Adamant Blood

Mark grumbled awake, Unioning with Good and Bad, a soft darkness ebbing away from his skin and letting him feel better with every beat of his heart.

That had been a weird fucking dream.

Was that his 100 Trial? There had been so, so many demons. It was like the sky was dark with demons. But more than that, the demons were there because… they were holding up the sky? And now Mark was unmoored.

Did the dream happen?

Was there an incursion from Thrashtalon?

Was the System fuckery real?

Did Mark make a demon?

… Why was the roof of the cave gone? In fact… Water trickled down some canyon walls far to the side, the noise of water echoing in the air, but Mark was nowhere near the trickle. He was on a hard layer of white stone made of concentric circles and the moon was off to the side, glowing brightly gold between the canyon cracks all around. Mostly it was dark. The auroras overhead swirled like a pink, green, gold, blue, and white whirlpool, up through the darkness, the stars barely visible beyond all of that.

Mark sat up.

He was nude again, but he was sure he had given himself some pants—

A brief heartache temporarily split Mark’s vision into another direction, and suddenly he was sitting across from himself in three different visions of himself.

One silver.

One gold.

And one black.

All three of them Unioned with each other, with Good and Bad, and it was like he had split himself into three, partitioning his strength into a third of what it should have been.

That seemed bad.

Mark rapidly decided he was the black one. Perhaps it was instinctual, but it happened, and thus the other two rapidly declined in nature and in perception. Mark pulsed his single heart in a single Union of Good and Bad from his black body, black sparks skittering in every direction, as the gold and silver bodies contracted.

They did not vanish.

And then, like a weirdness manifesting, the silver body flexed and looked at Mark with new eyes.

The gold body jerked and launched to his feet, wary of the other two and putting up his fists, saying, “I’m warning you body… snatchers… wait.” Gold Mark paused. Gold Mark stood there, and said, “I’m not Mark, but I feel like Mark. I know I am not Mark, though.”

Silver Mark spoke with a professional tone as he stood up, pushing off of the ground with his hands, saying, “Oh dear. I appear to have gained physicality. This seems rather dreadful.”

Mark lifted off of the white stone ground with some bits of adamantium, spreading out a few pieces of himself to distant areas in case he was struck with weaponry of some sort. He looked at Silver Mark, saying, “So you’re Quark, for sure.” And then Mark stared at Gold Mark. “And you must be… a weird demonic version of me.”

Quark and Mark looked at the last one together.

Quark said, “Greetings, Spark.”

Spark said, “Now I know what you’re thinking, because I have somehow been updated from what I should have been into this weird amalgamation of all of Mark’s memories, as seen by Quark, and so I’m pretty sure I’m just Mark, but toward a demonic angle.”

Mark was skeptical.

The demon was talking like it was a person.

“Yeah I wouldn’t buy that shit from a demon either,” Spark said, “But in my defense… I don’t have a defense. Shouldn’t demons have, like, a whole lot of knowledge to them? About whatever the fuck is happening in the worlds, or shit? Oh. That’s funny. It feels weird to curse.” Spark made noises, “Fuck, shit, cunt, bitch, ass, tits, pussy… That feels weird to say.” And then Spark looked down between his legs, and said, “Whatever I am, ‘Spark’ is not asexual, and I’m gonna live this life to its fullest…” Spark raised his eyes slowly at Mark, and Mark saw the demon for a moment, as Spark said, “And if you try to control me, or kill me, then I am going to…”

A pause.

Mark waited for the horror… and he realized that Spark had no threat.

“I have no threat,” Spark said.

“Because you love everyone I love,” Mark said/asked.

Silence.

Spark told Mark, “I’ll find a way to hurt you if you try to contain me. I swear it.”

“And I get that. So… How about I just leave you somewhere and you do, like, magical research, or something? You can do that.”

Spark paused, and then he threw some sigils to the side, casting a manual spell of fire—

A small orb of fire appeared in the air beside him while frost drifted down from the air in a few meters. Spark flicked his hand and the spell faded away, heat washing outward, evaporating the condensation in the air. Mark had felt a tiny draw of power when he did that, in-line with the same draw that Quark used when he cast magics.

Spark asked Mark, “It’s like I cast it?”

Mark asked, “You can feel that, like it’s your own?”

Spark said, “Well why fucking couldn’t I? It’s my magic! I’m Mark! You’re the imposter demon!”

Okay, so Spark was… something.

This was going to be a problem, wasn’t it.

