Mark 2.0: Book 4: Love

by Prax Venter

  Tension from Sasha along their bond yanked at Mark’s attention as they entered the portal room, and he hurried their steps. Shouting from the other side became audible as the four of them joined that mob of people within the vibrantly red Saturasphere.

  “…re’s what’s going to happen,” Learis screeched, spittle flying from her face as Jayna and Klax stood facing the Lagos portal. “You will only be allowed the kind of sunlight that we give you when we feel like it, and when you long-lived fucks turn fifty years of age, you also willingly step into a blender so I can have a nice juicy drink. If not, we don’t feed you anything!”

  “Enough,” Mark Commanded, and as the wisp of energy burst from his mouth, he finally made the connection that he could only call on its power in specific situations. Whichever way the magic worked, everyone in the Saturasphere was now paying attention to him.

  “What is the fucking problem here?”

  “They say they can’t eat the sunlight here!” Learis blurted it out as if she were waiting for the chance to tell him. “Can you imagine the poetic justice of forcing them to live here?”

  He looked over at the black-robed mage, who still hung his head toward the floor, and then the fuming Jayna.

  “Klax,” Mark said, and the other man’s weighty pumpkin head rose to meet his eye. “Is this true?”

  “Yes. The Kalorplast could not survive in this red dimension on our own.” It was the truth as far as Mark could tell.

  Anger from Amina caught his attention as the two of them mentally fought again about the Lagomorph then being ‘just as bad’. She wasn’t getting through, and the normally shy bunny woman didn’t care that she was making a scene. She wanted a scene. She wanted what she felt was justice. His magic eye flashed out a new type of warning as he followed their psychic conversation and saw that Learis was about to audibly scream at Amina regarding what she would do to the Skeema. Time slowed down around him and a part of his mind that didn’t really feel like him pressed against his thoughts. It wasn’t Other Mark’s memories, or even any other Mark at all. It was a part of him. But separate. The feeling was gone as soon as it was there, but he realized why time had slowed down in his skull as he watched these two digital beings telepathically pass packets of information back. A heated lover’s quarrel where both cared so much for the other that there was no just agreeing to disagree on this subject.

  “As I am the only reason any of you exist at all,” Mark said loudly, pulling everyone’s attention once again, “I am going to step in here and force some actions. Learis.” He paused to point at the rabbit woman quivering with rage. “I am not taking away your decision to allow one single Kalorplast in Lagos. I honestly want that to remain your call. However, stopping Maliah and helping us four outsiders get back outside can literally make all your dreams come true. We will be able to do wonders none of you or even the gods of this universe could even comprehend right now. What I need you to do is to take a walk with me and some friends after you put that well-deserved rage on a shelf for- let’s say… an hour or two, then you can pick it back up again. Could you do that as a favor to me?”

  He noticed an Armored Abby/Angel had crossed over and hovered ominously at his back at some point having also been recalled by Sasha’s telepathic warning, and a wave of terrified awe echoed to him from the many Blazar gathered. But there were a lot of Vulpath and other races too, all frozen by the events playing out at the busy hub between three worlds.

  Learis on the other hand let her mind go blank as she watched the abyssal horror idly sway her armored tentacles while treading gravity, just breathing.

  Then she shifted her tan eyes to his. “I owe you this much, Outsider Mark.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now, I want Learis, Amina, Klax, and Cel to join me in Lagos at one of the furthest cleared depots from the orb.”

  The cabbage Fighter balked. “Me?”

  “I will not leave her side,” Dar said.

  “I’m not staying here!” Jayna screamed.

  “Salivis,” Mark shouted over them as he gazed at her carved obelisk. “Hear my call!”

  He could make a scene too.

  A ten-foot transparent woman who appeared as a different race to different people phased into existence straddling her Goddess Anchor.

  “Can I ask you for a small favor?” Mark said, looking up at her with his intentions bare.

  “You may ask,” she answered, her voice booming.

  “Please help keep this pregnant tree lady from going insane while we figure out a good spot for her mega-city baby.”

