Dorian flared his aura. He spread out his wings. He put on his toothiest grin. He made damned sure the poor sods in the valley below got a good eyeful of him. And indeed a good quarter, maybe half of the army was now turning to face this strange new threat! He always was a head-turner.

Now that he had their attention—

[Supernova Fist!]

He made sure to put some real oomph not this one. Shoved a good chunk of Supergiant Qi in, and he was paid off with a BANG that made him regret having ears. Then came an eye-watering flash of white, which felt like staring directly into the sun on the hottest day of summer.

If it was this bad for him, he could only imagine how bad it was for the rest of them.

Actually he didn’t need to imagine. He had evidence enough, since half Jez’s army dropped to their knees, wailing and clawing at the holes in their faces. Some bled from their ears, some from their eyes, some from both.

There was some friendly fire. The front row of Fate’s armies had gotten knocked off their feet too. But Jez’s got the brunt of the hit, and Fate’s backranks surged to take advantage.

Grinning, pumping his fists, Dorian waded into the mess.

Fist of Falling Star, Rising Moon!

He wasn’t stingy with his qi now. Each strike had some good heft to hit. He picked out his first victim, a stunned jiangshi wreathed in golden aura, and caved his faced in one heavy, sinking fist. The shockwave alone sent a good dozen of his compatriots flying. Dorian crashed through, striking again and again, one fist shocking white, one fist thudding black, and it was like chucking dolls aside. These Gods felt weightless. It was godsdamned exhilarating! A few stray claws clattered off him. Bolts of qi splashed against his wings and broke like raindrops against an umbrella. So small. So easy! One fist and six went flying. Another and seven more. The battlefield was his sandbox.

These grunts, these Gods, were simply no challenge at all.

He felt like a god amongs mortals.

The legendary dragons had well-deserved reputations for haughtiness, and Dorian could now tell why. Who wouldn’t be haughty, when you could bend the world as easily as this? Who wouldn’t be haughty, when your flesh was a divine treasure? When a sea of enemies could wash over you, hacking and slashing, and all you felt was a tickle?

***

BANG!

Another clump of bodies went flying. Baldur’s eyes were still watering, his ears still ringing. What the fuck was that?!

Their whole right flank was dissolving before his very eyes. And it was the result of one man. He couldn’t believe it. One god had decided to crash through, and not one of those weak little shits could hold him back! Simply gave way! Like that!

Useless cunts!

Baldur gave a grunt of frustration. It fell to him to set things right. As per usual. Roaring, wheeling about, he leapt to face the new threat. He closed the distance in three big bounds, using the helmets of his soldiers as launching pads. Squeals rang out under him. At least this way they served a purpose.

The closer he got the more that chilling sense of familiarity gnawed at him. He knew this dragonoid, this grinning menace. But where? He chucked the thought aside. Hardly mattered now. His fists rose together in one meaty hammer, blazing with Laws, heavy with stony qi.

Time to give this would-be war hero a taste of true power!

[Anvil Fist!]

He cast a broad shadow across the man’s head. And at last the dragonoid took notice, looked up, but he was too late. His fist hammered down.

But the dragonoid raised a wing almost lazily to meet him. A wing so thin he saw the blood vessels sticking through the skin. Are you serious?!

CLANG!

Then his hand was a sharp spike of pain. Baldur’s eyes watered. “FUCK!” He roared, cringing back. What the hells had he hit?! Triply-reinforced coldsteel!?

“Oh!” said the dragonoid, giving him an appraising look. “It’s you.”

“Huh?”

“Remember me?” The dragonoid grinned. “From the Spirit Pavilion?”

It took a beat. And then Baldur felt a wash of freezing horror. Oh… oh no…

He remembered now where he knew this man. Remembered very distinctly. And he knew just why he was having such a hard time recalling it.

He’d spent the best part of the past week trying to suppress that memory.

Oh NO.

His legs moved of their own according, kicking hard, trying desperately to get away. But the ghoul in dragonoid’s flesh just smiled, and opened his mouth, and from deep within his belly came a sound like a devil laughing.

***

Jez pursued his lips.

His battlefield was being torn up. And by a familiar face.

“Dorian.”

He sighed. The man was his beginning, his end, and perpetually a thorn in his side, it seemed. Jez would be glad when this was all done. When he could lock Dorian up for good. All this killing, this hurting… it was such an awfully draining endeavor. Emotionally, more than anything. He hacked up a sword’s slash, saw Fate scramble to counter, and sighed. After this he would take a long rest. Perhaps explore painting, or landscaping. Wistfully he considered the somber purple skies.

Truth be told, even this much was taxing on Kaya’s body. She was proving to be an excellent vessel for him, but she was no Godking. She was scarcely even a God. It was simply that her mind was hollowed-out and shattered, which was a terrible thing, and he felt for her. But it also made her quite convenient to inhabit—

A swirling of chaotic energy, a great boiling glut of it. His head snapped down. What?!

Dorian’s mouth was open, and his throat was lit red from within.

No.

NO!

***

[Breath of the Ashen Sky]!

The Torchdragon’s signature Technique. And Dorian served it generously.

Let’s give… half my qi, to start off with? More, if needs be. But this should get the job done nicely!

And the Technique screamed out into the world. Right atop Jez’s armies.