But as for the magic casting itself…

Quark said, “I felt it too. It felt how you have described the sensation to me, when I use processing power, sir.” Quark flicked the same sigils into the air, and once again Mark felt a similar draw on his mana as the air turned flaming and frozen in equal measure. Quark, however, felt something very different. He dispelled the magic as he said, “It’s like I’m using my own mana.”

Spark said, “No. That was normal for me. You used my mana.”

Mark said, “No. That’s how Ifeel when Quark casts spells normally. Both of you are expressions of me.”

“Fuck you!” Spark said, “I’m not an expression of anyone but myself.” And then he paused, and looked at his golden hands. “But I think I’m orichalcum?”

Quark said, “I’m mithril.”

Mark asked the both of them, “So this is the ‘Trinity Godmetals Immortal’ thing?”

“Has to be,” Spark said. And then he looked upward, at the Moon, off to the side. It was just a sliver of white and a whole lot of gold in cracks in the dark. “This is kind of what I imagined when I imagined having multiple bodies. I’d give the demon one and make it be normal… but I can’t bring up my Status? Have you checked ‘your’ Status yet?”

… It was doing that on purpose, wasn’t it? Trying to be ‘Mark’. To gaslight. Maybe it was even doing some witchery sort of shit with all of that, and holy hell, Mark was suddenly deeply furious. This fucker was trying to control him. To usurp him!

“Hey, Spark,” Mark said, controlling his rage, “You’resomehow a copy of me, and until I figure out how and what that means, you acting like a demon wearing a me-suit ain’t gonna win any favors—”

Spark launched into a silent rage, rushing at Mark with fists of gold.

Mark floated into the air, out of range. No need to kill the bastard. Just flying overhead a good 5 meters was more than enough.

And then Spark figured out how to turn his arm into a spear, aiming right at Mark’s heart.

Mark retaliated with a sweeping brush of adamantium, turning Spark into scattered metal that clattered against the concentric rings of white stone underneath them all, at the bottom of this weird crater. Ah, fuck. Mark breathed hard as he looked down at the metal, not knowing what had just happened. But he did know. He had just killed Spark—

The world flickered white and then faded outward.

Far, far overhead, a white aurora around the moon briefly shimmered—

“Oh fuck,” Mark said, realization dawning like a cold morning. “I just sent him to Arakino.”

“I believe you did, sir.”

Before Mark could think too much about that, he was already Unioning with Good and Bad, and something weird happened. He felt a weird sort of bulge in his body—

And then Mark was in two places at once.

He was gold. He was black.

Black Mark looked at Gold Mark, and both of them said, “This is me.”

Black Mark decided, “This is me.”

Gold Mark turned inanimate.

It remained there.

… Mark tried a Union of Dream and Reality and Gold Mark faded away into a figment of Mark’s dream, becoming a possibility in his soulhouse, standing in his room, beside his bed—

Mark was in the dream, now.

He was not alone.

“So this is new for me,” Quark said, standing beside Mark, inside the dream, all silver and normal-looking, which was not at all like Mark’s silver version of himself. This was Quark’s original look, after he had modeled himself more as a ‘different brother’ kind of deal. His silver body copy of Mark, however, was over there on the other side of the room, abandoned, for now. Quark looked at the silver copy alongside Mark, and then he looked all around, saying, “I can see your soulhouse now, sir.”

“I see,” Mark said.

So that was a big fucking deal.

Before Mark got his soulhouse, Quark had been able to help him map and plan around his Binding, which was the main function of all familiars; they helped a person make alterations to their Binding to make magic. But then Mark had gotten his soulhouse and Quark had stopped being able to make sense of Mark’s Binding. What he saw was stretched and deformed in every direction. He could not actually see the bed, the kitchen, the yard; any of that.

But now he could see the soulhouse?

What did that mean?

That was, perhaps, a topic better for another time.

Mark pulled back to reality, and Silver Mark was gone; faded away while Quark was in Mark’s body. Some sort of ‘bulging’ was happening in Mark’s body, which Mark now recognized as his extra bodies trying to manifest themselves, but he held it in, now.

And then Quark’s normal silver-drop, Familiar-sized self appeared on Mark’s shoulder. He spoke with a voice in Mark’s ears, like he was 3 meters away, saying, “It appears I need your permission to resume using the mithril body.”

Mark let one of the bulging parts of himself out, and suddenly he was in two places at once.

His Unionsense range took a massive nosedive as he controlled both bodies at once, effectively halving his range. With a bit of focus, Mark resumed his control of his normal, black body, gaining back most of his range in one body and most of his normal senses of self.

