Mind Invasion

Chapter 108: Mind Invasion

The dead boy woke up once again. Not always on the same day, sometimes even months apart, but he would eventually wake up and make his way back to the city. He saw the people there had moved since his last visit, and he was happy for them, but he knew the thing was still coming, and he had to move them all over time.

Thus, the boy set to work. He once again picked people up and brought them to the faraway place. There, the others were still waiting for them, peacefully laying on the ground. The boy thought that the way they slept looked very uncomfortable, but he wouldn't judge the people. They were all quite strange after all.

But every time the boy visited, something about the town changed. First, it grew bigger. There were more people, rather than less as he continued to move them away. Additionally, they also began to put up fences around the city, which made it a little harder to enter.

Then, on his next visit, the fences had grown taller, and the boy had to struggle even more to climb them. He could take fewer people away because of this, and that made the boy sad. He redoubled his efforts with each time the wall grew, and yet it seemed he would eventually be unable to scale the wall anymore.

In fact, that day came quite soon. After the boy slumbered only a few more times, the wall had grown so tall, he could not scale it. His hands didn't find purchase on the smooth stone, and as he tried to run against it, he was stopped. Of course, the boy was persistent, with a one-track mind he continued to run against the wall, over and over in hoped of knocking it down, but he failed.

When the day was moving towards its end, the boy was defeated, and he wailed. Slowly he trudged back towards his sleeping place, and laid down once more. The city, for once, had not lost anyone to the raging winds that sometimes came to them, and it was cause for celebration.

After all, while this was the first storm it braved, it certainly wouldn't be the last. And on that day, the city was named. Stormbraver.

(Legends: The running boy - 3)

- - - - - -

Like most people, Mercury would sleep sometimes. He didn't exactly have a lot to do and could, more or less, just spend his time waiting. Well, that sounded extremely boring, so Mercury decided to do literally anything but that.

He spent some time joining the hunting parties and went into the forest to get food, he tried his best to help Ria cook a few times, though he stopped when he realized just how annoyed she could get while hungry. Instead, he spent his time on grinding down the walls of his mana veins some more. The barrier felt thinner now, but there was still work to be done.

At night, he would usually fall into deep sleep, but occasionally awake in the field. If he ended up there, he always worked on his ihn'ar. In there, he simply felt that much more in touch with himself, which allowed him to get into meditation a lot faster, and pierce the veil then, too.

This continued for a while, until eventually, something changed. That was how it always went, after all. One night, he went to sleep, and as he would begin to dream, as usual, he felt there was a choice ahead of him. He could simply continue on to his fields, a familiar place, or he could go somewhere else.

Mercury thought for a little while. It was strange that he so suddenly got a choice on where his dreams would lead him, and it wasn't a very explicit choice either. He simply felt that he could go somewhere else, follow some other track that was now built into his mind. For a moment, he attempted to use <Appraisal> on it, but there was no reply.

Of course, being himself, there really was only one way he could go. Would he take the boring route and go back to his fields? Fuck no! New place it was!

As he made his decision, the cat was met with a little bit of resistance, like he was pushing up against something. But with a little bit of effort, Mercury soon managed to overcome that flimsy barrier, and break through to whatever new place there was to be explored.

Soon after, he woke up again, this time in a room he had never seen before. The air was quite stale, the walls made from cut stone. It felt a little suffocating, almost like Mercury was claustrophobic, but the feeling soon passed, and all that remained was a flame of curiosity within him, which he immediately channelled into actually looking around.

Inside the room, it was quite dark, the only source of light being a window, and when Mercury looked out of it, there was a dark moon with a halo of light around it hanging in the sky. It lit up the world with thin, eerie moonlight, which shone in a sterile white rather than its usual silvery glimmer.

Other than the window, the room had a little more furniture. There was a bed, which Mercury had woken up in, and a nightstand with a wilted flower on it. Above the bed a painting hung as well, except the painting that was frame was simply canvas painted entirely black. If he had to guess, Mercury might have said it was something like modern art, but even then, a black square seemed boring.

Still, it hung there, unperturbed by his thoughts. The last thing Mercury looked at in the room was a door, obviously leading somewhere else. Funnily enough, even though he was clearly inside the house, the door had a knocker on it. One of the old ones, with a heavy brass ring to slam against the door, held in the mouth of some sort of gargoyle.

The knocker was strange in another way as well though, given that it hung so low to the floor, Mercury could actually comfortably reach it with his paws. For a moment, he gave another look outside the window, staring at that strange moon, before shrugging and knocking on the door.

With a heavy thud, the brass slammed against the wooden door, cutting through the silence of the night. Mercury hadn't realized just how quiet it was, so much so that the sound hurt his ears a little, giving him a ringing in his head. It also seemed to have gotten brighter in his room. The moonlight leaking in from the window had increased slightly, painting the dust on the floor many shades of grey as Mercury waited for the door to open.

It took a little bit, and the wait was unsettling, but eventually, without any warning, the door slammed open towards the outside rapidly, causing a small gust of wind that knocked even more dust into the already stale air. With a sigh, the cat stepped outside.

