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Mark made himself a 'webweave'-like pair of short shorts that Isoko insisted he wear, to match her own 'fresh from a terrible battle' outfit that she had chosen for herself. Mark's outfit was a little… weird, but okay. Isoko's option would have been reasonable on a porno, or maybe at one of those parties that Blackthorn liked to throw. It was technically clothes, but it was clothes that were worse than wearing nothing at all. Adamantium boob-cups and a strapless thong. Held on by tactile telekinesis.

She had squished her boobs together a little bit, and so the boob cups could clip in the middle, giving her assets ample boosting. She had shown Mark how she did it, but he still had no idea how some thin cups could do all of that. Perhaps it wasn't his place to know." It's just a little revealing, okay?" Mark said, as he spun a rotor, heading across the Daihoon-version of Tokyo Bay, toward Sidecity and Big Torii in the distance. Isoko smirked, saying, "I think your short shorts are great.""

I'm talking about you, and you know it." Isoko laughed, filling the sky with trilling joy. She twisted as she flew under her own Full Platinum power, reflecting the world in her platinum clarity.

"You're the one that has weapons-grade dick in those short shorts, sir, so don't begrudge a poor girl her own share of the spotlight." Mark's face felt a little hot and his short shorts felt a little tight. It was a good, weird, good feeling— Isoko tackled him a little as they flew, neither of them knocked off course at all, and she giggled.

"You like me."" I mean… Yeah. I do." Isoko's vector and her face was quietly, truly happy.

"I don't remember anything past the first battleship, but I do remember later when you Called out to me and I had nothing except for your light in the distance. You love me." Mark's short shorts felt a lot tighter, which was weird for him. Erections were pretty normal and orgasms were fun, but actually connecting this thing happening in his pants to Isoko was a very, very new experience, and it was honestly too much. Mark was glad his shorts were adamantium.

He could control himself a bit, but he didn't really want to, and… And he did love Isoko. Mark told her, "I do love you, Isoko." Isoko's vector lit up with joy as her eyes went wide… And then she teased Mark, running a platinum hand down her completely exposed ribs, all the way down her reflective abs, to her hip and then thigh, not touching any covering at all the whole way, saying, "All of this, huh! You love all of this?" Mark got fully hard and he didn't stop himself, but he did stop there in the air.

Isoko was stunned and she was very focused on everything happening right now— Mark said, "Hopefully it passes." And then Mark flew on.

"… WHAT! NO! Come back here!" Isoko gave chase. Mark laughed and sped up, forcing his erection to go away as he fluffed his short shorts out to pants." NoooooooOO! Booty shorts! Come on!" Isoko pleaded. Mark smiled as he got less excited and more normal-feeling, so he put the booty shorts back on and Isoko sighed with the entire sky, frustrated. But Mark held out a hand for her and her heart jumped a bit. Isoko grabbed his hand firmly, her platinum grip turning Mark adamantium black for a moment.

Then she let up, and Mark's pale skin returned. They focused on the event ahead. Sidecity was below. The main battle was over, but smaller fights remained." Do you feel Tempest and Specter and Derek?" Mark asked, as Quark updated his sight with dots here and there.

"Quark is giving me low-priority targets."" I can feel Tempest but not Specter or Derek… Were we a team in the battle? I was worried about Tempest's pro-Okuana stance considering the Russian Federation is basically kept afloat by donations through mostly Okuana."" Tempest almost died a few times before I gave her Accelerator— Specter got Battlemind, too. So Tempest fucking hates Okuana now. And the Russians were there at the Winter Ball and we helped them, so they're less dependent on Okuana now.""

Gonna need to help them a lot more, or we watch them fall." Mark nodded a little. And then he said, "I'm going to point to areas and I want you to try the shavallian aura if you can— ah, fuck." Mark paused in the air, feeling a small loss deep in his soul." What?" Isoko asked, worried.

"Shavallian aura? Wha— Oh! Did I figure it out?!" Mark winced.

"I think you figured it out there but… then the battle— Ah, fuck. And Prismatic/Disgrace and—"" How about this," Isoko said, interrupting, "We solve the problems here, and then you tell me all about how awesome I was later, and you don't tell me about the shavallian aura. I figured it out once and I can do it again, and that way you don't violate Freyala's request." Mark smiled and it felt like he was smiling with his whole body.

