Really? It’s been nearly a month! What took you so long?!

Dorian stared deadpan at Nijo’s smiling face.

And this is how you choose to do it? No face-to-face meeting? No secret lair? A scroll in the middle of the damned street?

“I’m fine, thank you,” Dorian said evenly. “And you?”

“Lovely,” sighed Nijo. “It is, as ever, a joy to be alive. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. My life has been rather hectic of late, you see.”

His voice was warbled and his long tufts of black hair fluttered behind him, as though buffeted by strong winds. A fleet of clouds whipped by his head—was he mid-flight? It was hard to tell through the scroll, but that clear backdrop behind him seemed studded with the subtle light of a waking starscape. Dorian squinted at it.

“Are you curious where I am?” said Nijo with a soft laugh. Somewhere far beneath him there was a grating shriek, like sandstone grinding against sheet metal, then a thundering crash. “Here. I shall spare you the suspense.”

He angled the scroll down.

Half of Dorian’s view was now filled by the a scaly back ridden with jagged, icy-blue spines: the back of some strange dragon whose webbed, batlike wing puffed out to either side. Nijo sat crisscross atop it.

Beneath him, an Oasis burned.

It wasn’t any old burning. There were the hungry red-and-white tongues of fire pouring through ranks of sandstone houses, melting girders and bringing towers to their knees, sure. But there was also fires of a blue sort: raging infernos of deathly cold qi, spreading like thick swathes of frostbite across the land. And there were black flames too; flames who left not even ash where they burned. Dorian saw a whole squadron of soldiers screaming, throwing Techniques, swallowed up by the black-flame. Their bodies, bones and all, went up in smoke. No remains.

The owner of the flame was a dragon. A small black-scaled spiky dragon, but no less vicious for it: it was at the Peak of the Earth Realm. Its powers went further than that. And it was not alone.

The sky was teeming with dozens of dragons and Vordors and huge wyrmlike creatures hung on six pairs of wings, drenching the city in acid rains, a dismal cloud of chaos whose outpouring showed no signs of stopping. Atop them, barking orders, were Ugoc Beast Tamers: Peak Earth-Realm warriors all. Their mounts might’ve been beyond that.

Dorian hissed a sharp breath.

By now the razing was nearly complete. The city was deformed, like a wax model left out too long in the sun, sloshing over itself.

“A tragedy, isn’t it?” said Nijo. The scene focused on his childlike face again. He sighed. “This is—or rather, was—the Shimen Oasis. A stronghold filled with delightful flora, and one of the greater powers on the Northern border. They are feared and respected across the Desert for their mastery over the lightning magics.”

He frowned. “One moment—“

Then he closed his eyes. The scene swerved as his mount swerved to the side, screeching furiously.

Standing atop a high steel spire—some kind of Artifact, a wizard’s tower, by the looks of it—one man was fending off three Peak Earth-Realm dragons, a ferocious look on his weathered old face.

By sheer cultivation he might’ve been the highest Dorian had seen in this plane. He was at least a half-step into the Sky Realm. Maybe higher! And by the looks of it he knew how to wield his powers, too. Blue lightning crackled at his fingertips, stinging the dragons and forcing them back. One took a direct hit to the nose and bellowed, half its face charred black.

“Hear me, savages of the North!” cried the old man. “So long as I, Oasis Lord Yuran, live, you shall never take this Oasis! We Shimen folk know not the meaning of surrender! If you think you’ve got us with but one air raid, you are sorely mistaken! Back with you!”

Then Nijo’s mount opened its mouth. The air around him ran with bleeding colors, distorting, like a fabric suddenly and viciously stretched beyond its breaking point.

The presence of a Law.

White fire poured from its mouth, a fire made of colors in the cores of stars. But this was no mere qi Technique. This fire was infused with a will—the hungry, angry will of the dragon, a will which bent the very fabric of the universe to its bidding. This Law had merely grazed the tip of the vastness of the Laws of Fire—Laws which held within them Rage, and Destruction, and Consumption, and Burning, and Heat, and Endlessness, and even Rebirth… this dragon’s Law was to Dorian’s eye crude, like a child that’d only learned the first letter of an alphabet. It held within it merely a trace of Heat.

The old man thrust out his hands, defiance written in the lines of his face. Blue lightning shimmered in a web before him, ready to catch and bind up the attack.

Then the old man’s mouth hung open.

The fire did not seem by itself extraordinary. It was not especially big. It was not even particularly fast. It was but a stream of blinding white.

A stream so hot the airs about it howled in agony. Not from the flame itself—but because of the gaping voids it left in its wake, jagged black tears in the fabric of the plane. For the powers of the heavens—even crude and shallow as they were—were intolerable to a lower plane. Their mere presence bent this universe.

