Mark and his team stood on the snow, in full view of more and more lights by the moment, as people crowded around the windows and balconies of the black pyramid. Some aimed to watch the fight. Others aimed to interfere, if needed, though not many of them actually wanted that. Blackthorn, Credenza, and even Punchman and even Blackthorn’s son, Alistair, were ready to prevent interference.

  If any of that ceasefire held by the end of tonight, Mark would call it a miracle.

  But, he supposed, it was only 16 hours ago that he put many of those paladins onto the ground at the morning’s bank robbery. That loss probably still stung.

  Tartu and his team also stood on the snow, about 40 meters away. They were all dressed in their hero outfits; predominantly white with a little blue, but with different colored strips to each of them. Kardi had pink accents, Shawn had yellow, and Lenny had green, while Tartu’s ‘extra color’ was just white. He was the leader of their team, after all.

  A frozen lake held to the side. It would probably be their battle zone.

  Quark estimated the depth of the ice in the center as 22 centimeters. Solid enough ground.

  Mark, as Blackvein, called out, “Leave this place, Spherix, or be made to leave.”

  Tartu, as Spherix, replied, “We’ve come to collect you for your violation of the Humanity Accords, specifically the part about trading with dragons. Come quietly and—”

  “And where is your evidence that I violated this most sacred of laws?” Mark asked, hamming it up.

  Tartu had no answer to that. He hadn’t expected Mark to actually ask for evidence. But someone on the HVP was looking out for Tartu, or rather, for the program, and a drone landed in front of them, to the side.

  The drone lit up with a holographic projection of the docks at the settlement. It was CCTV video, taken from above. Mark was doing basic brawny work as a part of his punishment for beating up Tartu. Lifting shit and moving it into hovercars, or taking shit out of hovercars.

  Mark instantly knew what was going to happen on the video, but it wouldn’t happen in this particular video, but Tartu likely had the next one lined up right after this. Or someone else did. Honestly, Tartu, or whoever was behind the image, could have shown any number of incidents and they would have shown the same thing. This particular pair of incidents simply showed what they were trying to show more than the rest.

  Everyone watched the video.

  On the video, Mark was standing next to boxes on the shipping dock, while the next hovervan came in. The van landed solidly on the grass and the doors opened rapidly, followed by an excited guy wearing an enchanted monocle and traveling leathers.

  The guy was focused on Mark, instantly asking, “Are you that Brother’s dragon?”

  Mark said, “Nope. Why would you say that?”

  The guy flummoxed his words, and then he blurted out, “You’re wearing 50 million in adamantium! You have to be Mark Careed!”

  Mark laughed and waved a hand and said, “This is just black iron! I took a potion to make it read as adamantium though. You’re the fifth person it worked on. Good prank, yeah?” Mark thumbed at the guy tracking the packages, saying, “Bossman told me to stop playing up that prank, but the potion is gonna last another few hours.”

  The ‘bossman’ was a guy that Mark forgot the name of. The guy snorted, though. He didn’t correct Mark’s lie at all.

  In the present time, Mark watched himself lie, and he knew he had lied well. This was not the first time he had used that lie, but the monocle guy was clearly wearing a wealth detector and he didn’t believe Mark at all.

  The guy on the recording frowned, not sure what was going on.

  He decided to let it go… or rather, that is how it had appeared at the time, and how it appeared on this video. Unbeknownst to Mark, the monocle guy had done something in that moment.

  He had started recording.

  A second drone landed on the snow and lit up with another image. It was a snapshot picture taken from the point of view of the courier, from his monocle, scanning and recording everything about Mark in that moment. It was one of the highest class wealth scanners that Mark had ever seen, and it showed the readout of every little bit of black metal that Mark had floating around him. This piece was worth 1.7 million. That piece was worth 2.7. The grippy bits on the boxes were each 3.2 million.

  The original video played on the first screen, but it sped up a lot, getting through the mundanity of moving shit fast enough.

