inward, thinking softly.

Mark continued, “I want to revive my parents, and a lot more. Is it possible? I don’t know. I wantit to be possible. There’s probably going to be major mory issues, since my parents died over a year ago and even the loss of a few hours between death and revival set mories back half a day, or more. That’s for the future, though.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Those future goals don’t help when it cos to dealing with the horrors happening right now. It also doesn’t help that Walaria said those humans were considered already-dead, but… Thisis why those people are considered dead. What they’re doing to those people in that human district was never not going to happen. In a Total War, they would have been used in so other way, and we were headed to Total War.

“Any attempt to fight the goblins always ends up with them causing horrors.

“But, if they’re going to cause horrors anyway, then fighting is the only option.”

Goofy stood up, light in his eyes, as he said, “Horrors happen. You gotta fight anyway.”

Mark nodded.

Goofy was having a deep mont, his vector going far and wide, as he sat on the side of his adamantium alcove, sitting on the invisible adamantium. He stared at the kaiju down below, but he did not see. His mind was far from this place.

Mark focused on the kaiju… and he had sothing of an idea.

Kind of a weird idea, but Quark was tracking Mark’s adamantium he was gathering from the kaiju, and Mark had sothing like 300 kilos of adamantium. The black tal collected on his scales, and made them bigger. It collected on his blades, like frost in a storm.

Mark made his flying pillbox larger, and he gathered his scales into forearm extensions, and then he put on a tail and so wings. Thin things, of course. Not very large. But the shape was enough to let Mark hunch over and flick his ‘wings’ and stand on his arm-extensions and flick his ‘tail’, just like the kaiju below—

There was a mont, fleeting and pure.

A connection, deeper than before.

The dragon-like death tal kaiju flicked his tail, and Mark flicked his tail, too. The kaiju lifted its head, and Mark lifted its head. It stomped forward, and Mark stomped forward, slamming his right limb into the invisible surface of his adamantium shell as the kaiju slamd its right limb into the ground, far below.

For the first ti, the kaiju had stomped.

Mark knew what the kaiju was going to do next, for it had done it many tis already.

And so Mark lifted his head and ripped at the world far, far ahead, feeling with senses that were not his own, that belonged to sothing else, far below.

And the kaiju opened its silver-orb-shaped head, and the tal of the border sucked inward, ripping out of the ground, swirling into its body, adding to the cables of its flanks, its tail, its back and its wings. But the kaiju pulled further, this ti. Kiloters upon kiloters of tal ripped into the kaiju’s mouth like a reverse dragon’s breath.

Then the kaiju’s wire-wings turned solid, flashing outward, silver and bright, and then glinting with even more tallic colors. Wind scoured the land. Scales flashed into being across the entire entity, soft gold, or maybe bronze. Amalgamations. The kaiju was ripping up so many types of tals, and now, those types were beginning to separate into different colors.

tal twisted.

An orb-head beca a head.

And a head beca a dragon’s visage, great and terrible and roaring.

Mark roared, too, high above the dragon-shaped, death-to-goblins, tal shaper elental.

The dragon flapped its wings, and Mark flapped his wings, all of the adamantium surrounding him becoming a flow of black scales, layering over his body. Goofy was ejected out into open air to fly, Glorious, like all of them, as Fear linked through the dragon elental’s astral body, out into the world.

Mark’s range exploded and he flew on adamantium wings, mirroring the dragon below.

They ripped across the land and the land ripped upward at their passing, great multi-tal wings causing a hurricane as the kaiju flew forward, and tal flew upward.

Soone said sothing in Mark’s ears. So sort of worry. Mark did not care about worries right now. He cared about the mission. There were goblins that needed killing.

One goblin flew at Mark’s head, but he wasn’t really a goblin, he was Goofy.

Goofy said sothing, seeming a bit worried about sothing. Asking if Mark was alright, maybe.

Mark ignored it.

Goofy stopped trying to talk and instead flew beside Mark. He nodded for so reason that Mark did not care to fathom right now; he wasn’t a threat, and he wasn’t the goal.

Mark flew forward, black wings spreading wide, gathering, gathering, gathering, as great tallic wings gathered from everything else. A hundred kiloters passed quickly. Lazily. A great row of tal lay to the left, but the path ahead was easier to fly, so he flew forward. And then the path ahead ended, and a great need for moremade its demands known.

Mark glanced backward, the way they had co, back to that massive line of power that they had passed back there.

The kaiju glanced backward, too, slamming itself into the ground, ripping up the world as it turned on a mansion and flowed the other way, back toward the rest of its prey. Mark flicked his black wings and matched the turn. Soon, they had returned to a great row of green-capped towers that glittered in the morning sun. Those green-capped towers made a line, every 100 ters, into the mountains.

