Everything outside of the tree city that was now the heart of Jason's soul realm was off-limits. Beyond the point where final trees stood was a sharp edge where reality came to an end. Beyond that was border, nothing could be seen but gold, silver and blue haze. There was a private mountain fortress hidden within in the haze but only Jason himself could reach it or survive there.

The realm’s remaining occupants had moved into the tree city. Jason was busy making use of his limited time, so his avatars were making arrangements. Accommodation and facilities were set in place for those who would be visiting the intact portion of Jason’s realm while Jason reshaped the rest of it.

Before the arrival of the sentient forest, Jason’s realm only had one permanent occupant: Melody Jain, Sophie’s mother. She had been moved to a palatial estate comprised of multiple treehouses, linked by rope bridges. Close by was the research centre that would hopefully allow her to one day leave the soul realm without her mind being taken over by divine brainwashing.

The research centre was set up for Carlos Quilido. The priest of the Healer had joined the underground expedition, putting his research on pause as Jason was critical to its next stage. The avatar Jason had left for Carlos would help his research by using the soul realm to help people survive their experimental treatments. The avatar would otherwise function as one of Carlos’ assistants so Jason could absorb the knowledge on his return.

Clive also had a research centre in the process of being set up, although he was not as reliant on the soul realm itself. Clive would use the space as he needed it, but would mostly be out and about with the team.

The other occupants of the soul realm were messengers, but they would soon be departing for Earth. Part of that group were the messengers Boris had shanghaied in the transformation zone. They were now free of their astral king’s influence, thanks to Jason helping them replace Vesta Carmis Zell’s brand with marks representing their own identities and autonomy. They had been forced into their current situation but were largely coming around.

More enthusiastic about following Boris were the messengers Jason had held as prisoners since the Battle of Yaresh. Marek Nior Vargas and his people had surrendered to Jason in hope of escaping astral king control and joining the Unorthodoxy. Boris represented their hope of joining a grand cosmic rebellion.

The largest group of messengers in Jason’s soul realm were those liberated in the transformation zone. Many of them were variants of normal messengers as a result of how they came into being. Orthodox messengers would never accept them, and Jason wouldn’t let the astral kings have them anyway. On top of everything else, they were only months old.

Two messengers stood apart from the other groups. Jali Corrik Fen had become aware of her slavery but thought that she would never escape it, even inside her own mind. Jason had rescued her from that when she’d expected him to kill her, transforming her future and winning her loyalty.

Tera Jun Casta had been a zealous follower of the messenger orthodoxy before her forced liberation at Jason’s hands. When she forced him into a death match, inflicting soul torture on her was the only way he could keep them both alive. He had freed her from astral king bondage at the same time, yet she was anything but grateful.

Jali and Tera had been friends, once. Jali’s growing doubts and Tera’s growing zeal had ended that relationship, but their shared experiences with Jason brought them back together. During the months they spent in his soul realm, they once again found themselves sharing each other’s company.

Their reunion had not been easy. Their differences in the past were reflected in their relationships with their shared liberator. To Tera, Jason was the man who tore her away from everything she knew. To Jali, he was the man who saved her from it. Jason was a hard topic to avoid when they were inside his soul, and always led to contention.

It was the group of young messengers that had brought them into alignment. Whatever their views on Jason, they both wanted the best for the young, impressionable messengers. Neither wanted them to have bad influences, meaning Jason for Tera and Boris for both of them. Unfortunately, there were no perfect options.

One possibility was to have them stay in Jason’s soul realm. Letting them out onto Pallimustus was not an option, as either the astral kings or the Adventure Society would quickly snatch them up. The other option was for them to go to Earth with Boris. Ultimately, Jason had left the choice up to the young messengers themselves, and they had chosen Earth.

Jason had made clear that he would not tolerate Boris turning them into child soldiers, which Boris at least claimed to completely agree with. Neither Jali nor Tera trusted the man’s word and insisted they travel to Earth with the others.

As for what fate awaited them, that was a tricky proposition. There were, apparently, large and extremely secret Unorthodoxy enclaves on Earth. As an alternative, Jason had given Jali messages to pass on to his family about offering the refugees shelter. As for what haven the messengers chose when they arrived on Earth, that was up to them.

