I do not own Chaotic nor anything related to it. It belongs to TCDigital.

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The One Who Knows

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Ah, that's what he meant by environment.

I'm in my normal twenty-three year old body. I'm lying on a bed with a dark wood frame. The sheet covering the mattress is tan with small black lines running down its length, and the pillow's and blanket's covers are colored and patterned similarly.

The room's walls are painted white, and sunlight streams through a large window missing its curtains on the wall opposite the bed. Underneath the window is a long dresser. A white door leading to a walk-in closet is on the wall to the right, and to the left is a white door leading into the hall.

This is my bedroom, and the only hint that I haven't woken up is the Mipedian standing in the middle of the room.

"I apologize for any disorientation you may be experiencing," he says. "I have little practice with creating environments that I personally have not experienced."

"The only thing that feels odd is seeing you in my bedroom," I chuckle.

I feel at peace. It's a feeling I haven't had for a while. Even before my ordeal with Aa'une, I was constantly under pressure with my duties as Prince of Al Mipedim.

Being at peace does not stop certain things from being odd, though. "Enre-hep, where are your clothes?"

"My worldly possessions are not a part of my soul," the Mipedian says, "so they do not follow me into the mindspace of other creatures."

I push my blanket off of me and get up. "Yeah, I'll just find you a towel to wrap around your waist."

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I'm upstairs, sitting on the couch in front of the television. Enre-hep, more or less decent now, is exploring the house. He's not actually wasting time, considering that time in the outside world is more or less stopped while we're here.

"You have water pumped directly into your home?" Enre-hep asks, awestruck. He's in the kitchen, staring at the faucet pouring water.

"Yup," I say.

Enre-hep looks at me over the counter that separates the kitchen area from the living room area. "Amazing," he breathes. He fiddles with the faucet's handle, then exclaims, "You can even choose its temperature!"

I hold back a laugh. This is just so precious.

Enre-hep turns off the water and heads for the dining room. He's looking at the lights over the dining room table. "What are these?" he asks.

I stand up and head for the switch Enre'hep had passed. I flip in up, and the lights turn on in the dining room and the kitchen. Enre-hep stares at the lights, then the switch. Then he starts playing with the light switch. "I feel like a little child again, exploring the world and being fascinated by everything."

"Pretty much how many Humans felt when we arrived in Perim," I reply.

Enre-hep glaces at me, and he flips off lights and turns to me. "I already know that this is all your dream, Prince Osiris. You effectively told when you had me read your mind."

"Which was a mistake," I mutter. "I'm sorry to have shattered your perceptions of the world."

Enre-hep laughs. "No perceptions were shattered, Your Highness. Even before I met you, I had always believed that all of reality was a dream. I simply believed that it was my dream."

I raise my eyebrows. "Really?"

"Absolutely convinced," the Mipedian chuckles. "It wasn't that much of a shock to discover that I simply had the wrong dreamer."

"Aa'une and Phelphor didn't take it quite as well as you did." I feel chills run down my back before the peace of the place pushes the feeling away.

"Which brings me to the reason why I wanted to speak with you." Enre-hep holds his tail to the side and sits down on a chair. "I have reason to believe that Aa'une had been using your mind as a scrying mechanism."

I shiver again, and this time the feeling does not go away. "Yes, he did."

"May I see?" Enre-hep asks.

I shiver again. "What exactly do you mean?"

"I would like to see how much of an advantage it granted him," the muge clarifies. "Our military is currently using several means to avoid what we assumed was a master soothsayer, and I would like to know how many of the practices are no longer needed now that Aa'une does not have you."

I have a feeling that I won't enjoy this, but he has a point. "Very well..."

Enre-hep places a hand on the dining room table, and suddenly crystal flowers bloom on its surface. Enre-hep takes a deep breath, then declares loudly, "Show me the bloom that holds Aa'une's soul!"

Crystal flowers start flying off the table, shattering into pieces against the walls, only for new flowers to appear on the table when they leave. For a while the flowers simply zoom everywhere, until only one remains.

Enre-hep glances at me. "Are you sure? From what little I gathered from my first foray in your mind, looking in Aa'une's mind will most likely not be pleasant for you."

I set my jaw. "Go ahead."

Enre-hep reaches towards the flower, and his hand transforms into a glowing gold specter as it approaches. He touches the topmost petal-

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I'm surrounded by what remains of the broken bodies of the creatures that had failed me. Failed to secure the dreamer, Michael. Their blood is everywhere, on the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and coating my projection's body.

