He Who Fights with Monsters 3

2

For Jason and his team, days of unrelenting training turned into weeks as their potential slowly transmuted into capability. This included regular practise against other teams in the mirage chamber. Beth Cavenish’s team was likewise improving rapidly, beating them less than half the time but with only five members to the six on Jason’s team.

Padma was a half disciple of Jason’s dead friend Farrah, with a team made up of Rufus’s juniors from the Remore Academy. They were interested in testing themselves against Jason, the person Rufus and Farrah had trained personally. At first, their conflicts were one-sided in favour of the Remore Academy elites, but Jason’s team advanced in leaps and bounds until they were winning as much as they lost.

Padma’s team was standoffish at first, and all the more so after they rolled over Jason’s team in their early encounters. They opened up as Jason and his team solidly proved their worth, although their draconian member remained stolid in his disdain for Humphrey and his dragon essence. Their shapeshifter, Natalie, struck up a friendship with Belinda who had only gained her powers and joined the team after the Reaper trials. Natalie was a valuable voice of experience for Belinda in the specialised area of shape-changing.

Padma’s team leader, in the meantime, built up a rivalry with Valdis. Both were sword specialists with almost identical essence combinations, but they were very different swordsmen. Valdis had the classic combination of sword, swift and adept, which produced the master confluence. Each essence was common, but with legends like Rufus’s grandfather using the combination, no one would look down on it. Valdis was very much a swordsman of that tradition; he had an array of special attacks that, at a glance, seemed very similar. It was a high-skill power set that lived or died on the user’s grasp of nuance.

Lance, Padma’s team leader, was an elf. His essences, which were sword, myriad and adept, also produced the master confluence. He possessed the elven aptitude for spells, rather than the special attacks in which humans specialised, resulting in a wholly different combat style from Valdis.

The elf could not match Valdis toe-to-toe, but he had no need to. He was far from weak in hand-to-hand combat but his powers gave him the freedom to fight at any range. Mixing spells into his swordsmanship, he could duplicate himself, conjure dancing blades to fight for him or fire waves of razor-sharp force from a distance.

Of the two swordsmen, the more experienced Valdis edged out his opponent more often than not, although Lance would score his own points as well.

Valdis and his team maintained a perfect record against Jason’s in the mirage arena, although what began as a series of thrashings slowly became actual battles. To hear Valdis talk, however, enjoying post-fight drinks on the houseboat, anyone would think he was the one losing.

“Your team is terrible to fight against,” he said to Jason. “You’re running around like an invisible, teleporting plague while your familiar is trying to burn down our healer. Normally my job is to put down problems like that, but that damn woman is made of the wind. How does an immovable object move that quickly? That’s not how immovable objects work.”

“You do realise you won, right?” Jason asked him.

“She head-butted my sword! That shouldn’t be possible. And what’s with that woman who’s everything? She had a wand in one hand and a shield in the other, which doesn’t seem like something people should be allowed to do.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not a rule.”

“Once she hit me with my own power. My own power! Being able to take on different roles is one thing, but none of those roles should be me!”

“Calm down,” Sigrid told him. “You’re spilling your drink.”

In the wake of Reaper trials, the city of Greenstone had a relative flood of essences and awakening stones. The foreign adventurers largely took their gains and went home, but many locals had also participated. Most had never intended to vie for the ultimate prize but instead plundered the astral space for as much treasure as they could carry away. As a result, the market price of essences and stones reached an all-time low.

With so many essences and awakening stones entering the market, Greenstone’s novice adventurer population was undergoing a surge. Families that previously could only dream of having an adventurer in their ranks were pooling their resources to buy essence sets for their most promising young people. It made for a strong first step towards replenishing the numbers diminished by the losses of the disastrous expedition. The city’s more powerful criminals were also taking the chance to add powerful henchmen to their rosters.

The ramifications of the expedition to the astral space that claimed so many adventurer lives were still being felt in the ongoing presence of the Adventure Society inquiry. The inquiry had begun with sweeping demotions, after which they had put the branch records through a sieve while so many adventurers were away at the Reaper trials. Once they returned, the inquiry commenced interviews, sometimes with individuals and other times with groups.

Finally, the Adventure Society had started re-evaluations, assessing the demoted adventurers one by one to reinstate their rank, confirm the demotion or even revoke their membership altogether. This brought a sense of hopefulness, but for most, their demotions were confirmed. When memberships were revoked, it was not a matter up for appeal. The lobbying to do so from certain sectors was swiftly and emphatically rebuffed.

