Adamant Blood

"Round 2," Mark said, facing the once-again-sleeping lake elemental. "Moving on from Stability/Instability to Mercurial/Predictable, and then probably Flow/Stop, or some variation thereof."

Quark spoke up, "Wasn't it supposed to be Fear and Glory, sir?"

"Yeah, but I'm kinda really excited about Glory, so we'll do that one last."

Quark bobbed in the air, in acceptance of Mark's words, and Mark focused.

He went right into a Union of Life, of existence, of Mark being on one side of a fight and the enemy on the other, and only one of them would live. And then he focused that Union into an actual exchange. Mark took everything that was Mercurial, untouchable/quick/spontaneous, and gave the lake-sized basic water elemental everything Predictable, expected/obvious/unsurprising.

Mark flipped feet over head as he dashed over the dark lake, and the lake responded with an explosion of vectors and water in every direction, trying to find whatever was attacking it. It did not touch Mark, but it found him well enough. Probably through the moisture in the air. It reached up to grab him, but Mark yanked himself forward, to the other shore, even as he turned a large spear of adamantium into a cutting buzzsaw, slicing through the waves.

The cut did nothing. The elemental reformed around Mark's slicing blade. It was still good practice for a real fight against any other kind of monster out there. The water elemental had to have a Body in the high 80's, and Mark's adamantium was thick enough that it encountered resistance, purely due to friction against the water, so that was good fighting practice, too.

Mark landed on the other side of the lake and instantly whipped his adamantium into a long, thin blade, that he wielded like a katana as he twisted his caltrops into the burned debris and kicked off across the elemental again. His blade sunk deep, but the handle remained completely in his control, and Mark ripped his blade through the viscous water and then out the other side.

The elemental responded with a crash of waves up in the air, aiming his way, and then a hundred extending tendrils when it failed to reach him, to catch.

Mark ripped his adamantium into a helicopter and dashed into the sky, even as he took his caltrops and turned them into fine wires, to spin into the water and then slice it apart. Mark was, of course, not doing anything to actually injure the elemental. He was basically shadow boxing with something that could actually box back. The elemental tried to grip his adamantium wires, to flow up them to grab Mark, and to pull Mark down, but Mark ripped his adamantium wires out of the elemental—

Half of the wires remained behind.

Mark frowned. The water elemental's astral body had severed his own control over those wires. He had gone too deep.

This was fine.

But this was also pretty great, actually.

Mark backed away completely, far into the sky, and he looked down at the churning lake and tried to do something he hadn't really done much at all, for whatever reason.

Adamantiumkinesis could be used to find adamantium deposits in the world, and Mark hadn't ever figured that out. That's what Addashield had done to amass his initial fortune, and kickstart his mage career. Addashield had had a demon to help him, though, all Mark had was Quark.

Mark asked Quark, "You know how to sense adamantium at a distance, Quark?"

"I feel you are a little manic right now, Mark, and that your fighting style at the moment is too random to be useful. But to answer the question, we can probably do it with Sigaldry."

"RIGHT!" Mark said, smiling wide. "Duh!" He added, "Also, I'm fine, Quark." And then he started making signs, right there in the air, saying, "So what do you think? How about 'From-the-heart, calling out to the strongest metal and feeling it like it is a piece of me—'."

A blinding headache ripped through Mark's skull and Mark faltered.

His adamantium stuttered. His scales fell from his webweave. His Union was gone and so was his sense of up and down—

"Sir!" Quark said, yelling in his ears. "Mark!"

Mark blinked, the sky flickered, and Mark blinked again, and then he realized he was falling right into the water elemental, which was a churning whitewater maw, right below him, waiting. Bits of metal fell all around him and into that maw, making little splashes, and Mark beat his heart with Good and Bad, and his numb body regained sensation, barely quick enough.

Mark grabbed a giant halberd he had made of adamantium sometime in the last minute —he had no idea when that had happened— and then he spun that adamantium into a rotor. He dashed back up into the air, his astral body lancing back outward, into the elemental, as Mark switched over to a Union of Life to connect to the monster.

He pulled up, escaping the crushing maw of the beast by a few meters.

Half of his metal was down in that beast, and Mark could almost feel it, even though it wasn't in his astral body at all. Mark had no idea what that was about, but as he hovered higher and higher, and as he felt better and better, the lake churned to violent life, and Mark felt his adamantium like no way he had ever felt before. It was almost like a sight, but not like that at all. More like seeing fireflies in the dark, but not with his eyes. He could just tell where the adamantium was.

Just a bit of sigaldry to enhance what was already there, huh?

That fucking easy?

Shit, man!

Mark floated away, severing his Union with the elemental, and the elemental calmed down. It was growing restless, though. It had been attacked multiple times and it was not willing to go back to sleep all the way at all. Mark watched it churn on itself as he said, "I have no idea why I did that. Experimenting in the field like… like that— Ah. Shit. Uh." Mark remembered someone else on the line, and said, "Sorry, uh, Quentin. No worries! We're good."

Quentin clicked his teeth, then said, "Glad you're not dead. Maybe don't do that Union again. Or openly sign. That's a violation of Mage Secrecy, and you now have a new note on your record about that."

Mark winced. And then he said, "Okay then." He moved on. "No more Mercurial/Predictable. Next iteration: Flow/Stop."

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Slipping into the flow was as easy as unsheathing a sword, but the 'Stop' side of the Union did nothing, as expected. Maybe Mark needed to experiment with 'Stop' somewhere outside of battle. So for now, Mark went with something simpler, using the better half of the failed Mercurial/Predictable Union.

