Jason floated up to the invisibility sphere and drifted inside where Miriam and Ramona were waiting.

“It’s done,” he said.

“Just like that?” Miriam asked.

“Just like that.”

“I couldn’t hear what you talked about. You used your aura like a privacy screen.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t want me deciding that I didn’t like how it was going and staging a sneak attack.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Jason said, “but people can make bad decisions under extreme pressure. I’ll admit that’s projecting my issues onto you, as you’ve been nothing but graceful under pressure, but it gave me some peace of mind.”

“How did you find us?” Ramona asked. “I moved us, yet you knew exactly where we were.”

“This realm belongs to me now,” Jason said. “I know where everything is.”

***

Jason sighed as he looked across the table at the brightheart leader. Behind him, the lava spilled down on the other side of a glass wall.

“Lorenn…”

“No chance,” she said firmly. “Not ever. That tree killed my people.”

“The messengers killed your people. If someone drops a barrel of poison into the water upstream from your village, you don’t blame the barrel for killing the villagers. You blame the person who put it there.”

“And do you put up a massive statue of the poison that killed everyone?” Lorenn asked. “Because that’s what you’re asking, Asano. It’s a giant tree. It will loom over us, every day.”

She shook her head.

“Asano, out of every twenty of my people, nineteen were killed. By that tree and its elemental messengers. If it stays in our home, even if you manage to shrink it down, we will burn it to the ground or die trying. That is my final word on that issue.”

True to her statement, Lorenn marched toward the large double doors. Jason looked away, not really seeing the lava waterfall through the glass wall. He heard the doors open, then the voice that came from that direction. He looked up to see Lorenn paused in the doorway. She surveyed the otherwise empty conference room.

“Thank you for doing this with just us, Asano,” she said, her tone having softened considerably. “You could have brought in everyone and tried to pressure me into accepting.”

“Would it have worked?” Jason asked.

“No.”

“Then you’re welcome,” Jason said, a smile teasing the edges of his lips. Lorenn left and the doors closed behind her.

The smile on Jason’s face vanished. He took a long, calming breath before moving to a bookshelf. He tugged on a medical textbook about Lupus and the bookcase slid aside, revealing a short secret tunnel to his office. He walked through, the bookcase sliding back into place behind him. He arrived in his office where another bookcase slid closed to hide the doorway he’d just used.

“How’d it go?” Neil asked from where he was sitting on a couch. There was a board game on the table in front of him that he was teaching Nik. A side table was next to the first, holding drinks and mini sandwiches where they wouldn’t dirty the game components.

“Well,” Jason said, “she didn’t attack me.”

Neil winced.

“That bad, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Jason crashed next to Neil before sitting up to grab a sandwich and a glass of juice.

“It’s not like I don’t sympathise,” Jason said. “They lost their civilisation. Most of their species. I’ve been through some stuff but I hope I never understand that kind of loss. But this tree has to go somewhere and the only place I have to put it is the space I’m about to reintegrate into reality. I don’t think repotting it will be viable.”

“You should put it somewhere else if you can find a way,” Neil said. “It’s unique, which means that lots of people will want to study it. Experiment on it. Take samples. And blaming it for all the death makes an easy excuse for treating it poorly.”

“And there will be no appealing to local authorities to protect it,” Jason said. “The brighthearts won’t tolerate it. At all. Lorenn made that extremely clear.”

“Well, just because you failed doesn’t mean the objective has,” Neil said. “You can let other people have a crack at Lorenn.”

“No,” Jason said. “There’s no room to move there.”

“You know there’s another option, right?” Nik asked, not looking up from the game he was trying to comprehend.

“What do you mean?” Jason asked. “I have to change the tree through the transformation zone. That means I have to place it somewhere in the domain I create where the brightheart city was. It’s not like I have a whole other…”

Jason trailed off as he realised what Nik was suggesting.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t even know how many ways that could go wrong..”

“What are you talking about?” Neil asked.

“Planting the tree in his soul realm,” Nik said.

“Yeah,” Neil said. “That sounds like a bad idea, even if it does work. Planting a tree with a soul inside your soul? I can’t imagine that’s wise.”

“It’s not,” Jason said.

“That being said,” Neil continued, “that may be the only safe place for it. People will want to use it. The brighthearts will want to destroy it. Is there safety you can offer anywhere other than your soul realm?”

“The new home I build for the brighthearts will be my domain,” Jason said. “There’s no getting around that. But if I protect the tree, that will put me at odds with the brighthearts and they’ve been through enough. Once more, I did something without fully thinking through the ramifications. I thought I was getting better about that, yet here I am again.”

“The circumstances are both urgent and extreme,” Neil pointed out.

“The circumstances are always urgent and extreme,” Jason said. “That’s just my life and long past being an excuse.”

“It’s still a reason, though.”

“Thanks,” Jason said. “For being supportive.”

“Well,” Neil said. “As much as I love to kick you when you’re down, it seemed like that wasn’t what you needed right now.”

“That is never what I need.”

“But sometimes it’s what I need.”

Jason chuckled, got up and patted Neil on the shoulder.

“Thanks,” Jason said. “I guess I have to go and give someone an uncomfortable choice between two crappy options. Again.”

“Has Gary…?”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “He has.”

***

“No,” Gary said.

He, Farrah and Rufus were in Gary’s suite, an opulent but ominous series of chambers within the mountain lair. Gary had already told Farrah of his decision and recruited her for support when telling Rufus. She sat next to him on a couch while Rufus sat opposite, staring at Gary with unbelieving eyes.

“Gary, you—” Rufus started before Gary cut him off.

