Mark walked back to his ‘cell’ in the main acolyte dormitories, in ‘Building 5’.
Orissa walked with him.
Mark asked, “We’re really under magical quarantine here on Earth?”
“Oh yes,” Orissa said, “No one asked about it directly, but you know those stories about millions dying to mana poisoning in the beginning of the Reveal? That was not due to a mana baptism, exactly, but more due to people Awakening to weird, bad Talents, and even a Knack can be really bad.
“During the Reveal —and also for most Daihoonian kids these days— people would Awaken to everything from the ability to speak to bugs, to the ability to kill with a touch. That first one might seem weak, and the second one might seem strong, but that would be incorrect thinking. What is a bug? Can you look at a monster, and think ‘ew, look at that bug’ even if the monster is a kaiju? Can a bug-talker speak to the kaiju, and thus get them to move around as they want? Inflame them to anger, or whatever? What is ‘touch’ and can you touch yourself?
“So yeah. It’s easy to get bad Talents. Thus: Curtain Protocol, and most people getting brawny when they Awaken. We chose not to tell people about what might randomly cause a kid to develop touch-me-kill-you talents and the like, and in doing so, we prevent almost all of those sorts of incidents.”
… Huh.
Orissa smiled. “But enough of that! Did you experience a power activation?”
Mark held his arms out, wiggling his fingers. “… No?”
“Have you been trying at all?”
Mark said, “No. I was… Occupied.”
Still was occupied, really.
“Understandable. Want to talk to a therapist? We have those.”
“No.”
… Maybe Mark had said that a bit too roughly.
Orissa smiled and moved on, “Well! When you do experience your first power activation, it’ll probably fuck you up a lot. Adamantium is incredibly magically dense, and you have some of that in your bones. We’ll go over this stuff tomorrow, but kinetics… Hmm. We’ll go over that tomorrow. Just don’t freak out if you get an activation and end up falling flat on your face and completely unable to move. That happens all the time with baby kinetics, and your experience is going to be worse than most.”
Mark smiled to see Orissa care. “I don’t know much about it, but I do know that overtaxing powers ends up with a person crashing out—” He realized something. “That’s because their astral muscles are tired, eh? They literally can’t stand up anymore? Or at least their astral body can’t?”
Orissa hummed, then said, “I might have used the muscle analogy too much. I consider my own power more of a blob that fades out when it's tired. Some people think of their power as the thickness of ice on a frozen lake, and so it works until it fails. Or the heat of water, and it works until it gets too cold. Or a particular sound that they can summon and then they have to let go when it becomes too much of a strain to hold. Stuff like that. Astral bodies do not cleave to physics so don’t go ascribing understandings where understanding don’t exist. Astral bodies don’t really get tired, either. Once you learn your power and grow some, you’ll always have it available at some base level.” She added, “And that’s not even touching upon what magic can do. Magic can do a lot of weird shit.”
Mark nodded as he looked ahead, thinking, his mind filled with thoughts of how everything worked.
He found himself walking in silence, and Orissa smiling softly to his side.
She dropped him off at his dorm room and then left to go elsewhere.
Mark lay in bed, thinking.
He held his hand in the air, looking at his fingers…
He made a fist and imagined crushing that dragon.
He grinned—
He thought of Mom and Dad and almost had a breakdown, so he got back up and went out… to the dining hall? No. Mark stopped in the hallway, turned to the right. No. He wasn’t hungry. He turned around and went… That way. Down that hall, wherever it might go.
He wasn’t sure.
All he knew is that he couldn’t be alone with his thoughts right now. Probably not for a very long time, actually—
Oh.
There was a sign on the wall that pointed toward the gym, the pool, and the spa.
Mark went back to his room and put on some gym clothes, trying not to think about how his usual gym clothes were burned in nuclear fire and—
Mark strode down the hallway, feeling fine in some gym shorts, a shirt, and some shoes. His COFR-issued phone in a pocket. He didn’t have a wallet anymore—
Stop thinking about it all, Mark.
He stopped in his tracks, his breath coming hard, and then he turned around and went back to his room. People gave him some looks, but Mark barely paid attention to those people.
Once he was back in his room he shut the door and asked his phone, “Citadel of Freyala Resources, I need to speak to… to someone—” Ice terror ripped into Mark’s chest as he thought about talking of the Tutorial and Addashield and all that shit. He couldn’t talk about that yet. Mark rapidly changed his mind. “I want something to do. Something productive. Can you… help with that?”
