All the sky was soft blue, the air smelled vaguely of salt and flowers, and all the islands below were tropical islands in a tropical ocean. It was a paradise down there, far below the Dreadnought. Big orchids flowered among coconut-tree-dotted islands. Dune grasses kept large beaches sandy and big. Corals glimmered under the deeper waters here and there, like pearlescent shines of every color. Fish flickered under the waters, swimming in massive schools, while predatory sharks and other beasts were few and far between. The average PL of the land looked like it should have been zero, or maybe 1-2 at the very most.

  It was beautiful.

  It was absolutely toxic, and the PL was at 99.

  “Problem at the stern, Isoko!” Eliot called out, as cracks formed in the Dreadnought’s shields.

  “On it!” Isoko said, brushing away the sky from that part of the shields in particular. “Good?!”

  “Better! It’s sealing up now! Derek? You got it?”

  Derek called out, “I’m plugging the hole with bodies!”

  And he was. Tens of Dereks soaked in the miasma that got inside, as they hopped off of the side of the ship, dying in droves to fully remove the poison in the atmosphere. It worked well enough.

  And soon, the hole was closed. ‘Normalcy’ returned. But there was never going to be a true normalcy in this specific layer.

  Fluffy white clouds flowed around the solid golden shield of the Dreadnought, keeping everything from the layer out of the ship’s space. Some stuff still got in. They managed. Between Mark running Purity/Corruption and bringing all the Purity in and throwing the Corruption out, and Isoko throwing the Impurity even further away, they kept the miasma away from the ship, depositing it far outside of the Castellan-barrier.

  Some miasma still collected inside the ship. That stuff fell to the bottom of the ship’s barrier, like a heavy, black fog.

  Derek occasionally jumped through that fog, soaking in the death and then taking it outside.

  It ‘worked’.

  The Dreadnought had poked into this layer an hour ago. According to the schedule, this was going to be the last layer they passed through to get to Tartu’s target, which was only 4 hours away. Even 4 hours in this hell-hole was going to be rough, but it wasn’t like the previous layers had been better.

  Mark sat on the forecastle, switching up his Union to one of Good and Bad, pushing out all of the Bad that encroached upon the Dreadnought, tackling the miasma differently, because the miasma seemed to adapt when he only did Purity/Corruption. He had started shifting between cleaning spells the instant they entered this deceptively dangerous layer, when Derek suddenly started dying and everyone else began dropping. Eliot had managed to put out some Castellan defenses, though, and now they were here.

  Mark glanced up into some feeds from the ship, looking down at Andria, and Eliot, who were mostly resting right now. Tartu, Sally, Isoko, and David were solving problems as best they could, with Isoko helping Mark with the Union of Good and Bad, expanding the range of their power over the entire sky of the islands, while Sally helped Eliot get around. Lola was praying at the Pantheonic Garden behind the castle, while Andria lay in bed, sleeping it off.

  Of all of the people here, the only ones without a Body Power were Andria, Derek, and Eliot, and so they had gotten hit hard. Power Levels in the 80’s didn’t do shit against whatever it was that filled this layer with poison. Lola was praying for a better solution than Good/Bad—

  “Freyala has no answers except to continue with what we’re doing,” Lola said, stepping away from the Pantheonic Spire in the garden, her voice filled with surety. “It is working well enough.”

  “Still not as bad as Sally’s lay— oooph,” Eliot tried to say, coughing in the middle of his words. “Excuse me.”

  Mark asked, “Any idea what’s in the layer? Anyone?”

  Tartu spoke up, “Some sort of anathema; that’s all I can guess.”

  Mark hummed at that. “I suppose so, but I was hoping for a better answer than that.”

  “What’s an anathema?” Andria asked.

  Mark said, “Some sort of power directly targeted against something. Like a miasma, but worse.”

  “Like that anti-human ritual that the goblins did at Goblinhome,” Tartu corrected. “Whatever caused the effect here has targeted humans, or maybe sapience itself, and now we’re swimming in the anathema. It certainly seems to be latching on to Derek when it can.”

  Derek asked, “Should I kamikaze through the collected miasma down there again? I think I should. I’m gonna do it.”

