Melk swept the area through with a blanket of pure intentionality, blasting out the lights and plunging the room into pitch-black darkness.

  Pitch-black, but for the arcs of electricity sparking through the air in bow-legged branches and flitting into and out of tangibility. Melk surveyed the room by the glow of the purple flashes.

  Empty corners. The place looked deserted. And yet, he could feel the presence of the other in there with him. A powerful being, no doubt, by the immense pressure that emanated from it.

  "You are Melk Ayerstein, I presume," the low voice said, bringing with it a chill from the void.

  "I don't believe we've met," Melk said, retreating to the edge of the place, the tips of his fingers twitching. With a blast of intentionality, he activated his Primary graft and sent a wicked arc of electricity crackling from left to right, the purple lightning carving the space in two and releasing a thunderous profusion of sound.

  Still nothing. The smell of ozone filled the air.

  "To whom do I owe the pleasure?" Melk said, throwing his voice across the room.

  "Nobody important, Mr. Ayerstein," came the reply, dripping with venom. The mysterious presence was all around him, as if it were sizing him up…

  … The ceiling. He's in the ceiling.

  Melk raised his head, narrowing his eyes. The room had a false ceiling, and he was about 90% sure the enemy was hiding above it.

  And he knew that this was no ordinary enemy—he could sense multiple powerful Incunabula, a bunch of grafts through which was filtered an intentionality that was thick and suffocating.

  And then, the powerful aura of a Golden Incunabulum. Melk knew it well—all Ministers of the School of Theli knew it.

  He purged himself of all fear. Fear changed nothing. He had no doubt in his mind that this man was the spacetime-manipulator that Norma spoke of.

  "Tsk. A Golden grade. You do not seem at all like a company man at all, judging by your grafts," Melk said.

  "Ha! I work for no man or creature, whether flesh or metal or legal personality," the voice returned jovially. "

  "Is that so…" Melk trailed off.

  Why hasn't he attacked yet?

  I have to be careful. If he's a Jumper, he could take my head off at any moment. Luckily I have my Tua wards set up—once he gets close it'll scramble his perceptions and then pick him apart at my own leisure.

  Patience, Melkyboi, patience…

  "How did you find me, shaygetz?" Melk said, pushing his hand into his cloak and gripping the hilt of a phase knife.

  "A simple matter. Your Tua led me to you," the voice replied. Its presence was shifting all around above him, and Melk found it impossible to draw a bead on its exact location.

  "Impossible. There has never been a blueprint for tracing Tua," Melk scoffed.

  "What you consider impossible is not my concern, Yid," the voice replied.

  The fool doesn't take me seriously!

  "Is there no hope that we can talk this out?" Melk asked, injecting as much deference as he could muster. Internally, he was double-checking his personal Tua wards, making sure they were primed to trigger.

  Personal wards involved a huge investment of time, money and effort. To 'use' a ward meant triggering a neuro-implant known as a Function-Implant, a rare and expensive implant that had been painstakingly imbued with pre-loaded intentionality formulations that could be instantly triggered by a mere thought. A Function-Implant could be loaded up with anywhere from one to three wards, depending on the quality of such implant. Melk himself had been fitted withthe highest quality of Function-Implant, and he had spent many hundreds of hours of pure concentration filling its ward-slots with the relevant wards.

  Expensive—but against a Golden grade, any expense was worthwhile. Unlike other Silver grades, Melk specialized in City-Control—he wasn't a combat-type, and going up against a Golden grade meant that he would be lucky to escape with his life.

  "Well, I must admit I'm eminently curious as to why you've found yourself upon this godforsaken world," the voice said. "I might be persuaded out of a fight, perhaps, if I'm satisfied with your answer."

  "... I was sent here," Melk answered. He tensed his shoulder, ready to send the phase knife flying through the ceiling the moment the voice answered.

  Silence.

  "I was sent here to study the climate and geography," Melk said, louder this time, attempting to bait a reaction. "Exoplanet 541-B* is known for having some interesting weather patterns."

  *[Desert]

  Melk felt the air thicken. The Golden grade was attempting to turn his intentionality against him—a classic move, and most likely to be effective, if Melk hadn't had a Nullifier-Brace bolted to his skull under the skin of his scalp. RA Goshen Levy had forced him to undertake the procedure before his trip, and he wanted nothing more than to thank the old man for his foresight.