  Monocle’s recording took several tens of snapshots as Mark loaded the vehicle, categorizing all of Mark’s metal bits, coming to a much more correct evaluation of 65 million gold leaf. That 50 million at the beginning was due to not having full information. Some of Mark’s metal was always out of sight, so Monocle had needed to take more and more pictures to come to a much better number.

  Mark recalled this event happening maybe… 6 or 8 days after getting all of his adamantium taken by Tartu? Mark had needed time to recover from the shavallian and also to produce more adamantium, so he had been rocking maybe 1.2 kilos by then. So yeah, that 65 million number was about right.

  The two recordings ended and then the next two played.

  It was a different day, and it started from Monocle’s POV. He was coming in for another pickup, and Mark was down on the dock, getting ready to load. The guy got a clearance from air control to come into dock, and Mark, in the present day, realized that he had been set up in more ways than one. Monocle should have gotten a random loader; whoever was closest, or who had his stuff. The guy might have showed up when Mark was on break. Any number of things could have happened to ensure that Mark and this guy here never met again. And yet, Mark was the one loading this guy’s stuff.

  Someone in the settlement had ensured that this had happened this way.

  The CCTV footage played alongside Monocle’s wealth-scanning view.

  Monocle: “If it isn’t the potion-changed loader again! Looks like you got some more metal this time. About 38 million more worth of ‘black iron’. Still pretending not to be Mark Careed?”

  This was the incident Mark remembered more than the first one.

  Mark, who rolled his eyes: “So you caught me. Hello. What’s up? You want this shit you ordered, or should I dump it in the trash?”

  A woman by the name of Odai, who was overseeing the loading that day, rapidly intervened, trying to calm everyone down, saying, “Sir Char! We’ll be sure to get your valuables loaded in a—”

  Sir Char, but Mark kept thinking of him as ‘Monocle’: “I want to know how he is getting more adamantium, and I want to buy it. Who do I have to talk to? You, Mark? House Char has very good rates!”

  Mark: “Look. It appears sometimes. I think it’s some talzarki magic. I don’t trade in dragon goods, so you’re S-O-L.”

  Sir Char, Monocle: “… A pity.”

  The videos ended there. The drones projecting the holograms flew up and away.

  Mark stared at Tartu, and then to Sentinel Saikou and Executioner Walker in the transport behind them.

  Mark mouthed at them, ‘Really?’

  They, of course, did not respond. The cameras probably caught Mark mouthing that, though.

  Whatever.

  With a voice amplified by anger and probably tech, Tartu exclaimed, “Eliot! Isoko! Sally! No one but Blackvein needs to be punished for this! Abandon your traitorous leader, or fall alongside him as accomplices! This is the only time we will be offering this choice!”

  Mark instantly decided something new about Blackvein’s character. He was a tyrant against his enemies, but not to his allies. While Isoko, Eliot, and Sally were equally offended and curious, each of them to different degrees and probably for different reasons, Blackvein turned to his team.

  Blackvein said to his people, “I won’t hold it against you if you leave.”

  Mark expected Sally to rally first, and she almost got there. Isoko could have spoken first, too; she was very close. They were both still trying to decide exactly what they’d say, though.

  Surprising everyone, Eliot shouted, “Fuck you, guys! I was supposed to build that gate and make it one of my best legacies, and now you pulled this shit instead! So no! FUCK YOU! We’re taking you down, and taking back that gate, and I’m gonna vandalize it! I’m thinking a great big dick! Maybe several!”

  As the audience quietly laughed, Mark smiled wide.

  And then Mark ripped an ice cream scoop of adamantium across the snow, making a rapid meter-wide ball of slush that he instantly compacted into ice and hurled toward Tartu. The block of ice sailed ahead, followed rapidly by Sally launching herself forward and Mark Unioning with all of them, taking in resilience from all of Tartu’s team and giving them weakness in turn.

  Many things happened all at once.

