The sky was frozen.

  But the farms were merely chilly. Otherwise, it felt like early spring.

  Mark’s boots crunched on healthy grass, while the air smelled of apples and distant spice. And the space was twisted, somehow. That twist drew Mark’s eyes toward an apple tree. Up, and— right there.

  A little doll made of grass sat in the crook of the apple tree, looking like a positively delighted little child. What it felt like, though, was some sort of vector that pulled at the vector of the tree, guiding that tree’s roots, branches, everything, toward a tree further down the line. The doll and that entire next tree was pointed at the tree after that. The third tree was pointed toward a tree further down, but one row inward.

  Quark had explained it, but Mark hadn’t understood what was happening here until he stood at the edge of the ritual space, at the southern part of a circle of plant vectors that swirled, aiming toward more of the same, gathering in a roundabout manner, and then inward, toward the center. Mark wasn’t sure what was in the center, or even if the full circle of vectors around the Farms was real, because he felt… almost… interruptions? In the flow? He wasn’t sure.

  The effect was subtle. So subtle, it probably wasn’t even there. Mostly, trees did what they wanted, which was to go up and out, but it was at the edges, and at those dolls, where the plant vectors turned toward purpose…

  … Mark frowned.

  Now he couldn’t feel the vector at all. The trees were just normal trees—

  Reeni was there, standing right in front of Mark, Sally, Isoko, and Eliot.

  Mark didn’t freak out, because he had been around Reeni a few times, and this is how she was.

  “HOLY Fu…” Sally exclaimed, and then she cleared her throat and looked embarrassed.

  Isoko and Eliot had evaded the jumpscare, too. Reeni sure did like to jump out from nowhere all the time, and especially when people went walking into the Farms, toward the center, like Mark and his team had been walking.

  Mark had never actually been to the center of the Farms, but he hadn’t really cared about that fact until now.

  Mark said to the short woman, “Hello, Reeni. We’re here as appointed?”

  Reeni frowned. “I know you are. But you four and especially you, Mark, should be back at Castle South. Eliot does good while there, and not out here, because there ain’t nothing Man-made about what is happening here and now. I know the orders you were given, and I’m countermanding them.” She said, “Sally and Eliot take off to Castle South. Isoko and Mark stay here. You two can watch and when I’m done we’re all racing to Castle South.”

  Their entire team had also been given specific instructions not to let their team be separated, for any reason. Even for reasonable reasons that looked like they might have come from Aurora herself. The right for a team to stay together was pretty sacrosanct in a wartime setting, and this was a wartime setting, for sure.

  So Eliot spoke up, “The tram is right behind us and we can hop on it together and escape.”

  Mark cemented the matter, saying, “We’re staying together.”

  Reeni tsk’d, and then she turned and walked toward the center of the Farms, saying, “Then we’re doing it the way Aurora wants, which is fine by me!” She told the trees, “I tried, so you stop that now.”

  Mark and his team looked at the tree Reeni had scolded—

  And then Reeni was gone between one blink and the next, and Mark wasn’t even sure he had blinked at all—

  No! Wait. She was just a hundred meters forward.

  Mark spotted her first.

  Reeni waved at them, yelling, “I ain’t got eternity! You got legs! Run!”

  Mark started jogging, and so did his team.

  Reeni vanished again, but Mark caught sight —and vector— of her a moment later, still ahead.

  Soon, Mark and his people breached some sort of inner edge of the Farms, running out of the orchards and into open fields—

  Behind them, the air vibrated slowly and lazily, like they had just come through the edge of a bubble and the bubble was stabilizing again to some sort of iridescent near-invisibility. Soon, the bubble was gone. The air looked normal… But also a lot warmer. Was this… summer?

  It certainly felt like summer.

  Reeni stood ahead, beside the low stone wall of a small farm cottage. A rooster prowled the wall while chickens bawked at grubs in the grass and pumpkins grew among giant leaves. There might have been eggplant plants growing on some bushes, too, but Mark sort of skipped over the vegetables when he saw the herb garden.

