The cameras shut off and Isoko stood up and shook herself out, saying, “Ah fuck, that was worse than I thought it would be, ha ha!”

  Lola raised an eyebrow, and asked, “I thought you wanted me to go harder.”

  The room was large and dark, save for the lights directly overhead, but Isoko flipped a switch on the table near her and turned on the main lights, saying, “I did! And that was great. Probably need to redo some parts of it, though…” Isoko frowned. She almost said something about the ‘interrogation’, but she decided not to. Instead, she said, “I’m gonna… go flying for a bit.”

  Lola stood and did her little thing where she put her hands on her lap and bowed just a little.

  Isoko got out of that room and rapidly joined Channel 4 on the comms, saying, “Any updates on the world out there?”

  Derek responded, “I’m swimming with some elves who aren’t that scared of me, so that’s great!”

  “And they’re stabbing him to kill him, too,” Mark said, “Which is not great. Not sure what the fuck is happening down there, but none of the elves are flying up here to yell at us or kill us, so we might be fine.”

  Isoko grabbed her visor from her belt loop and put it on, tapping through the side buttons to arrive at the full view of the ship’s POV. While standing in the main hallway of the Dreadnought, she also looked all around the ship, the many cameras outside all linked together and funneling into her view. It was like looking through the ship, using the ship’s eyes. Ship systems rapidly identified what was happening down there in the near-endless ocean. Isoko focusing on one highlighted square in particular caused that square to enlarge. She tapped her visor and the enlarged view took over a wall to the side, through her visor.

  Derek was on a small boat on the water and bleeding out on the boat, while some elves floated with their heads and shoulders sticking out above the waters beside the boat. The elves had some harpoons, and they looked angry.

  And then Derek waved and died, and he let his body discorporate.

  The elves looked on in satisfaction, and then the leader raised his harpoon and a pulse of water rose from the ocean and shattered the boat into driftwood, quick as a blink. As the boat became driftwood the elves went back below the waters.

  “Have all of your encounters with the water elves been like that?” Isoko asked. “Actually… When did you start going down there?”

  “About 4 hours ago,” Mark said, sounding chagrined.

  “I can’t very well be stuck on the ship!” Derek said, with surprising sincerity in his voice. “It’s awful!”

  “I know, Derek, but… Come on, man,” Mark said, “We’re close to being through this greater grid and we don’t need a potential world-influencing event to happen again.”

  “… Yeah,” Derek said, “It’s just…” He went quiet.

  “I know, man,” Mark said, “Maybe just take some boats out and stay in the air? We’re going to be through soon. Hopefully the entrance to Earth is right past this grid-line, or whatever they call it.”

  Isoko asked, “How much longer are we in this greater grid?”

  “About 20 minutes,” Mark said. “You coming out to watch? The sun is rising.”

  “I love watching the sun rise on the water,” Derek said, almost as an aside.

  Isoko said, “Yeah I’m coming out.”

  She put the visor back on her belt and got out there, leaving the hub, stepping out into the sky like she was tossing off a winter jacket. The sky was warm, the night was fading, and everything was pink and gold and glittering… Except for Mark, way up there, like a dark spot in the sky. Isoko couldn’t really see him so much as she felt him, due to all the air he was moving around. A lot less air than when he was Full Adamantium, though!

  Isoko took off into the sky, though really it was more like a 10-kilometer-wide jellyfish merely moving its central part a fraction of a body-length.

  “So where’s the edge!” Isoko called out, as she got next to Mark, flowing the air up toward him to make it easier for him to fly and match her speed. She gave a bare glance toward the forward-direction, where the line of bubble-lights still extended through the Dreadnought’s path, leading off toward… more oceans? “All I see are oceans down there, and up ahead.”

  “Deeper oceans, according to Quark and Eliot’s scanners,” Mark said, as he pointed toward an ice tower in the distance, to the right. 3 faint lines of prismatic mana extended outward from the top of that tower, and Isoko had no idea where the other ends of that power line were, but they were out there, somewhere. “That mana tower is the last one for a very long time. The bubble-path goes underneath the line ahead of us, and that’s the crossing point between greater hexes.”

  “I didn’t even notice the last one.”

  “I was asleep for it, so yeah. Same.”

