Chương 445: 445

I have never been hit that hard before. That was Mark's first coherent thought as he lay in a pile of himself at the bottom of a wide crater. His next coherent thought was that he had seen Buckler do this before, back when Buckler was crushing goblin villages around the settlement. He'd summon giant shapes of force, and then flatten whatever he wanted to flatten, leaving behind craters shaped like cubes, or the edges of cubes, or triangles, or hemispheres— A flicker in front of him— Alacrity and Slowness.

He had fallen out of his Union, but now he pulled speed from Buckler, standing right over him, as Buckler held a shield of force in one arm and a jagged lightning-bolt-sword of force in the other. That sword was ten meters long and already splitting Mark's vision. And then Mark was half of himself, half remaining there, under Buckler, while the other half still under Mark's control, that was still Mark, rapidly clawed and pulled himself away from the followup blow.

Mark stepped into the air, the world burning at the movement as he split his attention to a healing Union of Adamant and Ethereal while trying to maintain speed. Normally, he could have restocked himself from stored mana, but Buckler had done something that had broken half of— Oh. Mark was suddenly reminded of his play-fight with Kraigen Steele for the Battle for Memphi videos. The leader of the Hero Association. That guy's main Power was Breaker.

It carved through mana and disrupted everything, and back when Mark was made of flesh Steele's Breaker had killed most of Mark's astral body, leaving him with fractured remains. This time Mark lost half of his body and almost all of his stored adamantium mana. Buckler looked up, affixing Mark with his gaze. He was not burning the world as he moved. He was using an actual Speedster Power, demonically-given. And then he grinned and slashed at Mark's discarded half. Fractured force dug deep into the black flesh.

Buckler left the sword inside of the adamantium, eyes forming on his face, and on his legs, each of them tracking Mark even as Buckler's main eyes looked down at the body, as his mouth called out, "It's so refreshing to actually be able to fight, Mark!" Buckler sucked up Mark's adamantium, black mana crawling up into the force blade. The edges of his sword formed demonic teeth while the blade itself turned from invisible to hazy black.

"This is gonna be so much fun, for so many reasons! You know how often we get speedsters to fight? Not nearly enough!" Mark had enough stored adamantium left to fix his body, but he still tried to grab everything he could, laying around, splitting his attention into a Union of Adamant and Ethereal to grab it faster. Just his breath, though. He kept his brain and heart working with speed. In a flash he was whole and surrounded by blades. Just blades. No need for rotors. Not when you were moving this fast.

But splitting his Union lowered his speed. Splitting his speed made Buckler look like he was moving at two or three times speed, his voice rushing in the air as he hacked and hacked at Mark's discarded half. Within three strikes Mark's discarded body had become dark force armor, layered over Buckler, and also a shield and sword. It was still partially translucent— Head, torso, most of his arms and legs. That's what Mark had to work with. Buckler moved. The world flowed.

Mark transitions fully into Slowness/Alacrity, pushing down Buckler's speed and raising his own back to full strength. A hand becomes a sword. A sword breaks away as force Breaks the sword in half, parry aborted. Mark rips the air with speed-of-thought blades, cracking into Buckler's shield, raised to defend, while he also slips away, cracking the world with fire and distance, shooting into the sky, crawling through fire and dragging explosions upward.

Buckler looks up from below, vector slamming upward, force moving him with pure intent. He appears beside Mark. Lancer in the distance, still putting himself together. The demonic force sword comes down again. Mark offers a thousand daggers in return. Buckler twists, demonic teeth eating adamantium knives, avoiding and consuming enough of the strike to neuter it. His strike continues into Mark's chest and Mark breaks in half again even as spare adamantium leaves furrows of broken glass on the force armor.

Consumed darkness fills every single crack in that armor, and skin below is just as strong as the force itself. Skin heals. Mark flows behind Buckler, appearing above the sword. He comes back together on top of Buckler, locking him in a wrap of adamantium. This is the wrong move, but it locks Buckler down in immobile adamantium and Mark flows away, splitting his Union back between Adamant/Ethereal and Alacrity/Slowness.

