Eliot sat across from Lola, feeling nervous and wondering why he was nervous. He shouldn’t be nervous. The interview was going well! A bit different than Eliot had expected, but it was still going.

  Eliot hated talking about his plans, though. His hopes. When he did that, then other people planned around him and then they bought out the stuff that he wanted to buy on the market, or they charged more. Or they decided they hated him. Eliot couldn’t buy garbage in Memphi after the garbage union fucked him over when he first got there, and that was just the worst incident. It had been happening his whole life, even before the Tutorial, before he gained the Power that propelled him as far into the spotlight as his grandmother, decades before. And yet, here he was, being ‘interrogated’, and talking about himself and his plans for the future.

  But the preliminary establishing questions were over, and Lola was getting ready to hammer him.

  Lola looked the same as ever, but she felt a whole lot harder as she stared at Eliot from across the table, a spotlight falling onto Eliot, and barely onto Lola at all. All Eliot really saw of Lola were her hands on the table, some folders and papers in front of her, and the hem of her white Inquisitor’s gown and the way the light glinted on the edge of her formal breastplate.

  Lola said, “Why did you go for such a low level of Power when everyone else was going after Tri-Talents?”

  “… What?” Eliot asked, suddenly off balance.

  “Everyone on the team ended up with 3 Powers but you. In order, we have Isoko, who got Sky Shaper, in addition to Full Union and her original Platinum Body. Then Andria ended up with Prosperity, Mithrilkinesis, and the wildcard of Mindless Manipulation. Sally got Retribution, Size Manipulation, and Titan’s Strength. Drakarok helped her more than I have ever known a god to help anyone before, but probably because Sally will be fighting against kaiju more than any other Executioners. Tartu got Full Farmer, in addition to his original Domainer and Healthy Body. Mark, of course, ended up with a variety of powerups, most of which have never before been seen amongst humanity in this era.

  “We will not speak about the Other Person yet, but know that she is coming up again soon enough.

  “But all you got was Castellan to go with your original Man-made Manipulation.

  “That is all you wanted.

  “The gods are not fickle, Eliot Cybersong. They give out their help to any who desire it, who can wield it properly, for the good of us all. But they also allow a lot to slide, especially if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. We don’t kill every archmage we know of, and we don’t hunt down and murder people who try to become archmages. We have paths to power for them, and they stick to those paths, or else we cut them down.

  “Based on the fact that the gods helped out everyone on this trip become a Tri-Talent, if they asked for it, and since you had had 2 people successfully go before you, Isoko and Andria...

  “Were you aiming low, or was there something else going on?”

  Eliot felt like he had ruined his entire life by not asking for more. He kinda stuttered, “I had been talking to Mark about his AI and I knew that if I got a Mind Talent then I couldn’t get an AI later and I…” He trailed off, not even sure what he was saying.

  Lola hammered him, “Then you could have gotten something else. Some Shaper Talent. Some Body Talent.”

  “No I couldn’t!” Eliot said, scrambling for answers. “Then I’d have 4 Talents and I would monsterize—”

  “Mark is a Tri-Talent with an AI as well. AIs are not a Talent. You could have gotten something. You chose not to. Why? Is it because you are planning to Contract with a demon? To do something to the settlement, or to the gate?”

  An emotional pain spread up and down Eliot’s spine, through his stomach, and then erupted out of his mouth as Eliot turned and puked on the ground.

  Lola only waited until Eliot was done with most of his vomit to continue, “Have you heard about the Eye of Arakino?”

  Eliot’s eyes went wide as he heaved onto the ground again, but nothing came up. He spat some, even as he said, “No. We’re not talking about the Big Stuff. Please.”

  “I wasn’t aware of it until recently, but based on your reaction you must have known of it for a while.”

  Eliot flinched as though struck. “… Fuck.” He added, “Mark has been… talking about it to a few people. He asked me… We should not talk about that stuff, Lola. Not here. Not on camera, at all. I hope you didn’t… Wait. You interrogated that stuff out of Mark, didn’t you.”

  The red light from the camera on the wall, in the dark, looked way too red right now. It made Eliot’s stomach churn again. This stuff should not be talked about at all.

  Lola looked at Eliot, as she said, “I want to talk about it. I want to know what you know about the theories of Big Silver, and why the elves spoke of that Big as ‘someone’s defense against the Others’.” She focused, eyes seeming to blaze. “What are kaiju, Eliot? What are demons? And why did you not take the power you could have taken?”

  She was letting him off of the hook with that last question… for now.

  “… There’s no… big conspiracy. It’s just… They expect everyone else to be kaiju killers. Even Tartu and Andria. They’re going to be forced into hunting kaiju and… And I don’t want that. If I became a Tri-Talent, then I would be obligated to operate at that level.”

