Marcus was in a command tent set up in Marshalling Yard One, the largest on the Adventure Society campus. From there, he was organising the round-up of messenger-servant infiltrators, as well as the impending expedition underground. He was standing behind a large table covered in neatly organised maps and reports. On the other side of the table was Rick Geller, along with his fiancé and team member, Hannah Adeah.

“Your team performed excellently during the sweep,” Marcus said. “I’ve always found working with Geller-led teams to be a pleasure.”

“Thank you, sir,” Rick answered.

“You can call me Marcus,” he told them. “I was hoping you could help me with a minor thing,” Marcus continued. “I’m aware that you were brought all the way to Yaresh because of Jason Asano. After Lord Charist put him at odds with the Adventure Society, you were asked to come here and help smooth out relations.”

“That’s broadly accurate,” Rick said. “The word ‘asked’ is the only part I would categorise as entirely wrong. And, frankly, the entire thing was unnecessary. Lady Arabelle managed to mend that fence herself and we were scheduled to go home, but the society was looking for outside adventurers. They wanted people they were confident hadn’t been compromised by the messengers. Since then, we’ve been pulling ordinary adventurer duty.”

“I know that you’ve been dragged around because of Mr Asano, so I apologise in advance for asking, but I was hoping you would be able to help me find him. I received word that he arrived in the city this morning but he hasn’t reported in. Last word was that he came in through the gate closest to the adventurer camp outside the walls, so he’s in the city unless he portalled out. I was hoping you had an idea of where he might be.”

“Well…” Rick began, only for Hannah to kick his shin.

“We don’t know,” Hannah said. “Genuinely, Rick is being an idiot, sir, not hiding anything.”

“Well, now I have to hear it,” Marcus said. “Otherwise, curiosity will be burning me up the whole day.”

Hannah let out a weary sigh.

“If you want to find Jason,” Rick said, “find a large group of highly attractive women. Adventurers and professionals, not socialites, preferably with at least one princess.”

Hannah rolled her eyes.

“I didn’t get the impression of Asano as a womaniser,” Marcus said.

“Oh, he’s not,” Rick said. “That’s just how it works.”

“That is not how it works,” Hannah said.

“Okay,” Rick said, plainly disagreeing but not pushing the issue.

Marcus watched the exchange with raised eyebrows.

“Well,” he said. “That’s too fun not to test.”

“Aren’t you quite busy, sir?” Hannah asked him.

“I could swear I told you to call me Marcus. And what’s the point of being in charge if you don’t get to do what you want?” Marcus asked.

“Uh,” Hannah said, “carrying out your duties and responsibilities to the Adventure Society and its Continental Council?”

Marcus frowned, then shook his head, his massive white mane whipping around it.

“Nope,” he said. “That’s far too good an answer for me to counterpoint, so I’m going to ignore it. Come along, let’s go.”

Marcus marched around the table and outside, leaving the other two to trail behind.

“Look what you did,” Hannah scolded Rick as they followed Marcus out of the tent. They found him with an Adventure Society official attempting to explain his schedule. The woman’s dismay at Marcus’ response was quite plain.

“No, push all that back,” Marcus told her. “Right now I need to find a large group of women attractive to human sensibilities, so elves, celestines. Humans, obviously.”

“I wouldn’t rule out leonids,” Rick told him, which got Marcus to turn around.

“Really?” Marcus asked, his tone intrigued, before turning back to the official. “Also, any royalty involved would be ideal.”

The official looked at him as if he’d gone mad.

“I have no idea what is going on, she said,” “But I am certain that anything on my list is more important than it.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Marcus assured her, leaving her looking very unassured. “Can you please just tell me of any group that matches those parameters?”

The official gave him an unhappy glare but scratched her head in thought.

“Beautiful women and a princess,” she mused.

“Adventurers would be ideal,” Marcus said. “And a princess.”

The look on the official‘s face did not imply that made it better, but she begrudgingly answered.

“Lady Allayeth has been taking Team Moon’s Edge around, introducing them to the team leaders that will be going on the expedition with them,” she said. “I believe she’s scheduled to meet representatives of Team Storm Shredder right about now. The team leader and one Zara Nareen.”

