Chương 321: 321

Mark flew back toward the Greendeath Mountains, making his way to about 20 kilometers outside of the outer edge of Goblinhome's agreed-upon territory. Further south, the border was lined with green-lighted towers in the dark. Goofy sat on the platform attached to Mark's flying pill box, his little legs kicking out over the edge, asking, "So no kaiju this time?"" Not to start, I guess.""

It was really scary seeing you last time throw that death thing at me," Goofy said, his vector just there, as though he had said a normal thing. It might have even been a complement, actually. Mark took the statement according to the nature in which it was given, saying, "Thanks. The Fear was only partially a side effect. Kaiju are scary." Goofy nodded seriously, and then he asked, "So what we doin'?""

They're going to break their word for peace talks in, like 2 hours— 1: 47, actually," Mark said, "Quark got a timeline, now. Anyway. Just like they broke their word to have a peace talk in the sky over Goblinhome, they'll break their word for a peace talk. They're buying time, and that's it. We'll be ready for when the time comes. Are you hungry, tired, or anything like that?" Mark took a real hard look at Goofy, and he noticed that yeah, the guy was tired, and hungry, and he needed to pee. Mark could relate.

Mark ran through a few Unions of Purity and then Sustenance, trying to wipe away whatever physical irritation was lodged in Goofy's vector like mold on bread. Some of that irritation vanished under Sustenance, so Mark kept that up for a moment longer. Goofy relaxed a little, and then he grinned brightly." Better?" Mark asked. Goofy happily nodded.

"Union is a true miracle…" His vector went distant, and then he asked, "Would Freyala welcome a wretch like me?"" That is a complicated question that I cannot answer at all, Goofy. Sorry. I'm not actually a paladin."" Oh! Right." Goofy's vector went internal. He started to think deep thoughts. Mark left him to it as he focused on the world below. He wasn't summoning kaiju, but he was certainly gonna summon some raging elementals, and if those elementals happened to cross into Goblinhome territory? Well…

They were wild forces of nature, so they were outside of Mark's control! Simple as. Mark was going to go for 2 different types of elemental, to start. Death and Fire. Mana-iron and mana-oxygen were the basis of the two mana types of Death and Fire elementals, with both variations having several differences. Death mana didn't only come from iron, but that was the one Mark was remembering right now. Fire mana came primarily from oxygen, but there were a hundred variations of mana-oxygen.

Mark wanted life-consuming elemental Death, and life-consuming elemental Fire. That was all very technical, though. Pretty much any elemental Death and elemental Fire would probably do what Mark wanted, which was to spread out, burn and consume all flesh, and ruin whatever ecology the goblins had made in the lands down below.

Mark had no formal training in elemental summoning, but if he strung together enough power he was sure something would trip over into elemental summoning, and from there Mark could do Unions of Stability to coalesce small elementals into bigger elementals. From there, and if the peace talks never happened, then Mark would inject some adamantium into some kaiju rituals, and turn whatever elemental he wanted into a kaiju. That was the plan, anyway. Mark told Goofy, "I'm starting."

Goofy flew up and away a little, getting out of the center of the coming storm. Mark beat black veins from his heart, breath, and brain, connecting to the world with darkness flowing outward. Light gathered in the pale moonbeams from above, radiating throughout Mark's presence like another moon in the sky. Goofy was a part of that radiance, but smaller. Black tendrils vibrated downward, seeking life and finding it in abundance. The Wilds here were thick with flora and fauna.

Things howled, things whined in death throes, and things roared and barked in displays of dominance, and territoriality. And then screams erupted from all of that myriad life. Fear arrived, vibrating the world and thrumming into every heart and mind down there. Lesser monsters died foaming at the mouths. Bigger monsters trampled smaller ones and crashed into others of their own size. Things died in abundance. Monsters went wild with their powers.

Bursts of shadow and air, light and flame, tore through trees and ground and sky. Mark focused on the flames down there. He expected to find the fire monster fast, but it was dark and Quark had cameras on the bottom of Mark's flying pill, and whatever was zooming around, igniting this or that, was moving too fast to see. There was no specific track of flames to follow. So Mark moved in, getting closer. With a range of a thousand meters, getting close was all Mark needed to do to figure out what he was seeing.

