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“Whoops,” Jason said as he stared at three filthy people in cages who stared back, seemingly equally shocked. He was quite sure he was winning that particular contest, but they didn’t know that. “I did not mean to go back this far. G’day, Rufus, Gary. Farrah.”
“Who are you?” Rufus asked, squinting through the bars of his cage. “How do you know our names? Did the Adventure Society send you?”
“Uhhh, that’s kind of a long story,” Jason said. “I don’t mind telling it, but maybe let’s save it for after you’re not about to get super-sacrificed to an evil cannibal blood cult that wants to take over the world and also eat you?”
“I think this guy might be really smart,” Gary told the others.
“Thank you, Gary.”
After the first five times little Jason’s mortal body exploded when big Jason tried to fit his big fat consciousness inside it, he stopped trying to do that. Then he tried only sliding through small slivers of memory, but even that made normal-rank Jason’s brain bleed out of his nose. After that, he decided to just eat the cost of overt paradox and let there be two Jason Asanos running around the universe. But little Jason kept exploding at random times anyway, usually in a manner very destructive to the people and things around him, and Jason had the dawning realization that he would have to leverage his vast cosmic power in actually intelligent and thought-out ways instead of just winging it.
“Maybe I should learn how things work before doing them?” he mused to himself as he restarted again, the world around him smearing into streaks of bright watercolour. “No, that can’t be right. If I’d done that in the past, the world would have been destroyed twice over by now.”
“That’s only because of how slow you are at learning things,” Colin said helpfully.
“That’s hurtful because it’s true.”
“Are we going to try the fridge idea this time?” Gordon asked politely, orbs flashing.
“Yeah, I think so. I didn’t die from the other kind of paradox, but this one will be trickier to contain. It’ll be easier if I can go back less far. Really hard to aim properly, though. I think the process naturally gravitates towards times when my soul traveled between worlds.”
“That would explain why we keep stumbling upon your past selves in various states of pantslessness,” Shade said.
“Yeah, vast cosmic power doesn’t seem to correlate with dignity as much as you’d think.”
“G’day Danielle, Thalia,” Jason said as he walked through the door on one end of the office space. “Elspeth, Lucian. What’re you silver-rankers all meeting about? Actually, don’t tell me, I don’t care, half of you are pricks and I went to the wrong when again.”
They watched him disappear through the opposite door.
“What is wrong with that man?” Elspeth Arella wondered.
“I wish I could just back to right before,” Jason said. “But then I just don’t have enough time to stop Knowledge’s plans. The crucial threshold is my first return to Earth. But that me can’t take having even an avatar’s worth of my mind shoved into his head, even after he becomes a gestalt being.”
“That was never going to work,” Shade said. “You are too influenced by the way time travel works in mortal fiction.”
Jason sighed. “Yeah, I know.” He looked up at the sky. Night in the desert was cool and peaceful. The blanket of stars overhead was a comforting and familiar tapestry; Greenstone and the surrounding delta would always hold a special place in his heart.
“I’m kind of glad, though. If resetting time completely was actually possible, or if I had to go back to being my past self... you guys wouldn’t be bonded to me the same way, and there’d be no guarantee I could pull it off again. I would miss our connection.”
“And so would we,” Shade said, Gordon’s orbs lighting up in a sequence of agreement beside him. A singular leech appeared on Jason’s shoulder and gave an adorable, soul-rattling screech.
Jason smiled. “Thanks, guys. No matter what happens from now on... at least I won’t be alone. We all know how that tends to go for me.”
“Wait, slow down,” Clive said. They were seated around a cloud desk, in the waterfall room where they had once pored over Jason’s little portal augmentation project. Clive had been furiously scribbling down notes all day, and the table was scattered with notebooks open to various pages as well as loose sheets of paper covered in parts of magical diagrams. Most of it was leftovers from the portal project. That felt like so long ago to Jason, but to Clive it had been last night. Jason was very much not used to having to be the one to slow down for Clive, and found that the situation was more disconcerting than anything else. It was a very ‘but then who’s flying the plane?’ kind of feeling.“So your astral kingdom is an actual place, right? It exists physically, as a complete universe, in a given location?”
“Basically, yeah. The location exists because it’s occupying it. You know the deep astral is weird about space.”
“And Pallimustus and your world are temporally linked, which is what allows you to exploit this loophole in order to... whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Yup.”
“But your astral kingdom is a separate space, apart from the two worlds. With its own subjective time. Is that how you’re maintaining your consciousness across these loops?”
“Well,” Jason said. “Kind of. Yeah, but nah. It’s—”
“Complicated, I know, you keep saying, Jason,” Clive said, somehow managing to sound both frustrated and enthused at the same time. “I know you’re not great at explaining things, but you need to try if you want me to help. I can’t even begin to untangle the mess you’ve made this time. Not only is this not my field, but from you’ve told me the field isn’t even allowed to exist. This is magnitudes beyond anything we were working on before you came back, and we were already struggling with that.”
“Technically, I’m not sure I’m back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could be projecting forward,” Jason said.
“How would it be forward? This happened before, for you.”
“Well, yeah. But that was when I had a mortal body. I’m a universe now. I run on Universal Jason Standard Time, and when I pop over to this world or Earth it’s not like it’s a consistent plus or minus five. It’s a good thing my solar system doesn’t move around. Actually, I realized a while ago that it probably should, but I don’t know how to make it work with the way I set up the physics and I’m kind of too scared to touch it in case it breaks something. It’s probably fine, though, right?”
Clive opened his mouth, then closed it. He let out a deep breath from his nostrils, even though he didn’t need to breathe.
“Jason,” he said. “I don’t understand why you’ve come to me. You don’t need my help doing this impossible thing. You’ve already done it.”
Jason looked at him like he’d turned evil and grown a second head, like a heidel. “Well, yeah. Doing the impossible is my thing. Your thing is something different.”
“And what’s that?”
“Making sense of the latest stupid thing I’ve dragged myself into and somehow coming up with a workable solution in under four hours like an unrealistic sci-fi movie genius,” Jason said.
Clive frowned. Instead of reacting to Jason’s familiar need to water down sincerity with flippant references, he looked over at his friend with something between concern and unease. It was a look Jason was very used to by now.
“You’re not talking about your plans to stop Knowledge.”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
“Or dealing with the Keeper of Moments’ retribution for your actions.”
“I wouldn’t ask that of any of you.”
“Then what is it, Jason? Why come to me?” Clive asked, frustrated.
“Because you believed me,” Jason said simply. “I just showed up and told you everything, and you believed me right away.”
“Well, yes. I’m not sure you understand the degree of absurdity attached to the things that happen around you, Jason. I’m sure it all seems ordinary to you, but the rest of us cope by throwing our hands up and giving up the question of disbelief entirely. At this point you could tell me almost anything and I would be forced to believe you.”
“Well, I think I may have gotten in over my head this time,” Jason said. “Even for me. I figured I should consult people smarter than me, and try to give them what context I can.”
Clive blinked. “You really are from a distant future.”
“It’s not that distant.”
“You must have had centuries to mature.”
“It’s not that distant!”
“Did you really think that would work?” Knowledge asked.
“To be honest, not really,” Jason admitted. “It was worth a try, though.”
Fifteen diamond-rank spears made of actual diamond sliced through him in an instant, even as they pinned the bloody sack of flesh that was supposed to house him to the stone of the cliff. Neither they nor the shredded remnants of his avatar dissipated, even well after his body should have turned to rainbow smoke. He was being kept right on the brink of death, the magic in the spears stretching the thinnest of moments into hours.
That wasn’t really the problem. Well, the fact that his consciousness was trapped in a pulped mess of flesh that could no longer move was a bit of a problem. Knowledge had clearly prepared this priestess’ ability as a countermeasure to the possibility of Jason having a spare body stocked up. Jason didn’t actually know if he had a spare or not, as he would have kept the knowledge from his prime avatar to keep it from Knowledge. Not that it would’ve changed much.
In any case, occupying a pile of red ribbons that couldn’t move, see, hear, or otherwise interact with the world in any way other than a trickle of aura was unpleasant, but didn’t bother Jason all that much. He had been through worse, and besides, it wasn’t like he was inhabiting Thadwick.
The problem was that Knowledge’s forces then began to advance on the base below them. He was still pinned to the cliff like an unusually wet taxidermy insect, helpless to do anything but so close to the battle he could almost taste it with his senses. The little he could spread his aura out was only enough to tell him that fighting had broken out, and to let him feel it when the first lives were snuffed out. Despite knowing it was futile, he strained, tried to open his connection to his true self wider, willed his broken and battered flesh to move. It didn’t work. Even though he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, he roiled and seethed; even though he knew he could try again, it still hurt, every time he failed.
She knew that, of course.
“Halt!” the young man said, planting his dragon-wing sword into the ground. “There were reports of a suspicious character sneaking around the area. If you have nothing to hide, show me your face.”
“Oh,” Jason said. “Oh, this is really weird and uncomfortable.”
“I assure you that discomfiting you is not my goal. My name is Humphrey Geller,” Humphrey said, Humphrey-ly. “These are dangerous times, sir, and due to recent events the Adventure Society has been on high alert. There aren’t many essence users out in the delta. If you’re an adventurer from out of town, I’d like to give you the chance to clear up any misunderstandings. Please identify yourself.”
“Uh. John,” Jason said. “John Miller.”
“Not that again,” Colin said.
Humphrey’s head snapped to where a second figure now stood behind Jason. He tensed; he hadn’t sensed the person appear at all. He looked like Miller’s twin—except for the unnatural eyes. His aura was subdued, but when Humphrey examined the sliver of it he could sense, he was deeply disturbed. It was blood-drenched and undeniably sinister—there was no doubt in Humphrey’s mind that it was the aura of a villain.
“Colin...” Jason said.
“What? It’s just Humphrey.”
“It’s not our Humphrey! And now he’s going to stab us with his big dragon sword.”
“What? Why would he do that? Humphrey’s nice.”
“Because I forgot to let little me become friends with him and now he thinks we’re evil.”
“I think you need to stop calling your other self that.”
“But he’s just so small.”
Humphrey narrowed his eyes. He didn’t understand their game, but they were clearly taunting him. He understood that these people were dangerous, though he couldn’t tell what rank they were. They must be at least bronze, possibly even silver. He knew it would be reckless to engage. The other adventurers should be on their way, though, so he could try to stall.
“Mr. Miller, and... Mr. Colin, was it?” he asked.
Jason bit his cheek while Colin looked delighted. “Yeah, that’s me!”
“Are you aware of the Builder cult activity in this area?”
“What, those machine guys? I ate them,” Colin said. Humphrey jolted, eyes wide. “The edible parts, anyway. Those guys suck, they’re like two-thirds metal on the inside.”
“Colin!” Jason hissed. “Now he thinks we’re evil cannibals!”
“I never really understood you physical types’ hangup about cannibalism,” Colin said. “If the team wanted to start eating people one day, I’d be cool with it, even if it meant I had less to eat. I’d be good about it. I’d be really supportive.”
