The Mind and An Oath

Chapter 25 –

"Telepathy works almost entirely one way. All people exist in two places. The first is the physical world or 'normal world' and the second is the mental space of the Astral Plane. Any given person's thoughts, memories, emotions, and other mental activity all exist in this ethereal plane of existence. Think of it as a globally interconnected telephone array, with a download, that is depositing new information into the "cloud" of the Astral Plane, and an upload, that is information being transmitted to your real-world body." The ancient one explained.

"What I will be doing, is forcefully injecting a tremendously large amount of psionic energy right in your mind, and connecting you to the astral plane. With this, I should form a connection for you to access the astral plane, and your mind defense will naturally use a lot of the excess energies to strengthen itself. What I need from you, is to reach out and grasp the psionic energy and link it to your defense, creating a one-way channel for you to be able to read the thoughts of those around you. Eventually, when you have sufficient control over the absurdly large amount of psionic energy that you possess, you should be able to manipulate them and create mental illusions, and based on your imagination bend the astral plane itself to your whim. Are you ready?" She continued.

Nathan took a deep calming breath, straightened his back and looked into the eyes of the Ancient One, and nodded in assent.

"Very well," She said, as she peered into his eyes and sent forth a massive barrage of mental probes using her psionic energy. The probe slammed into his mental defense which did not budge despite the tremendous force of the probe. Nathan compared it to the time he had walked past the weak compulsion charm at the old witch's home near the abode, and he felt nothing more than a significant presence.

"Reach out Nathan, you will have to manipulate the psionic energy and grasp my mind probe." She said, and Nathan tried manipulating the outer layer of his mental defense. Willing his magic to manipulate the psionic energy, Nathan created a small probe of his own which he used to initiate contact with the Ancient One's mind probe.

As soon as he came into contact with her probe, she pulled him and his astral form out and brought him into the astral plane. Nathan looked around the room, and he noticed that his body was still seat on the Zafu opposite the Ancient One, while his spirit was floating freely in the spirit realm. The Ancient One herself was in her own astral form floating beside him, but she was looking curiously at him.

"Interesting." She said aloud. "I had a direct connection to your psionic energy, yet I wasn't able to get even a sense of your emotions. You have a nigh impenetrable mind, Nathan. Though, now that you have gotten a sense of how to access this dimension, you should be able to replicate the effect using Astral Projection. And you should be able to read the minds of people around you. Can you tell me what my surface thoughts are?"

Nathan nodded and focused on her Astral form, and sent forth a strong psionic probe of his own towards the form, now that he could physically see the psionic energy, it had become very easy to manipulate. The energy reached the astral form, and Nathan got a vague interpretation of 'Timely Comics' Fabulous Five series' fifth issue'.

"You're thinking about the comic you were reading?" Nathan queried as he tilted his head in his astral form.

The ancient one's eyes twinkled as she said "Well, that is what I let you glean, yes. But, for your first effort, I would call it a mild success." With that she reprojected her astral form back into her body, and kept looking in the direction of where Nathan was still lingering. She said, "Aren't you going to rejoin me in the mortal world?"

Nathan awkwardly floated back into his body, and he looked back at the ancient one who nodded positively. "Crude, but it worked. Now, I want you to send just psionic energy my way and read my thoughts again, do not enter the astral plane." She instructed.

Nathan nodded and tried to replicate the mind probe he had produced in the astral plane, astonishingly he sent forth a much more powerful mental probe than he intended. The ancient one was bombarded with an onslaught of magical psionic energy, and Nathan gleaned at least more than half of the comic series in continuation that she had been reading.

The ancient one nodded smiling slightly, "You have a large amount of psionic energy that is used to protect your mind, and at the same time, a large amount of psionic energy to create mental attacks. I expected that you would have no control over the energy outside of the astral plane. Improve that control, and your control over accessing the astral plane will increase, and you will be able to read the minds of multiple people at once. For your home assignment, I want you to work with Jolene and gain significant control over that energy. Now, for the second to last lesson of the day, I want you to push my astral form, my soul, out of my body."

