Adamant Blood

With one final act of desecration, Mark hovered in the sky over the goblin village and pulsed with a Union of Bubbles and Earth, connecting to the world, and fully encompassing all of the land below.

It was like toppling a table full of carefully stacked cards.

Burning and brittle trees crashed upon each other, root systems floating up as tunnels collapsed and stone turned to aerated sand. Small fires blossomed into massive, roaring things, as the tumult of bodies and grasses and trees all mulched together into a spinning, airy mess. Plumes of smoke filled the air, darkening the sky with fresh ash and soot. Mark would come by later to repeat the process, to make sure all the ash flushed out into the sky and all the buried woods were exposed to fresh air, and to kill whatever goblins might still be hiding down there.

But for now, Mark moved on.

Mark flew forward, his propeller sucking that black ash down onto him, Isoko, and Derek. But Isoko was doing a Union of Purity and keeping the air mostly clean around them.

Soon, they were out of the mess.

Quark beep-booped, telling them all, "Aurora is on the line, sir. I'm patching her through to just you."

"Mark, hello," Aurora said, "I appreciate the initiative, but that was dangerous."

"I'm aware, Aurora," Mark said, as Derek and Isoko glanced his way. "But I'm going to continue unless you ground me."

"I'm not grounding you. I'm am asking you to do these things with less spontaneity. There are several teams gearing up to take down these places in coordinated assaults, and the larger villages have bigger defenders than the ones you took down at the previous place." Aurora added, "Derek informs me that several goblins at that location you just destroyed spoke of 'Goblinhome' and 'lacunas'. These are not scattered tribes, but actual threats."

Mark knew most of that, but it didn't change what he was going to do, so he asked, "Can you please set up to counter any threats coming at us? I'd still like to go in."

Aurora paused. "… I don't feel that you're being emotional about your current recklessness, so I'll allow it. Altering plans here. The command center will be under your purview in 5. Quentin will have words with you over the way you handled that previous village, and you will listen to him. He knows more about war games than you."

"Heard and understood, Aurora."

"Good luck."

The line clicked.

Mark sighed a little, feeling better. He had wondered if he'd get a talking-to about this decision, and he did. But not a bad one. Aurora wanted these goblin villages gone, too.

Quentin's voice came over the coms, to all of them, saying, "So we're killing goblins today!"

Mark responded, "Same day every day."

"Some facts: There are 3 big villages left. One of 5,400 goblins, another with something like 16,000, and the final one with 18,000. We're labeling the villages Alpha, Beta, and Omega. A and B are linked and on the other side of the Shine, with all of the higher-powered goblins in A. Omega is to the south, over the mushroom kaiju, in the mushroom forest. Omega is full of mushroom goblins; spores and shit. Anti-flammable. We threw some firebombs at them and they ate the flames. Usually that's the opposite of what happens when we firebomb the mushrooms, so the goblins have adapted. They might become the ecology of the mycelium kaiju there, too, if left long enough, which would remove the fire vulnerability of the kaiju, and we don't want that.

"The village you just killed had a very high-tier plantmancer and a medium-high speedster. Congrats on the kill, Isoko. Thanks to that kill you've bumped up higher on the list of powers in the city, if that means anything to you."

Isoko was quietly happy. That did mean a lot to her.

Quentin continued, "If you attack the bigger Beta, then Alpha's powers will respond to defend it. Attacking Omega will be a problem due to spores and anti-fire magics. All three options are just on the edge of the range of whatever magic you guys got up to in Mage Society. Omega is barely inside of that magic. And then we got the archmages. The archmages are in Omega, with the mushrooms, slowly churning through some kill zones of their own, but they're taking their time, if you get me. I know you do." Quentin asked, "So where are we going first?"

Mark looked at Derek, and asked Quentin, "Does Beta have training yards with weapons like the place we just took out? If yes, then we're going there."

"Yes," Quentin said, "I'll send an updated map for Quark and… one second... there we go. Should pop up now. All of the training zones have Shaper goblins of various kinds; they made the weapons."

Mark said, "I'm deploying Derek at each of those and then moving on. Run and gun, for now, until the big goblins come out, and then we're running from them and taking them on individually."

Derek was ready for it. He focused. He was also a bit worried, though; this was like a job interview for him, and he did not want to fuck it up.

Isoko was ready, too.

Quentin said, "That tracks with a good basic strat. I suggest you also desiccate the edges of the village and start fires and encircle the whole place. Keep Isoko with you. Descend to the ground each time so that the goblins don't automatically run from the high-flying problem. Will update strat as situation unfolds. Gods-speed."

Mark flew forward, speeding across the sky, over the Shine and toward the goblin village beyond.

