Mark sat on the floor of the hovercar watching Eliot, waiting for him to wake from his gold fire dream. It had been about 3 hours and the golden fire on Eliot’s light brown skin was still flickering, which was different from everyone else’s prismatic bath experience. Sure, the prismatic skin glow was there, beneath the skin and when you looked at him a certain way, but mostly there was golden fire. Castellan Fire, of course.

  All the world beyond them was filled with floating cities, like mirages made by artificial hands that couldn’t quite get architecture 100% correct. The kaiju was dead and disassembled into various organic-ish matter, its blue scales now forming hovercar side panels, the flesh turned into fertilizer for plants, the bones turned into white walls for buildings, and the fluids were now flowing in cesspools, being turned into water and other organic matter.

  Most of the floating, airy cities had moved away from here, changing from a battle front against the eldritch kaiju back into a normal-ish sort of space, where every airy city was a few kilometers distant from its neighbors. Except for the ones still digesting the kaiju, of course. Those airy cities remained joined by roads and highways and trains full of kaiju guts, traveling on high speed rails between locations.

  Whatever controlled the cities had stopped telling cheerful stories on their screens about Mark and his team. Whatever ‘intelligence’ governed this place, was short on memory.

  The Dreadnought was about 10 kilometers over there, hovering and being all normal. Isoko was playing around with the sky a little, figuring out some things to do with the ‘physical lightning’ she had slammed into the eldritch kaiju, probably trying to mimic Sally’s physical lightning from her Retribution.

  A platinum ring of lightning over 2 kilometers across zapped into the sky over the Dreadnought. The lightning spiked and shattered, and then the air glowed, becoming a massive ring of soft magenta light that warbled the air like some sort of high-strung rubber band.

  Parts of the magenta light flickered back to platinum, and then back to magenta, like a flowing, fracturing, very-thin donut. And then the whole thing fell apart into puffs of poofing, warbling air, rapidly decompressing and bursting into shockwaves.

  Several car alarms went off in the cities, their noises barely audible.

  Some of the nearby cities had some things to say about all of that, as shockwaves rumbled across them, disturbing everything.

  Mark focused on a big billboard that turned into a screen to show a movie trailer for a ‘horror movie’ about ‘The Magenta Disruption’. It was about an amorphous magenta ‘ghost’ pushing full water glasses off of counters and breaking windows. The sky cleared.

  Isoko tried again, and this time the torus of lightning formed much slower and never got properly magenta at all before it collapsed, puttering out with nothing to show at all but a great big fart noise.

  “Quark,” Mark said, “Send Isoko an audio recording of this.” And then Mark tried to make a fart noise with his mouth, pinching his lips together, blowing, and completely failing, because for some reason his lips weren’t as flexible as they used to be, or… Yeah. That was exactly the problem. He was adamantium and his lips were not flexible at all. “Ah,” Mark said, “But hold on! I can do it. Phhhhhh… Phhhhhphh. Phhphhphhphh. Phhhhbbttt! Phbt phbt phbt. There we go. Fart noise achieved. Send!”

  “… Sending, sir.”

  The twisting of the sky stopped.

  2 minutes later the sky flickered with lightning that rumbled and twisted into a rumbling noise that was not nearly a fart noise at all, but it was close enough.

  Mark clapped.

  And then Mark watched as Isoko, for 15 minutes, tried to get back to that magenta glow she had achieved only once— Suddenly, Isoko got it. A torus of sky turned magenta and then deeper magenta. Isoko held it for a full minute, crackles of small platinum glows holding the whole thing together as it spun and twisted like a contained roar. She let it go. Whatever she was doing broke with softness, this time, the shockwave barely audible.

  Mark asked, “What is she even doing, Quark?”

  “I cannot say for sure, but the effect happening is that Isoko is ionizing the air, possibly for better lightning conductivity. In the battle with the eldritch kaiju most of Isoko’s lightning went off-target, and she only achieved real success after a few minutes of figuring out what she was doing.”

