Jason and his team huhe pirates through the dimension ship, with few putting up much of a fight. Their prey was scattered, on the run and ravaged by afflis. The near-iructible gold-rankers weren’t dying, but they were closer than they’d ever been. Used to being oher end of one-sided fights, they knew what it was to be the predator. Being the prey left them panicked and fearful, many surrendering the moment one of the team caught up with them.

  While there were still a few pirates to round up, the fight was already won. That left Jason more fasated with the dimension ship than hunting down stragglers. It had the feel of a proper spaceship, all metal walls and heavy bulkheads. The magitech touches kept it from seeming like a submarine, with glowing magiduits and holographiunicators. Jason didn’t know how to work them, but some of the pirates were using them to try and coordih their fellows.

  They were colleg the pirates in the mess hall. Each time he returned with a prisoner, Jason would ge the afflis eating them from the i into ohat suppressed their powers instead.

  “I found a dead one in some kind of healing bay,” Humphrey said, ing back with another prisoner of his own.

  “It’s called an infirmary on a spaceship,” Jason told him.

  “It’s a dimension ship, not a spaceship.”

  “Don’t take this away from me,” Jason said, then his expression turned sober. “Dead in an infirmary, you say? Probably tried te what I’d doo him and the Weight of Sin affli killed him. That’s the ohat inflicts damage when my afflis are sed.”

  “Weight of Sin,” Humphrey echoed. “Sometimes I fet how… evocative your powers be.”

  “You say melodramatic,” Jason told him. “I’ve had a lot of therapy; I know who I am.”

  He looked at the prisoners, some on their knees and others curled up on the floor. Their bodies were ravaged by Jason’s power, plus the burns, bsts and pummelling they’d taken from the rest of the team. Their clothes were ragged but rgely intact.

  “I should start s my clothes out in the os,” Jason mused. “Then maybe I’d get bsted naked less often.”

  “Does it happen that much?” Farrah asked, dragging in another prisoner.

  “More than I’d like. Should we get Neil in to heal them? With their powers suppressed, they’ll take a while to heal, even with gold-rank vitality. It doesn’t feel right to just leave them with their flesh half rotted off.”

  “You’re the one who did that to them,” Farrah pointed out.

  “That was a fight. They’re prisoners, now, which means we should treat them humanely. Even if they’re a bunch of pirates, we’re not.”

  “Jason’s right,” Humphrey said, “but I don’t want them in fighting shape until we decide what to do with them. Imprison them on the cloud ship?”

  “No, let’s put them on my priso with the messenger armies that surreo me.”

  ***

  Lenora aaff tio listen in, through the drone Jason and his team had left, discarded in a er of the dimensional ship’s mess hall. The camera ointing at a wall and only infrequently got a signal out, but the audio remained mostly funal.

  “Did he just say he has a priso?” Lenora asked.

  “He also said armies,” Barry added. “Armies, plural. Of those ahings that were secretly running the Cabal. They don’t have anyone below silver rank. They’re born that way.”

  “Teically, they’re budded, not born,” Jason’s voice came through the audio pickup. “They’re actually pnts, which is kind of crazy.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Humphrey’s voice came through.

  “Some guy named Barry. He’s in one of the bunkers uhe town out there. They’ve gone all quiet and nervous down there now, though. I don’t think they realised I was listening, and they don’t seem happy about it, now that they have. Which, frankly, is a double standard when they’re still tapped into that drone in the er.”

  “That’s the oversized rec crystal thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  ***

  Jason’s team left the dimension ship and chased down the remaining pirates. Rufus and Taika had already grabbed some of them, before they could kill any of the overenthusiastic Ameri gold rankers. All the pirates were gathered up ahrough the portal to Jason’s soul realm. They couldn’t be forced through, but the alternatives, should they refuse, proved suffit iive to ply.

  Following this, more of Jason’s paniohe cloud ship and moved to the ground together. The security force was unsure how to react, surrounding them but keeping their ons, mostly guns but also swords, spears and even whips, ily non-threatening postures. One of them stepped forward, wearing tactical gear woven with magic. Jason could sehat their armour was less resilient thahe clothes worn by the pirates.

  “Mr Asano. My name is Security ander Higgins.”

  “I’m feeling a little crowded, ander.”

  “In fairness, Mr Asano, you did e to our town.”

  “Your town.”

  “I am, in this case, ag as representative of the Australian gover.”

  “And what i does the Australian gover have in this remote little spot.”

