3 Chapter 3 :

Low Orbit, Maradisaè, 3rd of March 2119.

Starfort Eta, Living Quaters, Captain Wells's Room.

Time, 04:25

Commander Bentham Magnler

They continued walking in silence. Bentham fell back during this march to come up alongside Ara.

"So..." he began, unsure of what to say.

A brief silence followed.

"... what can you do with magic?" he finished.

"I don't know what you mean, anything to do with the mind really. I don't think there is anything you can't accomplish with magic. It's only a matter of your mental limits and ingenuity."

"So how exactly...?"

"Well, say I wanted to trip you up." began Ara, Magnler felt sudden worry, "I can do that in any number of ways. I can befuddle your mind to make you lose focus on what you are doing, walking, or I could bend you to my will and force you to fall, but that would be more challenging.

As for mental limits, whatever I do I must focus on, should my concentration fail the task at hand would not be accomplished. It would be stopped at whatever point I lose my focus. What's more, psyology affects the mind in strange ways, if the task I undertake is too much, it could drive me to unconciousness, or even death. So the stonger your mind, the more you can do. The Elders say I have one of the strongest minds they have ever had the privilege to train." she finished with a hint of pride.

"And what did you say about taking over my mind?" he asked tentatively.

He suddenly felt a... presence... in his mind. A vast alien intellect.

I can speak to you like this if I wanted, it said, Ara's voice bouncing around his head, but our people believe it an invasion of privacy to do it without consent.

His panic abated as the presence, what he knew now as Ara's mind, withdrew. Only then did he notice he'd stopped walking, and was several meters behind Ara, and several of his crewmates were curiously looking over his shoulder to know why they'd stopped. He hastily resumed walking.

He made a few long strides and caught up with the Alfan woman. They resumed their conversation, Ara describing the rules behind magic and her personnal experience passionnately. Bentham listened quietly, drinking in the information.

It seemed like magic was very complex. It was apparently based on a system of mental acuity and concentration. The more psyonic focus you could achieve, the more potent the effects you could manifest.

Psyonics could therefore achieve many things with live creatures. Including plants, by feeding them energy and changing their thoughts. As such things like controlling herds of animans was trivial as the animals understood where to go and when.

Strong Psyonics could even achieve this effect with unfocused and unintelligent sentient species. But it was extraordinarily difficult and impractical.

The Psyonic's two most general ways of achieving something are thus manipulation and forcing, with the first being the subtle influencing of decisions or thoughts while the latter focuses on breaking your opponent's mental barriers and immobilising his thoughts to then force upon him your will.