Adamant Blood 418

The worm kaiju burrowed through the frosty clouds, its grey body half hidden by sleet and storm. It roared, subdued, its mouth a tunnel of sifting teeth, like the baleen of a whale. It probably had been a sky whale at one point in ti, now that Mark was really looking at it. Or maybe it ate a lot of whales? Glowing green tendrils undulated across the surface of the sky-ice worm, like the floaters of sky whales. Maybe it had evolved from a sky whale?

Command wasn’t sure about the specifics. The specifics didn’t matter, anyway. Of much more concern was the fact that the entire world around the worm was frozen as the worm moved ever-closer to the settlent.

The kaiju was headed right for the gate, because this was January 15th, 2050.

Gate Day.

Sa day every month.

Today was special, though. It had been a full year since the settlent broke ground, and they were still here. Still alive! Everything seed to have a new coat of paint on it, too, and if not paint, then at least so illusions were thrown over walls for the photo ops. No one was expecting this kind of kaiju to co through today. They had been hoping for sothing simple and then a big party later to celebrate the year’s survival, but people were already cursing their bad luck in the comms, talking about how ‘of course it had to be a big one’.

The black gate lood in the northern district of the settlent like a 500-ter-tall doorway without a visible wall surrounding it. The door was open, and all the world undulated at that opening, as the Veil itself seed to cry out for soone to co and close this tear. No one was closing it until the ships were through, though.

Ships rushed from the south prep area, through the passageway to Earth, to the Central City of mphi, located in the heart of what used to be Arica 80 years ago. In a mirrored action, thousands of ships were rushing out from mphi’s southern gate loading zone and zooming through the gate to get here, to Daihoon. The ships from Earth poured out of the north side of the gate like a rush of organized chaos, hundreds of people and many powerful Skills and Powers ensuring that the dance of directions went off flawlessly.

No crashes, no misalignnts in the air. Just a flow of traders and business and visitors and immigrants and otherwise, leaving and coming at the sa ti. Lee Windhopper, the established Sky Shaper for the settlent, along with a bunch of hired AIs and Tinkerers, kept it all flowing well.

Mark Careed, Inheritor of Xerkona and Adamantine Immortal, wasn’t involved in the exchange of goods and people. He was here to kill kaiju.

The demons that controlled the System and magic itself didn’t like it when humans opened the Veil between worlds. Demons didn’t much like humans, except as playthings, and so when humans got uppity the kaiju ca out to try and put humanity back down.

Well fuck that, and fuck them.

Long term solutions to the demon problem were coming, but there were issues with that right now. A lot of issues. Too many. The Okuana Empire and Godking Dominant were still making political waves and the Aluatha Empire was responding and the world was freaking out, but so far it was just a dance of businesses abandoning storefronts and moving and opening new places, and heavy words exchanged between diplomats. No war yet. It was coming, though… Probably. Who knew! Mark certainly didn’t.

Mark wished he could cut through those issues like he could the monsters of the Two Worlds, but that was for later.

For now, there were kaiju to kill.

“Confird Sky Worm Kaiju at 30 kiloters out and closing. ETA to airspace 6 to 7 minutes,” Quentin at Command said. “Primary ability seems to be freezing airspace 10 kiloters out and turning it into terrain to eat through. Labeling it as Supre Cryokinesis. Could be Temperature Manipulation. Working on Category estimation— Got it! Cat 4. Big one. Not that big. No other kaiju signatures detected. Official na decided: Sky-Ice Worm.”

Mark floated above the wall of the settlent as snow billowed in from the east, where the Sky-Ice Worm Kaiju flew like a thread of light grey in the sky made of ice and snow and auroras. It twisted and word its way toward the settlent, crushing through nearly-invisible ice that it created as it moved. It was weird-looking. The thing was obviously crushing through real, physical ice, but the ice was mostly invisible, except when long cracks shocked through the sky and then icebergs of frozen air sheared off of the worm’s path, to fall to the ground like constant avalanches. Those avalanches beca clouds when they fell out of the kaiju’s astral body range. Those fallen clouds were already crashing against the settlent’s wall like a released ocean of mist and cold. That fog rolled over trees and lands and killed a great deal of monsters that didn’t move fast enough to cover. Every person out there had already evacuated, though, so there were no casualties. The fallen fog was only PL 20, too. Barely more than the normal Power Level of the land out there. Even with the degree of chill it wasn’t thatbad for most things.

