“Alright, mates. Time to front up.”
Items flew into the gazebo, vanishing into the three archways. Jason had enough materials to summon Shade and Gordon once each, and Colin twice. Along with the material components being consumed, the required spirit coins came hurtling up and in from somewhere below the floating gazebo.
Leeches started spilling out of the bloody arch, forming a pile from which strips of ragged, bloody cloth emerged to start binding the pile into shape. Motes of blue and orange light streamed out of the nebula arch like a swarm of fireflies, slowly coalescing into Gordon’s form. A dark shape slowly pushed itself out through the final arch, taking the humanoid form of Shade. As his shadow familiar appeared, Jason’s own shadow vanished. Additional dark bodies emerged from the arch, one after another, before melding together as one.
“It is good to see you alive again, Mr Asano.”
“Good to be seen,” Jason said. “It comes as bit of a surprise.”
“Not entirely,” Shade said. “The World-Phoenix token in your possession was always a comfort to me, in regard to your safety.”
“Wait,” Jason said. “You knew?”
“Of course,” Shade said in his usual dignified tone. “I’m not a scrub.”
3
THE SINGLE GREATEST THING ON THIS PLANET
Jason’s inventory power had been transformed into a floating, otherworldly gazebo. In addition to letting him do what amounted to storing himself, he could use it to resummon his familiars, allowing him to reunite with them. While he was pleased to see them, the revelation that Shade had known the nature of the World-Phoenix token was startling.
“How long have you known what the token could do?” Jason asked.
“Several thousand years,” Shade said.
“It never occurred to you that I might want to know it could bring me back to life?”
“Of course,” Shade said. “I chose quite specifically to withhold that information from you.”
“Why?”
“Mr Asano, you are more than reckless enough as it is. If you realised you had a tool to bring you back from death, it would only have exacerbated the cavalier attitude you hold to your mortality.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“Mr Asano, you just died attempting to have a knife fight with an entity so powerful that it was forced to use a proxy so as to not annihilate the universe by simple virtue of arriving in it.”
“Oh, come on, Shade. It was one time.”
“Mr Asano, as I do not possess eyebrows, I shall require you to imagine me with a pair in order that I might give you a flat look from beneath them.”
“Yeah, alright,” Jason conceded. “I’m glad we all made it through.”
“I hope that you will act with more caution in future, Mr Asano. We all do.”
Jason turned to the cloaked forms of his other familiars. Gordon was a disembodied cloak filled with power, while the leech swarm, Colin, was bound up in bloody rags in a cloaked, humanoid shape. Both of them nodded in agreement with Shade’s assertion.
“My own familiars are ganging up on me. What a sad state of affairs.”
“Then I recommend you stop trying to get yourself killed,” Shade said. “You are demonstrably good at it.”
“That’s fair,” Jason said. “Do you have any insight into the World-Phoenix, Shade?”
“Some,” Shade said. “You are undecided about the power she has offered you?”
“Did you sense that through our connection, or did I miss something while my soul was making its way back across the astral?” Jason asked.
“I took the opportunity to reconnect with my progenitor while your soul was in its care,” Shade said.
“You saw your dad; that’s nice. He didn’t give you any insights into what the World-Phoenix is after, did he?”
“The Reaper only said that the power was designed in negotiation between itself and the World-Phoenix,” Shade said. “I believe it withheld further information, knowing that I would pass it along to you.”
“More secrets. Wonderful.”
“The power transfiguration you have been offered is unusual,” Shade said. “The basis is something I have seen from the World-Phoenix in the past, but the Reaper’s hand in its design is clear.”
“Oh?”
“You have a habit of not staying dead,” Shade said. “This is not something the Reaper likes. You have its gratitude, however. Great astral beings, the Reaper included, rarely involve themselves with the mortals that venerate them. Typically, they restrict themselves to bestowing blessings by whatever criteria appeal to them, using star seeds only for their most important agents. The Builder is unusual in this regard, being much more prolific in its use of star seeds.”
“You’re saying the Reaper’s grateful that we helped out those Order of the Reaper acolytes trapped in the astral space as flesh abominations?” Jason said. “It didn’t have any boots on the ground to settle things?”
“The cult of the Reaper does operate in that world, or it once did, but the Reaper does not communicate with them directly. That would be to trespass on the domain of the local god of death. I have been sealed in the astral space myself for centuries and am unclear about the relationship between the order and the cult. The Reaper appreciates that without you and your team, the souls of its followers would still be trapped inside the undying flesh abominations, which is a direct contravention of the Reaper’s core principles.”
“That dead things should be dead and stay dead.”
“Yes. The ability you have been offered is a compromise, making sure that the World-Phoenix won’t just keep bringing you back every time you’re killed.”
“Is that an option?”
“I am not privy to the ancient pacts that govern the interaction between great astral beings, but I know that the World-Phoenix rarely acting directly is part of a trade-off in which she has the right to return mortals from death. She is judicious in its use out of respect for the Reaper’s authority in this area. In turn, the Reaper has worked with her to design for you a formidable power.”
“Limited revives,” Jason said. “Like when Sonic the Hedgehog games were still good. The Reaper is all right with me cheating death?”
“It’s a matter of perspective and authority,” Shade explained. “The Reaper doesn’t care if you cheat death. Even without magic, the dead have come back to life. Worlds like yours with advanced medical technology make it possible. The Reaper only cares if you cheat being dead. Once your soul has gone to the astral, that is when it becomes his concern. Until then, it is the affair of any death god a world might have.”
“Which is why quick-revive magic that high-rankers use is all right?”
“There are more potent diamond-rank resurrection effects that are less timely,” Shade said. “Such powers can return the soul after it has left the body, so long as it lingers in the world. Death gods may intercede for good or ill, as they choose, even governing the rules of such powers.”