Adamant Blood

Quark spoke up, "Sir. It is done."

Mark blinked awake on the couch, relieved that he wasn't taken in his sleep, and then he looked at the mess. Books lay everywhere. They weren't open, at least. But some of those books were really old. They were copies, but they were old. They were a little more torn, now, too. Mark got up, ignored the damage his scales had done to the couch (ignored how his shell had become scales, too) and proceeded to pick up the books. Quark helped him with putting them back in their proper places.

As Mark put them away, Mark asked, "What's Goobersmithing look like?"

"Like everything that came before, but jumbled up into 'goobers' and then smithed together. For example: The concept of Protect written in Runic and Manawork, stuck together into a shield, and then corrected into a cohesive whole. Goobersmithing is how all solid, great items are made, from an archmage's robes to a Sword of Empire. More nuanced items, like those with moving parts, use other smithing, artificing, enchanting, and tinkering techniques."

Mark nodded. "Neat." He asked, "How about that language, Waterpeople?"

If that assassin shit wouldn't have happened, then Mark would probably be doing a Waterpeople Understanding Party right now. From what he had heard about it, Waterpeople was all about flow and water, and Mark loved fishing, boating, swimming, and all of those water-based activities.

If that Addashield stuff hadn't happened, Mark would probably be on the boat right now, fishing with Dad.

Quark answered, "Waterpeople is a descriptive prophetic language that, in the hands of a master, attempts to describe the world in a way that makes the world how it is described, but few, if any, can use Waterpeople at all. Most can only use it on themselves, and not very well. It is a living language, too, so it can only be used well when there are lots of practitioners nearby, and they all decide on a course of action, and thus that action manifests. In an overall sense, this seems like an amazing language.

"In a practical sense, the capabilities are much lower than historical records might be believed.

"Waterpeople is mostly used to hide from monsters, to ensure safety on the waters between islands, and by fortune crafters, to make fortunes come true. 'Fortune crafters' are not to be confused with 'fortune tellers'." Quark finished with, "Other languages can do fortune telling or crafting better for certain situations, primarily when it comes to 'eventual prophecy'-type fortune crafting/telling, but Waterpeople does fortune-crafting best for medium-scale, small-scale, directed and immediate actions."

Mark nodded slowly as he put away books. "That would have been nice to learn, but now we got a war, and now you got lots of information I do not have. Please tell me if something comes up that I need to know."

"Yes, sir."

With the books back on the shelves, and in the correct order, Mark took one last look at the room…

And then he walked out, into the dark.

He hoped he would be back and he could take his time. He liked reading from actual books. But… Well.

"Walaria seems alright?" Mark asked himself as he walked forward, through the dark. "Of course she was defending her brother, I guess? What do you think, Quark?"

"She was defending the Empire and her brother is a part of it. The hierarchical structure of House Aluatha is simple, but solid. They have remained in power for the last 80 years, beset on all sides and yet arriving triumphant, because of that simplicity."

"Gods… I guess so, huh."

Mark wondered if there was a point in a person's life when things were just so bad that they wanted to destroy everything that had made things bad. The answer was an instant 'yes', for Mark. But until today, or yesterday by now, 'everything' had not included the Empire…

'Everything' still did not include the Empire, Mark supposed.

Mark sighed.

… The dark went on for a while, and just like before, Mark's unionsense range was limited to the size of the light; 6 meters instead of 600.

Mark eventually called out, "Librarian! You out there?" He muttered, "Probably another ambush."

Mark kept walking, the sourceless light overhead still bathing him in a circle of illumination, driving back the dark all around. The dark still bit and nipped at the edges, the monsters in the dark continuing to try and get in, to eat Mark. But they could not cross into the light. They hissed and jumped away, remaining mostly unseen, as Mark moved through a sea of them.

He walked, walked, walked, and finally, something appeared in the gloom.

It was a staircase leading upward.

It was not the grand sloping spiral walkway, carpeted in red and overseen by guards, that connected the settlement's arcanaeum to the Vault.

