He Who Fights with Monsters 5

4

“I don’t think that’s going to work. Not if you really cured those people. Was that you in Sydney last year? Healing all those kids at the hospital?”

“I try to be more circumspect, now, but…”

They both turned to look at the frenzy of activity in the camp.

“Sometimes people just need helping,” she said.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed.

“Are you going to more camps?”

“Of course.”

“I won’t keep you, then,” she said. “There’s no shortage of people that need you.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re really not going to ask, are you?”

“Ask what?”

“You know what.”

“You can tell?”

“I can feel it in your aura.”

“Oh, my aura,” she said sceptically.

“You just watched me heal the sick with a magic spell, but auras are where you draw the line? I’m not talking about the aura photographs you can get in a new age shop. I know you felt mine.”

Jason let his aura gently brush against hers, showing off the delicacy of his aura control. She felt the domineering nature of his aura power, Hegemony, along with the unyielding resolve that came from all that his soul had endured.

“So that’s you,” she said after recovering from the strange sensation.

“I’m not as serious as my aura might imply. I’m actually pretty funny.”

“Most people who say they’re funny are,” she said.

“Ouch.”

“I think it’s time for you to go,” she told him.

“Why didn’t you ask me to heal you?”

“You’ve given us miracles enough. What’s a little cancer next to what these people are going through? I can go home and do all the chemo I like. All they can do is lie there and hope not to die. You should be moving on to more of them.”

Jason gave her a warm smile. He held up a hand, repeating the chant in the language she didn’t understand.

As with the patients before her, her red life force was brought out, cleansed and returned to her. She felt like a fresh breeze had just passed through her whole body.

“You’re a good egg, Chloe Baudrillard.”

He plucked a pen and notebook from thin air, scribbling a note and tearing out the page before handing it to her.

“You’ll be busy with this for a while, but when you’re done, come find me. I’ll show you how to heal in ways you never imagined. You do want to do what I just did, right?”

“You’re saying I could…”

“Some variation on it, yes. If I show you how.”

She looked down at the paper in her hand.

“Jason Asano,” she read.

“That’s my name,” he said. “I’d appreciate you keeping it under your hat.”

She looked up from the paper, her eyes searching his face for answers.

“Why me?”

“Because you didn’t ask,” he said.

A black UTV, something between a quad bike and a car, was moving along a road of red dirt, between vibrantly green bushes and trees. The man in the driver seat was not driving but instead narrating to the recording crystal floating over his head.

Losing power due to low levels of ambient magic was a problem for magic items, especially weaker and cheaper ones like recording crystals. Fortunately, Jason’s inventory was able to replenish the depleted magic of objects, so long as Jason himself wasn’t mana-starved. Since the transfiguration of his body and soul through the World-Phoenix’s blessing, Jason no longer needed spirit coins to keep his magic levels up, or even consume them for food, so that was not an issue. The steady trickle of power from the astral he now enjoyed sustained him both physically and magically.

“You could use a non-magical recording solution,” Shade suggested as Jason put the recording crystal away.

“Recording crystals adjust to the movement of the vehicle so there isn’t a jiggled image.”

“Are you suggesting my suspension system is insufficient?”

“Not in the least,” Jason said. “This is as comfortable a ride as I could hope. As always, Shade, you excel.”

As they continued on, a magic item on the passenger seat began glowing with silver light and made a low hum. It looked like an oversized compass.

“It’s not even two o’clock and this is the second one today,” Jason said, picking up the device. Farrah had devised the compass after digging into the nature of the Network’s detection grid. There was some resistance to giving her access from certain elements of the Network, but that changed as sections of the grid started experiencing failures. At that point, Farrah became a valued part of a multi-branch investigative task force.

When it started happening, Jason had offered to return immediately.

“Not wanting to seem rude,” Farrah said, “but you won’t actually be able to help. This is an array magic thing and you just don’t have the expertise.”

“The grid involves astral magic too, right?”

“Yes, but the astral magic part works fine. It’s the bones that need looking at. Not everything is about you, Jason.”

The grid compass alerted Jason to proto-space formations in the vicinity by tapping into the grid. At the pivot-point of the needle was a crystal that glowed different colours, according to the strength. Smaller crystals gave a rough indication of distance by how many lit up.

“Seventy klicks,” Jason said. “Silver rank too.”

The UTV pulled to a stop and Jason got out. The vehicle transformed into a cloud of darkness, most of which disappeared into Jason’s shadow. The remainder took the form of Shade.

“My supply of coins is getting low,” Shade said. “I’ll need more if we’re going to fly.”

“Ask and ye shall receive, my friend,” Jason said, producing a box of coins.

Neither Shade nor Jason needed coins in the low-magic conditions, although Jason still needed coins if he wasn’t consuming large amounts of food. He had no shortage since he was interceding in proto-spaces at least once, and often two or even three times, daily. Shade needed coins to supplement high-energy forms like flying vehicles. Only once he was silver-rank would Shade be able to fly in an energy-efficient manner.

When he jumped in on proto-spaces, Jason was leaving behind the bulk of the silver-rank loot for the locals and satisfying himself with bronze-rank spoils. Leaving behind the best goodies with no work required for the Network made for exasperated responses from the local branches, but no actual complaints. Not since leaving China anyway.

“Actually,” Jason said, pulling a completed recording crystal from his inventory, “take this too, please.”

Shade put the coins and the crystal in his own dimensional space. It was significantly smaller than Jason's but could be accessed through any of his bodies. This meant that Jason could send his recording to his niece Emi via Shade. She sent him back gifts in return, like biscuits she made with her mother.

Shade then took the form of a new vehicle, an ultralight trike. Not much more than a seat with a motor behind it, with glider wings over the top, it was also black with a few white embellishments.

“I’m not sure black is especially safety-conscious,” Jason said.

“I could transform into a regular tricycle instead,” Shade suggested.

“No, this is good.”

Using the road as a runway, they were soon soaring over the landscape. Seventy kilometres would be roughly a half-hour trip.

“I know it’s probably time to be looking towards heading home,” Jason said, enjoying the wind flowing over him. “I'm having an absolute blast, though. I would love to bring Erika's family on a trip like this. Minus the monster-slaying and horrifying misery of the plague camps, obviously.”

“You have responsibilities, as vaguely defined as they are, right now,” Shade said.

“Meaning that I don’t even know what they are,” Jason said.

“I believe that Dawn will eventually contact you again for further explanation. The failures in the grid may not be unrelated.”

“I was thinking the same thing. I don’t want to leave while this Ebola outbreak is still ongoing, though. It’s nice to use what I can do to help solve a non-magical problem that affects so many people. It’s exactly what I imagined back in Greenstone.”