Adamant Blood

Mark sat down on the wrought iron chair across from Walaria as he put one of the Extended Protect spheres onto the table, to the side of the cookies and tea.

The butler, Arvin, had already come and placed refreshments. The sun shone down through the canopy high overhead and the wind blew softly and cool across the low gardens, bringing with it the scent of roses and other flowers. It was a nice scent to go along with the tea, which was steaming and ready to be poured.

Walaria already had a cup.

She looked like she had come from a minor party. Her white and blue dress was nice, but not too nice. Her bright red hair was done up with just the right amount of ‘not too perfect’. It wasn’t anything different from her normal looks. Her jewelry was a simple affair of diamonds and rubies, but it was highly enchanted, for sure. Everything she wore was enchanted in some way, including the very air. The Witches’ Welcome was strong around her, like she was a centerpiece that it rotated around, but Mark knew that was untrue. The real ‘center’ of the Witches’ Welcome, according to some comments Addavein had dropped the other day, was Emperor Salvation, the Throne of Aluatha, and Empress Cataclysm. Domal’Takela itself was also the ‘real center’. Walaria was just one of the many acting arms of the Welcome.

Right now, that Witches’ Welcome wasn’t touching Mark.

Arvin poured Mark a cup.

Walaria said, “I assume that it’s something else besides one of your orbs that is preventing the Welcome from touching you.”

“It’s a side effect of a ritual I have going on in my soul house. It’s based on the goblin cleansing ritual we did.”

Walaria sipped her tea, thinking.

Mark had no idea what she was thinking because her vector was so diffuse, because she had some sort of Castellan-like Power going on. She still had the same amount of astral body as anyone else (though she obviously had a lot of boosts to her size) it was just that she was spread quite thin. Over all of Aluatha, actually. Still, Mark got glimpses of her vector and her thoughts here and there, when she was really concentrating on him, or stuff near him.

She was facing a divide in the road.

Mark spoke first, saying, “So a lot of things just happened to me, and I’m wondering if Aluatha, or you, are the cause.”

Walaria seemed to be more comfortable being confronted directly, because she focused and said, “I never knowingly imparted unto you an eldritch threat. It would be personally disastrous for such a thing to happen to my apprentice, under my care, and especially through the materials I gave them. So no. Whatever you found was not from me. What did you find?”

Mark was glad to hear her directly deny it. There was no real knowing how some people would react to being directly accused of doing something bad, and Walaria was definitely an old hand at denying, denying, denying. But still! You had to ask. An hour ago, Mark had certainly never expected Addavein to be so flighty and worried, or so deeply concerned. So even if Walaria was lying, it was a comforting lie.

Mark said, “The threat appears when I say the word. I will say the word now: Water People.”

Saying it with the space between really got the antimeme going. The space beyond Mark and Walaria flickered with tendril dreams that reached after Mark, and then failed to touch him. The shadow faded away after several moments, but it was still there, in the background.

Walaria looked to the side, eyes tracking the ‘monster’ slipping back into the shadows, right alongside Mark—

The entity went to Arvin, and settled into him.

Oh.

… Uh.

It didn’t seem to cause him any distress? But with both the Second Princess and Mark Careed looking at him, and hearing what they had been saying, that was giving him cause for concern.

Walaria relieved that concern, saying, “I know this one, and it goes away when you stop thinking about them. It’ll take about a month and then it will leave you, Arvin. Don’t worry about it.”

Arvin stood tall and relieved, not really sure what he shouldn’t be worried about, but he was not-worried nonetheless.

Mark was kinda surprised that the eldritch thing was that easy to throw off, that Walaria knew about it, and that Walaria knew Arvin’s name. The last one shouldn’t have surprised him, though; Walaria was good about knowing the people who worked under her.

Walaria added, “You may leave us now.”

Arvin bowed quickly, then took his leave.

Walaria was not alone with Mark because Sally was about 40 meters away, standing on the walkway leading into the Green House. But Walaria acted like they were alone, saying, “I have a dilemma, Mark. 99% chance we’re going to war with Okuana in 3 days. Chances are they’ll launch the invasion early, when they know we’re at the big party tomorrow. I have asked you if you wanted to be involved, and you have said yes, so I want you ready for it.

“But you are potentially more valuable to keep here, as a source of connection between people andadamantium andthis new crafting methodology you have devised. You are valuable, as you are, for the prosperity of all Aluatha. But you do not want this, and that has been taken into account.

