“You know, Gerard,” said Dorian as they strolled down the long, winding stairs, “It occurs to me we’ve been all business since I got here. How’ve you been these past few… Hells, has it only been a few months?”

“I am fine,” said Gerard with a little nod, the picture of courtesy. “Thank you kindly for your concern.”

“Really? After all that’s happened?”

“… No.” Gerard sighed. “I miss my magnolias desperately. I am grieving. Honestly, I am … unwell.”

There was a tightening to his face. The muscles of his lips, the corners of his eyes, like he was carefully hold his mask of calm in place. “I am furious, sir.”

“Mm. I figured.”

They went down another spiral.

“How far gone is our estate, anyhow?”

“It was buried deep in the Unstuck Space. Then severed from the rest of the Multiverse, along with Zenith…it is erased from our conception of existence, I am sorry to say.”

Dorian grunted. He’d figured that too, but it still irked him to hear it spoken.

Another spiral.

“And you, sir? Are you well?” said Gerard.

“What an excellent question!” Dorian took a few seconds to ponder it. “I don’t know. Probably not. But I never was well, was I?”

“…No, sir. I don’t believe so.” Gerard looked profoundly sad at that.

“If it helps, I’ll be much more well once this nonsense is over.” Once I wipe that watery smile off that smug little meddler’s face, and reclaim what was once mine.

Another descent.

“What will you do after our business here is done?” said Gerard.

“Get my old life back, I imagine. Rebuild an estate. Achieve Godking. Start on runs again, that sort of thing. Why?”

“I’m… not sure.” Gerard sounded wistful. “I should like to see Jez crushed. True enough. It was… quite traumatizing…to see our home rent apart. But I also found its loss… oddly clarifying. Perhaps it is not the plot of Zenith land, nor the peerless strain of flower, which makes gardening special to me—as I had once presumed…I should be happy growing anywhere, I think…”

Dorian shook his head. “What is it with you retirees and gardens?”

Like Meng. Gerard in his day was a menace, a merciless slaughterer whose name even devil-kings dared not invoke! Albeit one every bit as meticulous as he was now—when Gerard’s sword cut through a God it went out the other side without so much as a fleck of blood on the blade.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps I tire of destruction,” said Gerard, brows furrowed. “Perhaps I find creation more … nourishing for the soul, as it were.”

They’d wound their way to the lobby, where a bathroom sat in the corner.

“Well, you’ll never catch me gardening!” snorted Dorian. “That I can promise you. I dabble in only one kind of cultivation.”

***

Back at the safe house, Sun hadn’t moved an inch. She was still facedown, snoring loudly. A small puddle of saliva was spreading around her face.

“…Shall I flip her over?” said Gerard.

“She seems plenty happy where she is, don’t you think?”

Sun snored her agreement. Dorian rubbed his hands and eyed the barrel once more. “Still two-thirds to go! To it, then—”

Gerard tapped Dorian gently. “One moment.”

“Eh?”

He handed Dorian a straw. A metal tube long as an arm, gleaming in the pale lamplight. “I made a requisition of our kitchen staff.”

“Gerard,” breathed Dorian. “It’s… beautiful!”

“It is a metal tube, sir.”

The metal tube plonked into the elixir, and Dorian was at it again.

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[15% -> 16%]

[Level-up!]

[Fire Planet: Terrestrial]

[31% -> 34%]

A torrent of qi gushed into him, packing into his Star and Planet like clay on a sculpture.

And with each addition that little spark of fusion at the center of his Star grew hotter. At some infinitesimally small level two iota of Darkness qi were making one. Again, and again, and again, faster and faster as he sucked in more qi…

Hours passed.

…

…

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[24% -> 25%]

[Level-up!]

[Fire Planet: Terrestrial]

[69% -> 72%]

…

…

He floated amid a white-watered river of qi. Letting its currents flow through him, crash into him, tug him to and fro, his body but a hollow vessel for the whims of the Multiverse. Cultivate this intensely and there was a sense of dissolution—the boundaries of his body, that liminal edge—of skin, of flesh, of mind growing porous. Of becoming one with the Multiverse. Of strands of his identity fraying at the edges, woven instead into that greater tapestry of existence that stitched together all things…

He giggled. Cultivation was a strong drug indeed! Not merely for its sinful addictiveness. At high enough doses one could get quite drunk…

…

…

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[30% -> 31%]

[Level-up!]

[Fire Planet: Terrestrial]

[98% -> 100%]

How odd.

He frowned. His Fire Planet was not getting any bigger. Had he hit the maximum qi it could store? But that hardly seemed right…

There was a problem with this arrangement of powers. He felt it first in his soul, a natural disharmony. His Dao now was the Great Dao of the Eclipse, Fire Law and Darkness interwoven!

Yet his core still kept Fire and Darkness separate. There was this strange dissonance—

—a dissonance his body seemed to sense. And start to address. Qi no longer flowed to the Fire Planet, instead rushing full-fledged to his Star. Was it simply that Eclipse was more parts Dark Law than Fire—that it needed a more proportional balance of qi?

Still Dorian felt like he was missing… something. He probed his innards once more, frowning. It bothered him. There was an off-ness about the picture, something but a few degrees out of place, the difference so minute that he could just about sense its existence. Only he hadn’t a clue what it was.

