Adamant Blood

For an hour, Mark was tense, standing there on the main deck of the Dreadnought, eyeing kaiju everywhere.

In the second hour Eliot finally got the adamant engine up and running.

It was like night and day switching places. Mark suddenly felt it as his caltrops touched the soft wood of the deck and he did not sink in all the way. The floor offered actual resistance, like he was grabbing a kaiju's scales. It was kind of a miracle, really. Mark smiled as he walked on the open deck of the Dreadnought and he felt almost at home. He even rose up into the air, standing on his caltrops and getting much better views of everything. The air barely brushed at his body, but it did, and it felt amazing—

Eliot made a ship-wide announcement, "Adamant engine is up and running, working exactly as expected. With that active… I don't want to tempt evil, but we should be safe from most casual kaiju attacks. We're now at the basic measure of survivability that all ships should expect before they go into Endless Daihoon. Maybe a little bit above. Please remain on high alert until we can get the mithril engine up and running, then comes engine integration and various scanner creations. I might need your help with that, Mark. About an hour."

Mark told Quark, "Tell him okay."

Quark replied, "I have done so. I have also put in recommendations for intercom badges."

"Ah, shi—" Eliot's voice came over the air again. "Right. I can make those. Everyone pick one up at the Hub. Someone bring Mark one."

Soon, Derek came out from the middle of the ship, carrying a badge and a fanny pack and some simple webweave. Derek held it out, saying, "I got some shorts for you, too! They'll probably tear and they're pretty much just underwear, but Tartu enchanted them with some of Andria's mithril to make them flexible and repairable."

Mark set back down onto the deck, feeling apprehensive about Andria, but he was getting over it, and clothes made by someone else besides just Andria seemed like a good thing. He took the clothes into his hands, but he did not put them on yet. The fanny pack and badge got clipped up by small adamantium hands, gentle as Mark could be, as Mark said, "Thanks, Derek… So you're the only one on the ship doing everything and with extra time, too… Anything happening I should know about?"

"Wanna talk about Andria?" Derek asked, guessing what Mark really wanted to know.

… Mark looked at the shorts and put them on, under his illusionary clothes, saying, "I'm sorry I'm not friendly towards her, or you, yet. I've just been… through a lot recently. I'll warm up soon enough, I'm sure." The shorts were kinda like booty shorts, but at least they held everything in and up. It felt good. His 'real clothes' were the illusionary ones, anyway. They were plain illusions but they were good, too. Mark said, "I'll tell them the shorts fit well. Thanks for the delivery."

Derek softly smiled. "Anytime! I'm busy and free at all hours of the day! I'm… I'm really happy to be here. Frelaya told me not to partake of the prismatic mana, and I won't, but I wanted to. And then the very second after I heard about it, Freyala told me that there was an 80% chance I would monsterize if we found a replicating kaiju. I'd be much better off taking the 20% chance to monsterize through any other kind of kaiju out there, but even 20% is too much for me."

Mark put the fanny pack around his waist and secured it on his lower back, as he listened. It felt secure. The shorts felt secure, too, and Mark recalled that Eliot had given him some repairable clothes before, not 12 hours ago, but then Mark had fucked those up escaping the Force Twins. A lot of things had happened fast back there.

Mark asked, "This kaiju mana thing is dangerous, huh? 20% chance of monsterization?"

"Less so for you, I understand. Unstable Bindings are made stable in the application of prismatic mana. Stable Bindings like my own are made unstable, first, so… bad idea. Apparently the Alteration of a Binding counts as 'unstable', but I'm not about to do that to myself."

Mark realized something. "You talk about Bindings like you're in Mage Society... Did you get that apprenticeship you were after?"

"I did!" Derek said, beaming. "You remembered."

Mark realized another thing. "Sorry if I've been short with you—"

"You haven't been short with me! A completely normal amount of trepidation— Hey. If it makes you more comfortable, I'm just the help, man. Anything you want, I will do! Eliot has about 20 scouter ships ready for me to go out on, to scout further! See a kaiju? Something interesting? Send me out! I have several bodies down on Daihoon and Earth, and they seem to be just as distant as they were before, so no issues there. I'm good. Are you good?"

