Isoko stared out at the ocean of fish at the edge of Mark’s range.

The fish blocked out the rest of Endless Daihoon with a flickering grey and silver density. Black miasma soaked into some of that greyness, and for moments here and there Isoko imagined herself as a Sky Shaper, causing a storm and pushing the Dreadnought through the eye in the hurricane. But then reality asserted itself and Isoko looked at Mark down there, in the middle of the deck about 200 meters away, all glowing and strong.

That dragon hadn’t even phased him.

Aside from her fuckup with the engines, Isoko felt they were going to be alright… Except.

Isoko pressed the comms button, and asked, “You wanna eat one of those fish, Mark? I bet they’re good!”

Mark responded, “Nah. Do you guys want one? I can grab one for you.”

“… No thanks—”

Sally moved forward and pressed her comms button, saying, “Yes. I want 3 of the biggest ones. Go get ‘em, Mark!” She let go of her coms and looked at Isoko, whispering, “Maybe he’ll try some after I cook ‘em.”

Isoko had already let go of her coms. She was hopeful, but… “Mark not wanting fish is pretty fucking weird, right?”

“Yes, absolutely, it is,” Sally said, looking forward.

Mark rose into the sky, pulling his Fear back, letting the fish get closer, and then he swiped up with quick claws, grabbing three out of the air. He made quick butchery of them as he settled back down, Fearing the world and soaking the team and the Dreadnought in Glory once again.

David appeared next to Mark, as Mark sat down on the deck of the ship, having already carved the fish into fillets. They talked to each other out there, and Isoko had no idea what they were saying, but soon David vanished, taking the 5-meter-long fish fillets with him.

Mark cleaned off the deck with a strangled Union of Purity, concentrating hard to keep Glory and Fear still going—

David appeared in the command center, saying, “I put the fish in the kitchens, Sally.”

“Thank you, David,” Sally said. And then she asked, “Eliot? Got some cooking equipment?”

“Give me 10 minutes,” Eliot said, vector focused down below. “Still helping Tartu and Andria.”

Tartu and Andria were working together down in the workshop, Mark’s Glory funneling a lot of power into them. Glory was funny, in a weird way. Andria was like a different person when she had Glory going; a much more confident person. Tartu was the same as he ever was. Isoko hoped that Andria would warm up to Mark in a normal way soon enough, and maybe it would happen… but then what?

More to the point: What was going to happen to Mark, if they found the appropriate kaiju?

He was already losing his humanity to that elemental body. If they found a metal kaiju, or if Mark made one and then consumed it (if that would even work), then would he be metal forever?

Andria wanted a metal kaiju, too. What would happen if shegot one? Would she turn all metal, too?

… Would she be a better companion for Mark, if she did turn metal?

Gods above, why was Isoko even worried about that?

Isoko still had some stupid emotions for Mark, of course. She knew that. Who wouldn’thave emotions regarding a savior like him?

… But whatever. That was a problem for later.

Isoko looked to Lola and David both, and asked, “Is he going to be okay?”

A tension filled the room.

“No,” David answered, simply and quickly.

“Maybe,” Lola answered, less simply, looking at David with a disappointed face.

David countered, “If he turns full metal all the time then he will move further and further from humanity, from everything that makes him—”

Lola quietly begged, “Please, David.”

David hmm’d, face focused, and then he continued spilling the bad news, “Food is always the first thing that the elemental bodied lose interest in. Sex is a close second. Everything else comes next. Since Mark doesn’t have a need for intimacy then the rest will follow a lot quicker. He only imagineshe has a heart; he does not. He only imagineshe has a brain; he does not.” David stopped talking to Lola, who seemed to be in the midst of a quiet breakdown borne of guilt and sorrow, and he turned to them; to Isoko, Sally, and Eliot. “The best thing you can do is focus on normal human things. Eliot can make the place suitable for standing around in, like he doesn’t weigh 3 metric tons. Sally can make food and maybe Andria and Tartu can figure out how to make it have texture. Isoko, you need to share your human experiences with him, and keep him mentally balanced, since you can do that with Union.

“Mark is never going to be who he was. Not exactly. Not after this. But he will be most of that person. And if we find the holy grail of a temporarily-metallizing-kaiju, like you with your Platinum Body, Isoko, then he might go back to normal.

