Chapter 751: A Task You Can't Seem to Manage

It wasn't hard to get the messenger servants in line and Jason was soon frog-marching them into his soul realm. These were people already broken by the messengers, so obedience in the face of power came easy. That Jason had clearly been in the position of power over the messenger had helped.

They had already surrendered to the idea that the messengers were all-powerful, becoming traitors in the face of the seemingly inevitable. If they were wrong about that, then where did it leave them? It was a question Jason was hoping they would all come to ponder, but not right that moment. Fortunately, a little bit of imposing aura projection got them following orders, something they were used to from the messengers.

Jason followed them through, arriving in his soul realm. He’d sent them to a different area than the two messengers, Tera and Jali. The servants arrived in a building that was somewhere between hotel, prison and mental ward. Arabelle was waiting as the unnerved people were guided away by avatars of Jason, all the more shaken by the multiple copies of him.

“Is this the same wallpaper as when I made this building?” Jason asked, looking around.

“No,” Arabelle told him. “Also, the stairwells switched from switchback to curved.”

Jason shook his head.

“I have got to get a handle on stabilising my soul realm. Everything keeps shifting around on me, and that’s when it’s meant to be there.”

He fell into a chair that came into being as he sat.

“Are you alright, Jason? You look pale.”

He nodded, but also flashed her a slightly pained smile.

“Shutting out an astral king from someone’s soul isn’t easy. I had to tap into my astral gate and extend my spiritual authority over her. I also had to guess that it was possible and figure out how to do it in about five seconds, so I’m pretty happy with how that went.”

“Jason, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t see what happened out there.”

“The messenger they sent was fairly borderline on throwing off her indoctrination. I think Jes Fin Kaal sent her to see what would happen. She has to be concerned about how I'll influence her messengers, and rightly so if there's more like this one. The astral king sensed she wasn’t on board with team Cosmic Angel Nazi anymore and decided to scrag her. I managed to hold the astral king off long enough to get her into my soul realm, but she won’t last long, even here. Not unless I excise that connection permanently.”

“By digging into her soul? Like the others?”

“I like to think I do so with a little more finesse than ‘digging’ implies. I’ll admit that it was a little rough at first, but it didn't take long to get a handle on it. It was easy. Instinctual, like understanding a newly awakened essence ability. It’s an astral king thing, I’m pretty sure. I can only do the basics of soul manipulation, and only on messengers because their souls seem built for certain kinds of artificial alteration. It’s almost like they’re artificial themselves. I imagine anything more than that is what the soul forge I don’t have yet is for.”

“Yet? You’re certain you’ll get one?”

“Forever is a long time,” he said, then nodded his head at the last of the messenger servants as they were led away. “I’m glad you agreed to help with them.”

“I’m glad you asked. Not to offer offence, but amateurs bumbling their way through treating people who have experienced mental trauma is a very bad idea.”

“No offence taken. At all. I am startlingly aware that I am not a mental health professional.”

“I’m also glad that you’re attempting this at all. Most people would dismiss these people as traitors.”

“They are traitors,” Jason said. “But that doesn’t have to be the end. If we can redeem this lot, there’s hope for all of us.”

“I would like to start by working with them myself,” Arabelle said. “There will be a time for you to come along and disprove messenger superiority, but immediately isn’t it. I’d like to de-escalate their circumstances rather than take them from one extreme to another. That will just close them off.”

“I’ll leave that to your judgement,” Jason told her. A shadow extended out to engulf him, and when it shrank back, he and his chair were gone.

“Yes,” Arabelle said to the empty room. “Because why bother with the basic courtesy of a goodbye when there’s a dramatic exit to make.”

***

Jali and Tera were in a garden courtyard of sandstone tiles and flowering wall vines. There was a sun high in a clear blue sky. It was the location into which the portal had deposited the two messengers after they rushed through it.

“You’re telling me to die?” Jali snarled. “I can feel her twisting me from the inside out.”

“At least you’ll die a messenger,” Tera told her. “Not whatever I’ve been turned into.”

