Jason ended up taking his cloud vehicle a significant distance from Yaresh, away from the messenger strongholds and towards the eastern coastline. He set up a cloud palace atop a massive plateau cliff that offered spectacular views that stretched out to the ocean. They could see a handful of large towns dotting the coast, the buildings washed white and decorated with bold colours.

“Why are we so far from the city?” Sophie asked Humphrey. They were on a balcony, looking out at the ocean, her leaning into his large frame.

“We’re still within portal range,” Humphrey told her. “It’s not an impractical location, given how many portal users we have. To be accurate, I’m a teleporter, not a portal user but—”

Sophie reached up to press a finger to his lips.

“You know how I’m always telling you that pedantically defining terms is sexy?” she asked him.

“Uh, no.”

“Exactly. The only person who has ever said that is Clive’s wife, and Jason made her up. And I didn’t ask if we could portal back to the city conveniently. I asked why we came out here in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be away from all the cloying politicians, the sad tents camps and the smell of ash churned into mud. It’s good to get out and just be somewhere quiet and beautiful together. But why set up so far from Yaresh?”

“To make a point,” Humphrey told her. “That orb was something Jason negotiated for himself. It took no one but us to go collect it, yet every major faction in the city felt entitled to invite themselves along. Wanting some observers for any interaction with the messengers is understandable, but they swept in and took over. All those people? Testing us with that Magic Society fool? Having that many gold-rankers around was a message to us more than the messengers. This is our message back, reminding them that we aren’t an asset for them to be used as they like.”

“By moving to the middle of nowhere?”

“Yaresh is their sphere of influence. We have placed ourselves outside it.”

“I think it’s going to take more than that to convince them to not try and use us.”

“Yes, but if we do things the diplomatic way before the Jason way, they can’t say they weren’t warned.”

***

In his soul realm, Jason was sitting on a bench in a garden. Around him were leafy green plants with flowers whose scents were as sweet as their colours bright. Jason was examining a smooth, flat stone, turning it over and over in his hands. It was carved with an intricate web of lines and sigils, complex and precision-cut. As he continued to peer at it, Marek Nior Vargas descended from the sky on dark wings to land lightly on the grass.

“That is it?” Marek asked.

“It is,” Jason said, tossing the stone to him. Marek did as Jason had, turning it over in his hands as he examined it.

“Definitely an aura keystone,” Marek said. “A common device in securing our strongholds, but this is more complex than others I’ve seen.”

He stepped closer to hand it back to Jason.

“Without Mah Go Schaat’s aura, I don’t think you can…”

He fell silent as the carvings on the stone lit up in Jason’s hand. Jason grinned, waving the stone jauntily.

“How are you doing that?” Marek asked.

“I’m told that diamond-rank messengers are obsessed with becoming astral kings.”

“Yes. The closer they get to the peak of power, the more they chafe at being beholden to those that stand above them.”

“It seems that your boy Mah fell very much into that camp. This keystone is barely aligned to his aura. It seems like he took everything he had learned about the power of an astral king and imbued it into this key. It’s not a terrible idea, since it’s easier to replicate an aura, even a diamond-rank one, than the power of an astral king. Mostly, though, I suspect he wanted to feel like a big boy astral king by mustering up even an echo of their power.”

“You’re saying that any astral king could open it easily?”

“I imagine most astral kings are sufficiently powerful that they wouldn’t need to. I’m the poor cousin of the astral king community, though. But yes, it was pretty easy to trigger. I did have to replicate elements of Mango Shot’s aura, but, I spent an absurdly long time devouring his life force. That left me with a pretty solid grasp on it. That bloke was a meal and a half, let me tell you.”

“If you have an active keystone, Mah Go Schaat’s study should just open for you, then. And, if you drained his life force as thoroughly as you suggest, then you should have some time before he comes looking for it.”

“Comes looking for it? That guy’s dead. I checked. I used a power on his body that only works on dead people. Are you saying that he might come back?”

“No, I am saying that he will come back. He’s a diamond-ranker. They’re extremely difficult to keep dead.”

“Wait, are you saying that all diamond-rankers self-resurrect?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“That would explain why the restrictions on my resurrection power lift after gold-rank.”