“I’m sorry, Rufus. Even if it wouldn’t make things harder for Jason, I don’t want to be a ghost, rattling around in a hole.”

“That’s not—”

“Don’t tell me what it is and isn’t,” Gary growled.

“I know this has been preying on your mind,” Farrah told Rufus. “But do you honestly think you’ve given these choices more thought than Gary? That he hasn’t gone over exactly what those choices mean, over and over?”

“One of those choices means death!” Rufus shouted.

“Yes,” Gary said, unhappy but calm and accepting. “The other means being stagnant forever, assuming I even come through the process still myself. It means being chained underground.”

“For now,” Rufus said. “Jason—”

“Will visit every few months. Like you. Then every few years. Every few decades. I’ll watch you all grow stronger and stronger. Listen to stories of other worlds every century or so when my diamond-rank friends come home. A little less recognisable each time while I’m forever the same. If I stay, you’ll lose me anyway. Just not enough that you get to mourn me. I’d rather be a fond memory you get to revisit from time to time than an obligation that you have to.”

While Rufus processed Gary’s words in silence, Farrah put her hand on a massive, fury forearm, rubbing it gently. Gary spoke again, his voice a softer rumble.

“While you’ve been thinking about my death, Rufus, I’ve been thinking about my life. And your lives. We didn’t realise it at the time, but we hitched our wagons to a comet when we met Jason in that basement. When we fought with him in that blood-soaked hole in the ground. Unless you end up like me, you two are going to be diamond-rankers sooner or later. There are too many powerful people and wild events around you for that to be anything but inevitable. I know it’s strange to accept when people spend lifetimes trying and failing to reach diamond, but that’s how it is.”

“You’re not done yet,” Rufus said. “We can keep you alive now and figure out how to fix things later. We can get you back on track. Maybe we find that purity artefact and use it to purge whatever’s killing you.”

“That’s not how it works, Roo. The thing that’s killing me is the same thing keeping me alive. The fact that Jason has a way to even keep me alive like this is a miracle. One that Hero slipped him on the quiet. But keeping me alive isn’t the same thing as saving me. It’s just… stopping me. Gold-rankers live for a long time, but not forever. I’ll have the lifespan of a diamond-ranker, but the life of a man that should, at some point, die. I’ll never get stronger; never see what the limits of my craft could have been. I’ll never see a real sky again.”

He bowed his head.

“Once you think about it Rufus — once you really think about it — I believe you’ll understand why I made this choice.”

Rufus shot to his feet.

“Why you chose to give up? To quit? No, Gary, I won’t.”

Rufus stormed out, the way he had a dozen times in the last week.

“It’s not giving up,” Gary said softly. “It’s letting go of something that isn’t going to work.”

“I know,” Farrah said, leaning into his furry wall of a body. “So does he. He just needs time to accept that.”

“I don’t have time.”

***

Jason flew through the air, standing in a black air skimmer that drove itself. His wooden replica was in one of the seats behind him.

“Why are we out here?” the doppelganger asked. Its wooden voice seemed like an uncaring monotone but Jason could feel the tree’s soul properly now. Like the messengers that had been unsealed, it was a young and confused child, despite how it looked. Like Gary, it was reliant on power that was slowly killing it.

In the tree’s case, that power was also muddling its mind. The wooden avatar was able to think clearly in a way the tree’s main body could not, but it was still troubled. It was so uncertain; so full of fear. The spark of hope inside it was a fragile thing, always on the verge of being snuffed out.

“I’ve consolidated transformation zones before,” Jason said, “but this time is different. It was more instinct than anything else those other times. Now I have the tools to be more deliberate, and I have to be careful. I need to rebuild the home of an entire people. I have to help you achieve a sustainable state.”

“And there is your friend.”

“No. He’s decided to… accept the fate he’d already chosen.”

Jason didn’t speak again for a while as he stared off at nothing. Then he brought himself back with a little headshake before continuing.

“I can perceive everything in the zone, now, but I want to understand it more directly. More intimately. I want to know exactly what I’m working with and go in with an idea of what I’m going to do instead of just figuring it out as I go.”

“Why have you asked me to join you in this.”

“Because we need to have another talk. I made you a promise that I would do everything I can for you.”

“Are you going back on that?”

“Not at all. In fact, it’s looking like I need to go a little further, one way or another. Depending on what way you want to go. The issue isn’t transitioning you back to reality; that remains no more or less challenging than it was before. The issue is what comes after.”

“I know nothing of the outside world. When I came into being, I could not truly think. All I knew was the drive to consume and grow.”

“And that’s the issue,” Jason said. “Your growth and consumption came at the cost of the people in whose land you will once again find yourself. I don’t think they have it in them to forgive you. And there will be others, eventually. Greedy people who will see your uniqueness and strive to exploit it.”

“That does not sound good.”

“No, it does not. And I don’t know if I’ll be in a position to move you. You’re a tree, and whatever changes you go through, I suspect you’ll remain quite large.”

“Your concern is that your help will be sending me to destruction.”

“Yes.”

“You mentioned a decision?”

“I could send you to an alternative place. I have a realm of spirit, within my soul. We’ve discussed using a soul forge to stabilise it, but it is real and it exists right now. I have no idea what putting you in there would do to either of us, but I’m willing to try. If you are.”

“Yes.”

“That quick you should take some time to think it through.”

“Do we have time?”

“Not a lot, no.”

“Then I have made my choice. All I have known, when I’ve had the mind to comprehend, is this small universe. Another one, with a man who offered hope, is preferable to something different that offers only avarice and vengeance.”

“Different can be good.”

“I imagine that what I encounter in your realm will be different enough.”

Jason let out a chuckle.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re probably right.”