The Rifts of Psyche by Kyle West (i love reading .txt) 📕

fifty years ago,” Lucian said. “But in my dream, I got the sense the Sorceress-Queen was quite young. How could that be when she’s been here over fifty years?”

“I don’t know about that. Though few outside her own nobility have seen her, she is known to be quite old. However, her powers are those of the mind. She can, and does, use mind tricks to appear a certain way. When she must. Perhaps she thinks she can better influence you if she appears in the guise of a young and beautiful woman. One of the basic tenets of thought manipulation is that it’s better to inflame a positive emotion than a negative one. Your subject will be far more likely to do your bidding willingly.”

“So what are you saying? That she’s trying to make me fall in love with her or something?”

“In love?” Elder Erymmo looked aghast. “Almost certainly not. Seduce you, perhaps. You must be on guard of that, Lucian. If she can get a toehold, whatever the means, it won’t be long before the entire mind falls prey.”

The mere idea that an eighty-plus-year-old woman was trying to seduce him in the guise of a young woman made him sick, so much so that he didn’t have words.

“We are delving into the unethical,” Elder Erymmo said. “We won’t debate the morality of mind control. Suffice it to say, it is possible, and it’s a powerful tool for those who use it, for good or for evil. The Sorceress-Queen can outright control the minds of her subjects with her brands. With all that said, most obey the Sorceress-Queen willingly, without the need for outright possession – the technical term for any sort of mind control. It’s easy to manipulate others without active magic when you can read intentions, if not their thoughts. She can enter the dreams of other mages, and implant ideas that the mage will act on in the waking world.”

“How is that possible? My mind is my own, so I don’t see how she can influence it.”

“A mind is far more moldable than you realize. That is why you must always guard it. If people can be influenced by ideologies, propaganda, fears, and misinformation without the aid of magic, enough to start wars, revolutions, and abandon all sense and reason, how much more can the human mind be manipulated with the aid of magic? If you take that idea, and multiply it a thousandfold across many minds in an empire, for example, then you’ll come close to what the Sorceress-Queen is capable of. Add to that an artifact as powerful as the Orb of Psionics, then it might be the end of the Worlds as we know them, especially if she finds a way off Psyche. Worse, mages have a particular vulnerability – a mage’s mind, or at least a part of it, is connected to the Manifold. She can reach you through there. Not easily, mind you. It takes far more magic for her to break your defenses than it does for you to defend against them. That is why it’s so important for you to learn to stream wards. It’s during sleep that you are most vulnerable, especially when you’ve reached a point of incredible exhaustion. That is when you, or any mage really, becomes vulnerable to dream implantation.”

“And you can teach me to defend myself from that?”

Elder Erymmo nodded. “That’s why I’ve come to speak with you. Fortunately, a Psionic ward is usually enough to keep other mages from interfering with your dreams, and you won’t need the ether while you’re asleep, anyway. Forming a Psionic ward before bed should become a daily habit of yours. Normally a dualstream is sufficient, however, the ward can be strengthened by making it a tristream.”

“How long will it last?”

“That depends on how long the streams in the ward cohere. Usually that’s eight hours before the ward unravels, or even longer if the warder is particularly skilled. To create a Psionic ward, either Binding or Gravitonics will form the shell. As stated before, the shell’s purpose is to keep the Psionic Magic in place through stream coherence. Through coherence, the two streams act in tandem to keep the ward active. It’s paramount you learn to do this before you sleep tonight. Now, expand your Focus to me and follow along . . .”

Lucian did as instructed. Elder Erymmo began with a Binding stream, with which he surrounded himself. Lucian saw why he called it a shell. The blue aura surrounding him had the appearance of a shell, or perhaps an egg. That layer of magic was thin, almost nonexistent. Lucian followed along and felt the stream was simple to perform, the magic circulating around at the same steady rate.

Then, Elder Erymmo opened a new stream, this one Psionic. The way the magic streamed felt . . . different from the kinetic manifestation Lucian was accustomed to. It was slower, more like an eddying creek that filled every groove and crack than a sudden burst. Elder Erymmo’s Psionic magic spread, filling the empty space within the Binding shell. It didn’t fill all the space. Lucian wondered why, until he realized that the shell was leaving room for more potential streams. Theoretically, there was enough space for the rest of the Aspects to be streamed within the shell, though the amount of magic necessary to do that would no doubt kill whoever attempted it.

Once done streaming, Elder Erymmo closed his eyes and combined the two streams – or rather, “cohered” them. The bubble was now indigo from the fusion of Psionic and Binding Magic. Lucian realized he had unwittingly done the same thing when he’d escaped the snow-filled valley on the Isle of Madness, only in that instance, he had cohered Binding and Gravitonic Magic.

Lucian felt Elder Erymmo’s stream cut off, leaving the indigo ward visible for a few seconds before it faded. Lucian followed the same steps, his own ward fading. Though the ward was no longer visible, inside