Palace of the Trolls, Underworld.

Ninth Circle of Hell.

Meetings. So many damned meetings! When the troll armies mobilized to fight for Jez, Baldur had expected a sea of lovely bloodshed. So far he hadn’t seen a drop of blood. Just marching, and waiting, and restocking, and meeting, more meetings, and marching yet again. And for some bloody reason he had to be present at all of them, listening to this or that advisor, general, lieutenant, are other feather-capped asshat whine and prattle. Being heir to the Throne of Trolls meant it was his duty to suffer fools, apparently.

They were close. He consoled himself with that. Soon they would meet Fate’s armies near Ur, and there would be a reckoning. Very soon...

He salivated just thinking of it.

Prince Baldur Devilhand, #1 ranked God of his generation and #13 ranked God in the Multiverse, bounded through the halls of his father’s obsidian palace with his chin held high. Trolls rapped their knuckles to their chests and hooted at his passing. He bared his teeth in a feral grin.

He stopped before the Spirit Pavilion. It was his favorite spot in the palace. This whole day had been cursed from the start. Fucking meetings! It was a ridiculous trick, some kind of perverse alchemy, to make war, such a beautiful visceral primal thing, into a passionless slog of maps and logistics and supply chains, fucking supply chains. Fuck supply chains in particular. Chains. He hummed at it. What a pretty word, and a prettier thing still! You could whip men with them. Shackle them up, hang them from them, as Baldur was fond of doing.

His father’s war councils had to go and slap supply in front of it. Supply. His lip curled. Ugliest fucking word he ever heard. Fucking war councils! Damned near more tiring than fighting the war itself!

It was time to unwind with his favorite pastime.

Beating the tar out of some unsuspecting idiot.

***

“WELCOME SPIRIT 13994: BALDUR. How may I assist you today?”

“Pull up my second profile,” he said. “The fake one. I want a bout.”

“As you wish. Searching requests in your range…”

Was it beneath his dignity to make a fake profile simply to find weaklings to shit on? Perhaps. He would certainly feel embarrassed if it got out. But we all had our guilty pleasures. And nothing was quite as satisfying as dishing out a good thrashing to someone without the slightest power to resist.

[Incoming bout request!]

[Alias: Fuck me!]

[Rank: 3061?]

[Wager: 100/0 high-grade Spirit Stones]

He tongued his jagged teeth.

‘Fuck me,’ eh?

With pleasure!

[Accept!]

***

A troll? Huh.

Ranked a little lower than Dorian would’ve liked—really at the low end of his search bounds—but he shrugged. For this practice bout he didn’t need anyone truly elite. This time around he was testing only his movement Technique. He’d use nothing else, just plain old fists and legs and tail for the rest.

Trolls were like Orcs, except a little fatter, a little slower, a little dumber, a little stronger. The thing about them was they were growers. At mortal power levels they were drones, barely conscious. But as they grew in qi and Bloodline and Dao they got sharper and faster and smarter at astonishing rates, especially the ones with royal blood. The King of Trolls was a perennial Top 10 Empyrean—mostly off the inexplicable power of his physique. Dorian had seen the brute in battle in another life—he’d caved in the skull of an elder dragon with a flick of two fingers.

Dorian’s Bloodline was still merely at First Form. This one seemed to be of Third Form. Its arms were as long as its legs, and about as meaty—maybe meatier. Its gray skin had a silver sheen. Royal blood! It prowled about, moving like a gorilla. Yet there was a tiny sneer at the corner of its lips, a calculating gleam in its eyes.

Dorian grinned back. He had a feeling this was going to be fun.

***

This is going be fun! Baldur licked his lips.

Strip away all pretense and life was made simple. A hierarchy. And there was nothing more satisfying in life than to force a man to kneel to you. To break him like a whipped hound. It was not the physical act Baldur yearned for. It was the mental.

To Baldur, even the simple acknowledgement that the enemy was stronger than you was a tacit bending of the knee. It was to subordinate yourself to him, to put someone above you in the hierarchy in your own mind! And once you lost there you were fucking done. Might as well gargle his balls while you’re at it!

His enemy was a dragonkin.

But he would not go in fists swinging. Oh, no. To break a man you first had to expose his underbelly. Get him all soft, unsuspecting, tender…It was one thing to lose to a superior opponent. It was quite another to be humiliated.

Humiliation was an art. It took finesse. First you built them up. Then the breakdown was so much sweeter.

“Greetings, mister dragonkin,” purred Baldur. “What an impressive profile you’ve got! Provisional ranking—yet so high? You must’ve been on… quite the streak.”

“Sure, I guess,” said the dragonkin.

“Well,” said Baldur. “It takes a talented fighter to be ranked this high without taking a loss!”

Or, far likelier, some lucky matchmaking and slick matchfixing.

“This one is but a humble troll…” Baldur whined on. “I have been stuck here for decades on end… I fear I have hit my ceiling! You will shoot past this poor one very soon, I suspect.” He chuckled at that, all humble-like. “I only hope to be a worthy stepping stone in your climb.”

“Me too,” said the dragonkin. “I must say, I’ve been thoroughly unimpressed these top ten-thousand rankers so far. I was hoping to get a couple hundred training matches in, grind my Technique levels to—I don’t know—six or seven? At this rate I won’t even hit three!”

…

…

Baldur blinked. That was not what the dragonkin was supposed to say. He was supposed to go, ‘Oh, I merely got lucky!’ or ‘Oh, you flatter me!’ or ‘Oh, I wouldn’t dare treat you as a stepping stone, Mister top ranker!’

