Adamant Blood

For a half hour, in a meeting room in Castle South, Mark spoke calmly about the attack, first to Yoro, then Kandon. Yoro went off to investigate things, while Kandon had specific questions about anything that Quark hadn't already recorded and shown to the settlement, which meant Mark's Unionsense feelings and any magical senses that Mark might have felt. What did the vectors say of those who had gotten off of the trapped tram, right before Mark got on? What about the tram operator? Did he recognize any of them from previous Understanding Parties, or other parts around the settlement?

That particular question caught Mark deeply off guard.

And then Mark got mad.

Mark stared at Kandon, and asked, "Did the systems in place not recognize those people?"

Kandon was controlled as he said, "I don't want to ruin the debriefing, Mark. Please answer the questions."

"… I have already answered these questions once. I'm gonna start asking my own questions soon, and then I'm going after people."

"I know Yoro already asked you all of this," Kandon said, "But please focus, and help us help you help all of us. Answering questions multiple times is a common way to unearth new, relevant facts. If you want, we can focus on other parts of your testimony to Yoro, like if anything about the four robed people stood out more than other parts."

Unionsenses aside, Mark didn't see why Kandon needed anything 'more relevant' than what he had already had. Quark had displayed tens of recorded pictures onto the screens of the meeting room, from all angles. Quark had even added notes, both in his own silver-colored text, and white, for Mark, as Mark spoke about it all.

But Mark answered questions and went over events for a third time, anyway.

Aurora had been up in her office for a while, as Mark was being debriefed. She was furious and Mark could feel her fury from down in the meeting room. She was also dealing with a bunch of stuff far, far away from here, if her vector was any indication.

Lola, Isoko, and Sally showed up outside of the castle, but they were stopped by Yoro who talked to them. Eliot came in from the north a bit later with a Derek at his side, and they all got stopped by Yoro.

Mark knew all of these questions were just to kill time. Or maybe to buy time. Kandon was keeping Mark calm, and they both knew it. Yoro and Aurora were doing a lot. Yoro as the spymaster was here and there, all around the place, his vector moving fast and then he'd spend a moment doing something with someone in the command center, and then he'd move somewhere else, to the security center, to the offices upstairs where people were debating things, and then elsewhere, to deal with Mark's team, who were complaining and wanting to be let in. Lola was getting very pissed. Walter was even walking this way. But then Yoro talked to Walter, and then Aurora talked to Walter, and stuff happened out there.

Mark answered questions in here, until finally Aurora's vector touched on Kandon, and Kandon got to the end of it.

"Thanks for being so patient." Kandon finally said, "One last question… And I hate to ask this, because it'll send you off in a direction, but I have to ask anyway. What would you do if the Empire planned this assassination?"

"Kill someone. Probably someone very high up! Maybe just at ground level. Who knows! Do you?"

"… And what if it's Walaria, testing you?"

Mark had a moment and the world seemed to darken around him as he considered the question in full. There were many things Mark could say right now. He could lie, and say 'Then it's fine! I hope I passed!' or he could say something like 'Then I guess I'm going princess-hunting,' or he could go a different direction, and swear off Aluatha forever. He could break covenant with them right now, and if they came after him for any reason at all, then he would tell them to fuck off.

He would probably end up killing some people who didn't deserve to be killed, too.

And then he would likely be trapped by some Force Twin Archmages and turned into an adamantium farm, like they had certainly done to that mithrilkinetic goblin last month.

Mark asked his own question, "Could it be Walaria? Did she do stuff like this to Aurora?"

Aurora decided to walk this way.

Kandon got a message from her, and he sat back, saying, "She's coming, and she'll answer that herself. But for what it's worth, Mark, something like this never happened. But there were tests. This was an assassination attempt using the strongest things we know to kill you, and it still didn't work. It wasn't targeted against you, either, like what you think. Monowire is a universal killer. Wands of Destruction are, too. Shavallian? Absolute minimum for an assassination against anyone. The elemental, though… we don't think that was an elemental. We think it was a corruption ooze. That's why your Fear just made it angrier. Oozes can't be split up into smaller parts like elementals can. So… if this was an assassination attempt from the Empire, then that's bad, and the settlement will stand with you. But we are absolutely not attacking the Empire."

