A Little Magic

The "Best" RPG Ever-69

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---

"We are having a mental conversation right now," Tsaron said. "You would've probably figured it out yourself, but four people in I'm already getting tired of this part."

"Oh..okay." Lynn looked around briefly anyway, just filling the awkward silence that naturally followed from the abrupt, blunt statement. "Sooo.."
"I already know what you intend to ask about, and I know the trick I tried with your friend won't work," he said with a touch of annoyance. "If I give you a vague answer today you'll just come back tomorrow, and the next day, and keep pushing on it until something concrete comes out. As amusing as that would be, I find we both have schedules much too busy to accommodate something of the sort."

"Okay then..I want to know if you see what I think should be there," Lynn said. "Two sets of memories? And if you do, then whether you have some idea what it actually means, or is?"

"Absolutely. Every one of you," Tsaron said, nodding. "You wonder why I never showed a particular reaction to it, but I did. It piqued my interest in you lot enough to open the door the first time some of you knocked, and invite them over, and then invite the rest of you once I better perceived the extent of the phenomenon. My reactions are simply discreet."
"That...yeah, no, that makes sense," she said, nodding half to herself.

"As to what I think I'm seeing, that's harder to explain. You've got a bunch of people from all over with two sets of memories each, one of them showing some other world whose description is consistent across all of you. Logically you would expect one of those sets of memories to be false, and obviously from my perspective it's most sensible to think the ones of that other world are, but—this is the really interesting part—there is no evidence of mental tampering whatsoever," he said with a sweeping gesture of his arms.

"What kind of evidence would there be?" Lynn asked.

"Normally, when a psion, or mind-altering magic, or anything else implants memories it's easy for someone like me to tell. 'Natural' memories are not just the surface-level stuff you can remember, but teem with unconscious echoes of the impressions those events made on the rest of your mind at the same time. No psion who just wants to fake a few memories would bother trying to replicate that, and it would take a great deal of skill to do so. And even then, thoughts that come from a single person have a certain subtle 'flavor' to them, unique like a fingerprint, and despite a lot of scrutiny I haven't been able to tell the difference between the 'flavor' of one set of memories and the other in any of you. Also, it's less analytical and impossible to put into words, but I can't help but feel your pairs of memories are 'in sync' with each other." He transmitted more thought along with the phrase to clarify its meaning: The two 'sides' of each person's memory sharing extremely similar personalities, dispositions, and sometimes even similar decisions at similar points in their lives.

"So, devoid of other options, I find it best to take what I see at face value," Tsaron said. "Whether your other-world is real or not, it's interesting, and that's the most I can hope for anyway, at my age. For reasons similar to your own, I can see no benefit in speaking about it to 'normal' people. But..if you can find a coherent way to describe it, it wouldn't hurt to share with one or two who you particularly like and trust. After all, it seems to be a significant part of who you are—whatever that means."

"I guess that's right. But—you haven't seen anyone else 'from Earth'?" Lynn pressed.

"If I had, it might be a breach of their privacy to say so," Tsaron replied. "I have seen a lot of strange things in other people's minds over the years, so if I say no it may simply be that I forgot, or just didn't recognize it at the time. So—I can't really answer that question."

"Fair enough. You know that's as good as 'yes' no matter what way you put it, though."

"Oh, I know that," he said with a small, dismissive wave. "Try not to lose too much sleep over it."

---

The fox-girl walked into the room, and immediately saw that something was off. It was like the entire room was one of her own illusions, even though it wasn't—in the sense that she could tell it was fake at a glance.

"Interesting.." Tsaron, apparently standing in front of her, nodded. "I tried to make this as real as possible, but your truesight is more advanced than any I've seen before."

"So, this is some kind of...psionic illusion?" she said, waving to the surroundings.
"More or less. I prefer this over mere telepathy for private conversation," he said. "Much more can be said in a brief period without feeling rushed. Tell me, what do 'know' about me from looking?"

"Uh.." She actually looked directly at him for the first time (wondering why she hadn't before, before concluding that he might have subconsciously compelled her not to). "Name-Tsaron, male elf, psion. Healthy, uninjured. Looks like your—" she hesitated for a second, realizing that words like 'stats' and the precise numbers might be meaningless to him. "—Um, strength, agility, dexterity, is about average? But your intelligence is through the roof."
"In other circumstances, I'd thank you for saying so," he said with a sly grin. "Many, you know, have gone mad trying to attain a level of Sight that you appear to possess as a simple, natural talent. And your ability to use it here should tell you that it isn't really tied to your eyes at all."
"Oh yeah...I guess that makes it a mind thing?" she said.
"Well, magic tied to your mind, at any rate. It shouldn't be surprising; you recently got it to translate ancient text for you, right?" She raised an eyebrow, but nodded after a second. "Not just literal translation, but understanding the meaning it would have in Common, involves the mind. Anyway, that power is the reason I wanted to speak with you."

"I assume, not just to compliment me on it," she said.
"Of course. Sight can be dangerous when applied carelessly," he said. "There are texts which are dangerous even to read, and things best left unseen, which can drive one mad to fully understand. In all things, I would exercise caution if I had power like yours."

Rayna put a finger just below her lips. "Guess I hadn't thought of that...it makes sense, though. But—I've found I can't exactly turn this 'off', except for literally not looking at things."

"I understand that," Tsaron said. "Any psion would. That's why I thought I might offer—if you ever See something truly dangerous in one way or another, and wish you could forget it..."
"You're offering mind-wipe as a service?" she said. "Which implies you can just casually do it anytime you want."
"Well. It's extraordinarily difficult to make someone permanently lose something they'd rather remember," Tsaron said. "But it wouldn't be difficult to relieve you of something you'd rather forget. As I said, just in case you should learn something dangerous."

"Well, I'll thank you for the offer. Even though I'd rather not need something like that."
"I assure you, I can be quite surgical about it, and even insert a memory of why you wanted to forget something in its place if you like," he said. "At any rate, that's all I had to say. If you'd like to rejoin the real world?"
"Yeah.." Rayna looked around again. "I think this 'mental environment' would give me a headache after a while."

