The world pulsed with his heartbeat.

  Meng Bi was standing before him, a mysterious figure that resonated with calmness and peace.

  Betelgeuse' body relaxed, feeling his anger dissipate. The focus of the conflict softened and then disintegrated, until it seemed rather absurd for the conflict to have started in the first place.

  It was difficult to describe what happened next. His perception 'loosened' as the hard lines his mind imposed upon the world began to distort and then crumble like columns of a building that would no longer support itself. The obtrusive shell of reality began to waver and fall apart, and then even the tough psychosomatic fibers that comprised his mind began to waver.

  All these had the effect of thoroughly sapping his capacity for urgency and action.

  Fool! Snap out of it! The domineering thought reverberated through the insides of his skull like a foghorn. Fragments of thought ran supercharged through his neural pathways, blinding his mind's eye with the heat of abstract perception.

  Betelgeuse blinked. He was in the middle of a concavity. A large bowl that flared up towards the crimson sky.

  He pieced together his scattered attention to realize that the whole world was made of blood. The sky was globular clumps and the ground was half-solid clots of fluid. Curtains of crimson viscosity ran down the sides of the bowl, lapping against his ankles and slowly welling upward.

  The light went out, and a cancerous calm descended upon him. No, it wasn't calm that descended, but slippery-slick walls, like the sides of a digestive tract. All he could feel was the peristaltic churn slapping against his skin, smothering him slowly and inexorably.

  Sickening. The maw consumes all thought. Silence and waves. An insidious actor shifting against the foundations of this mental underworld.

  Chthonian voices shift. I feel the charms in my pocket: there are two, a red thread and a string of blackened meat, bursting with the intersections of a million cathexes of mind. They are clearly Gehennite—I can feel it, one of many intersections this dying society makes.

  Those beings around me—the women who have been turned to the Queen's self-destructive ideology and kept under the thumb of her paramours—I feel them resonating with hatred against the traditions which they have inherited, the traditions which have destroyed their society and created the charms that I now possess.

  Dark realities clash with dark fantasies. I know there are reasons for why these artifacts exist, but I cannot tell exactly what those reasons are.

  Does it really matter? Human beings will sink into their fantasies. The important thing is to keep moving, to keep living…

  Betelgeuse blinked again. Meng Bi was before him, the mysterious harbinger of his fate.

  He was being tested. The relaxation that he was feeling was an illusion. Meng Bi had failed to break him, and so he resolved to scatter Betelgeuse' mind to the wind instead.

  Now that Betelgeuse had made himself whole once more, he found himself standing on his own two feet, facing the blue-robed man. Rafayel had collapsed backward with his shins under him, completely catatonic, a stream of saliva dribbling from the corner of his lip.

  Betelgeuse wriggled his extremities, allowing himself to focus his attention. He had picked himself up from the debilitating languor and sharpened himself. Now devoid of anger, he searched painstakingly and found that a middle way was traversable.

  His White Incunabulum pulsed as his body strengthened. His heartbeat began to accelerate, forcing blood through his dilating veins at incredible speed. The world receded to a single point.

  It was impossible to break Meng Bi's grip on his mind. Not with the compulsion.

  I must attack.

  The next moment, Betelgeuse lunged at Meng Bi, slamming his shoulder into the man's helmet.

  Meng Bi grunted in surprise, his head forced backward. A crack spidered across the surface of his visor, marring its obsidian polish and making of the reflection of the OLED light two shores facing each other.

  The world shimmered and was sucked away into the void.

  When the feeling returned to his body, Betelgeuse was high up in the air, falling.

  Meng Bi was next to him, his arms cracked down the middle, his arms folded and his feet stuck out below him as though he was standing—but he was falling straight down, at the same speed and acceleration as Betelgeuse.

  Betelgeuse' heart leapt into his mouth. He angled himself downward. His speed was increasing. The ground was so far away, with its expanse of rock, sand, soil and smog. A spine of mountains jutted out vaguely to his left; their peaks remained a long way below him, indicating that it would be many seconds before he hit ground yet.

  "You learn fast," Meng Bi said coldly, his visor catching Corydon's light with a brilliant spangle. "I struck you with both the Ying-Shu and the Ruan-Shu. You found the middle way very quickly. Quicker than I anticipated."

  "... Is that so?" Betelgeuse said, swallowing his fear. He had no clue what Ying-Shu or Ruan-Shu meant. Were they the names of the techniques which Meng Bi utilized? Some kind of mental-ability? The names sounded Sinic…

  Betelgeuse' body was almost at terminal velocity, and yet, the ground was still so far away. Was there any chance at all that he could take control of Meng Bi and force a Jump? Would a Jump erase his momentum?

  "Though you show quite an impressive amount of audacity, attacking me," Meng Bi said, bristling with barely concealed contempt.

  "Attacked you? You attacked me first. After all that talk about a partnership, you'll just up and kill me? What was the point of showing yourself, anyway, if you were just going to dispose of me like this…"

  "You must be getting mixed up, Mr. Betelgeuse. I didn't attack you—I was just testing you, making you stronger, showing you the way… and you took it upon yourself to bite me like an ungrateful dog," Meng Bi returned. "You ought to be put down."