Mark ignited the fear in a rough area where the flame monster might have been, and then a small part of the forest combusted as a goblin appeared in Quark's sight, like a green dot racing fast, trying to hide. Where the goblin put on bursts of speed it exploded the land all around itself. Some sort of Combustion Body goblin? Maybe. That was Mark's first guess. It was probably close enough. The goblin looked up at Mark over and over, its vector going wild as it tried to escape. … It was a scout, for sure.

One of Old Slave's speedy scouts, probably. Well okay then! Mark put the fear of the Tyrant into the goblin and the goblin quelled in fear, shitting out fire in every possible direction, igniting the land all around. The goblin did not die. Mark did not want it to die. It simply vibrated in place, frozen in a conflagration of its own making. Flames spread. Things died. The fiery goblin fainted, and Mark moved on to the next part.

Mark flared out a Union of Stability and Instability, into the flames, into the dead things, focused on un-life, on elemental power. The wilds responded with incoherent action; in ways it didn't know how to respond. Things crashed into trees instead of running around them. Things stepped off of webs and crashed to the ground. Trees grew roots in their crowns and a canopy underground.

Instability infected every living thing, while Stability infused every single non-living vector that Mark could feel, in the fire first, and in the freshly-dead. It was like taking a picture made of sand and shaking it at specific frequencies to cause images to appear in the sand. And so, Mark shook the painting of the world, focused on elemental Death and Fire, and those frequencies inflamed. For minutes, flame was just flame, and dead things were just dead things.

Mark wondered if this methodology would work at all, but it seemed like it should! And then, some sparks of elemental life appeared. It was easy to tell those vectors apart from every other living thing out there. Elemental life was simple. Stone wanted to stay where it was. Fire wanted to burn. Water wanted to flow downhill. Wind wanted to flow anywhere it could. Death was the weird one, wanting to act like living things, but with a distinct inversion to its vector.

Mark wouldn't have recognized Death if he hadn't been working with Death elementals a lot in the last month. Mark focused on those vectors most of all, giving them as much Stability as they needed. Soon, the nascent elementals had reached some tipping points. And then Mark opened his mouth, and imparted a Call to action in every elemental he touched," Consume goblins." Tiny motes of elementals of all sorts, not just the ones Mark wanted, coalesced into life.

Wind elementals joined with fire elementals, becoming raging storms the size of houses. Death elementals joined with stone elementals, becoming mass graves that got bigger, and bigger. Water joined with shadow and mutated with miasma to become choking storms of death that rolled across the land, consuming and corrupting, killing and decaying into even more elementals. The new elementals went after every living thing, not just goblins, but when they saw a goblin they went after those things most of all.

It worked better than Mark imagined it could have worked. Mark returned to Glory and Fear as he closed up his flying pill, bringing light and power to every elemental down there, and to every smaller elemental that spawned from the greater elementals. Goofy stared down into the mess as he flew down, to sit on the edge of Mark's flying pill. Wind poured down from overhead, where Mark held himself and Goofy aloft with spinning blades of adamantium. Goofy's vector was suddenly ashamed.

He didn't want to kill random goblins. Mark saw the world through cameras on the outside of the shell, and he spoke through his Union just as much as he spoke through speakers beside Goofy, asking, "Do you believe in the reincarnation?" Goofy solidly said, "Yes. I do believe in the reincarnation. I am living proof of it… But I am still conflicted." And then he faltered just a little, looking down again.

"It is a conflict." Mark left it at that and started his slow flight toward the west, dragging Glory and Fear as he went, guiding a horde of elementals as much as one could guide a horde of elementals, which was very well, if you knew how to. Mostly, it was a matter of keeping them healthy enough to keep living. Otherwise elementals tended to discorporate and fall apart as they encountered more and more things that were not-them.

Kaiju-sized elementals were different; those could self-sustain, probably due to the adamantium inside of them, but Mark wasn't sure about that. But, basically, where elementals tread, new elementals could be born, as long as Mark empowered them with Glory, which he did. When the new elementals grew bigger and bigger, and became self-sustaining for a reasonable definition of 'self-sustaining', Mark let them go, taking his Glory away and poking them with Fear.

Those elementals then went wild and elsewhere, outside of his control. They soon found goblins to hunt, though. Mark nurtured new elementals left in the wake of the old ones leaving. The horde advanced, with Mark dropping off mansion-sized elementals to ravage the land every minute or so. Sometimes multiples a minute. An hour later, Mark had gone 20 kilometers and left behind an expanding trail of destruction that rushed off in every direction, chasing goblins hidden in the Wilds.