"I love you, Isoko." Isoko's face did an amazing thing as she tried not to grin too much, and said, "I love you too, Mark." And then she focused, though her grin was still there, and her hand was holding Mark's strongly. She let go, and said, "I'll keep you up with Prismatic and 'Disgrace', if that really was better— Oh shit.

'Disgrace' instead of 'Boring' because the Okuana soldiers were scared of Dominant."" Exactly! It worked really well.

'Boring' works for general applications, of course, but I used Disgrace/Glory against them and that worked very well, too…" Mark glanced down at a new warning, via Quark.

"Here we go!" Mark took off, down into Sidecity, into the streets and into the sewers, wherever Quark directed him to go. Overhead, Isoko fortified him and also Tempest, who joined them shortly. Mark found Specter worrying over a tactical nuclear bomb planted 30 meters under Big Torii that he was holding together with TT. It was not a big bomb. Mark grabbed it with a 2-meter-thick wrap of adamantium and Specter let go, and the adamantium kinda expanded a few centimeters, and that was it.

Mark disabled 3 more tactical nukes in the walls of Sidecity in as many minutes, moving fast. Up in the sky, Tempest was talking with Isoko, fully in disbelief that Isoko was real. Eventually, though, by the time Mark, Specter, Derek, and the people of Sidecity had secured Sidecity and joined the girls in the sky, Tempest believed that Isoko was real. Isoko had also found some real clothes in the meantime. Tempest held onto Isoko, crying a little, holding her tight, saying, "Oh my gods! It's a fucking miracle!

Gods! I was not looking forward to telling your grandmother!" Isoko laughed at that, hugging Tempest back, saying, "I'm not looking forward to it, either!"" Oh my god, girl," Tempest said, getting real serious, holding Isoko at arm's length and staring straight into her eyes.

"She gonna kill you." Isoko smirked, saying, "I can take it!" Mark called out, "Don't you fucking dare!" Isoko smiled, and then she landed onto a new hoverplatform and hugged Mark for a moment, her body hanging off of Mark's front as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Isoko looked at Mark from centimeters away, asking, "You'd bring me back, right?"" Yes," Mark solidly said, holding on to Isoko's lower back. Isoko giggled as she slipped off of him, onto the floor.

She pretended to be all business as she asked, "So D'Takasaki? Side Depot?" Derek pulled up on the hoverplatform, saying, "That's the next stop! Aleph Two came through the private gate there to get it back online, but they need some heavy hitters for some monster killing."" I want to handle this one myself, please," Isoko said.

"And make sure the cameras get me good!" Mark rolled his eyes at her, and she laughed. Side Depot was under attack from a monster wave of undead horrors started by rampant Green Death Ecology in the wilds just outside of the place. Some warriors were in the thick of it, trying to save themselves and their home, while most people had evacuated back to Earth. They were fighting a retreating defense. It had been a lost cause.

And then Mark, Specter, and Derek provided ground support, ripping through horrors of all kinds, while Isoko stood like a raging platinum goddess overhead, ripping down platinum lightning and ripping up platinum storms from the ground. Undead trees shredded under Isoko's power while Tempest provided backup, letting Isoko handle the majority of the onslaught.

Tempest's Accelerator helped her make super-speed storms, but it would be a while before she could control it well enough to use around sensitive locations, like the Side Depot. Soon, the Side Depot was secure. The team returned to Earth through Side Depot's portal, right into the middle of the ongoing defense of New Tokyo. All of the major issues were gone, but stragglers remained.

On the way between districts, in a general eastern direction, Mark caught a glimpse of the blue floating cubes firing off tiny lasers into Tokyo Bay, near the corpse of the green dragon. The corpses of the red dragon and blue dragon were further south, not visible from here, but the necrodragon's corpse was highly visible, because it rested on top of a glacier down south. Mark's black and purple dragon body was still there, standing tall. As everyone saw it, surprise struck most of them one by one.

Derek wasn't surprised at all. Mark felt kinda embarrassed. The body was kinda standard-dragon, but obviously not, because it was missing parts and it had extra parts— Isoko looked at the body, saying, "That's you, right?"

"… Like… I guess— In my defense, I was pretty fucking crazy while you were resurrecting, and I did not go for looks at all." Mark's kaiju-sized remains had most of the features common to dragons. Two forward arms that were legs. Two legs. A long tail. A long neck and a dragon face with big jaws. And two wings. It was kinda frozen in place, too, but weirdly. It looked like it was flinching from being struck in the head. That flinch would be because that's where Mark exited the 'kaiju'.

