Upon waking the next day, Mark checked out the Accord channel with Isoko and Eliot, and Mark smiled.
They had answered, and quickly!
- -
VeryHuman (Today:2:39AM): I’ll tell her myself, but you can tell her that her room is adjustable as soon as I get back. She is 2.5 meters tall, right? Average Giant Strength height/weight? The room should work out well. The bed is a strong one.
HimePink (Today:5:02AM): If she can fight like you, then she will be a good addition to the team. I look forward to meeting her.
- -
Mark felt warm. Both Eliot and Isoko were being diplomatic; he was sure they had reservations. Anyone would! So Mark started typing, telling them about how both he and Sally were first class in their weight divisions back before the Tutorial, and so she should still be a good fighter. And she was giant now! With a 15-times modifier. She was a frontliner, just like Isoko… Mark backspaced before he sent that last message. He didn’t want Isoko to feel infringed. She loved her Platinum Body these days, but she was trying to be a frontliner, too. She got offended at other frontliners sometimes, when they could do everything she could do, but stronger.
Mark reworded his message and talked about how Sally could be a proper tank with her Retaliation power from Drakarok. Yes. That seemed… better. Isoko was going to learn some magic, too, and Mark suspected she was going to be good at it, so Isoko was still secure in her position. She would always be secure in her position if Mark had anything to say about it, because Mark simply trusted Isoko like a rock he could absolutely rely upon, and that mattered.
When he was done with those messages he went to the home gym and pumped some iron, while simultaneously making shapes out of his adamantium, stretching his capability further. Cubes became mobius strips became fish which became spiders. Mark had long ago moved on from doing one Shaping exercise while lifting weights, and now he did 6 at the same time. All of those shapes were malformed because Mark had a split focus going on, but he needed the training, and he was getting better. He would always have a split focus on the battlefield, and he needed to be able to make different weapons for different scenarios.
And now that he could actually make real adamantium weapons, and not just needles and scalpels, he needed to do more, because he could do more. He still wasn’t able to break the link between Shaping-action with his astral body and physical-body action, but he was getting there! Sometimes, when he moved the metal, it ‘slipped’, moving with remarkable speed.
Mark hadn’t been able to replicate that feat outside of concentrated effort in a quiet environment, though.
The day passed fast and slow at the same time.
Mark refrained from calling Sally, to see where she was, until 2 in the afternoon.
Sally did not pick up.
Mark did not leave a message.
He sent a text instead, that amounted to ‘Your room is all ready for you!’.
And then Mark went and made sure the room was ready.
That killed an hour.
Mark absolutely refrained from calling Sally’s parents and otherwise. That would be wrong.
At 5 pm, Mark started making himself and Sally dinner. It was pasta, and a lot of it. At 6, the pasta was done and in the baking dish, sitting in the oven, waiting for Sally to show up.
The sun set.
8 pm rolled around.
Still no Sally.
Mark lay on the couch, freaking out.
What had happened? Where was Sally? They had never set a real time for her to come over, because why would they ever do that? ‘Come over tomorrow!’ was good enough, right? It should have bee—
The security system pinged, the cameras activating at the presence of an unknown person walking off of the street, toward the house. Mark’s phone flickered silver as Quark brought up the camera feed, showing Sally walking in the dark, with her whole life strapped to her back. There was a crate and ropes and bags hanging off of the side and stacked on top.
Mark felt his heart soar and then he extended his senses outward, far away, and he felt Sally walking this way. It was real. She was here.
Mark leapt to his feet and raced toward the door, throwing it open to call out into the night, “I thought I was gonna have to send out a search party!”
Sally was still at the end of the driveway, walking this way. She guffawed. “I have a lot of shit, Mark! It took time!” She jogged a little, getting close enough that Mark could see her properly. She didn’t look weighed down at all, but she certainly was. She smiled anyway, as she loomed. “Where’s my room? I might be 15-times the woman I was, but this shit is heavy, and…”
Tension left Mark’s shoulders as he helped Sally unload her crate and her bags, using little clips of adamantium to pick up stuff and float it into the house. There were books and boxes galore, and some of the books were in odd languages, and Mark talked about those and Sally spoke of learning new languages by paying a fee to get a spell cast on her. The floodgates opened, and they started talking about absolutely everything under the sun, from monsters they had fought, to people they had seen, and then Mark started talking about his time at Citadel and they had dinner, over a keg of beer that Sally had brought.
