Mark remained Incorruptible. A part of him was still him.

But he needed more than that.

There was no heartbeat that was under his control, but he beat anyway. There was no breath he could breathe, but that was unnecessary. There wasn’t even a brain of his own to think with, but Mark didn’t need to think. Mark tried to lash outward from his very core with Adamantium and Corruption; with everything solid and everything disruptive.

Greeplox did some witchy thing to him. Puppet controlled Mark’s Powers. Stupid Goblin was there to make sure that anything Mark did try, he was able to redirect. They locked him down as much as a person could be locked down. They flowed the Green into Mark, trying to finalize his end. His transformation.

They couldn’t finish him off, though. He was still Incorruptible.

And so, Mark was not without options.

When Mark had been transporting Old Slave to the settlement, after the ambush, Mark had shut him down completely, but he still managed to kill himself. Which meant that there were options. Had Old Slave disrupted his soul? Maybe some Tactile Telekinesis on his own brain? But no. His Powers had been completely nullified.

But one thing that all Powered people eventually figured out was their Binding. The older a person was, the more chances that person had to recognize their Binding. And a person could always access their own Binding.

Had Old Slave disrupted his Binding to kill himself?

That seemed right.

Disrupting one’s own Binding at allwas enough to kill oneself if they knew how to disrupt their Binding in the exact right way. Mark bet his life that Old Slave, a speedster, knew exactly which protective measure to disrupt in order to cause his own death. Maybe some inertial dampening aspect, or something like that. Bindings had lots of protections in them, and though Mark didn’t know what sort of Bindings existed in speedsters, he knew that buffing anyone with speed was usually enough to kill them outright.

Mark wasn’t going to kill himself.

But if Old Slave could go into his Binding to disrupt something, maybe Mark could go into his own Binding to Protect himself. That’s what he wanted to do with magic in the first place. That’s what he had failed at, the first time he tried to Alter his Binding. He had ended up hurting himself, requiring a day of recovery, and it had taken multiple hours for him to do even the most simple of Bindings. Mark wasn’t going to get multiple hours to do anythingright now.

But good mages could Alter Bindings on the fly, making their mana achieve their desired magics within moments.

Mark probably had a moment. Maybe even a few!

And so, with a plan born of necessity and not enough time to do anything proper at all, Mark bet his life on a long shot, diving into his Binding—

Usually the landscape was black on black on black. A black world, with black depths, with black shapes linked to each other and the land a fractal mess of repeating patterns and adamantine connections.

But now there were Green roots and mist, and Mark’s Binding was being invaded.

Mark’s Binding was fighting back automatically. The black Binding was secured, but the Green kept trying to invade.

For the first time in Mark’s experience with the Binding, Mark saw more than himself.

He saw beyond his core, to the Green all around, and then further than that. That space out there was all shapes and colors and dark imagination. It was a dream that was not Mark’s, and was not part of the Green either. The Green ate those dark rainbows. The Green was trying to eat Mark.

Mark’s Binding was a battle of colorful Green and utter Black. There was something slightly silver inside the Green, too, close to the surface of Mark’s Binding. Mark had no idea what that was, but it was part of the Green, so fuck it.

Mark did not have the skill to understand what he was seeing, exactly, but he didn’t need to understand completely. There was no time to plan anything, anyway. There was only time enough to reach for someone else who may or may not have been looking.

Mark prayed that Addavein was watching, somehow.

And so, Mark reached out for Addavein along a path he didn’t understand, but which he made exist in the dreaming of it all. Maybe Mark imagined Freyala, too, helping him to reach Addavein.

A gold flicker appeared in the Dream, deep inside of Mark’s Binding.

And then Addavein was there, too.

A flash of black eyes. A flash of black wings. A black talon, pointing down, down, down, into Mark’s core, into Mark’s memory of Mom cleaning house, at the base of his Incorruptible Body. The dragon then pointed to a part of his Binding connected to his memory of healing in one of Freyala’s healing centers, while the third flash of insight illuminated his memory of fishing with Dad. All of that combined into something Mark didn’t understand, but which he saw well enough.