“But maybe he shouldn’t.

“Maybe, what the worldneeds, what Markneeds, is for a body that can take a beating and always come back.”

Lola did not like that, and so Lola found her footing. Her vector was almost a solid thing, pointed at David, pointed at everyone, and the world as well. Lola stated an absolute truth, “Mark has given enough to the world.”

“He certainly wouldn’t think that,” David countered, stating an absolute truth of his own.

Lola turned away.

Sally decided, “I’m making food. Do we have lemons and butter?”

Eliot said, “Synthetic butter; margarine.”

Lola asked Derek, “Could you please check to see if we have lemon seeds in the package from the farms, Derek?”

Derek saluted. “On it!” He didn’t move. Another Derek was probably moving downstairs, in the hydroponics area— “We do! I’ll plant one now!”

Lola said, “Thank you, Derek. I’ll join you down there.”

She went down the stairs, and David went with her.

And then it was just Isoko, Eliot, and Sally… And also Derek—

Derek popped like a rather chunky illusion.

Only the team was left in the upper command center; Mark’s team.

Quark was probably in here, too.

Sally said, “He’ll be okay.”

“The scanners return solid metal in his body,” Eliot said. “He has no human parts anymore. He only looks how he looks because he believes he looks like that. I think we should start looking for suitable kaiju right now. One for Isoko, for general purposes and because he believes we’re doing that anyway. And then one for Mark. Maybe even a dragon. They have prismatic mana, right? We should just get him a dragon.”

Sally turned distant in that proclamation, her face going pale, her eyes going to Mark, glowing out there on the deck.

Isoko had a similar reaction, but she came back sooner than Sally, but only because a thought stuck in her head that went against what Eliot was saying. “The kaiju has to be born on Endless Daihoon and have been here its whole life to have prismatic mana, right? Dragons aren’t like that. They all come from Earth or Daihoon, right? From archmages? So dragons won’t work.”

Eliot looked at Isoko. “So you agree that we should start hunting now, even though we’re in dragon territory.”

… Isoko looked away.

It was answer enough, for the moment.

Sally shuddered. She looked away. “… I’m going to cook up some fish. Is Andria able to enchant food crunchy enough to be anything but a cloud to PL 98 Adamantiumkinesis?”

“Tartu would be the one to ask about that,” Eliot said. “The kitchen is ready, too. You can find it down there easily enough.”

Sally went down the stairs.

Isoko turned back toward the front view of the ship, to look down at Mark. And then she tapped some buttons on the controls and opened up a specific communication channel, asking, “Lola?”

“Speaking.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“Is there a Union of Humanity?”

Lola softly said, “Yes. We’ll do it if we have to, but we should not have to, and it would be dangerous to start doing that; to define ‘humanity’ versus ‘inhumanity’ with a person who has an unstable Binding. Mark seems stable, for now, and soon we will find a kaiju that fits whatever criteria we need it to fit.”

Isoko glanced at Mark, and he looked back at her and waved. Isoko tried not to worry too much, because she knew that he could feel her, even if he couldn’t hear her.

Isoko said to Lola, “Okay. Thank you.”

- - - -

Sally stared at the humongous fillets of fish sitting in cold storage, and in the freezer Eliot had crafted in the last half an hour. In any other scenarioshe would have been thrilled. The kitchen was massive, made especially for Sally, with a whole giant fireplace, a big stove, huge cutting tables, and so very much space for cooking. Slipper fish looked like pure delicacies, too. The meat was deeply pink/red, like tuna, a meter thick in some places, and every fillet was boneless, 4 to 5 meters long, and completely free of parasites.

“Gods damn,” Sally said, picking up a carbon steel knife that Eliot had made for her, out of a very large set of knives. She put the knife to the fish… and the fish didn’t cut at all. Sally chuckled, a bit of mirth returning to the world as she stabbed at the flesh of the fish, and the knife did nothing. Useless! Except the knife wasn’t useless at all. It was a good knife! She wasn’t using her TT, but she didn’t expect to needto, and yet… “The fuck is this? Do you know? It should have lost PLs upon death, right?”