  Crystals grew out of herbaceous leaves of all sorts of shapes and sizes, of all colors and sparkles.

  And almost all of those plants were some sort of living thing, too. They all had strong vectors that… felt like Reeni’s vectors?

  … Mark had imagined that the plants were imbued with Reeni’s own Skill, whatever that might be, and also that Reeni was a Seer, instead of a Near like almost everyone else that Mark had ever met. She seemed able to split her astral body off of herself and work at true distances, which was… really strong.

  And it explained a lot, actually.

  Mark knew that Reeni was some sort of ancient woman who stayed in the background most of her life, but she had been a contemporary of Addashield for a while, and she was working on chimeric monster magic, to make chimeras and then separate them back into their constituent souls and lives. That was what she planned to do to Addavein. She wanted to pull the mage out of the dragon, like how Leash had said was possible, back when the demon had taunted Mark in that Lightbox in Wolf Bayou—

  “The magic is simple, and I’m not activating it,” Reeni Thumb said, as she sat down on a chair that hadn’t been there before. She pulled out a pipe and started smoking it, even though Mark had not seen her light the pipe. Maybe it had always been lit? “You’re activating it, Mark.”

  Mark stood strong, but inwardly he was worried. “Uh…” And then he calmed as he realized… “Yeah. Okay. How?”

  Sally opened her mouth, worry already coiling outward—

  But Reeni shot her a glare, Sally found herself unable to speak, and Reeni said, “You can say whatever you want about me when I’m not teaching. You can be worried about witches and careful about nobles, and in all honesty, those are good lighthouses to follow in life. But I’m teaching right now, young lady, and I do not like to be countermanded. Say your piece and be done with your suspicion.”

  Sally directly asked, “Are demons involved in this?”

  “None at all. Ritual magic of this nature, and most natures, is the safest magic there ever was, or ever will be, because this type of ritual magic is built upon fundamentals writ large,” Reeni said, “Once you understand the principles, you’ll see that there is no chance of monsterization or demonization here, and, in fact, you can make many large spaces very well protected from all of that, if you do rituals large enough and well enough. Eliot knows what I’m talking about.”

  Eliot’s face paled a little.

  Sally whipped her eyes toward him. She whispered, “What?”

  “Hearthswellian secrets…” Eliot mumbled, and then he added, “But I think you’re all about to get the same lesson I got a while ago.”

  “The very same lesson, yes,” Reeni said, knocking ash out of her pipe. She refilled her pipe and it was already on fire again, as she said, “Though my lesson is the more natural one, full of nuance that the Hearthswell version sometimes fails to capture.” She took a drag of her pipe.

  The world felt warmer here in this perpetual summer grove, though the sky overhead was still filled with snow and blue auroras.

  “The main thing to keep in mind is that there are two types of rituals. Rituals where the people do something to the world outside, and rituals where something is done to the caster. It is very easy to know which is which. Are you making a magic happen elsewhere? Or in your own body? Simple distinction.” Reeni looked to Mark, her eyes holding deep truths in that moment, as she asked, “You want to learn some ritual magic to enact your will upon the world, boy?”

  “I want to learn anything and everything,” Mark answered.

  Reeni snorted. “That talzarki claiming got you good, you know. As greedy as a dragon, and with just as many inclinations when you truly get into battle.”

  Mark tried not to think about how his adamantium transformed into dragon claws when he really got going, because yeah, that was Addavein’s fault, for sure. Nice to have confirmation, though; Mark guessed.

  Reeni added, “Lying about where you get your adamantium from is what really solidified the connection.”

  Mark frowned, and said, “I’d prefer if that lie remained hidden as possible, please.”

  Reeni snorted. “So! About ritual magic:”

  Mark stood tall.

  “Ritual magic, as done by a Natural, as done by you, with Union, or I, with my own ways, is based on the understanding of the caster and the world that they have primed to action.

  “The ritual I have set up does one thing. It takes the magic I have layered and reinforced across the farms and transplants and overwrites the magic in the sky, and in the nearest 50 kilometers. It is the work of weeks, taken and used for something else that is already in line with the original magics laid down.

