Adamant Blood

Mark called out, “Quark! Can you hear me? Volume max! Is this a monster wave?!”

Isoko had killed two more wolves by the time Mark had asked that question to his AI, and now she killed some bat-like things that swooped at her.

But in the darkness of the forest, beyond the path, two more wolves simply ran past them.

Mark hadn’t noticed all the monsters running to the sides, avoiding Mark and Isoko, until that moment.

Mark stretched his Unionsense as wide as he could, pulling his adamantium inward to get the range in his Union that he had been missing. As he fended off a pair of giant rats, killing one and injuring the other, he felt a flow to the world that he hadn’t noticed here, in his and Isoko’s private battle with whatever came their way.

The forest was alive with vectors, like a river, and most of them were headed south. They were avoiding Mark and Isoko.

Quark still hadn’t answered.

Mark rapidly pulled Quark out of his bag to try and figure out what was happening—

The phone was dead, which should have been impossible, but maybe they had been hit by some sort of electrical attack earlier. Those flying eels, earlier? Any number of the hundreds of monsters they had killed might have fucked them up in ways they hadn’t even noticed. Mark shoved Quark back into the bag and told Isoko, “Hold on! I’m breaking the wave!”

Isoko backed up to Mark, standing behind him, guarding him with everything she had, fending off three rats—

Mark focused on a Union of Vein Decay, on the dance of electricity between himself and Isoko and the world, and in the brains of every single monster rushing their way. Black veins shot out from him, stabbing into the hearts and brains of every living thing directly in his line of sight, instantly killing hundreds of enemies.

The stronger ones survived.

Most collapsed anyway; even the strong ones.

The stronger ones that collapsed got run over by the ones behind them that were too strong to be dropped by the ‘simple’ destruction of their veins. In the dark forests to the sides, monsters still ran on, untouched.

Mark could have struck deeply into the monster wave. He could have extended his black veins into the world outside of his sight, to strike at every living thing for half a kilometer. But this was an active hunting zone, and he might hit a person. He wasn’t about to accidentally kill someone. The only monsters that died were the ones that Mark saw, directly.

The monsters kept coming. Mark killed more and more, and they began to pile up.

The monsters began to ignore Mark and Isoko, the strong ones racing by, leaping around the thing in the middle of the path with all the black veins. The monsters’ vectors even told Mark that he wasn’t in any danger from them; they were just running.

The monsters were crazed.

Those that Mark killed piled up into a crashing mountain in front of Mark and Isoko. A hundred meters of bodies, piled onto the path. Blood and roars filled the air. It was an apocalyptic sound. It was a horror of a situation. Mark almost wanted to run, too. Isoko’s vector was going wild with worry. She wanted to run away from the north as well.

Isoko cried out, loud enough for Mark to hear over the roar, “We need to ru—”

A silence flattened reality. All sound evaporated.

And then something roared in the distance.

Something shook the entire world.

Sound returned all at once as the stampede turned completely frenzied.

Isoko calmly spoke, her voice cutting through everything, “A kaiju is coming, Mark. Plans are forming to take care of it, but you must escape notice, for now. The pile of bodies is a big notice. The kaiju will want to eat it. Can you purify it away? I will help.”

Mark looked at Isoko and her eyes were glowing gold.

Freyala was here.

Mark flickered purity into the world, and Isoko was right there, hand to Mark’s shoulder, helping him. Black lightning shattered the highway full of dead monsters and some of the living ones, too.

“Very good,” Isoko said, smiling. And then the gold faded. Isoko blinked. She chuckled. “That’s a fucking rush. Okay. Uh. I think we need to move north as fast as possible. That’s the last impression I got.”

So maybe Freyala had been here more than just a little bit.

“North? Into the attack?”

“Yes,” Isoko said, very firmly.

“Well okay then!”

Mark understood enough.

He pulled his Union back, since most of the monsters were dead and all the rest were screaming in fear as they bulldozed through the forests to the sides. Mark spotted and grabbed a big hunk of wood, from some freshly-broken tree, grabbing it with bands of black metal and then securing it in the air beside Isoko—

Isoko wrapped herself around the tree, grabbing hold as she pointed to the north. “We have to meet up with someone! We’ll know who we’re meeting fast enough! 15 miles! Avoid everything! Go go go!”

