They tore away so fast they sent gusts of air spiraling through the Forest, whistling a haunting dirge through the bone trees. Dorian bounded by on his sleek new hindlegs. He wound easily between bones, wrapping his tail about them as he slingshotted ahead. He took care not to let his tail’s wicked tip bore into them. This was still the sacred land of the Ba Serpent; their auras still tinged these bones. He hardly needed more monsters after his head.

Ahead it was like Sun had shed her physical form; she whizzed by as a blur of light and sound. Loud screaming, to be precise.

For a few blissful seconds Dorian entertained the notion they’d made it out. Maybe those Jiangshi hadn’t yet scented them. Maybe they were simply patrolling nearby.

THUMP.

Dorian’s heart sank.

Another boom, a lighting crackle. THUMP. THUMP. Each step was an explosion. Behind him came a flurry of flapping wings and shrill screeches, frightened Rocs taking flight. THUMP.

The beats were only getting faster. Which meant something far, far worse than the Jiangshis taking note of them.

The Taotie smelled prey.

“Faster!” shouted Dorian. He had no wish to test his luck in the shadow realm again, but just in case—“Be ready to cloak! We may need to shadow-walk.”

“What, from that moldy lump?!” Sun’s brows furrowed. “We’ll be on the other side of Hell by the time it clears the Forest!”

But she’d had never been met a Taotie before.

THUMP.

This time he felt it the vibrations as he wrapped around a tree. Too close—way too close. Sun gasped. “That’s—what?!”

“A hungry Taotie moves like an avalanche,” said Dorian grimly.

He felt the strike before it came. A shiver of qi, a tide of instability. He grabbed Sun by the wrist, wrapped around a tree, and slingshotted a hard left.

A huge sucking wrenched at his backside, flinging him off course. From behind there was a shriek of air, a a flurry of heavy thuds; whole bone trees toppled over, yanked out by their roots. Through ringing ears Dorian made out the Jiangshi—“Hells! Keep a leash on that thing! Do you want half the Serpents in this forest on our hinds?!”

A snort. “Please. Our prey is at hand. One good strike and we have him.”

“He’s getting away!”

“Not for long. The Master’s fencing him off as we speak—he won’t be tricked twice. Where’s our prey supposed to run?”

Fence me off? But there was no time to consider it. There was a wet, slobbering sniffing, a harsh growl. There was a thud so vast it could only be from a giant body taking flight. Dorian raced on, Sun in tow, screaming at his legs to go faster.

Then it was like day switched to night. A sudden shadow swallowed Dorian up, swallowed the bones around him, blotted out the path ahead. A shadow quickly swelling as the creature high above cratered toward them.

Dorian had no intention of sticking around for the landing.

“Cloak!” he yelled at Sun. He grabbed her and stepped into shadow.

The shadow realm was much as he’d remembered: a swirl of discolored darknesses, splotches of dull grays and empty blacks melting into each other. He felt a tingle of gray qi on his arm. Sun had gotten the cloaking off, just as she’d done when they fled the Torchdragon—and just as back then it erased their qi signatures. Above floated wraiths, nightmarish masses gushing tentacles, ridden with eyes. It was like standing at the bottom of a deep ocean and seeing hordes of sharks swirl above. Oblivious.

Sun’s cloaking was a miracle. Dorian took a moment to catch his breath, to think. They’d need to exit far off. Somewhere li out, miles from their pursuers’ sharp noses—

“Dorian!” said Sun. She jerked her head up.

The wraiths were slowly wheeling toward them. Giant watery eyes squinting upon their cloaked forms. The pupils contracted. His blood ran cold.

“Fix your cloaking.”

“It’s not broken!”

“Then what—“ Dorian broke off. A horrible thought had struck him. What had that Jiangshi said? The Master’s fencing him off as we speak. He won’t be tricked twice.

Dorian had already escaped Jez once through the Shadow Realm.

What if the fence wasn’t physical? Jez was a pan-cosmic entity. It would take very little effort to bribe the wraiths to strike down anything suspicious that suddenly popped into their realm. Or— even worse—

A few smaller wraiths dove at them. Etched on their skins, tiny yet clear: golden infinities. Screeches pierced the void. Tentacles shot for them.

