Chapter 845: When Violence Is Easy And Words Are Hard

Once Jason had extracted Amos Pensinata from his attempted suicide-by-messenger, the next stages of the battle were unsurprising. The gold-rankers escaped into Jason’s soul realm safely. Jason, Miriam and a few others remained hidden in Ramona’s invisibility shield.

Gary was the only one left in the open but was largely unassailable. Elemental messengers moved to intervene in the fight with Gary’s wooden doppelganger but failed miserably. Some fired off powers that did nothing while others exploded in golden fire after getting too close.

Gary’s wooden doppelganger could at least fight the demigod, but had no real chance at victory. Not only did it fail to match his divine power but it also lacked the skill. Gary was an experienced warrior and simply outfought the wooden giant. It finally fell, toppling like a tree under a woodsman’s axe.

The final question was what would happen when the last of the tree’s crystals were destroyed? Gary didn’t waste time trying to find out, going to work the moment his replica was felled. The messengers kept charging him but he ignored them like insects as he smashed the crystals. None of them were set too high on the trunk and Gary smashed them by throwing his hammer over and again, having it fly back to his hand each time.

From within the invisibility sphere, Jason and Miriam observed, tension evident in their body language. More so Miriam than the one in a recliner made of clouds.

“You still think that the tree will initiate some kind of duel power against you?” she asked.

“I’m not making any assumptions,” Jason said, “but it’s a solid hypothesis. The tree has started to demonstrate cunning, and it’s demonstrated that it knows I’m the one it has to defeat. It also knows that isn’t likely while I have Gary with me.”

“It needs to isolate you from our demigod.”

“I think so. It’s demonstrated an aptitude for mimicry and it certainly utilises messengers, so it wouldn’t be strange for it to mimic their challenge powers. It could do something else, certainly, but that’s my best guess.”

“I suppose we’re about to find out,” Miriam said.

Gary destroyed the final crystal. The remaining messengers dropped like puppets after the puppeteer was shot in the head. They fell to the ground, joining countless others of their kind in death.

One more figure emerged from the tree, this one unlike those that came before. It wasn’t a giant like the root avatar or the Gary clone. It wasn’t even as big as the elemental messengers. It had wooden flesh, like the Gary replica, but that was hard to see when it was almost entirely covered by robes and a hooded cloak made of rough, undyed cloth. From within the hood, its eyes stood out, glowing yellow and orange.

“That looks like you,” Miriam said to Jason. “If your outfit was made from sackcloth.”

“It’s a strange choice,” Jason said.

“Strange? That thing has clothes made of fabric while yours are made of apocalypse beast and what looks like a portal to space.”

“Point taken.”

The new enemy emitted an aura that was gold-rank, yet revealed a lower strength than the enemies that had come before. The elemental messengers had been approaching peak gold-rank in power. The aura of this foe suggested a power level closer to the peak of silver. The figure floated forward slowly, drifting towards the giant-sized Gary standing on the ground. Gary brought his hammer down squarely on its head. The hammer bounced off, not so much as slowing the figure down.

Jason sat on his cloud throne, reading through the lengthy system message floating in front of him.

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• You have been affected by a challenge power. This challenge power is soul-based and cannot be overcome by external forces or withdrawn until a completion condition has been met or sufficient time passes for the challenge power to destabilise.
• While this power is in effect, You cannot be harmed by external forces other than those coming from [Voice of the Will] of the [Corrupted World Tree].
• While this power is in effect, [Corrupted World Tree] cannot harm you or be harmed by external forces, including you, until its [Voice of the Will] is eliminated.
• While this power is in effect, [Voice of the Will] of the [Corrupted World Tree] cannot be harmed by external forces other than those coming from you.
• Completion conditions for ending the challenge power are: Your death; destruction of the [Voice of the Will] of the [Corrupted World Tree]; you or the [Corrupted World Tree] surrendering to the other.
• If a completion condition is met, transformation zone territories held by the participants will be unified under the control of the victor. If sufficient time passes that the challenge power destabilises, all participants will be annihilated and destabilisation of the transformation zone will be massively accelerated.

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Miriam turned to look at Jason seemingly staring into space.

“Operations Commander?”

Jason stood up, his chair turning to mist and getting sucked into the miniature flask amulet on his necklace. He held himself aloft with his aura, his void cloak vanishing. His expression was not determined but contemplative.

“Jason?” Miriam asked.

“Miriam, have you ever been in a situation where there were only bad options laid out in front of you? But there’s a hole where a good option should be, if only you could see it?”

“I’m an adventurer, Operations Commander. I’ve felt like that far too many times.”

Jason rubbed his hands over his tired face, then looked grimly towards the cloaked figure floating in front of Gary.

“Okay,” he said. “Time to finish this, one way or the other. I’m sorry I don’t have anything to offer as a contingency if I fail.”

“Again, Operations Commander: I’m an adventurer. We all came down here as adventurers. I know you think you’re the extra special boy who does god stuff, but we all walked into this with eyes open.”

Jason turned to look at her, eyebrows raised, then burst out laughing. Miriam glared at him but couldn’t quite smother a grin, the sides of her mouth curling up. Jason gave her a friendly slap on the bicep.

“You’re good people, Miriam. I hope I’m not about to get you killed.”

“So do I Operations Commander. I look forward to complaining loudly about you when we’re home safe.”