  Kardi, with her automatic rifle, dashed backward, lining up shots. She sent a volley exactly where she wanted it to go, putting two shots into Mark’s chest, hitting his ribs because he wasn’t running an adamant Union right now, a shot into Eliot’s thigh and another into his stomach, and pinging off of Isoko’s platinum skin and Sally’s Giant Strength of a body. They were incredibly fresh and strong alchemical silver bullets, all of them, and this time she did not limit her shots to just Mark.

  Eliot grunted even as he transformed the snow into melt and the land below into solid stone, mostly focusing where Mark had scraped the ground. Eliot couldn’t remove the magically-enhanced bullets because Man-made Manipulation could not work on magic. But the bullets fell out of him anyway, pushed out by Mark and Isoko’s healing Unions.

  Where the fuck was she getting her alchemical silver supply—

  No, wait.

  She was just getting Lucky. Very lucky. Able to punch through Mark’s Union of adamant and weakness… But also Inquisitor Saikou was running a Union of some sort on Tartu’s team, making Mark and Isoko’s Unions less effective than they would have been against the ‘heroes’ and the ‘heroes’ stronger than they should have been.

  Mark’s missile of packed snow struck Shawn, who had interposed himself in front of the torso-sized weapon. The ice crashed across his body, spreading in every direction, and he glowed gold in return. He was a brawny with something like a 3x enhancement, and also Retribution. He used his Retribution weirdly, too, because instead of being pushed back by the snow boulder, he flew directly in the direction that the boulder had come. Which meant right at Mark.

  But Shawn, with a long sword, met Sally, wearing just her dress and with her hands in fists. Shawn and Sally rapidly moved their fight to the side, their strikes cracking the air like the sound of thunder.

  Isoko went sliding across the ground like a minor speedster, which is what she was. She aimed at Tartu, still 10 meters away, hands forming fists. None of them had brought any weapons with them, because that was just not done.

  Eliot was making a bat for Sally and a sword for Isoko out of some stone, as he developed his battle platform. Already, lights and electronics were coming online in the stone pillar that would form the center of his defense.

  And then Tartu willed a Domain into the air in front of Isoko, and Isoko struck that sphere of power like a fly rushing right into honey. Isoko was stuck, moving slow. And then Tartu did something really weird. Something Mark never expected him capable of doing.

  Tartu filled the space around Isoko with layers and layers of light, multiplying the brilliance in a flashing instant, and then Isoko was gone. Her vector was elsewhere. Mark had no idea where. The light was still there but it faded fast, and Tartu grinned, his vector full of surprise, even if he was suddenly tired. Inquisitor/Sentinel Saikou’s Union rapidly restored Tartu to full astral body strength.

  … What the fuck had just happened?

  Isoko was gone?

  And then the person who had been Lenny, the mud mage standing in line with Tartu, suddenly turned to broken mud, his vector rapidly transferring underground. Lenny popped up under Eliot’s fresh construction and mud oozed out from lights and wires, rapidly turning to solid stone while the lights died.

  The ground melted around Eliot’s feet and he began to sink.

  Mark was a little impressed and worried, but only really about Isoko. Where had she gone? What had Tartu done? Mark had no idea. Only 10 seconds had passed, but it felt a lot longer.

  Mark reached his adamantium down into the ground, into the largest part of Lenny’s vector under the snow, saying, “Don’t die, Lenny.”

  Lenny must have heard him or maybe he just felt him, because he rapidly retreated, his vector popping up back into the broken mud sculpture he had left behind, exploding the mud out from within. Lenny gasped, wounded in his guts, red blood spilling all over his white outfit. He gasped and gasped, and Mark helped to heal him right alongside Saikou.

  Mark cut the ground around Eliot’s feet, pulling him back onto a solid surface, while Eliot said something about needing to get onto the ice, and out of Lenny’s influence. Eliot was already spinning some lights out of the air, probably getting a CO2-to-polymer-thing going as fast as he could. Mark thought that he could just poke into the ground again to attack Lenny, but he agreed with the change in venue.

  He didn’t want to accidentally stick metal into Lenny’s head, after all.