“How are you anything but a messenger?” Jali asked. “One that’s free? One whose power isn’t chained to the ground while the people around her rise to new heights?”

“Asano stealing my purpose is not freedom, and infusing me with his power is no gift. I have been tainted for whatever dark purpose he intends for me.”

“Dark purpose?” a male voice came from above. They looked up to see Marek Nior Vargas descending through the sky.

“Messengers go where they like,” he continued as he alighted on the tiled ground. “Enslaving or wiping out entire planetary populations. Countless worlds across countless universes, an unstoppable swarm, consuming and moving on like locusts. What is that if not dark purpose?”

“It is glory,” Tera told him. “It is the right of those that stand at the pinnacle to look down on those below them.”

“So we’re told,” Marek said. “The lowest messenger is above the highest of any other race. Then there is us, a second hierarchy. Remind me, Tera Jun Casta, who stands at the pinnacle amongst the messengers?”

“Your sophistry will get you nowhere, Marek Nior Vargas,” Tera told him. “Asano is no messenger, nor is he a true astral king. He’s flawed.”

“He is incomplete,” Marek corrected. “Not flawed.”

“Oh, don’t sell me short, Marek,” Jason said, stepping out of a shadow. “I can be both. I have depths we have not yet begun to plumb. Also, I didn’t leave anything inside you, young lady. If I did, your dark agenda would be obsessively watching recording crystals of The Greatest American Hero.”

Tera wheeled on Jason, opening her mouth to speak.

Tera Jun Casta.

Jason's words weren't spoken. They came into being like the creation of light at the dawn of time, an act of will that defined the universe. The three messengers were suddenly and extremely aware of where they were. They were not surrounded by Jason's power; his power was everything. The ground beneath them and the sky above. The air brushing against their skin and the sweet scent of wildflowers. They were in a reality where they alone were alien and their continued existence was at Jason Asano’s whim. He gave them a friendly smile.

“Tera,” he said softly. “We both know that you waved Jali here into my astral realm so that she wouldn’t die. Maybe now, instead of telling her to die for your beliefs, you might want to give that action you took some thought. Examine why you did that. See how those beliefs hold up when you have the courage to be unflinchingly honest with yourself.”

Jason made a flicking gesture and Tera was gone as if she’d never been there.

“Marek,” he said, “leave me to speak with my guest.”

“Asano, I think it would be best if—”

Jason looked at him and Marek felt it. His sense of balance lurched as if Jason's head had stayed where it was and the rest of the universe turned to position Marek in his eyeline.

“I wasn’t asking, Marek Nior Vargas.”

Marek didn’t respond, taking to the air with a beat of his wings.

“I…” Jali said hesitantly, stopping as Jason turned to her, even though his expression softened.

“What were you going to say?” Jason asked gently.

“Marek Nior Vargas is a respected war leader, even amongst my kind. I’ve never seen someone like him scared before.”

Jason nodded and sat, a chair appearing under him. A stool appeared behind Jali, backless to accommodate her folded wings. She turned and looked at it for a moment before sitting. She turned her gaze nervously back to Jason.

“You know Marek, then?” he asked casually. She shook her head.

“I know of him. I’m too insignificant for him to know me. He’s one of the commanders, amongst the strongest. I always paid attention to him.”

“Why?”

“There were rumours. That perhaps he was like me.”

“A doubter in the messenger orthodoxy?”

“I have nothing to do with the unorthodoxy.”

“I don’t care if you do or don’t. That is Marek’s battle, not mine.”

“Then he is? Part of the unorthodoxy?”

“He is now. As for before this, I don’t think he dared. I'm not sure that it's an actual organisation as much as an idea. How can you have a resistance movement when your soul is enslaved and your master will sense the rebellion inside you? Marek is free to be a rebel now, but you should be wary of him. I believe that he has a trap for you, although I doubt he sees it that way.”

“A trap?”

“He’s going to offer you a false dichotomy, but that is a concern for later. There are more pressing issues at hand.”

She nodded, her whole body looking shrunken.

