Adamant Blood

Mark did not find the secondary safehouse, but as he hovered over a third possibly-maybe-the-place-mountain Grax and Goofy found him instead.

Grax materialized out of the air like a giant mirage in the sky that became a smaller, golden being of light, that then became a red goblin standing on a platform of red light.

Goofy was right beside him, flowing down and looking kinda different, but maybe not? His webweave was torn like someone had taken swords to his flesh, but his flesh was whole and his vector was strong. He almost had a pull to him. Mark glanced deeply into the guy’s soul, and he looked almost the same… but something was different.

Aside from Goofy’s soulhouse, of course.

Something bright and shining and solid.

Goofy proved something was very different when he hovered there, and rumbled, “Greetings, Mark.” Goofy’s voice was much deeper. His eyes sharper. He purposefully looked at the black box Mark was carrying, hovering to the side, and asked, “That’s Kialo?”

“Your voice is… So you changed a lot, huh, Goofy?” Mark asked, curious about all of whatever all this was.

Grax cut that investigation short, saying, “You’re 30 kilometers off. We can regroup from the safe house, but then we have to leave in 10 minutes. BiggestBaddest is chasing us and he will find us.” Being very formal, he said, “I request for Kialo’s diminished form to be left in our care. We can nurse him back to health, and it would be good for both Goofy as a leader and Kialo as a person.”

Mark got to flying alongside the others, saying, “Sounds fine to me, but I need to know how to heal him back to his complete self, if you know how. How can I do that?”

Grax flew next to Mark, and then a little bit ahead, leading the way, pushing on some light from the sky that he turned into a part of himself. “Kialo went through the Green and came out the other side changed, so there is no way to undo that directly, so we must keep going. Cleaning him up did most of the work, so now the System will repair his soulhouse and make him, all him. But he still has the taint of Wongod in him. The only way to fix that is to have him join Goofy’s expanded Heroism.”

Goofy said, “Anyone that sees me, that wishes for something better, can join me in strength, breaking away from other obligations. I’m a Divine Hero now, and I will lead all the maimed, the wounded, and the hurt to a better world.”

That sounded rather nice, but something was wrong with Goofy.

Mark asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

Grax laid it out, “Goofy is deep in the moment right now, the magic controlling him more than he controls it, but that’s normal. He’ll learn to control it later. It’s one of the dangers of making your own magic, but it’s also the main benefit.”

“Sure,” Mark said, the day already rather full of stuff, so why not throw in some mental changes, too. “You good, Goofy?”

“I am better than good, my friend,” Goofy said, eyes glittering green, one fist forward as he flew, the other held against his chest. “I’m going to save my people from themselves!”

“Seems fine to me,” Mark decided.

Grax flew down through a tight opening of stones, rimmed in blue runes, and then Goofy was through next. Mark followed. He was sure he had passed over this location before, but maybe the illusionary runes around the entrance were keyed to make the place invisible until the people who lived here showed up. Seemed possible. Those runes on those rocks behind Mark had some weird arrangements to them.

Mark landed on the ground with Goofy.

Grax was already headed forward, into the main base, saying, “I need 5 minutes, and then we can bug out. If you want to give Kialo to Goofy now, it would be a good time for that. He might stop biting on his cage if you do.”

Kialo had woken up and he was biting his cage again. No fangs meant it was hard for him to do that, but this version of Kialo was very young, so Mark supposed Kialo simply didn’t realize that he couldn’t break his cage.

The secondary location they had landed in was little more than wood and rock stuck against walls, driven into the ground and then supporting itself. One half of the place had fallen down, obviously not structurally sound. Grax glanced at the fall in and ignored it, choosing instead to head to some wooden trunks in the back of the other half of the place. There were no houses here, no little streams, and certainly no gardens.

Mark turned Kialo’s cage into metal bars and the goblin inside suddenly got really mad, yelling unintelligible curses. There was no language there at all. This goblin was too young for that.

But then Kialo saw Goofy, and Kialo’s eyes went wide and his ears fell down.