The village in the distance was of similar composition to the previous one, but over five times the size. The trees looked more gnarly than organized, though, with most of them so low to the ground they were like hedges. Mark saw between the hedges to an utter darkness that went deep, deep into the village…

Wait a second.

"When did the place gain a second level?" Mark asked anyone who could answer.

This place was built unlike any other village Mark had ever seen, but he had heard about places like this. The Master Armsmith, Tulo Khava's people, were from the Daihoonian-side of the Indonesian islands, and they built like this. It was called 'island building' and it had two levels.

There was the bottom level, which looked like normal forest, or rather like giant open halls filled with big trunks that acted like pillars. Those pillars supported the second floor, which was a raised city. The goblins lived on the city above, but the monster spawns —because those never stopped!— happened mostly on the lower levels. The goblins lived high above all of the death-zone that was the ground floor. The second floor, near the bottom, was also kind of a death zone, but not nearly as bad as the ground floor.

Tulo Khava's people usually used illusion magics to hide up above the ground floor, and they never made settlements big enough to really trigger monster spawns down below. Mark was pretty sure Tulo's people had transitioned into Castellan-based architecture since the Reveal, but the old means of survival still worked where it worked. The goblins, in contrast, were triggering monster spawns on purpose. Mark imagined that goblins lived on the upper floors and hunted down below for monsterized worms and other fresh meat for breeding.

But he had no idea when this transition had happened.

"It was a normal village just… what? 10 hours ago?" Mark asked.

Quentin said, "One moment… Ah. The higher level? That was 7 hours ago. The transition is only half done. Half of the place is still on the ground. The readouts we have for the training zones with theoretical weapon stashes are still correct, and on the ground."

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"Okay… Well." Mark said to Derek, "I'm gonna do something slightly different now that I see the place, but I'm still dropping you off at a few of the supply depots." Mark glanced at the city layout and marked some locations in his vision, with Quark's help. "These ones look like the big ones. Smash and seed, and then we're burning down the house from the outside in. Isoko is with me, and we'll double team any strong goblins, with the same run-and-gun strat as before. Derek. You will set up anywhere you can and keep moving and surviving. Alpha village will respond quick enough. Plan set. We're going."

Derek and Isoko gave grunts of acknowledgment.

Mark spun forward, across the sky, Isoko and Dereks trailing behind him as his propeller was directly ahead. He threw out some tendrils of adamantium onto his passengers' seats and into a wing formation beyond them, on both sides, stabilizing the whole arrangement with solid black lines. He spun the forward blade faster and faster.

He was going in fast, right past the guarding edge of the hedges that ringed the city.

Goblin watchers on the edge of the city spilled lights and sounded sirens, filling the sky with warning bells. This was a goblin 'village' of 16,000 goblins, as of the last count, but that could have been a vast understatement considering Mark's numbers were a few hours old.

"And they can see through the ritual," Mark softly said.

Derek was a little freaked. Isoko was frosty and ready to kill.

Quentin said, "Updating tactics. 60% chance you'll need to retreat. I'll tell you when we see bad things on this end. Eliot is sending in firebug missiles into the other side of Beta. They won't be able to escape that way unless they can put out fires. Should distract them. Showing expected artillery splashes now."

"Affirmative."

The blast zones appeared in his vision, far away, so they'd be fine. Mark aimed toward the first training zone, for weapons for Derek.

Hive mind goblins, like hanging bugs and relay systems at the same time, were already pointing at Mark with vectors that skittered off of him, but which came back toward him here and there.

… Maybe they couldn't see him, not clearly. They were still sensing him somehow. There were 16,000 goblins in there, and many of them were well over a week old, so they'd be able to see what was happening, somewhat; like that speedy goblin with Isoko.

Mark got close enough to really see what he was seeing, and past the scattered hedges that made a 'wall' around the place, it was dark in there. Deep. The canopy was maybe 80 meters off of the ground, and the trees down in the gloom were very, very thick. They were probably high PL, too, but Mark could cut them down, if he wanted. He wasn't sure he wanted to, though. All this air down here would make the top burn rather well, as soon as Mark killed the trees and the people controlling the trees.

The sun vanished and chill took hold as Mark zoomed under the canopy of the city, right into the shadows.

Mark wasn't sure when he started calling it a 'city' in his mind, but it very much was a city, for sure. There were monster hunter depots over there, hanging below the canopy, goblins with powers herding big worm monsters while other goblins Bit the worms and turned them into more goblins. There were big staircases spiraling up and down some of the truly massive trees, which were themselves 10 meters wide. Fires and lights bloomed in the deep gloom under the city; the signs of goblins using Powers against this or that.

Mark felt several thousand goblins everywhere around him. They were horny, bored, angry, happy, entertained and joyful. Some were dying, some were comforting the dying. Some were healing and hating it because they imagined they should be doing so much more than this, but here they were, healing stupid goblins that got themselves hurt, yet again. Mark focused on the healers with pinpoint precision, to kill them first.

