Now that Dorian was infused with Law he was exposed to a new world. It was like he’d been seeing in black-and-white all this time and could now perceive color. Laws of Fire and Darkness threaded the world around him, glorious tapestries suspended in air.

And now those tapestries were violently torn apart.

The ground shuddered. The walls hissed and bulged. Wisps of darkness scurried at the edges of Dorian’s vision like frightened vermin, and the flow of fire at the mouth of the chamber went blinding white.

It was like the whole world had begun to scream. And it screamed one thing: explosion!

Shit-shit-shit! Time to get the hells out of here!

Then he eyed the entrance again, eyeing the broken mess of Fire Laws swirling about like broken bolts of lightning. Wading into that mess—even with his new Fire affinities… Dorian gulped. On second thought, maybe staying put in this little chamber would be like riding out a storm in its eye. Maybe if he shut up and sat still everything would turn out just fine.

He was able to cling onto that warm fantasy for all of five seconds. Then it was like the chamber split from itself. A huge chunk of the walls detached, lurched to the side…

No.

Not a section of wall. Dorian blinked. His eyes had mostly regenerated, but the world still filtered in splotchy and fuzzy at times. The finer points were lost. The real wall was smooth seamless black. This moving chunk had subtle lines traced throughout its surface. Lines that marked out scales…

This was, in fact, a tail. The tail of the Dweller. Dorian’s heart sank.

His eyes found the beast’s face. Its nostrils were flared, harsh lines of effort scrunching its draconian features. It looked as though it were having a horrible dream—so horrible it was on the verge of waking… fuck! He edged slowly back, stepping out from the embrace of its body. Creeping carefully toward the wall.

It growled. The sound rushed down the chamber, harsh and heavy, echoing like a struck gong.

Then its eyelid snapped open to reveal one brilliant yellow marble of an eye. Its pupil was a yawning, empty-black fissure down the middle.

A fissure that leapt instantly to Dorian.

For a heart-stopping moment neither of them moved, and Dorian saw in that great black space his own reflection. He saw his own face, warped by the curvature. He looked rather like he was about to shit himself.

Then the eye narrowed, and Dorian sucked in a sharp breath. Here it comes! It was like all the color was suddenly sucked out of the room.

One moment there was Fire all around him, thickening the air. Darkness swirled at the chamber’s edges. Then it all blurred into rivers of light, rivers which rushed toward the Dweller. The Dweller uncoiled itself slowly, almost leisurely, as Laws rushed to its side, swirling around it in a shimmering coccoon. Its wings unfurled to either side of it, swallowing half the room. Its head reared up, proud and mighty.

It eyed Dorian. Dorian eyed it. They faced each other, man and fallen god. Each of them sensed something of itself in the other. Both were forged of Darkness and Fire. Both had the Bloodline of the Torchdragon. Dorian even wielded one of this creature’s fangs! He could tell that it didn’t quite know what to make of him. It was confused.

Then he saw something flicker in its eyes as it came to an opinion. A cold, brutal opinion.

Intruder.

Thief!

Dorian groaned. Fuck!

Then the Godbeast—his body’s Bloodline ancestor—struck.

Fire and Darkness intertwined at its mouth. It screeched, a sound like a thousand windowpanes shattering at once. And with the sound came fire.

Black fire, red fire, fire interwoven in one dreadful black-red braid, two Laws woven together atop a deluge of qi. A bonfire to torch the Heavens, too vast and too fast to dodge.

Dorian could only trust in himself, trust his new body. Gritting his teeth, he countered.

His Star answered his call. Its planet’s qi, too, rose to his fingertips. He had but one blocking Technique.

[Void Shield!]

A vortex of qi flared into being before him, a whirlpool of fire and brimstone. And its potency shocked even him. It felt like he stood before a tiny sun of qi. Its powers smothered him like a heat wave, made his hairs stand up on their ends.

Holy—

Was it his imagination, or did its qi feel even stronger than the Dweller’s attack?! But there was no time to consider it. Flamethrower bore down upon Shield.

This moment would decide everything. They met.

And his Shield held.

He watched, shocked at himself, as god-level qi struck his Void Shield—and was swallowed whole. Vanished without sound or fury. He saw the Dweller’s eyes, too, widen. It may have been a crippled god, but it was still a god! Its qi was tempered in the Heavens! No mortal of these feckless Lower Planes should’ve stood a chance! And yet—

The Star Realm had worked a miracle. Hells… it had bridged the mortal-immortal divide! Dorian cackled, struck by a heady rush of energy. He was tingling all over. This Realm is godsdamned incredible! He’d discovered something extraordinary—nay, something that breached the natural order of the Multiverse itself, a loophole in power! Who needed godhood when you had qi this strong?!