Goofy did nothing but stand there, looking at Kialo, eyes focused. He rumbled, “You are a lot older than me, but you attempted to fight an enemy who you did not understand. That enemy corrupted you and left you diminished, mind broken.” He held out a hand, his fingernails more human, less like goblin claws, as he said, “Let me help you come back, Kialo.”

Mark decided that this was fine.

Mark opened the cage and let Kialo stand on the ground, Unioning with him and with Purity and Corruption, joining in whatever Goofy was doing as he reached out toward Kialo.

Kialo reached forward to Goofy, his hands tiny things, his claws sharp, his skin rugged and corrupted, despite Mark’s cleansing. It was easy to see now that Goofy had undergone a secondary transformation, refining him beyond what Mark had achieved half a year ago. As Kialo touched hands with Goofy, Kialo shifted, too, something ephemeral passing between the two of them—

A flicker of something bright and shining and peeking out from the dream slammed from Goofy into Kialo, like a meteor out of the blue. Kialo’s soulhouse, his bed and bookshelf and a bit of his kitchen, suddenly repaired themselves, bits of wall and wood and floor and land flying out from deep in the dream, landing exactly where they needed to land to join with what Kialo already had. Those joinings created a tiny hut on bare green soil with a sun shining in the sky overhead. That sun was Goofy.

Kialo gasped, breathing strongly, lungs expanding, chest expanding, ears shrinking but still remaining elven, nose shrinking, and then he matched Goofy for height, but not for power. Something else, perhaps more important, came back to Kialo, for Kialo looked at the air like he was suddenly reading. And then he blinked.

With clear eyes, Kialo looked at Mark and Goofy, and then at Grax over there digging through some trunks full of magical items, and Kialo winced.

Mark only had one question for now. “So those bits of other materials I saw flying through the sky, to join with Kialo’s soulhouse… That was the System repairing his soulhouse, right? Were there a bunch of other goblins out there that Wongod was holding back that suddenly died when their souls were ripped out and rejoined to Kialo’s?”

Grax glanced his way, and then went back to rummaging in the pile of treasures. “Yes.”

Kialo winced harder, his voice low and difficult. “I was a fool.”

“Yes, but also no,” Goofy said, still standing tall. “You attempted peace without knowing the truth of the matter. There is nothing foolish about wanting peace. The only foolish thing is that you didn’t know your enemy and the forces that surrounded him.”

Kialo looked up at Mark… and then embarrassment hit him again, so he looked away. He looked at Goofy, asking, “You’re the lost elves too, yes?”

“I am, but Goofy is new,” Grax said. He had a whole bunch of junk in a backpack on his back, walking this way. “I’m Grax the Conqueror. Do you know my name?”

Kialo squinted at Grax… and then at Grax’s third eye, which was heavily focused on Mark. He glanced at Mark again before finding that too difficult, and then he looked at Goofy, and his vector was too confused to do much. He did manage a bit of surprise as he asked, “A new elf? Truly?”

“First in a long, long time,” Grax said.

Kialo asked Grax, “And you have a house daemon in a… a strange union? Why is it still inside of you? Shouldn’t it be… moving on?”

Huh! Weird thing to say. Mark imagined they didn’t have archmages up in ‘Elf Land’.

Grax spoke for both Mark and Kialo’s benefit, saying, “They have unions of daemons and people back up there for times of trouble; you simply do not remember, Kialo. The unions of man and demon are different here in the Secondary System, as well. All of that is too deep of a conversation to get to right now. We need to leave.”

Mark asked, “Do you have a printer here, Grax? For photos?”

Grax paused. “Uh… No?”

“I’ll just make you an adamantine one, then. Quark?” Soon, Quark painted the image he had taken between Mark and Wongod into Mark’s eyes and Mark replicated the image in a handspan-size of adamantium. He handed it over to Grax, saying, “I have a treaty with Wongod now, between me and him, with the threat to come back if he violates the treaty.”

Goofy instantly said, “A valiant effort, but whatever Wongod promised he will violate.”

“I agree,” Mark said, “But I still managed to get him to promise to leave humans alone, D’Australia is his and we won’t violate it in turn— except for me. I’m violating everything that needs violating. And he can’t steal people from Australia at all, either. Maybe, if a worlds’ war starts with Okuana, then we can do a Pantheon-thing and cleanse him, too, if he sticks to the treaty. I’m sending the recording to Aluatha soon, but I have not done it yet.”