“I think you’ll find that most of the diamond-rank monsters that appear during a monster surge aren’t newly manifested but rising from dormancy as the ambient magic grows strong enough to wake them.”

Jason groaned.

“The Adventure Society and their bloody secrets,” he complained. “And now I have to worry about this guy coming back?”

“Yes. Even if their body is annihilated, diamond-rankers come back unless you take measures to prevent it. Once you become diamond-rank yourself, your corpse-draining power might be enough, I don’t know what the specific power is. The best you can hope for at your current rank is that you’ve extended the time before his return.”

“Great, there was a secret clock on this the whole time. Here I was worried that the messengers were stalling because they were either trying to break into the study or booby trap it on me. Maybe they were just holding out for this guy to come back.”

“Unlikely. Jes Fin Kaal detests Mah Go Schaat, and killing you does not serve her agenda. Your postulation of her trying to access the study for herself is almost certainly accurate and does not harm her astral king's interests. Jes Fin Kaal is detestable, but not a fool. For the moment, she has need of you. That said, do not think for a moment that she won't take the chance to establish dominance, should the opportunity arise."

“But no booby trap on the orb?”

“I cannot speak definitively on that which I have no direct knowledge of. I would be very surprised if there were. If nothing else, It would be hard for any kind of trap to go unnoticed unless she had successfully accessed the study. Even so, you should be diligent in examining the exterior before you open it.”

“I’ve got my best guy on it. I don’t suppose you or any of your people could help with that?”

“No, we are soldiers. The astral kings are careful in whom they allow to wield any power outside of our innate abilities.”

Jason sighed.

“Alright,” he said. “If Margo Shat is waiting out there like a time bomb, I need to stop faffing about and get to it. Anything else you can suggest, as my expert on messengers?”

“I do have a suggestion. You should ferment insurrection amongst the messengers to undermine the astral kings.”

“By letting you and your people go?”

“We are very motivated.”

“I’m sure you are. But you also killed a lot of innocent people, and you don’t care about that. Your only concern is your conflict with the astral kings, and if you can advance that by killing more innocent people, I have no doubt that you will. Which makes it hard to let you go.”

“The greater good of pitting us against the astral kings—”

Jason stood as the air trembled and the sky darkened, blue shifting to bloody red as the soul realm reacted to his anger. Marek felt the world press in on him like a squeezing fist.

“I’m familiar with the ‘killing ten to save a hundred’ argument," Jason said in a voice of thunder echoing through a glacial canyon. “You would be well-served in not making it, Marek Nior Vargas.”

The messenger set his jaw, matching Jason’s gaze. He could not still the tremulation in his hands, however, held down at his sides.

“I can see this is a discussion for another day,” he said, his voice carefully controlled.

“On that day, you'd best come up with a better argument," Jason warned, his tone cold but returning to normal as the sky shifted back to blue. "Otherwise, you might find me convinced that there is no salvation for you. Forgiveness is one thing, but mercy has its limits. Sometimes a beast has to be put down because it can't be trusted not to hurt people.

“Perhaps you can guide me towards an argument that you would find compelling?”

“Start by convincing me that your kind are even capable of compassion. If you can't manage that much, then I don't see any hope for you as a species. It would make your kind less a people than a thorny, poisonous weed. Avoided where possible and burned out to the roots when necessary."

***

The metal orb got its own building, resting in a cradle of cloud substance. Clive had set up a small forest of magical devices and was running every test he could think of. He could think of a lot of tests.

“It changed colour again,” Clive said as he moved around the orb, peering at it so closely his nose was almost touching it.

“It did?” Belinda asked in a bored voice, looking up from the notebook she was using to record Clive’s observations. “Are you sure?”

“I’m certain,” Clive said confidently. “I went from a dark brassy colour to a slightly darker brassy colour.”

"Fascinating," Belinda said in an aggressively unconvincing tone as she marked down a note. “Have you considered hiring a research assistant, now that you don't have the Magic Society to provide them?

“I hired you as a research assistant.”

"Five years ago. We've kind of moved on since then. Pay an auxiliary adventurer to do it."

“Yes, I bet the Magic Society would love to position a spy next to me,” Clive said.

"Who cares if they're a spy, as long as they're willing to organise your notes? I'm not transcribing these into your reference system, just so you know."

