Adamant Blood

The nights on Daihoon were a lot brighter than on Earth.

On some nights, it was almost as bright as an overcast day. August 13th, 2049, Friday, was one such night. The full moon hung in a cloudless sky, like a soft silver sun, cracked with gold throughout. The auroras of Endless Daihoon swirled overhead, most of those colorful bands passing around the moon like a lens, making the sky directly overhead look almost like an eye, looking down.

The demons certainly looked down onto the world, both literally and figuratively, so that much was appropriate, Mark figured.

Mark looked down upon the world, too, but less in a figurative sense.

The Greendeath Mountains spread out before him like a goblinized horror.

The lands here were basically the Daihoon-copy of the Appalachian Mountains of North America, and just like Appalachia, the Greendeaths were old. Millions of years old. Daihoon was rougher than Earth in a lot of ways, with kaiju all over the place, so the Greendeath Mountains didn't look exactly the same as the Blue Ridge Mountains part of Appalachia, but they were close.

Rolling green hills, writ large. Big caverns everywhere. Streams and rivers and floodplains, and a few big lakes here and there, where old trauma from big fights had filled in with water and greenery. But mostly, the place was secure, because of the people who called this place home.

Goblinhome was in all of that.

Half hidden in most places, most goblin houses didn't rise much higher than the bottoms of canopies. But there were goblinfruit-borne cities all along the mountains. Old growth cities, too, with big defenders and bigger defenses.

The goblin cities were layered like cakes, with vast open spaces between layers, one layer after another held up by goblinfruit tree trunks that were so large that they dwarfed every image that Mark had seen of Okuana, with its dryad defenders. Every layer was filled with greenery and civilization. They were not like the cities that had cropped up around the settlement, and especially not like the one that Mark had destroyed with a kaiju-sized death elemental.

These places had lights. Electricity. Antennas and broadcasting systems and news on airways that reached homes of goblins that watched the news as they ate cereals because they were too busy to make a proper meal. There were grain farms and meat farms and all sorts of farms. It had buses and people complaining about exact change. It had bankers and currency forged of goldleaf trees that farmers tended to in secured locations, overseen by armies of goblins wearing uniforms and holding guns.

It basically looked like human civilization, but made for very short people.

Those were the nice places, though. The main cities.

Other places were intake for wild goblins that had made the trek to Goblinhome, braving everything to get here, most of them not even realizing what they were actually trying to find. It was racial memories that drove them. Those goblins went through queues at every edge of Goblinhome, and most of them ended up at halfway cities.

Death was rampant in those halfway cities because the rules were clear, and violators were murdered by guards without mercy.

Goblins that wanted to enter the main city needed to have powers worth something. Everyone else needed to prove themselves by bringing in 10 right ears of 10 different goblins. How did that happen, exactly? Well, there were tunnels from the intake zones leading into the death cities, and goblins went into the death cities with friends or with enemies, and then 1 out of 10 goblins came out the other side, at the exit portals of the death cities. Then, they could enter the halfway cities, and 'rent' was 1 other dead goblin a month.

Or you could join the army, fighting monsters that always encroached.

"There are sweeper goblins that come through the halfway cities every other month and sweep the place clean, killing every goblin below PL 20-All," Goofy said, floating beside Mark, pointing out the various things down below.

The two of them floated about 40 kilometers from the place, and several kilometers up, and that was more than close enough to see the whole stretch of it all. They were inside the border of Goblinhome, and technically trespassing.

Mark thought of it more like invading.

Goblinhome was a civilization, for sure. The holograms, the pictures, the historical records, did not do the place justice at all. Most of it was hidden from sight, too, but Quark colored in areas with known activity in Mark's sight, using high-flying scanners to fill in gaps in vision. What looked like a rolling mountain range full of cities 5 times that size, with long, winding corridors of space in every direction, was also full of goblins.

Goblinhome was the land right before them.

Goblinhome's territory and suburbia was 100 kilometers in every direction, with small sub-cities out there in the deeper woods.

They had more than 1,000 superhero-level threats, too, but only 10 of which resurrected all the time. Goofy was #11.

