“Now that I’ve seen you in a,” Valdis said, “I see a lot of potential ao take another run at you.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but I’m not a big arena guy,” Jason said.

  They were in the partits lobby, lounging with drinks, snacks and some of their friends who either had fought already or were getting ready to.

  “You should rethink that,” Valdis said. “They loved you out there.”

  “It was a different experience,” Jason admitted. “I suppose they know that real dark wizards don’t usually show up for spectathts.”

  “And they didn’t see what your powers actually do to people,” Neil added.

  Neil was waiting for a healer match against Sigrid. That involved two identical teams of illusionary warriors g, with the healers on each providing the differe was a slower event than high-ranking bat, and cked in fsh, but it was something that most watchers could observe normally instead of relying on the projes.

  Jason looked over curiously at a pair of lobby attendants.

  “I ’t believe we’re out again. What’s happening to them all?”

  “It’s these out-of-town adventurers,” the other one said. “Here, I’ll take that tray over to the buffet table if you like.”

  “Thanks, Mike. When did you grow the moustache, by the way?”

  “Oh, it’s new. Do you think it works?”

  “Uh… yes?” The two parted ways, ‘Mike’ heading for the buffet table until his colleague was out of sight. He then immediately scarpered so suspiciously he looked like a cartoon bank robber. Over at the buffet table, a local fighter watched him go with a fused expression.

  “Where’s he taking all the biscuits?”

  ***

  “No,” Clive told Valdis firmly. “Jason is not going bato that thing until we figure out what he did to it.

  Clive, somehow, now seemed to be in charge of mirage chamber operations. The staff weren’t precisely sure how that happened, but it had involved stabilising the power distribution and whatever had happeo its mana flow. It also involved scathing respoo any questions deemed insuffitly insightful.

  “It’s fine,” Valdis wheedled, more like a child than a gold-rank prince. “Nothing blew up.”

  “We don’t uand how the System mao imprint itself on the mirage chamber projectors and what the long-term effects will be.”

  “People love the System iion,” Valdis said.

  “People love a lot of things that might get them killed, Valdis. I wasn’t allowed to cel the upis, but at least that allows us to monitor what’s happening. It would be eveer if Jason was here to answer questions instead of sneaking off.”

  ***

  “…and Granny Danielle helped me arrange secretly digging out the underground ste,” Stash expined. He was walking down a hallway beside Jason, looking like a more boyish version of Humphrey but with silver hair and eyes. He appeared as his actual age, which was his early twenties. Jason looked much the same, at a gnce, which was normal for essence users. People could see the age ihough, in the way they carried themselves.

  “She doesn’t mind you calling her Granny Danielle?” Jason asked.

  “No, she loves it! Humphrey doesn’t, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “He says it’s giving her ideas.”

  Jaso out an easy ugh.

  They heard a raised voice through a door as they passed.

  “…what do you mean, you’re adding Ned full-time? I don’t care if the audience ‘loved the interpy,’ the audience are imbeciles who’ll eat whatever we feed them. Have you heard those sponsorship annous? You know Ned writes those, right?”

  ***

  Gss towers jutted from the tral district of Yaresh. The tallest of them tapered to a point, a ft pte on the bluip allowing room for one person to stand. The building itself offered no access, but it offered a vantage from whie could turn and look over the whole city. Doing just that, Jason mused that design robably not by act.

  “You’re in my spot.”

  Jason smiled, then turo look at Alyeth. The diamond ranker was h in pce, wings spread out behihe wings had wooden frames and leaves as feathers.

  “That’s new,” he noted. “Item?”

  “Yes. Not all of us just start yanking new and strange powers out of nowhere.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  A line of aterial snaked out of Jason’s cloud fsk, currently hanging on his neckce as an amulet. The cloud took the form of a floating chair a in it, then waved at his previous pervitingly. Alyeth drifted over and waved a hand over the ft, round ptform on the building’s peak. The pte oip of the building desded into the tapered roof, leaving a hole. Up through the hole rose a luxurious chair, anchored on a swivel. Jason ughed as her branch wings retracted out of sight and she floated into the seat.

