It was a gray, dismal morning in the Great City on Nuwar, but that was nothing new. It seemed like the sun didn’t like this rat’s nest of a city any more than I did, and had at least as much trouble getting up in the morning. I usually solved the problem by rolling out of bed and into a bottle. The sun solved it by hiding behind the clouds until after noon. I preferred my method.

It was about two hours to noon, and I had a meeting to go to about fifteen minutes ago. Probably should have written that down somewhere. It gets a little tricky to remember things when you’re swimming in a bottle of three-day warmed wine. I was tired. Tired of the Great City, tired of the work, and tired of the endless dead-end trails of cold mornings, cold bodies, and warm booze. The name’s Donagut, the job’s Detector, and the mood’s just like the day. Dismal.

It took me over an hour to make my way down to the headquarters of the Enforcers, where I was supposed to meet with Captain Nallry. The Enforcers existed to do one thing: enforce the Ordinances. And they did it, well, pretty poorly, to be honest. That’s why they needed me. I’ve seen more things on more planes than an Enforcer will see in a lifetime on the streets of the Great City. Course, they don’t know that. They’ve never heard of other planes, and I’m in no hurry to tell them about them.

I had barely stepped into headquarters when I heard my name bellowed through its halls. My headache worsened. I glanced over to see Captain Nallry standing in the doorway to his office, his face red. I’ve never understood how humans can change their color like that, but it seemed to upset them when they did. After all, every time I saw Nallry do it, he seemed to be pretty mad. Just a fault of his species, I guess.

“Donagut!” He repeated. “Get your flea-ridden hide in here!”

I shrugged. A mutt like me’s been insulted far worse in the past. I rubbed my brow briefly to try to ease the headache, and then walked over to Nallry’s office. Nall had already moved back behind his desk, and when I stepped in, he was just staring at the doorway, waiting for me to fill that space.

“What’s the matter, Cap?”

“Donagut, where in the Flooded Hells have you been? I’ve been waiting for you all blasted morning!”

“I thought our meeting was an hour ago.”

“An hour and a half ago,” he said through clenched teeth.

“See?” I grinned, scratching behind my right ear. “That’s not all morning. Half the morning, at most. Say, you got anything to drink in here?”

“I’m not in the mood for this today, Donagut,” Nallry said, scowling. “I know you’re not an Enforcer, but we do pay you. We pay you to be here, and be sober! Is that clear enough?”

I yawned. “You pay me to solve the cases you can’t, Nallry.”

“And if you want us to keep paying you, you’d better show up when we need you!”

I rubbed my forehead again. This day was already getting too long. “Look, Nall, I told you it was a bad idea to have these meetings in the morning like this. Also, can we get these things catered in the future?”

Captain Nallry slammed his palms down on his desk. I flinched. “Donagut! This is serious! We’ve got trouble on our hands, and you’re sitting there making jokes.”

I sighed, and went back to scratching behind my ear. “Fine, Nall. Fine. So what’s going on? What’s so doggone important?”

“You said it yourself, Donagut,” the Captain said. “We pay you to solve the cases we can’t. Well, we’ve got one.”

I growled. I probably should have guessed that. “What’s this one?”

“Murder.”

I nodded. “Figures. It usually is. So what’s the big mystery, Nall? It’s the Great City. Bodies are like the morning rain out there. They fall often, they fall hard, and the streets wash them away, and the next day, we start over. You’ve been here longer than I have, Nallry. You should know that.”

“I do know that,” he said, his face darkening. “I know a lot of things. I know that bodies don’t just show up when no one’s missing. I know that a simple murderer doesn’t take the time to burn a symbol into their victim’s forehead with a branding iron. And I know that no one who was born and raised in the Great City has ever seen a woman with a two foot long neck and covered in yellow scales.”

I stared at Nallry for a long time. He was still angry, but he couldn’t hide the smug look on his face. He knew he had all my attention. I hated it when Nallry had all my attention. I took a deep breath. “When was she found?”

“Two days ago.”

I nodded. “Where?”

“Braggart’s Court. It’s a slum on the north side of the City. A lot of anger, a lot of violence.”

“I’m familiar with it.” They sold really cheap booze there. “Who found her?”

Nallry shrugged. “One of our patrols. She was lying in the street, face down, in front of a vacant lot. No telling how long she’d been dead or how long she’d been lying there. No one in Braggart’s Court is talking, and I mean no one.”

“And no one had ever seen her before?”

“I told you, Donagut, nobody’s ever seen anything like her before. Some kind of lizard, I think, from the scales, but bizarrely thin. And long. She must have been about seven or eight foot tall.”

“You keep calling her a ‘she.’ What makes you think she was a person, and not some kind of beast coming down from the mountains? That happens sometimes.”

“Do you think I’d call you in to investigate some animal? She was wearing clothes, Donagut. Some kind of dress, or robe. She was also wearing jewelry. A necklace, several rings and bracelets, and a sort of golden netting threaded around spines protruding from her head.”

I closed my eyes, visualizing. I didn’t like where this was going. I really, really didn’t. “So it was no robbery. That makes it worse.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

I looked up at him. If he only knew the half of it. “Are you sure there’s no one who knew her? Or where she came from? What about the Outrigger Isles? There are no Cyclops on the mainland. Maybe the ‘clops have more secrets on those islands.”

Nallry shook his head. “Wrong tree, Donagut. We already looked into that. The Outrigger delegates haven’t seen anything like this woman before. Same with the Peaks, the Muckflow and all four regions of the Wooded Alliance. I’m telling you, we checked with everyone! Nobody’s ever seen anything like her before. Which is why I thought of you.”

I groaned. I knew Nallry was going to revisit that. “I told you, Nall, there’s nothing so mysterious about me. The Houndsfolk mostly died out years ago,” I lied. “My family was living in the woods, just outside of Alliance lands. When my father died, I came to the City.”

“I know what you told me, Donagut, and I’ve overlooked it until now because you’re a damn good Detector. But now we’ve got another being. Another ‘one of a kind.’ I need to know.”

I scratched behind my right ear again. I didn’t like where this conversation was going. “Look, all I know is that nothing like what you described comes from where I came from.”

Nallry narrowed his eyes at me, but he let it slide. I appreciated that. “Fine. But what about the case? Can you solve it? We need to know who she was, who killed her, and why.”

I switched back to rubbing my brow. I was going to wear off my fur at this rate. “Well, the first thing we need to do is find out where she came from. Maybe that will tell us who she was.”

“Any idea how to do that?” Nallry asked.

I shrugged. “Not for sure, no. But I have a few tricks. Where’s the body?”

“The cryos have it on ice downstairs. You want to take a look?”

I just nodded, and Captain Nallry and I headed down to the Iceblock. Whenever a victim’s found who the Enforcers can’t identify, they bring the bodies to a basement of the Enforcer’s headquarters, and the cryomancers freeze the body to preserve it. Until the case is solved, the body stays on ice. Personally, I hated the Iceblock. I’ve seen a lot in my time, but that place unnerves me. It’s just row after row of dead bodies, frozen in perfect accuracy in blocks of transparent ice, their dead eyes staring endlessly outward.

I shivered. I’d like to say it was the cold down there, but my fur was more than adequate to keep that away. It was simply unnerving. Fortunately, Nallry and I didn’t have far to go. The vic was hanging on an ice slab pretty near the door. Apparently, the cryos knew the Enforcers were going to put a premium on this one, and kept her accessible. It was actually a rare bit of efficiency I didn’t see around here much. As Nallry and I approached her frozen body, I started scratching behind my ear again, and wishing I had brought my flask with me.

Looking at her body confirmed my suspicions. And my fears. Viashino. That was the bad news. There were no Viashino on Nuwar, at least not that I knew of, and I tried to make it my business to know what was going on and where. She might have been a planeswalker, a prospect that didn’t please me one bit. The last time I had to deal with a planeswalker in Nuwar was four months ago, when a serial killer started murdering one ‘clops after another. I still had Blink’s file sitting on my desk. I had never found her. She just disappeared. But she didn’t seem likely to come back to Nuwar, and that was something, I guess.

But this frozen Viashino in front of me didn’t look like any lizardfolk I’d ever seen before. Her body, limbs, neck, and tail were all thin, so thin that I wondered how they had room for her organs. But of all of her parts, it was the neck that interested me the most. It was long and serpentine, nearly two foot from shoulders to jaw. She looked more like she was descended from one of the long-necked species of drake than from the dragons that the lizardfolk usually claimed to have come from. Whatever the case may be, though, I had never seen a Viashino like her before, and that was the worse news. I had no idea where to start.

Then I looked at her face. It was a typical lizard’s face, with deep-set eyes, an elongated snout, and a wide mouth. The cryos had frozen her with her mouth open a bit, for the purposes of inspection, and I could see her rows of serrated teeth. Nallry had described her scales as yellow, but they looked more burnt-gold to me, although it was possible the ice was playing with the color. But it was her forehead that interested me most. Scorched into the center of her reptilian brow was a strange symbol. It was a thin circle, inside of which was a thick, black circle, inside of which was a figure that looked like two arrowheads, facing each other and joined at the tip. The figure was left on undamaged scales, while the black circles were singed in, undoubtedly with a branding iron as Nallry had said.

“Any idea what this symbol means, Nall?”

The captain shook his head. “None. We checked the records and couldn’t find anything like it.”

“Did you ask the delegates?”

“Yeah,” Nallry said, stroking his chin while I scratched behind my ear. “We asked them when we asked about the lizard. Nothing.”

I growled. This wasn’t going to be easy. I took a few more minutes to study the lizard woman, trying to commit to memory every feature, every descriptor I could think of. I would likely need all of them. Finally, I turned to Nallry and nodded. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Well, you’re going back to your office, to do whatever it is you do when you’re waiting for me to do whatever it is I do.”

“And where are you going, then?”

I smiled. “To do whatever it is I do.”

On my way back to my rented room, I stopped to buy some booze. I was going to need it to get through this investigation. The first thing I did when I got back was fill my flask. The second thing I did was empty my flask. The third thing was fill it up again. After that, I kind of forget what order I did things. I think I laid down for a while, I probably relieved myself at some point, and I’m pretty sure I made myself some food from whatever I could scavenge together. Eventually, though, I got to work.

It occurs to me every so often how biased life can be against certain people. Take me, for example. Some people would say that I’m a pretty lucky guy, being able to ‘walk the planes like I do. In a way, they’re right. But here’s the thing. I’ve met planeswalkers before. Plenty of them, and most of them seem to have a talent, something they can do that others can’t, something that the Spark has given to them to help them deal with the wide, uncaring Multiverse. Sometimes this can be a command over fire, or an ability to blend in wherever they go, or being able to breathe whatever air they find with no trouble. But not me. I didn’t get anything spectacular like that when my Spark ignited. You want to know what I got? I got paperwork.

You might think I’m joking. I’m not. If you need me to track down a report on a case, I can find it, no matter where it is or how badly filed. But it only works with paperwork. Need me to find the jewels a thief stashed during his getaway? Tough, I can’t do it. Need help finding that missing person? I’ll have to look the old fashioned way, just like you. But if you need me to track down a report on a disturbing the peace charge from thirty years ago? You’ll have it in your hands inside of ten minutes. I don’t understand it, I’m not proud of it, and I don’t like it, but there it is.