---

"You have questions," Tsaron said, once Clera had come into the room. "The first being whether I can answer them."
"Yes..? I would appreciate an opportunity to actually ask them, however." The winged girl took a second to look around, and concluded that they were in a telepathic environment—something the part of her from here had read enough about to recognize.

"You have no idea how tedious that would get for me," the elf said. "If I say I can answer your questions then you know I already know what they are."

"That's no excuse for being rude," she said, crossing her arms. "You created this link specifically to talk in a way resembling normal conversation within a short span of time, so you brought this on yourself. So—first of all, why am I still one here?"

"If you knew much about how Empathic links work you wouldn't even need to ask that one," Tsaron said, shrugging. "When you're asleep, you separate out your identities but share a dream. When you're awake, one mind is what you are. You're not two minds sharing a body, you're two souls sharing a mind. That's just how it's supposed to be."

"Then why—" Tsaron started to interrupt her to reply, and she glared at him until he stopped, looking slightly annoyed. "If what I'm experiencing is how it's supposed to be then why am I constantly confused? Why is the 'extra' soul taking over so often when neither of us want that?"

"Because you're worried about this or that soul taking over," he said, and gave a small sigh. "...That's to your first question. For the second: A mind isn't a simple, clean-cut thing. You're all of the experiences, thoughts, impressions, and opinions of two different people compressed together into one whole. It's not really meaningful to characterize anything you think or do as coming from 'this mind' or 'that one' because most of it, by now, is coming from both in varying degrees. Usually an empathic link makes the new soul's thoughts 'weaker' just because the soul doesn't feel it belongs to the body it now inhabits, but something unsual happened when your ritual concluded, didn't it?" Without waiting for her to come up with an answer, he continued: "Your original soul knows this is its body, and the extra one feels like it's been reincarnated into a similar one. They're both uncomfortable with the latter idea, for differeng reasons, but that discomfort comes from a much higher level than the one responsible for said feeling, so it can't change how your mind works."

"..Very well." She dropped her arms to the side. "I suppose I was aware of some of this already. However, I still want to know whether this is stable. Or if something could go wrong, or out of balance, and destroy one or both parts of me."

"Of course it's stable," Tsaron said. "I mean—as stable as any other mind, anyway. And I'm sure you've noticed this, but the Empathic link has a safeguard in case you disagree with yourself too sharply: It knocks you out so you can separate identities again and sort out whatever you need to. That kind of thing is the only point of failure that a merged mind like yours has any risk of hitting, and it's already well-accounted-for. I would dare say that the designer of Empathic links knew what he was doing. I'm sure it's an unusual and sometimes unpleasant experience, but that's just the sacrifice one makes to gain the kind of powers you now have."

"Thank you for the reassurance," she said, nodding. "It's also good to see you can carry on a normal conversation with some encouragement."

"Well, of course. Your 'dead half' has learned some proper mental defenses, unlike most of your friends. I couldn't have you kicking me out from annoyance before we were really through talking," Tsaron said, with a bit of a smirk.

---

Aria was second to last into the room, with only Loren behind her. That made it mildly unsettling when the room seemed briefly devoid of people, and in addition to that the uncomfortably familiar sound of blood pumping droned across the surroundings, just as in her dreams. And...on closer inspection, the walls were pulsing slightly in rhythm with that sound. "Uuuuuuh..."

"Relax, this is just what happens when I try to make a mental environment and that demon butts in," Tsaron said, suddenly appearing in front of her.

"Oh! Okay. S-so I did not just suddenly go completely bonkers. Heheh." She laughed nervously. "Oh, wait! So you can get in my head when I'm awake!"

"It's not very hard," the elf said, with a small nod. "You should tell Katherine to just block all thoughts about blood and death coming from your direction. What I'm doing is more sophisticated, of course, but she should be able to do that much with little effort, and it won't miss much of your actual thoughts—probably."

"Cool."

After an awkward second or two, she said, "Sooo.."

"You supposedly came here to help recover your lost memories, but you don't actually want me to do that," he said, crossing his arms.
"Nope. I mean—I'm, interested in what I'd remember, but I don't really want it to all flood in at once."
"Well, the bad—or maybe good news, for your lack of foresight, is that I couldn't do that safely anyway. Mind-affecting magic interacts unpredictably with psionic powers. Maybe I could force all the memories past that seal, but it would have a high chance of breaking your mind irreparably in the process. However, what I can do—and what Katherine can probably do once you get her past the roadblock she should've already figured out on her own by now—is gently tug at memories that the seal has already let through, to bring them into better focus and clarity. Really, she even managed to do that already, but it should be a much more coherent experience when you're awake rather than dreaming."
"Oooh. You mean when I remembered my old—uh, my name," she said. He nodded.

"There is one other thing I'd like to inform you of, regarding the demon in your sword," he said. "Maybe, for one reason or another, you're concerned what kind of mind is sleeping behind the obsession with eating blood—in case it should wake, or something like that."
"Yeah..?" 'Something like that', indeed.
"Well, there really isn't anything else to that mind. It's just the raw instinct of hunger. It probably had something else lying on top of that at some point, even if it was only an animal intelligence, but it was sealed away with nothing to feel or experience except for desperate, starving hunger and the occasional taste of food for—I would guess centuries? Long enough to destroy any mental framework it had, for certain."
"That's..reassuring, but—wait, how did it manage to curse my hometown or whatever if that's true?" Aria put a finger to her chin. "I..remember something about failing crops, worse the closer they were to the sword..."

"Surely you've noticed by now, what qualifies as 'blood' to sate that demon's hunger is more flexible than literal blood from a living creature. Fire giants are just fire and chaos magic wound together, but you got it to 'eat' some of the heat from inside of that thing because that was what represented its life."

"Ooh, I get what you're saying," she said. "So—it was absorbing the 'life' from the earth, or the nearby plants or whatever, because that was the only blood it could get to and it was desperate."

