Chapter 482

“How are the new Powers working out, General?” Mark asked, once they were situated and sitting in the side room, and the pleasantries were over. The couches were nice.

Councilor Umeda sighed as he eventually sat down on the third couch in the room, beside Mark and Devo Stone. His body might betray him, but his mind was sharper than most minds Mark had known, his vector like an ice pick, his thoughts swirling behind that ice pick like a command center’s susurrus of activity during a kaiju attack. The guy hadn’t felt like that outside of the room, but now he was focused, knowing the real talk was happening right now.

Isoko stood behind and to the side of Mark.

A few other people, like the General’s secretary and a pair of soldiers, and the Councilor’s bodyguards, stood on the edges of the room. One of the Councilor’s men offered tea, but the Councilor shook his head just a little, and the guy backed off demurely.

General Devo Stone sat down with a greater ease, opposite of Mark, his mind like a thousand different ice picks, all ready to go, and all the world was ice. His countenance and ease of voice was more like an uncle’s, though, as he grinned a little, saying, “I’m sure you can feel most of it already, yes? Battle Manipulation and Visionary go together like the ocean and the sun, while Strategist allows me to recognize all the islands of danger and the lurking leviathans in this upcoming war, allowing me to angle our course as needed. But that’s a bunch of upper-level speak that I’ll tell the papers. You want something solid, yes? What are you looking for, though? What do you want to happen in this war?”

“I don’t believe that the people of Okuana are our enemies at all, and I don’t want to fight soldiers.” Mark added, “But I’ll respond through ITLKR to any dryad threats. I didn’t exactly promise Walaria that yet, but I’m promising it to you, and to New Tokyo, right now.”

Councilor Umeda bowed just a little, his vector flexing, relaxing. He was still an ice pick, focused on everything happening in this room, but his voice was easier as he said, “Thank you, Mister Careed. Crystal Tower, New Tokyo, and Aluatha have mutual defense protocols, most heavily visible through the ITLKR systems, but we have those treaties with Okuana as well, and this current chapter of history has broken a great deal of that International good will. New Tokyo is glad to see young, strong hands reaffirming our mutual treaties and desires.”

General Devo Stone had a small moment of a thousand ice-pick vectors all shifting, as Councilor Umeda spoke. Some of the General’s animosity and worry pulled away from New Tokyo, as Councilor Umeda made his reaffirming speech.

It was kinda nice seeing how serious these two were.

Mark, of course, couldn’t read minds, but he practically could. This was a tense conversation due to the violence inherent in these sorts of discussions, and due to the violence of the past week, but right now it was just surface tension… and maybe some old tensions, too. New Tokyo was a ‘rival power’ of Aluatha in certain ways. They both had gates between the Two Worlds, of course, and New Tokyo did not like it when Aluatha got their gate.

… Mark belatedly recalled how New Tokyo had been the ones to deny help for the Battle for Memphi, even though Crystal Tower had wanted to help. That proved a prudent call, when the Battle for Memphi caused kaiju and Cultist attacks to trigger all across the world. So Mark understood that, in retrospect...

Superheroes being held back by politicians felt bad, though, even now.

But Timeweaver had been in Memphi when he needed to be in Memphi, ‘making’ it happen like it happened…

Mark decided he didn’t really need to think too deeply about any of that stuff anymore. It was in the past. It did color Mark’s perception of this event happening right here, but that was all.

General Stone had taken 10 seconds to think. He was still thinking as he told Mark, “This war is more than Dominant’s doing. The Godking is merely the head of an empire, filling that empire with propaganda against the rest of the world. There will be no avoiding front lines and battles with people.”

Mark responded, “I understand that, but I’m not killing people unless they’re archmages or kaiju-level— And, yeah, I will go against archmages. Should have said that earlier. Count me in for that.”

Stone’s vectors flexed, his gaze focused but easing up, as he said, “Amberstone managed to seal you for a moment. Are you capable of preventing that sort of action when it invariably happens again?”