Those fleeing goblins did not run to safety. They just led the elementals to more targets. Mark kept himself beyond the border of Goblinhome's territory the whole time. The border was certainly looking this way, though. Stone towers, capped in green lights, lined the border, and there were enough vectors in that border zone that Mark felt the world pulling at him, even from this distance. Things were watching. A lot of things.

Soon, Mark reached a 'corridor', which was a protected space for goblins to travel, where they would not be attacked by human forces. It was something Aluatha had worked out with Goblinhome in ages past to prevent total war. That corridor had a line of green-light stone towers running down the center of it, like an octopus's tentacle extended far, far toward the north. Mark thought the whole idea of a 'corridor' was fucking crazy.

But it was what it was, and Walaria had commanded him to stay out of the corridors, so Mark flew high into the sky. He focused his Union of Glory on a few different elementals in his horde; on one wind/fire 'conflagration' elemental, on a storm/miasma 'black lightning' elemental, and on a water/death/wind 'drowning' elemental. All of those ones could fly. So Mark flew up, like a beacon, and those three elementals followed.

He passed across the corridor, high overhead, dragging power behind him, and that power was getting hungry. They did not want to fly after Mark. They wanted prey. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. The elementals decided the glowing black oval in the sky was prey. Goofy was on the other side of Mark's pillbox hiding from the elementals.

"Those things are scary."" I won't let them eat you."" The black lightning one got really close!" It had, yes. That one tore across the sky truly fast, again, coming at Mark and Goofy like a dying man lunging for succor. But Mark poked at it with Fear, driving it away in a flurry of rushing black illumination, and then he re-targeted the elemental with Glory before it went out of his range, and it came flying toward Mark once again." It's coming back!" Goofy said, almost flying away.

Mark shocked the 'miasma-lightning' elemental with Fear again, and it flew away, roaring with lightning, zooming right past the much slower drowning elemental. The conflagration elemental was moving at a medium pace, but the lightning elemental outstripped everything else Mark had raised so far. Mark considered just dropping the drowning elemental, but it was the strongest and widest-acting elemental that flew, so Mark just flew slower.

Mark bounced the black lightning elemental away with Fear, again, saying to Goofy, "Everything right now is part of the display to help Aluatha get that peace talk. This control? It's a display of power. We're not in danger, Goofy. They are, and especially if they forgo the peace talks." There were watch towers everywhere out here, the nicest ones situated on the edge of Goblinhome territory, and in the middle of the corridors leading that way. They were large and stone and capped with bright green light.

There were terrible towers, too, cobbled from wood and goblinfruit trees and strewn throughout the land, disregarding delineated territory. Mark flew over it all, and they all saw what he could do. Soon, Mark was on the other side of the kilometers-wide corridor, setting down into mostly-pristine Wilds. The elementals crashed into the land and into goblinfruit-tree towns outside of Goblinhome's official territory, like starved men, eating, gorging, spawning new elementals of all kinds.

Mark let the miasma elemental run rampant, pulling on it with Glory and frightening it off with Fear, and when it bounced off toward Goblinhome, Mark let the mansion-sized elemental simply continue on in that direction, right toward the border. The black lightning elemental razed the ground, igniting fires and electrocuting goblins on the ground and in their stone watch towers.

It struck at the green light at the top of the tower, bursting whatever power lay within that light, and then it moved on, into a nearby goblinfruit tree settlement, inside the border. That action happened 3 kilometers from Mark. He had not crossed into the border at all, either in person, or in astral body. It was the same thing that Grax had done to the settlement. Mark wondered if Grax was out there, right now, looking at all of this and realizing it was his fault. Probably not. He was a monster, after all.

Grax's circling of the settlement, at about 10 kilometers out, had happened in less than a minute. Mark could not match that. He was no speedster. Mark continued his own trail of destruction at a much more sedate pace, and what he left behind was a lot more dangerous than a goblin tide. Even now, house-sized elementals were gaining steam behind Mark, and especially on the other side of the corridor Mark had just skipped.

Fires and lightnings and explosions of consuming power illuminated the full-moon night, and the goblin reprisal, their attempts to destroy the elementals, were just as bright. Once Mark left the elementals behind, the goblins moved in, trying to clear the problem before it got bigger. The elementals were not winning. But the goblins didn't have Union on their side, either.

