Jason was using his cloud-flask to produce what was essentially a combat recreational vehicle. The size of a large tour bus, it was comprised of cloud-substance encased in panels of various magical materials. The blue and green metal panels were not square but formed swooping shapes, reminiscent of the wind. The result looked like a hybrid between a bus and a swift pleasure yacht.

“This is the way to travel, bro,” Taika said happily.

Belinda and Clive were floating around the metal orb on the heavy freight skimmer. They couldn’t fly around with the ease of Jason or Sophie, but any silver-ranker could levitate slowly with concentration. The pair were attaching devices around the surface of the orb, designed to reduce the weight of the massive thing. When they were done, they dropped down to join the rest of the team.

“These were Belinda’s idea,” Clive said. “They’re usually used in shipping.”

“Also, occasionally for stealing things,” Belinda added, getting an eye-roll from Clive.

“They only get used for loading and unloading,” Clive continued. “They burn through spirit coins too fast to use them for an entire trip. Humphrey, Neil and Taika; you’re the strongest of us by far, so we’ll need you to move the orb once we activate the devices.”

“Didn’t you say those things will make the orb weightless?” Rufus asked. “Shouldn’t that make it easy to move?”

“No,” Clive said. “It won’t fall to the ground anymore, but it still has what’s called the echo of weight, meaning that it’s still hard to shift.”

“Are you talking about the difference between weight and mass?” Jason asked.

Clive turned to him with a curious expression, but before Jason could say anything, an overwhelming aura manifested.

“No,” a female voice rumbled like thunder.

“Oh, come on,” Jason complained to the sky. “I know this one. Kind of. More or less. Okay, fine. You’re not even saying anything and I can practically hear your raised eyebrow.”

The aura vanished.

“Ask Travis about it later,” Jason told Clive. “Did he ever tell you about gravity?”

“Jason…” the voice rumbled, the aura returning.

“Seriously?” he asked the sky, throwing his arms out. “I was just asking a question. Bloody hell, lady, don’t you have a precocious child to go inspire with a verve for learning? You’ve got to have better things to do than this.”

Jason shook his head as the divine aura rescinded again.

“Gods, am I right?”

He looked around, seeing that everyone from both groups, the Yaresh convoy and the messenger servants were all staring at him.

“Oh, like you’ve never seen gods before,” Jason said loudly. “I know a bunch of you are priests; I can feel the divinity in your auras, so don’t give me those looks.”

Jason wandered over to his cloud vehicle, muttering discontentedly as he did.

“Bloody transcendent beings think they run the whole bloody cosmos…”

When Jason disappeared into the vehicle, the people all turned their attention to his team. Rufus pinched the bridge of his nose while Humphrey ran an exasperated hand over his face. “We cannot take that guy anywhere,” Neil muttered.

“I don’t think my mum would like this,” Taika said as he gave all the people looking at them an awkward wave. “She’s pretty Christian.”

“That’s one of the religions from your world?” Clive asked.

“Yep. The god is kind of like the Builder, in that he’s more on a creating-the-universe level than the gods here. Also, he doesn’t like shellfish or mixed fabrics. I was never clear on why.”

“Your mother didn’t tell you?” Sophie asked.

“Well, there’s this book with all the rules in it, but it seemed a bit sketchy to me. Mum used to make me read it, but then I’d ask questions until she hit me with a spoon.”

***

The massive metal orb was heavy, even for a metal sphere of its size. Even so, it was slowly moving as Humphrey, Neil and Taika pushed on it, bracing themselves on the carry bed of the freight skimmer. Each of them had strength enhanced beyond the silver-rank norm, leaving them somewhere between the strength of a peak silver-ranker and a baseline gold.

The freight skimmer was floating at maximum height, some four metres off the ground, at considerable cost in spirit coins as fuel. It was enough that the orb, when pushed sideways, would float over Jason’s cloud RV instead of into the side of it. The rest of the team were looking on, as were most of the Yaresh city representatives and Adventure Society officials. Those that weren’t watching were busy interrogating the messenger servants. The Magic Society people had already left.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t make the cloud vehicle more like that freight skimmer, with a big flatbed,” Rufus said.

“No, I could,” Jason said.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“So many reasons. One, see how it looks? It was completely worth House de Varco messing with us to get those upgrades to the cloud vehicles.”

“You don’t think having a giant metal sphere on top will ruin the lines?”

“Well, you can’t have everything. And that wasn’t even the main reason anyway.”

“Which is?”

“Flatbed haulers don’t have a lounge area.”

