Mark stepped into the main command center and paused. The place looked nice. Screens everywhere, controls, a few chairs in the back. But exposed wires hung from the ceiling by an unfinished part of the room and the floor over there was completely open. The whir and crackle of engines and electricity echoed up from the opening in the floor.

A glance down there revealed servers all lit up and bright, more wires, and various poles of various thicknesses. The poles descended into the illuminated depths, and Mark couldn’t tell what was what, at all.

Mark asked, “60% done?”

“Something like that,” Isoko said.

Sally asked Isoko, “How did you crystallize your mana, Isoko?”

Isoko started talking about mana crystallization as a form of Aethercalling; of manifesting power and instead of letting it go, condensing it down. Mark thought that was pretty accurate, but he was more focused on the room than on talk of magic right now.

Mark soon continued on down the hall, in the back of the command center, to a solid metal door with a camera to the side. The camera flickered as it looked at Mark, and then the door opened up like an iris, and Mark grinned, thinking the whole thing super cool.

The room beyond was even more awesome.

The Storm Prism sat in the middle of the room, locked between two spires that rose from the floor and descended from the ceiling, locking the artifact in place in the middle. The bottom pillar had two buttons; one for active kaiju scan, which it was currently on, and another for focused scan. Holograms lined the room, which was kinda spherical-shaped, and everything in the local space was mapped out, with the Storm Prism acting as the Dreadnought.

The cloud of slipper fish was behind the Dreadnought, like a haze in the air between the wall of the room and the Storm Prism itself. Some floating numbers marked its rough dimensions, occupying the entire layer of this ribbon of Endless Daihoon, at about 500 kilometers across in all directions.

Kaiju hung out far beyond the edges of the layer, at 600 km and 700 km being the nearest two kaiju, and a whole lot more existing beyond that distance. If you were on deck, it looked like kaiju were everywhere, but from here, you could tell that reality out there was all bent.

Sally commented, “The landscape looks pretty clear?”

Isoko said, “Reality bends weird in Endless Daihoon and it bends faster when we’re moving.”

Sally nodded a little.

Mark pressed the button for active mana scan, and the hologram shifted, and then vanished. The room flickered. A soft, small orb of light manifested over a corner of the Storm Prism, and instructions held to the side, reading, ‘Place a small bit of manifested mana into the edge of the Storm Prism. Do not touch the Storm Prism. Do not touch your bit of mana unless you want to ruin the readout. If your mana is volatile please seek assistance before using this device. Thank you.’

Mark grinned, and then he stuck a random fingernail-sized bit of adamantium into the corner of the Storm Prism—

The Prism caught the adamantium and held it still, and Mark let go completely.

The Prism flickered and began to spin slightly, like a suddenly-released compass re-finding magnetic north. The hologram to the side flickered and read, ‘Locating compatible prismatic mana signature. One minute, please.’

Mark waited, and soon the Storm Prism stopped rotating back and forth, and it zeroed in on a signature.

A map appeared, zooming out drastically, showing hundreds of softly-undulating, crisscrossing ribbons of Endless Daihoon, and one particular bright spot among the noise, a few tens of layers away. Words appeared.

21 layers, 7,600 kilometers, 90% match.

“90%, right off the bat!” Mark said, grinning.

“Try a finger!” Isoko said, highly interested.

Mark chuckled and pulled out his drop of adamantium, killing the scan. The Storm Prism locked down again, little armatures reaching out from the base to prevent it from moving willy-nilly. Mark clipped off the fingernail-part of his right pinky finger and put it into the scanner.

The little arms released the Storm Prism, and it spun again.

Soon, another map came into being, and Mark frowned a bit.

“Different map,” Isoko said, looking outward.

“Is this bad?” Sally asked, genuinely unsure. “That you get multiple results with different parts?”

Mark looked at the numbers. “Could be bad?”

116 layers, 16,100 kilometers, 95% match.

“So… I’ll ask a big question.” Isoko asked, “Do we wantto go out that far

?”

Mark winced.

Sally frowned.

Mark plucked out an eyeball next, and it was very weird looking at himself from his hand, and looking at his hand from his body, but then he detached himself from his eyeball and he went blind in that eye. So he regrew another eyeball instead.

The detached eyeball went into the scanner.

7 layers, 1,400 kilometers, 75% match.

Mark said, “Not doing that one. But… Maybe?”

Sally commented, “You don’t want to be eyeballs… do you?”

“Could end up like Big Silver,” Isoko said, and it wasn’t really a joke, but she wasn’t serious, either— “Oh!” Isoko said, “Crystallize a bit of adamantium into whatever you desire from a settled Body?”

Sally asked, “What do you even desire from a body?”

… Good question.

