The Dreadnought sailed through an airy sea of glittering gold dust and soft silver lights. It looked pretty. It was one of the most deadly things that Mark had ever encountered, and the ship was already broken in several places because of those soft lights.

  The golden dust had carved furrows into the entire hull of the Dreadnought, wherever one of the glittering things had touched and then mostly drilled straight though. Eliot had been able to compensate for that, but it was Derek that did the most work, literally throwing a tide of himself into the waves of gold to kill himself and consume the dust. Isoko’s wind could barely touch it; she had tried.

  The silver lights were worse.

  Quark blinked warnings in Mark’s vision, and Mark whipped around toward the port side, following the indications.

  Quark announced, “Calculating trajectory! Calculating… calcu— There! ALL DEREK!”

  Mark could barely tell what the silver lights were doing out there, past the golden geodesic shield of the ship. Mostly the world beyond the shield was simply gold. The silver lights’ vectors were too dim and too crazy; like a crash of vehicles, or a bunch of molecules, all crashing faster and faster, getting stronger and stronger with every crash. As the crashes built, they became bright enough to actually see, and now Mark saw them inside the gold.

  A haze of silver radiance shocked out across the port side shields.

  The only reason everyone had survived the first blast was because of David, because he recognized what was happening fast enough to jerk the ship to the side. But now every person on the ship had goggles on that directly translated what Quark could see.

  David jerked the ship to the side, right when he needed to. He probably ran around as well, pulling people out of the way.

  Mark focused on culling the problem.

  Mark went into quick time, draining Alacrity from the lights and giving the three nearest ones Slowness in turn. It was barely enough to even see the silver orbs, as 19 crashing lights became 16 beams of light, transposing through the Dreadnought and out the other side like a bunch of shotgun pellets, each a meter across. The 3 remaining lights were ‘merely’ moving twice the speed of thought.

  Mark turned the air into an inferno as he flowed forward, adamantium moving fast, becoming a hard-edged knife. 2 of the lights killed themselves, split in half on Mark’s blades, multiple halves twisting into spiraling destruction that sailed into the ship and started fires where they passed, and where they crashed. Mark missed the third one. The third one broke through the Dreadnought like a fist through paper, breaking everything in great crashing ways as it tried to punch clean through. It wasn’t fast enough to just glide through, though, like the other 16 lights had done.

  Luckily, the lights were aiming at Derek inside the ship, so no one died except for him. He lived, though.

  Tartu, Isoko, and Lola, had almost died in that first encounter. They were better now, but it had been touch and go for a moment.

  “Shield?” Mark asked, coming back to the moment, looking at the giant rent in the shield on the port side, and the holes in the shield in the starboard side where the lights had gone through. Golden dust was already leaking inside of the Castellan shields—

  BOOOM

  Eliot said, “The last one caught on the shield! Isolating it now! It’s isolate— Fuck!”

  Another boom rocked the ship as the lights, now outside of the shield and quite slow for the moment, turned, and got a bit faster. Just fast enough to slam into the shield, break it in a small way, and break out their surviving friend. Gold dust filtered into the air of the ship, disintegrating the hull of the Dreadnought in a million small ways, but none of the dust neared the center castle, where everyone was protected, and Isoko was able to keep the dust from coming in further than that.

  Isoko hovered in the sky, spinning the wind, pushing the golden dust away from the Dreadnought, keeping it out of the shields, reminding everyone, “This shit ain’t physical you know! I can barely hold it out! Eliot!”

  “I’m on it! They hit some generators— I’m getting it!”

  No one expected this kinda layer when they went searching for Andria’s Prosperity kaiju, but that kaiju was here, and so the team was here, too. That had been half an hour ago. Foolishly, they had seen the danger in the air and they had thought that Isoko could handle it.

  The dust was not physical.

  Eliot figured out a trick with magnetism and magic and whatever.

  Isoko was still trying to figure out the gold dust.

  Mark was on light-killing duty.

  Everyone else was surviving as best they could, and putting out fires—

  “Spinning up again!” Quark called out.

  The silver lights were flickering fast outside of the shield, bouncing off of one another, and then—

  “Calculated!” And then he called out four names, all at once, “LOLA, ELIOT, ANDRIA, TARTU!”

  A small panic pressed through the vectors of the ship. The lights sometimes targeted people who weren’t Derek.

  Those were the dangerous flows.

  Mark focused on the flow of battle.

  4 lights within range, trajectories locked.

  4 lights slowed down the most of all, as they raced into the Dreadnought.

  Mark caught 3 of them, clipping through two silver orbs before they hit the ship. He reached into the ship to catch the third one. 3 silver orbs died, their split bodies spiraling off in multiple directions, cascading fires throughout the hull. One orb’s remnants went out the other side, hitting the Castellan shield and dying.

  14 left.

