Jason was in his office in the mountain lair. His eyes were closed, his elbows were propped on his desk and his chin was resting on his hands. Scattered across the massive desk in front of him were copious notes he’d written, planning out the reintegration of the transformation zone. He felt Miriam’s approach and heard the ostentatious double doors swing open.

“Well?” she asked from the doorway.

Jason let out a frustrated breath before raising his head and opening his eyes to look at her.

“This isn’t easy, you know,” he said. “The last couple of times I did this I went by instinct. I wasn’t so much making choices as desperately hoping I didn’t mess anything up too bad.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. I altered the magical landscape of the entire planet. Forever. I managed to prevent the planet from breaking up and drifting off into the astral, but I left it fragile.”

“My understanding is that Pallimustus is more resilient than your world.”

“Yeah. I'm not worried about punching a hole in the universe. This time it's about the details. I have more control than before, which is good, but I only have one chance to get this right. I have to extricate the natural array, the soul forge and the tree. I have to be careful about what goes into my soul realm and what goes into reality. I have to build a new home for the brighthearts and keep everyone safe while I’m doing all that.”

“Is keeping everyone safe a concern?” Miriam asked. “I thought we were moving everyone to keep them out of danger.”

“We are,” Jason said. “Each time I've done this, there's been a safe centre. I've just never done this with allies in place. Except for the ones I intended to betray and kill from the beginning.”

Miriam raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jason said. “Yeah, it felt crappy, but they were looking to betray and kill me as well.”

“You just did it better?”

“There was one woman that played me and escaped. Vampire Lord. Call it a no-score draw. And I’m hardly going to betray anyone this time.”

“Hardly?”

“What?”

“You’re hardly going to betray anyone?”

“no idea what you’re talking about. I’ll thank you to not cast aspersions upon my character, Tactical Commander.”

Miriam shook her head as she walked across the large room. She cast her eyes over the haphazard notes scattered across the desk.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked.

“I don’t think ready is an option, but I’m as prepared as I’m going to get. How’s the transfer going?”

“The mountain is almost empty. Just a few stragglers.”

“I think I can sort that out.”

Jason entered a code into a keypad next to a desk drawer and the drawer opened itself. Inside was a plastic container that he picked up and smashed on the desk. He picked up the two keys that came out of the container and stood up. He moved to a small table where there was a bronze bust of Beethoven. He tilted the head back, revealing that it was hinged and had a small red button underneath.

“What are you doing?” Miriam asked.

“Security procedure.”

He pressed the button and a painting on the wall slid aside, revealing a safe door with two keyholes and a dial. He went over and slotted both keys but only turned one. This lit up the security dial that he turned left, then right, then left.

“Seriously, what are you doing?” Miriam asked.

“Some things are too dangerous to be easily accessible,” Jason said.

After he finished entering the safe combination there was a click. He then turned the second key and pulled open the safe. Inside was a small rubber mallet.

“A rubber hammer?” Miriam asked.

Jason took the mallet and went back to his desk, setting the mallet on top. He then opened an unlocked drawer, took out a glass case with a big red button inside and set it on the desk as well. He picked up the mallet and raised it to smash the glass.

“Is that special glass?” Miriam asked.

“No. Just regular glass.”

“So, it's not something magical that can only be broken by that hammer?”

“No, it’s a regular mallet.”

He brought the mallet down and smashed the glass, exposing the big red button inside.

“You could have done that with your hand. Regular glass can’t cut you.”

Jason ignored her and held his hand over the button, quivering slightly as a serious expression crossed his face.

“You need to get on with whatever this is,” Miriam said. “Don’t make me go get Farrah.”

Jason brought his hand down on the button. A monotone voice started echoing throughout the mountain lair, tinny as if speaking through a mediocre PA system.

“Self-destruct has been initiated. The mountain will be destroyed in fifteen minutes.”

“What did you just do?” Miriam asked.

“That should get everyone out,” Jason said.

“That button destroys the mountain?”

“You said you needed to get the stragglers moving.”

“Why was that in an unlocked drawer while you kept a small hammer behind all that ridiculous security?”

Jason looked from the button to the open safe.

“You know, it occurs to me that I could have set that up more efficiently.”

Miriam ran her hands over her face.

“You’re doing this now? NOW?”

“Yep.”

“THIS IS NOT AN APPROPRIATE TIME!”

“Self-destruct has been initiated,” the monotone voice repeated. “The mountain will be destroyed in fourteen minutes and thirty seconds.”

Jason laughed and hit a switch under his desk. A section of floor started lowering in segments to become a staircase.

“Come along,” he said and headed for the stairs. The gold-ranker moved in a blur to position herself between them and him.

“Is there an issue?” he asked lightly.

“This is an extremely serious moment, Operations Commander.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“You need to stop playing around and get ready to start transitioning the transformation zone.”

He flashed her a tired smile.

“Tactical Commander, I started eleven hours ago.”

Miriam suddenly found herself behind Jason as he walked down the stairs.

“How…?” she asked as she numbly followed him down the stairs.

“I’m manipulating the reality of the transformation zone.”

“What about getting everyone to a safe zone first?”

“I told you that this time is different. Previously, the entire zone collapsed outside of the core safe zone. That was because I had almost no control. It was a dam and all I could do was open and close gates to control some of the water flow. This time I’m sculpting clay. River clay, so it’s rough and I have to take care I don’t get washed away, but I have my tools and some sense of what I’m doing.”

“Isn’t that reckless?”

“All I’m doing right now is trimming away the portions of the zone that are unsalvageable. The edges where the zone is breaking down. Plus tweaking a few things, like when people block my way.”

