The theater was silent, waiting, all eyes on Booth One Hundred and Twelve. The Auctioneer marinated in the tension, working his meatball fists around one another as though trying to congeal them into one giant meat club, smiling his oily little smile all the while.

But soon it was clear no response was forthcoming.

The Auctioneer gave a little sniff. He had little cause for excitement in his daily routine. In fact he’d done his very best to legislate the excitement out of it. This was his gift to the common demon, to serve as the sober proprietor of Ur. It was his solemn duty to play the lawman, the police officer, the judge, the warden, and it was his weighty burden too be reviled for it by every one of the hypocritical savages who prowled about his territory, enjoying the startling absence of knives in their backs after every barter—and cursing him under their moldy breaths all the while.

All he received as compensation was that puttering warmth in his heart knowing he was providing great service to the ungrateful folk of Hell.

That, and an almost unbelievable amount of money.

Speaking of…

It was looking like the excitement which had been quivering so promisingly on the horizon was sinking out of view.

His guests would not cooperate.

Gah.

Slowly he let his fists unbunch. Should there have been a spark… an ember… a fire… why, he, as the honorable proprietor, the Auctioneer, the righteous keeper of the order, would be forced to step in. And it would have been within his rights—in fact his duty—to beat one of the offending parties, perhaps both, to death with his bare fists. The bare fists was not strictly necessary, but he always liked to administer justice with a personal touch. He had been speculating as to the texture of that dragonoid heir’s brain-matter for most of the past thirty seconds. He could not get it out of his head. He wondered how it would feel under his fingertips. Like a slug? Or perhaps like squeezing a glove full of sand?

Alas.

As often as he stood atop his high spire, gazing down at the thousands of tiny dots below and imagining puppetting them all on tiny strings, he could not actually control them.

Though when Jez made his visit very soon, that would soon change…

The Auctioneer cleared his throat. “The bid stands,” he said. “Fourteen thousand, five hundred high stones! Do I hear any other offers?”

The young dragon heir spat, plopping down with a scowl. Nothing.

“Sold! To the gentleman in Booth One Hundred and Twelve!”

***

The gentleman in Booth One Hundred and Twelve groaned, and promptly threw up.

“Ack!” said Sun, who had been trying to drag him up from the floor.

She hadn’t thought it’d affect him that much—

Then again when she’d hit Dorian she’d been about twenty times weaker, and also a full cultivation tier lower, and much less advanced in her Dao. And also she really had gotten Gerard very clean. Like she’d hit some pressure point in the skull or something! There had been a long echo of metal, her Bang vibrating so sharply she felt it all up through her arms and shoulders, chattering her teeth.

And then here was Gerard. Projectile vomiting all over his pristine suit.

“Err—“ Sun paused. Now seemed a particularly bad time to ask him what it was she was supposed to do, given that he seemed rather busy with all the—

He retched up a small pond. His eyes were pools of dark horror. He seemed to be stuck in his own personal Hell. He kept retching.

…Anyhow—yes, a bad time, but that was about the one good idea she could squeeze out of her brain. Which was, she felt, pretty good already, given the circumstances! As far as she was concerned she had exceeded expectations. She still didn’t really have the faintest clue what was going on. Dorian was in prison? There were bombs still to be planted? And now Gerard was—well—like this—

Probably best to wait on the poor fellow to finish up.

Sun liked maps. Maps were awesome. She kept dozens crammed into a thick pocket of her trusty backpack (which she’d sadly had to leave behind for this adventure). With a map you knew, say the floor plans of Ur! You knew exactly where you started, where you’d end up, each bit along the way. Only thing was she’d gotten so used to having them that now, with no maps and no clue of where she was, she had zero sense of direction.

And Gerard—who had the closest thing to a map—was busy hacking. He’d emptied out most of his intestines and graduated to hacking on air now. He groaned, but not in the way that people groan. He groaned like a king disappointed that his duck was served a little too salty. He glanced down at his soiled suit in dismay, tried to produce a handkerchief, realized it was soiled, since his gloves were soiled, found himself in a conundrum, and sighed.

“Thank you,” he croaked. “Good thinking, Miss Wukong. Though I fear… I may not be of much use for the—next few critical hours—”

Hurriedly he produced a bright blue vial and downed it. The veins on his neck took on the color, tracking into the veins on his forehead, and he breathed slowly out.

“Good… swing.” His face spasmed. “You will need to alot me some time to recover, I fear…”

“Oh.” She relaxed. Waiting? “I can do that. And—err—sorry!”

