Mark hovered over the crystal corpses of three different crystal guardians as he eyed the ones further afield, yelling, “Try it again, I dare you!”

  Nine different crystal guardians, each the size of a small mansion, jolted, each of them rushing away from Mark, and from Sally’s adamantium cocoon. Those ones ran well and far, skating across the surface of the lava like water bugs, slicing through lava slimes and getting far out of range. They knew Mark wasn’t going to venture far from Sally’s cocoon. They had been doing probing attacks for the last hour, now.

  So far, Mark stood over 3 corpses of crystal guardians, their broken stone melting into the bright red and yellow lava.

  But the big red crystal dancer stood apart from all the rest.

  Big Red flowed across the lava, with its spike-like legs and spike-like arms holding it above the liquid ground, moving with the ease of a figure skater. Mark could not move that well out here. He needed to make his adamantium into paddle-like structures to grip the mobile ground. Big Red could skate on the lava without worry. And it was fast. Faster than Mark when he wasn’t moving with Alacrity, and twice now, when Mark moved with Alacrity to try and catch it, it suddenly sped up and twisted away. Mark had smashed it with adamantium blades and cracked its surface with adamantium bats, but that didn’t really matter. It was an elemental, so breaking it up didn’t really do shit. Unions of Fear and Glory did nothing against it, and Unions of Instability and Stability didn’t break it apart at all. The heat nourished it, sealing up all wounds, and so…

  It was a slog to kill it.

  The elementals in Endless Daihoon, or at least the elementals down here, were a lot tougher than the ones back home.

  And Big Red was twice as large as the other crystal guardians, too, and it never got close enough to provoke a real counterattack. Not since Mark scored a few cuts in that first clash, maybe an hour ago. Now, Big Red sent in animated crystal guardians at Mark, while it tried to circle around Mark, to get at the cocoon while Mark was busy. Big Red was the thinker in the groups. The other ones were nothing compared to—

  Lightning flickered overhead, super hot and radiant and lancing, sending crashes of super-heated power into the tallest crystal spike around, which was 55 kilometers over there, and halfway up on the side of the tunnel. The noise echoed throughout the entire center of the layer, causing every slime on the surface of the lava to flinch, and Big Red to turn in that direction.

  Tall towers of crystal came alive with heat, and then they exploded, sending kilometer-long fragments of crystal across the sky, turning one very tall crystal ‘city’ into a scattered ‘suburb’ of kilometer-tall shards that each began to grow taller and taller.

  Big Red was paused on the lava.

  Big Red turned toward Mark, looking at him with a featureless face of red crystal.

  And then Big Red skated away, across the surface of the lava, toward the growing city.

  Mark sighed in the thick air, saying, “He’ll be back.”

  “Yes, sir. I believe so as well.”

  “Why do you think they go after the newly-destroyed crystals?”

  “I’m not sure, sir,” Quark answered, “But I can guess that the ones like Big Red need heat and resources to grow bigger. But not too much heat. Nothing seems able to survive the true heat of the central lightning line.”

  “Yeah…” Mark glanced around. All he saw were dark spots on the lava where the hedgehogs had been. They were burned away, now, all of them gone… which made Mark wonder about what they had been doing out here at all. “Do you think the hedgehogs were headed toward Big Red’s crystal city?”

  “It seems likely, sir— Oh, sir. Look at this.”

  Quark brought up some images in Mark’s vision, displaying the other side of the freshly-struck crystal suburbs. Some things were poking out of the lava, eating the crystal. Mark narrowed his eyes, trying to see, but there was a thick haze in the air that distorted most of Quark’s long range vision. Even his short range vision was compromised to some degree, but Quark was compensating for that—

  A clear image appeared in Mark’s vision.

  There were sharks in the lava. Big, mini-kaiju sharks, bigger than the lava striders, which were already as big as houses. The sharks had a penchant for eating freshly-lightning’d crystal, too, which was fucking bizarre. It was a feeding frenzy out there. Why were the sharks eating crystal? Ah… Elemental sharks? Or… No. Were they alive? Mark couldn’t tell.

  Mark asked, “Are they elementals? Or organic?”

  “About as elemental as the hedgehogs had been, sir; that would be my guess.”

  Mark nodded, then he turned his gaze back toward Big Red, who was currently a fast-moving stick figure about 10 kilometers away. It was moving fast toward the crystals. Mark turned back toward the big black dome that held Sally, saying, “I’m doing a round.”

