Mark decided something.

  He hopped off the side of the Dreadnought and plummeted through the sky, toward the desert down below.

  Quark questioned him before he even fell 10 meters, asking, “Sir? What’s happening?”

  Mark said, “Tell everyone I’ll be back. Just going for a private walk for a minute.”

  Some people weren’t going to let that happen, though.

  Isoko hopped up into the sky and followed him down, smiling platinum and glittering under the blue sky, while the undersides of her mirror-like body reflected the orange dunes below. Mark caught himself staring for a moment, thinking about a lot as he fell.

  Isoko asked, “You gonna put out some rotors? Or is it plummeting time?”

  She was clearing the air between them as Mark fell, so that the wind didn’t whip their words away.

  “Plummeting time,” Mark decided.

  And then he struck orange sand, landing solidly and burying himself a good 5 meters into the grains. He began pulling himself back out… but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. It was dark down here. Good for thinking.

  But then the wind turned on and the sand blew away, and Isoko hovered in her bikini, a mirror to the world, holding out a hand to him as she whipped the sand away from his body.

  “Come on. You’re not walking alone, big guy, and you’re certainly not brooding alone in the dark.”

  … Mark took her hand, and soon he was walking on the sand alongside Isoko. She was putting her TT into the sand to keep it stable, in a way that Mark simply could not do. He couldn’t do a lot. That’s what was bugging Mark.

  He couldn’t do everything he needed to do.

  That’s why he needed to take a walk.

  To think, while moving.

  Words poured out of him, “I’m strong, Isoko. I know I am. Crazy strong, by some measurements. But it’s not enough, you know? I don’t think it could ever be enough. Not after what we’ve seen, and the implications behind everything we haven’t yet seen… but I suppose we got a clue about some of the hidden stuff when we saw Eliot’s kaiju. The Manipulation Kaiju. It almost killed us all with just a glance. And then you killed it… I never really asked, but how difficult was that?”

  Isoko answered, “Pretty damned hard, actually. It kept ripping apart the wind, and I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just kept keeping on. Eventually I bored through enough of the eyes and scales and surface to start ripping flesh. I’m almost 100% sure that the monster was actively trying to die, too, so… It didn’t fight back, nearly as much as it could have.”

  Mark sighed, and said, “That’s what I was afraid of. I think it was an outsider, or whatever you want to call it.”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  “… You know this already?”

  “Pretty easy to figure out, especially when Eliot doesn’t want to talk about it and then all of that shit back there that happened with the ice wall and the ancient elven words.”

  “Ah. Yeah… I suppose… yeah.” Mark had another thought. “I think I’m really slow right now. I was thinking about the fight with the crystal spider in Sally’s layer. Looking back on it, and especially when Andria was talking about the kaiju having a lot of hearts, and how Big Red had gone away to come back with the beast, I should have put it together sooner. It was a hive mind of a hundred-or-whatever icky cores. The same cores that were inside of Big Red, but bigger and kaiju’d, obviously. Maybe I should have tried a Union of Anarchy and Cooperation, or something. Maybe, if I had been rested, I would have realized this, and I could have killed it myself.

  “Am I making sense?

  “Or am I just being… weird to everyone when I spout off these weird things about… well, about the System being a Wyrd, for one?”

  Isoko said, “I think you’re experiencing a lot of weirdness due to being awake for so long, and the adamantining of your Incorruptible Body, and the talzarki stuff.” Isoko added, “But that’s pretty understandable, Mark. Hell… I’m having a hard time with the shit from the gods the other day, but you’re the one that actually went through it— And Kardi! Oh my god, that bitch.”

  Mark felt connected to Isoko completely. It was so unexpected and joyful, that Mark burst out laughing. “She is a bitch!”

  Isoko chuckled, grinning brightly. “It’s okay that you can’t do everything. No one expects you to be able to do everything. That’s why there are teams. That’s why there’s a Pantheon, instead of single gods. All the single gods are dead, Mark. Even the gods can’t do everything alone.”

  Mark was still smiling… but the smile faded, and he said, “Thrashtalon said that this ritual was to make me a god.”

