Chapter 740: Exactly Where I Want to Be

Although his body was sitting with Emir and Carlos, Jason’s attention was on other places within his soul realm. There was only so much privacy Jason could offer Sophie and her mother, but he forcibly moved his attention away from where she and Arabelle were looking after Melody. Because of how his mind and perception worked in this place, he was able to compartmentalise the memories, the same way his avatars learned. He could access them later if necessary, a quirk of how his mind and perception worked in this place.

Jason distracted himself by focusing on Marek Nior Vargas, leader of Jason’s messenger prisoners. The man was yet again working on plans for his uprising against the astral kings, his timeline measured not in months and years but decades and centuries. Tera Jun Casta, the messenger whose soul had been forcibly altered by Jason, was pretending not to listen as she stood at a remove.

Tera was still railing against her fate, regularly screaming bile at Marek and Jason. Marek, she yelled at in person, while her wild tirades against Jason were usually screamed into the sky. It was increasingly performative, Jason was sure, although the heavy self-deception made it hard to read the truth from her aura.

He hoped that her listening in on Marek and the other messengers was a sign that she was finding some kind of equanimity. Indoctrinated from birth, she felt that Jason had stolen her from grace and placed her amongst heretics. He hoped that she would come around on the nature of the astral kings and the bondage in which she had been held, accepting that she would need to move on. His fear was that, once she stopped clinging to the shards of her old life, she would be an empty vessel, too broken to be refilled.

Tera Jun Casta was easy to think of as an enemy, yet she had been through more than any of them. Her soul branded, raised on lies and exploited her entire life. She was having so much trouble because her very sense of self had been constructed from the mechanisms of her oppression. Then, her liberation had come in the form of the worst violation, Jason himself torturing her soul until she opened it up to him that he might meddle with it. The fact that he had used that chance to set her free was immaterial to the trauma he had inflicted in the process.

Jason frowned at the thought of all the trauma around him, from Tera to Melody to himself. Those with the most power were the ones who did the most damage, with astral kings, gods and great astral beings all being the agents of their misery. Their machinations hurt so many, and Jason knew that he was not absolved from being grouped among them. How many had been hurt by his decisions back on Earth? Excuses were easy to come by with a world to save, but how much collateral damage could he ignore? For all the people he saved, how many died because he chose one path over another? Thoughtlessly accepted a battle without regard for civilian casualties?

Jason had made a lot of hard, necessary choices, and he would make more in the days and years to come. He was no longer so naïve as to believe that he could do so without innocent people getting hurt along the way. He would make mistakes. He would fail. He would choose one life over another.

He had to resolve to not let himself become callous. To stop rushing ahead and letting others suffer the consequences. He needed to think before he acted, and heed the wisdom of the people around him. But he couldn't allow being diligent and thoughtful to paralyse him, either. He wouldn't let his efforts to minimise damage prevent him from doing what good he was able.

He decided to ask Marek Nior Vargas to speak with Carlos and Arabelle about the kind of soul-based control the astral kings used on messengers. He didn’t think there would be a lot of crossover between what was happening with Melody, but he guessed that the healers would be enthusiastic regardless.

Jason’s attention was snapped back to Sophie, Melody and Arabelle when Arabelle spoke his name. A replica of Jason, one of his avatars, was brought into existence next to the three women. He saw Melody slumped in a chair, staring off into space, looking less catatonic than drugged. His all-pervasive senses examined her body for anything wrong, sensing that she was mostly healthy but extremely exhausted.

He was about to ask what happened but instead tapped into the memory of the events he’d been ignoring. Earlier, when he’d suppressed the influence on Melody, she had collapsed, caught by Sophie’s lightning speed before she fell to the ground. Melody recovered her faculties after a moment, seemingly fine, and that was when Jason had stopped paying attention.

The memory began from there. His mind processed it in an instant, although it felt longer as it played out in his mind. He watched Sophie carefully help her mother into a chair as Arabelle fetched a glass of water. They started talking, Melody disoriented and confused. She complained of being tired after years of fruitlessly fighting the influence inside her. Arabelle, being a healer, monitored her condition, finding her tired but healthy, just as Jason had. Melody flagged quickly as the conversation jumped around, disjointed by her erratic sensibilities. Once she became non-responsive, Arabelle called for Jason, catching him up to the current moment.

“She’s just tired,” Jason assured Sophie. “Arabelle’s assessment was spot-on, so far as I can tell. Physically, she’s in excellent condition.”

“What about her mind?” Sophie asked, none of her usual stoicism in evidence. “She was scattered, confused.”

"This may seem counterintuitive," Arabelle said, "but her state of mind being where it was is exactly what we wanted to see. If she came out of that fully lucid, I wouldn't trust it. I would assume that the thing inside of her still had control. Given what she's been through, and for how long, what we saw was extremely encouraging."

“Physically, she’s doing as well as we could have hoped,” Jason said. “There don’t appear to be any negative side-effects from suppressing the control on her.”

“Which means we can leave her here long enough to get the rest she needs,” Arabelle said. “For all the power Jason can wield here, that’s the best thing he can offer her: a place to rest without that thing crawling inside her mind. And she’ll need a lot of rest. Don’t expect her to reawaken today.”