I drink a lot, but never much on the job, so as I was waiting to sober up a bit, I glared down at my report on the Blink case. About half of it was my reports on what happened on Nuwar, the stuff I could give the Enforcers if they ever needed it, not that they’d want it. The rest were reports I’d gathered from other planes, reports that matched her description and her MO. It’s how I had pieced together her name, and what had happened to her on Daymir, which must have been her home plane. The Enforcers could never see this report, because it wouldn’t make any sense to them. Other worlds? People who could travel between them? No. The Great City on Nuwar was too big a world for them already. They didn’t need any more. For them, reports from other worlds would just confuse the issue. For me, they just might solve it.

Finally, the room stopped spinning enough for me to get started. I needed to find out where the lizard woman had come from, because that was the only clue we had. It wasn’t going to be easy. My only advantage was paperwork, and there were a lot of planes that didn’t use it. Hell, there were a lot of planes that didn’t use paper! But I had to start somewhere, and I figured maybe someone on some plane had reported the lizard missing, and somebody else, just maybe, had written the report down and filed it somewhere.

I moved to the center of my filthy room and sat down on the floor, my legs crossed beneath me. I held my arms out to either side at shoulder length, and then folded them in at the elbows until only the fingers overlapped just below my jaw. Then I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing, with each exhalation lowering my elbows just a little bit more. This was a focusing exercise I learned after my first planeswalk, when I studied with the Vedalken warrior-monks. They took pity on me, and trained me in the Broken Bone form, which was the only martial art they knew that only used two of their four arms. I learned a lot from those monks, and I was going to have to use it if I wanted to solve this case.

Finally, my elbows were down at my sides, and my paws formed a gentle arch just below my face. I was calm and collected, and more or less sober. In my mind, I began to visualize paper. A lot of paper. Stacks upon stacks of the stuff, spreading out infinitely in each and every direction. And all of it was blank. That was important. The papers always start off blank. Then, when I felt ready, I started thinking about the lizard woman, projecting her description all around me. I thought about her size and shape, her proportions, her jewelry, and the strange mark on her forehead. Slowly, the papers in my mind began to fill with imagined ink, and then they started to fly, all around and away from me, falling away downward, upward, and to the side. One by one, each sheet, tome and scroll flew away, and in just a few moments, I was left alone with the darkness behind my eyelids.

I tried again, twice more, varying my mental description of the woman based on what I knew and what I could guess. Nothing. Each time, I still came up empty. Eventually, I gave up and opened my eyes again. I don’t know how long I had been trying, but it was already getting dark outside, so it must have been a while. It seemed like nobody had any reports of this strange lizard woman with the mark scorched into her face. I reached over to grab my flask, and just as I was about to take a swig, a thought occurred to me.

“Wait a minute, Donagut,” I said to myself. “You’re looking for a lizard woman with that symbol burned into her, you stupid mutt!” I’m not always the nicest guy when I talk to myself. “What makes you think she had the mark the last time anyone saw her?”

This made me stop and think. I had to admit that I had made a good point. That symbol was her most distinguishing mark, and so I had made sure to use it, but if she hadn’t had it before, then it wouldn’t be included in any report. I shrugged. It was, at least, worth a try. Setting my flask aside, I set about my focusing exercise once again, and prepared to search. This time, I made sure to picture the woman without the mark, her yellow-golden scales pristine instead of scarred. This time, the papers flew away from me a little more slowly, but still regularly, until only two papers remained. I held out my paws, both mentally and literally, and the papers flew into them. The moment I felt their weight, I woke myself out of my trance and stared down at the copies I now possessed.

The good thing about my mystical copies of reports is that, for reasons I can’t begin to explain, I seem to be able to read them instinctively. It makes it much easier than having to translate everything. Better still, I have an intuitive sense of what plane their originals came from. It takes a lot of the guess work out of the whole thing. Granted, sometimes I wished the Spark had given me indestructibility or flight or something, but all things considered, my affinity for paperwork paid off more than you might think.

Both reports were from a plane called Quanyan. They were filed through a magistrate in a town called Jilong. The first one, as I had suspected, was a missing persons report filed for a woman who perfectly fit the description of the vic down at Enforcer headquarters. Unfortunately, there was nothing more to the report. It was merely a notification that she had gone missing and for the magistrate to put his guards to looking for her. There was not even a name associated with the report. The second one was even less helpful. It was nothing more than a notification from the magistrate’s office that the allotted search period of a fortnight had elapsed, and that no further active search would be made.

I growled, and scratched behind my right ear. The reports didn’t tell me much, but it told me where to start looking. I had never been to Quanyan before. Never even heard of it. So I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But I figured it would be a quick in and out, find out what I could about the vic, and maybe that would lead me to her killer. I doubted it, though. I was working on a theory, and it wasn’t one that was going to be easy to explain to Captain Nallry. I figured the lizard woman was likely a planeswalker whose Spark ignited. Her family probably put out the report, but she was killed here on Nuwar before she could return. If she even wanted to. It didn’t tell me anything about who killed her, or why, or what that symbol meant, but it was the only lead I had. So I followed it.

When I stepped out of the aether and into the plane of Quanyan, I was blinded by the light of its massive sun, and had to shield my eyes. By the time I was able to look around again, all I could see were a few dozen faces staring at me in confusion and amazement. Most of them seemed to be human, but I noted with my unique brand of optimism that one or two were long-necked Viashino, like the vic back on Nuwar. “Donagut,” I said, under my breath, “don’t screw this up.”

For a long time, I stood there, standing in the blazing hot sun in the center of what looked like a public square. The ground was tiled in some sort of marble, and there were four fountains set at ground level in a square pattern. I had, apparently, planeswalked directly in the center of those four fountains. Well, to be honest, I think I was slightly closer to the northern fountain, but you get the point. Whatever the case, eventually one of the humans approached me slowly, inching closer and closer without taking his eye off of me. As he got closer, the others who were gathered in the square eased closer as well, trying to hear whatever conversation the man and I were about to have.

The human man looked me up and down and said, “Are…are you one of the Guardians?”

“Uh?” I asked eloquently. “Oh. Well, undoubtedly not in the way you mean it, no. I’m just a traveler. I’m looking for someone.”

“But…your face?” The man stammered. “Surely, only the Guardians wear the faces of the beasts!”

I growled. Such was the windfall of being a planeswalker from one of the rarer races. I didn’t pretend to know why hounds seemed to live on so few planes while humans seemed to infest nearly all of them. Usually, I just figured it was related to how there was one noble hound to the thousands of fleas that plagued him.

“Look, never mind all that, alright? I’m looking for a woman. A Viashino woman.”

The man scratched the back of his head, looking confused. “What’s a Viashino?”

I scratched behind my right ear, partially to mirror his action, and partially because it itched. I pointed at one of the lizardfolk still watching my conversation with this short, small-eyed man. “That’s a Viashino.”

The man looked where I was pointing, and his confusion deepened. “That’s Chongci Kuai. He’s the village messenger.”

“That may well be,” I said, “but he’s still a Viashino. You know, a lizard-folk? Scales? Long tail? Sharp teeth?”

“Oh!” the man said. “He’s Xiaolong! Yes, of course, the Dragon-young. So you are looking for Xiaolong, then?”

I sighed. “If that’s what you call them, yes.”

As I was speaking, the lizard that this man had identified as Chongci Kuai approached, a bit quicker but no less cautiously than the human had. As he spoke, he hissed every “s” just enough to annoy me, but otherwise his voice was deep and pleasant. I noted that his scales, unlike the woman we found on Nuwar, were a sharp shade of green.

“Greetings, noble visitor,” he began, before turning to the human. “Perhaps if he is searching for Xiaolong, I had best speak with him.”

The human nodded and began backing away even before he answered. “Yes, that would perhaps be best. Thank you, Chongci.”

They bowed to one another at the neck, and the lizard’s head bent nearly down to his waist. The human continued his retreat as Chongci straightened and looked back toward me. “So, good traveler, how may I assist you? You seek one of my kind, I understand?”

I nodded. In my experience, first impressions were nearly always wrong, especially when they have time to craft them. Chongci Kuai seemed much more friendly than most Viashino I had ever dealt with. That made me suspicious.

“That’s right. First off, though, would you mind telling me the name of this village of yours? This is my first time here, as you can probably imagine.”

“Of course, honored stranger,” he responded immediately. “It is the village of Jilong which has the privilege of greeting you.”

At least I was in the right place. I figured I was, because following the paperwork typically brought me to the right place, but I’m a Detector, and I’ve found that everything I take for granted usually turns out wrong.

“Excellent. The Via- sorry. The Xiaolong I am looking for is a woman, perhaps just a bit taller than you are, yellow or golden scales, and wearing plenty of jewelry. Rings, bracelets, necklace, and a golden netting along her cranial spines. Anyone you know?”

It was difficult to read the lizard’s reactions, but I guessed it was something akin to recognition. “I know of perhaps four or five Xiaolong from Jilong alone that would fit that description. Do you, perhaps, know her name?”

“I don’t,” I admitted. “If it helps, I believe she was reported missing. How long ago, I have no way of knowing.”

“I see,” Chongci said thoughtfully. “But if the woman was reported missing from Jilong, may I inquire as to the purpose of searching for her here?”

I shrugged. “I needed to start somewhere, and Jilong is the only lead I’ve got.”

“I see,” the lizard repeated. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. No matter what the species, suspicion was still suspicion. “And, if I may be so bold as to ask, why are you searching for her?”

“I believe she may be in some danger,” I said calmly. “I believe somebody wishes to hurt her. I want to find that somebody, and I can’t do that until I learn more about the woman herself.”

“I see,” Chongci said for a third time. Then he stared at me for a long moment. I suppose he was trying to decide whether or not I was lying. I like to think I’m a good liar, and I had answered his question in such a way that, strictly speaking, I had told the truth. Someone did wish to hurt her, and I was looking for that person, and I did need to learn more about her to do that. Finally, Chongci seemed satisfied. “I am afraid, good wanderer, that I cannot help you directly. However, I believe I can take you to someone who can.”

“Sounds good,” I said. Chongci bowed his head to me and I mimicked the gesture slightly. Without another word, the Xiaolong man moved past me and toward a large building a short distance away. I followed him, taking the opportunity to survey the village a bit. The buildings were all beautiful and well-kept. They all seemed set into the ground, as each one rested in a small pit of carved and polished stone that angled downward toward the walls, which were rectangular and painted, mostly in reds and yellows. The roofs were large and uniformly green, tapering downward in an arching slope rather than sharp angles, and turning upward to points at the four corners. These roofs were supported by rows of pillars painted in contrasting colors with the building. I’m not much for décor or architecture, but even I had to admit that the effect was stunning.

The building Chongci brought me to was larger than most of the others, with walls of deep crimson and light gray pillars. He didn’t hesitate as we approached, and instead led me directly through the door and into a large receiving chamber with a polished gray-marble floor. To the right as we entered, there was a single desk with a human man sitting behind it. He glanced up as we approached, and then looked back down, only to shoot his gaze back up at me a half second later. The man was staring at me, his mouth hanging open, when Chongci spoke to him.

