It took 30 minutes for the Crystal Spider Kaiju to come back toward Sally’s cocoon. Mark had checked on her a few times during that ponderous half hour, and at least there was some good news on that front. Sally was maybe 70% as bright as she had been. She was coming out of her Second Awakening. Not nearly fast enough, though. Mark was getting kinda furious at her for stupid reasons, muttering about how paladins were such zealots sometimes, and how they could have taken the hedgehog kaiju… differently. Maybe.

  Who the fuck knew that Sally would take this long, though!

  Mark stared at the Spider Kaiju as it slipped across the lava’s surface, far afield. It had no eyes but Mark was absolutely sure it was eyeing the black cocoon. Maybe it was just waiting, too. Crystals grew all over Sally’s cocoon now, and though Mark had flexed the surface of the cocoon and dislodged the crystals that were growing directly on top of it, those crystals merely hit the lava near the cocoon and started growing from there instead.

  Now, the entire black dome was surrounded by crystals—

  An arrow in Mark’s vision.

  Pointed behind him and to the left.

  Mark turned the air to shockwaves as the world slowed down and he sped up, turning around, crawling through the thick air toward the new problem.

  A lava strider was attacking Sally’s cocoon, trying to break through, or to break off a patch. It had been too far for Mark to sense its vector, and it had been quiet, but Quark had seen the problem so Mark responded.

  With a rapid reposition close enough to hit the lava strider with Union, Mark popped back into real time, shockwaving the air with thunder, as he cracked into the lava strider with a Union of Homeostasis and Agitation, shattering the crystal construct and a tiny bit of organic shit at the center that held it all together.

  Mark hadn’t noticed the organic stuff at the center right away, but he noticed it now.

  The whole thing fractured and exploded, its pieces crashing into the lava and the solid ground near the growing crystals, and onto the dome itself. Everywhere it landed it started to grow, and Mark flexed the surface of the cocoon in response, dislodging the crystals from the surface, clearing sight lines as much as he could—

  Another arrow, directly behind him and overhead. A massive warning, too.

  Mark instantly went to speed-time as he felt the Spider Kaiju’s vector directly overhead, its forelegs aimed at Mark. He turned, and looked up at the thing, as it moved quickly and yet slowly at the same time.

  Mark hit it with Homeostasis and Agitation, and the results were just as explosive as it was with the smaller lava striders.

  The kaiju’s 2000-degree white-crystal legs shattered like cracks in an ice-covered pond, great gouts of steam and gasses shattering away from the breaking kaiju. The kaiju screamed, but Mark was ready for it this time.

  Mark held onto himself and Sally as much as he could.

  But the dome around Sally still broke open, like the shattering of a cathedral stained glass window.

  Sally was exposed, her prismatic skin shredding down to bone all across her chest and face and arms and legs. Flesh caught fire. She did nothing. She was still asleep.

  The crystal kaiju screamed more as it suddenly displaced itself far, far away.

  Mark freaked the fuck out for the 2 minutes it took, in speed time, to cocoon Sally again, all the while looking at the damage and worrying and panicking. But he got it done, trying not to think about how wrong everything was going. Soon, Mark had remade the dome and then he began healing Sally herself, and the prismatic glow returned to healing skin, though it was a lot dimmer and Sally was pocked everywhere Mark looked.

  Mark couldn’t spend any more time on her.

  Something was knocking on the dome to the side, which was a deep, deep worry.

  Mark found 4 lava striders working together to break into the edge of Sally’s dome.

  Beyond stressed, Mark took everything Good from everywhere, from the security of the heat for these monsters, to their very lives. Mark gave them every Bad thing in the world in turn, from Sally’s wounds to the worry of the battle itself, which Mark supplied himself.

  Black lightning shattered the heat of the lava tunnel, dimming everything in a deep miasma that rolled outward and struck the crystals, the lava, the heated air, the striders, and something else. Something deeper.

  Something groaned in the background.

