“Do you realise what you’ve done?” Rick asked Jason as they walked along a hallway in the cloud ship. “The collection of people on this boat is ridiculous. The number of gold rankers alone is mind boggling. If we’d had this group when we went down that god-forsaken tunnel, we’d have wiped that undead army off the face of creation.”

“I don’t think the gods actually forsook the tunnel,” Jason pointed out. “That was actually kind of the problem.”

“It was, wasn’t it. But to continue my point, beyond the number of gold rankers, look at who they are. Prestigious teams from across multiple generations of adventurers. The Archchancellor and Vice Chancellor of the Magic Research Association. One of the rising stars of the alchemy world.”

“You mean Jory?”

“I don’t think you realise the reputation he built up while you were off inventing your system.”

“I wouldn’t call that an accurate description of what happened.”

“The world’s most notorious treasure hunter. Roland Remore’s son.”

“I’m aware of who is on my boat, Rick.”

“Aunt Danielle.”

“Again, I know who—”

“How many members of royalty, Jason?”

“Only a couple of big ones. Most of that Rimaros contingent are peripheral family members at best.”

“My point, Jason, is that you need to look at things the way the wider world sees them. You’re going off with a multi-national force of top-tier adventurers, magical researchers, royal family members and even clergy. You just incidentally built one of the most powerful factions on the planet, and people want to know what you’re going to do with it when you bring us all back. Found a country? Take a more forceful approach in trying to eliminate indentured servitude?”

“I’m going to go home. Hang out. Kill some vampires. When I get back, I’d love to do some quiet adventuring. Take out some messengers.”

“Jason, even you aren’t oblivious enough to not know what people are thinking. Not with your history. Look at what happened the last time you came back from Earth. The Builder invasion. The Battle of Yaresh. The brightheart expedition. You were a major player in all of them. You might not have been famous with the public at large, outside Rimaros and Yaresh, but the people in power? They were watching you closely. Then you vanish and reappear fifteen years later, having changed the very way essence users operate. And it’s not long before you’re doing ridiculous things all over again.”

“They weren’t that ridiculous.”

“You evacuated the entire population of a city with your aura, turned into a bird and single-handedly wiped out a messenger army. And that was after coming back from the dead. Again. Which barely warrants a mention because it’s kind of your gods-bedamned thing.”

“We all have rough days, Rick.”

“Rough days?” Rick exclaimed.

Jason laughed and put a companionable hand on Rick’s shoulder.

“I’ve had worse. Did I ever tell you about my time on Earth? I got back at bronze rank, and was almost immediately kidnapped by a silver ranker. Again. This one was crappy, though, so I was able to put up a…”

Rick rolled his eyes as Jason trailed off, his attention caught by Zara walking the other way.

“Princess,” he greeted, doing a terrible job of suppressing a grin.

“Captain,” she greeted back as they passed one another.

“Captain?” Rick asked.

“It is my boat,” Jason pointed out.

Rick shook his head.

“You know, I didn’t even want to come on this trip.”

“You didn’t? Who wouldn’t want to be a part of this?”

“Me, Jason. I wouldn’t. Fifteen years of very happily fighting monsters, like a regular adventurer. Now I’m in a magic boat full of people who bring trouble down on anyone standing in their general vicinity. But my wife wanted to see another world, so here we are.”

“Well, I’ll do my best to keep things calm and normal for you.”

“Is that going to work?”

Jason patted him on the shoulder again.

“Not even a little bit.”

***

The cloud ship boasted a variety of amenities, from hanging gardens to a full blown mirage chamber. The most popular spots were the observation decks, featuring a relaxed bar, intimate lounge areas and a ballroom-sized dining hall. Each featured transparent hull sections, offering expansive views of the astral as the vessel passed through it.

Other rooms frequently occupied were the lecture halls and classrooms. The people from Earth taught the languages of their home planet, along with basic cultural studies and introductory etiquette. Jason had been banned from this by Farrah for both his inherent lack of etiquette and for relating every social situation to an episode of The A-Team.

The deep astral wasn’t visible in the normal sense. Instead, strange interactions of its raw magic with the bubble keeping the ship safe manifested around them. Sometimes that meant arcadian landscapes, with the cloud vessel feeling like a train in the countryside. Other times, it felt like moving through the void of space as bizarre objects and entities drifted past.

With so many powerful adventurers on board, and no adventuring to be had, many had chosen to focus on training. The passengers quickly learned to avoid Prince Valdis, who found himself in a heaven of strong people to challenge. With little else to do, however, many took him up or challenged each other. The vessel had both the space and facilities to accommodate them.

Jason was having dinner with Travis Noble and his wife, Gabrielle. Gabrielle was quiet, still getting used to the absence of her goddess. Travis was fascinated with the strange things passing by the window.

“Is that some kind of merman?” he asked. “He’s got webbed hands and feet.”