“That’s what I have a team for.” Mark added, “But, just so you know, I kill him before he could do anything. Yes. He got his attack off, but I killed him, and then I also put his demon back, and his demon revived him. I didn’t want to have him turning into a necrodragon at that moment, and the demon didn’t want that either. In retrospect, perhaps I should have triggered the necrodragon then and there, but I made the decision I made. Amberstone got away. I’m sure I’ll see him again. I’m sure, if I need help, then you’ll teleport someone with ITLKR to help me, too.”

Councilor Umeda focused here and elsewhere, thinking deeply again and coming to a conclusion about something. He looked to the General.

A lot of hidden thoughts coalesced for General Stone, the cacophony of his vector finding purchase and then hitting the world of his mind, forging a path forward. It was kinda weird to Unionsense, and Mark was sure he was barely scratching the surface of what the General was thinking and doing with his Powers, but he understood the big parts.

Devo Stone asked Mark a big question, “Can Aluatha count on you to produce more True Powers for the war effort?”

“Yes, of course.” Mark added to the Councilor, “That goes for Crystal Tower and New Tokyo, as well. I reaffirm my decision to Skill a lot of people over the next few days. My hope in doing this is so that more and more of the world is strong enough to fully resist Dominant’s tyranny. We don’t have dragons, or archmages, but we do have superheroes, and I will help with that as much as I can.”

Councilor Umeda nodded.

General Stone easily said, “Then I see this war going in this way: Blockades everywhere, denial of resources, fallback tactics, and specific ingress into Okuana’s territory to deny them strategic locations and resources. We have all the Two Worlds ready to unite against Godking Dominant, and I plan to use that coalition to great effect. I see us winning this war. Of that there is no doubt. But, before we win, I see the war going one of two ways:

“Either we win in under a year and behead Dominant,

“Or the war goes slow and steady and dangerously, and then we win anyway.

“It all depends on Dominant’s response.

“What we’re most looking to prevent is Doomsday Scenarios, where Dominant sets off ten thousand nukes all across the Two Worlds, burning out the world while he rests underground, ready to take back what’s left. That’s what most of our prognosticators are focused on. Other than that, the war will be a steady noose, tightening and tightening.”

Isoko shuddered. A few people had similar reactions.

Mark nodded a little—

“he truly do that?” Councilor Umeda asked, though he already knew the answer.

“He would,” Mark said. “He’s a tree. People only exist to provide him with mana and underlings.”

General Devo Stone nodded solemnly to Mark and then to the Councilor, saying, “Mister Careed has the right of it, but nukes everywhere would not be that disastrous of an event. Make no mistake. A billion would die. But humanity would survive and then there would be nothing preventing us from an all-out attack against Dominant.”

Mark nodded a little, expecting all of that—

“All the world went against him in the past and he won,” Isoko said, speaking up and surprising most everyone. Isoko stepped forward, to stand beside Mark and let loose with something that she had been brewing for a day, saying, “After the Dragon King died and never-died, Dominant turned elves into goblins and all the world fell to him. Maybe it was a free-for-all and Dominant was a cockroach who survived. Maybe Xerkona had some Fates back then, too, and those Fates foresaw everything that Dominant needed to do to win and he was not a cockroach, but a truly accomplished assassin or general. I don’t know how it happened. All I know is that Dominant is stupid, but he still attacked Aluatha, uniting the entire empire once again against him, and then he attacked New Tokyo and Crystal Tower, uniting a great deal of Earth against him. If he does something else to the other nations of Earth, making all of them hate him too, then that would be a third point in a pattern of attacking and only making the Two Worlds more angry at him.

“So I’m worried he’s going to pull another goblins-type event; he’ll make something that targets all of Okuana’s enemies. He might even have access to the elven lands again, and elves. And historically, the goblins were worse in ancient history they are these days. That’s what all the history books the goblins say. Dominant won, and thus he turned the goblins weaker, into what they are today.”

Isoko hadn’t really asked anything. She finished, standing there, waiting for a comment.

Councilor Umeda regarded Isoko’s worries with seriousness, and then he looked to the General.

General Stone seriously said, “I believe Mark is scheduled to assist with the People down south, on Daihoon, against the goblin threat on D’Australia.” Stone looked to Mark, asking, “Do you still have plans to do that?”