It was a flow. One Power supporting another, supporting the next, which supported the first.

Right now, Incorruptible was doing The Most, but everything worked together to make that happen. Suddenly, Mark saw the architecture of it all.

Incorruptible Body was all layered hexagonsand healthy spellwork, shaped into a body, like ten million different cells all reinforcing and replicating, splashing outward, ever growing, ever replicating, ever pushing out from the center, erasing all outside influences, while also securing the Incorruptible center. Each cell differentiated from the center, securing his Adamantiumkinesis, and his Union, both of which were as much a part of each other as Incorruptible was a part of them. It was a system of multiple parts, each reinforcing the other, and all of the rest of Mark’s Binding in turn.

The Green tried to reach through to Mark’s center, to his deepest memories. It wanted to turn his love of his mother into the love of Wongod. It wanted to turn his memories of his father into fishing with Wongod. It wanted to turn his healing at Freyala’s center into Mark making connections with other goblins and praying to Wongod.

All it could do was touch the surface of Mark’s Binding. It corrupted the surface, only, but the deeper parts were pushing it out. Rejecting. Constantly growing and pushing all bad things out and away.

But it wasn’t just that. Union was an inlet and a cleansing, taking in power in order for that power to be used against everything else. The Green splashed away from where Union cleansed it, but the cleansed core of the Green continued onward, into the center, to become more ever-rejecting black. The mechanism by which it did that was weird. Mark didn’t understand it.

He didn’t need to understand it. Not completely.

It was Union bringing in strength, even from the Green, cleansing that Green, and making its strength Mark’s own.

And Mark was there, now, at the depths, and at the surface.

Mark flooded outward, rapidly replicating that weirdness he found deep below, right into the path of the largest Green tendril flooding his body, like putting a waterwheel in a stream. What came out of that waterwheel was pure black.

And just like that, Mark cut off the flow of Green into his body, along that one major inlet.

The Green tried to invade those new structures from the sides, but Mark slammed some Protective hexagons into the space around them, and soon Incorruptible was Protecting those waterwheels and Mark automatically. Mark zoomed around, adding more and more waterwheels at every Green river, turning every river black, and then securing those inlets with even more Protective measures. The Protects held, and where the black rivers overflowed, the Protective hexes secured themselves even more.

Down below, the black world of Mark’s Binding flickered darker, deeper. Every deep tendril of Green was soon cut off from the Green overhead, and Mark replicated more and more waterwheels throughout his Binding, and soon, his Binding was replicating them itself.

Green vanished as the black pushed it out, but the Green still pushing in, trying to find cracks—

The Green snarled at Mark, and said, “Stop that! Come out right now!”

The Green snatched Mark out of his Binding, pulling him to the surface.

Mark jolted awake.

Wongod was still where he was, still staring at Mark with brilliant green eyes, the Green swirling all around him. He was still a tree with an obsidian-like shard of corruption lodged in his entirety, and also a goblin, and he was pissed. “Control him!”

Puppet was saying, “—not enough! He’s breaking—”

Puppet’s ingress was useless. Like shackles had fallen away, Mark now controlled his own Power, and every thread of Union and Kinesis was his own. His body was his own again, though he felt weird about that. Mark would figure it out later. For now, Mark felt adamantium shards everywhere, like they were a part of his own body.

This was a target rich environment.

Mark grabbed an adamantine blade held in some goblin’s hand about 20 meters to the right, then ripped through that goblin at the speed of thought, then swiped that blade through half of the nearby goblins. Greeplox, Stupid Goblin, and Puppet simply died, sliced into meat. Goblin lives vanished from the real world and reappeared in the Green, like ephemeral ghosts in Mark’s second sight.

Dreamsight; Mark realized. He was still half-dreaming.

