The battle had barely ended and they were already spinning up songs for Sun. Her soldiers bounced her between them as they flew a victory lap, cheering and hooting and spewing celebratory peals of fire. She cackled all the while. Beneath, Squashednose and the rest of the recruiters had scurried into Lockjaw Fortress. They set about dragging out cannons, gauntlets, spears, bows, and other such deadly knickknacks.

“Remarkable,” muttered Dorian. “She has them on a string. I wonder how she does it.”

“In past lives, haven’t you inspired similar devotion in your own armies, sire?” asked Gerard.

“Well yes, but she hasn’t needed to threaten anyone’s families,” said Dorian. “They just seem to like her. How intriguing.”

Now Sun had gotten ahold of some of the Fortress’s interspatial rings. She chucked gold coins at her legions of adoring fans-slash-soldiers, who began rowdily chanting her name.

“Oh—hey!” She’d finally noticed Dorian and Gerard, standing on a bluff overlooking the battle. She tried leaping for them, misjudged the distance, and vanished screaming beneath the cloud layer. One of her minions graciously scooped her up and deposited her at their feet. She grinned.

“You’re back!” she said. “And stronger now, too, by the looks of it! This is very convenient, actually, because we’ll really need any bit of extra power you can get. Without you, we’re totally screwed.”

“What?” said Dorian.

“I’ve got it all worked out. Here—follow me. To the command tent!”

***

“This lil vacation we’re on has been a real treat so far,” said Sun. “So many new friends! The only disappointment is the food, really. Which sucks, because it’s sort of why I came in the first place.” They pushed their way into a small makeshift hut. It was made of straw and wood and looked like it’d been built in an hour by someone who’d read a description of a house, but had never actually seen or lived in one.

“It’s like they haven’t discovered seasoning. All the meat is a variant of leather sole. They say Mt. Tai stole all the best livestock. And spice trees. And… everything, pretty much! Which is a real problem for us.”

She led them to the sole table in the room. On it lay a crudely drawn diagram of Mt. Tai, labelled in Sun’s messy scrawl.

“See—it’s not only food, it’s weaponry too. Mt. Tai has all the best ships, weaponry, cannons, ammo stocks, even draconic Techniques! And all we’ve got is leftovers from Lockjaw Fortress, pretty much. It’s like Mt. Tai is a modern fortress, but the rest of the realm lives in the Stone Age.”

“Wait. So you’re telling me we’ve got no airships?” asked Dorian.

“Nope.”

“What about claws? Gauntlets? Bows? Any weapons whatsoever?”

“Only crude ones. Not even as good as a dragon’s claws.”

Dorian struggled to see how this was possible. Last time he came to this realm he was greeted by artillery fire on every peak. The dragons loved their mortars—they practically pioneered the stuff! It took them but a breath to set off a whole row of them, and they were a massive pain. Salas had felt like a pigeon flying through hail. And don’t even get me started on their swords. A strong Empyrean dragon wielding a two-handed godly blade could cleave a mountain in a stroke.

All that’s… just gone?

“I have a sinking feeling,” sighed Dorian. “Our present woes are my fault, yet again! I sense this is becoming a theme.”

“I’m afraid you may well be right, my liege,” said Gerard. “Salas burned down the realm, which was destructive enough. But it would have recovered in time. It was his destruction of the great stone pictographic tablets, which held all of the arcane secrets of draconic artificing, that truly doomed them. Since then, the only weapons of caliber circulating in this realm originated pre-Salas. And the number has dwindled significantly over the years. Mt. Tai is in possession of the vast majority of them. It is one of the ways they maintain their dominant position.”

Dorian had been hoping, naively, that after that nightmarish Salas-mech encounter Fate had been done beating him over the head with the consequences of his own actions. He certainly felt he’d learned his lesson plenty well. Alas. Here we go again!

“Hey, it’s not all bad!” said Sun. “We’ve got something they don’t have, too.”

She patted Dorian on the back. “You!”

“What do you have in mind?” he said warily.

“I call it: Operation Meat Shield.”

Dorian blinked. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Just hear me out!” said Sun. “We’ve got one hundred sixty gods and twenty Empyreans—including Gerard and you. But we’ll need to scale a mountain on foot against heavy artillery fire and all kinds of land mines and other booby traps. And then shimmy across this nasty moat they’ve got. And then climb Mt. Tai’s walls, which are enchanted to repel intruders like magnets! We’ll have like three dragons left by the time we make it through all that. Unless…”

“…You send me out in front with my wings spread wide,” sighed Dorian. To trigger all the mines. And booby traps. And eat the artillery.”

