“It is Battle Paragon Jalan! Praise the light!” One of the Legionnaires shouted.

Moloch was stunned. “How and why was he here?” Jalan was one of the first legion's five great War Awakened. A War Awakened would never disturb their cultivation with such a minor operation like this. He was nevertheless grateful to see such a powerful being here in Drydellia intervening on their behalf.

“Jalan! Jalan! Jalan!” The seven ragged Legionnaires cheered. “Jalan! Jalan!” Krasus and Moloch took up the cheer.

He waited patiently as they honored him. After a few rounds of them chanting his name, he smiled in appreciation and held up his hand to silence them.

“I want you all to close your eyes. Take a moment to revel in this sensation! Have you ever tasted a feeling sweeter than the one? To be snatched from the jaws of death and given back your life? There are few feelings sweeter than the pure relief that is at this moment is washing over you.” Jalan said in a calm kind tone.

Everyone obeyed Jalan’s order without hesitation.

As he closed his eyes and began to breathe, Moloch’s felt a warmth begin to pervade his body and move deeper into him. He thought he was just imagining the sensation but then, suddenly without a doubt he felt as if his very soul was freshly scoured as if someone had plunged it into cool refreshing water, scrubbed the accumulated grime of time and trauma from it.

He felt the tightness in his chest abate and the air tasted sweet and fresh, like it did when he was young despite the filthy conditions of the chamber.

Jalan spoke to them, continuing the soothing tone.

“The gift of your lives is such a small matter. But to come so close to death, and to live to experience this moment, for an unawakened, this is the gift of a lifetime.”

When Moloch’s revelry had concluded he opened his eyes. The surviving Legionnaires had obediently closed their eyes, and wore smiles of joy, as tears streamed down their cheeks. He could see that Jalan was augmenting the experience as faint golden tendrils of light streamed out of his extended palm, and flowed into the space of skin between their eyes. In the space of a few moments, they too came around and the light stopped.

They looked up at Jalan with shining smiles and expectant gazes. Moloch’s body felt battered and bruised, but his soul felt fresh and renewed.

He would have given every ducat in his account to feel that way again.

Jalan smiled cryptically down at them. He was a dark skinned male of indeterminate middle age with a straight black mustache that was trimmed off his lips and dark bright penetrating eyes that had glimpsed vistas considered incomprehensible to most mortal minds.

He threw the comm jamming blankers down the hole at them. They were twisted and broken.

“You should find that your comms work again. I recommend that you contact the Legion at once and inform them of what has taken place here.” He said after several long moments.

Moloch, Krasus and the rest of the surviving legionnaires fell to one knee.

“It will be done my Lord!” they exclaimed together.

Rofoscue took this moment to start up another long series of mournful howls.

“Save me! Hurry and save my precious beautiful, lovely legs!” He cried.

Jalan looked at him hard for a moment, then he blurred forward so quickly, they couldn’t see him move.

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He loomed over Rofoscue, staring down into his eyes.

Rofoscue got very quiet, the weight of Jalan’s gaze stifling the scream in his throat.

“If you speak another sound in my presence, it will be your last.” Jalan said simply.

Rofoscue’s eyes went wide, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Impotently running his fingers over his twisted and mangled legs.

None of the surviving Legionnaires moved to help him. Salazaar picked up a fallen legionnaires pack and hobbled forward towards Rofoscue. He pulled a canister of colag paste and the field injectrix and sat down beside Rofoscue. He selected “strong anestesia” on the injectrix’s menu and pressed the device against Rofoscues neck. It ran a simple diagnostic program, to ensure from his biofeedback that the dose would be safe and then it hissed as it was administered. Rofoscue gasped and flopped limply in the sand. Salazaar sprayed colag paste into the wounds made from the compound fractures in both legs. As Salazaar tended to Rofoscue’s injuries, out of the corner of his eye, Moloch saw a shadow streak from the corner of the chamber and bound noiselessly through the hole in the wall and disappear into the open street. Haru had made his escape once he realized that the situation was well in hand.

Jalan arched an eyebrow in curiosity.

“I hope you don’t mind my Lord Master Jalan Sir, you mighty people might not care what happens to him, but I still need him for something.”

Salazaar said with his head bowed, not daring to look up.

Jalan nodded once.

Krasus, still kneeling with his head bowed, cleared his throat and spoke in a clear thin voice.

“My lord, to what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“Excellent Question Centurion.” Jalan replied. “I was cultivating in my chambers, when I was interrupted by a flickering untethered standard spirit, who in the most informal and frantic way possible, told me to come here, and listen for a prayer. I almost waved him off but he begged me to help and said he faithfully served his brothers for centuries, before he winked out of existence I recognized that it was your precocious Nassim. Given that my cultivations for the day were already disturbed, there was nothing else to do but investigate his final words with all haste.”

“Gratitude, Lord Jalan!” Everyone said at once, in legion formal speech.

He nodded once, by way of acceptance.

“It seems when I arrived here that this was not more of Nassim's hyperbole. Though I believe that he might have expended the last of his power to bring his message to me. While the ordeal he endured seemed to break his bindings to this plane, it will still be appropriate to honor him when you are done here and return to the Ziggurat.”

Potter hopped forward. “My lord, do you think he is really gone?”

Jalan thought for a moment. “It would depend on his accumulated power and ability. But I’ve only heard of two instances in our history where an untethered spirit was able to avoid the cycle of reincarnation after his binding was broken. So I wouldn’t hold much hope in it.”

Everyone’s head fell at that news.

Jalan looked at Potter considering him for a moment.

“Potter, your hymn was well sung. I could feel its power the moment I stepped into this level, it was how I was able to find you so quickly. I sense you have a strong attunement to the light. Who is your principal?”

“I don’t have one Master Jalan. I wasn't selected for training at the last round of tournaments, so I am content to carry our cohort's legion standard, and attend to the succor of the enlivened spirit. What little I know I have taught myself in the library, beyond the standard course of instruction.”

Jalan harrumphed. “The tournaments. What can they reveal? The rigors of daily life is the only tournament that matters. From this day forward I shall take you as my Acolyte. Report to my chambers tomorrow morning after the third bell. Then I shall begin your real instruction.”

“It is my honor!” Potter said as he abased himself before Jalan, pressing his forehead into the bloody sand.

Moloch and Krasus exchanged glances. Jalan had never formally taken an Acolyte. This was a high honor.

“My Lord, why did you decide to come all the way down here and help us? Moloch asked.

“Are you not my brothers?” Jalan said.

Then he leapt effortlessly from where he stood back to the entrance of the hole and He turned to go.

Krasus called after him. “Can we take the legion tunnel transport back up to the Ziggurat with you?"

Jalan turned his head and spoke over his shoulder.

“If you rode the level lift down, then you can ride it back up. Haven’t I helped you bunglers enough? You are blessed to be sons of the Legion. Act like it!”

The severity of his tone brokered no room for discussion.

Krasus swallowed, he hoped that he did not express disrespect to Paragon Jalan.

But after eyeing Krasus for a moment in silence, Jalan turned with a swish of his robe, in the next moment his form blurred and he vanished from

view.

“What a being he is.” Krasus said in awe.