  "Come on, shaygetz, show yourself!" Melk hissed, filling the entire space once again with his intentionality and causing the air to bristle with charge.

  "... I suppose I should have expected interference from the worshippers of Theli," the voice intoned, almost too soft to hear now, as though its owner was barely at the edge of perceptibility.

  There, near the entrance!

  Melk sensed where the voice intersected with its clumping intentionality and ripped the hilt from its sheath, depressing as he did so the button at its base. With a snrrkt sound the translucent blue blade materialized as if from the ether, perfectly formed and sharp enough to slice through blacksteel as if it were paper.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The phase knife flew through the air, stabbing straight through the false ceiling—snapping it in two—and then disappearing through the concrete wall at an angle.

  "Wrong move."

  The voice came from behind him.

  Melk grunted and whipped around. A man in a blue-robe was there behind him, his face obscured by a mask which was cracked down the middle, his arm upraised.

  Instincts took over. Melk let fly a vicious right hook, but just as his fist impacted the man's chin, the world shivered.

  Melk activated the Tua ward.

  Beneath his dark suit-jacket, his Incunabula—a Silver and a Primary—hummed and resonated with power. The Function-Implant took over, forcing all his generated intentionality through a mold.

  Stagnant bloom.

  Melk's Tua ward was a sophisticated weapon aimed at disrupting nerve cells. The ward's power was as follows: firstly, his Silver Etching would induce a fervent desire to worship (i.e., the feeling of Agape). Secondly, this intense desire was directed towards a particular object by the ability of his Primary graft to calibrate potential difference—used in this case to hijack the physical medium of thought (i.e., electrochemical signals communicated between nerve cells in the brain).

  The end result was an intense fugue state that could afflict any mind, regardless of strength and focus.

  Melk was proud of his work, mediated as it was by a trillion calculations; all of it just to create the thought: God is here, God the Father, the Son and the Cosmic Dragon. Fear Him! Worship Him!

  The next moment, his arm disappeared. Dematerialized, as if it had never existed. The blue-robed man had taken Melk's arm, and he recoiled—

  ***

  Meng Bi widened his eyes at the flash of intentionality.

  Ward!?—

  Melk's fist impacted his left temple; at the same time, Meng Bi activated his Golden Incunabulum—shifting space, melting its form into shingles, entangling Melk Ayerstein's arm within an immense quantum constellation and swallowing it whole—

  'No question about it. It's a Nousshik-Tua ward. Slippery bastards!' thought Meng Bi, even as he reeled from Melk's blow.

  Nousshik-Tua: Spirit-poison.

  The realization reverberated through Meng Bi's mind even as his perceptions began to careen out of control. His body began to spasm as the nerves in his muscles began to fire arbitrarily, and Meng Bi turned his immense concentration to bear, attempting to force a single thought through the growing confusion.

  Not good, I have to Jump, now!

  But Meng Bi's mind had already spiraled out of his control. The synapses between his nerve cells were guided by the Nousshik-Tua toward a meticulously formulated thought, a thought that was at once simple and powerful.

  And from that one thought, a dreamscape was created with such gravity that Meng Bi was—

  —plunged into confusion, falling through the liminal void made of dreamstuff and hurtling into an infernal hellscape made to perpetuate the sufferings of Nimrod, the First Rebel.

  Theli, the Cosmic Dragon, grasped at him. It was a long and coiling serpent, reminding Meng Bi a little of the gargantuan Boassia Pythons he'd fought once, long ago, deep within the Hyperjungle on Consus, where it was easy to believe that the Universe comprised only vegetation and blind noise .

  No, these aren't my thoughts. It shades into my memories and disguises itself as my own thoughts… but remember—the Boassia didn't look like that. It had scales, like a reptile, but this creature has none. This one has skin that's smooth and pale as a baby's. Its eyes are wiser and more cunning than taotie executives. Its knowledge is vast and endless, greater than the sum of all human learning.

  At that moment, an all-consuming urge to fall to his knees overcame Meng Bi. This creature—no, this great being whose true name was Theli, commanded only the very highest reverence. Meng Bi struggled, but found himself struggling against the fabric of his own universe.

  No, this isn't my god. There are no gods in the Universe. Only the slow ebb of life into Entropy.

  The only goal worth pursuing is ultimate control. I murdered Kai Tuo, my mentor, my only friend, because I believe—I know—I will be the one to consummate the dreams of my race. No, I have no guilt, no remorse, because a superior being does not feel guilty over his inferiors.

