She couldn’t undo Avecia’s mind blast with sheer will, but she tried to give him as much knowledge as she could. You can control the pitch of the sound to some extent once you realize it’s a hallucination, turn it lower, it will hurt you less!
Stop thinking with color, just focus on what is shadow and what is light!
Focus on either breathing in, breathing out, or swallowing, one at a time.
And then she remembered she had to keep it simple, he wasn’t good at this, he had never been properly taught. And then she remembered the first lesson all psions were taught to begin their long training.
Breathe. Focus on your breathing. Now she took the chance to walk herself through the same exercise, the foundation of all psionics. For without breath there would be no oxygen, and without oxygen there would be no energy, and without energy there could be no thought.
Breathe. Focus on your breathing.
Breathe.
She breathed in. Her body regained its composure, now still.
Exhale.
She breathed out. She felt even the pain she absorbed for him melt away.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Exhale.
Exhale.
And then they were in unison.
Breathe. Exhale.
How did he recover from a mind blast?!
And then pain erupted down her arm. He had been shot with the railgun. She instinctively thought to block this pain too for him, but she had reached her threshold. But she also sensed now that she didn’t need to. The breathing exercise had changed him. He was now much surer of his latent psionic ability.
He strode forward and kicked away the rogue’s railgun, planted one foot on her chest. He ripped her helmet off. Blue eyes, fringe, stick thin.
He leveled his greatsword at her throat.
Stop!
His muscles froze, caught in the hold person.
Conduit, break me free!
Vilithe tried, she really tried, but she needed a moment to recover, a moment she didn’t have. She had half returned to her body’s senses now, and she was once again drenched in sweat. She wiped the saliva from her mouth, but her limb felt stiff and uncooperative, and the back of her hand shot past her chin awkwardly. She gritted her teeth, dug her nails into her palms, bit hard into her lower lip, trying to use the pain as reins to guide her psionic beast within. If she could use her own pain as traction, she could put greater leverage into her psionic force. C’mon! Come on! COME ON! But it was two psions against one, and she was much further away from him. Psionic strength is amplified with proximity. She just couldn’t do it. Every psion has her limits.
I… I can’t…
The Knight Leader felt a loathsome regret that he had dragged Vilithe into this. And Vilithe wanted to protest, to tell him that no, he shouldn’t feel this way, that she would have done this willingly every time in a thousand lifetimes. You can’t give up! Not now!
The rogues now hallucinated him, but they couldn’t fully blast his mind without letting go of their hold. So, they split their duties. The braided one kept him locked in the hold now, while the one with the fringe used her hallucination to worm his way into his mind, to find his greatest weakness, so that she could craft the perfect hallucination to break him…
Vilithe didn’t know what she could do now, but she tried to lend him her strength.
And then he made a psionic feint. He slackened his will just enough to fool Elyn, the braided one, and then he roared- “AHH!” Vilithe clutched her sixth rib and doubled over. He had roared a little too hard. Why did he have to be such a glutton for punishment? But it worked. He had used the pain to reset the electrical connections in his nervous system and taken back control of his body. How did he learn all that so quickly? And did he get the idea from her- when she bit her lip to try and use pain to rein in psionic will? She was awed by the Knight Leader now.
And then he lopped off Elyn’s head.
Awe gave way to unease.
Elyn!
The shock and sorrow of Avecia shot through her like an icicle skewering her stomach.
HOLD!
Vilithe had to agree that it was quite hilarious that this gaunt, pencil necked psion – Avecia – was wearing a carapace designed for a broad shouldered, tall and lanky soldier, not just a soldier but a knight, who were usually buffer. Yes, funny, but moot, for anyone piloting a carapace could crush an elvan skull like a Vyredian grape.
You think you’re so funny.
She hoped to dear God that Avecia was not able to somehow read her mind right now too.
You’re no Amallark.
She was speaking. Why?
A conversation.
Knight Leader - A conversation, really?