“I assume this Nareen is a beautiful woman since you’re pointing her out specifically?” Marcus asked.

“Yes,” Rick said. “She’s also the former Hurricane Princess of the Storm Kingdom.”

He failed to notice the look that the speed and certainty of his answer got him from Hannah.

***

“It’s very complicated, as you’d expect,” Zara told Jason. “Refinancing all those people in the entertainment district was complicated enough before the city was destroyed. When it was destroyed that got worse, obviously, but the real problems came when the city administration fast-tracked the reconstruction here and started micromanaging while ignoring property rights. They only care about creating a morale booster for the populace, which is a fine goal, but untangling the legal mess is going to take years.”

Jason and Zara, along with Zara’s team leader, Korinne, were watching a building being constructed in the entertainment district. With them were Allayeth and Team Moon’s Edge, a team of six women personally supervised and guided from their early careers by Allayeth. They were now all gold-rank, Jason estimating that to be a recent development based on their auras. His senses also picked up Bellory, but she was inside her half-built tavern, several blocks and a dozen construction projects away.

“I’ll take the issue up with the city myself,” Allayeth said. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try and ameliorate the damage. I maintain a small staff here at the Adventure Society, so if you could provide all the relevant details, I’ll look into it. Are you going to be joining Team Storm Shredder for the underground expedition, Princess?”

“I am,” Zara said, glancing at Jason. “I didn’t come to the team with the most sensible of intentions, but I have found my time with them highly rewarding. I am part of it for the foreseeable future, so long as they are willing to have me. Also, referring to me as ‘princess’ or ‘your highness’ in the wrong setting could be a minor diplomatic incident. Lady is fine, although Zara would be even better.”

“Well, Zara, let me introduce you to some of the gold-rankers that will be joining you when you head underground. I wanted an all-women team as role models for young girls, and not just pretty faces with no skills, either. Team Moon’s Edge are all exceptional adventurers by any standard. Essences are the great equaliser, but there is still too much oppression of women amongst the normal-ranked section of the populace. Given that the normal-rankers are almost all of the populace, that is a problem. I don’t expect…”

Jason and Allayeth both turned to look at the sky, the gold-rankers doing the same shortly after. A tent on the back of a flying carpet arrived at breakneck speed, stopping almost instantaneously. It descended to the ground and a tent flap opened to let out Marcus, Rick and a disgruntled Hannah.

“Lady Allayeth,” Marcus greeted. “Mr Asano, I’ve been waiting for you. The messenger envoys will reach the city soon.”

“I’m aware,” Jason told him. “My familiar is tracking them. He tells me that so many others are doing the same that more people are watching than being watched. Also, there’s an actual messenger this time. What brings you by, Rick?”

“Winning a bet,” Rick said, accepting a gold spirit coin from Hannah and dropping it smugly into his pocket.

“No, mate,” Jason said with a slow, sad shake of the head. “You just lost, mate, and you lost hard.”

Rick looked at him with confusion, then at Hannah. The expression on her face suddenly registered and his eyes went wide. Jason wandered over to pat him consolingly on the shoulder.

***

Jali Corrik Fen was unhappy. She didn’t care if a few dozen of the servants were killed by their own, by now she had been placed on the chopping block. Jes Fin Kaal had assured her that the lesser races would not risk murdering her without gain, but she had always overestimated her foresight. There was no predicting what the foolish savages would do, and the logical choice was always a poor bet.

The device was much smaller than the study of Mah Go Schaat that Kaal had also foolishly handed over. There was no telling what secrets the diamond-ranker had left behind but, more importantly, what about when he came back for them? For once, Jali was glad to be a silver-ranker too unimportant to be caught between them, assuming she lived that long.

Jali scowled at the old wound that was her rank. All messengers came into being with inherent limitations on their power. They never knew until they reached that limit, but Jali had been born at hers. Forever destined to be at the bottom of messenger society, the moment of her creation was also the peak of her existence, cursed to never become more than she was.