It was a 4-ish meter wide, dark stone staircase, leading straight forward and up. He couldn't see up there, but this stairwell was the only thing in the dark, so this was the way forward… probably?

Ambush?

Ambush.

… Probably.

Mark backed away from the path, and the light did not follow. Mark frowned at that, as he walked toward the edge of the circle of light, to where the dark swirled ominously, dangerously. The dark chittered and snapped. Mark scowled at the dark.

And then he turned around and went up the path.

The light resumed following him as he moved upward, most of the circle of light hitting the walls instead of around him. And so, Mark walked the path upward, his unionsense not telling him much more than what his eyes were telling him. The rock was dark and mostly dry. Was he even still in the settlement? Maybe. He wasn't sure.

He walked for a while, the land behind him vanishing in the dark, while the space ahead was more gloom than absolute-black.

And then there was a landing. Just like that. Mark saw the landing 4 steps before he reached it, and then he stepped onto an open area and the gloom vanished, pulling away like someone was wiping off the lens of a camera.

The room was wooden and nice, and the stairwell to the Vault was gone, the wall behind Mark a solid thing. The entire room seemed solid, actually. Mark's Unionsense returned, but not completely; it stopped at the edge of the wall. The room had windows, and the land beyond looked like the settlement, but somewhere near the farms. It was dark, the auroras overhead coloring trees in soft, dark rainbow. It was one of the orchards and grain fields, and some other big houses like this one. The other houses had lights on inside, like squares of gold warmth in the dark night.

Mark was pretty sure he knew where he was. All of those farmhouses were big, family homes, for big farmer families and farmer traditions. They were somewhere north of the farms, with all the other farmhouses.

Quark calculated their location directly.

This one was one of the smaller farmhouses in Quark's records. According to the records, this was the second floor of a 2-story place right near the main roads into the orchards. According to what Mark was seeing right now, this place's interior architecture did not match the records. Instead of having interior walls this place was just one big room, maybe 10 meters by 7 meters—

There was a potted cleaner plant, and Reeni Thumb was standing beside it.

Mark's adamantium was almost all the way to her, while his Union was already beating hard with Adamant and Ethereal, but Mark pulled back. He breathed out normal air, and then took a normal breath. He was still on high alert.

Mark simply said, "Please don't do that."

Reeni watched the blades float away from her, saying, "You have gotten me with Union, but you likely would have failed with the blades. You weren't running the dangerous Union, though, so I think I was fine."

"That's… that's beside the point. I don't want to hurt you."

"And I am thankful for that. You can do a lot of damage with those Powers of yours!"

Mark frowned a little, not sure if she was getting at anything specific, or not.

Reeni moved on, the small woman stepping away from the cleaner plant, looking out the window at the aurora-bathed orchards. "You wanted to know about the goblins, and I will tell you: The goblins are a tribe of elves."

Mark felt a headache coming on. "Fuck." He scowled. "The ones with resurrection magic, huh… Yeah. I could see that." … Did that fact change anything? Mark said, "Doesn't change anything. So… So they're one tribe of elves?"

Reeni watched Mark as he decided things for himself, and then she said, "The full tribe consists of about 200 to 250 people. Some have put the number as low as 100. Others at 500. I think 222 might be the exact right count. Numbers aside… They die and are reborn over and over again, losing most of their memories with each death. Most goblins don't know about their true selves at all. Are the true goblins that exist today anything like their old selves? Not really, no.

"But Wongod remains.

"There's too much to tell you and none of it truly matters.

"But if you wish to know a few things, the things that matter, my predecessor once told me about these goblins, and about the elves in Daihoon. I will tell you the story that connects them, and then what it actually means.

"A few thousand years ago, the Godking Dominant of the time, with a thousand eyes and a thousand ears tracked the chariot of the gods through the sky. When he knew where to aim, and where the gods would fall, he fired his bow and he reached the heavens, knocking a star out of the sky. That star fell to Daihoon and Dominant gathered it into his bosom, controlling it and mastering it, and then he revealed that star to the world as the first goblin, Wongod, the Wrong-Made God. He sent that Wrong God against his enemies across the leviathan-thrashing ocean, against the Elemental Dragons and their terrible slaves, thus tempering their constant raids and murderous ways."

