“I mean…”

Dorian made a sour face. “Pooling qi shouldn’t be possible. Qi is individual—one creature’s qi shouldn’t be compatible with any other’s! Even I can’t pool qi between bodies, and I’m me. But if you’ve found some way to do it… it’s kind of genius.”

Gerard nodded. “One may vastly increase one’s qi reserves and recovery rate.”

“Yea. You’ll have to share, true, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.” Dorian was frowning in earnest now. “Get a pool big enough, and, well…you’re pretty much unbeatable one on one. You’ve got limitless ammunition.”

“Therein lies the issue,” sighed Gerard. “Any one of them can easily overpower their peers. And if the head of the snake is as strong as one of the Saints? … It concerns me deeply, if I may speak truly. Our neighbors on Zenith feel the same.”

To which Dorian snorted. “Paranoia has served them well! It’s gotten them this far. But it’s also made fools of them. They can’t truly think he’ll make it anywhere near the Upper Realms, can they?At this rate he’ll unite all the Middle Realms against him. He’ll fizzle out, like all the other would-be conquerers.”

“Not according to Old Man Fate.” Gerard put his hands on the table, leaning over it. He looked Dorian square in the eyes. “Fate has been going door-to-door, clamoring about it for the past year. And each of his warnings, without fail, has come to pass. I think… it is time to take him seriously.”

“Fate?” Dorian said with a light laugh. “He’s still at it?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s dropped by just yesterday to see if you were home. Something about recruitment for a resistance. I turned him away, of course.”

“As you should.” Dorian was growing rather bored of this whole thing. “Alright. So some new shiny would-be conquerer has cropped up with grand plans, makes early gains and stirs up panic. This kind of things seems to happen every millennium. The Multiverse is massive! No-one serious can possibly think one man and his band can run it over. We simply need to weather the storm, lay low. Keep our wits about us, eh?”

Dorian found this Jez creature a curiosity, but that was about where his interest ended. Really he was getting a little miffed at this whole dreamscape, now that he knew what it was about. “Was all this—“ he gestured to the scene about them—“really necessary?”

“If I may, sir…” Gerard blinked heavily. “I surprise myself to hear myself agreeing with our friend Fate. This threat is unlike any other. It has shown itself capable of killing a Godking —and not any mere Godking! It has slain Fabro himself. If Fabro can fall, the rest of us can. It grows far too fast. If keeps this up there is a very distinct chance it threatens the Upper Realms. Perhaps even Zenith itself!”

He paused. “And it may come on much faster than you expect, My liege. I implore you, this once, though I know it is against your nature—please. Deign to take the matter seriously.”

“Alright, alright, I hear you,” said Dorian, wrinkling his nose. “You don’t need to lecture me, of all people, about the unpredictability of speed and timing. And if you’re this concerned...hm. I’ll give this another think. Is this what this meeting is about? Spinning up an emergency plan?”

“Precisely right.”

“Bah.” Dorian closed his eyes, rubbing his brows.

Fate was wrong all the time.

It was almost certain that Jez and his force would sputter out.

And yet… the greater evil here, above all else, would be a blithe blindness to the state of affairs.

In his runs Dorian threw caution to the wind. In his main life, on the other hand… things were different. Dorian did not ascend to godhood by acting as he did in his runs. Acting as he did in his runs got him killed. A lot.

He grew powerful because, for all his risk-taking, he knew there was a place for temperance.

Gerard’s instincts were seldom wrong. If the rest of the Godkings thought so too, well.

It wouldn’t hurt to take precautions.

But first—

“What about my insufferable brother?” said Dorian with a sigh. “What’s he think, perched on his sad little rock at the edge of the multiverse? Isn’t his whole shtick shooting down rabble-rousers like this Jez?”

“Houyi refuses to act,” sighed Gerard.

“Oh?”

“He shoots down creatures powerful enough to threaten the whole of the multiverse. But only if they are evil. But in his eyes… Jez and his followers are in the moral right.”

“You can’t be serious.” Dorian leaned back, gazing flatly at the ceiling of the dreamscape. “Are you in one of your pedantic moods again?” he called to nothing and no-where in particular. “At a time like this?”

“There is no help coming,” snapped Gerard. “We must make a decision. Time fades fast—I will not be able to reach you for another moon-cycle yet! I must have your word now. would you have me do, my liege?”

In through the nose, out through the mouth: a long, slow breath. Dorian closed his eyes, running through choices in his mind in rapid succession. Four slow heartbeats passed; the space shrank further, the edges of the tea-room shimmering, distorting. Gerard glanced about nervously. “My liege—?”

“Fine. Out of, really, a severe overabundance of caution—here’s some drastic steps.” Dorian’s eyes snapped open. “If—big, big if—a shitstorm makes landfall, let’s guarantee that I, at least, shall be safe.”

He stood. “Gather up all my valuables. Take this whole estate-treasure and shrink it, then stuff it in my galactic-scale Interspatial Ring.”

Gerard’s eyes bulged. “Sire. You can’t mean—“

“I do,” Dorian said. “You, and the rest of my belongings, will go into deep hiding for just this little stretch. I grant you permission to access the Unstuck Space.”

