The last time they had come to this mansion, Jack and his friends had the intention of seizing a criminal organization by force. They had wanted to become shot callers in the world so they could influence events in their own favor.

This time, they just wanted their friend back.

Sneaking into the big white mansion again was much easier. There were only two of them and they were expecting a fight. If they could find Arthur and get him out without shedding blood, that would be ideal, but they weren't expecting it.

Again, the front of the house was heavily guarded with armed men in suits stationed at the entrances and roaming the grounds.

Matt crept through the hedges on the side of the yard and Jack followed silently.

He led them around back to a ground floor window that opened like double doors. Matt sliced through the lock with his shadow covered katana, and the cut was so smooth that Jack couldn't even hear the impact.

They slowly pulled open the windows just enough for the two of them to slip inside wrapped in Matt's shadows and quickly pulled them closed again.

They would have gone in through the second story window that Janus had launched Jack through, because it was still wide open, but there was light absolutely pouring out of it into the backyard. It would have been difficult to sneak through it undetected even with Matt's shadows covering them.

Matt led them through the first floor past the site of Matt and Arthur's battle with Diana. Jack saw the devastation that Diana's arrows had done to the entrance hallway. There were craters in the floor, the stairs, one of the columns even looked like it had been the site of an explosion.

On one wall, there was a hole more than twice the size of the others. That must have been where the arrow had hit after Diana had gotten serious. It was a sobering reminder of the power of the people that they had come here to challenge.

Matt and Jack made their way around the first floor without breaking their cover. The second floor was equally empty. They started to worry that the entire house was vacant. But if they had abandoned this place, then why were the guards still outside?

Jack was surprised that there were so few guards inside the house. It was as if they hadn't just been attacked by strange warriors a couple of nights before.

Were Janus and Diana really so secure in their ability to defend this place by themselves?

The more Jack thought about it, the more it made sense.

Janus must believe that Jack was dead. He did beat the holy shit out of him. Maybe he thought he hit Jack so hard that his body disintegrated like that dove that flew into Randy Johnson's fastball back in the early 2000s.

On the other hand, Matt escaped cleanly, but since he ran with his tail between his legs, they probably thought that he would be too scared to come back.

Well, Jack hoped that they could surprise them both tonight.

After they cleared the fourth floor, Jack was concerned that they had abandoned the mansion altogether.

He couldn't help but imagine Arthur's dead body over and over again.

At the lowest point in Jack's life, when he was sure that nobody gave a fuck about him, Arthur had been there to prove to Jack that there were still people who cared about him.

He was a beacon of light in Jack's life long before he ever manifested his qi for the first time.

If they had killed Arthur, or even hurt him badly, Jack would go to war with the gods, the factions, the whole damn universe.

Whatever it took to save or avenge his friend, Jack would do it.

Because Arthur was worth it. He was worth more than all the blood in Jack's body, and Jack was ready to shed that blood to prove it.

Then, he remembered that before his fight with Janus, Jack had walked through a doorway on the fourth floor and ended up in that grand hallway with the columns.

He then had retreated up at least one flight of stairs before he apparently ended up flying out of a second story window. It was hard to remember the details of the fight because he was busy getting demolished at the time.

Either way, it gave Jack an idea about where they needed to look in this giant house.

"We need to go back to the first floor and work our way down" Jack whispered.

Not only did he think that they would find their enemies down there, and hopefully their friend, he wanted to see what was on the other end of that mysterious hallway.

Matt led the way back down through the mansion. The only place they saw any guards, was outside on the front balcony that they had snuck in through the first time.

On the back side of the giant house, they found a second stairway that led to what must have been the scene of Jack's fight with Janus. The doorways were destroyed and the white walls had swaths torn out of them. The window that Jack had flown through was right down the hallway from the second floor stairway.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The first floor stairway door looked like someone had been thrown through it, and the arched double doorway at the basement level was nothing but hinges with a few splinters sticking out of them. Jack remembered tricking Janus into breaking those big doors with his cane. It was one of the last things he could recall from that awful night.

At the time, he had wondered why the whole doorway had exploded into shrapnel and splinters just from getting whacked with a skinny cane. Now he understood that Janus and Diana both had the ability to manipulate kinetic energy to give their attacks much greater impact.

He looked forward to being able to do that himself.

They crept into the hallway where Jack had met Janus for the first time. It was a long white room with a row of columns on either side leading to a big set of arched double doors. The grandness of the doors on the other end of the hallway once again made Jack wonder what could possibly be on the other side.

The white marble floor still had cracks where Janus had tried to curb stomp Jack's head in. As they approached the big heavy doors, Jack and Matt could hear a pair of familiar voices on the other side.

They inched closer and leaned in, trying to make out the muffled words through the thick wooden doors.

"...that matters is that Earth has become a qi rich planet again. We can finally progress as we did so long ago." A hoarse male voice said with barely restrained glee.

