Chương 234: 234

All was warm. All was dark. Mark's thoughts were an echo into infinity that returned nothing but the immensity of the darkness all around. Somehow, he found himself walking on a black sphere, but he was not walking on a black sphere at all. He was inside of a black fog. Gradually, slowly, Mark began to have coherent thoughts. There was a memory of his parents, giving him a bike for Christmas that none of them could afford.

That thought became a glimmer in the dark that vanished as it revealed layer upon layer of other memories. A fishing trip with Dad. The sky was blue and the fish were biting. Watching Mom clean up around the house. The sun came in at a golden angle, highlighting dust in the air. A rugby game as a freshman when Mom and Dad showed up with his uncles, Alexandro and Gabriel, and Mark scored 5 smashing goals, and then they took him out to get ice cream and to the temple of Freyala afterward, but mostly to the temple.

Mark met a rival from another team at the temple. It had been a warm night. All of those memories were a brightness in the black. Those lights were his good memories. Surprisingly foundational memories, too. Mark didn't know it back then, but these things had informed all of who he was. He was a guy who liked to fish with Dad, who caught sight of Dad throwing out his little Fish Yank fishes to catch the big ones, and who had promised not to tell Mom that Dad was using magic around him.

Dad had laughed at that, looking handsome and so very young in the memory. Happy. Healthy. Alive. Dad told Mark to tell Mom whatever he wanted. Dad was strong enough to take the blow back, and besides, he wasn't actually breaking Curtain Protocol at all." Mom breaks Curtain Protocol all the time!" Dad had said, laughing, right there, like it was happening right now.

"And you see her do it, too."" Where! When?! How!" Dad had smirked and cast the line back into the water, really, really getting it out there, but without flicking the pole like he should. He was using Fish Yank again. He also shrugged, saying, "Now that would be breaking Curtain Protocol." And then Mark was in the memory with Mom, and she looked beautiful. Mark was a little kid and Mom was Mom, and not long for this world. Mark didn't know it back then, though.

In that memory Mark was talking to her about one of the books on her shelf, and she was dusting, and then Mark-in-the-memory realized that there was no dust in the air. He knew Mom cleaned the water with some water-cleaning magics, but he didn't know she cleaned the entire house with cleaning magics when she dusted." You're using magic right now!?" Mark said, exclaimed, accused, breaking from the conversation. Mom paused. She didn't look at him, "No I'm not. So in the book for class.

You talk about that part about the fire? You didn't think it was realistic? Fires spread fast, honey. Faster than you think they do." Mark rolled his eyes and talked about how it was unrealistic for an entire city to go up in flames in a single afternoon. The story or class just didn't make sense if that was an event in the story, because Glorious Man or maybe even Timeweaver would have stopped it.

But mostly Mark watched Mom dust the house with her little feather duster, and he watched the shafts of golden light in the air, and he didn't see any dust get in the air at all. She was making a very healthy house by cleaning out the bad things. The shafts of light shifted, and Mark was walking into the temple of Freyala, to the healing side. There, on the other side of the 'doctor's waiting room' was the guy from the opposing team. The one that Mark had tackled way too hard." You!" Mark exclaimed.

The guy looked worried, and then he looked furious. Mom was right behind Mark, and Alexandro was there with her, and both of them were suddenly cautious about whatever might happen next. Mom tried to hold Mark back. The opposing player rose from his seat, scowling hate. His own mother was with him and she looked pissed off. Of course they were mad. Their team had lost because of Mark, and this guy in particular had lost hard, because Mark almost broke his ribs, for sure. They had cracked, at least.

But Mark didn't see any of that hate. This was before Union, before he could tell how people felt just by sensing them, when he was ignorant enough to just believe everyone was a good person. Past-Mark said, "Dude! You almost had me there! That was an awesome catch you did that first time so I knew I had to be on you like a brawny! And I was, but you almost got us anyway!" Mark smiled and got next to the guy, holding out a hand.

"I'm Mark!" The guy was so disarmed that he didn't know what to do, except to shake Mark's hand and say, "For such a short little fucker you sure can aim right at my fucking ribs." Mark laughed.

"Of course I can! It's all always about the leverage and your ribs are right there! Are you in the Tutorial training programs already? Our school is starting them in the summer, but some do it early, right?" Mark sat down next to the chair that had been the guy's. The guy sat down and the pain ebbed away even faster than before, now that more people were here to form a Union, though Mark did not know that back then.

He saw it now, though, people behind the glass in the healer's room had been about to panic, and then they calmed down when they saw there wasn't going to be a fight. A lot of people did that. … Huh. And then everyone got better and they went out for ice cream together. Mark was surprised, looking at the memory, that his family, led by Mark, had invited the rival teammate to ice cream, and that the rival had come. Mark didn't remember that happening quite so easily… But he remembered it now.

Mark blinked in the dark. The memories were lights again. The three specks of light began to illuminate more memories, like ripples in water touching off more and more stones just below the surface. Stones turned to light, and then became more ripples. It was Mark's center. In that moment, in that action of recognition, Mark was standing on a wooden floor that was not wooden when he looked at it, in a room that was not a room at all when he gazed upon the not-walls and the not-windows. It was all black.

It was all a dream. But he still held those 3 memories in his hand like three dots of light inside of a black marble that was not a marble. It was all a dream. Mark looked out. He knew, in that moment, that he was seeing his soul from the inside, and the marble in his hands was his core, and that the ripples in the core and the mirage of the house was his Binding. His soul was his mana, and his mana was adamantium. The illusions overlaying the adamantium mana —because that's what it had to be— was the Binding.

