Chapter 63: The Forsaken Mind
Nymeria was sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. Then she reply to Reynold question.
"That is the part nobody really understands," she said finally. "The council has people working on it. But there is no clear answer yet."
Reynold leaned back slightly and thought about it.
The Greywood Basin was not just land. It was the vein the whole continent run on.
The magestone that came out of it fed the academies, the trade routes, the infrastructure of every major city in Valdris. In fact the economy 70 percent of revenue was from the the Basin.
If they pull the Basin away then the whole of Valdris will suffer for it.
Dammit! This people want the whole city to crumble.
Reynold exhaled and rubbed his jaw.
He reached for the last of the pigeon pie, and started eating it.
After the 190s treaty, the Forsaken had never moved this openly before.
They have always operated in the shadows.
Open border movements were not their way. If they were being spotted near the West and East borders, it means they have a plan..
Nymeria lick her lips as she shifted on the bed. She glanced down at her wrist, at the small brass timepiece she wore on the inside of her forearm, and looked at it briefly.
Then she stood up.
"I should leave now," she said.
Reynold looked up at her. He nodded once and started gathering the empty containers back into the paper Lyon bag without thinking.
After packing, he then stood, brushing crumbs from his lap. "Right. Thanks for the food. And... the information."
Nymeria moved toward the door.
Reynold stood at the same time to hand her the bag.
They both moved at the same time and towards the door.
Their heads bumped with a dull thud.
"Ow—" Reynold winced.
Nymeria rubbed her forehead, with surprise crossing her blank expression. For half a second they just stared at each other, close enough to feel each other’s breath. Then she stepped back.
"Let.. me have this.." She grabbed the paper bag and turned, unbolted the door herself and walked out without looking back...
Reynold watched the door close, rubbed the small spot on his head, and let out a long breath.
Then he sat back down on the floor, leaned against the bed, and stared at the ceiling.
Location: The Enclave facility in Capital City.
The enclave facility was located at the capital city of Valdris.
The building was behind two rings of iron fencing and a gate that required a signed authorization from a council officer to pass through.
From the outside it looked like a university building. Wide, grey-stoned.
But the inside was a different.
The facility was large enough to house over two hundred minds users at any given time.
It has dormitories, classrooms, a dining hall, a medical ward, a small library, an observation room and a training block.
It had everything a person needed to live a structured and comfortable life.
Even at that, the mind magic users inside did not have their own freedom.
They can not leave the building, they can not use their magic except when they are asked to.
They all have the same neck collar as Nymeria collar fixed on their neck.
Maybe it was not that cruel in the way cruelty usually looked.
The rooms were decent, the food were good, the professors here were not bad.
But every one of them inside this facility was placed here without their choice.
Right now, Professor Valerius was standing at the front of one of the smaller classrooms on the third floor.
There were three of the mind magic users seated in front of him this morning.
Elara, who was seventeen and she has been in this facility for two years.
Davan Power, who was twenty and he grew up entirely inside these facility walls. And Sael, who was the youngest at fifteen and was only here for three months now. This three are the most strongest in the facility right now.
Sael could not stopped looking at the windows.
Valerius was standing as he talk.
"The difference between reading an ordinary mind and reading a Forsaken mind," he said, "is the same difference between walking through an empty room and walking through a room that has been arranged specifically for you."
He moved to the board and wrote two words.
Surface. Construct.
"When you enter a standard mind, you are moving through what is genuinely there. Their memory, emotions and thought. Is the standard mind disordered, yes. Sometimes it is guarded but still real." He tapped the first word.
"Surface level access gives you what the person is actually thinking in that moment."
He moved his hand to the second word.
"A Forsaken mind is not passive but active. It knows you are inside and it builds."
Davan frowned. "Builds what?"
"Whatever it needs you to see," Valerius said. He turned away from the board and looked at them directly. "They construct false memory, false emotion and pathways that feel genuine because they are layered the same way genuine memory is layered. You may walk in looking for truth, and it gives you a room full of convincing furniture. Everything in its right place."
Sael was quiet as he was looking at his hands.
"How do you tell the difference?" Elara asked.
"That is the question," Valerius said. He clasped his hands behind his back. "And there is no clean answer. The only reliable method is pressure. A constructed memory does not breathe the way a real one does. If you push past the first layer, a real memory has depth, It has inconsistency and it also has the kind of small, useless detail that nobody would think to fabricate." He paused. "A construct mind is too clean. When you find a memory that has no smell, no peripheral noise, no small mistake in it, you are looking at something that was built for you to see."
Davan leaned forward in his chair. "What if you push and they push back?"
"Then you will know what that feels like shortly," Valerius said. He moved toward the side door of the classroom. "Follow me."
The practice room was one floor down. There is no windows and no furniture except for three chairs arranged in a loose triangle and one additional chair that was set apart from the others at the far end.
On that chair was one of the facility’s simulation subjects. It was not a real person but a construct.
The enclave have been working on illusion bodies for practice purposes for years now, and the one seated in the far chair was one of the more advanced versions of it.
It looked like a middle-aged man in a grey coat. It was sitting straight. And it look like a damn real human.
Valerius gestured for the three of them to sit.
"One at a time," he said. "You will attempt to enter the construct and locate the embedded false memory. It is carrying one. Your task is to find it and identify it as false before the construct’s resistance mechanism triggers."