"… Yeah, I think I am."

"Andria is fine, too, by the way. She knows she's here for a task and she already got a 750 million goldleaf payday."

"Ha," Mark said.

Derek grinned, and then nodded and vanished, disappearing into a flash of released mana, or whatever it was that happened to him when he discorporated a clone.

… And so, wearing new 'clothes', Mark hovered about 50 meters off of the hull of the ship, looking around at everything, keeping eyes on the nearest visible kaiju, all of which were more than 250 kilometers away, according to Quark. Endless Daihoon was kinda 'layered', which Mark didn't really know about until he was here, seeing it for himself, but it made sense. The auroras that one could see from Daihoon were all separated from each other, or not-so-separated, and those were the layers that made up the space out here. To go down into one of those layers was to see that land down there from up close, like it was real, but up here all you could see was the endlessness of it all.

Mark turned his attention to the ship; the part of the world that made sense. Mark had yet to explore any of it, and he might end up out here on the deck the whole time, so he asked Quark about it, and soon Mark had a wireframe model of the place to go along with his Unionsense of where everyone was.

Mostly, the ship was ship-shaped, with a large 'pleasure cruiser ship' functioning as the main hull of the thing. Standard wood, but writ large. Very, very large, at 400 meters long. That was among the largest sized sailing vessels anywhere, and comparable to the Grey Whale that had brought everyone from Earth to Daihoon, to the settlement, way back in January. The Grey Whale was bigger, and by a lot; and not just by length. The Dreadnought was still huge.

Mark didn't know where Eliot would have gotten such a large base vessel in such a short amount of time as they had had. Mark had thought Eliot was going to just make his own vessel, and maybe he had, because this wood looked new, and the layout of the ship was very open, according to Quark.

Mark supposed that was a question to ask.

Another question was 'where is the hover ring?'. Grey Whale had a giant ring around the back of it, acting as the envelope for the ship. All hoverships had big hover rings. That's how they worked. Sometimes the hover rings were enclosed, as they were in all hovercars and vans and the like. But big ships usually needed rings around them somewhere, usually in the back, to act as a shield system and a gravity control system.

But, there were a hundred cars strapped to the undersides of the vessel, gradually becoming one with the main ship as Eliot worked through them. So that's where some of the lift was coming from.

And yet, that center castle, spearing through the top and the bottom of the back half of the ship, absolutely needed more lift than a hundred hovercars. That thing was solid stone, meters thick on the walls. Eliot had absolutely picked that up off of the ground somewhere... Or maybe he had made it, too? The stone looked fresh-cut and the mortar… there was no mortar? Ah, yeah. It just looked like it was made of individual stones. Seemed to have some metal reinforcement throughout the whole thing, linking it to the ship, too…

Ah.

Yeah.

Eliot had absolutely made the new-wood ship as well as the castle and the greenhouses…

Mark reassured himself that though there were lots of spaces for infiltrators to hide in this place, there weren't any pre-made hiding zones from previous owners, or whatnot… Except for maybe the hovercars? To be sure, Mark picked out the intercom badge from his fanny pack and clicked the button, very lightly, and asked, "Hey Eliot? Testing?"

"I'm here," Eliot said, coming through the badge, and also Mark's Quark-provided ear hooks.

"Oh! Ha." Mark put the badge away. "The badge is redundant?"

"Yup! Quark can hook into it as a secondary transmitter; that's why I wanted you to have it. You shouldn't have to speak into it directly."

"Ah, good... So where'd all this stuff come from? I'm concerned about infiltrators and the, uh, size of it all— Ah..." Mark gazed out at the land beyond, eyes flickering to a thing that Quark had noticed in the last few seconds. Mark moved fast to the side of the vehicle, to look down past the ledge at the land. There were some floating mountains down there, coming into range. Maybe 150 kilometers away. Some worm kaiju were burrowed into the mountains, hanging out, or whatever they were doing. They were... just close. Not important. Not a threat. Mark watched them as he asked Eliot, "What made you go with this huge construction?"