Grax stared at the picture a little, and then he had questions. “Those are his fangs he pulled out and you cleansed?”

“Yes.”

“How easy was the fight?”

“I killed 1 out of 5 of the Lightning Spires with Pillar of God, then they went uncontrollable. Wongod showed up right afterward. Almost got me before I got the Spires but I got them. And then I beat the shit out of Wongod. Burned him to nothing once, and then went for a treaty-end to the fight. I bargained for the release of humans and no more human districts, then I grabbed those humans he had kidnapped from Earth and sent them along to Commander Highgrade of Lake Eyre along with Derek. Then I came here with Kialo.” Mark asked, “How does that sound?”

Grax was impressed. And then he said, “About as good as we could hope for.”

Goofy rumbled, announcing, “Today is the twilight of Dominant’s corruption of my people. As his star falls, the light of a true goblin people will rise.” He looked up at Mark and said, “I wish to make a pact with you, as well. A better pact! Join me and let me join you in turn, in making this world a better place for all.”

“Yeah sure, Goofy.”

“Then it is settled! Today marks the turning of an age for all goblinkind! First, we have gathered some key forces, and now we will begin to take Wongod down from the inside!”

Grax brought the moment back down to Earth, telling Mark, “Goblins can’t reproduce without Wongod’s cursed Bite, so we’re gonna need some of those Breeder/Impregnate combos that you had going on with the cows in New Tokyo. Not now. But eventually.”

Mark said, “I have Sex Manipulation, too. I’m notgiving it to you, but I can figure out how to get that functionality to you.”

Grax said, “That works.”

Goofy wasn’t quite interested in all of that, but he nodded, almost magnanimously—

“Wait,” Kialo softly said. And then Kialo’s eyes went super wide as he looked between his legs and then grabbed his empty crotch. “FUCK?!”

“No fucking for us, unfortunately,” Grax said.

And then Kialo looked at something in the air, and he got even louder.

“I barely remember sex anyway,” Grax said.

“Always seemed unimportant to me,” Mark added.

Goofy said, “Take heart in the pleasure of helping others, Kialo.”

But Kialo just wailed, “I’M STARTING OVER FROM ZERO AS A SEXLESS GOBLIN?!”

Mark asked, “Don’t you have anything left from your previous Status?”

Kialo wailed.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Guess not,” Mark muttered.

Grax told Mark, “Kialo and Eria came through together, both of them presenting themselves to Wongod as just themselves, without any Powers at all and with most of the memories of home locked into another book of life.”

“Oh shit?” Mark asked, kinda suddenly and deeply disappointed, in multiple ways. He looked down at Kialo. “You can’t tell us anything about the elves?”

Kialo wailed about missing his manhood.

Goofy put a comforting hand on Kialo’s shoulder.

Grax told Mark, “It’s operational security. They dumped most of their soulhouses, too.”

“Ahh… yeah. I guess so. Fuck?” Mark frowned. “Fuck. Well… Get a computer or an email or something and I’ll shoot you a text about Sex Manipulation when I finally find someone to use it. I’ll even make sure Kialo and Goofy aren’t attacked when they come for it.”

Grax nodded—

Kialo exclaimed, “I’ll take it! You’re giving out Powers, right? That’s what’s happening here, right?”

Grax quietly said, “You’ll be fine. Who would you have sex with? We’re ostracized from everyone.”

“… I still want my manhood—” Kialo suddenly stopped. He almost whispered, “I can take the Tutorial… Can I take the Tutorial?” Kialo looked in the air, eyes flicking, obviously looking at a Status screen, asking himself, “Surely I can, and I can get my own Powers, right?”

… He was checking his Status, for real, huh.

Mark felt that odd.

Shouldn’t he be cut off from System Prime? Or maybe he had better innate defenses against eldritch stuff. Mark had no idea. Obviously he didn’t leave everythingbehind in Elf Land. But, since he wasn’t a fully-new goblin, then he could probably do the Tutorial, and that was fine—

“Fuck!” Kialo said, hope guttering. “I can’t do the Tutorial.”

