Everyone on Fate’s side seemed to harden, all at once. Bracing for impact.

Some creatures cringe at threats. Others rankle at them, and it was clear which kind the Phoenix were. They always were a proud sort. A great big one took a break from batting at a wraith’s hand to rear up, screeching at Jez.

“Do I have the honor of addressing Erlo, the Prince of Phoenixes?” said Jez mildly.

Dorian knew the name, and it was a weighty one. Where had he ranked in the Empyreans list? Top 10, for certain. Maybe Top 5.

The phoenix spat at the ground, but rather than a cloud of embers flew out.

“Intruder,” he whispered, but in his bird’s voice it still came out as a shriek. “You shattered our ancestral estate in Zenith.”

“No…” said Fate.

“You killed my Emperor!”

“No!” said Fate, louder this time. But again the Prince ignored him.

“And now you come to me in a body of Empyrean qi, and you dare threaten me?” The Prince laughed, and the piercing sound bounded through the city. A cry choked with fury. A challenge.

“It is good that you know my name. A man ought to know his killer!”

He burned up. Feathers went up in flame. His great gold beak turned molten. His whole body was suddenly like one of the suns Houyi had shot down from the sky. One great burning grievance, carving an angry arc for through the air. Straight for Jez’s head.

Jez stared straight into the light. Then he dipped his head, eyes fluttering. Almost mournfully he slashed.

The meteor was impossibly bright. Jez’s slash was brighter still, a brightness so fierce it brushed up against that lesser brightness—the whole of the Prince of Phoenix’s being—and sliced it apart, the way a lighthouse’s beam might slice through a dark night.

Fate’s gasp could not be more horrified.

The phoenix beside him—Sun’s mount—only laughed.

“Don’t worry. Erlo’s only getting warm! Look.”

Erlo’s light was clumping back together, making a shining ball, a small sun. And from it two fresh wings spurted out, catching fire as they did. The light dimmed, unveiling the rest of him, and there was Erlo once more: the phoenix, reborn.

A little smaller, maybe. A little less bright. But the hate in his eyes was still fresh.

He opened his beak.

Then his eyes bulged.

Blood beaded down his chest in a line. His body slowly sagged open. And underneath that blood, buried deep in his torso and stretching all the way down his body, all the way to his tail, was a shining white line.

Sun’s mount was not laughing anymore.

“Impossible!” he croaked.

And Erlo screeched one long note of pain, and burst into flames once more.

The wound was inside him. Was carved into his being.

And was remade. But split open yet again at the seams like a taxidermied animal, screeching, thrashing at the air all the while. The horrible cycle recurred. Death. Rebirth. Death. Each time reborn a little less bright, a little less big, but the wound in him stayed no less bright and no less big. And the angry notes were growing a little less angry now, a little more frightened, as that great legendary beast whose Bloodline blessed it immortality came face-to-face with the specter of true death. For its own infinity had come in brutal contact with a vastly greater infinity.

Jez walked up to it. Pressed a hand to the head of the suffering creature. Shook his head one last time, that insufferably kindly look in the lines of his face, like he was some doctor treating a fatally wounded animal, and not the butcher who’d carved it in two.

Gently Jez tapped it. And the phoenix exploded.

Matter became energy. Seething white coursing crashing energy and for a fraction of a second Dorian thought the whole city was about to end up one giant smoldering scar.

Jez breathed in.

The energy froze. Not like it’d been stuck in time. But rather like a thrashing toddler made to freeze when its father’s hard hands get a grip on it. There was a golden lining to the energies that had once been Prince of Phoenixes. And at Jez’s in-breath it flowed gently over to him. In two heartbeats it had all been sucked in. Absurdly Dorian expected Jez to lick his lips after the matter, or grin wolfishly, but he simply sighed once more.

Then Jez raised his sword and leveled it at Fate.

Fate had his head in his hands. And when he looked up, blinked down at that blade, his expression was still distraught. But then it started to harden. Fate did not hate people. Fate very rarely grew angry. But when he did it was a sight to behold.

“Flee,” he said softly. “I will hold him.”

Dorian knew Fate. Knew what a monster he really was. And even then he was nervous.

Because what the fuck had that been?!

Fate wasn’t nervous. He was cold, and he was angry. He turned, giant jade needle in hand, and launched it at the sky.

It wasn’t in his hand. It was where Jez’s powers had made a net in the air, for it had been there all along. And when it pricked that net the net shuddered, its strings fraying, peeling apart from one another. Losing identity, structure, the things that bound them together coming undone. Suddenly there was a hole in the sky.

“Flee!”

No sooner had he said it did the phoenixes launch for the gap. And no sooner did they launch did Jez slash yet again—this time at Fate. A tyrannical golden shockwave that grew wider and more spastic as it sped through the air. Fate’s needle was in his hand again, and he met that shockwave with the tip.

There was a sound like a plucked harp’s string. Clear, bright, beautiful. The shockwave did not break. Instead it flashed downward, just as fast, as though that had been its direction all along; it splashed into the Royal Palace. The dome was neatly decapitated.