She ate almost a full gallon of pasta while Mark talked. She finished off all that was left, and Mark had to comment—
“Holy shit you were hungry!”
Sally instantly started complaining, “I am never full! It’s impossible to eat enough! I had to contain myself around the family— They bitched about you paying for a new house, by the way, but Mom assured me in private that she was in charge of the finances, and she was gonna get a bigger house. I believe her.”
Mark smiled. “I’m glad.” Mark beat his heart with sustenance and deprivation, connecting to Sally and the cold world beyond the house. The forest was in hibernation, but it was still alive, and it appreciated being able to share in life with all the other life around. “Tell me if this helps with the food situation.”
Sally got a funny look on her face. “… What... Oh. It’s that sustenance/deprivation thing?” Sally relaxed in her chair. “Oh. That’s nice. Keep it coming, Mark!”
Mark smiled, flashed some purity/impurity and got both of them clean, just because it was a nice thing to do. He was glad that he was able to help a friend like this, and said, “It’s not really that good right now, because we’re in the middle of winter, but it’ll be better once we’re near actual green stuff…” Mark was suddenly concerned. “Do you know about Union? I have been staying away from Drakarok’s Retaliation or whatever it is called.”
Sally looked at Mark. “I’m… aiming… to be a paladin of Drakarok. Does that scare you?”
Mark paused. And then Mark said, “No, and yes. I trust you, Sally. I’m wary of the god of murder and war.”
Sally scoffed. “He’s more like a janitor than some sort of death in the dark.”
For a moment, Mark was stunned. “… A janitor?”
‘Death in the dark’ was also a concerning phrase.
Sally chuckled then waved a hand, saying, “That's a big topic that’s basically all about enforcing morality against the worst of offenders. Let’s talk about something else for now.”
“Yeah. Let’s do that.” Mark asked, “So you had to ‘contain’ your hunger around your family? What happened?” Mark added. “Or rather than that: What happened to your family after the dragon? We talked a little bit but… They’re all still in the same house? What’s up with that!”
“I wasn’t there for most of the happenings with the family, you understand...” Sally looked away, and then she began, “But I did come back home about ten days after the happening. It took that long to get through customs and back through the stopover on Endless Daihoon. The family had evacuated as a secondary string request, you know? Everyone who was in contact with you was told that they should consider packing up and leaving just in case of a targeted Magefall, though no one expected it to be an actual Magefall —and the recent blowback on Daihoon is that of course it wasn’t a Magefall, and too many people use that word too loosely… Anyway. When you start throwing around phrases like ‘Archmage Addashield, the Scion of the System, is Falling’, then you get a whole bunch of action happening very fast, and that action swept through the family like a hurricane.
“When I got back to Earth the family was already in Memphi at that time— The very first time I was here, with them, Arana was here with me. The other two stayed back at Harbordock— That’s the base where I was with the Belters… Anyway.
“I got here to Memphi and everyone was wearing basic browns and no one had any jobs and they were all on UBI trying to get jobs and make it, but mostly they were half-catatonic. Mom was crying daily about her house and her four cats…” Sally sighed. “She had set the cats up with that whole feeding system, but then there was a nuclear dragonblast, and you know. Anyway. Mom was crying. Dad was yelling at his sisters. Aunt Penelope tried to make a bunch of food for the family, but when I started to grab my first plate… She snapped at me, talking about how I shouldn’t eat that much.