  Half an hour later and the battle was done.

  Mark was on high alert.

  Everyone else was on repairs.

  Derek, Lola, and Tartu were down there growing new trees for new wood for the ship, since so much had been lost. Isoko was still trying to figure out the golden dust and she was not having much luck at all.

  The Dreadnought was swiss cheese. Systems had been broken everywhere. Wind howled through fires and openings in the ship, and Derek ran everywhere, pulling out ‘Good’ from the fires. Isoko helped. Soon the fires were out and the holes were healing over, though repairing the inside of the ship would take longer.

  Mark stood ever-vigilant on the forecastle, giving everyone Glory and driving away Fear.

  The gold dust layer continued to churn beyond the golden shields, with Isoko gradually filtering out the gold dust that had gotten in —as much as she could— and Eliot eventually giving an ‘all clear’. And then Eliot went deep into the ship and got to fixing some parts that really, really shouldn’t have been broken.

  It had been 4 days since the team left Kabberjaw and they had seen some crazy shit on the way out here to Andria’s layer. Flying cities full of the dead. Oceans filled with leviathans and krakens at constant war with each other. Lands made of molten mud and giant humanoid skeletons that lived in that mud. Isoko had killed some winged kaiju, all on her own. It was a cat 2, but it was still a BIG accomplishment. There was nothing quite like bright silver lights punching through all defenses, though.

  Mark watched as the holes in the hull sealed over, asking, “Distance to target?”

  “440 kilometers along this path,” Quark responded. “Travel time is estimated to be 5 hours.”

  Mark asked, “Andria? You prepared to actually enter the body somehow?”

  Andria said, “Wai… Hold on.”

  Andria was down there helping Eliot with something, based on their vectors.

  Mark waited—

  “The cutter was broken,” Andria said, and then she muttered, “Shit.”

  “We’re fixing it,” Tartu said. “It’ll be ready.”

  “Long range scanners picking up the kaiju yet?” Mark asked.

  “Negative,” Quark said.

  Eliot commented, “The dust is too thick and the magnetic forces out there are fucking with everything.”

  “I’m trying! Wind and light don’t really touch each other too much!” Isoko said, overhead, feeling stressed.

  “We’ll figure out something,” Tartu said. “A magnetic pulse?”

  Lola said, “Is a Union of Ethereal doing nothing, Isoko?”

  Mark said, “It didn’t do anything when I tried it.”

  “No,” Isoko simply said, arms outstretched, winds curling platinum around the ship.

  “It’s really just light, right,” Mark said. “That’s why the magnets in the shields are working.”

  “Yes,” Eliot said, definitively. “It’s like… solid light.”

  “Not that fucking solid,” Isoko muttered.

  Lola was unsure as she said, “Then try a Union of Dark and Light, Isoko. You have the range. Be careful with it. Channeling too much Light could cause immolation. I was worried about it in the battle, but since we’re outside of battle… you should try it, now.”

  Mark told Isoko, “Use me as the Light sink; I won’t combust.”

  “Gear,” Tartu simply said, which was more than enough to tell Mark what he needed to know.

  Mark had needed to replace his gear a few times by now. Between Tartu and Andria they could replace what Mark broke, but no one wanted to redo work when Mark could just set his gear aside when the danger started. So Mark tucked his gear into an adamantium spike which he drilled into the deck, to the side, and then he stopped touching that adamantium spike completely.

  His illusionary clothes evaporated, of course.

  Mark said, “Go for it, Isoko.”

  Isoko grinned at him, titillated, but then she focused. Her unsure vector flexed to surety. She nodded, then she Unioned with Mark and the bright, glittery gold world. Light poured out of the world, becoming ephemeral platinum glitters that flowed in the sky, directly into Mark. Mark immolated with brilliance.

  Mark was fine.

  Mark lifted off from the Dreadnought by a few tens of meters so that the Dreadnought would be fine, too, but he had already scorched away a meter of wood.

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  Isoko’s vector turned surprised, easing off of her Union, as her voice carried on the wind, “Holy shit… You okay, Mark?”

  Mark hovered in a platinum fire, light bursting from his surface and from every bit of adamantium Mark had. He could barely tell whatever was happening beyond his sight, beyond the platinum wind/light/fire, but he could still communicate through Quark. He said, “I’m good! Feels like nothing. Pour on the gas, Isoko!”

  Isoko was unsure… but Mark glowed with Glory and Isoko glowed with Glory, too. Fear dispersed and Isoko drained the world of Light. She had barely been trying before then, but now, she tried. Darkness flowed in an endless wind as golden glitters turned to black, and Mark’s black body began to radiate with impossibly bright light.

  Mark managed to catch sight of his bright white ‘skin’, even through the glare, and chuckled, “Hey I’m white again!”

  Isoko chuckled… and then she focused, becoming a Glorious darkness that swept the sky of light.

