Strongest Among the Heavens

Dasha, the dealer on the floor, and everyone else in the Moon Club were eerily still. The barrier remained visible as blood trailed down like a slipping, dying hand.

With a sharp breath, Dasha asked, "Your name?"

The dealer glanced at him, terrified, the smile on his face shaking. In spite of his fear, he climbed to his seat. He faked his confidence and ignored the death beside him. "I...my name is Liu Ch’ang-yu...I..." His gaze flickered, his mind struck by the headless body five feet away.

Dasha calmly rolled out the Geas of Service, a parchment of light-yellow with an awaiting pen on top. "Try not to be surprised," he said. "You know who that is."

"Don’t talk about her, don’t speak about her, don’t mention her, don’t talk about her, don’t speak about her, don’t mention her," Li Ch’ang-yu muttered. "Haa...hahh..." He gulped the heavy stench of death, glancing at the corpse and then back to the parchment. Nervously, the dealer began to write the terms and conditions, his left leg bouncing anxiously. "So, regarding terms..."

Writing by pen and not by the mind; it was an intentional action. A way to unsettle the dealer further, to get him to subtly bend to his will. The more he wrote, the more he pushed aside his fears and the more he failed. If it was not for Jack’s mask and the natural negativity it radiated, Dasha might have been in the same condition. Thinking, reconsidering, and subconsciously lowering himself toward a god-like figure. Thinking over and over again that you were truly, wholly nothing. That your death meant nothing. It was the rational response to world-bending authority.

"Six months of deliveries," Dasha requested, cool as ever. To see his dealer shaken up like this was a huge advantage. He could practically hear the other man’s shrieking heart. "Ten thousand points per delivery once a week and a hundred kilos."

"Ten thousand." Li Ch’ang-yu whispered it like a ghost.

"Shall we bump it to twelve thousand?"