The beast didn't turn as Zane stepped up to the bank. It just lay there, still, as though it were merely some barren volcanic island. Only its eyes swiveled slowly to regard him.

  He crossed into the water and unloaded his hammers.

  His blood began to heat up. A searing vitality poured out of him.

  At that turtle let out a rumble of a growl. Zane felt a great deal of irritation emanating from the beast. As it moved monstrous waves sloshed over the surface, as though its heft was upending the whole lake.

  At last it turned to face him. He got the sense his life-force was loathsome to the beast—it seemed a common thing with Monters.

  Its growl deepened. And its cannons began to swivel in that fortress of a shell.

  Zane kept coming, wading through the muck. He stopped just a mile off, and took in his foe in full.

  There it loomed, titanic.

  It’d been a while since he’d fought anything close to that big. He almost wasn’t sure where to start—it felt like he was one man, about to siege a castle.

  The scale of the challenge—the sheer size of the shell he had to smash—it felt like stepping up to one of those great weights back at the Conclave. The ones that always looked too heavy to lift, until he lifted them.

  This thing might only be one level up from the strongest Monsters he’d fought—but Shaman Guri had taken him aside, just before he’d come, and made sure he knew just what a difference half-step True God made.

  “You’ll be fighting in its world,” she said to Zane. “You be ready when that Distortion field hits!”

  He was. He was quite looking forward to it.

  He took a deep breath, and let out his domain.

  The air flushed from pale blue to sunrise gold; heat raged into the world, flooding the skies with Solar Flare Law. Streams of flare crackled through the air, drifting golden embers. All around him ice-floats shuddered and melted.

  That was the power of a domain. In moments he changed the very atmosphere.

  Then the turtle snorted. Plumes drifted out its nostrils like smoke-stacks.

  Its shell began to rumble—and tar spewed out of its shell, staining reality itself.

  It oozed out in great swathes, and Zane saw instantly that this was no mere flood.

  That was its pseudo-Reality Distortion Field.

  That field worked at a deeper level.

  His domain could torch the air. But as that field rolled over the lake the waters turned dark, the currents slowing, like it’d all gone to mud. Even its essence grew sluggish. The waves fell slowly, staggering. He saw a fish with the snout of an axe leap the waters, struggling to get away—but as it fell time seemed to slow around it. Only its thoughts, its frantic eyes, seemed to go the same speed.

  It fell with agonizing slowness into tar-stained waters.

  That field changing the rules of reality itself. Gunking up its inner workings.

  The Dead Sea King was submerging this whole chunk of reality in that tar—and that field was fast running up against his own Solar Flare domain. He kept his powers strong, kept the heat up, and braced for the moment the gold and black crashed together.

  The tar rolled right over.

  But that wasn't quite right. It rolled under his domain, and over it too. The gold and the black hardly met, like they were working on different layers of reality.

  It felt like a leaden blanket had draped over all his powers. Instantly his domain started to sputter.

  He had to fight to stabilize it, flooding it with all the essence he could spare.

  Then that field closed over him too.

  It felt like he'd been plunged into the bottom of an endless vat of tar—he had to work just to breathe; for a moment he staggered. It didn’t feel like he was fighting some foreign domain—it felt like all his limbs had gone to tar, like the air had gone to tar, and he could no more shrug it off than he could shrug off gravity.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t fight it.

  He set his jaw, and body responded.

  His heart began pumping faster and faster. The blood-red of his Asura runes began shining, began piercing the tar, and he felt fresh blood coursing through his muscles, bringing new power to his limbs. Enough power to stand up to this world.

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  He shook his head to clear it and forced himself upright again.

  He could feel how suppressed his body was. Even his Asura had to work to fire up, and under the weight of the tar-field it took double the essence to spark the same Flares.

  It hit about as hard he’d expected—but all it meant was he had to work harder.

  He could do that.

  ***

  There was some minor alarm in the Rhino camp when the pseudo-Distortion Field crashed over Zane—a few folks gave nervous tail-swishes, and one young Rhino even stopped chewing his curd mid-munch.

  It was only a shadow of a true Distortion field. But even that was far too great a gulf for any Minor God to breach. That was the conventional wisdom.

  Then relief, as they saw the moment pass, saw Zane fight his way back in—although with great strain, by how hard his body seemed to be working. The young Rhino started munching again.

  At the sight of it the Turtle’s eyes narrowed. It seemed to have expected that blow to cow Zane—at least make him wary.

  But the moment Zane felt that weight, it was like a new light came into his eyes.

  “He’s enjoying it, isn’t he?” said Guri, blinking.

  “Damned right he is!” laughed the Sage. He hadn’t stopped chewing the whole time.

  ***

  Zane cranked his arm all the way back.

  Then he roared, and launched a hammer straight for the Dead Sea King’s head.

