“I’ll play up. You give support,” breathed Dorian. Gerard nodded grimly.

“What about me?” said Sun.

“You—I don’t know. Do something! Make yourself useful!”

“Okay!” She scurried off.

Dorian frowned. Godkings. The highest tier of cultivation truly stood apart. Even the highest-ranked Empyreans were only on par with the typical Godking. Godkings were masters of their domains—the common wisdom, even among Gods, was never to challenge one on pains of imminent death. No matter how many Gods you had. No matter how strong you were. Only Godkings fought Godkings…

He couldn’t draw this out. He had to—

“Well?” said the Auctioneer, still gnashing his hands together. His grin was oily and relaxed, like he had all the time in the world. Even as his city was blowing up around him.

“If you won't come to me… I will come to YOU!”

Even with Serpent’s Senses at full tilt, even tensed and braced, Dorian still barely got his fists up in time. He took the blow on the plates of his forearms.

CRACK!

It wasn’t just the force of it. Though that was monstrous enough. He was struck by a swathe of Law. Laws of Breaking; laws that made the hardnesses on his arms soft, brittle. He was struck by a sudden sense of massive weakness, the way a fly might feel an instant before the swatter connects.

He was flying, flipping through the air, struck a mass of crystal—chandelier?—barely righted himself mid-air as he landed in a crouch, breathing heavy.

The scales on his forearms were laced with spiderweb cracks. But the bones had held. If barely.

….

….

Still, utterly inappropriately, a background hum of messages kept popping up. His Bloodline. Still going.

[Level-up!]

[Bloodline Quantity] 2745 -> 3133

“You’re still standing.” The Auctioneer made a statement sound like a question. Then he nodded, managing to seem impressed and disdainful at once. “Nice.”

Gerard struck.

Jagged tears rippled across the air, arching for the Auctioneer’s head. But he simply held up a hand, and flicked. Gerard’s strikes were thrown back whence they came, gouging into the pillars behind his head. Sun had yanked him down at the last moment. She was whispering intently at him something Dorian couldn’t make out. He had no time to think of them; the Auctioneer was on him once more, beckoning with a forefinger, and Law shimmered on the air.

And he was pulled. Whole-body. And not just him. The rubble around him started to shoot at—no; drop towards the Auctioneer, like their gravities had changed directions.

Shit!

Sunshine Steps! And at the same time—Supernova Fist!

It was like he’d summoned a thunderbolt. And to his satisfaction the Auctioneer gave an annoyed little hiss. He managed to kick free of the warped-gravity Zone, somersaulting to a halt.

They couldn’t waste time on this. He wasn’t about to win a one-on-one against the Auctioneer. Styles made fights, and even if he wasn’t two full Tiers of power below, he simply matched up badly! Steel- and ground- aspected fighters always gave fire- fighters headaches. And Gerard, wounded as he was, could hardly hold up for long.

Could they run? Behind were the dungeons. Dead-end. Ahead, just past the Auctioneer, blown-out windows were laid out invitingly. If only…

“Sir!” Gerard coughed. “Just need—hold out—”

“Eh?”

“Sun is seeking help. Just—last half a minute! I will—cover you—”

“Got it. Say no more.”

Dorian whirled around and threw up his hands, making his eyes pop wide as he could, mouth gaping wide. So wide he seemed to have startled even the Auctioneer.

Commence Stalling Tactic #38!

“Wait!” He screamed.

“What?” said the Auctioneer.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” said Dorian with a stern frown. “Have you thought this through? Before we finish, there’s something you should really know.”

“Oh?” The Auctioneer cocked his head. “What is it?”

Dorian opened his mouth. Then his brows drew into a furrow. “Uh… shit. Hold on—….I seem to have forgotten.” Dorian grinned sheepishly. “It’s on the tip of my tongue! Just give me twenty-two more seconds—”

The Auctioneer beckoned at him, and gravity yanked him sideways, and that was the end of that.

He was committed now. Might as well go all-out!

Sunshine steps!

In an instant he stared into the Auctioneer’s amused face from a stride away. The Auctioneer was still looking amused—how’d you get there, little Dorian?—when his Fist of the Falling Star hit the man square in the nose.

[Level-up!]

[Fist of Falling Star, Rising Moon]

Lv. 5 -> 6

It felt like he’d punched metal. Which he really should’ve seen coming, in hindsight. He lashed out thrice more, landed two—one to the Auctioneer’s cheek, another to his stomach, got a third caught in the Auctioneer’s own fist—and each time his fists made hollow CLANGS! By the end of it the only indication he’d struck at all was the slightly miffed expression on the Auctioneer’s face. His face itself was… depressingly unmarked. Dorian was pretty sure he hurt his own fists in that barrage more than anything.

The Auctioneer’s hand had caught his own. He tried pulling it free, but it was like it’d been cast in a block of iron. He stamped at the Auctioneer’s chest. Not the slightest reaction. Ripped at him with his tail, tore up his clothing and left a fine mesh of white lines across the shiny muscle. Was this how those lizardman guards felt, facing him? The Auctioneer grinned, and his hand glowed.

Ah, shit.

