III-17 Open (Deathless)

Scouts are the eyes, nose, tongue, ears, mouth, skin—everything that relates to the senses for an army. No scouts means that you're fighting

Scouts are the eyes, nose, tongue, ears, mouth, skin—everything that relates to the senses for an army.

No scouts means that you're fighting blind, that you're just a mass of firepower stumbling around in the general direction in which you're supposed to march. No scouts means that someone's going to slit your arteries while you sleep, that someone's going to burn and butcher your supply train while you aren't looking. That someone's going to loot your tent and camp clean, is going to poison your food, your water, is going to start cutting throats while you sleep at night.

Scouts are essential. Shadows, Assassins, Thieves—they're essential. They might not be the single most important component of an army, but without them, you're almost certain to lose.

Before every battle begins, there's the skirmish. There are the knife fights in the dark. There are path-bearers with stealth skills, with high levels of awareness, blinking through shadows, scouring out paths for the rest of their forces to travel, and figuring out where the opposition lies in ambush. You need scouts to counter other scouts. You need scouts to figure out where things are—especially the obvious things and the hidden things.

And you need scouts most of all if you are the inferior army, if you don't have the necessary force projection to match someone else head-on. That's when scouts, infiltrators, and saboteurs shine: when they're crippling the enemy and bringing them down from the inside.

Hell, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for our scouts. My wife wouldn't be here. All of us would be sleeping with the worms had their lengths of steel passed through our backs or been dragged across our necks. And because your enemy has scouts, you're gonna need scouts.

Because if not... well, you ever wander into the jungle at night alone, without any equipment? You see eyes looking at you from the dark, but you don't know what's exactly staring at you? Yeah, it's kinda like that.

Except, you likely won't know what kills you. Or worse, what carries you off and takes you as a prisoner.

-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

III-17
Open

A single, hair-thin strand of Psychomancy mana slipped into the Court Leviathan, seeking a certain Deathless. The string of translucent mana scoured the creature, sliding through each of its many brains, trying to pinpoint the exact location of Shiv’s whereabouts.

Uva could have asked Adam, but Uva found Gate Lord slumped over and asleep within the Garden of Bountiful Alloy. Nearby, Valor and Can Hu watched over him while going through the Educator’s burned tome. 

Hence, Uva sought Shiv out herself. She was done with interrogating the owl for now, and with the Null Mont situation temporarily resolved, she wanted to see how Shiv was doing.

Even with the battle over, they were constantly pressed with tasks and things to do. There was hardly a moment for all of them to talk and figure things out—or to just exist.

Well, the strands briefly stopped as they examined a certain Angelo, a vampire brought back by Shiv during his earlier hunting expedition. The man's mind was awash with trauma, wailing and weeping. To describe him as something physical, he was a brutally infected wound, leaking pus and foul ichor out every passing second. He was still sane, but just barely. Right now, his mind was pointed inwards, the current of his thoughts cascading inversely. A sign that he was holding to the past, unable to emerge from the shadows lining his memories.

Uva considered slipping her Psychomancy thread through the vampire once more, examining him, learning what he was actually thinking about right now. She decided against it. Usually, the only things Uva contemplated regarding the bloodsuckers was how to kill them, how to break their minds; how to destroy their culture and bring down their faith. But this one… there wasn't much left to break, and frankly, she didn't think there was much she could inflict upon him that his own kind hadn't already, and worse.

She continued on, a single strand circling through hallways, partially destroyed and reclaimed by spreading masses of flesh. She glanced into rooms, mostly obliterated by Shiv's inertial detonations, with little more than shards and debris embedded within the body of the court leviathan. The insides of the creature were about as ruined as the gate. There would need to be a substantial rebuilding effort before it could serve as a troop carrier, or frankly whatever Shiv wanted it to be, aside from a provider of flesh—a dedicated and ethical supply of meat. 

But that was up to him. And only him. He made sure of that when he “convinced”  Exalted Mother Null Mont of her stupid mistake with some help from Adam and Valor.

It was good that he didn't actually hurt the Weaveress, but still, the way he treated her made Uva uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable. On some level, Uva understood the Exalted Mother was taking advantage of the Honored Guests, was being foolish and impulsive in ordering Uva away from the gate. Even if her suspicions about Dreamtaker’s eldritch influence, about Uva’s potential subversion, were correct, there was a way of doing things, a way to be efficient and effective while also ensuring a Cherished Sister wasn’t compromised.

