Chapter 726: We Should Probably Get You Out of Here

“We need to talk with my team,” Jason said to Allayeth. They were walking through an underground cavern lit by glowing fungus too bright and too convenient to be natural phosphorescence.

“Do they comprehend the magnitude of what this place means? Of what you are?”

“Their frame of reference is perhaps limited, for some of them. My mate Clive, maybe, and my friends that are priests probably understand the scope. Not many people have pushed their souls up against the will of a god or great astral being. Not in an actual conflict, which is when they show you the whole thing. Normally they just poke you as hard as you can take to make a point.”

“Will,” Allayeth said, focusing on the one word of Jason’s. “The will as an element of the soul is not normally something essence users explore until gold-rank.”

“Yeah, I’ve been learning about controlling aspects of the soul in isolation from Amos Pensinata. It’s been really handy in expanding my perception without blasting my aura out like a beacon. We never focused on will because I already had a good teacher back at iron-rank.”

“Farrah Hurin was your aura teacher at iron-rank. She shouldn’t have had any grasp of will back then.”

"I'm talking about someone else. From after Farrah died."

“I didn’t see anything in your records. Are you talking about Carlos Quilido?”

“No. I’m talking about the Builder.”

Allayeth flinched.

“You call it a teacher?”

“Him. He was a man once. A boy, really. I think he still is, in a lot of ways. It’s almost like he’s…”

Jason frowned as he trailed off.

“Like he’s what?”

"It doesn't matter," Jason said, his tone firmly shelving the topic. "He was in the fullness of his power when he pressed his will upon mine and tried to get me to open the gates of my soul. He’d already claimed my body and then came for the rest. I didn’t remember it for a long time, because he’d already claimed my brain at that stage. My soul remembered, sort of. Not exactly emotions but kind of. Only the things that impacted my will. Left a mark on my soul. I remember his will pushing against me when I had nothing left but my own to push back with. He schooled me in the nature of will in the most thorough way possible."

“That is not teaching.”

"Maybe not, but I still learned. How to turn my soul into a weapon. He carved that into the surface of my soul as he flayed it, trying to break my will. After that, soul attacks came so easily. Naturally. Like breathing, back when I had to do that.”

"I can make soul attacks. It's something you can do after you learn to differentiate your will. It's meant to happen at gold or diamond, not iron-rank. It doesn't come easily either. It's hard to pinpoint your will so sharply, and there's an instinctive revulsion against doing that to another soul. You have to push through that to make a soul attack. I'm told it's possible to inure yourself to that but I have no interest in doing so."

“I never had that trouble,” Jason said, his voice low. “Not the difficulty and not the revulsion.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up such dark memories.”

“It’s fine. What Carlos Quilido and Arabelle Remore did do was put me back together again after. They built me back strong.”

“You rely on the people around you a lot.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t have a lot of peers. Charist is an inconsistent comfort.”

“Your team?”

“I was the only one to reach diamond. The others died or couldn’t make it past gold. We weren’t as remarkable as yours. I can see many of your team members reaching the peak.”

“There is no peak.”

“Essence users can’t go beyond diamond-rank.”

“Not with that attitude.”

She looked at his teasing expression and couldn’t help letting out a laugh.

“You really do just look at impossibility and put it on a to-do list don’t you?” she asked, looking around at Jason’s soul realm. They were entering a cenote, a sinkhole with water at the bottom and a hole leading to open sky at the top. A railed wooden deck ran around the circumference with two large grills and picnic seating. The light fell through the hole at just the right angle to illuminate the area perfectly.

“I have my moments,” he said.

Allayeth was looking up through the hole when a glass sphere floated overhead. Inside it, a red mass pulsed with internal light, like a massive, glowing heart.

“What was that?” she asked.

“You know how Jen Fin Kaal is a Voice of the Will?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that makes her an extension of her astral king’s will?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m an astral king in progress. That’s my Voice of the Will in progress.”

“I think I’d rather deal with the messenger than that thing.”

“I suspect that, once he comes out to play, so would the messengers.”

***

Jason and Allayeth rejoined Jason's team in a courtyard lounge where the walls were covered in greenery and lotuses floated on a water feature of raw mana.

“But, to be clear,” Humphrey said, “Lady Allayeth is the one who will go and talk to the goddess Liberty, correct?”

“To her high priestess in Yaresh,” Allayeth said. “One does not just go speak to a goddess.”

Jason’s companions all turned to look at him, eyebrows raised.

“What?” he asked. “And really, who doesn’t just talk to them? Isn’t that what prayer is? Have I been getting prayer wrong this whole time? How does it work, then? Is it catered? Is that why people take all those casseroles to church functions?”

