As Demigods, demons were still infants. Primal, more feeling than sense. But a rush of pure aggression animating a body dripping with tar qi, brimming with teeth, still made for a hell of a fight—like being set upon by a pack of rabid hounds. There must’ve been a few dozen of them up on the ridge of the crater, stark black cutouts in the somber purple sky.

They leapt, hissing and cackling and screeching, a ragged tide of falling shadows. They swamped his sight. He snarled. Serpent’s senses!

It was the first time he’d called on the Technique in his new body. His pupils dilated, then shrunk. He gasped.

The air was hot, muggy, tinged with sulfur, flecked with a starburst of ashy flavors. The shadows arrested. They floated down toward him as though through oil. The demon at the front was a tiny thing, a sprite of knitted bones; he could make out each tiny wrinkle lining the hollow sockets of its eyes as it grinned.

The neat thing about Serpent’s Senses was it let him think. It let him react with intelligence. To conjure split-second tactics. But it was no true time dilation, as those Gods of Time could manage. He couldn’t move any faster in time than the demons bearing down upon him.

So if he went close combat now he might strike down two or three—then the rest would mob him. And, worse, mob Sun. Monkey-girl was still doing a very convincing ragdoll impression.

No Sun, no Interspatial Ring, no Jingu Bang, none of whatever Wukong heirloom treasures she had stashed away…

He cursed. Saving himself would be enough of a pain as is! Protecting others would make this a nightmare. Especially since it was something he was hardly in the habit of doing. It meant he was stuck to her—it took out most of his room to maneuver.

Looking up at that distinctly unappetizing wall of snapping teeth and dripping Rot Laws he thought about leaving the girl to her fate. It would be so easy.

Then he thought about the three Torchdragon Eggs she had stashed away in her Ring, and sighed.

He opened his mouth. He felt his throat burning, saw a dark crimson glow pour out of his unhinged jaws. Dragon’s breath!

Fire and Darkness were one, a perfect fusion. The hate of Fire and the destruction of Death laced cruelly together. The beam that left him seemed the expression of an emotion, a most vicious kind of loathing—blacker than black, burning so hot it made the air about it blush a fierce red.

Then it made contact with the first of the falling Demons. The sprite’s hollow eyes widened.

It was all it managed before its whole being—demigod qi and all—was reduced to dust. The dust was putrid gas in the same breath. The beam screamed out, running through a half-dozen demons beside it.

In that instant seven gods, creatures that would’ve run roughshod through any Lower Realm, were no more.

Dorian blinked. There was a reason the Torchdragons were legendary—a reason he nearly took for granted, after fighting so many. Certain beasts you challenged at your own peril. A quarter of his qi was eaten up in a flash—more than worth it.

Then the rest of the demons were on him.

He bared his teeth, and took them on in an embrace of blood and claws. Red and black streaks carved the air, sinking into deeper black, deeper still, carving through, bursting out the other side in a shower of inky gore. The Demon’s eyes bulged, glanced down. The wound seethed with withering Laws. Another stroke gaped its neck wide open. Each strike of Dorian’s smoldered at the tips, Fire Laws burning at demonic flesh like it was fresh timber. But Dorian was already spinning, setting his claws into another demon, ripping down once, twice; it fell before him, smoldering like bonfires. It was so easy! He looked down at his hands, astonished. Were these real demigods? He’d fought demons of Hell before in other Demigod bodies. It was never like this.

Ten claw slashed out in a cross, trailing jagged lines of hateful qi. A demon—great big potbellied thing, built like a boar, burst open like a smashed melon. Its insides were the same color as its outsides, and they smoked as the Laws in Dorian’s claws did their horrible work. A gob of noxious qi flew at Dorian’s head. He ducked, watched it flatten a demon behind. Then he made mincemeat of the one who’d tried him. Laws of Fire and Darkness thickened the air. He was laughing as he whirled, grinning wide and cruel like a demon himself. He let the next strike hit him. An apelike thing, fist coated in Rotting Laws, smashed straight into his chest. He watched it glance off, fascinated. The Laws fled when they met his chestplate.

He drove a hand through its head.

The trouble was these things were dumb. They were too stupid to be scared. He’d need to kill them all. He licked some blood off his lips. The way things were going, it would be long—

Three leapt overhead. Right for Sun. He cursed, turning, and ate a horn to his back for his trouble. He whirled around. Some kind of rhinoceros demon, all black ooze save for a massive horn wreathed in Dark Laws. All it touched would wither; even being near it would do active damage to a mortal’s life. It was a blow that would’ve been fatal mere days before.

But now it merely clanged right off his backplates. He raked five fingers across the thing’s face, making mincemeat of it in an instant. Then he leapt for Sun, somersaulting through the air, cursing harder. The demons were almost upon her—

His tail gored one right through the chest. It looked down, surprised at the harpoon-like spike protruding where its heart had once been. Then his tail arched farther, thwacking aside two demons like he was swatting flies. He crouched beside her, feet carving thick lines into the brimstone ground as he whirled to face the rest, teeth bared.

A dozen left spread out in a loose circle, and his dragon breath was heating up again in his chest. A few more seconds and it’d be primed to go again.

