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Eliot sat back in his chair at the command center as he watched the battle from ten different views, mostly high in the sky above the canyons. Mark's path of destruction beyond the western entrance was like someone had taken an eraser to a well-used artist's palette. It was mostly a straight line in from the west, and then curved down to the lizard's rock, where all the goblins were gathering. Mark killed the enemies today as easily as he had back in Rome, which was surprising.

The goblins here had much better developed Power Levels, even if most of them were young. Bodies in the 30s, at least. Union was a Natural Power, across the hex from Body, so it was strong against Body, but Body was still highly resistant toward breaking down, and Mark was attacking the body, directly. It was a Union trick, of course; a specific use of his Power that only Inquisitors or real Union-users were capable of doing. A use of his Power in a way that didn't cost him much, but which killed easily.

It was a Freyalan secret. Eliot had made his choice to be of Hearthswell. Sometimes he questioned if he made the right choice, but looking at the battle in front of him, today was not one of those questioning days. Who the fuck wanted to be in the middle of that? Not Eliot! Eliot was here in the command center, as he should be. He was not using the full command center, though, for the CC was purpose-built for responding to major direct threats to the settlement.

Most of the place was unoccupied, in case it needed to be occupied in a hurry. Eliot and Herb Sacredcut and some of the people on duty today, who weren't actively monitoring for kaiju, were helping to monitor the goblin situation, off to the side of the command center. Those other guys were coordinating with the other teams, for when the breakout happened, as it always did. Eliot glanced over at Herb. The man was sitting on a throne-like seat atop a mechanical spiderbot that was its own little command center.

The bot had countless arms, some of them acting as legs, some of them plugged into the tech of the command center, and some of them holding up screens, while Herb touched arcane buttons on retractable keyboards. Herb said, "It's a big goblin infestation." He was still looking at his screens, tapping away, but Eliot got the idea that he was talking to him. Eliot said, "It is."" You don't do strategy with them?" Herb asked, almost innocently.

"They're just letting Mark do it all, too. He's not using Samson properly, and Samson has never been good about standing up as tall as he should." … Well yeah, Mark was a bit… Mark. Eliot wasn't the best strategist, either. He could monitor any situation rather well, but actually attacking any particular situation was an exercise in working through choice paralysis. And also, well… Eliot found himself saying, "It's easy to do strategy when I'm out there … But when I'm not actually in the Union it's harder.

I give them the information they need, and they know what to do with it. Mark is a good leader." Herb was insinuating… something, but Eliot wasn't quite sure what he was saying. Eliot ignored it. Eliot looked at the screens in front of him, at the wide map of red dots scattered throughout all of the canyons, and at the estimated number of goblins up in the corner of the screen.

The goblin count had crossed 50, 000 and it was going up from there as Herb's spiderbots and Eliot's drones spread out throughout the craters, getting proper numbers. That area in the southern-ish canyon was full of goblins. Most of them were down there, actually. But they were still everywhere. Mark's attack was like a gnat waking up a giant beast. Eliot said, "He can handle this." Herb grinned, still not looking at Eliot, as he said, "He's certainly a good lure!

He really knows how to make the goblins follow his lead." …' Follow his lead'? Now that one had been on purpose. Another 'almost innocent' phrase. Mark was undoubtedly leading the goblins in a Union, but he wasn't mind controlling the mind controllers. Eliot might not have been an acolyte of Freyala like his parents had wanted, but he didn't think of Freyala as mind control. That was crazy. Eliot had a lot of concerns about mind control, though… Herb knew about those concerns, didn't he.

Some of those concerns were right here for all to see, too.

Eliot said, "The mind goblins are orchestrating the whole thing. You can see them, here, here, and here," Eliot said, as he tapped the screen in front of him. One of the bigger screens on the wall behind Eliot updated with the suspected mind goblin nodes. Such a designation was nearly impossible to scan for because you needed an actual scanning machine to find out a creature's Powers, but there were a lot of resources here at the settlement and Eliot could command a great many of them.

Broad spectrum ground-penetrating scanners were available, and Herb was actually operating most of those, making them run through the forest on the backs of spiderbots, plant themselves, and take readouts. Eliot continued, "The mind goblins are controlling the battle." Herb shook his head, humming.