“I was already fucking 8 foot tall! 410 pounds! Skinny as fuck back then, too. And here she was, this tiny woman who had always had a lot, who I had looked up to as my lesbian aunt with her 2-income-no-kids lifestyle, who had always had so much, was telling me I shouldn’t eat so much because they had to feed the cousins and the other people from Orange City, too, and…” Sally frowned. She looked away for a moment, then she turned back and said, “I tried to give them money, you know. I am a hunter, too. I have 90k in the International Bank of Aluatha right now. I had less back then, but it would have been enough for a rental somewhere. Literally the only thing I bought with my money by then was a giant ass sword —which I have to go back and get, but later— and I was saving up for proper armor, but that could go on hold. I tried to give them money. They didn’t take it.
“Admittedly, I was stupid about how I tried to give them money. I wasn’t forceful enough. They asked me what I was saving up for and I stupidly told them about my dreams of proper warrior armor, and then they decided they weren’t going to take my money, ever.
“They took your money, though I did have to be smarter about it.
“Anyway.
“I was only here in Memphi for a tenday and it was one crisis after the other…” Sally paused.
Mark could tell she was working up to something, but he didn’t know what. He was tense. She was tense.
And then Sally said, “I’m really sorry about your mom and dad. I wasn’t there nearly enough… When you were in the coma...” Sally teared up. “I thought you were going to die. The whole time! You almost did die. I talked to your dad a few times…” Sally couldn’t talk anymore through the lump in her throat.
Mark blinked away a few of his own tears and tried to grin, to banish the pain. “Don’t worry about it, Sally.”
“I’m so sorry, Mark.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Mark said, putting on a smile. “You were out there killing monsters, saving people you’d never meet, and getting a girlfriend.” He softly added, “I’m sorry she isn’t with us anymore.”
Now probably wasn’t the best time to talk about Isoko and his own long-term plans to find resurrection magic. That would better come up later. Sally seemed fragile at the moment and they had so much to talk about anyway.
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Sally chuckled, either nervously, or just to fill the void of sorrow with something nicer than pain. And then she took a deep breath, shrugged her shoulders to loosen up, and said, “So let’s talk about the settlement thing! What’s happening there? How do I officially join and shit? What happens now?”
Mark was ready to move on in the conversation, too. He never wanted to deal with being sad ever again. But there was one important thing to discuss.
Mark began, “You need to sign a settlement contract with the settlement committee to pledge to make the settlement your home base for the next 5 years. You can vacation wherever you want, and you can move around, too, but the settlement is your home base.”
Sally nodded, focused on the moment. “That means I pay taxes to them, yeah?”
“Basically, yes. It’s lower for us settlers— that’s what your designation will be, along with all of us. We’ll get grandfathered into those lower rates if we stay there for 5 years. It’s like… a whole standardized thing. I’m not sure about all of it, but as settlers, we get better treatment. It’s like being a First Citizen in Orange City. Some people at Orange City are First Citizens because they were grandfathered in, but we were able to buy it with that adamantium trinket… Anyway, at the settlement you have to work to keep that designation. We shouldn’t have any problems with that… Ah… I got distracted.” Mark paused, looked at Sally, and decided it was time for a big bomb. He began, “You know how mithrilkinetics make mithril, and adamantiumkinetics don’t make adamantium? Well I’m one of the adamantiumkinetics that do make adamantium. It’s a big deal, and I need you to swear to secrecy about that. The adamantium I gave your family came from me, directly. Not from Addavein.”
Sally completely lost focus for a good minute. It was like Mark had come in with a baseball bat to her noggin.
She rebooted.
“Wait… What? What? No wait. Uh. Say that last part again?” And then Sally rapidly added, “I knew about mithrilkinetics. I tried to commission armor— They told me that…” She gasped a little. “Holy fuck, Mark.”
She went silent. She stared a little, then she looked away in thought.
Mark waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
Without looking at him, Sally asked, “So I need to protect you?”
Mark smiled. “No need for protection, but I’m glad that’s where you went with it.”
Really, really glad, actually.
“Good, because I can’t protect you at all. I won’t endanger you, ever, Mark, but I can’t protect you more than one mortal can protect another.”