And the worm burrowed forward, through clear ice of its own making, and it Called, roaring all the while. The actual sound it made was too soft to hear most of the ti, but Mark still heard a song of hate and hunger vibrating under the ice.

If there was a second kaiju out there then Mark couldn’t hear it.

Or the worm’s suspected-Cryokinesis was killing that sound, too. That was doubtful, though.

Mark comnted, “I hear no other kaiju.”

“Confirming single kaiju,” Quentin said, acknowledging. “ETA 6 minutes now.”

Sam Ranger, commander of the Kaiju Squad, said, “Recomnding Blackvein on kill, Princess and Masher on distant support. Princess on anti-cold asures. Lee on keeping the settlent clear of ice and transfer control. This is going to be a difficult one.”

“Already on settlent protection and gate transfers,” Lee Windhopper said, floating above the main spire of Castle South, That was a good place for him to be to keep the settlent safe and also organize the gate transfers. “No problems except for panic among the freshies.”

“Understood,” Mark said.

“Got it,” Isoko responded, right beside Mark. She was dressed and acting like the paladin that she had been and still was, floating in the air, platinum and focused. “But is it Cryokinesis or Temperature Manipulation? Do we have a definitive answer yet? That fog is absolutely freezing, though, if that helps figure it out.”

Mark was a bit worried, too.

Temperature Manipulation would an that since it was cold out here, there should be heat sowhere else. Inside the worm? Maybe. If that was the case, then Isoko could directly fight against that by manipulating heat cycles herself. Union wasn’t as good at temperature manipulation as the actual Power, Temperature Manipulation, but she could move a great deal of heat and cold anyway.

But if it was Cryokinesis, that was different. That ant that the magic was directly causing cold, which ant that there was no heat to rescue from the worm’s control, to protect the settlent and otherwise. That ant more difficulty when it ca to controlling the battle.

Quentin answered, “95% Cryokinesis. Temperature Manipulation is 0%. We see no flas anywhere.”

“Got it,” Isoko said, settling in for a hard fight.

“ ‘Masher’, blegh,” Sally muttered under her breath. ‘Miss Masher’ stood on Mark’s other side, wrapped in black adamantium armor and with a big black sword as large as her entire 2-ter-tall body. Sally complained, “I should have applied for a na change beforethat damned docuntary.”

“Or the months before all of that!” Isoko said, trying to be cheerful.

“Ready to take the battle outside of the settlent, Command,” Mark said, grinning a little as he stepped into the air, supported by his own casually spinning adamantium rotors and Isoko’s wind.

Once beyond the walls the cold hit him like a shock to the system, turning his normally-pale skin back to its real color of absolute black. He wasn’t really flesh and blood when it mattered anymore. He was pure adamantium.

He was still wearing webweave, though. It was highly enchanted to repair itself quite fast and with a few illusions that made him look like he was stepping out for a business eting sowhere, which was true enough. Everything he did in public these days, ever since they ca back from Endless Daihoon, was seen and judged by millions of people. Every day was another impression upon the world, so Mark needed to make good impressions, always, and he needed to do it effortlessly so that the world would feel safe moving in the directions the world needed to move.

Toward Reset.

Everyone was nervous about the Reset Quest, and right now, as civilization ca to terms with the idea that they could co together to fix the Two Worlds completely, nervousness was bad. Strength was good. So Mark needed to project true strength. He needed to be an anchor in the storm.

Mark took to the sky, focused and easy at the sa ti, saying, “Ti to save the day! And when this is over, it's the 1 year birthday party for the settlent!”

Aurora cheerfully spoke in the comms, for everyone listening, “Cake and steak for everyone for a full year done well, but after this battle. Head in the ga, people! I want you thinking about the battle, not about what we’re going to na the settlent next month.” She added, “But I’m pulling for ‘Valencia’, personally.”

“Citadel Black!” Mark said, teasing for posterity.

“That’s a terrible na,” Isoko complained.

And with that, the banter ended.

Mark Unioned with the world and with Isoko, and through Isoko with Lee, and through them, with the entire settlent. Good and Bad shocked out into the world, into the sky, into the chill coming their way, and Mark broke that chill.

