“Follow me!” Sun set off at a brisk pace. Dorian tried to follow and ate a face full of soot for his trouble. He groaned, trying to flop his way to a halfway upright stance, but basic motor skills still eluded him. His limbs felt like wet noodles. Sun skidded to a halt, frowning.

Below, magma gurgled ominously…

Her eyes widened. She ran to him and got one hand on his wrist before the ground fractured beneath them. Dorian caught sight of a broad red blur—a whale head?—before the world spun, his head spinning with it, and he ate another hearty serving of soil.

And then he was flying, speeding his way across the terrain at a pace that had him gasping. The world was an endless streak of shifting red-purple-black before his watery eyes. The wind whistled by so fast flecks of ash stung at his cheeks. All the while from out in from came a high-pitched scream—“AHHHHHHHHH!!”

Sun hadn’t been kidding when she said she’d been good at running. It must’ve been what kept her alive all this time. The Stone Monkeys—the lineage of Sun Wukong—had always been a speedy bunch, among the speediest in all the Multiverse. It made them a tricky lot to fight, and a hell of a lot trickier to corner.

Dorian’s thoughts were unceremoniously interrupted by a third serving of ground. He spat it out, opened his mouth to protest, and promptly ate a fourth.

From then on he resolved to let himself be dragged along, plug his mouth, and try not to pass out ‘till they got there. Wherever there was. Somewhere nearby, he hoped. Smashing him with Hell’s coals over and over wasn’t doing his recovery any favors.

His hopes were sadly disappointed.

To her credit Sun really was great at fleeing—as a master ‘run-and-screamer’ himself Dorian had to give her a grudging sort of respect. She wove through war-torn battlefields like a rat through a maze. She ducked blasts of Law, limbo-ed under scything qi-waves, and made a gymnastics course out of all manner of demonic body parts.

Sadly her cargo was not so lucky. Dorian counted three times he got brained on stone arches (which she’d ducked), four where he’d eaten qi-blasts (she’d so nimbly dodged), and a dozen or so times he got raked by a passing claw or tail. She yelped a quick “Sorry!” each time it happened. Somehow it made things worse.

Dorian had gotten intimately acquainted with the flavor palate of brimstone by the time he’d come to a halt. Only when he was absolutely certain the wind had stopped screeching past his ears did he chance a glance up.

This wasn’t the plains anymore. No shifting cracked grounds, no roving bands of demons. Just a forest of eerie white spires reaching like cursed trees into the ghostly skies. They were bones, one and all. He knew this place.

“The Bone Forest,” he said, dazed.

“You’ve been here before!” Sun grinned. “Great. It’s my hideout here. Follow me! Oh—and don’t touch the trees. The Serpents get ornery.”

She stomped away. Dorian made to follow, looking dubiously around. The Forest stretched hundreds of thousands of li. It had started as the corpse of a Ba Serpent Godbeast; most of these ‘trees’ had really been one giant stretch of ribcage jutting from the ground. Now all its descendants carried on the tradition. When they sensed themselves nearing death they would make a final pilgrimage to the Bone Forest, and become one with the remains of the Ancestor. Over thousands of years this land become a holy land for Serpents of their lineage; and they numbered many indeed in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Countless Serpent souls were laid to rest here.

Luckily huge stretches of the Forest were simply desolate, densely clustered stalks of bone. No place for the bigger demons to bang about. No Beast Cores nor treasures to fight over; nothing save for the Ba serpents and certain predators—Rocs, for instance, which made a habit of preying on Ba young—made this place home. He saw the V-shaped shadows of a few of them banking in the distance.

Sun motioned him over to a particularly chunky spire. It recalled a curved tower in his blurry vision, like a massive white bow missing its bowstring. “Come on in!” She pressed a finger to the bone.

It flashed a red rune for a moment. Nothing happened.

Dorian raised a brow, crossed his arms, then promptly uncrossed them, holding them out to keep from stumbling. Blasted nausea! “…Was that supposed to do something?” He croaked.

“You tell me.”

She stepped through the bone and vanished. He blinked. Her aura—totally gone. All he sensed before him was a void of qi, just like any other desolate bone.

“You coming, or…?” called a voice from within the bone.

Tripping over himself, he did.

He didn’t so much step through as fall through the mirage-entrance. He cursed again as he got an umpteenth serving of floor. He’d been hit clean by the Jingu Bang before, swung by ol’ Wukong himself! That had left him catatonic for a day, and he’d been an Empyrean then. It was a blessing the girl could only unlock this a tiny fraction of the treasure’s true powers.

He blinked stars and black motes from his eyes and tried to get a gander at the chamber about him. They vanished to reveal a room that was, if anything, even more chaotic than the dancing stars they replaced. All about him was stuff. Shelves. Jars. Must and dust. Pans stacked atop one another in great wobbling towers. A fire pit stood proud in the center of the room, and all about it was littered a minefield of crusty bowls. Little candles spiraled up the walls, faintly illuminating stacks upon stacks of shelves, all stocked with the most bizarre ingredients. Horns of all colors. Hairy ears, smooth ears, slimy ears, translucent ears, ears big as heads and small as leaves. And that was just one body part among dozens scattered about. From the ceiling, dozens of slabs of thick dried meat hung on rusted chains.

