Melmat was having a wonderful evening. It seemed that no matter how many times he pulled the slot machine lever, he just couldn't manage to lose any money. Sure, he didn't win every round, but when he did win, he won big. There wasn't a discernible pattern to it, and Melmat would have noticed if there was, but he did notice runs of small wins and runs of big wins. Even better, to the growing crowd around him, he just seemed to be having an extremely lucky streak.

  He was wearing a white button down shirt with the top three buttons undone, a gold chain, aviator sunglasses and a large cigar in his mouth. His every movement oozed confidence, and inspired a single thought in the minds of anyone who saw him; what an asshole.

  “All right,” Melmat said in an exaggerated, boastful voice “That's enough of these slots. Who wants to come play some craps!” A number of people exchanged glances and followed him to the craps table. All around him, the roar of gambling served to put people into an altered state of consciousness, making them do things they wouldn't normally do. Melmat looked at his bucket of chips and realized he'd made far too much money to get out of the casino without trouble. Even though he'd come here to find some trouble, that wasn't the kind of trouble he needed right now. With a sly smirk, he reached into the bucket and began throwing the contents like chicken seed to get the crowd's collective mind thinking the right way, then dumped the entire contents on the ground.

  Melmat felt the ring on his finger, and the moment the pandemonium began, he stepped across reality outside the casino. Chaos Walk, the skill was called, and Melmat knew that in any other point in history, this ring would have allowed him to take over the world, no questions about that at all. He used the skill several more times, Liborum helpfully highlighting the position and arc of all the security cameras in Vegas, creating little dark pockets in his vision that represented the blind spots that he jumped to and through, exiting the boardwalk and cutting a rapid line across the map.

  Finally he stopped in an empty parking lot, body coated in sweat, but not from exertion. No, he could jump around all night with this ring and not feel it. Liborum appeared, but not as a book; instead she was a voluptuous woman made entirely from large sheets of paper with small, shifting text that moved around like the shadow of rain on a car window at night, flowing around her in an upward spiral. She was breathing heavy, hands on her breasts, an expression of intense, painful desire on her features.

  “I'm sorry,” she panted “Your emotions are too powerful for me to regulate.”

  Melmat knew exactly how she felt, because she was feeling what he was feeling. The rush of power; the giddy surge of sexual energy that was raging through him; the crazy, animal anticipation of what was coming next. He knew the time, his internal clock rivaled anything the Swiss watchmakers had ever produced. They were coming, and soon. He'd paid good money for results and punctuality. Still, he had a little time to check the status of his ring.

  “Advanced Analysis, Liborum, please.”

  When Melmat looked up from the window, he saw a group of large, tough looking thugs.

  “Evening,” one of them said “You our client?”

  “I am,” Melmat said, an involuntary tremor running through his body. The man noticed and shot a glance to one of his associates.

  “And you've got our payment?” The man seemed to be trying and mostly succeeding at containing the skepticism in his voice. To answer, Melmat pulled a fat envelope from his pocket and tossed it to the thug.

  “No matter what happens,” Melmat said “You will not speak of what happens here to anyone. You might not believe me right now, but by the end of this I expect you will understand.” Melmat shot each of them a hard stare “I will know if you do, and you will not like the consequences.” One of the thugs laughed.

  “You're a nut!” Their leader, the one with the money, shut him up with a look, and then resumed counting. When he was finished, he chuckled.

  “All things considered, I'm at a loss as to what we would have done if you hadn't brought it all. You sure about this? I don't care how crazy you are and what kind of fucked up beliefs you have, you're gonna die here if you say yes, guaranteed,” he said, then patted the envelope “paid in full.”

  “I go down fighting, I promise not to kill any of you,” Melmat said, loosening his body and preparing for combat “and I promise I'll let you win.”

  “Crazy fuck,” one of the other men said, then rushed forward and went to deliver a devastating gut-punch; he yelled out in surprise when he instead stumbled forward, his fist passing right through Melmat.

  “Come on, you'll have to do better than that you faggots,” Melmat taunted, getting their hackles up. They descended on him as a group, punching and kicking; most of them connected, but any time a blow would have knocked him out or incapacitated him, he blurred from existence, and the thug connected with nothing but air. Eventually, however, the prolonged fight began to take it's toll. The pain was incredible, made even more so because of the 'death by a thousand cuts' nature of his execution.

  He didn't fight back except to goad the criminals on, an occasional shot to the nuts or some other dirty blow that enraged them to comical levels. He felt himself drifting away, laying on the ground, their feet stomping him into the pavement. They'd already tried to crush his skull several times, but they just kept hitting the ground.

  Melmat's final thoughts were that these men would absolutely talk about what happened here tonight. He was counting on it, he needed to bring more attention to this area, to get more people looking for the source of the disturbances in the world. The dungeon needed them to come, needed them to come and die. Melchsee was quite clear in the brief, clandestine write up of the situation she'd managed to send him nearly a year ago.

  Melmat's body stopped moving, and the thugs gave it a couple of extra kicks for good measure. They all sat around, breathing hard.

  “What the fuck was that,” one of them muttered, shaky hands reaching for a pack of cigarettes and then placing one between his lips.

  “I wasn't expecting to have to fuckin sweat over this, Christ!”

  Then, something else unexpected happened. Melmat's body exploded into shards of blue light that vanished as they rose into the air as if pulled by gravity. The men jumped back, several of them had been hit by the phenomena and began shivering and rubbing the contacted spots.

  “Let's get out of here!” the leader shouted, and they ran.

  They'd never run so fast in their lives.