The teachings said that she should not worry; that the least of the messengers stood above the greatest of everyone else. The other perpetual silvers seemed to revel in that. She couldn’t bring herself to do so, and her treatment at the hands of messengers not so unlucky certainly didn’t reflect any superiority. There had been times when she was treated little better than favoured pets from the servant races. It was certainly why she had been chosen to deliver the device. Jes Fin Kaal’s confidence that the lesser races would not kill Jali was less about Kaal’s certainty than Jali’s expendability.

She schooled her dissatisfaction, a long-practised behaviour. There was an astral king’s mark on her soul and she had no interest in being killed for suspected sympathies with the unorthodoxy. No astral king was watching those bound to her that closely, but a spike in disaffection could escalate that attention very quickly. Jali had known others that disappeared and she was careful about keeping her emotions in check. If the other messengers learned that she’d started meditating to calm herself, something she picked up from the lesser races, she could face anything from derision to violent excision.

Jali moved smoothly along the road, bare feet hanging just above the flagstones of the highway. Months of poor maintenance had left them uneven and with growth forcing its way up between them. Behind her was a pair of the floating vehicles the lesser races made with their primitive magic. One had a pair of servants and the device which was the size of an average human male when crushed into a ball shape. The other vehicle was more servants in case of trouble.

Monsters were always a problem, but unlikely to have an interest in the device. It was the fractious people of the city that presented the real danger. One of the few things they could truly be relied on for was to turn on one another, and if they sent one of the gold-rankers it would be a problem. Jali was unwilling to rely on the inherent superiority of the messenger species she had so often been assured of.

Even that was of limited concern. She could sense the plethora of spies tracking the group in what they probably thought was secret. The inability of almost any of the lesser species to properly contain their auras was laughable. She wondered if most of them had been sent to distract from any who were able to evade her senses as they surely had some stealth specialists worth the name. Jali had fought during the attack on Yaresh and knew that the lesser races had members that weren’t so lesser at all.

If nothing else, the astral king’s shadow familiar should be around, and she certainly hadn’t sensed it. Many scoffed at the idea of a silver-rank non-messenger astral king, but Jali knew it was denial. Her fellow messengers had proven startlingly good at that, but the ones who had been there knew better. They had felt the aura. The urge to kneel. If anything, Jason Asano’s incomplete state made it worse because he was less unknowable. Less was hidden, his aura whispering secrets of the infinite.

So many of her kind had been driven to fury by his very existence. He was antithetical to so much of what they had been told about not just who, but what they were. Oddly, those with potential beyond their current rank were affected most strongly. Most of Jali’s kind, forever bound to silver, were shocked but not overwhelmed. The central tenets of messenger identity had not been kind to them.

The idea of meeting the astral king had left her intrigued more than afraid, and she was uncertain as to why. Mah Go Schaat, in all his power, had dropped dead at Jason Asano’s feet. Marek Nior Vargas followed him into a hole in the ground with an entire company of messengers and never came back. There were dangerous whispers, especially amongst those bound forever at silver rank. Jali had kept well away from such talk, her caution proving wise when a cluster of unorthodoxy sympathisers was purged.

There were other rumours, too, ones that were allowed to flourish instead of being quashed. The concept of a non-messenger as an equal nudged closer to revolutionary thought than Jali thought would ever be allowed. Conveniently, these rumours played into Jes Fin Kaal’s plan to use Jason Asano not by subjugating him, but as an ally.

Kaal was playing fast and loose with the teachings that formed the core of messenger society. Jali was certain that tied into their entire purpose in the region, which was not the same as that of other messenger groups. She was not privy to what their astral king wanted, but it felt more and more like they were courting disaster, discord and internal strife. If not for the brand on her soul, Jali would have run far and fast long ago.

They reached the location she had been told to stop and wait at, a short distance from the city. There were large holes in the road rimmed with blood stains from the last envoy to meet with the lesser races here. Just as she was wondering how long she would have to wait, a single aura entered her senses from the impenetrable barrier of the city. She tensed on sensing it, as it would be forever unmistakable to her.

Jason Asano was coming, and he was coming alone.