Mark's trail of destruction was not as wide a trail as with the kaiju-sized Death-To-Goblins elemental, and he was not aiming at anyone in particular, but he cut around the northern edge of Goblinhome and that was effective enough. He could do this for days, if needed. At this pace it might take him 30 hours to fully encircle Goblinhome. Goofy just watched. Mark focused. The two hour timeframe for peace talks came and went. Quark kept Mark updated with chatter from the settlement, and news from elsewhere.

A few people were asking about the peace talks now that the time was up. There were no responses from anyone in charge. Goofy tapped on Mark's flying coffin and asked, "What's happening? Do you have screens in there?" Goofy was suddenly curious.

"How are you even seeing!" Quark was transmitting vision and sound to Mark, but... Mark realized something he probably should have thought of earlier, but he had the idea now, so he told Quark to make a screen on the outside of the pill-ship, showing his face and letting him talk to Goofy all the time, instead of just through speakers. Quark obliged, and now Mark could look at the inside of his pillbox and Goofy could look at him.

There were problems with scale and distortion, and Quark stretched himself thin to do that. But Goofy liked it." Oh good! I can see you now!" Goofy let some of his fear show through the Glory of the moment, and Mark wiped that fear away as a matter of course. … And then Mark had a better idea than the screen. A very good idea, really." One second, Goofy. Cut the feed, Quark." The feed cut, and Mark was once again plunged into the darkness of the pillbox.

"Do the invisible adamantium sigils, like we practiced." Quark returned to his handy little body and started signing, and soon, layers of invisibility overtook the pillbox, and it was like Mark was floating under the sky again. An invisible pillbox! Duh! Mark chuckled. His Glory, which had seemed bright before, doubled in intensity. He was still inside the box, of course. But he didn't appear that way. Goofy looked and felt happier, too, as he said, "That's so much better!

You don't talk nearly as much as Derek does and it is scary out here all alone, but now I can see you! Why not do that before?" Mark said, "I'm learning as we're going, too, Goofy, and we're being listened to, so sorry about not talking as much as I should. As for the timeline for peace talks… It is time to put my finger on that scale, too." The command center of the settlement, and probably a few other people besides that, all heard Mark ask, "What's the timeline for the peace talks?

Are you talking, or am I raising kaiju, and advancing on Goblinhome? Because, as you can see, it is very easy to raise elementals. Some of them are really good. Quark; where is that lightning/miasma elemental? I can't even see it anymore." Quark answered, "I lost track of it when it consumed its fourth stone tower, and then went under the big trees about 30 kilometers back there, at that bigger settlement." Mark looked, and he could not see a goblin settlement at all. It looked like a dark forest.

"… There's a bigger settlement over there?"" It went dark, too."" Ah… Oh… I see the outline of it now. Looks like fires in there?"" Lots of fires." Mark openly asked, "What kind of kaiju do we want to send to Goblinhome? Have you had a favorite yet, Goofy? How about a 'most-productive' one, Quark?" Goofy said, "The drowner looks peaceful." Quark said, "There was a metal one that we left back there before we moved across the corridor that was iron and death.

It was very effective and they were still fighting it by the time we passed out of sight. Conjuring one such as that would also rip away all the metal and electronics that stabilize much of Goblinhome's tech-based defenses, and—"" Mark," Walaria said, "You're approved for kaiju creation. Do the metal one. Destroy their electronic and metal infrastructure. I want long-term permanent damage and an inability to easily rebuild.

If you need to escape, then you will escape, but I want at least the border of Goblinhome torn down completely." Mark simply said, "… Okay." It was time. Mark took a deep breath, and the world breathed with him, all Glory funneling his way, all Fear invading all others… except for Goofy. Goofy knew he needed to not be here, though. He flew up and away, fast, avoiding Mark's adamantium blades overhead. Soon, he was way out of range, and when that happened Mark drove all nearby elementals away with Fear.

The elementals scoured the land as they fled, screaming, roaring, warbling, tearing. Mark made the sigil for kaiju with one hand; an open, maw-like gesture, over his mouth. Mark made the sigil for goblins with the other hand; the middle and ring finger biting the thumb, as the pointer and pinky rose like ears. Mark had the maw devour the goblin, over his own mouth, as he Called out," Death scouring, metal clawing, death to all monsters, death to Goblinhome."