“We would like to see the Prefect, if you please. Our honored visitor requires his assistance.”

“I…” the man began, then stopped. “Of course. Please come with me,” he made sure to indicate that he was speaking only to Chongci. To me, he added, “If you would be so kind as to wait here.”

I simply nodded. I didn’t like where this was going. I was in a strange place I knew almost nothing about, and the fact that I was a stranger here was very obviously not lost on any of us. It had also been my experience that one of the quickest ways to make enemies in a new place was to start asking about the people who had gone missing from there. Fortunately, I had always been a quick ‘walker, and if I had to get out of there quickly, I knew I could handle myself long enough to do so.

My wait was relatively short. It was perhaps two or three minutes before Chongci Kuai and the man behind the desk returned. Chongci bowed to me a second time, but said nothing and proceeded to walk out the door and back into the village. The other man smiled at me as warmly as he could manage and indicated for me to follow him.

“If you would be so kind as to follow me, sir?”

I just nodded. Together, we crossed the marbled floor until we came to a large set of thick double doors, painted crimson and inlaid with an intricate jade design that snaked its way from one door to the other. Its pattern seemed maddened, yet there was an odd sort of symmetry to it. The man opened the left door and indicated for me to enter. I nodded again, and did so.

On the other side, there was a large office lined on two sides with windows which were open to the outside. These windows were crossed by blinds made of some sort of green wood, and all were open except for one set, which I could tell from the shadows faced the blazing sun. The third wall of the office was lined with shelves filled with stacks of papers. In the center of the room, a bit closer to the far wall of windows than to the door, was a large wooden desk, and at the desk sat the man I assumed to be the Prefect, who stood up as I entered.

The Prefect was a short man, but thick with muscle. He wore a strange sort of ceremonial covering that tapered down from his neck and covered his chest and back, but left his massive arms bare down to the forearms, which were covered in dark leather bracers. His hair was short and black, his skin tanned and smooth apart from a trimmed mustache and a long patch of dark hair at his chin that extended from his bottom lip to about half an inch below his jaw. I noticed with no small degree of interest that, leaning against either arm of his chair, was a weapon of thick wood longer than his arm, hooked across the chair arms by leather-bound handles. I had seen tonfas before, even fought with them occasionally in the Pits back on my home plane of Dinaska, but these were exquisitely crafted, and looked impossibly heavy.

The Prefect smiled at me. “Greetings, honored stranger. I am the Prefect of Jilong, charged by his most noble Magistrate to keep the peace and assist those who require aid. My name is Dizhen Shan. May I ask who you are?”

“Name’s Donagut,” I said, trying to size him up. He stepped around his desk, leaving his tonfas where they rested, which let me relax. But only a little.

Dizhen extended his hand to me, and I shook it. When he let it go, I started rubbing my right paw with my left. This man was strong, and I suspect that he had wanted me to know it. He was still smiling warmly as he spoke. “So, Donagut, I understand that you have come to Jilong looking for Kuweide Hua, is that right?”

“Kuweide Hua?” I asked, absently scratching behind my right ear.

Dizhen cocked his head at me, his brown eyes flashing confusion. “That is what Chongci told me. Perhaps he was misunderstanding.”

“Oh, the Viashino woman!” I said, realizing he was giving me her name. I noticed his eyes flash something else, perhaps understanding, perhaps recognition, but he continued to smile as I realized I had again used the wrong word. “I mean, the, um,” I stammered as I tried to remember the local term. I gave up.

“The Xiaolong,” Dizhen offered matter-of-factly. “I see, Chongci must not have told you her name. I do not blame him. He wanted to be certain that we could speak of the matter.”

“So you did know the missing woman?” I asked him.

“Of course,” the Prefect said, moving back around his desk. “Jilong is not a large town. We all know one another.”

I nodded. “Her name, you said, was?”

He narrowed his eyes at me, just slightly, but kept smiling. “Kuweide Hua.”

I tried to commit it to memory. I suspected it would come in handy later, after the Prefect would invariably fail to give me any other useful information. After all, while he had no way of knowing it, I had already read the reports. They had told me nothing but the names of a plane and a village. I needed more. Now I had her name, and that, at least, was a start.

“Right. Kuweide Hua. Were you the one to handle the search for her?”

“Yes,” Dizhen said, sitting back down in his chair. “When her brother, Roushi, came in to file the report, I spoke with him personally.”

“Were there any leads?” I pressed, “anything to indicate where or how she left town?”

“No.” The Prefect said simply before he began to idly play with the handle of one of his tonfas. “You seem very interested in this matter, Donagut. I would be very interested to know why.”

I shrugged. I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. “A woman disappears into the unknown, Prefect. That sort of thing always makes me wonder.”

He nodded, but his curiosity was obviously not sated yet. “And how is it that you came to hear about our missing Kuweide?”

I scratched behind my right ear. “Rumors on the road,” I said vaguely, then tried to distract him with another question. “Are you still looking for her?”

He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. The Magistrate has strict orders about time management. We are allotted no more than a fortnight to search for the missing. I alerted the Magistrate’s office of her disappearance, and two weeks later, they alerted me that the search was ended.”

“And that’s it?” I asked, surprised. “What about her brother? Hasn’t he searched for her?”

“Roushi assisted us in the search, yes,” Dizhen said, his irritation beginning to bubble up. “But it was only out of duty to his kin. Frankly, I don’t think he would have even filed the report if he hadn’t been honor-bound to do so. He didn’t think we would find her any more than I did.”

“Why not?”

Dizhen Shan stood up again and stepped away from his chair and, notably, his tonfas. He stepped over to the open window and sighed heavily. “Everyone in Jilong knew Kuweide Hua. She was wild. Ambitious. She resented this small town and her family, and wanted nothing more than to travel to the capital, or to some other big city. I believe that one day, she simply decided to leave. She told no one, because she cared about no one, except herself.”

I considered this. Whatever else might have happened, Kuweide Hua had, in fact, found her way to a big city. But how? Was she a planeswalker? I needed to know.

“Prefect, are you certain that no one saw her leave? No one knows if she just walked out of town, or…” I trailed off.

“Or what?” Dizhen asked without turning to face me.

I sighed. “Or something else, I suppose.” For a long moment, neither of us said anything. Finally, I continued. “Are you certain her brother feels the same way? Or that he doesn’t know more than he’s telling you?”

The Prefect thought for a long moment. “I know only what Roushi told me, I suppose. Understand, Donagut, that by order of the Magistrate, I am forbidden to look further into this matter. If you wish to, you may feel welcome, but the fortnight has expired, and Roushi has elected not to file a petition with the Magistrate for an exception. My hands are tied.”

“I see,” is all I said.

There was another long pause before Dizhen Shan spoke again. “You are convinced something has happened to her, aren’t you, Donagut?”

I scratched behind my right ear. There was concern in the prefect’s voice, although it sounded a bit odd to me. Almost hollow. “Yes, I am. To be honest, Prefect, I think she’s been killed, and I think someone in Jilong knows about it.”

Dizhen hung his head. “I never wished for such troubles here,” he said, barely above a whisper. Then he looked back at me. “I cannot help you officially. But if you wish to investigate, you should start by talking to Roushi.” He moved to open the one set of closed blinds, and pointed. “He is that Xiaolong there, standing by the barrels.”

I moved over to see, and Dizhen stepped back to let me stand in his place. I could see the stack of barrels the Prefect was talking about, but I saw no one, neither Viashino nor human, and I told him so.

“Strange,” he said. “He was there just a moment ago. Perhaps he ducked behind them. Let me see.”

I felt Dizhen come up beside me, and then I felt something much worse, a sudden, painful impact right at the small of my back. The pain was so intense that I dropped to my knees, and then fell to my left, splayed on the ground face down. Although the pain was incredible, my instincts saved me as I felt the prefect’s movements above me. I rolled away just as one of his massive tonfas hammered down where my head had been, cracking the marble. Thanks to my years fighting in the Pits, I was able to push through the pain and spin up to my feet, bringing my arms up to the lower of the Broken Bone ready stances. Dizhen grinned.

“Impressive,” he said, readying himself for combat. “With most people, that shot would have broken the back. Of course, I assumed you must be strong.”

“What are you do…”

I was never able to finish that sentence. Dizhen rushed at me, faster than I would have guessed he could move. He had both tonfas in his hands now, and it took all of the speed I could muster to dodge them. He swung at my head and my body equally, and I was just grateful for the large size of his office. If the space had been any more cramped, I’d have been in serious trouble. As it was, I was in slightly less serious trouble. My back was killing me, and though I’m pretty good with hand-to-paw combat, paw-to-weapon combat was another matter. I was quicker than Dizhen was, and was able to stick a few shots in at his body, but it was like punching a stone statue. They had no effect on the Prefect whatsoever.

Then Dizhen Shan landed a second blow, catching me in my left ribs. I think I heard a crack. I sure as hell felt one. I staggered back a few steps, clutching my side, and then I lost my balance and went down. But I wasn’t out. As Dizhen closed in, I launched myself upward, trying to strike him in the jaw or the nose with the palm of my paw. Unfortunately, he closed too fast, and my strike was blocked by his massive, muscled chest. The momentum of the strike still caught him in the chin, but there was little force behind it, and he shook it off. My strike up his chest did, however, lift his ceremonial covering up to momentarily cover his face and, more importantly reveal a large medallion he was wearing underneath it. The medallion bore the same symbol as the one that had been burned into Kuweide Hua.

I was so surprised at seeing the symbol that I momentarily forgot what I was doing, and again, it was only my instincts that saved me. I brought my forearms up to block just as both tonfas flew toward my face. The shot broke both of my arms, and I howled in pain as I flew backwards and tumbled over Dizhen’s desk. Acting on impulse and self-preservation, I scrambled to hide underneath it, and I knew I was lost. Dizhen Shan was too strong for me, at least today. Before he could circle the desk, I decided that ‘walking away with my tail between my legs was better than not walking away at all.

I almost wish I could have seen the look on his face when he found I had vanished.

It took me almost a week to get patched up after my encounter with Dizhen Shan. The Enforcers, fortunately, had access to some pretty talented healers on Nuwar, and Captain Nallry told me they’d foot the bill. Of course, he had a lot of questions for me as to how it happened, where it happened, and who had done it, none of which I could really answer. I just told him that I had tracked down the vic’s name, and I found someone who was likely involved, but that he’d have to trust me to get the rest. He didn’t like that. I couldn’t say I blamed him. But I promised him I was making progress on the case, and that, despite what my injuries suggested, I could handle it myself. Finally, Nallry relented.

So there I was again, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my rented room, stilling my breathing and concentrating on paperwork. I already knew that only Quanyan had any paperwork describing the vic in detail. But Dizhen had given me at least one thing other than a pretty painful beating. He had given me a name, and a name was something I could use. So, once again, I allowed myself to drift into that imagined world of papers, tomes and scrolls. This time, I ignored Kuweide Hua’s description and instead focused solely on her name. As before, the papers flew away from me with haste, but several papers were left behind, and when I woke myself, copies of them were resting in my paws.