For a little bit, he thought about this place. It felt very typical of a nightmare, but at the same time, it was quite different. The place felt unsettling, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up, yet at the same time, he felt so much more in control than in his nightmares. Usually he would simply be forced to deal with whatever came his way, but this time he himself was acting, so if he was honest, that already felt liberating.

Still, he decided to be a little careful as he stepped out of the room. It opened up into a long hallway, one side full of doors like the one he had just stepped from, and the other side across full of tall, arched windows, revealing the night sky. But what was strange is that on this side, the one opposite from the window he looked out of before, there was the same black moon with a white ellipse around it as on the other side.

Mercury blinked in confusion.

As his eyes closed, for a moment he felt all light in the hallway vanished, but as he opened them again, all had returned to normal. Ah, except for the fact that something else now stood in the hallway. It was a floating eye, as big as a human head, that simply stared at him.

"What're you looking at?" Mercury asked, in a way that probably sounded a little more confrontational than he wanted. But the moment he spoke, the eyeball vanished into a cloud of smoke, leaving him alone in the hallway once more.

"Weirdo," the cat muttered as he continued. He began to walk down the hallway, passing door after door, window after window, with seemingly no end. For a while, Mercury took to glancing down below the windows, in hopes of seeing a garden, but all he could see was a swampy expanse of muck that seemed rather uninviting.

Shaking his head, he walked on. He passed door after door, window after window, with seemingly no progress at all. It was quite annoying really, especially when combined with the fact that he felt watched whenever he blinked or closed his eyes.

So, since this was quite an annoying place, which seemed rather uninviting, too, Mercury decided that instead of cooperating, he would cause a little havoc. Slowly, he reached out his hand, touching it against the glass of the windows that led outside, and as he did so, he could feel it shake.

Not shake like a solid would, either, but he could feel ripples travelling across its surface like one would when touching water. This wasn't even glass at all!

As Mercury pushed his paw through the strange windows, reaching out into the strange white moonlight, he could feel something thick enveloping him, like he was already moving through mud, though as he pulled back, none of it clung to him. The atmosphere outside was still serene, the sky starless with only the strange moon, and the ground featureless except for a deep swamp.

What a boring place, Mercury thought to himself. Other than the floating eyes, it felt like nothing except him was here, and given the feeling he got as he stepped outside the window, Mercury decided that perhaps it was time to think outside the castle.

The mopaaw approached one of the strange sheets, pushing one of his front paws through. He watched a ripple travel through the glass, distorting the image of the moon, making it look even weirder, before Mercury pushed his second paw through as well. The liquid, or whatever there was outside, was so thick he could actually put weight on the appendages he had put through without even fully sinking.

With his mind made up, Mercury then pushed himself off the floor with both his back legs, and soon, his entire body had passed through the window. Almost reflexively, Mercury had closed his eyes. Of course he didn't have any, given that this was his astral body, but it was hard to get rid of such normal reflexes.

In fact, he was struggling with another very regular desire right now. The substance filling this place was so thick, Mercury couldn't breathe. For a moment, he panicked, trying to force his lungs to move as much as he could, but it just wouldn't work, but very soon <Steady Heart> kicked in. There was no reason to be afraid. He didn't need air after all.

Shaking his head a little, Mercury calmed himself down. For a moment, he almost fell into meditation, but soon called himself back out of it as he noticed he was sinking, very slowly. To resist this, he did the only thing he could think of, raising his leg higher.

And, as stupid as it was, it worked. Mercury was, in the most literal terms, walking through the air. Well, then again, he was in a dream, so the substance most certainly wasn't air, but still. He was walking in the middle of basically nothing.

From out there, the hallway he had been in looked like an almost endless tube, stretching on forever. It felt like there was almost no bit of castle other than the hallway, but Mercury could most certainly see a spire off in the distance. Except, rather than reaching it by walking down whatever nightmarish construct the inside of that stony prison had been he now had the freedom to simply walk through the sky, reaching wherever he pleased.

Now that he saw things from the outside, Mercury first decided to head upwards, so he could stand on top of the stone rather than inside it. And after only a few steps, he reached just that.

Once again, he took a look around. There was the spire in the distance, which was his goal, but he also wanted to see the moon once more. It had been in all the 'windows' before, after all, so where would it be now?

And as Mercury looked up, his heart skipped a beat. Of course, his astral body had no heart, but the metaphor still worked. Because right there, in the sky, Mercury could see hundreds of moons refracted in the strange material. It was like somewhere above him, there was a dome, in which the strange, thick liquid he was walking through shaped itself into a myriad of glass panes, each and every one of them reflecting the same moon, over and over, so that instead of just one, Mercury could see dozens of them in the sky.

Once again, Mercury blinked by reflex, like he was trying to clear his mind.

Then, a moment later, the moons in the sky blinked back.