Adamantium flowed away from Mark, from scattered black blades under aurora night skies, into the scoured ground itself, into the bits of iron in the blood of monsters and goblins, and into the scattered, rusted metals of long gone civilization. Death was everywhere in Daihoon and especially in this place that had been called 'Goblinhome' for thousands of years. Was Mark's incursion into these lands the first? Not by a very, very long shot. The gathering started slowly, this time.

Death clouded the ground, metals ringing out a ripping warble, adamantium flowing into Glory, into the land itself. Mark barely controlled what was happening, except to let some adamantium out of his direct control, to flow into the monster below. Mark spun his rotor faster, though, to fly up and away from the gathering, to rise, higher and higher, as vectors gathered below, becoming a whip-thin almost-kaiju, expanding, expanding, expanding. It had been a small thing.

Now, it grew, like a metallic vine under the light of Mark's Glory. And then a dark tangle of wires reached out for goblin after goblin, ripping blood out from bodies, gathering more material into itself. It was barely 100 meters tall. If it was crunched down to size, it might only be as large as a refrigerator. It didn't have any real structure, except for two legs and a whip-like body that was actually a thousand whips at once. It did not need size right now, though.

It slapped goblins in half, ripping metal as it passed. It tore into a makeshift goblin tower, just outside of the main line of goblin towers, and it ripped out enough wires to form a second whip to its main body. Suddenly, wires braided with themselves, coiling and spinning together, and then reaching out once again, stronger, faster. The almost-kaiju ran at the main towers that denoted the border of Goblinhome.

It reached one tower, and then it reached deeper into the ground and vanished like pasta slurped into a mouth, moving faster than Mark expected it to move. He raced to catch up— The almost-kaiju began to spill forth from the tower, from every window, from every wall, ripping and tearing as it braced itself against the ground, the stone tower falling apart all around it.

Its vector clawed through the ground far, far beyond Mark's range, and it ripped upward, like it was tearing a vein from the surface of Daihoon itself. Mark briefly saw that vein in his Unionsense, but only because the strength of the almost-kaiju's vector was that deep. It was like the almost-kaiju had lit up a part of the world in an arcing, spreading line of Tactile Telekinesis that went on for kilometers upon kilometers in every direction. The border towers, with their green lights, all flickered.

The two towers directly down the border to the east and west went fully dark. And then the border towers came back on. Was the almost-kaiju touching an old part of Goblinhome? An ancient line? Or something recent, that the current goblins in charge had laid down, deep underground? The towers it connected to were old, but they also had new parts, for sure, and metals of all sorts had always been used as conductors of magic. Was this why Walaria mentioned taking infrastructure from the border, specifically?

Probably 'yes' to all of that. The almost-kaiju gained size in that single yank. It hadn't grown in height, but it had grown in thickness. It had been almost-black in the light of the moon and the auroras, but now it shimmered with silver and bronze in Mark's Glory. It had been bipedal, with only a whip for an upper body. Now it had two arms and two legs and a whip for a head. For a moment, it was silent, resting, like it was a man that had pulled in too large of a fishing net.

And then it reached into Daihoon and pulled. The entire border erupted, the entire line of border towers for tens of kilometers to the west going dark as the almost-kaiju ripped up entire kilometers of wires at once. The green lights in the furthest towers came back on, and then the almost-kaiju pulled again, sending a flicker of Tactile Telekinesis-like power outward like lightning underground. Border towers 10 kilometers away ripped apart as the metal inside of them came alive and flowed into the almost-kaiju.

The metal flowed and flowed, the death/metal/goblin-killer almost-kaiju gaining in height and size, its body becoming a mass of wires and cables, the black parts fading inward as the metal flowed over, becoming solid. Two smooth legs, two smooth arms that became whips, and a head like the back of a spoon, or an oval. It crossed a threshold. The smooth silver head opened, revealing a churning maw of metal death, and it roared.

The shockwave passed across the land, and every single electronic light out there, every single bit of metal for kilometers upon kilometers, wiggled. The nearest bits of metal flowed into the kaiju, killing goblins along the way. And then the kaiju began running along the border, slurping up all the metal it found. Mark chased after it. - - - -" Holy dark and light," Addavein said, watching from a new location.

"That's gonna fuck up Goblinhome for decades."