  Isoko nodded. “Yeah. That’s fucked up and probably a lie,” she added, “But I repeat that there are no single gods. They’re all dead… Actually. Is Nobody Important a god? Doubtful. So yeah. No one lives alone. No one fights alone. And if they try, they die. So don’t try to do everything yourself, Mark. That’s just foolish.”

  Mark thought about that as he walked.

  Isoko walked beside him, still Tactile Telekinesis’ing the land, supporting Mark’s weight, while also leveling most of the dunes ahead, making the path rather flat. Mark’s weight still pressed into the ground, but not nearly as well as it normally would have.

  Mark grinned a little, looking at the subtle platinum shine to the sand, saying, “Friends are important.”

  Isoko laughed once. “Such a big revelation!”

  “I know, I know. But… It’s still important.”

  Isoko smiled softly. “Yeah. It is important to have friends.”

  “Power isn’t everything, is it?”

  Isoko hummed… “Do you mean literally, or figuratively?”

  “Both, I think. Having more power wouldn’t solve any of the deeper issues I really have with life and others. Enough power to be noticed gets you enough notice to be controlled. Planned around. Enough notice, and the empires and gods pull shit on you that you never planned for, and that you have no idea how to combat. Maybe that’s why Nobody Important didn’t tell us his name? He didn’t want to be noticed, or controlled, and it’s a lot harder to do that if you don’t know his real name. And yet, you still gotta have power.

  “If you don’t have enough personal power, then you’re not allowed at any of the tables where people are talking about the real issues in life… And yet? Do you think the empires are actually trying to solve any big issues? Like… I don’t want to say it aloud, but Okuana’s demon plans? Do you think Okuana actually wants to solve that problem?” Mark asked, “It seems to me that they’re probably planning to eradicate whatever demons they don’t like, and elevate whatever demonic factions they appreciate, instead?”

  “Oh absolutely the second one, now that you bring it up,” Isoko said, “If they have the capability to alter established demonic groupings, then they’re gonna take that option before all others. Better the demon you know than the outside creeping in… like, literally. If you killed all demons you’d break the System, and then who knows what would happen! Certainly not me. I do think the System keeps the Bigs off of the Two Worlds, at least. Everything above Cat 6 has a really hard time getting out of the Crossings, and that functionality does not strike me as natural, at all, so it has to be the System doing it.”

  Mark stared off into space as Isoko’s words made a whole lot of sense. “… Didn’t think about it that way.”

  Isoko hummed.

  Mark muttered, “Okuana could solve a lot of problems… but there’s no way they’re killing the System. None of the Empires would want to do that. That just leads to outside context problems.”

  Isoko said, “I don’t know what Eliot knows, but I know enough to know that I don’t want to deal with that shit at all.”

  Mark snorted. “Yeah…” His thoughts drifted.

  He walked.

  Isoko walked with him.

  “What does it even mean to be an elf?” Mark asked.

  “Pointy ears,” Isoko helpfully answered.

  Mark snorted… and then he pulled at his ears and made them pointy. “This much?”

  “Maybe less.”

  “This much?”

  “Yes, better.”

  Mark smiled at the world… And then his smile dropped, and he asked, “Power isn’t everything. So what is ‘everything’? My idea of ‘everything’ is changing, but it’s still ‘everything’, and the original idea includes the new idea… I’ve put my adamantium into the scanner 7 times already, and changed my idea of what I wanted for ‘everything’ each time, and each time it shows the same end location…” He pointed to the edge of the layer, far beyond mirage of orange sand and blue sky. It was a distant horizon that was a lot closer than it appeared to be. “About a 20 minute trip through the dreamlands, in that direction. That’s where ‘everything’ is. No visible layer at all. Just dreamlands.”

  The dreamlands beyond the desert were simply dreamlands. Moving land, moving sky, moving oceans and rivers and lakes and rain. It all shifted upon itself, as you looked at it. When you turned and then looked again, what you saw was completely different than what had come before.

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  At 20 minutes away, Mark’s target should be visible as a strip of solid sky.

  But there was nothing.

  Nothing but dreamlands.

  Mark openly wondered, “Is it a hidden layer? I think it’s a hidden layer.”

  “Elves are probably watching us right now.”

  “Oh… shit?” Mark looked at the sky again. “Yeah, I could see that.”

  “You still thinking about resurrection magics?”