Mark looked upon himself and saw his mana, his astral body, as a perfect black sphere with rumbles of illusions all throughout, and the illusions were memories… No. Not memories? Or maybe they were? This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Mark stared at the marble in his hand, staring at himself in turn, and he was a dot of black. Mark looked outward, and he saw an immensity.

It was Addavein from the inside and asleep, curled around himself and layered over with adamantium. What was this? Oh, Mark realized, the very second he saw where he was. He remembered gripping Freyala's hand and then he was here, inside Addavein. A Union of Mark/Addavein, huh? Mark was a marble floating inside of a warehouse. He moved through the space at the speed of slow-thought. He considered the dragon's tail, and then the wings, and he moved backward and then backward in a different direction.

He considered the spine and then the neck, and then Mark gained a little bit of control over where the hell he was going. He went right to the brain, to the face, to the left eye— A crack in the black. An ocean beyond. And then Mark was cast backward, into Addavein, into the creature's heart. …

Mark considered a Union of Blood, his heart beating hard with Adamant and Ethereal— Mark's eyes slammed opened and he was paralyzed at the bottom of an ocean— Mark crashed back into himself, into his floating core in the middle of the dragon that was his talzarki. For a long moment, maybe minutes or more, Mark thought about what the fuck he was doing here and he finally shouted, "What the FUCK!" The world rumbled at a distant voice, sparks flying in the dark… Those were not Mark's sparks, though.

Mark floated up, up, to where the sparks lay like glittering stars among the heavens, but also scattered throughout the spinal cord and brain and nerves of Addavein. They had been moving too fast to see, but with Mark taking control of the body for a minor moment, the stars had appeared. And now Mark saw them everywhere. Mark was a tiny blot of stars in the middle of a kaiju-sized blackness, but there, in the nervous system and beyond the body, lay stars.

"… Am I myself, in the middle of a hollowed out Addavein?" That felt right, somehow. … Was there anything he could actually do here? … Well, for one, he knew that a lot of bad shit was happening back in Memphi, but he didn't feel any of it. The threats of Leash, the promise of dead friends, dead uncles and Lola and David and Blackthorn and everyone else... It was there. It was horrible. But Mark couldn't do anything about it right now, and he knew Addavein was on the case. Were his emotions deadened?

Maybe a little. Mark was a little miffed at Freyala for doing… this. Whatever 'this' was. He had expected to be riding a dragon against kaiju, to help soften them up for Addavein to knock down. But now that he was here, in the calm black, he saw that sort of decision would be the bad one. As long as Addavein wasn't physically a dragon in the sky, then everyone could pretend that he was never there." He better not do any weird shit to my body, though," Mark said.

His words sent ripples through the black and Mark watched as Addavein's body rumbled with whispered words, his nervous system sparkled with memories, and the sky beyond glittered with distant power. He really did feel like a guy on a black ocean. Mark watched the stars and he waited for the transfer back because he was getting transferred back… Right? … Mark made a Union with himself and Addavein, pulling on his heart and Addavein's heart which was right here, next to himself.

That heart was the size of a house, or larger. Hard to tell distances here— The heart beat once. Mark felt something out there. Something far, far away. … Was that… Addavein? Mark had no clue. He just felt calm. … And now that he was looking at it, why did the heart look so much smaller? Well… Not really smaller. Maybe less mansion-sized and more… very slightly smaller mansion. Oh. Mark was getting bigger?

Mark made a Union of himself and Addavein and he beat his heart— The heart at the center of Addavein beat, and Mark realized that yes, it was Addavein's heart, but it was the heart he was using for Union right now. He wasn't connecting to it, he was it; the heart was his. Mark's target of 'Addavein' to connect to was… Mark looked up, at the shell around him, at the stars in the black.

Mark was connecting to whatever existed out there, far, far beyond this body, and every time he did, he became a little bigger— Something hurt. What was hurting? Mark looked for the hurt, checking Addavein's shadow-like body, resting out there in the black. Was something attacking him? … No. Or maybe yes? Hard to know— Pain." The fuck?" Mark said, and Addavein's body spoke in his sleep, like a mountain echoing five mountain ranges over that way.

Mark switched his Union to a Union of Good and Bad, poking at everything that might be out there, beyond the stars that were the edge of his soul—" Ouch ouch ouch ouch," Mark said, stopping everything. He looked inside of himself, next, trying to find— The core of his body and the Binding all around it were strained. Tiny cracks had appeared in the 3-light marble core. The floorboards of his 'house' were ripped up here and there. The 'walls' of the house were kinda… bloated? Soaked? Waterlogged, maybe.

Everything was kinda inflamed, or maybe the bricks were supposed to have black ooze ripping them apart— A golden hand revealed a golden thread connecting Mark's core to Elsewhere. Mark looked at that thread, and it was a river of light and Mark fell into the river, all of him rushing outward— A black storm approached from the other direction." Hello, Mark!

I cleared out most of the problems, but—" And then the storm was there, all around, and Mark was a tiny boat being flung down the golden path, far, far away, and the storm was past them. Mark yelled at the passed storm, "Addavein?!" Addavein called back, "Talk to Quark! Hopefully you don't have a tail but that's a solvable problem if—"