  Lava striders collapsed on themselves, freezing in death. Crystal towers crumbled. The air sank and spread as a liquid poison swirled out past the towers and invaded the lava slimes in every direction. Cold miasma flowed away, moment by moment, and all the light of the world pulsed through Mark’s Union, into Sally.

  The world died along with Sally’s pain.

  And then the Spider Kaiju screamed from 10 kilometers away, moving fast and circling the area at great speed—

  Sneaky Snake poked up from the lava 2 kilometers away, looking at Mark, quietly hissing, “That not dragon. You not familiar.”

  Mark roared at him, “TRY ME!”

  Sneaky Snake harumphed, and then said, “Bargain still hold.”

  And now Mark was furious. “DOES IT?!? THEN GO KILL THAT SHIT!”

  “I going, I going. Bargain holds, young and stu…” Sneaky Snake said, ducking under the lava, his last words lost to burbling lava.

  Mark growled out at the world, “Drakarok. Hurry the fuck up.”

  Sally’s vector was fully internal, and it had been that way since she fell asleep 16 hours ago. If there was a golden glow to her vector, then Mark couldn’t tell. All Mark could tell was that Sally was too far from being done. Quark calculated, based on her 50% glow, that she had yet another 12 to 18 hours remaining. She would need a miracle to survive this.

  Mark needed a miracle.

  … Mark prayed, “Freyala, if you’re there. Please. Help.”

  The Spider Kaiju was still 10 kilometers away, Big Red holding on its upper body, staring at Mark. A thousand trailing lava striders flew across the lava all around the kaiju. It was circling, circling, circling, and it was looking for a good opening.

  There were no golden glows anywhere to be had, or seen.

  Mark muttered, “Fuck.”

  - -

  Andria had gotten lost, and now she was panicking. Something had twinged in the last 35 minutes of her currently-6-hour journey. Some large amount of Prosperity was on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall. To be lost forever.

  Andria pushed the drill forward, using a lot more personal force than before; the enchantments to let it drill through rock had broken—

  Isoko landed beside her, bringing Andria back to the moment, back out of her helm, as Isoko looked down at her in Full Platinum, saying, “You need to hurry, Andria. Find the Path. Connect to Mark, to Sally, to The Prosperous Future.”

  Something golden flickered in Isoko’s vision.

  Something golden thrummed into Andria, waking a similar golden glow inside of herself.

  Andria focused again as Isoko brought the sky down into her very veins, filling her with power. With purpose.

  Andria felt connected to the world in a way she never had before.

  Then she felt it.

  An arrow in the world, pointing her toward the biggest source of Prosperity this world had seen in a very long time. Something very, very expensive was right over there. It had to be Mark.

  Andria wondered how she had ever gotten lost.

  It was just so darned obvious… Yes.

  Mark was right over there.

  - -

  Lava striders came in from the west. The entire horde. 327 mansion-sized crystal monsters, skimming along the lava with spiked pillars for arms and legs, killing slimes without care as they came for Sally’s cocoon. Big Red stayed in the back of the horde, controlling them.

  Spider Kaiju aimed at Sally, but not directly. It swung around the entire side of the tunnel, moving fast, waiting for Mark to be distracted with all of its horde. It was a good tactic. If the kaiju attacked while Mark was distracted, then no amount of Homeostasis Union could keep them from Sally’s life inside that dome. She had almost died once.

  If she died…

  Mark wouldn’t let that happen.

  Mark rushed out to meet the horde, speeding his way toward the center, even though they all began to spread out in every direction. They couldn’t keep up with Mark when he was moving fast, as long as he didn’t let them, and he could kill them quickly when he got there. But it would still take a minute, and a minute was all the Spider Kaiju needed.

  Mark was 2 kilometers away from the dome when he started shattering the horde.

  The Spider Kaiju rushed the dome, traversing 10 kilometers in 30 seconds.

  Mark had been waiting for that shit, though. He had been playing with the striders, not killing them right away, but merely distracting them, keeping them away from the dome. Mark turned and sped through the air, spilling shockwaves—

  Suddenly, a hundred of the striders Mark had not killed somehow blinked in front of him, blocking his path.

