The violet artificial sky of Neo-Pangaea had been completely overwritten by a breathtaking, shimmering canopy of liquid gold.
It was the eve of the Coronation. Tomorrow, the Sovereign of Grace would officially take the Throne of the Iron Barrens.
Inside the Sovereign's Penthouse, the atmosphere was thick with an electric, almost intoxicating anticipation. Jack was pacing across the white glass floor, a nervous, radiant energy radiating from his every movement. His chameleon skin was flushed with the most brilliant, blinding neon-pink luminescence Marcus had ever seen. The physical Pink Blossoms didn't just drift from his fingertips; they swirled around the room in a continuous, fragrant cyclone.
"I can't sleep," Jack laughed, his voice trembling with a melodic, overwhelmed pitch. He stopped pacing, looking at Marcus with wide, sapphire eyes. "I know I need to rest my mana core for tomorrow, but I just... I can't believe it's actually happening. My father told me I was a mistake. My whole life, he told me I was a curse. And tomorrow, millions of men are going to kneel because they want me."
Marcus stood near the hovering crescent bed. He wore his dark grey kinetic combat rig, fully zipped.
Beneath the fabric, Marcus's core temperature was dangerously low. The internal Liquid Silver splint wrapped around his fractured rib was drawing so much latent mana that his breath plumed faintly in the cool, sterile air of the penthouse.
"You're not a mistake, Jack," Marcus rumbled gently, his voice a low, heavy anchor in the center of the pink storm. "You never were. They're going to see exactly what you are tomorrow."
Jack's smile softened into something profoundly vulnerable. He walked over to the bed and climbed onto the hard-light silk sheets, pulling his knees to his chest. He looked up at the massive, stoic bodyguard standing over him.
"Will you stand close tomorrow?" Jack asked, a sudden, fleeting shadow of the old, terrified boy slipping through the Pink High. "When I step out onto the Grand Balcony... I need to know you're right behind me. If I can't see you, I think I'll panic."
Marcus felt the frozen, splintered bone in his chest throb in agonizing agreement.
"I'll be exactly a half-step behind your right shoulder," Marcus promised, his Chrome Diamond pupils hiding safely behind a warm, human brown. "I won't move an inch. You have my word."
Jack let out a long, shuddering sigh of absolute relief. He lay back against the pillows, the Pink Blossoms settling over him like a divine blanket. "Okay. Okay, I can sleep now. Goodnight, Bastion."
"Goodnight, Sovereign."
Marcus waited until Jack's breathing evened out into a deep, restorative rhythm. The Pink High leveled off into a soft, ambient glow, bathing the room in absolute peace.
Marcus turned and walked into his adjacent quarters.
The moment the heavy glass doors sealed shut, the Bastion's stoic facade violently collapsed.
Marcus grabbed the edge of the chrome sink, his massive shoulders heaving as he coughed. The sound was wet and ragged. He tasted copper. The internal silver splint was holding, but the sheer physical exhaustion of the last three weeks was tearing his muscular structure apart. He was shivering, his skin slick with a freezing, clammy sweat.
He looked at his reflection in the hard-light mirror. His dark brown eyes were bloodshot, surrounded by heavy, bruised bags of absolute exhaustion.
He raised his hands, staring at the custom dark kinetic wraps Jack had woven for him. The single pink thread across the knuckles was stiff with dried, dark blood.
He had to go down one last time.
Because the Kinetic Hubs were completely shutting down tomorrow for the festival, the Enforcers had pushed the ninety percent to an absolute, breaking-point frenzy today to finish the architecture. That meant the Red Rust infection rate was going to be astronomical tonight. The Crucible would be overflowing. If Marcus didn't purge the sickness from the workers tonight, they would mutate during the Coronation tomorrow, and the Sovereign's perfect day would be bathed in slaughter.
Marcus closed his eyes. He forced his heart rate down to a glacial forty beats per minute. The Liquid Silver jammer bled from his pores, forming a freezing, invisible second skin.
He slid the ventilation panel open and dropped into the dark.
The descent was pure agony. His left arm was practically useless. He relied entirely on his right arm and his heavy boots to navigate the vertical shafts, sliding down past the blazing heat of the Industrial Core and landing heavily on the black steel grating of the subterranean aqueducts.
The massive iron blast doors of the Refinery were already open.
