Chapter 968: A Brief but Firm Reminder

“Are there any kind of warning signs I should be aware of?” Anna asked. “Some kind of indication that you or your familiars are about to go off like a powder keg?”

“Yes,” Jason said calmly, then sipped at his fruit juice blend. “Some humans, in a display of idiocy so grand I have no metaphor to compare it, are trying to DESTROY THE PLANET THAT THEY ARE STANDING ON!”

His outburst was mirrored by the land around them as the gorge was rocked by a tremor that shook leaves from the trees. Thunder pealed in the sky as lighting danced through dark clouds. Anna was sent stumbling back as Jason’s aura took on physical force, pushing out of him like a wave.

Anna had made multiple visits to Jason’s astral kingdom. She had seen its wonders and witnessed his power, but it was only in that moment that she truly understood. This place had a god, and that god was angry.

Suddenly struck with the urge to escape, she found a portal open next to her and hurried through without further consideration. On the other side was the central hub of Asano Village, bustling with diplomatic staffers from across the globe. Portal travel was relatively common amongst them, but they all recognised the portals belonging to Jason. They also knew Anna, and watching her emerge, wide-eyed and trembling, had many stopping to gawp. She stood up straight, tugged a couple of adjustments to her suit and took a deep breath, letting it out long and slow.

“That bad, huh?” Farrah asked. Anna turned around, finding her leaning casually against an electric buggy. It was one of a fleet of busses and buggies that, along with an underground tram system, connected the disparate locations within Asano Village. Farrah took a swig from a bottle of iced tea, sold from a vending machine beside the buggy depot entrance.

“He’s not happy,” Anna said. “What exactly did you tell him?”

“The same thing I’m here to tell you. More or less. We’ll need to meet some people after, so let’s do it on the road.”

Farrah got behind the wheel of the buggy, basically a juiced-up electric golf cart, and Anna sat beside her. The private roads of the village were well-maintained asphalt, and they took one that soon led them into bushland. The sun was warm and the air filled with the scent of eucalypts. Farrah tapped a button on the console and the fabric top of the buggy folded back.

“Lovely day,” she said.

“It’s very nice,” Anna replied, her tone less enthusiastic than her words.

“Shame how the people of this planet decided to take all this away from Jason’s family.”

Anna’s lips pressed tightly together.

“Yes,” she said.

“He’s angry at the people of your world. Again.”

“I noticed.”

“I’m not without my own outrage, you know. Do you recall how I spent my first weeks on this planet?”

“You were held and tortured.”

“By?”

“A rogue—”

“Who?” Farrah interrupted, her tone a warning.

“Members of the Network,” Anna admitted.

“And when I escaped, they moved me to an astral space. Not one of the proto-spaces you had back then, but a fully developed one. From which I was in the process of escaping again when Jason found me.”

“This, while interesting, is not new. I thought you were going to brief me, Ms Hurin.”

“Oh, Ms Hurin, is it? Are we not friends anymore, Anna?”

“You’ve been gone a long time, Farrah,” Anna said, then her expression turned awkward. “Susan did tell me to invite you to dinner.”

Farrah grinned.

“And how is she?”

“She’s been spearheading a project to retrieve art from abandoned European cities. She’s stockpiled a collection of works she’d be lucky to allowed in the same room as, back in the day. She’s happy, although seeing cities in what amounts to a post-apocalyptic state has unsettled her.”

“The stakes are high. Something that humanity still has trouble grasping, it turns out. That’s why Jason is angry. I’m angry too, I just don’t have a universe to shake. I have to make do with being pissy at old friends.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“Anna, do you recall the man who perpetrated my incarceration, here on Earth?”

“Adrien Barbou.”

“He was one of yours. A Network man.”

“He was a traitor, not a true—”

“Don’t,” Farrah said. “You need to retire the ‘it wasn’t us, it was a bad apple gone rogue,’ speech, Anna. I won’t tolerate it. And if you try it on Jason, you’ll regret surviving what I do to you. He vented his rage on you, and I’m guessing the sky. A few earthquakes in unoccupied parts of his main planet. Maybe a tsunami or two. Which is healthy.”

“That’s healthy?”

“Compared to roaming the Earth, killing anyone who displeases him? Yes. Instead of that, he’s having a therapy session with Arabelle Remore. But I saw it when I told him, Anna. He had the old eyes, from the last time we were here. It was just for a moment, but you don’t want that. Not with the power he has now.”

“What did you tell him, Farrah? What set him off like this? You keep talking around it. I thought rambling, tangential explanations were how he worked, not you.”

Farrah snorted a laugh.

“Fair enough,” she said. “My explanation had gotten as far as Adrien Barbou.”

“My information was that he died in the Saint-Étienne transformation zone, along with Jack Gerling, Mr North and most of the vampire lords who went with them. Only Jason and the vampire queen emerged, until Gerling return in his current unfortunate state. How does Jason feel about that?”

“There are a number of topics he intends to raise with Elizabeth. But Jason did bring Barbou out of the transformation zone alive.”

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“Barbou is still alive?”

“I didn’t say that, Anna. Mr North asked Jason to make Barbou’s death quick and clean. Jason told him that it was up to me, since I was the one he held and tortured.”

“And did you?”

“There’s a lot of different tracking magic out there. Rituals, items, essence abilities. A lot of familiar powers. There’s a whole sub-branch focused on different ways to find corpses, which makes disposing of a body you don’t want found rather laborious. You can use magical countermeasures to hide it, but for every ward, there’s a way circumvent it. Only one thing consistently foils most methods of tracking a body. You have to break the corpse down. Very extreme dismembering can work, like putting it through a woodchipper, although burning it to ash is better.”

Farrah glanced briefly from the road ahead to give Anna a smile.