Mark looked through the door of Lola’s new office and saw Lola hanging paintings up on the walls. Her small library of non-fiction histories rested on her new bookshelves, while her desk itself was up against the other wall, and half of her office was a giant window with a fantastic view of snow-covered Memphi. They were on the second floor of a local branch of Collective Temple, north of Enchanting, the ‘mage city’ of Memphi.
Lola was focused on her paintings. She had already hung up a view of the bay of Orange City, with its pillar wall, before Addavein had replaced a few central spires of the span with pillars carved in his own likeness. Another painting was a gold and blue landscape of the French countryside.
Mark knocked on the open door, but it was just to be polite. Lola already knew that Mark was here. She had probably clocked him when he walked through the big entrance downstairs.
“Hello, Mark,” Lola said, smiling a little bit as she turned toward him, and then back to the painting of the bay. “Do you think this one looks good here? I’m not sure.”
“I think your whole office looks great.”
Lola smiled a little, and then she turned professional. “You’re here to talk about whatever you learned with the archmage. Come on in and shut the door.”
Mark entered, shut the door, and the words started pouring out. Lola asked clarifying questions every now and then, but mostly she let him get out everything he needed to get out. It took some time and Lola had to dismiss someone who knocked on her door halfway through Mark’s words, but Mark eventually finished.
After he was done, Lola said, “I’m glad you told your friends. I doubt Eliot was as circumspect as he imagined he was, but probably through no fault of his own. Osmium is not actually regulated at all, but it is tracked most heavily, because, as the archmage told you, that is one of the major materials for growing biometals.”
Mark’s eyebrows went up. “So you did know that it worked like this?”
“Yes, though I was hoping that wasn’t what your conversation with Blackthorn would have been about, though it was one of the possibilities.”
Mark suddenly felt… weird. “Were you ever going to tell me that I could get more adamantium on my own?”
Lola arched an eyebrow. “No. No one from the Church of Freyala would have told you.”
Mark felt adrift. “… Why not?”
“We know a lot about what you might eventually be able to do, and producing adamantium was just one of those eventualities that you don’t need to rush into as fast as you are rushing. More adamantium would have just made you a target, as you have already experienced once before.”
“… Oh.”
Lola nodded. Lola added, “You don’t need to worry about any Color Drop plots, though. We do know who did your treatment, and they will not be an issue.”
Mark wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “… You were hiding this from me?”
“Among many other things, yes.”
Mark extremely wasn’t sure how he felt. Some combination of betrayal, but also comfort, and knowing that some people out there had his best interests in mind, but then again how could Mark know that he was being protected, or babied, unless he was told about that, and yet, Mark wasn’t an Inquisitor, so of course they would keep important information away from him. Mark had kept himself separate from Freyala of his own volition, after all, and that meant that he was outside of the Collective, the loose association of Inquisitor-ranked paladins from every church and clergy that worked together to kill Fallen mages and demonic threats of all kinds, and who dealt with the worst of humanity, killing cultists of Thrashtalon and… and all of that.
Lola waited while Mark had a think.
Mark eventually looked at Lola, and asked, “If I were an Inquisitor, would you tell me about these sorts of things?”
“There’s a lot to learn about magic and mages and demons and all the nuances of the War for Life. It takes time to learn those things, and you are not currently enrolled in any sort of formal education system. But before that time of learning, before schooling can happen, it takes a Calling to become a soldier in the War. Do you feel Called to rid the world of its problems, in ways that are too permanent to be called anything but murder?”
Lola had always been way too solid in her expectations of Inquisitors and what it meant to be a hunter of demons. Here she was, talking about straight-up killing people. It always freaked Mark out. He still wasn’t over killing that one woman, Mary Getty, the Mind Controller cultist of Thrashtalon who had tried to kill him first, and who had demonized herself in order to do it.
Mark found himself faltering.
“No,” Mark said, “I’m not Called to war against other people like that.”
The War for Life Itself was not something Mark needed to step into. Not now, hopefully not ever.
He just wanted to kill monsters.