“I’m starting to realize I should’ve also had Danielle give you diplomacy lessons.”
“I’m flying through gold,” Jason observed. “I knew it would be quicker than silver, but I didn’t think it’d be this fast.”
“Diamond rank is different from previous ranks,” Shade said. “You know this. It is the journey started on the path to gold taken to completion. It is about forging a place for oneself in the cosmos. Deciding who you are in relation to it.”
Jason gazed out at the panorama stretching out below him. “You sound worried.”
“I have never doubted that you would have the resolve to get to diamond, Mr Asano, in the same way that achieving gold was easier for you than getting to mid-silver.”
“I’ve been trying very hard to be who I want to be this whole time, Shade.”
“I am aware.”
“But you’re concerned that who I want to be is someone who says ‘fuck the cosmos, I do what I want.’”
“Mr Asano, you’ve been that way since I met you at iron rank. And nobody who knows you thinks you are treating things so flippantly. You fought to reinstate the rules of the cosmos, at great cost to yourself. I know that you did not make your decision lightly. I simply worry that your choices this time will have ramifications beyond what we can imagine. A price that even you would find difficult to pay.”
“It’s been the people around me paying the price for my mistakes for a while now. It’ll be refreshing if that swings back around.”
“Due to your unusual path to half-transcendence, unlike other diamond-rankers, once your mortal power reaches diamond rank, you will brush up against full transcendence almost immediately.”
Jason raised an eyebrow. “Are you worried I’ll lose sight of mortality right before the finish line, like Dawn almost did?”
“No. I am concerned that if you achieve transcendence in the midst of the current crisis, it will impact your nature—your identity—in ways that will be difficult to untangle later.”
Jason reflected on this. “I suppose that’s fair. I think I’ll continue working on myself for as long as I live, so basically forever, but I imagine transcendent beings don’t change and evolve as easily as mortals do.”
“They do not.”
“But I know who I want to be, Shade. I’ve found my footing. That’s why I’m progressing to diamond so fast. I know I’ll stumble a little, before I get there. But that’s why I have you. And all the others.”
Shade didn’t respond immediately, but he didn’t need to. Jason smiled, feeling the supportive presence of his familiars inside his soul.
She always knew as soon as he arrived, of course. He could no more keep her from knowing his mind than she could stop him from attempting to tear her to pieces, no matter how impossible it was supposed to be.
Her advantages were omniscience and centuries of preparation. He couldn’t do anything about the former, but he was pretty confident he could throw a wrench in the latter. That said, to do that he had to first tease out all the varied layers of her plots—the contingencies, the alternate paths, the obfuscations, the forces kept in reserve. Every time he learned something, she would learn that he had learned it. She held all the pieces of the puzzle, and her broader view let her adapt and slot in any new pieces quickly; in comparison, he was fumbling in the dark, always ten steps behind with every move he made.
But he was used to that. This was how he had fought, from iron rank all the way to gold. He always started out every battle on the back foot, and held himself together through skill, endurance, and sheer force of will until he accumulated enough momentum to go all in. He wasn’t cowed by the gulf between them. For all that she had millennia more experience, resources, and knowledge than him, they were both infinite, in the end. Compared to the difference between a mortal and a god, the difference between a smaller infinity and a larger one had very little meaning. After a while, the numbers didn’t matter anymore; he knew he would win on a different playing field, with a different rule set, even if he didn’t know what that was yet.
After all, he might share some of their power, but he was not as limited as the gods.
“I FORGOT NEIL!” Jason yelled, jolting upwards in his bed.
“What?” Shade asked.
Jason raked his fingers through his hair. “I forgot to ask Neil to join my team this time! Last week!” He’d been too distracted nursing his latest soul damage hangover.
“Ah,” Shade said. “You’ve probably missed your window then. As a healer, he’s no doubt been recruited to another team by now.”
“Do you think if I engineer the deaths of his new team, he’ll agree to join ours again?”
“Probably not.”
Jason stomped angrily through his soul portal.
“Nothing but a bunch of spineless cowards,” he snarled.
“They chose not to confront Knowledge the first time for good reason.”
“Yeah, but that was before they met a diamond-ranker who literally traveled through time to convince them otherwise!”
“Some of them know enough to know that a time traveler may spell greater trouble for the universe than an overambitious god,” Shade said.
Jason glared at his familiar with both the eyes in his head and the one in the sky.
“All I am saying,” Shade said in a conciliatory tone, “is that these diamond-rankers have little reason to trust you. And, being diamond-rankers, they are used to being supremely confident in their own judgment.”
“And their judgment was that something drastic had to be done about the gods. Too bad that doesn’t include anything that involves actually confronting one,” Jason said bitterly. “I fought the Builder as a bronze-ranker, and the strongest people in the world, who can’t even die, don’t have the guts to risk themselves. Not even to save a whole world.”
“Not their world,” Shade said. “And one that faces not utter destruction, but an orderly domination.”
Jason bit down on the burst of savage anger. Rather than growl at Shade like a manchild, he let it out in distant earthquakes ripping through an empty continent.
“Forty diamond-rankers,” he said dully after his anger had deflated, leaving only weariness. “That’s most of the ones on Pallimustus. It would be enough. If they would just help, it would be enough.”
“Perhaps,” Shade replied. “Or perhaps not. There is no guarantee. Knowledge has contingencies upon contingencies, and she has been aware of this group’s plans for a long time. It is undeniable that they are a force fearsome enough to be an obstacle to the goddess’ plans, but that just makes it more likely that she has plans to deal with them should they prove a threat.”
A bench materialized and Jason sat, dropping his head into his hands. Shade floated next to him, letting him sit in silence for as long as he needed.
Eventually, Jason took a deep breath he didn’t need, then let it out. “Okay. Let’s try this another way.”
Jason blinked slowly.
“Uh...?”
He sat up and looked down at himself. He was dressed in a plain linen top and loose pants, airy and breathable. Though he had no idea how he had ended up here, his clothes were perfectly suited for the hot, muggy air. He had no bag, no accessories, no vehicle, nothing that would give him an inkling of why he had woken up passed out in the delta under the blazing sun, but with no sign of heatstroke.
He only knew three things. One, his name was Jason. No last name, apparently. A mononym, like Cher. Wait, four things.
One, his name was Jason. Two, he really wanted to join the Magic Society. It was his life’s dream or something, even though he wasn’t quite clear on what the Magic Society did or why he was so passionate about them. It was extremely important, however, that he join them and learn All The Things. This was his divinely appointed mission, though he also wasn’t clear on what his stance on divinity was.
Three, he had some kind of super-amnesia, because even trying to think about anything other than points one and two initiated a terrible, throbbing headache in his skull, like someone was doing something indescribable inside it with landscaping tools. He wasn't sure what those were, either.
Four, his favourite Cher song was If I Could Turn Back Time.
He looked around, picked a direction that felt right in his gut, and started to walk.
“Will you promise me something, Moppet?” Jason whispered, kneeling down in front of his niece.
“Uncle Jason, are you okay?” She sounded nervous; scared. He hated seeing that look on her face, and wished he could wipe it off, but knew he was more often than not the one who put it there lately. As he had been so many times.
“I’m trying very hard to make everyone be okay,” Jason told her. “As many people in this world as possible. Do you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you,” Emi said, frowning. “But Uncle Jason, you won’t explain anything. What’s going on?”
Jason bowed his head, and took a leaf from an old friend’s book. “Promise me that one day, if I ask, you’ll come with me. No matter what’s happening, how confused you are, how you feel about me, or what I might have done. Take your mom and dad along too, if you can, but I know I can’t ask the same promise of them. I’ll do my best to explain everything before then, but I’m so bad at it, Emi, so very bad at it.”
“Uncle Jason, you’re scaring me.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“You’re talking like a character with a million death flags.”
He chuckled, the sound slightly wet. “Don’t worry, Moppet. Your uncle’s a proper immortal now. I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
“Immortal?”
“Will you promise me, Moppet?”
Emi was silent for only a moment, those large, intelligent dark eyes, so much wiser than they should be at her age, boring into his. He didn’t know what she saw in them. He was afraid to know. Then, finally, she nodded.
“I promise.”
Jason shook his head, letting the dizziness slowly settle. His head felt like he’d tried to cram too many universes into one localized geography, which he supposed wasn’t all that far off. He didn’t need his eyes to see; once his aura senses were clear enough to perceive the world around him, he began to walk.
“Mr Asano,” Shade said from his shadow.
Jason didn’t reply. He was busy sifting through everything passing through his mind, then reorganizing more than half of it. It was like badly packed luggage contents getting all jumbled up after a rough bout of turbulence. He had never been great at packing. Erika had complained about it a lot, back when they’d still gone to places together as a family.
“Mr Asano. We have reached a point where I strongly suggest you stop. At least to take a break, take stock, and consider a different approach.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing every time.”
“And yet you ran out of ideas you had any real confidence in long ago. Your recent attempts have been increasingly reckless.”
“You can talk me through my next one more slowly then.”
“I don’t think any amount of strategizing will address the most relevant problem. Namely, that I believe you are approaching your mental limits.”
“You want me to just call it quits? After everything? All those people who were slaughtered in their homes, all those people who fought and lost everything, and you want me to pull out for what, my mental health?”
“You tried your hardest, and it didn’t work. Not because of any failing on your part, but due to the very nature of the battle in question. There is no shame in accepting that.”
“Everyone died this time, Shade.”
“Yes. And at the risk of sounding callous, perhaps the fact that the outcome was worse with your more dramatic intervention than the first time around is an indication that the venture is no longer worth pursuing.”
Jason stopped walking. “I can’t stop now.”
Shade hovered beside him. “For all your many faults, Mr Asano, you have never conceded to sunk cost before. Not when you knew you could make a better choice.”
“It’s too late.”
“It is never too late to choose better, Mr Asano. You know that.”
Jason whirled around. “You’re making it sound like trying to save the Earth is just me being selfish. Just another one of my childish impulses, or me clinging to anger instead of being the bigger man. Is that what you think? That the responsible thing to do is just to roll over and let Knowledge take over Earth as a super-god? Because it’s just some backwater planet that’s younger than your last space vacation lasted? Because the lives of its people are insignificant in the grand scheme of things? Because becoming a powerful immortal being means I should put everything aside for the sake of the greater good, no matter what it costs me or the world?”
Shade was silent. For a while there was only the sound of Jason’s angry footsteps as he stomped forward in a random direction. Finally, Shade spoke softly. “Your current path is costing both you and the world a great deal.”
Jason’s shoulders slumped. “I can take it.”
“That does not mean you should.”
“I notice you’re not mentioning the world.”
“Because you were correct in your insinuations, accusatory as they were,” Shade said. “My experiences on Earth were valuable, as all experiences are. There are people there I am glad to have met, and whose losses I will mourn before they return to my progenitor. But in the end, I am your shadow, Mr Asano, and no one else’s. I chose you, and at no small cost.”
