412
Mark walked into the main hub, and then turned left.
Addavein was sitting on a couch, adamantium forming a desk in front of him, an adamantium grip holding a pen and writing onto a notebook that looked Eliot-made. The television was paused and the transcript of the show was separated and pinned onto a blackboard made of adamantium. Addavein also had a few electronic tablets open and tabbed through. He had noticed Mark come in, but his vector was still mostly focused on the papers ahead of him and the many different highlights decorating the sprawled-out transcripts in a riot of organized color.
With a cheerful voice, Addavein said, “I have missed electronics!”
Mark sat down about four couch cushions away from Addavein, asking, “How do you live a life where you want to kill everyone who seeks to harm you, but you know that to do so would also destroy the world?”
Addavein set down his tablet, easily saying, “The smaller solution is that you kill enough of them that the rest become too fearful to try. This solution breaks down at the level that you’re operating at, when you end up facing people who run empires. Your problem —and boon— is that you haven’t killed enough people yet, and you’re a good guy, with a proven track record, so people know you’ll never truly go after them. This is not a bad position. It will open more doors than it will close. The problem with doors is that assassins can walk through them just as well as opportunity. Honestly, there is no singular solution to this. The only real solution is cultural, and you’re already doing that with Xerkonan etiquette. As long as cultural norms prevail and people adhere to the ideology that ‘people help people’, then the number of assassins coming after you will be a lot less.”
Mark wasn’t sure if there was a solution to his problems in that philosophy… Seemed like a ‘not’. Mark frowned a little. “That works? Culture… works?”
“Up until the point it doesn’t. Honestly, the absolute best thing for you to do is to keep standing up in front of crowds and talking the good talk, and not resorting to violence yourself. As soon as people think you’ll resort to violence, they’ll resort to violence, too. They’ll think it is ‘okay’.”
Mark said, “But that doesn’t stop the assassins.”
“It stops most of them, actually. The lone gunmen, the disgruntled, the hateful. Nothing stops other empires gunning for you except empires of your own.” Addavein continued, “Are you aware that you are among the very few people in the world who anyone would accept a phone call from, as long as they know it is you?”
Mark felt a little blindsided by that. He wasn’t sure what Addavein was getting at, or why such a fact was even important. “Yeah? I guess so?”
“Ah. You are experiencing too many things at once. You are overwhelmed. Otherwise you would see this for the true boon it is. If you were a killer, then people would shun your calls. But you are a provider. A healer. A kaiju killer. Would you accept a phone call from Glorious Man if he called right now?”
Mark flummoxed a little. “Uh… yeah. Yes, I would.”
Addavein grinned a little. “Of course you would! I would, too. That sort of connection is huge, Mark. Most people, especially people like Walaria and I, have systems in place to screen phone calls. You have a grand reservoir of calls from strangers that Quark screens, yes? You would pass any screen that anyone else is putting up, instantly. You call someone, and you’ll get a meeting, right then and there or shortly after, even if the other person is minutes away from watching the birth of their child, or they’re at an estranged daughter’s recital and trying to make a re-connection. If the person you’re calling knows it is you, then the person you’re calling would make time for you. And so, you must ask yourself: Who would you want to call to change the worlds?”
Mark found himself a little excited.
But then Mark had a weird moment, as he looked at this man named Addavein, who looked like an older version of Mark but with a trimmed beard, like Sloane. Life would continue to be weird around this person, Mark was sure, until hopefully one day life wasn’t that weird anymore.
And yet, this man had pulled kids into the Thresher and then the Tutorial for centuries, until the Reveal changed it all…
Mark asked, “Back when the Tutorial was the Thresher… kids died all the time, didn’t they.”
It was an admission of guilt, and a fact of life, like how one ‘excused racists’ from 200 years ago because ‘that’s who they were back then’. Except… reality wasn’t really like that. Reality wasn’t a monolith.
Addavein was still a man who killed kids because his demon demanded it be done.