  “The city is beautiful,” Jason said, a it. He had an affe for tree houses, which Yaresh always had, but now everything had been built to a cohesive pn. The housing wards were tightly packed, with rope bridges between decks and ptforms. Trade districts were more open, and included more of the local dark grey stohe river was no longer lined with piers, docks and warehouses, but now featured a swath of parknd oher side.

  “Master craftsmen from the skybranch elves spent years helping with the restru,” Alyeth expined. “They’re a magical variant of elves, much like the brighthearts inated with the smoulder. I helped them once, as you did with the brighthearts, although the threat was nothing so drastic. It was enough that they were very generous with Yaresh, and gifted me these wings when the job was done.”

  “The results are impressive.”

  “The ges go beyond simple looks. Utility infrastructure, magic distribution, evacuation bunkers. The defence systems were pletely overhauled. Your friend Travis helped with the new city defences. You ’t see it now, but if the defensive barrier gets breached, the trees will grow what he called to as ‘rotary spear ons’ out of stone and wood.”

  “I’d like to see that in a.”

  “I hope you never do. When my home and family were destroyed as a child, the idea of a safe home became quite important to me. My inability to protect it from the messeroubled me greatly. I was uo even attempt advang through diamond rank for many years. Now that it is restored, and more defehan ever, I have finally achieved a measure of peace.”

  “Only a few diamond rankers involve themselves in the affairs of society, yes? You and Charist here. The Mirror King and Rond Remore.”

  “Most move unseen, seeking a path to whatever lies at the peak of diamond rank. To me, it’s uo the point of not being sure it exists.”

  “It exists.”

  “I suppose it must seem straightforward to you, living the life you do. For me, it’s listening for whispers in a storm. Perhaps things will be clearer for you. You seem to have little trouble finding the path, and you are not alone in this. I am young by diamond-rank reing, but yeion of adventurers is the stro I have seen. Not just in how powerful you all are, but in how swiftly you advance. A product of ing up in an age of turmoil, I suppose.”

  “There is a curse on the world I e from: May you live in iing times.”

  Alyeth ughed.

  “I see. These st couple of decades have been a crucible. The great monster surge, timed alongside the Builder invasion, was just the beginning. The world has been at war with the messengers ever sihey sweep through an area, in search of Purity’s legacy relic. Then they move on. Sometimes they leave behind some of their o rule an ensved region. Other times, they leave only ruins, depending on how hard they were fought.”

  “How well are they being fought off?”

  “Well enough in the cions. Adventurers and resources are tralised in rge poputiores, too heavily for the messeo strike at without massive cost. More isoted regions have been the focus; there are mae city-states like Yaresh. Vulnerable regions rely on the holy armies raised by the gods and, increasingly, those of nations and city states. Knowledge reparing her army before anyone khey o, and War did the same in response. Nations and other churches have been copying their example for years, now, but there are only so many essence users to go around.”

  “Standing armies were never something this world had, right? Pallimustus has always relied on adventurers.”

  “Yes, and adventurers are still the tip of the spear. But they are individualistic by nature, and do not make good soldiers. They don’t like taking orders, and anyone who has been on an expedition knows the challehat e frling them in rge groups. There are not enough to make true armies of them anyway. The problem with using anyone else is that the most basic messenger is silver rank. There is little point sending waves of bronze rao die just to eliminate one of them. Those anders who try have been savagely rebuked.”

  Jaso out a sigh.

  “I’ve returo a war, then.”

  “Yes. Yaresh has been quiet sihe st of the messengers were wiped out. The messengers move like locusts in search of their goal. If they do not find what they want in the more rural regions, they will eventually make more certed attacks oies.”

  “I suppose I should go sign up.”

  “And you would be wele. But I think, perhaps, you’ve bee so used to being the focal point of events that you fet not everything is about you. This is the world’s war, not yours, and we’ve done well enough in your absence. I know you io return home, and you have earhat. We’ll tinue doing fihout you, and there will be plenty of messeo fight on your return.”

  “Thank you. I’d invite you to e with us, but Earth isn’t ready for diamond rankers. It barely has the magic fold rankers, and there are still mas where it’s rough for them to be.”

  “It would be fasating to see, but I still have much to do here. Yaresh is rebuilt, but the surroundings regions are not so far along. We still rely on the brighthearts for much of our food as we establish new farming towns. Getting people to repopute the existing ones has been something of a disaster, so building fresh ones is proving more effective.”