“… Yeah, I get it?” Mark said/asked, suddenly not sure why Sally was going so strongly on telling him she couldn’t protect him. “No one can protect me from my own life, Sally.”
Sally looked at Mark. “When we were kids, we talked about having superpowers and what it would mean. It’d be all rainbows and sunshine, and we’d kill the kaiju with single punches, like Glorious Man. We were young and stupid.” Sally continued, “The world is dangerous, and I can’t protect shit, Mark. I can’t protect shit.”
Oh.
This was…
This was something deep, wasn’t it.
Mark saw the pain in her eyes. He instantly thought of Arana, Sally’s dead girlfriend. He didn’t know the history of her and her girlfriend, but he knew it had left a deep wound upon her. Obviously.
Mark strongly said, “Yes you can protect shit, Sally, because I’m here with you, and we’ll be doing this whole thing together. It looks a whole lot different than either of us imagined it, but we’re here now, together, and we can do anything.”
Sally was about to object, probably to say how Mark didn’t understand.
Mark didn’t allow her a moment to say something. He hadn’t imagined he would tell Sally about resurrection magic now, but she looked like she needed it, so he continued, “Have you heard that rumor of Addavein’s, about the elves and resurrection magics up on Endless Daihoon? Getting that magic is just one of our goals. Isoko and my goals. Far off, nebulous goals. None of us are strong enough to go onto Endless Daihoon yet. But eventually we will be, and you, Isoko, and Eliot, too, are all going to be decked out in adamantium armor with the best weapons anyone can possibly make.
“It’ll be a little weird with the Villain Program and a little exciting with the settlement thing, but each of us are going to have to be the absolute best we could ever be, because that’s what we have to do to live in this world, Sally. We’re going to save the world. It’ll take years, but we’re going to make everything better.
“Death to all monsters, delivered by humanity through our actions and arms.
“Death to all monsters.”
Mark watched as the moment crystallized in Sally’s eyes.
She stared, secure and focused. She breathed a little.
Sally said, “Death to all monsters.” And then the pressure fractured and Sally nervously chuckled. “The fuck, Mark! Resurrection magic? I have seen some horror shows of people trying to resurrect the dead. Why do you think this Addavein-rumor is different?”
Mark smiled, asking, “The magic level of Daihoon is on another level, right? They have necromancers and shit, right? I basically learned that souls really, truly do exist, like, a week ago. And I don’t know why I think Addavein isn’t lying, or fibbing, or whatever. I do trust that the dragon wants to be the god emperor of man, though, and that requires that he brings something to the table large enough to reverse opinions on dragon oversight.”
A comfortable, warm silence stretched.
Mark watched Sally, and Sally’s vector went everywhere. She was thinking about a lot—
Sally went into a story, “The fact that living things truly do have souls is something I learned in my first month. I had just signed up for the Belters and one of the first missions I went on was caravan guarding out to a commune in the woods.”
“Holy crap. A commune in the woods! Was it a hunted area?”
“Oh yeah it was hunted, but not by people. It was haunted. There was a spirit caller shaman-type family that lived in this wilds-based tribe. His clan was a pit stop on the trip, and every single person in his family had shackled the souls of a thousand different monsters to all of the trees in the area. It was a type of Okuana Empire forest, though one of the less common types for sure. The trapped souls were all monstrous spirits, from chimeric frogs to cats to wolf-types. A lot of monkey-types, too. Every single one of them looked as they did in life, but instead of flesh they were made of glowing aura, mostly soft green. They didn’t know they were dead, Mark. And they didn’t attack people. They just killed whatever came through that wasn’t people…”
Mark listened to a story of necromancy, forests, and monsters killing monsters, enthralled.
Eventually the two of them ended up on the couch in the living room, drinking beer and sharing stories of hunting monsters. Mark spoke of becoming a Slayer and his uncles living beyond the woods over there, and about Curtain Protocol now that the two of them were finally outside of it and able to talk properly. Sally talked about the skies of Daihoon, how they were all auroras all the time, and they both had a lot of fun talking about how they were both taller now, and then came talk about the food.
