Adamant Blood

Mark flew through the sky, toward the goblin villages he had burned and sanded days ago.

It was just him, completely alone, but Quark floated along in his handy orb, and the command center was on the line. It wouldn't be him alone out there for very long at all. Command was currently working with a lot of other people to organize the settlement's forces into an organized offensive in the same location Mark was headed, to work out kinks for tomorrow's main offensive against the 250,000 goblins living 35 kilometers to the north, but Mark had Quentin dedicated to him, and only him, for the day.

Hovercars on the tarmac by the gate were filling up with teams, and they'd be deployed soon.

Mark was currently 'invisible except the eyes', which had taken him 5 minutes to apply himself. Even his adamantium was invisible. Not silent, at all, but that was fine.

Quark was in his well-made handy-orb, and he was fully covered in invisibility oil. He even had an extra invisibility oil nestled inside of that orb, ready to break at a moment's notice to reapply the oil, while a reservoir of open oil was kept in a second spot inside of his body. Quark was leaking that opened oil onto his body, through his silver veins, and it should last a good 4 hours. His little handy orb was fully invisible, and though Mark didn't expect to need to use him to cast much Sigaldry out in the field, today was a day of tests, and Mark was going to do all kinds of tests before the goblin city attack tomorrow.

Pulling that Anarchy/Civilization test out of his ass the other day did not feel good. It had felt reckless. Sure, it had worked, but untested steel was bad. No one took new swords out into a field without testing them first. New steel often broke when you needed it most… Or at least that's what happened to other people.

Adamantium had a way of being a lot stronger than steel, and Mark could reshape it back into proper configuration easily enough. Still, though… New steel was untested, and Mark didn't want to go into battle untested ever again.

And so, Mark flew.

Hovervans rose from the city behind him.

Quentin sipped on some sort of drink in the coms, rapidly cut the sound, and then came back, saying, "Sorry about that."

Mark grinned. "No worries. We're not near Beta yet, anyway."

"According to the long range sensors, the water elemental hasn't moved at all…" Quentin chatted, "So this is magic you're doing now, right? Not some artifact or item? Some guys use potions sometimes, too. I normally wouldn't ask due to Mage Secrecy, but it's hard to judge how to work a battle without knowing capabilities." He reiterated something he had said before Mark had gone out, "Your view is being censored from open-viewing in the command center and I am read in on Mage Secrecy, but I'm not nearly as high as you, mister Apprentice Rank 3… But I still need to know rough capabilities."

Mark was mostly truthful, answering, "It's some basic magic. Gotta lotta holes in the spellwork right now and it's a bit painful on the eyes, but yes." Mark's invisibility began to fade, even as he was talking about it. Quark's handy orb was still invisible. "Got some invisibility oil for other things but I won't be using it myself."

Quentin said, "That stuff is dangerous, you know. Being invisible in a battlefield is… iffy. Giant, invisible kaiju-sized things are even more dangerous, for a lot of other people."

"I know, but I can handle it, and I can feel vectors out there anyway. I won't be working anywhere near other people, as well, so… it should be good?"

"Hopefully!" Quentin said, not sounding too worried. He trusted Mark a lot.

Mark asked, "You're still getting Quark's feeds, yeah?"

"I am, so yeah, that helps to know where you are better," And then Quentin's tone changed, and he was more professional as he said, "So for today I'll be watching and requesting you fly here and there to help with a team now and again, but otherwise I'll be quiet. Quark can keep both of you apprised of the strategic situation as well. If both of us request you move elsewhere then it is expected that you do so. It's a two-step verification system so that it can't be easily hacked by any possible tech-goblins out there."

"Heard and understood," Mark replied. "Am I cleared to advance yet?"

"Cleared for forward spear," Quentin replied.

With a concentrated twist of power, Mark revved up his main rotor and kept his stabilizing blade matched for speed, and zipped forward, eating the kilometers.

The area that had been goblin city Beta was mostly a charred mess, from when Mark sanded the whole place and let it all fall into one level, to burn and burn and burn. The sky was black with soot and fires still smoldered here and there, among the char and death, but mostly it was black or grey. Here and there things were still green, and fire elementals or plant monsters or charcoal malformations all fought and ate each other, or they ran from each other, but Mark's target was far ahead.

