“Horseshit!” said Skyhammer Kang.

  “The signs were there,” said the Wandering Monk. His face, normally as blank as a placid pond, grew dark.

  Tatsuo screamed and punched the ground, searing white claws into the sand.

  “That prize was mine,” said Princess Saori tightly. All the playfulness had gone from her face.

  “Whoever he is,” mused Li Zhang, “when he comes out, he’ll have a hell of a lot of treasure to throw around. Could be trouble.”

  “All the treasure on the continent won’t save him now,” growled Kang.

  Fairy Shi nodded. “That Temple must come down. Sooner or later, the cheat will have to come out.”

  “I would see justice done,” said the Wandering Monk quietly.

  “As would I,” said Cloudless. He chuckled, eyes cold. “I can’t recall the last time a man made a fool out of me. I must confess—I don’t like it.”

  A certain sentiment began to harden.

  ***

  Inside the Temple, Zane got the notifications too.

  He felt a little awkward about it. But only a little.

  In this case, he felt the bulk of the blame should rest on the fellow who made this thing. If you made your walls breakable, in his view, you really couldn’t be surprised when someone came along and wrecking-balled his way through.

  His conscience cleared, he carried on.

  Inside, he found pillars of onyx and obsidian holding up a domed roof. Ancient demons and men did battle there—a god of light wrestling a dragon with three heads, six red eyes, and wings like tattered rags.

  But the main attraction stood in the center of the hall.

  It was as though he’d been dropped into a museum, only there were no display cases at all. Every treasure on display was up for grabs.

  They had names like “Helm of Rage and Glory” or “Noctivarus Scale Cloak.” He passed a pendant called the “Dracarys Mantle Amulet,” floating on a silver pedestal—it claimed to boost all fire attacks by 50%, though the effect was capped below God.

  There was a velvet mask called the “Visions of the Blind,” with no eye holes. For the price of sight, it boosted hearing sound tenfold.

  Lots of neat stuff here. A few so strong they even had weapon spirits, like the Red Moon Pagoda. He passed a tiny treasure ship made out of gold and wood—something straight out of Gulliver’s Travels. Little men manned the decks, all spirit servants. The ship would expand on touching water; you could sail this thing all over, conquering worlds. They squeaked and leaped, trying to get his attention.

  Proud black-gold gauntlets, carved with dragon heads, stood on a dais. Their spirit popped out—an old fellow, very long beard.

  “Take up the Ashborn Gauntlets, if you dare! Only the most—hold on. Wait—where are you going? Halt!”

  The voice faded into the distance.

  They faintly amused him, but that was all. They might’ve been of use to him a while back, when he was a great deal weaker. He might take one back to Reina as a souvenir or something.

  He got the odd sense all of this stuff was prepared for someone else, like he wasn’t really meant to be here. He’d just stumbled into someone else’s story.

  In any case—he made his way straight to the end of the temple. There, one treasure floated higher rest, hovering on dream-clouds, as though put there by Astra itself.

  It was like him—it wasn’t really meant to be here.

  The Empress’ Sorrow, Fan of Burning Sky [Transcendent (E)]

  Its handle was the color of bright flame. But the higher it went, the more it fanned out, the darker it grew—until it was charred black at the edges, smoldering with dormant power.

  An immensity of light in the Astral Plane.

  A simulacrum of the favored weapon of the Empress of the Apocalypse. Preserved here lie the memories of the Law it contained.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The name rang a bell. He’d heard of this Empress fellow before—she was a former head of the Azure Flame Faction. Noughtfire studied history extensively and had given him notes on the must-know stuff. There was a time called the ‘Warring Tribes Era,’ in which the Azure Flame fractured into civil war. But this Empress unified them again under an iron fist—while crushing back the other 9 Great Factions, hovering like vultures.

  Noughtfire’s notes had just one word for her.

  ‘Strong.’

  So he was pretty curious when he stepped up to the fan.

  He reached out a hand and grasped it firmly.

  A vision flashed before his eyes.

  A planet charred beyond recognition. Just a floating hunk of blackened rock, the remnants of a battlefield, smoldering coals in a dead hearth.

  A woman in black, standing on a cliff’s edge. Below her lay a drop to the planet’s core—a heat you’d only find at the beginning and ending of worlds.

  Behind—penning her in—were nine peak true gods.

  All the cloaks were there. Thunderheart. Deep Earth. Eternal Ice. Each a white-bearded Elder.

  She stood there, mastering her breathing, and turned a mournful gaze to the skies.

  But they were of no help. As far as the eye could see, the asteroids and moons were mined with peak Minor Gods. Blocking off the escape. Ready to slow her down—even finish her off if they caught her wounded.

  “At last,” rasped the Endless Shadows Elder. “No escape, demon woman.”

  She turned slowly. Her eyes made all of them flinch—the color of raging flames.

