He Who Fights with Monsters 9

4

“Everything smells like a trap to you,” Neil said.

“That’s because anything we run into out there is likely to be a trap.”

Jason and his team, plus Rufus, Gary and Farrah, were tooling up for a fight. While they kept most of their gear in dimensional spaces, Jason had placed a ready room full of excess equipment they might need for any given mission. Their gear was stowed on the second-highest level of the pagoda, in what amounted to a locker room.

He had also installed more fireman’s poles, but these were hidden behind a conspicuous bookcase that was opened by a hidden switch in an equally conspicuous bust on a small table. The poles ran from the ready room down a secret shaft to another hidden door in the atrium. Each pole was labelled with the name of a team member, except for one—Neil’s pole was labelled ‘Robin.’

“The possibility of a trap is why I picked the location,” Jason said. “Which Estella won’t be sharing with Estos until it’s time for him to head there.”

“You should have picked here,” Sophie said.

“The only reason I agreed to this meeting is because of a name that Havi Estos dropped, and the person belonging to that name has a lot of eyes and ears. He’s already in hiding, and if he hears that Estos is paying me a visit, he may disappear entirely. Again.”

“And who is this mysterious person whose name you’ve been declining to tell us?” Sophie asked. She watched as Jason glanced at Belinda, who shrugged.

“It’s Killian Laurent,” he said.

“Who is Killi… wait, isn’t he the guy that put a star seed in you and then vanished?”

“With a good deal of the Silva crime family’s money and resources, no less,” Clive said. “There was some concern you might get a little, uh, enthused, once you found out.”

“Why would you think that?” Sophie asked.

“Because you tore half of Old City apart when Jason went missing,” Belinda said.

“Well, now I can tear him apart, if we’ve found him.”

Jason’s kidnapping and star seed implantation was orchestrated by crime boss Cole Silva and local Magic Society Director Lucian Lamprey, in Greenstone. These were the enemies he had made by shielding Sophie from

them, which did not sit well with her. After a lifetime of everyone trying to use her, the one person who helped change her life for no more reason than she needed it had paid the price for doing so. For all her frenzied searching, she had found nothing and failed to contribute to Jason’s rescue. Silva and Lamprey had both been caught and punished, but the man who did their dirty work had escaped.

As it turned out, Silva’s henchman, Killian Laurent, had been working behind the scenes on his own plan. For him, Jason had been a conveniently powerful distraction for Cole Silva, allowing Laurent to enact well-laid plans to plunder the Silva crime family and escape the city.

“Are you sure we can trust Estella?”

“She can only hide her emotions from my perception if I don’t push,” Jason said. “I pushed.”

“That’s not a guarantee,” Clive pointed out. “There’s a possibility that a false aura was magically overlaid on hers. Admittedly, anyone who can do that well enough to fool you, Jason, is probably more trouble than we can deal with anyway. Someone like that could probably come down on us like a hammer the moment we’re away from the safety of the pagoda.”

Jason moved to the bust on the table, depicting the Adam West Batman. He unhinged the head to reveal the switch that moved the bookcase, revealing the poles. Jason watched the bookcase move across with deep satisfaction.

“Jason.”

“Yes, Humphrey?”

“We’re portalling out of here.” “We can portal from the atrium.” “We can also portal from here.”

“This room is securely shielded against portals,” Jason said. “We need to leave so we can portal out. Tell him, Clive.”

“He’s lying,” Clive said flatly. “He can portal us out of here just fine.” “Bloke, why would you do me like that?”

“How about because you have a security system that involves an illusion depicting my parents doing… things… in a giant tub of eels?”

“Hey, there was a clearly posted sign telling you to not go in there. And why. You didn’t go in, did you?”

“No, I didn’t go in! What kind of i***t calls you on a bluff?” The rest of the group nodded their agreement.

“I can’t help wondering about how active you had to be in creating that

scene, Jason,” Neil wondered aloud. “Did you sit down and write out how it was going to go? How detailed was it? How long did it take to craft the illusion of Clive’s parents and some eels, tweaking and correcting as you went?”

“I can speak for all of us in saying that we don’t want to hear the answer to that,” Humphrey said. “Jason, please just portal us out.”

“Actually,” Belinda said, “I’d like to hear—”

“I can speak for all of us,” Humphrey repeated, “in saying that we don’t want to hear it. Portal, Jason.”

Jason grinned as he went to open a portal, then stopped.

[Astral Gate] has detected portal tracking magic. Spirit domain prevents tracking within the domain, but external destinations remain subject to tracking effects.

Backlash from using [Astral Gate] to reconfigure portal to avoid tracking: low.

Would you like to reconfigure portal to avoid tracking?

“Huh,” he said.

“What is it?” Rufus asked.

“Someone is tracking portal use in the area. Not really a surprise.”

“All portal use on Livaros is tracked,” Farrah said. “The Magic Society does it, in conjunction with the Adventure Society. Part defence measure, part policing measure.”

“That involves a lot of infrastructure, though,” Clive pointed out. “Infrastructure that doesn’t exist here on Arnote. Setting up a tracking blanket without it is fairly high-end ritual magic.”

“It’s not news that it’s the top end of town that’s paying attention to us here,” Belinda said.

“We don’t want to be tracked where we’re going,” Humphrey said. “We should call it off.”

“It’s fine,” Jason said. “I can tweak the portal to avoid the tracking.” “How?” Clive asked. “If it was that simple, why would anyone use

tracking magic?”

“Not everyone has the thing I keep behind the eel-porn doors.”

Jason opened a portal, which looked normal, but his blue and orange eyes started glowing brightly and he grunted as pain racked his head. A small wall of cloud material rose from the ground and he leaned back into it heavily.

“Ow.”

“Are you alright?” Farrah asked.

“Yeah. Just a minor backlash for overstepping my rank. Give me a minute.”

Jason’s companions looked on with worry, and while Jason had been optimistic, it was only a few minutes before the pain passed.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”