Adamant Blood

Mark stepped out of the wreckage of the citywalker, brushing blood out of his eyes. A few breaths of purity and that went away. Behind him, a platinum hand shot out of the plastics, and then a moment later the plastics began to melt and recombine, as Eliot groaned.

They had killed two wyverns, 2000 goblins, and a thousand other smaller monsters since they started hopping all around Rome. The smart goblins ran from the citywalker, though. They’d all come flooding in tonight, for sure. Maybe they could have caught up to the smart goblins, but the walker had the most fucking awful steering that Mark had ever fucking experienced in his whole fucking…

Mark took a deep breath and tried not to be mad.

Isoko said, “Welp! The third wyvern had been too much, I see!”

Eliot happily said, “It breathed fire! But I can do better on the parachutes next time!”

The third wyvern had eventually gotten them; yes.

Mark had eventually killed it, though, while Isoko did a whole lot of dodging and Eliot shot some ineffectual sticky glue at it. The sticky glue had blinded it, at least! So it hadn’t done exactly nothing.

And now the wyvern rotted on the ground over there. Blood drooled from every orifice; not spurting anymore. It had taken a full 3 minutes to kill the fucker.

They were lucky to be alive.

David stepped near them, saying, “You’re lucky to be alive.”

Mark burst out laughing.

Eliot said, “I had faith in Mark! We were fine!”

Isoko said, “The steering could use some more work, Eliot. I was thinking bigger parachutes. Maybe some actual wings on the spidercrawler, too.”

“I’ve been thinking about the wings again,” Eliot said, “They didn’t work so well—”

As the sun started to set in the distance, Mark said, “Can we please try the hot air balloon now? Please?” Mark had already suggested it once, when they first got into the half-flying death trap, but they had shot him down. He had thought of a better argument in the last half an hour, and maybe it would work, this time. “You could even paint the sides with advertisements for your channels.”

Eliot went from dislike to deeply interested in a flash. “OHHHH!”

Isoko rolled her eyes. “I’m still piloting. That shit is fun. I think I want to get a proper pilot’s license. Can you make the balloon fast, though?”

“There are many things I can try,” Eliot said, thinking.

Mark smiled as he said, “And here we are, learning things about ourselves and the world. It’s just so grand.”

Soon, as the sun started to set, and as Mark killed the constant waves of monsters that came their way, before they even saw the monsters, Eliot smashed a plastic bottle full of bubbly oil on the brow of ‘Citywalker Mark 5’, and the whole thing lifted off with them inside. With a balloon that over matched the size of the carriage by 20 times over, and looking like a proper dirigible, Citywalker 5 floated in the air like an unmaintained hovercar.

It rocked. It swung. It had problems.

It was loads better than before.

The outside was even layered with holograms, shining brightly upon the world, taunting all the goblins who could see it, which was a lot. There were even words spoken through loudspeakers. It was a display of cartoon humans shaking hands with cartoon goblins, and, at David’s suggestion, Eliot had the cartoon goblins voluntarily remove their fangs after the handshake. It was a particular insult among most goblins to call themselves fangless, apparently.

This had the desired effect among the goblins.

The city positively boiled with them, all of them racing their way, some through the sky on wyvern-like wings, most across the ground.

Eliot added ‘successful’ goblin attacks to the illusionary display, having the fliers ‘get into’ the dirigible and disrupt the display, and having the dirigible ‘drop down’ to ‘crash’ into a tower so the goblins on the ground could ‘get in’. But, in truth, Mark dropped them all before they got close and Citywalker 5 never crashed at all. Eliot shot acids at them, and some fast-growing mushrooms began to pile up on the corpses very quickly, which was enough to hide the truth of the assault from most eyes.

Isoko pressed a big blue button that was labeled, ‘I’m doing my part!’. Little lights flickered every time she did that, and a ticker ticked up. Every hundred button presses was a dinging bell, and she was nearing 20,000 presses. She smiled.

Half an hour of killing later and there were only a hundred goblins left.

They looked to be holding back, though. Reevaluating.

Mark said, “ ‘Repair’ the ship and have us ‘crash’ into that big empty space over there, by the toxic slimes in the Vatican. They’ll think we’re running. I think they’ll take the bait if Isoko drops out and runs away from the ship, too. You and I can stay in here and pretend to be dead. Isoko… you can kill all of them, right? I’ll keep you alive, of course.”