“I doubt many could imagine what she’s been through,” Jason said. “Even me. My soul torture was over in a matter of hours, but Amos Pensinata went through extended spiritual tribulation, just as Melody has. Sophie, while your mother is sleeping, I would recommend you seek Lord Pensinata out. He can tell you at least some of what to expect. Maybe even what your mother is going to want and need as she goes through this, now that she’s free of the influence. Even if that freedom is only temporary.”

“That is an excellent idea,” Arabelle said. “But you are right that her reprieve is only temporary; she isn’t actually in recovery. Once she leaves here, the shackles on her mind go back on.”

“Does she have to leave?” Sophie asked. “We’ve just been keeping her in locked rooms, and what is more secure than this place? It’s still a cage, but it’s bigger and nicer.”

“I have no problem with that,” Jason said, “but I think we should defer to Arabelle as her primary care physician.”

“Her what?” Sophie asked.

“Sorry,” Jason said. “Primary care physician. It’s a term from my world that just means the person in charge of seeing to someone’s medical care,” Jason explained. “they are the first port of call, tapping into specialists like Carlos as needed.”

“Oh,” Sophie said. “Why not just say healer?”

"Jason has introduced a number of terms from physical and especially mental care in his world that I have found useful to adopt. Specificity matters when it comes to healing. But as for your idea, Sophie, I think it has merit. Unless we see any detrimental effects over time, keeping her here until we have an actual treatment may well be the best thing for her.”

“I also think we need to avoid jumping the gun on any kind of testing for removing what’s inside her permanently,” Jason said. “Carlos won’t like to hear it, but I think she could use a nice, long time to get herself together before we let him anywhere near her.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Arabelle said. “I’ll break it to him.”

***

The team was assembling in the atrium of Emir’s palace when Jason and Sophie emerged from his portal. They were tooled up in full adventuring gear and Jason did the same, shrouding himself in dark mist. It dissolved away a moment later, revealing him in his dark blood robes.

Vidal Ladiv was also present, the Adventure Society liaison to Jason’s team having been sent to fetch them.

“So,” Jason asked him. “The messengers finally turned up?”

“More the messengers of the messengers,” Vidal said. “Rather than turn up in person, they’ve sent some of the people they’ve enslaved.”

“Enslaved nothing,” Allayeth said, the diamond-rank elf striding in through the mist door. “I’ve been fighting the messengers here for months, and they don’t take slaves. Everyone that serves them joins up voluntarily.”

Jason looked at her angry expression.

“I’m not sure that join or die is much of a choice,” Jason said. “There’s nothing wrong with biding your time and looking for the chance to escape.”

“Except that’s not how it works,” Allayeth said. “It’s join or die, yes, they don't get to choose. The messengers are just as good as you at reading emotions, Jason. They look for people who are demoralised by their power and accept that the messengers are superior beings. Anyone else, they kill outright. It’s how they trust the people they take to infiltrate the city; their wills are broken. And speaking of the messenger servants, how is your auxiliary’s project going?” she asked him.

“Lindy?” Jason asked.

“Estella says she’s gone almost as far as she can mapping out the network of messenger agents still in the city. She doesn’t think there are any gold-rankers and it’s mostly bronze-rankers in positions adjacent to power. Anyone with direct power is being watched too closely, especially now, and the messenger agents are laying low.”

“And she’s identifying them through the aura masks the messengers provide?” Allayeth asked.

“Yes,” Jason confirmed. “They’re hard to spot, but I saw one on a messenger agent in the weeks before the attack. Estella’s fourfold senses make her even better than I am at picking them out. She’s also an experienced spy, so I’m confident she’s done a thorough job of mapping out their network. It’s unlikely that we’ll pinpoint them all, but she’ll put you in a good position to sweep them all up at once.”

"The Adventure Society has been carefully vetting teams to strike when ready," Vidal said. "We don't think any of the adventuring teams have been compromised, but we're checking anyway and focusing on using outside adventurers like your friend Rick Geller's team. The less time they've been in Yaresh, the less likely they are to have been suborned somehow. Of course, none of the teams knows what's going on yet. Most of the people who know about the plan are in this room."

“Estella wanted to know when we’re moving forward,” Belinda asked. “She’s ready to present everything for the strike teams to act.”

“Mr Ladiv,” Allayeth said. “How is the readiness of the Adventure Society to move on this?”

“We’re already finalising preparations. We’re almost ready to bring teams in for briefing, immediately prior to deployment. If Miss Warnock is willing to come in today and present her findings in full, we can be ready to move as early as the day after tomorrow.”

“Excellent,” Allayeth said. “That is the day the Continental Council officials are set to arrive. We might get lucky and find some of the messenger spies sticking their necks out for slicing.”

“Should I skip this and go find Estella now?” Belinda asked.

“No,” Humphrey said. “I know we’ll have gold and diamond-rank backup, but I want the whole team on deck for this.”

“You’re a silver-rank team going somewhere with gold rankers and a diamond,” Vidal said to Humphrey. “And you think that they are your backup?”

“Yes,” Humphrey told him.

“No offence, Master Geller, but I think Mr Asano is affecting the way you think.”

“Mr Ladiv,” Humphrey said, “Jason told the Builder to pack up and leave this planet — and he did. If that’s where his kind of thinking gets us, that’s exactly where I want to be.”

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