Once, when Fatty G had been a much younger man, he had heard a story from an old raider. It was not the most interesting story, but after the man told it he had gone out again, and not returned.
Perhaps that was why he remembered the story so vividly, despite it being so short.
“It was deep into the windy season,” the man had narrated, “And things were looking grim. We’d gotten too fat with spoils, and the trucks were slow – it was Beasts on one side and Blood Lake on the other, pincering us in like a grub about to be hooked.”
The man – Fatty could not recall his name, if he had ever learned it – paused to drink. He was a classic Junk Dog clansman, with vividly pink skin and a cascade of thick wiry hairs running like a sharp black cloud down his back and shoulders. His only visible mutation was a single horn, a tightly spiralling bone protruding from the point where brow met forehead, just slightly shorter than a finger.
“We had the best loot all piled together on the lead truck. Plan was, that we would buy time for the Warboss to escape – I was in the second truck, with Plex and his boys in the third. Strongest in the front, most annoying in the back.” He smiled, then, the thick drink coating his teeth and staining them amber. “Turned out that was unnecessary, ‘cause about an hour off from when they’d have caught us, we felt the shake. You know the one.”
Fatty hadn’t, not back then, but he nodded along with the other listeners as the Raidboss took another long pull of his drink. “Now I’ve never put much stock in fate and all that, but I figure it couldn’t’a been anything else. There was no way we’d have gotten out, otherwise. The will of Joe.”
Fatty could still remember the way the energy in his spirit had turned as he spoke the next sentence. “Yeah, I figure that was about all the blessings we could expect in our lives, all used up at once. It was still close, you know?” Solid, like a stone too heavy to lift. “A couple of klicks too short and the shockwaves would have taken us as he passed. And if he had swung wider behind us, the bloody bastards would have been spared too, caught us and ate us up… but we got out. Buried down for a few hours to escape the dust, and then we were home free.” He finished his drink, the last few drops dribbling down his chin. “The guys following us got stepped on, while we were spared, praise Joe. I know that’s what I’ve been doing, and what I’m gonna do every day for the rest of my life.”
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“Praise Joe.”
The words escaped from him almost involuntarily, as they often did these days. After all, who could look at a God in the flesh and not feel their hearts soar, the ecstasy and terror mixing together into an emotion all its own?
Big Joe was here in front of him, and despite that being the case for countless days in a row the feeling was undiminished.
“Praise Joe,” Holiphon repeated behind him. “It almost feels like cheating, doesn’t it?”
Junk Dog the Immense’s smile split his face, stretching nearly from one ear to the other. “It does, a little bit.” Simply basking in Joe’s presence as he stood, unmoving, was a vastly less harrowing experience than enduring the fullness of him as he moved across the world at his blistering pace. “But who am I to question an Ancestor? The true battle has yet to begin; no point complaining at its easiness just yet.”
Junk Dog felt the much smaller man flare his nostrils, considering. When he spoke, it was to disagree. “I don’t think there will be much of a battle. Urick killed almost all their middling Warbosses with that mad plan of his; we’ll be fighting the dregs while the Ancestors clean up the real warriors. What struggle will there be?”
Junk Dog could only continue to smile up at the broken sky, its terrible sharpness revealed as Joe’s built-up energy chased away the clouds. It was indescribable, almost imperceptible, with no colour or shape he could name, no depth or texture to its majesty. He could only tell that it was broken, sharp and deadly in a way that hurt his eyes to look at.
“I think you’ll be surprised, Grandmaster Holiphon. We are fighting an entire world; how could the challenge be anything other than immense?” His eyes went down, down, to land on a pool of blue, radiant light cascading through the doorway as acidic and dangerous as anything the Sun had ever spat down,
In the back of his head, that nameless warrior repeated his story over and over. All those years ago, that one unremarkable Raidboss had been what moved him to seek out Joe – and today, he still remembered the way his power had sat, immovable, invincible. It seemed so small now, but in his youth that man had been the incarnation of strength.
I have been stepped on, and yet I live. That is the truest strength; not to be blessed, but to create your own blessing.