  Mark felt as about 100 Dereks dove into death, taking that death outside of the shield with them.

  “Thank you, Derek,” Eliot said. “It was, uh… It was getting to a point.”

  “I could tell,” Derek said.

  Lola spoke, “An anathema seems most likely at this point. Mister Cybersong. Are there any civilization-building things out there at all?”

  After a moment, Eliot said, “The scanners aren’t showing anything larger than a grouper in the water or a cat on the land. No civilizations, at all. Not even any worked stone. No boats, no metal tools… Nothing. For at least the nearest 30 kilometers. Everything past that is a guess. The probes die fast when they leave the ship.” He asked, “You’re still at the elven place right, Derek? The Softer Lands. They do have tools and whatever there, right? What I’m getting at here is that this place seems against people, which is not what I saw at the elven place.”

  “You think this place might be elven?” Isoko asked.

  “I don’t know,” Eliot said.

  “How is that going, anyway?” Mark asked, suddenly very interested in the topic.

  Derek said, “It’s pretty boring there so I’m about to move on, but yeah. They have worked tools. Coins made of platinum, I think. A great big goldleaf tree that looks about 20,000 years old, according to the stuff I’ve been able to find on how to date goldleaf trees. It’s big enough to cover a kilometer of sky, and if we ever needed money we’d be set for life… And yeah, it’s fascinating, but I’ve explored it all and cataloged it all in books back on Daihoon.” Derek added, “Nobody Important still hasn’t shown up on the moon, and it’s been 20 days.”

  Mark hummed. “He could have shown up and the world simply wouldn’t be able to see him… maybe.”

  No one said anything about that.

  Lola said, “So the land here likely has an anathema against sapience itself, which explains why it even tried to strike at Mark, and why Freyala said there was nothing to be done about it except go through and come out the other side.” Lola asked, “Are you okay, Mark?”

  Mark shrugged, far out of sight of anyone, but still connected to them by the comms and through Union. “I’m good. Soon, Tartu will be powered up, and then it’s 3 more days to my target.”

  Isoko said, “I can’t wait to be home.”

  “The last week has been pretty rough, yeah,” Mark said.

  This layer was full of some sort of anathema against sapient life, but the previous several layers had all been bad. Two of them had been full-fire layers, and another three of them had been so filled with kaiju that they had actually needed to use the brightspeed engines to get away.

  One of the layers was a full on war between kaiju of all kinds, with a hundred kaiju visible on the scanners and every single one of them paired up against each other, or tripled up, and fighting.

  Isoko and Mark had gotten to learn about ‘Don’t Care About Me’ Unions from Lola, with Mark doing well with Unseen and Perceived, while Isoko did a lot better with Obscured and Revealed. There wasn’t much time to actually figure out why Isoko did better with her own ideology, but Mark was pretty sure she had a thing for being really famous, so Obscuring or Revealing herself was a big deal to her.

  Mark was plenty famous enough; thank you very much.

  When this was over, and assuming that they wouldn’t all be assassinated, then Mark was going to do nothing at all for at least a month… Maybe kill some kaiju on Gate Day. But other than that? Nothing!

  … Maybe some HVP thing, because he needed to talk to the public…

  … And magic studies…

  But nothing else!

  Ahh… who was he kidding.

  Mark was never going to get a real break, and that was just how he liked it.

  Sally said, “I want some time to practice Size Manipulation and so I can stretch my legs before Tartu’s target. If we find a good rest spot… can we actually rest for a day?”

  “Sounds great to me!” Mark said. “I hope reality decides to cooperate.”

  “There’s enough spa—” Eliot coughed a little— He cut the comms. Then Eliot came back and said, “There’s enough space on the Dreadnought’s surface for you to stretch, Sally.”

  Sally scoffed. “Not doing that here.”

  Mark smiled to himself.

  Isoko said, “Maybe Tartu’s layer will be open? Plants need sunlight and sky, right?”

  “Not all of them,” Tartu said, “But the vast majority, yes. If we find an underground layer then… Then I might have to make some rough decisions.”

  Eliot said, “If anyone’s targets are underground anymore, we’ll figure something out. I’ve already got plans for a digger-type shield for the Dreadnought. We will not have a repeat of the last incident.”