“Okay just… One second,” Mark said, thinking. Kialo brightened, but he didn’t say anything. Mark wasn’t about to switch out any of his own Powers around Grax, even temporarily, and especially not for Sex Manipulation. And he didn’t really want to actually give out sexes to anyone, anyway. He had literally no experience with any of that stuff at all. He’d get it super wrong, for sure, and that kind of screw up was the kind of thing that fucked up a person for their entire life. So Mark said, “Okay so… You’re gonna have to hang out with these two guys, and they’re both superpowered and Grax is housing a homicidal demon that worked to kill and then resurrect an entire city of millions of people, and then you got Kardi, who is surely around here somewhere—”

A particularly gruesome slip of gore poured over the edge of the boulder entrance, Kardi’s face appearing on the gore, smiling, saying, “And that’s my cue!”

“Fuck the FUCK off,” Mark Called, right at her.

The walls of the cavern vibrated. Dust scattered. Kardi excused herself, slipping back up and out of there, waving as she turned back into nearly-invisible gore. And then she was gone. Her vector was gone, too. How the fuck was her vector thatgone, thatfast? Fucking hell. Fuck her.

All the goblins watched her go.

Mark continued, “So what do you want, Kialo? I got kaiju killer options. True Brawny is a good one— Impregnate? If you want that one. Don’t know if that one will give you a dick. Healthy Body? You can grow that one—”

“Healthy Body! I can do the rest,” Kialo said, worries fading, breathing in relief. “I can do everything with that… or at least I think I can? Should be able to. I can make that into Elven Body.”

“… Can you do that right now, or will it take some time? Because I can trade you Healthy Body, you make it Elven Body, and then you can trade it back for another Healthy Body. I want Elven Body. What does Elven Body do?”

“It’ll give me a manhood! … And some other stuff, I suppose? Stronger, faster, immortal, able to hide well. A baseline good start. It will turn back into Healthy Body outside of an elf, though… But you’re an elf, right? But through the System? I remember that much. Anyway, for me: I’ll meld it with my Status and I can start cultivating my own Abilities after that,” Kialo said, as though it wasn’t a revelation about what was even possible at all. You could set your body as a Skill and still use a Body Skill? Is that what Kialo was saying? Kialo continued, “You never had an Elven Body, right? You should have one, since the System recognizes you as Elven. Slot it as your baseline Status.”

Mark decided, “I will have to think about it, but Dominant turned elves into goblins, and he will likely try to do something similarly awful to someone who has a soulhouse, who isn’t already attached to the curse he has in Wongod. So you three, each with your soulhouses, are elves, and you need to be wary of that. We’ll see what you can do with this Healthy Body, though.”

And then Mark linked with Kialo, flowing with a Union of a Healthy Body he had in his storage—

There was a weirdness.

Mark opened his eyes further to the dream.

The weirdness was that Mark was a black house in the rainbow black dream, and Kialo was a sunny little cottage right next to his own house. Kialo, as a tall goblin, stood on the edge of his property, and Mark’s collection of Union arms were not opening up Kialo’s soul like normal because Mark could not reach Kialo’s soul at all.

Kialo waved in a frantic, worried kind of wave, from the green lawn of his soulhouse.

Well then.

Mark… passed the Healthy Body blueprint across the distance between their houses, and Kialo took it eagerly. Mark spared a glance to the ‘sun’ in Kialo’s soulhouse, and then spared another pair of glances toward a red wastes further along and a sunny metropolitan city next to the wastes. The city had a very bright sun in the sky, but the city itself was just some silver towers that looked like they were drawn by a kid. A young kid, too. It still looked like a nice place—

A red shadow knocked on the dream of what was obviously Grax’s soulhouse. It was all fangs and arms and it smiled way too much as it slammed a jagged fist against the edge of that red, sandy property.

That would be Leash, in Grax’s soulhouse.

Mark ignored that and looked over to Kialo, who was in the middle of flexing the blueprint for Healthy Body into something slightly different. Mark had no idea what he was doing, but Kialo did it anyway, all shimmery and weirdly, and then he handed it back across the separating space, to Mark.

Mark handed over another Healthy Body at the same time.

