Horns blew. All along the walls soldiers readied their Sticks, qi Techniques boiling feverishly at their tips. Thousands of eyes watched the line of beasts draw closer.

Then the sands at the forefront erupted.

A new horrible species reared up from the sands; like wyrms blown up to ten times their natural size, eyeless, toothless, screeching murder, streaming waves of sand. Their foreheads were shiny dark plates like massive beetleshells grafted onto the skin. Battering rams.

General Bin roared a command, the Sticks discharged, the world was rocked with qi and noise and screeches.

Chaos erupted. The battle began in earnest.

Dorian turned his eyes from the ground. He’d need to trust the Oasis defenses to hold. The sky demanded his attention.

Keeping pace with the ground fleet were the vanguard of the Sky-Realm dragons: two ugly lumps of gray skin and grayer wings. Steel rimmed their wings, flecked their tails, tipped their massive snout. Wielders of the Earthen Laws?

They proved him right an instant later. Their mouths opened, and a muddy avalanche descended upon the world. Horribly heavy, bloated with Laws which granted it an unnatural weight. If this mass struck the Oasis Walls it’d flatten like it was made of straw.

Void Shield!

A glut of shadow coursed up to meet the blast, fanning out until the darkness blotted out the light of the waning sun. It swallowed the avalanche soundlessly, easily. For a moment the rock-dragons looked as baffled as their craggy faces allowed.

Then the shadow winked out. Along with the attack.

And in a strike Dorian knew everything.

These things were not the Dweller. Their command of Law was nowhere near a god’s. The dozens of them together might hope to trouble him—but two?

He drew his hands together, and his Yama’s Chains whipped across the air. The dragons hardly had time to move before they were struck like flies by a swatter.

It was comical seeing things so big be flung aside so fast. Two geysers of sand cratered in the distance, then more as the huge bodies skidded across the dunes. Dorian blinked at his own Chains. Slowly he grinned.

It’s as I suspected, then! We are not of the same level.

As Realms went, Star eclipsed Sky. It was an old cliche to frame the paths of cultivation as different paths up the same mountain. While the basic idea was fair, in truth this was an oversimplification. Really the paths of cultivation were different routes up a mountain range. Some routes led to higher peaks. Already the difference was clear; Dorian breathed higher air than these creatures of the conventional Sky Realm.

The next wave struck at once. A scattering of dragons, some sleek, others ugly, all unleashing blasts of Law-wreathed magics. Dorian found himself the center of an all-sides assault. Sleet, fire, lightning, stone screeched at him.

Another finicky constraint: there was no dodging. Dodging meant letting the dragons blast the Oasis. Dodging meant violating his contract to protect. He’d have to swallow these head-on.

Which meant he was about to get a lot of run out of his Void Shield!

A dozen-odd shining pillars of Law gouged trails in the air as they descended upon Dorian. A dozen-odd shining pillars sank into the swirling whirl of shadow before him.

And vanished, like that, like stones dropping into a pond—but without even the sound to mark their vanishing. It was as though they’d passed into another world. Gone. Dorian bared his teeth at them, and he saw in their slitted eyes naked disbelief.

[Level-up!]

[Void Shield] Lv. 1 -> 2

Wonderful. Then he reached for qi for a counterattack, felt the depths of his reserves, and paused.

That little stunt had blanked out thirty percent of his qi. He didn’t let his sudden antsiness onto his face. He was meant to save a goodly chunk of it to blast Jez’s avatar with! No more eating attacks head-on. No more probing, screwing around. This had to end fast.

There was only one course of action here. Javelin snaking high above, Chains curling at his sides, he took one massive leap. Right for the dragons’ midst.

The strategy was simple. No projectile strikes—used too much qi. No Void shield blocking. Same reason. So rather than stand here, where he was forced to block and strike back, he’d wade into the fray with his Javelin and Chains headfirst. He’d have at them in close combat. No time for anyone to charge any big beams. No time for long-winded feats of Law. This would be grimy and dirty and brutal: his raw powers versus their huge numbers. It was like charging into a thornbush with an axe; it would be bloody and awful. A horrid mess.

Just the type of fight I like.

Dorian smirked. He liked to play around with his fighting styles, sure. But at his core he was exactly what his older brother, Houyi, was not. In his basest mode he was the antithesis of order; soon these beasts would know the true meaning of chaos.

The dragons greeted his charge with unhinged jaws overgrown with dagger teeth, raising talons like scythes. Then the violence began.

***

Zenith Plane.