"Right. Its range wouldn't be too long, and it might well have actually starved completely to death if that area was cleared of vegitation and deserted for a long while," he pointed out. "But I like your solution much better, to be honest. It's difficult to keep people out of a suspiciously empty place; telling them to stay away from the sword attracts them more, and the area would need to be guarded for several more generations. Somebody with far less willpower and no plan would've attached themselves to an even hungrier demon eventually, and probably caused disaster. So why not make use of a power like that once the price becomes low enough to pay?"

"Well, aside from the price being kind of annoying," she said. "I guess I made my decision already, though."
"Right. I'm just suggesting there's little reason to regret it, especially since the seal appears to be designed to let your memories recover over time anyway," Tsaron said.

"Anyway, that's all I wanted to speak about in private. Try not to look too unsurprised when I repeat the information about your memories in a few minutes." He nodded, and cut the communication, bringing them both back to the "real world".

---

"Well, the tea should be ready pretty soon," Tsaron said once Loren (therefore, everyone) was seated. "I have a few teacakes prepared if anyone's hungry...let's get those in here." On cue with him saying that, some dishes floated in and spread themselves around the table in the middle of the room.

"Is doing it that way really necessary?" Loren said, in spite of himself.
"Maybe not," the elf shrugged, "but it's very convenient, isn't it? I pride myself on hospitality, and this way I can entertain the guests and serve at the same time. Nobody even has to get up."

The kettle whistled in the kitchen almost as soon as the plates were down. "Ah, there we are. Let me know if there's not enough sugar or milk there for you," Tsaron said, waving to some bowls already placed in easy reach of every seat. A bunch of cups came in along with the hot kettle, and he poured starting next to him (where Katherine happened to be sitting) and going the long way around back to himself. Then, of course, the elf raised the cup without lifting a finger and took a light sip, enjoying it with a peaceful expression.

Well, Loren thought, at least he's a good host.

The "Best" RPG Ever-68

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---

I'd like to give a small content warning here, about a certain paragraph in the section involving Mira. It isn't particularly graphic or detailed in description, but what it describes is sort of graphic in nature (think "fantasy world serial killer"). It begins after "Let me tell you what he'd been doing." I knew I couldn't avoid some description of this kind somewhere in this story, but hopefully this is sufficient warning to brace yourself, or skip over the paragraph, if you're particularly sensitive to this kind of thing.

 

---

The rain steadily died off over the early afternoon, and was nearly gone by the time Katherine left the library and returned to the house. Everyone had gone their separate ways, it seemed, with only Zack (and the wolf, on the floor next to the couch) left in the living room. His ears twitched slightly when the door opened, and he looked up from what seemed to be a book on sword techniques, complete with several drawings and diagrams. "Hey, welcome back."
"Hi."
"Guess you found whatever you were after?"
"Yeah! Sure." He looked back at the book, almost broadcasting an unwillingness to pry or ask anything more.

The psion came the rest of the way in, closing the door and sitting across from him, leaning forward slightly. Say—can you get our friend there to sit still for a stranger?

Zack looked up at her for a second, and back down again. He'll sit still if I tell him to. Easier if someone introduces him, so they're not a 'stranger'. I mean, he's not barking at Loren anymore, is he? Why?

I met someone who's...researching something I think we have reason to be interested in. It's complex to explain why that is, but—anyway, he wants to do some kind of magic scan on a monster. And I thought, well, we conveniently have a friendly one right here. More or less.

This 'scan' won't hurt him or anything?

No, it's just a passive reading from what I could tell.

Zack shrugged. Shouldn't be a problem, then.

Great! I already..invited him to show up tonight. The knight turned his eyes off the book for a couple of seconds to give her a half-lidded 'of course' look, and then went back to reading. He had something else to say, but waited until he was finished with the current paragraph and turned the page past it.

"So, Aria wants to go visit Tsaron now."

"Yeah?"
"She came up with the idea that he might be able to 'fix' the broken memories or something, and she's dragging Loren along too. About half an hour from now. Mira's coming too."
"Okay..." She nodded.
"I said I'd go with them."

"Why?"

"Well, he seems pretty old. From what you told me, it seems like he's been all over. Maybe he knows something about.." Zack mentally communicated the idea of his 'curse' to save some effort explaining.
"Oh, yeah. He might...although, being a psion he probably doesn't have any actual magic power himself."

"Yeah, but, also.."
"Also, you don't trust him," she finished for him. "I don't, either, to be honest. I guess I should go too, since I'm the only one of us who might be able to tell if he tries to do something weird."

"Lynn announced she was coming with us, too."
"Did she say why?"
"No, but I'm pretty sure there's something she has in mind to ask him about. And Rayna's coming with her because..."

"They're joined at the hip?" Katherine joked.
"I wouldn't put it that way, but..."

"But yes. And I suppose Clera found some excuse to come along, too?"
Zack shrugged. "Maybe a powerful psion can help sort out the whole two-minds-one-body thing."

"I can't tell the difference, it just looks like one mind unless she's asleep," the catgirl protested.
"Maybe he can't either, but she seems to think it's worth a shot."

"So..."
"Nine people, I guess. And a wolf. Does he have space for all of us?"
"I...don't know. We only saw the little kitchen area he has up front, the meditation room, and one hallway. His house is part of a bigger building so there's no telling how much of that building is his. There were a bunch of other doors in that hallway, though, so, maybe? Either way, he brought it on himself."
"He did?"
"He said to bring all our friends when he invited us. So...he's lucky Rose isn't in town, is what I say."

---

Tsaron felt them coming from a few blocks off. As they came into his passive range, he counted them—up to nine, but only eight he was really interested in. More than he was expecting, but he had cleared out a fair-sized storage room already, just in case. The table unfolded itself and another few chairs floated in through the hallway while he personally made his way to the kitchen and up to the front door, waiting for somebody to be about to knock. After a brief discussion which they probably imagined he wasn't listening in on, Katherine took the lead, with Zack behind her. Perfect; he wouldn't have to contrive anything to get her to the front.

"I still don't know why I'm here," Loren said, Aria all but physically dragging him along.
"Well, call it moral support," she said. "Come on, the best way to get rid of a fear is to confront it head-on!"

"Maybe for you..."

