Chapter 471

Mark hovered high over one of the main, 350-meter-long hoverships of Okuana. The port side of the ship had a gaping hole through several different decks. Some people were evacuating out the back on smaller ships while others poured out of that hole to flow to the sides. Some people were flying, aiming to flank, or to posture. Mark watched every single one of them, for Mark had strung himself out into multiple bodies, and multiple partials, just a head, or just a mouth, or just some eyes. He had trouble navigating some of the sensory input, but not much. Quark had no trouble at all, and through him, through Crystal Tower and their connection to Aleph One, Quark rapidly pointed out and discarded the people that Aleph One considered non-threats, highlighted some which were maybe-threats, and directly marked others which were archmages, hanging back, or hanging out beside the main ship.

The dryads on the ship were still revealing themselves, uncurling from their invisibilities and minimizations. They unfurled like trees suddenly growing to stand fully revealed, looming into the air at a level with Mark, who was still about 200 meters up and away from the bow of the ship. The dryads easily reached that height, and their roots, dripping down below the ships, made them even taller.

The enemies on the ship were silent. Perhaps they had said something to Crystal Tower? They said nothing to Mark. If they cared about his ultimatum telling them to surrender, they did not seem like it.

Rain fell hard everywhere but here. Hurricane winds buffeted around the battlefield. Behind Mark, 2 kilometers back there, was Isoko, Specter, Tempest, and Derek. One of Mark’s eyes caught that Isoko and them were in a battle right now, but it was a battle happening 200 meters from the black bowl of their hoverplatform… and that black bowl had some dents in the adamantium. Some personal hoverbikes flew fast, lightning zapping them, platinum glitters breaking as they broke through those glitters.

Isoko and them looked like they were having a normal amount of problems. Nothing dangerous yet, but…

Hmm.

Mark would need to reconvene with them and fix the black bowl, at least, but Quark had Isoko, Specter, Tempest, and Derek’s readouts in Mark’s vision, when he looked their way. They were all in the green. Tempest had some damage but she was receiving active healing. She would be fine.

Mark focused on the archmages, the dryads, and the captains and leaders in the battleship ahead. He Called out again, voice echoing upon itself and driving deep into the very soul of the enemies, “Surrender and be spared your lives, and nothing else.”

The dryads rippled with rage, wood creaking like snapping branches in a storm, tendrils lashing, green crowns growing even larger, their astral bodies touching Mark’s and poking at him. Mark poked back with Energy/Entropy, his strung-out body suddenly bursting with new bodies further away from his spread-out self as he gained energy, the dryads wincing away as though they had tried touching fire and had gotten burned—

“Foolish boy!” yelled one of the archmages to the left.

The guy’s black and gold robes fluttered in his flight spell, in the light rain here at the center of the storm. He had dingy yellow hair and pale eyes, and was otherwise unknown to Mark— Oh wait. Mark knew him. Quark knew him, too. Archmage Amberstone! That’s what his name was. He was some top guy in Okuana who Mark had heard about once or twice. He had seen the guy maybe once on the screens, but Mark hadn’t even thought about him until now. He was a ‘Medium Name’. No Addashield, but more like Blackthorn, before Mark knew that Blackthorn’s demon was some ‘demon king’… or maybe that was a perfect analogy. This guy was an archmage. He had tricks, for sure.

‘Demon king level’ tricks?

Probably not.

Quark named the other guy as some unknown, lesser archmage, and probably freshly made, too, because Aleph One told Quark, who told Mark, that the guy had been recorded as a Sky Mage of Okuana. He had Sky Shaper, and he had visited New Tokyo years ago. He wasn’t doing much in the air right now, though he certainly had the range. He was probably keeping away from Mark, and for good reason. According to Aleph One his name was Hotano, and he should have been 87 but he looked 20.

That was pretty typical archmage-longevity on display. Demons didn’t want their shells dying to mundane things like age, unless they specifically wanted that to happen. Most archmages Contracted against that, though, because every time an archmage died, even if it was from old age, they turned into a dragon, or, as Mark had recently learned, a Living Spell.

Of the two archmages, Hotano was probably weaker and more dangerous than Amberstone, because Amberstone had a known Contract on record at Crystal Tower (Note from Aleph One: Probably a fake Contract, of course) and that Contract would turn Amberstone into a dragon that would rage and kill whoever killed him.