“That’s Patrick Duffy,” Jason said.

“The season one host of Bingo America?”

“Uh… maybe?”

They continued their meal, Travis and Jason chatting about their journey.

“Honestly,” Travis said, “I was reluctant to come along. I don’t know that there is anything left for me back on Earth. I come from an old-school Network family, and they cut off almost any contact after I joined the Asano Clan.”

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

“I get that,” Jason said. “I felt the same way for a long time, but don’t underestimate your family connections. I have people waiting for me, despite how I left things. They basically thought I was a mass-murdering psychopath, and I’m not sure they were far off the mark. It won’t be easy, going back, but I’m doing it. When was family ever easy?”

“I remember when you left,” Travis said. “Things were tense between your sister and your niece for a long time. Emi got it into her head that you weren’t going to come back. She blamed her mother, and also herself. For not understanding why you became the way you were. I don’t know how it is now, given that I was pulled through to Palli not that long after you left.”

“I have the advantage of calling in. I’ve tried to keep things quiet with my avatars over there, not make myself known too much. I have spent time with family, though. It’s awkward, but getting better. Time gives raw wounds a chance to heal. Speaking of which, I think I owe you an apology, Gabrielle.”

“Oh?” she said, looking up from her pasta.

“You and I fell out twenty years ago. We were young. We made the mistakes that young people make. Passion; a little too much confidence. A certainty in our rightness that age was yet to temper. The sin of disrespect is one I have indulged in many times. Your goddess has helped me time and again, yet I failed to show her the respect she deserved. Not in her own right, and not before those who hold her in such esteem. I apologise for disrespecting something so central to not just your life but also to your identity.”

Gabrielle stared at Jason, as if searching his expression for amusement or insincerity. He found that a little hurtful, mostly because he was pretty sure he deserved it.

“Thank you,” she said finally. “Faith can make you strong, but also inflexible. I was particularly guilty of that. Honestly, I was a little jealous. Some man comes swanning in, bad-mouthing gods and loudly proclaiming that our society was corrupt and broken. Yet my goddess kept showering you with attention and I didn’t understand why.”

“I suspect she was indulging me, the way you do a rude child who doesn’t know any better.”

“I let my rigidity and my envy poison relationships that were important to me, not just Humphrey. I spent a lot of time saying unkind things about you to any who would listen. I am sorry for that.”

“I think we can both pass that off as the poor decisions of youth. You were still a teenager, so that excuses you more than me. Still, we did get along at first, and it would be nice if we could get back to that. Do you remember the time we danced?”

She let out a soft laugh.

“I do.”

“What’s this?” Travis asked.

“It was back in Greenstone,” Jason explained. “Sorry, this is really a story about your wife’s ex, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, not at all,” Travis said. “I have no problem standing in comparison to a guy who is basically Superman but with ethnically ambiguous sensuality and an adorable magic puppy.”

“Really?” Jason asked. “Sensuality?”

“Oh yeah,” Travis said as Gabrielle nodded her enthusiastic agreement. “He’s all upright, but passionate. He has a whole ‘I’ll do the right thing on the battlefield and in the bedroom’ situation going on. Once we get back to Earth, he’s going to get internet creeped on hard. Hard. But what was this about a dance?”

“Um, okay,” Jason said. “So, we were at some kind of social event. A ball, something like that. Gabrielle, here, was what? Sixteen? I think Humphrey was seventeen. He’d been taught how to smite monsters with a big old sword, but he didn’t have the same natural talent for his mother’s social lessons. Now, I could see him mooning over your lovely now-wife, so I decided to stir him into action. I bribed the band to spice things up and introduced Pallimustus to the tango.”

“You bribed the band?” Gabrielle asked.

“I had to have something I could work with. Those Greenstone dances had no verve.”

“You taught my wife the tango?”

“I thought I did, but thinking back, she picked it up a little too well. Did your goddess pluck the tango out of my head and teach it to you in real time?”

“Basically, yes,” Gabrielle admitted. “Which still counts as you teaching me.”

“No one ever taught me the tango!” Travis complained.

“Well, that’s easily solvable,” Jason said. “I’ll teach you.”

“Shouldn’t my wife teach me?”

“It doesn’t work like that, Travis.”

“It really feels like it should,” he said, turning to his wife with an imploring look. She looked back down at her pasta and continued eating.

***

On Earth, Jason’s Slovakian spirit domain held an astral space. Like the one in France, it contained a city surrounded by wilderness that spanned out to the edge of the space where reality broke down. Unlike the French city, this space had no sun. Lit only by moonlight, regardless of the hour, it held Earth’s remaining population of sane vampires. The looming architecture was influenced by Prague, Istanbul and, more than anything else, Batman movies.