And although it was a psionic echo, she heard his voice for the first time. It was a bit hoarse and whiny, kind of nasally. She felt just a little disappointed. But the more she ruminated on it, the more the voice grew on her. It was kind of cute, in a way.
You’ve killed every single one of my compatriots. I can’t survive alone. Now, my only option is to break you free.
And then it dawned upon her. This psion, Avecia, and her two rogue friends, Elyn, and Charysha, had never planned to kill Eighth, Ninth and Tenth.
They were going to break them free. They were going to turn them rogue. Break open their enslaving vassal encryption. Three workers, two of them psions, three soldiers. Just enough psionic strength between the three of them to do the trick. The Knight Leader hadn’t interrupted their execution, he had interrupted their liberation.
Goddess… you’ve forgotten the meaning of freedom.
And then Vilithe could see deeper into the Knight Leader’s mind. There were so many encrypted holes and patches, so much imprinting, that his psyche was fragmented and glitchy. Whatever had been done to his mind had been an attempt to contain him, to control him.
For some reason, that meant even trying to destroy his understanding of freedom itself. But they could not do it, whichever psion had come here – Amefrid herself most likely – had just crudely stitched together imprinting –
But it broke him. This time his attempt to struggle through the imprinting was not adorable, but truly pitiful, indeed heart wrenchingly pitiful, because this time he did not give up no matter how many times he failed. He kept trying, and trying, but his psionic defenses were so open and raw and weak and exposed now that Avecia slipped right inside his mind to find out that his greatest fear was a fear of heights, because he was either born with, or imprinted, a trait of having severe vertigo whenever brought to a high ledge.
It was like his senses of survival were so well honed that he had an exaggerated neural reaction to the possibility of near instant death. Yet it beckoned him, a call of the void, some strange morbid curiosity that just simply wondered what happened if he did it, if he just jumped. He knew it wasn’t the height, or even the speed of the fall, that first killed an elvan, but simply the suddenly stopping. And through the inescapable magick of physics, all that it took to lead him there was simply the choice to leap.
This thought of the knight leader finding his own enslaved existence so unbearable that he would end it himself, a euthanasia- it was mortifying to his new number one fangurl.
Aha. I’ve found your greatest fear.
Vilithe had felt helpless but now she felt fury at what he was being subjected to. A bruised cheek, he could take. A broken rib, he could take. A shredded shoulder, he could take.
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The feeling of falling through two portals, one leading to another, so that you fell infinitely through the same space again, and again, and again, he couldn’t take. He couldn’t take that at all. He’d rather just die and get it over with.
The Knight Leader tried to vomit but unlike Vilithe earlier had, he had absolutely nothing in his stomach, all he could cough out was a thin, watery line of saliva that spun about everywhere, flecking little bits of spit on the floor, as he tried to retch. The carapace hissed and groaned and creaked as it protested the ungraceful clawing away on the hard solid ground that he felt was nothing but air. Tears streamed down his face and terror seized his gut, clenching it hard like a grip.
Oh, the poor thing.
“Fuck you, Avecia!” she screamed out, alone in her reaver.
Fatigue pulled her hard, but she wouldn’t back down, she couldn’t, she couldn’t just drop back into her own body and lose all psionic connection with the Knight Leader. She needed to know he was going to be alright. So, she fought it but instantly developed a migraine that would last for two rotations, and that is when she realized that she had reached a dangerous level of psionic strain.
Avecia slammed him back to the hard floor.
Do you know your name?
Of course I do! It’s…
Well, I know my name. It’s Avecia. But Vilithe already knew that having pried it out of her mind.
Pleased to meet you, Avecia.
Even Vilithe had to shake her head at his sarcastic bravado now, for it was all too easy to predict how Avecia would respond.
She gave him a hundred-meter drop.
Fuck! Okay! Stop! I’m sorry.
Don’t you get it? You’re a vassal! You were never part of Clan Amallark, you were in some other clan they defeated! For all you know, we could have been in the same clan!
I’m frayed… If I disobey…
Then this happens?
Avecia gave him a thousand-meter drop. Damn her to the nine hells! Damn her to the nine thousand hells! And more!