Crawling fog blasted apart, revealing icicles on trees and on power stations outside of the settlent, and on bee hives and other fard monster lands. Creeks thawed and water flowed. Icicles crashed into puddles.

The wind buoyed Mark into the sky like a blot of black lightning rimd in fire.

But Mark felt a chill in his heart that had nothing to do with the cold. Mark gazed up at the sky worm, which Quark noted as now 9 kiloters away, and he asked, “Is this thing really a Cat 4?”

Category 1 through 3 kaiju varied from ‘big monsters’ to ‘big monsters with special tricks’. Cat 4 was where things started to get dangerous, and those kinds of kaiju required special counterasures of their own. True environntal control on a large scale was a dangerous thing, automatically making a kaiju at least a cat 3, and this Sky Ice Worm had a whole lot of environntal control. Any flying kaiju was automatically 1 category higher than whatever it appeared to be. Any kaiju without any obvious weak points, like any and all elental-based kaiju, were at least 1 category higher than what they appeared to be. Did this worm kaiju have a brain? Sothing to actually attack and kill properly? Probably not. Thus, it was a very, very high Category 4… though that seed wrong.

Based on how dangerous that land below was getting, with trees shattering from the cold and then freezing in the fog, unmoving but halfway destroyed, and how Mark could now see shatters of ice cracking the sky as he flew into the worm’s airspace, Mark was thinking this thing was a Cat 5. Easy.

Cat 5’s were city killers.

Quark did not answer Mark’s question.

Aurora Valen, General of the settlent, was on the line instead of anyone else. She answered Mark’s question, saying, “It’s a Cat 5, unofficially. I’m on backup this ti, too. Addavein is in reserve with Reeni, waiting for sothing to happen.”

Mark let his worries fall away as he said, “Understood.” He put his Blackvein, supervillain persona back on for the caras, saying, “I’m glad you’re letting Bro join in on the fun!”

“I wouldn’t go that far with it,” Aurora grumbled, and then she commanded, “Head in the fight, Mark.”

Mark got his head in the ga.

Quark saw through the mountains of falling ice and snow, displaying the incoming kaiju better than Mark’s normal eyes could see, as well as highlighting anything that Command thought was important. Thanks to those calculations highlighting Mark’s visuals, Mark saw that the kaiju was a lot longer and wider than he thought it was. He was guessing 2 kiloters long. It was actually 2,650 ters long, and about 30 ters wide; it kinda looked like a long, green-frilled grey/blue pencil drilling through a sky of its own making, sending cracks through the sky as it swallowed its way forward. It had millions of tiny eyes, all along its body. Mark couldn’t see them at all, but they were there, and they were now looking at Mark—

Mark hit the forward edge of the kaiju’s astral body, which was exactly in line with the invisible ice. To Mark’s Unionsense, the world simply ended about 300 ters forward, and that ending rushed toward Mark like the sky avalanches overhead, swallowing his range and his senses.

With so rough calculations of his own making, Mark guessed, “3 kiloter range, and… Uh. It’s focusing on .”

That was fast. Usually the kaiju didn’t notice Mark when there was an entire settlent and a gate behind him. Those were the normal targets, after all. They only ever noticed Mark when Mark started killing the kaiju. Last month had been super easy, with a large floppy fish that could barely move on land, and which pretty much ignored Mark altogether in favor of flopping at the walls of the settlent.

This one was going for Mark.

“Still just a Category 4,” Quentin at Command said, though Mark knew he was following orders to call it that.

The worm aid at Mark, roaring underneath its ever-moving iceberg, sending shatters of cracking ice forward, crackling the air with freezing wind that beca sothing a lot more solid, a lot sooner than Mark expected. Ice closed in, snapping around Mark’s rotor, stilling it and breaking Mark’s Adamantiumkinesis connection, and then the ice gripped closer, cracking the air around Mark like a lake suddenly freezing.

Mark turned full-black, the illusion of his Adamatine Immortal Body fully fading.

Isoko’s touch of Union faded, and the roaring crunch of a worm moving through ice vibrated through Mark’s whole being. It was the only sound out there, but it wasn’t a large sound at all. The kaiju seed capable of stilling its own vibrations, even though it was coming right for Mark. It was a train-sized burrower, crunching through the ‘clear sky’, its maw a tunnel of twisting baleen… Or maybe that was just the cracking ice. Hard to tell, really.