In the real world, Kialo sighed.

Mark looked down on the green guy, and Kialo changed just a little bit here and there. His skin turned softer, paler green. His eyes opened up brighter and then shrunk along with the size of his head as his body got bigger, more proportional. He looked a lot less goblin with each passing moment.

Still a smooth crotch, though.

Kialo opened his eyes and looked up at Mark… and then he looked down and frowned. “Dammit.”

Goofy put a comforting hand on Kialo’s shoulder, saying, “It is okay, big brother. We will weather this storm together. We will get you your dick back.”

Kialo put a comforting hand on Goofy’s shoulder, in turn, as he solemnly said, “Thank you, young brother. I know I can believe in you, and when I get my dick back, I will make sure you get a dick, too.”

Mark told Grax, “Seriously: get some electronics and figure out how to not be tracked through them so you can contact me whenthis all goes bad.”

“Sure,” Grax said, even as he gestured up to the exit with one hand and solidified his grip on the strap of his backpack with the other. “We need to leave and either split up and talk later, or regroup in another location.”

Mark said, “I only have one question, and then you all can contact me later: How did you two get soulhouses and then grow them?”

Grax told Mark, “Take a lump of orichalcum and be an elf and bring the lump into yourself, and then grow it by meeting your dreamselves and finding the orichalcum-blooded version of yourself and donate a bit of yourselves to them, and them to you. Other species have to use books and Worship.”

“... Okay?” Mark said, knowing he would have to think on that later.

Kialo was confused, too, but for different reasons. Kialo asked, “Why not ask a daemon for help?”

“Mark isn’t going to pick that option,” Grax said.

Kardi poked her head out of the rocks—

Mark elongated his fist and punched right through her head, 10 meters away.

Kardi caressed Mark’s stab with her forehead and eyes, even as she said, “We’ve got to go. The nukes are coming soon. And if you keep doing this, Mark, maybe I will, too!”

Mark destroyed that entire half of the cavern in a twisting mash of spiraling adamantium and Unions of Purity and Corruption.

Grax said, “And now she’s back in my house. Okay! We’re all packed up kids, and the nukes are coming!”

Goofy floated into the air, deflecting a boulder from falling in a casual sort of way as Kialo rushed to stand under him, for safety. Goofy said, “If you’re doing the orichalcum-self option, it’s a vision quest. It’ll prepare you for meeting your demon later, too. I did that. There’s also the Worship option.”

“You haven’t even met your own daemon?” Kialo asked Mark, super surprised.

Grax told Mark, “The Worship option is the ultimate form of house-creation and growing.”

Mark made some rapid decisions to talk to Archmage Steve Blackthorn, at Memphi. Or maybe Addavein. There was no need to go back to Vaka right now and try for that soulhouse book, especially if there was no easy answer why he didn’t get it the first time. He needed to talk to Walaria right now, and get prepared for a worlds’ war, and see about enforcing the treaty he made with Wongod.

That soulhouse book at Crash would hold. It had held for decades, after all.

Mark told them all, “Good luck, you three.”

Grax expanded rapidly, flesh fading into light, scooping up Goofy and Kialo as he busted out of the hiding hole. His Light Titan body rapidly faded into the background illumination of the world, and then he was gone.

Mark hovered into the sky, free and clear, Quark instantly spotting some missiles coming over the horizon.

Mark told Quark, “Open a channel to whoever.”

“Open to Clearwater and Goblin Airways.”

Mark threatened, “Turn off those missiles, or I’m coming back.”

The missiles kept coming… and then, one by one, they kinda faltered and grounded themselves. Three of them crashed and nothing happened. The third turned around, curving hard, and then grounded itself behind a mountain. Nuclear fire blossomed into the sky, dimming the daytime with its own brightness.

Mark felt the tingles of radiation on his pale skin, turning his skin black in the radioactive glow.

Mark decided, “Good goblins.”

Quark said, “The broadcast was interrupted due to radioactivity.”

“Tell me when it’s open.”

Mark waited, watching the mushroom cloud rise into the aurora-rimmed sky, Unioning with Good and Bad—

“Open channel.”

Mark said, “Good goblins.”

And then he left.