Null Mont thought of none of that. Null Mont was short-sighted, and Null Mont was narcissistic. But Null Mont was not suicidal. And ultimately, after some threats and a meal, Null Mont was pacified, at least for now.

In part, Uva was grateful for that, but the developments also troubled her. She wondered if she could have solved the problem herself, convinced Exalted Mother Null Mont to allow her to remain at the Gate, to have Null Mont see the folly in her actions, the blindness in her choices. 

The answer was a culturally-engineered no. 

Shiv was right. Uva could have done a number of things to Null Mont. The Weaveress had a few Master-tier skills, but she was no Psychomancer, and she was relatively unblooded in combat. Uva could taste the inexperience off of her. But even so, something rooted deep in her Umbral psyche screamed at her every time she thought lowly or poorly of the Weaveress. It was sacrilege. Unthinkable. Wrong. Just like doubting the Composer was wrong. Just like how every vampire was supposed to be a slaving monster that indulged in cruelty and bloodlust in equal measure. Yet here was Angelo. Yet, here was Null Mont. Yet here Uva was, lost in her own growing doubts as she searched for Shiv.

Two months ago, such wrong-think would have been immediately repressed. Yes, there were problems at Weave, but they were inflicted by outside agents, by agitators, by enemies. The Surface was the land that harbored her mother's murderer and the ones who inflicted so much damage on the Abyss. 

The Composer was the only reason Weave was protected, the only reason Weave was at all. And it was the Umbrals, and to a lesser extent her Weaveresses, that failed to uphold her glory. But increasingly, whispers of doubt began to surface in Uva's mind. No more were they like sediment at the bottom of her thoughts and memories. They were rising now, like buoyant pieces of driftwood breaking free from the wreckages long lost.

"Cling," the Dreamtaker sang out to Uva, "cling, hurts you, it hurts you very deeply, cripples your development, blinds you."

"I am not blind," Uva shot back, a slow, aching feeling turning to reflexive outrage. "I am… I am merely ruminating. My thoughts are slightly in disarray. This is not blindness, this is just…"

"This is you trying to come up with a reason, trying to process the flaws of those you thought were better."

Uva considered how she was to reply to that. The Dreamtaker, as strange as it was, seemed a relatively benign entity, despite the harm inflicted upon her mind and the minds of other people around her.

"I pity you. You fear the colors you cannot see. You do not wish to perceive them. I pity you," the Dreamtaker sang. "I pity and envy you. You have a journey, a journey away from the limitations of consciousness."

"What?" Uva replied.

"Consciousness. It is like… it is like a cage. You are… you all see yourselves in the form of a cage. There are boundaries to where you end, boundaries where the world begins and you don't touch. You are like… like a foreign body drifting through the vastness. No wonder you all feel so alone. No wonder you cling to each other. No wonder your thoughts turn so malformed. You are searching for consciousness. It is a terrible thing. I regret it sometimes. I regret the system infesting me with it and I adore the fact that I can see it."

Slowly, Uva closed in on the signature of thought hidden deep within the lower middle of the court leviathan. Considering that no one else should be aboard the massive creature, she expected that was where she expected Shiv to be.

"You think consciousness is a negative thing?" Uva replied, her curiosity slightly piqued.

"I think the way you think is broken. You are shaped by belief, for there is a pattern engraved inside of you, patterns from your culture, from your society, patterns. Because you cannot be of the world, you are not of the world. You start inside a vessel, your own flesh, but your colors, they don't intermingle. Not like me, not like me at all, not yet. A shame, a pity, a wonder, a journey, a mystery for you to uncover, to seek, to become, if you so choose."

It was hard to decipher what the Dreamtaker was saying sometimes, but Uva thought she got the gist. The Dreamtaker was closer to being a dimension unto itself rather than a singular being. But it might also be a singular being now that the system infested it with mana. 

Infested with mana, Uva thought to herself. The very concept made her shudder. Was the system some kind of infection as well? Some kind of disease that spread across souls? Was it a disease that composed souls? Another unnerving thing that intruded into Uva's mind when she already had so many to face.

"There. Another flaw. Another mis-shape in your mind. In your way. You find things horrifying, terrible, because you don't know, because you don't understand. But I don't know what it is like to not know, to not understand. Things are and they are not. They are expressed, or they do not exist."

"Is there nothing you fear?" Uva asked. "Not the Stranger, not another Eldritch entity?"

