Isoko had moved the ship far away from the slipper fish migration, but they kept it in sight.

Emotions had passed and thoughts were now coherent.

It was time for a full team meeting.

Everyone met in the Hub, while Mark was still partially outside so he could react fast enough, if he needed to react. Nothing was coming this way right now, but that could change in a moment.

Tartu had already asked to speak first, and everyone allowed that.

Tartu stepped forward, “I would like to begin with the big problem: That whole dragon event and this whole measure going forward, with Kabberjaw, the appliances, and that hunk of brightspeed crystal, is illegal as per international law. Mark briefly acknowledged that when he was going through the motions of denying the dragons as much as he could, and I am thankful for that, but then he went ahead, trading adamantium for goods and now we’re possibly headed off toward Kabberjaw, to make appliances for exiles.

“Let me repeat that: Exiles.

“And dragons.

“One is bad enough. Two is unconscionable.

“Both of which are a big problem! Big problems! We had that whole HVP storyline in Memphi about that, before Mark outed himself as adamant blooded… And Mark won that international battle by sidestepping the issue. This here, is directly illegal. And for good reason! The Empires have very good reasons for not wanting dragons to be a part of humanity, and now we’re edging close to letting them into humanity.

“I will leave the part about Mark becoming a king and inviting dragons into humanity for another day, for, as far as I am aware, that idea is so far out there that it isn’t even on the horizon?” Tartu asked, “Correct me if I am wrong about that, Mark? Areyou going to strike out on your own, and make a nation for dragons?”

Everyone had words to say about all of that, but everyone wanted to know what Mark was going to say, first. Isoko and Eliot were pretty sure they knew what Mark was going to say, but Sally was worried. David stayed back and watched; just an observer. Lola was having flashbacks to Memphi. Andria felt she should not be here, while Derek was all ears.

Mark answered, “I don’t want to be a king unless it is necessary in order to kill all monsters. Such an action would undoubtedly involve the System, the gods, and all demonkind. I’m not ready for that, but I can see that it is on the horizon, in some distant time and place.”

Tartu pressed the point, “Are we allying with the dragons, even temporarily?”

Mark asked, though he already knew the answer, “Does the law allow for alliances in times of distress, when you’re pressured into dealing with dragons, or else you’re dead?”

“No, it does not, and you know this.”

“Well how about this, then: I’m not going to risk them killing everyone here over some appliances and resources that are effectively endless to me, and to Eliot, too. I don’t give a shit what the worldwide price of adamantium is, and if I have to crash the price of adamantium myself, when we get back, then I will.”

Andria gasped. “You can’t… It’s nuclear proliferation? Right? Bad idea?”

Tartu’s eyes were wide. “Andria is right. Do not… do that.”

“The empires would push for that if they knew it was an option,” Lola said.

Mark continued, “Then I’d appreciate it if no one here lets that slip to any authorities because, yes, they will absolutelypress the point and make me do that.”

Silence.

Sally launched to her feet. “Is what that blue dragon said true? Quatrok? That part about ensuring no demonic influence on the Two Worlds by dictating that all archmage Contracts be instant-full-dragon Contracts? Can that actually happen— Sorry. No. I mean… I know that canhappen. But is that an actual political movementamong the dragons? Or is Quatrok an outlier?”

Mark said, “Quatrok seemed sincere from what I could feel. He wasn’t directly near me, though, so I don’t know. Odanci said some stuff in speed-time when she dropped the brightspeed crystal. It went like… ‘Please think about Quatrok’s words. No one likes demons, but dragons don’t exist without them, and you can’t kill them, so the direct-to-dragon solution is one of the better solutions’.”

Lola said, “With that knowledge, I believe I can say that Quatrok’s politics are at least… normalized as an option.”

Sally breathed deep, eyes wide, surprise and horror heavy in her thoughts.

Isoko whispered, “Holy gods.”

And then David spoke up, “Forgoing demons and avoiding Falling archmages in favor of dragons is a double-edged bargain, and one we should leave to the side. Far, far to the side, because when dragons are involved in normal mortal life, people who hate dragons will Contract with demons a lot more. Fewer dragons means fewer cultists, too.”

Lola added, “A very valid concern, rooted in history. When the problems of life are too much, more people Contract with demons to save themselves from their problems. Dragons being a part of society turns up the heat on a lot of rhetoric, because while you can argue with other people who are shaped like people, arguing with something half a kilometer tall is impossible for most.”

Sally’s enthusiasm fell to the ground like ice cream off of a cone.

Splat.