  Mark went around them, but his shockwaves caused them to suddenly reposition in front of Mark again, right into his path, surrounding him completely.

  Mark fell into a flow, turning himself into a needle and piercing through every single problem ahead of him, striking through crystal, hitting the organic center at every strider, threading forward and traveling 2 kilometers straight through hundreds of lava striders at the same time, to pass over Sally’s cocoon and to strike the Spider Kaiju right in the dark, organic part of its body. Mark instantly recombined into his normal body, facing down the open maws of the kaiju, Unioning with Homeostasis and Agitation. He tried to Union against the Agitation of the coming sonic disruption, too.

  But the Spider Kaiju screamed and Mark turned to droplets of adamantium in the air, even as it blinked and escaped.

  Mark floated on the air as a fine mist of adamantium, coming back together and getting eyes once again, just in time to see the Spider Kaiju on the other side of Sally’s cocoon, only 50 meters away from touching the surface with the first of its unbroken white crystal forelegs. Mark turned into a fast thread again, aiming at the kaiju’s face again, striking true and turning the Spider Kaiju into an offgassing explosion of heat and sound.

  It screamed.

  When Mark came back from discombobulation, he saw that Sally was exposed. She whined about the heat. She died in the pressure. Mark went about repairing the 300 meter-wide hole in Sally’s cocoon and healing her back to full. By the time he was done with that, Sally’s glow was a lot less than it had been, which was either great, or truly concerning. Her vector was still internal—

  A flash of gold flickered through Sally’s vector, and she dimmed just a bit more.

  Drakarok was here.

  Mark said, “Thank the gods.”

  And then Mark rapidly went back out into the world—

  The spider kaiju was 1,200 meters away and with its vector fully pulled back, parts of it wounded and dripping white lava—

  Sneaky Snake coiled out of the lava, around the similarly-sized kaiju, grabbing it tightly like a piece of white metal thrown and wrapping around a giant spider. It was too big to fully comprehend the size and speed of it all, and it was even harder to judge the pace of events as Mark watched the spider reverse the grapple, to grab onto Speedy Snake, like it had been waiting for Speedy Snake to appear, which, according to the vectors Mark felt, is exactly what had happened.

  Speedy Snake bit into the black organic parts, and the black organic parts turned into a blender of teeth and maws and sonic screeches, discombobulating Speedy Snake—

  The Spider Kaiju flickered, displaced, and reappeared 16 kilometers away, near a growing crystal city that it instantly started devouring to repair itself.

  Speedy Snake fell in two pieces and many scattered scales, into the burning lava, screaming and yelling and flailing around.

  Mark grabbed onto Speedy Snake with Union, yelling out, “Calm down! I’m healing you!”

  Speedy Snake only understood pain as he scattered blue flaming venom into the air, hissing, roaring, crying. But then Mark’s Union connected, and Good flowed in and Bad flowed out, and Speedy Snake had a surreal moment as it was being healed, and it had no idea how to handle the situation except to lay perfectly still, in two different pieces.

  Mark Called, “Put other half against wound!”

  Speedy Snake looked up, lifting its head up, and then it looked down at itself, at its other half, burning in the lava over there. With a weird sort of movement, it pushed at its body, backwards, using its many hands, and it shoved itself against its back end. Everything was lined up wrong. The spine wasn’t against the spine. A giant crystal was in the way for some fucking reason.

  Mark figured it out, using a puff of Purity to clean up the wounded space, and then he shoved enough Good in and pulled enough Bad out to overwrite whatever was wrong with any possible alignment.

  It took 5 minutes.

  The world was cold with Badness by the end of it, and Speedy Snake figured out how to shift itself into the proper position so Mark could heal the wound easier.

  And then Speedy Snake looked down at Mark from high, high overhead, and said, “I done. Bargain not worth.”

  Speedy Snake vanished into the lava and went away.

  Mark stared for a long moment, watching Speedy Snake’s entire body slip under the lava like a 2-kilometer-long train vanishing into a tunnel. And then he was gone.