It tore through the old man’s web like it wasn’t even there. The man didn’t have time to scream before he was taken by the white. It went through him, too, like he wasn’t there. Went straight through his magic tower, not slowing in the slightest, burned a gaping hole through a steel pillar and vanished, still sizzling, into the sands. All it left behind was the shape of its path, burned into the things it’d gone through: a clean, perfect cylinder of smoldering black.

Dorian had gone very still. A twitching had overcome his left cheek.

“You seem to be lost in thought, friend Io,” said Nijo. “Would you care to share?”

“What the fuck.”

“Mhm.”

“How—“ Dorian caught his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and tried again, but still couldn’t keep his tone fully even. “How many Sky Realm beasts do you have, precisely?”

“Oh—“ Nijo shrugged. “A dozen in total, perhaps—“

“A DOZEN?!”

Dorian thought about the Heilong Family’s forces, still working on mastering the point-and-click feature of his first batch of Wizard’s Sticks. He thought about the grand total of zero Sky-Realm warriors in the Oasis.

His head was starting to pound.

“You needn’t worry about them,” laughed Nijo. “If this meeting ends as I’d like, you shall never have to feel their wrath.”

Dorian twitched again. “Yeah, uh, I’d like that too.”

“Besides—it is not they you ought to worry about. Our ground forces are far more formidable.” Nijo paused. “And—if you may permit me a moment of hubris—it is not our ground forces you ought to worry about either. You should be worried about me.”

“Hmm.” Dorian breathed out. “None of that sounds very appetizing. Is worrying about none of those an option? I’m assuming this isn’t a social call. You have an offer for me, don’t you?”

“I do!” Nijo lit up with a smile. It was unsettling; every expression he made was so deeply genuine, so innocent, that it bothered Dorian in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Like the smile of a toddler untouched by the horrors of the world. Except he’d just finished wiping a man out of existence so thoroughly not even a shadow of his being was left.

“Here it is, then,” said Nijo. “I’ve heard that you’ve ingratiated yourself well into the upper echelons of the Azcan military—well done. When we arrive, I shall need you to dismantle its most troublesome defenses from the inside. Do that and you and your sister shall be spared.”

“And you need me to do this because you can’t take Azcan on your own?” said Dorian hopefully.

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Sadly I fear this is not the case. It makes no difference in the final calculus. I only wish to limit whatever preventable deaths I can.” He frowned. “The Shimen…it is truly awful, what had to be done here. Awful, but alas necessary. This need not happen to you.”

“Uh-huh. Or,” said Dorian slowly. “Hear me out—this need not happen at all! You seem like a reasonable fellow. I’m sure we can work out a peaceful deal, eh?”

“Mm. I wish that were the case.” A watery smile graced Nijo’s face. “It is among the saddest and most painful truths that I have had to learn that one must raze the old to grow into the new. To bring about a world of infinite love the order of Jez must first weed out hate. Killing is sometimes a kindness.”

His smile turned wistful. “It’s funny. You taught me that, actually.”

“…right.” Of course, Dorian hadn’t the faintest clue what Nijo was talking about! He was pretty sure there was something deeply wrong with the man. “Anyway, I’m afraid I can’t take your offer as is, sadly! I’ve been bound by Soul Contract to defend this Oasis.”

“Oh?” In that moment an immense sadness sagged Nico’s features. It was as though he’d aged decades in a second. “Then I suppose there is nothing left to say, is there? I shall greet you in less than two weeks. On less hospitable terms, I fear.”

Wait. You’ll greet me in less than what now?!

“Woah!” Dorian said with a slightly nervous laugh. “It needn’t come to that, surely!”

“Needn’t it? It is the objective of the Church of Jez to conquer this and all planes. To bring them under our stewardship. It is your objective to resist. Neither objective is negotiable. The matter is simple, then. Either you fall, or we do.”

“…”

Fuck. He’s right.

“Okay. Fine. Maybe it does. But, err—at least give us the rest of the moon cycle!”

“Why?”

Dorian searched his butt for excuses to pull out. “Why, it’s the Azcan Oasis’ midsummer Festival, its most precious annual tradition! You wouldn’t deprive us this last bit of joy before the end, would you? Come on—it’s but a few more weeks. Hardly anything!”

Nijo smiled. “Why do I get the feeling you made all of that up?”

“…”

“Listen, friend. I think this may do you some good. I hope you shall treat what is coming less as an end, and more as….” Nijo put a finger to his lip as he thought. “A liberation.”

Dorian was faintly amused. The more Nijo said, the less sense he made. “A liberation from what, exactly?”

“From the thing you love the most in all the world! The only thing you love at all. Yourself.” Nijo tapped his chin. “Put another way—your ego?”

Dorian had no clue where to begin with that.

Then Nijo waved. “Good-night!”

The scene vanished, leaving Dorian holding a blank scroll, staring at the reflection of his own bewildered face.

What the hells just happened?