"No they're not. They're working for the leader. They're information relays only, which is why I think Mark is controlling them. He's using the mind goblins for his own ends, and they don't realize this yet. I've seen Inquisitors of Freyala do something like this, but never at this level of power." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. …

Eliot felt the weight of the Mind Protector on his neck, the charm that Holy Father High Priest Rafael Pardo had given him, to guard himself from all other influences. Mark could get around the charm, of course. Union was like that. Rafael didn't need to tell Eliot about that, but he had told him strong non-Mind powers could do that, and Mark was a glaring exception to the otherwise absolute protection that was guarding Eliot's mind, because Union wasn't mind control at all. It was Union.

But still, Eliot felt a chill when he thought about mind monsters. Being inside the settlement helped. In this place, Eliot had a lot of tricks he could employ in a lot of different ways. If those 50, 000 goblins had tried to breach the settlement walls instead of laying traps out there, then Eliot would have been the one standing for the cameras, instead of Mark. Eliot sighed a little. What was Herb's goal in talking like this? People in power always had goals when they spoke.

If you were lucky, then you knew what those goals were before you interacted with those people. If you were unlucky, then they could walk circles around you, doing whatever they wanted without you knowing they had done anything at all. Was Herb just 'making conversation'? Well yes. But was he setting up the pieces for later? Setting up the pieces for the future was a given; that's how this worked.

Was he trying to understand Eliot, or was he trying to make Eliot understand something in the way Herb wanted that thing understood? … Eliot was too worried about mind monsters right now. He was imagining things that did not exist in reality, because Eliot liked Mark. Mark was a great guy! A bit strongly tied to the biggest world events happening right now, and he was sometimes, perhaps, moody, but Mark was highly reliable in every way that mattered and a lot that didn't.

The guy had thrown Eliot a birthday breakfast this morning, just a few hours ago, and Eliot had never asked for that, but he had really been hoping that someone would do something… Fucking goblins got in the way of a really good day. And Mark and Isoko were fighting for their lives right now, though it certainly didn't look like it from the outside. It looked like Mark was effortlessly killing everything, but Eliot knew Mark was focused fully on the kill happening right in front of him.

Eliot knew about the actual dangers of this world. Mark and Isoko were in mortal danger right now. It was just a matter of the wrong thing happening at the wrong time. Eliot focused on the screens in front of him and fell into the man-made systems that snaked through the buildings, the very concrete itself, the rebar and the water pipes, and everything else, all around him. He became one with the wires in the walls and the enchantments that he had laid down, thanks to Hearthswell.

These goblins were nothing to him, here in the settlement. Out there they were dangerous, but in here they were easy pickings. But they weren't in here. They were out there. That is what was freaking Eliot out. He couldn't do shit to help Mark and Isoko. Nothing except to ping him when big threats started moving. Maybe when they got that flying castle up and running in a few years, then maybe he could go out beyond the walls again... Hmm. … Something was happening? What was happening.

Something was happening in the battlefield, but Eliot couldn't see— Oh. It clicked, and Eliot's breath stopped. Herb's field-capable Skill scanners recognized Shapers to the south of Mark's position, on the crater wall. Those Shapers were strong. That was the basis of the threat. Deedee was another person here at the Command Center. Her Skill was called Imposed Vulnerability, and she used it in an almost-prognosticatory sort of way, to know when stuff was going to break.

Her warning systems were a general 3-second alarm that sounded before tech was damaged. Mark's team's stuff was about to break. Quentin had the knack Organized, but he prided himself on being a kaiju battle strategist, and he was certainly that. Since there were no kaiju out there, but since Quentin was on duty right now, Quentin was watching the battle and the three other teams, situated on the other natural exits to the dragonoid canyons. Those other teams were fine. But Mark's team was not.

Quentin's eyes went wide as he watched the goblins surge from four different holes in the ground, all around Mark's team, and the power surge on the southern wall suddenly magnified. Eliot was seeing it, too. Quentin almost leapt out of his chair to say something—" Team!" Eliot rapidly spoke through the team's coms, "Goblin ordnance from the south, beyond the treeline! RUN BACKWARD!"