Its head was mostly intact, but it had a giant crater in the skull, in the middle of a 10-pointed crown of horns. All the rest of it was obviously a non-standard dragon. Not even standard to a necrodragon, though there was a lot of that 'look' to Mark's 'kaiju body'. The wings were skeletal and partially missing, for the purple Death mana that had been the wing membranes was no longer present. The underbelly was gone, ribs formed out of adamantium and protruding out where Death mana would have made the guts.

The entire underbelly was missing, actually; it should have had Death mana there. Part of the face was an exposed skull, because, again, missing Death mana. Isoko said, "That's terrifying as fuck, Mark." Mark winced.

"Again, in my defense…" He gestured at everything, and then at Isoko.

"Stuff was going on." Isoko and Tempest both nodded a little. Derek informed them, "We're leaving the city to kill a Green Death Ecology location." The wall passed by underneath them. Specter thumbed backward at Mark's 'remains', saying, "It'll be a hit with the younger, edgier crowd, and I'm sure we'll get some new Death mana Talented people in the city because of that. I can't imagine that we'd ever be unprepared for other Living Kill spells ever again.""

You just fucking died, Isoko," Tempest said, still disbelieving that Isoko was alive and well." I got better!" Isoko said, enthusiasm waning… She told Derek, "I want a uniform drop off on the way back in. Standard fare, please." Derek said, "We got costumes for everyone, if you want new ones. It'll be another 10 hours cleaning up the major threats of the city, too, so there is food if you all want it." And then another Derek over by the edge of the floating platform pointed.

"Right there, Isoko and Tempest." The surface of a small mountain crawled with necromantic problems. And then the girls joined forces, with Mark supporting them. One minute, there was a hill of tall trees and ghostly things and horrors lurking in the shadows. And then there was sand and bedrock and a new lake. They flew back to the wall, and toward another target, to the south. Mark looked at 'his corpse' there on the horizon, while also glancing at quests from Quark, from Aleph One.

There were tons of quests in the area, and Derek was getting them to the big ones, but a quest came up when he looked at his shed body. It was a request to remove the corpse and to clean up the Death mana, if possible. Mark hummed, saying, "Looks like some of the Death mana sublimated back beyond the Veil, but the real adamantium remains, so they want me to clean it up or do something with it. I'm surprised they didn't ask to have it."" Give it to them?" Isoko suggested.

Tempest and Specter went wide-eyed and surprised." Quark. Tell Crystal Tower that it's theirs. I can still clean it up if they want it cleaned up, but New Tokyo needs the adamantium anyway for new defenses both on Daihoon and here on Earth."" What?!" Specter asked, too surprised. Derek chuckled, saying, "That shouldn't be that surprising!"" Beep boop!" Quark said, "Message transmitted. Quest log updated.

New Quest: Thank you, but please clean up the Death mana that remains and the constructs that still roam the land."" Ah, well yeah," Mark said, "I'll get to it... Eventually." Isoko asked, "What's your Power haul look like?"" Still needs to be organized!" A drone delivery brought them all a change of clothes, and suddenly things felt a bit more normal. Less crazy.

Mark was in his full black suit with white lines, Isoko had her paladin chestplate and her normal white paladin-esque webweave, while Derek was still wearing his normal, replicating white webweave, and Specter got white… Lotta white, actually. Tempest had on blues and browns, though. She looked a lot happier when she had full sleeves again. Mark said, "Everyone wears too much white." Specter said, "A lot of people are going to switch to black mourning after today." Mark winced.

Tempest looked at the horizon with contemplation in her vector. Isoko sighed a little. Derek said nothing. The team went around cleaning up Green Death Ecology nodes for the rest of the day and long into the night, but the AIs of New Tokyo were doing most of the real work of protecting people and killing monsters. Everywhere Mark looked there were turrets mowing down undead horrors and ending threats, while humans came through in big groups, securing areas one by one.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. It was a slog. Enemies and monsters were killed and conspirators were sometimes captured. Battlefronts opened and shut without much rhyme or reason. The team would be headed toward a location, and then the location was secured before they got there. And then, like all battles, it ended like the floor dropping out." That's it," Derek said, bringing the platform to a hover in the sky over the bridge between Chiba and central New Tokyo.

"We can go to Crystal Tower or to one of the refuge centers. Everyone is requested for a big meeting in the morning—" Tempest was not thrilled with that. Derek continued, "At Noon."" Oh thank the gods," Tempest said, anger deflating.