  Mark nodded. “Lightning conducts down ionizing trails, right?”

  “Lightning conducts down anything that has moving electrons, and it always moves down the path of least resistance, so if there is a trail of moving electrons in the air in the way she wants, and not in the ways she doesn’t want, it will allow her to strike her targets correctly.”

  “I wonder if Wandering Sage can do lightning. I’m pretty sure she can’t…” Mark was almost tempted to call up Isoko and talk directly, but Eliot was sleeping and he was Mark’s first priority right now. “I bet she can ionize the air with Union in a great torus… or maybe she’s already doing that. Looks like she’s just doing her Platinum Tactile Telekinesis, though. What would a Union of lightning even be… a Union of Conductivity and Insulation— No. The human body needs electrical conductivity to function, so Isoko couldn’t be on the Insulated side. Even if Union would insulate her from the worst of the possible downsides to such a Union, the positive aspects of such a Union would similarly be mitigated… But if Isoko doesn’t need to be in the Union herself, then she can do it…” Mark frowned. “I can’t do it that way. So how would I do it?”

  Mark watched Eliot and thought.

  Isoko experimented in the sky with lightning and ionized air.

  … And then Mark noticed Eliot’s fire.

  It clicked.

  “Oh,” Mark said, a little while later, “I can’t do lightning at all because I can’t work enough sky anyway. But I don’t need that trick. I have another trick I can pull.”

  Mark took some adamantium and made a ball in the air, outside of the open door of the hovervan, and then he started mashing that ball into itself. When metal got mashed, it got hot, and Adamantium was no exception unless Mark was fully Shaping it. But Mark wasn’t fully shaping that ball of adamantium. He was ‘half-shaping’ it, which meant that the ball of adamantium got real hot, real fast. It was still absolutely black, and Mark kept it far away from Eliot, but… Errr. Mark stopped. He strung the super hot adamantium ball into a thin sheet and let it dissipate its heat far outside of the ship.

  Mark said to Quark, “Make a note, please, for me to experiment with a Union of Heat and Normalization… I’ll figure out a better second word later. Something to do with cooling, but I don’t want ‘cooling’. I want something— Oh! Natural, maybe. A Union of Heat and Natural. Heat up a part of my adamantium to super-hot temperatures, and since it’s me, I’ll be on the Natural side of the Union and give the Heat side to the target. With enough heat generated on my side, I can use Union to simply combust any normal-sized target out there— Except for fire elementals, of course.”

  “I have made the note, sir.”

  “Thank you, Quark.” Mark looked at Eliot and his flaming skin… and then he grinned. “How much longer do you think Eliot needs in the oven?”

  “Oh about another 45 minutes ought to do it. He’s already a golden brown, though, so it’s hard to say.”

  Mark chuckled.

  And surprisingly, 40 minutes later, the fire dimmed from Eliot’s body, the prismatic glow faded completely, and Eliot woke up, his vector unfurling outward into the hovership, almost naturally. But it was different. Mark had never seen Eliot’s vector do what he was doing right now.

  Mark was already on high alert and Quark had already sent out a big warning to the team, back on the Dreadnought, which was currently parked about 25 kilometers away. It had moved further away due to Eliot being close to being done. Mark went on higher alert, standing up and away.

  He waited for the hammer to drop.

  Eliot yawned, stretched, and his eyes were slightly golden, the brown of his irises replaced with bright amber. He grinned, and said, “That was a good sleep.”

  … Was that it?

  Mark eyed Eliot, the hovercar all around him, and then he said to Eliot, “Tartu is on standby to come over and hook you up with a System Call Domain for a readout… You okay?”

  Eliot said, “Different, but okay. Nothing really changed— No. A lot changed. A whole lot. But I’m good. I got True Castellan, and I can already tell the difference, but all of my accidents with it were with Hearthswell in the dream. You don’t have to worry about me going crazy with stuff like Andria did. I did not get seer… or at least not directly.”

  “Ah…” Mark paused, then moved on from that part about the seer stuff, saying, “You were covered in golden fire the whole time so… That was Hearthswell, huh?”

