Mark yawned as he held on to the overhead railing in the tram. The gently-moving vehicle bucked a little and Mark gripped tighter as the vehicle moved out of the train station, headed toward Mage Society. It was just him today, off on his own away from his team, though the tram did have a few other people.

He was on his way toward the arcanaeum, to check out the next language, and also to kill time before his first International Teleport test, which was going to happen in about 2 hours. They were going to port him and either Kandon or Yoro to the delta of the Shine, where it emptied into the Meteor Sea. A very strong mud elemental had claimed that space for itself, and it had been living there for the last 4 years. Aluatha did not care about the delta being open, but if Mark could go down and farm the elemental for adamantium, then they cared a whole fucking lot.

But for now, it was just an experimental kinda day.

Kandon and Yoro were still discussing who should go with him on his first port, and it wasn't going to be any of Mark's friends. Not yet, anyway.

And so, Mark was killing time.

The next language was Waterpeople, which was the translation of The People's language. It was called something else in their native tongue, but everyone else called it 'Waterpeople'. It was the first truly 'alien' language of the bookshelf. Most of the magical languages had come from Aluatha, Okuana, or Xerkona. Waterpeople was not like that. Waterpeople, of the Daihoon-side of Indochina, was from a people who were truly divorced from all other nations on Daihoon.

The People had only been rediscovered in the Reveal, 80 years ago, and their understandings of mana and magic were all based on flowing water, and all completely different from the other interconnected languages of Daihoon. The People didn't even call Daihoon 'Daihoon'. Mark wasn't sure what they called it.

Xerk, and the various languages of the Three Empires, all had the same sorts of sounds and similar sentence structures, but they were all different, of course. Waterpeople had 'click consonants' and rolled-Rs, and if you moved 'in the flow' as you spoke it, it was supposed to cause magic, somehow. Consequently (possibly, Mark wasn't sure) the most prevalent Power in all People was Water Shaper, just like Grandpa and Great Grandpa. (Fun fact that Mark had only recently learned: Water Shaper was derived from Water Mana, which was a result of a molecule of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen, and not a specific, individual element, like many manas.)

Mark was kinda looking forward to the whole experience of learning Waterpeople for a bunch of reasons. He was a Floridas boy, after all, and water was in his blood… Metallic water, Mark corrected himself, with a little bit of amusement. Water was in his family history, and everyone loved a boat ride, going fast over waves and practically flying over the deep blue… Most people liked that, anyway. Thalassophobia and kaijuphobia were very real.

Mark loved flying fast, over big clouds and everywhere else, and that was kinda like boating.

… He missed his dad. Mom. The boat. The house. That old trashy truck and the smell of saltwater and fresh fish. Fresh fish did not smell like fish at all. It was a clean sort of fishy smell...

The tram stopped and Mark stepped off, into the exchange station to Mage Society. Most people went south, to the shops south of the big walls enclosing the Society, but Mark went north, to the tiny tram carts that went through the wall, thinking about boats and fishing. He passed through a turnstile that registered him as Mark Careed, nodded to the teller who got all excited to see him and who waved at him with a quick 'hello!', and then he got onto the individual tram—

The tram's display signage overhead flickered as Mark stepped on.

A light beeped as a voice said, 'Over the weight limit'. The signage displayed yellow letters on a flickering yellow-line background, reading, 'OVERWEIGHT'.

"… the fuck?"

Mark weighed 115 kilos these days, and he also had 10-ish kilos of gear on him, but he also had 120 kilos of adamantium strapped to his back, looking like a backpack. He supported the weight on his back with some caltrops under his feet. He might be 250 kilos at the most. These things supported a thousand kilos all the time, easily, and that was the listed maximum. Mark knew, thanks to Eliot overengineering everything, everywhere, that these things could support 2,500 kilos, if they had to. Mark had gone through these things with Sally and his full team, and with Isoko even going Full Platinum to test the weight. Eliot had been happy when the tram took it just fine.

Had to be a calibration problem; not an actual problem.

Mark stepped backward anyway, onto the station grounds.

The tram lights flickered.

The teller back there was incredibly embarrassed as she pressed a button on her side of the guard station and her voice came over the air, "Sorry about that, Mister Careed! I'm not sure what happened there. Over-calibration, maybe? I'll send that one along for repairs. Please take the next one."

Mark nodded, saying, "No problem!"

The first small tram clicked, beeped, and then closed up, and then it settled onto the line and drifted forward, down the line. The next tram came and Mark stepped into that one.

'OVERWEIGHT'

"The fuck," Mark said, stepping back. Mark gave the teller a single-eyebrow-raise.

"I am so sorry. Uh! Next one?"

The lady was dying of embarrassment as she pressed the button to move the trams along. The next tram contained about 4 people in it, all coming out of Mage Society, all of them wearing casual robes over various kinds of dress clothes, and they all startled when they saw Mark. They bowed and tried to escape fast, all of them surprised and excited at seeing him.

One of them, a shorter man, said, "Thank you for the Symposium. It was amazing and… AndI'llstopbotheringyou! Byebye!"

"No bother," Mark said, chuckling, keeping it light. "Glad you liked it."

The people had already escaped, all of them fearful and thrilled and going fast.

The teller was hoping desperately, silently, with all of her soul, that this tram worked.

Mark waved at the teller and then stepped on the tram, and the tram worked just fine. The teller was exhausted with relief when the tram clicked, whirred, and moved down the line into Society, into the scanning tunnels in the walls.

Everything was dark out there, and the people in the scanning booths were looking at his numbers and thinking vaguely jealous thoughts. Several were annoyed; probably at the trams that had failed Mark.