  “Most good ritual magic is like this.

  “This is not enough to actually destroy the Winter Auroras, and you shouldn’t aim for that sort of understanding. If you try that, you will knock yourself out, and the magic will only go as far as it can go, anyway. Your aim should be to knock down the intensity of the Winter Auroras, because this small, kilometer-wide ritual, can not possibly diffuse into that large space up there. A teacup of water cannot fill an ocean, but a teacup of blood can certainly muddy any and all waters it invades. Got that?”

  Mark repeated, “I’m taking the summer here and putting it up there, grafting a change into the world itself. Don’t try to do too much because that is impossible due to size differentials.”

  That seemed pretty simple, really.

  Mark wasn’t sure what the ritual was actually doing, for Reeni was certainly simplifying things a great deal, but changing the world with a shift of parameters? That was in Union’s wheelhouse. No wonder Aurora had assigned him to come here and do this instead of going to Castle South where everyone else was, to support that place there. Aurora wanted Mark to learn something truly important, and Mark was, at the end of the day, just support. Aurora probably wanted Reeni to not be weakened by whatever might come from this, since Reeni seemed like a hidden True Power.

  Aurora wanted Reeni available if she was needed, more than she wanted Mark available. It was the same order of demands that made Aurora choose another person to change the weather in the first place.

  Reeni arched an eyebrow at Mark’s quick answer. And then she laughed and stood up, saying, “I should have expected more from you than I did. More fool me, then. The next lessons will be more difficult, but only when I care to give them. Don’t go seeking me out for lessons, boy. I don’t like that.”

  Mark got the distinct impression that Reeni would reluctantly, yet happily give lessons, when she wanted. She was rather good at keeping the entirety of the settlement fed, and she liked doing that, so Mark was surprised she was offering magic lessons at all.

  But Mark would absolutely take those lessons, if she wanted to give them.

  Mark said, “Understood, ma’am!”

  Reeni gestured at the world, saying, “You touched the diagram earlier and I had to turn it off before you activated it without knowing what it did. But now you know what it does. Through your understanding, the ritual will be complete. Touch the ritual again, and this time make it work how you know it should work.”

  Even as she spoke, her words echoed, and Mark felt dots of light come to life in the orchards all around. Those dots of life connected to further dots of life, all of them coming together into this space, here and now, in the middle of the Farms, where Summer reigned supreme.

  And Mark was at the center.

  Mark looked up at the Winter Auroras overhead, at the snow falling down onto an invisible dome, to never touch here unless it turned to rain, first.

  Mark felt a drop of that rain right now, touching his cheek. It was warm, as though it had fallen through a heatwave. A dozen other drops of rain scattered across the land, like tiny footsteps, or tiny fists, tapping on grass and knocking on stone.

  A chicken bawked.

  A cat yawned, being lazy in the heat.

  And the forest was warm and plentiful, exactly as it all should be.

  Mark connected to the forest —to the people of the forest, to the dolls that lived there, to the trees that they made their homes. Everyone here wanted warmth, and the world was just a bunch of ambient mana and large systems that could be altered at their whims, if there were enough whims. If there was enough demand. Mark understood that Reeni had populated the forest with dolls that were people, that had needs and wants, and those needs and wants were for warmth and growth.

  And the world had given them that.

  But now, their magic was necessary for something else.

  Mark breathed in the Heart of Summer, and beat a drum that warmed the frozen heart of the world beyond.

  It was like taking knives to the sky.

  Winter was a pinned monster, and Mark was a surgeon with his strikes. Splitting, splitting, splitting. Knives of adamantium the sizes of towers carved through the winter light, turning them to ribbons.

  Mark had no idea how he was reaching so far, or how he was even doing it, or where ‘he’ even was. But he knew he wasn’t doing this alone. He was just the focal point for a ritual set up way before he got here. He was the catalyst that made it all happen—

  “Pull back,” came a voice, from nowhere.

  That voice grabbed him and yanked him backward, slamming him back into a body and crushing him inward, attaching him back to his mortal coil.