Hotano’s Contract, which was NOT on file at Crystal Tower, could be anything.

Amberstone continued, “You have been deceived by your own desires for power—”

“You have made your choices in life,” Mark intoned, interrupting the asshole. “One of those choices was to assault Crystal Tower. Therefore, you have forfeited your right to try and persuade me of anything at all. The time for speeches will come after the battle, when you have been stripped of all of your power. Surrender, or prepare for devastation.”

Disgust filled Amberstone’s voice as he called back, “I will rip that soulhouse from you and make you watch as I tear through all of those who would fight Dominant.”

“What a fucking stupid threat,” Mark Called back, getting the last word in even as Amberstone and everyone else started moving.

Mark dropped into a weak Alacrity/Slowness, powered by a few hearts, keeping power in the tank in case he needed it later, as he slammed into everyone Amberstone and the other archmage 300 meters away with a full power Energy/Entropy. Time vaguely slowed as vectors and astral bodies crashed into Mark, and he crashed right back into them. The collected people in the sky, over 30 of them, each had a handful of tricks ready to go.

Most of Mark’s strung-out astral body completely disintegrated, leaving him inside his strung-out adamantium self and blind to the vectors outside of himself, his Union gone. Isoko’s connection broke in a shattering of platinum sparkles, half the sky clearing and turning suddenly-calmer. Something had disrupted him. Had to have been Wands of Destruction. Mark hadn’t recognized those on the battlefield, and they didn’t fully work on him anymore, but they had to be here—

A void bomb went off in the middle of his selves, and then two more bombs off to the sides. Mark slipped down as those 50-meter black voids hung in the skies, as Mark scrambled to remake his body below the destruction, time flowing almost normally, but he spun his body into monowire, and then Unioned with the world through that monowire.

Hairs of adamantium strung into the world as Mark recovered his strength, his astral body and Alacrity/Slowness kicking back in. Mark re-strung himself down, closer to the prow of the hovership

The void bombs began to implode, and time slowed. The implosions halted for a moment as Mark pulled too hard on Alacrity/Slowness, and then Mark let up on that, stringing his Union, along with some adamantium needle-wires, into the bodies of the enemies before him. The implosions above continued in slow motion.

Mark held the strings on the extra 30-ish people in the sky, including the dryads but excepting the archmages. He felt their pain at the intrusion as he began draining them with Energy/Entropy. Some people attacked him with Shaped water or Shaped other things. Some tried to pry Mark off. All of them failed as he drained them fast, but he felt and saw as a few of them aimed small, weird-guns at his body, as their own Powers failed them.

Those guns had to be the ‘wands of destruction’ Mark, Aleph One, and Quark had missed.

The soldiers pulled triggers, darkness sputtered, and mostly they failed to do shit, because Mark was inside of his adamantium body right now, partially protected from disjunction. But a few of them had aimed better than the rest and they struck pieces of Mark that escaped the confines of his adamantium. Where the darkness struck, Mark’s astral body collapsed. The rest of him remained strong, and so Mark reconnected fast, jamming adamantium-covered limbs into stomachs and chests, ripping into those guns and ripping out more adamantium from their cores, Energy/Entropy pulling power out from enemies, out from the world, and into Mark.

He was still pretty strung out, but he had enough of himself left to slice apart every little special gun.

This was a concentrated, orchestrated attack. Mark was surrounded. They’d have more tricks. Mark decided to retreat and regroup.

Isoko’s Union was still gone, which was the real concerning thing here— No wait. There it was.

Isoko’s touch returned with a surge of platinum, ripping across the tops of every dryad, like chainsaw whips, cutting branches and tops off and away, the dryads only able to fight back inside of their bodies, like what Mark was doing right now. Isoko shifted the whipping storm on a thought, crashing through the entire sky in great, spiraling curls. Had she figured out Energy/Entropy? Maybe!

Ships dropped out of invisibility, cut in half or in pieces.

People fell in pieces.

The people that Mark had grabbed onto fell in pieces, because Mark let go of them without care at all.