About this point, Katherine walked up the two steps to the door and raised a hand to knock, whereupon it immediately swung open, Tsaron standing just inside. From that alone, Loren could guess which kind of psion this was going to be. "Hello there," he said, leaning forward slightly to take in the small crowd gathered. "I'm glad to see so many of you accept my invitation. Please, come on in." He turned and started inside, the door still hanging open behind him. After a brief exchange of looks with Zack, the catgirl walked in, and everyone else followed behind.

"For this many of you, the kitchen won't really do," the old elf continued, heading for the hallway. "I've got a more spacious room set up, although—well, there may be competition for the better chairs." After going past a couple of closed doors, he came to a doorway without a door and strolled through, the others following one by one. Loren wound up coming in last, and looked around for an empty space.

When he did, he had the distinct sense that the mood of the room had very abruptly changed. There was Tsaron, sitting on a dining-room styled chair and looking serene as ever. But the others sitting around the room had very different expressions to before—Katherine looked annoyed, Zack agitated; Mira he caught very briefly with an enraged look, though not toward anyone in particular, before she caught him looking and flashed a smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring. At this point Aria distracted him by waving, and he went to a seat she indicated next to her, while still wondering what exactly had just happened.

---

Katherine stepped through the doorway, and immediately felt a pull on her mind. She stopped, seeing Tsaron standing in front of her in the room and knowing at the same time that he was not standing up but sitting, and that while standing still she was also walking toward a couch. She crossed her arms, glaring at him. "What are you doing?"

"Ahh, you are getting better by leaps and bounds," he said, smiling like a grandfather seeing a child learn a new word. "Well, I wanted to have a private conversation with most of you, and this seems like the most efficient way to do it. Get it all out of the way, and we could have some relaxing tea afterward. But in your case," he said with a small wave, "I also wanted to explain what I'm doing and reassure you so you wouldn't try to prevent me from discussing a few things with the others."
"..Not that I could stop you anyway," she said, expecting that to be what he'd say next.

"I don't know. You are pretty talented, I'm sure you could at least make it difficult."

"And this is supposed to be reassuring?" she said.

"Well, no—let's see. I have no intention of harming any of you, or altering the way any of you think—directly, I mean. There are a few things I might like to convince some of you of, but not by way of forcing it into anyone's head."

"Riiight. And I'm supposed to just take your word for it," she said.

"There's not that much else I can give you in this medium. But you know your friends' minds, and you're good enough to tell what I'm doing to yours right now, to some extent at least. You'd be able to tell if someone 'broke' something. Ah, there is one other thing," he said, appearing (pretending, she thought) to remember something. "I can assure you that I have a keen interest in self-preservation. There is one person in this town who might be able to kill me—surely you know who I'm talking about?" Even if she didn't, he was mentally projecting an image of Ezra, so she just nodded for him to continue. "I don't exactly want to test that out, and the lot of you have her protection—for reasons I hope are obvious independent of my word. And believe me, she would know if I messed with any of your heads, too."

"That's a little better, I guess. You're still asking forgiveness instead of permission."

"I can't help that," he said. "After all, you do a lot of monster hunting. Who knows if you'd all be around, if I just asked this time to do it on a later visit?"

"Fine." Her mental-body-language, or whatever it was to be called, suggested it was not entirely fine, but at least she'd accepted it for now. "So, you want to talk to me about something?"

"Sure. It's not often two psions run into each other out in the wild," he said. "Surely you have a few questions. Or at least something you're wondering about? Especially since it seems like you're the first of your family to be one."

"What's that have to do with anything?"

"Well. Psions are capable of experiencing a lot of things lesser minds don't," Tsaron said.

The catgirl crossed her arms. "'Lesser minds'?"
Tsaron shrugged. "Aren't they? It's not disparaging, just calling something for what it is. Anyway, I say that because you're confused, or at least a little concerned about one of those, and I don't think you would be if someone had ever given you 'the talk'. Not the usual one—the one psions need."

"And I guess you feel like it's your job to give me that."

"Well, since I'm here, and I'd hate for you to miss out on any happiness you could have," he said. "It's really fairly simple. You've experienced attraction to someone else's mind, haven't you?"

"That's kind of a personal question, but you wouldn't be asking if you didn't know the answer anyway."
"I just want you to know that's normal. Lesser minds—oh, there I go again." He had obviously done it on purpose. "'Normal' people are attracted to bodies because their brains are tuned to notice a lot of details in bodies, building up some sort of aesthetic sense of 'beauty' that appeals to them. Our minds can notice just as many details about other minds, and build up a similar aesthetic sense. There's certainly nothing wrong with enjoying it."

"And, I suppose you've had that experience at some point?" she said. It was personal, but since he had already preemptively pried into her mind it only seemed fair to do as much of the same back as possible.
"Oh, sure," Tsaron said with a small smile. "Now, you seem to have a thing for open, uncomplicated minds. Not—dumb or simple, just honest. Or...also particularly well-organized ones—and especially a combination of the two. My tastes are a bit different—I like to have a lot of layers of experience and wisdom to dig through. Something too big to understand all at once is just right for me." He looked slightly to the side, wistfully. "For a short while, I had the chance to be around a mind like that, and admire its form as much as I liked, but it has been denied me ever since." Then, turning to face her again: "Just enjoy what you have while it's there, is my advice."

"Now, there's not much else I had to say to you for the moment," he said. "Another seven are waiting, so I'd like to get on to them if you don't have any follow-up questions."
"I guess you're not 'talking' to Loren like this?" she said.
"Nope. He isn't as interesting to me, at least not at the moment. He'll probably appreciate not being pulled into a conversation of this kind, anyway."

"I guess so."

---

Zack entered the room, and immediately noticed that Katherine had apparently disappeared. Looking to the elf, he started "What—"
"Not to worry, we're communicating mentally right now," he interrupted. "I desired a moment of private chat with each of you, and this is the most efficient way to manage it."

After looking around for a second, he also saw that the wolf had disappeared from next to him; and the door he'd just gone through had disappeared, as though this room was everything there was. In a way, it kind of made sense—to give the illusion of being physically somewhere, making that place fairly small also made it easier to maintain. "Okay. What do you want, then?"