Addavein’s happy-ish, joyful-ish, still-stoic face kinda cracked. He let out a tiny sigh, and said, “The hardest part about saving the worlds was that my Contract demands remained unchanged. 1 child turned hidden dragon, every 10 years. One child sacrificed for the demon. Back when I made my Contract…” He drifted off, and then he came back from a different direction, “I’ve probably had 400 kids, Mark. I’ve met a few of them, years and years ago, after they came out of the Thresher and made something of themselves, but I did not raise them. I did not know them before the Thresher. Most people were like that. Anyone with power had the onus on them to create kids for the Thresher, for civilization. The change in my Contract demands and Earth’s influence did away with much of that older life, and that was good. So many kids were saved.” Addavein looked away, saying, “The child houses still kept churning out kids for a decade more, but that fell out of favor fast enough as soon as ‘Earth’ proved to be actually real, in a cultural sort of way.
“But doing good for the Two Worlds did not change what I had to do for my own sake.
“So it was tough.
“I still did it, because I valued myself and the worlds more than I did one young life, cut down before they ever got a chance to grow, every 10 years.” Addavein softly added, “Most years it was more than 1 kid, because most people… didn’t make it through the Thresher.”
Mark had so many old questions building in his mind, as though they were leviathans awoken from slumber. He had never gotten a chance to talk to Addashield after the Tutorial. He had never gotten a chance to do anything at all about any of that fallout, except to accept it and move on. But here, now, the past was finally available for scrutiny.
Was this healthy?
Was this productive?
Mark had no idea.
He knew that there were bigger things out there than this. Bigger issues. Hell! He had just gone through a lot of them, and there were more to come. The Reset Quest, mainly. In smaller ways: perma-killing demons, elves, Resurrection magic, his house in his soul… all of that. And yet...
Mark just went for it, saying, “At the end of the Tutorial, when you… when the prismatic mana appeared, you said you needed to repent with your death, and that you would not be doing what you planned on doing to me, for Kanda… You threw the bracers with Kanda’s control in them away and I touched the mana. And I’m still me because of that.”
Addavein stared, not sure what was happening.
Mark wasn’t sure, either.
Mark had thoughts. He could continue on this path, and say something like ‘Was that some sort of trick to get to this moment, right here? Some Xerkona Fate thing?’. But he already knew that wasn’t healthy. Hatred was good when it was protective, but Mark didn’t feel the need to protect himself from Addavein. Not really.
So Mark said, “So… so thanks, for that. For… for everything— Except for what Kanda made you do to my parents.” Softly, Mark said, “I’ll never forgive… Sloane… for that.”
Addavein’s breath was stilled, his emotions heavy and wild at the same time, swirling behind a stoic face and a serious demeanor. And then he turned away, unable to look at Mark anymore. “What Kanda demanded in my Contract… Well I’m sure you’ve seen the mangling of my old life, pulled apart by every talking head on the screens everywhere. And… and it was true. Is true. The guilt eventually got too much. Even back in the Old World, sending kids to their deaths was never easy. I saw an out with you and with the dragon I would become, so I took it.” He turned back to Mark. “I never expected to come back from that at all, and I don’t think I did.”
Mark had a moment.
He recalled calling down Addavein during the Battle For Memphi, and switching out for a while so Addavein could do what Mark could not. But he also remembered being summoned to Daihoon, ripped off of the street in Citadel Freyala and left in the wilderness of Earth, but with a book about best Shaper practices. The dragon’s very first action as a dragon had been to kill the kaiju that Addashield, through Kanda, had diverted toward Orange City. The rest of Addavein’s actions had been to try and play nice with everyone on Earth, to become part of the Hero/Villain Program, and make the world a better place in that way, too.
But he had also cast Mark as the villain in their ‘duo’.
Mark liked being Blackvein. It wasn’t his first choice, but it was a lot freer of a choice than being a ‘hero’.