Tartu stood next to the table on a little stool to reach the surface of the wood. He watched Sally try to cut it, and his eyes went a little wide. He voiced a hypothesis, “I think the PL of stuff doesn’t decay in Endless Daihoon?”

“Evidently!” Sally laughed, and then TT’d with the knife as she brought it down on the flesh of the fish— The knife went in, and it was like cutting butter straight out of the refrigerator. “Oh wow. That’s stiff! Why does it still have such a high PL?”

“I am guessing that the mana density of Endless Daihoon allows things to retain integrity? But… I am not sure. No one hunts in Endless Daihoon—”

“On account of the dragons.”

“Yes. I learned that too, recently. And knowing about the dragons, I know why no one hunts here —aside from the kaiju— but I’m not sure about anything regarding this PL-retaining… It’s almost like the whole land is under some Gathering Skill? To keep things preserved for later use?”

“More like ‘every Gathering Skill mimics what happens naturally in Endless Daihoon’ perhaps.” Sally chopped through the fish, saying, “So that means that Gathering Skills just lock in mana, inside of a thing?”

“We already know that much is true…” Tartu asked, “Maybe you don’t need my help at all?”

“No no, I do,” Sally said, cutting off a slice of fish a meter long, 40 centimeters wide, and 3 centimeters thick. It was brilliant red and solid as heck, but Sally went at it with great control, and only the barest of sawing motions. “My PL for Giant’s Strength is 97, and this is a basic steel knife— Eliot’s fantastic at making knives, and you should get yourself a set if you’re interested in that sort of thing. But Mark will be coming at this stuff with PL 98 Adamantium.” She cut off the section of flank and then she diced it up into 3 centimeter cubes, saying, “So it’s still mush to him.”

Tartu nodded. “Eating is an important part of keeping one’s humanity as an elemental. Normally, one would go out and seek items that are made of the same types of item that the elemental finds themselves as, and fashion those into ‘food’. But eating adamantium seems like it would be… Well. It would have to come from him. Cannibalism doesn’t seem good for keeping one’s humanity.”

Sally had the pan already heating on the stove, but it wasn’t quite hot enough so she cut up some more of the fish as she asked, “Do you know much about elemental bodies?”

“Have I studied them? No. Did I read a lot in the last few days? Yes.”

Sally nodded. “So what are you going to do, exactly? To up the PL of the food? Is that what needs to happen?”

“I thoughtI was going to do that, yes, and it wouldhave involved preparing the fish to keep its PL high throughout the process, doing some of that mana reinforcement that Gathering Skills can do, but now I will be shifting toward a secondary answer that will likely work better,” Tartu said, “When Mark wants to eat, I’ll put him inside a Domain of PL equalization. It will drop his PL and increase the PL of everything else; especially metals.”

Sally hummed, then asked, “ ‘Especially metals’?”

“With the exception of adamantium, which is not technically a metal.”

“It is a metal, though.”

“Yes, but I can split the difference with a properly applied Domain.”

Sally nodded a little. And then she put her hand over the pan. It was hot enough. With a bit of margarine from a nearby tub, and some oils that were also pulled from the very air with Eliot’s machines, Sally splashed the pan with oil and then margarine. It sizzled strongly. With some quick fingers, Sally put the fish into the fats. This was just a test run, to start, so it was good enough to do it like this. Some herbs would come later.

The fish didn’t even sizzle.

“Well damn. It’s not cooking… Hmm.” Sally asked, “When do you do your part?”

Tartu flicked Power across the stove burners and a rectangular prism of air, about 2 meters square and 1 meter tall, took hold of the space. The fish began to sizzle, as Tartu said, “Not sure how long that will last.”

“So that made it actually start cooking… What are you doing, exactly?”

Sally guessed he was ‘Gathering’ into the space, and raising PLs across the board, which made the oil hot enough to function against the meat.

“Imbuing Power Level into everything in the space, which means the oil and pan, mostly, and the fish secondarily.”

Sally smirked. “I have a pan that does that at home. It needs to be charged all the time, and it doesn’t work well. This is working quite well, though.”

The fish were getting a good sear and the air smelled of food instead of like new wood. It was a good mix of flavors, really.