  Isoko guessed, based on the fact that there were about 20 bubbles before the Dreadnought hit the transfer point, and each bubble was a Dreadnought in length, it was only going to be minutes before they reached the new zone. “Wanna head back in?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said, flowing downward.

  The two of them repositioned onto the forecastle of the Dreadnought, and then, the ship passed under the thin line of prismatic mana, and all of Eliot’s drones came in to rest under the Castellan shield. They passed through uneventfully, and then Eliot’s drones went zooming outward once again, into a sky full of distant clouds—

  Mark instantly said, “Bring ‘em back, Eliot.” His eyes glittered gold and black as he gazed out into the new zone. “The oceans are deep and most of the elves are down there, but the clouds out here have cities on them, and someone is coming this way… Oh. No? They see me looking at them.”

  Isoko studied the part of the sky that Mark was looking at, and she felt nothing. Not even a hint of any vectors at all. “How far away?”

  “Right there,” Mark said, pointing at an empty patch of sky. Isoko felt nothing over there besides air. “About 5 kilometers away. They’ve stopped and are looking at us.” Mark waved at them in a big way, waving his entire arm above his head. Isoko joined him in the waving, though she had no idea what Mark was seeing… Mark slowed. He stopped. Isoko stopped too. Mark said. “They turned around.”

  “Uneventful is better than eventful right now,” Isoko said softly… and then she felt a mass of people leaving downstairs, through the wall of the Dreadnought, which was flowing with wind down there like a cargo hold had been opened. Isoko repositioned on the edge of the Dreadnought’s railing, standing tall on the meter-wide wood, looking down. “Oh yeah. There he goes.”

  Derek was taking out a skiff, loaded up with copies of himself.

  Mark stood on the railing with Isoko, looking down, wincing. “I really wish he wouldn’t do that, but… I mean. It’s fine, right?”

  “He got cut off from his previous self when we passed through the zone defense wall. It probably happened again in this zone.”

  “… Oh.” Mark said, “He said he pulled out of the original zone, but I didn’t really believe him, which was fine, you know? The guy needs to get out there and spread far and wide. But the water elves routinely killed him. Wouldn’t even talk to him. I didn’t get why he wanted to still go exploring… But I don’t really need to get it, do I?”

  Derek’s need to spread out was normally a fine thing. But here and now, it was a thorny issue.

  “On one hand, spreading out is how he survives. But on the other hand, we need to not antagonize the possible-superpower elves waiting in the dream. But on the other, other hand,” Isoko said, making an arm out of TT’d platinum air, next to her right arm, and drawing a cute look from Mark, “They should be antagonized at least a little. It’s the only way we know where they stand.”

  Mark said, “The chances for a backfire are too high.”

  “Not really,” Isoko said, “But if that does happen, if that is capable of happening, then we shouldn’t respect the wishes of the elves at all. All he’s doing is going around and checking things out. If that’s enough to start a total war, then fuck the elves. Earth and Daihoon are in the shit because of them.”

  Mark took that in as he stared across the ocean.

  Isoko watched the sky with him for a little while.

  Eventually, Mark asked, “How was your interview?”

  “Gods damned rough,” Isoko grunted.

  Mark laughed once. “Lola can nail hard when she wants, huh!”

  “I thought it was gonna be nicer. More of a show. But then she started asking me about how I felt about Resurrection Magic and my sister Riku…” Isoko frowned. And then she stated, “I want Derek to pester the elves more about big Resurrection Magics. We’re here. We’re never going to get this opportunity again. Why don’t you want to get those big magics, Mark? Why did Eria’s warning not to poke around at resurrections actually stop you from poking in that direction? What happened to you wanting ‘everything’?”

  Isoko hadn’t meant to bring it up, but this was happening, and so she stood by her words. She waited for a response. She did not have to wait long.

  Mark said, “I’m pretty sure once I talk to Addavein and Walaria about all of this trip, that Addavein will be able to figure it out with enough clues, and Walaria will tell us that they already have it solved, and that she will not use Resurrection Magic on ‘inconsequential people’.”

  “Your parents are not inconsequential, Mark.”

  Mark shuddered.

  For a moment, it was like he had turned off.