The kaiju found its prey in the ground and all around, marked with tallic senses and with a dragon’s Fear.

It opened its maw and a great roar shocked across the land, breaking towers and settlents and ripping tal from the ground, and then the dragon roared in reverse and tal twisted inward like spaghetti into its black hole of a maw.

The dragon swallowed as it flew forward, and Mark followed.

Ahead lay the power plant. It was a big place of big green towers, belching steam and smoke into the air and poisoning the land. It had defenses on towers. Those defenses fired bullets that traced lines of fire in the air that swung around the kaiju, falling into its orbit, and becoming a part of its body, even as the towers themselves lted into silvers and blacks and flowed into the kaiju’s extended wings.

The kaiju flew at its target, and the land disintegrated as tal ripped from the ground.

And then the kaiju slamd into a barrier over the power plant like a cannonball slamming into reinforced glass. The barrier cracked and then splintered in every direction as the kaiju descended into the power plant, into the center of all the towers, and pulled.

Explosions rocked the world, shockwaves expanding from the base of every tower in concussive waves, as tal, red-hot and nuclear, rushed into the kaiju’s open maw; yet another dragon’s breath in reverse—

Sothing venomous, poisonous, crackled in Mark’s Union with the beast.

Sothing tainted.

Sothing goblin.

Mark’s head shot left, pulling away from the green poison in the reactors, and the dragon-shaped kaiju yanked right, ripping into the land even more. Wings turned into more arms, and arms turned into maws, pulling at tals down below, like plucking at the center of a spiderweb.

The kaiju bucked from Mark’s control, its head splitting into a collection of maws, its tail becoming another sucking mouth, pulling at the world—

“Warning!” Quark alard. “Atomic launch detected!”

Goofy yelled sothing, too, but mostly Mark felt his worry.

And just like that, the mont broke.

Glory and Fear faded and a dragon of many tals beca a being of flowing wires and desires and too many limbs and heads to count.

Goofy grabbed Mark’s tail. “MARK!”

Mark slipped into Alacrity/Slowness.

The world slowed down as Mark’s entire draconic-shaped body splintered into scattered scales, revealing him at the center several hundred kilos of adamantium.

Quark spoke at a normal speed to Mark’s super speed, “Atomic launch detected from the main city. Atomic blast ALSO preparing deep under the ground at the current location. Please escape now… One second— I am now in contact with the AIs of Aluatha. They have analyzed the payload and it is a citybreaker— It is a citybreaker and several tactical nukes designed to weaken the target first and then obliterate with the main attack. They are suggesting that 4 centiters of reinforced adamantium are enough to survive an indirect blast, as long as you are 10 or more kiloters away. Escape now. Escape now. Escape now.”

For a brief mont Mark considered confronting the nuclear bombs directly. Maybe he could make the kaiju reach out and attack the nukes before they could properly detonate. The kaiju had a range of kiloters, after all. But the Union that allowed Mark to direct the kaiju —just a little bit!— was gone. Mark would need so ti to get back into the kaiju’s vector, to connect, and now that the dragon-shape was gone Mark doubted if he even couldconnect at all.

It was too invested in eating the power plant, anyway, even though the power plant had so sort of weird, corruptive poison happening inside of it. That poison was already seeping out of Mark’s skin like liquid corruption, and his skin was not feeling very well at all.

Quark was right; ti to run.

Mark returned to normal ti, just in ti to feel the kaiju go berserk again, because Mark had, of course, dropped Glory/Fear to run Alacrity. The kaiju beca a blender of tal, kiloters-wide, and Mark wrapped himself and Goofy into a sphere, while spinning up another rotor up ahead.

Goofy was worried.

Mark started making Sigildry hands for Quark (those things broke way too often, Mark needed better control) even as he said, “Nuclear threat incoming. We’re running.” He pointed at the edge of the sphere that was away from Goblinho. “Push!”

Goofy rushed against the wall and flew fast, tugging Mark along with the sphere. As Mark made so hands for Quark, he thought that Goofy’s power set was kaijushit. Howwas he able to fly without a counter force at all? Mark needed to push against sothing to move. Everyone did! What was Goofy pushing against? Kaijushit, that’s what. Anyway. They were locked in a black adamantium sphere, the only light shining from Quark’s lights on the inner surface of the sphere.

A tir appeared on the inner surface of that sphere.

:29

:28

It wasn’t even in minutes.

Must be using so of those enchanted nukes, or maybe it was the countdown for the bomb below the power plant. Who knew! No ti to talk.

Quark got so hands and a tiny orb in 10 seconds and then he started making sigils again as Mark got a rotor up and running outside, spinning the air fast, turning the world to fire as he pulled alongside Goofy’s push. Quark began making sigils and the adamantium sphere began to fade away, revealing the countryside and the kaiju, far behind them, while flas washed across the surface of the sphere.

