# Chapter 9: The Duel of Minds
The world dissolved into a scream of raw data. One moment, Konto was leaning against the damp brick of the Undercity alley, the scent of rain and refuse a cloying fog in his throat. The next, the physical universe was ripped away, replaced by a non-space of pure concept. He was falling through a cacophony of Kaelen's thoughts: a vortex of greed, violence, and raw, unfiltered ego. The connection was brutal, a spike driven directly into his cortex. The dream-pit's machinery hummed, a physical bass note that vibrated through the mental construct, a cold and artificial heartbeat for the psychic battlefield.
Konto fought for cohesion, for a single solid thought to anchor himself. He pictured his office, the scuffed leather of his chair, the dusty smell of old case files. The image flickered, then solidified into a small, circular platform of obsidian floating in an endless, starless void. This was his arena, his sanctuary. Across from him, the vortex of Kaelen's rage coalesced. The rival Dreamwalker took form, not as a man, but as a hulking beast of jagged obsidian and crackling crimson energy, its form a perfect manifestation of his brutish power. Kaelen had no subtlety, no artistry. He was a sledgehammer in a world that demanded a scalpel.
*"Little mouse in a maze,"* Kaelen's voice boomed, not through air but as a psychic pressure wave that threatened to shatter Konto's platform. *"Did you really think you could challenge me in my own house?"*
The beast raised a clawed hand, and the void around them warped. A thousand phantom blades, forged from Kaelen's memories of street fights and assassinations, materialized and rained down. Konto didn't try to block them. To meet force with force was Kaelen's game, a sure path to defeat. Instead, he poured his will into the floor of his obsidian platform. It liquefied, turning into a churning, black sea that swallowed the blades with silent, greedy gulps. The effort cost him. A sharp, piercing pain lanced through his skull, a phantom echo of the physical world. He felt a trickle of warmth from his nose. He was bleeding in the real world.
Outside the dream, Liraya's focus was absolute. She stood beside the humming dream-pit, its glowing conduits and vials of shimmering sedative a grotesque altar. Her hands hovered over the main energy regulator, a complex lattice of copper and silver wires. She couldn't enter the dreamscape—she lacked the innate Aspect—but she was a Weaver of the highest order. She could feel the flow of power, the raw arcane energy the Cartel was siphoning from the city's ley lines to fuel the duel. It was a torrent, a raging river directed straight into Kaelen's mind. Her job was to build a dam.
She began to weave, her fingers tracing intricate patterns in the air. Her Aspect Tattoos, elegant silver filigree on her forearms, flared to life. She wasn't trying to sever the connection; that would be too crude, and the backlash might fry Konto's mind. She was introducing disharmony, a subtle counter-frequency designed to create ripples, to turn the smooth flow of power into a choppy, unpredictable current. A single bead of sweat traced a path down her temple. The concentration was immense, like trying to redirect a hurricane with a hand fan. The air around her grew thick, smelling of ozone and hot metal.
Inside the arena, Kaelen roared in frustration as his assault failed. He felt it then—a flicker, a stutter in the power flowing to him. *"A rat in the walls,"* he snarled, his beast-form's head snapping toward the direction of the real-world machine. *"Bringing a friend to a fair fight?"*
He abandoned the assault and charged, a meteor of crimson fury. The ground beneath Konto's feet—the very concept of stability—buckled. This was Kaelen's true strength: he didn't just attack the mind, he attacked the rules of the mental space. He was trying to unmake Konto's reality. Konto felt the obsidian sea beneath him solidify into jagged spikes. He leaped, his body a blur of thought, landing on a new, smaller platform he conjured mid-air. The pain in his head intensified, a hot drillbit behind his eyes. The sensory bleed-through from his corruption was getting worse. He could smell Kaelen's psychic scent—a foul mix of cheap synth-ale and stale ambition.
He needed to change the dynamic. Defense was a losing game. He needed to make Kaelen fight on his terms. Konto closed his eyes, ignoring the charging behemoth, and reached inward. He found the dark, squirming thing in his own soul, the Somnolent Corruption he had kept caged for so long. It was a terrifying prospect, like opening a cage containing a starved tiger. But he needed its teeth. He didn't try to control it; he simply gave it a target.