Behind him, the hovervans and otherwise sped up, advancing toward targets of their own inside the burned, ashy, goblin city Beta. A lot of the people in those vans were eager to hit up resource nodes that scouts had uncovered in the past day. Goblins had ways of gathering stuff to central locations, just like people gathered gold and whatever, because goblins were people, after all. From mana crystal deposits, to plant cultivars in protected gardens, to even a few stone elementals that had been born from gold and silver and other precious metals melted down and then come to life, a lot of people had targets and an eagerness to get to those targets.

But for every resource target there were also obligatory targets. If someone wanted to sign up to kill one of the big 'gold elementals' they had to kill 20 other things that were simply menaces.

And that was the extent of everything Mark knew about what other people were doing.

Quark lit up Mark's vision with a thin overlay of the area ahead, showing the path toward a lake in the distance.

The lake was kidney-shaped, about 40 meters long at the longest point, with clear edges and deep, deep blue water. Charcoal tree trunks and burned grasses did not encroach on this land. No greenery grew here. The lake was not a lake, and it was not nearly as deep as it seemed to be.

Mark hovered to the side of the lake, wind from his tri-toroid flowing down onto the land, churning up soot and ash. That black mess breezed across the waters and the waters shivered at the touch. The waters moved, and rippled, and not at all how water should move or ripple. It was alive.

The lake was a collection of water elementals that had become a single water elemental some time in the last 12 hours. It was mini-kaiju-sized, measuring an amorphous 30 meters tall when active, and thus it was up to Mark to take on. Aurora had told him it would be good 'impossible kaiju' practice, because Mark was absolutely not gonna kill it through any normal means at all.

Its vector was barely there, under the gelatinous-like surface. Mark's downdraft continued to scatter ash and debris over that dark blue surface, though, and the elemental did not like that. It started to wake up, to undulate stronger.

Mark flicked his rotor into a spear and several caltrops that he whipped out to support himself, to float above the ash next to the lake, while his spear floated around him like it could actually protect him. Ha! Elementals this size did not care about normal weaponry, no matter how strong that weaponry was.

Mark watched for a moment as the elemental's vector quieted once again, as the wind from his downdraft vanished. All the elemental wanted to be was a gel at the deepest part of the land around here, to collect all the water that might come this way. The debris that came with that water got tossed aside. A low rim of hardened ash had formed around the edge of the elemental because of that continuous action, and even now the elemental lazily moved the new ash and debris off to the sides.

Mark couldn't see any core because elementals didn't have any cores, so this wouldn't be as easy as killing a slime.

"Well… It's not doing anything and it doesn't seem to care about me—" Mark's adamantium caltrops crushed into the ground, cracking through ashy wood, revealing divots that he hadn't known about. He compensated easily enough, and the elemental didn't seem to care about noise or presence. "It really doesn't care at all."

Mark went quiet, focusing on Union, trying to find a way in which he could connect with the elemental. Standing still made connecting pretty easy. It wasn't a Union of Breath or Blood, though, and it certainly wasn't a Union of Brain. It was a Union of Life; of casual connection and simple living. It was the fastest kind of action/reaction Unions out there, which wasn't that great for Mark's purposes.

Mark connected, anyway.

One second, Mark was just himself in a Union of Good and Bad with the world, and then he was taking all of the elemental's Good and giving it all of the Bad in the area—

The elemental roared, flopped, and woke up—

Mark cut the Union of Good and Bad, and the elemental remained up and active, but it was already wondering what had happened. It didn't have eyes or sensory organs like normal animals, though, so it didn't really see Mark. It went back to sleep, to loll in the depression in the ground.

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"So connecting was easy enough."

Mark focused on breathing, on respiration, to find a slower-acting Union to use with the elemental. Two minutes later and Mark was still breathing with purpose, and he knew that wasn't gonna work. Elementals did not breathe. They didn't even respire, did they? Well, no. They did respire.