  Betelgeuse fell silent. For some reason, Meng Bi had a vested interest in making him stronger. Betelgeuse could discern, through the waves of intentionality emanating from Meng Bi's form, an intense displeasure.

  He's bluffing.

  "My attack is what's got you so worked up?" Betelgeuse jibed, feeling every second the rush of mortality. He stared at the ground and the ground was death, rushing up to meet him.

  "Here I thought the great Meng Bi would have better control of himself."

  "Don't push it. This is just punishment," Meng Bi shot back, his intentionality flaring slightly. "The price of breaking our pact of comity."

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  "And the price is death? Quite a steep price considering the trouble you and I have been put to," Betelgeuse said, turning his head to address Meng Bi directly. Every molecule in his body was screaming out in existential distress.

  He's bluffing... right?

  "How's this for comity: mutual respect of boundaries. The mind is off-limits. Keep your Ying and Ruan… whatever the fuck you were trying to do with my mind," Betelgeuse said.

  Meng Bi didn't reply.

  The seconds ticked down inexorably. Betelgeuse vacillated between maintaining his facade and crumbling into an obsequious beggar. He struggled with himself, his perceptions threatening to wilt with fear. But then he realized that if he was going to die, he'd rather meet that death with decorum.

  Once he accepted his fast-approaching mortality, Betelgeuse' heart quietened. There was no thought of God, no prayer to Theli. But there was regret also: the memory of the Revelation remained bitterly in his heart, for its promise of—

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. The next moment, everything went black.

  Betelgeuse stumbled and fell backward onto the ground. He realized he was staring at the red sky. All of his momentum had disappeared, substituted for nausea and disorientation.

  Huh?

  Was it a dream?

  But it felt so real—

  "Impressive fortitude," Meng Bi said, stepping forward to stand beside Betelgeuse' head. Meng Bi appeared tall enough to reach the sky—a trick of the perspective, but one that curdled Betelgeuse' emotions. "You conducted yourself admirably."

  No, not a dream.

  Meng Bi's tone was back to normal and his intentionality was the very picture of calmness. Had Betelgeuse completely imagined Meng Bi's displeasure?

  "... Was that a test?" Betelgeuse managed groggily.

  "Yes," Meng Bi said, leaving it in great doubt whether what he said was true.

  "Did I pass?"

  "Perhaps you did. Stand up," Meng Bi instructed, and Betelgeuse complied immediately.

  Queen She's women were all around him, staring at him and Meng Bi with curious expressions. Betelgeuse couldn't tell what was off about them, only that their intentionalities seemed bound in some way to him.

  Betelgeuse' perceptions shuddered. As he stumbled, a woman in a ragged cloak stepped forward to support him.

  "What... happened? What's happening to me?" Betelgeuse rasped, his world spinning.

  "You're suffering perception-warping. Its a consequence of enduring Ying-Shu and Ruan-Shu. Expect temporary side-effects... Though I don't think they'll be any serious, considering your achievement of Zhong-Jie—of Centering," Meng Bi said matter-of-factly.

  "Centering?" Betelgeuse echoed, scanning the crowd and admiring their docility. Meng Bi must have had something to do with it. "I've heard of this only in passing… yes, Psychosomatic Arts, I think it's called. Ying-Shu* and Ruan-Shu* are part of the Sinic Compilation of Psychosomatic Arts."

  *[Ying-Shu: 硬术; Ruan-Shu: 软术; Centering / Zhong-Jie: 中界]

  "You've 'heard'? Hah!" Meng Bi sounded with a note of surprise. "I can't say I expected that. You get more interesting every second, Mr. Betelgeuse."

  He doesn't know of my past on the Pecorino black market. Regardless, I can deal with this later. My first priority is to consolidate my position, and that means securing Voke and the rest of them.

  "If you're done playing games, I need to save my men," Betelgeuse said, frowning and nudging away the diminutive woman. Her stature reminded him of Thete.

  "You mean the ones we saw earlier, in the trucks. You needn't worry—it appears they've gone ahead to Gehen," Meng Bi said.

  "What? Bullshit!" Betelgeuse blurted, jabbing a finger straight at Meng Bi. "We just saw them outside!"

  Meng Bi merely placed a hand on Betelgeuse shoulder, and the next instant they were perched atop one of the enclosing hills. Corydon blazed high in the sky, and Betelgeuse realized it was no longer morning.

  What's this!? It's late morning! I've lost... hours! What did Meng Bi's Psychosomatic Arts do to me?

  As for the wide expanse of land separating the makeshift encampment from Gehen, there was nothing but red soil and a convoy of trucks trundling slowly many hundreds of kilometers away to the east. He scanned the wide strip of land desperately—desperately? Why am I worried? Voke and Douglas will keep them together—but found no trace whatsoever of his band.

  " … How much time did I lose?" Betelgeuse asked softly.