Reeni waited.

Mark was pretty sure he understood all of that, even through the metaphor. He said, "Seems simple enough."

Reeni smirked, just a little. "Do you know much about Okuana?"

"I wasn't aware Godking Dominant used the same name throughout all time… or is it the same guy?"

Reeni said, "The Dominion of Okuana has been ruled by one person that changes faces and ideology every few decades. They're either sexless, or both sexes, depending on their stance at the time. They usually go by 'he', and he is the product of all who come before; of all those who are buried in the Great Tree. He is as much a dryad as the other dryads of Okuana, under which all of Okuana is protected from all encroaching kaiju.

"Okuana also had a dragon-based defense system, of course, but they focused on Green Death Ecology. For most of my adult life it was dragons and elementals versus dragons and trees, and the trees threw goblins at us many, many years ago. 3,300, or 3,700. Hard to say.

"We're pretty sure the story I just told you, while apocryphal, is probably close to true. Knowing what we now know, I can safely tell you that the goblins were a tribe of elves that Okuana was able to strike out of Endless Daihoon, to crash them to Daihoon way back before Endless Daihoon was open in any permanent sort of way. And then they used skillers, Wilders, or soul mages, possibly with demon help, to corrupt that original tribe of elves into lesser beings, splitting them into the goblins of today.

"What you did with Goofy was peel back the corruption that Okuana instilled in one of the original elves. I'm absolutely sure that the corruption is still there. In the background. Maybe you could purge it eventually. I don't know.

"But I do know what happens when we go to war with the goblins. We win well, for a while. We achieve great things. And then the goblins get tougher.

"When there are fewer goblins, the ones that remain get that much stronger."

Mark turned away in thought.

Goofy was an elf, huh?

Did the goblins have resurrection magic? Or was the magic inside of them; intrinsic and unusable by others? If Okuana grabbed elves from Daihoon through some sort of… of aurora-tracking systems, then they probably experimented on them long before they arrived at the idea of turning them into goblins and planting near their enemies. Maybe some original elves remained alive in Okuana? Seemed possible.

Which brought up a concern of timelines, and just how deep the resources of these empires went.

Mark was currently tangled with Aluatha, and Aluatha was only, like, 500 years old? Or something like that? But it was a bunch of scattered nations long before now.

The Dominion of Okuana was not an unbroken lineage to 4,000 years ago; absolutely not. But they probably did have history stretching back that far. How deep did their resources go?

Mark had sort of heard about the godking of Okuana before, but not really. That stuff was outside of his concerns. But now they were heavily trying to recruit him.

He needed to know more about them.

… He didn't know enough about Xerkona, either, but if they were sending assassins after him, then Mark needed to know about them, too.

Mark said, "Your warning is heard and understood. Still gonna try and kill most of the goblins, though. Maybe the ones that remain will be able to have proper conversations. Thank you for telling me this…" Mark switched gears, asking "Do you know why Xerkona is after me?"

"I can guess, and it's important, but it is just a guess."

"Please guess for me."

Reeni hummed, looked at Mark, and said, "The Fates of Xerkona, with their prognostication abilities, are often involved in worldwide affairs. Most of the time they simply speak through an ambassador, passing along notes of things that should happen for better outcomes in the future. Sometimes they get truly involved, as they did with the Reveal, openly telling people what needed to happen if we were to survive that thresher. Those that followed their advice survived. Those that rejected their advice perished.

"I believe that the Settlement of Xerkona got involved with the tram attempt on your life. It looked like a real attempt to kill you, and it might have been. I don't know why they would want to kill you. But the outcome was heightened security checks for ITLKR, and then you survived the goblin ambush."

Mark wasn't sure how he felt about that.

Confused, mostly.

