One plain arrow flew through the void, slow and heavy, like a battleship cruising inky seas. Its aim was true as it traced an arc through the Multiverse…

***

“Again.”

Dorian rushed at his brother, teeth bared, smiling wide as a jackal. The storm began. Feint jab. Feint jab. Cross to the body, pivot, jab-cross-headkick and a dip out, smooth as you like.

Houyi looked positively bored.

Block. Block. Dodge, dodge-dodge-block. Then, timed in perfect unison with Dorian’s dip, a vicious stomp to Dorian’s midsection. Wheezing, he was sent sprawling across the training field.

Dorian cursed, scrambling to his feet. Houyi looked on impassively. “Again.”

“How?!”

“You’re predictable.”

Dorian spat out a clump of weeds, then glared. “Oh, come off it! I had no pattern. I wasn’t even thinking as I moved! That was pure improvisation!”

“It’s sloppy.”

“I won the City Tournament with that ‘sloppiness.’” said Dorian loftily. “The Martial Elders said I’m a genius.”

Houyi arched a brow. “That says more about them than you.”

“Hmph. Why do I get the feeling you think every way of fighting that isn’t yours is sloppy?”

“Because it’s true,” said Houyi with a shrug.

“Prick.” Dorian snorted. “Tell me how you did it.”

“It’s simple.” There was that look again, that expression which on a less regal face might be a smirk. On his it was a sort of subtle smugness. Infuriating.

“There is no such thing as the new,” he said. “Innovation is an illusion. It is a recombination of old parts. There are only so many patterns of footwork, so many optimal paths to strike with the Techniques at your disposal. You can play with timing, and angles, and distance. But there are only so many moves.”

“And?” Dorian raised a brow. “Old Pangu had just one move—[Fist of the New World]. He used it over and over! Everyone knew it was coming. They still couldn’t stop it.”

“I won because I know not only your toolbox, but also how you will use it.” Houyi stared flatly at him. “I have in my mind a complete model of your mind. I know what you will do before you do it—I know what you will do before you know you will do it. Thus the instant you set foot on a path, I am there to meet you at its end. When you decide to strike I have already thrown the counter. I see the future and the past. In the end I always win.”

He crossed his arms. “This is what you ought to aim for. There is no future in chaos. Your style is childish. You should have discarded it long ago, little brother. So I have said to you again, and again, and again.”

Dorian considered this for a long moment. At last—“Nah,” he said, smiling. “I’m just not good enough at it yet. I’ll catch you one day. You just watch!”

“…You’ll never learn, will you?” Houyi shook his head, gave a long-suffering sigh. Then a slow, begrudging smile spread across his face. “Fine. Go on, then. Surprise me.”

***

Very few things in this Multiverse could put this expression on Jez’s face.

His mouth hung slightly open. His eyes bulged, twitching, threatening to fall off his face. He stared at the spot where Dorian had winked at him. At the patch of glass where a shadow had once been, then winked out. At the charred clump of gold qi-threads sticking the ground, swaying gently in the lazy winds.

He kept blinking. Blinking and staring. “How—?“

Then a shadow loomed over him. A grating screech blasted him, loud enough to splinter the glass he stood on. He turned to face this strange newcomer—this pet of Dorian’s he’d apparently summoned from thin air to free him.

A dragon. Sleek curves made its face; its spines jutted like a shelf of knives, masterfully crafted. A lovely beast, well-made.

Then it opened its mouth and made to scorch him.

He sighed, raised his hand, drew a clean horizontal line. The scene stood still. Jez waited. Then gravity finally took its toll; the great neck, head and all, slid from the lower half of the body and thundered into the sands. The body still stood upright, balanced nicely on big deadened hindlegs. Well-made indeed.

Jez turned back to the empty spot, the spot Dorian had been.

“…Heh. I see. Well done,” he whispered, eyes twinkling.

Slowly, to nobody in particular, he began to clap.

***

Kaya woke and immediately wished she hadn’t. Her head pounded something awful. Her vision was littered with yawning black holes. There was no spit in her mouth. She felt dry as a rotten carcass. She groaned, propping herself up to her arms. It was about as far as her body was willing to go.

“Good evening,” a voice said softly. She looked up.

It was the strange man with gold eyes, silhouetted against a sky the color of burning. Jez. The one she’d struck a bargain with! It all seemed so distant now, now that the rush was past and she was all hollowed out.