  Mark felt warm. Like really warm. It was a good feeling.

  But the Dreadnought began to disintegrate under Mark’s light—

  “Okay Isoko!” Eliot called out, “The ship is clear! Stop it!”

  The light cut and Isoko said, “Uh… Sorry!”

  Mark felt a little disappointed, really. He had been warm, and now, he was not warm at all.

  And then he looked down, through about two floors of the ship, into a blackened, charcoal’d Dreadnought. The solidified light of the layer, channeled by Isoko, had burned a lot of things, with Mark at the center, like a blowtorch of knives and cutting light. Now that the light wasn’t simply burning everything to nothing, fires started in the decks below Mark. Mark Unioned with the local world, with Heat and Cold, and Mark warmed up as the fires died.

  Mark said, “So that worked more than I thought it would. You good, Isoko? How was channeling all of that?”

  Isoko was alive and well… but also quiet and contemplative. As Eliot began repairing the Dreadnought underneath Mark, Isoko quietly said, “I think I Unioned without going through myself.”

  Lola gasped a little in the comms.

  Mark went, “Ahhh! Ha? How?!”

  That was one problem that Mark hadn’t even approached solving.

  Union had two parts to every Union. One side gave to the other side and the other side gave back to the first side in an equal exchange. Sometimes it might not look like an equal exchange, but it always was, eventually. If the exchange rate was unbalanced then the user eventually simply became unable to Union anymore, until they discharged the parts of the Union that they were holding onto.

  Mark could pull all of the Glory out of the world for himself, but then that Glory would fade and his Union would get ‘full’. But when Mark Unioned with Glory and Fear then he could cycle endlessly.

  But he had to be a part of the Union in some way.

  There was no way to be a ‘third party’ to the Union, like Isoko had just claimed to have become.

  But… Maybe she had figured it out? Mark looked across the clear sky, where the golden motes had vanished and all that remained was a golden sheen, far in the distance, like a peculiar-colored sunset. Parts of it shimmered platinum, just a little, as Isoko’s Sky Shaper was still out there. Eventually the golden ‘light motes’ would come back, but for now they were dispersed.

  And Isoko was perfectly fine, but of course she should have been; she would have been channeling the Darkness side of the Union into herself. Hmm.

  Isoko was still trying to think of how to explain what she had done.

  Isoko eventually said, “… Or maybe I was on the Dark side… but it felt like being a third party? My astral body is pretty wide— Actually, I think I’ve been a third party to all of the Unions I’ve been doing since I got Sky Shaper. You broke the world with adamantium black veins when you channeled between kaiju and Titanfist, but… Well. I haven’t channeled between kaiju before, but I’ve never felt whatever kind of personal strain you’ve felt and displayed before. I’ll have to do testing to make sure that’s what’s actually happening but it feels right.”

  It was like a click going off.

  Mark felt both enlightened and also stupid at the same time. “Oh my gods. I never tried separating my powers from my body but my body is now all over the place… can I even do that?” Mark frowned, hovering a shard of black adamantium into his front, looking at it… then he said, “But I have no heart or movement or brain inside the shard, so… it doesn’t work that way for me?”

  Isoko said, “I am the wind, so it seems like it does work that way for me.”

  Mark looked up at Isoko and Isoko did something that Mark could not do.

  The golden motes were gathered on the edges of the sky, far outside of Mark’s range, but not out of Isoko’s range at all. And then she Unioned with Dark and Light, and somehow she designated a sphere of twisting wind, far to the port side of the ship, as the ‘sink’ for all of the Light.

  The entire world seemed cast into black and white as Isoko turned the sky over there into a white, airy radiance, and made everything else dark as black. Isoko herself more resembled a mirror, or a silver flow in the center of it all, than a real part of the Union.

  Isoko turned off the Union, revealing a much wider sky, the encroaching golden motes further away.

  Mark said, “Well congrats! That's fucking awesome.”

  Isoko giggled, radiated satisfaction, and said, “Thank you.” And then she instantly began to tear down her accomplishment, saying, “I don’t think I’m separate from my Unions at all, but my Union isn’t like yours. It’s a lot less exact, and I can practically overlap Good/Bad at the same time, as long as I’m targeting different stuff. Good/Bad transitions happen right where I’m making them happen without needing to cycle all the way back to my physical body at all—” Isoko’s vector flickered into something more solid. She sighed, “Ahhh… The Eye of the Storm isn’t anything but a calm space; all the action is happening everywhere else.”

  “Neat revelation,” Mark said, and he meant it.

  Isoko smiled softly. “Yeah, it is.” And then she admitted, “Grandma told me that one. I didn’t understand it then, but now I do.”

  Mark smirked.

  Lola said, “Congratulations, Isoko. That is an accomplishment unknown to the Church of Freyala.”

