In the middle of the volcano known as Drakestail Peak, one explosion after another rattled the earth. Rivers of qi were sucked in and blasted out and sucked back in again, like a whirlpool which couldn’t decide which way it wished to flow. At the center of it all was Dorian, brows scrunched and cross-legged, the whole of his mind stuck firmly on one task.

It was hellacious. His qi was monstrously dense, his grasp of Law tenuous at best. And Law would need to be the binding agent if this Star thing was to work! He was trying to hog-tie a bucking stallion with a ball of twine.

He’d been at it for hours. There was no telling time in this place but it could’ve been half a day for all he knew. He tapped his Interspatial Ring, yanked out an icy brew and took a swig of it, panting. He let himself take a bit of a breather—let his Core and Sea recover before he put them under another round of bruising pressure.

Clearly this way of advancing took a lot more understanding of Law—understanding he simply didn’t have! So what was there to do? To advance to Sky Realm one needed simply to dissolve the Core and the Sea and to drop in a dollop of Law as flavoring. Easily done. The only thing was that since it was a dissolution the consequences for failure were dire; screw up dissolving the Core and you were stuck that way forever.

This way had more do-overs. But it wasn’t infinite. Even as Dorian waited for his Core to recover from this round of attempts he could see it wouldn’t—not fully. Stress fractures, searing lines of qi in his mind, began to spread.

Which at some level he’d anticipated. It was like trying to break through a brick wall by running at it headfirst; of course there’d be damage! But being confronted with the physical signs was a stark reminder of the limits he was brushing up against. This was a new and dangerous path. He had little time. He had little Law!

Hmm. He scratched his chin. There was nothing for it, was there? This was an all-or-nothing affair; there was no going into it slowly or softly. Either he succeeded in a flash or he did not. And each attempt wore him down a little more, and a little more…

It was looking disturbingly possible that he might come out of this with nothing but a broken core. He ran the odds. If he kept trying like this how likely was it he managed to do it after another, say, fifty tries? Perhaps one in twenty, or even less?

He steeled his nerve.

So often, the difference between a mortal and a god was the willingness to take that final step. To cross beyond the boundary of no return, to gamble it all. It took a kind of insanity, a radical irresponsibility—most who tried it died. Loss aversion! Many a god was made victim to it, to say less of mortals with all their mortal ties… it was above all selfish.

Irresponsible, selfish, insane... it might as well have been ripped from Dorian’s biography!

There was no hesitation in him as he crossed the threshold, laughing as he did. He opened himself wide up, and in poured the world. His body felt the stress instantly, buckling at the knees, stooping involuntarily. His Core and Sea were forced smaller and tighter until it was all one dense, volatile mass. He could hardly breathe. He could hardly think. Still he waited, letting the environment crush him further and further—until even his new treasurelike body, lacking qi or Bloodline reinforcement, began to shudder. Qi was the lifeblood of the body. Even so, his new flesh should’ve been able to withstand nearly any physical condition in this plane, qi or not.

It went to show how stupid extreme this chamber was. Not even a baby Torchdragon could survive down here without qi, he suspected.

Around this point in earlier tries he’d be well into the tying process. Not now.

More!

His body, tempered by fire, was no longer durable in the ways flesh was durable. His flesh still felt like flesh, his bones like bones, but he was much more like a gemstone now—there was no melting him. All that pressure instead went into cracking him.

It felt like rivulets of magma was flowing up his arms and legs from under his skin. He knew that if he opened his eyes now he’d see stress fractures starting to creep up his body. He ignored it. All he had eyes for was the core within, growing dense, shockingly dense. From the size of a melon to the size of a grapefruit. The denser it got the more it boiled, the faster it spun, the hotter it got; tiny geysers of hot inky qi erupted from its surface before being squeezed back in by the pressure.

Still Dorian waited. The pain had become immaterial to him. He was in so much pain all the time it wasn’t that it no longer hurt; of course it hurt like all hells, but when didn’t it nowadays? Only when a chunk of his skin on his arm fell off like a cracked piece of eggshell did he start to get nervous. How much was he willing to give for this one try? As his core shrank smaller than the size of a fist—now it was really bucking, bucking for all it was worth—another chunk of skin fell off, then another. He could no longer feel his fingers. For all he knew his toes had already fallen off.

His eyelids went next, shucking right off his face, and he tensed. It would have to be this one attempt, then. He wouldn’t have enough body parts left for another! His body had started to tingle—at least in the parts he could still feel, as though his whole physical being was about to evaporate. That, or crack apart like a smashed vase. It occurred to him that he was getting eerily close to death.

He licked his lips on instinct and found that halfway through his tongue decided it’d had enough of his mouth. It hung out, lolling, no longer responding to him—the nerve endings had been seared off so he could no longer feel the pain, at least! Small mercies. Then it fell off.

Black spots began to appear at the edge of his vision, and not just from his boiling eyes.

This is it. The physical limit. Any more and he was dead.

He scrambled for the Laws of Darkness. Luckily there was so much of it in the qi bearing down on him that it was fast at hand. His would-be Star, Core and Sea and all, had now been compressed so tight it was but an angry black marble in his mind. He began to wrap it tight with threads of Law. One loop. Two. They submerged into the thing, merging with it; it shook.

Dimly he realized he could no longer see. Or feel, or smell, really. Hearing was fast deserting him too. Soon he would be floating in a void of sensation. Only his spiritual senses would guide his way. And if he lost his footing here he was but another set of bones on the ground.

Three. Four. Five. Six.

Was it his hopeful imagination or was his core that little bit more stable? It no longer seemed like it might combust at any moment…

Yes, yes! It’s happening!

It was less a race against time now and more of a race against his own lifespan. At least when he still had access to something resembling a body he had some sense of it. Right now there weren’t even vague impressions to go off of; there was only the beating of his heart. A beating that was growing erratic, off-kilter.

Seven. Eight. Nine.

He could now feel the presence of Law within him, flavoring the qi of his core. Every loop tied Darkness further into the foundation of his being.

His marble-sized Core, spinning fast, as now starting to glow with a soft sable light. The light of Law! To his delight, to his relief, a black star was quickly taking shape within him.

And even in this half-made state he could feel its potency. Even he could hardly bear to look at it head-on, and he owned the damned thing! It was like wielding threads of magma where before he’d had but weak embers—and as he weaved more and more Law in, that magma only grew more and more destructive… How would it feel if he teased out one of its tendrils and applied a Technique with it?

He would’ve shed a tear, if he still had tear ducts. Or eyes, for that matter! It’s—it’s beautiful! He would’ve sniffled if his nose was still attached to his face. It was all coming together. Not stable yet, but he could see the endpoint from where he stood. Just a few more loops and it’d be over. A few more and he would be a one-of-one in this Multiverse. A new type of being.

And of course that was when his heart—the ungrateful little shit—had the nerve to stop beating.