The first people from Earth to visit Jason’s astral kingdom had been a trio of gover officials and the security team that came looking for them. After their experiehey had been subject to every test that could be devised, be it magical, teological or both. There were no signs to be found of mental manipution, pod people, shape-shifted repts or any other sarios that could be tested for or imagined. For many, wary of Jason’s magic, this was not enough to firm he hadn’t done something to them.

  The main reason doubts persisted was the attitudes of those who had entered Jason’s realm. While the specifics varied, eae held some variation on the same positions. Their expnations of what y oher side of Jason’s portal sounded absurd. Whole ps, godlike power. Whatever Jason Asano might want from Earth, he had no need of it.

  A more formalised expedition into the astral kingdom was arranged. pared to the previous impromptu visit, this one had representatives from across the globe. Intelligence officers were apanied by geologists, biologists, anthropologists and anyone else with some potential insight and a security clearance. Jasohe group to the cierge to guide, as he had the st. While that was going on, Jason was walking with his soul realm’s lo-serving resident, from a time before it even was an astral kingdom.

  Melody Jain, Sophie’s mother, was in recovery after a surgery to remove the substahat had been influeng her mind for decades. It had robbed her of her autonomy and of her family. The process of removing it had been a savage trauma that only Jason’s trol over his realm allowed her to survive. After a lengthy a, she was ba her feet. She used them now to make her way through the tree city of Arbour, with Jason strolling beside her.

  Melody, like Sophie, was a beautiful, silver-haired celestine. Although she had physically aged no more than her daughter, there was a weario her that spoke to the hard years she had lived. She wore a simple linen shirt and pants and wandered barefoot, uned about the scattered leaves and dirt over the storeets and pathways. Jason was simirly garbed, the natural colours of his clothing a trast to his usual garishness.

  The metropolis was a living forest, but with open thhfares, and buildings of wood and stohat blended into the surrounds. In pce of underbrush were wide boulevards, dappled with light filtering in through the opy. Small gusts of wind swept up fallen leaves and carried them away in swirling dervishes, dang like street performers. Roads and pathways of hewn stone meandered around trees and buildings.

  Above them, buildings were anchored tantuan trees, ected by hanging bridges and stairways that wound around the trunks. There was even a wooden track for a light rail system that shrough the upper reaches of the trees.

  Natural sts floated on the breeze; grass, wildflowers ah. Jason took a deep breath and sighed happily.

  “I’m very happy with how this turned out,” he said. “I uand how you might want to escape after being here so long, though. I’m sorry it worked out that we are oh and not Pallimustus, now you’re finally able to leave.”

  “I shouldn’t pin too muot mao explore airely different world. Nothio you, I suppose.”

  “It still feels fresh,” Jason said. “There’s always a new horizon. Ohings have settled, we’ll get you out and about.”

  “Sophie has been so excited about travelling together,” Melody said. “It’s almost like I’ve got the little girl back I never got to see her as. Maybe she feels it too. But I’m in no rush. This is a big world too, and it’s been my home lohan anywhere else. It was haunting, at first. This huge, empty pce, waiting for people who never came. And it keeps ging. The world, and this city, especially. Growing, like a garden. Only i year or so has it really settled down.”

  “People will e,” Jason said. “You’ve seen New Water.”

  “Why didn’t y those people from Pallimustus to the tree city? You made them a new one instead.”

  “A couple of reasons. One was that I wahem to be somewhere familiar. I couldn’t recreate their city, but I wa to at least feel like what they knew. Another was that this pce is earmarked for others.”

  “Oh?”

  “With normal astral kings, the ones who were inally messengers, things work the same way for all of them. Those of us who bee astral kings through less ventional means find that we each have little quirks we o figure out.”

  “If you say so. I’m not well-versed on any of this.”

  “her am I, to be ho. I find myself in a learn-by-doing situation. For example, normal astral kings create an astral kingdom, much like this one.”

  He gestured at the space around them.

  “So far, so good, then.”

  He chuckled.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Now, when it es to poputing their astral kingdoms, that’s when the normal processes get a little wobbly. An astral kingdom creates special trees, but they won’t grow beyond saplings. They have to be transpnted, out into broader reality. The birthing worlds, where messengers grow more messengers. Like fruit, to be harvested.”

  “Harvested?”

  “Astral kings create messengers for two reasons. One is to have an army of pliant minions, and the other is to drain them for power.”

  “It doesn’t work like that for you?”

  “Not the growing part. I’m not sure about the building power part, but I’m not going to juice people and drink it.”