Buckler struggles inside darkness for a moment and then shearing force cracks out from inside of the black shell, raking through the black covering like ant-mandibles through dark chocolate. Buckler digests the adamantium left behind, incorporating it into his armor. Mark pulls more adamantium out of storage and he's empty. He's not keeping up with Buckler's consuming force, so he splits his attention to a Breath and Blood Union of Adamant and Ethereal while the Brain keeps flickering with Alacrity and Slowness.

Only his brain needs to really move fast at all, and it is certainly moving fast. Mark makes his breath and blood move faster too, Shaping himself into faster and faster Unions. Mark is 200 meters away, drawing out the adamantium from Buckler's force armor and his sword when Buckler breaks free. Buckler is in Mark's face again, sword in Mark's chest, breaking him in half. His blue eyes lock on Mark's adamantium eyes, and he slows down just long enough to say, "You're fucking disgusting when you're moving fast!

Anyone ever tell you that!" Buckler has a good hundred eyes all over his body. Mark can't retort a similar disparaging comment, but he wants to. Splitting his focus into two Unions seems to be detrimental to being able to move fast enough to keep up. But Mark thinks he can do this. Healing is more important than keeping up, because Mark has an idea. First, Mark tries wrestling for control of his adamantium back from Buckler. It's solid adamantium. It's still valid for his control. It's hard, though.

Buckler is already doing something to the adamantium he stole, making it fully force-adamantium, or something. Buckler responds with slashes. Mark counters with enough speed and Unionsense to understand where the strikes will be before they land. Buckler fakes a strike with Force Magic and Mark is split in two, again. He's not even a person anymore. Just a torso and eyes that shift around and regrow. Buckler stabs into that torso. Mark casts out a copy of himself, flowing through the air on blades of adamantium.

Mark experiences a real split as Buckler does something to the sword in Mark's body, twisting. Pain. Adamantium shrapnel in the sky. Mark comes together in his secondary body, pulling through the air, Shaping heavy, fast breaths and turning barely-formed adamantium into a real body, black fading and flesh reappearing. Quark flickers in Mark's sight and Mark casts another adamantium self into the distance— Pain. Another explosion of adamantium shrapnel. Worry; this wasn't working. Buckler knows it, too.

He calls out, rapidfire, "Shouldn't have used speed against me! Now I got so much more and you can barely keep up because you have to heal! GODS, this is great!" And then Buckler is right in Mark's face again, looking at him from above, upside down, Mark's sight splitting in two directions because the sword in his face splits him down the middle again. Mark flows around the blade, reconnecting to scattered adamantium that Buckler never gathered up, becoming whole— Sword in the chest.

Mark explodes his body in every single direction before Buckler can do it. Desperate times call for desperate, untested actions. Shards turned to hearts, each one powering a Union of Alacrity/Slowness—" No bullshit, please!" Buckler declared, and then he rips down the sky again with a mountain of force.

Mark is on the ground, in the ground, so he flows down, into the deep, cold dark, out of sight, becoming hearts in the soil, beating and connecting to all of the life everywhere out there— Something pulls at him in a way he had never been pulled before, and Mark realizes what he has done. He had connected to a puppetmaster. Mark cuts off the part of him that was in that direction. It's painful. All of this was so much pain. But that doesn't matter.

Mark burrows deeper, hearts beating with deep roots, thrumming to full life, each one Shaped to beat faster, matching the speed of Alacrity and Slowness, and suddenly Mark has crossed a tipping point. Flesh! Feeling. Sight and senses. Mark is whole again, for a given definition of whole. He is still tens of hearts under the soil. Mark shoots out of the ground, and there is Buckler, 300 meters ahead, just like Mark's Unionsense already told him.

Mark remains deep in the ground at the same time, astral body stretched to his limit, tiny hearts spreading under the soil, beating with the deep life down there, healing him to full, and moreso, but avoiding the puppetmasters all over the place. They were hardier than most of the other plant life around here, but even the plant life was hardier than what Mark was used to back at the settlement. Average PL 50? Maybe even 60? Seemed about right— Half speed is not enough to catch up to Buckler's full speed.