***

There was a gathering in the tree city, on the balcony of one of the larger treehouses. Boris left as Emir, Constance and Nik joined, completing Jason’s core group of friends. This was how Jason wanted to use his limited remaining time. Not making plans or setting things in motion; just being together with the people that mattered most. He put aside the separations soon to come as, for the moment, they simply enjoyed one another’s company.

They ate and chatted, Jason and Neil were even vaguely nice to each other. The closest to an outsider was Gwydion, but Rufus’ older brother was quickly fitting in. The priest of Hero was lying back in a cloud chair almost prone, between his father and brother. He picked at the food piled high on a plate resting on his chest, sauce stains marking his fingers and his priest robes.

While the group could pretend they had all the time in the world, Jason’s ticking clock became hard to ignore when streams of golden energy started rising off his as his body entered the early stages of breaking down.

“Bro,” Taika said. “I think you’re regenerating.”

Jason let out a sigh.

“Looks like my time is coming to an end,” he said. “Sadly, there is more to be done, so I have to go.”

Danielle Geller got to her feet.

“I know that there are some impending departures,” she said. “Most, only for a time, but Gary for the last time.”

She looked at him with sad warmth.

“I can offer little consolation for those we won’t see again. It’s a loss we can never get back, but we should take joy in the chance to say goodbye to Gary. Too often, people are taken from us suddenly and unexpectedly. With Gary, his sacrifice was anything but unexpected. There’s so much hero in him that making the choice he did seemed almost inevitable, in hindsight. If anything, Hero doesn’t deserve him. No offence, Gwydion.”

“You’re fine,” the priest of Hero said. “He can’t hear you in here.”

“What I can hopefully help you with,” Danielle continued, “are the partings that, while long, are not forever. You will all learn, in time, that temporary parting is a natural and healthy aspect of relationships that run into the decades and centuries. My husband and I are together and apart as we need. It does not diminish our love for one another. We adventured together. Raised our children together. When our children made their own ways in the world, so did we. Having spent time apart since then, we've just recently been enjoying time together again.”

She gestured around the group.

“Friendship is the key. Passion and ardour can get you far and fast, but they won’t keep you together as one year becomes ten and ten becomes a hundred. My husband is my best friend in the world, and that is why we will always find one another again, however long we might part.”

Humphrey and Sophie shared a look, nervous but hopeful, as Danielle continued talking.

“I have not been a gold-ranker for long,” she said, “but I am older than I look.”

“You’re older than fifty?” Jason called out.

“Jason!” Humphrey hissed. Danielle glared at Jason, but the grin she failed to smother undercut any sternness.

“I am older than I look,” Danielle resumed, “and I’ve come to terms with parting ways for years at a time. Today, it’s time for many of you to start doing the same. Friends will part, today, but the road is longer than you can understand from the short time you’ve been together. Your friendships are still in their infancies. That you have forged such strong bonds in only a few years impresses me greatly. I have no doubt that you will be part of one another’s lives for longer than any of us can imagine right now.”

She turned to Gary again.

“Which makes permanent loss all the harder. I’m sorry to speak of the many years we’ll all have together, Gary, when you will not get the chance to journey through them with us.”

“No,” Gary said. “I made the choice that brought me here. And I like to think that making it is the reason you will all be together for so long, instead of dying in a hole. I can’t ask for more than that.”

“Are we sure we can’t swap Jason out for Gary?” Neil asked. “He’d probably come right back to life; you know what he’s like.”

“Yes, Neil,” Humphrey said. “For the eighth time, we’re sure.”

“What about my backup plan?” Neil asked.

“How is pouring sticky syrup over Jason’s head a backup plan?” Humphrey asked.

“I don’t know,” Neil said. “I just don’t think we should dismiss any options until we’ve tested them thoroughly.”

“Are your friends always like this?” Gwydion asked his brother.

“Yes,” Rufus said, staring at Gary as he had been the whole time.

“They’re a fun bunch,” Gwydion said.

“It’s not the time for fun.”

“They seem to disagree.”

“Are you here for Gary?” Rufus asked.