  Quark beep-booped and turned his attentions to the world around them. “I am still on the lookout for weirdly-behaving slimes that might indicate Andria’s attention, sir. I have not spotted any abnormalities among the slimes. I will let you know if that changes.”

  “I haven’t felt any weird vectors out there either; thanks, Quark.”

  Mark flowed into Sally’s cocoon, through the adamantium and then into cool, brilliant glows. Sally’s skin and her entire body was still shimmering prismatic, while her vectors were all pointed inward. She was deeply asleep. Her breath echoed a little bit as her chest rose and fell far out of sight. All Mark could see was her knees and her arms over there, so he floated up, grabbing onto the adamantium shell without Shaping it at all, to fly overhead and Union with Sally with Good and Bad. Sally’s weight had pressed her down into the lava bed, but Mark had slipped adamantium under her to separate her from the heat, and then he had put some aerated adamantium down there to insulate her a little bit more. It wasn’t much insulation, but adamantium didn’t conduct heat all that well anyway, so even a little bit of insulation was better than doing nothing. Sally was hot again, though, and the air was always hot, so Mark Unioned with Homeostasis and Agitation as he hovered over Sally’s 100-meter long thigh, passing over her hip soon enough.

  Mark pulled the heat out of the adamantium shell, too, cooling the place down to a ‘comfortable’ 30 degrees. Soon, Sally nestled against the giant adamantium ‘body pillow’ Mark had made, actually deforming it a little with her big arms, and then Sally sighed in her sleep, settling down. Her diamond-prismatic skin was the only light in the adamantium cocoon, and adamantium was absolute black, making her look like she was sleeping in a land of nothing at all.

  Hovering over Sally’s head, looking down at her blond hair and her gently moving eyes under her eyelids, Mark felt a little bit at peace. Sally was okay. She was dreaming. Mark felt like he was having something of a nightmare right now, though. Being here by himself was anxiety-inducing. This layer was a whole bunch of death traps, one right after the other.

  Mark did one final Union of Good and Bad to refresh the air in the space, and then he floated out of the adamantium shell, out into the light of the layer once again—

  “Kaiju incoming,” Quark said.

  Mark faltered for the barest moment, and then he floated strong and followed the arrow in Quark’s vision toward the right, up above, about 35 kilometers away.

  The kaiju was a snake/centipede, coiling through the lava and on top of the lava. It was maybe 2 kilometers long and bright white. It was headed toward the burning crystal suburbs, just like everything else. Mark prayed that it would keep going that way.

  Which is why it came as no surprise that the kaiju paused and then looked toward Mark.

  “Of course you have to look this way… and now you’re coming this way. Fucking great. Fuck fuck fuck. Estimation of category, Quark?”

  “Without knowing its capabilities or without a proper scanner, my estimate is anywhere between cat 4 and cat 6.”

  The snake kaiju flowed through the lava, swirling back and forth, swimming toward Mark, or more appropriately toward the giant black cocoon, and not being cautious about it at all. The air began to vibrate with the kaiju’s natural Call, and Mark squared up, hovering high and then…

  On an inspiration, Mark flexed his adamantium out into a very large dragon skull, turning his entire body into the thinnest scales and most vibrant black eyes he could make. He was making a mask, and he gave the mask hints of broad, sweeping horns and large, menacing fangs, before Mark healed himself back to full, within the center of that broad, skeletal dragon mask. Quark picked up what Mark was putting down, and he rapidly did some calculations of his own, painting in the parts of the face that Mark didn’t get quite right. Mark fleshed out a tongue and then he fleshed out a few more scales to cover the worst parts of the threat display.

  In a short 30 seconds, Mark had created the barest remnants of a dragon head that was maybe 50 meters across, with him at the center and controlling the smallest parts of it all. The jaw opened and shut properly, though; Mark had put some hinges on it and made sure it could move up and down. Everything else was strung together on black adamantium webbing, and if Mark was using any other kind of metal except for adamantium then it surely would have broken apart under its own stresses.

  The white snake slowed down as the dragon mask came together.

  The white snake paused completely, curling backward a fraction. Watching. Waiting. Staring.

  And then it meep’d. It was the smallest, almost cutest kaiju Call Mark had ever heard. It was still a kaiju Call.

  Mark roared with all of his power, all of his need to protect, saying nothing at all but meaning everything in that roar, angling the jaw of the face open as he did so.