"Noon is fine. I'm gonna hop off here and head home. Specter?" Tempest took to the air, lightly, and Specter floated up with her. For a moment both of them shared a look. And then Tempest asked Mark, Isoko, and Derek, "You three want to come by? It's Team Mithril HQ and we got nice guest rooms." Isoko shook her head a little, saying, "Thank you, and yes, I want to visit, but I need to see the clan."" Oh, yeah! You're… you're from here, yes. It's been a long day." Tempest said.

"Tell Aeri I said 'hi!'

"" I will!" Isoko answered. Mark waved, saying, "It was awesome working with you. If those Battlemind and Accelerator don't work, then I can switch them out. I'll probably be doing a lot of that for a lot of people."" And cleaning up the Death," Isoko added." And the Death," Mark agreed. Tempest waved off, saying, "I think I'm good, but thank you anyway." Specter flew with her, saying, "This was great for me, Mark. Thank you. Sorry about… I guess you got better, Isoko?"

Isoko put on a smile that everyone knew was a mask.

"I got better!" She told Mark, "Let's go clean up that Death." Tempest and Specter hung out for a small moment, but then they waved and got going. Derek drove back down south, to Mark's dragon corpse looming on the horizon. All three of them stared at it. The black glowed with purple light around the edges here and there, in the cavity of the chest, and in the eye and nose-holes of the skull. It wasn't a bright effect, but it was absolutely there, like a weak eclipse.

Isoko asked, "So the 10-point-crown is the Dragon King's Crown, right? Like the 10 points of Kabberjaw's skull?" Derek nodded solemnly." Ugh," Mark said, "I did not mean to do that."" It's probably a good thing?" Derek offered.

"You were going to do that Worship magic, right?" Isoko went, "OH! That's right!"" Gods," Mark said, groaning a little.

"I already get enough weirdos online that I don't need to encourage it, but… holy shit, guys. It just happened. I have no idea why I did that."" You were kinda flowy when it happened," Derek said." Oh yeah," Isoko said, agreeing, even though she hadn't been around to see it.

"He gets weird when he gets flowy."" I was still there!"" Sure you were. I totally believe that."" Were you? Were you, really?" Derek asked, smirking as he needled Mark." I didn't want Isoko to come back to a war! So I kinda went… err…" Mark trailed off. Isoko smiled embarrassingly brightly." Isoko should hang back," Derek said, interrupting the moment—" Uggh! Why?" Isoko said, scoffing again for good measure.

Derek said, "Because Dominant was using his Living Kill spells to specifically target Union users, to specifically target the healers. Tens of thousands of paladins died today, and most of them Freyalan, and you're the only one that came back." Another Derek added, to Mark, "Walaria is in talks with Crystal Tower about Jessie Stills, by the way. They'll probably end up coming this way. She's not going to ask you to be a bodyguard, for Cade is there for that, but stuff is developing." Mark nodded, thinking…

and then he looked at Isoko. Isoko had heard what Derek said about Union users being targeted, and she was currently stuck on disbelief. And then she grinned, saying, "No… No? No?"" Yep," Derek said. Isoko raged, "WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK?!" Three Dereks standing around all nodded, knowingly, talking to themselves about how that's a normal reaction. Mark said, "We don't know what it means, exactly, but the churches are probably going to fully pull out of Okuana."

Isoko shot back, "But those fucking Hearthswellian hardliners won't!"" They might!" Mark said, "We don't know what is happening right now." He pointed to the south, to the big black dragon 'skeleton' coated in purple light.

"But we do know that I need to clean that up, and you can't come. So stay here just in case a Living Kill survived inside that thing. I killed them all, but… who the fuck knows, right?" Isoko frowned, hatred in her heart like an ember becoming a flame. It was not directed at Mark. Her vector went wide, to the sky, to the bay far below, and inside, thinking. Mark flew to his 'corpse'. - - Mark stared down at the 'skeletal' 'flesh' that was his skull.

It looked pretty fucking weird but only because it had been Mark's skull for a few minutes there, and the half-skeletal-half-flesh-all-corpse situation happening here was fucking with Mark's head. The time was currently a little past midnight. Maybe 1 am. So it was dark. The city didn't send drones to get better looks, or to shine lights on the black thing. This was because even the drones died when they approached this death-zone. Mark could see everything, anyway.