  It plunged through that field like a torch plunging through an ocean. He’d loaded those flares double—but they started sputtering, losing steam fast.

  He fought to heave in more essence, willing that fire up—and the light of Destruction shone through the gold. It was the only thing the tar couldn’t touch.

  Still the strike slowed, despite his best efforts. As it crashed closer and closer to the beast, the density of that tar-field skyrocketed. By the time it landed it was falling apart.

  The Turtle didn’t bother hiding. It eyed the blow with lazy contempt, then turned its shell, let it smash into the thick of the plates.

  It drew a few shallow cracks—but that was all.

  About as expected, he thought.

  That was a feeler. He could put a lot more into a smash. But he’d had a feeling smashes alone wouldn’t be enough.

  If he wanted to get a good blow through, it was looking like he’d have to go into it with some momentum.

  He was getting a good grasp of his enemy now. In that field, Zane felt its soul. This Deep Sea King was a slow-moving creature, uncaring. Even its mind was like a pit of tar. It despised life, despised movement. It wanted all that moved to cease.

  Zane could feel how he felt in its mind. A raging bonfire. The light, the heat, it all stuck in the beast’s craw.

  It rumbled at him again.

  Then there came a cranking, a grating of heavy stone on stone.

  The cannons on its back locked onto him, and tar streamed heavy from their mouths.

  Before they could fire Zane was already stomping down—but it felt like every molecule of air fought to slow him down. He’d hardly gotten a foot off the ground when a pillar of tar shot out like a piston.

  It was the only thing fast in that whole field; the domain lent it a supernatural strength. It caught him square in the chest. It felt like he’d been punched by a giant.

  It drove the wind out of him—he felt a rib crack. But it was only the first.

  All those gunk-cannons opened heavy fire on him.

  This time he managed to stomp out the way of the first few—but a gunk cannonball clipped him on the leg and he grunted, falling. Then one the size of wrecking-ball rammed him in the back; more blasted him in the face, and there he heard a CRACK! A third, a fourth, pounded his ribs—

  He roared, fighting to his feet, fighting through the hail, stomping away, taking more and more fire as he did.

  It wasn’t just that he had to work twice as hard in this field—those blasts were loaded with twice the power. So much tar had got in his face it confused his senses; he could hardly make out his direction. He wiped off a chunk—

  Then a cannonball hit him on the side of the head. A second, right in the ear. A third—a big one—square on a shattered rib—he felt that one.

  Warning!

  Health under 75%

  Together it was enough to get him off his feet.

  He hurtled through the air, growled, kicked out for balance, managed to right himself—and came to a steaming halt. He wiped the gunk off his face, spat out some blood, and groaned.

  Then he blinked.

  The air was different here. He’d been blasted right out of the field.

  Tar still clung to his skin, to his hair, but it suppressed him much less out here—its powers hardly weighed heavy at all. Solar Flare roared to life, burning it right off.

  He looked down at his bare chest.

  …Huh.

  A few miles away the Turtle let out a croaking laugh. It looked a little smug for Zane’s liking.

  Then the turrets on its back wheeled on his—and started firing again.

  Dozens of gunk cannonballs streaked at him from all angles. He stomped out the way of a huge cluster—it whizzed right by; he felt geysers of tar erupt behind him.

  But now he was out of that field it was much easier to get out of the way. And the cannonballs came much slower, too—he frowned at the latest volley, and gave it a good punch, just to see.

  An eruption of Solar Flare—and his powers swallowed it all up.

  That field really did make all the difference.

  The while the turtle seemed content to sit there and potshot at him.

  He leaped around its outskirts, trying to find a way back in—trying to find an opening as gunk-balls whizzed by.

  The more he looked, the more it grew clear there wasn’t any. The only way to beat that field was to go right through it.

  He blinked.

  “Momentum,” said Zane. Then he leaped back—right out of the lake.

  ***

  All the Rhinos blinked at the flames. Zane had just gone out of the scene.

  A few beats passed like this.

  “Did he give it up?” said Ronk.

  “‘Course not!” said Sage. “That lad’s doesn’t know what giving up means!”

  Another beat. The Rhinos started looking at each other, confused. Back in the flames the Dead Sea King’s beaky mouth was wide open; its throat shook in a chortle. It was already celebrating.

  The Turtle was halfway through sheathing its cannons when the waters began to tremble.

  Not only that—the ice-sheets, the tundra started trembling for miles around, spreading thick with cracks….

  A rumbling descended on the world.

  It frowned, turned back—and found the horizon flush with gold.

  Its eyes widened.

  A storm was cresting the horizon. A storm so bright, pumped so full of heat and essence it lit up half the skies, burning away the clouds. A mass of Solar Flare somehow still growing denser by the second. Twin axes whirled within, screeching like devils out of hell.

  And at its head, charging down the slope at full-steam, was an angry Zane.