On a wide road in an otherworldly jungle, Jason and the World-Phoenix stared at each other.

“I had this whole speech planned out,” Jason said. “About how you used me, only to throw me away when something more important came up. It had this great running metaphor about how people respect their tools. But that would be for me, not for you. I may have taken the extension of your will you poked into my soul and stuck it in a person-shaped box, but that’s just my impression of you. It’s not what you are. So, we might as well go ahead and get started.”

He turned to walk off, then froze when the World-Phoenix spoke.

“Thank you for Dawn,” she said.

Jason turned to look at her, eyes narrowing with curiosity.

“Same,” he said after a long moment. “Thank you for sending her my way.”

He marched into the middle of the flagstone highway and the great astral beings followed.

“The game,” he announced, “is simple enough. In that large building over there are all the nameless GABs that will be fighting alongside the World-Phoenix.”

He pointed down the road behind him.

“They will be attempting to fight their way down this road. The rest of us…”

He pointed in the other direction.

“…will be trying to fight our way to that end of the road. If we get there, you all get kicked out and I can repair the Sundered Throne in peace. Either way, the game ends when I complete my astral king transition. Once that’s over, so is everything else, whether the throne is fixed or not.”

“And if I reach the other end of the road?” the World-Phoenix asked.

“Every time I’m forced back down that road,” Jason said, “it damages my will. If you can eradicate my will entirely, then my consciousness goes away. Stops fighting back. I’ll come back to my senses eventually, so I’m told, but not for a very long time. And I’ll come back funny in the head.”

“You’ll be more than funny in the head,” the Celestial Book said. “Your mind will effectively be destroyed. You’ll only be lucky enough to generate a new one because you’re in the process of becoming an astral king. You’ll be a new person, with no memory of the old one. And by the time you come to, everyone you know will be immortal or very long dead.”

“Then I’d appreciate you making sure we don’t lose,” Jason told him.

“This is foolish,” Legion said. “You make the rules here. You can only bend things so far with our wills influencing events, but you could have given us far more advantages. You have to know this, so why would you arrange it like this?”

“Because of what we took from him,” a voice whispered, seemingly coming from all around them. The group turned to looked at the laced and veiled Whisper in Corners. It was not a great astral being Jason had heard of prior to his meeting with Raythe and Velius.

“He will be forever,” Whisper continued. “But for now, he is young. His friends will grow stronger and his family older in the time he is with us. He will not be there to see or share in those experiences. If not for the fight we have imposed upon him, that time would be far shorter. We have taken time from him, and he chose this path to gain a measure of it back.”

“This won’t accelerate the process,” Legion said.

“No,” the Reaper said, “but it will help him become stronger. His astral king ascension will only take him to a half-transcendent state. Until he completes the path of mortal power and transcends in full, he will have access to the infinite power of the cosmos yet be unable to tap into it. His purpose in setting the board as he has is to accelerate his progress to gold rank. Rather than design it to his advantage, he has designed it to give himself constant challenge, with stakes for failure. He has put in place the conditions to push himself to his limits, and made of us a whetstone upon which to hone his power.”

The Celestial Book burst out laughing.

“You’re saying,” the Seeker of Songs said, “that this man is hosting the largest gathering of great astral beings since the sundering, and he’s using us as a training tool?”

“We have used, and are used in turn,” Whisper said. “My approval is not required for this arrangement, but you have it, Jason Asano.”

“We are great astral beings,” Legion said. “We do not get ‘used in turn.’”

“Petty pride,” Jason said. “I did a good job with these mortal brains.”

“Approve or not,” the Reaper said, “the course before us is set. Our options are to participate or to leave. All that remains is to make that choice and begin.”

Jason’s clothes were replaced with conjured blood robes and his void cloak appeared, draped around him. He took his sword belt from his inventory and strapped it around his waist.

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s begin.”

In the distance, by the side of the road opposite where they’d come from, was a large building. The massive warehouse door on the front exploded outwards. It was reduced to splinters that rained down on the monsters pouring through the massive and now-open doorway.

***

It was a fight that Jason was familiar with. The nameless great astral beings had taken the form of a horde of monsters; wild, savage and multitudinous in form. The World-Phoenix served as horde leader, somehow commanding what looked like an army of anarchy and madness. More monsters poured from the building than ever should have been able to fit, even with its considerable size. Some were large enough to require dimensional distension to emerge, squeezing out of the door like a cartoon character. These were cyclopian giants, hydras with talons in place of heads and other humungous monstrosities that towered over the horde.

Jason hadn’t been as attentive with the countless monster forms as he had with those of the great astral beings. The monsters came in myriad shapes with no unifying theme. Some were comical and others horrifying. There were tiny swarms and some bordering on kaiju proportions.