Mark took a breath, and said, “I’m not even sure.” Mark stepped away from the machine, saying, “I like the elemental body, even for all its weirdness. It’s fucking strong. But also… I don’t have a heart, but I think I do, and therefore I do? What happens when I stop thinking I have a heart? Can I even doa Heart Union then? What even is a Union of Heart when I don’t have a heart? Why does it still work? But… leaving that to the side.

“I want all of it.

“The immortality. The unkillability. The free adamantium.

“But I also want to weigh a normal amount. I want to be able to eat, and be normal.

“But I also like being able to turn into shapes.

“So… I want everything.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Mark paused in thought, in clarity, and then he held up a hand.

Mark intoned, “Everything.”

A shard of adamantium condensed into his hand. It was spiky. It was fractal-ish. It curled on itself and then vanished into itself, and Mark had no idea what it was supposed to be, but he put it into the machine anyway.

The Storm Prism unlocked again and began gently spinning.

It spun for a while, hitching here and there, and then continuing on, looking, searching, trying to find something close to the ‘everything’ that Mark wanted—

It found something, and the Storm Prism began to undulate in a direction.

The holographic map appeared and the target was pretty far, but not thatfar. Not as far as the fingernail-kaiju had been.

19 layers, 9,100 kilometers, 85% match.

“Therewe go,” Mark said, “That’sthe one that I want—”

The world gained a new gravity, right overhead. Small things began to rise in the air.

Danger.

Overwhelming, immediate, absolute death.

Mark reoriented fast, putting dollops of adamantium onto the walls, onto the ceiling.

There was a weight upon the horizon, pulling all sights toward itself.

Little lights flickered out of the edges of the floor and down the hallway back to the command room. Mark was already moving fast, even before Eliot’s choked warning echoed across the Dreadnought.

“Don’t— Don’t look at it! Look away!”

His warning fell on deaf ears.

Derek’s vector was pointed upward, and then David and Lola were out there, and Isoko was panicking beside Mark, wondering what was happening, even as she turned Full Platinum, racing to catch up, walking on the ceiling. Eliot shuddered in the comms, talking about how we needed to not look at it, and Andria was currently catatonic, laying on ground, locked down to the floor with mithril caltrops of her own, while holding on to Tartu, who was gently touching her head. Andria was not knocked-out. She was staring, wide eyed, at the floor. Looking away.

Mark rushed out onto the deck and he beheld a vision.

Big Silver.

Right over there.

Big Silver watched them from beyond the Endless horizon, like 3 silver moons of different sizes, hovering on the edge of reality, gazing directly at Mark, at the Dreadnought.

Mark took a deep breath, feeling the vectors of the ship out, pushing Fear away as much as he could, as he told everyone, “Do not look. Turn away. Everyone turn away. It goes away when we don’t look. You too, Quark.”

No one listened.

Mark enforced his will with a Union of direction; without purpose or action. Simply a need.

Do Not Look.

Slowly, horrifically, everyone turned away.

Mark was the last to look over at Big Silver, at the planet-sized kaiju.

And then Mark turned, breaking sight lines—

The weight upon the world tripled, and Mark looked up as gravity pulled him upward, off of the ship. He turned and saw, briefly, a hundred eyeball-moons overhead. They crowded the Endless sky. They blinked in a billion unknown colors.

Mark blinked, too.

And then the eyeballs were gone.

Mark collapsed to the ground, denting the deck.

Big Silver was gone.

Things went wobbly for Mark and for everyone else for a while.

Mark kinda just hung out on the deck, looking at nothing in particular while everyone had quiet panics, or loud panics in Andria’s case. Tartu and Lola helped put Andria to sleep, at her request, and then everyone else kinda had a nap, or whatever. Mark stayed awake, looking at the clear sky.

Time marched on.

Occasionally Mark ventured to the edge of the ship, to look at the lands below, and all around, because a curious thing had happened out there.

“You see any kaiju out there, Quark?”

“I see no kaiju at all, sir,” Quark answered.

“Big Silver got reallyclose, didn’t he.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mark went back to sitting on the forecastle of the ship, looking outward.

“… I don’t even hearany kaiju anymore.”

Endless Daihoon was silent, save for the wind.

The endless migration of slipper fish was gone, too.

“… Did we leave that fractal fragment in the Storm Prism, Quark?”

“It is still in there. It is still pointing at ‘19 layers, 9,100 kilometers, 85% match’.”

Mark snorted. “So it wasn’t pointing at Big Silver but Big Silver showed up… Hell of a fucking coincidence… Fuck.” Mark looked at the sky, at the endless ribbons of land out there, and asked, “Anyone ever fought any of the Bigs? And lived?”

“Not in the public record. I will say that Big Silver has never known to attack people, according to my records.”

“Do you think your records have a survivorship bias?”

“Undoubtedly, sir.”