Labyrinth. 9th Circle of Hell.

“But since you insist, for you—just you—I’ve made an exception. Congratulations.”

The last thing Jez saw was the tip of the Javelin. Then the scrying glass, hung like a mirror on the wall of the study, went blank. Its bronze surface now threw back a room crafted of obsidian, lined with shelves humming with a confusion of magical baubles. Some were but harmless playthings—a tiny little gold telescope that let you see across realms, for instance. Others were wreathed in so much law they seemed like worlds in miniature. In fact one such snow-globe did trap an entire shrunken civilization in its midst. Even the God-level Demons that maintained this room dared not touch those.

At the room’s center stood a barefoot, plain-looking boy. Jez, as he liked to see himself—as he was, and had always been. And to his right a girl who’d refused to change out of her tribal leathers. Kaya.

“So it’s true.” A hint of gold flashed in her eyes. “He’s not only killed my true brother and run around in his corpse. But he’s also gone and replaced me—soon as he could. Like… like I’m nothing.”

“That’s his nature,” said Jez sadly.

“I…” She swallowed, then, and her expression collapsed. She sunk into herself. “I would’ve died for him if he asked, you know. Wouldn’t have thought twice,” she said softly. “Guess that makes me a real idiot, huh?”

“There is no shame in being fooled by Dorian. He makes a sport of it, and he’s had centuries of practice.” Jez shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t get it.” Kaya studied him. “How aren’t you mad? At all? Ever? If anyone should be, it’s you.”

Jez started to laugh.

“What?”

“I seems I’ve played a little trick on you,” he said. His eyes were twinkling. “I do feel these things. It’s only human, isn’t it? I feel annoyance in me right now. A little anger, even.”

“You do?”

“Mm. In the past I was hateful, in fact. But nothing useful ever comes of rage or hate. It serves, perhaps, to animate the headless masses. For those who stand alone—for those who wish to stand above—it is love that must move us. Love, and reason. Discard all other sentiments. They only distract.”

“You say that like it’s easy.”

“It isn’t.” Jez sighed. “Only necessary.”

“How?” she whispered.

“We all have our own ways, don’t we?” Jez closed his eyes. “Some exact vengeance to extinguish the hateful sentiment. It is the ugliest option of the lot. Others find time naturally whittles it down. One way is to take one’s mind off of things. Which reminds me…”

He smiled at her. “Come with me. I’ve got a gift for you. For all your help.”

He led her down a corridor made of soft glowing stone. Stone that was kind on bare feet. It had no windows, only doors running along either side of it. Doors marked with numbers. No qi leaked from them, though he knew for certain there were Godbeasts with plentiful qi signatures crammed behind some of them. No sound, either, though he knew for certain a great number of those beasts howled in constant agony. This section of the Labyrinth was his personal laboratory. Its confines were absolute.

He led Kaya to a door he’d marked with a gold dot of qi. It opened as they walked up to it. Kaya gasped.

The insides were a one-to-one replica of their old tent. Back in Rust Tribe. The stone washpails, the sacks of jerky, the hollowed-out stone stools and thick leather sheets for blankets. But it was who sat in the center that caught her eye.

Io.

Not Dorian. Not that lean muscled creature, but the thin, soft boy. Not Dorian, smirking and lounging. Io—the nervous creature sat there looking like a gust of wind might tear him apart.

Their eyes met. “Sis?” he gasped.

“I was able to capture his soul here in the rivers of Hell,” said Jez behind her. “The body was the easy part. He isn’t the same, but he’s as close as I could get him…”

She hardly heard him. She tackled Io in one tight hug.

Jez smiled softly behind her, then stepped away. This was their moment, her cleansing. He was off to seek his own.

***

Jez hadn’t lied to the girl. As a matter of habit he seldom lied. He did feel mad at times. But these feelings were usually muted in him, easily discarded.

When it came to Dorian it always came a little harder. Even after he’d mended his feelings, excised cruel sentiment as best he could, it was still there—only dormant. Like a wound scabbed over. Prick at it and blood was apt to spill again. Oh, he could love the man, just as he could love all men! But he could also hate the man.