  And then Mark breathed, and said, “… If they never come back, then they can never be used against me.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Isoko was speechless for a moment, and then she said, “Draw lines in the sand and say certain things are off limits, and when people go over those limits and murder your parents again, you murder the line-crossers without remorse, and then you bring your parents back again.”

  “Death isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Uncle Alexandro and Gabriel were captured and used against me, and we got lucky with them. I don’t expect my luck to hold forever there… there’s capture, torture, mind warping… Goblinization.”

  “… Ah.” Isoko looked out across the empty sky, seeing nothing, while Mark saw a great deal. Isoko said, “If you don’t figure out how to bring them back soon, then they might… not ever come back. Right now… Well… They’d probably come back as teenagers, right?”

  “If I’m lucky… Fuck. You know, I kinda hate that word these days. ‘Luck’.”

  Isoko didn’t allow him to change the subject. She said, “Your uncle can de-age your mom and dad and then Alexandro and his husband wanted to be young again when you were finally out of the nest, anyway, right? So he could grow up again with his family again, together. So maybe now is the best time for them to come bac—”

  “I can’t do it, Isoko. I can’t. They’ll be tortured. I know they will. No. It’s… it’s better that they’re dead.”

  Isoko frowned. “That’s fucking kaijushit and you know it.”

  “Who are we without our memories, Isoko? They’d be shells of the people they were! There’s no point to bringing them back—”

  “The point is that you love them and they love you so you should bring them back while you can, which means going out there and poking at some hiding elves and demanding to know certain things!”

  “And what if they’ve lost so many memories that they don’t even know me! What if I’m a stranger to them?”

  “So what! You’re a damned Inheritor, whatever that means, and even if all we know is that it means you have the capability to activate some Xerkonan Dragon King era shit, then that’s should be more than enough legitimacy for you to do whatever you damned well please when it comes to world events. If your parents don’t know you, then they can get to know you. I trust you, Mark. So much. Everyone does. But you don’t trust yourself nearly enough right now.”

  Mark was quiet, and Isoko was worried.

  Normally Mark was not this quiet at all. But normally Isoko didn’t push this hard.

  Isoko softly said, “When I insisted we all go on this trip with you, I was hoping that you’d be back to your old self after everything was said and done. In and out! Quick trip. After you had some sleep, you’d be fine. But that was rather foolish of me. No one would ever be the same after all of this stuff happened to them. To us. No one expected this. But we’ve rolled with the punches and you’ve been wonderful. The way you watched over everyone. The way you saved Sally was especially a lot. She hasn’t talked about it, and neither have you, but the whole thing… All of this.” Isoko reached out and took Mark’s hand into her own. He was warm, and he held tight, like he was holding on to whatever he could grab. Isoko had been worried that she had pushed too much, but maybe she was pushing just the right amount. “Thank you. Forever and always, thank you. But you need to do more, otherwise you’re gonna be kicking yourself for the rest of your very, very long life, mister ‘immortal’.”

  Mark snorted a little, a tear falling. “… Maybe…” He held Isoko’s hand warmly, and looked out at the ocean, and at whatever else was out there. “In my Dream, the one that Tartu made happen with that story, and with the Second Awakening dream… There’s a big golden eye on the outside of the moon. The dark side. The side that never faces Earth. It’s the Eye of Arakino, and it takes up a good… half of it? Something like that. Like it’s the size of the iris and pupil of a human eye. It’s big and gold and it opens up about once a day, according to Freyala. It wards off outsiders larger than the orbit of the moon. Seeing that… Makes everything else seem small. Too important to risk. I can’t endanger anything at all with bringing home Resurrection Magic. The demons already don’t like that.”

  It was like someone had distilled liquid fear and jammed it into Isoko’s heart.

  She froze, as the truth, as the enormity of Mark’s words, settled home, in her very soul. She turned Full Platinum somewhere in the last 10 seconds, and her grip on Mark’s hand was solid. Too solid. Mark’s hand and arm had turned adamantium black.

  Isoko did not let go, but she tried, almost unsuccessfully, to loosen her grip. Mark’s hand returned to normal colors as Isoko said, “That’s… That’s…”

  “I know. It’s a lot. Sorry.”

  “Never, ever be sorry for telling me what’s out there.”

