Chapter 1052: A Complicated Hammer (Patreon)

Jason had avatars operating throughout his astral kingdom, including one in the city of New Water. He was leading Melissa through an archway and into a courtyard where sandstone apartments surrounded a shared courtyard centred on a water feature. The fountain cooled the desert air with a fine mist while leafy green plants stood in pots and grew out of wall alcoves.

“This one is yours,” he said, pointing to a door painted bright yellow. Another door opened to allow a woman with silver hair and eyes to exit one of the other apartments. She flashed an easy smile and jogged over to give Jason a quick hug.

“You really are back,” she said after letting him go.

“I am,” he said. “Melissa, this is—”

“Melody Jain,” Melissa said, confusion on her face. “The Order of the Reaper hunted you for years.”

Jason nodded.

“Melody, this is Melissa,” Jason said. “Former vampire and, like you, former member of the Order of the Reaper.”

A thought struck Jason and he frown at Melissa.

“It is ‘former,’ right? I don’t think we ever explicitly discussed it.”

“Given that everyone else in it was turned into vampires and then killed by you, I would say very much so. There are probably a few that Umber hadn’t sent into the afterlife, and there might be some scattered members back on Pallimustus, who didn’t get swept up by your shadow’s brother in the first place. As an organisation, though, I think we can safely call it dead.”

“It’s been called dead before,” Melody pointed out. “Let’s not go jumping to conclusions.”

“How did you come to be here?” Melissa asked her.

“The same way you are, I suspect. I tried to kill Jason and he decided to save me instead. He has a habit of picking up enemies in distress. It’s how he met my daughter.”

“In fairness, I was more her enemy than she was mine,” Jason said. “Melissa, Melody has been through some things that I believe will resonate with you. She was critical in developing the process I used to remove your vampirism. Mel, can I leave you to give Other Mel the tour? I’m in ten places at once and all these avatars need refurbishing.”

“Of course, although I would like to know when I’ll be seeing my daughter again. And Earth, in that order.”

“Earth might be a while. I need to stay hands off to prevent things there escalating. Sophie I’m looking to get to sooner, rather than later, although I have a couple of things to do here before I head out.”

“What do I do now?” Melissa asked.

“Whatever you want,” Jason told her. “There wouldn’t have been much point freeing you if I wasn’t going to set you free.”

The avatar dissolved into nothing before Melissa had a chance to respond.

“He likes to get the last word in,” Melody told her. “Come on, let’s go see if he remembered to give you furniture.”

***

Jason walked through the streets of Arbour, the living tree city. With him were Farrah and the city’s avatar, who could have passed for Farrah’s darker-skinned half-sister. A breeze played with the leaves of the canopy above, leaving the dappled sunlight to dance across the ground. For being a city so steeped in nature, there was a startling verticality to it. Buildings nestled in the branches of a forest that would dwarf even the great redwoods of Earth. Platforms and bridges strung them all together, making a levelled metropolis that had limited need of the ground.

All through the city were massive pods, growing from the trees like fruit or out of the ground like exposed roots. They had the look of giant cocoons, ranging from the size of a person to three times that size. They were all trembling, as if with anticipation.

“It started when you reached diamond-rank,” Arbour said, “and it’s escalating day by day.”

“How long?” Jason asked.

“We could induce them at any time, now,” Arbour said. “If we don’t, they’ll start emerging on their own in a few weeks, unless you want to intervene in their life cycle. You control all of this, after all.”

“No,” Jason said firmly. “I can do anything I want in this place, but I’m not ready to intervene on living things at that level. I don’t want to get something wrong and have their biology fail the moment they leave my domain, keeling over dead.”

“Then there’s a question of what we do with them all,” Farrah said. “This city has been empty for a long time, but it’s about to get very full.”

“We need caretakers,” Jason said. “The most important of them will be you, Arbour, but there needs to be more. That should include Nik, but he’s too important to Earth’s defences. I’m bringing in Jali Corrik Fen and some of the messengers from the same transformation zone where we met Arbour.”

“They’re still on Earth as well,” Farrah pointed out. “I didn’t think you could open a portal to Earth without causing problems.”

“I can’t. Fortunately, I have some former dimensional pirates in my employ who still have a ship. They can bring Jali here the long way, with normal dimensional travel.”

“I thought Jota was playing ferryman to Team Biscuit and the others from Pallimustus.”

“They’ve picked up their own rides. Dimension ships aren’t exactly common, even where Dawn comes from, but they aren’t that hard to get a hold of.”

“I’m a little surprised you’re not winging your way to them right now.”

“Soon. My cloud flask is still in the process of upgrading to diamond. It takes time since my astral kingdom infuses more and more power into the flask with every rank-up. I also need to keep my prime avatar here while I construct new lesser avatars that can operate outside of the astral kingdom.”

“And what will you do with them?”

“Look for ways to kill a god. It’s a big cosmos, and the answer is out there somewhere.”

Farrah gave him a worried look.

“What if the answer you already know is the only one out there, Jason? You kill a god by killing the planet they’re on, and you can’t do that to Earth or Pallimustus. You could do it on one of your own planets here, but I doubt you can get a god into your astral kingdom. Even if it’s possible to get them in here, I don’t think they’d come.”

“That was one of the first plans I came up with, but you’re right: it isn’t viable. I considered redirecting the dimensional bridge to force Knowledge in here, but it won’t work. Replacing Earth as the terminus point would destroy the bridge, and eventually the Earth as well.”

“Do you even have the power to modify the bridge like that?”

