Dorian knew he was going mad. He laughed, he whooped, he howled. It seemed only fitting, since the world had gone mad too. In one fell swoop his a speedrun went upside down. One moment he was in a desert, the next in Hell. One moment he was a peak Godking, the next—whatever the hells this was!

As he veered left and right, dodging boulders and diving baby Rocs and leaping hordes of Hellspawn, and all the while his head felt like it was about to burst open. Every nerve ending on his body screamed at him. But when you’d been mauled as many time as he, that was easy enough to ignore.

It was his thoughts that really had him cringing. That whirlwind mess pressing the insides of his skull to near bursting. Think! Think, damn you! There had to be a way out.

Most of his mind was spent weaving this mad obstacle course. The rest was coming up blank.

He yelped, veering left as a Roc beak snapped shut not a pace away. Near miss. Far too close. His face was drenched in sweat. Odd—he would’ve sworn there was no water left in his body. He was being wrung dry of every last hint of life! His thoughts flowed to him slower now, muddy and syrupy and worryingly warm.

Something. Anything! For the love of Fate!

But Fate did not answer. That silly old coot might’ve been sent back to dust by now for all Dorian knew.

A passing Hellspawn loosed a stream of fire, searing a blackened strip down one side of his body. He hissed, cursed, spat out a gob of black blood. Behind him were a confusion of screeches and roars, bursts of qi. He didn’t know what chased him. If anything still chased him. Didn’t matter—had to keep moving. Here stillness meant death. He raced across a flat field where two hordes of demons clashed in a heated melee, skirting the battle’s edges, thinking furiously.

He had to heal—but how? He had to get a dragonform—but how?!

He grimaced. The only way he could get a dragonform was to consume the embryonic essence of his Bloodline. In other words, to steal the life essence of the unborn Torchdragon to craft his own second body. And for that he needed a whole Torchdragon egg. The qi from the egg alone would be enough to stave off death, to say nothing of the Bloodline.

If only Torchdragons in Hell weren’t like unicorns in Heaven—so rare they were godsdamned mythical. A Torchdragon egg, even rarer than a Torchdragon, would hardly drop out of the sky.

He grimaced harder. …Come to think of it—weren’t there a whole horde of them in the Sinkhole? How had they gotten there? They were natives of Hell. So they must’ve come through a portal. Which meant…

It was like stars connecting to form a perfect constellation in his mind. He gasped.

Then he turned tail and raced straight for the line of volcanoes marked out black in the reddish distance. The only volcanoes in sight.

Rushing to any old volcanic range in Hell expecting to find a Torchdragon egg was a little like diving into any old dumpster and expecting to find a diamond.

But it wasn’t as batty as it seemed. There was only one volcanic range on the horizon. And it was awfully close… Those Torchdragons he’d fought had been baby Torchdragons. They were all born in Upper Realm volcanoes, by nature. Somehow they’d wandered into the Lower Realms—through a portal, surely? It had to be the same one he’d gone through. Portals didn’t grow on trees!

Likely they’d wandered in from a nearby nest, then…

Could there be a Torchdragon nest hidden in that volcanic range?! Where else could it be?

He clung to the thought the way a drowning man clings to a life raft, and went for it. It was far from certain. But what else could he do?!

He went into a trancelike state. All there was was the chaos before him; all he did was thread needle after needle, fire showering above, great beasts hulking by, beaks and fins and claws slashing at him. But he was small and weak—too small to be worth chasing long, too small for anything but small fry to take notice of him. He was wily and tricky and fast besides. And he had that desperate manic thrust to him that only dying animals do. He was frothing. He’d gone mad.

A burst of fire seared his ear as he corkscrewed. An iron feather opened up a gash in his stomach as he went up-side down, dodging between two battling Rocs. The molten landscape rushed up, whooshed past…

He felt it. His eyes went wide. Deep within, Dark Star and his Fire Planet trembled in recognition. Resonance! YES! He could’ve wept then and there. There, in that runty volcano wedged between two giants. Inconspicuous, out-of-the-way. A perfect Torchdragon’s nest.

With a new energy he didn’t know he had he bolted at the feeling, dodging and bobbing. He knew then he wouldn’t make it out the hour, even as his potent qi did the best it could to hold him up. There was too much hurt in him. It was this, or he was done.

Past a killing field of demons, past a herd of gryphons bringing down a howling hellhound, past a bubbling lava-lake where Hellwhales breached, bellowing like foghorns, spewing geysers of molten rock from their blowholes.

Past—he blinked. A strange sight crossed his vision. A sight so out of place that even in his flow state he had to do a double-take.

Directly in front of him, not a hundred strides away, ran a girl. A monkey-girl, by the look of her. Shaggy head of brown hair, a long monkey tail, lithe frame.

On her back was a giant backpack jingling so loud Dorian could hear it even from out here. Strapped to its sides were an assortment of ladles and spoons that would’ve put most kitchens to shame. But none of those things were what caught Dorian’s attention.

First, she was screaming. But it was not the angry screeches of Rocs, nor the warlike bellows of Hellwhales. More—“AHHHHHHHH!!!!”

Second, she held a frying pan in one hand. Frying pan. Red pan, yellow handle.

Third, under her other arm she clutched a struggling minotaur calf.

Fourth, her ass and tail were on fire. Extremely on fire. Purple flames roared up and down her tail, swirling with Fire Laws.

And lastly there was the roaring adult minotaur barreling after her, bulging with knots of crimson muscle, nostrils snorting furious flame.

Ah. That rather explained the ass-on-fire. And the calf. And the screaming.

Dorian watched her pass by, incredulous. She caught his eyes. She winked.

She vanished behind a shelf of rock and was gone.

He blinked. …What.