“Then there will be a barrier to what I can tell you, and how we interact. I greatly care for you, Mark. You were harmed, and I harmed you, and I don’t want to harm you ever again, and knowing something as… as deep as how to induce a biometallic to make more biometal is one of the secrets that can harm a person. There used to be a great many menageries in the Old World. The dragons kept those people as pets and they had breeding programs, though they dressed their programs up with nicer words like ‘bloodlines’ and ‘bloodline purity’. Even in a lesser way, learning about the biometal-metals can lead to heavy metal poisoning in people who eat the things thinking they’ll get rich if they can condense adamantium, or otherwise.” Lola said, “There are horrors in every shadow of every nation of Daihoon and otherwise. Learning about them takes a decade and then a lifetime.”
Mark decided right then and there that he didn’t need that concern in his life, so he said, “You know what? Let’s just not talk about that sort of stuff. Thanks for looking out for me. I’ll probably be selling the adamantium to Blackthorn for some good secrets. Got any suggestions?”
“How to kill demons permanently,” Lola said, without hesitation.
Mark blinked. “… I kinda figured you would already know that? And I just haven’t asked about it? It seemed like a smaller concern next to resurrection magics, elves on Endless Daihoon, and turning Addavein back into Addashield and Kanda?”
Lola said, “Demons are basically unkillable outside of certain scenarios. Killing a Fallen mage just sends the demon back to Arakino. There’s only one scenario we really know kinda works, and that’s when a demon becomes a dragon and we kill the dragon. Or at least that’s what we thought, until Leash showed up with those words of his. Some people never believed that killing a dragon was the end for any demon at all, and those people are suddenly gaining a lot of voice in the Collective. Your talk with Leash revealed a few things that may or may not have been true.
“I will give you a basic primer on souls, now.”
Mark breathed in sharply. He had spoken about souls and death and resurrection and necromancers when he told Lola about his talk with Blackthorn, but he had never expected to go further in that direction of talks with Lola. Mark just didn’t know what he didn’t know, though, and that included what sorts of topics were the truly interesting ones, to those in-the-know. Perma-killing demons was apparently a very interesting topic.
“First, regarding the existence of souls and soul manipulations. Some Powers can work with the dead, and people who die in service or devotion to Freyala move on to Freyala’s heaven, so we know souls exist. But they don’t come back from death, not ever. When a necromancer raises a body, if the body is intact enough, then the person inhabiting the body can gain some memories from the body, and superficially resemble the person whose body they now inhabit. That’s called ghost-calling, Mark.
“Any soul work that works off of impressions left in the body or in the air is called ghost work, or ghost manipulation. Ghosts are figments in the weave of the world, left by the depth of souls that have passed on. They are not the real souls that used to live in real bodies.
“Some very strong, very niche Powers are able to call back the original soul into the body, but only in certain situations, like recent death. We’re talking within a minute, Mark. It’s more healing magics than soul magics at that point. Those same Powers act as necromantic Powers beyond that minute-long time window, which is not always one minute long. Sometimes it’s 10 seconds, sometimes it’s 10 minutes. There’s leeway with that number, because souls are slippery.
“Sometimes you can catch a soul with a soul crystal, though. If you ever see someone with a soul crystal then you need to be wary, Mark. They’re dangerous people, and they probably deserve death, because they were probably trafficking in people because soul crystals are used to kill a person and then harvest the soul and keep it intact until you can make a body for the person once again, making a slave or other sort of horror.”
Mark felt his skin prickle.
Lola continued, “But anyway, this means that souls leave upon death, and go somewhere else. We believe that souls move on to Endless Daihoon when the body dies. And that’s the basic truth of souls.”
Mark felt a focus. “Holy shit. Maybe some elves out there can resurrect people?”
Lola nodded. “Either a mythical people, yes, or something else that functions the same. That’s probably where Blackthorn’s 20% figure was coming from, though I have absolutely no idea how he arrived at that 20% figure. That seems like a wild guess to me.”
Mark almost asked something else, but he forgot what he was going to ask when Lola continued—
“So back to dragons and making people out of them. Dragons have souls, and dragons can be killed,” Lola said, “Dragon souls are massive. They’re huge things that can be captured by certain sized soul crystals, and then those artifacts can be used to power very large enchantments. It’s soul magic, and it’s dangerous. But, regarding dragons and demons...