Something about murdering his mother, and father, and sister. Something about her pale, tearful eyes as she was torn from his arms…

There was something dark and hot in his chest. He did not rise to it. He did not grit his teeth. He did not clench his fists. He simply sighed and walked on and felt a little sad. After all these years he was still capable of such horrible feeling! He would’ve hoped to have grown up more by now.

Was it what made him track Dorian to that mortal plane? Was it what made him track the man now? It disturbed him, that some subconscious irrational drive could tug him to and fro.

One way to get rid of it was simple. Excise it like a tumor. Split it from the soul, as Houyi had done. Mutilate the self. But this seemed to Jez inhuman, and the coward’s way out besides.

The only honest way forth was to grapple with feeling. To overcome it.

There was one room deep in his laboratory that no-one entered save him. It was most nondescript, barely an indent in the wall, and it admitted him instantly. Inside was a garden teeming with lush flowers, a pocket dimension. Bright blue skies above dotted with cotton clouds. Wild grasses swayed in a gentle breeze. It was his room of cleansing.

One stone pedestal stood at the garden’s center, and on it lay a whip. Plain leather. He walked up to it with sober eyes and closed a fist around the handle. Then he knelt, took in a deep breath, and brought to mind that simmering hotness in his chest. An old hotness.

“Forgive me. No man deserves hatred,” he said. “I repent.”

It did not go away that easy. He knew it wouldn’t, of course, but there was always that childlike hope at the beginning.

He whispered a prayer. Then he lashed himself over the back.

There was a brilliant CRACK! Blood sprayed the grasses. They drank it in eagerly.

Jez gasped, tears springing involuntarily to his eyes; when he retracted the whip it was stained red.

This was no ordinary whip. It was a whip that lashed body and soul alike, and the pain it exacted was a special flavor of hurt, a pain beyond the world. Most deities would go mad at just one lashing.

For pain to mean anything it had to be consummate to his will. It had to be pain that could break his mind—for only then could his mind be remade. In a way he was like the Multiverse itself. To be pure he had to be made pure.

He lashed again. CRACK! This time it drew out a whimper. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “No man deserves hatred. I love you.”

But no. Too weak, too soft. Another sigh. CRACK! CRACK!

Tears wetted Jez’s cheeks.

CRACK!

His chest felt like it was being torn open from the inside. CRACK!

“I repent,” he croaked. His eyes were bloodshot. “I’m foolish! I’m weak. I am but a man… I’m sorry. I loved you once. I can learn to love again—just as I love all living creatures. I needn’t like you. I needn’t know you. But you are similar to me: blessed with life, with the capacity to think, capable of love. And that, for me, is enough. I choose—despite it all—to love you.”

This time—thank Heavens—he could sense he meant it.

He smiled, baring bloody teeth. Sometimes all it took was a little perspective. He looked within himself and found the darkness gone. Whipped deep into submission. He had no hate left in him.

He stood.

“I will not hunt you because I hate you. I will not kill you because I hate you. I shall do it out of love—love for not only you but also the welfare of the Multiverse. As a shepherd does to his flock, I love you.” He rolled the words around in his mind and found them true. He smiled.

Later in his throne room he put Demon King Yama’s armies on high alert. He sent out his most vicious squadrons of beasts—among them the legendary Nine-Tailed Fox and the Sky Wolf—to hunt Dorian down. Out of love.

***

Swamp Outskirts — 9th Circle of Hell.

For three days and three nights neither Dorian nor Sun dared to stop running. They crossed bare bone-dry grounds much like the Molten Plains—fewer whales, but warring demons infested all of Hell. Sun’s cloaking kept the brunt of them away. Dorian handled the rest. They’d made out with a treasure trove from the corpses of Ba Serpents and Taotie alike, but neither of them dared to celebrate.

It wasn’t until they were a few thousand li from the Swamp of the Damned—when the ground started to get soggy and the lava-flows receded and the demons grew less sleek and more thick-limbed and ponderous and webbed—Swamp demons—that they stopped to take a breath. They dug a cave into a mountainside. Sun set up a small qi cloak. Then she lugged out the Taotie heart and tongue, which still oozed dark-green slime.

“Finally!” She rubbed her hands, grinning. “I swear I’ve been salivating the whole way here.”