As Marcus stepped into the holding pen, the sheer, catastrophic volume of the kinetic sickness hit his Danger Detection so hard his vision briefly blurred.
The pen wasn't just full; it was overflowing. There were over two hundred men crammed into the rusted iron cages. The heat was unbearable. The air literally vibrated with the jagged, toxic pressure of the Red Rust. The men were howling, tearing at their own clothes, their eyes completely black and feral. The agonizing kinetic withdrawal was pushing them to the absolute edge of mutation.
Marcus stood at the end of the aisle.
Up in the observation deck, standing behind the reinforced energy shields alongside a dozen Refined Enforcers, was Varkas.
The Elder looked down at the holding pen, and then his steel eyes locked onto Marcus. Varkas tapped the microphone of the central comms system.
"Warden," Varkas's synthetic voice echoed through the screaming cavern. "The Hubs are closed. The festival preparations are complete. But the toll of the Red Rust is... unprecedented. We cannot risk a single mutation breaching the surface tomorrow. The Sovereign's peace must be absolute."
Marcus looked up at the Elder. He didn't speak. He just waited.
"We are bypassing standard bout parameters," Varkas announced coldly. "This is a Mass Harvest. We will open the gates until the sickness is purged. Can your shield hold the weight of the city, Bastion? Or will you let the monsters reach the sky?"
Marcus looked at the hundreds of thrashing, infected men. They were the men who had built Jack's floral arches. They were the men Jack believed he was saving. They were victims of their own wild, kinetic nature, completely reliant on the Bastion to bleed the poison out of their souls.
Marcus raised his taped fists. He widened his stance, his heavy boots locking into the blood-stained grating of the floor.
He didn't yell. He didn't boast. He simply gave Varkas a single, imperceptible nod.
The deafening mechanical siren did not wail; it shrieked.
The heavy iron gates of the cages didn't open one by one. They all slammed open simultaneously.
"Generate. Bleed. Serve the Canopy," the Enforcers chanted over the loudspeakers.
The holding pen erupted.
Dozens of massive, feral workers flooded into the blood-stained polymer arena. They were entirely consumed by the toxic crimson spikes of the Red Rust. They didn't see Marcus as a man; they saw him as the only solid object in a world of agonizing kinetic pressure. They charged him like a wave of rabid beasts.
Harden, Marcus commanded his freezing core.
The Liquid Silver mana violently expanded, conducting through the microscopic silver threads of his hand-wraps. The invisible Non-Newtonian Kinetic Shield formed a dense, pressurized dome around his battered body just as the first wave of men hit him.
The impact was catastrophic.
BOOM.
The kinetic shockwave blasted through the Crucible. The reinforced glass of the observation deck cracked entirely across the center. Above the arena, all ten of the massive translucent glass pillars flared with blinding, sun-like blue light, drinking the massive surge of generated power.
Marcus was buried under a mountain of violent, thrashing muscle.
He was struck from every conceivable angle. Knees, elbows, headbutts, and wild, desperate punches hammered against his invisible diamond armor. The shield held the physical blows at bay, but the sheer, crushing weight of thirty massive men pressing down on him was apocalyptic.
His fractured rib ground against the internal silver splint. The pain was so absolute, so blindingly white-hot, that Marcus lost his vision for three agonizing seconds.
He dropped to one knee.
Up in the observation deck, the Enforcers leaned forward, their cybernetic eyes whirring. The Bastion was going down.
"No," Marcus growled, the sound ripping from his throat like grinding tectonic plates.
He forced his Chrome Diamond pupils to refocus. He looked at the jagged, toxic crimson spikes in the auras of the men pressing down on him. He felt the frozen, agonizing weight of the Gilded Silence.
If he fell, the shield dropped. If the shield dropped, these men would beat him to death, mutate into Savage Men, and swarm the Silver Spire. They would tear the penthouse apart. They would tear Jack apart.
I'll be exactly a half-step behind your right shoulder. Marcus drove his heavy right boot into the polymer floor. With a monstrous, terrifying surge of raw, heavyweight kinetic strength, he forced himself back up to his feet, lifting the crushing weight of the rabid men with him.
He locked his guard, tucking his chin, and became a true, immovable monolith.
He let them strike. He let them batter their own bones against his defense. He acted as the ultimate, agonizing pressure valve for the entire continent.