Eliot seemed to be working on something, too, down there at the center of the ship, below the main command center. He was able to speak anyway, saying, "Everything in here including the Pantheonic Spire in the back is fresh-made. Lola and Derek helped to grow the wood for the main ship, while David fast-processed it. Sally and Isoko secured the stone, and the metal came from the remains of your metal elemental. The main reason it's this big is because these were open-source plans. Tested and proven plans, using only materials available for creation inside Endless Daihoon itself. If we fall and break all we have to do is survive and I can eventually remake the whole thing."

"Awesome," Mark said, smiling a little, relaxing. And then he rapidly added, "Not the planning-for-failure part, but the whole 'we can rebuild' part."

"I thought so, too. There were hundreds of options using a lot of that metal that you brought back from Goblinhome, but this one used the least amount of metal possible. The only non-renewable things are the hover rings from all the hover vehicles I bought straight out of the yard. I gutted them down to their metal and their rings, though. There's no chance any of them have any tracking devices… Well." Eliot focused on the call for a moment. "If someone really wanted to track us, they could. It'd be hard as fuck, but it's possible. The hovercars and whatever were the only thing I couldn't make myself in a fast way, so I had to buy those. If we do crash and need to rebuild, expect 2 weeks of me growing crystals and a much, much smaller ship to start. Could probably get a courier-sized ship up and running in 10 hours, and set up grav-crystal grow tanks for on-the-go. Anyway! The real reason we're so big is because anything smaller than 100 meters is food. 250 meters is the size of a possible threat. At 400 meters, we're avoiding a lot of fights just by virtue of our size alone."

"Ahhhh… That explains a lot. Thanks, Eliot," Mark said, "I just wanted to know about it all and to have a modicum of security… Well. An abnormally large amount of security, actually. This is all really good."

"Sorry the shit around the house wasn't good enough. Those archmages… Sorry."

"That's not your fault. It's my fault. I expected… I don't know what I expected of Aluatha. To be better? No. I suppose not." Mark changed the subject, "What will need to happen if we crash? Which parts need to be saved?"

"Our lives; that's it. I can remake everything given enough time and space, and I'm pretty sure you can make a kaiju and protect us well enough. Hopefully we can find a Sky Shaper kaiju for Isoko, first— Ah! Yeah. Did someone tell you yet? Isoko needs Sky Shaper, first. That's the order-of-attack we decided on when we were coming up here because then we'll be able to fly and protect the ship a lot better. But if you have a better idea for a first kaiju, or if you really need to sleep and we need to get a metal kaiju super fast, then tell me now."

Mark didn't need to think about any of that. He said, "A Sky Shaper kaiju for Isoko first is a good idea. I like it. I do not need to sleep at all right now, so don't worry about that."

"Good. Glad to hear that."

"So about that… is Andria doing some sort of… scanning device, or something?" Mark asked, "What's happening right now?"

"Andria is creating some preliminary stuff down in her workshop and I'll help her make the scanner later. I will need your help there.

"Tartu is working on protective hexes for the ship, and that'll take several days for several arrays. Each completed array will give the ship another PL though, since he's using your adamantium, so we want him on ward stone creation as much as possible.

"Isoko is helping me with the ship. Sally is, too.

"Derek is helping everyone.

"Lola and David are doing stuff in the gardens with Derek, making sure we have food. We're not planning on any meat while we're here, but we have beans and rice and that's fine.

"I'm working on the main computers, power, and hover systems right now, cycling through the hovercars on the hull, pulling them apart and bringing their parts into the ship. In 4 more hours we'll be at 50% expected capability. And then it's a week of flying away from Daihoon, deeper into the mirage, so we can avoid the dragons that patrol the lands near the Crossings. But! When I finish here, I'll help Andria, and the scanner should be online shortly after that. Tartu will be involved as well.

