Adamant Blood

Mark’s mind wandered while he raced down the riverbank, flying on four ‘feet’ made of adamantium caltrops. Black veins beat from his astral body, filling the air, drifting into the weave of the world and drawing resilience from the surroundings, while giving weakness in turn. He ate up the miles and he gripped a man’s silver sword in his hand.

He wasn’t sure what he was doing with the sword, but he was holding onto it.

Ten miles away from that encounter, Mark raced across an innocuous-looking bit of sandy riverside and the land tried to snap shut on top of him, with fangs and whipping tendrils and an opening maw right underneath Mark’s feet. He reacted before he realized he was in danger, leaping up, the fangs of the monster snapping shut beneath his legs.

Sudden rage came upon Mark, like the burning of a house.

Mark brutalized that monster, using his new silver sword and his scalpel of adamantium to rip it to shreds, right there on the shore of the Ohio River.

When he was done, when he was breathing hard after the killing, Mark recognized the appearance of the trap, and the monster. It was a frog-type, or maybe more crocodile-shape that had opened its maw a full 180 degrees and then it had buried itself in the grassy mud, waiting for something to fly into its mouth. It wasn’t even aware it had attacked Mark before it had attacked him, and thus Union didn’t warn him at all. The alligator-thing had activated on a trigger reflex, like a fly trap… or like an alligator. It was an automatic devour-reflex.

Now that Mark was aware of the monster, and he wasn’t lost in his own world, he saw more open-maws waiting here and there on the banks of the river, in the sandy, muddy spots. Mark was more careful as he flew now, because these ‘hidden’ monsters were kinda everywhere. His thinking didn’t go as deep as it had been going, before the trap. He was more present.

Mark killed a few more trap monsters before they had time to react to him, each of them ‘waking up’ with a snap of their jaws, even if Mark wasn’t in the area of attack, even if he killed them from the side. They were remarkably easy to kill from the outside, but tougher on the inside. Specialized ambushers? Yeah.

… And there were a lot of them. Very easy to see, too… Hmm.

Mark stopped killing them. They were probably a monster that Memphi would want to keep around, just to make it easier to control all the other randomness that came with unknown monsters. Trap monsters that were easy to see for humans might be remarkably hard for other monsters to see.

Mark flew on.

Maybe 15 miles from the encounter with the people who had tried to murder and rob him, Mark found a quiet spot, free of monsters, and he sat down and had a moment.

The sword was a good sword; plain, but very well made. It was a meter-long thing with a solid crossbar and a solid handle. The whole thing was one whole piece of metal, without any adornment or anything fancy at all. It was a working tool.

It might have even been mithril.

Mithril was PL 65, which was weaker than adamantium by a ‘considerable’ amount, while adamantium was PL 79. The sword could just be a silvered sword, too, made with alchemical silver, which was something like PL 50. Different alchemies made different qualities of silvered swords.

Those people had probably stolen this sword from someone they killed.

Mark made an easy decision. He was going to tell the authorities and leave it in their hands. Probably give them the sword, too. It had to be someone’s family heirloom, or something like that—

“Oh shit. I cut off that guy’s sword arm.”

… He didn’t know how he felt about that.

Mark watched the river flow for a little while. It was a big, wide, and brown-blue stretch of water, filled with life, while the lands around Mark were filled with different sorts of life. There were monsters all around Mark, visible due to the strength of their vectors pointed this way and that in the world all around him, but none of them were pointed in his direction, so he was safe-ish. There were ambush predators that reacted without thinking, though. Mark had forgotten about that part of his Tutorial training.

Dealing with people who wanted to harm him had never been part of his Tutorial training.

Mark breathed in the good and breathed out the bad, and soon he felt less disturbed. He got back up on his caltrop ‘feet’ and kept going.

15 minutes of hard-flying later, and Mark wondered if he had missed the Mississippi River.

It was fine, though. The Ohio River and the Mississippi Rivers flowed together. He’d find Memphi soon enough—

There was a big tower on the horizon. It looked like a tree stump from this distance, but that was just to disguise it. Mark could tell it was a guard tower of Memphi, because they had spotted him. Their vectors pointed his way. They didn’t feel murderous at all. They just felt present. Waiting. It was so much different from the monsters, and from the people back there. It was a breath of fresh air.

Mark felt buoyed as he rushed forward.