  She was devastatingly beautiful, and yet otherworldly. No mortal face had reds like that. There were long-dried tear tracks on her face, made from tears of blood.

  “Jackals,” she whispered. “I never wanted this.”

  Then she raised her fan. It slowly unfurled, moving like a live flame—and as it moved, the softness in her expression changed. Grew ugly. “Fine!”

  She slashed it like a knife.

  The air ripped open—the world ripped open in great white searing streaks; there came a howling, a shrieking that shivered the length of the planet—

  An invisible storm had descended on the world.

  The Endless Shadows Elder howled; his flesh was scoured clean off his bones. He stared at his skeleton arms in disbelief—he barely managed to shadow-walk away.

  That moment nearly cost him his life.

  The other elders leaped back, throwing up desperate shields, shields of tempered steel and glacier ice and endless dark—but it was a savage wind that found them, streaked with fire-white. A massive tearing sound. It was all coming apart.

  “Hells—she’s mastered the solar wind!” roared the Deep Earth Elder.

  Then she threw the fan skyward, crying out, and there the full force of it shone through. It lashed the cosmos—and scoured asteroid belts from the sky.

  Wiped meteors off their paths, shattered moons—a horrible destruction had been unleashed, with the Empress at the heart of it.

  Minor gods were wiped out, thousands of miles away.

  “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?!” she cried. “The wrath of the Azure Flame? Then take it!”

  Zane observed all of this thoughtfully and nodded.

  It seemed like a massive area-of-effect boost. It’d make clearing huge packs much simpler—yet another useful anti-bird tool, he thought. He was fascinated by the way her powers moved so freely and quickly.

  His Solar Flare was wound tight, like molten steel, something liquid. Its edges were harsh and brutal.

  To make them radiate that wind, he’d have to unleash it—unbind it. So all that hyper-charged plasma could sear out and make the scouring force.

  He’d have to unleash its destructive potential.

  He knew enough of law by now that he could grasp what he had to do pretty quickly. But going through with it—that was another matter.

  He had a lot of Solar Flare within him. Lots of essence to unleash. It was the sort of thing that’d need a good deal of experimenting, he imagined. Lots of explosions before he got it right.

  He’d take it one step at a time, just like with the last Concept.

  Temple Collapses in Five Minutes

  …He’d take a closer look at it later. A nice sturdy cave would do. Maybe some island a ways from civilization, where he could blow things up without too much trouble.

  With that, he deposited the fan in his ring.

  ***

  “This treachery cannot stand,” said Emperor Cloudless.

  “For once,” said Kang. “You make some damned sense.”

  “Eh,” said Li Zhang. He grinned, arms crossed, leaning against his spear. “I don’t know. I respect it. It’s kind of funny what he’s done, if you think about it.”

  Everyone stared at him like he’d grown two heads.

  “To hells with that!” snarled Tatsuo. “The cheat must pay.”

  “Agreed,” said Princess Saori. “We’ll crush him. We’ll take them by order of our trial performance.”

  Some murmurings at that. That left the bulk of the experts there with nothing.

  “’Course you’d want that,” said Tatsuo, treating her to a flat glare.

  “Quit being a child. It’s only fair,” she said primly.

  “A free-for-all, I say!” said Kang. “Whatever drops, drops. Snatch it first and you get it!”

  “I suppose your suggestion has nothing to do with the fact that half your legions are here, primed to dive on any scrap of loot?” sniffed Fairy Shi.

  “Oh! Is that how it is, my good lady?” Kang turned on her, barking a laugh. His aura flared.

  “You don’t scare me, Thon Kang,” said Fairy Shi coldly.

  Her aura seeped out from her like frost, and her disciples’ sashes came out, smoking mist.

  It was like drawn blades. Suddenly auras were flaring all over.

  “What—are we fighting now?” Li Zhang laughed and let loose his aura too. “Count me in!”

  His armies hefted their spears.

  “Our enemy is not each other,” said the Wandering Monk, brow furrowed. He looked to Cloudless. “Cloudless…?”

  But the Emperor merely stroked his beard. “War has its place,” said the Emperor, shrugging. There was a certain glint in his eyes. “At times it can be quite clarifying.”

  Just as things looked to be getting ugly—

  “Do you feel that?” whispered the Wandering Monk.

  “What?”

  “The Earth…” he looked around, seeking the far horizon. “Something approaches.”

  “If you’re trying to distract me,” said Princess Saori, eyes narrowing. “It won’t—”

  Then she stilled.

  Kang felt it a moment later and bellowed—“WHAT?!”

  He whirled toward the dunes. They all did.

  “Monsters,” whispered Cloudless.

  And a voice rang over full of sounds gravelly and discordant, like steel grinding on stone.

  Good evening, humanity… How very nice of you to gather all your greatest hopes in one place.