Gritting his teeth, Dorian dove at the nearest exit. He popped out tumbling, stopped himself against a bone tree, and looked up into the startled faces of two Jiangshi. Behind them loomed the Taotie, its face a sheer cliff split down the middle by a ravine of teeth. It drooped into a jagged frown.

Dorian chucked everything he had. Everything. The Javelin burst forth. A wall of dragon’s breath fanned out. Yama’s Chains whipped out in the fray, crunching into Jiangshi. They bounced off the Taotie, twisted around and grappled at it once more. These Chains would’ve given most legendary beasts trouble. Against the Taotie they seemed like childish slaps, easily shrugged off.

The Taotie roared and they were blasted to nothing. Qi and Law smoked like incense.

But by then Dorian had grabbed Sun and bolted. That display was but a distraction. He squeezed as much time as he could out of that sliver of surprise. He was another quarter of his qi down. His reserves were dipping dangerously low…

“What now?!” yelped Sun.

“Don’t panic.”

“Trying!” Crashes. Hoarse cries. Shockwaves of qi. Above it all the Taotie’s cavernous roar. And then silence. A good three seconds was all he’d bought. Then the beast lumbered after them again, each step a natural disaster.

“We can’t outrun it. We can’t hide. And fighting it won’t go well...” Dorian wracked his brain. He expected some plan to unfold out of thin air—it was probably the trait of his that kept him alive. An excruciating second trickled by. Another. Nothing. “Fuck!”

Then there was a sound like a meteor strike—the Taotie kicking off into another seismic leap. A giant shadow loomed above him. It was the jolt he needed.

Suddenly it was there, hovering, a shining star of the mind. An idea from the most unlikely of places. What had that Jiangshi said? Do you want half the Serpents in this forest on our hinds?

“Grab the Jingu! Start smacking Bone Trees! As many as you can!” he roared. “I’ll buy us some time!”

“Why? What’s that—oh. Ooh.” Her eyes went wide as they met his. It clicked instantly, to Dorian’s vast relief. She nodded.

This was the sacred land of the Ba Serpent. These bones were Ba Serpent bones! Those creatures slithered here at the end of their life cycles and gave their bodies and souls to the land. It was why the first Jiangshi had been cautious. Making a mess might draw unwanted attention.

It was one thing to desecrate this place like the Taotie did. Uproot the bone trees, crater the soil—it’d piss off some Serpents nearby. Ba Serpents had special connections to this place; it was akin to uprooting the graves of their ancestors! But the Jingu was a special weapon: it could give concussions to the soul. Each smack of a tree traumatized the soul of the creature laid to rest there. Now try smacking dozens of trees.

If you wished to piss off as many Ba Serpents as you could, this was the way to do it.

Of course nobody was stupid enough to try this. Then again nobody had run through here with a weapon of myth and a rogue legendary beasts on their heels either, probably.

“Once you’ve got them, lead them here. Cloak when I say!” again she nodded quickly.

“Go!” He heaved her forward. Then, bracing, he turned to face the beast.

It landed not ten strides away. The ground rippled under Dorian’s feet and he was chucked head-over-heels; he somersaulted, hooked his tail into the coal grounds and skidded to a halt. He saw the Taotie’s head emerge first from the smoking crater, then the rest of its body, so big it defied all sense. The bone trees around it might have been its toothpicks. Its head swiveled toward him. Its teeth gnashed tight.

Then its mouth opened wide, wider, wider still, a black yawning circle expanding, and for a second Dorian had the absurd thought it’d go on forever—until it was big enough to swallow all the world. Mercifully it stopped at last. Dorian felt like he was staring at the mouth of the void itself. What lay beyond that absolute darkness was not organs and intestines and acids; what lay beyond was something abstract and unknowable and infinite. That mouth did not end at a Taotie’s insides. He was already in Hell—that mouth led somewhere far worse.