  “So you’re a coward.”

  “… Yes.” Eliot felt like the world was closing in on him. Everything was too much, but also… Eliot took a breath, and said, “I was hoping for the Arcane Power... Resurrection.”

  Lola paused. She narrowed her eyes in the dark, asking, “You think you deserve to rip people out of their afterlives, away from the comfort of their Gods, to bring them back to this mortal coil?”

  Eliot felt like he had been slapped. “You never say that shit to Mark when he talks about it!”

  “Mark deserves the world, Eliot, and he’ll have to come to terms with his destiny on his own long timeframe. You and I are mere mortals compared to the machinations of gods and elves and Inheritors, whatever the hell that means.”

  Eliot suddenly realized something; in the air, in the aura of Lola, in himself. Castellan afforded him the ability to see a lot about everyone in his castle, but somehow he had never seen this, before now. Lola hadn’t allowed it. But now she did. Eliot had to be mistaken. He almost blurted out what he saw right away, but that would be wrong for a noble.

  Eliot asked, “Do you hate me for forsaking Freyala for Hearthswell?”

  “ ‘Hate’ is a strong word, so no. I do not hate you. I am supremely disappointed in you, Eliot Cybersong. You had that goblin training incident where you were mind-slammed into another version of yourself and you began your retreat then, running behind the walls of Hearthswell instead of standing tall against the monsters with your team. And then you saw the horror of the Battle for Memphi and that’s when it became clear who you are. You are a coward, Eliot Cybersong. Where Mark advances, you huddle in his shadow. Even now, when we’re out here discovering one new thing after another, you content yourself with hiding inside of a giant ship. And so yes, when you speak of having the power of Resurrection, I am disappointed, because you haven’t gone for it, Eliot. You play your cards too close to your chest.” Lola slammed her hands onto the table, asking, “Why didn’t you go for it when you had the chance!”

  “How could I have gone for it! I didn’t have the proto-binding! I don’t know necromancy! I don’t know any of that shit, and it scares the fuck out of me!”

  “Ahhh, so you do know how you would go about it. Through necromancy. You could have pursued that. There is nothing inherently wrong with necromancers. We have many of them in the Collective.”

  “Necromancy… no.” Eliot shook his head. “No. I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because!”

  Lola waited.

  “… Because souls are sacred. I don’t want to mess with them. I just want to put them back together.”

  “A demon shows up right now, offering you the power of Resurrection. Do you take it?”

  “NO! Fuck no.”

  “Why not? You could save a lot of lives that way.”

  Eliot couldn’t speak. “It… It wouldn’t be right. Cultists are… are. No.”

  “Who do you want to save, Eliot?”

  “… Everyone.” Eliot took a deep breath, and repeated, “Everyone. The bodies… the bodies, Lola.” Eliot shivered as he remembered Memphi. The aftermath. “Mark sanded the land and bodies turned to debris and he didn’t see it, but… but I did. The Resurrection Ghost was an 85% hack job. I took the bodies of those who didn’t come back and I turned them into sewage waste, to be processed and disposed of in a mass grave. There were ceremonies and vigils but there were no identifiable bodies and so… And then there was the goblin attack at the settlement. Thank the gods that Mark killed Goblinhome but… I was so prepared for another mass casualty event, and yet… I knew I wouldn’t be prepared for the bodies.” Eliot Manipulated away the tears that were falling from his face, dispersing them and trying to put on a good facade, but he was hurting too deeply. “And then when we got to my kaiju, the Manipulation Kaiju… It ripped through Andria and… and you. And Sally was down below that lava layer… I don’t want anyone under my care to die ever again. So of course I want the Power of Resurrection.”

  “Does it make you mad that Mark got that ‘house’ instead of you?”

  “… Would it make me a bad person if I said ‘yes’?”

  “No, Eliot. It makes you human.”

  “Still a coward, though.”

  Lola shook her head in the dark. “You’re not a coward, Eliot.”

  Eliot felt like he was being tossed around.

  “You’re among the bravest people I know, and that’s saying something considering the company I’ve kept in recent years. You’re out here, hauling around a castle for all of us, keeping us all safe as we could be. I just don’t want you to go down a bad route because you’re too scared of what could be. I’ve seen it too many times. A strong person breaks in a way they never expected to break, and so they go out seeking more power in ways that are anathema to civilization. Now, is Resurrection Magic anathema to humanity? Who knows! I certainly don’t. But the majority of demons seem to think it is, while a very vocal Cultist minority thinks that Resurrection Magic is a fantastic lure.” Lola looked at Eliot, eyes shining in the dark beyond the illumination of the table, of Eliot. Lola said, “I don’t want you to be lured by them. I want you to be brave, and go out there and tell Mark that you want to get a house, too. Or will you hold that desire so close to your heart it rots and turns to poison, like those bodies you cleaned up certainly would have done if not for you?”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “… Fuck.”