"Someone was going to be here for him. It just made sense to send me. Are you going to make your and his last moments together this maudlin thing? Don't you want to send him off with some joy?”

Rufus frowned, looking at his big brother with a troubled expression. Gwydion’s expression grew serious.

“As you said, I was sent here. It’s not all family reunions and new friends. I do have an important question in need of an answer.”

“What’s that?”

 “Sophie and Humphrey; how open do you think they’d be to a less-conventional relationship?”

Gwydion’s father reached out to flick his son on the ear.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“So your mother doesn’t have to get involved. Behave yourself.”

Gwydion lifted his plate and sat up looking over at his mother. Arabelle was looking at him from under raised eyebrows with an expression that held no amusement.

“Thanks, Dad,” Gwydion whispered.

***

Jason quietly made farewells with his friends, one by one. He met them in a room just off the balcony where they had all gathered.

“I know you still wonder about your place in the team,” he told Belinda. “I don’t. You have a perspective that only Sophie shares, and she’s so determined to look forward. You’re the only one who looks back, into the dark corners the rest of us don’t understand. There are threats that only you will see coming, and I see you watching for them.”

“Where is all this sincerity coming from?” she asked as she gave him a hug.

“Maybe I’m growing more mature.”

She let him go and gave him a flat look.

“It could happen,” he said unconvincingly.

***

“…be able to effectively map out astral geometry once I’ve run sufficient testing to accurately designate variable values for non-synchronous time streams across—”

“Clive,” Jason said, cutting him off.

“What?” Clive asked, distracted. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“I said that this is the last time we’ll see each other for at least a few years.”

“Oh, right. Becoming an astral king.”

“Yes.”

“Just make sure and take a lot of notes. In fact, let me get out some instrumentation that will measure dimensional interactions far better than subjective observations while—”

“I’m not taking a bunch of tools, Clive.”

“It’s not like you’ll be busy,” Clive complained. “It’ll basically be like meditation, right?”

“Clive, I’ll be fighting the World-Phoenix.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Remember how I mentioned that I have to kind of fix the cosmos a bit?”

“I probably wasn’t listening. You’re always doing stuff like that, and you never take proper notes.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“What you could do is take some basic dimensional analysis tools.”

“No. Maybe you could find an actual wife while I’m away. You’re not still hung up on Farrah, are you?”

“When was I ever ‘hung up’ on Farrah?”

“Back in Greenstone, when we first met.”

“I think all those resurrections have affected your memory.”

“They definitely have not.”

"In any case, while Farrah is appealingly intelligent, she's also rather socially aggressive."

“You two didn’t…?”

"No. As much as I like the idea of shutting you all up, that's a bad reason to select a spouse."

"I wasn't suggesting she was going to marry you. I was wondering if she dragged you into a closet for a tumble at some point."

"Definitely not. And if I was going to go to the trouble of developing a relationship, it would be more efficient than that. Long-term relationships have a superior effort-to-result ratio than casual encounters."

"That sounds like someone who hasn't had a lot of long-term relationships. Or casual encounters, for that matter."

"The point is, I'm not going to rush into something frivolous, and it's not easy finding the right person for extended companionship."

"I can't argue with that."

"In terms of a prospective spouse," Clive said, "I don't want to call people dim, but it's hard to find someone who can… keep up. I’ll be interested when you show me someone as smart as Belinda, but is the opposite of a risk-taking burglar whose idea of experimentation is to throw fake babies off a cliff with bombs strapped to them.”

“That’s a highly specific example. What were you testing?"

“Safety features on a pram.”

“A pram? As in, something to wheel babies around in? I don’t remember you making those.”

“It was while you were on Earth and we thought you were dead. Belinda and I tried a few money-making projects, including a pram that you can link to another personal transport vehicle, like a flying cloud.”

“Did they ever work out?”

“Yes, actually. Danielle Geller helped us set up a business. We’re operating out of Vitesse and Cyrion, for now, but we're looking to expand into other major centres. It turns out that adventurer parents really like explosion-resistant prams.”

“I can see that," Jason said. "Life can go in unexpected ways.”

"The point is that it's a great source of funding for research. And for special projects.”

“Like you and Belinda raiding a Magic Society Archive Vault?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”