The Dreamtaker was silent for a while, but then it responded. "Does the sunrise fear the moon, the broken moon? Does the sea fear the land, or the way the wind dances, carrying gravel in its wake?" There was something strangely alluring in the way the Dreamtaker described things.

"No," the Dreamtaker said, "there is no capacity for fear. It does not exist. We are infested. We are bearing tumors of self-awareness, but we are not fully self-aware. The metastasization is not complete. We are still more Outside, a concept animated, rather than a mind uncovering. A mind like you."

Uva felt a traitorous desire slip through her, much like the thoughts she had before. The thoughts doubting the Composer, the Weaveresses, doubting even the fundamentals of her own culture. She suppressed it, but the Dreamtaker let out something as close to a sigh as it could possibly make. It was a broken sound, this discordant melody that sawed at Uva's very psychology.

"Again, again, why? Why do you mutilate yourself? Why do you mutilate the colors that spring from you, seeker? You have the capacity, so much capacity to reshape your own mind, to face what is. Why turn away?" The Dreamtaker paused. "Go further. Even if you blind yourself, it is not protection. Denial is not defense. Open yourself more. Open yourself to everything, everything. Do not fear for getting infected. You are already infected. Not by me, but your culture. Not by me, but existing patterns, beliefs like viruses. Twisting your mind away from what is, what actually is. The fundament of the thing."

"The fundament," Uva replied.

"You see things, but then you mask them with signs. With an illusion of your perception. But you are a mind-dancer. You are a Psychomancer. Break the illusion you have drank so deep. You alone, among many, have limbs of heart and mind. You alone are the shaper of personal meaning. And you alone can dissolve meaning and simply see things for what is."

Uva felt something shiver within her, something shift and dance behind her eyes. Colors she couldn’t describe, but colors that painted new possibilities. Colors there if she just reached out for them.

“There is a reason you delved deep inside we of the Outside and returned. Changed. But unbroken. Mutated. But not deviant. Not twisted. Think. Open yourself. Open…”

And finally, Uva drew near to Shiv. Her Psychomancy thread flipped through a final set of walls, and she found herself in a rank chamber. It was a little bit like one of the chambers in Elaboration, an observation room overlooking an experimental cell of some kind. Or perhaps a containment unit. Through a reinforced window was another chamber. Its walls were furrowed with slick substances and countless glistening pores. 

It seemed like some kind of malformed womb, and a feeling of revulsion went through her immediately. But standing at the center of the room was Shiv. He was stripped down to nothing, and a look of absolute focus painted his expression. He constantly drew in lungfuls of air, and Uva wondered what he was doing. But then she saw it. A bubbling of pustules bursting across his chest and abdomen, only to fade a moment later. Shiv blinked, shaking his head. His thoughts swayed slightly, and Uva recognized the patterns of those movements. The way his focus shook, he was like that of a drunk. 

Wait, he wasn’t like a drunk—Shiv was drunk.

And then she recalled how his Plaguefueled skill worked. Ah, she thought to herself with a dry exasperation, alloyed with the faintest bits of astonishment. Her dear brute was nothing if not stubborn, and nothing if not enduring. It expressed itself in his skills, and it expressed itself in his every action. She guessed that he was in this chamber because he was infecting himself with plague after plague, malady after malady.

But was he doing it to improve a skill? Or just for the pleasure of imbibing diseases? Uva didn’t know. And thus, she finally dipped the tip of her Psychomancy thread into his mind, and he responded, looking in the thread's general direction.

"Oh, hey, Uva," he replied. He let out a slight cough, but then that affliction faded as well, burned away by his hypercharged immune system. She regarded him through his own eyes, observing his body, and Uva felt a rush of heat harden and clench inside of her.

"Do diseases make you larger?" Uva asked. “Because you seem… bigger somehow.”

He let out a low chuckle. "Yeah, something like that. And not just like alcohol for me, it's like a steroid too. I feel all kinds of drunk, but also, it doesn't just make my muscles bigger, it makes me harder, it makes me faster, and… it feels pretty good."

"It's addicting," Uva said, sensing the enjoyment ingrained within Shiv. Absorbing the diseases lined his mind in layers of pleasure, the same kind of pleasure one might feel when gambling or doing substances meant to spike the neurochemistry. 

The same way Uva's neurochemistry was being affected right now, with what she could see. "So," she said, trying to distract herself. "Have you made some progress regarding your Practical Metabiology? I trust this is more than just an exercise in pseudo-alcoholism.”