  The snake backed the fuck off, rapidly retreating deep into the lava to resurface a good 2 kilometers away before it turned back to face Mark and his mask. It hissed quietly; it was a non-committal sort of Call. Maybe it was something along the lines of ‘Fuck you! Don’t scare me like that! I was just curious!’

  … Mark wondered if he had interpreted the snake’s Call correctly, but it seemed like he did. Mark barked back something that was more him saying, ‘Stay away and we have no trouble’ than anything else.

  The white snake stared, and then it bobbed back into the lava and headed toward the still-burning crystal suburbs.

  Over the next two hours, Mark filled out his adamantium dragon head and disassembled it into easily-reconstructable parts. He kept checking on Sally and also watching the new crystal city get demolished by every oncoming monster. Lava sharks ate burning crystal towers. Big Red struck pillar after pillar of crystal, turning each one into a smaller copy of itself, which was interesting to see happen because that proved why Big Red stayed back when it fought Mark; it was a horde-making monster, not a part of a horde itself. Other monsters ate at the city, in their own ways. Swarms of flying things attacked the other side of the crystal city, eating the white fire from that side; Mark suspected they were tiny phoenixes, like humming birds. Quark couldn’t get a proper image of them.

  The white snake kaiju ignored all of that as it curled through the largest parts of the still-burning city to crawl up the largest fragments of crystal towers with its many arms, to then bask in the heat of the flaming crystal. It soaked in the dulled white fire. Mark assumed it couldn’t take the full fire from overhead, from the middle of the layer. Nothing could.

  Three hours after the city had freshly caught fire, the fire was gone and the creatures that attacked the place began to move on.

  White snake moved off of the now-cooled center towers and passed close by Mark’s giant black dome, getting 10 kilometers away before it stopped and looked.

  Mark brought out the shape of the dragon face again, watching the white snake.

  White snake meep’d. Sounded sort of like ‘Okay’.

  Mark Called out a huff that was almost a rumble. He tried to mean ‘Sure’. Did that get across? Maybe.

  The white snake stared for a long moment, and then it swam into the lava, flowing down into the heat, its immensity disturbing the surface as it swam down the tunnel. It did not resurface.

  … Mark pushed the dragon face into the shell with Sally, setting it to the side as he Unioned with Homeostasis and Agitation again, throwing the heat back outside. Sally didn’t even stir… But now she was hungry as fuck. Shit. When did that happen?

  Mark Unioned with Sustenance and Deprivation and lava slimes around the cocoon began to wither… But a strange thing happened. The slimes drew in heat, and fluffed up again. Mark dragged whatever Sustenance they were getting out of the heat and gave it over to Sally. But did the slimes even have sustenance? Seemed like they did.

  Why was this working at all? Mark had no idea. Sally seemed to appreciate the ‘hot meal’, though, or at least her vector quieted down and her body seemed to sparkle even more in the dark.

  Eventually, Sally’s needs were met, and Mark sat on top of the black dome, waiting for Big Red to come back, though he didn’t see the crystal guardian anymore and Quark hadn’t seen him in the last hour, either. It was a waiting game.

  Mark almost —almost!— said something like ‘at least this was more interesting than simply watching over Sally as she slept’. But that would be jinxing the whole thing.

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  He did, however, say to Quark, “So everyone’s prismatic mana targets have been in line with their own natures, right? That’s why Isoko got the mythological creature, because she wants to be that famous someday. Andria got the old god that watched over a civilization, because she wants to be the power to help build the world better. Eliot got that Manipulation Kaiju in that layer of AI cities… or whatever it was. That one was special, too. Eliot still didn’t say why it was special while we were on the boat driving this way. I think it’s a Castellan secret—” Mark waved a hand, adding, “Which is whatever. Secrets and secrets. And now here’s Sally, having killed a kaiju that was a leader of its own kind who remorselessly used its own kind as meat shields. And SOOOO~” Mark guessed, “Tartu’s target is probably going to be some magical tree that casts a million spells at us, or something… Huh. Wait a second. I was just naming shit, but now that I’m looking at it all...

  “I’m betting that’s what it is, right now.

  “So what the fuck kinda kaiju am I targeting out there?

  “And more to the actual point I’m getting at: Eliot, Andria, and Tartu really made that Storm Prism very well didn’t they? That it can actually target this sort of stuff is just… just crazy, really.”