Most of the new reports were useless. That’s just the way paperwork goes. Nearly all of them were from Quanyan. There was a notification of birth, an attestation of her completing her education, a report of domestic trouble between Kuweide, her father, and her brother, and a last will and testament for her father, listing her brother Roushi as a primary benefactor and Kuweide as a secondary. I growled. While that didn’t rule out her brother as a suspect, it did seem to shed some doubt on it. Obviously, Dizhen Shan was involved, but how and why, I still didn’t know. And none of this helped figure out how Kuweide had gotten to Nuwar in the first place.

Only two of the documents I had found were from somewhere other than Quanyan. One was from here on Nuwar, and while I was momentarily excited that I had found a pertinent clue, I soon found myself disappointed. It was only an updated report from Captain Nallry, amending the death report and providing a description of the vic and the name I had furnished him with. Nothing I didn’t already know. The second one, though, was much more interesting. It was from a plane called Hangu, written by the Prime Mophi of the Temple in a town called Othdban. The report was apparently intended for Temple records.

So there it was. I had my second lead. It was thin, because I obviously already knew that Kuweide was no longer at the Temple in Othdban, but it was all I had. Also, her appearance on Hangu confirmed that she must have been a planeswalker, and the fact that she posed as a god made me wonder about what sort of person Kuweide Hua actually was. Dizhen Shan’s words could certainly not be trusted, but there may have been a grain of truth in them. Still, it was my job to determine who killed her and why, and I wasn’t going to do that by sitting around my room on Nuwar. So, with a heavy sigh and a brief swig from my flask, I planeswalked, following the paperwork to Hangu.

My shoulders slumped as soon as I arrived. Hangu was sticky and hot, although mercifully far less blinding than Quanyan had been. But even more than the weather, I was unhappy with where I had wound up. While I had managed to ‘walk directly into the center of Jilong, I was, apparently, nowhere near the city of Othdban. In fact, I seemed to be nowhere near anything. I was standing in the middle of a worn dirt road that stretched on endlessly in either direction, roughly east and west, from my best guess. The road was lined by jungle vegetation, but it was relatively short, allowing the broken sunlight to fall across the dirt in whatever patterns the clouds decided. I stood there for a while, trying to decide which direction to take. Finally, after a particularly long scratch, I set off eastward.

It’s always hard to judge time on a plane you’ve never seen before, but I guess it was about two hours before I spotted the town. The road, and the jungle around it, seemed to open up into a public square, although it was far from the center of town. Still, even as I was approaching, I could hear the commotion coming from the square. By the sound of things, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of people gathering, chattering, and shuffling around both feet and metal implements. Just before I stepped into view, I took another quick drink from my flask. I hate crowds.

As I entered the square, I found I had underestimated their numbers. They were certainly in the hundreds and then some, and, as I had suspected and feared, they seemed to be preparing for war. They were all human, or at least all that I could see, and dressed in the simple garb of farmers that I could have recognized on nearly any plane, the colors and cuts drab and simple and utilitarian. Noticeably, none of them wore armor, and the weapons they were collecting were little more than farm tools repurposed for battle, with the occasional sword standing out as a rarity. I shuddered. The only thing worse than warriors going to war was civilians doing it.

A few moments after I entered the square, a strange ripple of silence seemed to come over the crowd. I could almost feel each set of eyes turn to me. Probably yet another plane who had never seen a houndfolk man before. I briefly reflected on the selectiveness of my ancestors in what worlds they chose to inhabit, but then remembered my home plane of Dinaska and realized that my ancestors must not have had a choice in the matter. Finally, after several minutes of these people staring at me in surprise and awe, a woman approached me, dressed in a dark gray robe whose cut was drastically different from those of the people around her.

The woman looked me up and down for a long moment, her mouth hanging slightly open, before falling to her knees and holding up her hands. “Truly, we are blessed!” She said, and almost all of those gathered likewise fell to their knees. I started rubbing my forehead. Clearly, Kuweide Hua must not have had a difficult time convincing these people she was a god.

As for me, I waved my hand at the woman who had approached me. “Look, you can forget all that, okay? I’m here because I’m looking for someone.”

“Of course, your celestial majesty! You must be looking for the Dragon-god, Kuweide Hua, is that correct?”

I sighed. “I’m looking for Kuweide Hua, yes. Is this the town of Othdban, then?”

“Yes, your celestial majesty!” The woman answered. That was going to get old really fast.

“Just call me Donagut, will you?”

“As you command, Lord Donagut,” she said bowing low.

“Just Donagut,” I corrected. “And will you please stand up? There’s really no need for you to kneel like that.”

“As you command,” she repeated, climbing to her feet. The rest of the gathered townsfolk took a bit longer to return to their standing positions, but eventually they did, and the woman hazarded another step forward. “I am the Prime Mophi of the Temple. Please allow me to welcome your distinguished self to our humble town, Donagut, venerable Hound-god!”

I scratched behind my right ear. “Uh, thanks. But I’m not…” I started to say, then thought better of it. It wasn’t worth the time or the trouble. “Anyway, I’m looking for Kuweide Hua. I know she’s not here now, but I also know that she was. What can you tell me about her?”

“My lord,” the Prime Mophi began with her head bowed, “The sun-scaled Dragon-god came out of the West, as you have! She came unto us with only her godly tongue, and would not speak ours, as you are graciously doing. She stayed with us at the Temple for a time, and we learned but little of her wisdom. The only thing we could discern, Lord Donagut, was that she loathed the Iron Temple to the west. Othdban has long feared them and their evil, and the goddess Kuweide Hua confirmed our suspicions!”

A loud murmur erupted from the crowd, and I could hear the anger in their voices at the mention of this Iron Temple. But if Kuweide had come from that direction…

“What happened to her?” I asked the Prime Mophi. “How did she leave this place?”

The crowd once again fell silent, and I noticed several of them lower their heads, though out of sorrow or shame, I had no idea.

After a momentary delay, the Prime Mophi answered me. “Please forgive us, honorable Donagut! We were too weak to stop them!”

“Stop who?”

“The Zealots from the Iron Temple!” She exclaimed, her voice breaking slightly as she did. “Led by their most wicked ruler, Thong Mu Beu, the zealots stormed Othdban and the Temple, and they took the Dragon-god!”

“She sacrificed herself for us!” A voice in the crowd yelled.

“We must do the same for her!” Another answered.

I was beginning to see the brushstrokes of this particular painting, although the whole picture had yet to dry. If the zealots from the Iron Temple had taken Kuweide, why hadn’t she simply planeswalked away? Then again, perhaps she had, and it may have been the last thing she ever did. I sighed again. There were still questions to be answered here, but before I could think of which ones to ask, the Prime Mophi spoke again.

“My lord, we are prepared now to strike back at Thong Mu Beu and his accursed Iron Temple. I would not presume to impose upon you for your intervention,” I flinched at that word, and I think she noticed, “but I would ask for your blessing in the coming battle.”

I knew I couldn’t stop them. I could feel it. But I also knew I wasn’t too excited about the prospect of a battle. Unfortunately, there was nothing more I could learn about Kuweide here in Othdban, and the only place to learn more was apparently this Iron Temple the Prime Mophi had mentioned. And so, I did something that, even at the time, I knew I was going to regret.

“I will not be able to do much to help you, as this is your battle,” I said, biting my lip. “But you have my blessing, for whatever it’s worth.”

A loud cheer rang out from the gathered townsfolk, and before I could say another word, they surged forward and past me, jogging down the road I had just come from. Before I knew it, all of them were gone, and I was standing alone in an empty town square on Hangu. I scratched behind my right ear. This was going to be another long day.

I spend most of the remainder of that day following the impromptu army from a safe distance. They maintained a quick pace as I followed more leisurely behind them. Whatever was going to happen, I hoped I could avoid getting directly involved. All I wanted was information, and whatever issues existed between the people of Othdban and the denizens of this Iron Temple had started long before I arrived. In all likelihood, it had started long before Kuweide Hua showed up, too. This was their war. I just hoped, after it was all said and done, someone would be left to tell me what I needed to know.

Apparently, the Iron Temple was not too far from Othdban. The townsfolk arrived there in the mid-afternoon and started preparing to assail the walls. I didn’t get there until early evening, just as the zealots of the Iron Temple were sallying forth to engage the peasants. At first, I stood back to watch the carnage, but it quickly became apparent that the villagers were outmatched. They outnumbered the zealots at least ten to one, but the zealots knew what they were doing. They stood in an organized line, their black robes forming a single, shadowy wave as the wind caught them. When the first of the townsfolk charged into them, the zealots turned them away to a man, fighting casually and unarmed.

The peasants rallied, but it did little good. Once in a while, a zealot would fall at the end of a pitchfork or a crude spear, but the bodies of the Othdban people were piling up. Whether they were unconscious or dead, I couldn’t tell in most instances. However, I did notice one man, fighting in the center of the zealot’s line, whose victims were obviously dying, and dying quickly. Without really knowing why, I found myself moving in his direction. He was a tall man, probably near seven feet tall, but thin as a scarecrow. His robes were just as black as the others, but the cut was different, with sleeves that fell away at the elbows and dangled around his knees.

As I drew closer, I noticed he was wearing a bizarre brown leather glove on each hand. The middle and ring fingers of these gloves were merged, and at the tip, there was a tiny needle protruding. There was also a tiny vial affixed to the first knuckle of the thumb. The man was dancing around, constantly shifting his weight from one foot to the other while raising and lowering his arms in a corresponding rhythm. Whenever one of the villagers moved to attack him, he would simply brush the attack aside, and then gracefully strike with his needled glove, immediately dipping the needle back into the vial even as his victim fell dead from whatever powerful poison must have been held within.

I had to stop and dispose of two or three of the zealots as I approached the man. They were fighting unarmed, as I was, but my skill in the Broken Bone style was, mercifully, superior to the skills of those who tried to stop me. A few quick deflections and a strike to the face or head, and I was on my way. It was a pity the townsfolk of Othdban were not similarly skilled, but they were already realizing their folly, and most were beginning to pull back. I looked around the battlefield to take note of my surroundings when I heard his voice.

“Well, well. I must admit I never would have expected this.”

I turned around, and the man with the poisoned glove was directly in front of me. He was still bouncing his weight around, but the movement had slowed, and his arms were lower than before. I had no idea how he had gotten so close. Even above the noise of the battle, my ears were excellent. I should have heard him coming.

“Who are you?”

“Thong Mu Beu,” he said with a devilish grin. “Though I suspect you already knew that. Are you allied with this rabble?”

“Perhaps,” I said cautiously, watching his arms. “But not necessarily. I’m just looking for someone, and I’m told you’re the man to see.”

“Undoubtedly,” Thong Mu Beu answered. “What are you called?”

“Donagut,” I said plainly. “Just Donagut.”

“As you wish,” he replied coolly. “Then, for the sake of familiarity, you may refer to me as Mu Beu. Tell me, Donagut. Who is it that you wish to find on a battlefield?”

“The battlefield was just bad timing,” I said. “I’m looking for a woman named Kuweide Hua. Lizard. Golden scales. Pretty tall. Anyone you know?”

