Gabriel said, “Those documentaries are like… so very wrong about Wolf’s Bayou. Technically they’re right, and we’re never going back, but they’re also wrong.”
Mark was confused. “You went there already? Once? Or more than once? Why?!”
They were eating dinner cooked by Gabriel, and it was fantastic, but Mark’s mood was all over the place. He had brought up the topic of Wolf’s Bayou when they asked what Mark had done that day, and now they were here, and Mark was more confused than ever.
“We went to Wolf Bayou for reasons that were very stupid; gambling with friends,” Alexandro said, as he cut into his chicken parmesan. He Looked at Gabriel. “It’s exactly as bad as the documentaries show. Our friends got sidelined, I almost got kidnapped, then Redwolf popped the heads of the four people who tried to kidnap me, and then Gabriel and I went to her palace for dinner, then we left, swearing never to go back.”
Mark stared at Alexandro. “Her Power really is ‘Brain Pop’?”
Alexandro nodded. “It’s an Arch Power, too, unlike the Arcane version. Give her enough support and she can kill some types of kaiju all on her own. Memphi leaves her alone because she can just do that.”
Mark didn’t understand—
Gabriel said, “Also, she’s an Inquisitor for Drakarok, Mark. The God of War and Murder.”
Mark’s eyes went wide. “That wasn’t in Layfair’s report.”
Gabriel said, “She’s more of the ‘murder’ part of ‘War and Murder’, so the official Collective response on Earth is to pretend that part of Drakarok doesn’t exist.”
“Oh, shit,” Mark whispered. “… A whole lot of things suddenly make more sense.”
Alexandro said, “Drakarok isn’t exactly accepted over here, but he’s practically a hero over on Daihoon. They like him a lot.” He stuck his fork into the chicken and cut it with the knife, saying, “All the documentaries try to downplay that sort of thing. Did the ones you watch even talk about that?”
“No, they didn’t. Layfair didn’t mention it either.”
“You should consider going. I’m never going ever again, but you should consider it,” Alexandro said, “It’s not a bad place, but it doesn’t cleave to any of the laws you’re used to at all, so don’t expect to be safe. It’s a complete dictatorship and Redwolf’s laws are the only ones that matter.”
Gabriel said, “I prefer Memphi’s democracy.”
Alexandro made a thinking/unhappy face. “Is it a democracy, though? The Mayor pretty much runs the town.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Every single borough has elected officials that determine how the place is run, and even Ramirez’s main cabinet has different representatives from each borough.”
Alexandro and Gabriel were about to talk politics; Mark could tell.
Mark interrupted that, asking, “But why does Redwolf even exist! Why… just why!”
Gabriel said, “Redwolf is an old-school warlord of the Reveal. She’s been around for 125 years. She was a contemporary of Drakarok and helped him plan the murders that led to World War Not. The reason that Alexandro and I were brought out there was to see if Alexandro wanted to become her primary True Healer.”
Alexandro winced even before Gabriel got to their own involvement with Redwolf.
Gabriel raised an eyebrow at Alexandro. “I thought you were over it?”
“Apparently I am not. I have just discovered this about myself, as well,” Alexandro said, as he looked to Mark. “This was years ago, and the trip was posed as a gambling trip and a meeting with Redwolf to see if I wanted to replace her current True Healer. After the attempted kidnapping I decided not to go forward with that, and especially after I saw how she dealt with the people who tried to kidnap me. I wanted to feel bad for them, and I did… But I know what people do to True Healers, Mark, and so those people got what was coming to them. Redwolf and I left on good terms, I think, but I’m never going back. I need to live in a city with good laws, made by the people, with an underpinning of common cause. Not the Right of Might of one powerful person deciding everything. If Redwolf ever left Wolf Bayou someone from there would turn that place into a crater within an hour.”
Silence.
“Oh,” Mark said, as the world seemed to get that much weirder for him at that moment.
Alexandro got a concerned look on his face.
Gabriel said nothing, but he did look to Alexandro.