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Sen Du had been born in an era of strife. A time when the very Heavens were contested, when men killed each other for mere drops of qi. A time when each king thought themselves the next living God, infected with a madness named ambition, a madness that threatened to devour the entire world.
In a way, the invasion of Hell could be seen almost as a good thing… almost, if one discounted the tremendous suffering, the loss of life and knowledge and culture, the snuffing out of entire civilisations.
Ha. No, there was no silver lining to that particular storm cloud. Sen Du had seen it first hand, the atrocities the forces of Wu Kong committed with malicious glee. He had been a soldier even before the breach opened, a man of bloodied hands, and still what he had witnessed sickened him to the bone.
He grew inured to it, over the years, but he never forgot.
And so when he took that last, final step beyond, when he abandoned the fetters of mortality completely and became the third Heavenly Emperor, he promised himself: never again.
Never will Hell, or anything like Hell, threaten the world again. Whatever I must do, whatever scruples I must discard or honours I must throw away, I will protect the Earth.
There is no human evil that can even begin to compare, no greater heinousness to be wary of, no line in the sand to cross; Wu Kong and his ilk must die. That is the only truth in my heart, now and forever.
Heim was not a surprise, when it came. Though he was the youngest, the least powerful Emperor measured both by raw strength and by the understanding he had of his new abilities, even he felt it approach – the membrane of Earth’s bounds brushing up against another was like ice-water down his back.
Together, three of them had plotted. He, and the second Emperor Chu’Hua, and the first, Taon of the Eternal Rain World.
They were difficult men to deal with. Though they had warred during his long mortal life, Sen Du found that as rulers they were basically identical; it was obvious that Chu’Hua had styled himself after his predecessor, and once one had an idea the other was sure to support it. Nonetheless, when the first tears opened up they were all of one mind. This was no glorious war of conquest, but one of extermination; no threats to the sanctity of Earth could be allowed to exist.
It was a long, grinding affair, so much so that by the time it was done, their numbers had doubled. Heim was a realm much like Hell – and Heaven, loath as he was to admit it – a place where souls dwelt as they exited their own wheel of reincarnation. But rather than golden light, it was a place of endless cold; nothing hot or fast could exist there, and it took centuries to pull apart even with their combined efforts. It fought them, wounded them, froze Chu’Hua’s soul in a way he still had yet to recover from, but in the end they were victorious. He and Taon and the three newborn divinities dragged the trailing spokes of that broken icy Wheel together, adding the loose souls to Earth’s and breathing a sigh of relief.
Securing the earthly realm attached to Heim was a comparatively simple matter, one that took barely a single year after the reality barrier grew close and thin. A physical place, it had little ability to detect their divinations, let alone stop them; once again they dragged the loose souls together and set them spinning, more spokes for the Wheel.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
And then for a time, there was peace. No foreign realities threatened to smash into them, no hordes of unkillable demons or terrible ice-bound giants. Humanity flourished, gradually building back towards the heights they had seen in the past – and, in some ways, surpassing those lofty peaks.
Their number doubled again, and Sen Du allowed himself to feel content. Within a few millennia they would have enough power to break Hell, and then it would be over. He would be able to rest, and allow the Earth to spin of its own accord until the next threat reared its alien head.
But then, the lightest scratching in the back of his head, lighter even than the gossamer touch of prayers brushing through fate’s weave. He spoke to Taon, who felt nothing. He spoke to the imperial siblings, who felt nothing.
But the itch persisted. What could it be? If it was something significant, why could the others not feel it?
I am the Greengrass Emperor, he thought, the one Emperor alone to call that place home. Surely, that must be the answer.
And so he had drilled down, and in, collapsing his senses to a single point, and went over the continent of his birth like he was a monkey searching for ticks. It was the only way to defeat the anti-divinations that the sects had set down, and a poor one at that.
And, months later, he would find enough to worry him. Enough that when a young rural priestess knelt for her daily prayers, he forced through the reality barrier and answered personally.
