Bog Standard Isekai

Book 3. Chapter 54

“You’re spending too much time on [Illusionist] Skills. I’ve already told you that those are unnecessary. You have no future in illusions. Focus on my lessons instead,” Aberfa said.

They were again walking by the seashore near Alhaedra, their steps making the smooth stones of the beach rattle. She loved it here and wore an expression of complete serenity on her face, even after Brin told her he was cutting her off.

“Did you hear me? Hogg says this is our last lesson. We’re cutting you off for two weeks. Today is our last lesson for a while,” said Brin.

“This is how you repay me for betraying my nation on your behalf? I led you to that safehouse,” said Aberfa.

“You warned the [Witch] ahead of time. Now I have a new enemy in the world, and I have no idea where she is or even who,” said Brin.

Aberfa’s eyebrow twitched, but otherwise her face was expressionless. From his time with her, he’d learned to understand that she was intensely furious and taking great pains not to let it show.

That… didn’t feel right. He decided to press a little.

“Look, it was fair play and Hogg knows that. You never specifically said you wouldn’t warn her. He’s just mad that you fooled him. He thinks he’s too smart for that,” said Brin.

Aberfa’s expression didn’t change, and suddenly Brin understood. There was a power in submission, and ever since he’d started accepting her as his mother, he’d gotten an insight into what she was thinking, even when she didn’t want him to.

Normally she would be gloating right now. She was upset because she couldn’t actually gloat. Because she hadn’t actually been the one to tip off the [Witch]. Someone else had.

“This game of back and forth messages grows tiresome. Tell your Hogg this: that in our next lesson I will reveal one of Arcaena’s most closely guarded secrets. This secret is a matter of national security to Arcaena and of great personal value to you. I will only reveal this secret tomorrow night, however. If you use those enchantments for even one night, for even one hour, then I will take this knowledge to my grave.”

“Why not tonight?” asked Brin.

Aberfa flicked his ear. “Because tonight we must speak of other things. Tell me of your battle with the Wisp.”

Brin recited the tale, going over the fight, and speaking in detail about what he’d learned about the Wisp through the Wyrd and what his own arguments had been.

“Good. You have no doubt spent some time thinking about your own arguments and formulating better ones,” he heard in her voice that she didn’t actually think that was the case, and she’d be right.

She was trailing behind him as they walked along the shore, and he didn’t turn around to see if she was watching them.

He liked it here. He enjoyed the feeling of the smooth stones on his feet and the occasional touch of the gentle lapping waves. As soon as he’d thought it would be better without shoes, his shoes had disappeared. He could change the dream in minor ways, but it was easier when he wasn’t trying to do it.

“There are two kinds of monsters. Those who fell from something greater, and those whose very creation was an act of rebellion against the world,” said Aberfa.

“Seems like there would be a lot of overlap between those two,” said Brin.

He immediately stepped on a rusty nail that hadn’t been there before. It went straight through his foot to burst out the top. He yelped and tripped into the water, covering himself with mud.

“Don’t play rhetorical games with me. I’m not interested.” She waved her hand, and the wound and nail disappeared. He was still soaking wet and covered with mud, though, and now a cold breeze was blowing. “Stand up.”

Brin stood and started walking quickly to burn off his anger, though since this was a dream she wouldn’t have to adjust her own pace to keep up.

He heard splashing now and again from behind him as she leaned down to toy with the water. A reminder that she could keep up even if she was walking slower than him. She could keep up even when she wasn’t walking at all.

“As I was saying. The Wisp is a rebellion. Many creatures are created by [Witches] for good and ill, but the ones that last, that reproduce and grow, are the ones who are the most rebellious. Wisps are such a case. They can grow quite powerful, and they’re so old that we don’t even remember the [Witch] who first made them. They are a rebellion against light. Against the metaphorical concept of light. We speak of light as illumination, as enlightenment. Light clears things up, reveals the truth, removes fear, purifies and uplifts. The Wisp uses light to confuse and manipulate, to deceive, and eventually, to kill. If you face one again, keep present in your mind that light is meant to–”

The dream lurched, and he felt a sudden instinctual panic surging up from the entire world at once. He turned to see Aberfa dash away from the water, chest heaving.

For the first time, he saw fear in her eyes.