  Meng Bi refused to kneel.

  Theli shivered, growing whiskers, its expression turning into a Frankenstein mish-mash. It hated Meng Bi like no being had ever hated before, and the force of its hate drew tides of liquid lava across the hellscape, shredding mountains into crags and pulling up dark cathexes from the abysses of the human soul.

  Shapeless forms, shifting and pullulating across the shades of brown to black to orange-red. Fulgurations etching contours of shifting talismans across the sky. Promises of status, promises of wealth, promises of greatness—promises given to him from those he loved and who loved him.

  All gone. Sacrificed to the gaping maw that was Humanity's thymos: thymos, the desire for recognition. Thymos was Meng Bi's reason for undertaking the treacherous and interminable journey across the stars.

  Megalothymos. In Meng Bi, the desire to be recognized as the Overman.

  Meng Bi knew his goal, the one thing that he had sacrificed all things to. He had once had a woman who dedicated herself to him. She'd borne him a child, and though he wasn't allowed to marry her by the tyrannical executives of Human Capital, he loved her and his daughter like nothing else he'd ever loved.

  In the end, he consumed them for his own goals. It was the most difficult thing he'd ever done, to have murdered them and taken their Incunabula for himself.

  At least, in the end it was worth it.

  Oh, that was what he told himself. But Theli was already gone from the sky, and the world of fire and brimstone was gone, substituted for the megapolis that was Upper Shenzhen. Ten thousand glittering skyscrapers piercing the sky, a world above, "像天堂*", his friend, Ah Ping said wistfully.

  *["Like Heaven"]

  And Ah Meng tore his eyes away from the horizon of steel and glass, staring instead at his own thin and grimy hands, staring holes in them. Ah Ping's wistful tone left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Where was I? There was a planet, named Desert...

  It must have been a dream, because he had been powerful. Unlike his reality: a mere orphan, destitute and powerless.

  As long as he had been alive, he had struggled to live—all 12 years of it, spent in a daily war for survival, struggling for food and temporary shelters amongst the trash heaps of the Dumping Grounds. Consumption gangs, organ harvesters, predatory cyborgs—he had seen them all, and against all odds he had survived.

  Most born here would die here, Meng Bi knew. He knew because he was good at calculating things.

  Ah Meng turned to Ah Ping. His friend's gaunt cheeks were streaked with grime and sporting the bumpy skin that characterized all carriers of Dumpster Sickness. Ah Ping was still staring at the tips of the skyscrapers, a million reincarnations away.

  Meng Bi looked Ah Ping straight in the eye and said: "像天堂一样压榨我们凡人。总有一天我会上升，利用这些位置剥削他们的晚年与子孙...*"

  *["And just like Heaven, they oppress us mortals. One day I will ascend to use these positions against them, to exploit their old age and their descendants…"]

  The scene shifted. The weight of years had thrown upon him a new habit. Meng Bi's body overflowed with strength. Now he stood before the grant double-doors of the Library at the Edge, breathing hard. He'd scaled the Library bare-knuckled, and the adrenaline rush was nothing like he'd ever experienced.

  Inside, he knew that the Analysis was taking place. He had sacrificed everything for this one chance. He would obtain an Incunabula and frustrate the Bloam, survive—

  And he Jumped. The dream was swallowed into nothingness. The void. Then the void gave way to a room drenched in fire. Meng Bi ripped himself from the hold of the Nousshik-Tua and pieced his perceptions back. He was hyperventilating. It had been a long time since he thought about Ah Ping.

  Meng Bi scanned the room.

  The heat was unbearable. Melk Ayerstein was nowhere to be seen, having absconded through the doors five paces away from where Meng Bi was located. The entire room was quickly becoming consumed by fire and a lake of purple flame was licking across the blackened floor towards him. Melk intended to burn him alive.

  Meng Bi tried to move, but found himself unable to do so. Glancing downward, he saw that his legs were encased in concrete. He had Jumped himself halfway into the floor.

  Behind his mask, Meng Bi narrowed his eyes in anger. He had shed all forms of weakness a hundred years ago now, but to be reminded like this...

  Meng Bi ground his teeth together, finding that his Centering was slowly becoming destabilized by anger.

  With a concentrated burst of psychic energy, he Jumped, blinking out of existence and taking his murderous intent with him.

  In his heart he carved the resolution: Melk Ayerstein must die.