Alexandro made up his mind about something, setting his shoulders and his sight upon the salt shaker at the table, and then he looked at Mark and said, “She’s an old Dainhoonian Queen of her domain, and she guards the northern flanks of Memphi. She never accepted any ruler, and she never accepted the instantiation of Curtain Protocol, or anything like that. Wolf Bayou is not an Earth city. It’s run like a Daihoon city. If you want to go, you should go. It is dangerous, but in most ways it is a completely normal city.”
Mark had a moment.
Mark slowly began, “The Inquisitors I’ve been around… They’ve all spoken about how they killed people before, but I guess I never really understood it. It’s just... too foreign of a concept. Even people stealing stuff is weird. But this is the real world, beyond Curtain Protocol, isn’t it. People are killed by monsters all the time. I already knew that. So danger exists everywhere. But I never expected people to hurt other people, or for people to harm other people on purpose. But they do, all the time.”
Gabriel said, “Life is complicated and dangerous in all the ways you never thought it would be, and that’s true for just about everyone, no matter their situation. You should go to Wolf Bayou and not expect to see the bandits at all, but if you do, then you can make further decisions.”
Alexandro frowned a little, but he nodded.
Mark found himself asking, “What would you two do in this situation?”
Alexandro instantly said, “Ignore it and move on. There are less emotionally complicated things to deal with and my life is already full.”
Gabriel dissented, telling Mark, “That’s Alex’s position, Mark. You have to deal with high-Powered-people for the rest of your life, because you are a high-Powered-person yourself. I still remember watching you run around the house when we visited ten years ago, when you were just getting into superheroes. You had that cute little cape on and you jumped everywhere.” He smiled a little. “But you don’t need your grandfather to catch you this time. You’re going to be catching a lot of other people, instead.”
Mark imagined that Gabriel must have meant 8 years ago, when Mark was 10, and everyone was visiting for some vacation in July. It had to be around there, because Mark had put on a cape and jumped around everywhere, and then he had gotten up to the roof of the house and called out to grandpa to ‘Watch what I can do!’. Mark had jumped.
Grandpa had caught him with a veil of water, but it hadn’t been enough. Mark crashed into the ground and all the wind drove out of him. Two hours later, and Mark was running around again with Sally and learning not to jump so high. To take smaller first steps.
Was going to Wolf Bayou a small step, or a big fall?
Mark wasn’t sure about much right now.
Mark only knew that he needed to go there and see… everything, really.
Gabriel continued, “You need to think about what you’re going to do with the bandits if you catch them. They tried and failed to kill you. What sort of response does that entail? You’re not going to murder them—”
Mark exclaimed, “Of course I’m not!”
Gabriel smiled as he slightly nodded, saying, “But they’re probably already exiles, Mark. The laws of the Central Cities and even the East Coast Union are very specific on what they do with exiles: nothing. Exiles aren’t judged by the laws of the city. They are completely outside of the laws of the city. Specifically. So you can’t bring them in and get them thrown in jail for rehabilitation. They’ll just get exiled again.”
Mark found himself reevaluating his desires. “… Oh.”
Dinner continued.
Mark changed the subject, asking, “So what was work like, Uncle Alexandro? Do you just… take in old people and send away 20-somethings?”
Alexandro grinned, then said, “It’s a lot more complicated than that, really. Some cases are that simple. But some cases are piecemeal. A week ago I had a client —old client who has been with me for 15 years now— and she needs to be old for her work, and her life. We had a big adjustment this time, though. She’s a grandmother and a CEO. So for her, specifically, I tuned her overall age down from 80 to 60, but I turned her internals, her eyes and her brain and her nervous system, down to 25, to keep it at that level. All her organs, too. Her skin I left mostly, because she needs to appear that age. There was a little problem with bone cancer this time, so I reversed time on all of that to take care of that. I had to go deeper in a few areas to keep it that way. I also had to de-age her soul, which took the most care.
“You know the soul ages just like the body? It needs care, as well.
“The body is an exceedingly complicated thing and all I really have is Age Manipulation, but it’s an Arch power, so I can stretch its parameters a lot.” He cut into his chicken, saying, “I know that Union is pretty good for healing, too, but you have to do some big-time schooling to learn how to do it better than baseline, yes?”
