Entering the Swamp felt like wading into the stomach of some giant serpent. Thick murky juices sloshed at your ankles. Thick boughs blocked out the sun high above. There were paths here—paths that often ended abruptly—some much more well-trodden than others. Glowing mushrooms with leapord-like spots drifted like reeds, moved by some invisible wind.

“Follow my footsteps,” said Dorian. “Cloak, keep alert, and do as I say. Got it?”

The first thing he had them do was to sink a hand into the swamp and splash themselves with muck. To her credit Sun didn’t bother asking why. She simply did it. She looked rather happy to do it, like a child in a playpen.

“You can’t cloak scents yet,” explained Dorian. “It’s to mask our smell.”

“Ooh.”

“I told you—there is no trick to this Swamp. I am the trick,” he whispered. “Stick with me and good things will happen. I have a response for almost everything this Swamp has.” “Almost everything?” said Sun. Then she winced and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, sorry! Old habit! It’s all so much more real once you’re actually in it… err…” She gestured around them. “Wait. Please tell me that’s bark on that tree.”

Dorian looked to her pointing. A thick coarse tree trunk much like any other in the Swamp, with rings running up its length. “That is not, in fact, bark,” breathed Dorian. “That is give-or-take six hundred sleeping Flesheater Cicadas. What you are pointing at is their camouflaged shells. About half of what looks like exposed bark in this Swamp is, in fact, a Cicada shell. Which reminds me! Another thing: touch nothing.”

Sun nodded very quickly. “Gotcha.”

“Don’t take so much as a step outside my footsteps. If we do this right it’ll look like we’re going through an ordinary swamp. But one misstep, one lean against the wrong tree… well.”

“Mm-hm!” Sun paused. “I think I’ll stop asking questions, actually. I really don’t want to know the answers. Just tell me what to do! Let’s get out of here fast.”

“That’s the plan.”

They forged on, hacking through the thick undergrowth. Dorian let his nose chart the course. His had grown surprisingly sharp after achieving his hybrid form. He wondered now how he’d be after he ingested the rest of his Torchdragon Eggs—and hopefully got to First Form. Could he navigate the world by scent alone?

The greater part of ten minutes passed like that. There was this uniquely insectoid buzz, a low level hackle-raising sound rattling from every tree. There were gurgles and burbles and the occasional far-off groan, which sounded like either a tectonic plate shifting or the death throes of some massive beast.

Above them, nearly invisible in the gloom, Dorian made out eyes camouflaged in those high boughs. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, half-lidded and murky. Watching, waiting. They could’ve been acorns.

At some point the ground had started to grow soggier, less stable. Dorian pointed at a dark patch—a circle like a pothole. “Do not step over that,” he said. He skirted around it with exaggerated steps.

Sun glanced up, startled. “Why—sorry. Yessir!” And did as told.

It was refreshing. Like having a smarter, much more useful—although much more annoying, more cowardly, and less tractable version of Kaya. With Kaya they’d probably have died in this Swamp five times over by now. Sun showed a different level of care.

He blinked. How odd a path for his mind to wander. That mortal realm tribe-girl was of no real relation to him. She was a brief blip in the darkness, likely already gone back to dust. There had been something charming about her pitbull determination. She’d been the kind of person who never stayed down; you had to knock her out. It was one of those traits you never wished to have, but found strangely endearing—like seeing a man who was just dumb enough to be happy all the time. Ah, well.

Then a poke in the back jerked him out of his thoughts.

“Hello?”

Dorian met Sun’s big eyes. He realized he’d been standing, frowning, for a good five seconds.

They forged onwards.

As they went, the patches circles in the ground thickened, widened. They grew as wide as wagon wheels—then wider.

“We’re getting to the middle region of the Swamp,” whispered Dorian. Then he froze, wide-eyed, and held up a finger.

A shaggy creature drifted out from a knot of trees to their right. It passed slowly before them. A slothlike thing with too many legs and tufts of thick fur covering the eyes, gliding across the surface of the Swamp as though over ice. It had no aura at all. It didn’t turn to look at them. It simply went on its way.

It passed over a dark patch. Nothing happened. It passed over another. Nothing. Then, when it was almost clear across the expanse, it went over a third.

A giant skeletal hand shot out, snagging the thing by a leg. A hand exuding the aura of Godhood. Sun choked. Another lashed out, snatching a hind leg. A third and a fourth erupted from the depths. All with Gods’ strength, and no mere beginner either. Each one could’ve dragged Dorian and Sun both under, and their nails were clawed and gleaming purple—laced with fearsome Laws of Poison.

The shaggy sloth creature frowned down at its attackers as though they were buzzing flies. Then it yawned. Its mouth blew out, exposing flat white teeth big as tombstones. It stretched lazily as if it were a dog. Then it shook its body. A circle of qi rippled down its body and the hands were blasted away; from within the bog came a chorus of wretched screeches. The sloth ambled on unperturbed. Seconds later it vanished into the undergrowth.

“This really needn’t be said,” said Dorian pleasantly. “But don’t touch the bog. Tread carefully. Follow me.”

They waded through the murky shallows, taking special care to circle around the deep bits. Sun’s steps grew skittish the farther they went. He caught her eyelids twitching. The hairs on her tail were so straight she could’ve been electrified.

“Another trick: Relax! To ass-pull correctly you need to be able to walk a tightrope as though it were a sidewalk. I can’t have a partner shitting themselves mid-job.”

“While I really do appreciate the tips,” gasped Sun, whose face was turning quite red. “Half of my brain is doing its best to shut up the other half of my brain, which really wants to run out of here screaming! Can’t really internalize stuff right now. Maybe after we’re done, eh?”