  Spider Kaiju was still remaking itself and its horde over there, dismantling a crystal city to do so.

  One good thing: The Spider Kaiju had destroyed the crystals around Sally’s cocoon, so they weren’t on track to regrow.

  “But what now?!” Mark yelled at the world, as he pulsed with Bad. Killing black miasma rolled off of him in waves of black sparks. “What the fuck am I going to do—”

  “Mark!” Andria’s voice shot through every Bad thing in the world.

  Quark found her before Mark did. But it wasn’t her. It was a black thing bobbing in the lava about 3 kilometers away. A drill, headed this way, floating fast through the air. Quark began mentally handshaking the Dreadnought and the team, and their voices flooded the space—

  “Love you all; Everyone shut up. I need Andria to attack that spider kaiju over there!” Mark pointed. “It’s been attacking for the last 4 hours. There was a friendly Sneaky Snake kaiju that was like a familiar for some unknown entity some long time ago —we talked a bit— but he suffered a big injury and he abandoned the field about 4 minutes ago. Andria! Use Quark’s vision. Attack the black part of the kaiju. It has a sonic attack. Eliot! Make sure the feedback won’t get to her! It’s a big sonic attack that shreds everything. It shredded me. Everyone needs to make sure that Andria is immune to any possible feedback through her vector. And she needs to kill it! AND it teleports around when it suffers big damage. Andria will need to reposition constantly.” Mark demanded to know, “Everyone understands?”

  Eliot responded first, “On it! 2 minutes!”

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  Isoko said, “I’m feeding Andria power.”

  Derek said, “Me too! I’m helping!”

  Andria’s vector faltered a moment, and then she strongly said, “ON IT!”

  Eliot asked, “How is Sally?”

  “About 750 meters tall and still sleeping, though I think Drakarok is helping her faster than he was before… Or something. She’s been asleep for 18 hours? I don’t know the time exactly— Quark says 18 hours.” Mark said, “She might be asleep for— Quark updated his thoughts… Uh. 3 hours? Oh? Thank the gods. As soon as she’s awake then she can probably fight for 10 minutes before she falls asleep again, like everyone else has done so far.”

  The Spider Kaiju was still drinking in the crystal city underneath it and turning its broken pieces into more scattered lava striders. Big Red darted through the ranks of new striders, doing something to them and making them link with it.

  Mark added, “I’m not sure what the connection is between that red lava strider and the big Spider Kaiju, but there is a link there. The smaller striders are pawns for Big Red. I think the Spider Kaiju might be a pawn, too… or something. Not sure.” Quark’s body was destroyed in the various actions of the last 2 hours; Mark had no idea when that had happened, but it had probably happened in that first discombobulating scream. So Mark remade Quark’s body and sent him up, saying, “Use Quark’s eyes to figure out vectors of attack, Andria.”

  Andria answered, “On it! Yes! Okay! Got it! Now… Now… I guess I just— I just go over there and start cutting? Yes! Of course yes.”

  Mark softly said, “It’s okay that you never did this, Andria. Eliot and everyone has your back. Be prepared for discombobulation. Derek? Lola? David? Please protect Andria from such a thing. Isoko, too.”

  Lola said, “Explain the discombobulation effect.”

  “It was a loud scream from a thousand mouths and everything turned into globules— Wait wait… Uh… Sally was hit, and she got pocked, like something was eating at her flesh. All of the metal I put around her instantly turned to globs. So flesh was okay? Not really, but maybe? The black part of the kaiju is fleshy and there are fleshy bits inside every lava strider. So maybe it’s not a flesh-killing attack— But then it attacked the Sneaky Snake kaiju and split him in half with a targeted attack.”

  David spoke up, “I need to know if the kaiju targeted you and the cocoon you have under you, and you were discombobulated while Sally was merely hurt.”

  “That’s exactly what happened! That means it’s a tuned sonic attack?”