Other concerns were at a level that iron-rankers like Jason and his team were uninvolved, although the team’s connections kept them abreast of goings on. The Builder cult was on the back foot, at least locally. The cult had been purged from the city and, after several costly ambushes, had halted their supply raids in the delta. The escapees from the island raid were still at large, however. Stories rolled in of the cult’s activities around the world and tension built as the city awaited the revelation of their next big move.

The church of Purity was under more scrutiny than any church would ordinarily have to tolerate. An ecumenical council of the other churches sanctioned them, launching a sweeping inquiry. Their temple was searched and all manner of materials seized. The church officially maintained that their members present at the island raid were a schism faction denounced by their god. Claims of a few isolated, bad apples rang hollow, however, as similar revelations were made about the church of Purity all around the world.

Certain individuals stood out, either by their absence or the issues in which current events embroiled them. A number of key members of the church of Purity seemed to have vanished on ‘previously scheduled sabbaticals.’ These absentees included the church of Purity’s Archbishop, Nicolas Hedron, Anisa Lasalle and almost the entire Lasalle family, who were some of the Purity church’s strongest supporters. Those that remained claimed no knowledge of where their spiritual journeys had taken them.

Jason was especially delighted to hear about Lucian Lamprey scrambling to absolve himself. Lamprey’s personal intervention in handing the star seed over to the church of Purity was suddenly the object of significant scrutiny.

The time-displaced priests Jason had released from the astral space during the Reaper trials were an unusual new presence in the city. Most were absorbed into their various churches, but the former members of the church of Purity were another matter, having been rejected by their now-former god. As Jason predicted, the Adventure Society had taken their disposition in hand. Given the troubles faced by the church that rejected them, the priests were a rather awkward presence within the city.

Those priests who had some of their powers gifted to them by their god had those powers revoked, which left them with dangerously imbalanced power. Those who had the greatest level of power and those who had many of their powers revoked suffered the worst. Until they replaced the missing powers they would all suffer, and their strength would never return to its previous level unless they found a new god to replace their missing abilities.

One group of the former purists dedicated themselves to regaining entry to the church of Purity. They were undaunted by the new revelations about their church, but their dedication was flatly rebuffed. A small number of these even turned to suicide in their despair, rather than be accept exclusion.

Others sought positions in other churches, many finding success. The rest eventually came to accept the need to start over and accepted new ordinary essences. With the market at record lows, the Adventure Society provided common essences for free as an act of mercy.

Whatever their situation and whatever their faith, every member now freed from the astral space had to decide on their own future. They had all been born before Greenstone was founded and needed to find a new way in what was, to them, a new world. Everyone they had known and loved was long gone. Most took passage to their homelands, even knowing that there was no one and nothing waiting for them.

The priests whose gods had welcomed them back at least had a path. Their churches placed them locally or sent them off to distant branches of their faith. Others, mostly former purists who came to accept their abandonment, decided to start over in Greenstone. They took the essences they were offered, even if they were cheap and less than ideal. Many, purist and otherwise, rejected their former faith with ferocity. They were filled with resentment at the gods who had sent them into that place and cost them everything and everyone they had known. They had a new attitude towards the gods that made Jason seem pious by comparison.

All the recovered clergy, excommunicated or not, had a variety of attitudes towards Jason. As he was the agent of their liberation, they were largely grateful, although to wildly varying degrees. Some felt that he only released them as an afterthought. Some even resented him for their current situation. Most were more gracious, however, often thanking him in person as he wandered about the Adventure Society campus. There was even a small contingent of the freed priests who viewed him as their saviour, especially after the gods had publicly appeared to thank him in person.

One day, Jason and his team returned from their training to find Rufus drinking out on the deck of the houseboat with Vincent, the Adventure Society official with the outrageous moustache. The pair had previously maintained a casual relationship, although not as much since Farrah’s death. Vincent’s busy schedule and Rufus’s driving obsession had left them seeing little of one another. After confronting Farrah’s killer and being largely responsible for his death, Rufus was finally starting to move forward.

They were not alone. Gary and his friend Russel, an artificer from the Magic Society, sat with them.

“Jason,” Vincent greeted. “Your reassessment interview with the Adventure Society has been scheduled. I thought I’d come and tell you in person.”

“Alright,” Jason said. “Any idea if I’ll be getting my old rank back?”

“The issue is that you’re very… loud for an iron-ranker,” Vincent said. “They’re going to want a display of humility.”

“No worries,” Jason. “No one’s as good at being humble as me.”