Thong Mu Beu’s mouth twisted upward into an approximation of a smile. “I suppose, if you are here, it is far too late for deceit, so I won’t even try. Yes, I know the creature you seek. She was here, not long ago, within the Iron Temple. But you have my word that she is not there now.”

No kidding. “Can you tell me when, and more importantly how, she left?”

The man looked me up and down for a long time. “You know,” he began absently. “I saw you dispatch three of my men as you made your way here.”

“You’ve got good eyes, noticing that,” I pointed at the piles of bodies behind him, “while killing them.”

“They are nothing,” Mu Beu said dismissively. “Barely worth the effort of slipping on my conbὸ cap,” as he spoke, he held up his gloves to show me. “You were at least interesting. Worthy of a fight. Worthy, perhaps, of something more.”

“I’m only interested in finding out what happened to Kuweide Hua,” I said, setting myself in my own stance.

Thong Mu Beu looked at me for a moment before his smile widened. “Come now, Donagut. We need not be enemies here. I’ll tell you what. Come into the Iron Temple with me, and I will show you how Kuweide departed.”

This sent a shiver down my spine. I usually had a pretty good sense of people and whether they were likely to be good to their word. I didn’t need that sense now. I knew Thong Mu Beu wasn’t.

“Considering the mess you and your men have to clean up out here, I would hate to impose,” I said. “Perhaps it would be best if you just told me.”

His smile widened to a grin. “There are certain things which defy description, Donagut. And many, many things which cannot be given without being earned.”

I don’t remember what I was about to say to him. I was interrupted when three of the Othdban villagers ran past me, charging at Thong Mu Beu with their crude weapons ready. I noticed that one of those townsfolk was the Prime Mophi who had spoken to me in the village. Thong Mu Beu gave no facial reaction, and instead leapt backwards a few feet to receive the incoming attack. I wouldn’t describe his movements as fast, but they were unbelievably fluid. The first villager stabbed at the zealot with an old machete, and Thong Mu Beu danced away from the attack, twirling his long sleeve around the blade and striking the poor man in the throat with the needle of his conbὸ cap. The second man thrust forward with a pitchfork, but again, Mu Beu slipped away, bringing his other arm under the weapon and moving forward, simultaneously hitting the man in the face with his own weapon and stabbing him in the side of the neck with the poisoned needle. Both men fell dead before the Prime Mophi even caught up with them.

The Prime Mophi fought bare-handed, but she, at least, seemed to possess some training in unarmed combat, and for a few moments, Thong Mu Beu was forced to simply deflect and redirect her strikes. But it was apparent which one was the true master of the martial arts between the two of them. Thong Mu Beu spun away from the Prime Mophi’s flurry of attack and kicked her hard in the stomach with his shin. He quickly rolled over her back as she doubled over, crouched, and brought his elbow up hard, catching her in the nose. As she reeled back, he spun around, striking her in the small of the back with his knee. As she arched, he grabbed her from behind and held her at an awkward angle, one needle against the skin of her neck. He was facing me, and grinning.

“I think, perhaps, I have poorly phrased my invitation,” he said. I noticed that he wasn’t even breathing hard. “For that, I apologize. Donagut, I would very much like you to accompany me back into the Iron Temple. If you would do us the honor of your company, I would be pleased to allow the Prime Mophi to live, as well as the remainder of her village.”

The Prime Mophi’s eyes widened as she stared at me. “Do not do it, Hound-god! He has already taken Kuweide Hua! My life means nothing!”

“On that point, we agree,” Thong Mu Beu commented. “Well, Donagut? What do you say? You may save her life by merely accepting my hospitality. Refuse, and I will be forced to kill her and her people. I should add that, although my poison works very quickly, it is, sadly, quite excruciating.”

I thought about it. At worst, I could always planeswalk away if things turned ugly. Of course, Kuweide had the same option, and apparently still could not escape her fate. But I wasn’t about to give up on this case, especially after all the trouble it had been so far. You just don’t walk away from that kind of investment of time. And I knew that the Iron Temple was, at this point, my only lead. I shrugged.

“You promise you’ll let them live if I go with you?”

Thong Mu Beu’s grin widened. I doubt it could have gotten much bigger. “Their lives mean nothing to me. They attacked me, not I, them. Once you are inside, they will be free to leave, alive and as well as they are right now.”

I looked at the Prime Mophi and nodded. “Don’t worry about me. He can’t hurt me. Go back to Othdban. Tend to your people. Live.”

There was a certain sadness in her eyes, but finally she spoke, not daring to nod with Thong Mu Beu’s needle at her throat. “As you wish, Lord Donagut.”

“Just Donagut,” I said, then turned to the zealot. “Let’s go.”

With a quick nod of his head, Thong Mu Beu indicated for another zealot to join us. When he arrived, Mu Beu handed the Prime Mophi to him. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Once our honored guest and I are within the Temple, release her and allow her people to retreat. Do not harm them unless he attempts to refuse our hospitality.”

The other zealot nodded, and quickly produced a wavy knife, which he held against the Prime Mophi’s neck. Then Thong Mu Beu looked back at me and indicated toward the doors of the Iron Temple.

“After you, honored guest.”

“I’d rather keep an eye on you, if it’s all the same.”

I don’t know how he managed it, but somehow Thong Mu Beu widened his grin yet again. “Very well, then. Side by side.”

I nodded. I knew I needed to be careful, because one quick puncture from his conbὸ cap would undoubtedly kill me. But if that’s what he wanted to do, he had certainly had his share of opportunities, and his skills in martial combat were impressive. He certainly seemed to think so. Whatever his reasons were, he seemed to want to get me into the Iron Temple, which was precisely where he had apparently taken Kuweide Hua. But it seemed impossible that she had died there. Even if she had been a planeswalker, she couldn’t have ‘walked after she died. And there was still Dizhen Shan to consider. What part did he and the plane of Quanyan play in all of this? I had no idea. And the only answers I was likely to find were inside the Iron Temple.

As Thong Mu Beu and I were walking toward the large metallic gates of the temple, I suddenly noticed something that I hadn’t before, something that made that connection I was looking for, yet didn’t make that connection make any sense. I looked at the closed double doors of that Iron Temple, and, set into the pattern of the door, was the same symbol I had seen on Dizhen Shan’s medallion, and on Kuweide Hua’s forehead. In the center were the general shapes of two arrowheads joined at the tip, all in white. Around that was a thick black circle, and around that was a thin white one. It was impossible to conceive that this symbol was a coincidence. Thong Mu Beu on Hangu, Dizhen Shan on Quanyan, and Kuweide Hua, somehow on Nuwar, were all connected. I just needed to know how.

As we approached the gate, the symbol split in the center as the doors opened to admit us. Beyond the gate, I saw a large courtyard where the zealots undoubtedly trained. In some ways, it looked similar to the temple where I had trained with the Vedalken monks, although the style of buildings were completely different. These were all constructed in a clear utilitarian style, all sharp lines and cold, gray metal. They were nothing like the smooth, curving symmetry of living wood where I had mastered the Broken Bone form.

As we passed the gate, I turned around and, surprisingly, Thong Mu Beu proved true to his word. With a small wave of his hand, he signaled the zealot still holding the Prime Mophi where we had been standing. The Zealot nodded back, and removed his knife, allowing the woman to flee. She was trying to gather up the rest of her people when the iron gates closed again, trapping me within the strange temple.

“I truly hope they do not attempt to attack again tonight,” Thong Mu Beu said to me. I turned to face him. His smile was gone. “I would be very disappointed if they forced me to break my promise to you.”

“Speaking of your promise, Thong Mu Beu,” I said, “Will you show me what became of Kuweide Hua?”

“I will,” he said with a slight bow, “if you are strong enough to earn that knowledge.”

Without any more warning than that, he struck out at me with his left arm, the needle of his conbὸ cap flashing in my vision even as I ducked under it. Allowing instinct to take over, I punched him in the ribs with my left paw, and then in the stomach with my right. Then I shifted to the upper arms position, which was more offensively minded. Using my body weight, I punched downward, striking him hard across the jaw, and he dropped to the ground.

But Thong Mu Beu was strong, and the strike only phased him. Still moving with remarkable fluidity, he spun around and swept at my legs, forcing me to jump back. In the same action, he bounded up to his feet and immediately came at me, striking at me with his conbὸ caps like a pair of scorpion tails. I switched back to the more defensive lower arms position, avoiding or blocking his blows as I could. I was able to return a few shots, mostly to his body, and then managed to catch his left arm at the wrist, followed quickly by his right. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to take his legs into account, and paid for it as he kicked me straight in the stomach, launching me backwards. I landed hard, and Thong Mu Beu was on me in an instant.

I rolled away and onto the grass, and only barely managed to deflect a strike to my neck that would have been lethal. I pounced up to a crouch, feigning injury, and managed to kick Mu Beu in the gut, although not with the force I would have liked. It did, however, buy me enough time to stand up before another flurry of almost liquid strikes came my way. I blocked, but only barely. But I was so focused on avoiding those deadly conbὸ caps that I forgot about the rest of him. Suddenly, he was hitting me everywhere, with everything except his hands. Kicks to my sides and my legs, elbows to my body and head, knees to my sides and back. Finally and out of desperation, I was able to separate myself from him with a well-timed head-butt to the bridge of his nose. That’s nothing the Vedalken monks taught me, of course. That’s one hundred percent Dinaska Pits, but it works.

Looking back at Thong Mu Beu, I could tell the shot hadn’t quite broken his nose, which was a pity. I really wanted to break his nose. But it had stunned him, and he was standing back, presumably waiting for his vision to clear. I was breathing heavily at this point. He still wasn’t. That, also, didn’t make me happy.

“How long do we have to do this until you tell me what I want to know?” I asked.

Thong Mu Beu smiled, though not nearly as widely as he had before. “We’ll keep going until I believe you are strong enough to know the answer you seek.” He paused, considering. “Or, more likely, until you’re dead.”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same,” I said. Then I pointed to his gloves. “How about we try it without those, huh?”

I was surprised. Thong Mu Beu’s expression shifted to one of actual, heartfelt disappointment. “I see,” he said simply, and then stopped shifting his weight. “Tell me, Donagut, do you truly believe I am any less deadly without my conbὸ cap? I must say, your attitude saddens me. I thought perhaps I had at last found a worthy candidate.”

“Candidate for what?” I asked, not really interested. I was only trying to buy some time. His change of mood was telling, and I had seen it before. In the Pits, when one fighter outclassed another one, he would often play with him, like a confident predator with a hopeless prey. But inevitably, the predator grew bored of the game. That was the look I saw in the face of Thong Mu Beu. So, I started to prepare myself, grasping on to the aether and getting ready to move.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said, dejectedly. “I enjoyed sparring with you, Donagut. I saw great things in your future. But now? Well, I suspect you know.”