“Is he always like this?” Allayeth asked.

“No, but you don’t want him the other way,” Neil said and the rest of the group nodded their agreement.

“You know I’m right here?” Jason asked. “You should wait until I’m gone to talk me behind my back.”

"Jason," Clive said. "You literally are this courtyard we're sitting in. You're the furniture we're sitting on. There is no behind your back."

Neil turned awkwardly on his picnic chair, twisting to look down at it with a concerned expression.

"I'm not always paying attention. I respect people's privacy."

“The goddess of Liberty might not be extremely open to you, Jason,” Rufus pointed out.

“Something to do with the way you go around declaring things and then making everyone accept them whether they like it or not,” Neil added, still looking uncertain if he should just be standing up.

“Dominion does seem to have taken quite a liking to you,” Gary said. “He and Liberty don’t like each other very much.”

“He would definitely make the worst possible approach,” Belinda said.

“Like trying to trap the goddess of Liberty maybe?” Sophie postulated.

“I totally know how he’d do it, bro. He’d get a box and he’d prop up one end of the box with a stick. There would be a string attached to the stick so he could pull it and drop the box, and the string would lead to where he was hiding inside a fake bush that he made. The bait he put under the box would be a sandwich and a little card with the word FREEDOM written on it.”

“You think I would try to catch the goddess of Liberty in a box?” Jason asked.

"Yep."

“That tracks.”

“Sounds like how it would go, yeah.”

Jason ran a hand over his face.

“Why would I do that?” he asked.

“No idea.”

“Doesn’t seem to matter.”

“We never know.”

"At this point, we just watch and lay the occasional side bet,” Neil said. “Speaking of which…”

The team started taking our spirit coins and handing them to Neil.

“Did you make some of kind of bet on me?” Jason asked.

"Nope," Neil transparently lied as he stashed away his winnings.

"There may have been a betting pool on how long it took you to find a new transcendent being to out-rank her now that you were dealing with diamond-rankers again," Humphrey said. "Belinda started it as soon as another diamond-ranker came in here and Neil picked 'immediately' as his time. Which wasn't fair, since we all—"

“I yelled it out first,” Neil said. “You know the rules.”

"You make bets like this enough that there are rules?" Allayeth asked.

“Yes,” Belinda said. “And Humphrey has no room to complain because he picked the big battle in Yaresh for the next time someone much stronger than Jason came to kill him, died, and then had something absurd looted from his body.”

Allayeth blinked several times, her expression nonplussed.

"What kind of absurd thing?" she asked.

“He still hasn’t told us, so he’s not going to tell you,” Sophie said. “He refuses to until he figures out how to use it.”

“I think I need the soul forge,” Jason said. “I’m pretty sure there’s a… look, that doesn’t matter. We need to concentrate on the next step. We’re going to have some cranky officials waiting for us if we just wander back outside.”

“Sorry about that,” Clive said sheepishly.

“Hey,” Jason said, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Who amongst us hasn’t defied authority or committed a bunch of crimes or rewritten city-sized chunks of reality in their own image?"

“What?” Allayeth asked.

“Humphrey, obviously,” Jason continued. “But the rest of us have all done something shady. Maybe not Neil. You need to get out more, Neil. Get drunk and steal a land skimmer or something.”

"You leave Neil alone," Humphrey said. "He's a respectable young man. Now, what solution do you have for the problem of what awaits us outside? I assume you have one."

“Maybe not a solution,” Jason said. “But I can probably put off needing to deal with it immediately. Give Allayeth time to calm things down.”

“I am meant to excuse the behaviour of your team, am I?”

“Yep,” Jason said. “I’m pretty sure I can use the archway on the outside as an anchor point to open a portal inside the normal portal range. Meaning that I can probably portal myself back to the tree house and then open up the soul realm and out you all waltz.”

He turned to Allayeth.

“Best if you scarper first,” he said. “I don’t want my portal arch to vanish and have them think I’ve absconded with a diamond-ranker.”

“That’s something else we need to discuss,” Sophie said. “Should we abscond with a diamond-ranker? Are you sure you want to let her out with what she’s seen?”

“We have to trust someone,” Jason said.

“Do we though?” Belinda asked. “I mean, the Adventure Society seems to get in the way more than help us, you only have to ask Clive about the Magic Society and as for local government, you remember that guy you sent packing, Jason.”

“What did you show him that sent him running?” Allayeth asked. “This whole place is certainly intimidating, and only more so the stronger your perception powers, I suspect. But not enough to make Lord Bynes the younger flee in a mad panic. I don’t think.”

