It was amusing just how visibly taken aback the guy was at the challenge, but he rallied quickly enough to make me think he wasn’t just a waste of space. Still an idiot, that much was fairly obvious given that he walked to the tower from the Blessed City on his own with minimal combat ability and no obvious plan to get back home, given that night would fall before he got there. So, an idiot but not a complete one. Or maybe reckless, naive or a combination of all three, possibly with additional negative qualities added for flavour.
“Uhm, I can make Charcoal,” he stated, his claim sounding far too much like a question to make anyone confident in that particular ability.
For a moment, I simply stared at him, judging if the guy was serious, until I realised that this might truly be it. Now, in a normal community, the ability to refine wood into charcoal would be considered useful, maybe even valuable, but when comparing it to the things my family could do? It didn’t even make the cut to be relevant. However, while the guy’s abilities were worthless, the guy himself might have some value, simply because he came from the Blessed City. That might give him physical access, or maybe he knew things we did not.
“Fascinating,” I allowed, already poking and prodding at his mind, trying to learn more about him. The first thing I noticed was that I had poked this very mind before, though not deeply. He was just one of the numerous guys I had influenced during my campaign to destabilise the Blessed City.
“You may call me Jade, by the way, and this is my tower,” I introduced myself, uncertain if I had ever heard his name. If I had, I hadn’t paid any attention to it and disregarded it as irrelevant.
“Name’s Jeffery, but you may call me Jeff,” he replied, though his eyes were visibly darting between me and the tower, and I decided to answer some of his earlier questions.
“You asked how this tower is possible earlier, and what it actually is, right?” I paused, taking note of how his mind shifted in tandem with his attention, allowing me to probe it a little more and gain access to a few more images and sensations. I would have to pay attention to what these shifts corresponded to, what mental buttons I had to press to achieve success here. “The tower was constructed magically, the stone pulled up from the ground while reinforcing the earth around here to keep it from destabilising. I wouldn’t want the tower I built to collapse into a sinkhole, simply because I pulled away the bedrock everything was resting on to build my tower, right?” I had to grin at the look of sheer disbelief on his face.
“How?!” He gasped, causing the grin on my face to widen even further, even as a small part of me was annoyed at the audacity this guy had. Shouldn’t he realise that his disbelief was quite rude, especially when facing a being who could, quite literally, rip the soul from his body? Maybe his sense of self-preservation had some developmental issues. It would explain why he decided to hike through a few kilometres of forest without a weapon, or any obvious plan to get home after it got dark.
“As I said, Magic. You don’t have the arcane understanding to make a more detailed explanation worth my while.
Thanks to the insight my Mind Magic gave me, I could feel that the guy was offended by my words, which amused me even further. He didn’t have the understanding, but didn’t like getting called out for it.
“Anyway, what options do you think you have right now?” I asked, curious if this guy had considered his future or if he was foolishly reckless enough to simply jump and worry about the landing later.
“Erm,” he started, only to immediately falter, “I hoped I could get some shelter here,” he admitted after a few moments of silence, to which I only raised an eyebrow.
“And that brings us back to the question I asked you right in the beginning,” I shook my head, “What do you bring to the table, beyond the charcoal? We don’t really care for that, though if you have a talent for Alchemy, my daughter might find you useful,” I mused, and a part of me wanted to reveal Lia’s vampiric condition, just to see what this guy would do.
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“Alchemy?” he frowned, “Not sure what that is,” he admitted, the confusion allowing me to glean a few additional insights into his mind, primarily regarding his education, especially the scientific parts of it. This indicated that slipping deeper into the target’s mind was a function of association and focus. If the person was thinking about something, it was easier to access memories and thoughts associated with that subject.
“So, a complete novice, how nice,” I just shook my head, only to have one of my students step up, surprising me a little.
“Master, if you don’t want to have him hang around here, we can take him with us,” he offered, “I’m sure we can find a job he can do to earn his keep over the winter. Even if it’s only that charcoal business, though I’d think that won’t happen until spring.”
“How generous of you, Lucas,” I complimented, keeping the scorn I felt out of my voice. If Lucas, who was a very competent and fairly powerful Water Mage in his own right, wanted to offer his community and their resources up on the altar of empathy, I wasn’t about to stop him, even if I wasn’t sure it was a wise choice. Or if it would be beneficial to my own cause.
“However, I believe I will offer him shelter within my tower, at least for a few days,” I told them, deciding on the spot. I had a few ideas for which this guy might become useful, and if all else failed, I could use him to further my Mind Magic. His mind was quite nice for this, wide open and straightforward, without any obvious pitfalls or general weirdness that made me want to invent brain-bleach or something similar. The worst I had stumbled over so far were some sexual images and memories, mostly experienced through third-order associations. Sure, I hadn’t mapped out his entire mind just yet, but the longer I had, the faster I was getting there.
Interestingly, I noticed some notable differences between the memories I encountered in his mind. Some were a lot clearer and sharper than others, and it didn’t take me long to realise that the difference wasn’t just the age of the memories in question. Instead, I was almost sure that there’d be a very distinct cut-off point between the sharper and clearer memories and the older, more fragmented and somewhat faded memories. A cut-off point right at the moment of the Change, though I hadn’t been able to confirm that. Mainly because I lacked the knowledge and associations to pinpoint the time frame between memories I saw, some of the older, faded ones might have been from a week before the change, or from a year or two.
So I couldn’t positively state that the cut-off was the Change, but I could positively state that every memory I had encountered and recognised as after the change was of a clearer quality. It was an interesting datapoint that I mentally noted while trying to see if there was a progression in clarity, beyond the simple difference before and after the change. It was possible that a higher Intelligence would also increase the fidelity of one’s memories but it was difficult to tell, especially as I didn’t know if this guy had ever improved his Intelligence. Though even if he had, it wasn’t as if he could have put all that many points into the attribute, not with his pathetic level.
“That’s nice of you,” Jeff replied with a slight, confused frown on his face, maybe asking himself if my offer was too good ot be true. If my students weren’t present, I would have pushed him into accepting my offer, or simply bagged him outright for use as a test-subject, but I didn’t want to taint my relationship with my students. So, if he accepted, that would be good, and I’d be able to tell my students that he went home afterwards. If not, well, there were more than enough people in the Blessed City. One or two of them would easily find their way into my dungeons, and then I’d have all the test-subjects I could ever want.
“How many people are living here? How many are living in your community?” Jeff asked, obviously trying to make an informed decision. At least he had the brains for that, though it was amusing to see him pale when he realised that the tower was only housing three people, my daughters and me. Somehow, he lost all interest the moment I told him that, and his mind was supplying the reasons quite nicely.
Apparently, he saw me as something quite similar to the wicked witch from a fairy tale.
And, to be fair, he wasn’t that far off base with the images; I couldn’t really be mad at him. Just laugh a little, and consider what I had learned while rooting through the guy’s mind.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter that I had dithered back and forth until Jeff decided to follow Lucas to his people. There were more than enough others in the Blessed City, and I’d simply grab one or two, maybe after setting up a small, additional facility for them elsewhere. Who knew what Sunna would do if I decided to cage one of her faithful and that faithful prayed for salvation? Better to keep something like that away from my tower, just in case.
