Chapter 824: He Isn't Always Evil and He is Not Always Wrong

Jason floated in the scorching desert air, standing on a small cloud platform. In his hand was his cloud flask, spewing out fog that was adding to the half-complete sky fortress forming in the air. It was all thin lines and sharp angles, more decorative than practical. As sections were completed, the white material turned the dark shade of a storm cloud.

He turned his gaze to the ground far below where Gary continued to beat on the avatar. It mounted token resistance but was well past the point of having any real defence beyond a refusal to be destroyed. Farrah rose to meet Jason, bright wings of fire driving her ascent. He shuffled aside on his small platform, making room for her to join him and she let her wings vanish on landing. She looked at him and he looked back with sad eyes.

“You know what I’m going to ask,” she said.

“I can guess. I try to avoid reading people’s emotions if I don’t need to, but your aura isn’t exactly hiding them.”

“It’s not possible, then?”

“No,” he said, his voice tired. “It is.”

“Then why don’t you sound hopeful?”

He plucked an oval object from his inventory, holding it in his hand.

“Hero gave me this before the transformation zone took us. To save Gary.”

“What is it?”

“Sort of like a skill book for intrinsic-mandate magic.”

“God stuff.”

“God stuff,” Jason confirmed, returning the item to his inventory. “It shows me how to work with extremely higher-tier magic, like authority. To tweak it in specific ways, like taking something that is fuelled by one high-tier magic and switching that source with a different high-tier magic.”

“Like swapping out Hero’s authority, which will go back to Hero once we’re out of here, for the authority in that avatar.”

Jason nodded.

“We’d still need to refine Undeath’s authority into something else first,” he explained. “Otherwise, that authority would do the same thing as Hero’s and return to the god the moment we’re out of this place.”

“Then, why don’t we do that?”

“Refining authority into something else isn’t a simple matter, Farrah. You need something to refine it, to work with the affinity it already has. Meeting those conditions is hard and the affinity can only be changed so much. Given that I have almost no idea what I’m doing, the fact that I have the right combination of knowledge and tools is a miracle.”

“You’re saying we got lucky.”

“No, I’m saying it’s a miracle. I think Death knew what was coming when I brokered a deal with her and made sure I’d have the right tools for the job. Telling me in advance would have been nice. I have to stop hanging out with gods.”

Farrah gave him one of her signature flat looks and he chuckled. Then his expression saddened again.

“I’m sorry, Farrah. Swapping out Hero’s authority for Undeath’s would have the same result in the end. Worse, because we’d be turning Gary into some manner of undead demigod for however long we remain here.”

“What about giving him the refined power?”

“It’ll be too different. Right now, Gary and the avatar are mostly clumps of raw authority. Something too processed won’t work. What I’m going to refine Undeath’s authority into isn’t something we could use to keep Gary alive.”

“Is there some way we can stop the power from leaving Gary? Prevent it from going back to Hero?”

“Yes,” Jason said. “If he stayed in my soul realm forever, I could keep the power trapped. But that would only delay Gary’s death. He would still die.”

“Why?”

“Gary was silver-rank, and now he’s got divine energy flowing through him. Transcendent-rank. Not contained and manageable, like my astral gate and astral throne. This is the raw stuff, blazing with power. It’s slowly killing him from the inside out.”

“But it changed him. Altered his body to contain it.”

“Yes. He’s now a gold-ranker, filled with not just diamond-rank but transcendent-rank power. Beyond anything a mortal body is meant to hold. His body was modified on the premise that he would only need to hold that power for hours. Luckily, it did the work above spec and Gary’s been fine, but it won’t last. We’ve been here what, two months?”

“How long does he have?”

“My experience and senses make me better than most at gauging what that kind of power does to a body. Best guess, I'd say he has another four to eight months before it starts turning his body into a worn rag. How long before it finally gives out, I don't know. It could be fast once the degradation begins or he could hang on.”

“It doesn’t matter, though,” Farrah said. “We’ll be out of this place before then.”

“Most likely. Many territories are yet to be claimed, maybe a third of the total, and they’re going to get more dangerous with time. By the end, Gary may be the only one strong enough to fight the anomalies.”

“And then we leave and he dies.”

“Yes,” Jason said. “We leave and he dies.”

“If stealing Undeath’s power isn’t the reason Hero gave you that oval thing, why did he? How did he expect you to save Gary? Or did he leave that for you to figure it out?”

“He did. And I have.”

“You still don’t sound hopeful.”

“Gary has a choice to make, once we’re done with this place.”

“What is it?”

Jason looked down at Gary bringing his hammer down on the avatar again, gooey flesh spattering across the red sand.

“Gary should hear it first,” he said. “If he wants help making that choice, he can ask us.”