Their forms weren’t the monsters Jason had personally encountered. He glimpsed a xenomorph in the horde, or something looking very like one. The most horrible thing he saw within the horde chilled his blood: a street gang from eighties television. They were all white guys with no tattoos but wore leather jackets and bandanas around their foreheads.

“Come on guys!” one of them yelled. “Let’s show them what the Downtown Beat Boys can do!”

“Oh, this is going to get weird,” Jason muttered to himself.

On Jason’s side were all the great astrals beings other than the World-Phoenix. He had chosen the form of their bodies, but not that of their powers. What he did set was their limitations, with all the combatants restricted to silver rank. The great astral beings were further restricted to essence user rules, their powers amounting to self-designed sets of essence abilities.

The results of this were formidable. Jason had seen some of the most capable adventurers in the world, and considered himself able to hold his own amongst them. Amongst the great astral beings, he quickly discovered that he was at the bottom of the bunch. By a wide margin.

It didn’t come as a surprise. There were many limits on them, limits matched not to Jason’s ability but to his potential. The great astral beings had found and reached those limits instantly. It was now on Jason to find it within himself to catch up to the examples set out before him. It did not start well.

The named great astral beings were far more powerful than the nameless ones making up the monster horde. Only the World-Phoenix could hold her own one-to-one, but there were no duels taking place. Monsters moved forward like the tide as the great astral beings slaughtered them. Every one that was killed respawned some time later, further back down the road. The same was true of any great astral being taken down. That usually meant the World-Phoenix had swept in on someone almost overrun by monsters, or was ambushed herself by multiple of her peers.

The weak link was unquestionably Jason. He himself had set the balance such that it was only winnable if he did his part. He was not doing his part. Time and again he failed. Swarmed by monsters or struck down by the World-Phoenix. He wasn’t slower or weaker. He just wasn’t as good.

The monsters had a panoply of powers, and were not unskilled themselves. Jason was used to numbers, but not numbers this fast or this capable. While some managed to resist his powers with their own, most didn’t. The simple fact was that he couldn’t output his afflictions as fast as the monsters kept coming.

The monsters didn’t make it easy for him, forcing him to work for every spell or sword strike he landed. He quickly found that his familiars needed to be used with care and precision as well. The trick of spreading afflictions with butterflies was a non-starter, the monsters eliminating each other as necessary to stop their spread. They were intelligent and didn’t need the guidance of the World-Phoenix leading them for that.

Colin, normally a weapon of mass destruction for Jason, worked wonders at first. It became clear that the monsters knew exactly how he operated, however, sacrificing their numbers until the leech monster overextended, and then they swooped in. Colin could not reproduce his biomass as fast as it could be destroyed by those with the power, precision and intent to do so, and that was exactly what the monsters did.

Gordon did well enough, ignoring his butterfly powers which had proved ineffective. He stayed in the backline, adding more direct impact to the battle than Jason’s afflictions, although he was not a definitive presence.

Shade was the familiar who proved most capable, faring better than Jason himself. Elusive and careful, he aided Jason by scouting and using his bodies as shadow-jump points. Even so, he could do little more than facilitate Jason, and Jason was falling short. Time and again he was cut down, overrun, torn apart or simply trampled to death.

The other great astral beings on his side were not happy. Even the previously cheery Celestial Book gave Jason accusatory looks.

“It is too late to change what you have done,” Legion told Jason as they fought side by side. “You are throwing away a chance we have waited eons for.”

The tall man with green hair and antlers was fighting in a style Jason could only think of as druid from Dungeons & Dragons. He was summoning wild beasts and turning into them himself to savage the monsters. He cast spells that unleashed poisonous spore clouds or had grasping, thorny vines erupt through the flagstones of the road.

“You’re still getting used to mortal sensibilities,” Jason told him. “Who and what you are doesn’t change. For us, being good at something always means starting bad. After that, it’s about opportunity and persistence. This is a long road we’re on, literally and figuratively. You just wait and see how I change.”

Jason had faced powerful monsters, skilled monsters, cunning monsters and overwhelming hordes of monsters. Never before had he encountered monsters that were all of those things at once. For the first time since his early days as an adventurer, Jason was failing to cover for the drawbacks of his abilities.

Every power set had strengths and weaknesses. Some were more balanced, with fewer flaws but no great strengths. Jason’s powers were the opposite extreme, capable of incredible things but with some glaring vulnerabilities as well. The most prevalent was the lack of immediate, impactful damage.

The current situation punished every weakness in Jason’s power set, and not by accident. The battleground had taken shape not just by Jason’s conscious choices but also by instinct. And what he had wanted was a situation that would hammer at every flaw and vulnerability in his fighting style.

From early in his adventuring career, Jason had learned to cover his weakness. Using stealth to buy time. Having familiars or allies to cover shortfalls or distract while he set himself up. Exploiting the environment or the stupidity of monsters that would fall for obvious traps.