But Mark sees his first opening of the fight. Buckler moves in a straight line, sword into Mark's guts, forceful shrapnel digging into his flesh. Abandoning the flying body, Mark, underground, digs deep into Buckler's adamantium and force with Adamant and Ethereal Union, ripping power back. It was a battle Mark barely wins, that Force Magic tries to shut down, but he wins.

Mark pops out of the soil far away, aiming at Lancer, but Lancer is 5 kilometers away by now, the pillar of his forceful escape still propelling him along. Mark would have to abandon the hearts under the soil to get to Lancer, so he does that and he races toward the goal. Behind him, Buckler slashes downward, deep into the ground with consuming, Breaking force, ripping all of that from Mark's control. Mark continues onward, abandoning that which was left behind.

Buckler pauses, fractionally, and he stares at Mark, far ahead of him. The guy's voice precedes him." Look at you! I had prepared a lot for this fight, and I even saw that bullshit training vid of you fighting yourself in multiple bodies, but you ain't got nothing on a real twin-system!" Mark is 50 meters away from Lancer. Amid the forceful pillar of his escape, the guy's hatched-from body was still coming back together, and poorly.

Eyes and tendrils form most of his insides and his face is splashed open, revealing teeth all the way through his center. And then suddenly Buckler is where Lancer had been, and his sword hits Mark dead-center, cracking his control and sucking in all of the adamantium in that body. Death comes, and Mark turns away, becoming a mono thread of adamantium that swiggles faster than Breaking can follow. Mark rushes through the sky and back to Lancer, back where Buckler had been.

He has no heart or lungs, but he has something that might pass for a brain, and Mark is working on overdrive on just Alacrity/Slowness. It is barely enough. He gets close enough to some broken adamantium hearts he had discarded in the soil, right below Lancer's body. Connection. Beating. Thrumming with power. Mark burrows into Lancer's body like a black thread and begins ripping him apart from the inside, churning like monowire, and then like a blender contained.

Each beating of an underground heart, Shaped to beat faster than thought, turns the churning monowire thread of Mark into a ribbon, then into a rod. Faster. Faster. Adamantium rebar moves like a laser light show and hearts beat black veins absolutely everywhere. Eventually, eyes appear. Vision returns. Sound has always been there because Mark is his adamantium and his adamantium can sense vibrations. In the distance, a guttural detonation rocks the world. A scream.

Mark keeps carving, dreamsight active, looking at Lancer's disintegrating and burning body— It happens. The moment of true death. Lancer's eye-filled soul fades away. His Power Level vanishes and he flashes with fire; fried into ash and dust. A mountain of force rips up the land in every direction, soil flying, trees tumbling. And then Buckler is there in the middle of it all. Sword gone. Shield missing.

Armor frayed and flesh full of eyes, each of them weeping, mouths opened in every joint, each of them screaming, matching Buckler's face. Lightning force tears out in every direction, and the world disintegrates, every single atom, or however small Buckler could target, suddenly deciding that it needs to move in a different direction than all of its nearby fellows. Death is there again. Perhaps it is merely a dream. Perhaps it is more than that.

And then Mark finds himself cast away, eyes opening up on a surviving splash of networked hearts that had been under the soil. Thrown through the sky at an angle, Mark escapes a kilometer-wide sphere of annihilating force. It is a constant nuclear explosion. Mark has absolutely no idea how he had survived, and he feels quite strongly that perhaps he hasn't. But still, he must fight. The contained explosion continues.

Mark rapidly makes 10 hearts, and 10 heads, each one Unioning with Adamant/Ethereal in order to create more of himself first, and then Alacrity/Slowness to speed up time, just in time. Each heart beats with speed, with Shaping moving them so fast that they are close to brains in Unioning power. Black veins extend everywhere and the veins network with each other, forming hearts and brains and eyes and ears— Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

The explosion ends and Buckler stands revealed. Bright. That is what he is. Like standing on the surface of the sun. Every vector illuminates him in the sky. Direction and power is his to command. And then the light crystallizes and Buckler stands in a crystal of pure force and the world flows away from him— Eyes lock over great distances. And then Buckler aims at Mark, the world disintegrating in front of him and concentrating behind him.