  “Oh, no,” Eliot said, “That was the extent of Hearthwell’s ‘castle’, and she didn’t want anyone looking at her castle— Here.” Eliot reached out with his vector and the ship gained a golden sheen on the edges of the windows, and the surface of the open air where the Dreadnought hung in the distance. It was a subtle golden warmth. “It’s sort of like one of Tartu’s Domains, but it’s whatever place I inhabit.” He held out a hand. “Don’t get too aggressive with it, but try to poke through my palm.”

  Mark wasn’t sure what was going on right now, but Eliot seemed secure. So that golden fire had been Hearthswell hiding Eliot from sight? Or something? Seemed like that’s what Eliot was saying. Mark eyed Eliot’s hand, and then he made a needle of adamantium and poked through Eliot’s hand; clean and simple, though there was some resistance. Mark’s eyebrows went up.

  “Oh! There was some resistance there!”

  Eliot, however, was deeply frowning and annoyed. “Dammit… You went right through my hand?”

  Mark chuckled. “There was resistance! Be proud of that, Eliot.”

  “You shouldn’t have been able to punch through at… Ugh.” Eliot flicked his vector in the ship and the hovership flew toward the Dreadnought, as he said, “I’m supposed to be able to determine how things work in my chosen castle.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be able to hurt your hand, huh…” Mark looked at his hand… and his hand was already healed. “Looks like you can heal it well enough? That’s new?”

  Eliot flexed his hand and started saying, “I can determine how things work inside of my…” His voice drifted as looked out of the window and his vector went weird as he looked at one of the floating cities. He said, “Ah.”

  “What?”

  “They’re not AIs. They’re an unconsciousness in the air and I think… maybe…” Eliot focused, narrowing his gaze— And then he suddenly pulled back, breathing hard, chuckling a little. He was nervous as fuck. “Ah. I think the whole layer is alive. We’re invaders in a blood stream, Mark. We need to… I’m not sure what we need to do. My instinct is to run, but... It seems unconcerned with us?”

  Mark looked out at the sky, at the floating, airy cityscapes, and he said, “Let’s get you Scanned, first. Sally and Tartu are a few hours away from putting in some more mana into the kaiju scanner, so what’ll probably happen is we give you time to figure out some things and then we can move on to whoever is next.”

  Eliot was unsure, but he nodded.

  Lola’s voice came over the comms, “Everything alright? Eliot?”

  “Yes ma’am!” Eliot said. “I feel about the same, but not! Gods… it’s like my eyes were closed before.” Eliot thumbed at Mark as he spoke in the comms, “And Mark is fine, physically, but he is fucked up on the inside.”

  Mark laughed. “I am, huh!”

  Lola quietly, professionally said, “Eliot. It’s not nice to say these things—”

  “Mark can handle some truths,” Eliot said, “And we’re all blinding ourselves to how bad it actually is by not saying it aloud.”

  Mark smirked, asking, “How bad is it?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “You look like a disassembling person, Mark.”

  “... Ah. Well. I’m sure I’m fine.”

  Eliot hummed.

  Eliot pulled the hovercraft into the Dreadnought’s space, the golden sheen around the hovercraft suddenly joining with the unseen-sheen of the shield around the Dreadnought, making the whole Dreadnought temporarily flicker with golden fires on the edges of every physical thing. It was like a spark touching a gasoline-soaked pyre, and then, the fire faded down into the wood, into the stone, into nothing. Eliot sighed like he had entered a warm bath, and he held up the same hand he had held up before. It was healed because Eliot had healed it by ‘deciding what happens in his castle’, or whatever that meant; Mark wasn’t sure and Eliot had distracted himself by looking outside.

  Mark would ask him about that later, but right now, Mark saw what Eliot wanted to try even before he asked. Mark waited until asked, though.

  With focused, golden-amber eyes, Eliot said, “Now try punching through my hand.”

  Mark smiled wide, saying, “Okay!”