Eliot asked, “Can you deal with the toxic miasma in the air?”

“Oh yeah,” Mark said, 75% confident.

They had already ventured close to the Vatican space, where toxic slimes ruled the world. The ones at the edge were tier 3 Shaper-Power slimes. Mostly acid-like toxins, according to Eliot, so Union could clear them up easily enough. Venturing into that space would be a last resort to get away from the goblins, though, so the goblins should believe that they would crash into that space to get away.

Isoko smiled brightly. “Let’s do it!”

Ten minutes later, pretending to limp through the sky and with goblins trailing in the distance, hanging back in the night, the ship crashed into the big empty circle in what used to be some sort of parade ground in the Vatican area. It wasn’t far into the space at all, and the slimes here were pretty sparse.

The area was a white road-like space surrounded by a ring of stone buildings that were all half ruined. There were four toxic slimes nearby. Most of the slimes were in the surrounding buildings. That made this space one of the few that could be considered ‘safe’ in the area.

The slimes rested in the bottom of small craters here and there, and all throughout the buildings, like rounded pools of glowing yellow gelatin the size of cakes. They tainted the night air with deadly yellow fumes. There was no green life. The slimes were pretty much immobile, too, resting only where they were, and barely moving at all. They didn’t need to move.

They filter fed on ambient mana. They didn’t even eat organics, or multiply all that fast.

Mark kinda wondered why they were everywhere around here, if they were so bad at multiplying and eating. The only thing they were good at was killing anything that came near them, which, Mark supposed, was good enough.

Mark felt the toxic miasma in the air even before he connected to it with Union. He winced.

David winced, too. “That’s a strong toxin.”

Eliot read out a few different things, “Ouch. They’re tier 5 up in here, but they’re Kinetic-based, so it shouldn’t be that hard for you.” He looked at Mark and pointed at the readout, saying, “You need to kill this one and this one. Isoko can fight there if those ones are dead. Keep this one nearest to us alive, though. It might make the goblins not approach us.”

Mark said, “Sounds good to me.”

Mark focused.

According to Lola, subduing a miasma-based creature that poisoned the air and made Union truly difficult to use, was rather easy, once you knew the trick. Actually killing a miasma-based creature was a lot more difficult, but these particular slimes were Kinetic slimes, which made them not-so-strong against Union, which was a Natural Power.

Mark focused his Union upward, into the air above, away from the toxins on the ground. He breathed in purity from the world and breathed out impurity into the world, into the air above the miasma, cleansing himself and his immediate area and sending impurity toward the slimes.

The slimes wiggled. They did not like that impurity.

The usual next stage was to attack the slimes directly, but they didn’t have heartbeats or anything, really. They just sat there, gelling. They didn’t even have any active thoughts, so Mark couldn’t use his new Union of Brain on them. So Mark had to find a different avenue of attack.

Mark sat perfectly still, mimicking the ways the slimes sat there, filter feeding on the world.

It was pretty easy to mimic that idea, actually, now that Mark was using Union to do something very similar to them, and that’s how he envisioned his heartbeat. That, right there, was more than enough to actually connect to the slimes.

Black veins extended outward and power flowed back to Mark, and he almost coughed, so he sped up his breathing of purity and impurity, keeping his area clean, driving away the miasma of the slimes.

Mark drew on the resilience of the slimes and gave them weakness in turn. This was enough to connect to them in truth, and eventually, after a minute, the two slimes that Eliot had designated started to dim and die. With a concentrated-enough weakness, and the removal of all of their resilience, the slimes’ bodies could not sustain themselves, so they simply popped, releasing clouds of miasma into the air that expanded like yellow mist.

Mark finished off the expanding problems with some more purity breathing, and soon—

Eliot said, “Confirmed battlefield clear. Isoko, you’re clear to go through the airlock and pretend to be wounded. The goblins are picking their way here. They’re only 5 minutes out. I’ll turn on the spotlights—”

“No spotlights,” Mark said, “She has to sell the death of both of us.”

Isoko grinned, then said, “Yes; that.”

“… Mood lighting with the remains of the holograms, then.”

- - - -

The corrupter goblin howled with jubilation as the silver one burst out of the wreckage of their vehicle, as fires started in the wreckage and light illuminated the night. They had crashed into a land of killer slimes, but they had picked the worst spot for them to crash; an open area, away from the majority of the slimes. That decision would lead to their deaths.