  Mark grinned a little. And then he looked out at the elven lands, saying, “It’s easy to understand why their best magics seem to be hiding magics, resurrection magics, and forgetting everything. All of who they are stems from there. When they came to Earth so long ago, it was probably to hide. When they saw humans start to develop, they probably saw kin… or maybe their dreams touched humanity, and there was spillover into sapience… Or however it worked.”

  Isoko thawed a bit, as Mark talked, his voice resonant. Isoko liked his voice a lot. However, Isoko teased, “If you want to give that theory over to the documentary, then you gotta work on your delivery.”

  Mark grinned, and this time it felt real.

  The sun shone across the ocean, the Dreadnought pressed on through glowing white dots, into the valleys between clouds, and time passed quickly. Andria came out of her interrogation with Lola and promptly raided storage for all the ice cream she could get, which was promptly expanded thanks to Sally. Isoko, Sally, and Andria sat in their bikinis on the deck, sunning themselves, and eating ice cream with loads of berries.

  Isoko loaded up her seventh bowl, saying, “I’m never going to get tired of eating all this ice cream.”

  Andria scoffed. “You don’t even keep the calories! You give them to Sally!”

  Sally laughed.

  Isoko grinned, making a show of lowering her shades and looking down at Andria’s pudge, saying, “The gym is open if you’re worried about putting on the kilos.”

  Andria’s face paled and she stammered, “I’m a healthy weight!”

  “Very good weight,” Sally said, nodding seriously.

  Andria found her spine and said, “And what’s with all the burgers for food! Why not some nice salads every once in a while? Just because you all cure everything about yourselves with Union all the time doesn’t mean your body can handle continual vitamin deficits and lack of fiber.”

  Isoko grinned, leaning back as she said, “I think she’s stumbled into our plot to make her fat.”

  “YOU DID NOT?!” Andria exclaimed.

  “Personally I was against it,” Sally said, joining in on the fun.

  Andria gasped—

  Isoko laughed—

  Andria gasped in a different way, and then she said, “Rude as fuck.”

  Sally guffawed.

  Isoko smiled as she asked, “So how did your interview go, besides making you feel like you made all the wrong choices in life?”

  “I don’t know why the heck you all decided to do it this way,” Andria mumbled.

  Sally said, “I plan on invoking Executioner’s Privilege.”

  “You let us know how that works out for you, Sally,” Isoko deadpanned.

  Andria held her ice cream toward Sally, saying, “Make this bigger, please.”

  Sally happily did so, doubling the size of Andria’s ice cream while keeping the bowl the same size, saying, “It doesn’t get rid of nearly as many calories as I think you’d like.”

  “That’s fine,” Andria said, “I’m taking a spa month when we get back. Gonna hire all of the best people from Crytalis, maybe even pay to have Sofri’Ether relocate to the settlement, and I’m gonna get everything done. Nails, hair, toes, skin softened, muscles toned, buffed and pampered and looking like a model, all while I eat all the best foods in the world.”

  Isoko perked up. “Sofri’Ether? The… the really famous one?”

  “That’s correct! I’m thinking 5 billion will be enough for them to relocate, but I’m gonna go to Crytalis and see if they live up to their reputation, first.”

  “… Can I come?” Isoko asked.

  “Same!” Sally said.

  Andria scoffed, “Of course.”

  The sea breeze blew.

  Silence flowed.

  Isoko asked, “Is Eliot out of his interview yet?”

  “I think he’s just going in,” Sally said.

  Andria muttered, “I forgot that Lola is an Inquisitor.”

  “I forget that sometimes, too,” Isoko said, shades on.

  The fake (or maybe real) sun shone, the sky was clear, and everything was radiant and warm except for the ice cream. That was deliciously cold and creamy.

  Isoko asked, “Have you seen Battleship Galaxia, Andria?”

  “I have not,” Andria said, “Sci-fi ain’t my scene, though. Have you seen ‘Bridge to Downtown’?”

  “That’s the period piece one, right?” Sally asked.

  “The costumes are fantastic,” Isoko said. “And yes, I have seen it.”

  Andria got all excited and enthusiastically began gushing about the main characters of Bridge to Downtown, and how simple life used to be back before the Reveal, and how life was still that simple in some places.