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It was not often that the twelve gathered together. In fact, this would be only the second time she would witness it – there was a majesty to the air, for though she had met each of her fellow Emperors individually, that was an entirely different level from what was occurring now.
Taon and Chu’Hua sat opposite each other, their forms much like they had been in life, ideal of proportion, gilded and stern in equal measure. The palaces they sat upon were black glass and shining gold, wreathed in bronze and copper like the bounty of their destroyed homeland.
The Greengrass Emperor, in contrast, had no marking of rulership on his brow. He sat on no throne, content to stand, armed and armoured with the steel his people had invented. If the first two Emperors were east and west, then Sen Du was the northern edge of the compass.
Between him and The Rain World Emperor, sat the three Imperial Gods. Elder brother Hong’Su Den Long, his twin sister Ru’Shay Long, and their younger brother Ling Ren Long.
She allowed her lip to curl with the mildest hint of distaste. She did not begrudge them their familial ties, of course – to do so would be an incredible hypocrisy – but still, there was a limit to reasonable nepotism, and keeping their descendants in power for so long was clearly outside it. A shame we cannot call them on it without triggering another Heavenly Disagreement. Their chunk of Heaven was a replica of the imperial city of Den, as it had been when they had been mortal, the three Gods looming over it like human-shaped clouds of volcanic ash.
Across from them, in the metaphorical southwest, was the duo from Blackiron. Hai Ti and Chi Wan; the Blackiron Emperor, and the Empress of Cold Summers. His seat was a great mountain that stretched down seemingly forever, while hers was a tower cast in silver. Though they sat near one another, they did little to acknowledge that closeness – and yet with one clad in black robes and the other white, they almost seemed to be reflections of each other, equal and opposite.
And speaking of reflection… mirrored to the southeast, two women, one short and one tall. Northern Bell and Southern Bell, Morning Phoenix and Evening Tiger, Zhao-Zhao Fong and Wanjin Lo Huu. A great jungle spread under them, verdant and deadly. Unlike the previous pair, these two had only eyes for each other, electing to ignore their ten peers in favour of glaring hatefully at their rival, their displeasure causing ripples in the Heavenly qi.
And, finally, her and her ancestor. Sitting opposite the Greengrass Emperor, with the Blackiron duo on their left and the Two Belles on their right, the eleventh and twelfth Heavenly Emperors could not help but feel like the smallest fish in the pond.
“I note that Greengrass and Chu have no-one between them. Are they quarrelling again?”
Her voice was high and airy, a good contrast for the deep bass that answered.
“In these times? Not even they would think to hold petty grudges while a second Hell is brewing.” At her raised brow, he amended, “Excepting the Belles, obviously.”
She sniffed. “You know that, and I know that, but…” Do they know that, she left unsaid.
Her senior only turned away, shaking his head.
The two of them were a strange duo. Of the eight Emperors who could be divided into four pairs, they held the least similarity to each other – even Zhao-Zhao Fong and Wanjin Lo Huu wore similarly cut robes, the mark of a hostile but shared culture. Chin Da and Shida Da were, in contrast, clothed quite differently despite their shared family name. He, the Last Northern Emperor, wore purple silks and a smooth band of rose gold upon his brow, and beneath him his soul coloured Heaven’s malleable space as a sparkling blue ocean. She, the Lost Empress, was clothed in rags, and though her body was as healthy as any peak cultivator could desire, there was a certain hungriness to her, in the way her ribs were just slightly visible, the thinness of her cheeks and neck. Below her was nothing, though an entirely different sort of nothing from the Greengrass Emperor’s.
Chin Da had been born into the Da family at the height of their power – her, two-hundred generations later, into that same family at the end of said power, scrabbling fruitlessly against the monolithic Imperial Dynasty. Their last gasp, her ascension, marked the end of their line.
The two allowed the silence to stretch, content to observe the other Emperors rather than continue conversing. Taon had gathered more to his side again, the charismatic old tyrant, while Chu’Hua had lost ground with all his allies – while both of them appeared to be egoists of the highest order, the first Emperor at least had an aura of competence. It was a shame that the imperial trio were basking in his shadow; that put her and her senior on the other side by default, and she so hated to be on the losing side.