A few days ago Goofy had been a scraggly, messed-up-looking goblin, like all goblins. Green, wrinkly, splotchy and wiry black hair, big dripping fangs, and a dirty Glorious Man's children's teeshirt with a sequined gold belt. Now he was a rather handsome green guy with long black hair tied into braids and a bun, wearing a children's sized Glorious Man costume. The costume fit him well, and he had no fangs at all anymore, so his smile was rather more glorious these days.

"Where was your house again, Goofy?"

Goofy pointed to the left, to the east, saying, "It was over there in that darker area. Wongod is probably over there, too. That's near Hive and the Godlands. The city is controlled by the actions of Hive, like a command center, so everyone goes in and out of there all the time. No one goes into Wongod's Godlands, though, but goblins walk out of there all the time. That's where he resurrects them. When he's not doing that Wongod walks a path from there to over there—" He pointed right, to the west. "— and he goes about as fast as he wants to go. Wongod is dangerous, and the only reason we don't see him right now is because he doesn't want to be seen."

The intel Mark had been able to acquire painted a rough picture of combat strength among the goblins.

Wongod was at the top of the list, but he never left Goblinhome. He never fought directly unless he had to. Mark did not expect to fight him today, but he was gonna fuck up some shit, for sure.

The rest of the list of 'worst goblins to fight' was subjective, depending on the situation and the person asking.

Mark, personally, was concerned with whatever could subvert his Power, or was too strong to face head-on. That list had speedsters at the very top, which meant Old Slave and his company of fellow speedsters. Grax was a speedster half the time, so he counted, too.

Then there were the weird goblins that could be a real problem, or not.

Stupid Goblin was capable of making enemies retarget their attacks, and he could adjust targets after the fact, anywhere within his line of sight. He couldn't retarget things like kaiju-slams, or other giant, area-of-effect attacks, but Union? Yeah. Union could be retargeted. Stupid Goblin was a 1-trick pony, though. Mark could retarget Union fast, too. He expected to get one-upped once by Stupid Goblin, and then never again.

And then there was Puppet, who could directly control an enemy's Powers. Puppet was a witch on the council of witches that oversaw Goblinhome. Puppet might be able to do… small things, maybe, but more than that? Probably not. Mark expected his PLs and Protect to save him there.

"Where is the witch council?" Mark asked.

Goofy pointed to the center of the place, in the middle of the biggest city. "There. Beside the red goblinfruit tree, right next to the human district. That's where the human breeders are, too. I don't know what to do about them. Save them? Condemn them? It is horrific. All of this is horrible."

Mark had heard 'human breeders' from Goofy a few times. He had even dared to open the file that contained information about all of that. But he did not ask Goofy for clarification, and then he did open that file. He promptly shut the file after the first few lines of overview text, and after the first few images.

Mark almost wanted to go to a mind healer after looking at that shit, to get his memory purged. Instead, Mark breathed in the Good and breathed out the Bad, and read on.

He was pretty sure every single human in that place was going to die as soon as Total War happened.

The breeder facility was one of the most guarded in the place, and one of the (many) reasons that Aluatha didn't just attack the place. There were about 5,000 humans in there, of various ages and sexes. The males were mostly shoved out of there when they reached Biting age, which was 16, and then they were given over to various households to take care of and maybe Bite later, while the females were kept for further breeding purposes.

And BiggestBaddest oversaw all of that, planting mind ghosts into every 'free' human, the ghost piloting the human while the human watched from inside of themselves, unable to do anything but mentally scream. BiggestBaddest also oversaw all of the governance of Goblinhome, along with a bunch of others Elder Goblins who Goofy (and several top analysts) thought were just BiggestBaddest by different names. Some of the Elders were real people, though; not just BiggestBaddest wearing a different person.

Lola had told Mark that she was pretty sure if Mark did a Union of Purity/Corruption on the humans, focusing on mental purity, that he could break BiggestBaddest's control. Goofy had broken BiggestBaddest's control on Kev just by touching him, and there were reports of BiggestBaddest's control slipping all the time, elsewhere throughout history. A push by a truly strong astral body, like Goofy's touch, or Mark's Union, should clear up that issue.

But further conversations with Lola, then Yoro, and Goofy, all told Mark to expect any rescue of any humans to be killed in the crib.