Could be a problem.

A person only had so much astral body, and Mark had never overcome that limitation. Stretches helped for range, as well as the thinness of his senses and how much control he demanded from the adamantium he floated around himself all the time. There were some formulae that applied to distance and density that Mark never really got into, and Changing into a dragon adjusted that final size a lot, mostly increasing it drastically, but for all that work, right now at baseline, Mark only had about 3-5 physical-body-sizes of astral body to work with.

Letting 1 of his godmetal bodies out into the world ate up 1 body size, even when he took back almost all of his senses from that body.

Mark’s range was probably only 350 meters in all directions right now, down from 500.

That brief foray into 500 meters in all directions told him that people he knew were watching him, and that they were scared to come forward and frantically talking to each other about what was happening. Also, Mark couldn’t see them, so they were using some hiding magics, but not much. Mostly, he felt Isoko who rapidly pulled back once she felt him feel her.

Quark questioned, “I believe I can enter that body? I will attempt as much, now.” Quark vanished from Mark’s shoulder and then the mithril body ‘woke up’, its eyes flickering and blinking, its chest rising and falling with each breath, and then it moved normally. Quark turned toward Mark, and said, “That works?”

“Seems like. Can you still use your cameras and communication equipment like that?”

“… Oh dear,” Quark said, realizing that he could not. And then he realized something else, his eyes going wide, and then he realized another thing as he touched his face. “I appear to be in a physical body, much like your own, but made of… is it mithril? I cannot tell. I had assumed it was mithril, but my sensors are not functioning properly— I figured it out. My mind is not as fast as it was. I appear to be running on meat, and now I am running through programs and embedded tech at the speed of meat. This is mithril, and that seems to afford some capabilities beyond the expected. Yes, sir, I am in contact with Dawncoast now, and it appears Eliot— Yes. Eliot and his spidership are over the bend over there.”

Quark looked to the left, his vector shifting strangely as he explored how he viewed the world, now. Which was strange. Normally, Quark did not have a vector except ‘I’m here’ and ‘I’m elsewhere’. He had to use arrows in Mark’s sight to indicate things, instead of just thinking about them. It appeared, when Quark was in another of Mark’s bodies, he had a vector, albeit a small one.

Quark’s eyes and ears shifted shape.

Huh!

Quark seemed to have access to some body shaping ‘Powers’, too, just like Gold Mark had when Spark was in control of that one, which made Mark wonder if he actually did have Powers or not… probably not.

Quark said, “One second.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Quark’s shoulder became a speaker and his hand became a screen that he stretched out to a good 20 by 20 centimeters, showing off that he had a bit of the ‘adamantiumkinesis’ and ‘adamantine body’ that Mark had, but in mithril… though Mark wasn’t sure about that. The image on the screen resolved and there was Eliot, Sally, Isoko, and Addavein standing on the main exterior deck of Eliot’s spider ship.

Everyone tried to talk at once.

Addavein cut through all of that, asking, “Was that white flash the demon leaving?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, “It was.”

“We need to do a Contract summoning him back to you, right now, so that no one else can use him. Did you name him?”

Mark wondered if that was the best idea… and then he thought about Dominant summoning Spark, and Mark made the decision he had already made, back inside the Trial, when he decided he wanted multiple bodies. “Okay, yes. We’re summoning him back. Let’s do it here. Come on down.”

Addavein countered, “We can’t do it here.”

“Thousands of drones are out here, Mark, and all of them are watching us, watching you,” Eliot said, “Quark should have access to the map.”

Quark shook his head slightly. “I cannot show you that when I am not with you, sir.”

“Quark isn’t working how he usually is right now,” Mark said, “But okay. I’m coming back.”

Isoko blurted, “I’m sorry, Mark! About the Sleeping!”

“It’s not an issue, Isoko, and I mean it. Sally was here, and she almost died, I’m sure—”

“I’m fine!” Sally said, slapping her own chest on screen. “See! I’m here!”

“—This is not what I expected out of a 100 Trial, but I’m glad it happened out here. Maybe Timeweaver didn’t appear and talk me out of that shit because this is the best possible outcome.” Though Mark would have some words for the Redo Hero the next time Mark saw him. For now, Mark put out a chair for Quark to sit on, for flight up to the hovervehicle, but Quark took a moment to think and then he faded away, leaving behind the mithril body. Mark stored the mithril body back in the dream, and Quark’s usual overlays appeared on Mark’s vision, showing Mark where the team was and marking out a whole bunch of dots in the sky beyond the canyons. Mark said, “I don’t know what the fuck happened out here, but if anything like this happened at Goofy’s 100 Trial, then I wonder how I could have missed it.”