Sally said, “Yeah... I could see that.”

Isoko nodded a little, thinking deeply.

Tartu reoriented the conversation, asking, “Are we following the dragons? Are we doing the rest of this bargain Mark has brought us into, or are we making draconic enemies?” He added, “They’re already enemies anyway, but they could be worse. If you’re worried about our lives, Mark, then maybe we could all go through a rift back to Earth or Daihoon, wherever we end up, and leave you with them to get your prismatic mana—”

“No fucking way,” Isoko spoke up, and Sally was right behind her—

Tartu spoke fractionally louder, “And then we can all pretendthat thisdidn’t happen… Unless Derek has already reported it to the people back home. In that case Mark is already legally fucked. I would prefer notto be complicit in that legal fucking, and if Derek is informing on us then I am leaving now.”

Everyone looked at the three Dereks hanging out to the side.

One Derek instantly said, “I’m not an intelligence leak!”

The other Derek said, “I’m not telling no one shit!”

The third Derek said, “I have been murdered about 7 times because I refused to narc on you guys. Gotta say, some guys are just not the people you think they are!”

Mark wanted to groan, but instead he asked, “Who is killing you?”

“I don’t know!” said a Derek, obviously lying.

“A few girlfriends who were apparently plants this whole time,” another Derek said.

“And a bastard of a boyfriend. Seriously! Can’t trust anyone these days.”

“A cop I knew back in New Denver killed me, but he kills me every other week.”

“He never liked me but I never held it against him.”

“I think he has an alcohol problem.”

“Someone did post a big reward for information about the trip on a few different dark message boards!”

“I already told Walaria about people trying to kill me.”

“She is fucking terrifying.”

“She didn’t ask about the trip! She only said that if I needed to reach out to her then I could.”

“She also told me that if I narced on you guys she’d find a way to permanently hurt me, so… I ain’t telling no one shit.”

“Not even Walaria!”

Stage whispering, “She told me not to tell her, too.”

The Dereks decided to stop talking, though it was clear they could have said more.

Tartu spoke up, “I should just open a rift right now—”

“No!” Andria said.

Mark said, “The only thing that matters in this world or any other is power, Tartu. Do you want power, or not?”

Tartu sarcastically frowned at Mark, saying, “Usually, the proper thing to do when a giant black void of power offers to hand you power, you walk the other way.”

“Don’t be racist,” Eliot said.

Tartu threw up his hands in disgust.

Isoko snorted. Sally smirked. The mood improved immensely.

Lola stepped forward, saying, “Eliot. Do you wantto do the appliances?”

“Not really, and we might not need to,” Eliot said, “Andria’s 80% prismatic mana match is 8,900 kilometers away. According to the trajectory and some rough estimates, that puts that kaiju just outside of dragon territory. We have to cross 16 layers to get there, so I’m guessing about direction, but it seems about right. So maybe we should table this discussion until we know that we needto bow to the dragons, even temporarily. Maybe allof the targets are beyond dragon territory.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Derek spoke up, “Walaria did say that she expects you to break the law out here.”

That got everyone thinking.

Sally said, “I want to know more about dragon culture. I thought dragons didn’t have

anyculture at all, therefore no politics at all?”

“They don’t,” Tartu said. “We ripped them out of Daihoon. All they have left are enclaves of exiled humans living just inside the Crossing, which I heard about, but I always assumed they were just rumors. As far as I know, the dragons went from empires to hovels in the dirt. There is no culture among exiles at all except for survival.”

Hovels in the dirt?

Mark felt… weird about that.

Eliot sighed, and said, “Okay fine. Yeah. We have to go help them.”

Tartu frowned. “That was notthe impression I was trying to give—”

“Well it’s the impression I got!” Eliot said.

Mark grinned.

Sally strongly said, “I want to know if we can get rid of archmages and magefalls and all that shit, or if that stuff is a draconic lie.”

“It’s SUCH a fucking lie,” Tartu began—

“I wanna know, too,” Isoko said.

Andria spoke up, “Me, too.”

Lola stood tall and simply said, “I am also interested to hear more of this philosophy.”

“Oh my gods of darklight and dreams,” Tartu muttered, under his breath. And then he said to Mark, “You’re in the Aluatha ImperialSociety, Mark. Not some dragonist society!”

“Kings make borders of their own, Tartu,” Mark said.

Tartu scoffed and shook his head.

“Sounds like the aye’s have it!” Eliot said. “Let’s go hand off some appliances!”