"If we see a kaiju nearby that we want we might consider taking it and damn the dragons. The dragons are mostly too scattered to really defend 'their land' here… And we can talk about that when the ship is more stable. Or ask Lola or David. And that's the news!"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Mark said, "Thank you, Eliot."

"No pro— Ah! Speaking of security sweeps. Derek and David have already done sweeps of the entire ship, but they can do another one?" Eliot said, "Calling David and Derek. Please can you do a security sweep of the entire ship, thank you."

Derek sounded off, "Sure!"

David sounded off, "On it."

David's vector became an absolute blur. Mark needed to do Alacrity/Slowness to even catch a glimpse of what he was doing but by the time Mark fully got into the moment, David was already done. Mark muttered a small 'holy shit' to himself, as he dropped back into normal time. That was absolutely faster than x35 speed. How fast did David go?

Derek went a lot slower, but a lot more solidly. Every single Derek became 2 Dereks, that then became 4, all of them walking all over the place, looking at everything, inundating the entire ship with overlapping, concentrated, and coordinated Unions of Good and Bad. Mark joined their Union, and after a few more divisions Mark stopped feeling like one very strong person connecting to a city's block full of people, and he felt more like one person connecting to an almost-kaiju.

Derek felt pretty darn huge when he really went for numbers.

Derek's Good was flavored like the Good of being seen and understood, and he connected to absolutely everyone and everything in the place, while the Bad was flavored as fear. And for a brief moment, the ever-present Kaiju Call happening in the background of Endless Daihoon began to attenuate, to silence.

Mark lapsed into relaxation as about 500 Dereks piled on to the main deck and then they went overboard, grabbing onto the sides of the vehicle and piling over, eyeing everything on their fall down into oblivion. Mark rapidly came back to himself as a spike of completely natural fear took hold. Those Dereks were gonna die! But then those Dereks evaporated, most of them feeling like they were 'signing off'. Mark was sure he heard, 'Okay down here, boys!', but who could ever really be sure about that sort of thing, except for Derek himself. Other Dereks climbed the main castles, and others clambered over the hovercars still stuck to the sides of the Dreadnought, like barnacles waiting for Eliot to consume and make part of the ship.

And then, 5 minutes later, the Dereks began to disappear, disintegrating into dispersed mana, reducing from 2,200-ish Dereks down to 60. Some of them were vaguely interested in whatever they had found.

Derek's voice sounded in Mark's ears, through the open coms, "I have found 24 items of low importance. I believe David found them, too. I have marked them in the log at the Hub."

"Ah, shit," Eliot said, walking upstairs from down below the center of the ship. He kept going upward, Mark only seeing him through his vector-location, and from the wireframe model of the ship, thanks to Quark. "What'd you find?"

"Broken beams, mostly. Stress fractures. Maybe some mechanical problems?"

Eliot said, "Okay. Help me find them. Go to channel 2-Repairs— Ah. Quark. There's a list of channels you can tune into, and a ship's guide to explain the ship. Please show Mark all about that stuff."

And then Eliot's voice went away.

"About what, Quark?" Mark asked.

Quark explained, "We're on Channel 1 right now; big ship news, meant to be kept clear most of the time. It's always on, but you have to actively speak into it to speak into it. Channel 2 is operational systems maintenance; repairs. Eliot is always on that one. Channel 3 is Ship Talk. It's currently Isoko, Andria, Tartu, and Sally talking about ship stuff, about spaces and rooming and plans. Channel 4 is Open Talk.

"The ship's guide is already downloaded and listed on your wireframe view I am giving you, but to reiterate, from the top:

"We are on the main observation deck.

"The Hub is the center of the ship, and it is located in the middle of the castle area. The Hub extends all the way under the observation deck, and to the back of the ship. Almost everywhere is accessible from the Hub. The nearest entrance to the Hub deck is that opening on the observation deck over there, in the centerline of the ship.

"Main Command is below the Hub, in the castle. It is mostly unused. It will be used if something threatens the ship itself.