Mark asked, "Will they come after me again?"

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Did they even 'come after you' the first time?" Reeni rhetorically asked.

"Yes," Mark answered, because yes, they most certainly did.

"Do you know that? For sure?"

"I'm going to act like they did, for sure."

Reeni hummed; noncommittal.

… it was a little infuriating.

Mark looked around at the empty room, and asked, "Why did you bring me here?"

"I didn't bring you anywhere. I just opened a path and closed all others. You walked it."

"… A lesson, then? That I should have drilled through the dark instead of coming this way?"

"That's one way you could interpret it. But you learned a lot by following the path laid out, yes? There are times to break the path, and times to follow it, and you might never know which way is correct until after the fact. But I feel, in this place and time, that following the path will get you quite a lot further than deviating into darkness." As if that wasn't enough, Reeni added, "Please don't abandon Aluatha."

Mark's anger was a cold thing.

Mark said, "They do this shit all the time. Twice now, they have sought to control me in terrible ways, even when I work with their systems."

"They have done horrible things, this is true. They did horrible things to Aurora's mother's family, executing every Valen except for Elaria. In smaller ways, the Empire tried to pull you in on charges of trading in dragon goods." Reeni said, "There are a lot of reasons I don't work closely with Aluatha, but I still work on the edges with them, for to work against them is to invite certain death. You can do the same, if you want. But if you break covenant then the Empire stops seeing you as an ally, and Okuana has no reason to do anything to you except what they want to do to you."

Mark's cold anger felt colder.

… He moved on, asking, "What do you think our chances are with the goblins?"

"We're going to lose millions of people. Tens of millions on the low end. 300 million on the high end. We'll still win. Kill Grax, break them in millions of ways in turn, and then the war will be over, for now."

The truth of that statement crashed into Mark's psyche like a heavy blanket, and he was already tired. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking, staring at the dark. After a moment, he remembered what he had told Saikou, Lola, and Rekaro. He asked, "Can I counterattack, first?" He opened his eyes, to see Reeni standing beside her cleaner plant in the empty room. He asked, "With Glory and Fear, and kaiju-sized elementals? With witches at my back? With Empire helping, instead of subverting?"

"You can do whatever you want, Mark. The only time you can't do what you want is when other people try to stop you. If you can get people on your side before you act, then you will have a much better chance of succeeding in whatever you want to do."

Mark directly asked, "Will you help with a preemptive strike?"

"Strike that wording from your lexicon. Call it a retaliation for their previous attack and for their heinous subversion of the ITLKR system, and do it publicly, and don't mention Doomo at all. If you must mention him, then do so kindly. Craft the narrative you want to see and paint your current assassins in good lights, and maybe you can win Doomo over. Right now you're just a pawn in Walaria's schemes. You have not interacted in a positive way at all with Doomo, or with their third sibling, Third Princess Kalimara, the one in charge of magic in the Empire. If all you are is a tool used by Walaria, then you are a tool the other two are more than happy to break for their own benefits."

Mark felt some of his anger twist into curiosity. "… Would that work? A propaganda push?"

"It might."

"… It makes me feel dirty to do that."

"Until you have the power to make and break all on your own, then lies and politics will fill the gaps in your power, Tyrant Dragon King."

Mark snorted, most of his anger becoming a desire to act… He looked at Reeni. "You running magic on me right now? Making me see and feel how you want me to see and feel?"

"Do you need that particular truth? Does this path I have illuminated for you benefit from knowing how the sausage is made?"

"… Still a witch, huh."

"Yes." Reeni added, "And you're still asleep."

Mark blinked, and it was like the world had turned soft, dark, and all the colors of the auroras outside the windows melted into the room. Mark felt himself laying on a soft couch, covered by blankets.

Reeni was still standing there, in the middle of the room, by the cleaner plant. She was the only thing making sense to Mark's vision.

Her words carried him back to wakefulness,

"I won't acknowledge anything said here in the waking world, and you shouldn't either, but I will stand with you when you speak of retaliation against the goblins. In this way, you will know the words said here were true, and real, as much as they can be, even though it was all just a dream."