“Killing a body that holds a demon just sends the demon on its way, back to the Demon City Arakino, to the Moon. Demon souls are a lot stronger than mortal souls, though. A lot stronger.
“Dragon souls are rather strong, too. Not as strong as a demon’s, but similar in nature.
“We thought that killing a dragon ended the demon inside.
“But Leash revealed that he wanted to pull Addavein apart and kill Kanda himself.
“So it’s highly possible that, if Addavein were to die, that his soul would flow along into Endless Daihoon, up to the Moon or wherever else it might go, or perhaps it could be summoned directly by the demons, and in such a case… Well. The current, extremely unsettling theory passing around the Collective, is that perhaps all dragon souls get summoned to the Moon and the former demon gets extracted and the archmage is discarded. That’s all theory, though. The demons aren’t talking. Not like Leash spoke to you.
“So maybe, all the demons we’ve ever ‘killed’ as dragons have never actually been killed at all.” Lola shook her head. “That’s a rather bleak way to view all the accomplishments we’ve made in this War for Life, in transforming this world into one where humans are dominant. It is a theory that most people are not willing to accept.”
That was big.
Too big to really think about.
Mark had his own issues, so he filed that information away for some other day… And yet, he looked to Lola, and asked, “Do you believe that this ‘War for Life’ is all a farce that the demons allow to continue for… for some reason?”
“Because they enjoy tormenting people? Yes. That is the commonly accepted reasoning that this might be true,” Lola said, adding, “And in that sort of way, yes. Yes, this fate of all dragons is believable.”
Mark sat back in his chair.
Lola added, “But we still have a lot of hope, Mark. A demon tried to tempt you with big information and bigger conquests. With information we have never heard before, but perhaps some mages have heard before, and yet they just never shared this with anyone. The fact that Leash spoke about all of this so openly does give us good hope, though.
“This means they’re scared.
“They’re scared of Addavein becoming a true stabilizing force. With the power and history he has, Addavein could become a true dragon emperor. Addashield was one of the main forces that allowed Malaqua to become the Demon King and Jailer, after all, and that is only one of his major accomplishments. He was a true Hero of Humanity, even if he had a lot of dead innocents in his ledger. If that dragon comes out of this nap with the same attitude as his father, or even the attitude he had going into his nap, then humanity is on track to figuring out how to perma-kill demons and maybe tame Endless Daihoon, or at least allow us to navigate it with some modicum of true safety.”
That was big, too.
Mark made a decision, “I’m going to focus on making a life for myself, and none of these big issues. I hope that Addavein can be a real talzarki. That would be best for the world, wouldn’t it?”
Even as he said the words, he felt a weight fall off of his shoulders.
He realized that he wanted Addavein to follow in his father’s footsteps of becoming a Hero of Humanity. Which was a strange desire. A strange feeling.
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Where had the need for revenge gone?
Simply put, revenge paled in comparison to the life he wanted to live, and to the future that a truly good dragon emperor could create.
Mark wanted family, friends, a home he made himself, to rescue people and kill monsters, and to live a life strongly, in the open. He wanted to be a superhero. He certainly didn’t want to be a villain. Trying to kill the dragon or work against Addavein, except to ‘keep him in line’ (which seemed like a fool’s task), would be the act of a villain. And sure, Mark was still a literal card-carrying villain, but that was just for show and to help Addavein fit into the role of ‘hero’… Which was Mark being manipulated, yet again.
And the thought of being manipulated threw water onto Mark’s fire.
The need for revenge smoldered.
Mark scoffed. “But I guess I’m still a villain.”
Lola gave a small smile. With utter politeness that Mark could only tell was teasing sarcasm because he knew Lola, Lola asked, “Are you? You haven’t even done your first show.”
Mark had a surreal moment. And then he laughed. “I’ve been busy!”
Lola chuckled in a small way. “I’m going to be front and center in the audience when you finally make your debut, though I imagine I’d make way for your uncles, first.”