Soon, he breached some sort of unseen perimeter and the guards in the tower watched him intently. Their base really did look like a massive tree stump, but done in grey concrete and the size of a 10 story building. The top even had craggy ‘broken wood’ edges that hid people looking out at Mark, while the bottom had ‘tangled roots’ that ‘hid’ some doors. For 50 meters around the tower, the land was plain grass; a killing field.

Mark got to the edge of the killing field and shouted, “Hello! I need some help!”

He waited.

One of the roots opened up at the bottom of the tower and a man stood there, wearing webweave armor and plates on top of that armor. He had a black and yellow armband with an ‘M’ on the center. Mark almost freaked out, but he knew, rationally, that the armbands were just normal tools of identification for Memphi, or something. Mark might have seen some of them in the debris he cleaned out of the backpacks of the dead, but he couldn’t recall that right now—

The man shouted back, “We don’t talk to people here unless they have an emergency! Go to the city if you have a problem.”

Mark wasn’t sure where to begin, exactly.

He managed to organize a hierarchy of needs well enough, based upon what these people needed to know, and he said, “Some people tried to kill me up the river, about 15 miles, or something. I can describe them.” He held up the sword. “One of them stabbed me with this, and I took the guy’s arm for it. There was an older woman Mind Controller and a younger woman Ice Weaver, or something like that. I don’t know, exactly. The other two might have just been brawnies, or maybe just Knacks— Ah! One of them was a Mass Illusionist, for sure. Both the brawny and the Illusionist were men, maybe 25 or 30-ish.”

The people in the guardhouse, which Mark estimated to be 17 people, all rapidly got on high alert. There was no outward signal that they went on high alert, but Mark could tell from the weaving of vectors that there were 17 people in there, and over half of them pointed his way. After a moment, with one of the vectors inside wildly pointing in other directions —maybe giving orders?— most of the people in the tower started pointing in other directions, looking around the tower for the other threats… Hmm.

Did they think Mark was tricking them, or something?

Mark almost wanted to be mad about that. Why the fuck would a human try to trick another human in the wilds! But then he realized, again, what had been done to him. He was fucking furious, about so many things right now. His anger wasn’t going away.

The guard standing by the opening of the tower glared at Mark, and then elsewhere, scanning the land. He turned back toward Mark. “You fought them off yourself?”

That was too much.

Mark spat, “YES I fucking fought them off myself! THE FUCK—” Mark took a breath. “… Sorry. I’ve never experienced that before. It was… not easy. I can heal myself, so…” Mark held up the sword with just a few fingers, letting it dangle in his grip; he did not hold it like a weapon at all, in order to look like less of a threat, which was crazy. Why would a human be a threat to another human! How funny! Mark chuckled. “They stabbed this into me! Almost got my heart… They might have gotten my heart, actually.” Mark felt cold. “Never thought… Humans would hurt other humans, you know?”

The guard regarded Mark, right alongside a bunch of people inside the tower.

The guard listened to something; he probably had an earpiece—

“We’re not handling that. Go to the city. It’s 10 miles down the river. Take you about 20 minutes at your rate of movement. We’ll have an Inquisitor meet you at the Eastnorth River Gate. Do you have a name? ID?” Without missing a moment, the guard added, “Don’t come closer. I don’t need to see the ID.”

Mark blinked, assessing if he really looked that dangerous or not…

Mark answered, “Mark Careed. Just registered as a Villain for the Hero/Villain Program. And a Slayer. So I have credentials.”

The guard relaxed a little. “A villain, huh? You certainly got the look. What the fuck are you doing out here, wearing booty shorts and a backpack— Eh! I don’t need to know. My boss is telling me to move you along; that we won’t deal with whatever this is. Thanks for the warnings. We’ve taken note of your complaint and descriptions of the people you claimed attacked you.”

Mark felt a little better, but at the words ‘you claimed attacked you’, he bristled again. He crushed that anger down, and said, “Then I’ll go to the city. Thanks! Just stay on this side of the river?”

“Correct!”

The guard waved Mark off, and then went back inside the roots of the guard tower.

Mark flew on, skirting the tower’s kill zone area.

The people in the tower were a little more active after Mark appeared, but they didn’t do anything for or against him. Even their various vectors were calming down, which was nice to see.

And an Inquisitor would meet Mark at the gate.

He felt better already.