“You remember that big door?” Jason asked. “The vault-looking one with the sign?”

“That sign was rather hard to forget,” Allayeth said. “The Astral Gate Containment Centre and Standish Family Adult Recreation Retrospective, was it? I’m assuming the astral gate part is what so disturbed Lord Bynes.”

“I wouldn’t rule the other bit just yet,” Belinda said. “What Clive’s parents were doing with those jellied eels is plenty disturbing itself.”

“Those are not real images,” Clive insisted.

“You haven’t even seen them,” Belinda said.

“Have you?” Clive asked in horror.

“No one has,” Humphrey said firmly. “Because they don’t exist. Jason is not going to create fake images of one of his friend’s parents doing obscene things. Are you, Jason?”

“No,” Jason begrudgingly admitted. “I recreated Clive’s mum’s voice a bit, but it’s mostly just squelching noises over some videos from my world that Farrah put on a recording crystal.”

"I need to get that crystal back, now you mention it," Farrah said. "A girl has needs. Do you know what it's like trying to get some action in Rimaros? Some gold-ranker got the fever over me but he's about eighty and refuses to make a proper move until I'm at least half his age. No one else will go near me because they don't want to offend him, though, but I'm not waiting quarter of a century for my next tumble. The equipment needs to be taken out and fired up from time to time or it’ll go rusty in the shed.”

“We need to put that aside," Rufus said. "Very, very far aside, and concentrate on Sophie's question of whether we should retain Lady Allayeth here rather than let her out with however many of Jason's secrets she has managed to uncover. For my part, I am firmly against taking her prisoner. Prisoners taken in battle is one thing, but taking allies who know too much? I won't be a party to that."

“Jason said all that needed to be said,” Humphrey declared. “We need to trust someone. While I recognise your concerns, Belinda, regarding the various institutions that have sometimes — often, even — acted with less integrity than we would like. But I am willing to bet that the people who have gained power by turning from duty to politics in the name of power are in the minority. That minority tends to occupy the upper echelons of those institutions, it’s true, but even there I would wager that corruption is not ubiquitous.”

Humphrey stepped out and turned to face the group as a whole, Jason keeping his mouth closed and trying not to cheer at Humphrey for falling into a monologue.

“We have to trust,” Humphrey said. “We just have to. There are far too many problems in the world for the people in this room to solve them all. Yes, we’ve encountered our fair share of people who have surrendered their integrity. They see Clive’s mind or Jason’s… whatever it is with Jason, and they seek us out. They’re opportunists, hungry and shameless. But I promise you that there are so many people out there doing the right thing just because it’s the right thing. You don’t see them because they aren’t looking for glory or power. They’re just looking to fulfil their duty.”

He nodded to himself.

“Yes, they make mistakes. Anger, pride, vanity, greed; they lead us to make bad choices. But I have no doubt that most of the people in the Magic Society are just like Clive: trying to take magic and make the world a little bit better tomorrow than it is today. Do you think the people working in the Yaresh government are all looking to fill their pockets and raise their status? Some, yes, but I promise you that most of them are trying their best to put the city back together again and help the people who live in it. And I hope I don’t have to tell you about adventurers. They are unquestionably more susceptible to the pride and vanity I mentioned, but every person in this room has seen them step up and risk everything because it was their duty to do so. And a lot of them never made it back.”

Humphrey moved to Belinda and put a hand on her shoulder.

“I know that you have less reason to trust than most,” he told her. “But we have to, even when it doesn’t work out the way we hoped. Because if we don’t, then what’s the point? I was reluctant when Jason brought along two thieves and said they were going to be adventurers. Now look at you: you’re glorious. This is not the team I envisaged building when I was growing up, and you’d best believe that I envisaged it a lot. But now my team is better than I ever imagined because I was convinced to trust when the smart choice was not to. So, I’m going to keep making that choice. And if any of you want to make a different one out of fear or anger or bitterness, then I’m going to talk and talk and talk until you all change your minds. And, as I’ve just demonstrated, I certainly can do that—”

Sophie shoved Belinda out of the way, grabbed Humphrey by the lapels and dragged him into a passionate kiss as the others all looked on.

“Does anyone else feel like this undercuts the gravitas of Humphrey’s big speech?” Neil asked.

“It was such a good monologue,” Jason said proudly. “I would have put in some jokes, but I also would have whinged about how hard I have it with all my money and vast cosmic power, so it balances out.”

Rufus moved next to Allayeth and leaned close.

“We should probably get you out of here,” he said quietly.

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