And then a hole tore open at the edge of his Shield. He froze. Uh.

A streak of flame poured through; frantically he leapt aside, letting it splash against the obsidian ground. He couldn’t avoid it entirely—a gob still tore into his leg, and where it struck the skin blackened and deadened instantly. Fucking Laws of Fire! He let out a hiss. They burned like no other; it was less a flame applied to his skin, than the Multiverse commanding his skin to be burned. Which—having been burned by both methods ten thousand times over—Dorian could attest was far worse.

What the Hells?! Wasn’t his qi stronger than the Dweller’s? And his reserves were hardly running out. What gives?

He squinted at his Shield, and blinked. Ah.

His qi was not the issue. His Laws were. Mighty as his qi was, the Laws of Fire and Darkness wreathing it were but tepid trickles next to the Dweller’s raging rivers of Law.

He gulped as another hole—wider this time, tore open at the other edge of his Shield. Then a third, starting up the center. Alright—perhaps I’ve slightly overestimated myself—

His qi might match up to a God’s but his Laws were woefully inadequate. It made for an unbalanced build, like a man with a giant’s upper body but a toddler’s legs! If this went on his Shield wouldn’t last ten seconds. Perhaps if he beefed up his Laws he could give the Dweller a good fight. Alas…

He turned an eye to the mouth of the shuddering volcano, where fires streamed upward. The volcano was on the verge of eruption, no? And now he had Laws of Fire—Laws to shield him from the worst of its heat.

Time to get the Hells out of here!

He dashed for the cavern mouth. He felt the last shred of his shield give way just as he wrapped himself in Fire Laws and plunged headfirst into the tide of seething magma.

Behind him came a bellow which shook the volcano to its bowels. Even amid a rush of molten rock he felt its vibrations rattling his bones. But it was quickly left behind as Dorian was shot up and up and up, riding a blast of the world’s biggest cannon toward the skies. In heartbeats he was gone.

***

Snow drizzled gently upon the tundra. Upon a blanket of other snow, which hid a mosaic of torn bodies. Upon a boy named Nijo—and the godking inhabiting him, named Jez—who was, handful by handful, digging. Digging up a body. It was perhaps heretical to do it. Jez prayed to the Multiverse for forgiveness. But he had dug so many graves for it, had put so many bodies in those graves. Surely it could permit him one reversal.

Plus, the body within was not even dead.

He dug and dug until he found a head. Then he cleared out the snow from the arms, the torso, worked down the rest of the body until she was exposed at last, fully, to fresh air. He looked down at her with kind, soft eyes.

There was nothing remarkable about her. A poor soul on an unimportant plane. The only trait that might benefit him was her utility; she had an unusual affinity for Jez’s powers and her head seemed rather empty. A useful tool, perhaps—that was all.

Jez shook his head. What a sad way to consider a human soul. It was how a creature like the Godking Dorian might think. It was the sort of thinking that might justify the devastation of an entire plane, of the destruction of living, feeling souls for mere power—oh, power, that most vapid of concepts, better wished for than had! It was the sort of thinking that might justify leaving Jez himself cradling the withered corpse of his own sister—his own very unimportant sister, a weak, small, fragile thing. Worthless to some. Not to him.

Gently he brushed the snow from Kaya’s face. He rested a finger on her forehead.

“Rise,” he whispered.

Her eyes fluttered open. For a moment her irises shone pale gold; then they faded, leaving behind only confusion.

She stared blankly up at him. “Who are you?”

“Does it matter?” He shrugged. He cocked his head at her. In that instant of connection he knew her; he knew her past the level of the bones. He knew her very spirit. “You desire to hurt. It is what you enjoy most. Is this so?”

Slowly she nodded. She still seemed out of sorts. It was only natural to be groggy, disoriented. Being brought back from the cusp of death was a little like being woken from a deep sleep. In a sense he’d woken her from the deepest sleep of all.

He knelt down to her level. “Does it matter to you who it is you’re hurting?”

She frowned. “Not really.”

“Excellent.” First he pulled off his fur glove. Then he held out one small, pink hand. “Join me,” he said simply. “And you can hurt all you like. Join me, and I shall give you power to maim the world.”