Mark whipped the blade through Wongod, and then through the other half of the nearby goblins, returning all of them back to the Green. Wongod did not seem to care for being sliced up.

Wongod grunted in annoyance, and then he snapped a finger. Wongoddidn’t do shit, but someone inside the Green recognized the command for what it was. Mark watched as someone, like a separate ghost in the Green, flickered the real world Green. That thing inside the Green made magic in the Green, grabbing goblin ghosts and shoving them back into their meat bodies in the real world. Every dead goblin came back to life, their bodies instantly restored to form and function.

Greeplox and Puppet were the fastest to act, trying to do something to Mark—

Mark moved his blades at the speed of thought, to whip an adamantium blade across everyone again—

Wongod backhanded Mark across the land.

Mark tumbled and his arms went out, his face crushing against rocks and stones and then crashing up and over a boulder. He landed roughly on the ground. The pain was not as bad as Mark expected it should have been.

But then, Mark’s goblin arms pushed off of the ground and his goblin feet got underneath him and Mark watched his body get up from the ground.

Wongod was there, standing before him like a beautiful goblin, saying, “Contain yourself, Mark.”

Mark’s voice said, “Sorry, sir!” Mark’s goblin body slapped his chest, hissing at himself, “Wongod is our god! Fall in line already!”

Mark rebelled, with Adamantium and Corruption and blades of adamantium, Mark killed and killed and kept killing, even as Wongod advanced, his face furious, as he prepared for another slap. But Mark moved himself away with caltrops, mincing goblins. Goblin-Mark did not like that.

“Oh gods!” Goblin-Mark said, clutching his stomach. “Stop it! Just relax! We’re goblins now! It’s okay— Ouch! That fucking hurts!”

Mark felt the pain of his body, like an empathic sort of pain. He knew he was hurting, because he heard himself cry out for help. But Mark wasn’t letting this thingpretend to be him anymore. He tried to cut himself up, but he couldn’t injure his goblin’s flesh at all. His adamantium blades crashed into his goblin’s body and slapped right on by. Goblin-Mark had inherited Mark’s immunity to adamantium.

Shit.

Mark retreated as fast as possible.

Wongod scowled, saying, “Get back down here, Mark!”

Goblin-Mark yelled. “I’m trying!”

“Try harder!”

“I can’t control any of it—”

The goblin’s vector flickered as it gained a tiny sense of Union. Goblin-Mark reached for Mark and Mark, inside the goblin, raged. Mark grabbed every bit of adamantium he could feel and shoved it at the goblin.

“It hurts!” Mark’s goblin grabbed his chest, even as adamantium shoved itself into the goblin’s mouth, and other areas, filling him from within. “It hurts! It hurts! It huuuuUGHHH—”

Mark couldn’t injure his flesh, but a whole lot of metal, suddenly invading the body from every angle, could still shut him up and distract him well enough. It worked. Goblin-Mark’s vector tried to touch Mark’s adamantium, and the goblin’s vector suddenly crashed into nothing. The more Mark piled adamantium onto Goblin-Mark the more Goblin-Mark couldn’t move at all. Mark might have laughed, if he had had a mouth.

It was just like when Mark had been learning how to Adamantiumkinesis. High PL materials ensured that anyone trying to connect to those materials got overloaded unless their PL was higher than that of the material. Goblin-Mark was young. His PL was abysmal.

Mark needed to kill Goblin-Mark before Goblin-Mark could grow.

Realistically, Mark probably had 12 hours to do that. But goblins grew fast, and goblins also had the Tutorial, which could happen at any moment. Mark needed to move fast—

Wongod snapped his fingers, calling out, “SAMPO!”

The world flickered green again.

The goblin of the Hearth was suddenly there, like a green ghost floating in the Green, laying Green hands upon Goblin-Mark and trying to restore him to health.

Mark was ready for it.

Mark had shut down Sampo once, and now he did it again, Unioning with the devouring dancer in the Green that was a bit more real than all of the rest. Sampo wasn’t a goblin in the real world, but he would be, soon. Entropy slammed into Sampo and Mark scattered Sampo out of the Green.