Mark stilled his breathing, to let his air naturally flow back and forth, from areas of high oxygen to low oxygen. Without actually moving his lungs, physics and the body's moving blood still moved CO2 and O2 back and forth, but it was very, very slow; at the rate of normal… whatever it was called. Osmosis? That sounded right. Water elementals didn't breathe air, though; they breathed water.

Mark slipped into an osmotic-based Union with the water elemental. It breathed water in the air, and Mark breathed air in the air, and it was close enough to work, that, yeah, it was working. Mark Union'd with Good and Bad, and the elemental reacted with a sloshing dislike that was barely a ripple in its surface, or its hundreds of almost-individual vectors. The elemental was a hundred frayed vectors and half-consumed elementals, and parts of it knew something was happening, but most of it had no idea at all.

With Good and Bad running, even if Mark wasn't breathing right now, he was able to stay awake and active and there was no worry about running out of air. Union covered for that current lack.

The first test was Stability/Instability.

The basic use of that dichotomy, according to Lola, was to induce anything from a slight inability to walk, or function, all the way to catastrophic biological/physical/mental failures. The rate of exchange and the disparity between subjects determined the overall effect. At its very lowest setting, for Mark, taking in Stability, the effect would always be a Durability-type effect, and a raising of Power Levels and overall strength. The Instability-effect would normally be a Weakness-type effect.

Mark could add specific meanings to those two words, too, of course, and that is what he would be doing.

Mark osmosis'd with Stability and Instability, taking in all of the solidness and reliability that he could gather, and giving the water elemental all the disruptions and weakness he could.

At this low rate of exchange the effect was subtle.

Mark felt grounded. Solid. His connection with the world strengthened, his adamantium-caltrop-grip in the ground feeling like full hand-grips on solid ground, instead of soft touches on mostly ash and debris. Mark did not feel like he could fall through the ash layer at any moment, which was a change.

The water elemental's surface, which had been undulating and pushing off debris, began to fluctuate. Instead of ripples of 'water' pushing away ash, the water turned foamy. Bits slapped out of the edges of the elemental, through the built-up rim of ash and debris that the elemental had been building. The 'dam' broke in several areas and the water elemental spilled away from itself.

Tiny water elementals, maybe 10 or 20 centimeters big, rolled away from the mother elemental, their vectors separated. The big elemental responded with sudden slaps of water, slamming into those escaping parts of itself, bringing those parts back into the fold.

Kinda freaky, really.

But, overall, and outwardly, there was not much of a change.

On the inside, though, the elemental's vector was concerned. It focused on itself, gathering stray thoughts that split off and went elsewhere. Mark watched as the elemental, which had been whole and solid, looked almost like it was going to split in two. Or maybe even 3 or 4. But soon enough the elemental regained control of itself.

The elemental was obviously reining in the parts of itself that it had just integrated, that had threatened to come undone. This whole thing used to be many different elementals, after all.

"… Separating elementals into parts is one of the best ways to kill them," Mark mused.

Mark usually had issues with killing elementals, like most people, but maybe… Maybe Union made killing elementals really, really easy?

Maybe.

Shoving instability into whatever 'Union' the elementals had undergone to become one elemental was clearly an option, here.

Mark focused on his own Stability, focusing on the idea of being one with himself, while shoving the exact opposite idea into the elemental.

The inside of the elemental suddenly, violently churned in on itself, like a wave crashing inward, out of nowhere. The elemental's vector, which had been so stable before, suddenly cracked, a rift forming in the surface. A wave crashed into a divot in the lake, and then another part of the lake rose up in hateful vengeance against the rest, breaking the debris-solid beach, to roll away into an elemental only a few meters big. The rest of the large elemental suddenly and violently collided into itself, crushing all dissidence and running after the broken part.

The broken part did not get far.

With a swallowing wave, the lake grabbed back the part that had broken off and crushed it, and in that crushing the instability Mark had induced was suddenly dead.

But another part of the lake began to boil and tried to run away.

Mark watched over the next ten minutes as the lake elemental lost several parts and then it reabsorbed them, and whatever Instability that Mark had been able to inflict was suddenly not enough. Not at all. The lake was still waving onto itself, foaming on the surface and breaking the lake shore with violent undulations, but then it calmed.

It was whole, now.