Elara was the first to go. Professor Valerius flipped his hand, and the collar on her neck clicked faintly and fell out...
Valerius picked it up. Elara rubbed her hand around her neck.
She then rolled her shoulders once, and she lock her eyes with the illusion man.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then suddenly her jaw tightened as she made a small sharp sound and quickly pressed two figures against her temple.
It was as if the man was resisting her.
Valerius watched with out moving.
Then shortly she exhaled through her nose and turn to Valerius. "There were three rooms," she said. "Each one had a different version of the same memory. I found the clean one but the moment I tried to move pass it, something pushed back.."
"How did it push back?" Valerius asked.
"Behind the eyes," she said. "Like pressure from the inside."
Valerius nodded slowly. "That is the resistance. The construct is designed to punish deep entry. A real Forsaken mind would do the same, except the push would be significantly stronger and potentially damaging. You did good." Valerius hand her back her collar. "Go have a sit..."
Elara nodded and then go sit in one of the three chairs.
Davan was next.
He lasted almost ninety seconds.
Soon his started swaeting. He bend over and pressed his flat against his thighs and he was breathing fast.
"I fu*king got turned around," he said through his teeth. "The rooms shifted and i kept finding the same memory in different locations and I couldn’t tell which one I’d already checked."
"That is disorientation," Valerius said. "A Forsaken mind that has practice will loop you. You will feel like you are moving forward while you are walking the same corridor. The tell is that nothing changes. Not even slightly." He looked at Davan steadily. "The pain?"
"Same place, behind the eyes.."
Valerius nodded. "Next time, do not stay past the first sign of looping. Exit and re-enter from a different angle. Staying inside a loop does not resolve it."
Davan nodded once, still managing his breathing.
Valerius the handed him back his collar and he took it and went to sit.
Sael looked at the construct from his chair.
"Your turn," Valerius said.
Sael looked at the floor briefly. Then he looked up and nodded.
He walked closed to the man... Just like before, Valerius flipped his finger and the collar fell off.
Sael locked eyes with the man. Soon he pressed both of his hands flat over his eyes as he let out a sharp hiss sound.
He was just there with the hands still on his eyes for a moment.
Then he sniffed.
"It showed me something," he said quietly.
"It shows everyone something," Valerius said. "That is the mechanism. Whatever it showed you was selected specifically to destabilize your focus. That is how a Forsaken mind operates. It does not fight you with strength. It fights you with the right image at the right moment."
Sael lowered his hands. His eyes were dry.
"What do I do when that happens," he said.
Valerius looked at him for a moment.
"You remember that the image is furniture," he said. "Built for a room that was built for you. It is not real and you keep moving."
.....
Location: Aether Kingdom.
It was the Aetherclaws tournament today.
The arena was filled with people.
The high platform on the right was for the royal seat.
Queen Hadassah was at the center. She was wearing the deep ceremonial burgundy of the Aether throne, her crown look like what was made from a a thin band of dark iron set with three amber stones.
Keturah was beside her. She has her chin resting lightly on one hand and was watching the arena below.
The left side platform was for the spectators. Merchants, officers, visiting nobility, families of the riders. The noise from that side of the arena was much.
The open arena below was the wide oval space.
On the air was where the fighting was happening today.
There were two groups. Group A and Group B.
Each rider has their Skreel under them.
They were not going to spit venom today..
The tournament was just for entertainment.
Each rider was holding a spear. They were going to fight just like they were fighting ground, angled charges, close passes.
On the air, one of the Group B riders was hit with a spear and he fell but his Skreel flew quickly downwards but the rider’s foot caught in the saddle rigging and for a moment he was hanging sideways from the Skreel at four hundred feet above the arena floor, the Skreel lurching and dropping altitude as its rider’s weight went wrong.
Keturah let out s short sound and sat forward as her grabbed Hadassah’s hand on the armchair.
The rider that fell got himself back into the saddle in the next few seconds, pulling himself up with both arms while the Skreel steadied.
The crowd starting cheering. The rider raised his spear once and the Skreel banked left, returning to the match line.
Keturah sat back slowly as she let go of Hadassah’s hand.
"That was a close one," she said.
Hadassah looked at her and let out a small smile. "He is fine."
"Yeah.... I can see that now." Keturah looked back at the arena.
Hadassah said nothing. She moved her hand to Keturah’s hand and started rubbing it slowly.
---
In an abandoned building, Corvan Dresh looked at the men in front of him and said, "The plan is set."
He rubbed his hands.
"Everything that needed arranging has been arranged. We are not going to move early and we are not going to move late. We move when I say move." His voice was low.
One of the men asked, "How long are we going to wait."
"Not long," Corvan said.
"You said that last month."
"And I am saying it again now. Which means we are closer than we were last month." He looked at the rest of the men.
"Patience has kept us alive this far. It will keep us alive a little further."
The man said nothing else.
Corvan looked at the ceiling briefly then he looked back at the men.
"Aether Kingdom has been ruled by women for generation to generation," he said.
"Every decisions was made from that high platform up there by women who do not understand what this kingdom actually is. What it costs to keep it standing. What had to be done and what was allowed to go." He was low. "It time we end it. Something had to change or this kingdom will keep walking in the same direction over and over again."
He paused and the continued.
"Wait for next word." he said.
He then turned and walked out as he head straight to the arena.