“No… no… it was—the correct decision.” More spurting coughs.

“Soon… we will be attempting… an assault. On this palace.” Gerard’s bloodshot eyes met hers. “I will need to stay, and recuperate my powers… in the meantime…I need you to—to do a few things. A few very important—things—”

He swallowed. “The first. You will find in this ring—”

He slid a black thick one off his forefinger. “One qi-bomb. I want you to plant it at the wardroom. Can—you do that?”

Gerard needed her. Dorian needed her. Her friends needed her.

How was this even a question?!

“Of course!” she said.

“Good. And the second… and this—this may prove… significantly more challenging…with your cloaking and subtlety—I suspect you can manage it—Kinzo’s Millennium Elixirs will soon be delivered… to this booth… we must put them to use as soon as possible. This is what you must do.”

***

“It is like a drumbeat, isn’t it, Salieris?” Jez tilted his head to the rhythm of thousands of stomping feet. His army, making the last trek to Ur. As of now he sat in his study, seeing the action unfold through a scrying glass from his main body, here in the Labyrinth. But soon he would be with them.

“Indeed,” said Salieris. “Positively musical.” Jez laughed. There wasn’t much funny in the statement, but sometimes you laugh the way you graciously accept a gift from a friend, no matter what it is. Jez never could tell whether Salieris was sarcastic. Or sardonic. But it was his policy to treat what everyone said as genuine, all of the time—and if it ended with some egg in his face every so often, what was the harm? He was always so much better at making connections than second-guessing them. It was how he made so many friends, which he felt was proof enough that his methods were good.

Look at how far they’d come together, after all! About to topple the last great obstacle to the realization of his grand vision. Fate. Troublesome, earnest Fate! In another life Jez felt they could have been great friends…

Perhaps they still could. Once Fate, too, joined his brethren in prison. Or submitted to the Infinity, which…he did not hold out much hope for, nowadays.

“Fate has sped his march,” Salieris was saying. “He will be upon Ur by the morrow.”

“Then we will match his pace, and meet him there,” said Jez.

“And can I count on your presence, sir?”

“You can. Not in my main body, of course—but I shall be there. And I shall lend you my army, and grant you a great boost to your powers.”

“I take it you’ve prepared an adequate vessel to possess?”

Jez smiled. “Oh, yes. I’ve found few better. She truly has taken to my powers extraordinarily well.”

***

Dorian now sat upright, having given up the pretense that the flat bench was even the slightest bit comfortable. At some point you had to confront reality.

They had stripped him of his Interspatial Ring. And all his gear. And cuffed him with anti-qi chains. And really rendered him completely ineffectual. Which meant Dorian had nothing to do but sit there, stare at the ceiling, and think.

It wasn’t a space he liked to stay in long. Stuck squatting in his own thoughts he had a history of going a little nuts.

For the damndest reason his mind kept circling to Kaya. Maybe because it was the most recent bit of stimulation he’d gotten. Or maybe the foolish girl had genuinely ticked him off somehow. He couldn’t tell which it was.

She had all these high-minded thoughts! All these hopes and expectations! Such childish things, things that did not survive first contact with reality, things that shatter when dropped. All she’d done was thrown some temper tantrum at him. And he’d laughed her off.

And she’d called him a monster, too! Which was also quite funny.

Perhaps there was a time he would’ve scoffed at the label. Monster? Try ‘realist’. Words like ‘monster’ and ‘hero’ were the naive, simplistic framings of a coddled mind. These things did not exist. These things were tricks of perspective. He was no more a monster than anyone else! He followed his nature. Was that such a crime?

But there came a point—probably in the last few thousand years—when he’d stopped protesting, and shrugged, and said, ‘Yeah. I’m quite the horrible person, aren’t I?’ He gave up the pretense. At some point you had to confront reality. You are what you are.

He sighed.

There really wasn’t much to think about here. Idly he searched his brain for intellectual balls of yarn to bat around.

A strange thought occurred to him. Wasn’t Jez much the same? It was like he and Kaya shared the same nine-year-old’s conception of the Multiverse! Every creature who lived to survive, lived to grow powerful and old and godly, let go of such silliness. Except him. And now the rest of the Multiverse was made to deal with it.

Then Dorian noticed a sliver of movement at the edge of his consciousness. He looked up.

Where there had been nothing before but flat stone running up to a flat stone cell door, now there sat seven vials of rheumy white liquid.

And attached to them, one note.

“Drink me!”