“I do. Dawn made sure that I was connected to the bridge so that Knowledge couldn’t just kill me once it was complete, but that connection is stronger than ever now. The bridge is effectively an annex of my astral kingdom. That gives me quite a lot of power over it, but it remains external to my domain, meaning that I can’t just cludge it into shape and forcibly keep it stable. If I divert it from its actual purpose, the bridge will collapse.”

“So, you have to keep the bridge as it is?”

“Not entirely. It has to remain true to what we built it for, but I can make some changes. The problem is that I don’t know how. Building it in the first place took Clive and I years and a trove of stolen astral magic. Modifying it without breaking it to pieces would require astral magic beyond even what we stole from the messengers.”

“I know that you’re determined to kill Knowledge, Jason, but you need to think about what happens if you can’t. Not without paying a price you’re unwilling to.”

“I know. We could potentially migrate Earth’s population into my astral kingdom, then detonate the Earth.”

“You won’t get everyone, Jason. Some will refuse to leave their planet, even if Knowledge has conquered it.”

“I’m aware. I just don’t have any better ideas. Yet. There’s something I need to look into, a door I never thought I would open again.”

“Would you like to share?”

“Not yet. I need to settle things with Velius and look into it while the cloud flask is upgrading and the avatars are being spooled up.”

“If you intend to send these avatars out into the cosmos, how are you going to do that? Do you have a fleet of dimension ships I’m unaware of?”

“Not yet. Let me show you.”

Jason waved a hand and a figure appeared in the air in front of them. It was blurry, like a low-resolution image, but was clearly an image of Jason, spreadeagled like a Vitruvian man. It stood ten feet tall and had wings of darkness and stars, much like Jason’s cloak when he used it to fly.

“As an astral king,” Jason explained, “I can create messengers. These avatars will still be me, but modified into messenger bodies.”

“To take advantage of the messenger ability to traverse the deep astral alone,” Farrah realised.

“Precisely.”

“Are you worried about their natural proclivity towards arrogance and tyrannical behaviour?”

“The messenger part of them shouldn’t impact the personality. It’ll still be mine.”

“I know,” Farrah said, doing a bad job of hiding a grin. Jason scowled at her and she let out a laugh.

“That’s quite enough of that. I’m assuming that once the cloud flask is ready to produce a dimension ship, you’ll be coming with me to find the team?”

“You’re damn right I will.”

***

Velius floated in space. He could easily survive the temperature and lack of atmosphere, but that didn’t make them comfortable, so he was shrouded in a large bubble of air from a device clipped to his belt. He watched as a new planet was slowly being formed in the afterlife, once more under the control of the Reaper. Trails of dust covering a region the size of Jupiter were converging on a central point. Eventually they would become a new celestial body to replace the one Jason had blown up.

Directing the process were hundreds of colossal golems, ranging from the size of skyscrapers to the size of mountains. They directed the flow of matter as it came together, manipulating the very substance of reality. Floating between Velius and the floating protoplanet was the person directing the golems, Erigo Fin Desca. The Builder’s prime vessel was a messenger, or had been before his extensive modification. With amber orbs for eyes, alabaster skin and silver wings, there was no flesh left to be seen. Even his clothing had no fabric, being a toga comprised of exquisitely fine metal links. It replicated fabric but with the shimmer of metal, in hues of blue and copper.

Erigo did not share Velius’ desire for comfort, letting the harsh conditions of space press in on him. He was utterly motionless, without so much as a blink or a twitch. He could easily have passed as a dead mannequin, drifting through the void.

A circle of white stone appeared in the air and was filled with gold, silver and blue light as the portal opened. Jason floated through and looked around, his gaze passing over Erigo before settling on the distant golems. Watching as the vast constructs did their works, Jason drifted into the air bubble around Velius who turned his head to glance at him before resuming his own observation. They floated side by side, watching the spectacle.

“Haven’t seen a world engineer in a long time,” Jason said, nodding in the direction of the golems. “This is what they’re meant to be for, not invading worlds so the Builder can jury-rig his own personal planet?”

“Yes.”

“Nice to bsee the Builder doing his actual job, although I must admit to an aversion to his giant robots. A conditioned response.”

“World engineers are tools, as much as a hammer or drill,” Velius said.

“That’s a complicated hammer.”

“Reality engineering is a complicated endeavour.”

“Tell me about it. My own efforts have landed somewhere between bumbling and purely accidental.”

“Reality engineering isn’t something you should be doing at all.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Velius looked at Jason again, nodding his acknowledgement.

“The Reaper would appreciate you limiting your ability to insert yourself into afterlives.”

“If the Reaper hadn’t played a role in trapping me here, I still wouldn’t know it was something I could do.”

“I warned it that you wouldn’t appreciate how it went about this.”

“But you didn’t tell it not to, did you?”

“No, I did not. I am sorry, for what it’s worth. Not regretful, but apologetic.”

“I appreciate that. For what it’s worth. I know you’re a good guy, Velius. So’s your boss, at the end of the day. I know the Reaper’s intentions have always been good, but intentions don’t matter, in the end. You can apologise when things go wrong, but that doesn’t mean the damage wasn’t dealt. Some things can’t be undone.”

“Yes,” Velius agreed. “The damage inflicted by the sundering of the throne—”

“I’m not here for that.”

“You will need to address it eventually.”

“Next on my list, but you know what comes first.”

Velius nodded.

“You did not bring Shade with you.”

“He’s not a gloater, and he knows that his attention is ultimately what Umber wants. He won’t see Shade again until he learns.”

“That may be some time.”

“What’s immortality’s for, if not having the time to wait?”

“True. If Shade is not here to see his brother, then why are you?”

“Shade’s a better man than me. I am a gloater.”

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