Jason slowed to a stop. “Do you regret it?”
“No. And if you are asking me that, I must strongly reiterate my suggestion that you rest. Please, Mr Asano. Just for a while. Nothing will break while you aren’t watching. We will keep watch for you.”
Jason blinked in surprise at the sight of the second woman stepping through the portal to stand in front of him. “You told Farrah before you told me?”
“Jason,” Farrah said. “It’s my job to stop you when you lose your way, remember?” Raythe stood silently to the side, letting Farrah take the lead in the conversation.
“You think I should just give up on Earth?” Jason asked disbelievingly.
“No. But I know that when you’re desperate, you often turn to things that are incredibly destructive. It used to be they were only destructive to yourself, Jason, and I would have stopped you—have stopped you—even then. But that isn’t how things are anymore. Not with the power you have now.”
“You have me at a disadvantage. I don’t even know the specifics of what we’re talking about, here,” Jason said. “Raythe hasn’t told me yet. She just wants me to give up without telling me why.”
Raythe was about to answer when Farrah cut her off. “He’s right. Your approach isn’t going to work. Let me talk to him. If I have to slap some sense into him, then so be it. His decision will affect me anyway, since we’re connected.”
Jason frowned. He hadn’t thought of that.
“You didn’t think about that, did you,” Farrah said dryly.
“No,” he admitted.
“I guess it’s at least good to confirm that you don’t secretly think of me as your fourth familiar.”
“Of course I don’t!”
“You’re just an incredibly self-centered man with an ego the size of a solar system.”
“I can’t do anything about that,” Jason complained. “My everything is the size of a solar system.”
“What’s... happening to me?” Jason croaked, staggering.
“Changes to your soul, rippling through time,” a female voice he didn’t recognize murmured. “This shouldn’t be happening. This is very, very bad. What have you done, Jason Asano?”
Jason fell to his knees, as the worst pain he had ever felt in his life seared through his soul. It was worse than even the star seed. That pain, torturous as it had been, had only been able to scrape at the outer shell of his soul. This was coming from the inside, from something that had full access. A keening sound escaped his throat as his arms wrapped around himself unconsciously, as though trying to keep his guts from falling out. But it wasn’t his body falling apart—it was his soul.
Jason convulsed, then began to scream.
“I didn’t realize how much I’d come to rely on my domains,” Jason told Shade. “Not even being able to peek in on Earth because they don’t exist yet is uncomfortable.”
“I can sympathize,” Shade says. “I imagine it it is similar to how it feels when I cannot keep watch over individuals in the bathroom.”
“No, Shade, I don’t think it is.”
“What the—Jason?”
“Oh… it’s you guys.” Jason had just stumbled out of the portal, but now relaxed all at once, Neil barely managing to catch him before he fell over like a limp noodle. The relief flooding his chest mixed with a fuzzy warmth as his team crowded around him, the concern in their auras strong enough that he didn’t need to see to know the expressions on their faces.
Neil was a solid presence beneath him, his aunt’s hideous clothing providing very comfortable layers of padding. It wasn’t quite a cloud bed, but Jason thought dazedly that they might have finally found a promising direction to take Lady Davone’s artistic talents. Jason’s eyelids were heavy, and he wasn’t above passing out in front of his friends, big special cosmic man or not, but Neil was carefully propping him back up to examine him. The elf was raking him over with his perception power, and based on how his aura felt, was growing disturbed at what he found.
“Jason, can you focus on my voice?”
“Uh-huh...”
“What’s wrong with him?” Humphrey’s voice, laced with urgency and worry.
“Nothing’s wrong with him physically, but...”
“But?”
Neil’s aura wavered.
“It’s his magical matrix. It’s not breaking down like last time, but it’s unstable, and... changed. Or changing. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Don’t tell me he did something stupid to himself again,” came Sophie’s voice. “That was rhetorical, Clive.”
As his friends argued around and about him, their voices mixed into a tinny chorus that echoed strangely in Jason’s ears. His awareness kept waxing and waning, like a wavering candle flame. Truth be told, he had forgotten when he was, what his plans had been, or what exactly he had just been doing; in the moment, he was just glad he was here.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you guys in a really, really long time,” Jason murmured. He’d pitched forward again at some point; he was staring at part of Neil’s sleeve, the woolly fabric itching at his nose.
“That’s weird, because we saw you earlier at breakfast,” Sophie said. “But that wasn’t really you, was it?”
Jason began to chuckle, barely audible and muffled by Neil’s sweater. He felt a small shift, and realized that Neil was probably struggling to move him gently. Gold-rankers were heavy as it was, let alone whatever it was Jason weighed now. Only Neil’s far above-average strength let him carry him at all.
“Some help here, Humphrey,” Neil grunted.
“On it.”
As his friends slowly heaved him into his cloud house—the sensation as he crossed its threshold the spiritual equivalent of the sound a phone made when it was plugged in—Jason realized that it had been so very long since they’d all been together like this. And longer still since he had allowed them to touch him, let alone carry his weight. He was completely helpless right now, as he had been so many times in Knowledge’s clutches, but there was no panic, no reflexive struggle.
He closed his eyes, and allowed himself to drift, his friends’ auras draped around him like a blanket.
“Deception,” Jason greeted. The figure floating in front of him wasn’t what he would have expected, but that seemed like the point.
Deception studied him curiously. “I can feel what you are,” they said, “but I do not know who you are. A god, but not a god. An aberration, but one with permission to intrude.”
“Yeah, being allowed in places no one should be is one of my things,” Jason said. “Though the cosmos isn’t happy with me, I can tell you that much.”
“What do you want from me?”
Jason tilted his head. “You’re the god of deceit.”
“No.”
“That business with Purity and Disguise. It was Knowledge’s idea.”
“Yes.”
“You must’ve gotten a kick out of that. But I would imagine,” Jason said, “that of all the gods on Pallimustus, there are none who have hidden as many things from Knowledge as you have. Or fed her as many falsehoods. You see, I’m looking to get in on that myself. Do they have disinformation campaigns in this world?”
Deception smiled.
“Do you have any idea,” Raythe said quietly, stepping into his path, “how many times I’ve had to kill you?”
Jason gave her a weary but sincere grin, leaning on the sword still half-plunged into the ground. “Nope. That kind of stuff’s for you and your boss to keep track of, not me. I mean, technically, I’m not even allowed to know. If you want to tell me though, I’d love to know my high score before y—”
He didn’t even see her move.
“Jason, you’re scaring me,” Erika said in a shaky voice.
He was so sick and tired of hearing that line, every single fucking time. He forced the words out through gritted teeth, clamping down on his aura with a vice-grip to keep it under control.
“Just. Get. In the portal, Erika.” There he would be able to think better, be able to explain better. “All of you.” And they would be safe in there, even if something unexpected happened. “Just. Get in. And I’ll explain.”
“Jason,” Ian said cautiously, stepping closer. He moved slowly, with his hands held loosely up, as though he were approaching a dangerous wild animal.
“GET IN THE PORTAL!” Jason screamed, his cloak flaring around him as though blasted by an intangible burst of wind. But not a single bit of aura leaked out. His control was ironclad. He would not allow himself to scare his family away again.
But then why were they still looking at him like that?
He was shaking, too, he realized. His prime avatar’s performance was increasingly subpar lately. He needed to learn to make better ones, like Jamis Fran Muskar’s, but he just didn’t have enough time. There was never enough time.
If only his family members would step through the portal arch into his astral kingdom, then he could conjure a nicer, more approachable Jason for them to talk to, one better with his words and more similar to the man they had known. He was fairly certain he remembered enough of that person to do that. Since it was some version of him, his subconscious would probably pull most of the weight—that was how it tended to be with him. If he had to create the personality matrix from scratch, though, he could probably swing it too. His family didn’t understand how much effort he was willing to go to for them.
“Everything will be all right,” he said to himself.
“Y-Yes, Jason, I’m sure it will,” Erika said. That made him feel better. It was good that she was finally understanding. He still had so much to do, after this, but this was the most important part.
He smiled at them, ignoring their flinches. They were always so skittish around magic, in the early days. “Get in now.” A little politeness never hurt, as Shade always said. “Please.”
Jason liked to think that, for the most part, he’d moved past the worst of his issues from his first return to Earth. But seeing the fear in his friends’ eyes, knowing that the unbreakable bonds he had managed to maintain through a miracle greater than what gods could achieve had died in their infancy here, due to his own actions, cut deeper than he could have ever imagined.
“This won’t stick,” he told himself. Over and over, because it had to be true.
Back on Earth, he hadn’t trusted himself to choose the world over his family. He had matured since then, grown stronger, wiser. But some things never changed. He had chosen Earth over the integrity of the cosmos. He had thought nothing could shake his resolve.
Certain loops were doomed to fail; he eventually learned to recognize them right away, so he could avoid them, and pull out early.
“They’ll be waiting for me when I’m done,” he whispered.
“They are waiting for you now, Mr Asano,” Shade said.
“Soon,” Jason said. “I’m almost there.”
Jason flexed his hand, staring down at it in fascination.
“Mr Asano?”
“Reality’s coming apart at the seams, Shade,” he murmured. “I think what’s happened is about to not have happened soon. And this’ll keep happening again and again and again, until either the cosmos or some version of me quits. Or until I win? What do you think, Gordon? This the kind of reality assassination you live for?” A pause. “No?”
He laughed.
“One more turn then, blokes.”
The city wept blood and pus, its mechanical legs blackening and crumbling. The fortress lurched, then began to fall on its side, kilometer-wide blocks of cracked stone and metal hitting the ground in impacts that shook the land like a series of earthquakes. By the end of it, the sounds of pieces of city falling had become wet thuds and squelches. No one bothered to wonder if any of the defenders inside were still alive.
The dark bird flew back around calmly, and reformed into the shape of a man. Jason stretched his neck as his robes flowed back over him, letting his mind settle back into mortal configuration.
“All right then, Soramir,” he said, turning around to where the pale-faced celestine stood. “Let’s talk shop.”
It was a pounding headache that grew worse and worse, until he was forced to pull back from his prime avatar to seek refuge in his true, full self. It didn’t quite help. If anything, he could feel so much more in his true form, the barrage turning into a biblical deluge. It was just that his true self could withstand it all, unlike his more limited vessel.
“Your mortal aspect cannot withstand the forces you are applying to yourself,” Shade told him. “You have already pushed yourself to your limits. An ordinary gold-rank mind would have already burst like a balloon.”
“I need to reach diamond faster,” Jason muttered, holding his head in his hands with all his avatars.
“Jason, I think Shade is right,” Colin said, appearing beside him. “We can all feel our connection to you getting wobbly. Sort of like back with Undeath, except not as fast and a lot weirder.”
“It’ll be fine after I reach diamond rank,” Jason murmured.
“I’m not sure that’s true.” Colin seemed uncharacteristically worried. “Not if you keep going like this. Not even a diamond-ranker can stop himself from getting erased through paradox.”