Mark was already flying forward, racing into the stampede, avoiding the monsters by simply flying over almost all of them.

Slimes, wolves, glowing cats, cow-sized land octopuses, frogs, and low-flying monsters of all kinds from birds to big bugs, all flowed south.

Mark carried himself and Isoko north, into the dusty air—

Isoko pulsed, her heartbeat clearing the air of impurity. It was just a few meters around them, but Mark could see a lot better than he could before. It was more than enough to see what needed to be seen, because Unionsense told Mark what he needed to know, allowing him time to dodge incoming monsters in the dust long before he saw them.

Shapes loomed in the dust storm of the stampede, massive and crawling, smashing and crashing. Elephant-sized monsters that would not move unless they were moved in turn; Mark went around. Tall monsters, like massive spiders with legs that kept them up and away from the problems of the world below; Mark went under them. Shimmery things that were indistinct colors in the dust—

A school of monster fish flew into the bubble of clarity surrounding Mark and Isoko, slipping around them, vanishing back into the dust cloud. Some of the monster fish almost wanted to take bites out of Mark and Isoko, but then the whole school went on, and the almost-biters went with it.

Mark raced forward, unsure what he was aiming for—

Seemingly all at once, the sky cleared.

For miles in every direction, Mark saw the barren Earth and monsters, crazed and running away—

The kaiju.

It was a cloud, but not. It was a mountain, and not at all.

It was not there, and then it was there, its vector appearing out of nowhere.

The kaiju was the only thing that mattered at all. How had it gotten here so fast? Why hadn’t Mark seen it before? All the monsters had been running away from it, and Mark had thought them running scared, from a kaiju, yes. But now they were truly running, freaking out. All the vectors of all the monsters all around were pointed in every direction. The monster wave had turned crazed, because it had not been a monster wave at all.

Mark had read about kaiju being born, spontaneously.

That’s what had just happened, for sure.

Because the kaiju had not been there, it had not been a weight upon the world, but now…

All Mark could see, all he could think about, could feel at all, was the pull of the kaiju in the air.

Mark could only see parts of it at any one time, for if he looked at the left wing then he could not see the tip of the right wing. It was, predominantly, a bird. It was white and soft yellow, and at sunset it would have vanished, but it was 4 in the afternoon, the sky was blue, and the bird was as wide as the sky.

Eyes opened up alongside every frontal edge of its ten different wings. Its center mass was a collection of glowing spikes that trailed light from every tip, shredding the sky like prisms shredded lights into rainbows. The shredded sky worked differently from a normal sky. Rain, snow, winds, even flickers of night; all the variations of the sky appeared around the white, many-winged bird, in the prisms created by its central crystal spikes.

The kaiju sang.

The song undulated upon the world, echoing in and out like a soft refrain, a warble, and a lone violin note held way past its expiration date. It chilled. Snow fell across the land to the left of Mark and Isoko, like icicle needles. A few icicles pierced a few different large rats, killing them, freezing their bodies and turning them to snow that fell to the ground and layered. Some monsters escaped. Most did not—

“Use me as a shield, Mark. Right fucking now.”

Mark was appalled, and because of that he hesitated.

The snow storm drifted their way. Mark was still running forward, but now he drifted right—

Isoko leapt off of her log and landed on Mark, covering his head, holding on to him, saying, “Run faster! We have to get up there and support them!”

Support who?

Oh wait.

Them.

There was a settlement sitting in the way of the kaiju, and Mark had not seen it because it had been so small, so distant. But snow spikes landed on the city and some sort of city shield flashed in response, lighting up that small, small part of the world.

Snow spikes struck Isoko, on Mark’s back, like hammers coming down on an anvil, each one sounding out hard and heavy. One of them struck Mark’s arm and scraped across his skin, down his bicep, drawing blood. His arm chilled, ice filling his veins, but Mark purged that infection with a bit of purity and impurity. It worked well.