Why are you doing this?! Please… have mercy on me!
Don’t beg. Please, don’t beg.
Because I’m trying to make you see! You can break free. I can unwind the imprinting they’ve done on your mind. Go rogue and join us… Join me. We’ll resist Princess Amefrid, slay all the Amallarkeans, and take Aryss for ourselves! There are so many more of us out there hidden in the deserts of the wastes…
Vilithe truly reviled Avecia now, but why she did not know. Rationally speaking, Avecia was completely right. They should go rogue. Even if it was a miniscule chance of survival, it was better to die than to continue living like this, as vassals. Then she realized- she was jealous.
She wanted to go rogue herself.
She wanted to have the chance to set the Knight Leader free, go rogue together, run away together. But what hope could there be, as a rogue? And then Vilithe thought, why did they mind blast the eighth “knight” instead of killing him? What use could they have with a mating drone?
And what happens to Second, Third, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth?
What, these guys?
Can you turn us all rogue?
That would be too much… Vilithe did not care for the rest of Avecia’s blathering so she cut it off.
Then just kill me.
Vilithe wanted to yell “NO!”, but she also could not help but respect the Knight Leader’s fearlessness in the face of death. It was honorable to die at the hand of a stronger opponent, even if by psionic combat, and not physical combat.
You nitwit! …more of Avecia’s ranting, which she cut off.
And then as the Knight Leader fell into a perpetual drop, Vilithe knew exactly what she had to do. She had now taken a page from the Knight Leader’s book now, having rested and withdrawn her mind to recover herself – akin to his psionic feint – and so with what little mental vigor left in her that she could scrounge up, she dived into his mind as he dived through infinite identical planes. Diving after him. Accelerating her astral projection so she could reach him, to catch him.
She knew he was of Clan Talauth.
Which meant he could know he was of Clan Talauth.
She fell deep into his memories. Memories that were locked even from him.
Talisa.
Queen Talisa.
She had originally tried to get his given name, but the imprinting was still too tight to his mind, and she felt if she undid it at this time his sanity would unravel. Vilithe herself did not even know that Queen Talauth’s given name was Talisa. And she could see that learning just the name itself had triggered a flooding spark of psionic well-being that was slowly undoing some of the imprinting in his mind, and she helped guide the spark along. She felt herself now, a psionic projection of her body and all, falling through the endless psionic facsimiles of this damned cave, plunging after his plummeting psionic presence even though he could not see her. But falling did not scare Vilithe. This was not real. She dove to him and caught his shoulders. The falling abruptly stopped.
It doesn’t matter who you are as long as you know where you belong. Or once belonged.
Conduit? Is that you?
I’m here, Knight Leader.
The Knight Leader stood up, completely immune to the hallucination now.
I’m sorry, Avecia.
And Vilithe too felt a tinge of regret. Avecia was cruel, but Amefrid was more so. It made sense that Avecia was desperate enough to do just about anything, she had been pushed to a corner. Amefrid, on the other hand, had all the power in the world to make life easier for Aryssals now, banished from her family’s graces as she was, but she didn’t. She instead chose to make it much harder.
The Knight Leader grabbed the ranting Avecia by the throat, then crushed it, killing her.
Conduit?
Yes, Knight Leader.
It’s over.
I know.
She didn’t know how to help him now; she was stunned at the madness of the proceedings. This was her first experience operating as a conduit for a ranging! Her first sortie!
The Knight Leader was now afraid that he had been so frayed he would need to be fixed. Vilithe knew that feeling all too well, she had confronted it every rote when she had to fix frayed elvans.
A mind could only be bent into something it doesn’t want to be so many times before it completely disintegrates.
How long until they awake?
It was a severe mind blast. It could be hours.
At least they’re okay. Eleventh?
He’s in the recovery canister, in the reaver. He’ll be fine. Torn ligament though, it could take a while before he’s combat ready.
Torn was an understatement, it was completely snapped in two, but she didn’t want to worry the Knight Leader.