“You have been leaning increasingly on your connection to the Cosmic Throne to keep going,” Shade said. “Gordon has been overtaxed for over a dozen attempts now. If you won’t stop and rest for yourself, at least do it for him.”
Jason finally lifted his head, turning to look at Shade with a frown.
“Yeah... okay,” he said slowly, dropping his hands. “Sorry, Gordon.”
Gordon didn’t manifest, but Jason felt a weak tremor of acknowledgement in his soul. Jason sighed.
“I really wish,” he said, “universes could take a nap.”
“Asano,” the Builder sneered.
“Builder,” Jason greeted. His team was standing in a loose formation behind him, shifting warily as the Builder’s vessel approached. He had made them promise to leave this to him, and felt a momentary pang of guilt at abusing their trust. But mostly, he was glad they still trusted him.
“I’ve come to negotiate.”
The Builder’s eyes fixed on him with disdain. He could feel what Asano had become, but he felt no less distaste for him. “And what do you think you have to offer me?”
“I can help you take the astral spaces in this region,” Jason said, ignoring the sudden jerks of shock behind him. “Other regions too, potentially, but I’m not looking to do a world tour.”
The Builder hid his surprise well. His gaze turned to suspicion, and Jason couldn’t really fault him for that. If he were in the Builder’s shoes, he would also be suspecting the smell of an extremely large amount of livestock byproduct right now. It would have been funny to mess with him too, but unfortunately Jason was in an experimental ‘honest and forthcoming’ phase right now. Mostly.
“I do not need your assistance to achieve this,” the Builder said.
“The record would state otherwise, but I guess you have no way of checking it,” Jason replied. “I have an ability to stabilize physical reality and the dimensional membrane, so the removal of the astral spaces would be less destructive for the surrounding regions—that’s a plus for me, not for you, I know. I can also get in and out regardless of any seals in place, and in general, I’m just more competent than your low-rank lackeys. Except for that Zato guy, he was pretty on top of things. He still got murdered by a bunch of bronze-rankers though, so.”
“You speak of frivolities,” the Builder said. “Petty logistics and mortal concerns. Why do you waste my time? If you wish to trade, then get to the point.”
Jason winced. “Look, I’m talking around it for a reason, okay? I’m not really supposed to be doing the whole informal agreement thing. It’s kind of difficult for me.”
“You are connected to the rules.”
“Yes, but I’m mostly a separate thing. It’s just harder for me than it is for you.”
“You are the one who called me here. State your proposal.”
Jason could feel his team’s auras behind him, filled with doubt, confusion, and apprehension. If he were honest with himself, he didn’t bring them along because their presence brought him comfort, though it did. He could have—should have—met the Builder in private, avoiding all sorts of potential complications. But he had wanted to remind himself of that risk, to let himself feel their fear and uncertainty. He cradled that ache inside him carefully. They were still so young, here. Untempered and naive.
“You’ve amassed great forces in this world,” Jason said. “Armies of cultists and constructs, living fortresses, carefully cultivated allies. Even if you were forbidden from further intervention today, you have enough set up to threaten the powers of this world.”
“And?”
“I want them,” Jason said simply. “Instead of adventurers, I have an enemy I’d like you to turn your armies against. The mortals will be a little mad, still, but you haven’t done that much damage yet. If there are no further casualties, they’ll let it go eventually. They don’t like to get involved in cosmic-level stuff if they don’t have to. In exchange, I’ll give you what you really want.”
The Builder stared at him, his blank face unreadable, but Jason knew the gears were turning in that head. Probably literally.
“And what makes you think you can give me what I want?” the Builder finally asked.
Jason gave him a smile that was only a little bitter. “You want to be a great astral being that’s also a god. You want to build your own private universe that you can shape as you please. You want to be worshipped by people all across the cosmos. I don’t know if anyone's told you this yet, mate, but that whole arrangement is kind of my thing.”
“I have to stop you earlier,” Raythe said. They were sitting side by side at the bar, each holding a glass of amber liquid in their hands, though only Jason was drinking from his. “Before you get anywhere near the critical node.”
“That does sound reasonable,” Jason said. “But good luck with that.”
“Jason,” Raythe said. “You aren’t going to last. Nothing will.”
“Will me not lasting last?” Jason asked lightly. Raythe gave him an exasperated look.
“We should never have let you sit on the Throne,” she said.
“No,” Jason agreed. “You shouldn’t have.” He downed his glass.
Jason laughed, a feverish, manic sound. His arms were flung wide, Knowledge hovering in front of him, looking disdainful.
“You don’t get it!” he cried. “I have infinity to try. I have forever to get it right! I have forever, and so does every other me. Every me that will ever choose to stop you, and that’s most of them. You know it, you’ve seen it in my mind. You’ve plotted and schemed for what, five hundred years? A millennia? I have eternity. I’m going to kill you, Knowledge. I’m going to find a method to kill you and erase your existence and you’ll know it the moment I do. You’ll know your death is coming for you from the moment it emerges in this world.”
“You still love to hear yourself talk,” she said coldly. Jason laughed again, wisps of smoke rising from the many holes in his body. His avatar was giving up again—it didn’t matter. He would be back.
“I do know the entirety of your mind, Asano,” Knowledge said. “And do you know what I see? A torn-apart rag, stitched together with bravado and guilt and fear. You’re trying to go mad, but transcendent beings don’t lose their minds, Asano. They just lose.”
Jason grinned up at her, blood dripping through his teeth. “Let’s bet on it, then.” She waved her hand dismissively, and his avatar burst into a shower of sparks, which then faded to nothingness.
“I really should’ve thought of this earlier,” Jason said. He felt calm; calmer than he had been in ages. There was still that immense pressure against his mind and soul—there was only so much he could do to adjust his prime avatar’s sensitivity to that without disabling most of its ability to be useful at all as a vessel—but it was no longer distressing. He felt no distress at all. Even pain, he realized, normally came with its own inflections and colours and imbued meanings. A purely neutral pain wasn’t nearly so bothersome. Of course, he had made himself very hard to bother.
Colin looked uncertain. “I’m not so sure about this.”
“I concur,” Shade said.
“It’s just my prime avatar,” Jason said. “My real mind is doing the exact same thing it’s been doing all along. This just makes it easier for me to do the things I need to do.”
“You have said before that your prime avatar is you, Mr Asano,” Shade pointed out.
Jason waved a dismissive hand. “That was me being reductive to make a point. The important thing right now is that I don’t feel like my brain is melting out of my ears anymore, so it’s a lot easier to plan and think.”
“Much as I am glad that you are in less pain, Mr Asano, my concern is the fact that while you are less sensitive to it now, said brain has not actually stopped said melting,” Shade said.
“What’s important is that I can think clearly,” Jason repeated. “I’ve lost control of more than one loop that was going well because of instability. This should resolve that issue.”
Colin still looked hesitant, but also curious. “I’m used to splitting my mind across loads of bodies, or concentrating it in a few big ones, but I can’t tinker with them individually like you can. Does it feel weird?”
Jason thought about it.
“No, not really,” he said. “My consciousness is very adaptable. It gets used to anything pretty quick.”
“How do I convince you, Jason?” Raythe asked, the outburst a rare sight from the usually unflappable elf.
“Help me defeat her,” Jason said.
The plan was simple, which would hopefully make it robust. They would focus solely on defense, prioritizing magitech, infrastructure, and strategies that would keep Earth’s population as safe as possible. They wouldn’t be able to defeat Knowledge’s forces, but they could try to make it as difficult as they could for Knowledge to make progress in her one-sided holy war.
In the meantime, all they had to do was invite in a sufficiently massive diamond-rank force to squash Knowledge’s army like a bug.
It was, of course, easier said than done. Jason was wary of triggering a war of escalation, especially once external forces had their attention drawn to Earth. As tempting as it was to let Dawn’s space empire take care of things, Earth was not ready to be scrutinized by players of that level. Jason knew where that led: caught between forces far more powerful than itself, who sought to use it as leverage or exploit it for gains, pressured until someone somewhere was stressed enough to do something inadvisable. Jason alone had been able to bat Earth around; the cosmic community would eat it for breakfast. It was preferable to letting Knowledge win, but it was an absolute last resort.
Some of the Pallimustus diamond-rankers they had managed to talk around to open confrontation. A select few diamond-rankers from the Imperium that Dawn knew and trusted, who participated not as subjects but as friends. A small contingent of messengers, borrowed from the Council of Kings. The Council would move against Earth if they discovered the Unorthodoxy forces taking refuge in it, but with Jamis Fran Muskar agreeing not to reveal that particular fact, doing a fellow astral king a favour wasn’t a problem. Jason had been loathe to deal with them at first, but enough loops had worn down his reticence.
“I feel like I’ve made deals with so many devils I’ve lost track of them all,” Jason said.
“I would wager that from their perspective, you are the devil in question,” Shade said. “Time travel is more than dangerous business. It is one of the few true taboos in the cosmos.”
Jason tilted his head. “They aren’t that few.”
“You feel them?”
“My connection to the Throne grows stronger by the day. I’m not sure if it’s all this fraying that’s making it grow back stronger, like a damaged muscle, or if it’s just the nature of my transcendence growing. Or...”
“Or?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Mr Asano.”
“Worrying about it won’t change anything.” Jason’s voice was tired.
“It must be unpleasant, being connected to the Throne while actively carrying out such a violation of the cosmic order,” Shade said.
“Yes.”
“What does it feel like?”
Jason considered the question for a few moments. “Like I’m committing a sin,” he finally said.
“The Throne is a regulating force, but a passive one, with no will or mind of its own,” Shade said. “Any judgment it casts, it borrows from you.”
“I know.”
Jason III had been nursing a sneaking suspicion for a while, one that had only solidified as he continued plodding through life, driven by weirdly compelling impulses he could not identify the source of. For a long time, the thought “I’m just whimsical like that” would appear in his head in response to any doubts and quash any desire to think more deeply about anything. Over time, though, even he had eventually built towards a realization.
“Do you ever feel,” he asked the bartender as he wandered over to the bar, “like you’re not a real person?”
She gave him a flat, unimpressed look.
He nodded to himself, lost in thought. “I think I was grown in a pod. Or a vat, maybe.”
“Most nobles and adventurers do it that way,” she informed him.
“Really? I didn’t know that. I don’t know most things, actually, which is weird when I consider that I’m deeply opinionated on a lot of topics that I don’t seem to be very informed about.”
“You and every second man I talk to. Are you ordering a drink or not?”
“Mr Asano,” Shade said.
Jason didn’t reply. He continued to stand where he was, watching the silhouettes of Emi and her friends set up the picnic table in the distance.
“Mr Asano. I understand how much you regret not being able to watch your niece grow up. But in your current circumstances, spending so many cycles just watching her live her life—”
“Is a luxury I can’t afford,” he said softly. “I know.”
Shade fell silent.
Jason inclined his head minutely. “Did I know you would say that because I know you so well?” he murmured to himself. “Or because you’ve said it before, in a time now lost?”