Mark got back to thinking about Waterpeople—

A spark.

A tiny whine, like a knife through paper.

A glitter in the corner of Mark's eyes that Quark registered long before Mark did.

That was why Mark survived.

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That spark trailed a line across the entire front of the tram, at chest-height, and another few lines up and down. Those other lines carved into the tram as the tram moved forward, through the tunnel. Quark noticed the monowire lines the very second Mark did, as the illusions hiding them broke away.

Quark blared warnings, instantly.

Mark didn't care about the tram so he shocked his adamantium into scales and a cocoon around himself, bouncing his cocoon off the monowire in front of him.

Another illusion shattered and a bunch of aerosolized shavallian was in the air like silver dust. Mark was already breathing it in, his range already crashing inward. Shavallian couldn't shut him down completely anymore, but it could still do something.

And then something else sparked underneath one of the ledges of the seats. Mark didn't see it. Quark would only later identify that spark as a Wand of Destruction going off.

That was the first second of the attack.

Mark bounced off of the monowire ahead while a Wand of Destruction shredded his unprepared response, the holes everywhere in his adamantium shell letting him see through to the sparking, derailing darkness. The back end of the tram crashed into Mark, pressing him against the monowire, Mark rapidly responding with a Union of Adamant and Ethereal, making him more solid than the world around him. His range still dropped and dropped, from 400 meters to 50 meters, but he maintained cohesion and the monowire did not.

The monowire broke and Mark went with the remains of the tram, right into spills of acid that burrowed into his body like it was alive. It was alive. Mark did not realize that at first.

Mark screamed, ripping at the acid with adamantium, tearing everything around himself, Unioning with Corruption and Purity and the world broke at the corruption spilling away from him. Strong miasma shredded reality all around him, burrowing into the walls, into the ceiling, into the ground, eating away at that, instead of at Mark.

Mark hovered there, caltrops locking him to the tunnel walls, and then the floor when the walls dissolved under pure corruption. The acid was still eating at him, roaming around his body, trying to find a way in. It was an elemental of some sort. Mark solidified his adamantium into a better, more complete shell, ejecting his feet and hands and scooping away the acid. Quark provided sights all around since Mark could not see out there himself. His eyes were gone. Mark purified himself, first, and that finally killed the devouring corruption.

The acid was still on the outside of his adamantium, trying to get to him. It was a corruption elemental, or something like that. Mark had literally never encountered one like it ever before. It was all black and invisible at the same time; like living miasma, and it didn't have a vector until it did.

Mark hit it with Fear and Glory and the damned thing drank in the fear like it was pure sustenance, growing stronger and larger and enveloping more of Mark's adamantium-covered body, so Mark purified it away, and that still worked. It hung on Mark's floating body the whole time, cloying at him, trying to get inside of his solid cocoon of adamantium.

Mark's range gradually returned, killing the corruption elemental even faster.

By the time he was 90% safe, whole, and healed, Quark was showing Mark what was going on out there, and communicating with people on his behalf, and Mark only really knew that he had destroyed a good 30 meter section of the wall in every direction. Or rather, purifying the corruption elemental had done that. Mage Society was open to the settlement, which was probably not that big of a deal considering what had almost happened.

Someone had tried to assassinate him.

20 minutes after the event started, Mark was still floating there, and guards were out in force on both sides of the 'new opening' to Mage Society. The corruption elemental was almost dead. It was tenacious as shit, and it was still flowing around the outside of his armor, trying to find ways in.

It was the size of a softball, and getting a lot smaller.

Yoro stood on the settlement side of the opening, looking concerned.

Soon, the corruption elemental was fully dead and gone, dispersed into the world.

Mark gradually opened up his cocoon, but he retained a full and complete seal on his armor. He set down onto the ground. He had been terrified in the first minute, in pain for a while, and now he was pretty sure he was furious, but where should he direct that fury? No idea.

Mark looked to the master of secrets, and asked, "So that was an assassination attempt, right?"

"We'll go over all of that back at Castle South." Yoro asked, "You okay to take a walk?"

"I need to replace some gear, but… yeah. I can replace it at Castle South— I think there was a Wand of Destruction in there and there was this 'overweight' problem… Quark told you about it all, right?"

Yoro glanced around at the crowd, who were all morning-commute kinda people, but there were a lot of them. Some had cameras out. The same was true over on Mage Society's side. People with cameras. Yoro told Mark, "Castle South, please, Mark."

Mark softly said, "There were some people that came off of the tram before I got on there. Where are they?"

Yoro said, "Gone and never existed, as far as we know. They vanished right as the trap was sprung."

"… Ah."

Mark wasn't quite sure where his thoughts went next. There wasn't much that could hide near the walls of Mage Society, and especially not in the tunnels, or in the terminal right before Mage Society. Scanners were everywhere. And so, there were only a few possible explanations.

Traitors, overwhelming skill and probably planning, or pure Luck.

That corruption elemental had to be a specially-sourced assassin's tool. It had almost gotten Mark. But then again, Mark was probably one of the only people who could shrug it off… Maybe. He'd need to ask others if they thought they could survive that.

Mark did exactly that, first thing, asking Yoro, "Do you think many people could survive that corruption elemental? Or was that something I was meant to survive? Or… Or what? Because I'm not sure what happened back there, only that it was planned for… a while? A month? A few days? I'm not sure."

"… Let's go to Castle South to talk. Please."

"I'm going to find who did this and kill them, Yoro."

Mark had said the words even before he fully registered that yes. Yes. That's where this shit ended. With someone dead, that wasn't him or his friends or… or anyone else that could have been caught in that shit. Mark was furious.

He contained that fury, for now.

Yoro simply nodded.

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