Addavein said, “Nothing like this has ever happened in recorded history, but it has absolutely been recorded now.”

“ ‘Recorded history’ as Aluatha knows it. I’m sure Okuana might have seen this before,” Mark said, and yet even as Mark said that, as he looked down, he didn’t believe it himself. “Or maybe not?”

It was a scene, for sure.

A white stone dais about 20 meters wide, looking like a rippled pond surface, lay at the bottom center of a great ripping of the ground, like a dragon larger than all other dragons ever seen had ripped the world away from this location. Some claw marks were long and thin, but others were wide and ripping. Some streams and creeks out there now emptied into the canyons, water flowing down, rocks falling here and there. As Mark gave himself some adamantium shorts and floated above all of it, he saw a 10-pointed claw-star, the white dais down below filling with water. All of it was dark, the shadows too deep to be real, except for that point in the middle, that white stone dais.

It wasn’t special stone down there. Mark had chipped it with his adamantium even as he simply stood there. But it did glow, like some sort of reflection of the moon, but whole. A full moon.

And then Eliot’s spider crab was there and Mark landed on the roof, going inside, giving himself some adamantium pants as he did so, as his skin turned from black to pale, to normal. His ‘soul’ still bulged with keeping in two extra bodies, but that was fine-ish.

Isoko was nervous, sitting in the pilot’s seat.

Eliot was focused on what he could solve, which was nothing in this location at all.

Sally was conflicted, saying, “Are you really going to archmage with your own demon?”

“Hell no,” Addavein said, not accepting any other kind of answer, “It’ll be the most basic Cohabitation Contract, allowing Mark’s demon to ride alongside him; not Empowering him at all. Isoko. Move us.”

Mark said, “That’s fine with me.”

Isoko said, “Moving out,” and then she lifted off the ship, the sky flowing with the ship and making it fly faster, straight, and toward Dawncoast. She asked, “We are going back to Dawncoast, right?”

“We’ll do the Contract at the church…” Addavein drifted off as he thought better. “Where would you like to do this Contracting, Mark?”

Isoko slowed down in the almost-morning sky.

“The church is fine, but tell me what you think of this:” Mark continued, “Did you guys know that the familiars from United Sapients are given to people, specifically, for 90% of the reason, to infect every newly created demon with a full-package memory dump from the original user, tainting the demon completely with the mind and persona of the familiar’s master? Or to at least attempt as much? I didn’t know that. Found that out just now. With that new information, Addavein, what do you think about Contracting with something with all of my memories, that is also a demon?”

Addavein looked stern.

“Correction, sir,” Quark said, speaking from a bit of metal floating over Mark’s shoulder. “Not the memories, and certainly not the emotions. The infection is a recording of events from my perspective, which is your perspective, in an attempt to cause an emergent cascade of behavioral modifications based on what works and has worked for the user, in the user’s life, to allow for the best possible integration of the demon into human society. Positive interactions are included. Negative interactions are not. It works, somewhat, because… ahh. Apologies, sir. I know it works, but I cannot tell you why. That part of the reasoning for this approach is missing from my files. All I know is that it does work.” Quark added, “Marginally.”

Isoko’s eyes were wide while she drove.

Sally was even more conflicted, but verging toward pissed-off.

Eliot had come back to himself upon hearing all of that, his vector internal instead of searching out everything out there. “Is that why they never approved a familiar for me?”

Mark said, “I never dug into Quark, so I never would have figured that out, but you would have dug into his code, for sure, so probably yeah; that’s why they never approved you, Eliot.”

Addavein asked, “What makes something a ‘positive’ or a ‘negative’ interaction— No. We can deal with that later. Why do you think Aurora has a block on her?” And then Addavein told Isoko, “Stop the vehicle. It might not be safe to go back right now. We’re running under full invisibilities right now, but I’m going to put up more.”

Isoko looked at Addavein, and then at Mark, and she decided to slow down the vehicle. With Solar Flare in one hand, Addavein swept his vector out and around the ship. When he came back, the world outside of the vehicle seemed lesser. Whatever he had done had partially cut them off of the world beyond.

