In mortals there is a blissful moment between perception and sensation. Stub the toe and the pain will come—but in the meantime you’re suspended in the in-between. You feel no pain—yet—and so the brain helpfully supplies substitutes. Dawning horror. Fear. And sometimes, as the moment draws to a close, resignation.

Gods had no such sensory gap. But Dorian saw these emotions on their faces anyways. Minotaurs eyes popping, red blood vessels stark against white film. Demons, misshapen blobs of rough sooty skin, tumbling over one another. Their faces—crude, bare blocks—did little emoting, but Dorian could read their panic in the way their limbs flailed. Then there were the gargoyles. They ran into a tripwire of their own—ten feet above the first, a weak slice of shadow blended into the gloom. They went down hacking, clutching at their throats. He didn’t need to move a finger.

A few had the wherewithal to catch themselves, try to stay upright. But the ground was a minefield of bogs and with the canopy as a low ceiling there was hardly room for maneuver. They smashed into one another. They crumbled over, howling and roaring. They toppled over, making cannonball splashes in the deep bog.

The Dhampir Prince, still stood there at the back, pinched his nose and sighed. He bared shark teeth.

“Useless. Utterly useless. Must I do everything myself?” He took a step. And stilled.

The bogs were bubbling. They glowed.

“What in the Nine Hells?” he muttered. Then they blew apart.

Great pink slimy tentacles thick as tree trunks burst out of the bog, studded with suction cups which gasped for air. Slime-water showered everywhere. In a flash they’d wrapped the line of Gods.

Two went under almost instantly. No time to even squawk. There was no Law involved, no Technique. Just sheer brute strength.

Then there was another pause as the rest of them soaked it in. Dawning horror. Fear. They never got to resignation. There was thrashing. There was crying out. There were blasts of qi, gargoyles slicing madly at the tentacles with furious qi scythes, minotaurs trying to tear them up with hands seething black with power. An explosion of qi and Law as they all—each one of them creatures who might dominate a section of Molten Plain, each one of them able to trouble Dorian even in his present form—unleashed their killer Techniques, all at once.

There was something uniquely fascinating about seeing an explosion stifled. A sudden fierce exultation—and then, just as quickly, a shrinking. A smothering. A silence as qi broke like waves against stern rocks and Laws had the wind taken from them. The tentacles wrapped them all up.

A dozen eruptions of water and they were all under. The bogs bubbled a few seconds longer. The ripples washed out across the surface of the marsh. And then it was like the Gods had never been there.

Dorian turned to Sun. “What’s the lesson?” he said cheerfully.She blinked. “Don’t fight when you can have someone else do it for you?”

“Something like that. We’ll make an ass-puller out of you yet.” He wasn’t sure why he said it. It would help a lot if she didn’t shit herself every time they entered a life-or-death situation, of course. But it also felt good to be boast a little, even if only to a child. It was fun. Usually when he pulled his tricks people flung shit at him.

Prince Tozen looked to be in a shit-flinging mood right now.

“That was my most elite guard!” he cried. He stared at Dorian open-mouthed. “Y-you—ruffian! Criminal! How—how dare you! Do you know who my father is—what are you doing? Wait! Hold, fool! Don’t you turn your back on me! Where are you going? Stay, I say! I demand it! I’m talking to you—“

It took about a minute of walking for his voice to fade out of hearing. Dorian thought he detected a cry at the end. Probably caught the attention of some Swamp creature who’d gotten tired of the noise. He snorted.

In Hell the survival strategy was to not attract attention. In the Swamp of the Damned this was triply true. One could only hope the rest of Jez’s bounty hunters were as ridiculous as that one.

“Another three hours of walking, and then we’ll find a spot to make camp for nightfall,” said Dorian.

“Shouldn’t we keep moving? To stay ahead of the bounty hunters and such?” Sun looked around nervously, as though one might pop out of the trees any moment.

“You don’t want to wander the Swamp of the Damned after dark. It makes the Swamp in the daytime seem like a playpen. It’s the nocturnal creatures you really have to worry about.”

“Ah.”

“If there’s bounty hunters brave enough to come after us—which I doubt—then they’re strong Empyreans. And if there’s an Empyrean after us we’re fucked regardless.”

“I probably should’ve asked this earlier,” said Sun with a squint. “But how much does Jez want to off you? What’ve I gotten myself into?”

Dorian scratched his chin. They walked for a while longer. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I have trouble getting a read on him. But I probably don’t rank in the top hundred threats to him as I stand now. I’m a pet project at best. He’ll throw some resources at me. I don’t know about Empyrean. He’s probably a lot more preoccupied with what Fate is cooking up.”

