The Neon Abyss Casino was a shining, infected wound in the heart of downtown's darkness.
A massive hall saturated with harsh purple lights. The air hung heavy with the cloying smoke of electronic cigarettes and the metallic tang of desperation.
The sound of rotating slot machine gears mixed with the desperate shouts of gamblers, echoing in my head like discordant noise.
The space smelled of sweat, alcohol, and anxiety—the perfume of bad decisions.
My feet carried me toward the Craps table.
Malakor shivered upon seeing the game.
"My Lord," he whispered, voice trembling under the noise. "This game... is black magic."
He pointed a shaking finger at the table's edge.
"The 'Back Walls' are made of an elastic rubber polymer with a diamond-shaped pattern. It causes the rotation of the dice to be completely chaotic. No one has been able to predict the return pattern. This game is based purely on luck."
I threw a humiliating look at him.
"Luck?" I scoffed. "Malakor, you still think like a cave-dwelling primitive."
Approaching the table, my eyes scanned the surface.
"Something by the name of 'luck' does not exist," I lectured, voice cutting through the casino noise.
"Luck is only a title mortals give to complex equations their small brains cannot solve."
I placed my hand on the green felt.
"When you know all variables—from the friction coefficient of the cloth to the concentration of water vapor in the air—probabilities lose their color."
My fingers brushed the wood grain. To an observer, I was admiring the table. In reality, I was measuring. Testing the elasticity of the back wall at different points with sensitive, new fingertips.
"They give way to certainty."
A burly man stood on the other side of the table.
Leather jacket reinforced with metal studs. Artificial eyes glowing with a red, predatory light.
He picked up the dice with theatrical movements. Brought them close to foul-smelling lips. Kissed them.
"Lady Luck..." he groaned, tone dripping with disgusting superstition. "Come help Daddy. Tonight is the time for winning, my beauty."
He threw the dice.
At the moment he uttered those vulgar words, a wave of biting pain rushed to my temples.
It was like a power drill boring into my skull.
The sheer volume of belief in the supernatural—applied to a purely physical process—was painful to my reality. My brain throbbed from the contrast between physics and delusion.
Without a word, I turned.
Kael stood exactly behind me. Indifferent to the glitter. Indifferent to the noise.
I grabbed his chin. Turned his face toward mine.
For a full minute, amidst the chaos of the casino, silence reigned between us.
I stared into the depths of his blue, void eyes.
I let his emptiness bleed into my thoughts. Like a thermal heat sink, Kael's mental quiet absorbed the additional strain and cacophony of my headache.
Cool. Quiet. The swelling in my brain subsided.
Kael blinked once.
"Master, has a problem occurred in my function?"
"There is no need for you to know," I answered, releasing him. "Just stay right there. Do not close your eyes. You are the only valuable element in this room."
My turn arrived.
I put all our assets—those meager 500 Clons of Malakor—on the betting line.
The table attendant, a young man with smooth skin and a purple uniform, raised an eyebrow.
The crowd gathered. The smell of greed thickened in the air.
I took the dice in my hand.
Weight check. Due to erosion, the center of gravity of one die was inclined toward the number 6 by a microscopic amount.
A favorable variable.
I tracked the "Magnus Effect" on the dice at the moment of exit from my fingertips. Every muscle in my hand aligned to create a straight vector.
With precise exit velocity and calculated backspin, I released them.
They hit the tablecloth at the exact angle held in my mind.
For anyone else, the rebound from that diamond-shaped wall was chaotic. For me, it was a three-dimensional calculation of kinetic energy loss and momentum transfer.
I saw the result—6 and 1—in my mind's hypothetical space before the dice even reached the wall.
The dice stopped. 6 and 1. Victory.
The crowd roared. Malakor held his breath.
I did not stop. Twenty times in a row.
Ten times double six. Five times seven. Five other combinations that sat exactly on my bets.
Every time, the dice were shot with the same angle. The same calculated speed.
I was using the "First Name" in its most hidden form.
Our assets reached 58,000 Clons within fifteen minutes. The table attendant was no longer pale; he looked like he was having a stroke.
A coarse hand slammed onto the table, scattering my chips.
The red-eyed gangster stepped forward. In his hand, he held a heavy iron pipe—his usual tool for settling "luck."
"Enough!" he shouted, voice trembling with rage. "You are cheating, kid."
He pointed the pipe at my face.
"No one... no damn one brings the correct number twenty times in a row. You are either an illegal magician or a cheater with a magnet in his sleeve. Here is Neon Abyss. We mince cheaters for dog food."
I remained calm.
In my mind, I was already deciding the next movement. Strike the knee joint. Collapse the center of gravity.
But before my will turned into action, Malakor moved.
It was a variable I had not calculated.
Perhaps influenced by the sudden wealth, or a desperate need to prove his loyalty, he threw himself between me and the iron pipe.
"Do not touch my Lord, you filthy mortal!"
The sound of iron hitting Malakor's side was muffled and painful. Like the crushing of a wooden hive.
Malakor was thrown to the ground, moaning. He hit the table, sending glass and chips raining over his bloody face.
A cold anger, white as a star's core, flared in my existence.
It was not pity. I did not cry for tools.
My anger was born of disorder.
Malakor was my map in this filthy world, and this worthless mortal had crumpled my map with a savage, circular movement.
It was an insult to ME.
I picked up one of the dice.
The small plastic cube sat between my thumb and index finger. I felt its weight.
I turned toward the gangster. He raised the pipe again, unaware that his death sentence was already written.
"Veoth, Donthe..." I whispered.
The fabric of reality groaned.
With a lightning-fast flick of my wrist, the die was thrown.
It was a cosmic shot in the body of a child's game. I concentrated my Will—the power of the First Name—into that plastic cube.
The die tore the air with the sound of tearing silk.
It passed through the center of the man's forehead without resistance.
The skull shattered like a clay pot hit by a tank shell.
The die exited the back of his head in a fountain of gray tissue and black blood, hitting the concrete wall behind him with enough force to bury itself ten centimeters deep.
Thud.
The man fell. He hit the table like a sack of meat, staining the bets with blood.
Silence.
The techno music cut off. The smell of urine rose from the table attendant, who had coiled on the ground in terror.
My shadow fell long and dark over him.
"The money," I said, voice rising from the depths of a frozen eternity.
"Transfer the entire inventory of this table to Malakor's account. If one Clony is missing, the next die will split your chest."
Trembling, he entered the codes.
58,400 Clons transferred.
I turned to the terrified crowd, stuck to the walls like a herd of scared animals.
"In this small world of yours, you forget a fundamental difference," I announced.
"Between 'Power' and 'Authority', there is a structural divide."
I looked at the corpse.
"Any idiot with an iron pipe can have power... power destroys."
I looked at my own hand.
"But I am Authority. I define reality. I decide whether a die is a game cube or a deadly bullet."
I lifted Malakor from the ground. He was moaning, but alive; his natural armor of fat had softened the blow.
Kael stood up.
Without a hair out of place, without blinking, he resumed his position exactly three meters behind me.
We left the heavy doors of the casino behind.
The air in the street seemed lighter, but the respite was short.
At the end of the street, under the flickering purple light of a half-burnt neon sign that advertised "Salvation," I saw a familiar figure standing in the rain.