I let out a roar with both my bodies. A pointless roar, it solves nothing. I lost the keystone of reality and my weapon in the same moment. And all that work to break him, now completely lost.

...We must accelerate our plans. My plans. Those fools K'yall and Pah'ziq, urging me to stop the invasion and turn to diplomacy. Diplomacy, ha! As if they knew how to deal with those disgusting creatures.

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Enre-hep pulls his hand away. His eyes are wide, staring at his hand and flexing it. "Just like last time..." he mutters. "It felt as if I was another creature..." He turns to me and asks, "So your mind can be used to spy on any creature, see what he or she is thinking or feeling?"

"Not just the present," I say. "Think about it. Is time passing outside while we're here?"

"No," Enre-hep says. "I informed you of that earlier."

"If we were only looking at the present, then you would have seen only a snapshot of Aa'une's mind, not those several seconds that you saw." With all the time Aa'une had spent inside my head, I had learned quite a bit about how it worked.

"Show me," Enre-hep says.

My heart seems to freeze. There are so many places in Aa'une's past that I do not want to look at. But then again, what are the chances that I'll pick one of those times, considering how long he's probably lived?

I reach over to the flower. My hand seems to turn into jet black crystal as it approaches. I hover my finger over a petal near the base, then lower it so I touch-

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The dreamer screams and begs. I can sense pain, yes, but the physical pain is not what his cryings are about. He cries for the pain of his soul, the loss of power, the violation of what he thought was his and his alone.

I do not care about his cries.

I thrust my projected body forward once again, and the connection between it and my real body flares up. Even though the dreamer is not attractive in any form to me, this... power I have over him is most arousing.

I continue, and soon my projected body is pushed to its limit, as is my real one. My projection releases the pressure it has built up into the dreamer's body. All it takes is a few strokes of my phallus for my real body to also spill my seed. Ugh, I've made a mess of my chest and stomach.

Ah, the dreamer Michael curls up in a ball and sobs. Breaking him is going quite well.

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I'm screaming. I can't stop. Enre-hep is yanking my hand away from the flower.

The house is a wreck now. Broken chairs are floating in the air, smashed glassware has fallen sideways against the wall. In the kitchen, blood is leaking from the refrigerator, and a jet of flame is spewing out of the sink. A thunderstorm rages outside, and the wind has shattered all the glass windows in the house. A crack opens in the upstairs living room floor, and furniture from the lower floor starts erupting from the fissure.

"Show me Enre-hep!" the muge roars as he struggles with my hand.

Aa'une's flower zooms away and flies out a window, and suddenly crystal flowers start pouring from the walls. They fly through the air, smashing against each other, and then they suddenly all stop. One flower floats directly in front of my crystal hand.

I feel the house begin to tip over. My parents' bedroom door flies open, and their bed, ignoring that fact that it's too large to do so, falls through the doorway. It tumbles end over end at Enre-hep and me.

Enre-hep forces my hand to touch the flower-

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Breath in... Breath out... I must empty my mind... Empty my heart...

Feel the sun shine down... Listen to the water of the oasis... Feel the sand beneath my feet...

Breath in...

Breath out...

I am at one with the world...

The world is at one with me...

In...

Out...

I open my eyes, and before me I see a light in my hands. I release it, and it floats up to the mugic floating above me.

"Minor Flourish," I whisper, and the song begins to play. The light and sound descends on me.

I look down at the wound in my arm that I inflicted on myself earlier. I watch as the mugical light envelopes it, pulls the flesh together. There, now it can heal properly.

I sit down by the edge of the Oasis again. A smile flits across my mouth. Today, at the age of thirty solans, I have finally cast my first mugic.

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I gasp for breath as I pull my hand away from the flower. The house looks completely normal now.

Erne-hep collapses in a chair, gasping for breath. "Let us not do that again," he breathes.

"Let's not," I agree.

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Enre-hep removes his fingers from my temples. I sag in my chair, feeling weaker than before.

{I aM sorrY,} Enre-hep says. {I diD noT meaN-}

"It's fine," I say, "it was my fault."

Enre-hep looks at the floor for a while. {...I caN teacH yoU hoW tO protecT youR minD froM thosE likE myselF.}

And suddenly that terrifying experience feels just a little bit worth it. "When can we start?" I ask eagerly. A shield for my mind, that's exactly what I need.

{lateR. noW, yoU musT resT.}

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Up next: The Toast

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Like I said before, Chaotic belongs to TCDigital.

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