"Well, let's see—I thought I might first point out that, even your 'mental avatar' appears to be female," he said, pointing. Zack looked down, realizing this was true, and glared back up at Tsaron. "It's not my fault," the elf protested. "Although, to be fair, the way I set this up makes you take on whatever appearance you think you're already in, so it doesn't really mean much. It's difficult to live in a body for a while without beginning to think of it as 'what you are'."

Zack took a deep breath, trying to think of what he should look like. He was able to make his 'mental form' shift to the one that the person he'd dreamed the memories of was supposed to have—still the wolf ears and tail, but at least male. "...There."
"Indeed. But do you feel that?" Tsaron said. He did; there was something pushing back against his present appearance, trying to return it to what it had been a moment ago. "It's not me; it's been there for quite a while. You're so used to pushing against it that you hardly notice it."

"..What is it?" Zack also remembered how, even in his dreams, it was rare to remain physically male for long.

"Unfortunately for us psions, magic can affect the mind as well as the body," he said. "Judging by the evidence, the curse you're under really wants you to be as female as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if it's responding to your stubborn resistance to the mental part by pushing back in other ways. I believe it affects the way others perceive you, for instance, and even lashed out slightly into the minds of some hairdressers once..."

Zack gave a confused look for a second, before remembering what had happened when he tried to get his hair cut short.

"And I guess there isn't anything you can do about this," he said.
"Not much, I'm afraid. Let's see—I could do the curse's work for it and override your thoughts of being male; neither you nor your friends would appreciate that, I think. I could fool you into thinking that the curse has already been lifted and you're back to your old self again. You might enjoy that, but the others wouldn't like the end results much. In theory, I could bolster your mind in some way, but it's difficult to predict how mind-altering magic will interact with something like that, and anyway your base stubbornness is doing a pretty good job as-is."

"So you wanted to talk to me to tell me that there isn't anything you can do about this," Zack summarized.
"Oh, of course not. I wanted to see your reaction to hearing the bad news," Tsaron said, with a wide grin. The knight glared back at him. "I do suspect it would practically disappear if you accepted its effects completely, but we both know that isn't likely to happen. Your best bet, then, is to find some way to either pass it on to somebody else or to find someone or something with as much power as the curse itself to break or alter it for you. The latter seems unlikely judging by the event that precipitated that curse, but stranger things have happened."

"You think it can just be passed to someone else?" he said; this was a new one.
"Well sure. Say, someone with a lot of demonic power—since that's the type of magic it came from—should be able to channel it around, at least on a temporary basis, even if they can't break or alter it."

"Great."
"Anyway, I don't have much else to say to you in particular. But I have enjoyed our chat."

---

The witch paused once she had entered the room, taking note of the absence of anyone else who should be there but Tsaron. Looking at him, she said: "I'm guessing..this is a more 'advanced' version of whatever Kath does to link people's minds."
"Well, you're a sharp one," he said, nodding.
"...And since we're alone here, you have something you want to say to me in private, hmn?"

"Right again."

"Well, what is it then?" She waved for him to get on with it.

To her surprise, his expression turned serious, somewhat dark. "..You should stop consuming demons," he said after what seemed to be an intentional dramatic pause.
"...No." The witch crossed her arms. "Also, why?"

"I knew a warlock once," he said. "You're on, what, your fifth or sixth?"

"I count four so far. As if you can't," she said.

"Around his seventh, he went bad. Real bad. Let me tell you what he'd been doing."

Instead of telling her verbally, he sent along some images: Bodies, over a dozen, in a basement. Carefully placed, like pieces in an art museum. Some were dismembered, some mutilated; one looked to have been torn in half. A few showed signs of careful, almost surgical cuts, and others were visibly unhealthy, as though they had been starved before death. The images were laced with a strong sense of disgust and rage that seemed to be Tsaron's own; he knew much more of what had happened to those people than just how their corpses had looked then.

After taking a moment to digest what he was communicating, she fixed him with a look. "You were with Ezra. Right? The same warlock this was made for," she said, bringing out (or at least mentally presenting) the scythe they'd found animating the dead.
"That's correct."

"Well, she suggested I should run away from anyone who thought the demons made him go bad, but I guess it's a little late for that."
"You don't have anything to fear right now," he said. "She has asked me not to do you any harm, and I respect that since it is her town, after all. But I can try to convince you to stop, the same way anyone else could."

"You really think just eating some demons can make someone do that?" she said, dismissing the scythe again so her hands could gesture freely. "The way it works, the demon's soul doesn't have a mind when it's consumed. It's literally just its power that's left after it dies. If you're concerned about a demon corrupting someone's mind you should worry about Aria, not me."

"I can see what influence it's having on her. You, I can't really tell. I couldn't tell with him, either. His mind looked no different from the first time I met him, on the day he killed four of my friends."

"And you don't think he could hide what he was really thinking from you? I think there's a person or three whose minds Kath can't read so well, and she can't be much worse at it than you were then."

"She's better, actually, but a little less imaginative..."

Tsaron seemed to realize he was getting off track, and changed tactics: "What about your master, hm?"

"What, she went bad, so it's automatically the demons?" Mira said, rolling her eyes. "You didn't know her. Griselda believed she was doing the right thing because it was exactly what she'd always believed in. That was just the time she finally pushed too far, 'punished' the wrong person, and it blew up in her face. She was only insane in the way of ignoring the fact that actions have consequences, and even if someone deserves what you do to them it might hurt a lot of other people who don't deserve it.

"And what about the man who had her killed? You know what he was doing? He didn't take a single demon's power, or enter into some kind of evil blood pact. All it took for him to grab girls off the street and do whatever he wanted to them was enough money and privelege to believe he'd never be held accountable for it!"

Mira paused for a second, calming herself down a bit. "..How old are you, anyway?"
"Well, I haven't exactly been counting, but—pretty old."
"I envy you, really." The witch grinned viciously. "Wish I could live that long and still believe that people only go bad because of magic. Truth is, the most horrible things you can think of are just what someone out there wants to do, and will if you give them the power to. It doesn't matter where that power comes from."