It was as though the room had been built before the invention of Interspatial Rings. Dorian squinted at the thick layer of dust coating everything. …It might very well have been.

“Welcome!” She cried. “Lie down. Make yourself at home! In the meantime I’ll cook up my famous Clearwater Stew.”

He’d already beaten her to it. He lay there groaning as she spent the next half hour chopping up herbs. All the while his skull felt like an eggshell that’d been cracked down its length; one wrong move and it’d split clean open, pouring the rest of himself out. How had things gone so awfully? He’d just gotten a new body! Then, instantly, inexplicably, smacked in the face by a legendary weapon.

Fate wasn’t done taunting him this run, obviously.

“Here.” He cracked open a red eye. She held out a wooden bowl to him. He propped himself up and peered at the milky liquid within.

“Drink up. Go on! It’s what I made when grandpa drubbed me with the Jingu. A few sips of this plus an hour’s wait, and you’ll be fresh!”

Cautiously Dorian took it in his hands. He quirked a brow at it, then her. She quirked a brow right back at him. “If you ask if it’s poisoned,” she said, rolling her eyes, “I’ll smack you with the Jingu again.”

He drank.

One sip. He felt the liquid trickle, warm and gentle, into his lips, down his throat, and a sharp sudden coldness took hold of him. It felt like the limpid waters of a melted glacier were trickling up his veins, into his skull, washing away the dreadful bog in his brain. Eagerly he sipped again. Another rush. His eyes were clearing up. He could think again! He went in for a third—

“Hold it!”

She snatched it from him. He groaned, glaring. “What?”

“Were you planning to rob me back there?”

He frowned. “Of course not!”

“Hmm.” She frowned. Then the shadow of a pan fell across his forehead. To his chagrin he found he was still in no condition to block. CLANG!

He gasped, doubling over, and vomited out his last sip of stew. It was much lighter than the last time he’d been hit by the blasted thing. It still had his insides doing backflips.

“I might be weak, cowardly, and generally useless,” said Sun, wagging a finger. “But I am not an idiot, mister!” She brandished her pan at him.

“Let’s try this again. Honesty this time. If I give this to you, will you rob me?”

“No!” Dorian dragged out. “I swear it—“

He grasped for something convincing. Alas his addled mind couldn’t come up with much. “I swear it on my ancestors! If I lie, let Fate’s own lightning strike me dead where I stand!”

“Hmm…” She rubbed her chin. Then—CLANG!

“OWW!”

He went for another round of dry heaving. It was but a tap on the head. Not done with much force. But enough to reverse whatever good the stew had done, and then some.

“I’m a Stone Monkey,” she said. “Nobody in the Multiverse is better at transformations than us! That includes all forms of fakery… including lies. I can always tell.”

Then she sighed. “Well! Can’t be helped, I guess.” She looked up to the skies as she stood, firming her grip on the pan. Suddenly it took on a threatening aura. “I try to be nice. I really do! But what’s that ever gotten me? Maybe grandpa was right after all…”

She shook her head. She had that tone in her voice. Like she’d discovered her a beloved pet had contracted some terminal illness, and it was time to put it out of its misery.

“Wait!” Dorian said quickly. “Wait. Give me five minutes. Then ask me again.”

She squinted at him. There was a long pause. Then she shrugged. “Okay! Five minutes.”

He spent those next five minutes trying miserably, through spikes of nausea, to firm up a resolution. If she heals me, I will NOT rob Monkey-girl! He said it to himself so much he was sure he believed it.

“You ready?”

He nodded.

“If I heal you,” she said slowly, brow arched, hands planted firm on her hips, “Will you rob or kill me?”

“No,” said Dorian emphatically. He looked her straight in the eyes as he said it. There was so much sincerity in his voice even he was surprised. He really meant it! It was the first time in ages he could recall such a thing. Even if done under threat, maybe he was capable of goodness after all—

CLANG!

“OH COME ON!” He roared, flopping over. “I ACTUALLY TRIED THAT TIME!”

“Yeah, but let’s be honest! You were just lying to yourself.”

Through oodles of pain Dorian inspected his innermost self and found, to his annoyance, the girl was right. If she healed him he definitely would’ve changed his mind then and there.

“FUCK!” And then he was dry heaving too hard to curse. Nothingness fringed his vision. His body was starting to drift away from him; the nausea was a cloudy layer between him and his nerve endings. He couldn’t feel his toes. Everything was going white, even as his vision grew narrower…

“Hey,” he heard her warbled voice say. “It was a good try! Really! But you can’t change you who are like that, can you?”

Then—

“Wait. I—oops! Err, that last one might’ve been a little too—“

He blacked out.