  Mark took a needle of adamantium and punched right through Eliot’s hand. Zip! Right on through. Mark said, “About 5 times as hard to punch through as before.”

  Eliot stared at his hand, which was already healed, and he frowned. “Dammit all to fuck!”

  Mark laughed.

  “Holy fuck, Mark.” Eliot settled the hovercraft onto the Dreadnought’s deck, to the side of the exit wound he had created when he exploded open the hatch to leave faster, about 8 hours ago. He stepped out onto the deck of the Dreadnought, saying, “You shouldn’t be able to do that!”

  Mark smiled, saying, “My adamantium is PL 98-ish Kinetic when I’m Shaping it, more when I actually try, and it’s naturally a whole spectrum of other alignments, primarily Kinetic, Arch, and Arcane. Of course I can punch through Natural/Arch-aligned flesh.”

  Eliot frowned.

  Lola, Sally, and Isoko were by the castle. Andria was over by the forecastle.

  Isoko came forward, calling out, “So the ship isn’t burning but it looked like it was going to for a second!”

  Eliot scoffed at everything, saying to Mark, “You’re just kaijushit is what you are; a whole lot of kaijushit,” and then he pointed at the ground. “But you’re not sinking into the ship anymore!” And then he told everyone else, “The ship is going to have golden fire on the edges from now on. And where’s Tartu? I want my scan!”

  Mark smiled, feeling warm in the wake of Eliot’s words, while also casually trying to push his foot into the ground, testing if he was sinking or not… And the ship was fine in the wake of Mark’s poking toe. Mark paused. And then he realized, as he stood on the ground, automatically spreading his weight out for stability, that it was like standing on concrete.

  For the last month, and worse there in the beginning, standing on the Dreadnought or anywhere while full metal was like standing on a soft carpet, at the best, and like trying to stand on water most often. Mark had needed to be careful not to fall through. The Dreadnought had a 2-meter thick deck, though, and Eliot had secured the physicality of the ship with some enchanted shield orbs and that adamantium engine that Mark had given supplies over to make, so the Dreadnought was pretty solid.

  But now the Dreadnought was even more solid?

  Mark poked into the surface with his caltrops, but he did not get deep into the wood. Mark’s eyes went wide as hope pulsed in his chest. Could he stand without the caltrops holding him up? Tentatively, Mark lifted his stabilizing caltrops off of the wood… and the wood held. He simply stood on the ground, and the ground remained stable.

  Mark chuckled, and then sighed, “How about that. It’s solid.”

  “Course it is! Now try cutting into it.”

  Mark had already dug into the surface with his caltrops, but he let Eliot have his moment, doing as requested and crafting a thin, katana-like blade, a few meters long. With swift chop to the side, like a sudden flex of a snapping finger, Mark carved a deep gouge into the ship.

  The first centimeters were easy to get through. Beyond that, Mark still got through, but it was almost as difficult as cutting into weak kaiju flesh.

  “Wow!” Mark said, completely serious, “That took effort! That’s amazing, Eliot!”

  Eliot was a little miffed. He stared, his vector going quiet and then focused. He healed the wound in the deck, and then he flashed his attention over to the exit-wound he had made earlier when he had taken the hovercraft out. That broken wood and other parts began to heal back into position.

  “How difficult was that?” Eliot asked.

  “About half as tough as a kaiju!” Mark happily exclaimed. “You think you could ward off that Manipulation Kaiju on your own, now?”

  “Okay well… I would have said ‘yes’, but you’re making me reevaluate my capability…” Eliot thought, then said, “I could compensate, but I was honestly hoping that it would be tougher for you— Anyway. I’ve set up some systems that should self-heal much of the ship, but apparently I can’t make it immune to damage from you, Mark, without being a real bastard.”

  Mark said, “Bring it on! Be a bastard. Try it!”

  Eliot arched an eyebrow. He almost went for it, and then he tsk’d and shook his head. “Nah. I’m not doing that against friends.”

  Mark scoffed. “Do it! Come on. Show me what you got!”

