158. Beyond the Sky (XIII) (Patreon)

Out in the frozen tundra, a girl lay flat against snowy ground. Around her was a fresh graveyard, newly made; hours before there had been only bodies. Then snow fell, and fell, and fell, gently and interminably, and piled up around them, slowly burying them in unmarked tombs. The girl herself lay under three arms-lengths of fresh-fallen sleet.

It might’ve been the only thing keeping her alive. She’d nearly frozen solid by now. She wasn’t merely unconscious—she was the closest thing a human could be to death without actually being dead. And even that state grew increasingly more uncertain with each passing second as more snow drizzled over her and the skies grew dark, foretelling a brutal night…

A sputtering spark of gold within her fed a weakly beating heart. It was the only thing keeping her alive—barely.

***

How to go from here? Dorian hummed, licking his lips.

Powering up in the Multiverse was simple, really! Get qi. Get laws. Get more qi. Get more laws. Win.

But how these principles were borne out admitted a dizzying variety. Everyone knew the way to get to the top of the mountain was to go up, obviously. But it was the path one took that made the journey—and some journeys led to higher peaks.

Dorian had no clue where this path led. In fact he was paving it one step as a time as he forded into the fog. He seldom liked to be the progenitor, the trailblazer; the first always made the dumb mistakes. Better to follow well-trodden paths. To inherit a lineage or a Bloodline.

Unless the prize was so monstrous, so vast in potential that one could not help but reach for it. If he guessed right, he found himself now on the path toward one such prize.

An image from the past—from his last encounter with those Torchdragons—came to mind: his flabby distended Spirit Sea and Core squeezing inward from pressure and heat, melding, condensing into something not only solid but also molten, supercharged with energy like flowing magma. Instead of a Sky which spread outward, an unfathomably dense core which drew inward. A Star.

But this star would need something to bind it together, to keep it spinning, to suffuse it through its breadth. Something that would further distinguish it from the Core—something that would give it that worldly essence he so dearly missed in his Earthen Core. Something that would at last give him a foothold into godhood, and raise his powers to another level entirely. A Law.

He took a deep breath. He felt it all around him, tingling like static electricity on his skin. This place incredibly rich in them—on this plane there might’ve been no place where the Laws of Fire and Darkness were more prominent than the heart of this volcano. To take them in here was nearly as simple as breathing! He hadn’t been ready for it when he’d formed his Earthen Core. But now he could feel a cavity in his body, in his soul, waiting to be filled.

He was ready.

The only question now was one of choice. Which Law to infuse into his core? Fire or Darkness?

He would need Fire, of course, if only to get through that magma volcano. But it need not be his core law. Beings nearing godhood, and especially gods themselves, could imbibe multiple laws; sometimes they might fuse them for greater effect. But the core Law would always be the most dominant, the most powerful, the one that defined the god. His Bloodline had a special affinity for both Darkness and Fire, it seemed. Thus far he’d typed all his Techniques toward Darkness—to weave it into his core would only bolster his shadow Techniques. It needed little deliberation.

Darkness it was! And he’d weave in some Fire while he was at it. He wasn’t yet sure how to implement it; in a normal Sky Realm he’d make Clouds of other Laws, for instance. Some more obscure models of progression went with a Dao Tree representing the Core Law, with Dao Fruits as secondary laws. The basic idea was the same: lesser and distinct fragments of the Core. But here—well, his core would be a star, wouldn’t it? He had some ideas. But this was such foreign territory that he’d need to feel it out as he went.

Each progression scheme had its own strengths and weaknesses. A Sky’s was volume of qi and law. A tree’s was qi endurance and vitality. If he had to guess, his would be the incredible density of qi and law he could pack into the star, as well as its sheer potent energy.

He wouldn’t know until he tried, of course.

Let’s begin!

Last time this process started—in the throes of the Torchdragons’ attacks—it’d been due to an overwhelming amount of heat and pressure forcing his core to condense. Right now, right here, there was more than enough. The only thing stopping him from crumpling over was his qi coursing through his body, running interference. Eleven times a typical Earth Realm’s powers went a long way toward resisting pressures.

He simply let it all drop.

And fires worthy of Hells themselves poured in. He felt instantly like he’d been dragged to a deep ocean floor, a dizzying weight dropping suddenly all over him—a weight he felt in his very organs. He rattled in a breath, then another, sucking in streams of air as though through a clogged straw.

