The moment the magic keeping the guy I had acquired broke, I reached out with my Blood Magic and struck. I had no desire to have the guy try to escape, fight back or, really, do anything but lie quietly on the slab of stone I had pulled from the ground to place him on. I didn’t want to risk breaking his mind, so I had to let him wake up, but his body? That was an entirely different aspect of his being, one my Blood Magic could manipulate easily. In this case, this meant I could paralyse him from the neck down, preventing any attempts at escape or resistance.
For the first few seconds after waking up, the guy was simply muttering and growling, still half asleep, his mind unable to cope with the reality around him. Or maybe unwilling to recognise it in the first place. As I did not need light, the cave was pitch black; a human wouldn’t be able to see what was right in front of them. The guy might even be unable to visually tell whether his eyes were open or closed.
His confusion didn’t last, and his mind slowly began to make sense of the situation. It was pretty fascinating to observe the changes in his mind. At first, there was complete confusion, his mind unable to truly tell the difference between the reality he was in and the nightmare he had been trapped in just moments before. Then, he began to recognise reality, though that didn’t completely cure him of his confusion; it only caused it to worsen, especially when he started to put together his memories. His focus was so strong that I could easily follow along as he went back to earlier in the morning, when he had woken up in the Blessed City, had breakfast, and headed out into the forest. Only for his memories to cut off suddenly, only to resume in his current predicament.
That’s when the guy started to freak out, especially when his body didn’t respond to his mind’s command. It was bad enough that I had to pull back a little and even use my Blood Magic to keep his heart stable as a massive dose of adrenaline flooded his system, only to do absolutely nothing. I wasn’t sure if my intervention kept him alive, but his body was doing its level best to move, no matter the cost. It was as if his mind was deep enough in a fight-or-flight response that it was trying to get the body to move, even if it meant sacrificing that very body.
Luckily, the panic-fueled rush didn’t last long, and my Blood Magic was sufficient to keep his body from self-destructing in the process. It was interesting to see the guy pant as if he had just run a marathon, even though the only physical feats he had managed were a few gasps and strangled calls for help, driven by desperate panic.
Now, he was starting to whimper, still unable to draw a full breath thanks to his desperate panting, making me almost feel bad for his state. That lasted until I heard a quiet, desperate prayer, muttered with what little breath he had and felt a tiny amount of Astral Power leave him. It was almost imperceivable, I only noticed because I had been paying close attention to his body, mind and soul, but it was there. And once I realised its existence, I reached out, using a bastardisation of my Blood Magic, and wrapped the traces into my own power and smothered it. The power never left the cave I had placed the guy in. Instead, I immediately drowned it in the Astral River, quickly reducing it to nothing but background noise.
I couldn’t help but grin afterwards. Unless I was speculating completely off-base, this wasn’t just words he had said, but an actual prayer, an attempt to reach the divine. However, it looked like the guy had already prayed in the morning, spending the vast majority of his Astral Power, leaving him with only a few dregs he had regenerated since. Thus, the prayer might have carried his desperation, and would probably have reached Sunna even with the little power he had left, but it was somewhat easy to squash. Curiously, moments after that prayer, the guy went into an even deeper panic than he had before.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
A part of me was tempted to speak to the guy, to intimidate him or maybe try to crush his hopes by telling him that his goddess couldn’t hear him, or that she had forsaken him. It would be so easy, but I didn’t want him to know about my presence. I just wanted him to keep freaking out. In his panicked state, it was almost as if his mind was screaming out, trying to attract the attention of anyone who might be able to help, making it fascinatingly easy to read his thoughts.
Which was exactly what I did, poking and prodding his mind, even as he kept whimpering. He occasionally managed to draw a full breath and call out for help, but the magic I had woven throughout the cave smothered the attempts, making the darkness around him feel even more oppressive.
That aspect was worth studying in its own right, the way the magic around him and the entire ambience were influencing his mind. I wondered which aspects were the most impactful. Was it the simple, physical darkness that made him so utterly uncomfortable? Was it the paralysis that kept his body still, that prevented him from acting and took away almost all his agency, that made him panic as severely as he did? Or did the magic saturating the air play a part, giving the darkness a supernatural quality, as it smothered all sound and scent, keeping him in almost complete sensory deprivation.
Even now, after almost an hour, the guy remained in a state of panic. He occasionally calmed a little, but it never lasted. As soon as the panic faded, his mind seemed to come up with yet another theory of what might be going on, and the panic flared up again, leaving him in a vicious cycle, unable to truly think, his mind slowly reducing him to an animalistic state.
A little later, he tried to pray once again, only for me to squash the power he sent out once more, and again, he went into a panic attack. This time, I started to dig, trying to figure out the cause of his panic attack and look for associations.
It didn’t take long for me to notice other prayers in his memories and realise that each and every time he prayed to Sunna, there had been a reaction. Nothing big, just a faint sensation of warm sunlight caressing his skin, but that reaction was missing in my cave. All he got was the complete and perfect darkness, pressing in on him, driving home that he was beyond the light of his goddess. It wasn’t actually true, but it would remain true as long as I was next to him and able to overpower the Astral Power he emitted while praying and drown it in the Astral River. Without Astral Power, Sunna was merely a word, and it looked like even a deity was unable to police the world for every mention of their name. They might notice if it was someone like Luna, with her personal and direct connection to Lady Hecate, or Lorgar for Sunna. But some random person I had just picked up? Well, the guy was just unfortunate.
Not that I would ever take delight in his misfortune, I simply read the thoughts his panicked mind was emitting, happy about the experience I was getting. The longer I experimented, the more I kept pushing and prodding his mind, the easier it was to find specific memories, especially when the barely coherent screaming in his mind had already associations with those memories.
The only remaining issue was the question of his more essential experiences. Those the system deemed worthy of becoming EXP. The experiences that were impactful enough to remain within his soul, instead of becoming part of his mind.
For a moment, I considered the significance of that. People had always claimed that murder left a mark on the soul, or expanded the saying that killing did. Given that the killing of any foe significant enough to be a challenge granted EXP, did that mean anything? Or was it just a coincidence, or maybe nothing but an odd twist of fate?
Shaking my head, I sat back, using a bit of Mind Magic to finally calm my test subject, unwilling to let his racing and raging mind distract me from my purpose. It was harder than expected to put him back to sleep, but, at the end of the day, no matter how unwilling the mind was, it couldn’t resist my control of his body. Eventually, lack of oxygen meant he fell unconscious; there was no way around that.
And with him knocked out, I could start working on his soul.