  Lola reached over and tapped a button on her side of the table. The red light on the camera turned off, and the lights in the room began to glow. Lola’s face was red and tears marked her cheeks, but Union was already cleaning her up as she said, “We’ll stop there for now.”

  … Eliot nodded and stood up, feeling wobbly, saying, “Now I know why Andria went and drowned herself in ice cream.” He made himself laugh once, adding, “And we didn’t even talk about the Manipulation Kaiju.”

  “You mentioned it. That’s enough when it comes to talking about Outsiders. Take a break. You did well.”

  “… yeah yeah yeah…” Eliot muttered, walking away, thinking a whole lot of thoughts he didn’t want to think.

  - - - -

  Lola sat in the interrogation room, alone.

  She took a moment.

  It was difficult but necessary to make these kids confront the worst parts of everything that had happened. Difficult for her, too. But she did it.

  Lola rose to her feet, did a small Union of Purity and then Good/Bad to clean herself up, then she went and made lunch for everyone.

  - - - -

  The Dreadnought flowed through a large gap between high-piled clouds, over an ocean with whirlpools that flowed deep into billowing, illuminated depths. Billows of sea water became clouds in the sky, and Mark gazed out at those clouds, and at the oceans below.

  To everyone else, it looked like clouds and water and some weird methodology for making clouds.

  Isoko could feel that the clouds here didn’t move as they should, and that was all.

  Mark was the only one that could see the cities of elves in the clouds. The cities were mostly abandoned this far into the realm. Back at the edge of the realm there had been elves living in cloud cities, with cloud boats and cloud houses. But here, the cities were thick and crowded and empty. Static, too. The living cities moved just fine. These ones? Dead.

  Parts of the illusions were even broken.

  Mark pointed at one part, now. “There. Can you see that?”

  Isoko gazed out with him, trying to identify what he was seeing. “… No? What am I looking at?”

  “There, where that spire of clouds becomes a thunderhead and then flattens out further overhead. That part right before where the cloud billows outward again. Do you see it? It’s glass, exposed to the light. It’s that flat part.”

  “… Not really.”

  Quark spoke up, “I believe I can see that, yes, sir. It’s very small. How are you seeing it?”

  “It’s like an exposed part of the dream, where something has broken between the layers of reality.” Mark guessed, “Or maybe the dream has been superimposed onto reality? I’m not sure. It seems very real, though, and the start of what looks like the middle floors of major high-rise in a metropolitan center. Buncha buildings all over that place… I kinda want to go exploring.”

  “No elves here?” Isoko asked.

  “None for the last 500 kilometers, ever since we entered the main city. There have been hundreds of little spots all over the place where the dream has broken down, but that’s the first one I saw that Quark managed to see.” Mark watched the high rise pass on by, the Dreadnought not stopping at all. “But I guess it’s probably best not to go poking into that sort of thing…” Mark turned a bit. Eliot was coming out of the hub, about 150 meters away.

  Isoko turned and saw Eliot, too.

  Soon, Eliot was near them, and saying, “I want a house, too, Mark. I want Resurrection magic. I want to let Derek out into the cities out there.”

  Isoko instantly turned to Mark and said, “I think we should send him, too.”

  Mark weighed the desires of his team versus a possible interworld incident, versus the possible bounty stored inside the abandoned elven city… And then he tapped the side of his head and Quark broadcast his voice to everyone on board, and into the sky beyond, “Derek. There’s a possible opening into the elven cloud city. Quark has the coordinates on this one. Wanna take a boat out and go exploring?”

  “Yes!” came a chorus from below, from all of the Dereks at once.

  Eliot sighed in relief.

  Isoko grinned.

  Mark hoped he had made the right call.

  A good 20 Dereks were soon on a sky boat and headed back the way the Dreadnought had come, sailing into the still clouds— The boat struck an invisible building and a few Dereks fell off of the side, but the boat kept on going and soon some Dereks were falling down onto invisible balconies and walking on invisible roads and then falling off of those, into the yawning abysses of light in the ocean down below. Most of those Dereks started feeling up invisible walls, if they could, bringing in a treasure trove of not-really-information as they tried not to die from falling off ledges and hitting the ground too hard.

  The Dereks on the ship acknowledged every death, but mostly it didn’t bother him.

  Soon, Derek had reached the break in the illusion. It was a series of windows on a high rise, exactly as Mark had seen. Derek cut through the window with an adamantium glass cutter, and then he was in, a bunch of them piling on to clean, yet empty, marble-like floors, and then rushing down into the depths of the city.