"The Nest is at the top of the main castle. It is the commanding center used most of the time. It is accessible from the outside, or from the Hub.

"The rooms are located below the Hub Deck, right below us. Beside the rooms are Utilities, which run off-center and in the center of the ship, from front to back, forming the center axis of the ship.

"Greenhouses 1 through 5, all of them redundant, are found below here, and are reachable from the Hub. The Church is located behind the castle, and it is accessible from the Hub.

"Power/servers, Shields, and Weapons are accessed through the Main Command, which is accessed through the Hub.

"Flight Deck is at the bottom of the ship, along with Storage, and they are both accessed through the central axis that is the Hub."

Mark watched as Quark illuminated his wireframe model of the ship, highlighting the decks as he named them. When Quark was done, Mark asked, "Illuminate the currently unused parts of the ship?"

90% of the ship briefly lit up, as Quark explained, "The Hull has a buffer zone, all around, and the cars attached to the sides of the ship are being integrated as we speak, so they will go away soon. 90% of the ship is still unused."

Mark said, "Join Channel 3, please; Ship talk."

Quark beep-booped.

And then Isoko's voice was there, going, "—to get broadcasts from Earth? Or Daihoon?"

"Not really," Tartu said.

"We can get broadcasts from Earth and Daihoon," Andria said, voice confident. "It'll be a break in security, but we can do that if you want your shows."

Mark was surprised to hear Andria speak that way. It was completely different from normal, because her tone was normal. Usually she was more fearful.

… She must not know that Mark had entered the channel.

Mark decided to keep it that way.

"Right, and that security break is why we shouldn't open rifts to Earth or Daihoon, not to mention the kaiju risk," Tartu answered. "So we're stuck with whatever stuff we got before we left, unless you want to break security protocols. In that case it's a matter of stabilizing the ship in place both metaphysically and actually. That way me opening a pinhole rift doesn't cause an actual rip."

Andria said, "We can do that. We can make a few sky anchors. They're a low priority but we can do it, and with Mark's adamantium we can make the best sky anchors in any world. And with Tartu being able to open pinhole rifts, we can probably open channels to the Two Worlds without summoning kaiju toward those rifts."

"Pinholes are still a danger—" Tartu began.

"Well yes! But not a big one," Andria said. "Not any more than us being here in Endless Daihoon at all."

"I'd prefer not to increase the risk at all," Sally said. "I can stand to miss a month of shows."

Isoko said, "We need to keep up with the news, though. Like… News briefing is a thing that we do need to do—"

"Absolutely," Andria agreed. "I didn't even think about that! I have 5 stocks I was keeping a close eye on."

"Okay so yeah," Tartu said, "We should plan for daily news scoops. Eliot can rip a day's worth of relevant news from the pinhole gate as long as we aim the rift right..."

The conversation meandered, with Sally happy that she'd get her shows back, and then Isoko spoke about HVP stuff with Tartu, focusing on possible Endless Daihoon and what the ship would need for that sort of thing. Tartu thought HVP in Endless Daihoon simply wasn't going to happen, since all of Endless Daihoon was treated as though it didn't exist, and no shows ever showed Endless Daihoon to the general public.

"And besides that, Shawn and Lenny aren't here," Tartu said.

Isoko replied, "Eliot is recording stuff because he's doing the Bard thing, so we're getting a good record of the whole thing that will be put behind big safety protocol laws regarding prismatic mana, but I want something that is going to be a public record. Some story about us being out here and doing this that the public can see. That's what I want."

"Well… Maybe so," Tartu said, "But we can't do that until the ship is fixed up, and there is no end to the defenses we can put up in this ship thanks to Andria and Mark, so I don't see us ever having real downtime."

"He's right about that, for the most part," Andria said.

Sally asked, "What do you think our weaknesses are going to be? What do we need to cover?"

"The adamant engine could be better, and the same goes for the mithril engine. But beyond that… Maneuverability," Tartu said, "It we find a wind kaiju for Isoko then we can solve a lot of that problem, but even so, the ship itself could use some better hover rings."