The antimeme, eldritch watchdog of the People, loomed on the edges of the room like an ethereal flow of tendrils and eyes.

Mark was the only one who saw it, though his vector did indicate something was with them in the room and so the Councilor and Isoko all wondered what Mark was looking at. Two of the bodyguards and the soldiers saw Mark looking to the side, too. None of them saw what he saw. All of them wondering what he was looking at was enough to get the antimeme to flow into them.

Surprisingly, the General was the only one who wasn’t touched. Everyone else ignored the plight of the People. General Stone still wanted an answer… which was surprising. The antimeme touched him but couldn’t hold onto him. He didn’t seem to notice the tendrils flowing into his head and chest, though.

… Wait.

Had the General activated the antimeme to disrupt the discussion happening? To answer Isoko’s concerns? … Maybe?

Mark decided to say, “I hope to bring some Powers to the People, to help them with self-sufficiency. I will not, however, attack the goblins. We don’t want them coming back to the Greendeath mountains.”

The eldritch thing flicked inside of Isoko’s vector and she shuddered, saying, “I need to stay here with the family, Mark. I won’t go there.”

Mark had some Thoughts about that, primarily about the necessity of getting Isoko a True Spellbreaker again. She had left her Spellbreaker back home at Dawncoast, for sure, otherwise she wouldn’t have said that; she would have jumped at the chance to talk with her family right now.

The General made the antimeme worse as he asked Mark, “Can you actually go there and do that? Most people can’t even make plans to visit the People.”

The antimeme touched the General again, but it couldn’t affect him.

Councilor Umeda groaned a little in soft pains, and then he stretched and cracked his back, saying, “I believe it is truly late, and I must be heading off.”

“Water People, Vaka, Picory,” General Stone said, gauging Mark’s reaction.

Mark remained sitting there, chilled to his soul, because Councilor Umeda strained to stand up and Isoko rapidly moved to help him stand. Everyone else in the room started moving toward the exit, even while he was still sitting there. They made some small talk as they went.

Umeda held onto Isoko’s offered arm, asking, “Have you visited the Imperial Palace in any of your time here?”

Isoko easily flowed into her role as a mover and shaker, saying, “Only the public parts, but I would love to be able to visit the actual interiors alongside Mark, I am sure.”

Mark reached out to take Isoko’s hand, to prevent her from walking away—

“They’ll be fine, Mark,” Devo Stone said, still sitting.

“I know they will be, but I still don’t appreciate you pulling that shit on them,” Mark said, frowning. He wasn’t truly angry, though. This place was safe, and Isoko was surrounded by soldiers and she had some deep respect for Umeda, so she was happy to talk with him. Mark watched her go, saying, “I suppose you needed to clear the room? You didn’t want to discuss Isoko’s valid concerns of Okuanan superweapons?”

“Of course Okuana has superweapons, and of course I am not talking about them in front of compromised actors. This is a hotel room, Mark. The AIs are watching, even if they can’t hear about the People, though I bet Aleph One and Aleph Two will flag the videos in this room later and then see what we speak about. The Blessing of the Picory will give them some problems, but they’ll overcome it, I am sure.”

Mark frowned a little. “Is the Godking going to make another ‘goblins’?”

“We’re not sure he to. The goblins still exist, after all.”

“… Oh.”

“I do need to know if you’re actually going to Vaka, Mark.”

Mark watched the guards shut the door, and then it was just Mark and Devo in the same room, sitting on couches across from each other. Mark turned to the man, saying, “I will. I’m going to grab the soulhouse book and try to give it to Eliot. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage it, but I’ll make it happen.”

Devo nodded a little, saying, “Aluatha hasn’t managed to secure it, and it’s been held in treasure by the Picory since the time of the Dragon King, so if anyone can secure it it’s probably you.”

The antimeme flowed around them heavily, sinking tendrils into both of them—

“You can actually see it, can’t you,” Devo said, already knowing the answer.

“Yeah. I can. You’re a part of Aluatha’s Containment, aren’t you?”

“Ever since I was a child. Born into it. My defenses are still spellworks, though, and they break, and I feel them weakening already, so I will have to leave more discussion of the Picory to another day. Is there any chance Aluatha can get you to give that housebook to someone else, besides Eliot?”