The humans in there all had Knacks, and those Knacks were probably obedience-oriented.

Goblins, of course, had no compunctions about human experimentation...

Mark didn't want to think about that. He'd confront the problem later, or, the problem would vanish, when the goblins killed all of their 'hostages'.

At least all reports of the human district of Goblinhome said that the humans there were highly brainwashed and they led 'good' lives, until it was time for harvest. At least they weren't being tortured all the time.

… Mark put that out of his mind, as much as he could.

Mark stared at the larger problem, and what a fucking problem it was.

Mark was currently 4 kilometers above the surface, about 40 kilometers north of Goblinhome, which was tall enough to see over the mountains. The horizon beyond the mountains was about 220 kilometers away. Goblinhome covered all of that horizon and even places underneath Mark, to the north.

The population?

500 million goblins, at the low end. Maybe a full billion. Who knew! The numbers changed wildly and they had Techies, enchanters, artificers, mages, and Powered goblins of all kinds, purposefully obscuring the lands from far sights and other means of spying. That was why Mark had to come out here to really see the place.

But at any moment, Grax could choose to come out, to go to the settlement, or journey south, to Not-Florida and then venture across the Meteor Sea to Aluatha's northern coast, and, speedy Light Titan that he was, make more goblins by Biting everything non-goblin. That would be the real start of the True War. Next would come kaiju summoning and other horrors. Grax hadn't thrown kaiju at the settlement, but Grax had cleared the entire area around the settlement within a minute, and he could do that whenever he wanted. Grax was going to be Goblinhome's spear.

Grax was called Grax the Conqueror for a reason.

Mark hovered in the sky, gazing outward.

Goofy hovered beside him, his vector focused on the mission ahead.

Back at the settlement, they were ready for war. All across Aluatha, a few people were gearing up for a fight. Only those deep in-the-know, though. Many were hoping to talk Mark out of this. It had only been a few hours since his Hero/Villain Program declaration of a counter offensive against Goblinhome. That news was still spreading and alerting people.

Mayor Ramirez of Memphi had called Mark and they had had a small talk about what the fuck was going on, whereupon Mark told a bunch of crafted lies and Ramirez told him to cut the bullshit. But Mark had doubled down, and added, 'And that's the story I'm going with', at the end of it all. The Mayor had responded with what amounted to a '… sure, kid.' and Mark was pretty sure she was working hard in the background now, trying to figure everything out, too.

A lot of people were working hard in the background, preparing for Total War.

Some people, fools mostly, were trying to stop it.

One of those people reached out to Mark right now, Quark beeping in Mark's ears.

"Ambassador Iliandra Snowstepper wishes to talk."

"Put her through," Mark said, "Speaker, too, so Goofy can hear."

Goofy's eyes flickered toward Mark, but he mostly focused on the land below and ahead.

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Iliandra spoke with a pleasant voice, saying, "Greetings, Mark. I will dispense with small talk. Empire Aluatha requests you stand down from this maneuver. We have peace talks lined up. Would you like to be a part of those?"

"Tell Grax if he wants a peace talk then I'm right here, standing over his lands like a nuclear bomb ready to go off." Mark was unionsensing everywhere, in every direction, as far as he could go, and then snapping back in the other direction to look that way. He hadn't caught anything staring at him yet. But he had only been out here for 10 minutes, having flown all this way over the last two hours. Mark added, "I'm waiting for someone to show and talk to me. If they attack I kill them. If they talk, then we talk."

Iliandra ignored the first half of Mark's statement, saying, "The talks we have lined up are at the Half Table, located in the islands off of Aluatha's equatorial coast. Those sorts of talks are much less prone to sudden attacks from both sides, and have proven necessary for both sides of this cold war. Please do not turn this war hot, Mark. Please listen to reason."

Mark frowned, then said, "Do you think Grax's threat of attacking on Gate Day was made up? A lie? A bluff? Take your time if you need to answer truthfully."

Goofy shook his head, whispering, "Not a bluff. He's going for Total War."