"I know that," he protested. "But you didn't..you didn't know that man, what he was like before..." Tsaron seemed to realize he'd been put on the defensive, and tried once more: "How can you be sure that power won't corrupt you? That there isn't something you want or believe to be right, that'll hurt a lot of people?"

"Well, nobody can ever know that for sure," she shrugged. "All you can do is keep trying to find the right thing to do, and do it. Isn't that right?" Mister centuries-old psion who could mind crush a city block if he wanted to?

Tsaron gave her a look, realizing that she knew he'd read that out of her mind. "...Well. At least I can see that I'm not going to convince you of anything today. But at least you should know—"

"Wait, lemme guess: If I turn evil and Ezra doesn't kill me, you will. Right?"

"You realize I'm supposed to be the mind reader here," he said with a wry smile. "Well, I wouldn't say that I'd kill you myself, but I'd make sure you were dead, anyway. Even if you're corrupt deep down, maybe knowing a few bigger fish are out to eat you if you act on it is enough to keep you out of trouble for a while."

"I'll certainly keep it in mind, anyway. Can we get on with the tea party now?"

---

After Nora walked into the room, she discovered that the three who had come ahead of her were missing. "Where are the..." she started to ask, turning toward Tsaron. "..Oh, I'm not stuttering. So this is mental."

"It would be entirely too much trouble to simulate that when you'd just figure it out anyway," he said. "There's something I've picked up that I thought you might like to know."

Her head tilted ever so slightly. "..And what is that?"
"Well, an old priest of Haestra from your temple showed up in town a few days ago, chasing a rumor that you went this way," he said.
"What does he want?"
"I haven't exactly done a deep search of his mind, but I can tell you for certain that he doesn't mean to drag you back to the temple. After all, he came alone, hasn't gone to the guard at any point, and without their permission, taking someone out of here against their will would be viewed as an attempted kidnapping and responded to with some severity. Besides that serious worshipers of Haestra are generally peaceful in disposition, so smash and grab is hardly in the repertoire."

"...So," Tsaron continued, leaning toward her a tiny bit, "do you want him to buzz off? I could always 'convince' him you're not here. Or I could have him conveniently find directions to your house, if you're interested in seeing what he wants for yourself."

"You speak very casually about manipulating other people's minds," Nora observed. "If those are my choices, I'd rather let him visit. It's...been a long time since I heard news from there."

"I don't see what other choice would be preferable. You want to run into him on the street, unprepared for the encounter? At least if I tell you he'll show up tonight you can take some time to brace yourself for whatever conversation you expect to have," Tsaron said.

"I suppose that's true."

"Well then, you aren't busy tonight, are you?"

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---

"Well, this is long enough," Katherine announced, standing up. "I'm goin' out. Probably be at the library if there's some other disaster in the next hour and a half."

"So, you took the shield skill?" Mira asked, grinning.
"Duh." A slight visible shimmer appeared around her as she brought the shield up, but there was no obvious difference afterward. "You know, maybe I'll buy some umbrellas, or like—a magic equivalent at least, while I'm at it." When she opened the door to town, the rain could be seen deflecting off of her on her way out.

After that, the witch observed: "So, Rayna's still asleep?"
"About normal," said Lynn. "I've always preferred to get up in what can be reasonably called 'the morning' when I can help it, but Ray always took pride in sleeping past noon when he could get away with it—which was most of the time back on Earth, with our job."
"Hmph."
"..What?" Lynn turned toward Zack, who still didn't look up from a book he was reading.

"Leeet's not drag that up again," the witch suggested. "Anyway, I guess lunch is on our own with the usual chef going off to the library. I mean—I'm not hungry yet since I basically just had breakfast, but I don't see any reason not to assume the kitchen's wide open." She stood up herself. "There's a few magic tomes in the library, it might help me to study some."
"And you want to see what Aria's up to, right?" Lynn said.
"Maybe."

---

This was stupid. It wasn't so much a bad plan, as a total absence of any kind of plan at all. Katherine was going to go to the library, and...check if the mind that had been there was still there? And then what? If he wasn't there—which was more than likely, by any reasonable guess at a normal person's behavior—then it was a wasted trip she would have to account for to the others somehow or other. If he was there—what, was she supposed to walk up to a complete stranger and say "I'm glad we're in a library because I'm checking your brain out"? Or something else equally stupid and nonsensical?

On reflection, the powers she'd gained since coming to this world created a number of experiences that would have been impossible to imagine before, and were even more impossible to convey in words to someone who hadn't had them: Thinking five different things at once, each in equal detail to a single fully-focused train of thought from before. Directing mental traffic back and forth between some ten plus other people effortlessly. Feeling the thoughts of every person in a nearby crowd at once and not being the least bit overwhelmed or confused by the influx of foreign information, some unconscious part of herself filtering it all and eagerly waiting to glean any desired metadata on request. More than anything else, there was this sensation of total control over her own mind and thoughts that transcended anything previously understood to be possible. In short, this was the first time since becoming a psion that she was still doing something and did not understand why. Two or three of the parallel processors making up her state of mind (one of which was currently busy deflecting raindrops off of her) concluded repeatedly that this behavior was nonsensical and purposeless, but her feet continued to carry her toward the library.

She entered the library with an outward appearance of purpose, dropping the shield while telekinetically pulling the door shut behind her and continuing past the front desk toward a random aisle as if she already knew of a book she wanted on that aisle. This continued until nobody's eyes were on her, and she stopped, taking a deep breath to calm an excited physical state she'd not quite managed to notice before now and mentally reaching out across the building—nothing more than the usual surface skimming.

Physically, her heart pounded in her ears for a second—the mind was here, easily identifiable and thinking similar thoughts to before! Katherine could feel her ears straightening and her tail moving much more rapidly than usual from an incommunicable thrill. He was in nearly the same place; intercepted physical feedback read him sitting at one of the library's desks hunched over, eyes focused closely on a book, whose contents were passing through his language center:

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," he said. "This is how I have always been. Have you never heard of infants born with feeble limbs? Broken eyes?"
"Yes, certainly," I said. Then, reading his analogy: "But gods are not born."