  A Derek in the real world soon stood on an invisible balcony, looking at an intangible Derek, who was standing on the inside of the city’s spell. They touched hands, and then they shook hands, saying how this was such a neat and new experience for him, while other Dereks set up transmitter equipment at the broken part of the spell, letting Eliot’s drones find their way in, too. Eliot began a deep inspection of the invisible city. He even had a drone fly into the hiding spell and come all the way back to the Dreadnought, to sit on the deck, for Tartu and Andria to start poking at, debating how it all worked.

  The Dreadnought never stopped its forward march.

  Mark watched the action from a feed that Quark had put up in his vision, but mostly he kept his eyes out on the rest of the invisible cloud city coming up, glancing backward to Tartu and Andria and the invisible/intangible drone sitting on the deck…

  Hmm.

  That was worrying, actually.

  Mark said, “I’m going to make a round on the ship, to check for ‘barnacles’.”

  There were no ‘barnacles’ on the ship.

  Time passed, and the Dreadnought sailed on.

  Derek never found anything inside of the dead elven city, except for a lot of abandoned places. Overgrown, wild trees. Cracked stone walkways. Magitech in the walls that he took lots of pictures of, but which was mostly beyond everyone on the Dreadnought. Sure, the sigils were the same, but the way they were put together was ‘wrong’, according to Tartu, which he admitted just meant that he didn’t know how it worked.

  If there were ‘libraries’ of orichalcum ‘starter books’, like the one Eria had placed on Mark’s body to give him a house, they were beyond Derek’s ability to find in 28 hours, which was how long it took them to reach the next zone wall.

  Derek packed it up and then cut himself off from the previous lands, as the Dreadnought passed into new lands and the way behind them closed.

  The new lands were red-sand wasteland, as far as the eyes could see. Black, leafless trees grew down in those sands, like points of dark static frozen in time. Only one part of the realm looked interesting; a tall tower in the middle of the zone. It was 200 kilometers thick, grey and white, and it was protruding from the sands at a 17 degree angle.

  About 100 different white power-lines of prismatic mana filtered in from the edges of the realm, to connect to the tilted tower.

  It took them a while to get to the tower, but not that long; this realm was smaller than the others.

  Sally had her interview.

  Mark asked her, “Did your ‘Executioner’s Privilege’ plan work?”

  “… Not really,” Sally said, looking embarrassed.

  Mark snorted.

  Tartu got delayed on his interrogation, because he kept making himself unavailable.

  Eventually they reached the middle tower, and something weird was going on with the dots they were following.

  The dots went to the tower, but then the path split. The full trail of dots went to the side, around the tower, and elsewhere. But 1 dot, positioned exactly in the direction of the path, toward the tower, flickered and died even before the Dreadnought reached that dot. But it had been there.

  The path had been leading toward a closed gate in the tower. The gate was 5 kilometers wide and solid grey, while the space behind it was dimpled in, and also solid grey. All over the entire tilted tower there were holes that prismatic mana should have flowed in, but only about 97 lines of light, according to the Dreadnought’s sensors, were actually connecting properly to the tower.

  After some discussion, David veered the Dreadnought off to the right, to follow the set of dots that hadn’t been there until they had gotten close.

  “That had to have been the way back to Earth,” Sally said.

  “But it was closed,” Eliot said, continuing the conversation from before. “So now we’re on a new path.”

  “But why was it closed; that’s the part I want to know,” Sally said.

  Mark gestured at the cameras showing the wasteland all around, saying, “This place is abandoned. The tower is tilted and broken and missing thousands of prismatic lines of light. The gate probably isn’t even working.”

  Tartu said, “It’s quite possible that the other side of the gate is gone, too.”

  “The other side of any possible Earth gate is absolutely gone,” Mark said.

  Tartu said, “You don’t know that.”

  “99.999% positive,” Mark said, rolling his eyes.

  Isoko asked, “So… If they’re sending us to a gate to Earth, and there are no gates to Earth at all… then what happens next?”

  “We’ll find out,” Mark said… And then he hummed. “There is that demon city in Okuana that has a gate that Addashield and others always had to tell people that did not connect to the moon. Everyone was always thinking it was connected to the moon, but that’s not how gates work. They have to be between separate realities.”

  Sally suddenly gasped a little, and then she sounded deeply disappointed as she said, “Oh Drakarok. Don’t tell me we’re gonna pop up right underneath Godking Dominant’s roots!”

  Mark felt a chill. “... The demon city in Okuana is underneath Dominant?”

  Everyone looked toward Sally except for Tartu.

  Tartu looked toward the path of dots in the sky, saying, “Yes, it is.”

  “Well fuck,” Mark said.

  Sally happily announced, “Plan World-Wide Counter Assassination is a-go!”

  “No,” Mark said, though he was worried that it might be inevitable.

  Sally just smirked.