A green goblin landed on the ground next to Wongod.

Wongod yelled at Sampo, “Get back—”

Mark tangled Sampo in monowire and then made a cage of an impotent goblin as he ran on caltops, wearing a goblin’s body that he filled with more and more adamantium. Mark would kill Sampo later, but right now Goblin-Mark was not dying, so Mark infused that goblin with Entropy, cutting off his sense of power, and then rolling him across the ground, into the ground, dragging him through the dirt and drowning him on adamantium that Mark picked up from every direction as he ran. Mark kept Sampo alive, too, and locked down, so he couldn’t escape.

The goblin surrounding Mark’s core either went unconscious from the pain, unconscious from lack of oxygen, or maybe the constant banging really was working. It didn’t seem like it was working.

Sampo cried out, “Let me out!”

Wongod chased Mark, running on long legs as Mark flew on caltrops. “Get back here!”

In Mark’s dreamsight, the shard of black inside Wongod was still halfway embedded in the tree, so Mark slammed Wongod with Corruption, tagging the Rotted Tree with whatever poison the world wanted to give him. Turned out that the world wanted to give Wongod a lotof Corruption. The goblin miasma helped, a lot.

Green shifted black as corruption crashed out of the miasma, through Mark, directly into Wongod. It was the touch of a dragon’s claw directly on Wongod’s most vulnerable nature.

Wongod cried out in furious pain as his canopy faded, his roots withered, and the black shard pushed back into him, centimeters at a time. Mark poured on the pain, but Wongod gasped and started directly fighting against Mark. It was a contest of PLs, and they were nearly matched.

Unconscious Goblin-Mark was like a boiling flesh bag around actual-Mark, the corruption withering his flesh, too. Soon, Actual-Mark would be free.

Wongod stopped running at Mark.

Wongod had a single moment of deliberation.

And then Wongod turned and ran away, as fast as he possibly could.

… Mark turned around and chased Wongod, tagging the Wrong-Made God with Corruption while he brought Purity to himself.

Goblin-Mark boiled away until it flopped, broken and near-dead, onto the ground, leaving Mark unattached.

Mark was a pulsing glob of adamantium now, like a disembodied heart.

Kinda disconcerting.

Not important at the moment.

Mark chased after Wongod, infecting him with the Corruption of the miasma, the world, while leaving behind Purity like a great swath of clarity in the green mist. Something else came out of that Union. Something Mark did not understand. Every pulse of his black heart caused Mark’s black body to flex larger. Soon, Mark was person-shaped again, but solid black, like a void in space.

Mark flew across the land, chasing Wongod.

Wongod became lesser, and Mark became more.

Wongod screamed something angry and hateful.

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Mark attacked the goblin wrong-god with adamantium blades, but each blade slipped through him, like he wasn’t even there. But he was. Mark felt the resistance when he cut the Wrong-Made God. He saw the blood.

Wongod wasn’t running on the ground now, and neither was Mark. When did that happen? Mark didn’t know.

Maybe neither of them were everactually on the ground.

But this wasn’t working. Every injury didn’t matter. Every pulse of Corruption fed directly into Wongod was scattered wide by the goblin’s PL, now that Wongod was actively fighting Mark. The first counterstrike had been a surprise. Now, it was a slog, and the slog wasn’t getting anywhere. The Green tree and the obsidian spike within remained locked in battle, with the spike burrowing deeper and the Green tree growing outward, dislodging the spike as much as it could.

So Mark slammed into Wongod with Entropy—

For the briefest of moments, Mark saw Wongod. He saw the Green.

And then the world exploded with dense Green light that blasted Mark backward, across the land.

Mark tumbled, spinning and spinning. The ground was a lost constant. Mark recovered, but not fast, shaking his head and then spreading his hands and adamantium wide to catch the air, to slow, to reorient.

The Green faded from sight.