Shade didn't answer, so Jason continued, “This will be the last time. As you’ve said, I’ve dallied enough already.”
“As long as she lives within your domains, you are always able to watch her,” Shade said after a moment. “When you spent your first years with her, I did not stop you because I could see how healing it was for you. But now you hover and watch from afar, forcing yourself to be present yet not approaching. Why?”
“A half-measure,” Jason said. “I didn’t think I still had so many of those in me, but it turns out I did.” He looked at Emi’s retreating figure, then nodded. “The last one, though, I think.”
“Mr Asano...”
“No more half-measures,” Jason said to himself.
“She can’t come over if the magic level stays too low,” Jason said. The bodies of the Network and Cabal agents lay scattered and pulpy around his feet, but he stayed clear of the mess, hovering a few inches above the marsh of red and black.
In his hand, he held the reality core all these mortals had so foolishly thrown themselves into a meat grinder for.
“That didn’t work the last few times you tried it,” Shade said. “Even with Mr. Standish and Miss Dawn’s help with the theory.”
“Yes,” Jason agreed. “I’ll have to try something more drastic.”
Time was melting into a soup, the fetid, black, and rotten kind that all of Jason’s enemies tended to turn into when he kept hacking at them long enough. Time had no physical form, but Jason’s abilities had long squeezed blood from that which could not bleed, and the years sloughed away like liquefying flesh, revealing the sticky strings of vein and sinew that were all that still feebly held the logic of yesterday-today-tomorrow together. The pristine immateriality of the deep astral was bloated with pus, a sickly sea of rot imprinted with will and purpose, the corruption spreading like a gangrene from a moving epicenter named Jason Asano.
He didn’t need Raythe to tell him that things were going terribly wrong. That tug deep inside his gut that connected him to that once-distant power had become a live wire of pain. But even the pain was simply his mortal avatar’s way of translating something that could not be expressed through a physical body. So many parts of him were shrieking, thrashing desperately against a tide of wrongness and ensuing recrimination that, ultimately, also came from himself. He was both the disease and a part of the immune system, and the contradiction would have been unbearable if his soul had not grown strong supping on countless paradoxes. He didn’t even quite remember transcending; the moment must have been cut up and scattered across universes, or perhaps duplicated until nothing but a vague overlapping blur remained around certain events.
Calmly, methodically, he isolated all the shrieking parts of himself in boxes, examining them carefully before sorting them and putting them away somewhere where they would be less distracting. He was so very good at it now, and it was only natural, when his mind was now so vast but had so little to be put towards. Still, at the center of him there was a mortal will, burning fiercely using himself as kindle. Jason let his awareness shrink, until he was just that small man, trudging through the oceans of filth that were his own doing. His path would be long, but he had forever to walk it.
“The World-Phoenix will get what she wants, so there’s no reason for her to stop you,” Jason said. “In fact, considering the number of holes in the universe I’ve patched over the years, I’d say she owes me a favour.”
Dawn shook her head. “It isn’t so simple, Jason. There are rules—”
“I know what the rules are,” Jason said coldly. “I reinstated them.”
Dawn looked at him. “And yet you’ve done this,” she said.
“I’ll pay the cost, when it’s time,” Jason said. “But right now, I need your help.”
“I can’t help you, Jason.”
“You can. You just won’t.”
“You know enough about transcendent beings by now to know that it isn’t that simple.”
Jason leaned forward. “You aren’t transcendent, Dawn,” he said softly. “Not yet.”
“All this work, just to sanction one little god,” Jason said, watching the flurry of activity below them as clergy and high-ranking representatives of related organizations scattered in all directions.
Arabelle looked at him. “You’ve turned the whole world on its head, Jason. The balance of power between factions was already precarious, and now you’ve just hit it again with a hammer. The churches are in complete turmoil. What you revealed about Purity was bad enough to shake many people’s faith, but at least Purity had a historical precedent of messiness. This business with Knowledge? She is foundational not only to the basic fabric of society, but to the Magic Society and the Adventure Society. It’s a miracle you managed to get the Ecumenical Council to rule your way without incident.”
Jason sighed. “I miss when I could just kill my problems. I understand why Boris stayed at gold rank for so long now. There’s a certain threshold in the accumulation of power where getting more just nets you more limitations rather than ways to act.”
“Which is a good thing for the world.”
“Is it?” he asked idly, rubbing the silky fabric of the suit he’d put on for the Council meeting between his fingers. “I solved a lot of problems on Earth once I accepted that I would have to grind the humans under my boot a little to get them to unite against the threat seriously.”
“Which loop was that?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You have a diamond-rank memory, Jason.”
“A diamond-rank memory isn’t always enough in the face of reality being overwritten so many times.”
“Jason, you’ve won. With minimal bloodshed this time, even. From everything you’ve told me, this is the best outcome you’ve managed yet. Haven’t you accomplished your goal? You’ve won. Why do you still look like you’re calculating what else you need to throw aside?”
“Won?” Jason repeated softly. He pushed himself off the railings he had been leaning against and turned to face her. “No, Arabelle. I did not achieve my objective today.”
“Knowledge has been declared a fallen god by the council. She’s been sanctioned by the other gods. Her forces are being dismantled, her invasion stopped. What else is there?”
Jason tilted his head. “Didn’t I tell you here? It’s hard to keep track nowadays. My goal has never been to sanction Knowledge, Arabelle. My goal is to kill her. To destroy every core part of her and scatter her authority to the winds for the nameless and the lesser gods to tussle over like dogs fighting over scraps. To leave a hollow deep enough that no new god of knowledge will form on Pallimustus again for a thousand thousand years. Maybe I’ll even eat some of her myself. Give myself a little treat.”
Arabelle looked back at him, and though it was hardly the first time, he was always vaguely surprised every time to note that she looked afraid.
“Raythe, be honest with me,” Jason said. “Has your boss been erasing me from reality?”
“Yes,” Raythe said.
Jason sighed. “That does explain a lot. I’m guessing it’s not quite taking because of my link to the Cosmic Throne?”
“Indeed,” she said wryly. “Even the Keeper of the Sands aside, your own actions have created countless paradoxes that should have wiped out your existence a hundred times over. Unfortunately, there is a reason the Throne was sundered, not destroyed entirely.”
“Because it can’t be.”
“Yes.”
Jason frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought just sitting on the chair once would protect me that much. I mean, I know it’s one of the most fundamental and powerful things in the cosmos, but I’m still half-mortal.”
“It wouldn’t,” Raythe said. “If it’d just been once.”
“Oh,” Jason said.
“Quite.” Her eyes landed on his coolly. “But do not think yourself unstoppable, Jason. Transcendent beings are eternal, but there are still ways for them to effectively disappear.”
“You mean being changed into something else.”
“Yes,” Raythe said. “And there are multiple ways for that to happen. Do you understand, Jason?”
“I think I do.”
“Yet you won’t stop. You still think you can pull off the impossible.”
“It’s who I am.”
Raythe looked at him. “That is the crux of the problem, yes.”
It was a strange thing, being a god. He’d been part-god for so long, he hadn’t really thought it would be all that different to take up the official title. More of that incorrigible arrogance, he reflected.
It turned out, there was a rather big difference between being part-god and being God.
“It’s so nice to have everyone sitting at the same table together like this,” Jason said cheerfully as he put his feet up on a cloud stool and sipped his drink. He applied a dab of power, and the little umbrella on the side shifted through a sequence of bright colours. “The humour of it was kind of lost on me the first time. I was still convalescing at the time, and I think I was a bit nervous underneath it all.”
“Are you rewriting reality to change the colour of your cocktail umbrella?” Dawn asked.
They were sitting in front of his pagoda-house, just like they had been so long ago. It wasn’t quite long enough that Jason had developed nostalgia, but it was a close thing. The weather on Arnote was as lovely as he’d remembered, the sun shining like in a postcard, the tropical breeze stirring his hair gently.
There were eyes on them all around, but Jason didn’t particularly care. The mortals were even more irrelevant to him now than they had been the first time around.
Shako was eating his sandwiches, casting furtive, wary glances at Jason in between rather large bites.
“Relax, mate, you’re not going to catch time travelitis from me,” Jason told him. “Honestly, even if you did, you’d probably fare better than Dawn here, since you’re going back to Throne Jail.”
“Thank you,” Dawn said dryly. “It’s comforting to know that I could get caught in a paradox through association and have my entire existence erased without warning.”
“That won’t happen,” Jason said. “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Pretty probably,” Jason said. “Any temporal anomalies would be centered around me, and if I mess up any timeline too badly, that timeline just becomes one of the ones that wouldn’t have existed anyway. Or something. I don’t really know how it works, you’ll have to ask Raythe.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t stop you,” Dawn admitted.
“Oh, she’s trying,” Jason said. “It’s a little unpleasant, not going to lie, but I can’t begrudge her for it.”
“How has she not succeeded?” Shako asked after swallowing a mouthful of roast boar with lettuce and spicy prappas sauce.
“Because he is tied to the Sundered Throne,” came the voice Jason had been waiting for.
He turned and gave Carmen a bright smile. “Carmen! So glad you could make it.” Gordon emerged from Jason, orbs flashing, and also greeted Carmen with a chorus of excited hellos.
“Hello, Jason Asano. I would like to say it’s good to meet you, but you’ll understand I have certain reservations.”
Jason waved a hand. “No worries. You know, I never did find out if you’d changed your name after all that. Are you ‘Carmen of the Cosmic Throne’ now in my timeline? I feel like that doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.”
“So, you did repair it. And sit on it,” Carmen said. Shako choked on his sandwich.
“Mate, you’re a peak diamond-ranker, how did you manage to choke?”
“Why did you travel to this particular moment, Jason Asano?” Carmen asked. “I felt you reach out to me, through our mutual connection to the Throne. If you wished to speak with me, you could do so at any time—quite literally.”
Carmen had nothing resembling a face, but Jason looked at the mountain-like nebula at the center of her cloak consideringly for a few moments, chin resting on one hand. Then, slowly, he let the thick veil around his aura that he had learned from Dominion’s gift drop. He felt Shako and Dawn stiffen across the table. Though they had been apprised of the situation, it was one thing to know something, and another to feel the presence of a great astral being unfurl next to them. As prime vessels especially, it was a deeply bizarre and unnerving experience to feel it unfiltered through a vessel, close enough to touch yet oddly small, without the being’s mere presence burning a hole through the planet. Jason knew that as far as great astral beings went, his aura was very little and cute, but that probably only contributed to the strangeness. Carmen simply continued to float impassively. She, more than the rest, had known him right away.
“I thought it’d be convenient to have everyone at the same table,” Jason reiterated. “Especially with the little bundle of authority from my past self as pretext. The Throne’s been repaired, but with the current situation, there are... margins. A lot of them. I can’t tell how that’s working out at any given moment. So if I have to pact, I thought, hey, why not use that loose bit of authority from that one time? I’d certainly rather not trade away my own.” The mere thought of it was kind of gross.
