The goblin from Daihoon bled from ten different wounds, red trickling down green skin onto white webs, inside the hive mind spider’s lair.
Hundreds of its brothers lay broken and dead on the ground. All of them were a little fuzzy and with big eyes and many legs. Some of them were wrapped in silk, the results of the last weeks of probes and failures. Most of them had no weapons at all, the result of the last few days of attack. Some had spears.
The goblin from Daihoon had a rusted sword, and it had been enough.
It advanced toward the enemy.
The hive mind spider, the size of a large room in a small dwelling, was crippled even worse than the goblin. The goblin grabbed at an almost-dead brother and bit his head off. He nibbled on the rib cage. He ate the heart. Within moments, the goblin from Daihoon was healed and walking tall. It raised its sword and advanced.
The spider was legless. Eyeless. Most of its sharp needle-hair was gone. It had one fang left, but it was using that one to crawl away. Its juicy, juicy body was untouched. No wounds at all on that big white butt. It was fat and white and the goblin leapt onto the big part of it. The hive mind spider chittered in impotent fury. The goblin got a few stinging hairs into his feet for his trouble, but that was no trouble at all.
His mouth salivated, his transformative power gathering strong.
He bit into the prey, drawing ichor from the beast. The beast hissed loud, and weakly.
The goblin leapt away.
Hidden deep within an old human city of columns, arches, stone, and destroyed homes, the goblin laughed, and he waited. His brothers gathered out of the gloom, to watch the death of the enemy.
The mind spider’s body eventually stopped moving.
And then its insides started wriggling.
- - - -
“We’re going to my ancestral home!” Eliot said, standing outside of Mark’s room.
Eliot had brown skin, brown hair, and amber eyes, with a wiry body under expensive, yet kinda trashy-looking clothes. He was casual right now.
Mark was in his boxer shorts.
Mark blinked out sleep from his eyes and looked past the short man, to the dimmed hallway lights. The sun was not up, and in fact everything was rather dark. Reddish. Citadel was primed for night guard. Mark looked Eliot in his happy face again. Mark tried to be enthusiastic, as he asked, “Sorry? What?”
“We’re going to Rome for the training mission! In 8 hours! The details just came through the wire! I had to fly the drone over and tell you!” Eliot chided him, “And why are you in boxers? Why are you asleep this early? It’s only midnight!”
“The real question is ‘why are you awake?’, because you should be sleeping, too.”
“I sleep enough! And I’m excited! Rome is amazing! Lots of weird monsters. Maybe we can even find and kill that giant hive mind spider!”
Eliot got real enthusiastic sometimes, and normally Mark loved it, but not right now.
“They told us that we’d be headed out tomorrow and sleep was important, and details would follow. We don’t need to know the details right… Eliot…” Mark blinked again, eyed some weirdness with Eliot, and then he reached out and touched Eliot’s face. His hand went through the face, disturbing the hologram and flickering broken light into the air. He pulled back and sighed. “You are in bed right now, aren’t you.”
“Yes! But I can’t sleep. Let me in. I want to talk about Rome!”
“If I let you in you’ll talk for hours…” Mark smiled sleepily. “No. I’ll see you in 4 hours, Eliot.” He closed the do—
Eliot pleaded, “I want to talk about Rome! And what you’re going to wear for the camera!”
Mark scoffed. “See you later, Eliot!”
Mark shut the door, scratched his abs, and yawned.
He heard Eliot’s mostly-silent drone fly away outside.
… What time was it, anyway? Mark checked his phone. Oh yeah. 1:12 AM.
‘It’s Midnight’, huh, Eliot? Phhsh!
Mark collapsed back in bed and he hoped that Eliot put down the phone and did the same.
Hours later, Mark woke up refreshed and excited.
It was time for a training mission!