  From Lenny’s vector, Mark doubted he would ever try that particular attack with Mark ever again.

  Sally was already on the ice, smashing it up with Shawn. Gold light flashed and the ice cracked, but Sally and Shawn were both holding the ice together rather well with their TTs. The sound was pretty incredible. Mark wondered, in a small sort of way, if they’d enhance the cracking effect post production—

  Mark pulled Eliot behind him right as he felt a vector draw upon them, not a moment before a hail of bullets slammed into his face, into his raised arm, and into his chest and stomach. All of the bullets got at least an inch inward. Mark felt one of the bullets in his left eye, in his socket, while his teeth were broken and his mouth was full of blood. He almost choked on blood because of the bullet wound in his neck.

  Several bullets had struck his upper chest and bounced off of his adamantium helmet.

  A warning from Quark flickered on Mark’s uninjured eye: Spellbreaker discharged.

  Ah.

  Someone had tried to shut him down, too?

  Time seemed to slow.

  The pain did not really register.

  Mark had gotten hurt before, but not this badly, not in a while. Not when he was still able to be injured further. At the end of a fight, to ensure he won? Yeah, he traded blows like this sometimes. Not very often, though, because that would be stupid. Mark was also no masochist. Pain was not fun.

  Mark recalled, for some odd reason, during the Tutorial, when those malformation dogs had been rushing at him, wave after wave, and he took bites to his thighs in order to get killing stabs on the dogs. He had taken those injuries to secure a victory, but that had been in the middle of the Tutorial. That could have gone very bad for him.

  But just like back then, like he always did when it mattered, Mark fell into a flow.

  The world flowed with him.

  Mark felt Kardi, far away, shooting at him. He dodged left and sent Eliot to the right, onto the ice. Eliot slipped but caught himself. Mark pried out bullets and regrew his injured body but Kardi’s bullets still found him, still dug into his thighs and stomach. Blood drenched his clothes.

  Tartu ran at him, almost onto the ice, launching fist-sized orbs of power across the ground, arcing in the air.

  That power zeroed in on Mark, and Mark didn’t touch it. Instead, he grabbed snow and dirt and struck the orbs first. Some of the orbs turned to honey-density and snow further froze midair. Some ignored the ice and kept coming.

  And then Tartu bloomed the world around Mark with an anti-Union magic. This was just a setup, though, to blind Mark to everything else coming his way.

  Lenny ducked into the ground. Where did he go? Mark had no idea.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Bullets slammed into Mark, even though he dodged away from where he had been hovering. Mark had raised his arms, though, and his arms caught most of the bullets. Mark had fully encased his neck and face in adamantium, too, so the ones that got through didn’t touch anything.

  There was no way Luck could get through a complete defense.

  Mark had partied with Kardi more than once. He vaguely knew what she could and could not do. The more he thought about those times, the more he realized something had always been wrong, even back then. Kardi was obviously related to Credenza and she was trying to start her career by being Lucky around some big name like Mark.

  Or maybe they just knew each other?

  Kardi and Credenza were both in the HVP and in Memphi. Even if Kardi hadn’t really joined the program until she had been on the Grey Whale and she had met Tartu, Mark hadn’t really been ‘in the HVP’ either. He hadn’t expected to do any of this stuff, in any shape or form, for years.

  But here he was, and Tartu and Lenny were gearing up for something special, and Kardi was in the big leagues because of Mark’s worldwide fame—

  Mark decided to tackle one problem at a time.

  Lenny first.

  Mark formed scoops of adamantium and absolutely ripped into the ground, throwing up truckloads of frozen dirt and soil in Tartu’s direction. Tartu waved hands in the air and the dirt didn’t hit him at all. Mark went down, into the ground, using the dirt as a smokescreen. It was quite easy to burrow into the ground of Power Level 0 Earth.

  Mark drilled forward, right under the ground, right out of Tartu’s anti-Union Domain. He connected back to Eliot, to Sally, to everyone else, though Isoko was still gone.