  For a moment, Mark was just himself again. He was floating a little off of the ground, one hand up, eyes facing upward, blades of adamantium floating in front of his face, at the end of his fingers, as he was tracing claws across the sky. Where he had traced, the sky had split kilometers above. Where he had pushed, the sky broke. The Winter Auroras were coming apart into scattered ribbons.

  Mark hadn’t reached far, though.

  To the edges of the horizons, beyond the treeline, the sky was still fully banded, thick with blue light. That blue light had been shattered right above, though. It would continue to unravel from the carving Mark had made in the working. He knew that. But it wasn’t fully dispelled at all.

  And now that he was looking, the trees in this Summer grove were... very unhealthy. They had been green. The whole area had been of Early Summer. But now the forest was browned and withered. Winds tore through the trees, scattering dead leaves like so much flaking blood. Winter had come, while Summer was away at war.

  And now Mark was standing there, wondering what he had done—

  “Here comes the backlash, everyone,” Reeni said, as she walked toward a hatch in the ground that Mark hadn’t noticed before. It was beside the wall of the house. She slapped open the hatch, like it was the lid to a storm shelter, saying, “Get the hovercart out, Eliot! Tram ain’t gonna be fast enough!”

  Mark almost asked ‘escape what’.

  But then he felt it.

  The thrum.

  The rumble.

  The sky shook and the world trembled. From the north, a roar. From somewhere southeast, a screech. From the Shine to the west, an incoherent rumble that spoke of promised death and breaking mountains.

  It was the sound of kaiju. Three distinct kaiju.

  Mark’s heart, far from weakened, roared back to life in response.

  Instinct kicked in like a foreign influence that made itself at home.

  Mark lifted into the sky, pushing hard with his adamantium to rise above the treetops, to see what could be seen, and then he saw them. A face made of scales made of faces and more legs than were countable. A tree too large to be real with branches raised up and roots ripping up canyons. A crash of an avalanche that went upward, and water cascaded downward.

  With his own adamantium turning to claws and blades, Mark saw what he needed to kill, what he needed to defend against—

  “You’re not allowed to kill yourself, young man,” came Reeni’s voice again. “Not on my watch.”

  Mark’s strings were cut and he fell down into a soft cloud of something, and then he was in the back of a hovercart, sitting in Sally’s arms as she held him tight, worried as hell, while Isoko drove fast as she could, Eliot held onto the hood of his jacket, and Reeni told Isoko to drive faster, please. Words were hard to hear right now.

  The cart rumbled and rushed, over sleeping roots and slumbering branches. The forest was tired, and so was Mark. Mark closed his eyes—

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  And then the hovercart jumped over something and then crashed to the ground, metal sparking as Isoko gunned it as hard as she could. Sparks continued to fly, though. They almost slowed down—

  “Eliot!” Isoko said.

  “I’m fixing it! I’m fixing— There! We’re good!”

  The cart lifted back into the air, though it seemed slower than before—

  And then the trees were gone. Left behind.

  The sky was there, still a shattered blue mess, but now there were rainbows, and a lot closer than they usually were. The rainbows twisted, and Mark almost didn’t realize they weren’t rainbows at all. They were twists of reality, bent so hard it made light twist and split into color.

  Aurora was up there.

  Mark needed to see.

  He beat his heart with adamant and weakness, finally activating his Union once again, connecting to his team and the world. Cognizance came back all at once, but then Reeni’s bright green eyes were right there in front of his face, and the short woman was standing over him. Sally held Mark tighter, but she could do nothing to stop those eyes.

  Reeni glared. “You’re not allowed to kill yourself tonight, young man.” Reeni brushed off a pair of adamantium claws that were lightly touching her neck, saying, “Or anyone else.”

  Mark flinched and pulled all of his adamantium back. “I’m so—”

  “You’re not in your right mind. That talzarki shit is tainting you, just as it is tainting Addavein. Probably a good thing, all things considered. Gods know that dragons need all the help they can get. But you need to learn to manage those emotions. When you’re tired, they’re bad emotions. When you’re rested, you can handle them. You’re tired right now, so I’m handling them. Don’t make me regret teaching you anything.”