He is a wave of pure force and the very air burns as he moves, a kilometer-wide adamantium-puffball scenario, but with Force Shaper instead. Mark races in two directions, leaving one behind like a discarded tail, but that tail was Mark's main weapon. Maybe he should have done this to start, but Mark is moving at full speed now and he's fully healing himself and creating more of himself with every moment, and he's not even sure if this is going to work, anyway.

Buckler can consume mana from the very air and repair himself, after all. And yet, Mark sends out tendrils of Union, piercing into Buckler's astral body. Half of his connection shatters away with Breaking force, but half of it remains. Ten brains all think the same thought. Energy/Entropy. The Shavallian Union. Would it work at all? Drawing energy from Buckler didn't seem to actually kill his endless demon-powered self. The puffball of force contracted instantly. It works. But not good enough.

Buckler reacts just as fast, his rush at Mark becoming a hurricane, enveloping that part of him over there so fast that Mark didn't even realize that he was already in his secondary body until it was his main body. Mark does it again. Buckler tries to compensate, to go in two directions at once, his body turning demonic as he tries to split in two— And then he is two people, going in two directions at once, leaving behind a splash of gore. FUCK.

Mark drops off brains and hearts everywhere as he rushes away, moving at the speed of thought through the sky, his trail marked by fire, each dropped set of brains and heats Unioning with Entropy and Energy, trying to drain the demonic well dry. Buckler chases. Mark separates into multiple directions as much as he can, and that helps Mark stay just ahead of the disintegrating puffball archmage. Twin Bucklers pursue every piece of Mark they see. He is undeterred and unbothered…

except for his emotional state, it seems. Buckler screams from multiple mouths, from multiple parts of his multiple bodies, echoing upon himself, "DIE DIE DIE! DIE DIE DIE!" Mark focuses on running. And then Buckler is there, in front of him, swallowing him with force— Mark is suddenly in other parts of himself he had left far behind, attached to the main body with only the smallest tendril of adamantium. He grows himself back to full, flashing to brains and hearts and regaining strength.

For a brief moment, Mark pays attention to what Quark was saying in his sight, even as Mark puffballs in two different directions, creating bodies at the tips of those other tendrils only 400 meters away in every direction.

Quark estimates Buckler's range is actually closing in, meaning that Mark is winning this fight, though it certainly didn't seem like it when Buckler suddenly appears at two of Mark's brain-clusters, disintegrating them into particulate matter even as Mark Entropy'd him, and kept his own Energy high— Buckler's range suddenly dies, and then one of his extra bodies gives out under whatever strain he is undergoing. Holy shit! He was strained the whole time! Mark is pretty fucking strained, too, but holy fuck!

Mark turns the tables fast, tearing through the absent-PL of the secondary Buckler and surrounding the remaining Buckler, the original one maybe. Who knows! Mark drains him fast, and suddenly he isn't moving fast at all. He is slow. The continual explosions suddenly end. Buckler is streaming tears from every part of him. Mark and Buckler drop down to normal speed and Mark focuses everything on Entropy/Energy. This was a trick, Mark thinks. It had to be.

Buckler was drawing Mark in for something, so Mark extended himself 900 meters in the direction directly away from Buckler, burying himself into the soil. That part of him is insurance against a trick. Meanwhile, Mark drills into the archmage with his Shavallian Aura, and the guy collapses on the ground, weeping into the soil, calling out for his brother. He had been calling out for Lancer all this time. Mark hadn't really noticed. He was busy." Lancer! Lancer! I'll join you soon, Brother!

We'll be the best demons in hell! So keep my pitchfork ready! I'm coming, brother!" Mark tries to lop off his head with a tendril of adamantium, but his body is still too tough. So Mark wraps a tendril of adamantium around his neck and starts buzzsawing. — Buckler grips Mark's tendril, bleeds brightest red, tears falling from every eye as he laughs. Mark cannot move. Force controls his vector. Everything stops except for time." You'll join us in hell, won't you!"