“Did you… Don’t lie to me, Aberthol. Did–? Do you know why I’m upset?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Brin.

The dream ended, and he sunk into complete unconsciousness. It ended, but not for very long. When he came back into Aberfa’s dream, they were in a graveyard.

There was an expression of intense relief on her face. “Nevermind. Let’s move on.”

Brin nodded. “Fine.”

Of course, on the inside his mind was buzzing. She’d collapsed the dream to put him in a deeper sleep, the kind of sleep that she used to read his memories. Hogg would wake him up if he noticed her doing that, but she’d only done it for a few seconds, too short a time for Hogg to notice. Actually, she might’ve been doing that this whole time and he wouldn’t have known. That was the bad news.

The good news was that something had happened, somehow she had revealed a weakness. Some secret that she didn’t want him to see. He’d been turned the other direction, so he hadn’t seen whatever it was that she’d accidentally let slip into the dream. She’d read his mind, and seen that he hadn’t seen.

He’d figure it out. But not now. He couldn’t let her know he was on her trail. He needed to stop thinking about it.

The good thing about Mental Control was that it actually let him control himself mentally. If he didn’t want to think about something, he wouldn’t. He’d slipped up with Hogg and the familiar once, but he wouldn’t mess up again.

He focused on Aberfa as she spoke, “The other kind of monsters are the fallen. They are less than they were before. Often the reason they are allowed to continue in petty evil is in remembrance of the great good they did before their fall. Think of a great king who reaches senility. Now he beats his maids and demeans his soldiers and lays in a bed all day which stinks of incontinence. No one will intervene, remembering the lands he conquered and the justice he upheld.

“The most common example of the fallen monster is the undead. Zombies, wights, and vampires, to name a few.”

A crowd of zombies appeared around them, shambling forward in the moonlit graveyard, though neither Brin nor Aberfa showed any fear. They stumbled to a stop at an appropriately respectful distance.

“The people are dead. The only thing useful about them is the authority that remains upon their bodies that gives access to the power granted by the System. Everything else must be imbued by the necromancer who raises them. Instinct, purpose, even locomotion.”

She waved her hands and stripped away the skin of the zombie nearest them. The exposed organs stayed in place, and Brin could see stitch marks rising up and down the lungs and heart. The intestines had been cleared away.

“A skilled necromancer will seek to repurpose whatever organs remain. A living body no longer, but still a biological machine. Doing this will allow the undead to keep more of its original strength, needing less power from the necromancer at the time of its awakening. This is why some undead still bleed, and why they often show so little sign of decomposition.”

“Those look like the undead Siphani used. But not all of them are like that?” Brin asked. Aberfa rarely gave such straightforward lessons. Clearly she was trying to distract him from what had happened earlier, and he was happy to be distracted. This was something he’d been wondering for a while.

“No. You’ve seen this.” She flicked her wrist and two more undead appeared. From the left, a disgusting rotting corpse, oozing decomposing fluids and smelling like actual death. It was a lot like Awnadil’s undead had been. From the other side, a walking skeleton, some disconnected bones simply floating in the air.

“I’ve seen undead like the one on the left. Never the skeleton on the right,” said Brin.

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“The concept is the same. Some [Witches] prefer the shock value of undead, and despise the weakness of relying on biological processes. A greater investment of power at the beginning yields a servant with fewer weaknesses. But these are fallen even further than the first undead, do you see? Fallen doesn’t mean weaker. It means lesser. They are less than human.”

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“Some undead have souls, the souls of their original bodies. Do all of them?” asked Brin. He thought he kind of knew the answer to this, but wanted to know what she’d say.

“No,” said Aberfa. “The soul remains with the dead body for a time and rests before moving on. If the body can be captured and reanimated quickly enough the process will be much easier and the undead will be much stronger and capable of an autonomy that other undead lack. Still, any body can be useful. Ancient Nhamanshal used [Necromancers] to remove the souls of the deceased, helping them move on into the afterlife, and then warded the bodies against further tampering. They supposed that this would render the corpses safe, but Arcaena has devised a method to reanimate even these, and soon all the world will tremble at her might.”

She hopped on top of a gravestone to gaze down at him imperiously.

“For someone who betrayed Arcaena, you’re more than happy to hold the bag for her,” said Brin.