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Eventually, there was a ringing. Not a physical sound, for matter only barely existed in the cloudy skies of Heaven, but a ringing of providence, divine power plucking the strings of causality to draw attention where it was wanted.
The Heavenly Emperor of the Eternal Rain World stood, and though the distance between them was actually further than the Earth was wide, she could perceive every detail of his stone crown with perfect accuracy.
“I believe we have all been caught up on the situation. Let us proceed.” He drew his hand across the horizon, and in an instant the circular space between them formed into an image of the Earth.
…Or at least, some of the Earth. Large sections, almost all of the land, seemed to be missing; the result of anti-divinations, set down by mortal leaders to prevent them from doing this exact thing. From looking down on their territories and seeing the truth. Only the shattered Rainworld, with its minuscule population, and the most pieous sections of Blackiron were untouched.
The first Emperor flexed his power, and a moment later the Greengrass Emperor did as well. New land seemed to rise from the ocean, tiny islands forming archipelagos. In ones and twos they all added their strength, and like the oceans had lowered the bare skeletons of the continents took form. They were misshapen things, patchworks where mountain sometimes blended into sea with no coast in between, most of the populated land still indiscernible. Then Hong’Su snapped his fingers – the showoff – and the entirety of Redsea filled in.
That left enough power between the rest of them to get somewhere around two-thirds of the landmasses to resolve. She panted, quietly satisfied. More than a hundred times the strength I could have exerted as a mere Elder. Don’t worry, ancestors, I won’t allow the name of Da to disappear; your inheritance is in good hands.
Another wave of his hands, and Taon brought their attention to Greengrass. The largest of the five continents, discounting Blackiron’s large swaths of frozen sea, its rolling fields and ancient forests seemed massive even with a third of them disappeared into nowhere.
“Direct your attention to the east of the bay. Do you feel the taint, the unholy burning?”
Truthfully, she did need the direction – but once she felt it, it was unmistakable. “How much of it was lost?” Hidden inside, another question: how did we miss this for so long?
The Greengrass Emperor answered. “Permanently? Hopefully none. For the next thousand years, at least?” His expression was grim. “At least a quarter of the farmland will lie barren. People will starve, and refugees will flood the western coast. The eastern sects are already evacuating their mortals.” It was the sects, junior sister, the damnable sects and their need for privacy.
The first Emperor continued. “Emperor Sen Du has been keeping close contact with certain individuals from his homeland. As such, I will allow him to address you.”
Internally, Shida Da smiled sardonically. Allow him, hm? But the thought was mild; Taon truly was the strongest of them, so when he said the word allow, it was only half arrogance.
“Thank you, senior. The situation is not as bad as it looks – though the damage is terrible, it fortunately occurred far from any cities. The number of dead are merely in the thousands, rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands. And they are not as cunning as they believe themselves to be.”
On the lumpy image of the continent, three red blotches formed. One was in the northeast, in the centre of a huge lake. Another was in the southwest, along the other tip of Crescent Bay from the poisoned land. And finally, a much larger pool of red, far out into the western ocean.
“They attempt to make it seem as though they’ve withdrawn from two of these locations, but they underestimate our senses.” Greengrass’s already grim face became positively ferocious. “I propose a counter-invasion. Let us send our priests through the lake and coastal breaches, while our junior brothers and sisters defend against the armies coming out of the ocean. We shall tear their divinities apart from behind their lines, striking where they think themselves safe.”
Chi Wan, the Empress of Cold Summers, gestured. “Are we certain this is not a double-bluff? They eliminated much of the continent’s strength by feigning weakness; I see little reason they cannot do so again.”
Greengrass shook his head. “The reality barrier has truly been left undefended. Check yourself, if you do not believe my words.”
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Questions and counters and proposed strategies flowed for long hours as the Earth turned under them.
But in the end, the verdict was this: the Greengrass Emperor’s plan was sound. They would send the war-priests through, and press their full support into unmaking Salt’s version of Heim. Then they would continue, tearing its earthly realm apart until the threat was dealt with.