Mark wasn’t sure if he could ever actually forgive Addavein/Addashield for what he had done. But the guy was a Hero of Humanity. That part wasn’t a lie. In a way that Mark logically felt, but which seemed like a bridge too far… Mark knew that getting too close to a Hero of Humanity was always going to reveal them as ‘just human’… or ‘human adjacent’, in Addavein’s case.
What would people think of Mark, later, or even now?
Mark was human, but he was also technically an elf, according to the System.
People had thought he was a terrible person for his actions in the Battle for Memphi, for even entertaining this HVP thing when cultists were afoot. Those comments online had been hard to read, so Mark ignored them. But some people did think that he was the worst thing to ever happen to them. And that was in addition to his ‘helping’ Addavein be born. That whole mess was a Big Mess, though Mark had been mostly hidden from all of that major fallout thanks to being inside Citadel Freyala.
The people of Orange City still hated him, Mark knew. It didn’t matter if the City AI, Orange, had said that Mark was welcome back whenever he wanted. Mark remembered the headlines.
‘Local Makes Deals With Demons’.
The news had also called Addavein, after he went around on his world-wide kaiju-killing tour, ‘A perfect legacy for Archmage Sloane Addashield’. The world had thought that Addavein was good, and that Mark was evil, but then emotions flowed around due to headlines and ‘talking heads’...
Mark felt too complicated.
He made it simple.
Mark said, “If you hadn’t come back then you couldn’t be a Hero of Humanity, and you are a Hero of Humanity. Still feels weird to call you my brother, though.”
Addavein had a confusing moment, too.
Somehow, Addavein grinned. He said, “I hope it will be easier now that I’m you-sized! And we’ll work on a way to kill that Leash demon, so he’ll stop coming after you.” Addavein gestured to the wall of hanging papers, highlighting a few sections of green-coded words, adding, “I understand Grax is likely Contracted with Leash, and that Grax is also your adopted father now? Aren’t you collecting an odd family!”
Mark felt disjointed. Weird. He retreated into something that might have been sarcasm, saying, “I’m an immortal adamantine elf, too, though the ‘elf’ part is a little asterisk beside the ‘human’ part of my status.”
Addavein was intensely interested… but he pulled back, saying, “I want to ask you a great deal of questions, and I hope you have a lot of questions of your own. Please, ask me for something. Or about something! I burned a great deal of Sloane’s stuff when I was about to Fall, but I do know of a great many ways to get a great many things.”
Mark moved past how Addavein had just referred to Sloane and himself in the same sentence, as though they were both the same person and also not. Mark simply said, “I don’t need anything right now…” He stood up. “Do you need anything?”
Addavein smiled slightly, saying, “I’m good. Thank you for your hospitality on the Dreadnought. When we get back, I will be attempting to secure my own lodgings in the settlement, and I want all of you to come visit me when I finally manage that. If they allow me to purchase property in Crytalis then I will be sure to secure property for all of you, as well.”
Mark felt a whole lot better in some small, unknowable way, as Addavein talked about living… next door, or something? Mark said, “Sounds good.” He glanced toward the papers. “If you want to be there with Walaria… I could use you there.”
“I will be there,” Addavein said, strongly, deciding that he would be there in that moment. “And when it comes time to kill Dominant, if needs must, I will be there, too. For the clearing of Goblinhome from the face of Daihoon, for the search for the other empires, for the establishing of Xerkona, for the System Reset. All of it. I will be there, Mark.”
Mark… nodded. And then he walked to the stairwell leading down, into the main parts of the ship.
He found himself walking into the kitchen, where Sally was eating a giant bowl of ice cream.
Mark sat down beside her.
She asked, “You good?”
“Good enough. How about you?” Mark glanced toward the main part of the ship, feeling out the vectors of everyone he could. They were all still on their phones, except for Derek. Derek was probably seeing people in person right now, doing ten thousand different things at once. Mark asked, “Did your talk with your parents go well?”