  David said, “We’ll prepare for possible feedback against Andria, but I’m 99% sure that the attack won’t even reach her, and if it does the kaiju will be attacking metal and not Andria, so she’s fine anyway. Do it, Andria.”

  “30 more seconds!” Eliot spoke up, “Just give me… There! Okay! Anti-disruption measures are in full effect.”

  Andria spoke strongly, “Going for it!”

  Mark watched with trepidation in his heart as an orb of mithril blasted away from Quark’s orb overhead, streaking toward the kaiju in the distance. It moved faster than sound, shockwaving the world as it traveled. The Spider Kaiju noticed the sound, if nothing else.

  Quark zoomed in for himself, for Mark, and for Andria.

  Mark watched as Andria’s orb struck the 14 kilometer-distant Spider Kaiju, right into one of its maws, and then it went inside, vanishing.

  Moment of truth.

  Andria softly said, “Oh gods, its so fucking… burning.”

  “Compensating,” Lola said.

  “Thank you,” Andria said, voice full of relief. And then a moment passed. She said, “Uh… It’s really fucking… not that tough, actually. I was expecting something… tougher?”

  “You have a lot of power flooding into you right now,” David said on the comms.

  Mark watched as the Spider Kaiju had a weird moment, pausing as it tried to eat another tower, to transform that crystal into new legs that weren’t cracked and bleeding—

  The kaiju flinched.

  The kaiju blinked and reappeared a kilometer away, on the other side of the crystal city.

  “It teleported?!” Derek exclaimed.

  “I’m still inside of it!” Andria said, “Still ripping it apart! It’s so soft! Oh fuck, it’s so fucking soft?! Oh! I see its heart— Oh. No. There are tens of hearts! Uh… One down? I think?”

  Mark felt an anxiety leave him as he watched the spider kaiju blink again, teleporting even further than before— He rapidly said, “It’s going to scream! Prepare!”

  Seeing the scream from afar was a lot different than seeing it in person.

  A shockwave expanded from the black central mass of the Spider Kaiju, spreading outward in a dense array of boiling, burning roars. The world shook in its passing. Every single non-crystal thing burst apart, the lava briefly displacing underfoot. The shockwave passed overhead, and across the land. The white coil of power in the center of the place vibrated and cracked, moving away from the kaiju and toward the side of the cavern over there. But then the white coil of power rapidly reoriented back to the center line of the lava tunnel.

  “I’m fine!” Andria announced. “Still killing it!”

  Mark cautiously said, “I’ll try another type of shockwave soon. Be prepared.”

  “Understood,” David said. “Continue, Andria.”

  Mark had no idea what Andria was doing in there, or even what she was seeing, or how she was seeing it at all. Even Mark couldn’t navigate in total darkness; even with his tactile feedback from his adamantium, he still had his vectors to go on, and if all he had to go on were his adamantium feelings then he would often just break through stuff instead of touch it. Mark asked, “How you doing in there, Andria?”

  “I’m finding hearts and pulping them! It’s weird! I never did this before except to some monsters and never from so far awa—”

  The kaiju screamed as one of its legs fell away from the central mass. A hundred smaller lava striders, underneath the main body, simply ceased to be in the resulting explosion.

  Big Red puffed away in a blast of power. Probably not dead.

  Silence.

  “… Andria?” Mark asked.

  “She’s temporarily injured, her astral body shredded,” Lola said, “She’s already coming back.”

  “I’m good!” Andria said, voice faltering, “I left some of myself near Quark down there. I can still fight!”

  Mark looked directly overhead and saw some sluggish mithril manifest out of a hidden vector near Quark. Mark latched into that vector with Glory and Fear, saying, “You got this, Andria.”

  Mark tried to ignore how he had failed to Glory/Fear her right away. He knew he wasn’t fully present right now, and that made him worry even more. But he had friends! They could work while he… oh gods, he was fucking everything up, wasn’t he.

  “Oh wow that feels much better,” Andria said, a globe of mithril expanding from the orb overhead. “I’ll leave more of myself behind this time.” And then part of her globe went rushing over toward the kaiju like a mithril bullet. “Here we go!”