Mark’s Union was just about as hampered as his ability to move and see right now.

“Mark,” Isoko’s voice ca to him, though Quark, though it was muted. She was almost pissed off. She said, “Stop playing around, please. I can’t even feel your Union anymore.”

“It’s coming right at , Isoko,” Mark spoke, cracking the ice around his face as he moved his jaw and mouth. “I might as well let it.”

The world was still, but Mark was adamantium, and adamantium was a good insulator when it wanted to be. Mark was never in danger from this thing, but he had to let himself seem a little hampered so that the world could see how strong he was, which in turn would make people believe that the Reset Quest was a real option.

This thing was looking to be a cakewalk compared to Endless Daihoon, back when Mark was strung out suffering from Dragon Wake, when only he was capable of saving everyone. The others eventually got their power ups and they were able to stand on their own eventually, and support everyone else, eventually, but in the beginning it was just Mark.

In a lot of ways it was going to be just him going forward, too.

The kaiju was 300 ters away now, and Mark’s Union and senses stopped at the edge of his skin. Everything else out there was frozen more than solid; it was unmoving—

Oh.

For a mont there, Mark had been worried, but as a realization struck his worries lted.

“It’s not Cryokinesis. It’s a movent ability. He’s making himself the only one able to move,” Mark said, voicing his probably-correct hypothesis to Command.

Command said sothing in return; so sort of possible acknowledgent.

Mark was in the flow.

The sky worm was upon him.

Mark unfurled his Union with Adamant strength, piercing whatever dominion the sky worm claid to have over this space, and the world unfurled to Mark, like ice sublimating directly into atmosphere. Mark grabbed his rotor overhead with a touch of power and then he burrowed into the burrower, right into its baleen-filled maw like a black spark of lightning falling into a white void.

The kaiju had 100’s across the board; 100 Body, Kinesis, Mind, Natural, Soul, and Arch.

Mark had 99’s across the board, and he was made of adamantium.

Whatever sort of materials composed the worm, punching through it was as easy as hooking worms back when Mark was a kid, fishing with his dad off of the dock.

Mark drove up into easy flesh, ripped outward in ever-expanding spirals. Like a zipper pulling down a jacket, Mark unspooled the 30-ter-wide sky worm into dying ribbons of flesh. The only difficult thing about the encounter was the length of the kaiju. Nearly 3 kiloters of kaiju-strength flesh was a slog to follow, because Mark couldn’t see shit. Everything was blood and viscera. No bones! Just gore. Maybe so assorted hard teeth. Nothing big.

The kaiju scread the whole ti, its insides vibrating, trying to shut Mark down, to make him still.

The only thing the worm accomplished was juking to the left when Mark went right, and thus Mark was suddenly outside of the worm, and the worm, all the many pieces of it, were either freezing, as those pieces fell out of the control of the worm, or desperately struggling to bring itself back together.

Mark dove back into the fight, pushing off of the frozen sky to launch back into the frozen-ish guts of the kaiju worm.

He cut. He sliced. He spiraled and unspooled.

He broke his webweave to its enchanted core, which ant he was nude again, but big deal. When Mark was done with the killing he’d slapped the core of his clothes onto his belly button and then focus on them and regrow the clothes and the illusion, and then he’d pose for the cara.

The worm turned out to have about 340 nerve clusters that each counted as a separate brain that each controlled the direction of flow for the worm, burrowing through the sky. Mark turned each of those into blended flesh, and eventually, 5 minutes after first contact, the worm finally began to die.

“Tenacious fucker,” Mark said, under a chilly sky, as his webweave regrew, as he flew over so grounded wormflesh that was crawling over broken trees. Mark bundled together Union-thin lines of adamantium, like monowire, through the kaiju’s flesh, spinning those wires and killing everything he touched. Gore splashed in every direction as Mark moved from pile-of-crawling-flesh to pile-of-crawling-flesh. The land around those piles was frozen until Mark killed those nerve clusters, and then the land suddenly thawed. It was all still cold as fuck, but the kaiju —all of the separate living pieces of it— was dying. Mark looked out across the myriad ‘pools’ of frozen air across the landscape and asked, “How many of these are left?”