Mark spun his blades into adamantium rotors and propellers to fly forward—

The green miasma cleared, showing a crater of lingering green light. The sky overhead roiled with green lightning, and then the lightning flickered away.

Gone.

Wongod was gone.

In the far distance, a metal kaiju made of wires and glinting stretches of metal roared as it advanced on the mountains like a tumble of animated spaghetti. Was Mark near the nuclear crater, now? Or was this a different crater? It seemed like a second crater. Trying to Entropy Wongod seems like it had caused a big-time explosion.

There was no one near Mark at all—

Ah. No. There was one life form close by. Someone that Mark needed to go kill, right now.

That goblin he had been born-again inside.

Goblin-Mark

It was healing itself. Mark frowned.

Mark moved over to the goblin and latched into it with Union, draining as much as he could as Mark tried to smash it with an adamantium anvil.

Mark just drove the goblin into the dirt.

The goblin groaned, “Fuck.”

“HOW are you still alive you PIECE OF SHIT,” Mark said, as he floated over the monster and stared down at it. “WHY are you alive! Stupid fucking goblins. Gods, you’re so fucking—”

“—ugly?” the goblin finished, looking up at Mark.

It had no fangs in its mouth. Its wounds were healing fast.

Mark’s Union with the creature wasn’t just a Union, either. It was a mirror. A broken thing that had been taken, and which was now coming back. Somehow. Mark didn’t know what he was sensing, only that it seemed familiar. Like a simple drain on the edge of Mark’s senses, but only when...

Mark stared down at the monster, and the monster stared up at Mark, and for a moment, Mark saw himself through the creature’s eyes.

Mark was a giant of black metal, through and through. Adamantium floated around him, and his eyes were solid black. He still looked like Mark. Even had the same hair. No clothes, though.

Hanging dong, again.

Mark thought he had been done with the nudity after each battle. Oh well.

Goblin-Mark had Mark’s facial features, kinda, if you were looking at him through a goblinized-lens, of course. But more than that, the goblin had a silver cast to him. A shimmering sheen. Metallic.

Familiar in a lot of ways.

… Too familiar.

… Mark lifted his right arm, and the goblin lifted his left arm.

The goblin stepped to the left, and Mark stepped to the left.

Mark and the goblin spoke at the same time, “This is… freaky. Ah, shit. You’re… Sorry about trying to… Not important.” They continued to speak together, “How about some Purity?” And then they both Unioned with Purity and Corruption, pushing out the corruption and bringing in the Purity.

The goblin looked at himself, and then he flexed to full-sized, to human.

Mark, but in silver.

Quark.

And then some separation between Mark and Quark evaporated, and Quark reappeared in Mark’s senses, glittering in his eyes, as the Quark-colored-Mark vanished, like a hologram turning off.

… Had the goblin body ever existed? Or had it just been a projection of Quark? Had Quark been goblinized? Did Mark die, and thus the bound-AI that was Quark became an unbound, full-person AI that looked like a goblin, until Quark re-bound himself to Mark?

Mark had no idea.

Mark was just Mark right now. Full-black. Nude. And Quark was once again in Mark’s sight and on his floating adamantium fragments.

Strange.

“Sir!” Quark said, “I think I was a goblin for a moment there!”

Mark blinked, and said, “And I think something weird happened to me, too,” as he looked at his solid black body…

And then he felt his black skin. It felt normal. Mark dug into his skin, and it moved like adamantium, coming apart at-will. With a thought, Mark’s arms became swords, and then Mark relaxed and the swords became absolute-black flesh, once again.

Mark felt his heartbeat rapidly increase as he had A Moment.

“… Ah, fuck,” Mark mumbled. “Any idea what, uh, happened?”

“A lot of things happened, sir!” Quark said, sounding a bit manic. Mark could relate. Quark added, “I think I tried to sell out humanity! I am very scared about that, sir!”

Mark instantly said, “It’s not your fault. It was a… a goblin magic thing. Uh. I’m sorry about, uh, slamming an anvil of adamantium into you and… Hmm.”