The whole place was rimmed in soft, purple light, and it almost looked like the yard of his soulhouse with all the black grasses and the soft purple glows here and there. It was a pretty corpse. The crater of the skull revealed the truth of it all, though; that was not a skull for there was no brain cavity in there. It was all solid adamantium, or else it was sculpted to have the look of exposed bone, or exposed scales, or whatever.

Mark flew down to the crater, to where the 'brain' was, sending his Adamantiumkinesis into the 'flesh'. He gazed up at the ten points of the crown surrounding the skull, each lined in purple glows. He looked down through the crater, to a place where the 'brain' ended and the holes where the eyes should have existed. There were some internal bone structures down there that looked almost like the complicated nasal and sinus bones of a real skull, but... It was all adamantium.

Mark Unioned with Energy and Entropy, grabbing the Death lingering in the adamantium— The adamantium flowed right alongside the Death mana, all of it flowing into him, because of course it did. Adamantium was energy/mana, too, and Mark had figured out how to suck down lots of energy in the last half a day. Mark kinda smirked at that… and then he focused on the Death, specifically.

The adamantium remained behind but the strangeness of the Death mana came to him, flowing in with every beat of his heart— Something shifted. Something cracked. Suddenly, the skull dropped a meter, and then it kept dropping and Mark took to the sky, still Unioning with Energy/Entropy, sucking up the Death holding the skeleton together. Millions of tons of adamantium crashed to the scattered, frozen remains of the necrodragon 250 meters below, as Mark kept sucking up the Death holding up his own kaiju's skeleton.

In the absence of life, or whatever, the Death had become tendons, and 'dried flesh', or maybe something weirder was happening; Mark wasn't sure. Mark continued to dismantle the body, soaking up the Death and feeling energized in the power, his flesh burbling under his new webweave suit, threatening to grow larger, but Mark contained the growth this time. Bodies could hold a lot of mana, after all, and Mark shunted that energy into his soulhouse, building up his reserves of mana.

But soon, Death crystals began to grow out of Mark's skin, out of his joints, shredding a little bit of his clothes, and that wasn't good, so Mark stopped for a moment. Mark refocused his Unions and his body, making himself a sphere out of his 'flesh'. He put some Death-shaped adamantium on the surface, so that it naturally collected Death mana into crystals, and he put one of his hearts inside of the sphere. Finally, Mark made that heart beat fast with Energy and Entropy.

Black veins throbbed out of the sphere, into the world, and Death followed those veins back to the sphere. Bright magenta crystals blossomed from the carved surface of that adamantium sphere and Mark collected all of the Death floating around his kaiju body, and around the necrodragon's corpse. A lot of small horrors crawled over the necrodragon's corpse, but Mark sucked out their Death, effectively de-animating them, and they died.

By 1: 15 AM, Mark had dropped much of his adamantium 'skeleton' onto the necrodragon's corpse and the glacier beneath that, and he had a huge magenta crystal of Death mana, floating beside him. The piled corpses filled a few square kilometers of glaciers just off of the western coast of Chiba, while the magenta crystal was a good 10 meters of jumbled Death. It seemed that the Veil would shunt most free mana back to Daihoon, but not the truly thick stuff. It was quite pretty.

It was also literally the most Deadly thing that Mark had ever seen. If he let it out of his control for a single moment then stuff would automatically start animating anything dead within the crystal's baleful light, which was a range of about 50 meters, based on Mark's casual experimentation with it. That undead light went a lot further than you'd think!

It was kinda cool, actually, because while the actual light only seemed to go 20 meters, if there was something dead within 50 then that thing would still light up purple. This giant purple crystal was almost like a 'blacklight', and after putting a much larger sphere of adamantium around the crystal core, and then an iris and a small tunnel into that larger sphere, Mark had made himself a 'death light beam gun'.

Mark smiled as he opened up the iris, exposing the core and shining a beam of purple/magenta Death on the corpse of a bear/shark. The light petered out after 20 meters, but the corpse and a meter around the corpse lit up bright purple. Soon, the bear/shark pulled itself together and started flying/swimming around. Mark said, "That's so neat." Derek said, "They've got a container ship coming for the crystal, Mark, so please stop playing with yourself." Isoko said, "Or at least wear the booty shorts when you do!