This story originates from . Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“17 more nodes detected,” Quark said. “The majority are to the northeast, in that direction. Isoko is culling them now.”

Mark turned, dragging his monowire blender through two nearby nodes of worm flesh, splashing the life away from them, as he looked toward the north. The kaiju he killed gave up the ghost rapidly, the air unfreezing around them.

Isoko was having a harder ti.

“This thing is tougher than it looks!” Isoko said, flying high above the remnants of worm kaiju, like a kaiju-sized jellyfish made of platinum wind hovering above so ice-locked blue-grey flesh. She hamred down with rushing, platinum wind, chipping the not-ice away, the remnant wormflesh undulating with a near-silent Call. Her attack didn’t crack the shell of ‘Motion Control’, or whatever it was the kaiju had. Her power bounced away, and Isoko called out, “The fuck?!”

Sally, standing at about 400 ters tall and off to the east, laughed. Her mirth echoed, and then she called out, “Try hitting it harder, Isoko!” Sally lifted her giant black blade like the rise of a hovercarrier. She faced off against a particularly large node-cluster of kaiju flesh, calling out, “Like this!”

And then Sally brought her sword down like a diamond-edged teor, her Retribution covering the blade and empowering it in a way only she could. The blade struck the hardened air around the target, hitting the kaiju’s remnant astral body like a cot.

Retribution cracked the astral body like so much ice, and then Retribution arced from kaiju-puddle to kaiju-puddle, clear in action and devastating in effect. Mark was pretty sure Sally was Size Manipulating the effect, too, making her strike larger than it should be, because that crystal lightning crashed across the entire northeastern quadrant of land outside of the settlent, drilling into and killing every single kaiju-piece left on the field.

Suddenly, the kaiju died, the pieces under Mark giving up, the astral body dissipating into elsewhere.

Sally laughed again, calling out, “Like that, Isoko!”

Isoko called back through the comms because her voice wasn’t big enough to reach everyone, “That only worked because I’mempowering you!”

“Thanks for the support,” Sally said, her smirk highly evident underneath her adamantium helt.

Quentin interrupted with a cheerful tone, saying, “mphi reports that Frozenfire and Archmage Blackthorn are done with their kaiju event, and so, with that, and with a clear signal on all of our drone sensors and the city sensors, and for 100 kiloters in every direction, we’re 80% confident that the kaiju part of Gate Day for January 15th, 2050, is over.”

… 80 percent?

“80 percent?” Mark asked, trying not to sound too worried.

Mark turned in the sky, to face the settlent. The black gate contained a flow of hoverships of all sizes, from cruisers to personal craft, moving through the gate in an organized manner. About 20% of the various staging grounds south of the gate were empty, and the rest of the hovercrafts in the other 80% were either in the air and waiting for their signals, or currently headed toward Earth. The sa was true for the landing zones north of the gate, with ships flying through in an organized chaos and slotting themselves down onto pre-planned areas.

Half a year ago Mark had been anxious on Gate Days. The flow of people and the thousands of moving parts were complicated, compared to his own duty of helping others kill kaiju. Mark had never actually killed a kaiju on his own until all of that goblin horror that had happened, people had tried to kill him, he had killed Goblinho in response, and then he went off to Endless Daihoon with everyone to fix his broken Body. One thing led to another, and then suddenly Mark was adopted by that goblin (and forr elf!) Grax, and then Mark went and t more elves, and now he had a house in his soul that he was still figuring out.

It had been a complicated series of events, and Mark looked back on all of it with a whole lot of disbelief.

And now, about 45-ish days later, none of it seed real.

But when Mark closed his eyes hard enough, he opened his eyes to his soul house, which kinda threw a whole bunch of established ways to work magic out of the window. Mark wasn’t too happy about that. Not many people were. That was because most of the literature he could read to learn about magic was now suddenly outdated. Oh, sure, it was useful, but Mark was still trying to understand how Sigildry was useful anymore when, instead of putting sigils into his soul or crafting Protect magics the old way, he could just… throw so hexagons into the air around his house and do the sa thing as casting a Protect spell…

Sort of.

He was still learning how it all worked.

He didn’t have much ti to learn, though, because of the Reset Quest, and how everyone wanted him to talk about it. As Quentin ntioned Archmage Steve Blackthorn, Mark winced a little, because he still had to talk to that guy.