"Aren't we? When did you become an expert?" he said, quirking an eyebrow.

"Who bore you, then? Other gods you'd rather us not know of?"
He merely laughed. "I'm afraid this line of inquiry really isn't going to go anywhere for you. The others just don't think any of you are ready. Dear reader of the reader: You will get the truth he whom you seek seeks soon; please be patient.¹"

His eyes jumped down to the bottom of the page, quickly processing the related footnote:

¹I don't remember hearing, nor writing that last sentence, yet I can't bring myself to edit it out. Most curious.

Then, back to where he was again:
I was going to ask what he meant by that, but he interrupted before I could form the words.

"Perhaps there's another topic you'd like information about, while this moment of lucidity lasts?" When he said it, I was convinced of it; the image appeared before and around us—the concept of my next prepared query...

The mind she was looking at leaned away from the book at this point, stretching and shaking his head, his surface thought a complaint about 'another dead end'. Katherine had succeeded in physically calming herself by this point, although her curiousity was piqued as to the exact subject of the book, or the nature of whatever research he was trying to do.

That one odd sentence hitched in her mind when it really hit her: It was easy to interpret it as being addressed to the mind reader of the person reading the book, provided that person was seeking someone who was themselves seeking something, all of which matched the current situation. But surely, whatever book this was was old enough to have run upon this situation before? If it really was some kind of intentional message then it amounted to the first actual contact any of them had gotten from any of the gods who may or may not have summoned them to this world, and for...what? Reassuring her that a total stranger she was vaguely attracted to would learn the truth about...something, soon? It didn't seem like a sufficiently important or helpful message to necessitate such a convoluted way of sending it, especially if—as it seemed to be—it came from the god who could literally walk into anyone's dreams whenever he/she wanted to!

Putting that aside, Katherine decided that this was a good time to stop being a telepathic stalker and at least attempt to talk to this person. Just standing around listening to his thoughts was...creepy, and wrong; and if he wasn't interested at all in her company then it would be easy enough to avoid him.

For the moment he was looking idly around the library, gathering his thoughts and attempting to conjure up a new lead for...whatever it was he was after...from thin air. It meant walking up to say hello wouldn't particularly distract him from focusing on something, so it was a perfect opportunity. After reassuring herself of this five or six times, the catgirl went on past the shelves she'd been standing between, and over to where he was.

He was a tall, lean, blond-haired elf (those first two traits, she was starting to suspect, were simply a natural part of elven anatomy here). To her body he registered as not entirely unattractive, but not particularly stunning either. His clothes were some soft black slacks and a thick, long-sleeved plaid shirt. He didn't particularly take notice of her, until she had come to the opposite end of the desk he was stationed at. That was enough to bring him out of the deliberately-distracted state of seeking inspiration and into a social mindset.

"Hello there..can I help you?"

"Um.." Well, now that she was here it was a little hard to explain, wasn't it? "I guess I'm curious what you're researching," she said after only a brief pause—but her mind being stuck that long was equivalent to a normal one leaving the conversation hanging in an awkward silence of probably thirty seconds.

"Oh, really? I suppose you see enough monsters for yourself and start to wonder where they come from too, eh?" he said with a small chuckle. He put out a hand for a friendly shake: "I'm Jacob Kniris."

"Uh, Katherine," she said, returning the shake, but introductions on her part weren't really necessary.

"Pleased to meet you in person," he nodded once their hands had disengaged. It was easy to forget their party had been steadily gaining a reputation in this town; he had already identified her as the 'mind reader' already and was now actively assuming she knew exactly what his research was.

"So, monsters?" she said. "What's that have to do with...?"

"This?" he said, waving to the book. "Another dead end," he said disappointedly. "I spent and risked much more than was reasonable to come out this way because somehow a frontier town library is the only place with a fully intact copy of a lot of points of reference I've been trying to chase down, including this one. And of course the passage I was interested in here is mostly just a classic Bimorphaeus handwave, complete with a cryptic message to who-knows-whom."
"Handwave?" she questioned, quietly using her mind to pick up a chair next to her and pull it back, then slowly sitting down in it while he talked.

"You know. She or he says something like 'that's not for you to know, don't you want to talk about something else'? And as soon as he or she suggests it the target finds they do want to talk about something else. I'm sure it feels quite natural to change the subject in the moment, but it's downright infuriating to read or hear about it. Direct conversations with her or him are rare enough as it is."

"What were you hoping to find out?" Katherine asked.
"Surely you're humoring me," Jacob said, leaning back in his chair a bit.

"I like to respect people's privacy as much as my powers let me," she said. "You haven't actually said or thought loudly enough what exactly the topic of your research is since I walked up."

"Oh, really? You must be pretty young, right?"

"That's kind of a rude question," she said, dropping her ears slightly.
"I'm sorry, I just mean, older psions usually get tired of being 'nice' to 'normal' folk, and start making conversations as efficient as they possibly can. You, on the other hand..."

"I am not 'being nice', I just happen to enjoy relatively normal conversations," she said, crossing her arms. "So you were saying...?"

"I wasn't, but I guess I should've been," Jacob said. "Well, my area of research is monsters. Or more specifically, I'm trying to work out their origin, or their specific nature, or how chaos magic works...it's gone a lot of places because I keep ramming my head into dead ends. Most recently I developed a hypothesis regarding the wounds of the gods."

"You mean like how Sophol is missing an arm, and that scar on Haestra.."
"Right, right," he nodded. "Even Bimorphaeus has occasionally suggested that he or she is somehow damaged, but never specified the nature of the injury. The thought goes like this: The gods are well-known to be the source of magic, knowledge about magic, various other kinds of power...but they vehemently deny any connection to chaos magic. They are consistently well-pleased to assist people in the extermination of monsters, just as much as they usually profess neutrality in our wars against each other. Our magic is of them, but chaos magic is not. Its nature must be different somehow. Maybe even opposed."

The psion just nodded, not merely interested in what he was saying but somewhat entranced by the 'sensation' of the thoughts sliding out of the deeper recesses of his mind to be spoken, in a way that—as usual—would be impossible to explain or communicate to anyone who hadn't experienced it for themselves.