Without warning, he forced his right hand forward, and somehow detached the needle from the end of his conbὸ cap. My eyes widened as the poisoned dart flew at my neck, and I instinctively completed my ‘walk, disappearing back into the aether just before the needle would have killed me, had I still been on Hangu. As I stepped back into my filthy room back on Nuwar, I finally allowed myself to breathe again. That was close. A slower ‘walker would have been dead. Is that what happened to Kuweide Hua? I sank down into my mattress and took a long, well-deserved swig of my flask. Just what exactly had I gotten myself involved with? What was going on? What had happened to Kuweide, and where? And what did that damned symbol mean? Somewhere out there was an answer. I knew it. I just doubted I was going to like it much.

I took another three days off after I got back from Hangu. Captain Nallry was starting to get a bit annoyed with how long everything was taking. So was I. Although, to be completely honest, I was getting more upset with how often my ribs were getting broken these days. Two trips off-plane, two instances of broken ribs. I need to remember to get something for these healers’ birthdays next year. Don’t know where I’d be without them.

During those three days, I tried to think of any other way into this case. Kuweide Hua’s name and description had yielded some interesting connections, but nothing to tell me what happened, and where, and why. Had Dizhen Shan killed her? Had Thong Mu Beu? Or was it someone else entirely? None of this made any sense. Why had her body shown up on the streets of Braggart’s Court?

That thought gave me an idea. Nallry’s men had already combed the area where Kuweide’s body had been found, but I hadn’t bothered. I figured the Enforcers would have spotted anything I would have, but now I was wondering. Maybe there was something there. Her body had been discovered over a week earlier, so I doubted there was much to see, but it never hurt to take a look. I remember rubbing my healed ribs at that thought. Okay, so it only occasionally hurt to look.

Anyway, that night, I headed to Braggart’s Court to have a little look around. One of the advantages I have over the Enforcers is that I don’t look like an Enforcer. The people in the slums of the Great City didn’t particularly like the Ordinances, and they liked those who were paid to enforce them even less. Those living in Braggart’s Court were not particularly likely to give aid to anyone, but least of all an Enforcer. So as long as I asked the right questions in the right way, I would probably have more luck than Nallry.

Unfortunately, my brief investigation didn’t turn up much at first. The street where Kuweide had been found was no different than any other stretch of street in Braggart’s Court. They were all dirty and trash-ridden, but otherwise clean of any sort of evidence. I asked a few of the people who were either wandering or living on the streets if they had seen anything, but no one was interested in talking. I tried to be as subtle as I could, but either they made me for an Enforcer, or they wouldn’t talk anyway, or they genuinely had nothing to say on the matter. Braggart’s Court was looking like a dead end.

And then, I happened into a dead end in Braggart’s Court, and things turned around. I had turned down an alley one street too soon for where I was going, and found myself face to face with a brick wall. A new brick wall. A very new brick wall. Construction in the slums of the Great City was a rare thing, and new buildings were expensive. A new one here meant somebody with money or pull or both wanted something big put up quickly and quietly, and that told me something was strange. I decided to investigate.

I worked my way around the block until I found the opposite side of the building to which that wall belonged. It was a tricky route through the back alleys of Braggart’s Court, but eventually I found the entrance, and my heart stopped for a moment at what I saw. The door was circular, and cast in the shape of that same symbol I had seen on Quanyan, Hangu, and Kuweide’s forehead. Two intertwined arrowheads in white within a circle of black, within a smaller circle of white. Here was my connection.

I watched the door for a while, but nothing seemed to happen. I was waiting in the shadows, watching people move up and down the street, waiting for a time when I could move without anyone seeing me. After everything was clear, I approached the door with all the confidence I could muster. As I approached, two guards appeared from the side of the building, moving directly toward me. I stopped and waited, hoping to indicate to them that I meant no trouble. The guards were massive, and while I might have been able to handle one, and, on a lucky day, both, I had no doubt there were more around, both inside and out. The guard on my right squared up to me and scowled.

“Sorry. Invitation only.”

I scratched behind my right ear. “Invitation to what?”

“If you have to ask,” he said as both men stepped closer, “then you haven’t been invited.”

I held up my paws in a another sign that I didn’t want any trouble, and retreated back to the shadows of the wider street, trying to decide on a new course of action. As I stared at the door, a homeless man walked by me, and I stopped him, speaking quietly but, I hoped, not too suspiciously. “Hey,” I said, “what’s in that place? That wasn’t here last time I was through.”

He glanced over at the door and shook his head. “Some kind of gambling hall. Never been there, myself. Too rich for my blood.”

I thanked him and slipped him a couple small coins. He took one step away, then looked back. “I wouldn’t go there if I were you,” he warned. “Dangerous.”

I thanked him again, then moved off until I was certain he had left, as well. I continued to watch the door for nearly an hour before it finally opened, revealing a man who was staggering against the weight of a few too many drinks. I envied him, but I was on the job. But the man wasn’t what interested me. Instead, for the few moments that the door was open, I saw what I had been afraid of. There were at least four more guards sitting just inside the door, all at least as burly as the two I had already seen. Whatever that place was and whatever it meant, it was guarded like a fortress, and I wasn’t getting in there alone. I would need Nallry, but I didn’t know if the connection of the symbols would be enough. I needed more.

I went back home and decided on a new course of action. I needed to know more about that blasted symbol. It was everywhere in this case, from Kuweide’s brow to Dizhen Shan’s medallion to Thong Mu Beu’s Iron Temple and right back to Braggart’s Court. Had Kuweide brought that symbol with her when she ‘walked out of Quanyan? Or was there some other connection I was still missing? My search for information on Kuweide Hua had lead me nowhere but right back to that symbol, and I wasn’t going to learn anything more about her until I learned more about it. The time had come for more paperwork.

This time, my search revealed too many leads. Nearly a dozen different planes had reports of the same symbol or one nearly identical to it. These reports ranged from mundane cataloging of unique building décor to strange reports of abnormal creatures and disappearances, but the one that interested me the most was from a plane called Ameshima, in a city known as Tenpesuto. It was a notice of warning to the general populace. It started off by describing the symbol in detail, precisely as I had seen it repeatedly. Then, and most importantly, it said this:

This seemed like the best place to start. None of the other references to the symbol gave any sort of direct connection between anything that I could track. Of course, a ninja clan was not exactly my idea of a great quarry, especially with how badly my encounters with Thong Mu Beu and Dizhen Shan had gone, but at this point, I simply couldn’t stop. I felt like I was getting close now. The layers were beginning to peel back, and I thought that I would soon know what exactly had happened with Kuweide Hua. I hoped so. I was getting sick of working this case. I hadn’t had a good drink in over a week.

The moment I stepped onto the plane of Ameshima, I growled. It was raining. Torrentially. I hated the rain. Humans always looked at me like I was something strange and beastly just because I was a houndfolk. I was used to that. But, for whatever reason, they seemed to consider it particularly undignified when I shook myself dry. I would say that they’d do it too, if they could, and that they were probably just jealous. Nallry would yell at me to get out of his office and dry off somewhere else. I would remind him that it was another good reason not to schedule meetings with me in the mornings, before the Nuwar rains had ended. Then he would start swearing. Sometimes, I just don’t understand humans.

Fortunately, this time, I had stepped into the right place. The first passerby I saw confirmed that I was in the city of Tenpesuto. Unfortunately, unlike Jilong on Quanyan or Othdban on Hangu, Tenpesuto was not a small town. It was, as I soon discovered, quite large. It was nowhere near the size of the Great City, of course, which was itself nowhere near the size of, say, Ravnica, but still, Tenpesuto was big. And nobody wanted to talk to me about the symbol or about the Yorukage clan. On the positive side of matters, no one seemed bothered by the fact that I was a houndfolk. I didn’t see any others there, but there were a wide variety of people in the city, and my appearance didn’t seem to bother anyone. My questions, on the other hand, did.

My investigation had not been going well, and I was growing disheartened. I had been in town for five days, with just one brief ‘walk back to Nuwar to tell Nallry I was still alive and working on a lead that would break the case wide open. Nallry didn’t believe the last part. I didn’t blame him. You’d think with how often I play cards, I’d have a better bluffer’s face. Anyway, nobody on Ameshima was talking to me. I could get some into a talkative mood, but the moment I brought up the symbol or the Yorukage, they suddenly had something better to do somewhere far away from me. It was getting frustrating.

Then, one night in my Inn room, I had a visitor. Well, several visitors. Several very large visitors. They broke through the door to my room and surrounded my bed, wearing full armor and wielding some pretty nasty looking spears, which I noticed were pointed directly at my heart. Their apparent leader stepped forward, his face mostly hidden behind the visor of his armor.

“By the authority of Kaminari, Lord Protector of Tenpesuto and Chosen of the Light, you are under arrest. Resist, and you will be killed, dragged to the necroths, reanimated, and then killed again, but more slowly.”

I have to admit, that was a pretty unique arrest statement. I shrugged. “What am I under arrest for, if I may ask?”

“That sounds like resistance to me,” one of the soldiers said, but his commander shot him a look, and he quieted down.

“Cooperate, and that will be explained to you. Do not, and…”

“Right, right, dead, dragged, dead again, got it,” I said.

“So you will come along peacefully, then?” He asked.

“Of course,” I said, yawning. Then I indicated toward the far corner of the room. “As long as my pet tiger can come along.”

Nearly all of them looked. Amateurs. In the instant of their distraction, I kicked my blanket off and into the face of their leader and the soldier next to him. Then I rolled off the bed with as much force as I could, rolling under the spears of the soldiers to my left, near the window. I knocked those three off balance, and immediately struck with an uppercut to the jaw of the closest one. He fell like a stone. The next guard over, I kicked hard in both kneecaps, and even through his metallic armor, it knocked him over, crashing head-first into the bed.

I had hoped that with the guards thusly distracted, I’d be able to make for the open window, but I had no such luck. There were eight guards in all, and only the one I had punched was out cold. The one I had kicked was still down for the moment, but the others were recovering, most moving around to my side of the bed. So I made a split-second decision, and ran up the back of the soldier I had kicked, bounding off his head and across the room. All but one of the soldiers had moved to intercept me on the other side, and the one who had moved slowest paid for it as he felt my knee hammer him in the skull, dropping him instantly.

Two down, six to go, but I had lost the all-important element of surprise, not to mention blocking myself from my only two exits out of the room, the window and the door. As I was trying to decide what to do next, the soldier I had kicked charged at me blindly, apparently infuriated at my so easily embarrassing him. As he approached, I threw myself at him legs first, once again connecting with both knees. This time he crashed head-first into the wall behind me, and he was out. I shrugged. Three down, five to go.

Unfortunately, those five had decided to approach me with a bit more caution, and were advancing at me slowly, with their spears held up and at the ready. In hindsight, I probably should have just gone with them in the first place, but that hadn’t gone well for me on Quanyan or Hangu, and I had no reason to assume Ameshima would be any better. Still, though, in tight quarters with five murderous soldiers advancing on me, I couldn’t even risk planeswalking. If I had had time to prepare myself, I probably could have made it, but with them standing just feet away, I didn’t like my odds.

So instead, I grabbed a chair and threw it at their leader. For once, luck was on my side. Four of the five reacted by lifting their spears to intercept the flying furniture, and as their razor-sharp weapons pierced the soft cushion, they found themselves entangled in the chair’s wooden frame. The remaining soldier was the leader himself, who glanced around in disbelief at his soldiers. I, on the other hand, had no time to think about what was happening or what I was doing. I had to act. I leapt upward, landing on the chair’s frame, which forced all four entangled soldiers off-balance, and then I sprang at the leader. I was too close for him to raise his spear, and so he dropped it and caught me, pinning me against his chest.