“Don’t remind me,” said Aberfa, looking downcast.

Brin decided to move this back to safer territory. “Vampires would probably tell you that they’re exalted. They’re stronger than humans; even Hogg says so. He told me that I should never face a vampire that’s not at least ten levels lower than myself, and I have a record of punching above my weight class.”

As if summoned by his words, the ground in front of a tombstone erupted and a creature with pale white skin climbed from the ground.

Brin had heard that vampires favored fine and elegant clothing, but this man still wore the ragged remains of the clothes he’d died in. Even so, there was an unmistakable nobility about him. He stood with regal yet predatory grace, and met Brin’s eyes with complete confidence. His mouth was closed so his fangs weren’t visible, but there was still an otherworldly quality about him that couldn’t be missed. This thing wasn’t human.

Aberfa stepped to the vampire, stroking his toned stomach, letting her hand linger. “Many of his organs retain their original purpose. His blood is red and clean. To some, it might be difficult to find the difference between him and a living person. He didn’t die first, then reanimate. He was transformed directly from living flesh to undeath. He fell less far than others, but he still fell. His body is only playacting its old functions. He still remembers his instinctual urges towards warmth, food, water, and reproduction, but he needs none of it so nothing can satisfy. Only the desire for blood is real. It is a tortured existence.

“If vampires are the strongest undead, then it is because they are the gentlest undead. They have no need to kill their victims for sustenance, so they can remain for many years without being discovered if they are careful.”

“In that case, kukubarus are even gentler,” said Brin.

Aberfa snickered, then when she looked and saw he was serious she burst out laughing. It wasn’t derisive, but full of joy and amusement. She wiped a tear away from her eye and said, “I needed that.”

Brin had another question, one he wasn't sure if he should ask. He wasn't sure if he wanted an answer, or if the lies that Aberfa would inevitably mix in would be worse than not knowing anything at all. But she was in a generous mood, and he might not get this chance again.

He asked, "I've been thinking about what you said about Wisps. How they're evil because–"

"I never called them evil," she interjected.

"What I mean is that Wisps are a lot like [Illusionists]. Is [Illusionist] an evil Class? Are all rare Classes evil?"

"Close. No Classes are evil. Some are irregular. Some are antisocial. But all of them fill a need, and all of them are a test."

"How does [Illusionist] change my personality?" asked Brin.

She shook her head. "I keep telling you, [Illusionist] is not your future."

"But it's my present, and I need to know. Please?"

She met his eyes, and her features softened. "You will obscure things for no reason. You will love lies more than truth."

"What? But Hogg doesn't–"

"Hogg had decades to overcome his Class. And when you found him he had few friends and no family."

Brin blinked in surprise, but before he could ask a follow-up she continued.

"[Glassbound] grounds you somewhat. Keep hold of glass. It will protect you from the worst kind of lies."

Brin stood in silence for a moment, watching the vampire who'd stood watching this entire affair, cold and impassive. "The worst kind of lies are the ones you tell yourself."

"This is so."

Neither of them spoke after that.

The dream ended and Brin fell further into sleep until Hogg shook him awake. Brin groaned and grabbed the warded blanket from beside him intending to go back to sleep with his anti-Aberfa protections in place, but then remembered what had happened and sat up.

"So what'd she say?" asked Hogg.

"I think we have a breakthrough," said Brin.

"Why? What is it?" asked Hogg.

"I'm not sure. I need a minute to look through my memories." Brin looked around at the sleeping camp and winced at the fact that yet again he'd forgotten to keep his voice down when everyone was sleeping.

He whispered, "Have you just been staying up all night watching me sleep? When do you sleep?"

"You want to talk about this now? I'm getting plenty of sleep," said Hogg. "Now what did you figure out?"

"One second."

He dived into his [Memories in Glass], seeking out the most recent dream with Aberfa, for that moment where she'd made some kind of mistake and she'd been terrified that he'd seen.

He hadn't seen, but it had happened in his dream, which meant that it had happened in his head. There should be some way for him to know what had happened. In dreams, you didn't miss important details just because you were looking the other way.

He replayed the scene, and it happened just as he remembered. He tried to twist his head around in the memory to look, but it was just a recording of what he'd experienced. He couldn't change anything.

There had to be a way.