“How long do I have?” she whispered.

“A few days, without intervention.”

She gestured around them.

“Isn’t this place intervention?”

“This is hiding. Intervention is less gentle but more permanent. May I ask for your full name?”

“Jali Corrik Fen.”

“I’d say I wish we met under better circumstances, but these are the best we could ask for, even if it doesn’t feel like that right now.”

“I’m dying.”

“Yes, dying. Not dead. Because I was there the moment your astral king decided that you were no longer worth the power she’s leaching from you. I don’t know how many people in the cosmos are both willing and able to help someone in your situation, but I suspect calling them excruciatingly hard to find is a profound understatement. Yet, here I am, sitting right across from you. If I were you, I would consider that about as good a circumstance to meet under as I could ask for.”

“Is what Tera said… can you truly—”

“Yes. True freedom from the astral king, but not without its own unpleasantness.”

“I’ve heard of messengers changing allegiances between astral kings. Being traded like they were from the enslaved races…”

She paused, looking scared.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You looked angry. In this place, I could feel it. Like the air getting hotter.”

“I don’t like the way the messengers treat people. I think you know that the astral kings treat the rest of the messengers like you all treat everyone else. I hope you reflect on that, in the days to come, and consider what it means for how you conduct yourself around others.”

“Do I have a choice? What Tera said. It means that you can overwrite my astral king’s brand on my soul with your own, doesn’t it?”

“I can. I’ve never done it, and I hope I never reach the point where I make that choice.”

“Then what about Tera? Marek Nior Vargas? No astral king would let you hold their messengers here, especially Vesta Carmis Zell. How have they not been killed?”

“Because I didn’t replace their brand with mine. I replaced it with their own. They are free.”

“Then why would they obey you?”

“Because I can annihilate their physical forms, leaving the ragged remains of their souls purely spiritual, and then kick them out into the astral for the Reaper to take. Good old-fashioned tyranny.”

“Why? Why are they here? Why am I here? What are you doing with us?”

Jason leaned forward, looked down at his feet and sighed.

“I hate this,” he said.

“You hate using us?”

“I hate that your species has so much power and the concept of compassion never occurs to you as a motivation.”

He looked up at her before continuing.

“I hope that’s cultural, Jali Corrik Fen. I genuinely do. I’m rather hoping that you’ll be the one to prove it. You’re quite different from the other messengers I’ve met and that’s a very good thing. But those are my ambitions, and we should put those aside for now. The issue at hand is keeping you alive and setting you free. From Vesta Carmis Zell, to be clear; you’re still going to be my prisoner until I decide otherwise.”

“How?”

“Well, step one is a doozy: you have to let me into your soul. That’s sometimes the hard part. I’ve had a messenger desperately wanting to let me in, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Couldn’t fight past their instincts, even to avoid death at the hands of your astral king.”

“I can’t believe that Tera Jun Casta let you do that.”

Jason bowed his head again.

“She didn’t,” he whispered.

Jason felt the surprise in her aura.

“You’re ashamed,” she said. “You did something to her, and you’re ashamed.”

Jason forced himself to meet Jali’s gaze and gave a confessional nod.

“She used a duel power on me. If neither of us killed the other, it would have killed us both. The only way to save us was to force her to let me into her soul and turn the ability off.”

“Why not just kill her? She was trying to kill you.”

“Peace has to start with someone. Sometimes it seems impossible, but that can be when the effort is most important. There was another way, and I took it. Compassion, like I just said. But I may have gotten it wrong. As you said, she would never have let me in. Not until I tortured her soul until she broke. Compared to that, just killing her might have been mercy. She hasn’t taken any of it well. Not what I did, or what that means for her. To her. I hadn’t done that before and I don’t know how much damage I inflicted in my ignorance. I don’t know if any of who she was is even left after what I did.”