The leader was an incredibly strong man, and he immediately began to squeeze, either hoping to crush me himself or to delay me long enough for his men to recover. I wasn’t really interested in either outcome. I extended my arms out to the sides and then, at the same moment, brought them down, elbows first, into the sides of the leader’s neck just where it met the shoulders. In pain and surprise, he dropped me and fell to one knee. I knew I couldn’t afford to hesitate, so I grabbed his head with both paws and forced it downward, bringing my knee up to meet it as I did. The impact against his metal visor hurt like hell, but it also knocked the leader cold.

The remaining four soldiers had freed themselves, but now I was on the other side of them, nearer to the door and the window. Without waiting to see where the soldiers were going, I jumped to the bed, where I would make the jump to the window. Unfortunately, one of the soldiers was quicker than I expected, and flipped his spear around, bringing the shaft down hard on my left shoulder. The pain was immense, and I dropped, rolling off the bed and hard onto the floor. In moments, the soldiers surrounded me, preparing to strike me down.

That would have been the end of me, but for the last time that night, luck was with me. Suddenly, somebody else was in the room, moving faster than my swimming vision could follow. It was a shadowy figure, draped entirely in black. As I learned later, she had jumped in through the window, which surprised the guards even more than it did me. All I saw was a blur of black and the occasional glint of a curved blade at the end of a chain. Two of the remaining four soldiers died immediately, and a third was taken out with the weapon’s heavy weight on the opposite end. The fourth soldier panicked, and managed to live for a few more moments, just long enough to speak one word: Yorukage. A second later, there was a small eruption of red at his throat, and he fell at my side on the floor.

Before I knew it, I was being hauled to my feet, hoisted over the woman’s shoulders, and carried out the window. The ninja ran for a short time and I did nothing, knowing it was a profoundly foolish idea to struggle when a highly trained assassin is bringing you somewhere, and her weapon is only inches from your throat. After a few moments, we came to a twisted tree just off a main path, and she set me down, leaning me against the tree before jumping backwards and out of my reach. I scratched behind my right ear.

“Uh, thanks,” I said.

She stared at me. She was completely covered apart from her eyes, and even those were difficult to see in the dark and in the rain. Finally, she nodded. “Thank you.”

I cocked my head. “For what?”

“For a very interesting performance. Eight against one is usually a slaughter. You performed admirably, all things considered.”

“You were watching the whole time?”

She nodded once. “And much longer, yes. I admit, at first I thought you were a fool. The way you were asking anybody and everybody about the Yorukage, it seemed like you were begging Lord Kaminari to come and kill you. I had assumed you were merely a creative suicide. But when you chose to fight against those odds, I admit, I was impressed.”

“Thanks. I almost got away, too. Without you…”

“ ‘Almost’ gets you killed,” she chided before I finished. “You have much potential, stranger, and no small degree of skill. But you have much to learn before you are strong enough.”

“For what?” I asked. I had heard a similar speech before.

She stared at me, but chose not to answer my question. “The noise of your battle will draw other guards. We must leave this place. You may come with me if you wish. If not, I suspect you will be dead by morning.”

“Who are you?”

“In the choice between death and life, for you, I am life.” I didn’t say anything back, and finally she sighed. “My name is Katto Soyokaze. I give it to you only because it does not matter. Lord Kaminari already has knowledge of my name, and so if he pries it from your tortured lips, he will still gain nothing.”

“My name’s Donagut,” I said simply.

“I know,” she said. “You have been giving it out to everyone you have met, along with what you seek. You have potential, Donagut, but you lack sense.”

“Are you Yorukage?”

“I can take you to them, if that is where you wish to go,” she said without answering my question.

“That depends,” I said. “Are you going to kill me?”

She didn’t even pause as she answered. “I have no intention of killing you regardless of where you choose to go. However, I will not stay here any longer. If you wish to come with me, I will slow myself down long enough to show you the way. If you do not, then fare well in the shadows.”

It was a predicament I had found myself in all too often lately. Going with her meant that, at some point, someone was likely going to try to kill me. Again. And probably break my ribs. Again. But, on the other paw, I had little chance of learning what I needed to know from anyone else. Lord Kaminari would likely have tortured and killed me just for asking about the Yorukage, and now that I had attacked his guards, a few of whom were now dead thanks to Katto Soyokaze, I was guaranteed to get no help from him. And I doubted the Yorukage were likely to save my life more than once. So what could I do?

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s go.”

She nodded, and started leading me through the woods. Our path twisted and turned as we moved through the woods and the rain, and although I’m no woodsman, I’m pretty sure we crossed over our own tracks more than once. Well, my own tracks, at least. Katto Soyokaze didn’t seem to leave any tracks as she moved, even in the mud. Across any plane where I’ve heard of them, ninjas have enjoyed a certain mystical reputation, but after seeing her move, and knowing that she was intentionally slowing down for my benefit, I figured that reputation was probably mostly deserved.

After an indeterminate, though long, span of time, we emerged into a small clearing in the trees, and Katto wordlessly held up one hand, indicating for me to stop. I did. She looked around for a moment, then dropped to a crouch. I followed her example. She took a long moment to glance around the clearing, and then she stopped, pointing to some moving branches on the far side. She leaned in close to me, her covered mouth just an inch from my left ear, and she whispered, her voice just barely audible above the rain, even to my ears.

“We have company. Be still.”

I debated momentarily whether I should nod in understanding, but I could sense that she had already vanished into the trees, presumably to sneak around to the unseen assailant. Katto undoubtedly knew these woods far better than I did, seeing as how I didn’t know them whatsoever, and so I was forced to trust her senses and her knowledge. I strained to listen for any sort of movement in the branches, but even my advanced hearing detected nothing. Then, suddenly, a shape jumped out of the trees on the opposite side of the clearing. It was a man, dressed in the same sort of ninja garb as my guide was.

“Katto Soyokaze!” He called out, his deep voice shattering the silence. Suddenly, I felt something pierce the back of my neck, and the world immediately began to spin and fade. I whirled around, losing my balance and collapsing to the ground, only to see the blurred image of Katto Soyokaze, unmasked and smiling, with a blow-dart reed in her hand. The man’s voice rang out again as the world went dark. “Welcome home!”

That was the last thing I heard before I slipped into unconsciousness.

I started to slowly regain consciousness with someone gently kicking the side of my right leg. I was in a chair of some sort, my wrists bound to the arms and my legs similarly restrained. The binds were tight, but surprisingly soft, like some sort of silk. My head was throbbing from the aftereffects of whatever drug it was that Katto had used on me, and it took several long moments for my vision to clear.

The first thing I noticed was the sky. It was a deep and uniform purple, with none of the stars, moons, or storm clouds of Ameshima. The second thing I noticed was the massive temple situated directly in front of me. The architecture held similarities to what I had seen on Quanyan, Hangu, and even a bit on Ameshima, and yet it was far beyond any of them in their sweeping curved lines and stern angles. The steps leading up into the temple were polished, pristine black marble, and everything, from the walls to the roof to the pillars, were likewise midnight black. At the base of the steps was a small moat which seemed to be fed from three directions, one stream from the temple’s right, one from its left, and one from a stream emerging from beneath the steps. This moat was crossed by a simple arching bridge of black stone that joined the steps with the path I had apparently been placed on. The entire scene was eerie, and, I admit it, intimidating.

The third thing I noticed was the smiling face of Dizhen Shan. “Greetings, honored stranger,” he said, placing undo emphasis on the word “honored.”

“You again, huh?” I managed, noticing his massive tonfas were clutched and ready in his hands.

The Prefect of Jilong nodded at me. “I admit, after you played your disappearance trick in my office, I wondered if I would ever meet you again. I suspected I would not. I am pleased to see I was mistaken.”

I shrugged, or at least as much as I could while restrained. “Wasn’t my idea to come here,” I said. “Where exactly is ‘here,’ anyway?”

“That answer will come soon enough,” another voice warned. I shuddered as Thong Mu Beu appeared at my left, his old wide smile back on his face. “Though I will say that I, also, doubted you would ever make it here.”

“Just because I didn’t want to fight you?”

Thong Mu Beu scoffed. “Reluctance to battle is borne from a fear of death, and none who fear death are welcome here.”

“He wasn’t reluctant to fight when I found him,” came a third voice, this one female.

“Let me guess,” I said, even before I could see her. “Katto Soyokaze.”

“Had that been a mystery,” she said, moving around Dizhen Shan to my right to stand directly in front of me, “I would congratulate you for solving it. However, as I could have been no one else, I will not.”

“Alright,” I said, looking from her face to Dizhen Shan’s, then to Thong Mu Beu’s. “So what am I doing here, then?”

“You are here because the Mistress wishes to meet you,” Dizhen Shan said simply.

“Frankly, I still believe you are too weak,” Thong Mu Beu interjected. “But that is not a decision for me to make.”

“I believe he has the potential,” Katto said, smiling wryly.

“The potential, yes,” Mu Beu answered. “That, I saw for myself. But that potential is not yet realized, and I doubt it ever will be.”

“He did take an unprotected strike to the back from me,” Dizhen pointed out, “and still came up fighting.”

“And yet he ran from you, as he did from me,” Mu Beu pressed. “That is weakness.”

“He did not run from the guards in Tenpesuto,” Katto reminded them, “even when their spears were leveled at his face.”

“The argument is moot,” Dizhen said. “The Mistress demanded he be brought. That is the end of it.”

“Indeed,” Thong Mu Beu and Katto Soyokaze answered almost in unison.

“And how long will I have to wait before I get to meet this lady?”

“You will wait for as long as She wishes you to wait,” Dizhen chided, losing his smile slightly. “You are in Her temple, and Her word is law. If you wish to survive the night, you would do well to remember that.”

Then, a clap of thunder sounded from the cloudless sky, and instantly, all three of my captors spun around and dropped to one knee. A moment later, a shape appeared from the temple at the top of the steps. It was a feminine shape, although I could not clearly identify what kind. She looked mostly human in general, but her skin, though pale, almost seemed to glow in an otherworldly white-blue light. It would not have been noticeable if not for the deep black of the building surrounding her, as well as her jet-black hair and dress. Her hair tapered down past her shoulders, and occasionally seemed to move in the wind, except there was no wind. Her face was difficult to see from this distance, but it looked smooth, and stretched at her jaw line, which was oddly ragged. Somehow, though, the alien configuration of her jaw only added, not detracted, from her haunting beauty.

The woman made her way slowly down the steps, while Dizhen Shan, Thong Mu Beu and Katto Soyokaze remained kneeling, their heads bowed, their bodies perfectly still. I could feel my heart beating faster and faster as this strange woman approached. My chest felt tighter with each step she descended, and as she crossed the small bridge, I found myself struggling to breathe. It was a feeling I had never really experienced before. I mean, I’ve been afraid in my life, plenty of times, but I had never come face to face with a being like her, a being who seemed to be constructed of fear itself.