  Sally’s vector turned embarrassed.

  Mark scoffed and said, “That was only a problem because Sally was giant. It’s literally not a big deal if I have to run and hide with Tartu underground.” Mark snorted at his own joke, repeating, “ ‘Literally not a big deal’. Get it! Because you’re tiny, Tartu!”

  A rumble of uncertainty went through the team, through the Dreadnought, filling the space with worry.

  Mark adjusted his Union of Good and Bad a bit, dispensing with the worries of everyone, casting them out into the poisoned atmosphere of the layer, adding, “Come on guys. It wasn’t that bad of a joke.”

  Tartu sighed, and said, “Let’s speed up the ship, Eliot?”

  “I think we might be able to… if Derek is okay with a kill-rate of 1 every second?” Eliot rapidly added, “That’s so fucking much, though, Derek, and I don—”

  “I’ll do it,” Derek said, cutting Eliot off. “Let’s get going! Speedy speedy!”

  “Thank you, Derek,” Mark said.

  “Anytime, boss!” Derek replied, happily.

  Eliot said, “Then I’m… Adjusting speed now. Isoko? Compensate, please.”

  Isoko said, “I’m gonna try a vacuum-push this time. I think I got it.”

  And then the sky shifted, opening up in front of them with platinum glows and closing behind in turn. The ship lurched ahead, rumbling and tossing around, as the hover ring of the Dreadnought began to glow a bit more, bringing light to the sky. For a moment, it was like pushing harder through solid miasma. Anathema inundated the Dreadnought.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  But Mark compensated, too, and the Badness filtered out into the sky, through Isoko’s sky-sized Union, and she opened the way forward as Eliot pressed the engines to go faster.

  10 minutes later and they had gotten all the kinks out.

  Derek was sacrificing himself at a 1-per-second rate, just how Eliot had predicted.

  “70 minutes left in this layer,” David said, at the driver’s seat at the top of the castle.

  Mark changed the subject, “What kinda kaiju do you think Tartu is gonna get?” He added, “I’m real happy about my theory that everyone is getting a kaiju in-line with their entire philosophy of life. Isoko is getting famous, Andria is getting prosperous, Eliot is getting a whole lot of city, and Sally was reborn in fire like a proper diamond… Hmm… Or maybe everyone is getting mana-alignment-type Second Awakenings? … So I admit the philosophy kinda breaks down a little, maybe with specifics, but it’s all there! And so, my theory is Tartu is gonna get a giant plant that spews spells at us like a whole contingent of mages.”

  Silence.

  Worry.

  Mark dispensed with the worry, tossing it out into the world like so much black miasma.

  Tartu spoke up, “Well… It’s certainly a theory.”

  Mark scoffed. “Oh come on! We got lots of evidence! I bet the reason Freyala didn’t want David, Lola, and Derek to participate is because us fighting a speedster kaiju is a one-way ticket to death for all of us, Lola is… something, not sure, and Derek would just mutate because a multi-body kaiju would be too… dangerous? Hmm. Not sure where I’m going with that. I’m sure Derek knows more about why Freyala didn’t want him Second Awakening— Oh! Lola! You had that revelation about witches and the Wyrd, right? So maybe some sort of Witchy thing, which… which might mean demons, honestly. Demons and witches both deal with the way things work, at their core…” Mark paused, as something loomed in his mind like the rising of a sun. “... Oh my gods.” Mark went silent as thoughts too big to hold crowded out the moment. Too big to hold onto. Too big to break down into small words—

  “Mark?” Lola asked, concerned. “The anathema is—”

  “Oh fuck!” Mark said, refocusing on Good and Bad, on shoving away the anathema— “And that’s another thing! The anathema! Sorry. I got it now.” Mark held on to the world, onto everyone he could, thrumming the sky with Goodness, and giving voice to a big revelation, saying, “So anathemas…

  “Like witches and wyrds.

  “Like, the System, right?

  “I think the System is a Wyrd-type imposition on the entirety of the Two Worlds.