Sally grinned a little, but inside she was absolutely beaming. “I got Size Manipulation and the first thing Cousin Ted— You remember him?”
Cousin Ted, Cousin Ted—
Oh!
Mark asked, “The one we teamed up to beat the shit out of when we were in 10thgrade, and he said that both of us were too short to be warriors?”
“The very same! So he’s living with the family now— Mom and Dad bought a big house in the expanded section of Memphi, and it’s practically a compound— They were all there when I called, or at least enough of them were. So I say that I got Size Manipulation, and the first thinghe says is that I should open a dick expansion business.”
Mark laughed.
Sally smiled as she continued, “I told him that I’ll open up a dick-shrinking business instead.”
“A true villain!” Mark said, laughing.
“The cousins all kinda ragged on me for that, but…” Sally smiled softly, now, saying, “Mom and Dad are really happy I’m back. They… they cried a lot. I’ll call them again later. You talk to your uncles yet?”
“Not yet…” Mark suddenly needed to talk to family. He got up, saying, “Be back!”
“Tell ‘em I say ‘hi!’!”
Mark went into the other room and called up his uncles for a video call, with Quark floating on a glob of adamantium and acting as the camera. Mark got a little picture-in-picture of himself in the video feed as it tried to connect. He thought he looked okay. He looked stressed, though, so Mark breathed out the Bad and—
“Mark!?” Alexandro exclaimed, looking down at his phone. He was in some office somewhere, wearing a good set of clothes, and Mark realized that he had called while Alexandro was at work. Some person said something in the background, sounding surprised, but Alexandro was suddenly out of that room and into a new room. “Holy gods it is you! Oh my gods— And you’re back to being human-looking!”
Mark grinned, so very happy to see his uncle. “I hope you bought some full-black action figures while you could. Don’t know if I’ll authorize them to sell more.”
Alexandro laughed even as he teared up, crying and lovingly saying, “You’ll have to make a special dispensation for us!”
“Of course! I’ll probably sell a whole series!” Mark digressed, and then he added, “Because… Because a lot of big things happened. You’ll probably catch it on the news soon enough. A lothappened. Everyone survived, too! We’re all tri-Talents now— Well…” Not Eliot, but he might get ‘Necromancer’ some day. That didn’t seem like something Mark needed to tell Alexandro, though. Mark said, “Gate Day is going to be super easy from now on… and a whole bunch of other stuff. How are you guys?”
Alexandro suddenly choked up, but he managed to get out, “Markus and Donna would be so proud.”
Mark felt tears fall as he choked out, “Y… you think so?”
“I know so.”
Mark suddenly confessed, “I was in the Elven Lands, Uncle. I… I could have tried to find out about Resurrection Magic, but… there was so much. SO MUCH. If Mom and Dad came back… If they came back right nowthey wouldn’t remember their entire adult life, if we were lucky. They might not even remember anything past… I don’t know.”
Mark suddenly realized he had no idea how Alexandro was going to react to any of that and that he was terrified to talk about this shit. Would Alexandro blow up at him? Mark wasn’t sure if he could handle that right now.
Alexandro looked lost as he said, “Don’t beat yourself up… oh gods. Elves? You really… you really found them— No.” Alexandro breathed out, then said, “It’s okay. Mark, it is okay. You don’t have to save the world. You can just save… a whole lot of it.” He sniffled, then asked, “Are we going to get to hear the whole story? Or are you too busy for your uncles?”
“Ohhh… You’re gonna hear it all, I’m sure. There’s a documentary hitting the airwaves right now— Several hours ago, when we came out of the demon city gateway underneath Okuana, having to blast our way out though Godking Dominant— Anyway. We recorded a documentary about the whole thing. It’s out there. Most of the public one is slightlyredacted, but it’s all out there. The big thing is this: There’s a way to kill all monsters, Uncle,” Mark said, getting excited. “It’s a System Reset Quest. I just have to find and populate 10 or 11 10,000-year-old empires from the time of the Dragon King, and then all of us and the gods get together at some place named White Cauldron and we can vote to Reset the System. It’ll be a Second Reveal, and then no more monsters… We think. Hard to get a straight answer out of the source it came from, but that source was System Prime, the elven System. We think it told us as much as it could.”