- - - -
Mark hopped off of the tram near the hover port. Cars and vans took off into the sky, picking up and dropping off people from designated circles on the wide, open ground. A lot of the people wore acolyte white, hugging people goodbye and then flying away, or people in civilian clothes coming into Citadel with a paladin or instructor escort, their eyes looking everywhere that they could. Paladins in silver armor hopped into big hovervans, the large, brick-like vehicles rushing off with their armored force to wherever it was they were needed.
To the side were assorted buildings; prep areas, mostly. Mark headed that way.
He checked his phone and navigated past paladins in armor, healers in silver-trimmed robes, and families who had their kids in tow. Mark wasn’t sure what was going on with that last one, because kids needed to stay inside cities, but the parents or whatever probably knew what they were doing.
Mark found the designated meeting room. Down a hallway, at the end on the right, was a small room that held a long table and some stools in the corner. A projection screen held to the side of the room. It currently showed a projection of a last-taken aerial composite photograph of Rome.
In the Old World, Rome had been a major metropolitan area, scattered with the ruins of ancient Rome right alongside modern pizza places and whatever.
In the modern world, almost 80 years after the Reveal and the flooding from Daihoon, and the complete melting of the ice caps of the poles, the ocean had risen something like 23 meters. Or at least those were the agreed-upon numbers according to the Two World History that Mark was studying, now that he was beyond Curtain Protocol. The flood took years to happen so people saw it coming but it still killed a lot of people. Maybe even more than the monsters, according to some sources.
A lot of people scoffed at that idea.
The World History books kinda threw their hands up and said that no one really knew final death counts.
The flood had come through Rome pretty strongly.
It was a city divided by an ocean. The River Tiber, the river that ran through the city, had become an inland sea more than a real river; the Mediterranean invading the land like fat lightning.
Rome was uninhabitable now, but people still flocked to it to steal whatever they could, or die trying. It used to be a great place of art and stuff, though Mark didn’t know anything about it, for sure. And so, since Mark was the only one here, he took out his phone and started researching.
Ten minutes later an exhausted Eliot stood in the doorway, his eyes dark, his voice haggard. “I stayed up too late. Please help.”
Mark smiled, and then he activated Union, the veins of his astral body flickering out from his skin with every beat of his heart, pushing out the bad in vein-like strands of miasma and taking in the good. He linked to Eliot, and soon, Eliot’s haggard demeanor began to shift softer. His eyes brightened, his shoulders unslumped. He smiled and walked into the room and plopped down in a chair across from the projection of Rome, his baggy cargo pants not crunching at all, which, based on how much stuff he kept in there, was still strange that it never made noise.
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Mark said, “Welcome back to wakefulness.”
Eliot said, “This right here. This is why I want Union the most. No more sleep!”
Mark scoffed. “Union is not a substitute for sleep!”
“It could be, but you like sleeping too much. Honestly I do not see the appeal if you can just flow away the bad and breathe in the good. Never have to sleep! Never worry about being tired! No worries about going insane from lack of sleep!”
Isoko stepped into the room, asking, “What’s going on with Eliot making bad decisions again?”
Eliot scoffed. “They just look bad if you don’t know me, but I plan and prep for everything!”
Isoko hummed, believing him, but not really.
Isoko was pale, strong, and Japanese, with starkly black hair in a layered bob cut and vaguely grey eyes. She wore basic brown clothes, like Mark. She had yet to become an acolyte of Freyala, even after being here for a few months and completing two training missions. This was going to be her third training mission, and Mark kinda wanted to know what Freyala was waiting on. Isoko was almost tier 3, if not already there.
“Eliot needed to forgo sleep again.” Mark linked to Isoko, too, helping her to recover from anything that might be affecting her, but she was fine, like usual. “And he wants to never sleep again, if he could help it.”
Eliot told Mark, “Traitor.”
Isoko sighed and summed up a conversation they had already had, “Everybody needs sleep, that way you can stress your astral body and physical body to your limits when needed and you won’t find your limits to be limited.”
“Blah blah blah~” Eliot said, “I was already on mission 8 hours ago.” With a dismissive, kingly wave, Eliot said, “You two are just now catching up to me. Therefore, I should be blessed with all the refreshments and no-more-bathrooms-or-showers that I require. And speaking of which! Please, Mark, if you would be so kind.”