A girl's getting bored up here!"" Okay okay okay." Mark called out to them, "I'll stop playing with it!"" I gave you two options! You could choose the other option!" Isoko called back. - - Mark floated with Isoko, overlooking Wandering Castle at Mount Gyodosan. It was a nice place. A big compound. About 5 or more big buildings over multiple levels, with a lot of grand, open courtyards here and there. Plenty of space to practice flying.

There were even some big rings on poles up in the air and some lights down below that could illuminate those rings, though the lights were turned off right now. Lots of hired help, too. Mark counted about 23 human-sized vectors here and there, and a smattering of animal vectors, most of which were asleep.

But the night watch was, of course, active, and many lights were still on— Wandering Sage was in the air, over the main building, rushing this way, and then she grabbed her granddaughter, collapsing with grief against Isoko's own grief. Aeri's long sleeves held Isoko just as much as her arms, the wind a cocoon around them. Mark felt like a third wheel. Isoko talked quietly about how she 'just wanted to sleep, Grandma', though Quark had needed to translate that for Mark, as Mark didn't speak Japanese.

He'd learn it tomorrow. He'd learn a lot tomorrow. According to plan, Mark and Isoko would be spending the night here, and then both of them would probably head off to Crystal Tower tomorrow, or whenever they woke up.

Mark and Isoko privately agreed that they should go to Crystal Tower right now and sleep there, because Derek was there and he was a part of their team, but Derek had said that he would see them the next morning anyway, and Isoko had tried to float that suggestion with her grandmother for all of 3 seconds. Mark had heard Aeri yelling through the phone from a few meters away and Isoko caved fast, and so, they were here.

Isoko and Mark flew down with Aeri to a slightly-separate part of 'Clan Wandering Sage's' compound, a bit out of the way of all the rest. It was practically Isoko's private property, though it had been the kid's section at one point in time, back when there were more kids. Isoko was the youngest, and she been partially raised under Curtain Protocol, just like all of the kids, but with her as the last one to get out of this section, it meant Isoko didn't actually have to leave this section at all.

And there was her bed, and they had already done some Unions of Purity to clean up, and she dragged Mark to her bed, and then Mark tensed. Mark was not actually horny, or lustful, or any of those other emotions at all. That emotion had passed, now that the fight was over. Isoko understood that before Mark had understood that she understood." I want to sleep, and tomorrow is a big day." Mark grinned a little.

"A really big day."" Hit me with a sleeping Union, big guy. I want good dreams." Mark ended up smiling a lot as he lay with Isoko in a big bed that was not a child's bed at all, in a room that was more adult than a child's, but there were still things about Isoko in the room that showed off who she had been, growing up, that Mark did not know about until now. There were glowing stars on the ceiling and video games near a screen, all of it so neatly put away and only vaguely dusty.

Plush cats lined a whole shelf, while a few different princess hats, all sparkly and with veils, some pointy, some just tiaras, occupied a whole display case. And then there were an actual pair of cats, named Mina and Myna. The actual cats jumped into the bed with Isoko, not even caring about Mark, as they nuzzled and purred as they laid down with Isoko, and also at Mark's back. Mark patted the cat, not sure which one it was, and it pushed into his hand." A very nice cat," Mark said."

We have nice cats here in Japan." She had said that with such absolute authority that Mark chuckled. But mostly Mark held Isoko, looking past her black hair, noticing how the bed they were in now, and how it faced her dressers and stuff, was basically the same as her bed back at their team house, which Mark had copied for his soulho—" Oh shit," Mark muttered." What?" Isoko asked, groaning a little." We should call the team." Mark sat up.

"I completely forgot—"" I diiiiahhhh..." Isoko yawned, then said, "I did that when you were down there playing in the corpses."

"… I wasn't playing in the corpses."" Yes you were. You were shining that death crystal on stuff and watching it pop back to life."" It was neat, though? And it's not like I was shining it on the people."" It's okay if you want to play with corpses, Mark. Necromancer is a good Talent." Mark smiled into Isoko's hair, against her neck.

"You'll accept me as a Necromancer?" She smelled good. Mark didn't know that girls could smell good. Isoko giggled, flinching, as she said, "I will, Mark. Absolutely. Now put us to sleep!" Mark smiled, and held onto Isoko.

"Good night, Isoko."" Good night, Mark." Mark did a little Union of Sleep/Wakefulness as he looked up at Isoko's little wing necklaces of Frelaya hanging on the headboard overhead. She had lots of those, huh? And then sleep claimed them and the purring cats on the bed.