  And then Reeni vanished.

  She reappeared in one of the seats of the hovercart.

  Mark looked up at Sally, oh so worried Sally, and said, “I’m good, I’m good.”

  Sally said, “You don’t fucking look good, Mark.”

  Mark wanted to say he was fine, but that would be a lie. He wasn’t fine at all.

  He looked to the sky, to where Aurora was somewhere to the north, now, and he wanted to be there. He wanted to fight. Who wanted to be safely ensconced inside a small building that a kaiju could just step on and kill? Not Mark! Never Mark. He wanted to be out there, making a difference.

  But Aurora was the only warrior they needed that day.

  Mark ended up standing in the command center of Castle South, connecting to everyone there, beating his heart with adamant and weakness as he watched the action on several different screens, alongside several different people, only three of which were on his team. Sally thought she was impotent and she hated that. Isoko did what she could with Union, keeping everyone in the command center in top shape and actively using their Powers, just like Mark. Quark was doing stuff, helping Eliot with massive calculations. Mark wasn’t sure how that had happened, but it had happened, and Quark seemed to be doing well, helping. He wasn’t drawing much power, and that was fine.

  Eliot was acting as the defensive center of the city in a way Mark had never seen him act.

  Sure, other people were working the machines and calling shots and talking to Aurora, but Eliot was the one making sure the city responded as it needed. He was the one who made giant laser beams on the city walls all fire in unison, to distract both the faceipede and the ice elemental, when he could.

  All of this was, perhaps, the scariest thing that Mark had ever lived through, which seemed to be an event that kept trying to top itself every few months. Who knew! Maybe in a few days, that day would become ‘the scariest thing ever’.

  But for now, Mark watched the screens, and was the center of an adamantine Union that would never break, as long as he held.

  There were three kaiju today.

  The tree kaiju to the southeast was already dead, taken out by a massive twisting spiral of Supreme Telekinesis; Aurora’s opening attack. That kaiju had been a true plant-type; a tree-like thing as tall as the sky. But now it was broken wood and a burning horizon. The sky to the south was already choked with ash from the fire, along with the flames of it all. The settlement wasn’t in danger from that one anymore, or from the fire of it burning like that.

  The other two kaiju were stronger.

  The kaiju to the north was a regenerator alligator/reptile/made-of-faces thing, longer than anything, with 20 legs and a body almost like a centipede’s. It laughed from a dozen faces as it attacked, as it twisted in the sky, as it evaded when Aurora tried to cleave it with sky-sized cleavers of warped reality. And now it hung back, aiming only at Aurora when it knew it had a clear shot. Otherwise it rushed the settlement, legs all slamming on the ground, eyes set forward, aiming to devour the people it knew to be here.

  Eliot was distracting that one the most, and making sure Aurora knew when she had to come back to engage it, because there was only so much Eliot could do.

  The other kaiju, the one from the Shine, was the real problem.

  It was a frost elemental the size of four skyscrapers, and every time Aurora broke the elemental, the thing reformed. It had no core to break. She could only wear it down—

  An alert from the west, the other side of the settlement—

  The faceipede poked above the city walls, its eyes locked on the assortment of castles that were the center of the settlement. And then it lifted up, smiling, laughing, reaching over the edge of the wall, and Mark wasn’t the only one who had no idea how it had gotten so close, so fast. It was within two kilometers. It was right there—

  Eliot’s voice rang out, “Not today, monster!”

  Mark felt Eliot trigger something deep in the settlement, in the walls he had built, in the trap he had laid for whatever might come. It tore at Eliot to activate whatever he was doing, so all of Mark’s attention, all of his Union, went to Eliot, above all. Mark focused the world on keeping Eliot whole and strong, and Eliot did a ritual that Mark hadn’t known he had set up, long before today.

  Bright sigils burst into light upon the entire wall. Those sigils burned with power, and the part of the faceipede that was inside the wall, suddenly burst into flames. Coruscating fire ignited down the length of the kaiju, and the laughing beast turned to a screaming beast as it yanked backward, like it was some tiny thing and some larger controller ripped the puppet backward, but no, the kaiju just moved that fast—

  And then Aurora passed overhead, briefly entering Mark’s Union, the frost elemental kaiju left behind as she chased the faceipede.