“Trimming? Is that going to cost us?”

The stairs led down through a stone stairwell, illuminated in red by lights set into the ceiling. The stairwell turned into a spiral.

“It won’t cost us much,” Jason said, “and the loss is worth it. Better to lose a little than have corrupted elements incorporated into the whole. I’m amputating the rot.”

“The transformation zone is so much larger than the space in normal reality it’s going to fill,” Miriam said. “I suppose we can afford to lose quite a lot of territory.”

“It’s not that simple,” Jason said. “The transformation zone is the same amount of reality as the space it occupies in the real world.”

“Because it’s made of that chunk of reality?”

“Exactly.”

“Then why is it larger? Vastly larger.”

“The reality is stretched thin. That’s why it’s become so malleable.”

“And now you have to squash it back down? To fit back into the space it occupied in the first place?”

“Yes. Stretching out reality like this is barely sustainable when it’s contained in the travel-size universe that is the transformation zone. Put it back into a full-size universe and it’ll break down. I need to get it into a shape close enough to the space it originally occupied that it can graft back on.”

“Like a healer repairing a severed limb before reattaching it?”

“Yeah, actually.”

The stairs ended in a short tunnel that terminated in a large iron door. It swung open, giving them access to a catwalk set into the side of a massive natural cavern. A lake of magma making up the floor of the chamber washed everything in red light. Hanging from the ceiling were a bunch of cages at the end of chains, dangling over the magma.

“Who is that?” Miriam asked, looking at the solitary occupied cage. A man in a suit was attempting to cut the lock using a wrist laser.

“Don’t worry about him,” Jason said.

“Self-destruct has been initiated. The mountain will be destroyed in twelve minutes and thirty seconds.”

“Was that really necessary?” Miriam asked.

“The self-destruct button? It’s a volcano lair, Miriam. Of course it was.”

Jason led her along the catwalk and into another stone tunnel with stairs heading down.

“Operations Commander, if you’re actively reshaping the transformation zone, shouldn’t you be somewhere you can concentrate?”

“No,” Jason said. “I realise that I may seem calm, debonair and strikingly handsome…”

“Uh…”

“…but the reality is, I’m very nervous. So, I’m having a little fun to calm myself down.”

“By remaking reality into forms that you find amusing.”

“Remaking reality is kind of my thing, which is a weird thing to say. Did I ever tell you I used to sell bulk office supplies?”

“Self-destruct has been initiated. The mountain will be destroyed in twelve minutes.”

“Operations Commander, I hope you realise that this isn’t exactly inspiring confidence.”

“It’s inspiring my confidence.”

“Oper… Jason. I understand that you are anxious about getting this right. I just don’t think that this is the time for frivolity.”

“It’s practise, Miriam.”

“Practise?”

“I’ve played around with reality before. A lot more than anyone should have or wanted to let me. This is the first time I’ve been able to do it with precision. Making a few innocuous changes here and there is giving me a feel for it. Once everyone is secure in the centre of the zone, I’ll start breaking the whole thing down and rebuilding it to fit back into reality.”

“The safe zone in the middle. The part that doesn’t change. Where the tree is.”

“Yes.”

“The tree is going into your soul realm. Does that mean that you’re taking a chunk of the transformation zone and putting it into your soul realm, instead of into normal reality?”

“It's complicated. The area where the transformation zone was is going to be my spirit domain. My soul realm and the space I'm recreating in normal reality will be physically distinct. Mostly. But the two spaces will spiritually overlap, and that will blur certain lines. You've felt what it's like in my cloud house. The way it doesn't just belong to me but is an extension of me. The altered space is going to be the same.”

“Leaving the brighthearts living in what amounts to a city-sized temple to you.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Jason said. “Not where gods can hear, please and thank you. But yes.”

“How do you think they’ll feel about that?”

“What they do next is up to them. Whether they use the space I create or not, it’s the best I can do.”

They emerged into another large underground space. This was not a lava chamber but a submarine dock filled with water. Jason's cloud vessel was sitting in the water, its sweeping lines of red and black panels over cloud substance, tapering into points.

Jason’s friends were waiting for him on the concrete dock. Rufus was talking to Gary, his voice low and his body language angry. He was punctuating his words with short, stabbing gestures while Farrah was trying to keep him calm. Taika was explaining Earth submarine design to Clive, Belinda, Neil and Nik. Belinda looked unimpressed and Neil was complaining loudly.

“What do you mean, no sandwich bar?”

“That’s more of a yacht thing,” Taika said. “Submarines are kind of tricky when you don’t have magic.”

Humphrey was looking around the space, glaring unhappily as another self-destruct announcement echoed through the chamber. Sophie was watching a moustachioed puppy splashing happily in the water.

“How are we going to get to the tree in a submarine?” Miriam asked as they walked along the dock towards the others. “And why not just portal?”

“Portals are a little wonky right now.”

“Up until I came to see you, I was supervising portalling everyone to the tree with no issues whatsoever.”

“That’s weird. Anyway, it turns out that there’s a network of massive underwater tunnels running beneath the entire transformation zone. It’s definitely been there the whole time and wasn’t created by me a couple of hours ago.”

Miriam sighed.

“If you don’t mind, Operations Commander, I’m going to go back up and finalise overseeing the departure to the centre of the zone.”

“Sure,” Jason said, then turned and pointed. “That elevator there will take you right up to my office in about twenty seconds.”

“Self-destruct has been initiated. The mountain will be destroyed in nine minutes.”

Miriam levelled a glare at Jason who met it with an impish grin. She sighed again.

“Is there anything else before I go, Operations Commander?”

Jason turned to look at his friends.

“No,” he said. “I have everything I need.”