***

After being completed, Jason's cloud palace looked like a monstrous spider, dangling on an invisible thread as it eyed-off the unsuspecting prey below. There were too many legs and too much chitin, armour panels of dark glossy red covering sections of the stormy cloud structure. At the base was a gaping maw filled with dark mist, like a mouth waiting to devour. Inside the mist, blue and orange light flashed rapidly, leaving behind a glow that grew brighter over time.

Watching from below was a group comprised of most of the leadership from the expedition, the adventuring teams that made it up, and their allies. Conspicuously absent was Jason, along with Boris Ket Lundi. Jason was somewhere up in his fortress while the messenger was keeping his forces well clear of the spell-happy adventurers.

The messengers might have fought on their side, but that didn't make them allies. Given that the Builder cult had managed to become allies, it spoke volumes of the trust any in the group had for the messengers.

“I’m surprised the avatar isn’t getting out from under that thing,” Humphrey said. “I know it belongs to Jason and even I don’t want to stand there.”

“Knowing it belongs to Jason is why I don’t want to stand there,” Rick told him. Humphrey snorted a laugh at his cousin’s comment.

When they saw Boris fly in that direction alone, the group stirred.

“Don’t worry,” Farrah said. “If that guy makes trouble in Jason’s cloud palace, he’s not coming back out.”

Miriam glanced at her, uncertain, but saw nothing but ease and confidence in her expression. Taking a rude peak at her aura she saw the emotion was genuine. The underscore of worry in her aura was directed at Gary, not Jason.

***

Inside what the observers below had dubbed the ‘smoky maw’ of his cloud palace, Jason stood at the side, on a platform jutting from the wall. The open-bottomed chamber was the size of a large house, filled with dark mist. Inside the mist, Gordon was filling the space with an elaborate ritual diagram in three dimensions. The dark mist did not obscure Jason’s vision as it was all a part of his domain; a part of Jason himself.

He sensed the approach of the gold-rank messenger, moving alone. Boris rose into the space, pausing as he crossed into the area of Jason’s domain. He floated at the entrance to the maw, wings gently undulating as their magic held him in place.

“Interesting,” he said. “I knew from Earth that you’d learned to imprint on physical space. Being able to carry around and reshape that space is unexpected. I’ll bet the gods started quietly attempting to replicate it the moment you showed back up in this world.”

“They don’t have mobile temples?” Jason asked.

“They do, but they’re massive temple boats and sky fortresses. Slow. Cumbersome. Certainly nothing you can carry around in a jar. Cloud flasks are hard to make, and modifying one to the extent that it can do this would be quite the feat. How did you?”

“The same way I do most things: it just happened when I was busy trying to save the world without dying in the process.”

“It seems to work for you.”

“It half works. I’ve gotten pretty good at saving the world. It’s the not dying part that has always been the trick.”

Boris flew up to hover in front of Jason on his platform.

“Once you’re done with this place, dying won’t be a concern anymore.”

“No,” Jason said. “It won’t. Did you come up here for anything other than implying you have vast knowledge you’d be willing to share if maybe I’m more open-minded about you and your people?”

“No. I do have a lot of knowledge, though, and there are things I need.”

“You’ve dropped the quirky Earth mannerisms.”

“They served their purpose. I’ll pick them up again. It’s the version of myself I like being the most. I’ve seen your personas, Jason. I know you understand playing to the mask until you’re not quite sure what’s underneath anymore. If even the parts of ourselves we hide away are real. People like you and I might take it further than most, but everyone wears different masks. Like in that Billy Joel song.”

“I love that song.”

“Me too.”

“Right now, I’m looking at you and thinking of the line about getting kicked right between the eyes. You and I are going to have a nice long talk sometime soon, but I'm kind of in the middle of something here.”

“Yes,” Boris said, turning to look at the growing blue and orange glow in the dark cloud. As he turned, he tucked his wing to avoid hitting Jason. Jason looked at his back.

“The implication was that you should leave,” Jason said.

“I’m curious why you’re taking this approach,” Boris said, ignoring his statement as he continued to watch the glowing cloud. “Intrinsic-mandate magic is tricky at the best of times, and you can’t be very good at it yet. We both know you have the power to breach transformation zones. It’s how you claimed your first domain on Earth. Surely it would be easier to crack a hole in this one and toss the avatar out.”

“Unreliable. Too much to go wrong.”

“As opposed to using god magic you aren’t even close to ready for?”

“Using power I’m not ready for is kind of my thing.”

Boris let out a laugh.

“I can’t argue with that,” he said. “Still, I can’t help but wonder.”