  “The standing stones, obviously. I don’t know what you’re trying to get me to admit, Mr Asano, but I’m a simple man. My job is to keep this facility, and the people in it, safe. I suggest you save the politics for Director an.”

  “Then why am I talking to you, ander?”

  “The’s rectify that, Mr Asano. Please follow me.”

  “I think I’ll skip the walk, ander. Shade?”

  The familiar emerged from Jason’s shadow. Jason stepped into his dark form and vanished, leaving the ander scowling at Shade and the rest of Jason’s team.

  “Who made these on systems?” a voipined in an Ameri at. Higgins looked over to see Travis, Clive and Belinda peering at a howitzer with a sigil engraved on the side.

  “This is terrible,” Travis tinued. “This is barely more than a big gun with an entment to overe i raances. Has this p not done any ons resear the st seventeen years?”

  “Sir,” Higgins called out to him. “Please refrain from poking the howitzer.”

  ***

  The security personnel in the and room raised their firearms as a dark shape rose from Lenora’s shadow.

  “My apology for the intrusion, Director an,” Shade said. “My name is Shade and I am afraid that my employer is, from time to time, an unfortunate mix of melodramatid impatient. Before he arrives, which will be very shortly, I have two reendations to offer you. The first is to make sure that your security force does not do anything precipitous. Of the people in this room that course of a would endanger, Mr Asano and myself would not be amongst them. Sed, I would advise allowing Mrs Aildery to this room. You may find that she ameliorates some of Mr Asano’s more instinctive impulses.”

  The room was very still as everyone in it waited for Lenora’s rea.

  “I am aware of who you are,” she said, keeping her voice measured. “I have been briefed. And I will take your advice. Sub-ander Keene, please remove your security team, find Mrs Tilden and bring her here.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “You are not here to debate my orders, Sub-ander. Do I have to repeat them?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Ooh, strianny,” Jason said as he emerged from Shade’s body as if walking through a d’day Lenora. I call you Lenora? Jason, lovely to meet you.”

  He held out his hand for her to shake, ign the security forces who had sheir guns back up. He was ba the absurd tourist outfit he’d worn when first emerging from his ship, with no sign of the blood and gore that had painted him during the battle.

  “Sub-ander, you have your orders,” Lenora said, not shifting her gaze from Asano’s as she shook his hand. In trast to images as she’d seen, his eyes were dark brown and seemingly normal. There was amusement in them, but she didn’t trust that any more than his absurd clothes or casual demeanour. She was holding a monster by the hand.

  His aura not only gave away nothing but was utterly imperceptible to her. With the old rankers she had met, she could at least register their presence, but to her supernatural senses, she was shaking hands with empty air. The disect between that and her mundane senses was unnerving and, she was quite certain, no act.

  The double doors leading into the chamber slid open and Ailden marched in as if she owhe pce.

  “Jason,” Anna demanded as she strode down the tral aisle, past rows of workstations. “What did you do?”

  “Oh, e on,” he pined. “I just got here. I haven’t done anything.”

  Anna arrived in front of Jason and Lenora. After giving Jason a suspicious look up and down, she turo Lenora and gave her a slight nod.

  “Director an.”

  “Mrs Tilden.”

  “We o get you a title, Anna,” Jason said. “An important-sounding one. Chief Something-Something of Earth Operations.”

  “Jason…”

  He chuckled.

  “Sorry, Anna. Look, I’m going to go, I just o know where we drop off all the refugees.”

  “Are you talking about the people who vanished here, seventeen years ago?” Lenora asked.

  “Yep. Didn’t bring all of them, but most. Some chose to stay, and others died. Some couldn’t be found, or didn’t want to be. Anna should have told you about this already.”

  “We’ve discussed it,” Lenora firmed. “However, you ’t just drop them off like they’re bus passengers. It’s not as simple as that.”

  Jason fshed her a smile.

  “Lenora. Director an. Anna, here, has made the grave error of agreeing to be the person who expins my whims in a mahat prevents me from ing off like a power mad loon who does whatever he wants because no one stop him. She’s going to have sh days, now that I’m back, especially these first ones.”

  He gave Anna and apologetic smile a out a sigh. His expression showed a deep weariness, just for a moment, that Lenora’s intuition told her had nothing to do with the battle he’d just e from.

  “I’m quite certain that a lot of very powerful people have a lot of questions they’re very vinced are important,” he told her. “And I will talk to them. Some of them. In time, as I see fit. Frankly, I don’t think many of the things that matter to them are the same ohat matter to me. I didn’t e to this po create some political storm. I’m just ing home and catg up with family. Bringing some friends to show them around my hometown. But I reise that showing up with all this power is going to scare people, however i my iions. Which is good, because if their iions are anything like what I experie time, they should be scared.”

