The messenger host of more thahousand had been cut down tlers. A swarm of shadowy figures dashed through the air through the air, colleg the rotted husks of the dead as they fell. The bodies were all dropped into the hole where the city of Boko had once been. The great portals in the air were gone, having trembled and ultimately colpsed.

  The st messeo emerge had been dragged out by the dark bird wreathed in silver fme. Tendrils of darkness had extended from its body, reached into the portals and dragged out four Voices of the Will. Even bound up, they had started to domineeringly demand their freedom. Their arguments sted only a few words before the tendrils cut them into slices like vegetables. The shadowy figures moved to collect the pieces and deposit them with the rest.

  Whe of the messengers were dead, the ghost fire phoenix desded into the hole, now host to a small mountain of corpses. The bird shrank as it he bottom of the hole, transf into a naked man as it reached the ground. Blood seeped from the man’s pores to cover his body, then coaguted and dried into a set of dark red robes.

  “Thank you, ,” Jason said quietly.

  System Alert: System Administrator

  The Hegemon has restituted his mortal form. External magic will no longer be introduced to the region. Magisity and magical saturation will return to normal levels over time.The Hegemon no longer cims dominiohe region and the gods may once again influehe area, outside of their cimed holy grounds.Jason grimaced as he stared at the pile of dead. He no longer had trouble maintaining his identity while in a transdent state, but it was still a deeply altered state of mind. In that dition, his emotions were pushed aside. It was useful for ag with a clear head, but the emotions had returned now he once more occupied a mortal avatar.

  His true self was a living universe from which he projected his sciousness, but that was something he was still getting used to. He remained mortal in many ways, especially in mi. It was not something he regretted, even as it subjected him to ive emotions. He’d felt people die uhe influence of his aura, helpless to stop it. Anger a roiled inside him, and that was something he did not want to lose.

  He looked up at the temples floating in the air. They still had ks of ground underh them, torn from the city during its destru and shielded by the power of the various gods. Now that Jason had withdrawn his influence over the area, the temples were on the move, drifting up and out of the massive hole. Moving in as they departed was a flying tortoise shell full of adventurers. Jason’s team gathered around him, looking him over with .

  “I’m fine,” he said to the unasked question, but the grim quiet in his voice was unving. “Do we know hoeople died yet?”

  “It’s still a mess out there,” Farrah said. “We won’t have a solid number for a while. Hundreds, certainly. Probably over a thousand. Hopefully not over two.”

  “This isn’t your fault, Jason,” Humphrey said. “It may have been your aura, but—”

  “I know where the bme lies,” Jason said. “For the most part, anyway. The messengers are dead, although they had someone far more powerful with them. Him, I couldn’t touch.”

  “Not a messenger?”

  “An astral king. In a prime avatar, like me, but without the power redu. His strength was somewhere around Dawn’s level.”

  “That’s a bad eo have,” Neil said.

  “I’m not sure he was an enemy. Something in his aura. The only other astral king I’ve dealt with is Vesta Carmis Zell, and her hostility burned like a fire. This man was calm. Detached. At least towards me. The only anger I felt was directed at the Voices of the Will.”

  “The ones yed out of the portals and chopped up?” Belinda asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing with all these bodies, anyway?” Sophie asked.

  “You might want to stand back for this,” Jason warhem, then quietly inted a spell.

  “As your lives were mio reap, so your deaths are mio harvest.”

  A red glow rose from the mountain of corpses as Jason’s spell drew out the remnant life force. The air was flooded with the coppery taste of blood, the life force tingling at the senses of Jason’s friends as they backed off. The red light gushed out like a wave to crash over Jason, obsg him from sight until the torrent of life force diminished and finally depleted.

  Shade had touched all the bodies while colleg them, so Jason was able to loot them all at ohe mountain broke down as the bodies dissolved into rainbow smoke. A vast plume rose from the hole in the ground, rising into the sky as if from an active volo. Jason’s friends backed off even further from the stench. Jason didn’t move, standing and watg until it was done. Jason’s friends approached again, o was safe for their noses.

  “Is that enough to restore your avatar with the bird thing again if your avatar is killed a sed time?” Neil asked.

  “No,” Jason said. “It was a lot, but not enough. Too many silver rankers and not enough golds.”

  “We o hunt some gold-rank messengers, then,” Sophie said.

  Jason pulled a sword from his iory that was more like a metal gangpnk than a sword, despite the lengthy hahe metal was dark, with red streaks. He held it out for Clive.

  “Something from the loot?” Clive asked.

  “No. When I was on the verge of erupting, the power around me became votile and killed the man who stabbed me with this. O was no longer in someone else’s possession, I could pull it into my iory. I was able to discharge it safely in my soul realm, but the power inside my body was toone. I couldn’t stop it from detonating, even though the thing causing the problem was removed.”

  Clive took the hefty on in both hands and exami.

  Item: [Lesser Celestial Ger (broken)] (gold rank, unon)

  A specialised on desigo absorb magiatter that bines physical and spiritual energy. It is a crude attempt to replicate a more sophisticated on. The rge size is to aodate crude adaptations when the inal design could not be funally duplicated. This on has been damaged by excess magic absorption. (on, replica, broken).

  Effect: Specialised magic absorption (non-funal).“This is desigo kill gestalt entities like you,” Clive said.

  “Someone designed a on just to kill Jason?” Humphrey asked.

  “I doubt it,” Clive said. “It robably desigo kill messengers.”