Mark was quietly furious.

He understood the position.

Still made him mad.

Mark said, "Maybe Drakarok has the right idea."

Aurora hurried up and got here, slamming open the door and then shutting it behind her, "You're not fighting the Empire, Mark, and Walaria didn't do this, anyway. I just talked to her."

Mark stood up. "I guess I'm glad, then! That this was all just some fucking test, or some outsider assassination attempt! Or something that doesn't seem to worry the Empire at all! I'll just go to war with someone else, whoever else that did this!"

"We are worried," Aurora said. "We'll figure out who—"

"And what if it is Walaria?!" Mark asked.

Aurora glared, her vector focusing, her stance solid and the world rainbowing around her as she said, "You don't fight Empire—"

"Hey hey hey!" Kandon stood up, and Mark and Aurora stood down, a fraction. "Please, sis, I know that's not where you want to go with this, and please, Mark, don't go killing people without a fuck-ton of proof. And the Empire is going to figure this out. Where did you get the impression that we weren't?! Aurora and I and Yoro and everyone is on this shit, right now! We are Empire, too!"

Mark… took a breath. "Yeah… okay."

Aurora calmed, though it was difficult for her. "I just… You don't fight Empire."

Mark ignored that, asking, "Was it Walaria?"

"If it was, she's lying to me about it, but she doesn't lie like that, so I don't think it was her," Aurora said, and then she breathed out. She looked at all of the notes and images Quark had put up on the screens on the walls, and said, "This is a much better starting point to look for more reasonable answers."

"How did Walaria test you when you were going through this?" Mark asked, not willing to let that go.

Aurora stared at Mark for a moment, then she said, "She told me not to tell you the whole system she has, and I don't want to go against that direct order, but I can tell you… How it worked was this: She told me a time, and I needed to be ready at that time. At first I would try to run and hide and that helped vaguely. But then she'd start giving me broader times, like for a week. And then I'd get hit hard sometime in the week. She hasn't done any of that with you because I was 12 when I started off, and I was terrified of leaving the walls, but then… Whatever. You already killed monsters on the regular by the time you entered her orbit. We had different upbringings, but even so, when I was subjected to the worst of her tests it was a lot fucking easier than what happened to you today. What happened today was not Walaria."

She seemed to believe that.

Or at least she made herself believe that.

Mark took a breath, let out a lot of Bad into the room that he threaded into the world, and then he took another breath, and said, "Okay. What are more reasonable scenarios? Because all I can see are either traitors, big-time Skills and skill and planning, or Luck."

Aurora sat down in a chair, preparing.

Mark and Kandon sat back down, too.

Aurora said, "Getting that stuff into the settlement is easier than it should be because we're a giant transport hub. Monowire is used in manufacturing, and we got that. Shavallian is on sale at the Alchemist's Guild for special buyers. Wands of Destruction are mage examination projects. Hacking the scanners and the trams itself until you got onto a tram is child's work for any Tinkerer, and we got loads of those, but they'd need to be an artificer or even a full enchanter to get around the magical wards to hide stuff like that, in that specific place.

"The corruption ooze is the big thing. It wasn't an elemental. Elementals are easy to make. Corruption oozes require dense corruption that doesn't kill itself, but instead creates itself. That's a big metaphysical hurdle— Yes, question?"

"I've fought oozes," Mark said, "They have cores. That thing didn't have a core."

Aurora paused—

Kandon provided, "That's a classification error between Earth and Daihoon."

Mark paused. "What?"

"Ah, yes— I know this one," Aurora said, realizing something, "You know slimes? With cores? Everything you have ever fought with a core that you thought was an ooze was really a slime. Slimes can get enraged and act like oozes. True oozes are always enraged, and they don't have a core. With slimes you can crack the core and kill the slime. Oozes only die when the entire body is erased."