  “Is that a threat, Mr Asano?” Lenora asked.

  “You call me Jason. And no, it’s not. You don’t a threaten a mosquito that nds on your arm, Lenora. You swat it if it bothers you.”

  There was a heaviness in the room. Lenora couldn’t sense any aura from Jason but was vinced he was somehow using it to make his presence seem rge and imposing, despite his ical appearano one in the room spoke into the silence as he paused briefly before tinuing.

  “I’ve been away for lohan I intended, and I have things to do. Things that are important to me. I did leave a mess outside that requires ing up. There are some pirates who wisely decided to throw themselves on my mercy rather than fight. I o have a versation with them about who oh ihem here to kill me. Also, how I fly off with that dimension ship of theirs.”

  “I tell you now,” Lenora said, “the govers and anisations operating out of this facility will wa—”

  “I don’t care what they want.”

  Now she did feel his aura, smming down on the room like a physical weight. When Jason spoke, his words started soft but grew heavy with restrained anger.

  “I built the anchor for my dimensional bridge on nd that I owhis town was abandoned after the monster surge, with no iion for ao rebuild it. The gover was happy to sell me the nd, sino one wa. But then I was gone, and they wanted what I’d left behind, so they used emi domain to seize it in my absence. And not only did they do the same to my uncle’s property, but they ha over to my enemies.”

  Jason’s aura had grown more violent as the anger seeped into his voice. She could hear the roar of blood rushing through her ears as his words bypassed them to thunder against her soul. She, and everyone else in the room but Anna, were either half crouched or slumped in their chairs, as if literally weighed down by Jason’s presence. Shaken as she was, she was thankful for the restraint of his rage. She could feel it in his aura, like water behind a dam, and khat if the damn broke, it would drown them all.

  Jason moved o Lenora, who suddenly realised she was croug. He crouched down in front of her and spoke again, his words soft and quiet.

  “The rules of this world,” he said, “apparently, mean that if you have the power, you take what you like. When people ask you about what happened here today, tell them that I finally figured that out. That anyone looking to take what is mine would do well to sider the full ramifications of that decision.”

  Suddenly, the oppressive force was gone. Everything seemed strangely silent, as if a background noise she hadn’t even noticed had suddenly stopped. Jason stood and offered his hand to help her to her feet. She looked around and saw that her staff were likewise rec.

  “I apologise,” Jason said. His voice was back to normal and he almost seemed like a different person. “I’m trying to be more diplomatic, but it doesn’t e naturally to me. Anna, please sort out with Lenora where I deposit ees. You have until I am doh the turncoat pirate captain, or I’ll dump them in the desert.”

  He moved to step back through his shadow familiar, then stopped and turned back to Anna.

  “Gary is here, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she said. “In the main room of the bunker.”

  Jason strode off towards the door, the security team gathered outside moving out of his way like pins before a bowling ball. The people in the main bunker hadn’t been privy to what took p the and room, but they had seen the security team’s rea, and they reised Jason from the footage of the battle. No one spoke and no one moved. Jason walked up to a leonid sitting in a booth, who stood nervously at his approach.

  The young lion man towered over Jason, who was not especially tall for a human. Even so, the anxiousness of the young man and the supreme fidence of Jason made the leonid seem the smaller.

  “Gary Sharpton,” Jason said, and held out his hand. Gary looked at it for a long, awkward moment before nervously reag out to shake it.

  “You were named food friend of mine,” Jason said. “I’m guessing you’ve heard that a few times.”

  “Yes, Patriarch.”

  “No, none of that. Call me Jason. And you let go of my hand, now.”

  He let Jason’s hand go with a yelp.

  “Sorry, Patriarch. Sir. Jason.”

  Jason chuckled and gave him a friendly pat on an enormous bicep.

  “Gary, how would you feel about following me around for a bit while I do some chores?”

  “Chores?”

  “Interrogate a pirate captain, learn to fly a spaceship, that kind of thing. I hear you know your way around magitech.”

  “I get by.”

  “Well, you’ll have to. I’m going to be relying on you to figure out how the spaceship works.”

  “What?”

  A bck archway rose from the floor and was filled with swirling darkness.

  “e on, bloke,” Jason said. “I also o interrogate you a bit. Make sure Taika hasn’t been teag you about the wrong Voltron.”

  “What’s a Voltron?”