Mark almost scoffed and spat, ‘no way’, but he gave the question actual thought.

Devo Stone was going to be a failure point for the war, but he was already deep in Containment, whoever those guys were, and he was a True Power now, thanks to Mark. Mark had only heard about Containment from Walaria, once, and it had been about the Picory antimeme, and how they fought against stuff like that all the time, but they fought the eldritch all the time… Hmm. Mark was feeling more and more confident that Devo was the right General to elevate to true power, but he didn’t like how the guy had just used the antimeme against Isoko and even New Tokyo.

Maybe Containment needed an unkillable soulhouse’d person?

But… No.

“No,” Mark said, “Because I’m going to give Eliot the book and also one of my own books of life. I’ll do the same for him. We both have Necromancer now, so if anyone can do it we can do it, so if either of us die we’ll revive with the other one.”

Devo nodded solemnly, saying, “That’s a fine plan. Moving on: How do you feel about me feeding you dryad targets and then you going Okuana, on your own, possibly shifting shape with that Adamantine Immortal body of yours, and then becoming an assassin? Not just dryads, either. Archmages would be good targets, too. If you would wish to deal with the fallout of the demonization of those killed archmages, then you could deal with that fallout. Or, you could let the demonized archmages run amok in Okuana’s backlines.”

“… I see and understand the strategic use of in enemy backyards, but no fucking way, sir, and don’t ask me to do any of that shit, ever.”

“The other option I gave you was to kill the demonized archmages.”

A hurtful anger rose in Mark’s chest, like fire burning cold. He said, “I don’t to be an assassin, unless you can figure out how I could assassinate Dominant.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Devo dropped a bomb, saying, “You have to kill all the dryads in Okuana to kill Dominant. He’s reborn from the nearest one, any time his main body is destroyed.”

“Fucking WHAT?!”

Devo continued, “We know how he survived all of our burnings in the past —because Aluatha did use to have dragons— but thanks to your trip to Endless Daihoon and all the information of your soulhouse you have shared with Walaria, we’re sure of a few different things.

“One, is that Dominant either doesn’t have a soulhouse, or that he doesn’t need orichalcum to grow his house, or it’s reached a size cap, because the international flow of orichalcum of Okuana is a well-documented thing that does happen. So if he doesn’t need orichalcum, then he probably doesn’t have a soulhouse. So he’s not being reborn from a soulhouse.

“Two, is that Dominant knows extensively about Resurrection magic, and books of life, and that he has stuck books of life inside of every single dryad he makes. They’re probably ‘libraries of life’, considering Dominant’s history and powers, but they’re still what we would call books of life.

“And three: We’re about 99% sure that this war is going to be Dominant apocalypse-ing the world many times over. He won’t take down the System itself, but he will kill everyone on the Two Worlds, if he can. That billion-death estimate I gave earlier? It’s probably a good estimate. And when that happens, Dominant will be reborn from the ashes.

“So while Isoko is expecting something magical, perhaps something to upend the entire world on its end, we know and are preparing for the 99%-event; a slog of a war, liberating city after city, and eventually cornering Dominant and then him pulling some dangerous shit. It might be 8 years before we get there.

“For the soldiers, there will be a lot of waiting around. I have several thousand men out there right now, on the eastern edge of Okuana, doing exactly that.

“For you, it will be months between engagements.”

Mark had a moment of despair.

Mark said, “Gods that sounds fucking…” He sighed, and decided to look on the bright side, saying, “Sounds better to have an apocalypse later than right now?”

“Quite so.”

… Mark had another moment. A better one. He decided, “I think you should make this war go as slow and as steady as possible, that way we can make our civilization strong enough to survive anything he can throw at us.”

General Devo Stone blanked, and then he said, “Huh.”

“… What?”

“I expected you to want to go faster. All the royals want shock and awe.”

“I want to out-civilization Dominant. I want to make everything so good out here that he’s .”

Devo thought a little bit, even as he said, “That’s one way to go about it.”

“What do you need from me to make the war happen safely? Minimal casualties on both sides.”