The last thing Dorian saw before the Phoenixes took him past the ghost-streams was Fate’s pale, sweaty, panting face. But his eyes were bright with determination.

And all Dorian could think was—

If Jez could do this with Kaya’s body as his vessel…

What could he accomplish with a Godking’s?

***

On phoenix back the flight took three hours over reddish ground cracked and pitted with lava, like an endless expanse of dry, bloodied skin.

Then they pulled into camp.

Torchlight speckled the grounds. The tiny triangle-ish humps of tents emerged. Hoots and shouts from far below—minotaurs?—orcs?—and the phoenixes drifted downward.

There must’ve been tens of thousands of those little tents, each teeming with at least a godly aura. Everywhere there was the whirring and grinding of sharpening iron. He glimpsed squadrons of jiangshi milling about with daggers, saw rocs doing dive-bombing drills in the distance.

They descended, and Dorian was pleasantly surprised to find a familiar figure waving up at them from below.

It was Fate. Survived, after all.

Very bedraggled-looking, each of his hairs gone off in its own direction. His face looked like a dead man’s unnaturally pale yet bruised at once. But there was unmistakably that Godking’s aura still—if sputtering a little. Clearly that battle had taken a chunk out of him.

“Welcome to camp!” he yelled. The Phoenixes swooped to a graceful halt. Fate beckoned, and soldiers came to cut them loose of their straps. “Someone get our dear friend Gerard a stretcher, please! Off to the healers with him!”

“No need,” said Gerard, looking like he was trying hard not to wince as he leapt down. “I’ll be fine—”

“Please! I insist.”

Gerard looked too tired to push back. He was soon summarily carted off.

“I never thought I’d say this,” said Dorian. “But Hells am I glad to see you! Thanks for the save, you old fart—”

He was cut off as Fate wrapped him in a tight hug. “—and the elixirs.”

“Dorian! You’re alive!” said Fate, eyes glistening. “I’m alive! We’re all alive! Isn’t it a miracle? Well—save for our dear friend Erlo…” A touch of sadness in his expression, starting at a tremble of the lips, fast to drag at the rest of his face. He drooped.

“There was nothing you could’ve done.”

“Well—there is always something to be done,” said Fate with a sad smile. “No-one’s Fate is set in stone. Until it is already done, of course. I… should inform the rest of his kin. After this. Oh—and it is I who ought to be thanking you!” Fate wrung his hands. “With your help, on the morrow, when we clash with Jez’s ten thousand strong, will we have a fighting chance.”

“Hi!” Sun had waddled up to them and was now regarding Fate with big round eyes.

“Hello?” said Fate. He blinked down at her. Then blinked as her face clicked into place. “Ah! The messenger! Yes!” He shook her hand vigorously. “My greatest thanks! You’ve spared us great disaster today.”

“I did?” Sun scratched her head. “Honestly it feels like you did most of the heavy lifting. Neat stuff with the needle, by the way! I was never great at knitting myself.”

“This is Sun,” said Dorian. “She’s…” …What is she? A partner? The word didn’t fit right. He looked searchingly at her, and she helpfully supplied a word.

“Hungry!” sad Sun.

“Ah.” Fate pointed. “The mess hall is that way.” Happily Sun scampered off.

“What a charmingly simple creature,” said Fate. “How did you come across her? Is she a servant?”

“It’s a long story. And… no. She’s…”

“A friend?”

Did he have friends? He figured she was closer to a child he was babysitting.

“…sure.”

“Dorian! Look at you!” Fate beamed. “Making friends! Having adventures! Good for you.”

“Yea, yea.” Dorian rolled his eyes, waved him off. “Look—” He gestured to the camp around him, wondering the best way to phrase what he was about to say. “I do mean it when I say thank you. For everything.” Best to start with gratitude, he figured. “That drum in particular was quite the help. I’m well on my way to not being a total embarrassment on the cosmic power-scale! But—all this?”

He waved airily at the army camp. “I’m not getting involved in this. No battles for me. I’m nowhere near ready.”

To be a grunt? Sure. He could probably wipe out a good chunk of Jez’s elite. But to go up against Jez’s best—or Jez himself? Creatures with access to that Infinite node network?

Hells no!

He’d just gotten this new body. In fact he was still processing Kinzo’s elixirs—

[Level-up!]

[Bloodline Quantity] 4732 -> 4811

Edging steadily closer to Fourth Form.

He was getting there. But there was much work to be done still, if he wanted to be ready for the very top.

“Oh, Dorian.” Fate laughed. “After all we’ve been through? Spiriting you that message when you first came to Hell? Investing all those resources in you? You wouldn’t be moved to come to the aid of the Multiverse—to fight for all of us on the morrow?”

But they both knew Dorian wasn’t about to be guilt tripped. “I’d be moved to take a crack at Jez, sure! When I’m ready. Good luck on this battle, though. And really—thanks for all that help—”

“I suspected you’d say that,” said Fate. He didn’t even look disappointed, just a little sly. “What if we could make you ready?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dorian, I would like to make you an offer you can’t refuse.” He paused. “Well, a very good offer I very much hope you won’t refuse, anyways!”