Mark… nodded. "Okay." He asked, "Where did it come from?"

Aurora replied, "Those particular oozes are tools of assassination from The Settlement of Xerkona."

Both her and her brother were very serious when she said that. Kandon even winced a little.

Mark nodded a little… And then he admitted, "I don't know what that means. That means something big?"

Aurora said, "It used to mean something. Do you know anything about Xerkona?"

"As much as the next random person. Maybe a bit more. There was the Xerkonan Etiquette class at Citadel Freyala, but that wasn't much. Xerkona is the Settlement of Xerkona and they have no real empire, but they're considered the Third Empire. They got places everywhere, and the culture is incredibly widespread, and they are one of the main reasons that the Reveal worked out how it did, instead of Earth and Daihoon falling into fighting. Thanks to Xerkona the Empires and Earth cooperated. Xerkona doesn't want to have a big empire, I think? But they do have some places out in some… some place on the Daihoon-side of China— Whatever that continent is called. Central… something."

Aurora said, "Central Sheorune, yes. That's where their ancestral homes are. Anyway: Xerkona is responsible for much of the politeness in interactions, and the 'humanity saves humanity' sentiments—"

"Yes, yeah. That. Yeah, I remember."

Mark's family had some Xerkona politeness influences from Grandpa and Great Grandpa, back when they were in the Reveal. Beyond that? Not really. Mark only ever knew Grandpa talking about being polite. Uncle Alexandro would know more, but was there more to know? Being polite was just… what you did. Being rude was pretty fucking rude.

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Aurora nodded, saying, "Xerkona is all about humanity helping humanity, until some parts of humanity need to be clipped for the greater good."

"Oh yeah," Mark said.

There was all that Empire of Foodstuffs back at the Citadel, where they pretended to solve fake kingdom-level problems through discussions and, if it was necessary, war. Mark had never gotten to the killing part, though he had been killed in the game for being a dissident.

"They're pre-Drakarok, but Drakarok has a lot of adherents in Xerkona for obvious reasons. By that same path, their history is absolutely full of a lot of self-destructive things that history never recorded properly, but which is recorded here and there in Empire records. In some of those clippings there are recordings of corruption oozes being used to hunt and kill particularly dangerous people, and also people that no one expected to be dangerous. Power-behind-the-throne types that Xerkona decided needed to die.

"Most famously, there was an advisor to a king in a bad part of Aluatha that was murdered about 20 years pre-Reveal by one of those corruption oozes, and then the kingdom got better in every possible way.

"That's what Xerkona does with those oozes," Aurora said, "With that all said, I have no idea why anyone would use one against you… A misdirect, most likely? The Empire will be talking with the Fates of Xerkona, though, of that you can be sure."

Mark nodded, thinking… he wasn't sure what he was even thinking. His mind was just elsewhere, trying to figure out what had happened. He asked, "Do you think it was targeted so I could counter it? Or targeted with the strongest stuff they had available?"

Aurora said, "We're dealing with professionals who can appear, act natural in a situation and fool a bunch of sensors into thinking they were always there, and then they leave, and they were never here at all. Yoro and about ten different security experts are going over the footage again and again, and they're not making much headway. The traps themselves, while impressive, were just undirected attacks, and you shredded pretty much everything, and then those shreds were melted away by the corruption ooze's cleansing. Undirected attacks are the only kind that can fool you for any length of time, so they knew that, too. If you were most anyone but you, Mark, you would have died, and even if you survived you would have been crippled for life due to the merest touch of the ooze shredding your Binding.

"Make no mistake, Mark, and listen now: You were the immediate focus of this attack, but this attack is sending waves all throughout the Empire. Someone already posted it to one of those Herowatch websites, and it went viral already. It got taken down but it already spread. It's only been an hour and already… Tomorrow is going to be worse. Politically."

She was worried about herself, and her position here at the settlement.

Aurora noticed Mark noticing her, and she shut her vector down. She continued, "Things like this tend to be big events long after they've actually happened. I suggest you vary your normal routine for now, fix up your house with better defenses, and if you do go after anyone, then you make sure they're actually connected to the assassination, and not just a patsy."