- - - -

Mark woke up on the couch in his private vault, his scales digging into the fabric.

The books were on the shelves, and Quark's adamantium body was sitting on the back of the couch, overseeing Mark's sleep.

"Morning, sir," Quark said, "I think Reeni had us in a dreamspell, as outlined in Languages of the Dark, which is one of the later languages you were set to learn."

Mark yawned and stretched, making efforts not to break the couch in the process. He sat up, put his feet on the floor, and sat there for a moment, thinking. And then he said, "So elves are already here, huh."

"Corrupted versions of them. I have recorded the whole conversation for later, if you wish. I am at 7% memory capacity right now, with all the information in all of the books here, in the vault. There is nothing in there about goblinized-elves. Would you like me to search the internet for corroborating evidence regarding the words said in that talk, once we reconnect to the internet and the settlement?"

"… Yes." Mark stood up. "Did anyone disturb us? What time is it, anyway?"

"The Librarian delivered messages from the team, wondering where you were, and he told them that you were fine. That was 2 hours ago. It is currently 3 AM."

Mark got up and got going.

He got earfuls from his team but also big hugs from Sally and Isoko, and even Eliot.

A lot of worrying had happened while Mark was asleep, but no actual events had happened, which everyone was thankful for. Mark wanted to talk about everything with all of them, but he had a short window to act, so he told them his plan for a reprisal against Goblinhome.

He did not tell them about 'goblinized-elves'. Maybe he should have, but that was a Big Secret for some reason. Reeni even said that she wouldn't acknowledge anything said in that dream. There were other concerns, anyway, like the Total War coming their way.

Mark needed to stop the Total War in its tracks, and he thought he might know how.

"The main target is Grax," Mark said, "Any other goblins we can permakill, we will, but Grax is the conqueror and he needs to die and then Total War gets shoved back to some other time and place."

Isoko had a lot of emotions to her, from worry to fear to excitement and anticipation, but she easily said, "I'm in."

Sally was mostly furious. "I cannot believe that Xerkona and Aluatha are trying to kill you… No. I can believe it." She frowned. She asked, "You don't want to throw in with Okuana? With Walter?" Sally winced. "Okay, so… Looking back on it, I know he has been trying to influence me to tell you what I'm about to say…" She frowned deeper. "But Okuana might be nicer than Aluatha. I started off over there with Arana… Anyway. They're nice. Lots of ghosts in trees, but they let you enter their main cities… mostly."

Mark said, "I can't go to Okuana. Right now I have some history with Aluatha and a contract to be here in this settlement for another 4.5 years. If I leave then Aluatha hates me and I have no way to change the narrative of what happened, and I'm rather sure that Okuana, if I had nowhere else to go but there, would not be any better than Alutha."

"I don't believe that," Sally said, "You're rich as fuck. You can change any narrative you want." With a Knowing in her tone that spoke of unsaid permanent-demon-killing magics, she added, "Okuana would love us."

"It's a crap shoot," Isoko said to Sally. "No way to know until it happens. And Walter even backed off from his threat against Doomo."

"He could pick the threat back up!" Sally said, incensed at Doomo again. "A man —even a prince!— who gives up superheroes to goblinization should expect serious reprisal." She told/asked Mark, "You won't seriously let him off that easily, will you?"

"I think I should," Mark said.

Sally looked to be in physical pain at that answer.

Isoko thought Mark was making the right choice, though.

Eliot spoke up, "Mark is right. We can't abandon this post— Well… We could. We also shouldn't. I have stuffed the house with the absolute best anti-assassin magics I could find. And Doomo is still an enemy, but one we should work with." He glared at Mark. "But I cannot believe you slept in the Vault. That's like… Directly connected to the capital!"

"I think the Vault might have been the best place for a nap, actually," Mark said, defending himself. "Sorry I didn't tell you guys about it, though."

Sally felt a bit better after an apology.