Isoko said, “We’re good. We can survive the small stuff. We need to support Redwolf up there. We’ll see her. You’ll have to do most of the work. Priests are already up there, trying to support her, but the thing thing— Ugh!” Isoko winced, her head jerking to the side. Mark felt ice roll down his face. “I’m fine. Just a hit. Not a puncture. The cold can't reach me.”

Mark was already running as fast as he could but he had no idea what he was running toward, except for the idea that he was running toward the Head Popper Queen of Wolf Bayou, in order to support her to pop the kaiju’s head, or something like that.

Mark complained over the roar of the kaiju song, “But it doesn’t even have a head! Can Redwolf actually do anything?!”

The kaiju was, like, 6 spikes of crystal, all laid against each other, like 6 ocean liners all bundled together, with countless mountain-sized feathered wings extending out from those crystals. Eyes opened everywhere.

It felt foolish to run toward the settlement up ahead, to run to Wolf Bayou, directly under the beast’s leading crystals—

Another vector flickered active to the left.

Mark only noticed that vector because it was pointed right at Mark and Isoko, and when the vector noticed them, it became the thickest vector in the immediate area. Whoever it was was focusing on Mark with almost all of their being.

It was a woman with a red wolf half-mask sitting on top of her head. Her pale, girlish face showed below the mask. She had on a death metal band shirt and black jeans, and she floated on top of a slick silver platform with a half-moon handlebar sticking up in front, her hands gripped on the handlebars.

Redwolf.

A man with a black wolf half-mask and wearing dark armor stood on the ground next to her platform, holding onto the platform, floating in a gloom that was only around him and the base of Redwolf’s platform. The man was wreathed in shadow, and so was everywhere he touched.

Redwolf commanded Mark and Isoko, “Stop where you are and Union link with me and with Blackwolf. We’re moving into position and killing the kaiju. Further instructions to follow.”

Mark was hesitant because he knew of Redwolf, but he also knew that she could kill kaiju, so she probably wanted to kill the kaiju, and Mark had to help her do that. So he stopped flying forward and linked with her and with the guy holding her platform, his heart beating with resilience and weakness—

The world flickered with shadow—

Mark was suddenly underneath the kaiju, looking up at the front edge of the beast, while he floated a meter off of a stone square in some sort of town. He pulled his adamantium inward. Isoko held on to his back, but she let go and fell to the ground. They were surrounded by people, all of them prepped for something. They were in Wolf Bayou, for sure, in the middle of an anti-kaiju squad.

Redwolf, and a whole lot of casters, or priests, or whatever. Paladins with breastplates, priests with robes and chainmail, and civilians, some in armor, some in clothes. All of them stood around the square, all of them stood at the ready, though all of them were scared. Some of the priests were focused on the walls of the city; they had to be Hearthswellians. Some of the paladins were focused on everyone else, the feeling of their astral bodies oh so familiar; Freyalans, for sure. Mark couldn’t place the other people who belonged to the various gods of the pantheon, but he recognized them as clergy—

The kaiju overhead sang a song of vibrating ice and rain. The intangible magical roof of the city sparkled and cracked as ten-meter-long spears of ice crashed down from on high. The city shields held.

The Hearthswellian priests faltered.

Mark instantly got to supporting them, connecting to everyone that he could reach, vibrating with his own brain, blood, and breath, a dance of resilience and weakness. Power flooded through Mark, into the world, into the population of Wolf Bayou. He wasn’t sure how far he had reached, but he reached for everyone he could.

The effect was immediate.

It was like he had set off a bomb of shared power.

Everyone straightened up.

Redwolf giggled, chuckled, and then she roared with laughter. She called out, “That’s the fucking GOOD STUFF!” She roared at the monster overhead, “FUCK YOU, KAIJU!”

Mark felt, saw, and sensed, in every way he could, something strange.

Redwolf’s existence flickered red, like an inward pulse; a drop of water landing on a multidimensional surface but in reverse. Mark heard something distant. He saw one of the inner ice spires that made up the center of the winged, spear-like, eye-covered kaiju, simply break in the middle.