  The frost elemental, now unoccupied, began to plod toward the settlement once again.

  Aurora brought the hammer down on the faceipede and this time the faceipede was too slow and on fire to evade. She crushed the half that wasn’t on fire and cut the legs off of the half that was flaming. Another few strikes and she killed it, and then she flew back over the castles, like a meteor made of light and rainbows, passing in and out of Mark’s Union. He tried to reach for her, to help her as much as he could, and she felt that.

  Aurora lingered for just a moment, as Mark focused on her above all, and then she was gone again.

  Eliot sagged in his command chair, but he was grinning. He chuckled. He said, “Two down!”

  One to go.

  Aurora crashed into the center of the ice elemental and fought the damned thing to a stand still. She could not kill it. It reformed, endlessly. Actually killing the ice elemental proved to be impossible, and Aurora stopped trying to kill it the normal way.

  Soon enough, Aurora started chucking the pieces of the ice elemental into the flaming corpse of the tree kaiju, which was now burning like a motherfucker. She couldn’t dump the elemental into the fire all at once, though. That would smother the fire. So instead she took an hour to do it, stopping by the command center every few minutes so that Mark could reach her and help her. Eliot coordinated that, but that was mostly for everyone else’s benefit, so they understood what was happening. Mark and the paladins of Freyala were in a very strong Union right now, so it was more them that informed Eliot of what was happening, and not the other way around.

  Soon, the ice kaiju was steam, which became clouds, which joined with the winter auroras overhead, repairing some of the damage the ritual had done to the sky. And that was as much as could be hoped to be done.

  The Winter Auroras were still a fractured thing overhead, and the large ones were unraveling from the immediate sky, but those pieces would flow together eventually. Not today, though. And certainly not for many more weeks.

  Aurora finished with her initial cleanup by throwing the faceipede’s corpse into the fire, too.

  Mark asked, “Quark? Estimate on time to have a stable winter again? What kind of winter, too.”

  Quark responded, “Winter has a 90% chance to stabilize at 9-band in four days, and 10% to go to 10-band in a similar time frame. Winter will be weak, and it will remain weak for the foreseeable future.”

  A lot of people heard that message, and a lot of people, including Eliot, began instantly shifting plans to account for the changed weather. A few people corroborated Quark’s prognosis, and then the damage reports started coming in—

  And then Aurora crashed into the ground just beyond the closed doors of Castle South.

  For a moment, the cameras weren’t on her. They hadn’t moved fast enough to track her presence back in the settlement. But Mark could feel her. She was exhausted as fuck. She struggled to stand, and she was probably struggling to stay awake, too. Her Skill was worn out and her body was almost about to give out on her.

  Other Paladins of Freyala could probably feel her weakness, too.

  Mark was the one that got to her first, though, and he dragged everyone else along for the ride.

  Mark gave her everything he could.

  When the cameras finally oriented on Aurora, and the eyes of the Empire were able to see, and spy, Aurora was blinking and only half-slumped, which was a lot better than how she had been. She was feeling better, and she wasn’t sure why was feeling this much better, this fast. And then her vector touched on Mark’s, and the rest of the Union. She understood.

  Aurora stood tall, her worries vanishing from her face as her Telepathic vector pulled back, closing off again.

  Yoro Wisperwind, the Master of Secrets and another person who kinda liked to speed around and appear wherever he wanted, sort of like Inquisitor David and less like Reeni, spoke above the voices of the command center. “Please take down the emergency lockdown, Mister Cybersong.” And then he added quietly, “That went as well as it could have gone.”

  Eliot said, “Lockdown coming down!”

  Yoro vanished in a whisper of wind.

  Soon, the doors unbolted and swung open.

  With her head held high and not looking tired at all, Aurora strode into Castle South looking every part the conquering hero. She nodded to the guys standing in the main hall, saying, “Good work, everyone.”

