“Of course! I wouldn’t dare,” said Dorian, picking his words like a man changing handholds as he hung on the edge of a cliff. “I know how much your Fruits mean to you. All I ask is that you hear me out. Maybe there’s a path forward that’ll make us both happy.”

“A path that ends with your leaving here with a Fruit, I imagine.”

“Well—“

“Always the Fruits! Always the damned Fruits.” Suddenly Granny Meng seemed to sag into her skin; she looked every year of her age. She snorted. “Each one takes millennia to grow. Every day for thousands of years I’ve seeded and watered them, trimmed them, fed them my qi drip-by-drip, blessed their soils with heavenly treasures…I know each vein of each leaf like the veins of my own skin! My Fruits are dear to me as children. And you would have them for what? Mere cultivation? Bah! You might as well use Emperor Cao’s calligraphies as toilet paper!”

“It is a travesty,” said Dorian. He held up his hands. “And no-one can do them justice but you. But if my timing is right, after all these years, your latest batch of Fruits should now be ripe. Ready for picking. Like children, they can’t stay in your care forever…”

Granny Meng sighed. “So you’ll have them, I suppose? For what? To further your Laws? Pardon me if I don’t care a whit about your Dao journey, child. You’ve been polite about it. For that I’ll excuse your impudence, this once. Most everyone else asks with Techniques instead of words.”

“Look, Meng,” he tried. “I won’t push you. But think what’ll happen! It’s either me or Jez. Sooner or later his forces will overrun all Hell. They’ve probably already made quite a dent. You can’t believe he’ll let your little corner of Hell go, can you? And his forces might well ask for far more than just one of your Dao Fruit. They’ll want the whole orchard.”

Meng was silent. She did not look convinced. He pressed on. “Help me. Please. One Fruit—that’s all—and you may save the rest of your orchard as a consequence,” he said softly. “You know I can crack him if I set my mind to it. I simply need the tools.”

The instant he said the word he knew he’d chosen wrong. A slip of the tongue—but its effect was instant.

“You’ll need to seek them elsewhere,” said Meng with a snort. She took a sip of her tea. “Tools. As though my Fruit were a mere pickaxe! Some dumb blade to flash at your enemies! Ha! I so tire of this nastiness…” There was a watery sadness in her eyes. “Child, let me be. If the end should come, let it come. Let me while the rest of my days away in my garden, planting my herbs, tending to my Fruits…you, of all men, should understand me.”

“I do. Believe me—I do. But being left alone isn’t always an option, I’m afraid,” said Dorian softly. “Especially when it comes to Jez. I’ve come to understand that quite painfully of late.”

“Dorian, Dorian,” said Meng, sounding every bit like a grandmother scolding a child with a hand in the cookie jar. “You don’t get it. It isn’t about consequences. It never was. I’m far past caring, dear! Jez can pry my Dao Fruit from my corpse if he so likes. I’d sooner burn my orchard than let it fall into his hands. Blegh! Neither you, nor him, nor any one of you little goblins can ever know a tenth of their true worth! And that is that.”

Frowning, Dorian opened his mouth. She stopped him with an open hand. “That’s enough. Don’t you think?”

There was a sharpness to her eyes now, a glint like a half-drawn sword. Dorian smiled wanly. “Of course. Apologies. You know I had to try.”

“Mhm,” she said. It was incredible how much disdain she could fit in one syllable. Meng took another sip. “Yes, yes—”

She froze. The world froze. Dorian suddenly found he couldn’t move his limbs—like he was a visitor on his own body. Sun had gone utterly still too.

In the distance, Dorian felt the culprit. A clump of qi signatures burst into being. Splashing down at the point of the portal. Unlike Dorian’s and Sun’s auras, which were cloaked and suppressed, these flared out with casual arrogance. At least two half-step Empyreans. Several more high-Tier Gods.

The Princes of Ur had arrived.

“More visitors,” breathed Meng. “How… curious. Curious, that they should come so soon. And with such killing intent!”

She stood. “Excuse me, children,” she said. “It appears I have more guests to welcome. Be good and stay put, will you? I’ll be back shortly.”

With that, she waddled out of the door. The world unfroze. Dorian and Sun let out deep breaths at once.

“She left,” said Sun, staring at the door like she could hardly believe it was real. “She really left us alone in here!”

She leapt to her feet. “Where’s she keep the fruit? Quick! Let’s grab it and go—” She stopped when she saw Dorian sat still, a picture of leisure, sipping his tea. “What are you doing?”

“Sit down,” he said. “We’re not getting the Fruit. No one can get to her orchard without her permission.”

“Then—the rings? Let’s nab some of those and—”

“We’re not robbing her. What sort of guests would we be?” He winked at Sun. “Besides. I tried this tactic the last two times I was here. Guess how that went.”

“So…what? We’ll just sit here? And drink tea?!”

“And chat a little more. And thank our host for her hospitality, once she returns.” He sighed. “This part was a longshot anyways. The only angle I could credibly take was appealing to her self-preservation. If not her own, then of her Fruits. But she’s a crusty old hag! She’ll bend for no-one, especially not me, and doubly so not to the threat of Jez. I figured as much.”

“You can’t be serious.” Sun goggled at him. “Please tell me we didn’t trek all this way for nothing.”

“It’s not for nothing. If we ask nicely, Meng might let us keep a few Interspatial Rings full of treasure—the droppings of those Princes outside. It’ll be quite a boon for the auctions at the Kingdom of Ur.”

“But—gah!” Sun drooped. “The Fruit! We’re so close! I can taste it!”

“We are quite close. Fear not! I do have one last card to play. It’s what I’ve been pinning most of my hopes on, actually.” He leaned forward, prodding her in the chest. “You.”