Mark chuckled and then pulsed purity/impurity, the black veins under his skin and in the air of his astral body turning much blacker for a few beats of his heart. Isoko relaxed into it, letting her arms shake out, as Eliot put his hands behind his head and grinned, leaning back in his chair, eyes closed. Mark felt a bit cleaner, too, which was just plain nice, and then he went back to drawing in resilience from the world, for all three of them, and expelling their own weakness back out in exchange.
For the past two weeks, Mark had been working the arena of Brawny Sparring 101, right alongside the rest of the Healer Club. People rotated in and out of Healer Club, their numbers sometimes increasing to 30 or dwindling to 15, while the numbers of people on the arena floor had mostly decreased, with people moving on or doing something else. Some got promoted to acolyte of Freyala, and they got to sit up on the arena stands and practice Union with everyone else.
Mark’s Union was truly strong, but then again Lola told him that was the case to start with.
Apparently Mark’s directed healing, with the good/bad dichotomy, was overkill, really, for normal battle.
So Mark had started to focus on a half-healing/half-protection style that suited him a lot better. The words/feelings of resilience/weakness were great, allowing him to make sure that everyone’s astral bodies kept going strong, and that Mark himself never needed to actually drop Union. So that’s what he did most of the time. It offered repair for the body and a host of smaller benefits, like being able to look directly into the sun and not burn your eyes, or being able to walk (quickly) through flames and be fine.
And blood never really stopped moving, but it did have periods of faster and slower times, so there was no ‘turn around time’ between resilience and weakness in his blood Union, like there was in his breath Union. Lola had told Mark that Mark should use breath Union when he wanted to provide a steady stream of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or whatever, and Mark found that to be a great suggestion.
All of that stuff was nuance that Mark would need to learn his way around, out in the field. That’s what today was for, really. Training missions were for learning about oneself, and monsters.
Mark asked Eliot, “What did you want to talk to me about Rome last night?”
Isoko laughed. “What time did he come for you?”
Eliot defended himself, “A scout scouts no matter the time! Informs no matter the situation! And we have the capability to ignore sleep schedules a little bit. Therefore, I did what I needed to do.” He looked at both of them, saying, “You both should have started briefing with me last night.”
Isoko asked Mark, “He came at me at 2 AM.”
Mark said, “1:12; I remember the clock saying.”
Eliot scoffed.
Isoko continued, “So he couldn’t get you, so he went after me, and then I denied him too, and now he tells us that we should just ignore sleep schedules. Obviously he is raising good points about scouting—”
“Obviously,” Mark agreed.
“—but what could he really tell us aside from the lay of the land, which is not what we really need to know except to make plans around, and that takes 2 minutes, and should be done on site.”
Mark said, “I have no idea about all that. I just knew I needed sleep before a mission. That was my personal prep for the mission.”
Isoko nodded, “And also exactly how we were told to prep. ‘Sleep well, because you might not sleep well for 4 days’. That, and the location reveal, was the entire prep that we were told to concern ourselves with.”
Eliot defended himself, “I went above and beyond.”
Isoko looked at him and straight-up told him, “If you ever wake me up to talk about how I look on camera out in the field I will be extra mad, Eliot.”
Mark laughed.
“I’ll fix you both in post and you’ll be fine with it!” Eliot declared. And then he said, “You’re going to have an evil look going on, Mark, with darker eyes and deeper black lines. Isoko is going to be a pretty pretty princess!”
Mark smirked. “Sure.”
Isoko said, “Sounds good.”
Eliot eyed them for a moment, an eyebrow going up. And then he smirked and opened his mouth to say something—
But Paladin David Turner walked into the room, and Eliot stood at attention. Isoko’s eyes went wide. Mark just grinned. He hadn’t known who was going to be their escort for the training mission, but now that David was here it looked like one of the overseers to Mark’s possible demonic influence was going to be their guide… Hopefully.