“That’s a good reason,” Sophie said.

“Agreed,” Belinda chipped in.

“Just to be clear,” Rufus said, “you use a bunch of spirit coins to lift that skimmer under extreme load so you could sit more comfortably for the minutes it will take to get back to the city?”

“More or less,” Jason said.

“Wealth is ruining you.”

“Yeah,” he agreed happily. “Anyway, I’m not taking it back to the city. Too many greedy little hands. I’m going to set up somewhere more remote, like when we were on the road contract last month.”

“You know we won’t exactly be hidden, right?” Belinda asked. “Hauling around a giant magic ball isn’t what you’d call a subtle activity.”

“I know,” Jason said. “The Magic Society has drones above us as we speak.”

“Drones?” Clive asked.

Jason pointed at the sky.

“Little flying magical sensors.”

The others craned their heads back, except for Clive who looked at Jason.

“I don’t see anything,” Sophie said.

“You wouldn’t,” Clive said. “They shift colour so they’re hard to spot. They also fly around three kilometres in the air and are shielded against magical senses.”

The others joined Clive in staring at Jason.

“What?” he asked, having continued to watch the orb the time.

Many of the people outside of the team, even the messenger servants, had been throwing regular glances at Jason since his interactions with Knowledge. Almost all of them had spoken with one god or another in their lives, some having done so many times. None of them had interactions like that, however. Gods were for worshipping, not for banter and certainly not for yelling complaints at. One might take issue with a god’s priests, but not the deity itself. Belinda looked around at all the people watching, then turned to Jason.

“You know there are a bunch of gold-rankers here, right?” she asked. “Why not get them to move this thing?”

“To prove we don’t need them to,” Jason answered, not taking his gaze from the orb. Belinda thought about his response for a moment.

“I can respect that,” she said.

Some of the Yaresh group were still interrogating the messenger servants, but they had little of value to reveal. It was less that the servants were resisting than the messengers had made sure to not send anyone who knew any critical information. The interrogators had largely moved on to demands for the promised device from the messengers. The servant in charge, one of their silver-rankers, claimed to have no knowledge of the messenger’s plans in that regard. Given how the messengers treated them, Jason was unsurprised to sense truth from the man’s aura.

“You know,” Jason said, looking over at the cloud vehicle. “I’m very happy with what House de Varco managed to do in terms of designing upgrades for the cloud flask. Maybe I should finally talk to that diamond-rank friend of Emir’s.”

Rufus let out an exasperated groan so uncharacteristic that the rest of the team all turned to stare.

“Please do that,” Rufus told Jason. “Emir has been complaining to me constantly about asking you to do that because she’s constantly complaining to him. Emir called my father to have him complain at me over water link.”

“Not your mother?” Sophie asked. “She’s right here where he can find her.”

“Emir isn’t stupid enough to do that,” Rufus said. “He’s right here where she can find him.”

The others laughed at Rufus’ thousand-yard stare.

“Why have you been putting the diamond-ranker off?” Clive asked. “She created your cloud flask, right? Surely there is a lot to gain from meeting with her.”

“Yeah, but she tried to take it over,” Jason said. “If she wasn’t a diamond-ranker and a friend of Emir’s, I’d have already done something about that.”

“What do you mean, take it over?” Clive asked.

“She has some device or method to control the flask, even without the owner’s permission. I sensed her trying to use it numerous times but she could never get it to work. It’s not just connected to me by a normal soul-binding that restricts access anymore. It’s an actual expression of my soul now, so even a diamond-ranker is locked out from messing with it.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Rufus said.

“I know you and Emir are close,” Jason said. “And I know he’s been bothering you about this. I didn’t want to cause friction between you.”

“I don’t think Emir would still be bothering me if he knew what she was doing,” Rufus said.

“He knows,” Jason told him. “Emir’s mindset is still caught up in ranks. It doesn’t occur to him that a diamond ranker shouldn’t get whatever they want, whenever they want. It’s the wise approach. I just don’t get the luxury of respecting power the way that self-preservation suggests. Too many people with too much power are always looking to take something from me. Still, it might be time to meet with this woman. Maybe she can offer some upgrades that will help us when we head underground. We don’t know what we’re going to face down there.”

Humphrey, Taika and Neil finished moving the orb over the cloud vehicle and came down as Belinda and Clive floated up. They carefully disabled the weight-reducing devices in sequence to slowly lower the orb. It sank heavily into the cloud roof as wispy tendrils moved up to encase it, although they seemed unnecessary. It looked like a bomb would have trouble dislodging it.