Jason’s avatar stood on the rooftop of a gothic tower. Rain pattered against his heavy coat and wide-brimmed hat, making the steep tiles slippery enough that he was holding himself in place with his aura. Moonlight pushed through the murk and reflected off the tiles, rendered slick by the water. A hatch flipped up, from which an umbrella was shoved out and quickly opened. Craig Vermillion extracted himself while awkwardly holding the umbrella, then picked his way across the slippery roof. He stood beside Jason and followed his gaze, trying to find what he was staring at. Not seeing it, he instead turned to Jason.

“Can’t you deflect the rain with your aura?” Craig asked, watching the droplets bounce off Jason’s hat and coat.

“Yep,” Jason said in a gravelly drawl.

“Wait, are you just posing dramatically as you overlook the vampire city you made?”

“Isn’t that what vampire cities are for?”

“You didn’t have to put gargoyles everywhere. It’s kind of a stereotype.”

“This is my domain, Craig. I know exactly how many people in it are wearing long black coats right now.”

“That’s fair,” Craig conceded.

“Your aura is settling down more every time I see you.”

“I’ve been working on it. Rufus has been helping me with essence user meditation techniques; he’s an excellent teacher. Apparently, his family runs a school in the other world.”

“I might have heard that somewhere, yeah.”

One of the earliest vampires to actively fight their own risen lords, Craig had accelerated to gold rank after feeding on several of them. Hard to kill permanently without blood magic, another vampire devouring them was a way to keep the resilient gold-rankers down. That made allied vampires an asset to those fighting the ancient lords, even at a time when any vampire was hard to trust.

Craig had lacked the power to defeat a vampire lord himself. Even with his new rank, he would be hard pressed to vanquish the ancient lords. It had been essence users and other human forces doing the actual subduing, leaving him to drain their life force and put them down for good. The effects of feeding on such potent blood included a rapid increase in his baseline strength, along with picking up additional bloodline powers. The downsides were fierce aggression, feral tendencies, and a drift towards amoral ruthlessness. Voluntarily locking himself away for years, Craig had finally come back to himself around the time Jason’s avatars started showing up.

“I’m a little surprised you picked here to do this,” Craig said. “Trying to intimidate the Americans with all the scary vampires?”

“No. I want this quiet, until I know why Boris is bringing them here. There’s a reason I keep all the secret stuff in this city.”

“Vampires respect secrets?”

“No, although that was a pleasant surprise. If there’s a bunch of secret things happening, no one questions one more car with tinted windows moving through the sputtering light of the gas lamps, shining off rain-slicked cobbles.”

“Do you need me to go get you a femme fatale? This is a vampire city; we’ve got them coming out of our ears.”

“I’m enjoying this a little too much, aren’t I?”

“I say roll with it,” Craig told him. “You build this place for melodrama, right?”

“Yeah,” Jason said happily, then his expression turned grim. “Well, that was the fun reason. You know we have to talk about what happens with the vampires when I arrive.”

“I’m assuming you’re going to kill all the ones still out in the world.”

“Are there any worth saving?”

“Ten years ago, I might have said yes. They’re too far gone, Jason, and have been for a long time. Maybe there are a few who could come back. Who wouldn’t kill themselves over what they’ve done once they regained a conscience. But finding and helping them simply isn’t a practical position. Europe is post-apocalyptic at this stage. It pains me to say it, but you have to kill them all.”

Jason nodded, resigned.

“What about the sane ones, here in the city?” Craig asked. “This place has been a haven, but will we ever get to go back out into the world? There’s too much magic out there now, and humanity isn’t going to accept us. Not after what the others have done. Are we stuck, living forever in a city with no dawn?”

“There is a world for you. Just not this one.”

“You’re going to send us into space?”

“Yes, but not this space. I have a solar system. Like this city, and the one in France, but obviously bigger. There’s a moon whose orbit is synchronised so that the planet is always blocking the sun. A permanent state of eclipse.”

“People like it when you swap out the permanent moon for an eclipse here in the city. It makes for a fun event. And you say there’s a whole planet like that?”

“A moon, not a planet. Smaller than Earth, so the eclipse can always be in place. I had to tweak some thinks to get the gravity right. Tides are a bit funny. Are vampires into yachting?”

“Not traditionally.”

“Also, I made the magic-infused sunlight turning vampires insane not a thing in my universe, so you can go out in the sun there if you want. I don’t have that kind of control in my Earth domains, yet, sorry. Not outside of the astral spaces.”

“Jason, these things you talk about like they’re nothing. Making planets. Your own universe. If I hadn’t seen things like this city, I’d think you were a madman. I still might.”

“Mate, you haven’t seen the half of it.”

Jason turned his gaze down to the street. A town car that looked like it was from the sixties made its slow way along the narrow thoroughfare. The windows and the paint were both black.

“Boris and the Americans?” Craig asked.

Jason nodded.

“Let’s see what they want.”