Nathan hesitated before saying "I am worried that I will do something wrong. I am quite literally playing with your soul here."

The Ancient One smiled at him and said "There is nothing to be worried about, if I couldn't handle a simple soul attack, I wouldn't be the sorcerer supreme. Now, Project my soul into the astral plane"

Nathan steeled himself, prepared a psionic probe, and sent it towards The Ancient One. The probe battered her defenses and Nathan forcefully tried to connect to her psionic energy, yet she was being elusive in her defenses. Nathan fought to grasp her mental image, yet she avoided all attacks.

"As you can see, I am very capable of defending myself, now I will give you an opening to latch onto. Grasp it and project my soul out of my body" With that she stopped struggling and sent forth a small probe of her own to which Nathan immediately sent his Psionic energy and latched onto.

He used the tether of Psionic energy that he created and yanked her soul out of her body, using all the strength he could muster. The Ancient One's Astral form staggered out of her body and she had to control her form and float mid-air to prevent her from tumbling over.

"Crude yet again, but it worked. Now, you know how to practically project other people into the Astral Plane, your job is to learn control. The motion should be fluid, physical contact in the real world alongside eye contact will make the job tremendously simpler. Now for your final lesson, the Astral Plane is made of Ectoplasm, the same substance that the ghosts and spirits that you would see at Hogwarts. Your astral form, your soul is also made of the same substance. And as you can see, it is very vulnerable. Remember Nathan, you do not want to harm this aspect of your being. One of the most heinous things one can do to themselves is damage their soul. Some spells have a significant strain on the soul itself, using it to feed the excess energy required to perform certain tasks. To protect your soul, we manipulate our segment of the astral plane and form what is commonly misrepresented as a mindscape. All mental battles are a proponent of wills. Once you have significant control over your psionic energy, you should be able to form your own defenses for the soul. What I did previously was just avoid physical attacks that were very visible to me, but what if the psionic energy itself was invisible to your eyes, as well as your senses?" Saying that she pushed Nathan's astral projection quite a distance outside of the room they were in, and made him float right on top of the waterfall which was visible from her room.

"Or what if I used the Psionic energy to cast an illusion and hide my soul here?" Saying that the entire waterfall vanished and was replaced by an accurate depiction of Hogwarts castle. "You can still listen to the sounds of the waterfall, which implies the castle isn't here in reality, but what if I make you believe that the castle is here, sound, smell, visuals, everything?" And the sound of the waterfall vanished replacing itself with what Nathan remembered to be the exact feeling he had when he first laid eyes on Hogwarts castle.

And just like they had arrived, the castle vanished again and the waterfall returned, and the ancient one was watching Nathan's incredulous face smiling with mischief. "That will only be possible once you gain control over your psionic energy Nathan, lucky for you it shouldn't be very difficult as Psionic energy and the magic you are so familiar with have very close frequencies. Manipulating it to do your bidding will not be a tall task."

Nathan gulped as his mind caught up to the miasma of senses that it went through and he asked "How do you fight that? I mean, you practically rewrote reality there, what does one need to do to fight that?"

The ancient one smiled hearing the question and replied "As I said, the entire thing was an illusion, and with illusions, it's always a battle of wills. All you need to do is overpower my illusion and rewrite the astral plane to suit your needs. For all other observers in the astral plane, we were just two figures who momentarily lost connection to reality as a whole. They would only see us staring into the eyes of each other, but in essence, we have traveled deeper into the astral dimension and entered each other's soulscapes. The only power there is will, and the abundance of psionic energy, of which you have an absurd amount."

Saying that she forced Nathan's astral form back into his body, and gasped for air.

She let him stew on his thoughts for a moment and said "That concludes your final lesson, as I said before, your home assignment for this week will be to gain significant control over your psionic energy, and then once you have a good control, I want you to develop a telepathic field using the psionic energy. I want you to be able to regulate and read the minds of people in whatsoever direction they are from your position, for up to 500 meters. We will work upward from there. My advice would be to talk a walk through a busy street and read the surface thoughts of people around you, till you are able to do so effortlessly without having to face the person."