And then Buckler unfurls in forceful ribbons of disintegrating magic, breaking Mark into a million bits. Mark is already a kilometer away, his secondary body already coming back together. It cannot come together fast enough. The world is breaking. Mark rushes further away to get out of the expanding tumble of kaiju-sized tendrils of force. It is the birth of a monster. It is a demon unleashed. An octopus, a squid, a kraken. It rips upward, invisible. It rips down, and the world breaks into flying mountains.

It spreads in every direction, and floating mountains turn to dust. Mark speeds away, Alacrity and Slowness doing everything Mark can possibly do. The semi-visible demonic octopus of force continues to expand, more and more skyscraper-sized tentacles lashing out, grabbing things, disintegrating things, curling into the ground and throwing up mountains, dragging down the sky and turning auroras into flashes of light. The touch of that demonic thing is an apocalypse, all by itself. Mark gets 15 kilometers away.

The tentacled force demon is still 4 kilometers behind him. But then it began to fade, its power expended, its gripping, ripping tendrils flowing inward like a portal to another dimension suddenly opening. And then the portal really opens. A hurricane fills the world and all the sky tumbles into an implosion of force.

Mark races further away, but everything collapses inward and Mark's speed isn't enough to get away, because the tendrils have gotten in front of him, somehow, and the world pulls in from every direction. The sky moves faster than Mark can run, and a swirl of a rift swallows everything— The tendrils vanish like they had never existed and the center of the hurricane suddenly detonates, prismatic light shockwaving outward. Stone rains down, the sky flows back into the sky, and Mark floats there, nude again, of course.

And where is the sphere of Extended Protect? Maybe somewhere on Endless Daihoon, based on how much of the sky that last hurrah had pulled down. Holy fuck." Fuck fuck fuck," Mark says… And then the flow ends. Mark hovered in the sky, and he was not himself. Mark was three darker-than-black people and two of them were malformed, hanging in the sky around himself. One was joined at Mark's hip. The other was not a full person. Mark looked at Mark who looked at Mark…

And Mark shook himself, becoming just one person, with one brain and one body. Slowly, as he put his body back together, the black receded from his skin. He was pale with a shocking amount of black veins beating into the air around him. Alacrity/Slowness was still in his heart, but his brain was running Energy/Entropy… So Mark transitioned to Adamant/Ethereal, and time sped up fractionally. Mark almost got the chance to ask a question. Walaria spoke first, coming through the comms, saying, "That's it.

Buckler and Lancer and their death trigger are over. Good job, Mark. Ready to come back? You can go after that Necromancer Skill instead. Capture will be available again when the next puppetmaster village coalesces somewhere. It might take 5 months." Mark took a difficult breath, and then he took several more. When he was ready, Mark hovered strongly, and he said, "Okay. Ready to come back and get Necromancer instead. ETA to ITLKR?"" I'm sending Quark a countdown now." Quark blipped a '0: 45' into Mark's vision.

The countdown was already going. Mark took a few seconds to ask Quark, "You okay, Quark? I don't think I died that time?"" You did not die, sir, but I can not be sure why you did not die." Mark wasn't sure how he had survived either. As the countdown ticked on, Mark watched mansion-sized boulders rain down into what remained of the Wilds below. A new mountain stood where Buckler's demon had sucked in the world and subsequently detonated. That mountain had a crater at the top where the inhale had become an exhale.

It was still a pretty big fucking mountain. Maybe a kilometer tall? The place where the peak should have been flickered with prismatic auroras." Disintegrated with speed, crushed with archmage force, or cast into Endless Daihoon…" Mark took a calming breath as he pulled himself inward, spinning a rotor overhead to fly a bit higher up, to get clear of everything more. As the countdown got close, he pulled that rotor in, saying, "That was rough."

Mark pulled his rotor in completely, tucked his arms in and his legs together, and the timer hit 0. Blip. And then Mark was standing on the edge of the Green House's property. Sally, Eliot, Isoko, Derek, Andria, and Tartu were here and there, a few of them looking at monitors Eliot had set up haphazardly. Rylan, Lola, and Tulo were hanging back, looking worried, but then Lola saw Mark and she beamed with pure motherly love.