Actually being here, Mark wasn't sure if he could kill them faster than they could heal, so he inflamed their responses to life, instead, pulling out a trick he wanted to try for a little while, now.

A Union of Anarchy and Civilization.

Would it do anything at all? Probably not.

Mark Unioned with Civilization and Anarchy, pulling in the call to order, to cooperation, to unity, and giving it all to himself, Derek, Isoko, and the trees, while giving back disorder, individualism, and separation to all of the goblins, especially the ones he saw leading and holding groups together. Every healer, every storyteller, every drill master, every team leader, every goblin that saw that another goblin was acting up, that knew that they needed to stand together to do anything useful at all, was drained of Civilization and given Anarchy in turn.

Mark wasn't sure if it was going to do anything at all. He still had another 200 meters to go to get to the first of the training fields over there, in the sun, so he could try some weird shit for a bit.

Weird shit turned out to be truly powerful.

It was like setting off an explosion of concentrated acid onto the very idea of goblins working together, of building a city at all.

Mark felt every single goblin he touched suddenly desire nothing more than to get what was theirs, and also everyone else's.

Healers killed the injured and took trinkets from around necks and arms. Drill masters grabbed swords and drove them into the hearts of their most promising students, while those students tried to kill the teachers and take those spots as teachers for themselves. Spars on the fields turned into death matches. Goblins rooming far overhead suddenly looked over at their roommates and then they tried killing each other.

Mark slowed down, taking in all of the horror he was causing everywhere, just out of sight.

Isoko and Derek both looked at him, wondering what was going on. They could feel his horror, for sure. But horror at what? And then the two of them saw for themselves what was happening when Mark hovered into view of the training field on the ground floor, in a large, wide patch of sunlight, pouring in from a massive gap in the canopy overhead.

Goblins were killing goblins, and Mark inflamed every response down there into more and more Anarchy, pulling away every call to civilization they could have possibly experienced.

The goblins didn't see them at all; they were too focused on each other.

Mark lowered to the ground and let Derek off, and Derek began multiplying fast, rushing around and grabbing crude weapons from fallen hands while a metal shaper of some sort up ahead whipped his metal through twenty different goblins trying to take him down—

Mark recalled, distantly, when Lee had once talked about 'leaving goblin settlements alone for a bit, so you could come by and steal every treasure they had gathered'. It had struck Mark as unnecessarily cruel back then, but right now, Mark could see one of those 'treasures', and it was a lot more than it appeared.

The metalshaper was slinging bright, almost-white metal through his companions, and then doing more than that. The metal vanished and then reappeared, the goblin dematerializing it and then bringing it back, to slash at goblins that had been trying to flank him.

Mark and Isoko instantly recognized that metal.

It was mithril.

A mithrilkinetic.

Mithrilkinetics were almost always mithril blooded. At least that's how it was with humans. Did goblins follow the same rules? Mark wasn't sure. Isoko didn't know, either.

Mark spoke up into his coms, "We got a mithrilkinetic goblin here."

"… One second," Quentin said—

"Don't let it die and don't kill it," Aurora said, rather instantly. And then she asked, "Are you sure?"

Mark switched out some of his Union, including the mithrilkinetic goblin and all of the goblins near it into Civilization, even while Derek began to spread out and encircle the thing. The mithrilkinetic and all of the goblins near him all kinda paused, shook their heads, and then the secondary goblins all got real, real mad at the mithrilkinetic. The fight went from chaotic grabbing for the mithrilkinetic's life, to about 30 goblins all suddenly working together to kill the mithrilkinetic, who decided that running was better than fighting.

Mark switched up his Union again, making the mithrilkinetic civilized and the others unable to work together, and that bought the mithrilkinetic all the help he needed against his newly-disorganized brethren. The secondary goblins got in each other's way more than they managed to do anything against the mithrilkinetic, with a particularly violent Fire Shaper not caring that he incinerated four goblins only to die to a small spear of the mithrilkinetic's mithril.

Mark watched the goblin fight as he said, "It's materializing mithril and dematerializing it and then striking out elsewhere. Yes. That's mithril. Quark is identifying it, too, 100% certainty. Quark says there's about… 4 kilos of mithril, too? What's that? Like a week of production? I don't know about goblin metal-bloods."

"I've marked it," Aurora said, "Lancer and Buckler are going after it. You can NOT let that goblin die. That's your new priority for today."

Mark wasn't sure how he felt, exactly, about capturing a sapient metal-blooded person who was absolutely going to get thrown into a mithril farm and soul-mutilated into a resource node… But it was a goblin, and the goblin would Bite and mutilate any human he came across, so horrors were horrors, Mark supposed.

"Understood," Mark said, "Shifting priorities."