His phone glittered gold and the same feminine voice as before said, “Would you like to take Union-power specialized classes and work on healing duty in your downtime? Union is the name of the power that Emily Turner unlocked in her mana baptism, that she used to become Freyala, and as such we can help you begin to understand that power more than most.”
For a moment, Mark recalled the stories he had been told about Freyala, and her rise during the Mana Baptism Crisis after the Reveal, when Emily Turner became a goddess of Protection and Healing. He had never heard of her human-born power be called ‘Union’… and come to think of it, he had never heard her human-born power named as anything at all.
All those stories simply called her a Healer.
Ah.
The Curtain Protocol.
Mark wondered how much truth of the world he had missed growing up in a human settlement on Earth, where everyone was kept in the dark so that they’d turn out brawny, for both their own safety and the safety of all the people around them. To be… fair, Mark supposed… To be fair, brawny was pretty good at just making you healthy and able to survive a lot of problems.
But Mark felt like all the world was different, now.
Like he was an alien in a strange land, that almost looked like home, but not quite. He was in France, true, in a citadel to a god that he didn’t believe in, but that only explained part of what Mark was feeling. The shift to adulthood was not supposed to be this… this disruptive.
He needed to call Mom and—
More ice in the gut.
Mom was dead.
Mom and Dad had wished him luck in life. They had said goodbye, one final time. They wanted him to be happy, and not consumed by revenge. Could Mark even do that?
After a long moment of sitting there on his bed, in his room, both of which were not his because he was just borrowing them, Mark looked at the phone that was also not his, and he tried to stop thinking about home. About Gladegrove and Orange City and—
Mark stopped thinking about death and lost lives, and said, “Yes. I want to learn about Union.”
- - - -
Mark walked down the large hallways of Central Citadel like a thief.
That was the only way he could think about it, since every checkpoint he encountered was more manned than the one before and the elevators didn’t have buttons; the golden light on Mark’s phone got him through all of it. A few times COFR had even told him to show his phone to the guard behind a desk. The guards simply glared at him, wondering what the fuck a nobody in basic brown clothes was doing this high up in Central Citadel, but the golden light let him through.
Mark stepped out of a very nice elevator into an even nicer hallway, high in the tower, and knew that he should not be here. COFR had to be playing a trick on him. The central AI of Citadel Freyala was as no-nonsense as all AIs, but she was clearly having fun with some of these directions. This hallway was filled with plush furniture, and he was pretty sure he had seen someone walk down that hallway back there in bedsheets.
This was a residential area of some sort.
COFR spoke from his phone, “Turn right here and walk into the waiting room. Request some refreshments from the servitor behind the bar. You might be staying here for half an hour.”
The waiting room was not a waiting room.
It was a private coffeehouse/library, with big plush cushions on big couches and big chairs with nice tables, and everything was stone and wood and truly expensive. A rather normal-looking servitor floated behind the coffeebar. Mark had never seen a servitor before, except on television. This one was matte-grey, with spheres for a head, chest, and pelvis, and all the other joints on its body, while the limbs and fingers were made of bright silver hollow columns. It had a glowing light above its head, and its face read COFR.
COFR’s light drained from Mark’s phone and her feminine voice spoke from the servitor, “Would you care for a coffee, Mark Careed? Or perhaps something else?”
Mark had no idea what he wanted, and he didn’t really like coffee, but maybe that was because he had never had a good coffee? Mark asked, “Can you make a good coffee?”
A very old woman walked into the room behind Mark, easily saying, “No need to start on that habit yet, dear.” She said to the servitor, “Milk tea for both of us.”
The woman wore white and gold robes in a simple cut, so she didn’t instantly trigger Mark’s knowledge of any particular strong people, but she was accompanied by a strong man in full embossed silver armor, and holy shit Mark recognized that guy.
He was Justicar, the hand of Freyala. Serge Garin. One of the true superheroes of the world.
He wore his helmet on his belt.
Justicar narrowed his eyes at Mark, and then said to the woman, “I would prefer to stay for this, mother.”
Oh holy crap.
This was High Priestess Julia Garin. The spiritual leader of the Church of Freyala.
The High Priestess smirked as she noticed Mark having a minor panic attack, and then she told her son, “Team Mithril will be here in four hours, Serge. That’s not a lot of time.”
Ah, Mark thought. Team Mithril, of Crystal Tower. Ah. Big Names all around.