  “I say this because witches try to make the dreamlands into something that works how they want it to work, and if you go against that then you will find yourself literally unable to work your magic like you want. I haven’t experienced it myself, or rather, if I have, then I did not know it, but we’ve seen some Wyrdings of the world in the rituals we’ve seen and done ourselves. From the anti-goblin ritual we did after Grax hit us at the settlement, to the anti-human ritual the goblins did at Goblinhome.

  “THAT is what the Wyrd can do.

  “So that’s probably Lola’s thing… or something.

  “You too, Tartu, I suppose? Pluta said that you should do more witchy stuff— Is there a word for a male witch? Warlock? Or is it all just ‘witch’?”

  Silence and worry.

  Mark had kinda lost the thread there, toward the end, but he got the big points out there in the open.

  And Lola clicked.

  Lola breathed out, “That’s rather insightful, Mark.”

  Mark smiled brightly, and then he had another thought. “What’s your Power anyway, Lola? I just realized that… that all this time I’ve known you I don’t know your Power?”

  “Ah…” Lola prepared herself. She said, “I’ll have this conversation in private, if you wish to know the specifics. The short answer is that my Power was broken when I was younger. It was a Brawny; bit more than basic. 3.9-times strength. Not quite 4-times. So almost twice as strong as a normal Brawny. These days my Body is little more than Healthy Body, and it’s not even that, not really. Barely a Knack. For a while I was lost, but meeting my Goddess 20 years ago brought me out of the dark and into purpose. As a result, Union is what I use more than anything else.”

  Mark was quiet for a moment, thinking, wondering if he had stepped onto a land mine. Lola’s voice was soft, and secure, but her vector was not. She was tense. Mark said, “Sorry… I didn’t know.”

  “I don’t talk about it, so it is not surprising that you do not know. I would like to leave this topic behind, now,” Lola said.

  “Of course, uh… sorry.”

  “It is nothing to be sorry about, Mark. I will tell you more, at length, if you wish to know.” Lola added, “But to meet the topic head on… The reason I wonder about witchery now, whereas before I never even thought about it, is this idea that witchery is capable of a great many things that nothing else can accomplish. If we wish to be rid of all monsters forever, then witchery, and System-interactions, are the way to accomplish that. It makes a great deal of retrospective sense that the System is one large Wyrd. It also makes sense that we’re all walking some sort of ritual, similar to the Tutorial, in order to manifest Second Awakenings for everyone. I would hear what Tartu’s larger thoughts are on this topic, if he could please speak on them. Mister Solari?”

  Tartu was quiet.

  The sky rushed by.

  Tartu said, “Demons might constantly create the System, in a way that witches temporarily cause Wyrd designations in the world, like with the anti-human Goblinhome ritual. But that’s beyond my ability to… to know at all. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any such ideology before now, either, and under normal circumstances I would say that Mark is delirious and showing signs of Dragon Wake, but it does make a kind of sense.”

  Mark said, “I’m not that delirious.”

  Absolutely no one believed him, though they kept it to themselves.

  Mark scoffed.

  “How about this, Mark,” Tartu spoke strongly, “You hang back when we get to the next layer, to my kaiju, and we kill it from far away. You stay safe and sound, here on the Dreadnought.”

  Mark scoffed. He sarcastically said, “You don’t trust me with your life, Tartu?”

  “… Chances are it will be throwing lots of spells at us, and I don’t trust you to be able to overcome all of them in your delirious state, yes,” Tartu said, “But I do expect Eliot’s Castellan and Isoko’s Sky Shaper and Andria’s Mithrilkinesis to be able to overcome all of it. Sally might even be able to help, by shrinking down the spells that come at us, though that might be asking for too much. What’s your Power Level at now, Sally?”

  Mark rolled his eyes at the change in topic, but he was also truly eager to figure out what his friends could do now, so it was very fun to say, “Do you think you can do that, Sally? Shrink enemy spells?”

  Sally spoke up, “Well… My PL for Size Manipulation is at 046 as of 4 hours ago, and I’ve been able to practice a little since Awakening, so better than it was, but not nearly good enough to contest PL with most other... magic?” Her voice sounded like she had a frown on her face as she asked, “Could I actually do that?”

