Adamant Blood

The green lightning bolt resolved into a green goblin with green lightning sparking across his skin, shocking into the air for several meters over and over, flickering, as he stood there in the sky, about 30 meters from Mark.

Tormpol, the Storm, one of the top 5 Elders of Goblinhome, of the big ones.

A pillar.

Mark Unioned with Tormpol. Adamant strength filled Mark and Goofy, while Ethereal weakness infiltrated the goblin. Tormpol frowned, his lightning trying to bite at Mark's Union, contesting him for strength, his flashing bolts frying thread after thread of Union. But Mark had no end of threads, and while some burned away the majority connected. The lightning calmed.

Tormpol frowned at that. He said nothing, yet.

Mark said nothing, either. He read up a bit. According to Quark's notes, based on what Mark had been able to find out from people and what Quark had been able to find out on his own, Tormpol had a temper on him. Tormpol was also a witch on the goblin council of witches.

Walaria spoke in Mark's ears, "Be careful with your words. You have already agreed to speaking on peaceful grounds. Do not strike the first real blow."

"LEAVE, TRESPASSER," Tormpol intoned. He might have been drained by Union, but he still had strength in his voice. He commanded, "Leave and do not return."

"You are an invader, not a trespasser," Walaria said.

"Invader, not a trespasser," Mark said, taking Walaria's prompting at face value as something that would be good today. And then Mark had his own words. Mark asked, "Are your people going to fight humanity anytime soon?"

Tormpol frowned. "Leave now, run, hide, and you might survive the coming storm."

"The storm is already here, and I am it. Leave Aluatha, leave this continent, leave humanity alone, and go to D'Austrialia like Doomo tried to get you to go, peacefully, to separate our war forever, and this storm will not strike."

Tormpol's eyes went wide. Lightning flashed—

"Prepare," Walaria whispered.

The intel had been right. Tormpol had a temper, and he hated his 'storm' being smaller than anyone else's.

Something small and fast curved off of the ground, down below, like a curving laser beam, right at Mark. It crashed against his Protect, triggering it. It was a useless spell; whatever it was. Nothing happened, except for what was meant to happen.

Mark's Protect protected against the attack that triggered the spell.

Everything else was fair game.

In almost that same instant, Mark pulled hard on Adamant and Ethereal, wrapping his adamantium around himself in a solid shell, and Tormpol struck Mark with lightning gathered from the entire sky.

Mark had been struck by monster-lightning before, both magical and half-natural. It hurt every fucking time. Tormpol's lightning hurt so much it wrapped all the way around to nothing. No feeling. No sense of anything real. The goblin had targeted Mark's nervous system, Mark realized. Mark could still Unionsense, though, and he could still sense his fused adamantium scales, and his adamantium rotors overhead, and he could still make rational decisions in a split moment.

He didn't get a split moment.

Quark screamed as something attacked him, too, filling Mark's vision and senses with incoherent silver cackling.

Mark fell, adrift in his own body, his mind fogged and goblin horrors plagued his senses, ripping at his nude skin with fangs, biting his heart and scooping out his eyeballs. Ten copies of the same goblin unspooled his intestines from slashes in his stomach and fed his guts back to him, offal and all, as they Bit him all over and horrors birthed from every opening in his body, bulging his skin like a sack before they ripped their way out—

Goofy pulled Mark away, and something ephemeral snapped.

Mark was in his armor, which he had sealed over into one solid mass of black. Goofy had grabbed his arm and ran, flying fast. Quark calmed in an instant, flashing signs of 'Rebooting!' in his vision, which was fried. Mark was blind. The lightning had done too much damage.

Mark healed himself first, drawing hard on Good/Bad, while Goofy flew fast, directly away from the confrontation. There weren't any living things around to draw from, since they were so high up, but Mark healed himself anyway. Goofy was damaged, too, but they hadn't been targeting him directly.

Mark had dropped a lot of his rotors in the moment, but his senses came back fast.

He sensed his rotors in the hands of goblins that were running away, flying fast. They were already 700 meters away, and Mark's Adamantiumkinesis didn't work so well at that distance, but it worked well enough. He ripped his rotors and scattered caltrops through the flying, fast goblins, mulching them and taking back what was his.

His eyes were still gone.

He didn't need them right now.

Mark spun his rotor fast and suddenly he was flying much faster than Goofy, so he pulled Goofy along with him.

Protect was down, and Quark was still lost to the reboot, so it was no real surprise when something came out of nowhere and tried to do something else to Mark. Mark couldn't see it, but he could feel it as a light-speed laser-like vector zapped up from the ground and into his adamantium-covered body, trying to find a hole in his defenses.

Mark zapped the vector inside the light with a Union of Entropy/Energy, turning off whatever power it had inside of itself.

The vector vanished.

Mark rapidly zapped every single vector in the sky all around him, except for Goofy, with his shavallian Union, turning them off, reaching out in every direction and saying 'no'.

In that moment of pain and healing, with Goofy's desperate vector holding on to Mark as Mark flew them faster and faster away, Mark felt he understood something more about what he was actually doing with Energy/Entropy. More than what Freyala had told him.

There probably was a switch at the bottom of every Tutorial-granted Power, but more than that every astral body contained within it a certain amount of strength. Mark restored his own astral body's strength all the time with Unions of all sorts, so he never ran out of power. But most people did run out of power.