  “It uses resources to do it,” Eliot said, “And right now I can tell we’re incredibly low on resources. The ship is barely holding itself together and I don’t want you to break it. Maybe, when we get more resources, I can actually make the ship immune to you.”

  Mark scoffed again, and louder, for effect. “The ship is stronger than ever before!”

  Eliot got a glint in his eyes as he said, “Having True Castellan shows me just how bad everything actually is. We’re at 5% capacity right now, Mark. 5%! Think about that.” He told everyone, “The ship is strong, but it’s weak. When I get more mana then the ship should be a whole lot stronger; like the walls of New Tokyo, or any other tier 9 city.”

  “Tier 9,” Mark said softly, almost in awe.

  “Maybe even tier 10!” Eliot said loudly and happily, golden fire flickering on the deck around him, briefly. “Imagine it! Impenetrable walls, like New Tokyo! That’s where that other True Castellan lady is. The Kaiju have never truly destroyed those walls at all!”

  Isoko asked, “You feeling okay, Eliot?”

  “I’m doing great!” Eliot announced, his vector a little wild.

  Mark Looked at Eliot, and yeah, the guy was a little manic right now, but that much was expected. He had just gotten a massive power boost.

  Eliot seemed to realize he was getting weird, though. He breathed deep, and then said, “True Castellan can do so, so much more than what I was doing before.” His eyes lit up with golden fire, as he said, “I can see everything inside this space. I can see relationships. I can see history. I can see your astral bodies and your souls and your selves. I can see the little purposes squirreled away inside the enchantments in Mark’s illusionary clothes, and I can see your desire for fame, Isoko, and I can see how much Lola cares for everyone here, I can see Drakarok with a hand on Sally’s shoulder, and I can see how absolutely terrified Andria is. Tartu is downstairs with Verdago, and Derek is doing about 4,000 things in other places. And Freyala is watching from beyond David.” Eliot reached down to the wooden deck of the Dreadnought and traced a finger on the wood, saying, “The ship was dead, but the ship is living, now, while I am here.”

  As Eliot spoke, Mark felt his words resonate in the ship itself. Mark jolted as he suddenly felt a faint vector awaken inside of the ship itself.

  Eliot continued, “The engine cores were out of alignment, resulting in an 85% reduction in efficiency. I didn’t notice that before because of course I wouldn’t notice it. The machines are dead and purposeless. Bodies laying on the ground. Now they are alive and working together, for a certain definition of ‘alive’.”

  The ship rumbled and the ship settled, almost purring, and then the sound vanished into the ether. The ship’s vector turned more lively, like a sickness had been pulled out and discarded, or maybe a bone had been set and healed.

  Eliot moved on.

  “The shields, all 5 of them, are similarly corpses. Now, they are a cohesive whole.”

  The golden shield surrounding the Dreadnought caught fire, every triangular pane of force and protection highlighted like stained glass. And then the glass melted, smoothing out, like raising the polygon count on a video game’s rendition of a ‘sphere’. The geodesic shields became spherical, and then vanished altogether, though there was still a faint golden light here and there where the wind brushed against the surface.

  “And now we’re at 10% capability, and rising higher and higher,” Eliot said, grinning. “It will be a while before the ship is fully online, but we’re safe to go hunting for more kaiju. Soon, I’ll be able to fully secure the Dreadnought from the dreamlands with its very own ego shield, but that’s a big project and it will take time.”

  People were worried.

  Mark asked for all of them, “When you say you made the ship alive when you’re here… What does that mean? Did you put an AI in the ship?”

  Eliot answered, “It’s alive in my presence. It’s my Castellan Power. It’s me. But not me.”

  “Ah,” Mark said, sort of understanding. “Okay. So… You doing okay, Eliot?”

  Eliot turned toward Mark fully, looking up at him, as he said, “I’m fine. You’re not. You’re pretending a lot, and it’s wearing on you. I can tell.”