  Quark said, “You made the core of it, sir, giving it its purpose in finding the best matches.”

  “Oh yeah… I guess I did?” Mark stared off into the fires, into the coiling white-hot center of the layer. He hummed, then said dismissively, “Ehh. Everyone else did a lot more for that than I did.”

  “Possibly true, sir. I do not know what the others did, exactly. However, I can safely say that none of this would have been possible if you weren’t here. Sally is doing quite well now, as are Eliot, Andria, and Isoko.”

  Mark smiled softly. “Thanks, Quark.”

  “Anytime, sir.”

  Mark got up and moved around some, watching the world and feeling some funny kinda way about everything. Here he was, far, far, outside of any city walls, with Sally, and he was killing shit while she slept. It was terrifying, but also amazing. When Sally came out of her Second Awakening Mark wanted to go exploring one of those crystal cities before getting back to the Dreadnought which was…

  Shit.

  … Over there, in some direction? Yes. Over by that city that had just exploded with the white fire from above. That one had been struck twice now; once when they had come into the center of the layer and a second time about 3 hours ago. The center spire was growing tall again and maybe it would be struck a third time?

  But maybe not.

  There were lots of different crystal towers everywhere in the layer, each about 75 to 125 kilometers away from each other, though there were smaller outcroppings of crystal towers every 10 kilometers or so. Everything else was lava covered in slimes, and the slimes multiplied constantly until they formed a solid film over the lava, like cells, 2 layers deep.

  It was all so fascinating.

  What was the entity that dreamed up this layer thinking when they made it?

  Were the slimes a part of that dream? Or did they move in later? Were the crystal towers a part of the dream? How about the crystal monsters? The band of white-hot fire stringing through the center of the place was absolutely part of the original dream… maybe. But what about the hummingbird-like white phoenixes that flew in massive flocks around in the upper atmosphere, not too close to the fire but closer than anything else in the layer was willing to get?

  … And Sally was hungry again.

  Mark Unioned with Sustenance and Deprivation again, wrinkling the layer of slimes and killing Sally’s gimmies, but not the slimes. The slimes recovered fast enough, drinking in the heat. And then Mark Unioned with Homeostasis and Agitation to dump heat out there before he Unioned with Good and Bad, to clear the stuffy air inside of the adamantium dome. The slimes loved the heat that Mark poured out there, into them.

  Mark asked Quark, “So what kinda kaiju do you think my scan was pointing at?”

  “If I were to guess at the beginning of this trip, I would have said something that allows you to transform like Isoko does, which means some sort of metallic/organic shifting kaiju. Now? I am assuming some sort of multibody-thing that is impossible to kill.”

  Mark snorted. “Ah… Yeah.”

  … And then Mark got to thinking weird thoughts.

  “How do you think Walaria and all of them have avoided assassination all these years? They must have a way, right? Like… backup bodies, or…” Mark threw fantasies against the metaphorical wall, seeing if anything hit right, saying, “Backup bodies, as one option. Seer powers and parasite powers could work, too… Or maybe no one has ever managed to kill them? But, no. That seems crazy. I assume that all of the royals have big time defenses, but also that they have gotten got at least once or twice before. So how did they survive? Or come back? Do they have resurrection magic on tap— Oh.” Mark paused. “Maybe they do? That would be the simplest option, and the simplest option is the usual solution…” Mark frowned. “And a rather infuriating solution, actually. If they had resurrection magic then… well. Hmm. Why not use it on others? Well… Maybe they do? But not en masse. Is it politics? Has to be politics, right?”

  Quark spoke up, “When the Resurrection Ghost brought back 85% of Memphi’s killed population, and Archmage Blackthorn was there to see it with his Demon Planty at his back, Planty specifically disallowed Blackthorn from looking at the magic because the majority of the demons don’t want that magic coming off of the reservation. This stands to reason that the magic is out there, but heavily controlled. Many of these topics were brought up at the various international conferences that you never attended, but which you asked me to record.”

  “Oh shit… yeah. Never got around to that stuff.” Mark asked, “How did that story about there being some kid who Awoke to Resurrection Magic turn out?”

  That had been the official story distributed by Memphi and the Central Cities as to how the Resurrection Ghost had happened. They didn’t want cultists to get any credit for that action at all.

  Quark said, “The hunt is still on for the unknown Resurrectionist.”