  The deity bent close to the powerful nature spirit.

  “I have seen Jayna of the Grove gag on a log a time or two. Although she has never thought to offer me a taste of that woody pleasure, I will grant you this boon, my Champion.”

  “I- You-” was all Jayna got out before Salivis moved to wholly encase the curvy wooden woman with pure, erotic resin, and to Mark’s magic eye, it was as if she were frozen in one blissful moment in time.

  “No harm shall come to your Collector,” he vowed to Cel’s Enthralled nut boy, and waited for his conceding nod before leaving him behind and ushering everyone he’d called on back through to Lagos. He shot glances to Sasha, Jezebel, and both Abby and Angel, and mentally asked them to handle things until he got back. All of them responded mentally in unison with assurance, and a little ‘what do you think I’ve been doing?’ from his sexy smart Druid.

  After consulting with Amina, they picked a nice remote spot near an old fishing village, then a quick hop through the Lagomorph teleport system later, and Mark and the four he brought found themselves standing on a windswept hill surrounded by endless Garda grass in every direction.

  “Welcome to Lagos,” Mark said after he’d stopped walking and spun to the others. Learis knew Mark wouldn’t lie to her and she’d figured this was some type of intervention, but she still smoldered with certainty. Amina was glad Mark chose her to come with and the two Kalorplast were just bliss-stunned by the unfettered blue sun of Lagos.

  “It’s what you call it,” Learis said. “The Lagomorph call it The Surface.”

  Mark raised his brows. “Do you want us to stop calling it Lagos?”

  “No,” she said, letting out a deep sigh. “I apologize. This all- I thought everything was going to be about moving forward. I could handle that, but now… here they sprout up again to take everything and...”

  Mark waited until she stopped herself and then began introductions.

  “This is Learis and she is not a native Lagomorph. She was born in your world, Klax and Cel, not here, where her ancestors either made or had a primary role in creating the Legendary Orb. I met her on the quest you sent me for yellow harmonic crystals. Here in Lagos, they can eat anything that grows, and their favorite meal covers The Surface.”

  “It is a beautiful world,” Klax said as if in a daze.

  Amina put her hand on Learis’s shoulder as the rabbit woman got ready to start screaming about not getting any ideas, but the support from her naturally serene Collector stopped the outburst.

  “She will have a chance to tell her story,” Mark continued, “but she is the Leader here. If that beautiful blue sun goes down and she still does not allow Jayna to find a remote corner to replant Starglade, we will have to figure something else out.” He paused to point at the muscular yet succulent Awysai Fighter.

  “This is Amina, she is one of the few dozen surviving Awysai after Maliah encouraged others to hurt her people because they helped us. She is a powerful Collector. She is very close to the goddess Salivis. And both she and Learis are some of my best friends in all the universes combined.”

  Amina nodded a silent greeting to the others, and Mark pointed to the short, but determined cabbage-wrapped woman. She’d only been in the sun for a few minutes, but the green was really starting to fill back in.

  “This Kalorplast Fighter is Cel Nightwater and is also a good friend of mine.”

  “Nightwater,�
� Klax muttered. “I knew I knew your face. Miss Celulocia Nightwater, technically your House is all that exists, and you are now the CEO of Starglade.”

  “There must be others…” Cel whispered. “I’m just…”

  “It’s just you and me here,” he said. “If there are others, they aren’t on this particularly important hill in another world. And you far out-rank even the head military mage.”

  Mark knew Klax was smart, and the other man was finally starting to show it. Until this moment, he’d believed all was lost. He’d been fighting with the overloaded mad tree spirit for days on end at the edge of his sanctum and had no way to stop her from making their situation worse. But now he also saw a potential way for his people to survive.

  “This is Klax,” Mark said. “He and Jayna, mmm, I would say helped us, although it was for mutual gain. We did kind of rip off Starglade, but it was not intentional. He is gifted with magic and can get shit done. Of anyone in any dimension, he would probably be the number one person I would want highly involved with helping figure out the Orb. I can see into his heart- all of your hearts, actually, and I know everyone here on this hill is a good person. Now,” he added pointing fiercely at Learis quickly before she could contradict him.