Mark agreed. Mark was also waiting for someone to show here, to kick this off properly. Maybe even Grax himself. Mark had cast a Protect on himself and even on Goofy, to counter an initial attack. And now he waited. His range was 1.2 kilometers if he stretched himself in one direction only, but only 600 meters average in a radius sphere around himself. Nothing had pinged his Unionsense at all.

Not even birds.

It was highly likely that someone was sneaking up on him, but Mark doubted that.

He focused, and felt the world beyond his Unionsense, trying to feel the general nature of the vectors of living things, to see if a big enough gathering of forces, all pointed at Mark, could be sensed. So far he was getting nothing on long-range Unionsense.

He never really got anything using long-range Unionsense, anyway.

Sure, he could feel it when kaiju were about to enter the world, and when the gate opened or shut, even if he was within 100 kilometers of it, or when big things happened in big ways. But if there were 1 or 100, or maybe even 1,000 goblins down there, looking up at Mark, he could not tell.

Nothing was invading the skies with power.

Nothing was invading the land with power.

Of course, Mark was wearing all black and holding himself up with a black rotor. Goofy was wearing white, so maybe they would see him first? Still hard to see Goofy, though. They were small things and the sky was big and black and colored with dark rainbows.

Mark asked Goofy, "They do have long range scanners, yeah?"

Goofy answered, "They should have seen us by now. I had goblins flying alongside me every time I went out. There are flying goblins everywhere, all the time. Even this far out. There had been flying goblins back at the border."

They had passed a border to get here, of course. That border back there had been lined with stone towers with green lights atop them every 200 meters or so. There had been guards, but they had all been 4 kilometers down. Well out of Mark's range.

"They probably have seen us," Mark said, "But they're actively choosing not to engage. Hmm. BiggestBaddest would be the one making that choice, yes?"

"Or the Elder Council," Goofy said, "The Elder Council is maybe half BiggestBaddest… Maybe less? Good actor most of the time. BiggestBaddest does all defenses, though; fast acting, that one."

Mark nodded.

Iliandra was still there on the call. Would she speak up? Mark wasn't sure—

"Would you talk to whoever showed?" Iliandra asked. "Or would you kill?"

Goofy scowled. He wanted to kill the abominations.

"I'll talk, for now," Mark said. "And if they attack or tell me untrue things, I will kill them. I will also be in a Union with them the second they appear, which will weaken them greatly. Hopefully they can fly this high while weakened."

Goofy thought for a second, and then he nodded. And then he nodded more. Yes, this was a good plan.

Iliandra was quiet again. Probably talking to others.

Goofy asked about something else they had discussed, while flying over here. "Can your AI tap into Gobkin Vision yet?"

Gobkin Vision was one of the main news networks of Goblinhome.

Quark answered, "There are various viruses in that network, but Mark's PL is too high to be corrupted that easily. I am still trying to unscramble the feeds. It might be a whi— Ah! Got it… no. Scrambled again."

Goofy nodded a little, expecting this. "You need to pay 1 goblin ear per week to see the shows outside of the main cities. Some goblins can bypass that with Techie Powers, but most cannot. I didn't know that until after exile. The shows are free in the main cities. They are all propaganda, but they do show news when it happens." He added, "BiggestBaddest is all of the actors and all of the hosts, and even some of the guests."

"Ha!" Mark said, more disgusted than amused. "That's a lot of fucking roles…" Mark said, "I don't care about their propaganda, but I would see it if you can Quark. Don't devote too much to it, though."

"Understood, s— Ah. The feed cleared suddenly."

Goofy perked up. "BiggestBaddest does that when news happens."

Iliandra spoke up, "I'll be listening at the command center, Mark, if you need me—"

Mark doubted he would need First Prince Doomo's pawn for anything, but whatever.

"—I can inform you of most of what they might talk about. Out."

The line clicked. Iliandra was off the direct call, though Quark was still broadcasting through drones in the atmosphere, back to the settlement, and to whoever wanted to watch in Aluatha. Probably a lot of people wanted to watch.

A little popup appeared to the side of Mark's vision, showing two goblins sitting behind a desk. Both of them wore suits and they had bright, shiny teeth. They were news broadcasters, and the picture-in-picture showed Mark and Goofy floating in the sky, backlit by auroras. They were talking about 'We apologize for interrupting your broadcast, but enemies of Goblinhome have appeared in the northern sky…' And then it was a news brief.