  Mark smiled a little, disbelieving Eliot as he said, “What? I’m…” He was about to say he was fine, but he saw Isoko with a worried look on her face, Lola full of concern, and Sally who needed Mark to be okay. Andria, off to the side, wanted to be done with all of this as soon as possible; the worries were getting to her, too. Mark had held her hand with an adamantium hand while they fought the Manipulation Kaiju, and she was terrified all the time, but she was holding it together as best she could. She had another spike of terror, though, as Eliot proclaimed Mark ‘unfit’, and that was rather unkind of Eliot to do to Andria, Mark thought. But Eliot was experiencing a Second Awakening, so he was manic right now, so Mark forgave him. Instead of confronting him head on, Mark said, “Sure, I’m getting a little weirder as I stay awake, but I have to stay awake.”

  Eliot Looked at Mark. “… I suppose you do. Sorry. I’m just seeing a lot of things like never before.”

  Mark added, “You, however, can go right back to sleep.”

  Eliot blinked a little, and then his strained vector faltered— He jolted back awake, saying, “I don’t need to sleep yet. I just woke up.”

  “And then you over-strained yourself.” Mark asked, “Will the Dreadnought be okay with you asleep here?”

  “Oh yeah it will,” Eliot said, blinking too much, his eyes becoming more amber than gold. “I’ve set up some systems that will cycle while I’m inside the… the—” He yawned. “Inside the… residence. Whatever.” He was having trouble picking out words. “I’m going to go sleep in a real bed, now.”

  Sally came forward. “Let’s get you to your bed.”

  Eliot smiled softly and then went with Sally, into the castle.

  Mark watched him go, and then he said to Lola and Isoko, “He’s going to be okay.”

  “Why wasn’t Tartu up here to scan him?” Isoko asked.

  “He’s deep in communion with Verdago,” Andria said, still keeping her distance at about 5 meters away. Her vector was all over the place, like floating blobs in the air. “He’ll scan Eliot when Eliot is asleep, though.”

  Mark nodded… and then he looked at Andria and said, “We’ll get you and all of us home as soon as we can, Andria.”

  Andria froze… and then she thawed and said, “With Eliot Awakened to True Castellan, this place is the safest place in the Two Worlds for all of us. I don’t need Prosperity to tell me that, and what’s more…” Andria raised a hand and mithril flowed into the air, and then right back out of the air. In that moment, Mark noticed that there were no stray mithril blobs around her at all, and she wasn’t wearing her bracelet, which meant she had achieved true control? But no. Andria said, “I’m able to keep the mithril de-manifested a lot easier now. And I think I know what he was talking about earlier, when he said he wouldn’t do it against his friends.”

  Lola watched as Eliot and Sally vanished into the castle. “I believe I know as well.”

  “What was it?” Mark asked.

  Andria said, “He can choose who is allowed inside the walls and a whole bunch of other stuff. If he dis-invited you, you’d go sailing off of the Dreadnought. This whole ship is practically a divine space for him.”

  Mark considered that, and thought about how he had punched through Eliot’s hand when he asked him to punch through his hand. Mark said, “Neat! But also: Not without limits.”

  Isoko agreed, saying, “I don’t know what sort of stories Eliot has heard about the walls of New Tokyo, but the kaiju regularly encroach on the place. In the 20’s there was a push to make the city bigger, to expand. Every single expansion failed due to monsters and eventually kaiju. No one was hurt because no one lived behind the ‘new walls’, but the monsters got bad. Grandma was busy back then. All of Crystal Tower was. Knowing now that there was a True Castellan there makes a lot of sense as to why the normal walls don’t fall, but they certainly got close to falling back then.”

  Mark asked, “New Tokyo is super densely populated, right?”

  “Densest population in the Two Worlds!” Isoko said.

  “And they’ve never been able to expand?”

  “Not easily,” Isoko said… And then she asked, “Is Eliot going to be okay?”

  Lola said, “It appeared to be a normal mania due to attaining new levels of power. Nothing to be frightened of at this moment.”

  Mark nodded… And then he smiled, asking, “So who wants to get Eliot scanned!”

  “Me!” Isoko said.