There was a drawn-out pause, filled with a great deal of nothing.

“Sun?!” He hissed. “Cloak!”

Nujia frowned at him. He, in turn, frowned at Sun.

“…Please don’t tell me you’re frozen again.”

“Am I?” Sun looked rather spooked at that. She raised a hand, wiggled her fingers. “Phew!”

“Then what’s with the delay?” “Oh!” A mischievous grin spread across her face. “You can’t tell? That must mean it’s working.”

It was his turn to freeze. He swept his surroundings. Nothing had changed, far as he could see. It was Nujia’s face that gave him the clue.

She was still frowning at him, mightily puzzled. Then she tapped her Inter-spatial Ring and drew out a pendant—golden, inlaid with a bloody teardrop of a gemstone. A Blood tracker. She held it up to the light.

It lay inert in her palm.

“You are cloaking. Only it’s so good it’s practically cloaked itself.” Now that Dorian was looking for it he felt it: a subtle sheen of qi flowed over him, a hair’s breadth thick and damn near transparent. “It handles not only sight and qi, but also Bloodline?”

“Hides sound, too. And smell. It’s the highest-level cloaking spell they taught me. So long as we don’t make any big movements, we pretty much don’t exist.” She grinned. “Neat, right?”

“Neat? It’s miraculous!”

“Guess it is, isn’t it?” Sun scratched her head. “Shame I can only hold it for a half-dozen breaths.”

“…You should’ve led with that!”

“Pshh! What’ve we got? Four breaths left? That’s forever for you! You’ll get us out of this.” She slapped him on the back. “You’ve got this!”

“While I appreciate the confidence,” said Dorian dryly. “Don’t get too comfortable. I’m a gambler, not a miracle worker—though one often gives the impression of the other. But here, now… Yes. I can slap something together. As long as you keep up the cloak.”

“Who’s that lady, by the way?”

So she didn’t know. Which explained why Sun wasn’t shitting herself.

“Don’t worry about it. How long can you cloak in the shadow realm now? Give me a guess.”

“Maximum strength? Um. Two breaths? But a normal cloak… maybe a dozen?”

“Good enough.”

A shadow slunk off a nearby boulder, resting beneath their feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

***

Nujia’s prey vanished. Teleported out the moment their eyes met. Like that.

She blinked. Pulled out her Blood Compass, dangled her it in the air, cocked her head at it. But still it yielded nothing. She sighed.

Such was life. Brief spurts of excitement interspersed between vast spells of waiting. Trekking all the way here had been such a dull affair. Then carving her way through that drudge of a Swamp. Then flicking aside that old worm Meng. Here, at last! Her tails quivering aflame, eagerness rising like the fledgling sun in her chest—

—and naught. Naught, and waiting, and naught.

She pursed her lips. “How vile.”

She turned on her heels and took in the broad sweep of the forest. An endless tangle of bark and vines and trees and moss. Life seething in the branches, crawling up and down every inch of soggy ground.

She raised a dainty hand.

The sky went crimson.

Fire fell like rain. Hot yellow, feverish red, searing, passionate white.

Not just any fire, but the fire of the Nine-Tailed fox. Endlessly thirsty. A cleansing fire.

In moments the screams rose up. Screams high and low, screeching, grating, young and aged alike. Serpents’ hisses. The piercing cries of locusts, cicadas. All mingling in the air, interbreeding, birthing a new species of hurt.

Nujia licked her lips. She raised her hands. She gave a breathless, happy sigh. And, slowly, lifting her arms, began to conduct. A symphony of pain. A Nine-Tailed Fox’s fire spread like lightning—faster than fire. It had gripped all the trees in sight now and against the backdrop of its shining light she saw thousands of writhing silhouettes. Dancing, just for her. When they crisped to naught their souls would not go to the ghost-streams. They would burn with their bodies.

For now, it would have to do.

“Wait for me, Dorian,” she sighed. She smiled like a child, but her eyes were very, very old. “Soon… soon…”

She had waited centuries. Slogging, muddy centuries. She supposed she could deign to wait a few days more to burn.

***

Thousands of Li away…

A giant one-eyed mutt raced on a stream of ghosts, high up in the skies of hell. It hardly had furs left. Only a mess of scars and crusted blood—crusted so long it’d grown into him, become a part of him.

It was part of what gave him the moniker Blood Wolf. 6th ranked Empyrean in the Multiverse.

A jolt startled him. He frowned down at his Blood Compass. It’d gone dull.

Jez had said he’d paid off the Wraiths. The Shadow Realms should’ve been sealed! So where, exactly, had his mark gone?

He grinned lazily.