  “ you get power without doing that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m unsure how much of the differeween myself and other astral kings is my not being a messenger. I suspect that many of the ges e from this city having its own soul. It began life as a ed version of a birthing tree, after all. It’s already w differently. Extensions of it are growing across the p. Not saplings, or even full-grown trees, but entire forests.”

  “The city has an avatar form, does it not? Have you asked it about this?”

  “I have. Like me, Arbour is finding their way through what is happening to them, learning as they go.”

  “And you think that these forests will grow new messengers? Here in your soul realm?”

  “It’s happening already. These forests, they’re full of… pods. Sooner or ter, messengers are going to start popping out like peas.”

  “Are you ready for that?”

  Jason’s ugh had a tinge of panicked mania.

  “For an army of ten-foot-tall newborns with silver-rank power and wings? No, I am not ready for that. I’m still stumbling through being a parent to one adult.”

  “How are things with Nik?”

  “Good. I think. Kind of. He just met his extended family. Magid circumstance kept us apart for so long, and we’re still feeling our way through. You know what that’s like, so I was hoping you had tips.”

  “Mostly a list of mistakes.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  They strolled through the city, discussing what it was to be an unventional parent in very unusual circumstances. In their wanderings, they entered many of the tree city’s unusual aspects. Natural and magical forces came together to shape the city, defining the oddities of its geography.

  Arbour was located in the vast caldera of a volic mountain range, in the iorth of the p. Geothermal heat and ambient magiditions created a temperate zone, hidden away in the mountains. There were massive underground districts, deeper even than the root systems of the massive trees. These included access to huge magma chambers that were half structed brick, half natural cavern. Magic set into the stone made the heat bearable and the air breathable. The stone was warm, but not hot uheir bare feet.

  “It’s beautiful, but quite ominous,” Melody said as the crossed a stone bridge that spanned over a flowing river of magma. “All this dark stone and fire.”

  The light of the molten stone painted everything red. While Jason enjoyed feeling like a video game dwarf, he led them back towards the surface. He aimed for a pce that was his favourite iy, possibly iire astral kingdom.

  A massive ge marked the city like a scar. The sheer sides were draped with trees like tapestries, houses of wood and stone poking out through the leaves. The river running through the city erupted over the clifftop, the deluge filling the ge with mist as it cascaded down and into the cave systems below.

  The buildings set into the side of the ge were part treehouse and part volic stone, no two quite the same. Some hugged the walls, with tunnels carefully avoiding root systems as they wound through the rock. Others had wooden ptforms jutting into the ge, shrouded in cool, refreshing mist. Hanging bridges spahe gap in pces, eg buildings on one side to the other.

  In the depths of the ge, the falling water filtered into a cave system of interected grottos. The grotto water was impossibly clear, courtesy of magical filters, and submerged crystals lit up the caverns with shimmering teals, blue and greens. Catwalks gave easy access to the cave system, where artificial chambers had been carved out to make unal spaces.

  These areas were subterranean gardens, lumi pnts growing out of the walls. There were pygrounds and piic tables, and public barbecues set up under well-hidden and carefully pced smoke vents. A fresh breeze blew through the cave system, taking the edge off the warmth of geothermal rock.

  “This is one of my favourite spots,” Jason said, joyfully pying tuide. They were in a water-filled grotto, on a wooden catwalk set into the wall. He pointed out pces where kids — or childish adults — could jump into the water, and the back out to one of the piic areas. The whole chamber was awash with cerulean light, shining from the water. It gave the whole chamber a sense of being uer.

  “There are animals in there as well,” he pointed out. “You swim with fish and turtles.”

  They emerged from the grotto caves at the bottom of the ge. It would be easy to fly upwards, but they took stairs carved directly into the stone, zigzagging up the walls. It was an i and ineffit path, weaviween trees and houses. Sometimes the path took them into tunnels briefly, before returning outside. The sun was high in the sky, its light painting rainbows in the mist from the waterfall. Droplets of spray sparkled like diamonds as they tumbled into the depths of the ge.

  “It doesn’t seem like a wildly practical space,” Melody pointed out.

  “There’s always flying,” Jason said. “This is designed as a residential space fh-rankers. There are more effit thhfares carved into the rock, though, behind the houses and past the roots of the trees. Direct tunnels, elevating ptforms. There’s a rge transit station behind the waterfall. It’s one of several hubs around the city, mostly underground to avoid interfering with the trees. I do have a wooden train that run above ground in some areas, although that’s also more about the experiehan pure practicality. You’ve seeracks, I’m sure, but I haven’t fired up the trai.”

  When Jason had met Melody, she had been sharp, fanatical and brainwashed. He could never have imagiheherly smile she gave him now.