A long silence drew over them. Gerard looked suddenly unsure. “Are you certain?”

The Unstuck Space was a distortion zone at the center of the plane of Zenith. More precisely, it was where the Planar Core was: the thing which held up the whole plane, an indestructible mass of unnatural law which not even most Godking could go near, much less touch. Only a Godking of Dorian’s peculiar talents of Time—and, by extension, a very good knack for Space too—could carve out his own little niche in the region.

It was where he housed his main bodies.

To hide there was to house an invisible needle in a haystack that seemed to change size and shape each time you looked at it. Except finding it was the easy part—since when you got there, you had to get in, and Dorian was stepping through a door which should not exist, closing it behind him, and locking it shut behind him.

Utterly impregnable. It was probably the single least traversable space in the whole Multiverse.

“Do it,” said Dorian. “Ride out this kerfuffle in there, and we’ll both come out untouched.”

“As you wish,” said Gerard, nodding. He hesitated. “It’s only—entering isolation, at this precise moment? I worry that Fate won’t be happy about this…”

“Oh, that’s for certain. I’ll bet he thinks I ought to come to his aid. Defend the multiversal order or whatever?” Dorian sighed. “Bless his senile old heart. Listen, I’m glad he’s happy bumbling about the multiverse, helping out the downtrodden and such. It’s where he tries to enforce his blubbery on me that I grow irked. I have no obligation to anyone except myself.” He shrugged. “Call it selfish if he likes. Judge me by whatever moral frame he fancies. It simply is what it is, and I am who I am. Such is life.”

Then he yawned. He didn’t feel tired, of course; he did it for the effect. “Release me, will you? I’ve got a run to get through, and things are just getting interesting!”

“Very well. Until our next meeting, then. Take care, my liege.” Gerard stood, bowing, and the scene rippled everywhere like the surface of a lake peppered by light rains. Then it all went white.

***

Dorian woke to the sound of blaring sirens. Not in their campgrounds, but very closeby. They seemed to be coming from within the city limits.

He bolted upright. A few feet away Kaya groaned, propping herself up on an elbow. “Wha?—“

“Attention all citizens of Azcan,” said a voice. “All non-military citizens, report to the Main Square presently.”

It took a half-second for Dorian’s brain to click. “So Bin came through after all!”

“‘Scuse me?” Kaya was still wiping the sleep from her eyes. “We’ve gotta report? What?”

“They’re instituting a draft,” said Dorian. Like I’d suggested! The ranks of Stick-wielders will soon swell drastically, I expect. Lovely news to wake up to. “We’re military. So we don’t need to go anywhere.”

Kaya looked at him, wide-eyed. “We are?”

“Oh, right, right. So much happens, hard to keep track who knows what!” Dorian snatched her up by the wrist. “Come on—let’s claim our new housing. It’s high time we cleared out of this shithole anyways.”

“We have new—?“

“No more questions!” He tugged her behind and they went stumbling into the light. “I’ll catch you up on the way, alright?”

***

Their new housing was near the market district, in the penthouse of a towering high-rise. It overlooked the whole of the city. Kaya was quite pleased about the whole thing—and also remarkably uncurious once he’d unfolded the whole story of his Heilong ties to her. She mostly nodded and grinned. She was far more fascinated by the space than his story; she went about oo-ing and ahh-ing at each little thing, which Dorian found endlessly amusing.

There were separate bedrooms. Working plumbing filled with qi-rich water freshly drawn from the Sinkhole. Three baths, one of them the size of a small swimming pool. And a living room fully stocked with plush pastel furniture tastefully arrayed, with two of its walls as giant glass panels overlooking the whole of the city. And to top it off—a pantry, restocked daily, with all the sweets Kaya could ask for. There was other food too, of course, but she’d taken to clearing out the candy shelves first with a vengeance.

“Why’s everything so—so spiffy?” she gasped between mouthfuls of a creampuff dessert.

“The word you’re looking for is clean,” said Dorian. He sensed it was a bit of a foreign concept to her. “You know. The things you use the bathtubs for?”

“Bath…tubs?”

He pointed them out.

“You use those to clean yourself?” She stopped chewing, eyes popping. Dorian saw her mind blown in slow motion. “I thought those were giant pots! Like—for making stew out of really big fishes!”

And on and on.

“Say…” he said, once they’d really settled into the space. “I didn’t catch your last fight. How’d it go?”

She wiped some blue jelly off her mouth and grinned. “I won!”

“You did?”

“Hey! You don’t need to sound so surprised.” She pouted at him, but he could see she wasn’t really angry. That was another thing about her—it was like a switch had flipped. She’d gone back to her happy old self. It was almost bizarre.

“I’m sorry,” laughed Dorian. “It’s just—you’ve really gotten a long stronger in the past month, huh? I saw what you did to that Ouyang boy.”

“I sure have!” She rapped her chest proudly with a fist. “And I’ll only get stronger, too —you just watch! This contract thing, it’s so much more awesome than you made it out to be. For the first time, I really feel like me!”

“Oh?”

“It’s all thanks to this—what did that old man call it?” Her brows drew together. “Oh, yeah. Mark of Jez!”

...

Dorian went very still.

“Wait. Say that again. Slowly,” he said. “The Mark of who?”