They didn’t give him the chance. They sprung at him from all sides. He caught one with his tail mid-air. He struck down a second, gashed a third. Then the rest piled into him, a whirlwind of bludgeoning and slicing and biting. A torrent of qi blasted him.

It was then he found he wasn’t invincible. His scales weren’t full-body. On his upper arms, down his sides, on his forehead sprouted lines of shocking pain. Still he danced with the demons, bringing them down with prejudice.

Then something swept his legs out from under him. He fell awkwardly as four others piled on over, thumping, hissing, blasting waste qi all over him; a few gobs got into his eyes. He howled, building up to the knees, trying to get up before a ramming at his side bowled him over again. It wasn’t at all dire; he was hardly hurt. It was more annoying than anything.

There was a sharp gasp. He chanced a glance over. Sun had chosen an inconvenient time to wake. She looked horrified.

Then she leapt to her feet. A red-and-yellow flash and a pan appeared in her hands. She wound up and chucked it right at him and the demon-pile kicking the shit out of him.

It grew as it flew. First it was pan-sized. Then it was the size of an oven. Then a kitchen table. Then a house. He watched, horrified, as it bore down upon them. A massive shadow fell across them. A handful of demons looked up.

Then it flattened them all with a hearty CLANG!

Something hit Dorian hard. For a few seconds all Dorian saw was darkness. His head felt all gummed up, throbbing with white stars. Down seemed like up seemed like down, and he dearly wished he could vomit. He would’ve been a little worried he’d been killed by the blow if not for the fact that he’d been dead before. It felt nothing as shitty as this. He felt like his brain had been wrung dry and stuffed full of cottonballs and set on fire for good measure.

Then the pan flew off them and Dorian was exposed once more to a swirling purple sky. No—the sky wasn’t swirling. His sight was swirling. Groaning he stumbled to his feet, blinking bright spots from his eyes.

The demons around him weren’t faring much better. They tripped over themselves, clutching at their heads, spitting gouts of qi in random directions. One was trying to rip out its own tongue. It was something in the Jingu Bang! Some kind of horrendous mind magic?

Sun, meanwhile, was gearing up for another throw.

“Stop—helping!” Dorian grunted, fighting the overwhelming urge to bang his head against the ground.

“Oh.” She blinked. “Oops!”

At least the Bang’s strike had settled the demons. It seemed to affect him less than them; they were writhing while he merely had the worst concussion of his existence. Drunkenly he went through the bunch, feeding them claws. And that was that.

All in all, a commendable test of his new body! He’d put himself somewhere in the range of an elite Demigod’s power levels. Handling mindless beasts like these was a lot easier than he’d expected. He would’ve felt a lot more pleased in the moment if his head didn’t feel like it was folding in on itself.

A pang of nausea nearly knocked him over. He spat. Whose idea was it to give the Jingu Bang to a demigod? That thing was a threat to Godkings! It was like handing a prized katana to a toddler.

“I saw what you did, you know.” The voice warbled over to him, loud-soft. It took him a moment to identify it as Sun. He glanced blearily at her. “Uh?”

“You saved me!” She had tears in her eyes. He blinked. She sniffled. “I would’ve died there. But you—out of the goodness of your heart, you stayed…Wow…”

“Uh,” said Dorian. He ran a quick mental calculus. How hard would it be to extort her in his current condition? Rather hard, probably, given he could hardly stand up straight.

“Well—“ She paused. “Either that, or you were keeping me alive so you could get at the goodies in my Interspatial Ring!” She frowned. “A less happy thought…”

Dorian couldn’t for the life of him figure out if she was very stupid or very perceptive. Was she about to hug him or kill him? She rather looked like she wanted to do both.

“Which one is it?” She studied him. “Grandpa used to tell me, ‘always assume the worst in people! That way you never get hurt.’” She paused. “But I hated that old shithead! So to me you’re the first. A dragonkin with a heart of gold! Huzzah! It must be Fate.”

She winked at him, like they were sharing an inside joke.

Then she glanced down his body and hissed. “Oh my.”

Dorian did too. …When had that happened?

Apparently the demons had done more than he’d felt. Everywhere that wasn’t armored festered with Laws of Rot, stopping gaping gashes down his sides from healing. It wasn’t life-threatening. Left untreated, though…

A slash of pain sent him reeling, a white bar running up the center of his vision. He knelt down, dry heaving.

“Ah!” Sun winced. “Right. Sorry about that! You’ll be feeling it for a few hours yet. The Jingu really does a number on people.”

She frowned. She seemed to be debating with herself. Then she shrugged. “I guess you did save me, whatever your motives were….Um. Why don’t you come with me? I’ve got a secret hideout you can rest in while it passes! I keep some nifty treasures there that’ll help. You’re hardly in any condition to—“

He hacked up a splattering of black acid. She winced. “Yeah…You might have a rough time of it while it lasts… and I guess it is my fault you’re like this—“

“Yes!” He gasped. He was finding it rather hard to think in straight lines. His thoughts ricocheted like lottery balls in his skull. “Take me!”