The basic lake elemental reacted Predictably, sending a tendril up at Mark, about 30 meters in the air, right at him.

Mark slipped down through the sky with a rotor that became a katana 10 meters long and a stabilizing rudder that became caltrops. He flowed near the water's thrust and dragged his katana through the monster, toward the little bits of adamantium that had broken off inside. The katana caught a handful of scales, suspended in the middle, and then stopped on those solidly-held pieces. The elemental had those pieces and it wasn't letting go.

Mark turned the katana into a retracting measuring tape with the lock unlocked. The tape spun backward into his control, ripping the lost pieces of adamantium out of the elemental and into his control.

Mark regained some of his armor.

The elemental slashed through the sky at him, a blade of water turning into a blade of edged-ice.

Mark morphed the rolled-up katana into a thick sword and a solid parry that sent Mark sailing away, right where he needed to go. With a twist, pulling his caltrops out of the way of the moving lake, Mark spun his blade into another katana and stabbed into the beast, right at his targets.

The lake elemental reacted Predictably, chasing after Mark's flow like water following water.

Mark stabbed into the beast several more times, retrieving threads and scales and lost caltrops, regrowing his stores back to what they had been, breathing easy the whole time. Every movement was exactly as large or as small as it needed to be, to escape, to cut, to retrieve. Every dodge was perfect. A wave of water chased Mark and Mark dodged to the side, and the vector of the water elemental followed him, its wave turning into a crash of tendrils shooting out the side, directly at him, and Mark spun and slipped away, again and again.

Mark retrieved everything he could sense in the area, and Quark registered that Mark had gotten it all, and Mark decided to end this, or at least to try the big one. The one he was excited about.

Glory, and Fear.

Mark hovered high in the sky, a halo of blades around his body, the elemental chasing with tendrils, seeking to devour. But Mark was in his moment. The world felt like it vibrated as Mark stared down at an enemy that was strong. Resilient. That could only be destroyed by its own dissolution.

But also beneath him. Literally and figuratively.

Mark opened his heart, his mind, and his mouth, and out poured Glory and Fear.

It was a detonation that spread like a shockwave of light and power in every direction. Veins pulsed all around Mark, lancing into the expanding shockwave, and then crushing into the seeking tendrils of the water elemental. The water elemental began to split, to fear going forward. And then it crashed out in every direction, flowing away, racing, screaming and unable to maintain itself, at all. One lake-sized vector became a million, that then became even more, crashing out into the ashy debris in every direction of the lakeside, breaking the shores and vanishing into the burned goblin lands, for this particular Fear was also laced with instability.

The elemental killed itself to get away, evaporating once it got too small to maintain cohesion, once it soaked into the wood and the ash and the dirt out there, while Mark continued to pulse with Glory and Fear, like a beacon of black and white, thrumming the world.

The experiment was over.

Mark breathed and the illuminated shockwave slowed.

He calmed, and the Union ended, light ebbing, shadows retreating.

Mark began to fall, but only because he wanted to fall. He caught himself by turning his halo of adamantium weapons and shards into a rotor, and into a stabilizing rudder. He breathed, and then looked at the land. The lake had basically exploded itself in every direction that was not toward Mark, as it tried to get away, riving the land with smaller and smaller water-carved furrows.

Mark sat down at the bottom of the lake bed, at the heart of what almost looked like a vein system, saying, "So that worked well. Probably only so well because the elemental was capable of being divided in parts, but still. It worked well." Mark took a breath, put his fists on his hips, and stuck out his chest, feeling accomplished, almost glorious, as he said, "Neat!"

No need to do any sort of 'pressure' Union to transmute the elemental into something other than what it was. No need to constantly cut the thing apart, like you had to do with other water elementals to kill them. Just make the thing fearful, and it would kill itself.

There was a lot to be said for that.

Fear was a big killer of warriors and otherwise. People talked about fear in chat rooms and philosophy groups the world over. A lot of guys had a lot of problems with fear. Eliot had a fear regarding mind control and goblins, but he was getting over that, turning fear to action. Sally had a fear of demons that made her rightfully paranoid. Isoko had a fear of obscurity that constantly spurred her into deciding to become stronger.

Mark had a fear of being weak. He had probably shoved that fear into the water elemental, now that he was thinking about it. There were a lot of ways to be afraid, though...

And Quark was very quiet. Quark still floated to the side, though, in his invisible body.

Quentin was quiet, too.

Now that Mark wasn't in the moment, he felt out the nearest several hundred meters and found a lot of the things around him were very, very scared. Not much was out there, though. But what was out there was terrified. Were there any people in those vectors out there? Shouldn't have been any people. Mark should have been rather far from the other groups.

Mark hummed, then asked, "Quark? Quentin? Report?"

Quark instantly said, "Apologies, sir, I was detained with ascertaining what was happening. Quite a few people in the day's event noticed your prominence and many fights were disrupted. Quentin is checking in on you right now, but he has been forced by circumstances to ameliorate the degradation of the day's war games on city Beta."

"Ahh… shit." Mark was contrite, but then also a little mad. He was kilometers away from people! They were still affected? The fuck. But then Mark put that emotion away and asked, "Where can I help?"

"Plotting courses on my own. One moment, sir."

Mark's vision flickered with new goals in the distance.

He spun up a rotor and got to flying, to saving people.