He felt it most in his core. There it was—the lapping edges of the sea drawing in like a receding tide, glomming onto the Core itself as gales of heat rushed into it, infusing it with fresh energies. Dorian tried his best to guide it with his mind, rounding out the rough edges, shaping it into a rough sphere. Soon it was this misshapen mass vibrating with pent-up energies. The more he tried to force it in, to condense it, the more it thrashed against him. It was not unlike trying to cram a huge pillow into a tiny briefcase—bits and parts of it popped out no matter how hard he tried to hold it all together. He gritted his teeth, fresh sweat glistening his brow. Now was the time for a binding agent.

He reached for the Laws of Darkness and tugged. But he had but a loose affinity for them in this body; they came to him as shadowy tendrils, responding to him cautiously, warily, like feral beasts badly tamed. He started binding up his core with it—made a loop of Law around the mass, trying to strap it all together—

It burst.

There was a flash. A crash of light and brilliant sound. A bang! that shook the whole of the cavern, that sent him flipping head-over-heels and landing in a sorry heap. He looked up to see rivers of crimson qi rushing out into the ether, dispersing in air.

Shit. Failure!

But more important—he gave the Dweller a side-eyed glance. It was still sound asleep, eyes welded shut. Its only movement was the rising and falling of its torso as it breathed, smoke trickling from its nostrils. Dorian let out a sigh of relief. So he had some latitude, then.

That didn’t go as planned. But then again this wasn’t the first time he’d failed to form a star. This was a wholly new path! Even he could hardly be expected to get it right on the first try.

But now he’d gotten a tantalizing glimpse of it. A tiny point of clarity in the fog, a foothold. He seized on it.

Again!

His eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. He had well under a week left. The passage of time had gotten away from him some—and who knew how much the jump to Hell had thrown things off?—but if he had to guess, maybe two or three days was all he had before he needed to get start heading back.

The breakthrough to Sky was the most time-intensive of the mortal bottlenecks. It usually took over a week. Sometimes a month, if you really wanted to get it perfect. And he not only needed to invent an alternative to Sky, but also to condense an unholy amount of qi into it in half the average time. A tall order, to be sure!

But if there was one creature in all the Multiverse who was born to race against the clock, it was him.

He leapt back into it practically frothing at the mouth, letting the heat and pressure descend upon his Core again. Again they drew in, coalescing…

If I pull this thing off, who knows how strong I’ll be? Strong enough to contend with a fallen god? To win over a mortal avatar of a Godking, even?! He hadn’t a clue, but his blood boiled at the thought of it.

He was determined to make every second count.

***

A scout of the Azcan Oasis sat perched on a bluff on the edge of the frozen tundra, frowning at the horizon. Thick, dark stormclouds were creeping over the whole of the horizon. Stormclouds in the tundra, at this time of year? Hardly seemed right!

He drew out his enchanted eyeglass, a gold-rimmed monocle etched with glyphs. It magnified human sight, letting him see tenfold farther than he would’ve otherwise been able to. He pointed at the distance—and froze. His jaw went slack. The glass slipped from his trembling fingers.

“Oh, dearest Dweller…” he croaked. Then he scrambled down the side of the bluff as fast as his legs could carry him. Less than ten heartbeats later he’d boarded his airship, gunned it to max speed, and was speeding back to camp. There he’d deliver horrible news—the Ugoc forces were but a few days out!

For those were not stormclouds. Those were hordes of countless dragons, and winged wyrms, and Vordors, so numerous and so huge they blotted out the light of the sun. Most were in the Earth Realm. Hundreds were well into Sky. Dozens possessed powerful Bloodlines to boot. And beneath them ran thousands of Profound and Earth-Realm wolves with dulled eyes, all held under the control of Sky-Realm Shamans…

At the front of the whole thing, on the back of a quasi-God baby Phoenix—a magnificent creature of a Bloodline on par with the Torchdragon itself—was Nijo Ugoc.

He quirked his lips at the falling sun.

“That is enough for a day, I think,” he said.

“Are you certain, your honor?” said a pock-mouthed lieutenant beside him from atop a black dragon. He frowned. “I reckon we can push another thousand paces before the sun sets.”

“No need.” Nijo yawned. “What is the rush? Besides…”

He glanced at the grounds below, where the sands melted into snow. His gaze tracked upward, scanning the tundra splayed out before him from his Phoenix’s eye view. Then he lighted on what he’d been looking for—a curious trail of red among the white. Blood—and lots of it, leaking out of hordes of bodies freshly dead.

He smiled wanly. “I have some business of my own to attend to.”