To answer Addavein’s question…

Mark thought back to his encounter with Aurora, versus his encounters with everyone else who ever had a 100 in their PL, including archmages or even dragons, like Addavein, right now. Mark swept his gaze over his friends, and he saw them as lesser than Addavein in PL, further cementing his ideas of why Aurora was being controlled.

And because accusing Aluatha of mind controlling Aurora was a Big Deal, Mark took the time to explain his full reasoning, beginning with, “With a fragment of a divine mirror, I can see souls and power. My scouting capabilities are not a sure thing with an exact measurement like a standard PL scanner, but there are some qualitative things I can see perfectly well, and now I know why. Addavein, you’re all balanced with a kind of solid white light to you, unless I focus on actual power and you turn black, which is your adamantium-type mana. Mostly you’re kinda grey and very bright. 100 PL across the board.

“All of you have a high Natural Power. That Natural Power is in the wind with Isoko, while Sally is sparkling, and Eliot is also inside all of the stuff all around us. Kinda hard to separate Sky Shaper from Union, but I can do it. Isoko’s primary mana is colored platinum white, Sally is all diamond, and Eliot is amber fire.

“But none of you three are at 100.

“100 is when you reach the point where your Power grows so strong, that you cause an indelible mark on the manasphere that either creates a demon, or calls a demon into being, in order to help you figure out your magic. That’s probably more of a System-thing than a real thing. But 100 is when you create something strong enough that it becomes a whole ‘nother magic.

“Other people, eventually, can gain that magic that you create, because you have caused a mark upon the manasphere. But that’s something else, irrelevant to this discussion.

“Anyway…

“When you hit 100, it’s recognizable.

“Shaper is what I see when I see Aurora. She has a very strong Mind, and that’s a bright light in her head, but her Shaper is Supreme Telekinesis, and that’s in her astral body. She’s prismatic white in all those parts, but she has a distinctly unnatural black mark to her. I didn’t think much of it at all, because Aurora is all prismatic, until I saw Timeweaver and Goofy.

“Timeweaver has 100 in Mind. That Power manifests in his soul as a bright shining glow to his mind area. That glow is distinctly similar to archmages and dragons. Zaid’s other bright shining glow is like a shadow around him. Clearly 100 PL. With 99 in everything else it’s easy to tell what is 100 on him and what is not.

“Goofy has 100 in his Natural Power of Heroism, and he advanced that to Divine Heroism, and he’s going to use it to strip Wongod of the Green. Goofy’s Natural Divine Heroism is a sun all around him.

“I didn’t, uh, get a very good look at Glorious Man… just because—

“Anyway, I saw Aurora again today —last night?— I saw something weird. That black mark was like a shadow, dimming everything else. At first, I thought it was because Aurora wasn’t actually at PL 100, so I said that, and she said that she was PL 100, which everyone assumes is true. But it’s nottrue. That black mark magnified when I confronted her idea of her being PL 100.

“So, Addavein, knowing that gaining PL 100 creates a demon, and causes an aurora in the sky… Does Aurora have a demon? Does she have her own special magic from attaining PL 100? Or does she not have any of that?”

Sally was pissed off, right alongside Mark. She was confused and worried, but she was right there with Mark. Isoko was almost there, too, but she was frightened of something, and ashamed.

Mark told Isoko, “I forgive you, Isoko.”

Isoko flinched, going stock still. And then she just nodded a little.

Sally hadn’t forgiven her, frowning down at Isoko, but she let it go; there were bigger kaiju to kill right now.

Eliot had been thinking. Now he looked over at Addavein and said, “Sounds reasonable to me. Aurora is being controlled by Aluatha because she’s an Inheritor.”

Addavein took a deep breath, and then said to Mark, “We Contract you with your demon out here. Fly like…” He gestured ‘over-there-ish’ to Isoko, “50 kilometers, Isoko, quickly. I need to think.” And then he sat down on a chair to the side, right on his tail. He winced, and then moved his tail and sat down for real, eyes focused on the ground, vector turning inward. “I need to think.”

Isoko put the vehicle into forward and began to sail off in ‘that direction over there’, which was somewhere off to the northwest-ish.

Mark asked Addavein, “You think Aurora is being controlled?”

“Yes, and we’re removing the control, but what comes afterward is an issue, and this 100 Trial… you say Timeweaver— Ah. Timeweaver would have been able to hide his demon creation from everyone, so that’s a useless thing to search for. But Goofy? Astrologists and Aurorologists are looking at the sky all the time. They would have seen something like ‘aurora creation’ if this is true. Not to this degree, of course, but similar. Eliot? Searches, please.”