Devo said, “I’ll send you an email with details, but mostly Aluatha needs you on the backlines and ready to respond at a moment’s notice because I can make this happen a lot easier if I had an invincible adamantine dragon at my disposal. So what I is for you to get that house book to Eliot, and for our backlines to be secure.” He added, “But that’s for whenever you can get it down. For now, there are a lot of soldiers out there who are truly thankful for what you have done for them, and all of New Tokyo is right outside, and they’re also thrilled. It’s a work party, but it’s still a party. Can I introduce you to some of the people here?”

Mark hmm’d and kinda nodded, but then he said, “Normally I’d take that offer, but I have my own work to be doing.” He stood. “Do you want some of those True Spellbreakers for Containment?”

Devo Stone stood, saying, “No no no… thanks, but no. They interfere with our own magics.”

“It’s a design flaw I’m working on.”

There was more small talk, but Mark soon left the room alongside the General.

Devo went off with some guys from New Tokyo and Mark walked off with Isoko, headed toward the exit…

Mark paused, and looked toward Jessie.

The ‘Resurrection Ghost’ was nursing a fruity drink, sitting on a round couch in a corner, in a cordoned section of the main foyer of the Imperial Hotel—

“What ya thinkin’ bout?” Isoko asked, quietly.

Mark was reluctant in a lot of ways, for this was a public place and he could not show weakness around troops. Blackvein needed to be unassailable. Spies were everywhere, after all. But Mark didn’t want to be that kind of person. Everything was too serious. Isoko was scared. The war was going to take forever, or not nearly long enough. Dominant might pull a win out of his ass in a way no one expected or could even prepare for. A billion people would die.

Jessie could be the solution against that bad ending.

But that was a lot of responsibility to put onto a guy’s shoulder.

Too much.

Mark said, “I need to talk to Jessie again, but… Hmm.”

Isoko put her arm around Mark’s and then tugged him along for all of one step, toward Jessie, before Mark fell in line beside her. Isoko grinned, saying nothing. And then Cade was there again, giving way to Mark. Isoko stayed outside of the cordoned space.

Jessie looked up at Mark, his pink frozen drink dripping condensation down his hand, onto his black pants. His voice was kinda ragged as he muttered, “What do you want?”

Mark sat down on the round couch, saying, “I’m going to do some more Skilling here in New Tokyo for a few days, and then I’m off to solve some other problems. Once I’m done with that other task, I’ll probably be relegated to the back lines except in an emergency, which is what happened here with the blockage. So if you’re ever around Dawncoast, come on by. I’ll introduce you to Eliot. I’m going to try and get him a soulhouse. Maybe you can be in his cohort, so that you can go out and do stuff instead of being so chaperoned all the time.”

Because if Jessie was in Eliot’s cohort, that was just as good as Eliot having Resurrection himself, and Eliot wanted Resurrection. Mark had no idea how Eliot and Jessie would get along, but maybe… maybe it would be okay?

Jessie furrowed his brow, and then he asked, “What’s a Cohort? Like… a team?”

“Oh, shi— Ah. Sorry. There’s some background information— So, you know I have a soulhouse, right?”

“Uh… I’m not sure about anything right now. I’ve…” Jessie frowned at the floor, and then he looked to Mark, asking, “?”

Mark would let other people explain cohorts and soulhouses to Jessie. Mark said, “When the world goes to shit, when Dominant pulls his worldwide nuke plan, or whatever it is, I want to be able to count on you to revive everyone.”

Jessie paled, and then he puked to the side, emotions overwhelming him. Snot and tears came out and the guy blubbered incomprehensible words. The guards nearby turned and worried a bit, but Mark was there with some Purity/Impurity, cleaning up the mess, and the guards formed a blockade between Jessie, Mark, and the rest of the party.

“It’s too much, too much,” Jessie blubbered, wiping his face with the back of his hands, guards blocking sightlines. Cade put up a little silencing spell and the noise of the party vanished. Mark was pretty sure Jessie didn’t notice that at all as Jessie curled into himself, saying, “Worldwide nukes?! Is that really what’s going to happen? Oh my gods, oh my gods.”

He was freaking out, and badly.