Justicar harrumphed. “Very well.” He turned and walked away.
The servitor floated to a nearby table and set down a tea set that Mark hadn’t even noticed being prepared.
High Priestess Julia Garin moved and sat down, saying, “Come join me, Mark.”
Mark found himself sitting down across from the spiritual leader of Church Freyala, and now that Mark wasn’t dumbstruck, he saw how the world bent around her with a golden light. It was subtle. It was there. She sipped her tea and Mark sipped his, as was obviously customary but Mark couldn’t place why he realized it was customary. The tea was probably delicious. Mark couldn’t taste anything right now.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Garin smiled softly as she set down her cup. “I have heard you wish to kill Addashield’s dragon.”
Mark’s usual fear of social interaction evaporated entirely. “I do. I heard something about him gifting adamantium in return for… for whatever. Will the world accept him?”
“We will accept him, and we have. We routinely hunt and kill dragons of all kinds, but some dragons are simply too valuable and cooperative to kill, even if they did kill thousands to become what they became. Addashield’s High Dragon is no different. In fact, he might be one of the dragons who can truly go the distance, and become a Hero of Humanity, like 98% of him used to be.”
Mark controlled his anger as much as he could, which was not a whole lot, really.
“Why does everyone think that Addashield is gone? He’s still there! He’s still that dragon! He should be exiled and pursued till death for what he did!” Mark lowered his voice. “He needs to die, or else the world simply doesn’t make sense at all.”
Julia Garin mostly ignored Mark’s outburst.
Mark tried to ignore his own outburst, too.
Julia hummed, then asked, “Tell me… If you take flour, eggs, sugar, and assorted other things, and you mix them all together, do you get a cake? Or do you have ‘flavored flour’? They are not the same thing at all, mind you. One is a chemically-created object that is wholly different from its start. The other is flavored flour.”
Mark said, “ ‘Flavored flour’ is just as true as ‘cake’.”
High Priestess Julia Garin grinned. “I suppose in some ways, yes… But in conventional wisdom, Addashield is already dead. He joined completely with his demon, astral bodies merging. The dragon is not even immortal anymore, because it’s not a demon. So many things change in the creation of a dragon that many nations of Daihoon and even Earth, don’t consider what comes afterward to be the same person that came before. Even memories are different. The creation of a dragon is almost always a disastrous affair, which is why it is very illegal, but Addashield’s dragon is trying so very hard to become a Hero of Humanity once again.
“Among his known accomplishments, he killed 3 kaiju storms, and he has gifted 1,500 kilos of adamantium to several different organizations across the globe. Even with just that gesture of adamantium alone, he would already be considered a Hero of Humanity many times over.
“Your revenge is dead in the crib, Mark, because unless the dragon does something horrible, then no one is going to fight him. It would be too costly, by far; in resources-to-kill, loss of potential future resources, and in lives.”
… What?
Adamantium was important, yes. But… Mark still wasn’t sure how important, exactly…
That little cube that Mom and Dad had given over to Orange City for first citizen rights was worth 4-ish million goldleaf, though? So that was a good approximation of… what 1500 kilos of adamantium would be worth?
A lot. That’s as far as Mark got with that math.
… Fuck.
Mark moved on fast, saying what he had said to David and Orissa earlier this morning, “I want to be there when proves himself a horror.”
“And I want you to focus on something other than him.”
“… Sure. I’ll lie about moving on.”
Mark had known the words were a mistake the second they left his mouth.
Julia smiled brightly, but there was little kindness in that smile. She had decided that Mark was an idiot.
She said, “I’m going to be mean to you, and then kind, and maybe we’ll speak again some other day.” She dropped her smile, and Mark felt cold. “It is unbelievably arrogant that you think you could do anything at all against him, and that you did not do exactly what the world needed you to do. You were in a tough position and you suffered; yes. People died. People very important to you died.
“This is still a good outcome.
“You even spoke of your own sacrifice in the name of bringing Addashield back to us. Back to humanity.
“Your sacrifice worked!
“I have it on good authority that your parents were aware of this possible outcome, too, and they chose to go along with what the world needed of them as well.
“Know this, Mark: I have sent thousands to their deaths against monsters, all to save the rest of us, orphaning babies and widowing wives and making widowers out of husbands. Any true leader would do the same. Any true human would volunteer to be the ones sent out to their deaths.