"What are you doing in here?" a voice sounded from the sky, drenched in confusion. The voice was loud in Mercury's ears, like the very world he was in had yelled into his mind, but while it was loud, it also seemed panicked. That voice was scared of him.

"Just taking a look around," Mercury replied, forcing himself to sound as calm as possible as he took another few steps. He was walking towards the spire in the distance, and with every step he took, it felt as though the stones beyond his feet shifted to have him be closer to that goal.

"Stop! Get out of there!" the voice now yelled, the droning in Mercury's head growing even louder. But Mercury could read something from it. Like with old Dreamweaver, there was a hint of intention behind the words. Mercury read of worry, and a little fear, but behind all of that, there was not a shred of empathy. In fact, he could sense quite a bit of hostility from the voice, and a sense of duty.

He could read so much that he was more than certain that this person did not mean well at all, and was, in fact, on a job to ruin his time.

"And why the fuck would I? Are you someone I know or something?" the cat answered again. He grit his teeth, ignoring the growing headache it was giving him as he strode even further forwards, now beginning to run, even as the liquid wanted to slow him down.

"What are you even saying?! Just leave! NOW!" with a yell, the pain in Mercury's head grew overwhelming, but he didn't come this far to get thrown out by some moon-eyed motherfucker who could do nothing but talk a little loud.

Instead of listening to his instincts, he instead jumped forwards, towards the stone structure, and as his paws touched the air, it seemed as though everything around him shifted. Through his will of going forward, the stones below him lunged back, and the spire he had set as his goal was suddenly right in front of his nose.

Before the voice could even protest, Mercury slammed himself against the door, and set his first foot into the entrance, yet the moment his head passed through, he was hit with another burning wave of pain.

"KYAAAA!!" the voice screamed, the pain of it so intense in Mercury's head that it turned simply into an overbearing noise rather than any specific sound. And moments later, Mercury found himself hurtled away, not in any direction within that strange place, but rather out of it entirely, and for a moment, there was absolute stillness.

Then, Mercury opened his eyes to a familiar ceiling. He had woken up, in his body, in his bed. His heart was racing, pumping the blood through his veins. The cat took a moment to orientate himself, he was feeling very dizzy, but as his mind took over a more active duty, and <Unfatigued> started to kick in, Mercury regained his bearings.

He breathed in through his nose, and the air felt sticky and wet. His eyes soon adjusted to the darkness, letting him look at the absolutely exorbitant amount of blood staining his fur. He felt no more pain, but it seemed as though that voice had given him the nosebleed of a century, enough to turn half his sheets from white to a perfect red.

Slowly, Mercury took another breath, composing himself. What the fuck had he just seen? Why did the moon blinks at him? What was that voice, why did it not want him to enter the spire?

All those thoughts raced through him, but there was one his mind could not stop obsessing over. When he was thrown out of that place, the nothingness in between there and here, he had only seen it for an amount of time that was as close to that nothingness as it could be, and yet it was burned within his mind.

It was familiar. It was something he had almost seen before. It was the nothingness between what is, the very thing old Uunrahzil wanted him to understand. And now, having seen it with his own, nonexistent astral eyes, Mercury grinned. This was a big step forward.

- - - - - -

Within the shadows, quite a distance from the village, someone screamed. It was a scream of hot, visceral pain coursing through his veins. Pain that was scalding and all consuming, pain that came from having ones mind torn open and looked within, from a damaged astral body.

The man spit blood again and again in between bouts of vomiting. His insides were in agony, and it had taken every bit of energy he had simply to throw that invader out. There was no room for thought in his head, only for the hope of getting better as he hacked his guts out.

Minutes passed, almost turning into a full hour until the man's retching came to a close. He had exited the shadows he was hidden in, stained all of his clothes, and utterly eviscerated his own dignity. His eyes were swollen from tears around them, and even now that the worst had passed, every movement sent waves and waves of pain through his every cell.

Just how did this happen? The man was so confused. He had used his branding technique, as he was told, to keep track of the little one. The details of this mission were scarce at best, most of it secret, but he knew they were monitoring the mopaaw to hold hostage against someone important. They were going to gain so much from so little.

And yet here he was. The man looked at his status page for a moment, and it made him want to laugh and cry all at once. This little episode had drained all his mana, and more than three quarters of both his stamina and health. How did this happen, really?

Usually, his brand was so small the beast should never even have noticed it. It was uninvasive, silent, and more of a tiny thread connecting their mana. Nothing was interchanged, it was a one way street. He would simply be able to monitor the other's location, nothing else and yet this had happened.

For a moment, the man considered telling his superiors about this, but that only made his eyes grow even darker. They would scoff at him, for being harmed by such a tiny foe. How had that damned thing managed to invade his mind, when it was nigh impossible even to greater mages?

Something about this thing was off, that wasn't just a mopaaw, it was an absolute monster. The man shivered as he thought back to the pain. What would b worse, the torture he would experience for failing this mission, or the pain he would feel if something like this happened one more time. The man began to gnaw at his fingers, because for once, he seriously did not know who to be more afraid of.

His superiors, or a singular little mopaaw?