Eliot was still worried.

Isoko said to Eliot, "I had that big conversation with Elaria about that, and I told you… But you didn't believe me?"

"I have no capability to interact with the Vault," Eliot admitted, wincing. "Don't tell anyone."

"The Vault is super defensive anyway," Isoko said, reevaluating a conversation between her, Eliot, and Sally, that Mark was not there for. She told Mark. "The Vaults are connected by way of electronics and AIs and by about 30 different Societies. And they're not a transportation system. You were perfectly fine in there. ITLKR is a single coalition force operating at the highest levels of cooperative governments, and thus much easier to corrupt."

Eliot gave Isoko a Look and a 'hmmm'.

Sally was on Eliot's side, saying, "I agree with Eliot. I don't trust the Vault."

Mark cut off the rest of what could have been a much longer talk, saying, "Well I gotta make some statements. Who wants to come?"

All of them wanted to come.

Soon, Mark was knocking on Noel Oliphant's door. The Hero/Villain Program coordinator for the settlement woke up with a start. Mark felt him through his Unionsense as the guy got up and then came to the door.

Noel opened the door and stood there in his boxers, blinking heavily as he looked at Mark and the team.

Noel guessed, "You want to make a statement?"

"Yes."

Noel nodded then went back into his apartment, saying, "Give me a minute. Everyone wants to know what's going on and your statement can go out with the noon brief." He called out from his bedroom, "You probably shouldn't tell the whole truth." He came back out wearing clothes, his automaton in his briefcase. "Do you have a story in mind already?"

Mark easily said, "Yes. The goblins infiltrated the settlement with changelings, but thanks to Walaria's oversight of ITLKR and Doomo's warnings from his unsuccessful diplomacy attempts, due to the heinous actions of Grax, I was able to survive 3 separate assassination attempts on the same day."

Noel was surprised. He easily said, "Okay. I was worried I was gonna have to talk you down from something a lot more dangerous."

Mark added, "And we're going to launch a reprisal against Goblinhome soon, before they get a chance to go to Total War first. I want to make that part of the statement, too."

"… Okay. Uh. Can we get Aurora involved in this, now? I'm not comfortable putting out that kind of statement—" Noel suddenly added, "We can always release it after the first actions happen. Does that mean that the attack Goofy talked about on the 15th isn't happening? Or that you'll be guarding against that with the preemptive strike?"

"I'm sure Aurora will want to show up and talk about it, but we're not calling it a 'preemptive strike'. We're gonna call it 'a retaliatory action', and I'll be pulling out all of the stops, Noel."

Noel's eyes went wide. "… All of them? Even this new… uh." He looked back and forth. "The Shavallian Aura?"

"Yup."

"I doubt we're putting that into the press release." Noel was excited as he added, "But let's get this thing filmed!"

Twenty minutes later Mark was setting up for a small speech by a fountain in front of Castle South. People were already gathering. They streamed out of the front doors of Castle South, and came down from the trams and stopped to listen, instead of continuing on.

Reeni stepped out from behind a bush and gave Mark a thumbs up, while Aurora and Walaria watched from a balcony high overhead.

And then it was show time.

Mark acted for the cameras, calling for action, retaliation, and lying his ass off about how Doomo's failed diplomacy at least helped him uncover a goblin that was capable of seeing other goblins as evil, and Goofy was already handing out amazing intel on Goblinhome. Grax was the enemy, and his call for Total War would not be tolerated.

"And so, because of the deep infiltration by Goblinhome and the continued attacks on our settlement, I will be going there myself, to fight that evil, to sever heads from necks before they can Bite again." Mark finished with, "Death to all monsters."

The atmosphere was quietly optimistic, but with a whole lot of apprehension.

Isoko clapped first, yelling "WOOOOO!"

Sally shouted, "Death to all monsters!"

Eliot made a sound, too, Mark was sure, but the other two had started the cheering well enough. The minor crowd, all 150-ish people, cheered. Soon, the press release would fly, and then the fireworks would start.