None of that was in play now. There was no good luck to be had; nowhere to hide. No environment to exploit or twist of fate to save him. The enemies had the wits and knowledge to punish lazy tactics that had served him well against unintelligent monsters.

His familiars were being punished, Jason quickly realising that he had fallen profoundly short on developing tactics for them. He had always used them, and they didn’t work for a situation, pulled them back. That wasn’t going to work here. He couldn’t afford to leave any advantage on the table, so he would need to learn how to work with them more effectively than he had in the past.

He also had no allies to assist him, the astral beings were not covering for him. Not only were they busy fending off the nameless horde, but they had an instinctive disinclination to help him. Jason had put the conditions in place, right down to the instincts within their new mortal bodies. Those instincts drove them to leave Jason to reap what he sowed with the battlefield he had established.

Jason had everything set up to leave himself no options and no excuses. He had his powers, he had his enemies, and all he could do was get better or fail.

***

One of the major changes Jason had made from the original brightheart city was how to access it. The shaft leading down from the surface no longer terminated in the ceiling of the massive city cavern. Instead, it led to an extremely defensible tunnel through which the city could be accessed.

At the end of that tunnel was an area Jason had set up for Lorenn and her people to use as a diplomatic ward. Emir, Constance, Danielle and Lorenn were dealing with the people who had arrived from the surface. It would take a long time to organise relations with the surface world and, for now, they were in diplomatic triage.

It wasn’t just the brighthearts being shielded from the surface. Boris and the messengers had no interest in meeting the Adventure Society. They were in one of the city’s many quiet areas, making final preparations to leave Pallimustus and ride the link between worlds to Earth.

It was a city square that wouldn’t have been wildly out of place in areas of Europe. Two flat, lacquered wooden platforms were laid out on the ground. Boris, Clive and Belinda were drawing ritual diagrams onto them, preparing to transport Rufus and Taika.

“I know it’s a rough workaround,” Belinda said. “If this needed to last a couple of weeks, that might be an issue, but this magic will take seconds to activate and then be done.”

“It’s a crude solution,” Boris said, “but as the adorable Miss Callahan suggests, it will save us an amount of complication. Practicality suggests we tailor our efforts to the task at hand rather than some other task out of principle.”

“Call me adorable again and you’ll find yourself dealing with the practical application of a war hammer,” Belinda said.

“I can assure you I meant it only in admiration and ardour,” Boris said.

“You keep your sleazy hands to yourself, bird man,” Belinda told him. “You couldn’t handle what I’ve got going on anyway. If you got anywhere near me, I’d break it off.”

“Break what off?” Clive asked.

Belinda and Boris turned to look at him.

“Is he serious?” Boris asked.

“He’s an innocent flower,” Belinda said.

“I feel better now,” Boris said. “He didn’t respond at all when I hit on him.”

“Wait, what?” Clive asked.

Humphrey, Sophie and Neil were saying their goodbyes to Taika.

“You’ll be missed,” Humphrey said. “Your contribution to the team — oof!”

He grunted as Sophie elbowed him in the ribs.

“…is nothing compared to what we lose in a good friend,” he finished.

“Smooth, bro,” Taika said with a grin.

“We are sorry you’re leaving,” Neil said, “but we understand. My family is only on the other side of the planet and I miss them. I can visit them when I like, and think it will be past time when we’re done with all this. I don’t envy you having been stuck, not knowing when or even if you’ll see yours again. We hate to see you go, but I’m glad that you get the chance.”

Taika, the size of Gary before his demigod growth, wrapped a surprised Neil up in a massive hug.

“See?” Sophie asked Humphrey. “That’s how you do it. Did your mother not teach you to talk to people outside of high society functions, diplomatic meetings and battlefields?”

“I think she wanted me to learn on my own,” he said defensively.

“Yes, because she’s famous for leaving things up to chance when it comes to your upbringing. I think she and I need to have a talk.”

Taika burst out laughing at the hunted look on Humphrey’s face. He moved forward to collect them into a group hug, Neil unwillingly caught up as Taika dragged him into it.

Gary, Farrah and Rufus stood together, off to the side. Gary’s parents, after a tearful reunion, were settling their possessions into their accommodations in Jason’s tree city. Gary was making his final goodbyes with his best friends.

Farrah, Rufus and Gary’s team had officially been disbanded years ago. Gary and Rufus had turned away from adventuring after Farrah’s death, and they had never reformed after her resurrection. The friendship had been far more than just a registry with the Adventure Society, however.

“You know,” Gary said, “the first time we met was in a town that was burning to the ground and full of zombies. The last time we met was in a magic city deep underground, next to a crowd of rebellious angels. It’s only been about ten years, but we can’t say it wasn’t exciting.”

“We set out to have adventures,” Rufus said. “No one can say we didn’t succeed.”

Farrah didn’t say anything, grabbing Gary’s much larger frame in a hug, looking like a child grabbing a parent. Her tears wetted the fur on his arm.