“Fate? As in—“

“Old Man Fate, yes.”

“Ah.”

They spent another half hour or so stalking through the Swamp. He’d died here quite a few times, and in quite painful fashion too. Those tend to make impressions on you. He hopped between Lily-pads big as tortoise shells, but not the dark-green ones, which were fake and would drag you under at the first chance. He tip-toed between trees. He had them rub a certain cicada dung on their arms to better mask their scents, just in case—this deep the incidence of powerful monsters was simply too high.

He was, on the whole, pleased with how he’d handled all this. They were but a half-day’s walk from the depths where Dao Fruits spawned. There would be an incident. There was always an incident. But thus far he’d taken all the necessary precautions. His calculation was this: both he and Sun were well-cloaked. Both he and Sun gave off weak signatures. So with some careful navigating he could step past the traps and the big threats would simply ignore them.

Now he only had to wait for it all to come crashing down. Inevitably. Another half-hour passed. Nothing. At this point they’d gone so deep that there bog’s shallows were but thin light-green streaks of water framing vast pools of dark liquids. Bubbling liquids. Active geysers spouted as they passed. Thick vines drooped from the trees like prison chains, crawling with Demigod. beetles.

It meant they were getting to the deep end. Every step now had him on edge. He kept his senses spread wide. He kept expecting an ambush. But other than spearing a few uppity Demigod slugs and crushing nosy bugs as they went past, still nothing.

He was almost relieved when it came.

Sun perked up first.

“Do you hear that?”

Dorian froze. He frowned. He sighed.“…Fuck.”

Voices. Very few things in this Swamp deigned to speak. These had to be outsiders. But it wasn’t what they were saying. It was that they were screaming—and moving with alarming speed toward him from behind.

His best guess? Another Prince with another compass. Only this one had poked something he really shouldn’t have. And it was a horrible time, too, since Dorian and Sun were currently walking the one narrow path of shallows between two deep pools. The vines all about them meant there was no flying out of this. They were stuck. They could only watch as a cluster of creatures burst through the trees.

Dorian blinked. He was only half-right. This didn’t look like a Prince’s retinue. There was a dark elf in mage’s garb. A minotaur in spiked armor overflowing with runes, ball-and-chain in hand. A vampire with a giant black bow slung over her shoulder. Out in front, a giant rodent sporting a huge nose and bigger yellow teeth.

This was an adventurer’s party. Made sense. This Swamp was rich with treasures; flowers of immense poison and medicinal value, incredibly rare insects and balms and the like. It wasn’t uncommon for troupes to venture the outskirts, on commission from some Kingdom or Clan.

This deep was a rarity. The only thing worth the risk way out here were the Dao Fruits, and that was a suicide mission. The only parties who came seeking those were either very stupid or very strong.

These were all high-tier Gods, so perhaps it was the latter. And more than that: he could sense the way the shadows embraced the Dark Elf. The Laws of Darkness on that one were nearing Empyrean. In Godhood there were many levels; a high-tier God commanded Laws that could mop up a half-dozen low-tier Gods. Dorian had as much shot against this one as he had against the Dweller back when he was in the Earth Realm. The gap in Law was simply too much.

The good thing was it didn’t seem like he’d need to bother. The Elf had collapsed to her knees, gasping, her qi nearly sputtered out. The minotaur made a keening sound, clutching its side, where its armor had been shredded and chunks of intestine heaved against torn flesh and bone. The rest of the party hardly looked much better. Manic eyes. Pale faces. Chattering teeth.

The thing rolling toward them through the trees, too far to see, made him feel like he stood in the way of an avalanche. The qi was choking thick. The Laws wafted over like an overpowering stench. Poison Laws, the dominant Laws in this Swamp. Yet they were more noxious than any Dorian had felt yet.

Half-step Empyrean?!

If he couldn’t handle that Dark Elf he really couldn’t handle this.

Then he saw what it truly was, and his heart sank. It broke through the undergrowth. Its snout came out first, and it just kept on coming, thrusting out like the front of a warship. Teeth ran out to either side of it. Then the eyes: beady and shockingly small, cruel orange and lidded with a milky film. A body like one of those massive Swamp tree trunks turned sideways came after, caked head-to-tail in gunk-green scales. Swamp slime oozed from it with each step. It looked like an alligator stretched to twice its length, and from its body Dorian sensed a Bloodline of equal oppressiveness to his own. It surveyed the lot of them with lordly disdain.

An adolescent Panlong of the Second Form. The apex species of the Swamps. Also known as the legendary beast—coiling dragon!