  "I wasn't keeping track. Give or take a few hours," Meng Bi replied nonchalantly.

  "They went into Gehen?" Betelgeuse said, indicating toward the messy sprawl.

  "That's what I said," Meng Bi returned, irritatingly calm. "Into the city, with the false Queen's followers after them."

  "Then that's where we have to go," Betelgeuse said, his tone darkly resolute. "Immediately."

  Meng Bi faced into the enclosure, witnessing the sprawl of bodies congregating out into the open. At their head was Rafayel, his handsome face staring blankly up at the duo.

  Betelgeuse followed Meng Bi's gaze and watched the people below him. Their intentionalities were bound—wrested from the hold of Rafayel and rewired in a way that Betelgeuse didn't completely understand.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  Meng Bi... I don't trust him.

  ***

  "We'll need them as meatshields and cannon fodder," Meng Bi had said knowingly, and Betelgeuse knew better than to second-guess the man.

  It turned out that Queen She had had three additional trucks parked to the south portion of the enclosure. Betelgeuse commanded a contingent of the men and women formerly under the Queen's control—minds now under his and, he assumed, Meng Bi's control—into these vehicles and then wasted no time in charting a course for Gehen.

  Amongst the men and women of Queen She's former subordinates, it turned out that experience with driving heavy vehicles were confined to several of the Queen's paramours. This included Rafayel and two other men, Dalik and Thomsk. Betelgeuse divined this nugget of information by exploring Rafayel's mind—an ability that Betelgeuse suddenly found himself in possession of.

  No doubt about it. It's the Centering or whatever the hell Meng Bi called it. The nuances of the intentionalities emanating from a mind are now so clear to me that I can inquire information from minds.

  So Rafayel was put in the head truck and ordered to be the driver, with Dalik and Thomsk as the drivers of the two other trucks. Betelgeuse and Meng Bi themselves rode within the head truck alongside Rafayel.

  Over the journey back to Gehen, as Betelgeuse continued exploring the threads of Rafayel's mind, he was left with a keen sense that his ability to discern the murky world of intentionalities had vastly improved. Of course, Meng Bi knew what Betelgeuse was up to, but otherwise did not interfere.

  I can follow individual threads clearly now, almost like I can read their minds and discern a relative priority in principles. It's like Meng Bi was hammering my mind into shape with the Ying-Shu and the Ruan-Shu.

  The more I use it, the more I learn...

  Oh? A thread relating to the Queen's power? It does seem interesting...

  I already knew that the Queen's minions were caught under the thumb of a flimsy ideology that she had fabricated. Its contours were a kind of emotive feminism that she hijacked for her own purposes.

  She drew the women in with promises of female power, made them believe they were rebelling against a society that treated them merely as tools of pleasure, when in reality they were put under her own tyrannical authority and treated like fodder.

  Once it became clear that, under the Queen's authority, their lives would be nasty, brutish and short, many of them must have revolted against her authority. The ideology she created was too flimsy to bear the burden of their loyalty.

  What's this? She made use of the women's sexual impulses to tie them to her male lieutenants, made the male figure an object of mind-cathexis.

  It must have been easy to do so, for within the seed of feminism is an obsession with the masculine imperative. This bore the burdens of the women's mind-cathexes well enough.

  It's ingenious. Although the Queen has little affinity for domineering compulsion, her understanding of and skill in… what can I call it… insidious compulsion is unmatched. To be able to set herself up as the supreme leader of several hundred persons is no mean feat.

  I'm curious why Queen She's use of the compulsion manifests in such a unique way. Different mental makeups probably results in different types of compulsion.

  Rafayel must have been more than a paramour, for him to have such in-depth knowledge. Curious...

  In addition, Betelgeuse divined that Meng Bi had carefully re-engineered the intentionalities of the Queen's former subordinates and put them under absolute control. Their allegiance and sexual frustrations were thoroughly excised, to be substituted for a calm, zen-like gratefulness for the existence of leaders—great spirits—inhering in the persons of Betelgeuse and Meng Bi.

  It was like nothing Betelgeuse had seen before. It was absolute control—control to an extent that boggled the imagination. The implications were earth-shattering, and it made Betelgeuse even more wary of Meng Bi.

  Before long, the truck they rode in came close to the looming border-tower—the same one they'd passed when leaving Gehen. Parked under the towers were the Dust-Trekker and a Maschinenfabrik truck—and behind the windshield of the Dust-Trekker, Betelgeuse could just make out a figure slumped over forward upon the dashboard.

  "Something's wrong," Betelgeuse said, pointing toward the front.

  Meng Bi sat silently, his cracked and featureless visor still and unmoving. Betelgeuse couldn't tell if the Golden grade could hear him, but all around he could feel the swirl of intentionality, oppressive as the smog that blanketed most of the city.

  "Are you doing that?" Betelgeuse asked, his voice urgent, turning to Meng Bi.

  "... No," Meng Bi said after several seconds of silence. "It's Donn-Tua. A probe. Someone is looking for me."