It was warm, and all of the other emotions coming off of everyone suddenly shifted to anger, worry, thankfulness, and relief. Mostly, they were happy Mark was okay. Isoko yelled first, "I hate that it was the right decision to leave us behind!"" Get some clothes on, nu—!" Sally called out, trying for a joke, but her voice cracked before she could say, "Nudist." Mark kinda emotionally crashed as the heat of battle faded behind him. It was not an easy thing to get back to normalcy so fast.

Not after what Mark had just been through. Usually Mark had a nice little flight back to the settlement. That was always good for decompression. All warriors needed some decompression time. Everyone here knew that, too, so they gave him some space, but not too much. Eliot got him clothes, and then Mark was sitting on a rock and he had some warm tea in his hands, and cookies on a plate beside him, and this was nice. Lola had a hand on his back, and it was warm. Freyala was there, too. It was good.

And now Mark was decompressed. He breathed easier, and he thought about what that battle had actually meant." So we're down some archmages for the war," Mark said. Sally said, "Good fucking riddance." Isoko said, "Aluatha has us, so… I think we're going to be okay."" I think so, too," Mark said, hoping he wasn't lying to himself. And then, 3 minutes after landing, a door in reality opened up over by the wrought iron garden table and Walaria stepped out onto the garden grounds. Everyone tensed, except for Mark.

Mark stood back up. Walaria said, "I formally apologize on behalf of Aluatha for the actions of our archmages."" That doesn't matter," Mark said, moving past it, "What is going to happen in the war?" Sally was almost mad on Mark's behalf, because she saw that he wasn't going to get mad nearly enough for his own sanity, let alone Sally's. Isoko was just thankful Mark was okay, and that the future was less worrisome for that reason alone. Eliot was just worried.

Walaria looked only at Mark, saying, "The loss of Buckler and Lancer will have a large impact on any potential future wars. We'll be Contracting new archmages in accordance with best practices today, though they will be new and untested."" Did you send Mark out there to kill those two assholes?" Sally spat. Mark did not particularly care for the answer to that, but… if Walaria answered, then that would be an answer. Walaria did not seem to want to answer that, though. She seemed pissed.

Walaria allowed a fraction of her own rage at the situation to show, her red eyes narrowing at Sally for the barest of moments. Sally grew a meter in response as she stepped back, suddenly sweating. And then Walaria pulled back, barely, because another person had shown up. Addavein was there, saying, "Aluatha cannot make Archmages in a warzone. The demons will take advantage of our weakness for even asking, and Thrashtalon's faction will ensure it. We must call for draconic aid from Kabberjaw."

Walaria stood with poise and purpose as she faced down Addavein, saying, "We cannot accept draconic help in this war."" How about if we shrink them, first?" Sally said, speaking up, even though she was quaking in her dress shoes. Addavein nodded, and he looked to Walaria for an answer. Walaria took a silent moment, as though actually regarding the question, and then she said to Mark, "I'll send details for the Necromancer monsters to Quark. Do you want an Understanding Party for Necromancy in a few hours?""

Thank you, yes please," Mark said. Walaria nodded. Soon, Mark was flying south in style, sitting on the roof of the vehicle Eliot had made for them for the Winter Ball, and all his friends were around him. Mark felt truly secure while they protected him, while he took apart a corpse lich that had arisen in a massive mausoleum that belonged to some ancient house of Aluatha. It was a fun fight, and the best part was that this was a pure monster. Not a person at all!

Just a risen corpse, animated by self-propagating Elemental Death. The thing practically dove right into Mark's soul, too, when he offered it an opening. Mark suspected that the monster wasn't expecting to have invaded what was effectively a divine demiplane of a godling when it attacked, but it had, and so Mark pulled it apart and discarded everything but its Binding, which was remarkably human-looking.

No one was quite sure why the monsters Mark pulled apart had human-compatible Bindings, but it was what it was, and yeah, that was the Necromancy Power. Mark did the same sort of attack-and-offer-an-opening to several other corpse liches and deathknights and a whole bunch of other soul-invading monsters. It was relaxing, really. Mark would check his haul, later.