“Fair enough.”

A few more steps. Then Dorian held out a hand.

The bog before them was bubbling. A skeletal hand reached out. Then another. There was a splash, and the skeleton of what looked to be a boar hauled itself out of the depths. Peak Demigod. It sniffed.

Its eerie green qi-eyes found Dorian’s.

“Oh shit!” said Sun. “Burn it!”

“No fires. No wild movements. The last thing you want to do in here is draw attention.”

Instead, Dorian drew out his Yama’s Chains.

It was pleasantly subtle. The shadows shifted with natural grace, and when they coalesced to chains they hardly seemed there at all. They were something murky, indistinct. Soft smudges of dusk.

The boar sniffed, pawing the waters. It stepped closer, tensing suddenly, preparing a charge.

Dorian caught it then. One chain hooked the neck. The other took the tail. Then, with all the vigor of a serpentine lineage, he twisted and squeezed.

The boar stamped. The boar shivered. Its legs thrashed, rippling the surface of the waters. But it was so bound it could hardly do anything else. There were a series of CRACK-CRACK-CRACKs. Gently Dorian popped off its head, letting the body sink easily into the depths.

Sun let out a sigh. Wiping sweat off her forehead she threw him a thumbs-up, grinning. He didn’t have the heart to tell her a low-level Skeleton was perhaps the least dangerous thing that could’ve come out of the bog. They kept moving.

The bogs kept growing bigger. The Dao Fruit scent grew sharper. The trees thickened, their trunks now fat, sagging and gnarled, like wood potbellies. Their leaves blocked out all the sky. And the buzzing, above them, all around them, locusts clustered atop locusts. Far too many to count.

It was Sun that detected them first. And she only did so because she was looking in the right direction. That was—everywhere.

“Do you hear that?”

“You’ll need to be a bit more specific.” Dorian gestured about them. The forest was screaming at them from every which way.

“Behind us. That… clinking. Real soft, but it sounds like metal. There’s not supposed to be metal in a Swamp, is there?”

Dorian didn’t have her sense of hearing. But he cast a glance behind them and strained, trying to pick it out. Nothing. “Are you sure you’re not being paranoid?”

“Yup! That was my first thought. I triple-checked! It’s through the bushes, off the beaten path—“

He felt it before he heard it. A bolt of sickly yellow qi wrapped in pulsing bands of Law raced out from between two tree trunks. He threw up a Void Shield on instinct. Blackness swirled into being, catching the bolt like a glove, swallowing it whole. It vanished in a muffled hiss—taking a good tenth of Dorian’s qi with it.

A God threw that. A very reckless God, with intent to kill. Those were powerful Laws of Explosion. It might’ve been the worst thing to throw here. Whoever threw that didn’t care that he might draw the attention of the true dangers of this Swamp.

Either that, or he was too foolish to know otherwise. Dorian didn’t know which was worse

A squawk in the bushes. Then a creature in a bloodred cloak burst out. He looked like a man, only his skin was pale as snow, eyes slitted and yellow, and two ram’s horns burst out from his temples. Dhampir: half-vampire, half-man. He was dressed head-to-toe in the furthest thing from Swamp’s attire: all silks and sashes. In his hand was a compass, a single drop of blood at its center. Blood compass.

An expensive device, and very rare besides; few craftsmen in Hell were capable of such deep scrying and blood magics. It swallowed qi like nothing else. It took the droplet of blood at its center as its North Star. In this case it pointed straight to Dorian. This one seemed sophisticated enough to bypass even Sun’s cloaking.

That Prince of Ur Dorian had seen at the Swamp’s entrance was clearly one of the less resourceful ones. If there were bands like these hunting him through this Swamp this journey just got a Hells of a lot more annoying.

Beside him Sun gave out a little cry. She had gone stiff as a statue, but Dorian put a hand on her shoulder and winked. Oh, relax, child. I’ve got this.

“Fuck!” The Dhampir snarled. Behind him a line of assorted monsters—minotaurs, gargoyles, demons—emerged from the trees, stepping gingerly around the deep spots of bog. All radiated the aura of Gods. There were a dozen of them, maybe more—far too many to handle, even for Dorian. They eyed Dorian hungrily. The Dhampir cuffed the gargoyle beside him, who squawked. He nearly dropped the thick chains in his hands.

“What did I tell you? The chains drag, idiot! You’ve ruined the shot!”

“Sorry, my Prince,” groaned the gargoyle.

“No matter,” sighed the Dhampir. He strolled leisurely toward them, a crooked, grotesque grin forming on his face. “It seems I am first to the prize. It must be a sign! Fate has declared I, Prince Tozen, Third of the Kingdom of Ur, am to win this bounty—and with it, the Throne!”

The monsters about him shouted their approval, a cacophony of groans and screeches that clawed at the ears. Far too loud for this depth.

“Well, then?” The Prince look at his men expectantly. He pointed to Dorian. “Nab the man!”

A dozen-odd Gods charged him at once.

Dorian turned to Sun. “Hey. Want to play a game?”

“Now?!”

“Rhetorical question! Here’s the game. You’re dueling a man on a tightrope. What’s the easiest path to victory? Beat him into submission?”

“‘Course not! You make him fall off!” Then she blinked, did a double-take, and saw it.

A line of shadows had stretched across the clearing. For the past minute it had been creeping slowly across, blending into the lesser darknesses nearby. Yama’s Chains—very much like the ones he’d used earlier—only now, with his new Laws of Darkness, much subtler. Thinner. He didn’t need these to strangle.

The line of Gods ran up against the tripwire.

And, predictably, tripped.