“They are so ready for me to do my first ‘bank robbery’, but I haven’t even done a practice robbery from either side of the equation.” Mark grinned— “Oh!” He pulled out his gold, osmium, and platinum pellets from his pocket. They were in a small wrap of paper. “I was going to take these if you corroborated Blackthorn’s story, so… Do you know the rate at which the cultivation will happen?”
“I’m honestly surprised that your Union of metals didn’t work out, but it obviously didn’t, otherwise you’d feel it in your bones. Just take them orally, and expect a month’s worth of growth in 12 hours. So maybe 2 grams per day? That’s normal, unless you do the cultivation technique. I’m not sure how fast you can go in that case. I’m not a mage, so I don’t have the privilege of knowing the exact numbers with regard to cultivation rates, and the Mage Guild doesn’t like Inquisitors up in their business.”
The Paladins and the much stronger Inquisitors had only been around for the last 75-ish years, ever since the Reveal and the creation of the New Pantheon. Before that, the Mage Guild did a lot of its own policing. With the rise of paladins empowered as the fists of the gods, the Mage Guild and the Inquisitors had a complicated relationship.
Lola said, “I do understand that it’s slower for a biometalist to grow metal than it is for a mage to grow loose mana. A real mage usually has enough mana stored away to be able to switch modes at least twice a day. Sometimes three. That means replacing a set of three minor power sets with whole different sets, twice over.”
… Huh.
Mark had not known that.
Mark nodded, downed the pellets and dry-swallowed them, and said, “Well that’s that.”
Lola smiled a little. “We should talk about whatever went wrong with you trying to draw in gold, too, and probably many, many times. Talking about that in the open is easy enough to write off as you trying to make money directly with your Power.”
Mark smiled. “A common occurrence.”
“The most common of all occurrences, truly. I cannot do this myself, but Freyala has given guidance in this arena. The issue there is that you needed to focus on depositing gold into something that was not yourself. A plant, for instance. Do you know why we call currency ‘goldleaf’?”
Mark gasped. “Oh shit! The goldleaf tree!”
Mark saw everything lay out before him, instantly, with the mention of the goldleaf tree.
Before the Reveal, Earth had used a fiat currency system that had hundreds of variations with every country having its own currency, or something like that. Daihoon was on goldleaf standard, though, meaning trees the sizes of mansions that produced normal enough green leaves, but when the trees were exposed to metals in the soil, they started depositing those metals into their leaves and then shedding those metal-imbued leaves. The leaves themselves were not actually gold, but they were gold-colored, and they did have small trace amounts of gold in them. When the leaves were dried out and pressed flat, they made a fantastic form of currency, since the leaves didn’t break down.
A ‘goldleaf’ wasn’t a whole leaf, though. A single goldleaf was a 2 cm by 5 cm strip of leaf, and could be made by pressing pieces of leaves into the proper shape. Nowadays a ‘goldleaf’ was pretty much the same as a cred.
The thing about goldleaf trees was that they produced ‘goldleaf’ at a rather normal rate.
The trees had been used as a currency system by the nations of Daihoon for as long as anyone there could remember, and they were all heavily regulated and secured by the banks of Daihoon, which were all offshoots of the empires and the nobility of the bigger cities.
After the Reveal, Earth ended up on the goldleaf standard, somehow. Mark wasn’t sure how, exactly.
Lola admitted, “It would be impossible for you to actually get access to a goldleaf tree, of course, but you could have tried using a cleaner plant and including it in a Union of gold and sustenance on the intake, and deprivation on the exit. I’m not sure how it would work, exactly, because this is not a normal application of Union, as gifted by Freyala, but we can discuss various theories and you can try them out. Perhaps you merely need to have a special version of ‘sustenance/deprivation’ that includes the idea of intaking the three metals. Those metals, after all, are a rather unique necessity of your specific biology, though we won’t be speaking of that particular fact too loudly.” Lola added, “Using that sort of ideology of ‘sustenance’, outside of yourself, only, would be considered an offensive use of Union, though, Mark. It would probably greatly hurt other people. Heavy metal poisoning and all that.”
“… I hadn’t considered that at all. Huh.”
Lola grinned. “Let’s go grab a coffee, and talk about gold accumulation. Maybe even take an early lunch? I’d love to talk to you about less-serious issues, like the settlement project. There’s a nice French bakery and cafe across the street.”