Mark felt connected to Uncle Alexandro in a weird, new, and wonderful sort of way. Alexandro’s Power was fascinating, and he had actually answered Mark this time, in a deep way. Mark smiled. “Inquisitor Lola —I think I told you about her?— told me that I need to do a proper Healing for Healers sort of university degree in order to start doing directed healing. Simply working a good/bad dichotomy is enough to heal almost everything, though. Going into stuff like… like focusing on vein integrity is a good way to… uh. Kill… things.”
Alexandro brushed over Mark’s sudden reluctance with his words, easily saying, “Healing magics of all types can kill just as easily as all other types of magic, though it’s usually less direct.”
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Mark rapidly circled back to something else Alexandro said. “So? You can de-age the soul? The soul ages?”
“Everything ages,” Alexandro said, “Bodies and astral bodies constantly take in nutrients and mana and expel the same. ‘Aging’ is just the process by which something degrades by not being perfectly replaced during the course of natural living…” He hummed. “Well that’s, like, a very non-technical explanation of ‘age’. One you probably shouldn’t rely on much.”
Mark nodded a little.
Eventually, dinner ended. Mark helped put away the dishes into the dishwasher, while Alexandro figured out what to watch on the television, and Gabriel made drinks.
Mark asked Gabriel, “Is there no way to… to rehabilitate exiled people? Are they forever forbidden from reintegration, or whatever it’s called?”
Gabriel hummed, and then he blended ice, the roar of the slush-maker filling the air for a good half minute. When he was done with that, Gabriel said, “You’d have to speak with the Mayor, probably. You have a standing invitation to visit her since you’re going to be a citizen here— You do want to be a citizen here, right?” He asked, with a bit of concern.
Mark felt loved. He smiled, saying, “Yeah. I want to become a citizen… But this whole ‘there’s a headpopper beyond the city walls’ thing kinda freaks me out. It’s all so weird.”
Alexandro came over, saying, “There were exile cities by Orange City, too.”
Mark gasped. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Alexandro said, “Up north, beyond the walls, between Orange city and Fort Stewart there was Jacksonville. Jacksonville used to be a tier 1 city, but with only about 50,000 people. There was some sort of failure inside and the whole place collapsed in a kaiju birth inside the city in 2028, I think.”
Mark’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t know that.”
“Before you were born,” Gabriel said. “It was big news back then. The Hearthswell Wards failed, or something. No one ever found out what happened, exactly. All we ever heard was that a kaiju was born inside the city.”
Mark was at a loss for words.
Alexandro continued, “The survivors scattered and none of them wanted to join another city, and a few of the big heroes in that city got denounced by Orange City and the rest of the East Coast Union, so they set up house right there where they blew up. They rebuilt. They’re still trying to rejoin the Union, almost 20 years later. They’re technically an exile city, but they’re not. Not really.”
“I never heard about that at all,” Mark said, as Gabriel handed him a frozen margarita—
Mark was struck with a sudden thought.
He said, “I don’t actually know how kaiju are born… Made? Grow? How does that work? Is it just… Well. Dragons are made by demons and mages joining as one. Are all kaiju demonspawn?”
Alexandro shrugged. “Partially, yeah. But also no.”
Gabriel said, “I think the primary way kaiju are ‘born’ is primarily Fallen mages —so demons in control of dead bodies— priming monsters to turn into kaiju if they grow strong enough. I’m not sure how it works, but that’s the basic idea. The primed monsters then grow and grow and reach a tipping point where they suddenly mutate like, well, Addashield and Kanda did, when they joined into Addavein. They become kaiju. Also, most kaiju come from Endless Daihoon, I think. You can see those ones coming, though, so they’re not that scary.”
Oh yeah. Endless Daihoon.
Alexandro said, “Thrashtalon likes to mutate his cultists into kaiju, too.”
Mark’s eyes went wide.
Gabriel nodded. “Yup. That’s the other major way.” He said to Mark, “I’m sure there are more ways than that.”
Alexandro took his frozen drink and headed toward the living room.
Mark found himself watching another episode of the superhero show that Alexandro and Gabriel were watching, but his mind was elsewhere the entire time. Except during the kaiju battle scenes. Those were still amazing to watch; to pick apart which superhero Powers were possible and which were complete fakery.