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Alexandro just stared. “… What?”
Mark went over it again, and Alexandro showed a little bit of surprise now, as he started to get it, and then the conversation kinda went wherever it went. Mark imagined the topic of a System Reset was too big for Alexandro right now. Alexandro ended up talking about Memphi and the superhero scene, and Mark got the distinct impression that he was certain that Mark was unbalanced, or something, which was… what it was.
“Oh yeah,” Mark said, “And Addavein is human-sized now. He’s over in the Hub, watching the documentary right now.”
“Oh my gods, Mark,” Alexandro said, laughing a little. “This is so crazy… Ah, shit.” He looked away, and then back to the phone. “So Mayor Ramirez is in my lobby right now. Uh… She wants to talk to you.”
Mark said, “I need to get back to a whole bunch of other stuff, too, so if she can make it quick then I can do that— Love you, and Gabriel! Call you later.”
Alexandro smiled softly, saying, “Love you, too, Mark. And holy crap! I was expecting to get… Never mind about that. I’m very glad to get a call from you, Mark. You were gone… gone for a while. Come home to Memphi, okay.”
“I’m going to be busy, but I’ll think about it. Love you.”
Mark made a cutting motion with his hand below the view of the camera.
Quark ended the call.
Mark took a moment, then said, “Call up Mayor Ramirez.”
“Calling the Mayor of Memphi, Emilia Ramirez—”
“Hello, Mark,” Ramirez said, “I’ll make this quick. I want to buy adamantium.”
“Sure! How much?”
“As much as you can manage.”
“I need a number, because I can manage an effectively infinite amount.”
“30 tons.”
“Okay. I’ll get it ready for you soon enough. I’ll figure out a price, too. Have you heard that we need the entire world to pull together to find create multiple Inheritors, to make new Empires, to vote to trigger a System Reset to fix everything broken?”
Ramirez said, “I have already seen all of the documentaries. Will you be holding a press conference? I would have it be held here in Memphi, for we desire to assist with this. We suspect that there are only 6 Empires on Daihoon, and that there are 6 on Earth somewhere. Or perhaps they were taken to Endless Daihoon in the catastrophe that split the worlds, and they need to be retrieved. We would have them retrieved to Earth, and at least one of them retrieved to Central Cities.”
Mark’s eyes went wide. “Ah, I… haven’t heard that theory yet, but it could be possible. We saw a lot of weird stuff out there in Endless Daihoon, including some ancient abandoned civilizations… So whatever way it needs to work, we’ll make it work, and if the lost empires need to be remade —we were thinking they would need to be remade, like electrical lines need to be re-installed in houses after the house gets rebuilt— then they’ll be remade in the best possible locations. If Central Cities should happen to have one fall in their back yard, then I would hope you and yours could take care of it, Mayor Ramirez—” Mark added, “—as valued allies of the Aluatha Empire.”
Mark was stressed but he did not wince, even though he knew he had flubbed that interaction at least a little.
A moment passed.
Ramirez said, “Memphi is always open to you. Please come on by sometime, and enjoy the full hospitality of the city. I know Archmage Blackthorn wishes to speak with you, and he’s rather insistent upon it. He will try and find you if you do not make yourself available, and soon. Planty is exceedingly concerned about Okuana’s theorized ability to kill demons permanently, and I cannot imagine that what I have seen online is somehow the full story, so whatever else has been obfuscated… I would like to be read-in on, Mister Careed. I would also like to speak about this plan you have of raising up super powered people via trips to Endless Daihoon for prismatic mana.”