“She’s not very different from when I knew her,” Jali said. “I would say angrier, but no. We were friends, once. Neither of us took being limited to silver-rank well, but we learned to deal with it in very different ways. I questioned. Reasoned. I had to be careful not to go too far, but the others knew about my doubts. It left me isolated. Untrusted. Tera went the other way. Absolute zeal. Unflinching dedication to duty, to the messenger race. Do you know what happened to us when you unveiled your aura during the attack on the elf city?”

“Rage. Frenzy. A general agreement that killing me should be at the top of the to-do list.”

“You are an affront to everything we've been taught about ourselves. Especially our aspirations. It's why those like me, locked at silver-rank, didn't react. Except for those like Tera.”

“The ones who kept the faith, even when the faith didn’t keep them.”

“Yes. What you’ve done is take everything she built her life around and shatter it to pieces.”

“That is the impression I’ve gotten. I’m hoping that time changes things for her. I’m hoping that you change things for her as well.”

Jali looked at him like he was some oddity that washed up on a beach.

“You mean that, don't you? You truly have compassion for her. Someone that used a power on you that guaranteed one of you would die. And you feel ashamed for what you had to do to accomplish the impossible task of keeping her alive instead of killing her.”

“Is that so strange?”

“Strange?” she asked with a laugh, surprising Jason. “It is, without question, the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. I have never heard of someone feeling compassion or shame over a messenger. Not from my own kind and certainly not from any other. Not anywhere, not ever.”

“Don’t you think that’s sad?”

“Everyone sees us as enemies. We even see ourselves that way. When the astral kings come into conflict, we make war on one another.”

“I admit that I have some trouble mustering up any good feelings for the astral kings,” Jason said. “But the rest of you are slaves, and I suspect most of you don’t even know it.”

“I knew,” Jali said in a whisper.

“I can do something about that. If you let me—”

“Yes.”

Her answer was firm and confident.

“As I said, it’s not so easy. Even when you want it.”

He stood up and his chair vanished.

“I’ll give you some time to process your thoughts.”

“I’d rather we do this immediately.”

“It was only minutes ago that you were a loyal messenger. Minutes.”

“If I was loyal, I wouldn’t be here. You’d probably have killed me.”

“Perhaps, but even so.”

He gestured at an archway in the wall that hadn't been there the last time she glanced in that direction. It led to a garden path running between beds of white and red flowers.

“Wander as you will,” he told her. “Anywhere that lets you in, you are free to go. I’m not always paying attention, but if you speak to me, I’ll hear it. If you want or need anything, just ask. Food, drink. To talk with other messengers here. A zeppelin in the shape of your own head. Just be aware that things might go a bit wobbly on you. I’m still getting a handle on remaking reality with the astral throne and stuff tends to shift about a bit.”

He frowned.

“Which suddenly makes me worried about the people back on Earth that live in places where I remade reality. Oh well, I'm sure it's fine. Anyway, take some time and let your mind settle as best it can. I know what it's like to have everything you think is true turn out to be breathtakingly wrong. I’ll find you soon enough and we’ll talk again. I’ll explain everything in detail about what my entering your soul and changing things entails.”

“And then you’ll do it?”

“Yes.”

She turned to look out through the archway.

“I don’t…”

When she turned back, he was gone. Her senses didn’t register his absence because they told her that he was everywhere.

***

Jason emerged from the shadow of a tree atop a cliff. Marek Nior Vargas was standing on the ground instead of floating over it, looking out at a lake below, the shore occasionally dotted with sprawling lake houses. There was also a house in the middle of the lake, carved from a massive iceberg. Jason went and joined him in taking in the view.

“You’ll talk to her if and when she wants you to,” Jason told him.

“She should have the guidance of her own kind.”

“The guidance of her own kind gave her a lifetime of misery. It indoctrinated her so thoroughly that she believed the most heinous acts were righteous. What she needs is time and space to think, finally free of the guidance of her own kind.”

“And your guidance is better?”

“The comments on a trailer for an all-female movie reboot are better than anything your people can offer. But on the bright side, she may accomplish the task you can’t seem to manage.”

Marek turned to look at Jason.

“What task?”

“Convincing me that your entire species is worth anything more than killing on sight.”

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