“Wh-where am I?” she croaked. She felt as beaten as a strip of old jerky. She could hardly swivel her head about. What she could see made no sense. A big ol’ hole in the ground, steel walls torn up, broken, sagging open like tent-flaps along jagged zippers. The sound of silence, heavy as fog, hanging over it all.

“This is the Azcan Oasis,” said Jez. “Or rather, what’s left of it.”

His words floated in one ear and out the other. They made no sense. She frowned. “What?”

“It’s all gone,” said Jez with a sigh.

Kaya opened her mouth. No sound came out.

“There was a duel between deities. An attack went awry…I’m sorry. When godly powers enter mortal realms these things happen.”

She looked round again, slower this time, struggling to take it all in. Her head pounded, fiercer now. She hadn’t much connection to this folk—in fact they’d been asses to her since the moment she’d come!—but still…

“I wish it weren’t this way either.” Jez’s eyes seemed to glow in the sunset. “I’d like to make a world where this sort of thing never has to happen. Where each and every creature is free to pursue their joys—free from the oppressions of the powerful! Where we can all share in the wonders of qi. But many people don’t like that. And sometimes there’s no other way.”

Kaya took that in silently. They sat there for a while, letting the acrid smell of smoke, the ruined sights, the warm colors of the sunset wash over them.

Then—“This duel,” she said softly. “Was one of the deities you?”

“Yes.”

“Was the other my brother?”

No hesitation. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

She lunged for his throat. She hardly made it a foot off the ground; gently he caught her arm and lowered her back down. “You’re injured,” he said, brows furrowing. He looked genuinely concerned. “Rest. There will be time to hurt me later.”

“You—!” she snarled. “I—I shoulda known there was something off about you! About all that—that gold stuff!”

The city burned. It all felt like a fever dream, these past few weeks, like she’d been drunk off something far stronger than wine and was only now sobering. She lay there trembling.

But still there was an itch prickling at the back of her mind, strengthening by the second. A want. The gold qi, it felt like living. It felt so right. It plugged some hole in her she didn’t even know she had. Yet…

She growled, shaking her head.

“Your brother,” said Jez sadly, “Is dead.”

Her head snapped up. Her eyes were wide, red-rimmed. “Huh?!”

“You’ve noticed the changes, surely.” Jez cocked his head. “For a decade and a half Io was one way, I’ll wager. And these last few weeks he became another. Am I right?”

Kaya gaped at him. Her heart lurched. It felt like someone had taken a hammer and split her head clean in two. She instantly felt defensive, and yet—yet—

He’d just something some dark horrible deep-down part of her thought. But up ‘till know she couldn’t bring herself to face it, couldn’t make herself believe. But the ugly thing was out there now, hanging in the air.

“…How’d you know?” she whispered.

“I didn’t kill your brother. The monster that wears your brother’s skin did. He’s a tricky one.”

“…”

“A monster I’ve been tracking for quite some time, a monster who has long schemed cruelties like this. His name is Dorian. He is in truth a Godking—among the most infamous Godkings of all, one who leaves great suffering in his wake wherever he goes. In my perfect world there won’t be anyone like him.”

Kaya stared up at him, wide-eyed. She was finding it hard to speak. She was finding it hard to think.

“At first I wished to convert him…wishful thinking, perhaps.” He chuckled ruefully. “Then I trapped him. I thought I had him! But even at the bottom of an ocean he can find a breath of air, it seems…he’s gone, now. Far gone.”

He chuckled. Then he eyed her.

“All is not lost.” His hand hadn’t left her wrist. “As Fate would have it, we have a body that shares blood with his own! A sibling. Through the use of your shared blood, and a great deal of scrying, perhaps we can track him down again.”

“…”

“Will you help me?” His eyes met her own. “Will you help me avenge the death of your brother, and bring justice to Dorian for good?”

***

Dorian found himself in a blank white space he was frankly getting sick of.

Another damned vision?! He was in the middle of bleeding out! He hardly had time to waste on this nonsense. As far as he knew, his body—the mangled remains of his torso—was lying facedown in literal Hell! He was minutes from bleeding out. That was if the djinn and imps and drakes and all manner of awful critters didn’t take him first.

“What now, Fate?!” he snapped.

A figure materialized before him in plain cloth dress, plain face. Dorian stopped cold.

“Not quite,” said Houyi dryly. “Greetings, little brother. How have you been? Still keeping up with your footwork drills, I hope.”