The guy who could shoot eyebeams and fly and had super-brawny strength was either a tri-talent (impossible, really) or completely made-up, while the girl who made rainbow distractions and who flew around with a tinker-made levibelt might have been an actual person, and not a computer generated hero. The kaijus were all computer generated, for sure. Or maybe they were someone’s illusion-based Talent.
When the show was over, and Mark’s uncles were headed off to bed, Mark said, “I think I’m going to make an appointment to visit the Mayor in the morning, to ask about actionable… detentions? Rehabilitations? For exiles. Is it just jail?”
Alexandro looked to Gabriel, asking, “Rehabilitation is normal?”
Gabriel said, “Yeah? I think it’s just jail? Some people would probably end up with community service.”
Alexandro smirked as he asked Mark, “You sure you want to focus on this little stuff? We could probably swing you into a kaiju hunting team, as a support guy. Get you a proper levi-belt and you can fly around like Rainbow Girl.”
Mark easily said, “I absolutely want to go levi-belt flying if that’s a thing and support hero-ing is what I’m gonna be doing for the expedition, but…” As Mark said those words, he knew he would absolutely rather be prepping for the expedition. But there was something calling to him about this whole… thing with the bandits. It was a darker side of humanity that Mark had only ever seen in the movies. At the same time, he saw that Alexandro was trying to nudge him away from putting himself in the line of fire with criminals because Alexandro didn’t want him to get hurt. Mark knew he was going to get hurt though, and a lot. Better to be hurt now, here on Earth, than be blindsided on Daihoon, and especially if this ‘Redwolf’ really was a Daihoonian ‘queen’. That’d be a good marker for what to expect on Daihoon. Mark said, “I need to see the exile city, Uncle Alexandro. I need to know… I need to know why… A whole lot of ‘why’s.” Mark made a decision in that moment. “Even if I do find the bandits who tried to kill me, I’ll just ask them why. I doubt anything will happen beyond that.”
Alexandro was tense, but he tried to be personable as he said, “Okay! Well! I am exhausted.” He hugged Mark, saying, “Monsters are dangerous but people are much scarier, because you often expect other people to be better than who they are, but sometimes they are not. Don’t learn that lesson over and over again, Mark.”
Mark smiled a little as Alexandro let go, saying, “People shouldn’t be scary.”
Alexandro chuckled, but it was a little sad. He looked away… and then he looked back, directly at Mark. He said, “All the world is a forest, Mark. The wilds. You walk through life through lands that you will never fully know. You hear voices in the dark, in the light, and you see people everywhere, and you might think you’re in a city, because that’s what it might look like here and there. But make no mistake. You’re in the wilds. The people you see might be real people. They might be wonderful. Usually, they are. You’ll see monsters, too. The monsters will be obvious most of the time, too.
“But sometimes the people are monsters in disguise, using their voices to lure you into traps, using the light to paint themselves in wonderful, luring scenes, while their real bodies hide in the dark, with claws and swords and guns ready to take everything from you.” He Looked at Mark. “You never know which people are people and which are monsters until it’s too late. And sometimes, rarely, the monstrous people become better friends than all the others you’ll ever meet, because you have something those people want, and their friendships prevent a whole lot of other problems with all the lesser monsters out there.”
Mark was stunned.
He wasn’t sure where to begin with that.
Alexandro hugged him again, saying, “Love you, Mark.”
Mark hugged him back. “I… love you, too, Uncle Alexandro.”
Alexandro pulled away, smiling. He just looked at Mark for a bit, and then said, “You look so much like Markus.” He chuckled. “Taller though! And by a lot! It’s a good look. Good night.”
Alexandro went away, and Gabriel followed—
“Good night!” Mark said suddenly, to their departing forms.
Mark stood there in the living room for a little while. Eventually he went upstairs to his own bed, where he lay down and stared at the ceiling for a while, stuck in thought—
Oh.
Mark had people he could talk to about bandits.