The archmages were making moves toward Mark, but they did magics that killed his Unionsense, so he had no idea where they were, exactly, for he was still strung out under and around the bow of the ship, searching for them again—

Mark’s Union reached the ship and he felt vectors moving inside, even as he actively Energy/Entropy’d them. Holes opened up in the front of the ship and cannons loosed blackwhite voidfire like napalm fountains, as another vector, probably Hotano’s, directly countered Isoko’s and Tempest’s control of the sky.

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Voidfire washed out into the world in expanding spirals of storm, eating at the rain, consuming stringers of lightning and platinum glows like it was all fuel for the flames. That blackwhite fire touched Mark’s strung-out body, and Mark moved down and awa—

Amberstone pointed at a single part of Mark’s body and suddenly everything sped up, Mark’s mind barely moving at the edge of the fight, blackwhite fires burning everything, even Mark. But Mark was still there at the edges. He saw what Amberstone had done.

A shatter of amber light glowed at the center of Mark’s body, the main body. That light enveloped him, traveled down his extensions, and locked him down.

“I have him!” Amberstone yelled, voice almost too fast for Mark to hear his words.

Hotano burned Mark, holding the fire to his body with control of the sky, burning him as much as he could. He called out, “I have him, too!”

They didn’t have him. They didn’t know he was also 400 meters below himself. That’s probably the only reason he survived what came next.

Void bombs cascaded from the ground, hit the sky where Mark was, and erased all of him in one great explosion of void, carving out a small part of the world—

Time resumed fast as Mark came back to himself 450 meters below the great implosion happening overhead.

The entire battlefield looked different. The main ship was kilometers away from where it had been. Smaller ships had come forward, unveiling themselves from invisibility. The storm overhead was gone; Hotano had probably cleared it so everyone could have good sightlines on Mark—

Isoko’s Union and Tempest’s touch was missing.

Mark grew back to full-size and spread out again, going into Alacrity/Slowness as fast as he could, asking Quark, “What happened?”

Quark kept pace with Mark, saying, “You were out for 3 minutes and 28 seconds. Timeweaver said they would fail to get you fully due to Clean House and not to worry, and for everyone to focus on helping Isoko, Tempest, and Specter, and to focus on the ingresses they’re making on the other side of the blockade as they rift to Earth. People are dying, and now is the time for no mercy.”

No mercy, then.

Mark reached full Alacrity/Slowness with the help of brains scattered in several parts, Unioning in full with the world, with everything nearby. He angled upward, burning the air as he grabbed into the four remaining large vectors up there.

Amberstone briefly paused as he recognized someone was attacking him.

Hotano didn’t understand anything. He was the more dangerous one to kill, though, because Mark was sure his Contract was against Mark or against whoever might kill him, just like Amberstone’s Contract. But now that Living Spells were on the table, Mark didn’t want to trigger Hotano.

A dragon that wanted to kill Mark was preferable to an unknown.

So Mark ripped into Amberstone’s adamantium robes, crushing into their magic, bursting through Amberstone’s chest from behind and flowing through all of him, draining the man of all possible speed—

Amber light sparked bright.

For a moment Mark was in the real world.

And then Mark was in the dream.

He stood in his soulhouse, looking at an amber sky beyond all of his black.

Amberstone stood on his lawn like a man made of yellow, ripping at the world itself, turning the ground amber at his touch. He sweated heavily and a gaping hole in his chest oozed amber light that bled into the environs, catching on the black and turning it yellow.

The Clean House statues of Mark swept the yellow away, but more and more yellow appeared with every moment.

Time to rip him apart, Mark supposed, as Mark flickered himself into his extraction house and slammed giant black Union hands into Amberstone—

Amberstone laughed as he lifted a hand and held it out, freezing Mark’s black hands in place as he taunted, “A boy with tricks will have his tricks stolen each and every time! Your house will be mine, usurper!”

Mark slammed more hands into Amberstone’s face, but Amberstone grew new hands for each and every hand Mark tried to slam him with.

The archmage laughed as yellow spread across the land—

“Oh,” Mark said, realizing something. “You have specific tools against Union. Duh. Well good thing I got this.”

Amberstone laughed louder, beginning to say something, another taunt.

Mark strung purple Death past all of his yellow hands, right into his yellow-bleeding chest.

“No,” Amberstone said, not seriously, not understanding what was happening to him. And then Mark funneled Death across his black Union hands, crushing the archmage’s specific defenses against adamantium mana, or whatever it was. Mark turned his purple-rimmed black hands into fists and poured Death directly through the yellow on the ground, into the archmage. The archmage screamed with two voices. “NOOOO!”