  “How could I not? It’s part of the whole… jumble… right now. Kardi is back. Fucking nuts, is what it is. But I suppose she said she’d be back anyway…” Mark frowned at nothing and everything.

  “No one ever takes those threats seriously,” Isoko said, putting Mark’s thoughts to words.

  “Exactly! She threatened to be back, and then, boom, she was! And Grax, too. I thought he was gone… But I guess the main threat of him is gone? We haven’t contacted Earth in a while, but I think the gods or Derek would tell us if we needed to get back, if Goblinhome was going to Total War. So… whatever Grax and Kardi are, they aren’t the people they used to be. They’re working for Thrashtalon, openly.”

  Isoko was silent.

  They walked.

  Isoko said, “I bet the only way to actually kill anyone is to change who they are.”

  “… Huh? Yeah… Yeah, I could see that.” Mark asked, “Mind control, or therapy?”

  Isoko rapidly added, “I’m not talking about normal shit. But… Maybe I am? And yet, no. When the gods get involved, when resurrection magic comes off of that reservation that Planty talked about, the only real way to win, permanently, is to change everything about your enemies and to change the world around your enemies, so that they’re not your enemies anymore.” Isoko said, “For the little shit, just behead them and be done. But for empires and resurrecting goblins and for Kardi… And maybe for Thrashtalon, too. Maybe the only way to win against those kinds of forces is to change who those forces are, at their core. That’s what Wongod tried to do to you, when he tried to turn you into a goblin. That’s what you did to Goofy, when you broke him and helped him to become a good guy. If you want to get down to physical actions, I’m sure pulling the corruption out of him helped a lot to make him more glorious and less goblin, and being his friend did a whole lot, too. That guy was starved for normal interactions, and the goblins were only giving him horrors.”

  That made a lot of sense.

  But it was too big to really grapple with right now, because Mark was absolutely not going to make friends with Kardi or Grax… even if both of them ‘liked’ Mark right now. And yet… Could he ask Grax to go out and fight against Wongod and the goblin agenda? Would Grax do that? Grax had told Malaqua that he would ‘try to be a better father’ —or whatever the hell it was he said; Mark would need to review the tapes to find out, for that whole thing seemed like a fever dream and he might be misremembering— so did that mean he was willing to be the kind of father that Mark would actually like to have?

  … Gah. Weird thoughts. So many weird thoughts.

  Mark wasn’t reacting with nearly enough anger right now toward the idea of Grax being his ‘adopted father’, but he supposed that’s what dragon wake and having a few days' distance would do to a guy.

  … Strangely enough, Mark found the idea of Grax being an adopted father a lot more palatable than whatever the fuck Kardi was going for. Kardi was straight up fucking insane. She was working with Thrashtalon, directly, and she had been for years. Grax seemed to be infected with Leash and brought back to life specifically to pull that legalese shit that they had pulled, and so that made… Grax less bad than Kardi?

  Kardi was a betrayer of humanity.

  Grax was always an enemy of humanity.

  “Both of them are clearly irredeemable, though,” Mark said.

  “Oh sure,” Isoko said, “So let’s get mind magic and soul magic involved. You’d have to do that sort of shit in order to counteract whatever Thrashtalon did to them, anyway. Another option is trapping. Take the soul and put it in a soul gem… You remember that?”

  “Addavein spoke about it— Oh yeah! You were there for that sudden phone call. I remember now.”

  Isoko nodded. “So Lola went into that stuff more in-depth in the Inquisitor training. Self-resurrecting monsters are a very rare, but major problem sometimes, so they use soul gems to capture souls and then keep them in containment for years and years. Eventually the souls dissipate out of the gem because no soul gem is perfect. By that time the monsters usually permanently die; when only whiffs of souls escape time and time again, then there is nothing for the original soul to recombine with, and they die permanently.

  “But not always.

  “Soul gems are also used for smuggling people into places. If you’re good enough of a necromancer you can extract the soul from a body, bring the gem across a border or whatever, and then you put the soul back into a body.”

  Mark said, “Addavein mentioned that. Said he could do it if he was fast enough. That’s not really resurrection, either. It’s just advanced soul manipulation… and also, that’s what the Living Resurrection did, but without a soul gem. It probably gathered the soul from the air and then put it ba— Wait. It gathered the soul from the dreamlands, the Veil, and then put it back together into a body that it also regathered from the physical realm… Does that seem right? Is that how it worked?”