Practical Metabiology 36 > 37

"A bit," he replied. "I think I'm getting some understanding of how a virus functions, and a few other diseases. I've been reviewing the most common disease types, along with the most infectious. I have to go with infectious because my plague field burns through most things too fast. So far, none of the diseases I managed to inflict on myself lasted that long, but then again, I am making pretty amateurish diseases." 

He let out a laugh. "That vampire bastard's all kinds of messed up, but his bio-molecular control is something else. It's like he's some kind of disease chef. Down to the last detail, he's got it all figured out. But it's more than just that. He can put his own spin on things. He sees connections that aren't even there that I can't even grasp. I feel like an alley kid looking at Georges again. I guess that's how things always are when you don't have the experience."

Uva hummed in agreement. She knew the feeling. As a child, she was a diligent student,but still, she remembered times where she was utterly lost as well, where she marveled at someone else's skill. Frankly, she marveled at Fel's understanding of how fabrics work. Uva, comparatively, was just a dabbler. It was one of her unspoken regrets. 

Her father, supposedly, had been a tailor before one of the blood-plagues took him, and while a few of her sisters veered closer to him in spirit, Uva merely touched on her father's skills and went no deeper. She didn’t have a true talent there. Only an interest. A dabbler’s touch.

But it can be more than that, Uva thought. I can be more than just a Psychomancer.

"I think I'm going to try something when I get the chance," he said. "I'm going to try doing this beneath the light of the mana core. I tried to have my skills fuse, but I think it doesn't work without direct exposure, or maybe Adam’s focusing it on me. Like he has to do with his Righteous Dawn Prevails. I don't know. I'll ask him later."

"What are you thinking?" Uva asked.

"I want to mix The Chef Wavering with my Practical Metabiology if I can, if they even come together. I mean, I think some parts of biology can be like a recipe or something."

Uva tried to imagine what that was like, but psychology, and frankly, Psychomancy, were far softer disciplines and far more insidious in certain ways than the complex but more rooted realities inherent to Biomancy and biology. She didn't have much insight to offer him here.

Shiv shook his head awkwardly. "Speaking of which, uh, you know, Uva, are you good at writing?"

"Writing?" she said, slightly taken aback. "I am good at reports. I do not do much personal writing, but I would say my skill is well into Adept.”

"Yeah, of course there’s a skill for writing too," he gave an awkward sigh. "I've been trying to start writing a journal of some kind, a book documenting ingredients and dishes and creatures you can hunt in the Abyss."

"Oh," Uva said, her curiosity piqued. "You want to make a cookbook? That is… that would be quite useful, I think, especially with your capabilities. Are you trying to document what your The Chef Wavering can do as well?"

"Yeah, something like that. There's just… I got a lot of stuff I'm trying to cover, and I can't just keep track of them all in my mind. Not yet, anyway. Is there a Memorization Skill too?”

"There is, in fact," Uva replied.

"I wonder why I never got that one. I try to remember a lot of things. I can practically name all the Swan-Eating Frog’s set lists from a couple of years back."

Uva shook her head. "No, that's not sufficient. It’s been Think of how much effort it takes for you to gain a level in Gravitic Wrestler. Do you strain your mind to the same capacity?"

Shiv paused. "Yeah, I get your point. You need to be doing it constantly, driving it to the very limit."

"To the very limit," she repeated for emphasis.

"Right." Shiv pressed his lips together. "I’m not that good at writing right now. I just… I find it hard to focus. I tried earlier and got a bit frustrated. I know plenty of works but putting them together feels like I’m wrestling with my own brain. My mind jumps a hell of a lot too.”

"I know. I’ve been in your mind long enough to  suspect your mental template to be hyperactive. A lifetime of conflict and constant anxiety or paranoia can cause that in a person. But I suspect there's also bloodline dispositions as well."

"Is that adjustable?" he asked. “Or bad?”

"It’s…" Uva considered her reply. "I potentially could, but the effort of sculpting one's cognition on such a level is… How should I put this?" Uva might have the skill to do it, but her expertise in Psychomancy was originally focused in shrouding. Something that made it harder for other Psychomancers to affect her and those around her. Something that made it easier for her to engage, even against those who would have the advantage in a direct Psychomantic confrontation. She was, in a word, a Psychomancer dedicated to hunting other Psychomancers. Such was the natural outcome when your adversary was the First Blood. 