The arrow moved through space. Jez and Houyi both saw it pass smoothly, with shocking slowness, through the air. Yet Jez knew dodging was impossible; if he tried he’d find himself quite stuck. A relaxed smile graced his face. He let his arms droop at his sides. This was a sort of illusion. It wasn’t that the arrow was slow. It was neither fast nor slow—it moved at just the right pace. It only seemed slow because it skewed reality around it; the eyes of the Multiverse itself were trained on its passing. The whole realm seemed to collapse to its form as it crossed halfway between them; three-quarters; then at last mere hairs’ breadths from Jez’s beating heart.

Jez closed his eyes. He put gratefulness in his mind. He let love soak his being. Love to the Universe. To his followers. To himself. And most of all to the man who was about to make love the final emotion he felt.

The arrow tapped gently on his chest.

The world in which he existed tore apart. A grotesque sphere blotted out the place where he stood, reality fraying at its edges; the sphere crumpled inward like a piece of parchment crumpled up. Crinkling into nonbeing. In the tiniest fraction of an instant it was gone, leaving nought but a jagged hole behind. Something was made nothing.

And that was that. One of the most powerful beings in the Multiverse carved away. The arrow did not slow. That small act seemed to have barely exhausted its energies. It flew into the void and was gone. The realm sealed up after it; nothing but a shimmering line of light marked the spot, a scar in the fabric of the Multiverse which would never heal. Some wounds ran too deep. But it was necessary, and it was done.

Houyi let out a breath. He closed his eyes. Three-quarters of his qi gone in a flash. Utterly necessary, in the end…

At the Edge of the Multiverse, with his long eye peering across its breadth, he had scouted Jez these last few centuries. He had mapped the world around the boy. He had charted the past and the distant future; he had played out countless scenarios, had let a thousand variables dance across the surface of his mind. The cognitive load had nearly overwhelmed him. But it was done. Of all the futures he’d forseen—and he’d seen far past this moment—this was among the most bleak. He had hoped not to intervene in person. Alas.

The bulk of the work of the hunt happened before he so much as touched his bow. The act itself, the arrow leaving the string, was but a formality.

Sighing, he made to leave.

And froze.

….

His head swiveled slowly to look at that shimmering white scar.

A tinge of gold glimmered at the tip. Then it spread downward until the whole line bore a signature color with which he was all too familiar. He had seen it so often these last few millennia that there was no mistaking it.

His suspicions were confirmed but a moment later.

The scar tore back open. A being stepped out.

It was not the same body; that much was instantly obvious. Leathery wings extended from the fold. A body thrice as big as a man’s, red-and-black, furred legs like a goat’s and sleek, head like a dragon’s. A demon—but not any mere demon. Houyi knew it on sight.

“Yama,” he breathed. He had gone very still. “The Demon-King of Hell.”

But something was not quite right, and it took him a second glance to place what it was. This thing was not alive. Its body was held together by seams of goldlight: where the joints connected, patching up tears down its legs and chest, sewing on a broken horn.

That was not right either. The body was not alive; the soul within it was. He saw it in the eyes. They glowed with gold light. The creature opened its mouth.

And Houyi knew who spoke before he so much as heard the words.

“I must thank you, great Houyi,” said Jez. His voice was of three pitches, one screeching, one low and hoarse, another level and even; blended together they were agony on the ears. “To bear witness to your arrow is an honor few receive. I shall cherish it for-ever.”

Then the beast began to leak. It began to quiver, as though struggling to contain its energies. It began to steam; trickles of gold spread up from it, and Houyi felt from them a potency which dwarfed even the mightiest of Godkings. It was power no one creature should have been able to hold; like a man grasping hold of the sun. And yet—

“How?” said Houyi softly. He would not lower himself to croak. In that instant he kept his emotions on as tight a leash as they were when he’d had them split from him. He stared at the beast. Now, more than ever, reason had to reign. He took everything in. Reason. Only reason would save him here—would save the Multiverse here. He had to—

“I must admit I obfuscated a corner of the truth, earlier. I must apologize; I am not in the habit of doing so. But it was necessary, to force you to exhaust your energies on a pointless task. To corner you here, on this plane, at your weakest.”

Jez cocked his head. “Truthfully I have transcended being. I am unique in more ways than you know. The creature you know as Jez is not a singular being. I am the Infinity. You may think of me as a parasite, if you wish. I consider myself the host.”

He smiled. “So long as I exist in any-one, across the Multiverse, I cannot truly die. I am eternal. I am infinite. And that is why you were fated to lose from the start. That is why I am fated to become the Multiverse.”

Houyi was silent. Jez sighed.

“You have shown me your greatest strike,” he said softly. “For that I am most grateful. Please—let me repay you in kind.”

The air was very still.

Jez’s finger touched the air, drawing a line. Where his finger passed a weapon was unsheathed, like he’d drawn it from nothing at all: a blade whiter than white, older than time, incandescent in the light of the dusk.