Stronger than before, really. Which was kinda odd. Mark had just made the elemental stronger by forcing it to confront its own instability, hadn't he?

… It probably still had some deep instability in the tank, but Mark was something like 1/100th the size of the elemental, so his overall effect on the monster was always going to be small, especially with such a slow-acting Union like the one he was using right now. Small disturbances on big systems, like small monsters going up against big monsters, tended to fail, and sometimes spectacularly, making the bigger monster stronger in the smaller monster's failure. Like someone getting sick and then never being able to get sick through that same disease ever again.

Mark broke off his osmotic Union of Stability/Instability.

He flowed into the deepest possible Union of Life, of brain and blood and breath and existence.

He Unioned with the Stability of solid strength, and the Instability of chaotic existence. His heart beat black veins into the air and his mind danced with electricity, and every movement of his own was lock-step in movement with part of the water elemental. A wave here was a beat of Mark's heart. A ripple there was a rapid-flash of Mark's thoughts.

Suddenly, loudly, the entire water elemental exploded into action, foaming up and geysering into the air like some deep cenote deciding all of its water should now be in the sky.

Mark backed up fast as the elemental showered the air and the land with droplets of itself, all of itself rushing in every direction. But it was not dying. It was completely intact, for Mark had killed whatever disruptive union of elementals it had been before today. It was just foam and droplets and a crashing, raging core, like whitewater rapids, flowing at the center, trying to find what had disrupted its peace.

"Noted," Mark said to himself, as he flowed out of the way, evading the majority of water droplets. "Don't make the elemental stronger before you fight it for real, unless you know what the fuck you're doing."

Droplets began to dig inside of his scales, all across his body, once Mark got moving, once he made himself a target. The water elemental was kinda like a Shaper, after all, and it felt through its water just like Mark felt through his adamantium.

Mark Unioned with a Stability of chemistry, of normal action, of normal life, while shoving out all the Instability of water that he could, practically dunking the water elemental with a 'universal catalyst', or maybe with an instability of water surface tension, as Lola had described the action. Lola wasn't sure if that kind of Union was going to work, but her educated guesses and guidance were good enough for Mark.

Water, now that it had less stability with its environment, evaporated all around Mark, vanishing in every direction, turning to mist and steam and blasting Mark away from the suddenly-screaming elemental. Mark had removed the water tension from the surface of every droplet, and the water desired not to be liquid water anymore.

Mark sailed away from the explosion, his skin feeling raw under the corrosive grip of all that water.

Ah.

Shit.

Acid lake elemental. Duh. Water and ash! Right.

Mark asked, "Acid, Quark?"

"It's water laced through lots of ash," Quark answered, "So it's not an acid, but a base. A PH of 13 or 14, Power Level 60, according to what I'm seeing. Also, my oil coating has taken some damage. I am reapplying the coating, sir."

Mark knew that acids and bases countered each other, but he didn't know exact things like whatever Quark was saying. "Ah! A base, not an acid…" He smirked, and said, "A basic water elemental."

"Yes, sir," Quark said.

Mark glanced at Quark's body— His invisibility oil coat was shredded. Mark did a quick Union of Purity/Corruption and blasted away whatever lingering basic damage was still affecting both of them, and that ended whatever degradation Mark was seeing. Quark rapidly spilled more oils out around his body, and then he went fully invisible again.

In that brief moment, the water elemental went from a foamy rain, back down to twisting whitewater standing tall in its lake bed.

Mark hummed.

Maybe if he tried it… this way?

Mark hit it with another Union of Stability/Instability, and it tripled in size as bubbles formed everywhere inside of it and it popped and gurgled into the air—

"Requesting help," Quentin said, in Mark's coms.

Mark instantly backed away from the water elemental even as Quentin continued to give orders.

A team, already labeled in Mark's vision and 3 kilometers to the south, had uncovered a pocket of goblins underneath what had been a big goblin building of some sort. Mark had no idea how he had missed those particular goblins, but he was already headed that direction. The green fucks had probably moved in later, maybe even just last night, and they had already built a forward base, huh?

Mark flew fast, saved some people, killed some strong goblins that were Fire Shapers, and then he turned back around.