I’m far too frayed, Conduit, I…
Vilithe felt such sympathy for him, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized she was falling deeply in love with him. Such were the effects of close psionic merging, especially in life or death situations, it was the strongest way to create a psionic bond. So much did she adore him now that she had already figured out a way to continue the pretense, so she could continue to be with him psionically, learn more about him, and protect him. It wouldn’t be any different from the psionic cloak of shielding she had encompassed his presence in to avert detection from Avecia. She would have to mask it from Therys, and if there was ever a chance to meet him in actual flesh, then she would have to enmesh the minds of every single elvan they came close to in the hive with the same psionic cloak, once they returned there.
But to meet him in person for real, that felt so far away at this point it didn’t matter. She didn’t care for his body right now, just his mind. That heroic, courageous, caring mind. If she did it right, no one, not even Amefrid, would be any the wiser. To them they would psionically register as just two dumb, obedient vassals, who, if they were not plotting anything, were generally allowed to have relationships with each other.
But Amefrid would keep a close eye on them, she couldn’t shake the feeling: vassals were a capital asset, and this strange, psionically gifted soldier, and her, a dragonrider, would both be high returning indeed, if they could be made to submit to Amefrid’s will.
Vilithe promised herself right then and there that it would instead be her who made Amefrid submit. It would be Amefrid who would fear her.
She would make Amefrid pay for the torment they had to endure.
She made sure to hide this thought from Therys, although she was quite sure Therys wasn’t even scrying her anymore.
I can mask it. They won’t know.
The Knight Leader felt this utterly foreign sense of rebelliousness, of shared conspiratorial excitement and hope. Hope!
He asked Vilithe, was this what freedom meant? But the fact that he even bothered to ask the question meant that he already knew. He knew all along.
Yes, indeed. This was what freedom felt like, some semblance of it. For now.
She sat back on the reaver’s cockpit, and leaned back, breathing out in relief. Her carbide fiber jumpsuit was soaked with sweat, sick and drool still stained the corner of her lips, a drop of blood was forming on her lip where she bit too hard and broke through the skin, and her hands were still trembling, her head, the nerves right behind her eyes, felt it was seizing up with paroxysms of shocks - a splitting migraine, and this one would last.
But she felt elated.
She really, really liked this soldier.
She also realized she had to calm down with the exclamations, no mind was ever receptive to yelling. Or, well, the psionic equivalent of yelling.
This far away from the Amallarkeans, she no longer used Goddess as an exclamation, but simply God. But what God was she hadn’t quite defined herself yet, even when she beheld the legacy. Cosmic, divine order that wrote the laws of the universe? As strong as a psion as she was, there were some things even she could not comprehend. She did not understand what God was.
She couldn’t. Avecia was not even aware of Vilithe’s existence at the time.
One last chance to make things right. One last chance to save a life. Perhaps Avecia’s own sorry elf ass?
So, the conversation- it was to save her own sorry elf ass.
Or not?
Though she had done it with ease on Kwandriss, which if she had time to think about it a bit more, should make her quite chuffed.
Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that’s what gets you.
Fraying usually led to echoes of previous mind flayings.
It’s over nine thousand!
It would really ruin the rosy romantic ideal of him that she was making up in her head.
They were trying to figure out how to breed. If they could get pregnant – maybe even without a cocoon – then they could truly ascend to Queen by the Rite of Coronation. At that moment there was a paradigm shift in Vilithe’s consciousness, and she began to finally consider possibilities that she had heretofore ignored, but it would take some time still for all this to gestate.
Malevolent whispered it psionically. He was really Team Vilithe all the way now. And as he evolved, growing from attaching himself to Vilithe’s psionic power, he decided to choose a gender for himself, inspired by this Knight Leader.
Or, as the orcans would say, ‘Lok Tar O Dar’. Do or die. Now or never. We run to victory or death.
And just like that she went rogue.
The only thing Malevolent could cognate was, oh fuck. Did not even need very many reasoning tokens for this one.
And just like that, although he didn’t know it, he also went rogue.
I hate purity. I hate goodness. I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.