Mark mentally added ‘Check in with Blackthorn about Planty’ to his new list of concerns, saying, “I’ll have a press release soon. No later than a week from now. I will be seeing Blackthorn sooner than that, though. Thank you for the heads up. Please contact Metallic Bank for the 30 tons of adamantium. I’ll be making more soon— Ah. And Addavein is human-sized and trying to be human now. I don’t know how well he can make some adamantium, but he’ll be selling too, I think.”
“… And how did he manage to get human-sized?”
“We helped him do that. It’s all hands on board to change the world for the better, Mayor Ramirez. It was a pleasure speaking to you.”
“And you as well, Mark,” Ramirez said, easily transitioning away from whatever emotions she felt about Addavein turning human-sized. Or maybe she was just pretending at being calm. She was a politician, after all. Ramirez added, “We hope to see you soon in Memphi for a great celebration of your return. Good day.”
“Good day!”
Click.
Mark took a deep breath, and then got up and went to check on everyone.
Tartu eventually finished a massive discussion with his father about the nature of the Dreamlands and especially regarding Nobody Important, who had yet to make an appearance. Maybe that ancient ‘god’ didn’t actually head off toward Arakino on the moon?
Isoko got off the phone with Noel Oliphant, their Hero/Villain Program coordinator, about potentially buying the rights to the dramatization of their trip into Endless Daihoon.
“They want us to make an appearance at Crystal Tower so that they can try to tempt us with an official Crystal Tower excursion plan to Endless Daihoon, with approved young heroes,” Isoko told everyone.
Mark’s stomach flipped a bit at potentially meeting Glorious Man and… and Timeweaver and Nova Nexus, too, actually. Mark asked, “Do you think Timeweaver or Nova Nexus pushed the world in this direction? Because they didn’t interfere with Addavein at all…” Mark looked to Addavein. “Did they?”
Addavein was a weird addition to the group, for everyone, but they were acclimating fast, in Mark’s opinion… Or they were pretending this was okay.
They were probably pretending.
Addavein said, “I would assume that I spoke with Timeweaver in an aborted timeline, probably even fought him, but it’s doubtful that he won at all, so he turned back time and then never approached me. None of them did, even when I went to Japan to give them some adamantium and try to make amends and join the Program.”
Mark nodded a little.
Eliot had a lot to say about the degradation of the settlement, of both the gate on this side and the gate on the other side, and about the reception of the documentary. The settlement was in a bad way and he was eager to get back to it. The documentary, all versions of it, had been out for a total of 10 hours so far, and the view count on the short, 10 minute version, was already in the 25 million count range.
“They took it down over security concerns and then put it back up with a massive warning page on all of the videos about being ‘potentially unverified lies’,” Eliot said, “By then all of the videos had been mirrored in a thousand other places and my petition to get the video reinstated on Crystal Tower Video had me talking personally with the CEO of Crystal Tower Video. She’s worried about it, but she let it go through.”
“What about the actually-hidden videos?” Mark asked, “The ones we sent to Walaria and such?”
“Those got out there and Walaria is trying to find the leak. The AIs of United Sapients have pulled those videos off of the net whenever they find them,” Eliot said, “The only way anyone ever sees anything online is if the AIs allow it, you know. Sure, there will be hard-drive, secretive videos passed around on personal video devices and dark webs, but the majority of people will never see the truth about orichalcum and all of the personal stuff— Oh! And the Others. The Others, the defenses of the System, actual dangerous-to-know stuff, is still hidden from the majority of people.”
Addavein was kinda flustered as he breathed out, “This is going to be a dangerous time for a great many people. The Church of Hearthswell will need grand support in the very near future.” He said to Mark, “A donation of adamantium will be required to pretty much all major cities. I can still pump out a few hundred tons per day if I desire, but you will need to ensure that my donations are accepted, and you will need to do the same, yourself.”
Mark nodded. “Good idea. Understood.”