Tartu said, “I’d imagine you have a lot of appliances and magical items to make food function well.”

“I do,” Sally said, watching the fish transition from pink-throughout to tan at the bottom, in the oil. The cooked portion slowly got bigger. It was only half a centimeter cooked right now, but it was getting hotter in there, and it would continue to cook when it was taken off the grill some… Now. Sally flipped the cubes of meat onto the other side— The Domain in the air broke. Tartu reapplied it quickly, but not before Sally said, “Ah? It broke?”

“Domains are fickle things when they have to interact with a lot of different nuances. I could just make the oil stronger so it could cook well, but then the oil wouldn’t gather enough heat from the pan, and it would stay there, cold and useless.”

Sally pounced on the subject, saying, “You should consider a god, Tartu. Domains and the Pantheon should work very well together.”

Tartu did not roll his eyes like he usually did, when Sally brought up the subject of gods around him. In fact, he seemed to be considering it. Sally was surprised, but she hid that surprise for now.

Sally had long moved past the topic of getting Tartu to pledge to Drakarok, because Tartu did not think Retribution would work for him well at all. Hearthswell was a great pick for Castellan and Domains would have a natural synergy, for sure, but Tartu didn’t want to be tied down to any location.

Sally had never really spoken to him about Freyala, Verdago, Pluta, or Malaqua, but any of the New Pantheon would do. Tartu really should just get Chosen. It’d make Sally feel a whole lot better being around him, as a mage, but that was a ‘whatever’ sort of reason for her. Sally trusted Tartu these days. They all did.

Sally wanted to push the subject… but she refrained. Mostly.

“Just a thought,” Sally said.

“Yes, and it’s a thought you and Shawn have both come at me with several times… but I’m actually considering it now.”

Sally made an exaggerated fist pump, saying, “Woooo! Win one for the good guys!”

This time Tartu did roll his eyes.

Sally put some margarine into the pan and she flipped the cubes onto their uncooked sides, teasing, “Malaqua, right? Stone strength seems like a good one!”

“No… I was thinking Verdago.”

Sally raised an eyebrow. “Really? Farmer?”

Tartu looked slightly embarrassed. And then he stood straight and tall, saying, “Yes, Farmer! What’s wrong with Farmer?”

“Nothing! Just… a noble Farmer? With the orchards and bushes and picking carrots out of the ground?”

“There’s a lot more to Farming than farming,” Tartu said, perfectly composed, which is how Sally knew he was acting strong for the ‘camera’, though there were no cameras around here. He was trying out a spiel on her, because she was ‘safe’. Tartu continued, “Farmer helps with raising families, raising teams, supporting communities, strengthening my Domains so that they would grow over time, instead of fade out over time—”

“That last one is why Castellan seems like a better fit.”

“Castellan is not a good fit and I am not a homebody,” Tartu said… And then he composed himself again, renewed the Domain over the stove, and said, “You can Farm anywhere, with anything, and that is why Farmer is better for Domains than Castellan. Farmer is the broadestPantheonic power, next to perhaps Union, and Farmer fits a lot better than anything else out there. If the Old Gods actually existed, perhaps I would pledge to them, but all we have are broken churches that…” He frowned a little at the end, like he was realizing a line was imperfect.

Also a non-sequitor, but that was fine. Tartu’s words weren’t really for Sally.

Sally asked, “Do you think your father would buy that reasoning?”

“… We have a church at the Old House. So no. That would be the wrong thing to say.”

Sally nodded, and then she pulled a few cubes of fish off of the stove and set it aside. “They’ll continue to cook and they should turn out barely pink in the middle, which might be good for these not-tuna. Give it a minute and then try one.” She added the herbs and more butter to the stove, for all the rest of the fish. “I’m gonna see what happens when I fully cook the rest, with the herbs.”

They talked about gods for a while.

Eventually, Sally tried the fish, and it was like biting into a tire, but back before Sally could actually do that and not hurt herself in the attempt. Sally chewed, tasted, experienced, and then she said, “Not bad.”

Tartu spit out his piece, saying, “I cannot eat that at all, and if I swallowed it I would need an operation to remove it.”

Sally grinned. “Let’s see if Mark can eat it!”