Definitely Janus, Jack thought.

The female voice that responded to Janus was incredibly smooth to Jack's ears.

"But how did this happen? For this world to be inundated with this much qi at once, a being of absolute power must have died here. Already, we have been attacked by warriors with artifact weapons. The world is changing Janus and we need to be prepared."

"Yes. It is exciting is it not?" he responded.

The weary sigh that the woman let out was audible even through the doors.

"Why did they have to leave me with a lunatic?" she asked the air, her voice getting louder as she approached the doors they were listening through.

Matt and Jack stepped back behind the column closest to the door. They looked at each other, a silent conversation passing between them before they both nodded.

The doors opened into the hallway and the most beautiful woman walked through with a quiver of arrows and a wooden bow hanging from her right shoulder. She had brown curly hair with a crescent moon shaped tiara sitting on her forehead. Her stunning heart shaped face didn't have a single blemish.

Damn Jack thought. No wonder Arthur decided to stay behind.

She sauntered through the hallway and gracefully made her way up the stairs.

Jack held his hand out for Matt to shake. He didn't want to break the silence, but he hoped that his friend could understand the gratitude he felt for him. Matt shook the offered hand and then turned and followed Diana while Jack stayed behind.

As he crept back up the hallway and stairs, the shadows went with him, leaving Jack to make his own way.

Jack waited behind the column for a bit, hoping that Janus would come out of the room. Maybe it was his turn to ambush the cane wielding psychopath.

Unfortunately, the doors remained resolutely closed. It was only a couple of minutes later when Jack decided that this sneaking around thing just wasn't for him. Matt was the shadow. Jack, on the other hand, was thunder and lightning, which were far from subtle.

He walked over, pulled open the magnificent double doors and strolled into the next room. He could feel Zachias in his mind and he got the sense that the bald-headed alien was facepalming right now.

Inside, was a huge square room with high white walls, white marble floors, and most distinctly, an ancient looking stone pedestal in the center of the room.

The pedestal was about three feet tall and six feet wide. It was holding up a tall stone arch that formed a natural looking doorway with an extremely intricate fractal pattern carved on it.

Despite the ancient looking rock that formed the pedestal, the stone doorway that rose out of it was in perfect condition, as if it had been carved earlier that day.

Just looking at the pattern carved on the stone gateway made Jack's neck hair stand on end for some reason.

Although, that may have also been related to the average sized, well dressed man standing in front of the stone monument looking up at it with his hands held behind his back. Janus was facing away from Jack and holding his cane in his right hand.

He had curly white hair that hung down to his shoulders although he still looked like he was in his early thirties.

For a moment, Jack thought that he hadn't even noticed him enter the room, but Janus suddenly spun around to take Jack in with a wild look in his pale blue eyes.

"Am I seeing things again?" Janus asked, his voice perpetually hoarse. "You can't be here. I killed you."

"Of course you did" Jack said playing along. "I'm just a figment of your demented mind. Say, you wouldn't happen to have my staff would you?"

Janus reached into his left pants pocket like he was fishing for his car keys and pulled out the seven foot long spear with the black handle and the gleaming silver blade. Jack wondered what else he had in his magical pockets.

"So you're the god of gates and doors huh?" Jack asked with a smile. "Doesn't really sound as impressive as the god of the ocean or the god of death does it? Was the god of tables and chairs already taken?"

Janus didn't seem insulted at all. He simply tilted his head and studied Jack as if he were waiting for him to disappear.

"Even if you did survive somehow, you should be a drooling pile of meat and bandages." Janus whispered, narrowing his eyes. "Are you truly an hallucination? Is that why I cannot sense your mind this time?"

Jack thought about his answer for a moment. Maybe he could get what he wanted and get out of here with less bloodshed than he thought if Janus believed he wasn't real.

"Yep, that's me. The world's most handsome hallucination, at your service. Now, I have a question for you" Jack stated and his whole body tensed up in anticipation for what came next. "What did you do with my light-haired friend?"

Janus thought for a moment and then smiled crazily.

"How about this?" he said and tossed the spear over to Jack with his left hand and while he flipped his cane around and held it like a sword. "If you defeat me, I will tell you anything you would like to know. Provided you answer my next question honestly. How are you still alive?"

Zachias tried to warn him to stop but Jack ignored him.

"Fine then" Jack blurted out. "I heal."

Again, Jack got the sense that Zachias was facepalming.

“You idiot” Zachias said in his mind. “Do you have any idea what you just did?”

“I thought you were hiding” Jack projected a thought back to the alien.

“It does not matter anymore. He will discover me anyway when he vivisects you for your healing physique.”

They communicated at the speed of thought while Janus was digesting what Jack had just said. The well-dressed madman looked shocked for a moment before he smiled wider than ever before.

“And so we begin” Janus declared and moved forward with violence.