Mark made the sphere a bit more aerodynamic.

If the kaiju had ever resembled a dragon, it did not look very dragon-like now. More like a chunky spider with an indeterminate number of legs. The power plant continued to explode inside of its tal-storm astral influence—

Quark displayed a zood-in vision of the nukes. There they were, 4 kiloters from the kaiju and closing in. The tir was at 4 seconds. Mark pulled his adamantium in, thickening the walls, bringing the rotor in so he didn’t lose it—

The world flashed white and then white again and the invisibility magics in the adamantium ended, plunging them into darkness. Quark flicked on so lights and Mark pulled in his Kinesis so make the outer surface solid, outside of his control, so he didn’t have to contend against the force of the shockwave—

Rolling, thundering.

Mark got tossed and Goofy crashed into him, into the adamantium, and Mark held him so he didn’t go flying around the space. A kaiju roared out there.

And then a big bomb went off.

Mark regained consciousness as Goofy flopped against him, both of them tumbling around inside the adamantium shell. He Unioned with the worl—

Pain.

Too much miasma out there.

Mark cut his Union instantly and regained so control over the interior of the sphere. He experintally kinesis’d with the surface of the sphere, but to touch that exterior surface was to touch pure poison. Whatever had been in that nuke had been more than just nuclear fuel. It had been a kaiju-killer nuke, for sure—

Goofy slapped unconsciously onto Mark again, and Mark grabbed a hand and held his arm. It was like holding on to a doll. He didn’t weigh much at all. He was still alive, but he was seriously injured. Brain damage? Mark wasn’t sure. It was too dark to see and Quark was offline right now for so reason, and the adamantium shell was still sailing through the air.

It was going to crash into the ground though, and soon, and Mark didn’t want that to happen.

Mark began running a Union of Purity and Corruption, gently pushing into his adamantium, into the world beyond. He just needed enough clean adamantium out there to send out a rotor. But there was no place for the Corruption to go, so Mark took it into himself.

All the while the adamantium tumbled, and Mark kept himself settled in the middle, holding on to Goofy so he didn’t slam against the inside.

“Fuck,” Mark muttered, as his Incorruptible Body burned.

Cold, hot, searing and ripping. Mark grit his teeth in pain as he did ‘enough’, and then he launched the surface of the sphere into the air, into ‘up’, and began spinning it fast, far out of sight. The adamantium sphere ca to a slow halt and then Mark regained control, spinning the rotor faster and faster, and finally Mark was probably flying again. Where was he, though? He set Goofy down on the inner surface of the adamantium, letting him breathe softly on the ground. Mark couldn’t see shit, but he also wasn’t about to open up any holes in the adamantium at all.

“Quark?”

Mark’s vision beeped with a tiny signal. Rebooting. Mark wondered how long was that going to take—

Mark’s vision flickered to life. Lights ca on inside of the adamantium shell while caras gazed outside, displaying images of a world of green mist, with the ground 20 ters away. Almost instantly the caras burned, but Quark remade them, and Mark healed himself a bit, and soon they were ‘stable’.

Mark had almost crashed. He was glad he hadn’t—

Quark said, “Evacuation is recomnded. The summoned kaiju has been rendered into molten, poisoned tal, suspected dead, and the pillars of Goblinho are headed this way. Evacuation is recomnded. The green mist is goblin venom, and it is Biting everything that breathes it in.”

Ah.

Biter mist.

Fun.

Maybe evacuation would have been the smart move.

But Mark felt the kaiju, still out there, keening on the edge of hearing.

Mark flooded the world with Purity, biting back the pain of Corruption as he lowered to the ground, to the miasma-scoured land. It was hard. Mark’s Union didn’t do much, because that miasma was strong stuff. It probably ca from that miasma goblin, Salter. The whole thing —nukes and all!— was probably a ritual nuke designed to weaken and kill.

Mark still flooded Purity out there, breaking the green atmosphere, digging into the land and clearing a small spot of the sky. He wasn’t getting far, and not nearly fast enough. So Mark switched to Glory and Fear, condensing power into himself and shooting painful, black Fear into the miasma itself. Would that work? It did, a little. Mark drove Fear into the green ‘radiation’, the poison, and the special magics they put into that green cloud, and the miasma withered away.

The sky cleared in a burst of Glory.

“What’s happening!” Goofy asked, waking suddenly under the touch of healing Glory, looking at Mark.

Mark floated in Glory in the middle of the adamantium ball, saying, “The pillars of Goblinho are coming. Wanna fight?”

Goofy turned very serious. “Yes.”