Mark stood, and asked, "Can I be dismissed now? I still need to see the security footage of before and after, with the 4 guys."

Aurora frowned just a little, then said, "Of course, Mark."

Mark left.

Aurora and Kandon stayed, and when the door shut they started talking to each other about things that Mark did not hear.

Mark went to the command center wearing his full armor. He had never taken it off. He was still nude underneath it all, too. He needed replacements for his repairing webweave, his rings, and a whole bunch of other shit. Nothing absolutely necessary. But all of the nice stuff was gone. Wealth scanners could pick him up easily, now. Mark would get to that later.

People were in the hallways and they moved out of his way.

The command center was just down the way, and Lola was standing outside, waiting for Mark.

She was calm.

Mark had no idea how she could possibly be calm, but she was calm. And it wasn't an act either. Mark almost said something. He almost lashed out. But then Lola walked up to Mark, and hugged him, even over his Adamantium. Mark felt the pressure of her hug, and he was absolutely sure he was cutting her, just a little, but he had no idea how to make his scales calm down.

The most Mark could do was hold back his scales from turning to spikes as he stood there and took the embrace.

"I'll help you kill whoever tried this, Mark," Lola whispered, softly. "Even if it's Emperor Salvation himself."

Mark understood Lola's calmness, in that moment. She had made up her mind about what needed to be done, and she was going to do it.

Mark's scales calmed down, and he hugged her back, saying, "Thank you."

Lola chuckled, a bit nervous, as she pulled away, a little bit of blood on her white clothes here and there, adding, "I would greatly appreciate it if it wasn't him or anyone even close to him, you understand."

A tension broke in Mark.

Mark said, "Me, too." He was about to heal Lola of the damage he had done but she was already healed, and the blood on her dress was already vanishing. "Uh… Sorry."

"Think nothing of it."

And then Isoko was there, hugging him a lot tighter than Lola, and fully platinum herself, and Sally was there with a hand on his shoulder, and Eliot was there talking about what they were seeing on the cameras.

Mark followed Eliot into the command center, which was abuzz with activity, with images of the 4 people on the tram dissected and put up on walls. There was a lot more footage of them besides that, too. Mark's eyes caught on an image of the 4 people coming out of the door of a shop on Magic Street, about the same time Mark had left his home to head to Mage Society, and he watched those guys walk slowly down the path.

Eliot talked about how the guys were meandering, taking their time, arriving at the Mage Society tram stop well before Mark arrived at the settlement-side, so the 4 people took more time, talking on the boarding platform, letting people go ahead of them. What did they talk about? The weather, the Hero/Villain Program, Mark, and then, when Mark's tram from the Noble District arrived at the transfer station, they got on their side of the Mage Society trams.

There was a missing 30 seconds of footage after they got on the tram.

The scanners in the walls had glitched, too.

There were still 2 trams between Mark stepping past the gate, onto the platform for the Mage Society individual trams. Eliot explained that there were some spiderbots in the system that were unknown and which had self-destructed when the event happened, but it was those spiderbots that had activated the 'overweight' protocol that allowed the 4 guys to set up Mark with that tram that Mark got on.

"We think there were some spiderbots in the tunnel, too, and that they used some spiderbots to plant the traps and tinker with the systems," Eliot said, "So we've got a Tinkerer of some kind."

Mark asked, "When is the first recorded sign of those spiderbots in the wires? The ones that detonated? You log all known bots in the walls, right?"

"We do," Deedee said, "We're still working on that, but we think it appeared either 6 or 7 days ago. Before the event you guys had in Mage Society."

Deedee was the resident bot expert, and she had about a million of them crawling all through the internals of the city.

Deedee said, "But my bots aren't in Mage Society that much, so I can only give an estimated planting time based on where I caught their bots outside Mage Society walls, and on Quark's partial view from where he saw the one working the Wand of Destruction, in this image here."

