“You know more than me,” Farrah said. “I’ll be relying on you to guide me through it.”
“If you're looking for productive, I think I have something. Back in Greenstone, I liked to blow off steam by monster hunting. Vent some frustration and help people at the same time by clearing off the adventure boards. The monsters here appear in proto-astral spaces, which is why no one knows about it. There's some kind of planetwide detection array they use to find and eliminate the monsters before the proto-spaces shoot them out into the world.”
“A planet-sized magical array? I’d love a look at that.”
“We can probably swing it,” Jason said. “I was meant to be meeting with a rep from the local Adventure Society equivalent today. She is out there, but my sister decided to invite my whole family around for a big group talk about magic being real.”
“The iron-ranker,” Farrah said.
“She can get us into some proto-spaces,” Jason said. “I still need to sort out the details, though. My family kind of took over everything and I just lost it and started yelling at them. They wouldn’t have understood much and believed even less.”
“Let me guess,” Farrah said. “You’re sinking all this time and energy into getting them caught up on magic, making sure they’re safe and understand what’s happening.”
“Something like that.”
“Well, you need to stop,” Farrah said. “Just because you came home with a pile of magic powers, that doesn’t mean you’re suddenly the king of everyone. There’s only so much you can be responsible for and to your family. They have to make their own choices and you don’t get to tell them what to do.”
“My coming back into their lives has caused chaos and brought danger.”
“Are you an idiot?” she asked. “Life is dangerous and you can't change that, no matter how much you twist yourself up in knots trying. Do you think you're the first adventurer to bring some weird crap back to hang around their family's necks? Every adventurer that comes up from nothing has some variation on this. Yes, your story has some surprising turns, but so does everyone else’s. You’re a little weird, Jason, but you aren’t that special.”
“So what do I do?” he asked.
“The same thing everyone does. You essence your family up, train any of them that are worth a damn and send the rest monster cores every now and again. Beyond that, you have to let them be responsible for themselves or it all goes wrong. If you’re too controlling, they get stifled and inevitably someone makes a stupid choice and betrays the family, be it on purpose or inadvertently.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “This…”
She poked him in the forehead.
“…is what keeps overcomplicating things. You need to get out of your own way, magic up the family and let them loose to make their own mistakes, while you focus on what you need to do.”
“I’m not even sure where to start.”
“I suggest with how we even ended up here,” she said. “We're in the wrong damn universe.”
58
I CAME BACK TO SHOW YOU WONDERS
Shade informed the family members, who were variously preparing dinner, looking after infants, or watching recordings, that Jason was about to emerge and they should gather in the bar lounge. As such, they were waiting for him when he stepped out, Farrah right behind him.
“Firstly, my previous statement about asking questions before watching all the recordings stands. Second, this is Farrah. You should all recognise her by now. Let me be plain in stating that she is family. Anyone who has a problem with that can get off my boat. Third, I need most of you to sod off, so you’re getting off the boat anyway. I have important stuff to do and can’t be dealing with you every bloody hour of every bloody day.”
Most of the occupants were herded off the boat by Shade, although Jason made sure to give his dad a hug first. Erika and her family were currently living onboard, so they stayed, along with Asya. Once peace descended on the houseboat, Jason, Asya, Farrah and Erika moved to the kitchen where Jason assisted Erika's dinner preparations—brother and sister side by side behind the counter, finding an old, easy familiarity.
“So,” Jason said to Asya. “Did Erika shake the story of my France trip out of you?”
“I didn’t do any shaking,” Erika said.
Jason gave her a sideways look.
“There may have been some mild jostling,” she confessed. “What she told me was insane, though. Aeroplane bombs, kidnapping, secret societies. Did you really kill that many people?”
“Yeah,” Jason said grimly.
Erika nudged him with her arm.
“Are you okay, little brother?”
“I’m heading in that direction,” he said, with a glance at Farrah.
“And you were kidnapped?” Erika asked Farrah.
“Yes,” Farrah said. “Lucky for me, they didn’t have any of the magical torture techniques from our world. An essence user can withstand mundane techniques well enough if you’ve been trained to. Especially if they’re trying to break you down mentally instead of physically.”
“You never trained me like that,” Jason said.
“You wanted us to torture you?” Farrah asked.
“No, now that you say,” Jason said. “How did they catch you in the first place? You should have been able to take those guys apart.”
“When I woke up,” Farrah said, “my brain was telling me it had only been moments, but my soul had a longer story to tell. That was disorienting, to say the least, and I wasn't thinking clearly. Plus, I was in a newly formed body and I wasn't human anymore, so it all felt very strange. My old racial gifts were gone and I felt all these blessings ready to evolve my new outworlder ones. In the state I was in, I made what turned out to be a very bad choice.”
“You accepted them all at once,” Jason surmised.
“Exactly,” Farrah said. “I wasn't exactly in a sound state in the first place and six gift evolutions at the same time were too much and I passed out. When I woke up, I was collared and in a box.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Asya said. “They were rogue elements of my organisation.”
“That’s okay,” Farrah said, to Jason’s surprise. “I’ve seen churches and Adventure Society branches go rotten from the inside. So has Jason, for that matter. The mission doesn’t stop being worth doing just because some of the people doing it go astray.”
“I appreciate that,” Asya said. “The Adventure Society are the people responsible for fighting monsters in your world?”
“That’s right. I’d appreciate learning some more about how you do things here.”
Asya explained the nature of the Network, with Jason occasionally contributing to help translate concepts for Asya or Farrah to understand better.
“Asya is here to nail down an agreement for working with them, so I can get to the monster hunting,” Jason said. “I also agreed to teach some of their people the things that you, Gary and Rufus taught me. I’m assuming you’ll want in as well.”