“Before, the scales were clearly allowing you to make your own decisions, but now…

“You being able to speak directly to System Prime and to answer even small, probably useless questions, is still more than we have ever had regarding the System, and the Systems.The fact that there is a System Prime and System Secondary, that the Dragon King truly did exist, and many other facts, are still new concepts for many of our oldest, most knowledgeable professors and teachers and other such people knowledgeable about such deep, important things. I have a horde of such people requesting to speak with you, to ask questions. Those questions could be asked at tomorrow’s event, if you wish.

“But I don’t know what you want right now.

“Usually I am rather good at navigating these sorts of issues and propelling people like yourself to untold heights. But my estimation of ‘untold heights’ has broken with you, Mark. You passed those a while ago, all the way in the Battle For Memphi.

“And now we’re here.

“So help me help you help Aluatha and the Two Worlds.

“What happens now?”

Mark said, “I want to know more about this threat that appears when you talk about a certain liquid language, and why I couldn’t even remember that the language was basically ‘super empathy’ and statues to that effect. Like… I was reading the book again, and I didn’t even realize there were all these parts about faces and statues and all that. I thought it was just feng shui.” Mark asked, “And why shouldn’t Arvin be worried? Addavein was freaked out.” Mark suddenly thought of another question. He asked, “And why did you seem to shut down every attempt I had to learn that language?”

Walaria tackled the questions in no particular order, saying, “That language is not one I expected you to be able to learn because most people cannot learn it, because it was made that way when the formations on Vaka were broken in the Reveal. But I still tried. Those who can learn it, who can read the words and not be shoved off by the antimeme inside the word itself, usually become part of an organization that is best kept secret. Hearthswell has their crusade against the eldritch, but so does Aluatha. We call them Containment. They are a division of the Sentinels. A rare few, like yourself, are both not-immune to it and yet you can still see past it, probably because you’re so adamant about your pursuit of various things. With whatever event you have happening in your soulhouse right now, do you think you would make you a good candidate for that sort of thing? For working with Containment? They’re always looking for new people.”

Mark was glad to hear pretty much all of that.

Aluatha had this shit on lockdown, or at least they had experience with the threat.

But… ‘Containment’, eh? Mark supposed it took all sorts of secret societies to keep things working, and especially when it came to weird threats that went over (or right through, untouched, unknown) the heads of everyone else.

Mark said, “No. I don’t need yet another organization on my plate… Why do the People have this happening to them? It is ‘against them’ isn’t it?”

“It’s technically a malformation of magic,” Walaira said, “It is not ‘against’ anyone. At the highest heights of Waterpeople, the language uses eldritch entities to make themselves invisible to monsters. They summoned, bound, and then imprisoned these eldritch beings in pillars. They’re eldritch, but also sort of like demons, so if you imprison them correctly, if you make them like to be imprisoned, then they don’t care about being imprisoned. However, the prison broke in the Reveal, and they were used to the prison, so even when they got out they still kept causing forgetfulness, when they could.”

“… Oh wow. They imprisoned theeldritch? Not just demons?”

Walaria shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t. Perhaps you do? Ask System Prime.”

Mark suddenly realized that Walaria was answering questions because Walaria wanted Mark to answer questions for her. Perhaps, if —well… when— he answered System Prime questions, then they’d move on to more important topics, like the incoming invasion, and places where Mark could extract certain Powers from certain monsters. Mark had only gained the ability to have a fourth Binding a few hours ago, and he already knew what he wanted, if he could get it.

Necromancy, the Arcane Power, or something better. ‘Better’ was preferred. He didn’t know what Necromancy did, exactly, but he knew it allowed for the collecting of souls and then using those souls in certain ways. At the very least, if he had Necromancy he should be able to grab souls from people or animals, and then put those souls into 2 empty Cohort slots in his Status, allowing those people to resurrect infinitely, alongside himself.

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Once Mark figured out how it worked he could probably discard Necromancy and use something else. Something all-the-time useful, like… Who knew!

Reality Manipulation?

Time Manipulation?

That’d be neat.

Probably too difficult to source, though.

Mark asked Walaria, “What questions do you want answered?”

Walaria instantly asked, “Where is White Cauldron?”

“System Call, Help: Where is White Cauldron? Display answer for all present.”

Mark wasn’t sure if that would work—

But a blue box appeared.