  “Much like all Manipulation Powers,” Tartu said, “The limitations are both seriously solid, and also not nearly as solid as they appear to be at all. Andria seems limited to slimes, but that’s a huge species of monster. Eliot is limited to man-made things, which is a similarly huge range of power.”

  “My uncle can do Age Manipulation!” Mark said, “He uses it on people, but I bet he could turn a ruined building back into a freshly-made house! I don’t think he’s ever tried that.”

  “He’s probably too busy as a True Healer,” Tartu said. “Maybe, one day, you could even be a True Healer, Sally, if you decide that someone’s age was a thing that you can shrink… Or maybe ‘the time someone has left alive’ could be made bigger? Hard to know. Even if you did that, it might not be enough to qualify as a True Healer, since the body would still be old and getting older. It probably doesn’t even work that way. I do not know enough about Size Manipulation to help you more than I already have.”

  Mark asked, “How does Size Manipulation work? Are you shoving the size elsewhere? Or bringing more size into the location— Ohhh! Are you turning dreams into size, or size into dreams?”

  Tartu muttered, “It cannot possibly work like that.”

  “Sure it could!” Mark said, “Everything seems to work based on how the System says it works, right, but even the System has to have some way in which stuff works. It’s not just magic— Ohhh… Do you think magic is possible without the System’s oversight?”

  “I don’t think I’m shoving stuff into dreams or out of dreams,” Sally said.

  Eliot spoke up, “The matter density is the same if you make things smaller or bigger, so your Size Manipulation is absolutely creating or destroying matter out of nothing, and if you make stuff bigger or smaller then it adjusts to compensate, as much as it can.”

  “Maybe you are directly manifesting dreams, Sally!” Mark said. “Your Titan Body is mostly tucked away right now, too, right? So maybe it’s all sort of connected to whatever space your size is taking or giving from.”

  Tartu seemed to ignore everything Mark was saying, as he responded, “Arch Skills are not as nuanced as Natural Skills, but everything has some give and take in it. It’s up to you, Sally, to figure out how your Size Manipulation works.”

  Sally asked, “How about we try out some stuff on the deck, Tartu? Or would that be disruptive to traveling?”

  “Too disruptive,” Isoko said, far overhead, as she peeled the sky open in front of them and shoved it closed behind them.

  “I would love to when the layer isn’t so dangerous,” Tartu said. “But we can still talk about it. Have you expanded past your previous limits of enlarging or shrinking apples? What about the seeds, and what happens to them when you do that?”

  Mark was deeply interested in whatever he could overhear right now.

  Sally said, “I shrink an apple to 40% of its original size or double it, and that’s about it. If I shrink it too small then the seeds vanish, but if I make it bigger then the seeds eventually start doubling and tripling up inside of the core—”

  “Mark,” Isoko quietly spat, “The Good/Bad.”

  “Sorry, sorry!” Mark said, refocusing. He had briefly lost it, but he got it back soon enough, and black lightning danced on the golden Castellan shield, sparking on the Bad and pushing it out into the sky beyond. “It’s just… why do you get more seeds when you make an apple bigger? Shouldn’t the seeds themselves be bigger?”

  Silence.

  And then Tartu said, “Let’s table the discussion for now, Sally.”

  Sally said, “Agreed.”

  “Oh come on!” Mark said.

  Eliot turned on some music.

  Mark stuck out his tongue at nothing in particular.

  Soon, they were near the transition point between layers and Mark Unioned with purpose, toward Tartu’s kaiju target. The Dreadnought plunged into the dreamlands, leaving behind the poisonous anathema-atmosphere of the island-layer, though they did take some of it with them, and where the Dreadnought traveled, black miasma seeped outward, turning dreams into dead nightmares.

  Derek dove into that miasma, and into the dreamlands, to get rid of it before they got to their next destination.

  Mark watched everything from multiple angles, thanks to Quark, as ‘Anathema Land’ got further and further behind them. Mark said, “So that layer was dangerous as fuck.” He smirked, adding, “I’m sure the next one will be better!”

  Tartu grumbled, “I would throw a tomato at you for jinxing us, but I wouldn’t want to distract you.”

  Mark smiled.

  “Give me a tomato,” Isoko said, “I’ll do it.”

  “Children,” Lola said, and that was all she had to say.