Energy/Entropy wasn't just turning off Powers, it was also eliminating the very source of a Power itself; the mana inside of all living beings. That's why he could 'turn off' a goblin, but normal shavallian would barely touch a goblin. A small revelation, but probably an important one—

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Quark popped online, too, saying, "Sir! The untrapped connection to Gobkin Vision was a trap!"

Mark almost laughed.

His lungs were full of blood and his mouth was a wreck of burned everything, underneath black metal.

"You okay?!" Goofy asked, all serious, as he held onto Mark's arm.

"I will be," Mark rumbled, and Quark transferred his voice outside of his shell.

Mark's metal was fused together, and Mark wasn't about to change that, but he probably needed to do his flying-coffin thing because there were way too many high-powered goblins around these parts. Full-thickness overlapping scales were great, but they were not a solid layer of adamantium between him and the world.

With a flash of Shaping, Mark reshaped his armor into a big sphere, with Goofy outside.

In the cool dark, Mark had a single moment, holding himself in the middle of the empty space.

And then Mark remade Quark's little hands, and Quark started redoing Protect right away, as Mark turned the sphere into a pill to hover inside. It was a bit more aerodynamic that way. Mark soon hovered in his flying pill, with a little platform on the side for Goofy to stand on. Goofy soon stood there.

Quark transmitted Mark's voice to the outside, to Goofy, and Mark said, "Thank you for the rescue, Goofy."

Quark still needed to clean up Mark's voice, though; to make his words known through the pain and wrecked flesh.

Goofy had one hand on Mark's shell, two feet on the ledge, and a soft expression on his face. "They attacked without warning again. In peace talks, they attacked…" Goofy's vector was furious, his voice quiet, as he said, "I am sorry. I should have done more. I couldn't do anything against Tormpol."

Mark pulled down the petals of the pill, so he could see Goofy, and Goofy could see him, as Mark said, "You followed the plan. You ran when we needed to run, and you took me with you. It was just meant to be a scouting run. The peace talks came out of nowhere, but I'm glad they happened. Don't worry about the rest. We're fine."

Goofy's countenance was honored and hopeful, but his eyes turned dark and hateful as he looked down at the ground, at Goblinhome, muttering, "You approach with honesty and conviction, and they approach with deceit and destruction. A meeting of peace is met with strikes from every direction at once. They are terrible, and they don't deserve the lives they have. Maybe when they are reborn, they will be better people."

Mark had a little bit of an inspiration. "Maybe, if we ever get that far with this, then you can lead them better, Goofy."

"Me?! No… no." Goofy was confused, deeply. Honored, but confused. He eventually settled himself saying, "These goblins are a people that don't need to exist anymore. Obligate horrors, all of them."

"Probably. But there might be some good people in there, somewhere. You were in there, after all." Mark added, "They called you 'Gallant', too."

Goofy solidified even more, saying, "They called me that to force me into a mold of their own making, and if there were any good goblins down there, then I did not see any." He looked at Mark. "Shells up?"

Mark simply nodded. "Yup. Time to bring out the big guns."

Kaiju time.

Mark focused down below, as he descended, slowing his rotor overhead. Glory and Fear threaded into the world, illuminating Mark and Goofy like a pair of extra moons in the dark-rainbow sky.

Everywhere else was dark with Fear.

The land was still a kilometer further down, and when Mark reached there, he would start killing things through Fear to bring forth Death, which shouldn't be that hard. Death mana was everywhere, and it was derived from Iron, which was also where Life mana came from. From there, Mark could eventually massage a ritual out of the place, and make another kaiju.

Easy peasy—

"Mark," Walaria said, through Quark. "We're entering real peace talks now. Stand down."

Sudden rage clouded Mark's mind, but he took a breath, and the light of Glory shone brighter, as Mark asked, "How about I just do a run around the place? Put the fear of the Empire into them?"

"You clipped Grax with that shavallian stunt. He got scared."

"… So you know it's a feint and you're still asking me to stand down." Mark added, "Because as soon as he's back to full strength then he's instantly going to war."

"Part 1 of even agreeing to these talks is the assurance that Grax will never do his run-and-Bite against a human settlement ever again. There are loopholes in that agreement. We are aware. But by coming to the table at all, which will be happening in 2 hours, he's already agreeing to that binding agreement. It's a good enough win, for now." Walaria commanded, "Leave Goblinhome lands and stand down, Mark."

"… Ah, so it sounds to me like I need to hang out for a while, until the talks actually happen."

"… You're trying my patience, but fine. Hang out for a while. Make some elementals, let them spread like Grax did to the settlement. Do not make a kaiju. Do NOT cross into the territories of Goblinhome or the corridors. Quark has all of that marked on your map. When the peace talks begin, I will expect you to stand down fully."

"… yes, ma'am."

The line clicked.

Mark looked around. "Where are we, anyway? Are we outside of Goblinhome already?"

Goofy said, "Yes. We passed the border way back there. It was a fast run." Goofy added, "I am jealous of that speed. I can't go that fast."

"… Oh. Got messed up with locations for a bit." Mark added, "And your speed is fine, Goofy. You got a whole bunch of extra senses that make me jealous, too."

Goofy's vector tumbled a bit, feeling a bit of joy.

Mark looked at the land, and then turned around, reorienting on the map in his vision, saying, "That way, toward the border a bit more."