“What is your proposal?” the World-Phoenix asked, suddenly there in place of his friend. The Builder was also staring at him with his blank brown orbs, Shako’s body now sitting ramrod straight.
Jason looked at these beings that were now his peers, though it didn’t quite feel like it. Yet. “Over the centuries, you’ve both been involved in a certain entity’s schemes. For the most part, you’ve let yourselves be used by her because you didn’t care what happened as long as your own agendas were met. You didn’t care about the machinations of a petty local god.” His eyes grew colder. “But I care. And since her plans hinge on yours in ways that would be hard even for her to adjust on short notice, you can ruin them. Which is a nice first step towards ruining her.”
“You are just as petty as this goddess,” the World-Phoenix noted.
“I am,” Jason agreed.
“And why am I here?” Carmen asked. “The Sundered Throne is not concerned with the behaviour of gods on their own planet.”
“Well,” Jason said. “I’d like to discuss the possibility that maybe it should be.”
Losing territory in the transformation zone had struck his friends hard, but to his eye it had been comparable to the flu. Eminently unpleasant, prolonged, and shocking to high-rankers due to the gratuitous emissions of a nature they were no longer used to knowing, but ultimately not more painful or damaging than a bout of sickness. Losing a spirit domain in holy war, especially one that was many times over the normal maximum size limit allotted by his rank due to his particular circumstances, was an agony that seared Jason’s soul like hellfire.
It felt like when his magical matrix had been crumbling, except worse, because at least at that time he had been largely insensate.
Not that he was much better now. Jason had hoped to continue helping in the battle, being one of their side’s strongest combatants, but his was not the role of soldier. He was Knowledge’s counterpart in the god slot in this holy war, and they were losing.
Strength leeched out of him in a way no amount of healing magic or rest could fix. It was like a part of the world, a part that was inside him, was going grey. His spirit domain hadn’t just been his; it had been him. There was less of him in the world now, and he was left adrift, authority bleeding out from that dismembered limb, anchored only by the parts of him that were not a god.
The war raged on without him, the small, diminished god that Earth’s forces were nominally fighting in the name of. By the time he lost his second domain, he understood little of what was going on around him, but he knew this: domains could only be taken over when all surrounding resistance had been crushed. They had lost.
Jason closed his eyes. There was a thread somewhere inside him that would let him start over, if he could find it. But he was so very tired. First, he would sleep.
Jamis Fran Muskar looked out of the glass observation window in fascination. The planets of Jason Asano’s astral kingdom were laid out before them, the ones visible from this angle, anyway. Even though there was no visual indication, while inside his kingdom, Jamis could feel them: the bleeding sores, the livid scars, the resonating hum in the soul that was really more like the universe-sized, scaled-up version of sheets of metal screeching as they began tearing off the airship. He was standing at the epicenter of a poison eating away at causality.
“It is incredible,” he said, voice dripping with a sincere awe. “What you’ve accomplished.”
“Most people are using the term ‘catastrophic’,” Jason said.
“You and I are not most people. Even in all the years I have lived, I have never encountered something like this. Some have tried, but were swatted like flies. You are so young, yet have gone further than I have ever seen.”
“You sound surprisingly enthused about the timespace continuum being abused by what must be in your eyes a toddler.”
“Being willing to twist not just yourself, but the very cosmos to achieve your goals—that has my deepest admiration. I find myself eminently glad that you did not heed my warnings.”
“You already know that about me,” Jason said. “I’ll pay any price to see things done.”
Jamis smiled. “I know. It’s what makes you great.”
Jason gave him a cold, assessing look. “You want to offer your assistance.”
“I do. I haven’t, though, and won’t, because I know you won’t take it. And for all my admiration, even I don’t want to get involved with the Keeper of Moments and the All-Seeing Eye solely to help another. How are you handling that, by the way?”
“Badly.”
Jamis Fran Muskar chuckled. “And yet you’re still here. I was right about you, Jason Asano. I am excited to imagine what you’ll achieve with a few more millennia under your belt.”
“Probably the destruction of messenger society I promised.”
Jamis Fran Muskar smiled, gazing out at Jason’s universe, groaning under the weight of presumption so great it had warped the immaterial. “I think you can afford to dream a little bigger.”
“Dawn,” Jason said, voice cracking. “Dawn, something’s wrong, I—I. I don’t know what’s happening.”
She looked at him, realization settling along with horror, shock, and sorrow.
“Oh, Jason,” she whispered. “What have you done to yourself?”
Jason looked around himself at the blackened ruins of what had once been Sydney. The wounded had already trudged through his soul portal for healing, but the bodies of the dead were too numerous to move. They could only be slowly collected when the survivors picked over the city in the days and weeks to come.
They had won, but it didn’t feel like it. Jason had long ago decided not to settle for pyrrhic victories.
“Mr Asano?”
“Again,” Jason said.
“Evacuate the whole planet?” Anna repeated slowly.
Jason was seated on the leather armchair in front of her, rolling something that looked like a stress ball in his hand. Despite how ordinary it looked, if it was able to serve that function for a high-ranker, it must have been ridiculously sturdy.
“It’s an ambitious undertaking, I know,” he said, not even looking at her. “But we have ten years to do it, give or take. I think it should be just barely manageable.”
“Mr Asano, this is madness.”
“I’ll need help—lots of help—organizing the logistics, of course. My people are competent, but this is the sort of thing only local authorities can really carry out.”
“Evacuate Earth. To go where, exactly?”
“I’ll recreate Earth to the best of my abilities,” Jason said. “I probably won’t be able to get everything right, but it’ll be close enough. France and Slovakia can even get their parcels of territory back. I think they’ll like that. There’ll be no more need for reconstruction efforts. The time and resources pulled back from that can go towards the evacuation efforts.”
“Asano, do you have any idea how crazy you’re sounding right now?”
“You know I have god-like power in my kingdom.”
“I knew yesterday’s you had god-like power, and then you showed up and threw him into some kind of dimensional stasis hole like chucking a salad in the fridge! He and I were discussing how to help humanity make their own future because he didn’t want to become a planetary dictactor, and now you’re saying you want to decide humanity’s future and take over as a planetary dictator?”
“Yes,” Jason said calmly.
Anna stared.
“If you’re a god,” she said, “why do you need to run? What are you running from?”
“I’m not the one who needs to run, Ms Tilden,” Jason said, idly squeezing the ball in his hand. “It’s all you squishy little humans. It’s not ideal, I know. Trust me, this wasn’t my first choice either. But it’s one of the only feasible alternatives left.”
“No government is going to go along with this.”
He shrugged. “Then I’ll make them.”
“The people aren’t going to go along with it. The ordinary, innocent people you’ve always aimed to protect.”
“There will inevitably be some left behind,” he agreed. “But I think we can get the vast majority evacuated. The fear of the monster waves, and then the vampires, is still fresh enough. We can use that.”
Anna searched his eyes for any trace of hesitation or bluster, and found none. “What’s the alternative, if we don’t do this?”
“Humanity will fall under the complete control of a capricious god,” Jason said. “There’ll be a small chance, when she first arrives, to drive her off. But Earth’s odds in that fight are very, very low. And once she takes hold, there’ll be no getting rid of her. She won’t exterminate you. She might even appear benevolent at first, and claim to be here to help you. But your fates will be hers to dictate. Anything you do, any way you develop in the future, whether magically, technologically, or socially, will only be with her permission. She’ll own the planet. Humanity will be forever dancing in the palm of its one true God.”
Anna stared at him.
Jason tilted his head, looking at her curiously. “Why are you looking at me like that, Ms Tilden?”
“Farrah,” he cajoled. “Come on. You know how important this is. You can feel it.”
“I don’t even know if I can put into words what I feel,” Farrah said. “This is all going wrong, Jason. You feel like you’re halfway to diamond-rank and already transcendent at the same time. Whatever you’re doing, it’s tearing you apart.”
“It can tear all it wants. I can’t be broken anymore.”
“If I know you at all,” Farrah said, “that’s definitely not true.”
“Come on, Farrah,” Jason insisted. “Let’s go save the Earth again, just you and me, like real adventurers. Just like old times.”
Farrah looked at him with a sad expression. “I didn’t want you to go back to those old times, Jason. Especially not alone. I thought you knew that.”
“Then come with me.”
Jason’s aura pressed down on her. She could feel the desperate insistence, the painfully earnest hope in it, and knew that he was just grasping at her clumsily, like a child pawing at a parent’s clothes, for all that the force behind it would have crushed an ordinary gold-ranker into paste. She reminded herself that he was not trying to intimidate her or hurt her—that he was simply extremely bad at asking for help.
She pushed back against his aura, clearing a circle of space around her where she denied his power.
“I will, Jason,” Farrah said. She took in a deep breath, feeling the power that had always simmered deep inside her, untouched until now, begin to blaze towards the surface. To fulfill the purpose the man in front of her had trusted her with. “I’m going to help you.”
“Jason,” Shade said. “If I ask you to stop, will you stop?”
“No,” Jason said.
Jason squinted around blearily. “Is this… Rexion?” he muttered, pushing himself up. “This isn’t when I meant to go…”
“Mr Asano…”
“Hang on.” The world spun, then settled. He let out a sigh of relief. “I do feel better being in one of my domains, at least.” He smiled, looking around at the familiar buildings. They were familiar because they were his. They were him. He had been feeling like he was running out of him lately, so finding a fresh stash of it was soothing.
“Mr Asano, I believe you should take a break.”
Jason’s smile faded, though a trace of it remained. He looked around the city contemplatively. “What would that help?”
“You need it.”
“Just because I stand still doesn’t mean time does,” Jason said, then chuckled at his own joke. He began to walk, but his legs felt uncooperative. That was very strange, because his legs were also him, just like the city, and he didn’t seem to be having a problem connecting to it.
“Mr Asano, you are not well.”
“Thanks for always worrying about me, Shade. You’re a really nice guy.”
“Your mortal half has reached its limits.”
Jason laughed quietly. “Isn’t it always? So high-maintenance.”
Shade emerged from his shadow, and placed his hands on Jason’s shoulders. Jason blinked at the rarely felt sensation of the shadowstuff against his body. Idly, part of his mind disconnected and started analyzing it, wondering what potential uses he might have for it, if he were to try to reproduce it.
“Mr Asano,” Shade said. “Do you recall what you said, at the start of this endeavour?”
Jason blinked, dazed, distracted by a flash of something on the ceiling of the cavern. “Hey, they have stars up in here now. How’d they manage that?”
“Mr Asano. This entire place is formed of your power. You are the one who put them there.”
“Huh...” Jason’s eyes went distant. “I don’t remember that.”
He sliced her in two, then the halves again length-ways.
It was utterly meaningless, of course; her manifested body was nothing more than a mass of authority he was keeping squeezed in roughly the right shape. Devouring all that authority was a painfully slow process, especially as it did not seem especially compatible with his own. He hadn’t thought astral nexuses could get indigestion, but he suspected he was approaching something close to it.