  Mark snorted. “Yeah…” And then he got to thinking about stuff way beyond the current moment. “I used to think that Nova Nexus or Timeweaver made sure important people didn’t die. But now I’m assuming the truth is a lot more spread and nuanced. Sort of like Uncle Alexander the True Healer and the others on The List keeping all the powerhouses of the world young enough to function forever, if they want. And the demons and the archmages make sure that happens that way.” Mark asked, “All because demons want their playpen to be sturdy enough to survive and grow… right? Do you think that is right? I’m not sure.”

  “From what I have observed some demons want the world to survive, but all demons want to experience things. Their methods of achieving experience range from positive encounters, at the beck and call of archmages, or horrific encounters, mostly due to mishandling of the demons by their users because the demons make themselves impossible to use without injury. The stories of demons I have read all tend to end with tales of destruction played out on large or small scales, for demons are not physical things, but they enjoy physicality. So to say they ‘want their playpen to survive’ is perhaps a reductive thing. Perhaps they don’t think they can truly destroy the world at all?”

  Mark hummed, looking out at the lava wastes, at the tumbling slimes, and at the bright white lightning soup coiling through the center of the tunnel.

  “The world is capable of being destroyed,” Mark said, as though it were some big-time revelation, when in fact it was just normal logic at play. Mark shivered, though he was not cold at all.

  Quark said nothing,

  Mark said, “I never have any positive experiences with demons at all, but that one, Leash, keeps trying. He’s tried twice now… Why? I don’t want to ever ask him why, but it does make me wonder. And it can’t just be because he wants Kanda removed from Addavein and then killed for real.”

  “Thrashtalon has targeted you indirectly and directly, sir. Any contact with them would be detrimental to you, in ways we cannot know. So I cannot recommend you ever seeking this sort of knowledge.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Mark added, “Most of the demons are algorithms rather than people. Some of them are people… or near enough to qualify. Like Thrashtalon’s demons. Like the demon Leash.” Mark added, “You know, I was expecting Leash to show up at the goblin shit— Oh, fuck.” Mark paused. “Leash is going to be at the end of this path for me, isn’t he. With my prismatic kaiju target, I mean.”

  “That seems a bit too fantastical to consider, sir. The odds of that seem too large to ever pass in reality. It might happen, but I would think elves with their resurrection magic are more likely.”

  “Ah… Yeah. Maybe I’ll meet some elves.” Mark continued, “So that story Tartu told us of the Dreamer that Dreamed the Demon… He met his demon in his dream. Do you think everyone has a demon in their dream? Maybe so. Maybe… Maybe when someone dies, their demon dies, too? Or… no. The demon lives on, right? That’s what Tartu said… The Demon killed the Dreamer… But did the Demon survive? I don’t know. I need to ask Tartu that— The point of this question is to figure out if I have a demon, and if that demon is Leash.”

  “There are also the inquisitors to ask.”

  Mark snorted. “Ah! Yeah. I could do that, huh…” Mark hummed. “Would Lola or David even know?” Mark added, “When we were talking about all that stuff with witches and the Veil and the Wyrd and how witches make their own Wyrd and attack people through the dreamlands… Lola seemed like she had realized something very big in that moment. Do you have any idea what she could have realized?”

  “No idea, sir.”

  Mark nodded and looked around, waiting for the shoe to drop. He poked his head down into the dome, to gaze over Sally. She was doing okay; still glowing brightly. A bit hungry and a bit uncomfortable, though. Mark pulled back up and began some maintenance Unions, shrinking the slimes out beyond the black dome, and then cleaning up the air and lowering the temperature.

  “She’s got another 12 hours to go, doesn’t she,” Mark said.

  “Considering how quickly Eliot came out of it, without gaining any tertiary Powers, and based on how long Isoko and Andria took when they gained a Third Power, and with Sally going for a Third Power and upgrading her main Body Power to Titan’s Strength and getting True Retribution… It will be a while, sir.”

  “… I hope the others are doing okay… Still no sign of Andria’s slime?”

  “No, sir. I have been looking.”

  Mark frowned a little, humming. “Put a priority on that. Tell me where I need to move to help you see better— Oh. And you’re checking for mithril in the air too, right?”

  Quark put some arrows into Mark’s vision, saying, “Yes, sir. I have seen no mithril in the air, but there are some locations you can look at that I have not been able to search properly...”

  Mark followed the arrows around for a few hours, keeping Sally healed and safe all the while.