CRUNCH. Then there was no hand to command at the end of his arm anymore. Only a blob of incredible pain.

“Dorian!” A Spatial Slash tore down from above. But the Auctioneer ignored it, instead reaching leisurely for Dorian’s head—

The Slash severed Dorian’s own hand at the wrist.

Hissing, he kicked off the Auctioneer’s chest, backflipped thrice, and landed in a crouch. Then his eyes flickered down to his new stump of a hand, which felt surprisingly hot all of a sudden. Come to think of it, his forearms felt hot too, like there were coursing rivers of lava under his skin.

They’d healed. Qi and bloodline rushed to the wounds. And now there was a pink nub of flesh budding at the wrist. The idea of a hand, slowly coming again to fruition.

Neat! Not how he’d have liked to discover how far his powers of regeneration had come, but he’d take it.

“Sorry,” wheezed Gerard. He was reduced to hunching over, clutching at his a dark stain on his ribs.

“’s fine. It was the right choice.”

“Sir—” Gerard looked pained then. “I will hold him off. You can make a break for it—perhaps—”

“Nonsense!” said Dorian with an airy wave. “There’s no need for self-sacrificial antics just yet. We’ll both get out of this in one piece, eh?”

If only Sun and their help would materialize…

Any moment now…!

As luck would have it, the Auctioneer also looked bored of all this waiting. He yawned. “I’m bored of all this waiting,” he announced, as though to make things official. “Let us put an end to things, eh?”

And his steel-toed boot tapped the ground. And suddenly he was the center of gravity—of the world.

Everything fell toward him. Things from behind. Things from in front, above, to either side, chairs and chandeliers and swirls of broken glass and helmets and armor and chunks of torn-off pillars and dust, so much dust. That everything sadly included Dorian and Gerard.

Gerard hissed. His arms grew vast and avian and feathered once more, and he beat back once, twice, thrice against the current, gaping spatial tears, but still dragged inexorably in. Dorian tried kicking off. Sunshine Steps! But it was like leaping away with a rubber cord tied around his waist. Somehow all his fighting amounted to very little; all he managed was the illusion of progress.

So he sighed, turned, and braced himself for the inevitable.

Qi rushed to his fists. A Technique circulated within, ready to blast, and his throat ran hot with dragon’s breath.

“Hey, Gerard?” He said. “About that offer—”

“A little late now, I fear…” gritted Gerard in the midst of heavy flapping.

“Ah. Figures.”

Godkings really were made different. The gap was simply too much! Maybe if Dorian got his hefty build to Empyrean. Maybe if he had time to assimilate his Bloodline a smidge more, get to Stage Four—

[Level-up!]

[Bloodline Quantity] 3204 -> 3611

Thanks, Bloodline! Still a few thousand off from evolution. Still a few thousand off from having a hope in making any difference in the outcome.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. All the way to the grave. It really did take a Godking to fight another Godking. Which he’d known before he took this fight. Which he knew even now, as he prepared his body for one last outburst.

‘Only Godkings Fought Godkings.’ It was a general rule.

But he always liked to operate under the assumption that the rules did not apply to him. A small fraction of the time this came to bite him in the ass quite painfully, and this seemed to be shaping unto one of those times.

As they slid towards the Auctioneer’s grasping palms, he gave Gerard one last annoyed hiss.

“Half a minute?”

“It was merely an estimate…ah.” The noise at the end there was on account of the figure who’d appeared behind the Auctioneer. A short, stout, white-haired figure who seemed somehow exempt from the Auctioneer’s gravitational pull. He cleared his throat.

“Excuse me?” said Old Man Fate, eyes twinkling. The gravity dropped, and thousand chunks of metal and stone and flesh dropped with it. Quite a clamor. And the Auctioneer turned, and his face lost all expression.

In fact he seemed suddenly rather pale.

“Fate?” He whispered. “But—you were not supposed to be here!”

“Yet here I am.” Fate spread his hands helplessly. “That is the thing about Fate, isn’t it? It finds us whether we like it to or not.”

Now Fate was a tiny figure, and a very kind figure. A figure Dorian had known for a very long time, had in fact made a sport of mocking to his own face. A figure who took his mockery with hapless smiles and tiny little shrugs. It might be impossible to offend the man. Which was why it was so easy to forget how others—his enemies—knew him. Old Man Fate, ranked #7 Godking on the Multiversal Rankings. One of the most fearsome duelists in all the Multiverse. You could literally count on two hands the creatures more frightening to have as an enemy than him. When you lost a duel to the death with Fate you did not die. You un-existed, which is something infinitely worse: you ceased to exist not only in the present, not only in the future, but also in the past.

Fate had been ranked #9.

Twice he had fought peers in the Top 10. Twice he’d been challenged by force (it was rumored). And twice his hand was forced.

Now, no living being could remember nor the faces nor the lives of the creatures he’d beaten. All there was to record their existences were their legacies, like footprints of an extinct species. Two creatures of world-shaking power, beaten down and scrubbed so thoroughly from time no-one could so much as recall their name.

You did not fight a Godking unless you were a Godking. But even as a Godking, you did not fuck with Fate.

“You’re late,” coughed Gerard.