Mark readily agreed to lunch.
The cafe was cozy, and talking with Lola was informative and also simply nice. Mark heard stories of Lola working as an Inquisitor to find mages that had taken demonic contracts in order to become fabulously wealthy, and how it always worked for a time, but then it always ended poorly. Lola was not shy about breezing past the final fates of those people she had needed to hunt down and end, nor was she shy about the ways in which those people wronged others.
“Demonic-backed financial crimes are not my department, of course,” Lola said, “I’m more in the educational sector for arcanaeum students. But making money is a not-surprising use of Powers and small magics that many people try at least once in their life. Most money-making Powers and magics make their money through the simple act of paid-for-labor, though. It’s always easier to use your Powers to make money the legal way, than it is to make money directly… Mostly.”
Mark smiled as he said, “I hear Eliot is pulling gold directly out of the Mississippi.”
“He would be the most pertinent example of a Talent that directly makes money, yes.”
Mark wasn’t going to become an Inquisitor, and Lola didn’t push for it, either.
By the time Mark got back home he already felt some new adamantium growing in his bones. It was a diffuse dust in his spine, and a fog inside his femurs and pelvis. Mark went to his meditation room and sat down to focus on his goals, to pick them up and put them down, and grow his adamantium. It was a weird sort of methodology, but Mark could sort of see the sense in it.
“I wonder if Mom or Dad did any ‘crystal cultivation’…”
Probably not.
They both had only attended a single year of arcanaeum. Crystal cultivation was year 2…
Mark sighed as he slumped forward, bringing his knees up to his face and holding his legs.
Resurrection might be possible.
Resurrection wasn’t going to happen for a long time, if at all.
Resurrection was a big fucking deal. Too big. What would Mark look like if he managed to find that sort of magic in Endless Daihoon? How would he change along the path to the sort of power necessary to enter and survive that nightmare? What would his parents think, when he stood there and pulled them off of the ground, back to life? Would he recognize them?
Would they recognize him?
No. They would not recognize him.
Mark had no idea who he would become as the years unfolded, but it would not be the same person today who was frightened about killing other people. When Mark had killed Mary Getty, he had made the decision to do it in a flashing instant, and it had been the right decision… And Mark hated that it had been the right decision.
Eventually, Mark uncurled from himself.
Adamantium had been growing this entire time.
Soon, Mark breathed the metal out, like expelling dust from his lungs. The powder instantly fell under his kinetic control.
He got back to meditation.
By the time Isoko and Eliot showed up for dinner Mark had managed to gather 75 new grams of adamantium, though he felt like he could do a lot more. The overall size of Mark’s newest cube was only about 4 cubic centimeters, which was a little over a tenth of the size of his current reserves. Mark already felt elated. This was working. This was going to work very, very well.
But first! While keeping those 75 grams separate from everything else in Mark’s possession, Mark handed over the small cube to Eliot.
“Maybe you can Manipulate this one,” Mark said.
Eliot stared at the metal in his hands, surprised and joyful, his face breaking into a wide smile as he said, “Gods above! You actually managed it?”
Isoko’s eyebrows were high on her forehead as she said, “I gotta say, I was not trusting Blackthorn… But I guess Inquisitor Lola came through with some truths?”
Eliot was too focused on the cube to participate in the conversation.
Mark said, “I think she knows more about magic than she thinks she knows. Every time I talk with her about something serious I learn something new… I think I need to learn a lot more, though.”
“You thinking of doing some arcanaeum?” Isoko asked.
“I was always told that you could either have a Power through the Tutorial, or you could make your own magic in Arcanaeum. I think the truth is a lot more nuanced than that, and I think… I don’t want to do arcanaeum right now. But Eliot was right yesterday about how if I went to arcanaeum I could actually learn what questions to ask Blackthorn. That’s a big draw. Bigger than I thought possible.”
“Yeah…” Isoko was quiet for a moment. “I went with Eliot today to the Settlement Project. Did some research. I found out there’s going to be a mini-arcanaeum at the settlement,” Isoko said, and Mark was already going wide-eyed before she even finished. “I’m gonna do that.”