  “Seems possible?” Isoko shrugged. “But anyway. When the soul is in a gem you can do Skill manipulation. Like the Skillers of the Empire? Like Thrashtalon with his Skill, Wilding. So if you want to change an enemy permanently, you can do what Thrashtalon did with Kardi and fuck her up in the soul, forever.” She added, “You know… theoretically.”

  Mark hummed, thinking.

  Thrashtalon, AKA Malcolm Shaw, used to be a human that had the Wilding Skill, during the Reveal. He turned a whole bunch of people into powerhouses for Earth, including Grey Phantom of Memphi, who turned into a true Cultist in the Battle For Memphi. Shaw also Wilded his own wife and son, giving them adamantium mana. The wife and son were then captured by the Dominion of Okuana and turned into adamantium farms. Aluatha probably helped with that. It was a common horror back then for the adamantium blooded.

  A lot of places fucked over Thrashtalon in a lot of ways back then.

  It was sort of understandable why he became an Enemy Of Humanity… But at the time, when he became and would become the sixth member of the Pantheon… he had probably done a lot of good to get there? Maybe?

  Mark wasn’t sure.

  Mark asked, “Do you think Thrashtalon was doing allied-stuff with the Pantheon before he became a member of the Pantheon? Or do you think he was put there specifically because Malaqua picked him, because they needed some evil bastard to make the System work again, or whatever?”

  Isoko shook her head, saying, “I have no idea at all, but it’s fucking scary. Do they need evil in the System to make it work? Why does it work like that?”

  “They’re all Natural Powers too, you noticed? Freyala and Union, Hearthswell and Castellan, Pluta and Prosperity, Verdago and Farmer, Drakarok and Retribution, Malaqua and Solidification, and now Thrashtalon and Wilder. All of them are Natural Powers, which means they all work how their users think they work. I’m not sure what that means, but it seems important.”

  “How else should the System work?”

  “One Power from each part of the Power Hex.”

  “What? Ha! No way. Why?”

  “6 gods, 6 main Powers of the Pantheon, and 1 to make the whole thing solid and working. So why Natural Powers? Why not one god of each Power?”

  “Because Natural Powers work how their users think they should work. I bet Natural Powers are the only reason that the System functions at all these days. It’s probably held together by Natural Duct-Tape.”

  Mark snorted.

  They walked in silence for a while.

  Isoko reached out and held Mark’s hand.

  Mark smiled and held her hand back.

  Isoko said, “I like the Hero/Villain Program for a lot of reasons. Fame just feels good, for one, and I like people to like me.”

  Mark snorted. “You are very likable.”

  “Haaa! No I’m not.” Isoko put on airs, saying, “I’m a platinum steel bitch!”

  Mark laughed, holding her hand softly, saying, “Platinum’s a pretty soft metal.”

  “Yeah yeah. Anyway~” Isoko smiled, and continued, “The HVP is full of stories and manufactured drama and even propaganda. Fake magic and fake problems. But it still makes people feel good or happy or sad or a whole bunch of pleasant ways. It’s still real enough to matter. It’s a whole lot easier to talk about the big problems when you use allegory, too. No one can take down an Empire. But maybe, if enough light is shone on a problem, the people who live in an Empire can change the Empire from the inside. Like… If everyone believes that the only way to solve the Cultist problem is to kill them all, then that’s the only way it’s ever going to be solved, and every single Cultist out there is only ever going to double down, because they know there’s no way for them to survive otherwise.

  “But the HVP can change that… theoretically. I don’t know how… But I do know that Glorious Man and the people of Earth have much nicer lives than the people of Daihoon, and the reason is less Empire, and much better stories.”

  Mark looked out into the distance, thinking about all of that.

  Isoko glanced up at him, but she mostly looked outward, too. She was worried that she wasn’t helping enough. But she was helping. A lot.

  Mark said, “You got a lot of good points there, Isoko. Thank you for being here with me.”

  “Could I give that speech in a movie?” Isoko added, “ ‘Cause I’ve been working on it here and there.”

  Mark smirked. “Yes.”

  Isoko practically beamed on the inside. On the outside she was merely quietly happy.