“That’s the plan,” said Sun with a grin. “Oh—and they’ve also got this super powerful force field up there surrounding the main fortress. I was hoping you could just keep dragon-breathing on it ‘till it breaks. After you tank all the cannon fire for us, I mean. And the booby traps.”

“Right, right,” said Dorian. “Anything else you need me to do? Move a few mountains out the way while I’m at it? Reverse gravity, perhaps, to speed up the climb?”

“I did not know you were capable of doing that, my liege.” said Gerard. “Is this among your new powers?”

“No, Gerard, I was being sarcastic.”

“Oh.”

“There’s just one other thing.” Sun gestured to the map, which was intricately plotted with arrows and X’s. “I’ve got all our angles of attack figured out. The army’s been organized into strike squads—we’ll breach the fortress, beat his armies, take the walls, and take out the cannons. The only thing you need to do after that is sit back and deal with Scraggletooth when he comes out.”

“You realize I’ll be pretty damned low on qi by then. After all that, you want me to fight a Godking?”

“Err—yeah.” Sun looked sheepish. “I, ah, know it’s quite a lot to put on you, but you’re really the only one capable of handling any of it—”

“I’m doing damn near everything! What’s the rest of the army for? Decoration?!”

“I’m not asking you to beat that Godking,” said Sun. “Just stall him! Long enough for us to break down their arrays and disable their cannons. Then we’ll finish him off together. Sound good?”

“It sounds very painful. For me, mostly. But…” Dorian rolled his eyes to the Heavens. “Doable, I suppose.”

Did she really just talk him into sacrificing for the sake of everyone else? Him? Dorian?

What the Hells was happening? What was he doing? Had he gone mad? All very good questions.

“Awesome!” beamed Sun. “Long live the resistance!”

When neither of them said anything in response, she kicked Gerard in the shins under the table.

“Long live the resistance,” said Gerard.

Then she frowned at Dorian. Dorian frowned right back. A breath passed. Then another. And another.

“…Long live the resistance,” he grumbled.

“Huzzah!” cried Sun.

***

“They’re coming,” squeaked Spiketail, peering through his telescope. “They’re almost at the base of the mountain!”

“Man the cannons,” drawled Scraggletooth. “Load the artillery. See to it they never make it farther.”

His men scarcely needed his instruction. They were jittering out of their skins. Partly it was because he hadn’t told them they had a super-weapon. Partly because none had ever seen action; after his rise he’d gutted his brother’s staff—often literally—and replaced them with toe-licking cronies. He selected them mainly for their fecklessness, uselessness, and general inability to usurp him. It was backfiring now as they scrambled about, one loud noise from collectively shitting themselves.

Still, it hardly took much skill to point a giant death blaster at a thing and fire it.

They seemed to get the hang of it. Dozens of giant gold-crowned cannons swiveled to take their aims.

By the looks of it, this would blow over fast. Scraggletooth yawned. He’d known the rebels were ill-equipped. On top of their lack of airships and weaponry they had no shields to speak of, and if they wished to survive this blast they’d need fearsome shields indeed.

“Huh?!” a yelp from another of his Empyrean lieutenants. One of the bug-eyed ones whose name was escaping him at the moment. It was possible he’d never learned it, actually. “What does he think he’s doing?!” cried bug-eyes.

Scraggletooth followed his trembling finger.

A single Empyrean was marching forward, wings outstretched, shining with qi.

“What?” sighed Scraggletooth. “You’ve never seen an idiot before? Shoot him down and be done with it.”

Bug-eye swallowed as he lit the fuse. His cannon was pitch black. Its name was the Heaven Devouring Cannon, and it was said a direct hit could evaporate an Empyrean in an instant.

There came a crashing and a great gout of black fire was expelled from the mouth of the cannon. It fell upon that single Empyrean like a mighty dragon descending from Heaven. The Empyrean didn’t move—just watched it drop. Perhaps it was stunned. Or perhaps it was resigned to its fate. Scraggletooth yawned. One down—

He choked, mouth frozen open.

For that Empyrean had flicked up a wing, and casually batted the blast out of the sky.

There was a long silence. A silence that stretched from the rebels far below, all the way up to the ramparts of Mt. Tai.

“Huh. That’s… new,” said Scraggletooth. “Alright then. Let’s try that again, shall we? I want everyone—every single cannon—trained on that tricky fellow.”

Why don’t you try batting all of these out of the sky?

“FIRE!”

Dozens of gouts of flame rained down at once.