“Breathe with me, Jessie. In and out,” Mark said, breathing in a Union of Good and Bad.

Jessie shuddered a breath. It was difficult for him, but he uncurled a bit, and Mark gently took his hands and set him up right, but Jessie’s lungs refused to fill. He was all out of breath, tears flowing freely.

Mark had a moment of reflection, sitting beside Jessie, who was also a young man, just a year younger than Mark, who had also been thrust into too much power, too young. For Mark, it was being a Tri-Talent. For Jessie, it was being the Resurrection Ghost. Aluatha had targeted both of them. Aluatha had failed to grab Mark. Aluatha had successfully grabbed Jessie, taking him into custody. Mark got to live in the real world for a bit, meeting people, meeting Freyala, meeting Isoko and Eliot and then getting with Sally again, and then there was all the rest. The Hero/Villain Program, learning to forgive Addavein, learning to fight and make his own mark on the world. Jessie only had his father, who was somewhere else right now, and Cade, who was his oversight, assigned to him by the people who had captured him.

They weren’t allowing Jessie to gain any real power, except the power they allowed him to have.

As Jessie’s emotions tensed his body, making him unable to breathe, to cry, to do anything but sit in his own horror, Mark recalled a moment of his own hopelessness, back in Citadel Freyala, when meeting Holy Mother Julia Garin, and what she had told him back then.

“A wise woman once helped me. Now, I help you,” Mark said, breathing in Union, letting his power falter at Jessie’s frozen astral body, at his tensed lungs. Mark did not force his way in. He just applied gentle pressure, saying, “Breathe with me, Jessie.”

Jessie cracked a little, pain flowing in dark miasma away from his body for just a moment, and then he tensed again. He couldn’t breathe at all.

Mark breathed deeply, saying, “We face so much sorrow in our lives. Accepting it and moving on is the only way to get through this or any other day. Breathe in! Breathe out!”

Jessie shuddered, cracking once again, tears flowing strongly. And then his emotions cracked and the Bad trickled out in thick almost-paste, flowing away like disintegrating snot. His lungs un-froze.

“Breathe in! Breathe out!”

Jessie breathed strongly, a horror of darkness flowing from him, out into the world, and Mark threaded that horror into the world, dissipating it back into the dream.

“In! Out! In with the Good, out with the Bad. There is nothing wrong with feeling overwhelmed. Everyone is overwhelmed now and again. But we keep at it. We keep living. We have to, both for ourselves, and for the people who love us, and who we love in turn. Keep breathing now. In and out. Good in, Bad out.”

“I couldn’t save all of them,” Jessie cried, a dam breaking in his mind, gushing darkness flowing away. “You can’t ask me to… to revive the world.”

“It’s a miracle you can save . You don’t have to be great. You just have to try.”

Jessie quietly said, “I wanted to be a Tamer but they wouldn’t let me ask you for that. They didn’t want me to possibly mind fuck the people I revived— but I would never do that! I wanted… I wanted monster friends. But all the monsters are monsters, aren’t they, and the ones that talk are even worse.”

“They tend to be… But…” This was probably a bad idea, but Mark said, “I could see about getting Goofy Goblin in touch with you?”

Jessie’s eyes lit up… and then he shook his head. He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, “Do you know where he is?”

“Nope.”

Jessie cracked a smile and then he laughed just once.

It would have been a better moment if it was a private moment, but the guards made it as private as they could.

Mark asked, “So what are you doing sitting by yourself over here?”

“Ah, fuck…” Jessie breathed out, shrugging. “I… I needed to be alone. Some guy… I don’t even blame him for what he said but…” Jessie quietly said, “I couldn’t revive the guy’s brother, and the guy is some high-up dude who… he said he understood, and he talked about his brother being a devout Verdago guy, so he was probably ‘farming rice in heaven’ but… Fuck, man. It just got to me.”

“Life is tough. Bringing people back to life has to be a whole new level of toughness.”

Jessie snorted, laughing once.

Mark smiled a little. “Don’t be a stranger, Jessie. Come on by Dawncoast anytime you want. Eliot will grill you about Resurrection, though.”