Before Dorian could run, it sucked. He saw it coming. Otherwise he would’ve been wrenched off his feet and sent tumbling in instantly. He had the wherewithal to stab his Javelin deep into the ground. He had the wherewithal to lash four Yama’s Chains to bone trees nearby. Still the force that ripped at him felt like it would tear the skin off his bones. It watered his eyes, ripped slices of coal clean off the ground. Tides of black sediment gushed into the Taotie’s open mouth even as Laws of terrible power streamed out. Beside him bone trees began to behind, quivering at their roots. Dorian heard a fierce howling—not of the Taotie but from the sudden hurricane winds. He found himself skidding, heels-first, slowly, inexorably, towards it. Even as he strained with all his might and qi to hold.

Was that a metal clattering in the background? A Jingu on bone, maybe? But it hardly audible over the screeching winds. It could’ve been anything. Dumb, wishful thinking. Dorian gritted his teeth. His reserves were already halved on the Jiangshi, then spent another to buy a few seconds. Only now did he note that clumps of the Taotie’s skin were charred black. So his dragons breath, at least, was effective! Only it was nowhere near enough. How much qi did he have left? Maybe a quarter? If that failed him it was all over.

But his Javelin was slowly being yanked out. The trees he clung to teetered perilously, scarcely rooted. And his heels were sliding faster and faster toward the beast. There was no choice.

He let it all out.

Fire and Darkness burst triumphant into the world. They met Laws of Hunger square and seared them to smoke; they surged brilliantly against the sucking tide. This was a God. This was a Taotie. Dorian dared not be stingy. He put all he had into this dragon’s breath.

For one glorious breath he and the Taotie held each other in stalemate.

Then his breath started to flag. It spurted, it screamed, it raged—yet its enemy was the Laws of a God. Another breath and the last of his qi was trickling from him, feeding what looked a feeble candle flickering in the wind. A defiant candle—but a mere flame nonetheless. And when it was gone…

Where the hells is that monkey-girl!?

Then a distinct possibility occurred to him the way a boulder drops on a man’s head.

It was, in fact, entirely possible she was never coming back.

It was possible that she—the self-proclaimed patron saint of fleeing—saw this opportunity to hightail it, and took it.

It wasn’t like he’d had a choice but to rely on her. There was no other way out. But he’d also—for some insane reason—believed she’d actually follow through on their plan. He’d trusted his judgment of character. Perhaps too much. Something about her had flagged her in his mind as one of those most foolish of people—people with morals. What lunacy! He might’ve been good at reading people but she’d fooled him once already, hadn’t she?

Their soul contract was one-way. She had no obligation to him whatsoever. What sort of idiot wouldn’t flee? He’d admitted to trying to kill her, hadn’t he? Why would she risk her neck to help a him of all people? Even a halfway decent person would choose to run. Nevermind one as cowardly as her. It was all so blindingly obvious.

The darkness before him suddenly seemed very empty.

To his right one of the bone trees anchoring him snapped off the ground and plummeted into the Taotie’s mouth. It didn’t make a sound as it went in. It was swallowed in an instant. Then one more, to his left, tumbled in.

It was, Dorian reflected, one of the most ironic ways to die he possibly could’ve chosen. He? Dorian, of all people—sacrificing himself, intentionally or not, for someone else?!

He wished he could reach back in time to a few breaths ago and strangle himself. He deserved to die merely for the stupidity of it.

He snorted. He started, hysterically, to giggle. A third tree broke off. Only one anchored him to the ground and that was less than a breath from gone. His Javelin tore out the ground. His heels slid as though on ice.

There would be no grave, no burial. This was the end—and what a pathetic end it was! The only thing that marked his passing was the shrill, screeching wind, a poor man’s dirge. To think! The last thing he ever heard would be—

He frowned.

That screeching wasn’t the wind. It was something higher, more frantic. And it grew louder shockingly fast. He could make it out now, even over the storm. It almost sounded like—

“AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”

No fucking way.

He sensed an aura directly to his left him. Sun’s aura. Charging straight toward him and the Taotie.

And behind her, in one mind-bogglingly massive, horrifying glut—

The auras of Gods. So many Gods.

And they were furious.