This… shameless little fucker!

“Well…” said Baldur, chuckling a little harder. Inside he was seething. “I can’t promise I’ll put up much of a fight, but I’ll try my best! Senior, please give me pointers.”

He clasped his hands and did a little bow. Just you wait, you little shit… The dragonkin did not bow back. “Sure! Tell you what,” said the dragonkin with a grin. “You give me a good workout and I’ll fix your Techniques. Fair trade?”

…

…

That was most certainly not what that dragonkin was supposed to say. He was supposed to say, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t dare!’ or ‘I am but a young dumb lower ranker!’ or ‘I wouldn’t dare let you call me senior! If anything I should call you senior!’

And that last bit—‘Give me pointers’ was a figure of speech! Did—did this idiot really think he, Baldur fucking Devilhand, gave a single speck of shit about his thoughts on Baldur’s Techniques?!

His face was starting to break into a snarl, despite his best efforts to keep up the act. He could scarcely believe the shamelessness passing the boy’s lips.

Still he laughed again, unable to fully keep his anger out of the sound. It came out as more of a bark.

“Sounds like a deal! Here I come!”

Then he was on the little dragonboy in a furious blur. A blink from the boy, and Baldur grinned wider. They always were so shocked. He could imagine the thoughts screeching through that tiny head— ‘Oh no! He’s double my size! How’s he so fast too?! Ahhh!! Mother!!’

His hand whipped out in an open-hand slap straight at the boy’s face. He didn’t put much into it. It was a slap, after all. A punch was harder. A palm-strike was sharper.

You only slapped if your intent was to humiliate.

And Baldur’s intent was to do that and much more. In the very first strike of the fight he wanted to evoke a specific emotion—a truly delicious emotion, tastier even than blood—

That ‘Oh Shit!’ feeling that struck harder than any slap.

Baldur was a connoisseur of despair. He’d beaten men in live duels, emasculated them so horribly their women left them for him. He’d broken kings in front of their subjects. Broken fathers in front of their children (a special flavor of despair; for children, stupid little things, always thought their fathers so invincible). All worthy flavors of despair, to be sure, with their own merits…

But his favorite setup was the good old-fashioned face-slap.

First you got them feeling all good about themselves. Then you slap them so hard all that puffed-up ego ego comes crashing down about their ears! And you savor the look on their face as they slowly did the rounds—from shock, to disbelief, to understanding, settling at last at a vintage despair. ‘What’s wrong, senior?’ Baldur would ask innocently. ‘Why didn’t you dodge? And are those broken teeth in your mouth I see? How did that happen, senior?’

The words were loaded on his tongue, ready to go.

Except he never got to fire them.

His slap missed.

There was a burst of qi below—some sort movement Technique? A flash of heat—suddenly the boy was five strides off, tumbling head-over-heels, dropping his tail like an anchor and skidding to a halt.

“Oops,” said the boy with a lopsided grin. “First time testing out the Technique! I seem to have overshot.”

The boy did not seem the slightest bit horrified by his sudden outburst. Relieved to dodge by the skin of his teeth. Baldur would’ve even settled for awed, but there was none of that either in the boy’s face. Just… sheepishness?

So he actually dodged my first try. Hmph. Very good, little dragonkin, very good!

It pissed Baldur off to a truly unreasonable degree. His fists clenched harder.

“I understand. First time jitters, eh?” He barked out a laugh. “I must warn you, boy—I used but a sliver of my power then. You’d better be ready. This time…” He hunched in, tendons stretching like loaded bowstrings. He snarl-grinned, letting three gobs of drool drip artfully to the floor. He’d seen grown men shit themselves when he pulled that nifty look out. “There will be no second chances!”

“Oh, good!” The boy looked relieved. Relieved!

“I was worried you’d go down as easy as the other ones.”

…

He’s taunting me.

…

Baldur could hardly believe it. He laughed. Laughed a little too loud. “I like your spirit, boy!” He despised it. “Let us see if you can back it up!” Let us see if you’re still smiling when I grind your bones to dust inside your skin!

His Bloodline roared to life.

***

This time, the friendly troll's aura seemed to shift. The twinkle in his eye went cold. His face was all hard flat lines. But his literal aura, too—it felt twice as intense, wreathing him in steaming gray. Suddenly Dorian noticed there were tiny crystals jutting out of the troll’s back, crystals that started to burn with putrid yellow light. Some Bloodline ability, he imagined?

And then the troll pounced.

He’d been decently fast before. Fast for a God.

One blink and he was a heaving mass of knotted muscle a stride from Dorian’s face. Holy!—

Dorian brought up his arms to block just as the fist drove in. It felt like he’d taken a battering ram to his forearms.

He was sent skidding back, barely anchoring himself with a flick of the tail.

It seemed this troll wasn’t boasting about using a fraction of his power. That was hellishly fast. And that force—

Dorian could feel the welts forming already.

This guy is ranked top three thousand?!

There were Gods in the top 20 who couldn’t hit like this! He'd only seen this kind of freak athleticism at God level in that panlong. But this was a step beyond, even...

All Dorian felt was giddiness.

Finally, a worthy challenge!

Now this was a creature he could not take lightly! He’d need to exert his new Techniques to their fullest. Which was the true value of the Spirit Pavilion! You could spar all you like in the safety of a gym, but there was nothing quite like a fight to the death for sheer Technique progression.

He curled his hands into fists. Okay, big boy. Let’s dance!