Oh well. Her authority was rich and dense, but it only spanned one planet; he was positive he could cram it all into his astral kingdom if he tried, indigestion be damned.
He grabbed fistful after fistful of authority with his aura and willed it in shape. A shape that he could cut, and tear into pieces, and make bleed. There was an endless sea of god-putty all around him, and he was a poor but enthusiastic potter. He chuckled to himself as she came into being with her features all swapped around, the shade of her hair now the colour of her eyes, the ridge of her brow now traceable in her cupid’s bow. Another few slashes and wet thuds, and her right eye glared at him from above the pile of red meat.
“This is completely meaningless,” she said without a mouth.
“No, it isn’t,” Jason said. “It’s making me feel better.”
She sneered at him. “All that self-righteous talk about deciding who you are. Being the man that chooses mercy. Where did that self-important drivel go?”
He smashed her skull in. It immediately reformed, and he smashed it again. When it reformed again, this time not under his power, it took on Gabrielle’s face. That didn’t stop him.
“This is all going to go away soon,” Jason explained, even though his familiars hadn’t replied in a while. They were as tired as he was. “Might as well unwind while I can.”
“Are you still capable of understanding the ramifications of your actions?” Raythe asked.
“Sure.”
“You’ve turned reality into your own personal palimpsest. Even if everything gets scraped off when you loop, the marks remain. Eventually the indentations left in the fabric of timespace will start causing other kinds of anomalies. Ridges where the stream should run smoothly. Dips where events should follow in sequence. The very flow of the astral being diverted. The flow of magic itself.”
“I’ll fix that after I deal with my current problem,” Jason told her, flipping through the tome. There was still so much knowledge he didn’t have, so much that she had. The more he learned, the more he fell behind. “Kind of busy right now.”
“You’ve gone mad, Asano.”
“Someone once told me that transcendent beings can’t lose their minds,” Jason said.
“And who was that?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said.
“Transcendent beings don’t misplace memories either.”
“They aren’t misplaced. I put them in a box somewhere.”
“Along with the parts of you that can listen to reason, I assume?”
“I’ve always been a bunch of disjointed cosmic bullshit shoved together,” Jason said.
Raythe levelled an unreadable look on him. Perhaps if he was sparing her more attention he could decipher it, but he felt no inclination to. “No, Asano. Not always.”
More important than beating her, more important than disabling her armies and killing her highest-ranking clergy, more important than ruining centuries of planning, had been making her realize that choosing to go to Earth had been a mistake. That it was not her methods or timing or reasoning that had fallen short, but that the very premise of her goal had been wrong. The thing she had yearned for, schemed for, that which she had learned to dream in order to dream of, despite being a god—he wanted her to realize its worthlessness. He wanted to make sure the knowledge of it was impressed well and deep inside her mind.
The idea had been simple—it had just taken a lot of doing. But Jason was a dedicated man. He did, and he did, and he did, and he did all the doing. Knowledge could only ever know everything on one world at a time. She had no way of seeing past the dimensional bridge. She’d thought her warriors had won the holy war, had claimed enough territory for her to move into. It had been trickier than Jason had anticipated, learning to tinker with minds. But minds were not souls, and Disguise had been all too happy to teach him the tricks he’d picked up with his work on the Order. Compared to forcibly converting enemies into Purity zealots, convincing Knowledge’s agents only of that which they wanted to believe anyway was so much easier.
Knowledge had come through, but there had been no holy ground waiting for her. She had put up a decent fight, all things considered. But she was a goddess of Pallimustus, her authority formed from the confluence of billions of people’s thoughts. Her authority tried to take root on Earth, but found itself blocked off by the Hegemon’s influence. Left languishing without compatible soil, it was a wilted thing.
This place did not belong to her. More fundamentally, she did not belong to it. Gods were created from the bones of the world, not the other way around, and Knowledge did not come from this place. She could not breathe its air, nor eat its food, not without plugging in to the planet in a way he would not allow her to. He was thorough, just in case, clearing the area of any sentient minds beyond his own. The mass of her authority was great, but helpless, suspended. All that power, but unable to be brought to bear. He had all the time he liked to pick it apart, as long as he could maintain his influence over the surrounding area. That wasn’t hard anymore, even without a spirit domain. He could feel her futile struggles against his hold, like fingers scrabbling at glass.
He’d wondered if gods could feel despair. He had asked, and Despair had been delighted at his question. He’d invited him to come and see, but Despair had declined with no small amount of regret. As much as he’d love to be there, he’d said, he didn’t want to be eaten.
“This was all a mistake, wasn’t it?” Jason asked.
“Yes,” Shade said softly.
“All this effort, and all I did was leave the universe in worse shape than I found it.”
“I am sorry I was not able to counsel you better.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jason said. “It’s me. I never learn. I never, ever, ever learn.” Despair was raking its claws down his soul, pitch-black and fetid like the worst of what he inflicted on others. What he did to everything.
“Mr Asano—”
“Hundreds of me have been erased, haven’t they? But it’s still going. I’m still here. Am I the main me? Am I the one keeping it going? Why am I still here?”
“Jason—”
“You tried to tell me. Everyone tried to stop me. I become worse the worse the thing I’m fighting is. But I don’t listen to anyone. I say that my friends keep me in line, but they never had to actually try before, did they? And it turns out they can’t. They’re too weak. Why did I become this kind of thing, Shade? I did it because they told me I had to. To help people. But I shouldn’t have. Now I can’t even die. The Keeper of Moments could’ve gotten rid of me otherwise, couldn’t it? I’d be easy to cut out from the cosmos. But I’m woven in there now, like a cancer.”
“Jason, I am sorry for what you have done and what has been done to you. But you are not a cancer. The mechanisms by which you—”
“The great astral beings are mechanisms,” Jason said. “They’re good at being mechanisms, for the most part. I’m supposed to be one of them. But look at me. Look at me, Shade. I’m the one who fixed the rules. I thought I would never take advantage of them. Power that no one should have, I said. How long did it take before I started abusing it? A decade and some change. I have eternity in front of me. How much damage will I do?”
“You can learn from this. Grow, like you have after every mistake.”
“There are only so many second chances you can give someone, Shade.”
“You are immortal, Mr Asano. For better or for worse, your second chances will be unending.”
“I’m sorry,” Jason told Raythe. Her face was unreadable.
“It’s far too late for apologies,” she said.
“I know,” Jason said softly. “I need to take responsibility for what I’ve done.”
Raythe shook her head. “That’s the problem. You can’t. What you’ve done is too big. It goes beyond you. You’re powerful, Asano, but you’re still just one small piece of the cosmos.”
“Then why was I able to do so much damage?”
“You know why.”
“What can I do?”
“There is nothing you can do, Jason Asano, that will not just create further harm. There are things that can be done to mend the damage, but you are not the one to do them. Your hands are no longer capable of mending.”
-
Astral Nexus [Jason Asano] has sanctioned himself.
-
Astral Nexus [Jason Asano]’s state of self-sanction has imposed sanction on avatar Shadow of the Hegemon [Shade].
“That took quite a lot of subjective time,” the System commented, studying his hands. Even though he knew it was in his nature to have a body that could house him without requiring an external vessel, it still felt somewhat odd. Something that still felt unintuitive to him on some level. His new self wasn’t perfect, but self-sanction was always a risky proposition, and considering the circumstances, he thought it had turned out relatively well. “I can sense that my isolation also calmed the temporal anomaly somewhat. A welcome side effect.”
Shade was quiet.
“I apologize, Shade,” the System said. “That can’t have been pleasant for you, even secondhand. As you know, the more drastic the change in authority, the more difficult and fraught the process. It was necessary, however.”
Shade still didn’t speak for a moment. Finally, he asked, “What would you like me to call you now? Mr Asano no longer seems appropriate.”
The System experimented with a shrug. “You may call me whatever you like, Shade. My name matters little. As an astral nexus, I am a confluence of things to begin with. And you have been with me for a long time, and have earned the right to call me by whichever element of myself you like.”
“Very well,” Shade said. “I can feel the changes you’ve made to us both, Jason. You’ve aligned your authority more closely to the Throne’s.”
“Yes,” the System said. “I thought that would be best, and easiest. The process was quite volatile at first. Still too much mortal in me, and my nature was ever stubborn. I was able to use the Throne as a guide to stabilize it. It may have well taken centuries longer otherwise. And there were only so many directions to take a nature as unruly as mine.”
“If I may confess,” Shade said. “I am surprised that worked.”
“Are you? For all his faults, my previous self was always desperate to become a better version of himself.”
Shade went quiet again.
“What are your plans now?” he asked after they had traveled past a few planets.
“A good question,” the System said. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, Shade. I feel my responsibilities more keenly than ever, and there is much to be done. But first, I think, I should help clean up the mess that my predecessor made.”
Jason had been on his way to work when all of a sudden, he was struck with the complete and utter certainty that he was God. This was very strange, given that he was an assistant manager at an office supply shop. He figured that he must have finally cracked and become delusional, although he had to admit that he was a little surprised at how generic his delusion was. He would have expected something more interesting from himself, especially since he was God.
Jason paused on the sidewalk and decided to reflect on his newfound state of divinity. He had absolutely no idea where the idea had come from, but the more he thought about it the more sure he was. That did not seem particularly reasonable, so he tried doing something godly to prove it. As soon as he tried, he suddenly knew that the magic levels on Earth were still too low to do anything he had been thinking about.
The fact that magic was real was somewhat of a surprise to him, but less so than the revelation that he was God, so it didn’t bother him too much. He briefly wondered if he’d created the universe, then immediately learned that he hadn’t, which was a relief. He didn’t want that kind of responsibility. As far as he was aware, he’d only been God for a few minutes, so he couldn’t be held accountable for any of the nonsense currently happening in the world.
“Hey, mate.” He stopped a man passing by on the sidewalk. “Sorry if this is a weird question, but do you notice anything strange and extremely not normal about me?”
“What? What are you...” The man frowned at him, then did a double-take. “Wait... are you God?”
“Okay, great,” Jason said. “So it’s not just my imagination.”
-
Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Knowledge].
“This doesn’t solve the problem,” the System said, dismissing Knowledge’s manifestation with a flick of his hand. “It’s addressing the symptom rather than the cause.” The starry nebulae of his eyes traced the curve of Pallimustus’ horizon, studying the world stretching out before him. “The gods’ behaviour on this planet is a systemic issue.”
“This is worse than I expected,” the System said, inspecting the display Raythe had conjured for him.
“You finally see how much damage you’ve caused?” Raythe asked.
“Yes. I apologize. It will be repaired, though. Eventually.”
“Few things are truly irreparable,” Raythe said. “Not even an event as momentous as the Sundering, and while this may be more directly destructive, it has less impact on a fundamental level. More relevant, however, is the fact that while the damage can be contained and eventually undone, it would be far better to avoid all of this happening in the first place.”
“Is that still possible?”
“In this case, the disease is also the cure.”