The lead scout goblins were already attacking the silver one.

The blackvein thing had died, otherwise the closer goblins would have died already, and the ship wasn’t coming together again, so the tinkerer had died. It was a great loss for their people not to transform those two, but they were too hard to take together. They would be content with just getting the platinum one. Maybe the other one, too; he never seemed to do anything except for that one time. He was obviously training the young ones, but he was not going to save them from their own deaths, not really.

The corrupter goblin looked upon the silver one, and he wanted her. To bite into those legs and stomach, and watch a new generation spill outward.

She killed and she killed, but she was slowing down—

A nudge goblin raced forward, saying, “MINE!”

A hive goblin rushed forward. “MINE!”

What! No! She was his! Not theirs!

Corrupter goblin yelled as he ran for the kill, “Blackvein should have killed you all, you stupid stupids! Silver is mine!”

Young goblins died to the yellow haze in the air, falling into slimes, but the older goblins were past the yellow clouds and already aiming for the bite of creation.

Corrupter was in the middle of the pack now, racing forward. He kicked a stupid youngling out of the way, launching them into a pool of yellow death. It screamed. Corrupter would make more from the silver one’s corpse. A lot more. A lot better ones, too.

Soon, they would overwhelm the silver one, and corrupter would come in for a bite. He was 20 steps away, and the silver one faltered, almost getting bit by the nudge goblin, but she slapped his face away with her sword, almost casually. The nudger bled, hissed, and went in again—

Corrupter’s heart beat hard.

Black expanded in the air, like cracks of death, drawing them all inward.

Ah, he thought, as black veins extended out of the crashed ship, and as the lights of the crashed ship flickered and changed. They were not dead at all.

The corrupter goblin fell to the ground and watched as the fancy lights of the downed ship showed all red, and then brilliant white, with letters, and the downed ship showed itself as not downed at all. Merely hidden behind illusions. Those illusions became letters. Became a celebration.

The corrupter goblin almost felt bad for what he was reading. He had learned to read the language for this? For this much of an ending?

A silver blade flashed, and the last thing the corrupter goblin saw were the words ‘Mission Complete!!!’ in bright, shining, human scribbles.

- - - -

Mark looked down at the holomap which was stretched out for kilometers upon kilometers. Nary a blue dot in sight. He still asked, “That’s really all of them, then?”

Isoko smiled as she marched back onto the ship, blood and guts falling away from her platinum body as dust, as she said, “Can’t you read? It says Mission Complete out there!”

Eliot grinned as he rolled his eyes, smiling for the camera, saying, “Mark Careed can’t read!”

Mark laughed as he pushed Eliot away, saying, “Ha ha ha.”

“Say something for the camera, Mark!” Eliot said.

Mark smiled and roared, “DEATH TO ALL MONSTERS!”

“DEATH TO ALL MONSTERS!” Isoko shouted.

“DEATH TO ALL MONSTERS!” Eliot proclaimed.

It was a nice moment.

And then Eliot smiled as he said to Mark, “So you heard the goblins calling you ‘Blackvein’, right?”

Mark had an instinctual reaction to say, “NO.”

Eliot laughed.

Isoko chuckled.

David grinned.

Soon, they were back in their seats, with David standing with them, and the ship lifted off into the night sky. Mark smiled as he saw the world descend, as the ruined rooftops of Rome came into view.

Isoko laughed as she spun the wheel, sending the ship twisting.

“Isoko!” Mark snapped—

Right as Eliot said, “Isoko!”

“It’s fun!” Isoko said, grinning, as she leveled out the ship.

Mark closed his eyes and breathed, and then he smiled.

Isoko said, “Let’s go kill another wyvern and do another crash landing! I’m sure I can land better this time.”

Mark burst out laughing—

Eliot said, “FUCK no. I’m already calling Citadel for transport.”

Mark laughed even more as Isoko spoke about having a bit more fun driving, and then she took control and gunned it. Mark held on to a chair, chuckling now.

David smiled and said, “I had complete faith and we’re going back now, but we can certainly meet the hovervan closer to Citadel. If you want to kill some wyverns, you should, but with caveats.”

“Yes!” Isoko said.