“No need to apologize, sir! I was not functioning properly at the time!”

… Mark distracted himself, pointing to the kaiju in the distance, asking, “Should we, uh, go handle that?” He made a decision. “Yes! We should handle that— Ishould handle that. I am me, and not a goblin, and you aren’t a goblin either. Yes. Let’s go handle issues and not think about the Dreaming Green for a while.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Quark asked, “Where is Sampo?!”

… Mark had a moment.

“… shit.”

Mark had no idea where Sampo was, or what happened, or… or any of that. Had he lost the guy trying to Entropy Wongod? Seemed… highly likely… Ah.

Too many problems.

Mark’s body was adamantium now, wasn’t it.

Mark didn’t move.

Mark floated there.

Mark asked, “Are you in contact with anyone right now? Why am I adamantium now?”

“Checking databases— Might be Adamantine Body! A theorized Power, but one that has never existed before in any known database. Might be like Isoko’s Platinum Body, or any number of Type-Body Powers. Those can be turned off and on by retracting/relaxing as opposed to powering/engaging. I do not recommend trying to turn off a Power in a battlezone! Since you have already demonstrated the ability to pull apart your arm and then reconstitute —which is not something a normal temporary Power can do— it might be more like Poison Body or Giant Strength; a Power that never turns off at all, and is instead a constantly-active part of you!”

So that was a lot of stuff.

Quark was acting funny, too. Probably feeling funny, too.

Mark also felt funny.

Mark’s enchanted items were all gone again, of course. But there were still magics he could do, or rather, Quark could do. With a flick of his hands and a concentrated action, Mark crafted a tiny orb-and-hand body for Quark… and it was the simplest thing to do, actually. Mark just didit, the adamantium moving like never before. Had his Adamantiumkineiss PL gone up? Probably.

A lot of things had happened, for sure.

Let’s put it all in the ‘think about later’ pile.

Mark said, “Okay, so… Protect again, Quark. Please.”

Quark swirled silver into his handy body and started casting Protect, saying, “Yes, sir!”

“How much adamantium am I down to?”

“It is hard to say, sir! You currently appear 100% adamantium to me, which means about 115 kilos in human meat means about 2600 kilograms of adamantium! But also you have adamantium floating around you which is another 200 to 300 kilograms of adamantium; by far the smaller amount! It could be that your body is not actually adamantium, but rather adamantium-like

, which is a common way for transformative powers to act, like Isoko’s and…” Quark paused.

As Quark had spoken, he had worked a Protect, while Mark watched the metal kaiju rip up the land and proceed, undirected, into the mountains of Goblinhome.

But then Quark finished with the Protect, and instead of any sort of hexagonal cast appearing around Mark, Mark’s solid-black skin sort of flickered with black scales that settled down into his flesh and then vanished, like a super-fine mesh. His skin smoothed out again, leaving behind nothing but solid black ‘flesh’. No scales at all.

A moment passed.

“What was that?” Mark asked.

Quark said, “I am not sure what happened, sir.”

“… Put it in the ‘think about later’ pile— As a matter of fact, please put all weirdness you have witnessed into that pile and ignore anything that is not directly relevant for combat.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Quark said, and then he softly muttered, “It will be a long list.”

Mark grinned a little.

Mark did nothing for a few minutes.

Standing there was calming for both of them.

… Mark was not sure what had happened with the Protect, at all. Maybe his Binding was different? Mark triedto Alter Protect into his Binding and he had ‘talked’ to Addavein (maybe!?) in the middle of all of that. Was Freyala there, too? Addavein had shown him how to do… something different? With Incorruptible Body? It was a cell-like structure, Mark was sure.

Mark had made a cell-like waterwheel-house that he had copied from Union’s inner parts and then slammed into Incorruptible’s protective parts, which were all Adamantiumkinesis-based, or something...

Ahhh…

Too much.