The System pondered this. “I see. I assume that if it goes well, I will be erased alongside my previous self.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not at all,” the System said. “Though I suspect it will be difficult to untangle me from the Cosmic Throne. The one thread has become many, and they have grown quite twisted.”
“There’s nothing to be done but to slowly untwist them one by one,” Raythe replied. “We do not lack patience. Your existence is an unexpected boon. On that note, you believe you will have a higher chance of success than me?”
The System met her gaze, and she was surprised to find a small, wry smile appear on his face. “I do. Despite all his stubbornness, even Jason Asano would be hard-pressed not to listen when his future self shows up to warn him of disaster.”
“I can’t read you,” Knowledge said.
“Of course you can’t,” the System said. “I may be a great astral being, but I am also my own vessel.”
“Great astral beings have no right to sanction gods!” she said angrily. “You are no longer mortal. The rules should not even allow you to intervene directly!”
“Do not cite the rules to me, goddess,” the System said coldly. “I was there when they were...” He trailed off, brow furrowing for a moment.
“What?”
The System shook off the moment of strangeness. “You are used to having all the knowledge, but you do not understand the laws of the cosmos as well as you think you do. How could you, trapped on this rock? The Cosmic Throne is a thing of boundaries, goddess, and you have overstepped yours drastically.”
“And you yours by interfering with the affairs of a local god.”
“You have no idea what my boundaries are, Knowledge.”
“There has never been precedent for such a thing,” Knowledge said.
The System fixed his gaze on her calmly. “There has never been me.”
-
Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned himself.
Jason Asano’s team stood protectively around his prone form, their bodies tense, their faces riddled with disbelief and confusion. But he knew that if he pushed them, they would fight to protect the man on the ground, despite the fact that he knew they were smart enough to grasp the implications of the situation. That was the kind of friends they were.
“Step aside, Humphrey, Sophie,” the System said softly. “This will not be painful, for him or for you.”
“It didn’t work, did it?” Clive asked. He was clutching his magister’s staff with a white-knuckled grip, but he didn’t have it raised. His face was pale, ashen with not just fear but a kind of resignation. “It bled through.”
The System smiled. “You always were the smart one.”
“If you’ve come for him, that means...”
“Don’t worry,” the System told them. “It will all be over soon.”
-
Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned himself.
“Jason. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“My tyrannical nature as the Hegemon stems from the same arrogance that led to me making my great mistake,” the System said. “That arrogance was a foundational trait of who I was as a mortal. Even after sanctioning myself, it has not entirely disappeared.”
“A transcendent being’s nature cannot be changed entirely,” Shade said. “No more than a mortal’s can.”
“Yes. But we should try our best, shouldn’t we, Shade?”
“I don’t think that is what you are doing. Sanctioning yourself repeatedly like this, in small bursts—it is erratic behaviour.”
“My nature as a triune of disparate forces leaves me with more flaws than other transcendent beings. Those flaws could, in time, lead me to making yet more mistakes of consequence.”
Shade said nothing, but the System smiled. “You just had the thought that I haven’t changed as much as you thought I did, didn’t you?”
“You have changed a great deal. As was your intention.”
“Yet as seems quite apparent to me, not enough,” the System said. “You once told me that change was inevitable, didn’t you, Shade? That to fear it was foolish, for it would happen anyway. That it was better to embrace it, so as to be an active participant in shaping one’s own destiny. You were, as always, correct.”
“I fear that I have also made a mistake somewhere along the line,” Shade said.
-
Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Knowledge].
-
Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Healer].
-
Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Guardian].
-
Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Fertility].
-
Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [War].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Dominion].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Liberty].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Refuge].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Justice].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Death].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Trade].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Journey].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Lust].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Pain].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Disguise].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Truth].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Chastity].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Strength].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned...
“Dawn,” the System greeted.
Dawn looked at him sadly, and he smiled at her, polite and vague. Though he was wearing his own body, he had the same blankness to him that most vessels did when channeling their masters.
“I would like to speak with the World-Phoenix,” he said.
“It is rather reluctant to meet with you.”
“I know. I suspect she knows what I want to ask of her, and is dragging her feet,” he said.
“Jason...” Dawn hesitated. “May I still call you Jason?”
“If you like.”
“Jason. The World-Phoenix is known for subtlety and indirect solutions. What you are asking for is...”
“I know.”
“I do not think it will agree.”
The System tilted his head. “But it costs nothing to ask. What are you so scared of, Dawn?”
“I’m still making mistakes,” the System said.
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned himself.
The System looked at the place where Knowledge had stood only moments ago. Gordon’s power had excised her cleanly. It had been very convenient of her to gather all of herself in one place in order to send herself through the dimensional bridge. The undertaking would have taken considerably longer otherwise.
“Is that it?” he pondered.
“Is something wrong?” Shade asked, emerging to float alongside him.
“This was such a gargantuan endeavour in my predecessor’s mind,” the System said. “It’s hard to believe that he made such a big mess over such a small thing.”
Shade glanced down at where the desiccated bodies of Knowledge’s followers were still dissipating into rainbow smoke. The System neither looted nor absorbed life force, and so the corpses were left to disappear on their own.
“He was very concerned about small things,” Shade said.
“I failed him,” Farrah said.
“Making you a Defier of the Will was one of the few good ideas he had,” the System said. “But it was unreasonable to expect you to hold him in check single-handedly, especially when he didn’t even bring you along half the time. Do not blame yourself. In any case, the worst of the damage has finally been contained.”
“My job wasn’t to minimize the damage,” Farrah said. “It was to help him hold on to who he was.”
The System slowly turned to look at her, his alien eyes unreadable even through their now frayed and ragged bond.
“He understood what he needed to do, in the end. He usually did—just too late.”
“I disagree.”
“On what point?”
“That becoming you was the correct lesson he took too long to learn. To me, it’s exactly the sort of stupid thing I was supposed to stop him from doing.”
“I am improved from him,” the System said, “by every reasonable standard of measurement, both mortal and transcendent. More importantly, with the power I have attained, my existence is much safer for the cosmos at large.”
“I don’t care about the cosmos,” Farrah said. “I cared about him.”
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Revels].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Roads].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Merchant].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Hearth].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Soldier].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Subtlety].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Vengeance].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Vineyard].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Hygiene].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Dancer].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Painter].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Mason].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Architect].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Grocer].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Farmer].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Gardener].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Dream].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned Pallimustus god [Courier].
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned...
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Astral Nexus [System] has sanctioned himself.
“I... feel really weird,” Jason mumbled.
“Did you eat something bad?” Erika asked, looking on with faint concern. “Didn’t you have that thing at work?” She trusted her brother with handling food, if nothing else, but that trust did not extend to his coworkers or manager. Normally, she was never above teasing Jason for any minor misfortunes that befell him, mostly as a result of his own choices, but he really did look ill. His skin was pale and clammy with sweat, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused. For a moment, she thought she saw a flicker of colour flash through them.
Had that been a reflection from the window, somehow, or was she seeing things?
“Now that you mention it... I might need to...” Jason muttered, staggering towards the bathroom.
“Don’t forget to flip the lid up first!” Not trusting Jason to follow instructions in his current state, Erika followed her brother into the bathroom. She’d metaphorically held his hair for him while he puked his heart out after Amy-related sorrow-drowning enough times that she was hardly squeamish about it anymore.
But she was not prepared for the deluge of black sludge Jason vomited into the toilet. It didn’t look like the aftermath of any food poisoning she had ever seen; it didn’t look natural at all. It was thick and almost oily-looking, and the smell was more terrible than anything she had ever experienced in her life. As she reeled back, gagging, Jason slumped further over the toilet.
“Jason?! Jason, are you okay?”
The panic already beginning to spread within her only intensified as she noticed something that didn’t make any sense at all. More black filth was beginning to ooze down Jason’s face, as though seeping through his pores. Jason’s eyes were wide and unseeing, even as black began to bleed into his sclera. Then he started to tremble and twitch, small jerky motions at first, then more and more violent. A faint grey light suffused him, like he was being lit from within. Then the light turned amber, and before Erika could even process what the sounds she was hearing were, the light was beginning to turn back to grey, only brighter this time.
Jason threw up more; his hair had detached from his scalp and she hadn’t even noticed because of all the filth coating him, keeping it all stuck to him like glue. She was also distracted by what she viscerally knew, somehow, despite never having heard such a thing, was the sickening sound of bones snapping and being pulled apart as her brother shook, mouth open in a silent scream.
The light turned bright gold. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t understand what was going on. The light grew brighter and brighter, with dazzling refractions, burning away all the filth, until flames of blue, silver, and gold were licking across Jason’s body.
Then her little brother looked up at her, his eyes now strange and vividly alien. The sight of them branded itself into her frozen mind.
“Oh,” he said, sounding strangely detached. “So that’s how the universe works.”
The bathroom erupted into light, and everything went white.
“This whole affair began with the Builder’s transgression,” the System commented. “All the patchwork attempts to fix it only led to an increasingly convoluted series of mistakes and schemes. But from the start, the error itself could not be redressed, only its consequences. My peers should have seen this and acted accordingly. Instead they let it fester like a lingering infection, leading both gods and great astral beings to stray from their proper roles. And for beings of authority, that is an existential issue. It would have been far better to cut our losses and excise the problem cleanly from the very beginning.”
Shade was silent for a long time. The two of them floated in the dark expanse of space, watching as the twin worlds of Earth and Pallimustus shuddered and groaned, then shattered in a cataclysmic eruption, landmasses and oceans sublimating into clouds of dust and rock and heat. The World-Phoenix’s power was a shimmering sphere around them, preventing the force of the destruction from reaching the rest of their respective universes.
“Of course, Lord System,” Shade finally said.
“What the—am I dead?” Jason asked. “It’s weird, because I just woke up and don’t remember anything but I’m super convinced I’m dead for some reason.”
“You are indeed dead,” the Reaper told him.
“Huh,” Jason said. “Okay, kind of a bummer, not going to lie. Are you the grim reaper?”
“I am called by many names,” the Reaper said. “But yes, you once would have known me as the Reaper.”
“Mate, your verb tense situation there is really confusing.”
“I would not normally speak with a dead soul directly,” the Reaper continued, “but one of my progeny made an outrageous journey and gave up every scrap he had to beg me to pluck your soul out of its path and guide it far, far away. The World-Phoenix was not particularly happy with me.”
“What?” Jason said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What path? What phoenix? Also, how did I even die in the first place?”
“I was told that it was a gas explosion.”
“Just a little bit farther,” Jason told himself. “Next time. I’ll get it right next time.”
“Shade,” Jason said wearily, sinking into a cloud platform, feeling like exhaustion was seeping into his avatar’s body instead of energy from the astral. He stared up at the dark ceiling above, for once devoid of stars or nebulae or sunsets. Just plain ceiling and walls, taking the shape of his old room in Madam Landry’s inn in Greenstone, back when he had just started out on his journey as an adventurer. It was a familiar, settling comfort. “Do you think I’ll ever make it?”
“I do not know,” Shade said. “But I know that, for good or for ill, you will keep trying.”