Eliot piloted a drone camera as he moved up to speak to Isoko, asking her questions about the whole experience, framing it as an ‘exit interview’ or something like that. Eliot told Mark that he was next, and Mark accepted that, he supposed.

But for now, Mark sat down in his chair, and watched the night sky and the dark city of Rome flow by—

“Wyvern!” Isoko shouted.

Spotlights whipped to illuminate the beast, off the right side, coming in from the river.

Mark launched out of his seat and looked out the window where Isoko was pointing. It was a pretty small wyvern, but it was still a fucking wyvern. Mark switched all of his Union, from breathing, to blood, to brain, to taking in vein integrity and giving back vein decay.

Black miasmic death slipped through the world, bouncing between threads of reality and crashing into the approaching wyvern. It was a good 300 meters away, but Isoko’s early warning was enough for Mark to latch on to it—

His threads doubled in thickness when he hit the target.

The wyvern flew on, approaching like nothing was wrong at all. It was a strong one…

But then it faltered. A hundred meters away it roared. At 50 it simply dropped. It lay on the ground below them, dying. It would not die for a while, but it was on its way. The ship flew on, but Mark connected to the wyvern for a good while. Half a minute.

They left the wyvern behind before it died.

Mark frowned as he blinked, adjusting himself back to normal operations. He said, “It’s not dead.”

Isoko happily circled back, the cabin under the dirigible swinging outward as the whole ship turned fast. “We can’t have that now.”

Mark glared at Isoko for a moment, while the ship settled back to hanging under the balloons, and Isoko just grinned at him.

Mark killed the wyvern after another minute of concentration. “Dead.”

Isoko nodded. “Good kill.”

In a much more relaxed manner, Isoko turned the ship back north and continued on.

Mark chuckled as he sat back in his sea—

There was a presence.

A vector pointed at Mark.

At Mark, specifically.

His heart beat hard.

Sweat broke out across his body.

A primal sort of fear took hold as though he was being stared at from every corner of existence. As though he was being unmade by some sort of unseen sight. There, in the cabin of Citywalker 5, Mark was the only one not relaxed.

Isoko happily drove, testing the waters with questions about extending the training mission. She wanted to fly over the Tiberranean and kill more wyverns.

David, unaware of what Mark was feeling, said something about how they needed to leave certain monsters alone, because if they killed every large monster in an area then what came next might become a plague. Stable ecosystems were better than unstable systems.

Eliot said something about how, “Speaking of that! I did some poking at the internet, asking about the weird toxic slimes at the Vatican. Mark said how they were so immobile and practically sterile with their reproduction, ya know? And that is very true! They’re specifically bred to be that way. They’re ‘Vatican Slimes’. They were bred and placed there to keep the site mostly untouched! The slimes do a very good job of that, while leaving the location itself mostly undisturbed. The poison slimes to the north of the Vatican are a subspecies of the toxic Vatican slimes that… Uh.” He looked at Mark. “Uh. You look… really pale, dude. You… Okay? No. No, you’re not okay at all, are you.”

Everyone looked at Mark.

Mark still felt the presence.

It was out there, watching them.

Mark said, “Something is out there. It’s watching us. It’s… It’s close. Holy fuck it’s clo—”

Words failed Mark.

In the dark of deep twilight, all of the lights of the entire ship flashed to full, to illuminate the world out there, to find whatever was hiding in the night.

It appeared, but only because it wanted to.

The world ahead of the ship turned into silver scales like layered breastplates. Black spikes along a spine, each the size of a car, drank in all light, resembling voids in the dark. Wings the size of streets. A face that was as large as the cabin of the flying ship.

The thing eyed the cabin of the dirigible.

It eyed Mark.

All other concerns fell away as Mark recognized the dragon who was Addashield, and yet not.

The dragon cheerfully said, “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to appear, but you sensed me anyway. Perhaps we are talzarki, Mark Careed. Wonderful news.”

The dragon unmade the flying ship and suddenly Mark was standing alone in the sky on a bit of wreckage, while everyone else was rapidly descending to the left, down to the ground.

The dragon seemed to smile.

Mark hit it with black veins.

The dragon raised a very large silver arch of scales over its eyes, and then he chuckled a few times, vibrating the world, and Mark’s power simply didn’t touch the dragon anymore. He grinned, showing off car-sized fangs a little.

“Good first try but I’m a bit beyond you, my happenstance brother,” the dragon cheerfully said, “Let’s talk!”