David was wearing his armor, like how Mark had first seen the guy. Blond hair that was a bit reddish, blue eyes that were a bit purple; the guy had daihoonian blood in some sort of way, for sure. His last name was Turner, though, which painted him as one of Freyala’s truly trusted paladins, and in David’s case, Inquisitor. Just like Lola, Mark’s teacher for Union lessons. Neither of them were actually related to Freyala, but the Inquisitors were her most trusted people, so they got her old last name.
Eliot and Isoko had both been kinda weirded out to see Inquisitors around Mark now and again, but so was everyone, once they knew that Lola, David, and Orissa, were Inquisitors. They were all pretty great people in Mark’s mind, though.
He still didn’t believe they murdered people who turned to evil. That was probably Mark’s personal failing; he understood that. He just didn’t believe that one person could hurt another in such a way, even though Addashield had—
Mark didn’t want to think about Addashield right now.
It was enough to know that Inquisitors only dealt death to those who became enemies of humanity, and no one here qualified for that classification at all; no one was linked to demons in an unapproved way, and no one was talking to monsters, and especially no one was talking to dragons.
David was personable as he said, “Hello, initiates and ward, Eliot Cybersong, Isoko Kanno, and Mark Careed. I’m Inquisitor Paladin David Turner. You may call me David. You are here for a training mission, in order to prove yourself as capable in the field, and maybe as someone that Freyala would want to patron. You will be in real danger, but I will be there at all points in time in the mission, and I will rescue you if you get too deep into problems. Other than that, I will hang back and let you experience what it’s truly like out there in the wilds.
“The training mission will be undertaken like a real mission at all points in time. We are off the ground in 2 hours. Usually you get a lot less time than what you have been given. Please keep that in mind for the validity of this training mission.
“Please direct your attention to the screen,” David said, as he tapped at the backside of one of his gauntlets, at a protected phone screen. The image of ruined Rome began to shift and light. Grey areas appeared, and also a blue area, to the left of the inland ocean, in where the middle of the city used to be, right beside a giant crater. “The city of Rome was heavily ruined in the Reveal, due to many different factors that are unimportant to know. I am sure Eliot has stories that he will be speaking of during your mission, if you have much downtime for any of that.
“I don’t expect much downtime.
“For your mission, you will be investigating this area here, north of what was once a religious center of the Old World, called the Vatican.
“A corrupter goblin from Daihoon showed up right there maybe a week ago.”
Mark felt the weight of the mission settle upon him at the naming of the threat. Goblins were a big deal. All goblins could bite something and transform that thing into more goblins, but corrupter goblins had especially potent transformative venom.
It all came down to a Power Level numbers game. Goblin claws and venom usually failed against anything that was at PL 10 in Body, though PL 20 was considered the minimum to be truly safe against any normal goblin. If a person was weakened by wounds and poison, or anything like that, or if they fell asleep while wounded by a goblin, then they would be influenced by the goblin venom. A lot of monsters and wildlife out were at 10-20 in Body, though, so goblin claws and bites usually couldn’t penetrate skin or hide, and especially not scale. Most healthy monsters could shrug off one goblin bite; even a bite from a corrupter goblin, sometimes.
Goblins were dinner for most monsters.
But a corrupter goblin was stronger. Maybe PL 25 or 35 in Body. They would come in and bite monsters and run away, letting their corruption infection transform the bodies of the infected into more goblins.
Isoko and Eliot stood a little straighter, their eyes a little wider, just like Mark.
David continued, “Your task is twofold and designed to give you the full goblin experience. The first task is to eliminate all the goblins until you find the corrupter goblin. The second task is to talk to the corrupter goblin and offer them passage back to Daihoon, or to hash out a different agreement where they stay in some sort of reserve, or something. The final shape of that outcome is left up to you.”
Mark almost scoffed as he could not believe what he was hearing.
And then he realized that David had not been joking.
Disbelief all around.