Clive moved to one of the many testing devices he had set up around the orb and was adjusting it when Jason walked in.

“What is that thing?” he asked, peering at the device Clive was fiddling with. “It looks like a backwards steampunk telescope with kaleidoscopic lenses.”

“Is that a research device from your world?” Clive asked.

“No, it’s what happens when a cosplayer eats too much sugar. Have you found anything?”

“No,” Clive said. “Nothing that suggests the messengers have set any traps for us, anyway. That’s not to say they aren’t there, just that I can’t find them. The messengers have a magical tradition older than this planet, so it’s hardly a surprise their magic is more advanced than ours. If you give me a couple of weeks to—”

"No," Jason said, his tone firmly cutting off that proposal. "It turns out that the original owner is likely to come looking for it at an indeterminate time in the future."

“I thought he died.”

“I’ve died plenty of times; I don’t put much stock in it. As it turns out, those rumours about diamond-rankers being immortal have quite a lot of truth to them.”

“Wait, what? Where are you getting that from? Those messengers you have locked up?”

“Yeah. I think it’s on the Adventure Society’s restricted information list. Right alongside secondary racial gift evolutions and pretty much anything that’s ever happened to me.”

“I think you’re both missing the point here,” Belinda said. “Which is not a shock since neither of you can make it through a conversation without going off on three tangents. You need to open this thing now before the big, bad diamond-ranker turns up looking for it. Let me remind you that we are a long way from support if he comes knocking on our door."

“You’re right,” Jason said. “Thank you, Lindy. Shade is already letting the others know, and we’ll crack this egg as soon as we’re all assembled. Clive, you might want to pack up your magic tools.”

***

The team, minus Rufus who was in Yaresh, were gathered in the one-room building with the orb. They had a blast wall between them and the orb, cloud material encased in the strongest materials Jason had fed into his colour flask. They were ready to fight if something in the orb was waiting to ambush them. They were ready to contain it if it blew up or spewed poison gas. They were ready to run if none of that worked, three portals already in place for them to flee into. Jason’s shadow portal, his soul realm portal and Clive’s rune circle portal were arrayed behind the team in a line.

"You know that if there's a diamond-level threat in there, we're done right?" Neil asked. "Nothing in this cloud building can stop it and we can't move fast enough to avoid it."

“Speak for yourself,” Sophie told him.

“Well, if you live and I die,” Neil told her, “you’re going to have to do something for me.”

“What?” she asked, her voice thick with suspicion.

“Just give someone a letter for me. You know, final goodbye stuff.”

“You want me to go to Greenstone and find your mother?”

“What?” Neil asked. “No, the letter is for Clive’s wife.”

“Oh come on!” Clive exclaimed.

“You don’t have to go to Greenstone,” Neil continued. “Just give it to anyone at the Magic Society. They’ll know how to find her.”

“Bro, that is ice cold,” Taika said.

“Yeah, that might be crossing a line,” Jason said.

“Does anyone have a writing implement?” Neil asked. “I haven’t actually written it yet. Lindy, you were writing something earlier, right? I can just scribble it on the back of that."

“You are not going to write a letter to my imaginary wife on the back of my research notes!" Clive told him.

“Should I include a poem?” Neil asked. “What rhymes with glistening thighs?”

“Seriously, I think Clive is going to choke you out,” Jason warned Neil.

"Lindy, get out one of my recording crystals," Sophie said.

“Good idea,” Belinda said.

Humphrey let out a sigh.

“You know, I always knew I’d be an adventurer,” he said wearily. “I used to lay awake at night, wondering what kind of team I’d have. Paragons, champions. Everything adventurers should be. Heroic. Dignified. People who gave respect as easily as they earned it. What happened to my life?”

“Uh oh,” Jason said. “I think we finally broke Humphrey. Look, I’m just going to open this thing. Everyone, try not to die.”

He pulled out the engraved keystone

“Wait!” Clive exclaimed. “You can’t just—”

The carvings on the keystone lit up. A panel of the side of the orb popped out and slid to the side. The team waited, frozen, for something to happen. For anything to happen. It didn’t.

“Well,” Neil said. “Is anyone else feeling let down?”