Mark looked down and to the right, where the camera might have been flying down there, and sure enough, there was a drone down there. Mark couldn't sense un-Powered drones with Unionsense, but Quark usually picked up on those. This one was probably just now moving into sight.

In the picture-in-picture on Gobkin Vision, Mark looked at the camera.

He waved.

The broadcaster goblins chuckled at that.

One of them started talking, "And it appears Blackvein has seen our camera! Greetings there, Blackvein!"

The other one said, "The channels are open to Gobkin Vision! You should be able to respond to us if you want!"

"He has one of those nifty AIs," said the first broadcaster.

"Yes yes!" said the second one. "Our records show that he does have one of those!"

Quark told Mark, "That is true. I can use a channel here to communicate your voice, if you want. It seems like a normal connection. It is likely trapped anyway."

The second goblin said, "Please regale us of your reason for being here tonight! The world wants to know! And why is Gallant Goblin with you? Are you coming to join the Rebirthing Green?"

Mark said, "Connect me then, Quark, but if there is any feedback then cut it."

"Connected… No feedback."

"Oh my green gods!" said the first goblin, smiling and showing fang, as he touched an earpiece. "He's joining us! Hello, Blackvein!"

"Hello, Blackvein!" said the second one. "We're still getting stragglers from that goblin birthing by your settlement! We've heard you have killed a lot of us!"

There didn't seem to be any rancor in that statement at all.

… But of course there wasn't. These two were BiggestBaddest, but more than that, they were pushing an agenda. Goblins died, and were then reborn. They didn't care about death at all. They cared a lot more about other things, though. What did they care about? Mark wasn't sure.

A small camera, the one recording him, flew up to Mark's front, to float a good 20 meters away. Mark only tracked it because of Quark; it was a very small camera.

"Greetings, people of Goblinhome," Mark said to the camera. "I heard Grax wanted to continue to attack us with an even bigger attack, so I had to come by and show y'all some retaliation."

"Oh! Scary!" said the first guy, smiling.

"Are you sure you can even do such a thing?" asked the second one. "We do have lots of defenders here, after all! And you might just galvanize us to attack in force, like what Grax the Conqueror desires."

"Oh, you already have plans to attack anyway. I doubt I can change anything at all. But I'm going to try, for sure, and probably get much further than anyone expects." Mark added, "And then I'm going to keep going, and going, and going."

"Oh oh oh!" said the first goblin.

"You can't actually kill us in any way that matters, and you'll surely get the immortals here after you if you damage enough," said the second one, looking truly curious. He asked, "Any particular reason why you're dead set on fighting this unwinnable fight?"

The first one faked a surprised expression, and a little gasp, before saying, "I bet he wants to be one of us! Wongod has open invitations to every power out there to become goblin, if they want to live the immortal life! And Blackvein was recently offered the Green. Is that it, Blackvein!"

"Oh yes!" said the second goblin. "Blackvein! You have problems with demons and monsters, right? Want to join us and help kill them all? You won't die if you join the Green, and with you leading our armies we can truly commit to Total War like never before."

"You want to kill all monsters, right?!" asked the first one. "We want that, too!"

Mark chuckled easily, finding it simple to act for the camera. "No thank you. Even if you could do that, I doubt you would, given the last several thousand years of history. So right now all I can plan around is how your people trick humans all the time. So no, I don't believe you can reincarnate people as goblins. With that out of the way: I'm waiting for either a representative to come out and we talk a ceasefire, or I start destroying. Are you the representatives that I was told to wait for?"

"Representatives?! Oh Green no!" said the first one, shaking his head. "We would never presume upon the sovereignty of the Elders, or the ones the Elders appoint."

"But we had to get in a small interview, if we could!" said the second one— And then the second one had a fake little startle. "Ah! It appears a representative is showing up! We'll fade into the background then! Thanks for the intervi—"

A green lightning bolt had lifted up from the ground to the south, near the main city, about 6 seconds ago. It was coming this way, and then it struck the camera and stopped right there, interrupting the second broadcaster's words.

Natural lightning did not move like that.