The "Best" RPG Ever-69

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

"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.