“What?”

Sun had a look on her face like she’d been hit by her own Jingu Bang. Outside he felt a whirlwind of qi brewing in the distance. Shouts rang out. Laws ripped into each other.

“What’ll I do?” she said.

“Give her the one thing she wants. The one thing neither I nor any of those assholes out there nor anyone in Hell, really, can give her.” Dorian smiled. “I’ve come to realize the value of a certain… Wholesomeness? Kindness?” Naivety? “Whatever. Meng gives her Fruits out once in a millennium, and it’s only to those she deems worthy. See, the rest of us, we’re dickheads. We’re not capable of genuine appreciation. But you actually care! You’ll make a meal of her Fruit, dress it up, enjoy it for what it is. When we want her Fruit, we want it merely for power. You appreciate it for what the fruit itself. That makes all the difference.”

“It does?”

“Meng sees you as a child. She seems to have taken a liking to you. You’re her old pal’s heir, after all! Play into it. Who knows? Maybe it’ll work.”

“It will?”

He certainly hoped so. He was playing it cool, but he would be quite annoyed if those Interspatial Rings were all they walked out of here with.

“The problem with you,” he said, wagging a finger. “Is you constantly underestimate yourself. Isn’t it exhausting? You doubt yourself, you curl up, you freeze. You cut yourself off at the knees before you’ve even begun! Relax. Let it flow. See what happens. Like that coiling dragon—you could’ve flanked the thing without my prompting. You don’t need my permission to be competent. You are.”

“I am?” She blinked. It certainly seemed like news to her. “Woah…you really believe it!”

Of course she could tell, with her Bloodline powers. Suddenly she seemed a little teary. “But—“

“Shhhhh.” Dorian flicked her in the forehead. “Shut up. Don’t overthink it! Think of it this way. You’re good enough at acting. Simply pretend to be the person you wish to be. Then you will be. Got it?”

“Okay. Okay! Yes!” She took a deep breath. She nodded, then beamed. A fierce light shone in her eyes. “I’ll try!”

Dorian had been around people long enough. He’d seen them in all their variety, and he liked to think he knew his way around their inner workings. For a while Sun had been hard to crack. She still was. But he thought he had a decent idea of one cog in her head. The girl had been the outcast of her family, the weakling, ill-loved—likely she’d never had anyone really believe in her. But by now it was clear she had more capacity than she let on. Hells, she could truly unlock the Jingu Bang and get over this ridiculous self-defeatism, she could be a real menace.

She just needed someone to shove her into it. Dorian was happy to put the metaphorical boot to her back.

He took another sip, then stood.

“In the meantime…” He cocked his head, listening to the qi on the air. It was sputtering out. “It seems the scuffle’s coming to a close. I’ll go check out the last of the fireworks. Why don’t you whip something up here? Impress Meng with something. Maybe she’ll deem you worthy.”

“Like wh—” Sun caught herself. She grinned. Then she got out her pan and dropped off her pack. “On it!”

“Good.”

He strode out the door.

On the beach, the battle was indeed wrapping up. The air was choked with dust. Hadn’t the sands been black when they came? But they were now all dark red. And then he saw the bloodless eyeless husks of gargoyles and minotaurs and demons splayed like taxidermies on the sands, and he knew.

Only thee figures still stood. One was a little old lady with her arms crossed. If you let your eye wander from her—focus on the trees or the corpses nearby—she suddenly seemed to shift in peripheral vision, grow vastly larger, coils upon coils of snake rising to a goddess body wielding dual silver scimitars.

Then your eye snapped back and she was the same old Granny Meng.

Panting, facing her with a bloody mouth, was the half-Empyrean White Tiger. Its master, the First Princess, glared out of one eye. The other was burnt out, making a crater of half of her statuesque face. At her feet lay another strung-out corpse, this one wearing a crushed helm fizzling with qi. Likely a life-saving treasure that had failed its one job. This had once been her brother Vinicius, Dorian was pleased to see.

“Leave,” said Meng. She looked bored. “I assure you I have no qualms with depriving the Kingdom of Ur of another heir.”

“You!” cried the Princess. But she was glaring at Dorian. “You’ve played us! You played me!”

Dorian scratched his head. “Have we met?”

“Funny.” The tiger lunged for him.

It was something he registered only in retrospect. The first thing he saw was the ripple in the air. Reality melted, ran wild with color, firmed up once more like a sword melting and hardening in the furnace. Blood sprayed out in a crescent. One massive furred claw thudded into the sands not five feet from him, limp and grasping. The rest of its body went careening back, made a cannonball splash in the thick swamp water.

Then the rest of the scene caught up to Dorian’s senses.

The first thing: that tiger was a creature of Time. It had wrapped itself with Time Laws. Then it had lunged—made a leap across the Space-Time continuum at a speed accelerated far past the reaction time of any living being. It should’ve had him. The First Princess choked on her tongue.

“This is my domain, child,” said Meng, shaking her head. “My prison, but also my home. Out there you may have fared better. But here, I am absolute. Out of respect for your father I’ve left you alive. But my patience wears thin. Leave! This is my last warning.”

She didn’t grow any larger, nor wider, nor full of qi. Yet in that moment she seemed as impossibly infinite as the night sky. The First Princess saw it too. Trembling, she bit back a curse.

“The Kingdom will remember this!” She snarled. She looked first to Meng. Then to Dorian. She made a gesture to her whimpering tiger, and they went out the way they came.

“I hope,” said Meng, her back still to him. “You haven’t tried anything naughty in my absence.”

“Me? Never! But my friend may have prepared a gift as thanks for your generous hospitality.” He shrugged. “She’s young, sentimental… you know the type.”

“Oh?”

This had better work...