“80% done is normal, right?” Isoko asked.

“We think we’re clear,” Aurora said.

The fact that Aurora answered instead of Quentin ant that the subject was dropped. She was probably coordinating with others right now, doing stuff outside of Mark’s responsibility.

Which was fine, he supposed.

Mark asked on the comms, “Since Archmage Blackthorn is out and about… Does Archmage Blackthorn want to talk now?”

Quentin said, “I’ll ask.”

Isoko had picked up Sally, who shrunk down to normal-sized and used her Size Manipulation to erase her weight, relative to her size, so that Isoko could fly them both over toward Mark. Mark held out a bar of adamantium, though, so that Sally could hold onto it instead of being buoyed by the winds.

Isoko asked, “You still didn’t talk to him?”

“He was all for a big talk right after we ca back,” Mark said, “But then I started talking to everyone else and he said ‘nevermind’, and then he went into hiding, or sothing. Didn’t return any calls. Last I heard —from Mayor Ramirez— was that he was in seclusion, but now he’s out? So maybe he wants to talk now?”

Sally grabbed the bar Mark offered, weighing about as much as the air around her. She said, “It’s because you denied Okuana’s threat that they were capable of killing demons, so there was no reason for Planty to end her vacation, right?” Her voice was hopeful and a bit angry as she repeated, “Right?”

“I an… That was my guess last month. No need to talk to about how the demon wars might start up due to an existential threat, if there is no existential threat out there,” Mark shrugged. “I’m not sure if that holds, though, so… maybe he wants to talk today?”

“I’d prefer if he didn’t,” Sally said, as she looked around for existential threats of their own.

Mark looked around, too. No threats.

Isoko humd, glancing at the world with them. Her vector was everywhere in the sky, but it was also mostly here, and she was calming fast. Sally was, too. Both of them put on a strong facade for Gate Day, but these monsters were still kaiju, and neither of them would ever be comfortable fighting giant monsters. They were getting better, but Mark didn’t bla them for their fear.

This was their second Gate Day working together. Last month had been easy; just a fish that flopped. This month, at the start of the new year and marking a year since the settlent had been settled, was a bigger kill.

Mark shimred with Glory and Fear, pushing away the worries, saying, “I’m glad it wasn’t actually Cryokinesis. It just looked like it.”

Isoko shivered a little, but then a darkness left her and she easily said, “I think it might have been Cryokinesis, but you’re just that resilient.”

“Nah,” Sally said, “Cryokinesis on that level would have been a Cat 5, automatic. They wouldn’t have done any political shit to call it a Cat 4 instead of the Cat 5 that it could have been. The sky worm was just a trick of a movent ability. Maybe sothing like Movent Sapper?”

Mark said, “It had to be Movent Manipulation.”

Sally huffed a tiny laugh. “Manipulation, huh?”

“That strong?” Isoko asked.

“Felt like it,” Mark said, “That’s why you couldn’t break through their frozen space. They were denying you movent. I Unioned with Adamant and Ethereal and was able to get inside of it, where movent was still allowed, and then I started carving.”

The girls relaxed a little, letting that after-battle synopsis sink in.

And then Isoko dragged the sky toward the settlent, bringing Mark and Sally with her as she said, “Reposition at the wall, yeah?”

“Yes,” Mark said, flying along with Isoko’s casual turn of the heavens—

Mark’s heart beat hard.

Sothing was coming.

Mark stilled even as his heart raced.

Eyes flickering left and right. Quark suddenly panicking, looking outward with Mark, lights flickering on in Mark’s vision as his sudden wariness alerted everyone at Command. Isoko picked up Mark’s sudden shift just a mont later, as Quentin started saying sothing in Mark’s ears, asking what was happening? Isoko asked questions, too. Sally was about to ask sothing, too.

“Get bigger, Sally,” Mark said, turning around in the air, focusing on— Up. It was up. Mark looked up. He focused, lifting an arm and pointing, saying, “There.”

Mark pointed at the sowhat-open blue sky, at a twist in the auroras far overhead, to the north.

It was a yellow aurora, crossing northwest to southeast, like a crazy brushstroke made by a god, saturated at the bottom and diffuse at the top. A river of gold in the sky.

The river flickered in the middle, opening just a little, showing itself for what it was.

It was a gap into Endless Daihoon.