Lola spoke of donations of orichalcum waiting for Mark at the settlement, at the church, and David suggested that Mark let David run in there and get it for him, before Mark went in himself. David actually had a whole list of suggestions for himself to do before Mark and them actually got to the settlement.
Derek was already at the settlement, and he agreed with David.
“You won’t be able to walk around on the street anymore. None of you,” Derek said, “Not for weeks. Maybe not ever again. Everyone here is gonna get swamped with reporters and probably assassination attempts.” Another Derek said, “A lot of people are not happy about what happened in Okuana, and the Collective is already calling for a full censor of the entire documentary.”
Lola instantly said, “The Collective is divided.”
A few of Derek nodded, agreeing. Others went, ‘ehhhh.’
Addavein had no concern about any of that, easily telling the team, “There will be issues, but you will overcome them all, for you must. I will be available for discussions about any topic you would have, from magic to culture to war to politics, and for more than just all of you here.” He announced, “I have applied for a teaching position at the settlement’s arcanaeum.”
“What?” “You did?” “Uhhh!”
Mark seriously asked, “And they’ve approved you?”
“No fucking way,” Tartu said, finally able to speak past the metaphorical bile crawling up his throat. “There’s no way that my father would accept such a posting!”
Addavein grinned, thoroughly enjoying the moment of human connection, saying, “I am not sure if they’ll accept me, and I am rather sure that my application is being looked at like some sort of practical joke, but applying was easy enough!” He lifted his arms and he tapped his clawed left leg, saying, “I’m mostly human, now! I’ve just got a small case of ‘Dragon Body’. And I don’t even have a demon anymore, so I can be in the same category as everyone else. Filed my Mage Society paperwork to Imperial Aluatha Society, too. Now thatwas summarily rejected, but I’ll reapply tomorrow.”
Tartu simply sputtered, words failing him.
Mark, however, was able to say, “Okay! Great. Hope that works out. You’re planning for the long term, then? Not for getting back on the Dreadnought and finding Inheritors out there?”
“The likelihood of finding other Inheritors is incredibly low, and basically a non-starter. But if you’re there learning at the arcanaeum and drawing in a great deal of others, then those other Inheritors will show up, or some people who could become Inheritors will show up.” Addavein added, “There is no better place to be to create the new future than to be in an intersection of the Two Worlds.”
The collected group sort of took that in, in various ways, some begrudging, like Tartu, and some hopeful, like Andria, weirdly enough.
Mark asked, “Anything going on with your contacts, Andria?”
Andria startled a bit, and then said, “Oh… Yes— No? Yes, and no. Rylan Drakemore, my cousin and my smithing master, is eager to teach me how to make Swords of Empire, if he can get enough adamantium. So, uh… We kinda lost all of the stuff that we had stored—”
“I’ll make more. Everyone here is going to get 10 tons, at least,” Mark said, “But more is obviously an option. Just tell me what you need, when you need it, and you’ll get it.”
With eyes sparkling mithril, Andria instantly said, “I want to start a multi-national company with the goal of creating prosperity and security for the coming System Reset. Defense manufacturing with Eliot and about 10 other companies and specific Mage Societies, like the Ironwards and the Oh’Hasst Society, but also infrastructure companies like Bright Brothers and Maritime Boating— You don’t know them at all, but they’re major shipping companies. Very important people.”
She was right; Mark had no idea who those people were at all.
Addavein was aware of them, though, saying, “Oh’Hasst are good people. I know the Oh’Hasst family from 30 years ago, but I don’t know the current CEO. I would be interested in funding such endeavors.”
Andria’s vector did a strange, unknown tumble, and she nodded.
Mark had a tinge of weirdness, too, and he recognized that weirdness after the fact.
It felt like Addavein was moving in on his territory, or something.
Mark dismissed that feeling out of hand, and told Andria, “I’ll fund whatever you want.”