“This time, the person left to suffer is you, and we all thank our patrons that you managed to pull a miracle out of your ass and only cause a 2% demonification of Addashield. That much is perfectly acceptable. So take heart that you did kill Addashield. He did do the right thing and he did sacrifice himself instead of allowing the demon to take over, for I highly doubt he was ever going to be allowed to return to the Old Contract at all.
“The man and the demon who killed your parents is dead at your hands.
“Addashield is dead.
“His son works to erase the freshly-known sins of his father, and to stand where his father once stood. He would not be the first dragon to attempt this sort of reconciliation with his birth-people. He will not be the last. He is certainly doing a better job of it than most historical examples.”
Mark probably should have withered at all of that. Julia was certainly accomplished at giving a tear down. But instead, Mark found himself asking, “Can you get to the part where you’re kind?”
Julia moved on, saying, “Union is one of the strongest known powers, and you are lucky to have unlocked it without going through the Chosen system. You didn’t need Freyala to give it to you. You have it yourself. This gives you variety unmatched by a normal priest, but you will need to make this power your own without utilizing the training wheels Freyala gifts to those who go through the Chosen system.
“The first lesson is still the same, though.
“The first lesson in Union is about linking yourself to the world and then breathing in the good health and breathing out the bad health. It’s all very meditative.
“Breathe with me now.”
She breathed in, deeply.
Mark tried to breathe in, and he felt himself shuddering instead. He was furious, and yet, he was a lot more than furious right now. He was bereft. Lost. Hating everything, and wanting revenge. But he was also human, and he saw that Julia was trying to help him. Actually help him. In her own way, in the way she knew how; with an iron hand and tough words.
Julia breathed out, “And then you breathe out the bad. Exhale now.”
Mark breathed out, and he shuddered on exhale, too.
Something broke inside of him. Some fragile barrier that he had managed to erect between himself and his sorrow.
The tears came again.
He shut his eyes as hard as he could, but the tears still flowed.
“Let them flow, Mark!” Julia said.
And Mark opened his eyes. Tears flowed.
Tears streamed down Julia’s face, too, as she said, “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. Now breathe in!”
Mark tried to breathe in and he mostly succeeded.
“Exhale the bad!” Julia breathed out a lot of hot air, and for some reason Mark found that funny.
He laughed.
Julia smiled a little.
Mark still shuddered as he exhaled as much ‘bad’ as he could.
“In!
“Out!
“In with the good!
“Out with the bad!
“In again! Out again.”
Julia breathed with rhythm, opting to let the sound of her active breathing do all the talking.
Mark breathed with the Head Priestess of Freyala for a while. He wasn’t sure when the tears stopped, but they stopped. They dried. Julia looked like a grandmother again, and not the High Priestess that she was. She smiled as she breathed.
And Mark felt better. He didn’t understand how he felt better, but he did. It was probably magic. It was probably Union, yes. But it was also just a person talking to another person, trying to help them understand.
Eventually, Julia slowed.
Mark slowed, too.
Julia softly said, “That’s the first lesson. Link with the goodness in the world all around you, and throw your badness away into the wind. All the world can handle your tiny problems, and give you what you need to heal yourself in turn. That’s the basic truth of it all. This is the basic way to learn this type of healing magic. It’s also one of the best types of healing magic, because this type of healing magic requires you to heal yourself, first.
“A healer of Freyala is never the first to fall, and thus, they can support all the others around them, no matter what horrors assail us all.
“You will eventually be an adamantium rock in the storm, Mark. You just need time for the fires of your forging to cool down. You just need time to heal.” Julia asked, “Do you understand?”
Mark didn’t lie when he said, “Intellectually, yes.”
Julia nodded. “That’s good enough for now.” She stood up, and when Mark tried to stand, she said, “No no. The tea here is good. Finish your tea. Have more if you wish. I have work to do, but that doesn’t mean you must leave. The reconstruction effort for Orange City is already underway, but it starts as all reconstruction efforts do, with monster killing. The Church is helping by sending healers to support the teams in the area. But that’s just the least of our daily efforts here, Mark.
“We’re also sending healers to Daihoon all the time, fortifying parties so that they don’t go off and get themselves killed, and also fortifying cities against monster incursions with healers on the walls and paladins on the front lines. Our Inquisitors routinely hunt and kill Fallen, and those campaigns always cost tens of lives, if we’re lucky. The hunts for Addashield’s hidden dragons continues. We’re working with Drakarok’s people there, and many others. When Addashield descended he broke a lot that he had been maintaining all his life. All of humanity is fixing everything that we can. I organize much of the higher level problem-solving of our church, Mark. I have to decide which people die where today, spending lives so that civilization survives.