  “Do you think you figure out where it came from?” Jason asked. “Someoher than the messengers was involved with this.”

  “Why would someoh a messenger-killing sword be w with the messengers?” Humphrey asked. “More than that, why would the messengers work with them? They like obedienot bargains, but I don’t see ah a messenger-sying sword being one of their cowed sves. And sneaking up on Jason is no small feat, given the power of his senses.”

  “I think his armht have been desigo hide from messengers,” Jason said. “I couldn’t grab it to check, but even when he was right behind me, he was hard to exami was like my perception just slid off him.”

  “It might be possible,” Clive said. “Our supernatural senses use our auras as a base, aalt entities have fually different auras. You could target those aura aspects with specialised stealth equipment. It wouldn’t wainst regur essence users, but it would have superior effects against Jason or messengers.”

  “Anything we use to track my attacker down?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know. I have some knowledge of magic devices, but we need a specialist for something like this. There used to be someone ione, Russel s. He helped us figure out what the Builder cult devices did, when the cultists were trying to steal astral spaces. I check if he’s still around.”

  “You might want to show Carlos Quilido, as well,” Neil said.

  “Why Carlos?” Clive asked. “He’s a soul healing specialist.”

  “Early in the war,” Neil expined, “he was involved in resear anti-messenger ons. They thought his speciality might help. Inflig spiritual damage rather than healing it. Remember when he wao experiment on Jason’s gestalt body?”

  “I do,” Jason said. “You think he’ll know something?”

  “He might not,” Neil said. “Carlos is a priest of the Healer, like me. Using our knowledge of healing teiques to design ons is the opposite of what we do. Carlos realised he’d lost his way after what happened with Jason ahe project early. Refocused on his vampirism cure project.”

  “We ask and see where it goes,” Humphrey said. “We’ll o put off our current agenda to hunt down—”

  “No,” Jason said. “If we were the right team to follow this thread, that would be ohing. But I think this will be a long, slow iigation. This on was some kind of replica. I think whoever is using it might be a group, not just one person who decided to work for the messengers on this. The only thing we have to go on is this sword, and if Clive says we should hand it over to a specialist, we should. Let the Adventure Society deal with it.”

  “They came after you!” Sophie said.

  “It’s not about me. I’m alive, but there are plenty of people who aren’t. I’m not going after some group with ons specialised not just to hurt me, but turo a walking disaster zone for any i people around me. robably mahe risk, now that we know about it, but I’d rather not have to.”

  “I don’t like the idea of letting some mysterious group just float around out there,” Belinda said. “We don’t know what they want, or when they’re going to strike . Stel and I could—”

  “No,” Jason said again. “I lost fifteen years letting other people turn me away from my own iions. I’m not going to let the messengers or whoever is behind this sword dictate my as.”

  “We ’t just let this stand,” Sophie said.

  “We won’t,” Jason said. “I killed all the messengers here. I even dragged out their Voices of the Will and killed them, too, but that doesn’t matter. The astral kings don’t care about their sves. They’ll live forever and just out more as they keep going. This phe one, going on forever.”

  “That’s disheartening,” Neil said. “You’re saying there’s nothing we do?”

  “There’s something I do,” Jason told him. “They have forever, but so do I. So do you, if you reach diamond rank and stop getting older. We ’t kill immortals, but we destroy everything they’ve built up. Right now, I’m vulnerable. There are too many people I care about that they hurt. A thousand years from now, those people will be strong enough to protect themselves, or long dead. I spend ay unmaking messenger society. Burning every birthing tree. Razing every indoatiore. Freeing every sve and turning them against their masters, until the only messengers left don’t serve the astral kings, but fight them. It might take a million years. A billion, but I have a billion. What I need is a purpose to fill all that time.”

  Jason looked around at his friends. They watched him with worried eyes as, with calm determination, he announced a billion-year jihad.

  “Perhaps we should focus on a more immediate timeframe,” Humphrey suggested. “Let’s get back to helping the dispced popution. You might want to donate all the loot from those messeo the restru… Jason?”

  Jason had turned his head as Humphrey was talking, staring at ay spaearby. Moments ter, a portal appeared and a man stepped out. He was extremely tall, with copper hair and dark eyes. His clothes were red and brown, cut ited Estercost style. Jason saw what he was immediately, while his friends were wary but uain. Humphrey jured his armour and sword as he stepped to the fore.

  “It’s alright, Humphrey,” Jason said. “He’s here to talk.”

  “Who is he?” Humphrey asked not taking his eyes from the man. “And how you be sure?”

  “I don’t know who he is, just what he is. And I’m not sure, but if he wants to kill us, there’s nothing we do to stop him. But I don’t think he’s willing to pay the price.”

  “The price?” Sophie asked, movio Humphrey.

  “Authority is a plicated thing, and there are rules to invading a world. You think the messengers needed locals to summoo start their invasion? With the dimensional magic they have? Those summonings were an invitation. A pretext for the messeo intrude on our world.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Neil asked.

  “This man is an astral king,” Jason said. “That’s a prime avatar, like mine, but he has fully developed his mortal power.”

  “This is the one you mentioned earlier,” Humphrey realised.

  “Yes. But there are rules, and if an astral king acts directly, the gods get a pretext of their own. They’ll start sc messengers from the face of the p like sweeping up crumbs.”

  He brushed past Humphrey and Sophie.

  “Isn’t that right, Mr Astral King?”

  “The name is Jamis Fran Muskar,” the man said, after patiently waiting for Jason and his team’s discussion. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Jason Asano.”