  “I want you to breathe. Feel Amina’s wisdom as a soft backstop to lean into. This is your home, and I promise you I will die before I let anyone take it away from you. Once you feel you can move forward without screaming direct insults, I want you to explain your life as what the Kalorplast called a Wild Lagomorph to Cel and Klax, and they will listen.”

  Learis nodded and was happy to do exactly what he asked… in haunting, first-hand account detail.

  Klax hung his pumpkin head when she described the attempted rapes by adventurers sent every so often to collect earth crystals, and Cel was on her knees in the grass weeping when Learis counted off the still-born children she’d personally buried due to starvation. The tan-eyed rabbit with the softest white ears he’d ever felt looked down on Cel with a mix of cool hatred as she explained her options.

  “Underground imprisonment and an early death, or virtual starvation- by a race of people that could blink our only edible food source into existence.”

  “I didn’t know you were out there,” Cel pleaded, wiping her eyes. “I knew about the Lagomorph in the farms, but I genuinely thought they were happy. If I had known…” She turned to Klax. “Military mage, your name is Klax?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know?”

  Klax decided to give his answer to Learis. “Not to this extent. Biology was not my focus of study. Learis, no one reported back what you describe that I know of… And I just wasn’t involved with that part. I didn’t know how-”

  “Fine,” Learis snapped. “Ignorance it is. But what of Paradise? What of the forced slaughterhouse under the tree? How can you possibly rationalize that torture?”

  “Calm,” Amina said and Learis reached back looking for her hand, her Awysai Collector taking it firmly.

  “I saw them,” Mark said, everyone turning to him. “The first Lagomorph I saw was happily getting fucked by this ripped bunny dude while she was getting milked by vines. There were about ten mostly-private chambers of rabbit women that I saw blissfully getting milked while either multiple sentient vines pleasured them solo or they had a partner to make them cum while they were drained of product, or all of the above. It was my first time in Starglade, and Cel’s sister helped us through some bureaucratic port of entry stuff by sneaking us through the places in the roots where no one was supposed to be.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Learis said, her raw anger growing to including Mark.

  “Well, I didn’t really know what was going on when I saw them. They weren’t unhappy so I moved on. Then, I met you and was going to make a lot of noise in Starglade about your town, but we kinda found a better place before we left.” Mark held out his hands to indicate the lush rolling fields around them. “Like you said at the beginning of this, you put those left remaining in Starglade out of your mind then, so I didn’t see any reason to start stirring it up again out of nowhere after we reconnected. Does that make sense?”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “Now don’t hate me, Learis, but I am going to suggest something, and I want you to think about it before you say anything.”

  She narrowed her tan eyes but nodded, and he could tell she was squeezing Amina’s hand as hard as she could.

  “The native people of Lagos are on the more easy-going side, generally. You know, not worried about much other than the food on their plate and the fun of friendly competition after supper or other simple pleasures. As a species, they currently care more about tit cheese than the Orb of Legend. Is it at all possible that the environment the Kalorplast provided was something the Lagomorph did come to enjoy, especially if they could eat all of any fruit or vegetables they wanted all while surrounded by a barren world?”

  “Why force their death?” Learis asked, feeling cornered. “Why take their lives?”

  “Fertility,” Klax said. “Consider this an honest guess. I think it had to do with balancing population load. I know we had a whole Branch focused on the logistics of sustaining the Lagomorph farms.”

  Learis was quiet for a long time as she stared down her small pink nose at Cel.

  “We aren’t livestock,” she said finally, and for the first time, with a softness.

  “I don’t eat meat or drink milk,” Cel said, still on her knees. “I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never met a Lagomorph before now, and Learis, I do not think your people should have been left to suffer alone. I understand your rage, and I certainly do not think you are livestock.”