She brought out a skillet and set up a fire. Soon an acrid smoky scent saturated the cave.

Dorian, meanwhile, sat down to cultivate. He was feeling rather good about this whole arrangement. His Laws would be brought up to snuff soon enough—if the Dao Fruit of the Swamp of the Damned were as good as he remembered. His qi was about to get a hefty boost from an infusion of God’s flesh. Soon he’d be a full-fledged Demigod. All told things were finally looking up.

Or so it seemed. Fate had a way of playing tricks on him, especially when Jez got involved. So who knew what dastardly things the future had in store?

A few minutes later, Sun shoved a plate of oozing green meat before him. “One Taotie tongue, split fifty fifty!” She gave a little bow.

It smelled like a heap of burnt shit. It didn’t look a great deal better. Yet it was overflowing with potent qi, like a hotspring of the stuff on his plate. It felt like a Godly elixir fashioned of the Taotie’s most powerful bits was in front of him. In truth alchemy and cooking weren’t so different; it took some serious skill to transmute ingredients as raw as this to something useful, edible.

He took a bite. Instantly qi surged into him.

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Dwarf]

60% -> 63%

[Fire Planet: Meteor]

52% -> 55%

As best he could tell, stacking his Dwarf Star and Meteor Planet, he was somewhere in God-range in terms of qi. This plate—plus the Taotie heart—might just shove him over the top.

Sun took a bite. “Mmmmh,” she sighed, slowly chewing. Her eyelids fluttered. “Ohhhhh….that’s really good. We ought to nab more legendary monsters! If all of them taste like this—man! A year of eating like this and I could die happy.”

She liked the taste. Not the qi. Some creatures were truly inexplicable.

Speaking of—

“Back in the Bone Forest,” said Dorian. “Why’d you come back for me?”

It was a question that had itched at him all these past three days. He had his speculations, but somehow he had to know. She blinked at him. “Well... we agreed to a plan, didn’t we?”

“You could’ve run off. Anyone sane would’ve run off.”

“Well if I didn’t know you, maybe. But we signed a contract! We’re a team now, aren’t we? What sort of shitty teammate would I be if I up and left?”

Dorian frowned. Sun held up a finger, grinning. “You’re thinking of this the wrong way. You’re thinking—if I was in her position, I definitely would’ve made a break for it. Right?”

He scoffed. “Of course not! How dare you!” In fact that had been exactly what he’d been thinking. She happily ignored him.

“See, but I’m not you! Not all of us have hearts of coal, you know. Is that so silly?”

It was, in fact, very silly.

“I prefer to term it ‘a healthy sense of self-preservation,” he said dryly. She took one at the unimpressed look on his face and huffed.

“Well, try this on for size then, mister! Imagine where we’d be if I thought like you. We’d have no Taotie to eat. I’d be running screaming somewhere, and you’d be dead. Instead we’re here.”

“Hmm.”

Dorian took another bite of Taotie tongue. He chewed on it like a dog with a bone. “So you really took a risk-reward calculus and chose the best option.”

“Nah. I followed my gut. Things worked out.”

“Hmmmm.” Dorian chewed slower. He was having a lot of trouble swallowing for some reason. “How old are you?”

“About seven centuries.”

“And how long have you spent in the Molten Plains?”

“I was dumped here right after the conclave fell, so… one century?”

Nope. Still made no sense. With her attitude she should’ve been digesting in the stomach of some Demon long ago.

“I’m still alive ‘cause I made some good friends! That, and I plan my heists well,” she said, casually plucking the thought from his expression. His eye twitched.

“We had an awesome run! Then they died.” She made a face. “And… now I’m here. You still think I’m silly, don’t you? That’s okay. I get it. If I were you I’d think so too. But as a general rule I try not to be an utter dick—at least to people in my tribe.” She waved a fork at him. “Even if you can’t bring it in your heart to be nice for the sake of it, it’s actually a decent survival strategy. You make a lot less enemies, for one.”

“Yeah, I don’t buy it.”

“Uh-huh. Say,” said Sun, gulping down a mouthful of tongue, “What landed you here again, Mister Godking?”

“…” Dorian smiled. “Touché.”