The humble hut before them was made of straw and logs bound tight with thick twine. Its round windows glowed warm orange. A homely smell leaked out the edges of the wood door—a heady mix of cookies and bread, like cheese in a mousetrap. A little garden ringed the hut bursting with flowers too bright for nature. You only found reds that bloody and blues that watery in the works of dewey-eyed painters. Or the perfectly manicured garden of a most heinous witch. They came to a halt at the path up to the door.

Sun shivered. The hairs on her arms were straight as toothpicks. “Something about this place… eugh.”

“Yup.” Like standing in broad daylight, yet feeling chills down your spine.

“So what’ll we do?” she whispered. “The ol’ bait-and-switch? You come up the front, I whack from the back?”

“Won’t work.”

“What about cloaking? We can sneak up the roof, then—”

“No.”

“Can we shadow-walk in? Then—”

“We’re not fighting. Or stealing, for that matter. Trust me—it won’t end well. We’ll go in and have a nice chat!”

“Seriously?”

“Deadly serious.”

Sun groaned. “Deadly sounds about right.”

“Hush, child! We’ve not died yet, have we? Have some faith,” he said with a wink. He figured one of them ought to.

“Besides, I have just spun up a plan, albeit a shaky one. You feature prominently in it.”

“EH? How?!”

He winked. “You’ll see.”

“Uhhhh… this seems like one of those times when it’d be really prudent for you to actually tell me now. Before we go in.”

“No time. Besides, it’ll work better on the fly. All you need to do is to be you when the time comes.”

“What the Hells is that supposed to mean?”

“You tell me.”

They stood there staring at the door. It even looked evil—too nice, too smooth, all its wooden lines ruler-straight. It gave off wrongness like the sun gave off heat.

“What’s up with that door?” said Sun, voice cracking. “And those plants? And this island? It’s all…”

“Off, somehow? Just a little? Uncanny, like a hand with six fingers?”

Sun’s knees were shaking so hard they made their own little drumbeat. It was probably better she didn’t know.

“Relax,” he said, trying on a reassuring grin. “Don’t think about it too hard. That’s how the trouble starts.”

“Ah, shit.” Sun stiffened.

“What?”

“Legs… arms…freezing up!” she grunted. “Happens. Got too scared. Been good about holding it back ‘till now…fuck!”

“…”

She puffed out her cheeks, yanked out a carrot, and took a giant bite of it. As she munched she squeezed her eyes shut. Seconds trickled by.

“Hello?” said Dorian.

“One moment!”

When her eyes snapped open again they blazed with fiery light. Her posture straightened. Her brows scrunched in determination. She seemed in that moment a hero lifted straight out of lore. “I’m good!” she declared, still chomping, mouth half-full. She pounded her chest with a fist. “I’ve decided—if I go out with my belly full on a sugar high, that’s a good end to me. To Hells with death! Let’s nab some Fruit!”

“Huh. Neat trick.”

“Thank you! It’s just bullshitting, actually. You’d be a natural,” she said with a hero’s grin. “Think hard enough and you can bullshit yourself. I thought about just how delicious that Fruit’ll taste. Then I asked myself, ‘what would Grandpa Wukong do?’”

“I see.”

“This will last all of, oh, a minute? Then I’ll start shitting myself in earnest. Let’s do this before I lose it, eh?”

“There’s no need to be so melodramatic, child,” Dorian rolled his eyes. “I expect this to be a pleasant experience. Unless it goes wrong, that is. And then it’ll be very short and very painful, which—as deaths go—really is the way to do it.”

She didn’t seem to know what to make of that. Shrugging, he strode up the path and knocked twice on the door.

“Come in!” croaked a soft voice.

The insides were as pleasant at the outsides. Warm spheres of qi gushed light over a small wood table, over sofas so plump that if you sat in them you might sink so far you’d never re-emerge. Honey-brown wood ran up the walls, down the floor, perfectly sanded, and on them were walls lined with dreamcatchers, twinkling mini-microscopes, nine-faced dice. A hearth cackled in the back. Stooped over it was a squat little gray-haired lady, handling a tray of baked goods. She bore no aura. She wore no artifacts. She seemed like any mere mortal—except, of course, that there were no mortals in Hell.

She stopped cold when she saw Dorian. “Oh, dear…” she said, squinting. “That soul signature. Can it be?”

She sniffed. She rubbed her spectacles. Then she broke into a gap-toothed smile. “You little rascal! Dorian, come to visit again!”

“Of course,” said Dorian with an easy grin. Rather hard to pull off when his insides were twisting in knots. “You know I can’t resist your cookies. For my money they rank among the best in all the Multiverse.”

“What a sweet-talker!” She beamed. “It is always so nice to have a visitor. Even if it’s you. You know I don’t get very many nowadays, especially with this Jez business faffing about. And the ones that do come never have time for tea and a chat. They’re always so keen on fighting. Fighting, and stealing, and all other manner of awfulness…”

“Mmm. Such is life in the Multiverse, I’m afraid.”

“And don’t think you’re exempt, you naughty little boy,” said Grandma Meng. She jabbed a finger at him. “I’ve not forgotten what you tried the last time you were here. Come to rob me again, have you?”

“Of course not!” Dorian protested. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Mm. You said that last time, too,” she said with a tut. “And the time before that.”