  “Look at you,” she said. “It turns out that the all-powerful god of this world is really just a boy pying with toys.”

  He grinned.

  “I live with that.”

  They reached one of the rger houses, featuring a rge deck, supported by multiple trees. It was close enough to the waterfall to have a refreshing ess to the air, but not so close to be painted wet by the spray. There were three barbecues, and a pair of piic tables that could host a rge gathering. Hanging from a branch orch swing, from which a visibly nervous leonid stood up as they approached.

  “My appoi,” Jason said. “Would you like me to portal you home?”

  Melody lived in a treehouse, built around one of the tallest redwoods iy. It was close to where Carlos had bee up with his research tre, and Melody’s fellow brainwashing victims.

  “I think I’ll walk,” she said. “Even after all these years, there’s still so much I’ve never seen.”

  She wandered off and Jason walked over to Gary. The young man wasn’t rge by leonid standards, half a head shorter than Taika. Even so, he loomed over Jason, making his timid body nguage somewhat ical. Jasoured at the porch swing Gary had just vacated, then sat. After a moment, Gary did the same. Jason didn’t rush to speak, giving Gary time to work up the ce. Instead, he took in the view with a tented sigh.

  “I…” Gary attempted before trailing off.

  “You don’t know what it’s like, sitting here,” Gary said.

  “I am sitting here,” Jason pointed out.

  “Yeah, but you’re sitting here with me. I’m sitting here with you.”

  Rather than respond, Jason gave Gary time to gather his thoughts and tinue.

  “I’ve been surrounded by your power my whole life,” Gary expined. “The ground I walked on, the sun in the sky. It was always there, underpinning everything, but I never realised it. It was just the way things were. It was only when I left that I realised it, by its absence. Like some fual part of the world was missing. We’re in another universe here, but it feels more like home than Australia.”

  “I’m sorry you haven’t had the ce to expand your horizons.”

  “That’s not… you’re a person.”

  “I like to think so,” Jason said.

  “I’m not expining this well. Mr Asano, after leaving the ’s territory, I suddenly find myself very aware of the power that has been around me my entire life. It feels like home. The pce I belong. And then there’s you. A person, radiating all of that power. The source of it. I feel it ing off you like a wellspring.”

  “It’s just an aura.”

  “No, it’s not. I’ve felt auras. Strong, well-trained, gold-rank auras. Being here isn’t like sittio Mr Williams, or Mr Remore. It’s like sittio God.”

  Jaso out a sigh.

  “Is that why you asked to see me, Gary? You think I’m God?”

  “No. I know what you are. Emi expi to me. But that’s what it feels like. And, sihis is as close as I’m every likely to get, I was hoping you might be able to answer a question that I’ve had for a long time.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Why am I different?”

  “Everyone’s different, Gary, to one degree or another. You’ll have to be more specific.”

  Gary nodded.

  “People treat me differently,” he said. “Not always, and not everyone, but some people. Mr Remore has always been there, helping me and guiding me. Not mahat kind of attention. At first I thought it was because I was the first natural born leonid, but there are others like me. Kids of the transformed. They didn’t get that much attention. And the way he looks at me sometimes, it’s like he’s seeing someone else.”

  “Not seeing someone else. Just remembering.”

  “The ary? The one I was named after?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I look like him?”

  “No,” Jason said, then waved his arm.

  A se appeared in front of them, of people gathered on a grassy area, overlooking a tropical goon. Gary reised Jason, Rufus and many others he had met i week. His eyes, however, were drawn to a t leonid in front of a grill. The man was holding a set of tongs, and wore an apron that read ‘adventuring is more fun when you eat the bad guy.’ It was in one of the Pallimustus nguages Rufus taught.

  The image was silent, but as the man threw back his head in ughter, Gary could almost hear the booming sound of it. He wasn’t sure how lo, transfixed, watg the man silently talk and ugh ahe entire roasted leg of some giant bird-like creature. Gary was startled when the image vanished.

  Once again, Jason waited until Gary finally broke the silence.

  “Before I was born, Mr Remore used to tell stories about him. That’s why my parents named me after him. But he doesn’t tell those stories anymore. Not ever, even when I asked. Do you know why?”

  “I do.”

  “I thought that maybe I was imagining things. Maybe it was because I was a leonid that Mr Remave me so much attention. Why your family included me in so many things. Gave me so many opportunities. I know the wants to be more inclusive. To not make it about just your family. But then I said that I wao see you. To talk to you, and three hours ter, here I am. There are people who run tries who ’t do that. I’m different, and I don’t know why. you tell me?”

  Jaso out a long, slow breath.

  “Yes, Gary. I .”