"The crystals are growing," Andria said.

Tartu said, "And when they come in we'll use them. Next biggest problem is cloying attacks. Mark should be able to handle any elementals swamping the ship, and the shields should give him time to be able to do that, but a fire elemental simply turning up the heat would be bad. Us entering physically hostile territory, like accidentally stumbling into a lava layer, or a water layer, would be bad, and that can happen if we start going through layers to hunt kaiju..."

Tartu continued for a while, and the enormity of the problems got to Mark. It got to Isoko and Sally, too, but Andria was fully on-board with Tartu's list of issues, and they spoke back and forth about lists of things to make.

In a lull, Mark asked, "What about mental attacks, from mental kaiju?"

Andria's vector shuddered and her voice was a quiet, "Ah shit he's in the channel."

Isoko laughed happily.

Sally spoke with a smile in her voice. "He'll warm up to you eventually, Andria, long as you don't try to kill him or anyone else."

Andria practically shouted, "I would NEVER— Oh gods, I'm so sorry, uh— I have work! Uh. Sh—"

There was a click and a disconnect sound, like on an Accord call. Eliot must be using that framework for the channels—

Another click.

"Sorry. I am back," Andria said, voice and vector composed. "Apologies. I have been weird. Mental attacks are taken care of through Eliot's Castellan, and the various things I and Tartu are making. It's on the list. Low priority because it's already handled as well as can be handled at the moment."

"No worries. Good to hear. You guys need more adamantium to make more stuff?" Mark asked. "I got lots. I literally just heal my body and make more."

"That is so fucking wrong," Tartu said, "And I demand another 10 kilos."

Mark snorted. "For what?"

"For using and selling, and I'm not too sure about the second option. Maybe I'll sell a single kilo and live off of that for the rest of my life."

Mark smiled as he looked out at the world, searching for threats, even as he poked at Tartu, asking, "What are you gonna make? What could you make with 100 kilos?"

"A 100? Archmage's robes. I have no idea how to make them, but I want them."

"Ohhh," Isoko said.

"What do those even do?" Sally asked, highly interested.

Mark said, "I wanna know what they do, too."

"If I knew that then maybe I could make them," Tartu said, "All I really know is that they give the user's spellwork adamantium strength. It's completely redundant when you're around doing the same thing, Mark, but it'd be great for when you're not there— And speaking of that: You need to put, like, a few thousand tons of adamantium into the hold while you can. If you get a kaiju that erases your elemental body then this might be the only chance you have to have this much metal."

Andria got a weirdly worried color to her vector, but she did not speak. "Can you do that? That'd be fricken nuts."

Isoko excitedly said, "Ohh! Yes! You should do that, Mark."

Sally asked, "Isn't weight a problem?"

Eliot, who had joined the channel when Mark wasn't looking, spoke up, "We're at 30% capacity, at a 90% empty ship, and even so the ship can handle another 72,000 metric tons of weight." He added, "With each of your bodies at around 2,500 kilos, if you wanted to put a few thousand bodies in the ship, we can handle it, weight wise."

"Oh shit, wow," Isoko whispered.

Andria was deeply worried, though, and Mark felt he knew why she was worried, because Mark was suddenly worried about the same thing, though he had already thought about it a little bit. Hearing actual numbers put those worries to the forefront, though.

Mark asked, "I'm sure there are long range wealth scanners that could absolutely detect us, though, right? And that seems bad."

Andria latched on to that, using it to allow her voice to join the group, "Yes! There are lots of wealth scanner varieties out there. We'll be making one to find the kaiju we want. And I need to make a Ring of No-Wealth… that will not work for Mark, uh… The ship has an anti-wealth array in the hull, right? A stationary no-wealth array will still work— for a given definition of 'stationary'. 'On a ship' is still 'stationary' enough to count… and now I'm rambling."

Eliot said, "It's on the list of things to do, which seems to be ever growing. Still don't have any proper weapons systems or even any deterrence systems aside from you, Mark, and then we still need better hydroponics..."