Qiangde delicately nibbled the Sacred Plum held in his claw. He wished the fruit weren’t so rare, or so small, but he savored the rich, complex taste of the sweet juice as it coated his tongue. Nothing mortal ever tasted so good, and the flush of golden ki that filled him as he ate it far outstripped its actual size.

Overhead, a member of his court flew lazily, dipping a pale wing into one of the sparse clouds and trailing a stream of water vapor behind the tip as it emerged. The wind was always fierce on top of his mountain, but Qiangde barely even noticed it since he entered what the humans called the Rhodium stage of cultivation.

Reminded, he mentally called out to the red dragon currently assigned to watch over the humans and the kobolds.

The red sounded harried as he replied,

Qiangde said, savoring the taste of it almost as much as the flesh of the Sacred Plum. Dragons didn’t feel the need to apply titles to everyone the same way humans did, but Qiangde had spent a century among them. He still held a fondness for the title they had given him, even if they had simply passed it to his son when he left. Humans were fickle, short-lived things, though, so he didn’t truly hold it against them.

Huoyan sighed.

Qiangde sighed and licked the last drop of juice from his snout.

Huoyan said, an edge of impatience breaking through the deference in his tone.

Something Qiangde hadn’t felt in a thousand years broke through his concentration, and his claws spasmed, making him drop the pit of his plum. It landed in a narrow crack filled with dust and debris, protected from the wind by the sun-warmed crag on which he lay.

Pain. Pain so terrible that Qiangde wanted to writhe, twist away from it, except that it seemed to be coming from everywhere. His scales rippled on the surface of his skin, their brilliant polychromatic gleam distorted as they lifted and fell away in drifts. Golden blood welled up where they had been, and in his mind, Qiangde heard a chorus of screams just like the one that tore from his own throat. His court was under attack.

Somehow, he lifted his head, staring around until he spotted a tall, reptilian creature staring at him from beside the very overhang on which he rested. In one hand, it held what looked like a perfectly carved jade statue of a dragon, while in the other hand… In the other hand, a ki-flame burned, licking darkly at the jade dragon, turning its surface to black char.

More of Qiangde’s scales dropped away from his bubbling flesh, blisters rising along his side, mimicking the path of the flame the kobold held. Qiangde felt the tether binding him to Huoyan snap as the red dragon died, and overhead, the white tumbled from the sky.

“How… dare…” Qiangde managed, forcing out the words between his thin lips. Human words were difficult to shape in this form at the best of times, but none of the kobolds had ever developed the knack of speaking mind to mind, not even these mockeries of dragonkind.

The kobold sneered, his own lips more flexible than those of a true dragon, but still stiffer than those of the humans that had been used to create his race. “No more will you use us, false emperor,” he hissed, lifting the statue and flame high. “Today, you and your brethren will fall, and the xiyi will rise!”

Qiangde’s head darted forward, and his teeth snapped shut around the foolish kobold. They might have injured him, even killed some few of his court, but there was no way-

His teeth crunched on something much harder than the bones and scales of the kobold, and even as his own bones shattered in response, he realized he’d been tricked. The kobold had never expected to kill him. No, he was only there to infuriate Qiangde enough to eat him without considering what else he held.

There was only one thing in the world as powerful as Qiangde, and that was Qiangde himself. Nothing less could kill him, but somehow the kobolds had bound the statue to him so tightly that when he bit down on it, it was as if he bit himself.

He felt his bones crack, shattering in a hundred places. When he took another breath, white-hot agony shuddered through his body as his ribs ground against each other. His organs, too, were damaged, but not nearly to the same extent as his skin and bones. He could still heal himself, still survive to take vengeance on these presumptuous kobolds. Their transgressions against him would not be forgiven!

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His core had not yet fully integrated the golden ki from the Divine Plum, so he grabbed the power in his belly and used it to fuse his bones back together. The breaks were too extensive to heal fully, even for him, but if he went slowly, he could make it to the bottom of the mountain.

Carefully, he extended his wings, seeing that there were holes - holes! - in the delicate membranes stretched between the digits. That, too, could be repaired, but as he threw himself from the crag, he could feel the wind pulling at the openings, trying to tear them wider. His skin, which was usually impervious to injury, gave way beneath the pressure, and he spiraled down, barely maintaining control as he plunged toward the base of the mountain.

An updraft caught his tattered wings as he flew over one of the long, clear lakes halfway down the mountain, and Qiangde curved into it, letting it lift him up, further from the steep cliffs above and below the water. The wind was trying to hurl him against the stone in a way it hadn’t threatened to do since he was little more than a hatchling, and even though he had to go back up to gain it, the extra distance was very helpful.