Quark softly said, “I have identified combat-related issues. It appears you have 9.8 liters of adamantium around you right now, which is about 220 kilos. A normal amount. But there was a lotmore than that before The Weirdness. Should we collect the adamantium that was lost in the battle? Or perhaps go rescue Goofy, who is currently trying to fight Tormpol and Grax? Also, there is an issue with the comms that I am working through.”

Mark focused.

Grax?

Grax!

“Grax! Yes!” Mark floated into the air. “Mark the area, Quark. We’re coming back for what’s here after we rescue Goofy.”

“Communications with various places is weird. I am working through a few relays. I have a garbled message here from Walaria who says there are spells to convert converted-biomass back into biomass.” Quark said, “The rest of the message seems congratulatory. There are issues.”

“… okay!”

Mark spun up a rotor —had a muchharder time flying because he weighed like 21-times as much as he usually weighed— and he flew up into the sky, asking Quark where Goofy was. Quark pointed out the general direction, and that was more than enough.

Green miasma still layered the world, but it was vanishing under the storm overhead, which was gaining strength—

Mark saw Grax.

The Light Titan was himself, all big and white and bright, and he was trying to catch something in the air. He swiped a hand and failed to grab whatever he was grabbing. The sky flashed green lightning, trying to strike something in the air in front of Grax, but Grax yelled at the sky and the lightning retreated, though it rumbled angrily. It was a fight, but it wasn’t between Grax or Tormpol. It was between them and something that Mark couldn’t see.

Quark overlaid images on Mark’s eyes, and though the images were pretty poor in a lot of ways, betraying Quark as not being 100%, Mark could see.

They were trying to capture Goofy, too.

Goofy was being toyed with. He did not look good.

Quark mentioned, “Your eyes are much more robust, sir, and I have no idea how to hook into any optic nerves at all! I am trying my best! If you have optic nerves, I do not see them! How about that!”

Mark flew fast, muttering, “How about that.”

“That was quite similar to the corruption ooze, wasn’t it, sir! You lost yourself again! This time you were reduced all the way to your astral body! It was quite scary!”

“Ah,” Mark said, making a few other sudden connections as to what had just happened. “… huh. Quark, can—”

“Yes sir?!”

“Can you, uh… Let’s try to focus on the mission. It’s not over yet, and we especially cannot kill Grax, because Sampo is in the Green, right on the other side of sight and probably prepared to rescue everyone to elsewhere— Actually. Is Walaria there? Some witches who might know what is going on?”

“I am connected to Crytalis, but there is something weird. There has been something weird for a while now. I think when the bomb went off and the miasma came in… Walaria was speaking through some sources and those sources are now corrupted. The voice isn’t coming through and— Oh. Now she’s sending a video— No voice there. I cannot see her eyes, mouth, or— AH! Someone else is speaking now.”

Some mechanical voice rapidly said, “Hello, this is an AI speaking on behalf of Second Princess Walaria. There appears to have been an anti-human ritual performed in the area of Goblinhome, inhibiting everything and everyone that is classified as human, including non-magical communication. I will begin translating for Quark in speed-time. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Quark spoke with a clipped voice, overlaying himself with Walaria’s voice, “You say Sampo is inthe ‘Green’? Elaborate on what you thinkthe ‘Green’ might be.”

Mark was flying as fast as he could. Grax would notice him soon. So Mark quickly said, “The goblins are all ghosts in the Green, and they are the Green, and Wongod is a tree with an obsidian shard in him that is keeping him goblinized. Sampo is in the Green, too, healing everyone all the time and bringing them back to life instantly. I lost sight of him for a second and he was gone. I don’t know what the Green is, only that it is something inside of a dreaming space.”

A moment.

And then Quark spoke with Walaria’s voice, “Focus on Grax and don’t kill him. Bring him in. We’ll have ITLKR ready—”

“I am notusing that.”

“We’ll have a zone ready in a nearby location.”

Mark nodded.

Grax awaited.