Mark looked at the image, and all he saw was a silver orb with knife-like legs gripping onto the underside of a seat, and also onto a length of silver metal with a black tip. That piece of metal was the Wand of Destruction, of course. It was aiming at Mark, right in that moment. Quark hadn't caught it at all, because the Wand of Destruction didn't look like a Wand of Destruction. The Wand was unique, and so was the bot. The Wand looked like an eyestalk.

Mark asked, "These spiderbots are unique enough that you can actually make that call that you know when you first recorded one of them? 6-7 days ago?"

Deedee grinned and said, "I can absolutely make that call!"

Quentin, however, was not convinced. "It's a silver-orb bot with knife legs and an eyestalk-appendage. Could have been here for 3 months, or 2 days." He pressed some buttons on the screens and out popped a whole bunch of images of similar bots, linked to the people who controlled them. "See?"

Deedee quickly said, "Oh come on! The assassin bot looks nothing like the rest!"

Mark thought all of the 'silver orb, knife leg, black eyes on a stalk' bots did look rather similar. It was not a unique design at all.

Eliot agreed, saying, "This silver one is not that unique. We can't even tell what the back end looks like, so… 6-7 days ago might be a mistake."

Deedee declared with confidence, "It's not a mistake."

Mark noted the discrepancy among the experts and moved on, asking, "What about the Wand itself? That has to be a unique shape. It's like a silver pipe with a black cap at the front."

Eliot said, "We submitted a review to Rekaro for people who completed their apprenticeships recently inside Aluatha. He's doing something on his end to officially retrieve records."

Mark nodded, then said, "Thank you very much for doing this. I hope to see results soon. I need to talk to Rekaro."

Isoko said, "I'll go with yo—"

"No," Mark said, with perhaps too much force. "I can't risk—"

Isoko got up in his face, saying, "I know you're not about to do some 'I can't risk others' kaijushit, Mark. Right! So I'm going with you... Say I'm going with you." She strongly added, "And we're still in the settlement! The fuck! I can go where I want."

"… Thank you for coming with me," Mark said, feeling slightly better and also like a bit of an idiot.

"Good! I can't fly well yet, so let's get outside and spin up that motor. We certainly ain't taking the trams!"

Eliot was deeply, horrifically embarrassed by that. A lot of people in the command center were.

Deedee instantly said, "We're checking all the systems! This won't happen again!"

Quentin said, "It could still happen. A skilled enough infiltrator—"

"We can patch up these holes, at least!" Deedee said.

Eliot said, "I'm going over the entire tram system again. That won't happen. A lot of people are working on it. But Mark, you should vary your routes going forward and… and I need to check out the house again."

Mark reoriented slightly, saying, "Yeah, so… Flying, yes. Isoko with me to Rekaro. But first I'm out of magic stuff. I need to go get some things. Some webweave, too."

"Can't have your ass hanging out, even if it is covered in metal," Isoko said, nodding, stepping to Mark's side and ready to walk with him to the Artificer's Guild—

And then Yoro was 20 meters away, suddenly appearing, and Mark almost caused an Incident…

But Mark calmed.

Yoro walked toward Mark, saying, "Re-gear and talk to the Grand Mage later. We're still doing the International Teleporter List for Kaiju Response, and I'm going with you."

Mark blanked.

Sally exclaimed, "You CANNOT be serious?!"

Isoko scoffed, disbelieving the whole thing. Eliot frowned.

"Sally is right, Yoro," Mark said, anger flaring a little. "You cannot be serious."

"I am so very serious, but we can go over all the reasonings when you're ready in 45 minutes. Prep is an hour. But basically, Mark," Yoro said, "This assassination attempt set off alarm bells everywhere. This test of the International Teleporter List for Kaiju Response is going to be overseen directly by Walaria in the capital, and if ITLKR is compromised, if anything happens to you at all, then heads will roll— Look. I can see you getting mad. Go ahead. Get mad. But be presentable for the cameras. I will be, too."

Mark decided to put off thinking any thoughts for right now.

He got going to the Artificer's Guild.