  ***

  Jota and Nata had been moved to Jason’s cloud ship and pced in a bnk, white room. They had been provided with some cloud furniture; chairs oher side of a low table.

  “I don’t like this,” Nata said. “Jota, I know this situation is extreme, but you’ve been ag increasingly stra’s like you don’t care about the ramifications of losing the ship or what Jakaar will make of this.”

  “Because I don’t,” Jota said. “I told you, back at Asano Vilge, that I had a strange feeling about all this. About Asano. After seeing that battle, I’m vinced.”

  “He wasn’t that strong.”

  “No. I couldn’t beat him alone, but if I’d been leading the crew, it would have been a very different battle. But I’m far older than him, and I trained with the best instructors in the os. I could see how he was trained in the way he fights. Solid, but nothing like what I went through. But when it es to fighting, experience is far more important than training. Where I came from, I got to see people who have been honing their skills in real bat for turies. Millenia. People who make me, Asano, and anyone else this side of the os look like stumbling buffoons.”

  “So?”

  “So, we know that Asano was born on this p, forty-four years ago. That, twenty years ago, he was no fighter at all. But what I saw in in that battle was not two decades of bat experience. He fights like someone who’s been fag life ah battles for lohan Asano’s been alive. What does a person have to gh to fight like that?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “It’s a data point. This ship is a temple; another data point. Asano is an avatar; one more data point. That portal he sent our former crewmates through? That was an astral gate portal.”

  “A what?”

  “A portal that astral kings use to access their realms. Astral kings, who operate through prime avatars.”

  “So, what are you saying? That this guy from a nothing p is some kind of astral god-king?”

  “Astral nexus is the term,” Jason’s voice said. A gap appeared in the wall and Asano walked through, followed by a human woman with dark hair and dark skin. There was a nervous young leonid who remained out in the hall. Jota and Nata stood up.

  “Astral nexus?” Jota asked.

  “It’s unusual,” Jason said. “Probably not unique because what is, in the vastness of the os? Out of the ordinary, though, I suspect.”

  “A nexus of what?” Jota asked. “Astral king and god? Why are you running around with a gold-rank avatar?”

  “Because my mortal power is still gold rank. I imagine you’ve been told at least some of my background by the people who hired you to kill me.”

  “Their information was very obviously g.”

  Jota heard the promise of blood in Asano’s chuckle.

  “I imagine so,” Asano said. “But you’re here to answer questions, not ask them. At least for now. But I have other s, so I’ll introduce you to my friend Arabelle. She’s going to interview you.”

  “You mean interrogate us,” Nata said.

  “No,” Arabelle said. “I’m not going to push because we don’t need anything from you. It might speed things up a bit, especially when it es to piloting your dimension ship, but we’ll get by regardless. At some point, we must decide what to do with the two of you. This is your ce to influehat decision.”

  “We’ll be forthing,” Jota said. “I spot opportunity when it steals my ship.”

  Jason ughed again.

  “Alright then,” he said, and held out his hand. Jota shook it and a system windoeared.

  Jason AsanoPrime Avatar (Astral Nexus)[System Administrator]Jota stared at the s, his hand frozen as it still held on to Jason’s.

  “System administrator?” he asked breathlessly. “As in… the System?”

  Jaso out a sigh.

  “Why won’t a go of my hand today?”

  ***

  On the cloud ship’s bridge, the entire front wall was transparent, at least from the inside. Jason stood looking out, with Danielle Geller beside him. Gary had bee off with Clive, Travis and Belinda to explore the dimension ship. The leonid’s aura was his own, the soul of his previous ination almost impossible to pick out. The only person who would reise it was Farrah, who Jason had avoided. Rufus was having a talk with her at that very moment. Jason could feel the turmoil in their auras as they chatted in the ship’s lounge.

  “There are a lot of things to do here, Jason,” Danielle said. “Decisions to be made.”

  “Yes,” Jason agreed, looking out the window.

  “Then you shouldn’t be leaving.”

  “I’ll be back. Soon. But I have to do this first, and I know you uand.”

  “I do,” she said, her eyes watg Humphrey flying towards the pirate vessel. “Just hurry back.”

  ***

  The first magic Emi had ever seen was a bck archway, rising from the ground and filling with shadowy power. She was walking out of a bakery when she saw it again, in the middle of the street in front of her. She dropped her sandwich, only to have it stop just above the ground as someoepped out of the portal.

  “Niece, you should be more careful with — oof!”

  She rammed into him with speed and strength that would have sent a car flying, ing her arms around him. He reached up and tousled her hair.

  “Hey, Moppet.”

  BOOK 12 END