“If we kicked the avatar out, I don’t know how much control it would retain over the territories it claimed. Maybe it retains control and we’d have to go bring it back so we can destroy it properly. Even if kicking it out severed its connection to its territory, that territory would likely become unclaimed space. Maybe even divide back into separate territories, meaning weeks or even months to claim them all ourselves. Worst case, removing that much power, tied to so much of the transformation zone, could have some unintended side effects. Maybe disrupt the zone and cause it to collapse.”

“All valid points,” Boris said. “Did Farrah remember you could breach the zone, forcing you to explain why you shouldn’t when you were explaining the plan?”

“Yes.”

“So. The real reason is that you want the authority.”

Jason didn’t answer.

“I get it,” Boris said. “You’ve been behind the power curve from the moment you learned there was one. Now you’re on the road to playing with the big boys and you need to stop falling short. I can respect that. I’ve been thinking that it might be time to rank-up myself, with what’s coming.”

“And what’s that?”

“A fight that isn’t yours. I can’t help but think you’ll involve yourself sooner or later, though. That destiny magic really does drop you into one hole after another, doesn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“You know there are a lot of forces paying attention to you, right? The World-Phoenix set something in motion by nudging you onto a certain path. Now the Reaper, the Keeper of the Sands, even the All-Devouring Eye. You’re a popular piece in a game that’s coming to a head.”

“I’m a pawn.”

“Yes, but pawns can be promoted. Once we’re done with this little misadventure, you might just find yourself reaching the other side of the board.”

“What does that mean?”

“That once you're done here, there are already people waiting to reward you. And you know the reward for a job well done.”

“Another job.”

Boris glanced back with an amused smile before returning his gaze to the cloud.

“You said the All-Devouring Eye,” Jason said. “I’ve heard of that great astral being, but I don’t know its area of influence.”

“No one does,” Boris said. “Not for certain. The prevailing theory is that it’s the end of all things, somehow. Or some cosmic, magical force of entropy, which amounts to the same thing. But your familiar, there, is a genuine avatar of doom.”

“As opposed to a knock-off one I bought from a shady guy at a street market?”

“Not exactly. Avatars of doom are the exclusive domain of the All-Devouring Eye. I have never heard of the eye ever employing his reality assassins for any task. Instead, they were loaned to the Sundered Throne. Why, and what relationship the eye has with the throne, I don’t know. Some say they are representations of order and chaos, not oppositional but symbiotic.”

“Do you believe that?”

“It’s clean, simple explanation.”

“So, no.”

“No,” Boris confirmed. “It has been my experience that most things involve far more nuance than I am aware of. I don’t trust clean, simple explanations. The cosmos is a messy place, whether you’re dealing with mortals on a planet with almost no magic or contending with great astral beings.”

“So, who is selling these fake avatars of doom in a side alley?”

“It’s not quite like that. It’s the avatars themselves. There are a few that have remained attached to the throne since the sundering. The real avatars bolster their numbers by creating constructs that are, to almost every test, identical to the genuine article. There is only one practical difference.”

“Which is?” Jason asked.

Boris lifted an arm to point at the glowing cloud.

“Only the real ones can do that.”

Jason let out a groan.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered.

“I’ve got you intrigued about the chance to ask me a lot more questions, haven’t I?” Boris asked.

“Yeah,” Jason admitted.

“Well, there’s a price. I have an astral king’s brand in my soul. I needed it to fool Vesta Carmis Zell, and while the astral king is a friendly, I still want it gone.”

“I get that. You know what that means in terms of trusting one another.”

“I have to trust you because I’m giving you access to the most vulnerable parts of myself. What do you need to trust?”

“That you aren’t some kind of living, soul-engineered trap.”

Boris turned to stare at Jason.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s actually a kind of brilliant idea. I wish I’d thought of it. I mean, setting the whole thing up would be a massively elaborate pain in the ass, but yeah, that would be a great way to deal with you. I’m kind of disappointed that I’m not trying to kill you now. That would have totally worked.”

“Except that I was the one suspicious of that being what you’re doing,” Jason pointed out. “I’m also suspicious of your reaction being a disarming way to convince me that you’re not some kind of living trap.”

“You’re a suspicious guy. You know that messenger plans usually come down to deciding they’re the best and throwing power at things until they break, right?”

“I met an outworlder who turned out to be a naga genesis egg that was transformed through soul engineering and sent to Pallimustus twenty years before the messenger invasion began.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I may have been on Earth too long. These messengers are getting sneaky.”

Both men turned to look at the cloud that was now pulsing with blue and orange light.

“Time to go, Boris,” Jason said. “We can pick this up when I don’t have a god to kill.”

“I know that’s technically inaccurate on a number of levels,” Boris said, “but that is a great line. Which I kind of ruined by talking about it instead of just leaving, I guess. I’m just going to go.”

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