  And then she walked into the command center.

  Aurora announced, “Good work, everyone!” She looked to Mark. “You did a bit too much with the weather clearing, Mark, but 3 kaiju was within our estimations, and we handled it. Good job.”

  Mark found himself nodding, and not saying anything at all.

  In the middle of the kaiju fight, Tartu had been staring at Mark and wondering if he had called 3 kaiju on purpose, but he had never said anything. Kardi had surely said a lot though, but only to her team, to Tartu, as she gave voice to concerns about Mark purposefully calling 3 kaiju.

  Mark was just glad this all worked out, though.

  Aurora nodded back, and then her voice filled all of Castle South, coming out of every speaker in the place, “An hour break! And then it’s more work!

  “Remember! Fixing the weather was the first hurdle of the 4 step ordeal that will result in our first successful gate test!

  “Step 2 is destroying the kaiju bodies so that other monsters can’t eat them and gain strength. The faceipede is the one I am truly concerned about, for its not burning very well inside the remains of the tree kaiju. The ice elemental is fully gone, though, returned to the Winter Auroras. They must all be cleared away, though, as much as corpses can be cleared!

  “Step 3 is a partial transition of workers to Memphi’s side, for the fixing and final repairs on that side. They will be over there for two days, and then returned to us for the big day!

  “Step 4 is the actual opening of the gate, and for a full hour!

  “Expect ordeals at every step!

  “Kaiju might still appear at steps 2 and 3, at cleanup and transfer, and will definitely appear at step 4!

  “And now, we’re on final prep.

  “After an hour break, we’re going back out there and piling everything onto that burning tree kaiju while we can, and burning and purifying away as much of those bodies as we can! We’ll have no super monsters spawning from the eating of those corpses! I’ll do most of the work but I still need your help.

  “At ease.”

  And then she walked toward the private hallway that led toward the kaiju squad part of the castle, her white rainbow hair flicking back and forth as she swayed down the hallway, hips moving this way and that in her tight brown leathers and army coat. Her coat had been cut off just above her butt, and her clothes had been ripped here and there.

  Mark thought it was a great look.

  Battle damage was fantastic on her.

  She was so damned cool…

  … And also hot, which was really fucking weird to realize. Were those hips doing things for Mark?

  … What?

  … The fuck?

  Aurora was hot?

  Uh—

  Isoko started laughing to the side, unable to contain her mirth for anything. She giggled, chortled, and snorted, and Mark’s face turned red. And then other people starting chuckling, or sighing, or saying how nice it was not to die, and none of them understood what Isoko thought she understood, which was something Mark didn’t understand at all.

  Eliot was still working on stuff, so he wasn’t really present.

  Sally knew something was happening, though.

  She looked between Mark, with his red face, and Isoko, who was still giggling, and she asked, “What? What happened?”

  Mark glared—

  “Nothing! Nothing,” Isoko said, toning it down to a too-big smile. “Nothing at all.”

  Sally looked between them again. “… What?”

  A few people looked at them, but Mark ignored it all.

  He focused on his Union, making sure everyone was doing well.

  Aurora had capped off her kaiju battle rather well with that speech, but now she was collapsed on a couch just out of sight, and Yoro was already there with her, handing her something. Probably food.

  Mark kept the healing going. Aurora wouldn’t be in any shape to do anything much at all, for a while…

  Isoko nudged him, whispering close, “Aurora is pretty neat, isn’t she.”

  “Oh my gods, Isoko,” Mark muttered, as quiet as he could be.

  Everyone probably heard him, anyway.

  Isoko grinned. “Almost as much as Glorious Man, huh!”

  Mark frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Sally narrowed her eyes at them. “You’ll tell me later.”

  “Tell me later, too,” Eliot said, proving that he had been here the whole time. He grinned. “I have a guess, though!”

  “Ignore it forever, please,” Mark said. “We have to prepare for kaiju purification.”

  Isoko grinned too brightly, and then she put that grin away and said, “I’m kinda excited about cleaning up a kaiju corpse. We never got to clean up the corpse that fell behind Wolf Bayou.”