"There's no way the gods hurt each other that way; as much of their relationship as we mortals can work out has been friendly for all of recorded history. And anyway, there's reason to believe that any damage inflicted by 'normal' magic should heal by 'normal' magic too, which they would be more than capable of doing in all this time, rather than retaining a set of inconvenient injuries forever. So they must have been injured by chaotic magic somehow.

"The trouble with this idea is that—well—they're gods. The sheer amount of power necessary to permanently injure one of them isn't present in a thousand monsters. Besides that, surely their fighting prowess would outmatch such an army and prevent the injuries even if there was enough power technically present." He shrugged. "I'm not the first person to come up with the idea, either, but nobody has gotten around the hurdle of there simply being no evidence of anything sufficiently powerful."

"So, you were hoping to find an account of Bimorphaeus telling someone how they got hurt," she said, pointing toward the book.

"Right. But...handwave," he said, shaking his head. "At least this place seems ripe for more practical research into chaotic magic itself. The ambient levels are much higher here than inland, which I'm sure is correlated to the more frequent monster attacks somehow or other. It'd be helpful if I could study a monster's magic signature more closely; I've read accounts of that sort of thing before, but the level of detail I need just doesn't seem to exist in writing. But, well, I'm not really confident I'd survive an encounter of any kind with a monster. Or actually, to be more honest I think I'd be too terrified to carry out the kind of scans I need." He shook his head, disappointed somewhat in himself.

"Hmmn." Katherine had an idea. She leaned forward, grinning, her tail twitching back and forth eagerly behind her. "I think I know a monster you could look over very safely."
"Really?" He was confused and a little scared by the suggestion, and also by her shift in posture and expression. "Did you..actually, capture one or, something like that?"
"Something like it, sure," she said, nodding.

---

Aria sat up and turned to the witch as she walked in. "Hey there! ...What?"

"Aah, nothing." It was harder than expected to hide her disappointment that they were still just sitting across from each other like that, even if she had caught the shifter at least leaning forward some. "Just thought you might want to know Katherine stepped out, so lunch is prolly on our own if you're hungry."
"Didn't you just eat?" Loren said.

"Me? That was almost an hour ago, but yeah—that's why I'm here instead of the kitchen."
Aria said, "Wh—an hour?" Loren seemed equally surprised by this.

"Well, you know what they say about time and flying," Mira shrugged, heading to where she'd put the magic tomes.

However, Loren was confused. "No, what?"

"When you're having fun?" Aria attempted to prompt him. "How do I know that one and you don't?"
"Can you run the whole thing by me again?"
"Time flies when you're having fun. Is the saying."
"Oh." He shrugged. "I usually find there's not enough of it to get my work done, instead."
"Well, you have fun with your work, don't you?" Mira interjected.

"Would you have fun painstakingly redrawing poorly rendered sigils for six hours straight?" he said, "—for example."

"Well, there must be some part of it you like," Aria suggested.
"Sure, the pay. And it lets me travel all over, meet a lot of people."
She crossed her arms, giving a deeply skeptical look. "You don't find any satisfaction at all when everything snaps together and the thing finally just works like it's supposed to?"

"Well, I can't deny that...wait, how do you—"
"Just a guess," she deflected quickly. "Maybe some unconscious memory prompted it if it was that dead on?"

"Perhaps..."

After thinking about it for a second, he said, "So, this whole time you haven't consciously remembered anything new, have you?"
"Not..really?" Aria shrugged. "I mean, the way you describe me sounds 'right' somehow, it sounds like things I could imagine I actually did. But there aren't any new, like, memories of events, names, places, people...nothing like that."

"And Katherine hasn't been able to help you remember much, either."

"Um. Right," she said—not that they had specifically tried for much beyond his name. But then: "She can't actually get in my head when I'm awake, the demon just keeps chanting 'blood' at her. She's able to go into my dreams, but, umm, the one time we managed to pull a memory out it seemed to take a lot of effort with barely any results. There was...we basically got my brain to pull up what my name used to be, and I—felt something 'hearing' it, but it wasn't much, in the end."

"Hmn. I don't suppose—well, I hesitate to ask, but are there any, stronger, psions in town? Or, more telepathically gifted at least?"

"Katherine told me Tsaron was a psion," Mira said, looking up from her book.
"Really? What about—" Aria started to ask if he knew about them being from Earth, and particularly how he'd reacted, but stopped herself in time. "Um. She didn't say anything like that when we first met him."

"He fooled her. She thinks he was suppressing any thoughts leading to that conclusion your whole first visit, all without her even noticing."
"Weelll...I guess that qualifies as 'more powerful', yep," said the shifter, turning back to Loren. "He was super nice the first time. Helped me learn how to meditate so I wouldn't go insane from being stuck in blood-obsession-land every night. We should go visit him after the rain lets up!"

"You, uh, don't think he would mind. Your showing up unannounced?"
"He specifically invited us to come back for tea."

"When Zack and her were out to check out some books yesterday," Mira interjected again, "they ran into him and he said, I quote, 'Please drop by for tea sometime soon, and bring as many of your friends as you like'. I dunno if he knew that might include Loren, buuut."

"Yeah, you definitely count as a 'friend'!" Aria said, nodding encouragingly.

Loren sighed. "I—really didn't want to bring this up, but psions kind of unsettle me. The worst part is they know that almost right away, and about half are offended, and the other half tend to think it's funny and like to mess with me."
"Aww come on, it can't be that bad," said Aria. "You seemed okay around Katherine."
"Frankly, I'm not sure she's been paying special attention to my thoughts, and I'm grateful for it. Still, I've kept my interaction with her to a minimum..."

"You know she's gonna end up dragging you along whether you want to go or not," Mira commented.

"I just—there's no reason why I have to be there," Loren protested.

"Hey, Tsaron is a perfectly friendly old elf. Like a telepathic grandpa," Aria said. "Oh! And the last time we visited, he gave us gifts. Don't you want a piece of sweet enchanted weaponry for your very own?"

"Not...really?"