Somehow, he managed to reach the broad meadow that he used when he rested at the base of the mountain. He stretched out his claws, trying to come in to a landing, but his legs gave out, one particularly broken bone shattering anew from the impact. He tumbled to his side, vision blurring to a jumble of brown and green as his nose created a furrow in the ground.

When he came to a halt, he lay there, drawing in shallow, shuddering breaths, and only the darkening of the shadows that fell across his face warned him in time to roll. Great black claws gouged the earth where his head had lain, and teeth as tall as a man snapped at him as the other dragon whirled.

a too-familiar voice crooned into his mind.

Qiangde muttered, almost pulling his wing out of the way of a ki-powered claw. Alas, ‘almost’ was not ‘completely’, and with a horrible tearing sound, a large chunk of his wing separated from the rest of his body.

Lifting the gobbet to his mouth, Jianying tore into it, then grinned, showing teeth gleaming with golden blood. the other dragon mocked, and Qiangde shuddered in revulsion. He had killed many of his own kind during his rise to power, but never had he eaten dragon flesh.

he demanded weakly, forcing the remainder of the Divine Plum’s ki to reinforce the repairs still holding his bones together. He managed to force himself to three paws, though the fourth dragged behind him, as did his long, sinuous tail.

Jianying stalked toward him, the black tendrils surrounding his face floating in a nonexistent breeze. The black dragon was smaller than his brother by a good bit, but in Qiangde’s current condition, that was actually an advantage. Qiangde was too large to dodge easily, at least without the boost to his dexterity usually granted by his cultivation level. All of his ki was currently going to keep him alive, however, and he had none to spare to strengthen his muscles and hasten his limbs.

The black dragon darted forward, and this time his teeth closed on Qiangde’s tail. He tore a lump of flesh free as Qiangde roared weakly, utterly unprepared for the new flood of anguish. he cried.

Jianying laughed, and there was something entirely without reason in the sound.

Qiangde howled, spinning on his one good leg as Jianying tried to take another bite of his tail. This time Qiangde was able to pull his tail out of the way just ahead of the snapping jaws.

Another jolt of pain as Jianying feinted toward his tail and instead bit into the forelimb Qiangde had extended to counterbalance his evasion. This time the black dragon failed to pull any flesh away, but Qiangde could feel bone scrape beneath Jianying’s teeth.

As he staggered, his eye caught the small, human-sized opening he had built to bring in supplies. The mountain provided everything he and his court needed, but there were certain luxuries he had become accustomed to during the time he pretended to be a human, and even after he learned all he could from the manlings, Qiangde still had those things shipped here for his use. One of those shipments must be due soon, because the entrance stood open and waiting.

Qiangde was aware of his body in a way he hadn’t been in a very long time. The higher his cultivation level reached, the more he found that things like heat and cold, hunger and pleasure, no longer affected him the way they had before. He was beyond them, except for rare instances like the exquisite sensation of eating the Divine Plum, whose power was great enough that it would kill a lesser creature to take a single bite.

Now, he pushed away the agonizing sensations and the nearly-forgotten emotion of fear. His nearly two millennia of practice took over, lifting his mind away from his body, and, for one perfect moment, into that state which was as close to ascension as he had been able to achieve, in spite of all his effort. The body was nothing. Ki was all, and ki was anything. The only thing that could limit a true ki master was his own mind, and Qiangde’s mind had ceased to limit him long ago.

He shifted. His spine straightened, his wings drew in and vanished. Forelegs became arms, and hindlimbs became legs. He was already taking his first staggering steps as Jianying’s teeth snapped closed where his throat had been when he was a dragon.

But Qiangde wasn’t a dragon any more. He had been something more for quite some time, something that really shouldn’t even have existed on this plane any longer. Now, he could be anything, and while he spent most of his time in the shape he was born with, it was far from the only one he could assume. Human legs carried a tall human shape toward the opening in the mountain, and he hurled himself through it, rolling across the hard stone ground beyond the portal disguised as a cave.

“Close it,” he panted out as the black dragon gave a terrible roar of frustrated fury.

Five kobolds stared at him, and then the blue-furred one yanked her knife from the ki-crystal beside her. The others followed a heartbeat later, and the portal shimmered and vanished, leaving behind a wall carved with a statue of a magnificent dragon which almost seemed like a mockery to him at the moment.

Holding out his arms to the kobolds, Qiangde commanded, “Take me to the Tree,” and they obeyed.