The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 83

Part 13

“He was an interesting research subject for a few hours after I first got him. I’ve seen a great many psionic attacks, but I’ve never seen a mind obliterated as thoroughly as his was without affecting the health of the rest of his body. His brain was not harmed, it was erased, and it was done with a unique and ground-breaking psionic attack. It was quite useful to study the results. I’ve considered how useful it would be to be able to erase the mind of a demon and replace it with one of our own design. I can think of no more effective technique for turning them to spying, sabotaging, and even counter-attacking for us.”

“Eww.” Helemia went, and wrinkled her nose. “I haven’t thought about Vanakit in a long time.”

“Oh, a very long time indeed.” Quewanak teased.

“A hundred and twenty million years old, and that’s the best joke you’ve got?” Helemia retorted. “Anyway, it bothers me that he’s just… stored, like a thing. It doesn’t seem right.

“So I think I should fix him.” she decided, and Summoned him with a slight gesture.

“That’s creepy.” Valentia said as she considered the vegetative blank stare of the naked Sylvan who now floated before them. “At least put some clothes on him.”

Helemia did, casting an illusory brown tunic on the limp body with only a moment’s distraction from the spell she and Reggie were designing.

“Did you know where he was?” Bezedil inquired, curious but unable to follow what she was doing. “Or did you search for him, or have Quewanak tell you where he was stored? I didn’t detect you asking, and I’m a bit curious.”

“She’s just aware of him.” Reggie stated. “Her awareness of him was pretty acute when she wiped his mind, and she’s a good enough psionic that she’ll always know where he is if she wants to, even with no mind inside him to keep track of. The uniqueness of his nervous system is enough for her to find his psionic aura.

“And to answer your next question, right now she’s designing an automated Reading that’ll Read her and me and everyone else here including Quewanak for everything that anyone ever knew or experienced of Vanakit Lamitkeze, and then it’ll consolidate all that together to try to recreate his mind, then she’ll try to put it back into him. I’m helping her of course, because I can’t help it. I couldn’t not help her unless I put a lot of effort into blocking her, but she doesn’t really need it.”

“Wow, that’s really very good.” Mark marveled as he psionicly observed what they were doing. “And it’ll be an incredibly useful addition to the Resurrection spell.” he privately added to his family. “If it works good enough, we might not have to be Linked with someone to Resurrect them. We might be able to gather enough information about them from everyone that knew them with this.”

“It worked.” Helemia declared with her eyes closed as she considered her results. “But now that I’ve got a chance to consider him again, I realize how much I dislike him. Even among Sylvan, Vanakit Lamitkeze was a very unpleasant person. I think I’ll dilute this into a general Reading of every male Sylvan here. And make a few more minor changes too...”

She fell silent for half a minute as she worked, while those around her who had the skills tried to follow what she was doing.

“There. Now to put it in him… Hm. This is going to be a lot trickier than I thought.

“Father, without actually doing it, can you show me how you’d do it?”

“Wow. This is a lot of work.” Mark said as he considered what she was showing him. “Do me a favor; while I’m working on how to give this to him without screwing it up, get a consultation from Quewanak, Povon, Hilsith, Equemev, Yazadril, and at least three of these senior Sylvan, as to whether or not the amalgamation you’ve made of Vanakit and six thousand other Sylvan is going to be able to function as a complete and healthy mind. No one’s ever done this before, and I don’t want to take part in creating a monstrosity.”

“All right, here it is.” Helemia said as she cast a ball of light that roiled with subtle and complex color patterns. “A complete mind maintained as an energy field, exactly as it’ll be when it’s being maintained by his brain. Now you can just take a regular Reading of it.”

“Sweet missing gods!” Yazadril exclaimed. “I haven’t been this impressed since Mark altered the curse and saved Dalia! This is groundbreaking work!”

“Thanks.” Helemia acknowledged, her face set in concentration on the spells she was holding. “Half the credit goes to Six, of course. He may not have had much choice about it, but he still did half the work.”

“Six?” one of the Sylvan asked.

“Governor Prince Markhan Reginus Longstrider the Sixth.” Valentia giggled, indicating him with a thumb.

“What do they mean about him having to help her?” the Sylvan pressed as he stared at the fascinating ball of light.

“They’re twins, and became psionic when they Linked each other in the womb, about two-thirds of the way through their gestation.” Valentia replied. “They can’t turn off or block their Link with each other, but if they put some effort into it, they can block any information or energy from passing over it. The rest of the time they share a lot of each other’s mental resources, and they have complete access to each other’s memories and experiences. They each feel like they have their own mind and they have functioning individual personalities, even though in reality there’s only one mind between them, or maybe there’s three; hers, his, and the one they share. I get a little boggled when I think about it too much.”

“That’s why we don’t think about it too much.” Reggie chuckled. “It works so we just accept it. If we pick at it too much it might not work as good.”

Suddenly he turned to Quewanak. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m hiding what’s happening here from everyone except the senior leaders of both communities.” the dragon flatly stated. “I’ve erased the memories of everyone else here concerning everything we’ve discussed since Malatik Saputebome approached Helemia and told her that she’d killed him. I’ve supplied them all with false memories and continuing false perceptions of what we’re talking about now, and none of them perceive the Mind Field or the body of Vanakit Lamitkeze.”

“Why?” Dolimatbene asked.

“The implications of what these children have done are beyond profound, and these techniques will be considered to be matters of utmost military secrecy, at least until they can be discussed in a closed session of The Military Council of The Just Alliance. I expect that body to rule that they be kept secret at least until the demons are dealt with, and perhaps beyond that.

“I do this by divine prerogative, as Draconian God of Dreaming. A status which you will also keep confidential.

“Consider that with variations of what these four have done… what these fifteen have done now that they’ve all contributed something to the spells… Anyway, now that it’s stabilized, with variations of this spell skilled mortals could cast false minds to fool psionic searches, they could erase a person’s mind and replace it with an altered version or a completely artificial construct, they could duplicate a person’s mind and place it in another person or in a Simulacrum in order to make it seem like the first person was in another place, doing things that they were not doing. These spells affect fundamental issues of individuality, and there’s no end to the mischief that could be done with them, while I can see very few beneficial uses for the techniques.

“Until now, only the gods could do such things, and they haven’t been able to give such divine abilities to mortals. But with this, any mortal with sufficient skill and power could do those things, and there are thousands of such mortals.”

“Well one benefit would be to fix Vanakit Lamitkeze!” Dolimatbene insisted as she pointed at the limp and blank figure. “He may have been a shit, but he didn’t deserve that! Kill him or fix him, but don’t just leave him as a living corpse like that! It’s bloody horrible and insulting to Sylvan in general! How would you like to see a dragon that you knew reduced to live meat like that?!”

“That’s a good point.” Quewanak admitted.