He checked his email to see if Sally had replied, but she had not, so Mark moved on to Accord, to check on Isoko and Eliot’s group chat. Both of them were offline right now, considering it was 10 PM here so it was 5 AM there, but there were lots of messages about the meeting that Eliot had had with the Holy Mother of Freyala and the Holy Father of Hearthswell.
Primarily, Eliot had chosen to go with Hearthswell as his patron goddess, and then a bunch of stuff fell into place based on that decision.
The Freyalan Church decided to send a big convoy and Hearthswell decided to induct Eliot into the Church of Hearthswell for a month of training with Castellan. Apparently, Castellan would allow Eliot to ‘harness the flows of mana inside cities to set up automatic magics, that keep out non-human intelligences’ as well as the more basic functions of Castellan, which was to upgrade the strength of some/most of the structures inside of a city to somewhere between Power Level 15 and 50. Eliot started listing off powers that he’d be able to give a city, or at least small parts of a city.
Mark’s eyes went wide as he read about floating castles.
“Oh my gods,” Mark whispered to himself as he instantly went searching the net for ‘flying castles’.
Flying castles were real!
Mark started giggling.
“Flying castles!”
Holy shit, Mark wanted a flying castle.
He had no idea what he would even do with one, or how it would even work, but holy crap Mark wanted…
“… Are they weak points, though?”
Mark hummed, then he sought out information on flying castles and kaiju battles.
It turned out that flying castles were completely ornamental and horribly vulnerable,
Mark still wanted one.
Mark got back to chat.
Isoko was doing a lot in Healing Club but she was thinking about getting a temp team to go out and kill some monsters as a Slayer. That was her ‘Duty’ to Freyala; all capitalized-like. Mark had never seen it written that way, but it made sense. Every person in the Chosen System had a Duty toward the god that gave them power, and Isoko’s Duty was to eventually become a Green-ranked Slayer.
… Which was interesting.
Mark hummed.
… And on a whim, and then because of very serious reasons, he sent messages to the chat.
- -
MarkC (Today:10:39PM): Memphi is a nice place! Have they floated any desires to become the other half of the twin city thing you’re planning on? I see you have inquiries from Mexico City and the Aluatha Empire, and also Lake Chad to make the temporary portal there permanent, and New London for Okuana Empire reasons, but Memphi is pretty central to a lot here. And it’s close to the Aluatha Empire, too.
MarkC (Today:10:40PM): I am super excited for flying fortresses! Can Hearthswellians really do that?! That’s crazy! What I’m reading says that they’re vulnerable to pretty much everything, though, so they’re super rare.
MarkC (Today:10:43PM): I’m going to make an appointment with the Mayor of Memphi Emilia Ramirez soon, the leader of 45 million people, because that’s what you do when you’re a big power moving in to a big city, and your uncle is a True Healer already here… Though now that I am writing that, she’s probably more concerned about my ‘baggage’; Addavein.
MarkC (Today:10:45PM): The bandit case took a turn for the weird. They’re probably all exiles, according to the inquisitor on the case, Layfair. He suspects that they already moved on, but if they didn’t, then I might need to go to this exile city north of Memphi, called Wolf Bayou, to see if they’re there, and what I want to do. I’m not sure I want to do anything except ask them why they tried to kill me. If they turn out to be assholes who won’t answer anything, then that will at least make sense, and that will be enough for me to be satisfied.
MarkC (Today:10:45PM): Good luck with your decisions, Eliot!
MarkC (Today:10:46PM): Good luck with your Slayer advancement, Isoko!
MarkC (Today:10:48PM): You should come over to Memphi, Isoko. We can go on some Slayer kill trips together! I’m doing the bandit thing right now, but I imagine that’s going to get resolved-to-nothing in a week when I can’t find them and when I don’t feel like lifting up that rock to see all the slime underneath. Wolf Bayou is some sort of bloodsport exile city, run by an Inquisitor of Drakarok named Redwolf who is some sort of contemporary of Drakarok himself, before he ascended to godhood, which is fucking nuts. Look that up online and tell me what you think about it.
MarkC (Today:10:48PM): I’m going to go to Wolf Bayou because my uncles spoke of it like ‘a standard old-world daihoonian city’ and ‘it’s exactly as bad as it seems, but also not that bad at all’ which is IDK.