Finally, she drew up within a few paces of the three kneeling figures and stopped, waiting. Katto, who was the furthest forward and the center of the three, spoke first, still refusing to raise her head.

“Mistress Yeong,” she began, reverently. “As you ordered, we have brought him.”

“Excellent, my child,” the other woman purred, her voice like tainted honey. “Now rise. I would speak with our guest.”

As one, the three kneeling figures stood and moved off the path, allowing Yeong to step closer to me. She smiled an unnerving smile down at me as she began to speak. “Welcome to my temple. I am known by many names on many worlds, but you may call me Yeong Eode.”

For some reason, I shivered at the sound of her name. “Donagut,” I managed.

She laughed sharply, and only once. “I assure you, I am most familiar with you. You would not be here, were I not. I have been following your progress with rapt attention.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You should be,” she said with no hint of irony. “Few are worthy of my attention,” she paused here, pointedly. “And fewer still survive it.”

“Why am I here?”

“Is this not where you wish to be? You have certainly put in considerable effort to come.”

“I don’t even know what this place is,” I said, then nodded toward Katto. “She’s the one who brought me here. I didn’t ask.” I paused, remembering my conversation with Katto after the fight with the soldiers. “Unless this is the home of the Yorukage clan.”

“Is that what you believe?” Yeong asked.

“No,” I said. “I doubt I’m still on Ameshima, though I don’t pretend to know how that’s possible.”

Yeong smiled. “For a moment, I feared I would have to become disappointed in you, Donagut. You are, of course, no longer on Ameshima. Nor are you on Quanyan, nor Hangu. This plane has no name, because I have never given it one. It is simply my temple.”

“So you’re all planeswalkers, then?”

Yeong Eode’s smile melted instantly, replaced by a look of sharp displeasure. She glanced to her right, where Thong Mu Beu was standing. “You may have been right, my child.” She looked back at me. “So much potential, and yet potential only it remains.”

“Look, give me a break, will you?” I asked. “It’s not like this kind of thing happens every day, you know.”

Yeong stiffened slightly, then nodded sharply. “You are right, of course. This is rather a momentous occasion.” She paused for a long moment, and then sighed. “No, Donagut, there are but two Sparks in this place: yours and mine. My devoted children, while strong and worthy, lack our gifts.”

“Then how did they get here? How did I get here?”

“Through my portals, of course!” Yeong said, growing annoyed. She took a moment to calm herself, and then continued. “I created this place, long before you were born. Long before any of your kind were born.”

“My kind? Houndfolk?”

Her black eyes flashed, and she shook her head. “No. Long before the dull candle flames that litter the darkness replaced the blazing beacons.”

“Ah,” I said, having basically no idea what she was talking about. “But if you’re that old, how are you still…”

I trailed off, and Yeong Eode turned her back to me. She seemed to think for a moment, and then turned back. “I wonder, Donagut, if you have ever heard of a Fountain of Youth?”

I shrugged. I wished I could have scratched behind my ear. It was starting to bother me. “I know I’ve heard legends of them on a few planes, but they’re just…”

“I caution you, Donagut,” Yeong interrupted me. “I myself am thought of as a legend on several worlds, and yet here I stand.”

I had no answer for that. “So you’re saying you found one?”

“One?” She asked, laughing mockingly. “I found several! The three most pure, I prize above all others,” she indicated toward the moat behind her as she spoke.

I looked at the flowing water and nodded. “Quanyan, Hangu, and Ameshima.”

“Quite!” She said, pleased. “Perhaps there is hope for you yet. Yes, those are my three prized worlds. But there are other springs, buried in deep and forgotten places on other worlds. Fountains that are mine by right, but that I have kept hidden.”

“Why?”

“No fountain lasts forever.” She pointed to the moat again, this time specifically the stream feeding it from the left of the Temple. “Even now, the village of Othdban on Hangu grows, and it begins to expand. One day, it may become a threat to my portal, and my fountain.”

“The Iron Temple,” I said.

“Very good,” Yeong congratulated me. “I am most pleased.”

“So that’s why you killed Kuweide Hua, isn’t it?” I pressed. “The Prime Mophi told me she arrived, worried about the Iron Temple. She discovered your secret when she accidently planeswalked to the Iron Temple, didn’t she?”

Yeong Eode lowered her head, and then shook it. “Why is it, Donagut, that every time you show an inkling of potential, you immediately discard it?”

“Huh?”

“Dizhen, my child, explain it to him.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Dizhen said before turning to stare at me. “Kuweide Hua was born in Jilong, as you know. She was wild, and dissatisfied, and wanted power. And so, I cultivated her. I trained her in secret, and when she was ready, I brought her before Mistress Yeong.”

Thong Mu Beu picked up the story. “The people of Othdban had been growing, both in population and in distain for the Iron Temple. If we had attacked them directly, the Kings would have sent out their armies in vengeance. We are strong, but even we cannot defend for long against the Allied Kings. But, if Othdban attacked us…”

“Then you would be guiltless,” I finished.

“Indeed,” Mu Beu confirmed. “And so, knowing their ignorance and superstition, Mistress Yeong gave Kuweide Hua a test. She was to go to the village and incite them into action against the Iron Temple, knowing that they are yet too weak to harm us.”

“But Kuweide was weak,” Yeong added. “She was weak of mind. When the people treated her like a goddess, she came to enjoy the treatment.”

“She did not lead them to the Iron Temple,” Thong Mu Beu continued once it was clear that Yeong wasn’t going to. “She had failed, and so I was forced to retrieve her, and bring her here.”

“Where I was given the honor of killing her,” Katto added.

“And then you dumped her body on Nuwar,” I finished, “where she couldn’t possibly have any connection to anyone.”

“I have just recently activated one of my old portals there, and a temple has already been built,” Yeong said, smiling. “Her body, along with my mark, will serve as a warning to any who would oppose us.”

“I thought it was a gambling house,” I said.

Yeong raised an eyebrow. “So, you have found it? Again I am impressed. Truly, Donagut, you are an enigma of potential and disappointment.”

“I get that,” I said.

“Indeed, it serves that function, for the time being,” Yeong said with a wicked smile. “Before my patrons know it, however, they will be converted, and the strong will serve. The weak, of course, will be eliminated.”

“But why?” I asked, struggling in vain against my silken bonds. “What is the point of all of this?”

Yeong approached me, leaning in uncomfortably close. “Do you understand the Multiverse, Donagut? Do you have any idea what it is? Or what fate awaits it? Something is coming, Donagut. Something frightening. Something indomitable. Something eternal. There are those who believe it can be battled. They are fools. Only those who accept it, only those who will aid it and serve it, only they will survive. And only the strongest are fit to serve.”

I shivered. There was a weight to her words that I couldn’t deny. “What is it?” I whispered.

She smiled and stepped back. Without a word, Dizhen Shan help up his medallion with the symbol I had been chasing down. In the next instant, Thong Mu Beu and Katto Soyokaze withdrew similar medallions. Then Yeong Eode waved her hands toward the sky, and an image formed there. It was the same design, a light image of two intertwined arrowheads within a thick dark circle within a thin light circle. Yeong smiled at me.

“It is the Eternal Eclipse, Donagut. The Forever Night. I am its harbinger, and these are its servants.” She indicated to the three around her. “These and so many more. Free him,” she said, indicating toward Dizhen with her left hand and Thong Mu Beu with her right. They obeyed, and untied my wrists and my legs. Then Yeong continued. “And, if you are strong enough, you may be its servant, as well.”

I stood up, scratched behind my right ear, and then kicked Dizhen Shan in the stomach. In the same instant, I struck Thong Mu Beu in the chest with the flat of my paw. Both men staggered backwards, and I charged at Yeong Eode. In that instant, Katto Soyokaze was there, her chain scythe in her hands. She deflected each strike I tried to make, but then I decided to fight like I did in the Pits. With reckless, stupid abandon. Forsaking my training with the Vedalken monks, I simply bull-rushed the ninja. The maneuver was so unexpected that Katto lost her footing, and fell, allowing me a swift kick to the face, which spun her around.

Dizhen and Mu Beu were already recovering, and I knew I had to make my move. I launched myself at Yeong Eode, striking first at her head and then at her body. I can’t exactly explain what happened, but I missed. Repeatedly. It didn’t even look as though Yeong was dodging, and she certainly wasn’t deflecting. It seemed almost as though she were simply walking, like she was out for a casual stroll. Each time I punched, she seemed to move just subtly enough that I didn’t touch her. And the entire time, she just kept smiling. She never once lost her smile. I kept striking faster and faster, but no matter what I did, my limbs never connected with her.

Then, suddenly, I felt an explosion of pain in my shoulder blades as Dizhen Shan’s tonfa struck me. Even as I was falling, my neck snapped back as my face struck Thong Mu Beu’s knee. I rolled away the moment I hit the ground, but in the next instant, I screamed as Katto’s blade sliced into my left leg. The pain made me shoot up into a seated position, clutching the wound, and Thong Mu Beu kicked me stiffly in the back just before Dizhen’s tonfa struck me across the face. After that, I sort of lost track of which one was hitting me with what, but it certainly felt like it lasted a long time.

Finally, they hauled me to my feet, though that was probably inaccurate. It was more likely that I was being held up by Dizhen Shan and Katto Soyokaze. I only remember that because I specifically recall Thong Mu Beu approaching me from the front, slipping his conbὸ cap onto his right hand. With his left, he held my throat as he drew back his arm. I was bleeding from a few different places, both of my arms were broken, and one of my legs, as well as, predictably, several of my ribs. I tasted blood, I could barely see, my right ear itched, and I could really use a drink. Then, Thong Mu Beu moved to strike.

“Stop!” Yeong Eode called, just before Thong Mu Beu could kill me. He stopped immediately, and turned to face the unearthly woman.

“Mistress?”

She smiled at him. “Let him live. He is unworthy of the embrace of death. He is weak. But perhaps, in time, he will bring us somebody stronger.”

Katto Soyokaze and Dizhen Shan let go of my arms, and I collapsed to the ground. Yeong Eode walked over to me and gracefully crouched at my side. I tried to summon the strength to spit at her, but I didn’t have it in me. She smiled.

“The darkness is coming, Donagut. You are not strong enough to stop it. You are not strong enough to survive it. You are not strong enough to serve it. Leave my temple. If you ever bring your weakness here again, I will destroy it, and you, utterly. If you return, bring only strength with you.”

I stared at her for a long time, unsure of what I should do. Finally, she stood up and began walking away. As she passed Katto Soyokaze, Dizhen Shan and Thong Mu Beu, she glanced back at me. “If he has not departed by the time I enter my temple, you may kill him.”

She continued walking, and I tried to gather my energy to planeswalk away. There was little left. When she crossed the bridge, I started to panic. As she was half way up the steps, her three servants began to advance on me. It was only just before she took her last step and disappeared into her temple that desperation won out, and I vanished into the aether. I almost died there, from weakness, but I survived long enough to show up in the middle of a road on a plane I didn’t recognize. I had only a moment to give a silent thanks before I passed out, and I was glad to do it. When that darkness came, I welcomed it.