  Isoko practically beamed with joy.

  “Please clear the sky of lights as we proceed, Isoko,” Eliot said. “We’re still under repairs. Be about 10 minutes.”

  “Yeah yeah,” Isoko said, grinning. “Work work.”

  Soon, they were underway, and Mark put his gear back on so he didn’t need to stay nude.

  This time, when the silver lights came by, because those fuckers were everywhere out here, Isoko turned the sky to brilliance as she shocked the lights to Dark, killing those jumpy silver lights before they could build up enough speed, or whatever it was, to threaten the ship at all.

  “Must be some kind of ‘speedy light body’?” Mark ruminated.

  “Brightspeed crystals are a big deal for a reason,” Tartu commented.

  “Oh, shit!” Mark exclaimed. “They’re brightspeed crystal things?”

  “My Prosperity is tingling a lot with them,” Andria said, “So that has to be part of it… maybe.”

  “Even with the danger?” Sally asked.

  “Even with the danger,” Andria answered. And then she said, “In fact… everything is kinda tingling— How far away are we? 50 kilometers? Already! Oh my gods, can we see it yet?”

  All Mark saw were golden shimmers far away, folding and flexing, ribboning and flowing. “Negative. No contact yet. Quark? Imaging? Scanning?”

  Quark overlaid Mark’s sight with the imaging from the ship, saying, “We have no drones capable of piercing the gold swarm, so this is the best image we can do right now.” There was an amorphous dot far, far ahead. A range marker said ‘52 kilometers’. Quark continued, “Scans return crystalline structures, wing structures, and some sort of song that is more and less than a Kaiju Call. The overall density of the kaiju is quite low, though. I am not sure how to reconcile what I know of kaiju versus what the scans are showing. There do seem to be 6 solid structures around the kaiju, though.”

  “We’ll see soon enough, Quark.” Mark asked, “How’s the cutter, Andria?”

  Andria returned, “Repaired! It’s as good as we can make it.”

  Mark laid out the plan, once again for everyone, saying, “Isoko and I will mostly kill it, or at least subdue it. Eliot and the Dreadnought will grapple it with gravity so it doesn’t fall out of the sky. And then you, Andria, gotta cut into it and get to the heart, all on your own. From what we saw with Isoko, you’ll go catatonic when you hit the prismatic mana. I’ll rescue you then.”

  The deck popped open a hundred meters away and a machine sphere floated out onto the surface of the Dreadnought. It was made of hovercar parts, brightspeed crystal, grav crystal, and surrounded by a buzzsaw ring of a hundred mithril blades, edged in adamantium. That cutting ring was not a proper mix of adamantium and mithril, for Mark had made some blades and handed them off for Andria to work into her mithril, but it was good enough. The ones for Sally, Eliot, and Tartu would be better.

  Andria was at the controls, her voice strong as she called out in the megaphone, “Severing Sphere Version 1.0, ready for combat!”

  “Barely any inflection in the voice that time!” Derek joyfully called out.

  “Th—thanks,” Andria replied. “I’m getting the— Shit fuck! More orbs incoming!”

  Silver orbs flowed through the sky, coming from the direction of the kaiju, spiraling and swarming like fish. Quark counted 37 of them, and Eliot yelled something about getting ready to retreat, and fast.

  But Isoko was on the job, saying, “I understand them now. Light/speed versus Dark/stillness.”

  Isoko swept the sky with darkness and ribbons of brightest speed.

  It was like bringing a sky-sized blender to a bunch of normal monsters.

  The silver orbs unraveled, spiraling and twisting into gusts of light that Isoko splashed across the dark sky.

  Mark watched, joyful. Isoko could really do this now, huh? It felt fantastic to be able to see her do that…but… hmm.

  Could Mark still beat her in a brawl?

  Mark wondered… Yeah. Yeah he could beat her.

  It would be fun to find out how it would go, though.

  When the ‘battle’ was over, Isoko teased Mark, “Mad I’m stealing your limelight?”

  “Ha!” Mark deflected, “Why do they even call it ‘limelight’?”

  Isoko snorted. And then Isoko happily declared, “Witness how I can beat Mark in a display of knowledge, too! They call it ‘limelight’ because, in a theater production on the stage in the 1800’s or whenever, they’d burn lime and it would produce bright light!”

  “Okay Platinum Princess…” Mark asked, “What is ‘lime’?”

  “I have no fucking clue!”

  Eliot chimed in with, “Lime, as you’re thinking of, is actually calcium oxide…”

  Chemistry lessons were better than speedy silver light orbs of death, Mark supposed, but he had no real idea what ‘calcium’ or ‘oxide’ meant.

  … Maybe he should go back to school after all of this is over. Or take some basic physics and chemistry lessons. Might be really fun, and fast, with a Union of Understanding.