It was said in the legends that a Torchdragon’s breath could change the seasons.

Dorian’s breath changed the color of the world.

The purple skies darkened todull, leaden gray. A chill swept through the battlefield.

And then heat. A new world of heat, an eruption of light.

The gods unlucky enough to stand nearest him were charred to a crisp in an instant. There was even an Empyrean in the mix, a Minotaur with its mouth half open, and he saw the flesh scoured off its bones, its eyeballs boiled and shriveled in their sockets. Instantaneous death.

The rest were like insects. Tossed into the wind. Horribly burned. The blast radius was massive. It was like a tidal wave sweeping across an ant colony, except rather than a rush of furious water there was a blaze of furious fire. Fire and choking ash, ash that smothered the skies black. There was not time to scream. And he had no doubt there were screams; he saw them, jiangshi’s mouths hung open in frozen horror, troll eyes popping, but no-one could hear them. They were small, insignificant things in the path of a natural disaster, and then they were made nothing. Brushed away carelessly, easily, like shavings off a desk.

Empyrean lights flickered but held in the storm. Flickered, and a fair few flickered out. Then he saw a Golden light flare hotter than the rest. A light which forged through his fresh hell of ash and fire, heedless, striding with purpose. Oh?

And then it charged him—charged him despite the winds. He was taken aback. He cut off his strike. It had run most its course anyways. Who’s this?

A familiar face broke through. A face with a Godking’s aura.

Well, what do you know.

“Yama!” Dorian smirked. “Hey there! Remember me?”

It was hard to make out an expression on that stitched-together face, but he was pretty sure he saw hate there. And a lot of it.

“DORIAN!” In Yama’s hands were two hammers. Both pitch black, topped with nasty spikes. And both started to glow, in that strange way black things can—rather than spread light they seemed to cast greater shadows. Darken everything about them. Uh-oh.

Yama leapt. Unreasonably fast. Yelping, Dorian covered up.

[Shield of the Blood Moon!]

His wings began to glow too, suddenly brimming with Eclipse qi as they folded over him, cocooning him. But that was a Godking’s hammer, brimming with Godking’s qi. And Heavenly Laws of Death and Decay tipped those spikes. Dorian had half a mind to just run for it.

CLANG!

To Dorian’s great surprise those spikes did not punch a hole through his flimsy wings. He felt a shock run up his wings, spread up his arms and back. And a chunk of his qi vanished. But he held.

Yama looked as surprised as he was. And Dorian could see him, too, through his wings, which were translucent from the inside. Could see him pound again with his second hammer. Again. And again. And again. And with each strike snarl fiercer, slobber harder, the blood vessels on his eyes standing out starker against the white.

Each strike felt like an earthquake in miniature. But Dorian held, and held, and held.

[Level-up!]

[Shield of the Blood Moon] Lv. 1->2

Yama’s lips, trembled. “What is this tomfoolery?!” He roared. “Fate has given you a life-saving treasure, has he?”

Not quite! The idea seemed to piss the Demon King off more. His next two strikes landed so hard Dorian’s knees started to wobble.

“But Fate cannot protect you forever…” Two more blows brought Dorian to a knee. As much as he hated to admit it Yama was right! It was, what, twenty strikes in? And every inch of him was starting to burn. He couldn’t hold out forever.

But he didn’t need to.

“King of Demons!” roared a gravelly voice. “Your enemy is me!”

Yama turned, surprised, to find a peak Empyrean minotaur barreling at him, swinging a giant axe. The Minotaur Chieftain T’lak, with his legion close at his heels. Dorian grinned.

All that flash-banging and dragon-breathing and shielding had drained his qi reserves near dry. But the work had been done.

Jez’s army was now a ruins. And Fate’s was sweeping them off the battlefield everywhere he looked. At places one side was so badly in retreat they were sprinting the other direction. Before the minotaur had even reached Yama a jiangshi Empyrean, some general or another, had hopped into the fray and was charging him with spear outstretched.

***

“No…”

Everywhere Jez looked. Broken bodies. Routed men. Entire companies in fast retreat.

“No!”

This could not happen.

This could not be allowed to happen.

They were so—so close!

His most powerful army in Hell, on the brink of total victory. Shattered. It could not—would not—

“You’ve lost.” Fate, a shriveled husk of himself, coughing and hunched. But still standing. “It’s over, Jez.”

“No,” breathed Jez. “I have not. I will not. Not now.”

If they lost here, how much would he need to rebuild? How many more would need to die to see his vision made real? How much longer would it take—and how many of those who opposed him, without and within, would be heartened?

He was not blind to the whispers. They said of him that he was soft. That he had not the will to break and reshape the Multiverse. Some of his own men, even his prison-guards in their more lax moments, spoke of a shadow faction—a faction plotting to seize his own network from under him! It broke his heart to think of it. He hoped dearly it wasn’t true.

The Multiverse was no place for soft-hearted men.

The last of the significant resistance must be broken here. He needed to do what needed to be done. It was very simple.

Even if it broke the bodies of his own men.

Sometimes to love a thing was to hurt it. He knew that.

He raised a fist, and closed his eyes, and in an instant the whole of his network, splayed out across the Multiverse like stars in the sky, was ranged before him.

We need you.

O Infinity—lend us your strength!

And the Infinity gave its answer.

He opened his eyes to a golden sky.