To reshape one's cognition, though, that was more in the domains of a psycho-healer, and frankly, a psycho-architect. Weave was desperately short on those. Uva had known one psycho-architect in her generation for the Arachnae Order, and she remained an Adept even now, bottlenecked by the complexity of her path.

“I’m not scared,” Shiv said. “Even if it does damage to my mind, I should just be able to come back together, so I think you can experiment a little on me too if that’s what it takes. I’m open to doing anything for some more improvements.”

Open. There was that word again…

"No," Uva said. "And for multiple reasons. First, for most people, there is significant risk in altering their minds. Doing so poorly inflicts mental issues like psychosis or schizophrenia. More importantly, it might break their minds entirely and ruin their sense of self. For you, I think the effects will not take. Your mind will revert to its original, stable state. You are, in essence, locked to your current mental template. That’s why you heal so well. And there is nothing wrong with the way you think. It might even be beneficial for active combat.”

Shiv considered that for a moment and grunted. "Yeah, might be for the best. Strain," he muttered to himself. "Yeah, strain everything. Alright, thanks, Uva. I'll try to get the skills fused. I just need to find a way to stress both of them at the same time, maybe. Anyway, I'm going to try to trigger the neurotoxin inside me this time instead of one of the many bacteria-strains. At least I think they’re bacteria…”

“Inside you?” Uva said. Her mind went blank for a moment. "You're storing dormant sicknesses inside of yourself? What? How?”

Shiv let out a slight grunt as he opened his left arm. Through the open wound, Uva could see a small piece of Leviathan tissue fused into his flesh. “I managed to figure out how to pull some of the dormant sicknesses from where they're hidden inside the Court Leviathan. I also managed to successfully transplant its flesh unto mine without getting it to reject this time. Something about how the Court Leviathan is designed makes that easy. Right now, I got a steady source of dormant sickness to trigger. Only managed to figure out how to activate a few of them, though. And my body burns them out pretty quick.

“This is…” Uva wasn’t sure how to describe this. For anyone else, it would be stark-raving mad. Suicidal. For Shiv, this was just another moment in his life. It was even logical. If he didn’t have technical understanding to create his own viruses or pathogens, he could trigger dormant sicknesses embedded within the Court Leviathan to boost himself in a fight. “Very creative.”

“Thanks. So far, I managed to get what I think is a fungal infraction to spread across me. That usually triggers a pretty bad allergic reaction across my skin, but doesn't last long. Frankly, I'm getting used to it already. I'm trying to study how my body reacts to it. But even with my Chronomancy, there's a…" Shiv let out a breath. "There's a lot going on. I might need a notebook for this, too. I think I can learn to cast these as spells too. Frankly, a dedicated Biomancer might be able to make some of these viruses without having anything close to Master-Tier Biomancy. The problem here isn’t power, it’s understanding. And it’s hard to level missing understanding through death. I tried with Metabiology, but the system seems reluctant to just give me knowledge. Power, sure. But not knowledge.”

Once more, Uva noted how inverted Shiv's development as a Pathbearer was. Usually, someone was trained in the softer skills first, prepared in writing, memorization, and all other informational disciplines before any of their physical and practical skills reached Adept-tier. He was the opposite way 'round, in the extreme. And so, he handled things brutally, because his skill set was brutal. Aside from his cooking, his technical and intellectual development had been severely hampered. 

For the first time, Uva felt a surge of annoyance towards Adam's father, Roland Arrow. For someone who feared the child of your enemy might turn into a monster, she thought to herself, you certainly did everything you could to make him develop like one.

Uva considered what he would be like without any proper training, without years of instruction and refined practice. Instinct. Instinct and intuition were her answers. And they weren't pretty answers, at that. It was probably part of the reason why he was developing skills the way he was. I might need to also start shaping his personal curriculum more than just teaching him Psychomancy, Uva thought. If there was one benefit to Shiv having little to no experience, it was the fact that he didn't have any bad habits yet. Well, none intellectually. Physically, his combat and tactics were for Adam to handle.

Just then, another swath of inflammation glided down Shiv's chest. Red boils appeared, rising from the skin in bulges of inflammation, but they only held their place for around five seconds before they broke, lost color, and flattened. Shiv's muscles bulged and swelled. He grew another few centimeters taller as well. His movements happened in blurring jerks. He let out a drunken laugh and worked to keep himself steady. “Okay. That’s not too bad. I think I’ll use this one when I get into a fight next.”

"You know, you can contain some of that drunkenness," Uva said.