It was an eye.

A golden eye rimd in fire and auroras gazed at them.

At Mark.

“OH FUCK,” Isoko said. “Is that—”

“It is?” Sally muttered, already growing massive.

Maybe being friendly was a way to get through whatever this was in a positive way?

Mark Called out, “Hello, Nobody Important!”

The Category 7 or 8 Old God of the Softer Lands, the source of Andria’s powerup to True Prosperity, and capable of talking, was here.

Why the fuck was he here?

The world vibrated as the Old God Called out in words that were not words.

He spoke through pure intent.

THIS SYSTEM RESET STUFF IS NONSENSE AND YOU SHOULD STOP PUSHING FOR IT. THE TWO WORLDS ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO SURVIVE EVEN A MONT OF THE SYSTEM BEING DOWN.

… Nobody Important was trying to stop the Reset? What the fuck? Why the fuck would he...

The sun kaiju’s words were laced with so much more aning than the simple language transmitted. Mark felt he got about 20% of it all. Enough, really. After getting over his initial shock of the actual contents of the words, which were similar to the words Mark had heard many, many tis since getting back from Endless Daihoon, from many people who were against the Reset Quest, Mark focused.

The size and history of the detractor in front of Mark was larger than most, but the argunt against them all was the sa. Mark didn’t expect Nobody Important to sit through the entire argunt, though, so a condensed version was necessary.

Mark Called back, “We’re weak now, but we’re getting stronger! We got plans in plans, and so many ideas of how to combat the coming Reset and the resulting deluge of horrors from beyond the stars. But that’s not for decades from now. A long ti! First we’re re-settling all of the Two Worlds. We’re resurrecting the Great Empires! Please be a part of that with us.”

There was a great huffing.

A dismissive roll of the massive flaming eye in the sky.

YOU ARE PROPPED UP BY IDEALS OF A UTOPIAN SOCIETY. YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF THE TRUE HORRORS BEYOND THE STARS. SO NO. I WILL NOT JOIN YOU. I WILL NOT HINDER YOU, EITHER, UNTIL YOU ATTEMPT TO ACTUALLY RESET THE SYSTEM.

BUT A DEMONSTRATION IS NECESSARY.

IF YOU SHOULD ATTEMPT SUCH A DISASTER, THEN I WILL DO MUCH WORSE THAN THIS SIMPLE TEST OF YOUR MIGHT, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

Golden auroras flickered in all 8 directions of the settlent, lighting the sky with brilliant gold flas. Those flas roiled into themselves, condensing down, like sandcastles building themselves, building people. 400-ter-tall people. Or rather, people-shaped kaiju.

The golden flas flaked away leaving behind glass-like flesh that was still half-molten as each and every monk-like statue lifted a foot in unison to take a step toward the settlent, as one.

Mark told Sally and Isoko, “Rush them.”

Sally expanded rapidly, taking a massive leap forward, her feet slamming into the ground as her head went upward, her body enlarging, sword flashing outward, vector focused. Isoko joined her with a platinum glow in the sky, wrapping Sally and empowering her speed.

Mark was furious, but that emotion seed useless right now, so he took a mont to turn back toward Nobody Important and Call, “Cease your attack and this ends here. Continue and you’re an enemy.”

LAUGHABLE! HA! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT AN ‘ATTACK’ OR AN ‘ENEMY’ TRULY IS, AND I HOPE THAT YOU AND THESE SMALL WORLDS NEVER DISCOVER WHAT WAS BANISHED, LONG AGO.

I CA TO THIS LAND TO ESCAPE THAT HORROR!

SO DID ALL THE ELVES!

SO CALL AN ENEMY IF YOU MUST. I HAVE BEEN CALLED WORSE.

Mark was already moving when Nobody Important laughed at him; it wasn’t like he needed to hear the rest of the sun god’s ramblings. But then, halfway to the closest glass titan, as Command was already labeling them, Nobody Important finished rambling, and Mark was almost upon the first titan. But he stopped. Sally had gotten to her target first, and Mark’s stomach fell as he saw what he saw.

Sally had grown to a kiloter tall. She swung her sword toward the first liquid-glass titan, and it was like splashing a blade through water. The titan parted. The titan ca back together. The titans were all elentals. Or maybe slis. The people in Mark’s ears were discussing what they were rather fervently. Consensus was not reached.