  Andria impacted the main body of the kaiju—

  The Spider Kaiju teleported 10 kilometers away.

  Andria said, “I’m still inside! I’m shredding now!”

  “Thank the gods,” Mark said softly.

  “I can tell where the hearts are now! They’re like a colony hive that—”

  And then the Spider Kaiju blasted the world again, even as it fell apart into a four-legged thing and Andria’s mithril overhead splashed in every direction. Andria’s vector vanished.

  Silence.

  “Andria?” Mark asked.

  “Andria is unconscious aga—” Lola started, voice tense. “She’s back.”

  Andria’s voice was sluggish as she said, “I… I can get back. I can… I…”

  And then Andria’s voice went away.

  “Uh, shit,” Eliot said, “She’s okay, but… Not. Fuck. Fuck, is Sally okay?”

  16 kilometers away, the Spider Kaiju picked up its legs and got itself together over the course of 2 minutes, and Mark worried deeply. If he attacked it, it would just teleport over here. But if he stayed here then Sally would be attacked directly.

  Mark looked down at the black dome, sensing Sally below. “She’s asleep. She’ll… I can figure out the rest.” Mark took to the air. “Get back when you can, Andria.”

  “I can get back!” Andria said. “I can get… Back… I’m coming back right now. It’ll be… 15 minutes. I don’t have to go through the ground again. I can piggyback on the slimes now that I know where you are— I’m sorry! I overshot the driller! I should have been here sooner—”

  “Don’t worry about that, Andria,” Mark said, “You’re here now.”

  Mark saw the Spider Kaiju stand up on 8 healed legs. It was thinner than before. It looked meaner than before, too. It stared at Mark with one great big open maw, and it screamed at him. Mark roared back at it, pain in his voice, and he knew that Sally was going to die no matter what he did—

  Sally stirred underneath, light dimming, vector unfolding, golden light stretching through her body. Drakarok spoke through Sally’s own voice, “Let it come, Mark. Let it come.”

  Mark looked down at the dome and he despaired, even as he put on a brave face. He sobbed, “She’s not ready. She’s still under. You’re talking in her sleep.”

  “Let it come, Mark.” Drakarok vanished, and Sally said strongly, “Let it come.”

  Mark couldn’t very well stop it from coming, but if he drove it away with some more Homeostasis/Agitation, then Sally would… would be deeply injured. She might live. And then Andria would be back by then.

  “Fuck.”

  The kaiju slid across the lava, sliding down the tunnel toward Mark and the dome.

  Mark went out to meet it at 300 meters out—

  It came in screaming, right at Mark, turning the world to dust and debris—

  Sally woke up.

  As a particulate mass, Mark watched shockwaves pass across the world and strike Sally’s cocoon, turning the adamantium into globules that spread across the world like leaves escaping from a leaf blower. And then the shockwave hit Sally, who turned her head and stared at the Spider Kaiju.

  Her skin sparked gold, and golden lightning shattered through the tunnel.

  The Spider Kaiju tried to blink away, but golden lightning followed it where it blinked, and Mark watched, still discombobulated, as the kaiju splattered across ten different teleports, each cracking displacement leaving behind more and more pieces of itself. The lightning followed without mercy, reaching each teleport location before the kaiju even got there.

  It died in pieces.

  Thunder rolled.

  Mark came back together, rushing toward Sally, as Sally began shrinking rapidly, hitting 200 meters long and then 20 meters tall and then shrinking even more, to stand on scattered black adamantium rocks on the lava’s surface.

  Mark rushed her with healing magics, fixing up the thousands of injuries she had gotten in less than 5 seconds of exposure.

  “Sorry, Mark,” Sally said, shrinking some more. “I need to sleep more.” She shrunk to be a meter and a half tall, so much shorter than before, and then Mark was there, grabbing her, holding her upright, even as Sally muttered, “Sleep, sleep. Thank you. Love you.”