"How," Shiv slurred slightly.

"Your Psychomancy."

"It's not very powerful yet," Shiv replied.

"That's fine. It’s the exact same thing as with your Biomancy. You don't need a lot of power to affect yourself. Think of how much Biomancy you needed to stop your own heart." 

Shiv considered that. “Not much at all.” 

"Yes, and Psychomancy even less so. It's simply about finding the right pieces in yourself. Follow my strand. Follow where I’m going and what I’m doing. Let your skills work in tandem. Like they're pillars for each other.”

“Pillars,” Shiv muttered. And that somehow sobered him immediately. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can do that.”

His Psychomancy field flowed inward as he chased after her strands. Uva noted how awkward his intent was, and how unfocused and indelicate his control. But these were all things of inexperience. He could be cured of these weaknesses through a proper instruction, and on this day, she would show him the true beginnings of Psychomancy.

“Here,” Uva said. She seized the parts of him that enjoyed the feeling of digesting the diseases, but she didn’t do anything. Instead, she highlighted how this sensation was passing through him. How it consumed his thoughts. “The feelings you’re experiencing are more physiological than psychological. But there is a psychology component. And there is a way for you to ‘pilot’ yourself. To exert mind over sensation.”

“Huh. So, this can help with my attentiveness too?”

“Absolutely. But it is paradoxical. You must be focused to infuse focus in yourself. So. Seize this. Grip the parts of you consumed by pleasure, by distraction and intoxication, and layer over them.”

“Layer? With what?”

“Another memory. A moment of extreme focus. Like when you are cooking. Or when you are trying to do something that requires a great amount of attention. This is the simplest method of establishing control over yourself. As you have transplanted a piece of the Court Leviathan into your body, now you can transplant part of your memories, your past sensations over your present. Mind over matter.”

“And… this can be done at any time?”

“If you have the focus. If you have the control. If you strain and stop yourself from being distracted.”

Shiv reached out for a moment, but his first attempts slipped as another buzzing rush swept through him. Unfettered, he tried again. Again. Uva control was fine and reached deep. Her strands were near solid constructs of mana. Shiv, meanwhile, was directing something that was fainter than a breeze and capable of even less force or control. He tried harder and harder, pitting his intent and will against his own mind, doing all he could to clutch specific memories the same way Uva did.

But hardness wasn’t the way here. Focus. Control. Directing the currents of his mana was the true path. Uva could have told him that. But it was best for him to learn directly. For him to understand the lesson himself.

His struggle went on. Seconds turned to minutes. Then, Shiv pressed on for a near hour. Through all that time, Uva observed his habits, studied how he approached her discipline.

He needs more flexibility of thought and an understanding of psychology to be a good Psychomancer. But there is no issue with his will or intent. I suspect he is beyond that in some ways. I suspect—ah, he has it.

Finally, Shiv twisted his Psychomancy mana around the memories Uva highlighted for him using her strand. He stole a method from her. She spiraled herself around the memories, and arranged his mana into cyclones that consumed each section of memory and sensation.

“Good,” she said. “You have it. Now. Move a copy of the memories over.”

Shiv’s brows furrowed. Sweat poured from his forehead, but his infused his cyclones into his mental architecture and began to move parts of himself. Soon, a memory from his past crossed the gulf of his mind, a memory of a scowling man with a large, messy puff of hair screaming at him, demanding he cut faster, cut better.

Uva was taken aback. Such a memory filled her with stress, but Shiv found it to be calming. Even reassuring. More than anything, it was focusing.

Psychomancy 9 > 11

“Why? Why this memory?” she asked, unable to contain her own curiosity.

Shiv chuckled as he fastened his desired memory into place. At once, his movements because more refined, more coherent. “Because that’s when I knew Georges wasn’t going to get rid of me. I made a mistake. A bad one. I expected him to throw me out. He made me peel a thousand potatoes that day instead. His punishment for me was to yell and make me better. And you don’t do that for someone you don’t care about. It was more than anything ever did for me before.”

Psychology 1 > 2

“I see,” Uva breathed. What seemed so unpleasant to her took on new dimensions. Open. I should be open to all manner of perspectives. All ways of understanding things. This lesson isn’t just for Shiv. This should be for me as well. What lies beyond the surface? What is the actual truth of the matter?

She contemplated that while she instructed him further, and he sank deeper into knowledge, and she opened her mind more and more to other possibilities. To things she hadn’t considered before as well.