A beat. Then Dorian tackled him. But in this unreal realm their bodies were both ghostly; he went straight through to the other side.

Houyi raised a brow. “I see.”

Dorian crossed his arms, looking as cross as he could manage. “How could you let yourself lose to that—that—smiley moron?”

A snort. “You hardly did any better.”

“I—“ Dorian spluttered. “I’m not you, you buffoon! You’re Houyi! In your duel with the Raindragon King you modeled every godsdamned grain of sand on the beach! You look decades ahead. How the hells didn’t you see this coming?!”

“I did,” said Houyi, rolling his eyes. “Sometimes foresight is not enough. You can know what your opponent will do. You can know how and when they will do it. Yet in the face of absolute power none of that matters. I had to pick my battles.”

“…I see” said Dorian.”…So.”

“So.”

“It has been a few millennia. It’s well past due we caught up. But unfortunately I’m about to bleed out. In Hell. So time’s rather short.”

“Ah, yes.” Houyi smirked. “And you’ve landed in a most ironic Circle of Hell, I must say. Fate has a sense of humor.”

Dorian ignored the jab. He sighed. Idiot brother. Fate of the Multiverse on the line and he still had time to jibe. “I liked you better split up.”

“So do I,” said Houyi. “Unfortunately that is no longer possible. I’ve been wounded rather horribly. And trapped, for good measure. I shall be of no use to your dying body. I shall be of no use to anyone for a very long time.”

“…So I’m fucked. We’re all fucked.”

“Not necessarily.” Houyi’s eyes twinkled. “You are right in a sense. I did see this coming.”

“But what’s the use?!” cried Dorian. “You failed!”

“Not necessarily.” An enigmatic smile. “This duel between Jez and I is, shall we say, unfinished. How it ends depends on you.”

“What in the Nine Hells is that supposed to mean?!”

Houyi scratched his chin. “There is a way out,” he said finally. “Seek out the Infinity Hearts. They are the locus of his power. They must be dealt with. But first—you shall not survive in Hell long in humanform. And a human with a Bloodline transfusion shall not cut it. You will need a dragonform. Rather fortuitous you’ve got a Torchdragon lineage. After that…”

He frowned, then shrugged. “Too many variables. Too hard to calculate. I’ve done all I can. There is a resistance. Fate is doing his best, and at last others are listening. Do try not to be eaten in the meantime? You have landed in a rather thorny spot. The power vacuum you left has led to a mess. But it is your own doing, I fear… Perhaps it’s fitting you’re left to deal with its consequences. Best of luck.”

He paused. “Oh—and…” His expression softened. “It is wonderful to see you again after all this time, little brother. Truly. Do take care.”

“Wait—“

The scene dissolved.

***

Dorian woke up, and immediately wished he hadn’t. His head pounded like his brain was trying to break free of his skull. He groaned, flopping on his back, and opened his eyes.

And frowned.

He glanced back up. The portal had dropped him in the same plain: smoldering red rock, broken up, floating on a lake of sluggish magma. A ring of volcanoes gurgled shining lava in the distance. He squinted. It was a strangely familiar plain, now that he had a second to really take it in… He squinted harder.

There were bodies here littered all about the plain, coated in a thin layer of volcanic ash. Dried-up remnants. Strewn like torn puzzle-pieces on the molten ground; a few limbs here, a head there. If you squinted, you could make out the vague outlines of Igrits and Djinn and gargoyles.

….

He could not believe what he was seeing.

If he was not mistaken—if he was where he thought he was—this level of Hell was filled with warring demon kingdoms, hordes of roaming djinn, lairs and dungeons even he hadn’t dared touch as he ascended. Where every passing beast could be a demigod, where dead Godkings made long-buried tombs, horrible spirits and ghosts ruled the skies. Where great opportunities and greater dangers lurked in equal measure. It was the most treacherous, most vile layer of Hell.

He knew this because he had died here many, many, many times.

He knew this because—more pertinently—he had just been here.

In fact he was not fifty strides away from the spot where, mere months prior, he had stabbed Demon King Yama through with a sword the color of blood.

“FUUUUUUUUUUU—“ was all he got out before ash rushed into his mouth, choking him. Above him coal clouds shifted in a starless, sunless sky.

So began Dorian’s adventure through the Ninth Circle of Hell!

…Again.

The final run began now.