Nathan stood as he nodded to her. He bowed in thanks and said "Thank you, Ancient One."

"Now run along, I will get back to my studies." She said floating the tome she had been reading to her, and Nathan could still see the title 'Fabulous Five' from the side. He shook his head smiling a little, and left as saying "Once you're done with that, may I borrow it?"

"I will send it through Edna, don't worry." She replied, dismissing him from her room.

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

Sitting aboard the Hogwarts express, Nathan watched as the scenery went by in his window. He was sitting with his friends Jeremy, Carlisle, and Mary-Anne, as he pondered over the Horcrux that was in his luggage. He wanted to learn more about the soul using the piece of trapped soul in the locket. He had spent all of the rest of summer with his mum gaining significant control over his psionic energies. He could form rudimentary illusions in the soulscape, and he didn't want to risk exposing himself to the Horcrux before he had good control over that aspect of the Astral Plane.

He had entertained the idea of informing the Ancient One of Voldemort's continued existence and his Horcruxes but had decided that he would do so, if the situation went out of hand. Voldemort wasn't an existence-level threat, and the Ancient One battled those on a weekly basis. Voldemort wouldn't make a blip on her radar. Just like she wouldn't care if the king of Latveria was terrorizing the Romani Population. Voldemort was a political threat in the magical world, and he would treat him as such.

"You've been awfully quiet buddy. Did Nepal suck out all the joy in your soul or what?" Jeremy asked, breaking him out of his musings.

Nathan looked at his friends in the compartment and said "No, quite the contrary in fact. Nepal taught me a lot about philosophy and perspectives actually. I realized that I am too weak and small to be actually capable to contend with things that are out there."

"You are not making any sense," Jeremy said. "It's not like you're going to fight some war or something, why are you being so morose all of a sudden."

He could see Carlisle and Mary Anne nod at his side. "Yeah, tell us the real reason you're being so quiet," Carlisle added.

Nathan sighed as looked at them all. He finally relented "Did you read about the Kingdom of Latveria? The Romani exile?"

They were confused by his change of topic, and he elaborated "I was drawing parallels between the non-magical world and the magical one. We muggle-borns and half-bloods are nothing better than second-class citizens. If the previous dark lord had succeeded, we would have had a fate much worse than the Romani's. At least they got exiled from their country, if The Dark Lord had succeeded, we would all have been killed, no questions asked. I want to change that from ever happening again, ever being a possibility again. And I realized that to do so, I will need to significantly get more powerful. Both magically, physically as well as politically."

His passionate declaration was met with total silence in the compartment. Before Jeremy looked straight in his eyes and said "If you want to change the world, Nathan. Then I will be there with you every step of the way. It's time we take matters into our own hands if politicians don't want to do it for us."

Carlisle nodded and said "I have read that Professor Dumbledore leads the light faction in the wizengamot, funny thing is, his entire faction is also comprised entirely of Purebloods. If you want to bring change here, I will join you and help you in every way I can. And leaving muggle-borns aside, Goblins, Dwarves, the fae, Elves, etc have basically been made into subservient species. Some of them are locked away in certain regions like the Centaurs in the forbidden forests."

Mary Anne reiterated and added, "You have my support as well. I also wanted to help the Romani people, and not just them, Carlisle's aunt, who's basically my idol, has been trying to gain support for Symkaria, Latveria, and so many other places, but she has been thwarted every step of the way. Once we bring change here, with magic we should be able to do a lot of good around the world."

Nathan felt immense gratitude for his friend's support as tears welled up in his eyes. He pulled a chocolate bar from his pocket and shared pieces with his friends, He said "Thank you!"

"To changing the world, one step at a time!" He toasted the chocolate piece.

They all laughed and toasted the chocolate with him.

**********

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