  Lenny was the first to fall.

  Lenny saw Mark coming and he leapt up and out of the ground, trying to get away.

  Mark clipped off his feet and kept right on trucking through the ground.

  Lenny screamed behind him and his feet were lost in the churn of earth, ripped to shreds by adamantium scoops that were kinda like a drill that threw dirt upward. Mark was only two meters ‘below’ the surface. Mostly, he threw the surface upward as he went.

  Tartu exclaimed something. Lenny yelled.

  Mark trucked on, toward Kardi’s vector. She was shooting at Sally right now, and Sally was hurting, which was strange. Usually she healed the hurt right away, but Kardi was doing something weird with her bullets, with her aim. Was she getting good shots on Sally? Maybe. Was this all just Luck? How far did Luck really go?

  Mark hit the lake and it was a lot easier to drill through water. Water flowed much easier than dirt.

  Shawn was there.

  Mark took his feet, too, clipping them off and mulching them with adamantium. He might have gotten a bit too much of one of Shawn’s legs, but that was fine.

  Mark drilled on, under the ice, following Kardi’s now-frantic vector. She saw him coming and she was terrified. She ran. Mark hit the ground again and the ground made way for him, mostly by shooting up into the night.

  Mark surfaced near Kardi, on the other side of the lake, more than a hundred meters from everyone else.

  Kardi’s gun was in her hands, and she was trembling. She had tried to get up into a tree, but she had stopped short when she saw Mark surface. She stared at Mark. She suddenly dropped her gun, shouting, “What the FUCK! You took their LEGS!”

  Mark didn’t believe her concern for other people for one fucking second. Mark intoned, “Hey, Kardi. I’m not sure what happened between us, but this is kinda crazy, right? All this because I didn’t want to party with you? Crazy!”

  “You… You took their legs! You… you…” her voice trailed off.

  “Still not a believable reaction for anyone who knows you. I think you once told me that losing a leg was not a problem. Memphi has good healing services,” Mark said, “Anyway. Back to the issue: You’re the one aiming to kill with your alchemical silver bullets. Specialty brand, too, so they actually hurt, even at my PL. You took my eye, choked me on my blood, and you even aimed for my heart, Kardi. What the fuck is up with that?”

  Kardi shook, falling into the dirt, saying, “I didn’t prepare enough.”

  “And your initial strikes, coming from a kilometer away or whatever, failed to do more than just piss me off, too. Why do that, Kardi? Why break the kayfabe so fast, before we even have a chance to properly banter? I need to know. I thought Tartu and I had a talk about how much damage we were going to inflict on each other. About following the program. About making it look good. And yet, here you are, being so damned vindictive… It boggles the mind, Kardi! Do you actually want to kill me in a training accident, or some shit? Or… Or what’s going on here. Talk to me.”

  Kardi couldn’t answer. She couldn’t look at Mark. She just whispered, “Dragon.”

  Mark scoffed… And then he looked at his claws of adamantium, hovering right in front of his open hands. Mark frowned at that. And then he flicked his fingers and the claws turned into simple blades.

  Mark changed his question, asking, “Where did Tartu send Isoko?”

  Kardi couldn’t look at him.

  Mark turned her gun into scrap and Kardi gasped.

  She looked about ready to cry as she whimpered, “I just bought that.”

  “And you can buy another one. Where did Tartu send Isoko?”

  Kardi looked up and her fear, her sorrow, turned to hate. “Figure it out, asshole.”

  Mark cut off her hands.

  It was over fast. Kardi just grunted.

  And then she looked at her stumps and she screamed. Her voice joined the frantic voices of the others. She could still walk, though. She could get back to that transport easily enough.

  Shawn had stopped fighting right after Mark had clipped him. Sally and Eliot were tending to his wounds right now, dragging him off of the ice.

  Lenny had fallen where he had been and Sentinel Saikou had pulled him back into the transport.

  Mark left Kardi behind, flowing across the ground to Tartu, who stood by the black pyramid, looking absolutely incensed.