That titan, and all 7 of its brothers, finished taking their first steps toward the settlent, and as one, they turned, each raising an arm toward the settlent like they were monks doing morning drills, and power began to gather in their forward palms.

Mark got a bad feeling. Everyone did.

Mark turned and Called out to Nobody Important, “Pluta won’t like this!”

The sky rumbled with a laugh that sounded like a hurricane in the night; a force of nature.

YOUR GODDESS OF PROSPERITY BARELY A CENTURY OLD! SHE IS MUCH TOO YOUNG FOR . ALL OF YOU ARE TOO YOUNG.

“So you’re opting to kill kids who don’t know any better?!”

There was a beat.

… MAYBE EIGHT SUMMONS IS TOO MUCH. FINE! YOU WIN THIS ROUND, LITTLE ELF-HUMAN-INHERITOR, BLACK AS DARK AND STANDING TALLER THAN YOU HAVE ANY RIGHT TO STAND.

EVEN THOUGH I WILL PULL MY DEMONSTRATION TODAY, YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THE SKY WOULD FILL WITH THINGS MUCH, MUCH WORSE THAN , IF YOU SHOULD PURSUE THIS RIDICULOUS ‘RESET QUEST’. THOSE OTHERS THINGSCANNOT BE TALKED DOWN.

The aurora in the sky closed.

A mutter echoed in the air, crackling on the edge of Mark’s hearing, saying sothing almost like, ‘I’m too old for this shit. I was about to kill kids! Ridiculous, old man.’

All eight molten titans suddenly pointed their outstretched arms to the sky, and though Sally hurriedly turned her blade sideways and tried to bash the arm of her target to the ground, to stop whatever was coming, her blade just splashed through the molten glass titan and the titans all finished powering up. For a mont, as a distant hum turned present, right before the coming blast, Mark glanced at the settlent, at the strong golden wall surrounding the place. The Castellan shield was operating at full strength. A shimr of prismatic light at the south half of the settlent, covering tens of square kiloters, was Aurora taking to the sky to the south, strengthening the shield in that direction. The frantic flow of traffic from the gate bunched up at the gate. So hovercrafts crashed into each other, breaking from their programming, wrenched backward in an attempt to go back through the gate, back to Earth. Others plowed forward, ignoring their appointed lot on the ground to try and get back into the sky, to flee. The people leaving for Earth went faster, so colliding with the gate itself, but though there was an explosion at the gate’s black fra the gate held strong. Isoko and Lee grabbed the sky and pulled on it, trying to make the shield over the settlent even stronger.

The humming reached a fevered pitch and then…

Ignition.

Great orbs of golden fire gathered at upraised palms as the titans drained from the outside in, from feet to upheld palm, like orange juice flowing out from a hole at the top of a glass cup. The orbs burst into lines of brilliant gold flas and fire filled the world, lancing the heavens, burning everyone and everything up above.

The fire expanded outward, and the land lted.

Sally burned in her adamantine armor, but she also ignited with crystalline Retribution lightning, striking the titan in front of her over and over and over again. She was a secondary brightness to the overpowering heat of the eight molten glass titans, her lightning cascading across the nearest four titans. That lightning did nothing. Isoko helped to channel that lightning across the sky, to the other titans, and that still did nothing.

Mark rushed to Sally; Isoko had retreated to the settlent and she was fine. Sally burned. Mark healed her as she scread in flas and shrunk in terror.

Eventually the titans emptied themselves.

When they were done, they were like cooled glass monks, each 400 ters tall.

They remained standing, like 8 jailers dressed up like ascetics.

Sally was a burned wreck. The land was half molten with blackened puddles everywhere. The settlent was fine, though four great cracks adorned the golden shield and parts of the coliseum district and the farms were on fire. Soon, Sally was fine, too, because Mark healed her and helped her back to the city, along with Isoko, who had retreated to behind the walls as soon as she saw what was coming. The city was fine, too.

Everyone was already working frantically to make the rest of the Gate Day happen as best they could, which was what they did all the ti, but this ti there were teams putting out fires and healers rescuing people from crashed hovercrafts. This Gate Day was technically one of the easier ones… until Nobody Important had showed up.

In the way of all horrors, for Mark and for many, the horror was not over, so there was no true relaxing.