A shockwave rushed outward, taking multiple seconds to reach Wolf Bayou. And then the wave reached the city, popping the bubble overhead, completely exposing them to the kaiju—

The world filled with a song of ice and rain and deadly night—

The Hearthswellian priests began to chant in another language and the bubble began to reform, slowly, like crawling light reaffirming itself over the tiny city far beyond the walls of Memphi—

The kaiju’s song turned muted, once again—

“Kid,” Redwolf said to Mark, suddenly there, floating beside him on her silver platform. “Focus. Keep doing what you’re doing, but more. That thing has 5 brains left. I need to pop 5 more brains up there. Focus on me. Give me everything you can. Right now.”

Mark set down onto the ground, sitting down, pulling his adamantium in all the way to rest against his skin. And then he flowed Union outward. Mark became one with the world, with the city of Wolf Bayou. It was not a large place. Maybe a few miles across. Mark managed to cover at least half of it. He touched the vectors of everyone present, gathering their hopes for life, their hate against the kaiju, bringing them together in a Union.

To unite them against the force in the sky.

To unite them under Redwolf.

He even brought the kaiju into its own destruction.

Mark had connected to a kaiju before, to Addavein. It was easy to connect to a kaiju, really.

Their physical bodies were way too distant to connect to at all. Multiple miles away. Ten or twenty, or however far away they were. This crystal-spike eye-wing kaiju was no different in that regard. It was high in that sky, for sure.

But its astral body was everywhere, like a suppressing, fearful power, driven into the land, into the hearts of everyone, everywhere.

Mark connected to that beast, too, and it didn’t even notice Mark’s touch.

It was like tapping into another world of power, there for the taking. An endless font of everything that Mark could ever need to make it kill itself. Mark gave that strength to Redwolf.

“There we go,” whispered Redwolf, her astral body seeming to turn visible, red, in the air around her. She spoke, and her voice sounded in Mark’s mind just as much as in his ears, “That’s even better than before.” She asked, “You canceled the fear effect?”

Mark couldn’t speak right now, but Redwolf understood what she needed to understand. Mark wanted to nod.

He was absolutely sure that many other people in the square nodded instead.

All of the people in the square were focused on Redwolf, on supporting her in some way, and Mark was no different right now. Black veins extended out to everyone within the square, but mostly toward Redwolf.

Redwolf breathed strongly, and then she looked upward. She winced. “This is gonna fucking suck, I can already tell.”

Like five ripples in the world, Redwolf became the epicenter for five separate inward splashes of red light.

Far, far overhead, the kaiju became the actual center of Redwolf’s detonations.

The five remaining crystal spires that made up the bodies of the kaiju all cracked in half.

The thing died. The song ended. Just like that. Five bombs for five heads; set off and sending shockwaves across the world. The thing died instantly and Mark lost most of the Union he had been tapping into for power.

The world relaxed.

But now, the monster was falling to Earth.

Mark felt kinda floaty.

Redwolf started shouting orders and people started to fulfill them. She yelled about how it wasn’t coming down on them, and that they were fine. Mark wanted to believe her, but that thing was too big, and—

Light bloomed in the sky; a thousand explosions, a thousand crashes and a thousand more ripping tears on the very fabric of reality itself. It was enough to nudge the kaiju’s falling body backward, back north, toward open land.

Redwolf held her head, blood flowing from her nose as she roared into a tech-thing on her floating platform, “Brace for impact! Kaiju fall! Kaiju fall!”

It was a quake, a dust storm, and a hurricane, one right after the other. The wards over the city broke twice, but they came back online each time. Mark was there, just off center of it all, feeling out the city and holding the people together as best he could, everything focused on resilience and weakness, but it was a lot harder to do without the countersink of the kaiju itself.

Somehow, minutes passed in raging sound and falling stone, and Mark lay on the ground, staring into the dusty sky. He wasn’t sure how he ended up on the ground, but here he was, on the ground. Was it over? It was over, right?

Mark gradually pulled his power back, turning off his Union of Brain first, and then pulling back his Union of Blood—

“Keep it going, please,” Redwolf said.

She was sitting on the ground next to Mark.

Mark was not sure how that had happened.