“Oh my gods, how? Are you gonna sign up to be the underling of some… some mage there? Or something?”
That was the usual way mage training worked. You had to sign up under a mage or a training center and sign contracts about not spilling secrets to outsiders. Outsiders who were able to learn whatever they could were still outsiders, and they sometimes got blackballed by guilders, by people in the Mage Guild, so that those outsiders couldn’t progress at all in their magic. But sometimes outsiders got ‘accepted’ by the Mage Guild, when they took down all of their outsider knowledge and swore secrecy. When that happened, they could get real training.
It was a whole big thing.
“Is that what you were thinking of?” Isoko asked.
“I mean… yeah, actually. I guess? I hadn’t really thought about the specifics of it all, but… yeah?”
Isoko said, “I attended a talk with the leader of the Mage Guild expansion for the Settlement Committee, Grand Mage Rekaro Solari. He’s going to be running the mini-arcanaeum, for promising students. The whole talk was all about how, since we all signed up for 5 years minimum time there, that of course there would be mage training for people who were either starting off there, or continuing their education. Apparently there’s a bunch of professors from arcanaeums all over Memphi coming over to Daihoon. And yeah, you have to do the secrecy clause stuff.”
Mark asked, “Can you actually learn new magic when you already have a Power?”
“It’s harder, for sure, but yes.”
Mark hadn’t expected that, but… Yeah. Addashield was an adamantiumkinetic before he became an archmage.
Eliot was still grappling with the cube of adamantium, his face tense with concentration, but the cube wasn’t changing. Eliot glared at the cube, the air distorting around it in a weird way that sometimes happened when Eliot was truly focused, but then Eliot breathed out and relaxed. He sighed, and handed it over to Mark, asking, “It’s really made by you? No contamination at all?”
Mark held the cube and transformed it into a ball, a spike, a star, and finally he put it with the rest of his adamantium, saying, “Yeah. But I just mixed it with the rest of it. No undoing that! So! How do you two feel about adamantium daggers? Christmas is coming up!”
Isoko laughed. “No thanks! I can’t carry it around. Too expensive.”
“None for me, either,” Eliot said
Mark paused. “… Aww! No! You can have one… Right?” Neither of them changed their minds, so Mark asked, “You sure?”
“Yup!” Eliot said. “So let’s talk plans for Christmas. You’re still doing the trip to Tokyo, yeah Isoko?”
Mark rolled his eyes. He wanted to give his friends stuff, but they weren’t having it, which was fine, he supposed.
Isoko said, “The hoverbus leaves tomorrow night. I’ll be back before New Years…”
Mark had plans for Christmas with his uncles and then visiting Sally after the holiday, since her whole family had moved here already. He said as much while he started making dough for a pizza dinner.
Dinner was great, with talks of plans for the holidays and what came later.
Mark didn’t bring up the knives again, but maybe a nice mithril knife would be more realistic? Accepted, even? More common, too. Everyone had one of those if they could afford one, and Mark was pretty sure that neither Eliot or Isoko had gotten one, yet. They were like 500 goldleaf, or something close to there. Mark could easily afford that and it wouldn’t break any banks at all.
Yes.
Knives for Christmas. He would go out and get them tomorrow, and then inlay them with some adamantium. Just a little bit! Probably jump the price up into the tens of thousands, but that level of cost was pretty normal for a person at their power level to wear in a casual setting. They were all hunters, after all.
Mark decided he’d get one for Sally, too, even if she probably already had one. She had been on Daihoon for over half a year already. Mark hadn’t seen his best friend in person since before his coma, but they had talked a bunch. He was excited to see her.
Dinner was soon over.
Mark had somehow created another 10 grams of adamantium in his bones before bed.
When he woke up the next morning, he had somehow grown 19 grams of adamantium in his sleep.
“… ohhh boy,” Mark muttered to himself. “Fast rate, huh?”
Another thought occurred.
“I’m never going to be able to hide that I can do this. Not for very long.”
A pause.
“… I’ll still try to be circumspect.”
He could blame his ‘brother’ for the extra metal showing up all the time. That would work, until it didn’t.