  Mark floated several meters in front of Tartu. “Where is Isoko?”

  Tartu gritted his teeth. “I didn’t take her anywhere.” And then he moved his attention to the side.

  An illusion, one of the best Mark had ever seen since it obscured all vectors, evaporated. Isoko was lying on the ground, unconscious, her skin pale. Mark instantly connected to her, and Isoko’s eyes slammed open.

  Platinum Princes was on her feet in a second, looking around with platinum eyes, wondering who to fight, but she saw the results of the fight and she backed down. She remained platinum, but she looked a little sick to her stomach.

  She glared at Tartu, but her anger was a cover for her disgust and her worry. “How did you do that?”

  “I can no-sell people if I prepare for them. You’re easy to prepare against. It’s the same technique you’d use against an archmage or hidden dragon to weaken them across the board.”

  “… well then,” Isoko whispered to herself.

  Everyone was a little sick, though some people were truly excited. The emotions of the people in the black pyramid, watching, were even more varied. Worry. Disgust. But also a distinct ‘I’m not worried’ from a lot of people. Emotions collided with each other and Mark didn’t try to suss them out.

  Mark sat down on the ground, and said, “Kardi tried to shoot to kill, and you hid Isoko rather well.”

  “Ah, so you’re blaming us for not following HVP fighting protocols,” Tartu said, “You’re blaming us for your own maiming! LOOK AT SHAWN! You took his fucking legs to the thigh!”

  Yeah.

  Shawn wasn’t bleeding out, but… yeah. That had happened. That was a… a major injury.

  Mark didn’t show any outward emotion, but he knew that at least Saikou and Isoko could tell that he was mortified. A lot of the paladins in the audience in the black pyramid could tell that, too. Mark supposed that was why a lot of them were not really worried; Mark was not a monster, he just did villainous things sometimes.

  Mark ignored Tartu’s outburst and said, “You can leave now. Kardi was born and raised here in Memphi. I’m sure she knows some good high class healers.”

  Tartu softly spat, “This is a problem with you being a healer on the front line too, Mark. You think you can heal away problems like this because you never experienced lasting injury—”

  Mark reached out and clipped Tartu’s legs at the knees.

  Whip!

  Clip!

  Tartu fell to the ground, gasping and then wincing. He tried to get up but he quickly realized what had happened. He touched his legs and his hands came away bloody—

  With his gorge rising, and pushing it down hard, Mark explained, “I was in a coma for months, and then came months of physical therapy, followed by rapid decisions to risk my life to save the world. That decision damned my parents to death by demon.” Mark said, “I am injured, Tartu, and you are not making this any easier on me.”

  Tartu rallied as much as he could, sitting there in his own blood. At least he had stopped bleeding, thanks to Saikou.

  Tartu glared, saying, “And now you’re never going to experience lasting injury ever again, you have an uncle who will keep you young forever, and you’ll be committing atrocities against other people, all of your long, long life, which you will use to bring the dragons back to power. You might not be a hidden dragon, but you are still an enemy of the world.”

  “… Please take your legs and escape, Tartu, and tell Kardi to stop aiming for my eyes with high grade bullets. A guy could get the wrong idea about how serious of a fight to have. Also, I need to have a talk with Credenza about stakes. You can lay some of the blame for tonight on her. I was planning on just escaping.”

  A fraction of Tartu’s rage kinda inverted, aiming toward Kardi, who was just now walking up to the transport, and another portion split off toward Credenza, standing behind the window right over there.

  Credenza happily waved at him.

  Mark asked, “Do you need help getting to the transport?”

  Tartu’s rage kinda quieted. He did not answer. He enveloped himself in a weird sort of Domain that lifted him and his legs off of the ground and floated him toward the transport. Shawn was already there, sitting in one chair in the transport and holding onto the stumps of his legs, blood all over his superhero suit. Lenny sat in another chair, and he still had some of his legs below the knees. Sentinel Saikou helped Kardi into the transport, making sure to hold onto her forearms and not her stumps.