“Oops?” He whispered. “Jez, Jez, Jez. What have you done?”

***

Thousands more Li away…

Jez frowned down at his Blood Map. He frowned down at his Blood Probe, at his Blood Compass. All had gone silent.

“I don’t understand,” he said softly.

He stood there, brows furrowed, and closed his eyes. He thought. Five minutes. Ten. Statue-still he stood.

Then, at the Twenty-sixth minute—

“Oh.”

He made for the dungeons.

It was there, he gathered, where Kaya spent most of her time now. He hadn’t interned her there—she went of her own accord. She liked the sounds, she said.

Now he had use of her.

***

Thousands of Li away…

“I must say, good sire, it has been an absolute pleasure,” said Fate, bowing low.

“Rise, Fate, rise! You flatter me,” rumbled T’lak Ochon, Grand Chieftain of the Orcs. But Fate could tell he enjoyed it. It wasn’t every day a Godking bowed to an Empyrean.

“Not at all!” And Fate meant it.

Their handshake marked the sealing of a treaty he’d been pushing for since he first set foot in the Ninth Circle of Hell. It was the last one he needed to secure, and he was so happy he’d managed it that his hairs, bushy at the best of times, had gone into a full frizz.

He and T’lak stood on high ramparts of T’lak’s great obsidian fort. Below them, leagues below, swarmed ten thousand tiny lights. Each of them a torch, which perched atop a barrack, which housed a dozen-odd orcs armed to the teeth. Ready to march at an hour’s notice.

Many fine folk in Hell weren’t keen on letting Jez trample over the rest of Hell. The gargoyle fleets were one. These Orcs were another. Then there were the Lava Whale-pods, the various races of Rocs…

The trouble was bunching them all together into something resembling an army! The forces of Hell were infamously fickle. Prickly, as Fate liked to put it. Even now there were flare-ups of qi in the camps below. Little fights breaking out, then quickly stamped out.

“We should march soon,” rumbled T’lak. His temple was one giant crease. “The males… get restless. Too many in one place, sitting still. It is no good.”

“On the morrow, then!” said Fate cheerfully. “I shall relay it to the gargoyles, and the Whales, and the Rocs.”

“Let it be done.” T’lak touched the back of his fist to his horn. A prick of blood welled up there. “Strength! Valor! Victory!”

Simple and forthright, the orc way.

“Yes!” Fate had done some study of orc culture—how awfully embarrassing would it be if he committed some faux paus? Though he had no horn he still put his a fist to his temple. “Strength! Valor! Victory!” He said, but in his voice it sounded more like a squeak than a boom. T’lak laughed, and Fate smiled.

It had taken all of Fate’s patience and diplomacy to string together this threadbare alliance. Even faced with an existential threat only about half the free denizens of Hell could be persuaded to join in. The Serpents and the dragons wouldn’t so much as hear him out! The demons were a lost cause.

But gazing at the void never much helped anyone. Fate gazed instead out at the simmering war camp before him, he couldn’t help but feel a bubbling of hope.

Then there was a heat in his breast pocket. It was his pocket scrying glass. He gasped, fumbling it out. There was someone at the other end. His contact.

“What is that?” said T’lak.

“Eh? Ah—a rather important friend of mine,” mumbled Fate. “Please excuse me.”

He tapped the glass. A stern face resolved. Flat expression, well-manicured hair, and a dapper suit framing the shoulders.

“My instruments have lost their minds,” said the man.

“I don’t follow.”

“Someone appears to be cloaking him. Quite powerfully, I might add. The Compass can’t find him. Neither can the Probe.”

“Not even with a Blood sample?”

“Yes.”

“What about following Fate-threads?”

“It cloaks that as well.”

“Truly? Wow.” Fate scratched his head. “Then—then how might you find him? I don’t mean to nag, sir, but I must remind you this is a mission of critical importance!” He could feel his pitch rising. “The Kingdom of Ur is our most pressing hindrance. If you two cannot bring it down—”

“Calm, Fate. Take a breath. You’re sweating through the glass.”

“Sorry, sorry.” For all the time he’d known the man Fate had hardly seen him emote. When he did it was like now—the slightest curve of the lip. So slight it could’ve been a trick of the light. But Fate could swear he was, ever-so-slightly, smirking. “Apologies. I hadn’t meant to alarm. Only to inform. I can, of course, still find him.”

“Yes, alright, good!” Fate sucked in a breath. “Err—might I inquire as to how?”

The man only looked at him, and blinked. There was that expression again. This time Fate was sure he wasn’t imagining it.

“I have spent the best part of five thousand years in his company. I should hope I know something of how he thinks.”