  Mark pulled the adamantium around both of them, giving her plenty of space but also a whole lot less space than before. Tears rolled down his face, or at least he imagined they did. It felt like it. They dried too fast to be noticed. Mark held a sleeping Sally for a moment, healing her more and more, even as he pulled an adamantium shell around both of them.

  Then Mark flew with Sally to one of the smaller crystal cities, to hide behind a tower that wasn’t nearly tall enough to get struck by lightning at all.

  Mark breathed out, “Love you, too, Sally.”

  And then he started talking tactics with the team, saying things about how he wasn’t ready to leave yet, and how he would make sure Sally would be fine and not spontaneously grow halfway through the trip back. It would be bad to survive all of that and then die to crushing forces under the ground! Mark had tried to say it like a joke, but it came out too harsh. Everyone ignored that. More words were had. They asked Mark about everything, and Mark told them what had happened, and about Sneaky Snake, who was probably out there eating Mark’s leftover adamantium right now. But that was fine.

  It was relaxing, compared to what had come before.

  Mark merely repositioned Sally when the monsters came close this time. It was soooo much better than guarding a single location. Holy shit it was so much better. Mark still left behind thick, black miasma wherever he went, though, discarding as much Bad as he could, when he could.

  12 hours later, Sally was awake and ready to move on, so they did.

  Andria helped get them back to the ship by attaching to Mark’s traveling drill and then pulling hard.

  The trip back took a single hour, and Sally almost dozed off halfway through, expanding as she slept, but Mark injected her with Wakefulness and Sally startled, shrinking back down to a proper height.

  Mark smiled at her, as he looked down at her. “You look good short again.”

  Sally sleepily smiled, and then she grew a lot taller and hugged Mark fully, completely, and Mark hugged her back. Sally said, “I love you, Mark. Thank you.”

  Mark sniffled and hugged her back, fully and completely, and said, “I love you too, Sally. Don’t ever fucking be that reckless ever again.”

  Sally winced. “Yeah… It was… pretty bad, wasn’t it.”

  “YES IT WAS.” Mark took a breath, let go, and said, “But I think I was reckless too… You and Andria were pretty awesome out there, though.”

  Andria giggled in the comms, the mithril plug at the bottom of the ship pulling harder for a moment, as she said, “It was so cool being able to kill a kaiju like that! It was less cool to faint, but it was still cool!”

  Sally smiled and said, “Thank you too, Andria. Everyone. Sorry about… the ordeal.”

  Everyone gave her shit for making them all worry, for heading off without a full plan, and for each and every way that all of that could have gone better. Soon, Mark and Sally pushed out of the crater underneath the Dreadnought, and then Mark floated them both to the deck of the ship.

  Eliot rushed Sally and held her close, quietly.

  Sally hugged Eliot back.

  Silence, and twisty vectors.

  And then Eliot teased her, “I liked you taller.”

  Sally scoffed. “Being short is awesome!”

  Tartu said, “Let’s get you scanned.”

  Body, Titan’s Strength: 097

  Shaper: 81

  Mind: 79

  Natural, Retribution: 093

  Soul: 64

  Arch, Size Manipulation: 039

  Estimated astral body strength: 68%

  Mark teased, “Not at full Arch power, huh?”

  Sally scoffed, “I’ll learn it as I go.”

  - - - -

  Later, at a dinner table with the food strong enough for Mark to enjoy, Mark merely watched as Sally and Eliot sat near each other, both of them seeming happy and the same height, too. There had been jokes and quietness. Togetherness and planning for what came next.

  Isoko asked, “What happened to Big Red? Did you see him again?”

  Mark shook his head. “No idea. Doesn’t matter, though. All that matters is that we’re all here, and okay, and ready to kill a giant magic-casting tree for Tartu.”

  Tartu raised a beer, saying, “Hear hear!”

  Cheers went up, and life was good.

  Mark tried to pretend that he wasn’t still anxious as fuck.

  It helped that Andria put a mithril hand into his own. It was kinda weird, but kinda nice. Mark smiled at that. And of course, Isoko had to hold his other hand, and that was nice, too.