  “It’s easy to overlook what es when your job is iing moments of violend destru. How hours, even minutes of fighting mean months and years of recovery.”

  “Yes, but those of us who fight have our pce as well. Thank you for preventing an unstoppable army of undead from rising out of the ground and flooding my home with death and despair, by the way.”

  “It took a lot more than just me, but you’re wele.”

  “You were in charge, Jason. That means you take the credit, even if you sat back helplessly and did nothing.”

  “Hey, who have you been talking to?”

  ***

  Although there was a river running through Yaresh, few of the docks and industrial facilities that once lis shores had been rebuilt. What remained was all he downstream river gate, where the water passed uhe wall and out of the city.

  Memorial Park now occupied most of the shoreline on both sides of the river. Full of open space, greenery and picturesque bridges. The park was dotted with statues, sculptures and memorial walls dedicated to those who had fallen, and those who protected the ohat survived.

  Jason found Farrah standing in front of a sculpture of Gary fighting a messenger. Unlike Jason and his team, who had been ihick of the fighting, Gary had single-handedly led a rge group of survivors to safety. They had mostly been craftsmen and manufacturers, and on hearing of Gary’s death, they had not only sponsored, but created the dispy. It showed him r in defia a messenger, sheltering people behind him.

  “Why do they only show him fighting and r, like some savage warrior?” she asked as Jason stood o her.

  “This isn’t him. Statues are about eople need, not the people they show, and these people needed heroes. Fighters. The man he was, who he really was, isn’t for the people visiting this park to remember. It’s for us, the people who loved him. We’re his true memorial, not a statue in a park or a pque on a wall.”

  She reached out, hesitant, and brushed her fingers against the stone.

  “I ’t keep looking at this,” she said, then turned and strode away.

  Jason followed, a few steps behind, until she arrived at a wooden bench by the water. They sat, letting the sounds of the park wash over them. The sun was high, the sky was clear and there were a lot of families out enjoying the park. Children ughed as they chased small animals into the bushes and parent warhem not to waoo far. Teenagers spshed around in the river, which was clear down to the bottom. The new sanitation infrastructure and ck of river industry had left the water pristine.

  “You said you didn’t know, but you kind of did,” Farrah said after minutes of her saying a word.

  “You know how this works. I have vague ideas at best about what’s happening with me. This time it was you and me, but the uainty is the same.”

  “I don’t want to be just some attat to you. Or a sve.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “Of course I do, but you’re the oh all the power. I’m the one being turned into some kind of magical servant. I’m not your familiar.”

  “I know that. I like to think that being my familiar isn’t so bad, but you aren’t some astral being. Your idea of existing is very different from theirs. I would never expect you to see things the way they do.”

  “What am I, then? Whenever you did… whatever it is that you did, the boween us got stronger. A lot stronger. My abilities won’t advail I accept this damn thing.”

  She brought up a system window.

  [Jason Asano] has half-asded to the status of [Astral Nexus].You are boo the [Astral Nexus].You have been assighe status [Voice of the Will] of the [Astral Nexus].As a [Voice of the Will], you will have access to a measure of power belonging to the [Astral Nexus] while also being subject to its dictates.Until you aowledge this role, your status will be in flux, impeding your ability to advance your essence abilities.“It o get into my soul, Jason. To ge me. It already has enough access through our bond to mess me up. It’s holding my advao ransom.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry. You’ve had to live with this, not knowing if there was any solution while I was out of reach. I was aware of it, on some level, but I couldn’t fix it while I was still fixing myself. And I ’t do it here, either.”

  “What do you mean by fix it? Sever the bond?”

  “If that’s what you want. I’m hoping that I do better, though. I o get you into my astral kingdom so I take a proper look at our e. If you still trust me enough to go somewhere I have all the power.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. I still trust you. Why did you wait until now to e to me?”

  “I’ve been watg your emotions.”

  “Through the bond?”

  “I ’t do that. I’ve just been peeking with aura senses, rude as that is. And I think you khat. I’ve been waiting for you to be ready, and I think that you came here because you are, now.”

  She nodded, Jason’s heart breaking at the fearful hesitan one of the stro people he kneortal arch of white stone opened in front of them and filled with gold, silver and blue light. He stood up and held his hand out to her. She reached out and took it.