“I think we’re good,” Jason said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Humphrey, Neil and Taika looked exhausted, trudging in the direction of the cloud vehicle’s door.

“Good job, blokes,” Jason said, slapping Neil on the shoulder. “I’ve got a very nice juice blend waiting for you inside.”

Neil nodded his acknowledgement and they climbed the short set of stairs to the door. The rest of the team followed, Jason about to be the last one in when he felt a surge of magic. He turned to see large thorns erupting from the ground, instantly and precisely impaling each and every messenger servant. The bronze-rankers had died immediately, as had one of the silver-rankers whose head had burst like a rotten fruit as the thick, sharp thorn passed right through it. The others died when the thorns sprouted smaller thorns, puncturing them all a dozen times from the inside out.

Jason looked over to Allayeth whose gaze was fixated on the now-dead envoys. Sensing his eyes on her, she turned to look at him, expression unrepentant. With a blur of movement, she was standing in front of Jason.

“Something to say?” she challenged.

“No,” he said sadly.

“You think I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t answer to you.”

“No, you don’t,” Jason agreed. “You don’t have to answer anyone but yourself.”

She seemed thrown by Jason’s lack of combativeness.

“Some things can’t be forgiven,” she said and then vanished in another blur, not waiting for his response.

***

Allayeth didn’t join Jason and his team for the return to the city. Jason’s cloud RV trundled along the highway with Shade driving, the rest of the team relaxing in the comfortable living area. Jason sat on a bench by the window, looking out, and Rufus moved to join him.

“You’re disappointed in Allayeth,” Rufus said.

“No,” Jason said. “I never expected my little morality rant to change her mind. I’m disappointed that I didn’t do a better job of trying, and it’s not like I’m some paragon of virtue.”

“I found it interesting that she came up to you like that. The way she said that she didn’t have to answer to you made it feel a lot like she did.”

“No,” Jason said. “She knows that the one she has to answer to is herself. But I’ve been there, and I think she realised that after she killed them all. And why I asked her to forgive them instead.”

“You’ve killed a bunch of helpless prisoners?”

“Not exactly. Once, back on earth, some people came for me while my family was around. I don’t know if I could have handled it better, but they had a weakness and I used it. Killed them all on the spot without moving a muscle. It was kind of the last straw for my family. It’d been coming for a while, but they didn’t look at me the same after that. It seemed like the right choice at the time, but I know what it did to me.”

“It was hard to live with?”

“No, and that’s the problem. It made it easier to do the next horrible thing, and that’s why I need to be better. Every time I justify some brutal action, it makes it easier to dismiss finding a better way as too hard. That’s why I’m trying to force myself to find alternatives to killing a bunch of people, even when it isn’t easy. Which it never seems to be with the things we do.”

“I respect that,” Rufus told him. “I don’t know that it’s a practical approach to adventuring, though.”

Jason laughed.

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “I’m well aware that there are hard, grim choices waiting for all of us. But I’ll never do it if I never try.”

Rufus nodded.

“You don’t give up on doing something that’s right, just because it’s hard,” he said.

“No,” Jason agreed. “You don’t. I’ve been thinking about these people the messengers have cowed into serving them. There has to be a better way to get through to them than impaling them on spikes.”

“If mercy is the goal, it can’t be hard to improve on that. You have something in mind?”

“Not yet. I’m still putting pieces together. The key has to be breaking the ideas the messengers have imprinted on them. Did you sense their auras? Those people are broken. Devoid of hope. The messengers have convinced them that the conquest of this work is inevitable, which crushed their will to struggle.”

“Well, if anyone is going to disprove the myth of messenger superiority, it’s you.”

“Immodest as it is, I was thinking the same thing. I still need to work on how, but at the very least I’ll need some live messenger servants to try with at some stage. Can’t have Allayeth massacring them all on sight. You’re diplomatic in a way that I’m not; can you go to the Adventure Society? Get them to hand over the next bundle of messenger slaves we get our hands on to me?”

“I can try.”

“Thank you.”

Jason and Rufus leaned towards the window, peering out at a group of people around a pair of halted skimmers beside the road.

“Are they the Magic Society people?” Rufus asked. The team clustered around Jason and Rufus to look outside.

The skimmers containing the Magic Society contingent had stopped and were belching sickly green smoke. The people in them had gotten out and were variously dry-heaving or yanking off their clothes and tossing them away.

“What is going on?” Humphrey asked.

“No idea,” Clive said. “We should keep going, though. Those stink cloud potions are extremely clingy.”