Andria easily said to Mark, “I got 30 different organizations that I want to fund. Most of them are about breaking new ground here and there, so they have a lot of people in them that could be better, that might be candidates for prismatic mana baptisms—” She had a startled moment, then rapidly added, “But I’m never going out there ever again, Mark. Ever again.”
Mark smirked, teasing, “Even if we want to reestablish the Softer Lands underneath Nobody Important?”
“… Maybe if… I don’t know.” Andria added, “There’s too much to do now to worry about that.”
“Oh! That reminds me…” Mark said to everyone, “Mayor Ramirez had an interesting hypothetical, that we won’tbe rebuildingthe Old Empires, but instead plucking them from Endless Daihoon and setting them down somewhere on the Two Worlds. She wants us to settle them down onto Earth, and at least one in the Central Cities.” He asked, “Could the Softer Lands be an Old Empire, lost to Endless Daihoon? Could we pull one end of it from the sky and sew it into Earth, and sew the other end into Daihoon?”
No one had any answers to that, not even Addavein, though Mark did not expect answers when he told them what Ramirez had said; Mark was just getting the information out there for all of them to digest, too, along with a few of his own hypotheses.
Soon, David was back at the controls of the Dreadnought, and the ship lifted off of D’Newfoundland. They left behind all of Addavein’s scales and detritus, but not his adamantium.
Mark stood with Addavein on a grand platform of adamantium, stretching across the deck of the Dreadnought. All of it was under his talzarki’s control, but it was a fraction compared to the amount of adamantium floating beneath the ship, also under Addavein’s control. Mark asked, “You really have no idea how to put adamantium back into the body?”
“I have learned a great many things in the last half a day, Mark,” Addavein said, grinning. “But I have not learned how to put adamantium back into the soul, and I didn’t have a True Adamantium mana-type until after I became a dragon. No one has ever managed to put their adamantium back into their bodies; not even people like you.” He turned and looked at Mark, adding, “But I bet you can, eventually.”
“I’ve tried. Still no idea how it works.”
Addavein chuckled like a kid on Christmas morning with too many presents after having had so little for so long. “Try making a ‘safe’ inside that house of yours.” He laughed. “Or maybe a bookshelf! A bookshelf might go well for the ‘books of your friends’ you intend to store there one day! I must admit, I don’t even have the framework to understand what is happening there, Mark.”
“… I feel like I should have, I don’t know, yelled at the elves more, demanding more answers, while I was there?”
Addavein shook his head, easily saying, “You acted properly, given the information of the moment. Given the information you discovered in the following days, what with them having abandoned their posts in the Endless Court and otherwise, I would say you still acted properly. They’re immortals, if nothing else, and that means a great deal. Godking Dominant won’t even treat with anyone who isn’t an immortal, and he barelyconsiders archmages immortal. I imagine that he has personally had dealings with your uncles, though, since Age Manipulation is one of the very few ways in which a person is immortal.”
“… Oh my gods… They never mentioned him…” Mark found himself saying, “They were captured and used against me by Kardi… who is still alive, too, and I think she’s in Grax’s house, because he certainly has one now, as well… How do you deal with people using your family against you?”
Addavein solidly, sadly, said, “You lose your family, over and over and over again, and you try to make a new one, or you stop, eventually. Even if you’re scary and the world knows not to mess with you, the world will mess with you, over and over and over again.” Addavein looked straight at Mark, adding, “But I’ll make it a point to help Eliot learn necromancy and to help you figure out how to make your house work at top form. Perhaps you should consider asking a demon for help, too. Or even Grax. They’ll tell you what you want to know, and also a hundred things you do not.”
Mark winced. “… Shit.”
Addavein nodded.
“There has to be another way?”
“The time of simple answers is over. You must plumb every depth you find as far as it goes, and then further. Do not be coy about power now, Mark. Do not be coy about power, ever again.”
Mark… nodded.
Mark left Addavein to himself.