He opened his eyes, and for a split second, his own aura flared with a chaotic, black-and-purple energy. He didn't attack Kaelen directly. Instead, he wove a single, perfect illusion around the charging beast. It wasn't an image of a monster or a weapon. It was a memory, plucked from the surface of Kaelen's own mind: the face of the Cartel boss who had once beaten him for a failure. The illusion was silent, just a disappointed, sneering face hanging in the void.
It was enough. Kaelen's charge faltered. The beast-form wavered, the crimson energy flickering as raw, unprocessed emotion—shame, rage, fear—bubbled to the surface. *"You… DARE?"* Kaelen's psychic voice was a choked whisper.
That was the opening. The disruption from Liraya hit its peak, and the energy flow to Kaelen sputtered violently. Konto struck. He didn't use a weapon or a blast of force. He used a scalpel of pure will, aiming for the single, glowing nexus of Kaelen's power—the core of his identity as a Dreamwalker. He plunged the psychic blade deep.
Kaelen screamed, a sound that tore at the fabric of the dreamscape. The obsidian beast shattered, dissolving into a storm of fragmented memories and psychic shrapnel. The raw, untamed power Konto had unleashed from his own corruption recoiled, slamming back into him. The world went white with agony. He felt his mind tearing, the barrier between his thoughts and the dreamscape dissolving like sugar in water. For a terrifying moment, he was everywhere and nowhere, feeling the dreams of a thousand sleepers in the casino above.
Then, a hand on his arm. Real. Solid. Liraya's.
He gasped, his lungs burning, and crashed back into his body. The first thing he registered was the coppery taste of his own blood. The second was the smell of burnt wiring from the overloaded regulator. He was slumped in the chair, his body slick with sweat. Liraya was leaning over him, her face pale, her eyes wide with a mixture of triumph and terror. The technicians were cowering in the corner. And Kaelen… Kaelen was still in his chair, but he was gone. His eyes were open, vacant, his mind a smoking ruin.
The crowd that had gathered to watch the duel was silent, stunned into submission. They had come for bloodsport and witnessed an execution.
Konto pushed himself up, every nerve ending screaming. He had won. But the victory felt hollow, poisoned. He could still feel the dreamscape, a phantom limb tingling with a million alien sensations. He looked at Kaelen, at the empty shell of a man who had been his rival. Shattering his mind would have been easy, a final, brutal twist of the psychic blade. But as he looked at the pathetic figure, he saw not an enemy, but a reflection of what he could become. A tool, used up and discarded.
Instead, he reached out one last time, a gentle probe into the wreckage of Kaelen's mind. He ignored the screams and the chaos, searching for one specific thread: the origin of the sedative. He found it, buried deep under layers of Cartel business. Not a formula, not a name. Just an image, seared into Kaelen's memory from a single meeting. A crate. Stamped with a logo of a three-forked lightning bolt. And a single, whispered word from the supplier: *Hephaestia.*
He pulled back, severing the connection. He had what he needed. He stood, swaying, and looked at Liraya. "We're leaving."
They didn't run. They walked. The crowd parted for them, a sea of frightened faces. The Cartel guards, seeing their champion defeated and their prize asset broken, simply watched, their bravado evaporating in the face of a power they couldn't comprehend. As they stepped back through the holographic koi curtain and into the neon-drenched canyons of the Undercity, the casino's muted symphony faded behind them, replaced by the familiar, oppressive shadows.
Konto leaned against a damp alley wall, the rough brick a grounding sensation against his back. Every sound was a gunshot, every light a physical blow. The drip-drip-drip of a broken pipe was a percussive hammer against his skull. The scent of rain and refuse was a cloying, suffocating fog. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it only made the swirling auras of the city's inhabitants brighter, a chaotic tapestry of fear, lust, and desperation that burned behind his eyelids. Liraya's hand on his arm was the only real thing, a cool anchor in a sea of sensory madness.
"Konto, talk to me. What did you see?"
He forced his eyes open, focusing on her face, on the single, steady point of gold and blue in her aura. "A logo," he rasped, his throat raw. "A three-forked lightning bolt. And a name… Hephaestia."
The word hung between them, heavy with implication. A foreign power. An act of war. Their investigation was no longer about exposing a few corrupt councilmen. It was about stopping an invasion. And he, the man who could barely stand, was the only one who had seen the enemy's face.