Frowning deeper, he waited. Waited and drank.

…

…

Another piss break, chewing on the issue the whole way there and back. Gerard simply nodded as he went by, nose still buried in his encyclopedia. Sun was still asleep, somehow. The puddle had gotten bigger.

Hmm. Dorian bent down and flicked her head. She didn’t stir. It occurred to him that she could’ve been dead five hours and he wouldn’t have known.

“Hello?” he said. He shook her. “You still there, runt?”

He pressed a hand to her neck, and was relieved to find there was a pulse.

She did seem quite badly eviscerated after that last bout of sludge…

“Gerard, get her a cot, will you?” said Dorian. “And some healing elixirs? It would be quite the inconvenience—to our plans, if nothing else—if our Wukong heir here were to die.”

“Of course, sir.”

When he glanced over he found Gerard already had a score of bubbling blue elixirs balanced on his little table. Just next to the tea kettle. “I was wondering when you’d ask.”

“How is it you always seem to have the right thing ready at the right time? It’s sorcery.”

Gerard blinked, like he hadn’t a clue how to respond to that. “Sorcery? I hardly think so. I…try to consider the needs of others. It’s a fairly common practice as I understand it, sir.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“Perhaps at times. Though it is fulfilling at others. I shall fetch the cot.”

Shrugging, Dorian went back to sucking.

***

***

It took another hour before Dorian seized hold of it. The core issue.

The size of the planet and Star. The slow pleasing undulations of their boiling surfaces. The way Law wove through them, steamed off them. Even the way his Fire Planet orbited his Dark Star. All unchanged. Only two variables were off.

The first he was aware of—his Dark Star was packing on mass, and condensing in on itself. The second—

They were getting closer.

It was greatly obscured by the orbit of the Planet. It was not a perfect uniform ellipse. Even so the deviations were now plain. The more massive his Star grew the faster the two seemed to inch together, tumbling into each others’ gravities.

What would happen when they met?

…

…

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[41 -> 44%]

…

…

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[47% -> 49%]

…

…

It was an inevitability now. Even if he stopped taking in more qi they fell toward one another as though down a whirlpool, destined to meet at its heart. The center of his core.

His main worry was that when they met there would be an explosion. Of the fatal variety.

His gut instinct was that was exactly what was going to happen. His logical mind was coming round to it too. When two unstable objects of great power were brought violently together the result was not usually a friendly handshake….

…

…

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[54% -> 58%]

…

…

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[66% -> 69%]

Since the start of his drinking, his Dark Star had nearly doubled in size. It was hard to fathom. How high was he in the Godly rankings now? 80s? 70s, even? From 100 to 90 should've been a seismic leap. It had hardly felt like a hop for him.

All that cultivating effort, all those great treasures, all those elixirs brewed and hours spent meditating—

Matched by half a barrel of drink. Such was the vast unfairness of power in the Multiverse! Those who had power very rarely deserved it, in Dorian’s experience. There were all too many Young Masters who couldn’t rub together two brain cells to make a third. Yet they were Gods! Because they were born in long heritages. Their parents were Godkings. Or the King of Ur, a recent case study. It was not any different than in the Lower Realms, in principle.

At the top, the Godkings, elite Gods, elite Empyreans were more vicious, more wily, more cruel than any ‘experts’ of the Lower Realms. True enough. But mediocrities plagued every realm in equal measure.

Dorian could hardly cast judgment on those gifted undue power—he was practically suckling at Fate’s teat with this barrel! A… distinctly unpleasant mental image he instantly scrubbed off his brain. Back to the task at present—

—His (possibly) imminent demise.

Probably not. Surely not. What kind of cultivation scheme had an inbuilt self-destruct scheme? But as he watched his Dark Star tick higher and higher…

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[73% -> 77%]

He couldn’t help but wonder if there was perhaps a very good reason he hadn’t heard of this solar system setup before.

The Star and Planet danced about each other like two nervous sides of an arranged marriage, but a step from the altar…

His hope, and his expectation, was that these two would fuse. That his new scheme would mirror his Dao, and thus achieve harmony.

….

….

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Red Giant]

[84 -> 88%]

So close now they were starting to distend, their gravities stretching each others’ edges. Black blurred red blurred black…

“Gerard?” said Dorian.

Gerard quirked a brow at him.

“You know the basic principle of sound cultivation scheme design for multiple Laws, yes? Separate locuses of Law and qi? No intermingling?”

“I’m familiar. Branches-and-fruits, Sky-and-clouds, and the like.”

“Do you know of any schemes that purposefully put two loci together?”

“My understanding is that they are quite uncommon, sir. Most such attempts seem… ill-advised.”

Which just about matched Dorian’s grasp of it. Hmm.

He’d seen shoddy schemes before, had seen whole cultivation bases cannibilizing themselves. But as far as Dorian could tell the architecture of his solar scheme was sound. The Star and Planet weren’t lashing at each other, butting heads; they seemed to wish to come together…

“I need you to perform a Spacial Lock on my position. Something very strange is about to happen, and, well—let’s put it this way. You don’t want me next to those bombs!”