  “No,” Mark said. “No one here does. And there have been no lies told on this hill under the blue sun. Some Kalorplast in Starglade had to know what was going on with the Wild Lagomorph, absolutely, but there are evil people everywhere. The whole situation was really kind of shitty to begin with- none can deny that, but these two had nothing to do with the current milking industry or its rules. Learis, everyone who set up the farms is probably dead, and the ones who’d been running it now were mostly born into a symbiotic setup they’d never even thought to question, on either side. We’re talking generations here.”

  “Fuck you, Mark,” Learis said eventually.

  He gave her a sad smile, and Amina nodded behind her. The Awysai hero had respected him before, but how he handled this had moved him up a few more notches.

  Learis rubbed her eyes, then balled up her furred fists and bopped herself in the skull a few times before she sucked in a deep breath and then let it out as the warm breeze picked up. The odd, pleasant smell of savory lilacs hit his nose as the big-chested rabbit woman let out both her trapped air and most of the blinding resentment she held for the whole race of plant elves.

  “Cel Nightwater, if I let you plant Starglade in Lagos, there will be numerous conditions.”

  The young cabbage-wrapped Kalorplast shook her leafy head as she crawled forward to kneel closer between Learis’ large paws.

  “You misunderstand,” Cel said. “There are no conditions. You make every rule. We already owe the Lagomorph a substantial debt, and now this second chance in this rich world to make- Each Kalorplast will come thank you daily for our lives. We will swell your grasses, crops, and orchards beyond what you can store or sell. In exchange for mere existence, we will work your lands as much or as little as you require of us.” Fat dewdrops formed in Cel’s huge green eyes as she pulled in a shuddering breath to continue. “We will do everything in our power to make the Lagomorph healthy and hearty and- and make your children so, so fat, and, and- or we will stay far away never to cross the lines you set. W-we, I-”

  Cel broke down and started sobbing at Learis’s feet and the kindhearted rabbit woman could only stand it for so long before she knelt to place her hand on the plant woman’s back.

  “There will be conditions,” Mark repeated. “And one of
mine is that Cel herself remains the board leader until I say it’s okay for her to step down, or Maliah erases us all.” He shot a glance to the pumpkin-headed man who nodded. Cel just froze staring at the ground, but he knew she would do it.

  Mark doubled down anyway.

  “Klax, Cel, I’m not worried about either of you, but there are many more than the two of you apparently about to spring back into existence. I will repeat this open threat for those others later, but I want to be painfully clear. No fucking games. If one Lagomorph hair is cut too short by a Kalorplast barber, I will hack down your great tree myself. There will be no spying, no weak-point evaluation, no market manipulation, no attempts to trick these people out of their land, their freedom, or their control over the orb. Every Kalorplast in Lagos is responsible for all Kalorplast remaining in Lagos, and if you thought Maliah was bad, wait until you see what my team is capable of if I learn one of your people have betrayed this act of goodwill.”

  - 25 -

  Days after it happened, Mark still couldn’t stop replaying the ultimate fulfillment of purpose Jayna of the Grove beamed into the sky in the shape of a cosmic ray right before she became the new megacity of Starglade.

  Jezebel had to fly her out over miles of rolling hills and past countless towering dirt columns as they couldn’t risk the life-mana fluctuations of teleporter magic, so she ended up riding Jez’s centaur form a good three hours away from the growing Orb Hub facility. Since the facility itself was isolated to begin with, their destination was sparsely populated.

  Mark knew the two Druids talked about their thoughts and philosophies for the whole road trip, and that both had discovered much, but he didn’t pry about the details as his bonded love projected a ‘you had to be their vibe’.

  Maybe it was the fact that his ballsack was almost vaporized by the incalculable amount of experience points he’d received when she did it, but the bliss Jayna experienced when she had successfully carried her seed to its new pasture immediately flashed into an explosion of essence that knocked him off his feet and seared her sacrifice into his memory. Apparently the system had treated it as an epic World Quest that both Amina and Cel also received endless essence for their part in its completion. They all lost more than 90% of those potential upgrade points to the universe, but each of them could now hold substantially more than they could before.