The little brown bird asked gruffly, "Want me to replay that last glimpse?"

"What?" Jade asked with confusion, looking around for the fire that his own memories told him would greet a player at this point.

"You didn't actually read the last message you ever received did you?" the bird asked curiously.

That would have been true if Jade had actually been human, though there were humans who seemed to store visual memory in a similar way. After his silent moment stretched too long, Jade admitted, "I didn't see the entire message."

A pool of light seemed to ripple out from the gentle tap of a single tiny talon, and a message shimmered on its surface. It was the message from Harmony's character, Sky, that had begun, "I think I may be trapped. They are all friendly enough, and it wasn't difficult…"

It continued, "…to walk into the crowd, but now there's not even enough room for me to stop moving without being trampled."

Those words jolted Jade into action. He had been wasting time. "I need to revive as quickly as possible!"

"Well… that's bound to be a bit tricky isn't it? There are no local shrines yet." the bird replied. "But if you want to reincarnate as a local species, you can do so immediately, and you'd even get a huge Karma discount!"

Jade hesitated. Reincarnation would cause some communication problems, but speed was essential. "What kinds of species are available here?"

"Are you ready to reincarnate then?" the bird chirped encouragingly.

"Not without knowing what options are available," Jade replied firmly. Living Jade Empire had a few species that had to be hatched from eggs, like dragons. Dragons might live on the moon. That would take days. There could be other disadvantages to losing Hisui to reincarnation as well. "Or at least what it will take to go about reviving me?"

The device in Hisui's workshop, that the moon sand and rocks had been transmitted to, was designed to secure a material connection to the moon long enough for the construction of permanent portals. It should be able to maintain it until the rocks wore down, though that might not matter anymore, given the notification about the Imins guild's portal.

The 'cheat' Jade had used to connect his own temporary portal, summoning a celestial being who was present in more than one place at a time, was probably what had enabled the Imins guild to activate their portal, but they must have had such luck with the timing. Or possibly they had simply done the same thing at the same time, since any God, or even some other kinds of NPC should be able to fulfill the equation.

"I can't tell you more detail about local reincarnation options, since I have nothing to do with new lives, but I can tell you that there will be a long delay in revival because the closest shrine is so far distant from the site of your death," the bird explained patiently.

"How long?" Jade pressed.

"A full day or more," the bird replied a bit sharply. It immediately continued without waiting for another question, "It's no use complaining about the speed. Portal magic cannot transport souls for us. We are already carrying many souls home as fast as we can."

Jade grimaced. Harmony would have to get Apella's help, but they would probably manage without him. A full game day was only a few hours long. Revival would probably be fastest. He straightened and told the bird, "Then let's get moving."

The bird's trill of laughter seemed to echo, as the area darkened further, and Jade was logged out. The remaining notice message floating in the system informed him how many minutes and hours remained until he could log back in.

--

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Jade opened the mobile application that let players send and receive game messages without fully logging into the game, and was relieved to see that despite his character death, messaging on this layer wasn't disabled.

His first message was to Apella, relaying the message from Sky, and letting her know about the delay in revival from the moon. His second was to Sky, to let Harmony know that she needed to contact Apella directly while he was stuck offline.

That done, Jade then shifted his attention to the small-self at his mother's place. They had been talking all along, but Jade's human-self had been isolated from the conversation unless his station-self had judged something important enough to transfer. Trying to balance external communication was so ridiculously awkward.

Tayana Kitari looked the same as usual. Or possibly even happier than usual as she chatted with her son through the elderly robotic interface. His memory of all of the scenes of Hisui with Kit Tay told him that her human self actually looked a bit older than her character's gradual changes had shown.

It wasn't that he didn't know her current appearance, or her former appearance. It was that he hadn't noticed the changes until they had been shown in quick succession. She wasn't nearly as old as Harmony, yet, but she would be all too soon, wouldn't she?

--

Eric focused intently as his character Apella shifted the little ship's controls nervously. She had flown Hisui's skimmer before, but not the airship. Jade had given them a quick summary of everything, just in case, but he had also still been making repairs to the ship just a few minutes ago.

Every other tiny gemstone light on the dash still glowed red instead of green, like some kind of festive display. The feather glowed green though, and the ship rose gently into the air on command. The communication mirror that showed Sky walking among the Augusmin lay beside the controls.

A susurrous murmur arose from the mirror as the ship began to move along the root, away from the gigantic tree behind it. Apella's control wavered for just a moment, as Eric's attention shifted from the screen in front of him, to the mirror's surface.

The Augusmin Elder who still traveled beside Sky spoke up, as though he could feel Apella's gaze, "The tree sings that over twenty Augusmin, and as many visitors have died this day."

Sky asked gravely, "They fought each other?"

The murmuring noise seemed to ripple as the elder replied with shock, "Surely not! Though the tree implies that they all died of crushing warmth, I think? I'm not sure, that part doesn't really make sense."

"That is what I heard too," another of the Augusmin agreed.

More of them spoke up, describing variations on impactful heat, until Skyheart Snowsong suggested, "Perhaps it was the crashes of the ships that we saw plumes rising from as we descended."

Eric struggled to keep Apella's eyes on the view of waves of traveling Augusmin moving along the root that was gradually getting thinner and shorter. The force of the air moving beneath this ship might be far more dangerous here than Hisui's sand skimmers back in the Jade Empire.

"Do such things carry the heat of legends, from within your world, inside their own centers?" the Augusmin asked incredulously.

There was a brief pause, before Sky admitted, "I certainly never thought about it in such terms before, but I will have to say, yes."

"What a strange death to imagine. Our stories do claim that people in your Empire can die from being too hot, but I never imagined that you could carry it with you," the Elder muttered.

Apella directed the little ship to lift itself even higher into the air before it finally moved out over the waves of living beings traveling beneath it. Her hands wanted to tremble uncontrollably, but force of will kept the vibrations small enough that the little ship moved steadily.

A handy locking mechanism clicked into place to hold the little ship in a fairly steady hover, when it finally caught up with Harmony's position in the traveling populace below.

"Are you sure about this?" Eric couldn't help asking. "What if completing the journey means on foot, with them?"

"I don't know about you, but I need to take a short break pretty soon," Sky replied a little tartly.

The sound of Apella's laugh startled Eric a little, not because it was different than his own, but because he hadn't really meant to laugh as he kicked open the hatch on the cabin floor, and tossed the silky cord through.

The elf below the ship caught the end of the cord on her next bounce, as though they had practiced this maneuver a thousand times. The gasps of surprise from the rabbit-like people around her, as the elf seemed to fly into the sky, came through the mirror before the change in noise reached Apella from below.

Moments later, Skyheart Snowsong climbed back aboard. Apella shut the hatch and looked up again to see Sky unlock the ship's controls.

"Let's get moving!" the beautiful elf sang out laughingly. "I've got other places to be!"