Jessie snorted, softly saying, “Yeah, I know… He…” Whatever he was going to say, he decided not to say it. Instead, he said, “Maybe they’ll let me come by! Who knows!”

Mark stood saying, “If you want me to break you out of here, keep in mind that I’ll only be breaking you out to take you to Dawncoast. I’m still a part of Aluatha for the next few years, and especially for the rest of the war.”

Jessie stood saying, “Ha! Yeah…”

Maybe he wanted to say something else, but he decided not to.

Mark left it at that.

Soon Mark was flying through the sky with Isoko, back to Wandering Castle.

Isoko asked, “So Jessie as a backup world revival, huh?”

“It’s the longest shot,” Mark said, putting a lot of meaning into that small phrase.

Isoko just nodded a little, her mind flowing away, toward her home, still about 20 kilometers away.

Mark changed the subject, asking, “Are you ready to go back to the compound?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be!”

Mark and Isoko both knew she was lying, but… it was what it was. Mark asked, “So you, uh, want to stay home when I go to the People maybe… two days from now? Not sure.”

The eldritch antimeme of the Picory people made Isoko say, “You shouldn’t go down there, either. The goblins might come back to the Greendeath mountains and no one wants that.”

… Mark moved on, trying to be cheerful, saying, “So about that old guy! Did you know him?”

Isoko was already excited before Mark even finished the question/comment, saying, “Oh my Freyala, Mark! You should know The guy practically invented the concept of modern day superheroes— Okay. Not ‘invented’, but he absolutely mainstreamed them here in New Tokyo. He’s the reason Crystal Tower exists at all! He’s like, the biggest supporter of superheroes in the entire Two Worlds!”

Mark suddenly stopped in the air, feeling like the world had fallen out from underneath him.

He gasped, “Oh my gods.”

“Yes!” Isoko said, laughing now, as she circled in front of him. With a wide smile she said, “And I got to talk in front of him! I could barely hold it together! You felt their vectors, right? I felt like I was going to crack and start confessing how I stole a soda when I was 10 and beat up a girl on the playground every other day for a month back in grade school."

Mark had a surreal moment, saying, “I thought they felt like ice picks, ready to break open everyone around them.” Mark shuddered. “And before that Stone felt like an uncle, or something almost warm.”

Isoko giggled. “I got to talk a bit with Umeda after we left early. He’s going to un-blacklist us from the HVP.”

“You did? Awesome!” Mark said, being enthusiastic for Isoko.

“He wants us to do a bunch of promos for a bunch of stuff.” Isoko waved a hand, brushing away the conversation, saying, “It’s a whole and I’m we came here, Mark.”

Mark easily agreed to that, saying, “Me, too.” He started flying again— “Councilor Umeda is something like 140 years old!”

“Yup!” Isoko readily guessed Mark’s question, almost teasing him as she asked, “You’re wondering why he’s still old, right? A guy that powerful has to know people, yeah?”

“Well yeah! That’s exactly it.”

Isoko grinned. “He did get younger in the 2000s, but they called him back to the Diet and he didn’t want to go, but he went anyway! They keep telling him to take the True Healer offering, but he knows that if he does he’ll truly never be able to leave office. He famously complained that the only way New Tokyo would allow him to leave the Upper House was in a casket.” She added, “He’s still as sharp as an adamantine blade, too, so I feel good voting for him again.”

“I guess so... So what did you think of Stone?”

Isoko glided alongside Mark, saying, “He was focused on that room with us because Umeda and you were both there, but his Powers— He’s a seer now, first of all. He was inside every soldier in that room, all of them connected by a subtle thread even more diffuse than my Sky Shaper. Sort of like how you described the Witches’ Welcome to us.”

Mark hmm’d, thinking back to the talk. And then he shrugged. “All I felt was a library of ten thousand minds inside of his own, each of them as sharp as Umeda. Makes me a lot more confident about the war.”

“Oh for sure! Absolutely,” Isoko said, softly smiling beside Mark.

And then Wandering Castle loomed on the horizon, just ahead, and Isoko tensed. Mark reached out and took her hand. Isoko smiled brightly and squeezed his hand. She looked confident on the outside, but inside she was scared.