“With luck, and power, most of those people will survive solving the problems I send them against, like how you survived Addashield. I am sorry about your parents.”
Mark sat stunned at pretty much all of that, but especially the last part.
High Priestess Julia Garin nodded, knowing she had made many points. She left.
Mark sat there, thinking. When he sipped his tea again it was cold.
It was still good tea.
He was being very fucking stupid for blaming himself for Addashield’s actions, wasn’t he. Shit. He had had no control at all over any of that, did he... Mark’s thought stilled as he felt ice knives in his stomach and all across his spine, yet again. He didn’t want to admit that this was the ‘good outcome’ at all.
And yet…
He wanted to believe the High Priestess. He wanted to believe that he had done everything he could.
But he missed his parents.
Mark sipped his tea. The servitor refilled his cup while he was staring off into space, and Mark drank the refill too. It was better when it was warmer. Mark breathed. In, out, in, out. The breathing exercises helped a lot, apparently.
Very meditative.
Mark made a decision.
He would hold onto his rage, but he would also set it aside. It would smolder in the back of his mind, fueling the rest of his decisions in life, but he wouldn’t let it control him like it had controlled him just now. He had blown up in the face of High Priestess Julia Garin. That was simply… simply unacceptable.
She was right about a lot.
Mark was used by Addashield to get what he wanted, which was complete evasion from his crimes. Was the High Dragon that came afterward Addashield, or not? Was the High Priestess lying to Mark about that, to make him choose a better path in life? Or was she telling the truth, and Addashield truly was gone? And all that remained was ‘Addashield’s son’?
Mark didn’t know.
Whatever the case, Mark didn’t matter to Addashield.
The archmage’s actions weren’t personal. Mark was just a stupid kid thinking he could change the world for the better, and Addashield had used him… And what about the other three people he had lined up for Tutorial? They all died, didn’t they? Mark hadn’t heard about them at all. They were certainly dead.
Addashield was completely derelict in his duty to the world. He was a Hero to Humanity and Mark thought that meant something… something better than what it had turned out to mean. But Addashield had been using people for a long time, and then killing kaiju and otherwise to… To hide his crimes beneath layers of blinding adoration from others? Or to make up for his crimes? Did he feel guilty at all about what he did to survive?
He had poisoned the world with hidden dragons, all for the sake of his own skin, which he sold to a demon for power when he was young and stupid…
Ah.
Just like Mark had sold his life to an archmage, hoping for power.
It was not wrong to want power, though. Power was how people saved themselves from monsters. Power was the true currency of the world.
Mark laid his head onto the table, muttering, “Fuck.”
He sat like that for a little while, and then he sat upright, finished off his cold tea, and asked COFR for guidance out of there, back to his room.
Dinner in the great hall was pretty good.
When dinner was done Mark sat in his room, alone and thinking.
And he breathed; sometimes with purpose and meditation, bringing in the good and expelling the bad, and sometimes just laying there, thinking. Breathing meditation actually helped a lot. Mark wasn’t sure if that was because of the meditation-aspects of it all, or if simply breathing was truly the first lesson in understanding his Union Talent.
Mark had never been distrustful of people in power before. Not really. Sure, you hear about bad things happening every now and then, but it’s always to someone else. Mark wanted to trust High Priestess Julia Garin, but in the very same talk where she told him breathing was the first step in Union, she also told him that she would be sending people to their deaths today, in order to protect civilization.
Did those people she sent to their deaths know she was sending them to their deaths? Or would they only find out in the dying, what had been done to them? Did they make their own decisions to go out there, like Mark had?
Eventually, Mark decided to take a shower.
It wasn’t until he was taking off his sweatpants that he realized he had met with the High Priestess of Freyala in gym clothes.
Mark laughed to keep from feeling mortified.
He smiled as he imagined Mom berating him for showing up for an important meeting in gym clothes, while Dad would be saying that Mark couldn’t have helped it, because he thought he was just going to meet someone in the School of Healing. Maybe Mom would have allowed that, but she’d tell Mark that he should have asked COFR who he was meeting, so he could have at least blamed his clothes on COFR instead of his own unknowing.
The shower felt good.
Mark went to bed exhausted.