Minute after agonizing minute passed. The Crucible was a terrifying symphony of cracking bones, feral roars, and the constant, deafening boom of kinetic force rebounding off Marcus's magic.
Slowly, the crimson auras began to shatter.
One by one, the massive workers exhausted their chaotic mana cores. The toxic red spikes splintered and dissolved into healthy grey. As their madness broke, they collapsed unconscious onto the bloody floor, completely cured.
But as one man fell, another from the holding pen charged in to take his place.
Marcus lost track of time. He lost track of how many men he had saved. His entire universe was reduced to the space behind his taped forearms, the searing fire in his chest, and the freezing cold of his draining mana core. His dark grey combat rig was completely shredded. The pink thread on his knuckles was entirely black with blood.
An hour passed. Then two.
Finally, the frantic, feral screaming in the arena began to die down.
Marcus caught a heavy, looping right hook on his forearm. The man who threw it—a towering builder—gasped as the last of his Red Rust shattered. The builder slumped forward, passing out over Marcus's guard.
Marcus gently pushed the unconscious man to the floor.
He stood alone in the center of the Crucible.
The polymer floor was completely covered in the bodies of over a hundred and fifty massive men. They were battered, their hands were broken, but they were breathing softly. Their auras were a calm, peaceful grey. He had purged the entire sector. He had absorbed the sickness of an army without throwing a single punch.
Above him, the glass pillars were practically vibrating, completely over-saturated with glowing blue energy.
Marcus's vision was swimming. His left arm hung completely useless, dislocated at the shoulder from the sheer, sustained pressure. His chest heaved with ragged, wet breaths. He was bleeding from his nose and split lip, the blood dripping silently onto his dark, ruined wraps.
Up in the observation deck, the Refined Enforcers were completely, utterly silent. Their synthetic routines couldn't process the sheer, impossible endurance they had just witnessed.
Varkas stood at the cracked glass window.
The Elder didn't smile. He didn't offer a polite, grandfatherly bow. He simply stared down at the bleeding, broken Bastion standing amidst the sea of cured men. Slowly, deliberately, Varkas raised his right hand and placed it over his heart—a genuine, uncalculated salute of absolute, terrifying respect.
"Harvest complete," the automated system whispered, the speakers blown out from the shockwaves. "The Canopy is served. Return to the light, Bastion."
Marcus didn't acknowledge the salute. He didn't look at the pillars.
He turned his back on the observation deck and began the slow, agonizing walk toward the dark maintenance shafts. Every step took a monumental act of will. He dragged his heavy, shattered body into the vertical pipes, beginning the impossible climb back to heaven.
Hours later, the violet sun rose over Neo-Pangaea, reflecting off the golden canopy.
It was Coronation Day.
The Sovereign's Penthouse was pristine, smelling of jasmine and sweet victory. Jack stood in front of the floating mirror, draped in his breathtaking white silk and floral mantle, a glowing pink flower crown resting perfectly in his silver hair. He looked radiant. He looked like a god.
The heavy glass doors of Marcus's quarters glided open.
Jack turned, a massive, brilliant smile lighting up his face. "Marcus! It's time!"
Marcus stepped into the room.
He wore a brand-new, immaculate dark grey combat rig. His posture was perfectly, flawlessly straight. His thick hands were wrapped in fresh, pristine kinetic fabric, the delicate pink thread woven perfectly across his knuckles, completely washed of the blood from the night before.
He looked like an immovable, untouched mountain of dark granite.
Beneath the fabric, he was dying. His dislocated shoulder was violently forced back into its socket, held together by freezing Liquid Silver. His fractured rib ground against the internal splint with every shallow breath. But his dark brown eyes were completely, warmly locked onto Jack.
"You look beautiful, Sovereign," Marcus rumbled, his deep voice carrying the absolute, unshakeable certainty of the God of Honor.
Jack beamed, his blue eyes filling with tears of pure joy. He walked over, entirely blind to the catastrophic agony hidden just inches beneath the fabric of Marcus's shirt, and linked his slender arm through Marcus's heavy, unyielding right arm.
"Let's go claim our world," Jack whispered.
"I'm right behind you," Marcus promised.
The doors of the penthouse opened, and the fragile Glass Cannon and the bleeding Bastion stepped out into the blinding light to face the roaring cheers of a completely manufactured utopia.