Mark grinned, and then he said, “I expect everyone to spy on those guys at Kabberjaw as much as possible. I wanna know who we’re dealing with. Derek? David? Can you help with that?”

David said, “I’m not spying; I’m the escape hatch.”

Mark nodded a little.

Derek spoke up, “I can spy! No problem.”

“I’ll have the ship spying,” Eliot said, “But there won’t be any spy gear in any of the appliances. I won’t have my name attached to that sort of stuff.”

Mark went, “Oh! I didn’t even think about that.”

Sally snorted.

Mark asked, “Can you help sort through the information, Quark?”

“I will do this, sir,” Quark said. And then he said, “I have sorted through some information and from the map given to us by Elkatracks, Kabberjaw looks to be a capital city, while a few other places like Bent Arm and Purple Palace seem similarly large, and close to the Northern Crossing. If you wish to pass over some places before we get to Kabberjaw, then passing over Bent Arm and Purple Palace would be a good way to go. They are both located on sky layers, and are therefore easy to fly by. Kabberjaw is on a clearwater ocean. I believe going to any land layer would be exceedingly dangerous based on the number of cities located on land layers being approximately 0.”

Mark kinda went, “Huh.”

“We already knew land layers were dangerous,” Eliot said.

Derek excitedly spoke up, “Endless Daihoon is so weird!”

Another Derek said, “Y’all know the rumors about it all?”

Another Derek provided, “It’s all some sort of dream reflection of Earth and Daihoon, and while Earth is the ‘body’, Endless Daihoon is the ‘astral body’ and Daihoon itself is the ‘Binding’.”

Mark felt his heart beat hard to hear that. “Neat.”

Tartu winced a little, a sudden spike of overwhelming needto set everyone right appearing in his vector, which caused everyone with Union to look at him. Tartu cringed and then spilled, “That’s probably… exactly true. That’s Old Pantheon, though, and most people don’t like to trot that out… in common company. It’s kinda sacred, Derek.”

A Derek grinned wide and then deepened his voice and intoned, “The Dream Goes Like This: Once upon a time, all of Earth was normal, and then the Dreamer Dreamed the Demons—”

“Oh gods dammit,” Tartu said, and then he exclaimed, “I’ll tell the story! You already got it wrong, and I suspect on purpose.”

Derek grinned.

Another Derek stage-whispered, “There are lots of stories about the Dreamer.”

“No,” Tartu said, “There is onecorrect story, and manyfalse illusions that lead people down manydifferent wrongpaths. There is ancient magic in that story, and ifit will be told among this group, in this place, then I will tell it and I will tell it correctly.”

“While that’s fascinating!” Isoko changed the subject, “Can we look for a Sky Shaper kaiju? And thenshow up at Kabberjaw? I would prefer to have more power before we willingly go into a place like that.”

That started another discussion, but soon words wound down. Everyone agreed to Isoko’s desire, at least in part, and then Eliot spoke up, asking who all were able to condense their mana outside of their body. A few hands went up, and a few ‘not yet’s followed.

Eliot said, “Looks like only Andria, Tartu, Isoko, and Mark can condense mana, and Sally and I need to work on it. That’s plenty to start.”

“I’m not too sure about myself,” Mark said, floating a drop of adamantium into the air, over his palm. “It’s just adamantium? Does that even count?”

Mark got a lot of shrugs.

Lola said, “I suggest you take parts of yourself, since you can heal them well, and put them in there and see if they give different results. Perhaps focusing on a piece of your heart, or your brain, or the tip of a finger, would produce something different.”

“… Wouldthat produce something different?” Mark asked. “My body is fully adamantium. I’m… I breathe and my heart beats, but I know I’m only alive because of Incorruptible Body. There is no heart, or brain, or breath at all.”

Silence.

Tartu said, “Perhaps it’s all different and you just can’t tell?”

Mark hummed a little.

Eliot said, “Go stick your pieces in the machine and find out. In fact! Let’s log everyone’s kaiju and plot out courses. I’d prefer to avoidtraipsing back and forth, if we can.”

Mark looked around outside, then turned back to the group. “Any problems out there, Quark?”

“None on the scanners, sir,” Quark said. “The nearest kaiju are located in other layers.”

“So I’ll put my pieces into it directly? CanI go down there?”

The floor inside was pretty stable, but Mark wasn’t sure.

“Sure sure,” Eliot said, “The ship is strong.”

… So Mark went down the way.

Isoko and Sally glanced at each other and then followed.

Behind them, Tartu approached Eliot, asking to speak, and Andria remained back there with them, along with everyone else.