  Sentinel Walter assisted Tartu into the vehicle, and then he held Tartu’s severed parts to his legs.

  Tartu bit down on nothing, grunting, as golden light flashed around the wound.

  And then the transport’s bay doors shut and the hovervan floated up and away, turning on its warning lights and its warning sirens. It was headed for a hospital, for sure.

  Mark turned his attention back to the black pyramid, to the room where they had left Credenza. His team soon stood beside him, all of them more or less fine.

  Mark had missed the fights with Sally and Shawn, and also with Eliot there, making what looked to be turrets on the ice that never got properly used. Isoko had been out of it the whole time, and she was embarrassed as fuck, but also more driven than ever.

  The supervillain waved a cheerful wave behind the glass, again, and then she held up a microphone and announced, “Looks like we got a proper villain team on our hands! Congrats, kids! Don’t worry. It’s gonna get worse.”

  “… Don’t you mean it’s gonna get better?” Mark asked.

  Credenza laughed. “Oh no no no. It’s gonna get a lot worse! Some of these kids just don’t learn how dangerous things are until they’re shown! And boy howdy, did you show those kids! Maybe don’t mulch the body parts in the future, though. Healing can be quite expensive in time and recovery if they have to do full regrows!”

  The people on the balconies, and viewing the screens inside the party palace, and Blackthorn, floating up there with his harem, all started clapping. They whooped and hollered, and someone fired off fireworks into the sky. Blackthorn told the band to start playing the good songs.

  Almost all of the paladins at the party cleared out, but a few stayed.

  All of Mark’s team were okay.

  But all of them felt dirty.

  - - - -

  Eliot finished a conversation with one of Blackthorn’s friends and moved to the next.

  Sally stood over there with Punchman, eating food and talking about gladiator stuff. They were doing okay. Had sort of a mentor/student thing maybe going on. Eliot wasn’t sure.

  Isoko was talking with Alistair Blackwood, the archmage’s son. Alistair wanted her to take a Mage Secrecy Oath, and Isoko wanted to know why she should; what benefit did it give her.

  The party was going strong, and they’d probably splice some footage from this time of calm conversation into the preceding hour, when they aired the actual episode. As Eliot met with potential client after potential client, writing down everything they spoke of in his databanks, he wondered if they would show the maiming when they aired the episode.

  It had been freaky to watch the ground and then the lake rip up like that, like a monster was burrowing through the earth, and then to see most of Shawn’s legs vanish in the churn and the ‘monster’ kept going. That hadn’t been a monster, though. It was just Mark.

  Mark got scary when he got angry.

  Mark was right over there with Blackthorn at his side, getting introductions to every minor mage in Memphi, it seemed. Blackthorn was doing his due diligence as a member of Mage Society, trying to get a wayward maybe-mage into a mage contract with someone, anyone, instead of the external, non-contract learning he was getting right now. Mark was doing his due diligence to politely decline and simply meet people.

  Mark didn’t seem scary right now, and he wasn’t, not really.

  Eliot made himself mad again.

  Where the fuck did Tartu get off acting like that?

  Eliot had half a mind to actually get involved and demand his removal from the settlement, and maybe even exile, but… Not yet. Not right now. Exile was a big deal, and the HVP always caused strong emotions among its participants. And yet…

  Eliot would float the idea later.

  - - - -

  Kardi stared at the stumps of her hands, where they had applied the gel. Her arms were numb up to her elbows and she was in a hospital bed. None of it seemed real.

  The doctor held up a mask and said, “Don’t worry, Miss Shale. In four hours your hands will be back, and in another four hours you will regain full feeling. We’ve seen this sort of injury a lot. We know how to deal with this.”

  Kardi softly said, “I’ve never been… injured like this.”

  The doctor held up the mask a bit more, saying, “If you’re ready, we’re ready. Can you count back from 100 for me?”

  And then the mask was on Kardi’s face and she started counting.

  She lost count around 100.