“Already on it, and there was nothing like this ever recorded, anywhere.” Eliot said, “Crystal Tower asked us what the fuck that was, because of course they’re spying, too, and I asked them about aurora creation. Ijust nowasked about aurora creation in D’Australia, and they reported a yellow aurora appearing in the sky there, though it was daytime so it was faint.”

Mark nodded a little.

Addavein grumbled, “They never would have seen something like this, anyway… Search historical records for aurora creation. I believe there were several over the years but… hard to say. The blasted things shift and shimmer in and out of reality all the time.” He grumbled deeper, “I cannotbelieve I didn’t know about the 100 Trial. I was always an outsider in most of the deeper affairs of Aluatha, but to this degree? No… But maybe, yes?”

Mark was using context clues to try and figure out what they all meant. He knew something had happened in the real world when he was in the dream, getting Trial’d, and that big crater back there was surely a rather unique phenomenon, and Sally looked like she had been hurt by Mark’s thrashing in his dream, but Eliot was already in a back-and-forth contact with Crystal Tower? How big of a thing had happened out here? Something more than, like… a monowire puffball scenario?

That white aurora was obviously Mark’s, though.

Isoko asked Addavein, “That Dreamer’s Demon story is pretty old, right?”

“Well yes,” Addavein said, “But the whole idea of ‘people making demons in their dreams and then sending them off to Arakino’ was something most people took as a rather fanciful way to explain reality, as all peoples attempt to do throughout history, so I never took it as real.”

Sally asked Mark, “You made a new magic? Was that the 3 body thing we saw?

“Oh yeah, uh… Quark? Take a body.”

Mark’s body briefly turned back to black as he let his mithril version out, to stand beside him. Quark slipped into that body. Mark faded back to pale-flesh-colored, his range went down, and he put some adamantium shorts onto Quark. Everyone watched.

Quark took a small, professional butler bow, saying, “Greetings sirs and madams.”

Mark flexed his third body out of him, and suddenly he was in two places at once and his range was about 100 meters. He flexed his thoughts and his black body resumed being his primary body, and the gold body went inert, standing there, as his black body’s range went back up to 250 meters. Both of them faded back to flesh-colored rather quickly.

Mark put a kilt on ‘Gold Mark’, as he said, “It’s called Trinity Godmetals Immortal’—”

Sally snorted, but she was also impressed. “Talk about an inflated ego.”

“Yes,” Mark said, smirking a little. “So I can be in multiple places at once, and I think if I leave Gold Mark somewhere then I can reconstitute myself from him. Seems safer than stringing myself out on a battlefield to avoid void bombs. Also, uh… my demon will probably inhabit this one, since Quark can do the silver body.”

Quark said, “I have a suggestion, sir. You can leave the silver body somewhere and I can be with you when you fight.”

“That’s a much better idea, Quark.” Mark added, “And maybe someday I will figure out how to use multiple bodies at once, but probably not for a while. They kill my range.”

Addavein stared slightly. And then he went, “Ah. That explains… so much, actually.”

“What?” Mark asked.

“All of these events make me think about the founding of Aluatha and Inheritor Jamasani, and especially with Aurora having a control spell on her. Jamasani displayed a remarkable number of powers when we helped him inherit Aluatha, and that had to be him gaining 100 in his Trials… but even back during the Thresher?” Addavein shook his head, knowing he had very little of the full story. “This must be one of the royal secrets that I was never privy to, because this multi-body thing is clearly a different Power entirely, but you say it’s just the growth of Adamantine Immortal to 100… yes?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, “And it’s possible for me to dump this Level 100 Power and go back to 99 and get a different one, and the same demon helps me figure out the next 100 Power again and again.”

Addavein stood up and said, “Here’s far enough, Isoko. Wherever we are is fine. We’re getting Mark back his demon and securing a Contract so that no one else can get it out from under him.”

Sally, Isoko, and Eliot were conflicted. This was Contracting with a demon, after all.

Mark was conflicted, too, but Mark said, “How do we do it?”

Addavein explained.

It was a little different from what Mark expected.

At the end of the explanation, Sally asked, “We’re on for destroying all the Moon, the demons, and all magic? Or was that just… hopeful dreaming?”

Addavein interrupted, “Not the time for that conversation!”

Mark said, “We’ll talk later.”

“You need to look at the recording of what we saw when you were out of it,” Isoko said… and then softer, “It was pretty, uh, scary.”

“Later for that, too,” Addavein said.