His smile slipped off his face.

Tied up in the middle of some shit Lower Realm? Put down like some common hound? This was how he’d go out?!

And Houyi, too—how in the Nine Hells had he let this happen?! The evidence was plainly laid out. Yet Dorian could still not get a firm grasp of it. It simply made no sense. His brother was like the rising sun! It did not simply stop.

The thought sank like a stone down his throat, stuck there. He swallowed. He felt it settle heavy in his chest. …Could it?

He glared up at the skies. At the Upper Realm. How could you let yourself lose to this—this smarmy upstart?!

To his surprise, a sharp pang of some foreign feeling pierced his chest. A feeling he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Fuck. You’d better not be dead, you bastard. I’d never forgive you.

Trussed up like a hog bound for slaughter, left stranded in the desert of glass—really it should’ve been comical! He found most dire situations at least a little silly. Yet right now he grasped for humor within him, and found nothing. Something about the looming mortality of it really put a dampener on things.

He swallowed, grimacing. He looked down at himself.

Oh, to Hells with this!

Even hogs had the self-respect to squirm until the knife came down.

He started to struggle. Buck, thrust up against the golden rope with all the might of his reforged body, gasping as he did. Each of his hands could crush a block of steel like an egg; his legs could dent the Oasis Walls on their own! And yet the rope held firm.

He cursed. Suddenly he was in no mood for jokes. Sunlight winked down at him, mocking him. He bucked again. Nothing.

He cast about, desperate. No shadows nearby—all was flat. He squinted at the wrecked lumps of metal hundreds of paces away.

[Darken the Sky]!

Then he dragged out a shadow, yanked it all the way beneath his feet, and tried stepping in. It admitted him.

For one blissful moment he thought Jez was wrong. He thought he was free! Then he looked down.

One gold rope anchored his ankle. It ran up his body, bound his soul. It yanked him like a leash; he was thrown unceremoniously back into this Realm.

FUCK!

What else was there? Nothing in his Interspatial Ring would make any difference now. There was no Devil’s Promise. No more Bloodline burning, no last cheap tricks. All he had was a piddling sliver of qi left in his body; it was regenerating naturally, but it was still no more than ten percent.

He opened his mouth, drew it all up in one glut, and let it loose. [Galactic Inferno]!

A stream of Black and Red splattered against the thread binding his leg. Then it faded out, the thread still intact. It was less bright. That’d knocked it down a few degrees. He yanked on it again, and it felt firm as ever. He sighed. Whatever damage he’d done wasn’t nearly enough. He’d expected as much.

And now he was really out. There was barely enough qi in him left to manage a handful of shadow-jumps. Groaning, he let himself fall on his side, spent and bruised. His head throbbed awfully. His whole body throbbed awfully, come to think of it. Black spots started to riddle his vision, swimming at the corners of his eyes. There was one particularly long one in the middle, just peeking over the horizon. He squinted at it. It almost seemed like…

He blinked. The line came into sharp focus.

He started to laugh again. Hysterically, heaving side-to-side. There was nothing else to do, really.

The godsdamned Dweller!

He tried to make rude hand gestures at the beast. He only succeeded in flipping himself on his face. Spitting out sand, he squirmed back upright. Couldn’t you have come any earlier?! Heavens!

The timing was fantastic. He might as well have been served up on a platter for it!

He kept laughing, and laughing, and laughing.

And then he choked. And frowned. He glanced at the Dweller again, meandering closer, and saw spurts of Darkness and Fire qi streaming from its mouth.

He glanced at the cord at his legs. The slightly dimmer bit, the bit he’d damaged with his tiny Galactic Inferno, with his Darkness and Fire qi.

He glanced at the Dweller, Darkness and Fire streaming from its mouth. He glanced at the cord. His eyes went wide.

…

There is not a chance in the Nine Hells this is going to work.

The Fate of the Multiverse, it seemed, was about to rest on one thing.

Whether Dorian could outlast a cord.

How the hells am I going to do this?! The setup would have to be perfect.

First—the bare essentials he’d need for survival. His brain. His core. And maybe his heart? The lower half of his body was mostly optional; he’d live to grow them back. The setup came to him easily, a stroke of inspiration.

His penchant for dumb good plans might—might—just save him. It would take some luck, of course. He was beyond caring.

First he drew a small pool of shadow behind him. If things went to play he’d go in headfirst, like a diver entering a watering hole.

Then he waited, and waited, and waited, his tongue like a chunk of dried wood in his mouth. Seconds stretched out to tiny eternities. And then at last the Dweller was in range.

They locked eyes.

Dorian stuck out his tongue. Then he turned around and bent over, exposing his ass to the creature.

They didn’t speak the same language, but some gestures were universal.

Behind him came a roar. A very, very angry roar. All about him glass cracked, splintered, shattered. He winced. Whispering an apology to his poor behind, he braced himself. Here it comes!

This position served three crucial functions.

First, obviously, it enraged the creature! He meant to goad it into unleashing its most potent attacks. It could just chomp him up, of course, but he had a hunch…

The eruption of qi behind him would put some volcanoes to shame. Yes! Laws flared around it, infusing them, charging them, building to some superheated monstrosity of a blast; it felt for a moment like he was mooning the sun.

The second function was to protect his vital parts. Head and core. Present his lower half—which included the cord—to be struck by the Technique first.

The third function was to get himself in position! His head was already a mere inch from the pool of shadow; his torso was angled to dive straight into it. He was but a flicker of will away from escaping.

In the second before the strike, two things happened in rapid succession.

Drawing on his reserves Dorian did a rough estimation of qi. He put all he could spare into a [Void Shield] covering only his legs and ass, leaving the cord exposed.

Then there was a flash of light to his left. A smiling Jez returned, with the sort of self-satisfied face one wears when one is ready to unleash a long-winded monologue.

His gaze flickered to the dragon. His eyes widened. His gaze flickered to Dorian and the position he was in. They widened further. They locked eyes.

Dorian gave him the man his very best fuck-you wink. He tried to insert some menace into it. Some promise of vengeance, perhaps. But it was rather hard to look intimidating in his current position.

Then he promptly took it up the ass.

Fire and Darkness descended upon him. The blast ran straight into his Void Shield, was halted for but a fraction of a second; then it crumpled like old paper and engulfed flesh. Dorian screeched.

In the same instant it relieved him of his body-parts below the shin.

But not the rope. The rope held tight for a fraction of a second longer—just long enough for the fire to take him up to the hips.

Then, mercifully, it gave.

Jez shouted something incomprehensible. He threw out a hand; strings of gold lashed out at Dorian. But it was too late.

Dorian’s head dipped into shadow; his torso followed easily, propelled by the blast.

His mind, his spirit, his legless body all craved oblivion then. But he couldn’t rest now even as the pain rose in a searing white tide, threatening to blank out all thought. He gritted his teeth. Just a few more…!

The first jump took him to the bottom of the Sinkhole. And then he was gone, gone along that route he’d tread mere hours before, slingshotting himself through the Shadow Realm to freedom. His one way out. Tears stung at his eyes. He would’ve whooped if he wasn’t about to pass out.

One jump. Two. Three. The rest streamed together. It was in a sort of half-conscious haze that he finally reached the mouth of the portal. Vision swimming, head pounding, he launched himself through that gap between Realms.

The last thing he remembered doing was driving his Law-tipped Javelin through the portal’s open mouth, severing the threads of qi that held it in place. Cutting off the doorway behind him as he went through.

He blacked out before his head hit the soils of Hell.