Jason laughed again and floated out of the invisibility sphere. He moved slowly through the almost empty air, the messengers previously filling it now dead on the ground. His mirth vanished as he drifted over a sea of corpses. The roots of the tree were only sporadically visible now, despite extending kilometres around the tree trunk. They were covered in a blanket of the dead, once-living anomalies piled high on the ground. The bulk of the root avatar and now the wooden giant stood out amongst the casualties.

Hours of battle that had seen rain and sun belt down in equal measure had given rise to the horrid stench of war. The oppressive foulness of rotting flesh; the ozone tang of ambient mana, overtaxed by too much magic used too fast. Jason sadly reflected that it was not a smell new to him. Broken Hill. Makassar. Yaresh. All times he’d been praised, despite the casualties. Those he failed to save and those who had fallen by his hand.

No small part of the corpse field came from Jason and his afflictions. His powers were designed to exact a tormented demise, and that is what he’d delivered. By the thousand, and not for the first time. Be it monsters or living anomalies, they didn’t ask to be what they were. To be put in a position where they needed to be put down for simply being what they were. They were soulless creations of magic, born to die, but their suffering was real.

Jason had grown used to killing en masse. On Earth, he’d cleared proto-spaces and beaten back monster waves. The wholesale slaughter had numbed him until he no longer felt a chill run down his spine at the sound of hundreds screaming in anguish. Screaming because of what he was doing to them.

There was a time, on Earth and after, when violence was the first solution he reached for. He thought he’d moved past that, but had he really? Was he doing as much as he could or simply taking the easy shots at benevolence and telling himself he was improving? Mercy was easy when you had all the power. He’d been offering it to messengers when his power over them was all but absolute. But was mercy the exclusive domain of the strong? Did he want it to be? Was there a way to give it to those who were a genuine threat and find a way to peace?

Jason floated down to where Gary and the figure were facing off, now on the ground. A rare patch of clear space was marked by scorched earth, Gary having blasted away the bodies. The roots of the tree were unaffected, even by the divine flames. Gary had shrunk down to his normal size but still towered over the Jason-sized figure in front of him. Jason alighted on a patch of scorched dirt, next to his friend.

“What is this?” Gary asked, nodding at the figure opposite. “Why can’t I hurt it?”

The replica Jason neither moved nor reacted, as if giving them time to talk.

“It has to be me,” Jason said softly. “You’ve carried us far enough, big guy. Further than we had any right to ask.”

“You never had to ask.”

“I know.”

Gary looked down at the hammer in his hands.

“That was it, then. My last fight. Wasn’t even hard, which I suppose is the point. It has to be power worth dying for or there’s no point taking it.”

“Go back,” Jason said. “Find the others; this is your time now. You’ve earned your rest, however you ultimately choose to take it.”

“I can stay.”

“No. It has to be me, for better or worse. And I want to try something.”

Even surrounded by death, with their fates on the line, Gary let out a chortle.

“Of course you do,” he said. “I’ll give you some space, but yell and I’ll come running.”

Gary walked away. A path opened up as he moved, corpses combusting into ash and golden fire as he drew near. Jason turned his attention to the wooden copy of himself. He could see the wooden hands and the wooden face, the inside of the hood lit up by glowing eyes. They were yellow and orange instead of blue and orange, but otherwise a match for Jason’s. The robes were a rough approximation of his in their cut but were made from what looked like coarse natural hemp. The cloak was nothing like Jason’s, being fabric and not ephemeral darkness. Jason didn’t have his cloak out.

“So,” Replica Jason said in a voice like wood being carved. “This is the end.”

Jason smiled. He’d hoped that the tree having a Voice of the Will meant that he could communicate with it in a meaningful way.

“Endings can also be beginnings,” he said. “I imagine that a tree understands cycles better than most.”

“This is just an end. For one or both of us.”

“Do we have to fight?”

“You want to consume me. You need to consume me. So, yes; we must fight.”

“What if there was another way?”

“There are only three potential outcomes: One of us wins, one of us surrenders or we are both annihilated.”

“In one of those options, no one dies.”

“If you win or we surrender, you will devour us. You want the soul forge.”

“I do,” Jason admitted. “I didn’t know what that meant for a long time. I had a chance, recently, to explore the reaches of my soul I’ve been afraid to in the past. I’ve come to learn what I’ve been missing. What it means to become what I’m on the path to becoming. Part of that involved getting a better understanding of this place. Of you. Where you came from and what’s happening to you. Did you know that the same forces that birthed you are twisting you?”

“Yes. It changes nothing. If you get sick, do you capitulate to death or fight all the harder?”

Jason snorted a laugh.

“Fight. Every time.”

“Then you understand that your knowledge of what I am doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t accept that. Knowledge changes everything. I come from a world where there was almost no magic, yet we’ve built a civilisation that rivals anything magic can do. Eclipses it, sometimes. Flying through the sky; speaking across the planet. Healing the sick. I have knowledge of you. Knowledge of me. Knowledge of what comes next. I think there’s a path forward for both of us.”

“Words are easy.”

“Sometimes. Most times. But there are times when violence is easy and words are hard. This is one of them, but I’d like to try words anyway. If you’ll let me. We can always fight after.”

Jason’s wooden doppelganger stared at him for a long time while Jason waited in silence. A thick root pushed its way from the ground behind Wood Jason and he sat. Jason called out his cloud chair and also sat.

“I have used the echo of you, imprinted on this realm, to create this body. To give myself a coherent mind. I understand that I am corrupted. A menace. I do not wish to be. I do not believe we can end this with anything but violence, but I am willing to listen. To see if you can bring me the hope I cannot find within myself.”

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