Yellow burned with purple and Mark poured in the Death, purple shining out of Amberstone. His yellow hands weakened without warning, Mark’s Union-hands crunching inward. The man screamed and Mark ripped into the archmage, turning him into so much scattered, dusty dreams—

For a moment, Mark saw another presence inside of the man.

It was a reflection of the man, but hollow. And then the two screaming voices separated into one yellow man, still screaming as Death turned him into a mockery of himself, replacing everything that was yellow. The yellow dream outside of Mark’s house became a purple hellscape full of Death.

The other person was a demon.

The clear demon’s features melted away, turning him into a blob of something clear with two arms, two legs, and a head at the top, but his arms were too long and there were no elbows or fingers, and his legs were flowing this way and that, and his head was not a head at all, but a central core. The demon, inside of the dream, was little more than a collection of possibilities both eldritch and vaguely human—

The demon clicked.

Time froze everywhere, the purple invasion of the yellow suddenly stopping, the wind on the grass dying, the ever-shifting dream beyond Mark’s soulhouse stilling to solid, dark rainbow.

“Hello, Mark,” said the demon. “Attack me and I do my worst.”

Mark had been about to attack the demon; to do what, he had no idea. But the attack had been coming. Black hands and coiling, instinctive Death, and a Union of Entropy/Energy to try and burn the demon to nothing, transforming it into something else and maybe, in that transformation, killing it.

But Mark paused.

“… Did you stop time?”

“We can stop time for Contract formation, which is what I have invoked. It will last until we come to a conclusion one way or another. Here is the short version: I like your house. I want to move in and live vicariously through the actions of one of the strongest people in the known worlds. I will answer questions in exchange for specific experiences, none of which will violate the largest parts of your moral code. You had a similar situation with Archmage Blackthorn. This will be more direct. I will not impact your house. I will not endanger your life. I will not hinder your desires in life as a man, as an inheritor, or as a hero. That is the gist of the Contract. Specifics can be ironed out if this first step to entertaining my offer is crossed.” The demon added, “The other option is for you to not accept any sort of Contract at all, continue to kill Amberstone, and I will turn Amberstone into a death dragon. I will get to experience rampaging through New Tokyo and killing many different superheroes and creating hordes of undead thralls until I am taken down. I estimate 40 million dead.”

Mark rapidly began healing Amberstone with a Union of Good and Bad.

Purple flowed away from the yellow of Amberstone—

“Ah,” said the demon, as his clear body began sucking back into Amberstone, the archmage’s features reappearing out of the clarity of the demon’s unformed self. He spoke with a clear mouth, “My name is Rokera. Do keep me in mind if you change your mind. As a show of good faith, and because I don’t want competition as a guest of your house—” The demon slipped fully into Amberstone’s body, but he stuck his clear head out a little, and continued as if he wasn’t disappearing at all, “—If you kill Hotano he and his demon will become a Living Kill that will not stop until 20 million citizens of New Tokyo are dead at its hand. Many other new archmages in this battle are the same.”

Time suddenly resumed—

Mark came back to reality as a stream of strung-out adamantium, hearts beating hard inside of a few different bodies 150 meters behind and below Amberstone. He was already moving with Alacrity/Slowness, trying to think, to come up with a way around this new issue.

The piece of Mark that remained jammed through Amberstone’s chest was still locked to the archmage with yellow magics. Those yellow magics were flaking away, but they’d be there for a little while as long as Mark was moving this fast.

Killing of the archmages was not an option—

“We have reached phase 2, Mark,” Timeweaver said in Mark’s ears, even though Mark was now moving at super speed. He must have recorded it earlier. “And yes, I did record this earlier. You have seen the traps in the blockade, from the archmage/demon death triggers to your personal soulhouse traps, which have not yet proven capable of stripping you of your house, but they’ve gotten very close. I hope you can figure out how to overcome all of that, but for now, rescue your people and take care of , for they have become staging grounds for ingress into New Tokyo through rifts. We need those staging grounds gone. Ignore all archmages. Let them chase you. Hopefully this is the last time I have to go through this!”

Mark was already headed toward Isoko.