Was he having fever dreams, in the daytime? He must be madder than he thought.

At last he arrived at the base of the Volcano, panting his lungs out. The Resonance was stronger than ever. He squinted up at its boiling peak. Time for another climb. Thank the ruined Heavens this thing was a runt of a mountain—

His mistake was that he’d taken a second to think.

A Hellspawn clambered out of the cracks below. It took that second to leap at him. His mistake nearly cost him what was left of his guts. Only a tingle at the back of his spine, a singing at his extremities, screamed at him to flee.

Up the volcano he went, a tiny black-and-red blur, feeling his senses slipping away from him as he did. The world was starting to float and blur. A dark warmth was wrapping him up in earnest. He gritted his teeth, bit at his tongue, did every little thing he could to force himself not only to stay awake, but to stay alive. He streaked on, beastly cries and roars ringing in his ears, expecting any second for a claw or beak or blast of qi to shoot him from the sky.

None came. Over the lip of the volcano he went; then a long whoosh of scorching wind crisped his ears, and he splashed into the boiling magma below with a gentle thunk. It all came to him from very far away, fuzzy-edged fragments of feeling. He felt like he was watching himself doing it from outside his body, and he knew then that he was on the threshold of death. His soul clung on—but for how much longer?

His Resonance pulsed stronger…

Only once he’d splattered into the magma did he snap back to himself.

Suddenly he was slapped awake; he shuddered, hacked, drew in a mouthful of magma. His eyes bulged. This magma of the Lower Realms—even the magma outside the volcano—was mere boiling water in comparison to this. The power of the Fire Laws coursing through it, the density, the purity of the qi was like nothing he knew in this life. It was hardly even magma as he knew it! It was so suffused in law that this liquid was the concept of burning, made physical.

Yet it didn’t burn him. Didn’t so much as scald his lungs!

This magma felt like but a warm bath to him, soaking him head-to-waist in a gentle embrace, like a mother cradling its child. The strangest feeling washed across him. Somehow it felt like home.

A tingling, starting in his chest, spreading down his trunk. The fiery qi soaked him. It daubed at his bloody wounds. It knitted torn skin together. He could even feel his reserves lapping it up, filling up a sliver…

It must’ve been some innate property of Torchdragons in its birthplace—an Upper-Realm volcano. He’d long suspected something like this. It was often the case that Spirit Beasts had a special affinity for their natural habitats. In his panicked frenzy earlier he’d considered dashing to the nearest volcano for just this purpose. Maybe his Bloodline would save him.

But he’d also quickly discarded the thought. He’d had a suspicion his wounds were far too grievous for anything but extraordinary means to mend.

Sadly it seemed he’d guessed right there too. The magma helped, but that was all. If he floated here healing he’d still be dead within the hour.

Still… it was peaceful. Lying there, drowning in weariness, he took a breath’s worth of time to lie there. To collect himself for the first time since he’d been thrown into Hell. To let this tattered body take a brief rest before it made the final plunge.

There were creatures here. Massive creatures lurking the depths. Their auras washed over him, fathomless as ocean trenches. But these were no mere Hellwhales, no baby Rocs; they paid him no heed. He was like a floating speck of algae to them.

Just as well. Clutching tight to the Javelin, he dove.

Great currents buoying untold swathes of melted metals and dissolved rock churned about. Forces and Laws that far eclipsed his being loomed and tugged and worked in this terrifying machinery. But the volcano welcomed him, eased his way forth, and currents that would’ve torn apart an intruder blessed his journey instead, shunting him farther along. Down and down he went…

The Resonance was like a clear bell chiming in his mind. There were more than one, now he felt for it—a glittering chorus, subtle and soft… Eggs!

And there was no great blot of Torchdragon qi nearby, either. No guardian. Maybe it’d gone out to hunt. Maybe Torchdragons simply left their eggs ‘till hatching time. Whatever the case he was so relieved he nearly blacked out.

Heavens… am I actually going to survive this?!

He dove for it, feeling out the way with instinct and guesswork. The qi here was so dense it blinded his mortal Spiritual Senses. Only by dint of his Bloodline could he withstand it. By now even the auras of those massive volcano-dwellers he’d sensed earlier were far above him. It was like being at the ocean floor; the heat, the qi, the pressure here was its own cruel barrier. It crushed everything. It’d crush him, too, if it wasn’t for his Bloodline.

Half-guessing, groping his way forth like a blind man, he made his way closer. He began to quiver—from excitement or exhaustion he couldn’t tell. Probably exhaustion. He was running on naught but grit as he neared.

There was an air pocket. Hidden well, behind a thick rocky ledge in the volcanic walls, but it was there. He felt the Resonances within, calling out softly to him. He steered up to it.

Then his heart did that little fluttering thing—that thump-thump, thump-thump, like a sputtering flame about to give out. Shit—not again!

As fast as he could he swam up to the entrance. Dorian was small enough he didn’t even need to move the boulder, just squeeze past it into a huge tunnel beyond. Then he steered straight up—

—and brushed up against a web of Dark qi. A fractal mesh that encircled the air pocket, simmering with Darkness Laws far beyond his comprehension. It put a lid of qi on the tunnel. The entrance was warded.

No surprise there. Torchdragons had their own esoteric magics. This one was keyed to the Torchdragon Bloodline. Only they were permitted entrance—a sensible choice, since the mother of this brood was almost certainly the only creature with a Torchdragon’s blood within a hundred thousand li.

The only creature, that was, beside Dorian.

With the last of his strength, he launched himself up and through the mesh. It shivered as he passed. But it let him through.

And he was free, flopping into open air, cackling mad as mad could be. He landed on his belly and looked up.

There, lying before him in a bed of ash, was a huge, glowing egg.