“Err—“

“Kidding, dear,” said Granny Meng, cackling. The cackling turned to coughing. She waved. “In, in! Don’t you stand there in the doorway. Take a seat! And who’s your little friend there? Is that a Wukong signature I sense?”

“…Hey?” said Sun. She made a tiny wave. She looked like she didn’t know what to do with her limbs.

“Fascinating…” Meng set her cookie pan on the table, hobbled up to Sun, gave her cheek a little pinch. Sun’s eyes were dinner plates. She looked on the verge of shitting herself. “Relax, child! I don’t bite. Well—” She frowned. “I won’t bite, at any rate. I knew your grandfather quite well.”

“You did?” croaked Sun.

“Hell of a fighter. An even better man! There was a time we were neck-and-neck in the Multiversal Rankings. Young prodigies chasing the peak, dueling in Tournament after Tournament…” she grew misty-eyed. “He’d snag an inheritance. I’d advance a Law grade. Back-and-forth we went for a millennium. Then I retired, and he advanced, and little Dorian there—his brother, Houyi, he shot past us both…But I shan’t bore you any longer with my ramblings. Do take a seat. Child of Wukong, I shall make you tea. Tea, and cookies.”

“Thanks?” croaked Sun.

“Of course, dear.”

They settled onto stools too small for them. Granny Meng went to make the tea. Sun looked at him like an animal caught in a trap.

“Tell me!” said Granny Meng. “What news do you have for me?”

“Only the bad kind, I’m afraid,” said Dorian. “Since we last spoke, Jez has taken Zenith—as well as most of the Lower and Middle Realms. Houyi has fallen. So has Sun Wukong. He marches on Hell as we speak.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Boring.”

She carried over a pot of tea and a plate of cookies, pulled out a stool, joined them at the tiny table.

“A drink?” She offered cups to Dorian and Sun.

“No thanks,” said Sun.

“Sure,” said Dorian. Sun looked alarmed at that, but he merely shrugged and took a sip. Meng sipped too. The tea was like joy in a liquid, just a tad too hot, and it brought a hot tide of qi coursing down his veins. He let it surge into his Dark Star, which lapped it up greedily.

[Level-up!]

[Star Realm: Sun]

[83% -> 85%]

“Ahh,” said Meng. She closed her eyes. “I must’ve tried Dragonheart Tea ten thousand times. Never loses its flavor. Marvelous stuff.”

“Really is,” said Dorian, sighing too. His temples tingled with warmth. “Never in all my travels have I found better.”

“I’ve only another… oh… dozen brews of it left. Devilishly hard to get stork delivery down here. They do love to complain, those storks. ‘The rocs will attack us!’ ‘So will the dragons!’ Boo-hoo! Premier delivery services in the Multiverse, my hairy behind! Oh—apologies, dear,” she said. That last bit was at Sun. “It has been some time since I’ve been around children.”

“I’m seven centuries old!”

Meng frowned at her. Then at Dorian. “Do her parents know she’s here?”

“Her parents are dead, I’m afraid,” said Dorian. “Along with her grandfather.”

“I see.” Another sip. “I’m sorry, dear. Would you like a cookie?”

Sun looked like she hardly knew whether to be mad and baffled. “No thanks,” she got out.

“Mm. As a rule I try not to stick my toes in Outside waters. So all this…” Meng waved a gnarled hand. “Blegh. Not my business. Though I am sorry to hear of your grandfather.”

“Me too,” said Sun in a small voice.

Meanwhile, Dorian was busy stuffing himself. “Meng—these cookies are divine!” he said. “You’ve outdone yourself. They nearly taste real.”

“Why thank you, dear.” Meng beamed. “I’ve only had ten millennia of practice. Or is it eleven? My memory’s not what it once was, I fear…”

She scratched her head. “Dorian—be a dear and remind me—when was it that Fate imprisoned me on this horrid little Island?”

“After the massacre of the Six Heaven, I think. That would be… twelve millennia ago.”

“Oh, my…” Meng frowned. “Have I gotten so old?”

“Call it eleven if you like. We both know reality here is what you wish.”

“Ha!” Meng snorted. She set her teacup down. “Alright. Enough with the pleasantries.You’ve not visited me simply to chat.”

“You know me,” said Dorian, wringing his hands. “Though I do delight in your company—truly!—I’m sorry. I have come with an ulterior motive.”

“Not my Dao Fruit, I hope.”

“…You know me a little too well.”“We were having such a pleasant time, too.” Meng sighed. “Please—don’t ask…”

The whole world spasmed. Suddenly Dorian saw double. The table before them wasn’t wood but cold black iron. The room was bleak and dark and welded up like a prison cell, and it was twice as big as the hut in which they stood. There were no windows. The hearth’s fire was not warm orange but seething green. The shelves weren’t lined with odd trinkets. They were lined with tiaras and Interspatial Rings and swords and shards of armor; there were so many Rings, in fact, that upside-down skulls were used to house them. They were filled to the brim.

Most striking of all—the bumbling little old lady before him was neither bumbling, nor little, nor old, nor a lady. Her upper body was that of a warlike goddess, steel-haired, cold-eyed. Her lower body was that of a serpent. Her aura felt to him like a mountain whose peak was shrouded in clouds, vast and unfathomably ancient. Empyrean.

“If you ask…” hissed Granny Meng.

The world spasmed again—it all came rushing back. Suddenly he sat once more in a warm little cottage with a hot cup of tea. Granny Meng smiled sadly at him.

“…I’m afraid I’ll have to kill you.”