Sally exclaimed, “They have this magic thing that doesn’t function over here— there’s lots of stuff like that; something about the lack of ambient mana pressure disrupting spellwork— this magic thing that’s like a cooking oven that you can fold up and unfold, and it’s like a box. I ended up carrying it around all the time and I loved it, but it belonged to Arana and it went with her next-of-kin…” Sally blinked a bit, and then shook her head, banishing the sad thoughts, before she continued, “When we’d camp for the night and after setting up all the wardstones, then I’d take out the food box and whatever game we hunted that day, and stick the meat into the unfolded box, and ten minutes later we’d have… like… the best roasted meat you’ve ever tasted. It was always cooked to perfection, falling off the bone, and just… just so amazing, Mark— and seasoned, too! The food box had different settings! Cajun was a popular one, but also Okuanan was what Arana and Shane loved— That’s just salt, pepper, and some saffron-like flavor. Flowery, almost. Tarek liked boring-old-plain. Gods!” Sally stared off into space, asking, “What the fuck was that machine even called? We just called it ‘the box’…”
Sally’s story meandered to different places, and Mark happily came along for the ride—
“A Prestidigitator! The Presto box! That’s what it was called! It was expensive as fuck and we need to get one when we go to Daihoon.”
Mark chuckled. “Eliot might be able to make one. He’s Hearthswellian— Oh, damn. I need to get you signed up to the chat room. Do you know what ‘Accord’ is?”
Sally shook her head and finished off her seventh beer. “What’s that?”
Mark began explaining about Citadel of Freyala Resources, COFR, and about paladin groups on the computer, but Sally yawned when she had to look at a computer screen, so Mark grinned, and said, “Time for bed.”
Sally yawned wider, saying, “Oh yeah. I need to take a shower, too. That shower in there looks amazing.”
Mark hit both of them with a purity/impurity—
“And that!” Sally exclaimed, “That right there! That’s amazing! You can just do that? All the time? … Wait. I don’t have to piss anymore?” Sally eyed Mark. “What?”
Mark grinned. “I can also go the other way and make a person piss themselves. Theoretically.”
Sally burst out laughing at the mention of ‘piss’, before Mark could even finish saying what he was saying.
Mark tried to be as serious as possible, frowning to force the seriousness, but his frown cracked into a grin several times as he said, “It is a dark and dangerous power, Sally Wuthers, and one I will not use except against the most heinous of foes.”
Sally was laughing all over again. And then she waggled her fingers like she was telling a scary story, and went, “OoooOOooOOOhhh~ Watch out, heroes of the world, Blackvein is gonna take the piss on you!”
They ended up joking for another hour, Mark constantly feeling a small grin on his face, before Sally yawned again. That’s when they called it.
Mark went to bed with a wall separating him from Sally. Sally’s vector was already lolling, sleep claiming her, the direction of her attention gradually and then rapidly faltering to a small state, pointed inward and outward and in every small direction at once.
In the morning, they’d go to the nearest Slayer HQ, which was by Northeast Rivergate, or maybe they’d go to the one a bit further and a bit nicer at Riverside, north of central Memphi but south of here, and get Sally signed up as a Slayer and also in the Villain Program, if she felt like doing that, too. The Slayer-thing was certainly happening, but the Villain-thing might not happen.
Maybe Mark would wake up early and make breakfast for both of them.
With a soft grin, Mark closed his eyes, feeling good about everything.
This is what he wanted when he was a kid, when he used to watch heroes fight monsters on the screen, and later on the news. Back then he and Sally had fallen in together as the short kids who wanted to fight the monsters of the world, and now they were here, grown up and in the same house, and preparing to destroy all the obstacles in front of them, and save the world… Or at least a very small part of the world. One step at a time.
Mark couldn’t wait to get Sally together with Isoko and Eliot.
… And now he couldn’t sleep at all.
Welp! He had a solution to that.
After one final check on the security system, and seeing nothing untoward, Mark breathed out wakefulness and breathed in sleepiness…
He dozed off with a sigh.