Running was a weird term. It was more like bringing their getting ever closer to me at incomprehensible speed.

  And considering they would blip out of my perception if they were headed to anything else but me since existence was relative. With each step, they appeared closer and closer to me.

  “Uh-oh,” I muttered.

  The woman was wild, her hand aged with nature and her soul filled with life. She was a druid, one with wild growth nature and the dragon was chasing her down. It was green and blossoming, with wings filled with infinite life and hunger, and scales green with nothing but desire.

  “Aid,” she communicated.

  She was a thirteenth-rank being, much like me and the dragon was thirteenth rank seventh step. It wasn’t trying to hide its exact cultivation. In fact, it was trying to show it. It was warning me.

  I was only at the first rank of the thirteenth step, the girl was at the fifth step of the thirteenth rank. She was the greater prey and he was a predator beyond both our powers. It was telling me to not help her or else I would become its prey.

  Time began to slow down, even though it wasn’t really here to begin with.

  I wanted to think, to ponder what Dane would do. I wanted to take the safest course of action I could and to avoid making any mistakes as I had earlier.

  And I almost did. I almost ran.

  Almost.

  My hand weaved in preparation, each limb holding a bundle of concepts in place.

  The dragon came, and seeing me ready to fight it left the girl and went for me.

  Flames made of growing death consumed me. I felt like a plant overtaken by weeds. A crop is starved of sunlight. I felt the flames twisting around, trying to take all I was and make it a part of its own.

  That was how gods fought. Concepts, laws, and daos warring against one another. My dao was small. It was almost nothing compared to this being.

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  But that was okay. I was an Array King after all, and we didn’t fight with our daos.

  I let the laws in my hand go.

  Array Masters had no law or dao to tie themselves down to, so most found other avenues of self-defense. Some used weapons, others used prefabricated arrays.

  I used something else.

  Arrays were applicable anywhere. Unlike enchantments, they relied on the fundamental forces of the soul to exist. To pull qi to your existence, to push it, and to hold it.

  Using these fundamental forces I would mix qi’s of different natures, using them, mixing them, and making them to create capable arrays. That required a vast but superficial understanding of laws.

  I didn’t know this dragon’s power like he knew it, but I knew enough.

  The attack faltered. A person’s being was a composite of who they are and this dragon was growth and greed, taking all it could from all it could find.

  So I gave it rot and decay. I gave it kindness and generosity.

  And for that, it withered.

  It didn’t die. I wasn’t that strong, but my small handful of laws and daos opposed its own perfectly. It reeled in disgust.

  “You dare?” It shouted.

  It tried to attack again, this time funneling more of its essence into its flames.

  But then the druid moved and held. Vines sprang and held him down. Roots wrapped around his feet.

  The dragon turned towards the ground to blast away at its bindings.

  Then I struck.

  Damage was complicated, as all things were with beings of this rank. But the amount of the damage, the nature of the damage, and the quality of the damage mattered. Amount was qi, nature was dao and law, and quality was rank.

  The center of a star wouldn’t even warm a god but a spark of a phoenix’s flame would burn them away.

  That was how the saying went anyway.

  I moved, shoving all the laws and daos that opposed him into my fist. Rot, death, darkness, age, fire, emptiness, starvation, everything. I took a thousand little things and balled them up into something that was his opposite.

  Then I put a little bite of peace in there for good measure and punched.

  The dragon roared in not agony but insult. It was annoying. I hadn’t stabbed so much as blasted him with pepper spray. While I was good at eating away attacks, offense was where I was lacking.

  He roared and cleared away my qi.

  I held on, ready to bring out the big guns. But then the girl struck, her hand holding a spear made of life and wood. The tip was a black stone that shone like obsidian in the night.

  The dragon roared and tried to bit down at her.

  I attacked again, this time shoving my attack deep into his wound and thus deeper into his being. Now it screamed.

  The girl pushed her spear further.

  This was the time.

  I pulled out an array and slapped it onto the dragon’s body. It was one made of rot and malice, death and destruction. It was like my attacks, but properly prepared and made to hurt.

  And more importantly, those attacks were the products of instantaneous thought. This was an attack I had made with days of power.

  And it screamed again.

  The woman reached and pushed her spear deep into his heart, into his soul, into the very definition of what he was.

  Then she broke him into nothingness.

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