Jason kept his aura restrained, but everyone in the room felt it boil like a witch’s cauldron.
“Once we realised what she was and the potential she represented,” Abreo said, “we were already past the point of diplomacy. In any case, we were used to having resources the rest of the Network did not and knew that if we were open about it, the International Committee would remove her in order to improve the general capacity of the other branches to resist the incursions.”
The room was once again unsettled at the naked betrayal of their core purpose.
“We realised that the Australian signal was likely another outworlder. As we hadn’t heard anything, this meant that either the local branch there was hiding him, like we were with ours, or their outworlder was still at large. Adrien advocated for having the Australian outworlder captured or, failing that, eliminated. The Steering Committee reluctantly agreed, under the stipulation that we send a stealth specialist, rather than the more aggressive team Barbou wanted. The goal was to remain unnoticed, or at least unidentifiable, even in failure.”
“Which went out the window when I left your guy limping to the local branch while I killed his support team,” Jason said. “Sorry, allegedly killed his support team. I totally didn’t do it.”
“You’re the outworlder?” Abreo asked, turning pale.
“Yep,” Jason said, standing up. “So, just to be clear. You found my friend unconscious, slapped a collar on her, realised she wasn’t what you thought, but you’d already screwed her over too much to cooperate and decided to torture what you could out of her. Would that be an accurate description?”
Abreo stood trembling, too scared to answer.
“Mr Asano,” Hector said. “I understand that you’re emotional, but please restrain your aura.”
Jason turned a look on Hector that made him flinch before he got himself under control.
“Somebody show me one of these apertures,” he growled.
52
A MOMENT FOR DRASTIC MEASURES
The aperture was in a tent that had been set up around it, with a makeshift military camp assembled around that. The story was the usual terrorism readiness exercise. The tent was almost of circus proportions, easily fitting a Network ritualist, Hector, Espinoza, plus Jason, with Asya and Abreo, with a pair of burly bronze-rankers as an escort. On top of that was the ritual circle around the aperture.
The aperture normally would have been invisible, but the ritual circle drawn under it was causing it to crackle with energy, revealing its circular shape.
“Sir,” one of the Network’s ritualists said, “we just don’t have a way in. I don’t see a means to break a ritual on the other side of the aperture from this side.”
“How long will it take to change that?” Hector asked.
“How long did it take to go from dial phones to cellular phones?” the ritualist asked. “Unless you have a whole new field of magic sitting around somewhere, we’re done here.”
“Mr Asano,” Hector said. “You’re meant to be the great font of knowledge from another world. Do you have a whole new field of magic sitting around somewhere?”
“Yep,” Jason said, not moving his eyes from the aperture.
“Then by all means, proceed.”
Jason looked down at the purpose-built wooden boards with the ritual circle drawn onto them. They were tightly slotted together so as to not break the ritual circle. Jason broke the ritual himself by drawing his foot through a chalk line in the magical diagram, and the visible magic it contained faded and dispersed.
“Turn off those mana lamps until I need them,” Jason instructed. “I’m going to have to start with a harmony ritual to balance out the ambient magic, which I won’t need them for.”
The harmony ritual was one of the few lesser rituals that didn’t require iron-rank magical density. It served the same function as Clive’s Mana Equilibrium racial gift, except it took more effort, more time, some lesser spirit coins, and wasn’t as effective.
Clive could level out the ambient magic with a snap of his fingers, doing such a thorough job, he never needed to adjust his ritual circles. Even after performing his first ritual and having the mana lamps turned back on, Jason still needed to use powdered lesser monster cores to gauge how his second ritual was interacting with the ambient magic.
“This will open up the aperture?” Hector asked as Jason’s ritual became more and more complex. Jason was constantly referencing Clive’s notes, which he was lucky to have access to. Clive had kept them with Jason’s books on astral magic, which was beneficial to Jason after losing Clive as a resource.
“It won’t,” Jason said. “The purpose of this ritual is to figure out what we’re dealing with.”
When he enacted the ritual, it seemed at first like the one the ritualists had used, leaving magic crackling over the invisible aperture.
“So much for that,” the ritualist said, happy not to have been shown up.
“Wait for it,” Jason said, eyes still locked on the aperture. Slowly, there was a shift in the magic and the crackling energy started forming into distinct shapes. Eventually, the aperture was covered in floating, glowing runes that shifted, merged, split, and transformed in complex patterns.
Shade emerged from Jason’s shadow to stand next to him, to the surprise of the other people in the tent except for Asya.
“What do you think?” Jason asked him.
“I have little grasp of ritual magic,” Shade said. “To my eye, however, it does seem less sophisticated than the seal locking the Order of the Reaper’s astral space.”
“It is,” Jason said. “By a lot. That said, Clive and Emir’s team took months cracking that seal. Testing, analysing, retesting. Even if I wasn’t reliant on mana lamps for that, which I very much am, it will be time-consuming. It may not be months, but I’m not Clive. Unless I get lottery-win lucky, it’ll be weeks.”
“You’re saying you can open it?” Hector asked.
“Very eventually,” Jason said and turned to Abreo. “If you’re holding anything back, Abreo, now is the time to talk.”
Jason walked over to stand in front of Abreo, who shrank away only to bump into one of his unmoving escorts.
“If I discover that you could have helped me here and you didn’t,” Jason told him, his voice low and resonant, “the Network can’t protect you from me. I will do to you what your men failed to do to me and take you away. The subsequent final few weeks of your life will be an experience that cannot be described, only felt. Do you know what it’s like to have your soul scoured, Mr Abreo? It changes you. Marks you. No healing potion or magic power can undo it.”
Abreo’s gaze lingered on the scars on Jason’s face as he trembled, almost shaking. Fear stained his aura like a poison, even as Jason’s aura ground Abreo’s into nothing, pressing on his soul like a knife to the throat.