"Give me one hour," said Brin.

Hogg grimaced, and then nodded.

Brin created five threads of thought, effectively splitting his brain into six. He immediately picked up a pebble off the ground and watched it fall. If he had to guess, time was moving maybe four times its regular speed. Maybe five? So of his six threads of thought, he was getting one and a half for free. That was nice. He really needed to figure out a way to precisely measure relative speed, but now wasn't the time for that. The clock was ticking. About four and a half ticks per second.

He dived back into the memory, looking around for clues, and he expected that the other five threads were doing the same thing. By splitting up, he increased his chances of thinking of something that would help.

He would worry that he would run into the old programming race condition problem, which arose when multiple threads tried to access the same resource at a time. It wouldn't be a problem with looking at memories, but if the other threads tried recording memories into the same glass at the same time…

Wait. Why not do that?

He realized he'd just solved his communication problem. Multiple threads could draw on his magic at the same time. That meant they could record their memories into glass at the same time. If they kept a recording of everything they were thinking, he'd be able to check up on them before they finished.

He felt a tug on his magic, summoning a glass ring onto his finger, which told him that at least one other thread had thought of the exact same thing.

The ring that appeared into place had six distinct sections, connected together with ball and socket joints but physically separate. Now each of the threads could take one. It was excellent thinking. He'd have to thank himself when he got back.

He created a directed thread, and told it to read the six sections, switching around through all of them, and then notify him by writing a log on the ground with faint light if anyone had a good idea. No, scratch that. He canceled the directed thread, then pulled a piece of empty bark paper out of his pocket. He made a new directed thread and told it to check on the ring, and make words appear like ink on the paper with illusion magic. It quickly filled out the paper.

Thread 1 - No progress.

Thread 2 - No progress.

Thread 3 - No progress.

Thread 4 - No progress.

Thread 5 - No progress.

Thread 6 - No progress.

With that in place, he focused on the real problem. Two minutes had gone by, which was almost ten minutes in real time. He needed to do his part and work on this, otherwise he'd waste the entire hour.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn't make any headway. He played and replayed the memory in his head, trying every angle he could think of. The memory was fixed. It refused to show him anything he hadn't noticed before.

Five minutes passed, and just like that thirty minutes of real time was gone. He was getting nowhere. He'd have been better off thinking with just his own mind. All six threads were probably chasing the same false starts.

He looked back at the paper, and to his surprise, much of it had changed.

Thread 1 - No progress.

Thread 2 - No progress, shutting down early.

Thread 3 - No progress, shutting down early.

Thread 4 - No progress, shutting down early.

Thread 5 - Has an idea. Requesting additional resources.

Thread 6 - No progress, shutting down early.

Threads 2, 3, 4, 6 all shut down, returning Brin to almost normal time. His mind filled with four more memories similar to his own. They'd scoured the memory and found nothing. Then they’d noticed that thread 5 had made progress and decided to return the processing power to his original mind.

He canceled the directed thread as well, making the illusory ink on his paper disappear, and then put another message on the paper.

Return. We'll figure this out together.

He stared at the paper, hoping the other thread would notice. It didn't. He looked at the six-piece ring and emptied it of all memories. Since they were back in his head now they weren't worth anything. Thread 5 kept recording, not noticing.

"Oh. Duh." Brin removed the ring with the memory of the dream that thread 5 was looking at, and dropped it on the ground.

The thread finally returned.

Brin felt the strange pins and needles as the memories integrated with his mind. In thread 5 he'd quickly realized that replaying the memory wouldn't give him any clues, but then noticed the reflection of the moon against the water which had given him an idea. These dreams were startlingly real, including fine details in high-resolution. There were veins on the leaves, dust on the stones, hairs on the backs of flies, everything you would see in the real world. Aberfa must have some ability to recreate scenes in their entirety, because it sure wasn't his mind doing that.

With a thought, he'd zoomed in, and realized that the pictures painted in his memories were accurate to some absurdly tiny details. She would have to be capable of this, he realized. The monster she’d turned herself into relied on trapping people in dreams, and there were people with much better perception than him. Her worlds needed to be perfect, and now that was working against her.

He’d wanted to use some directed threads to scan every inch of the dream for reflections, but wasn't sure if he was allowed. Instead, he'd started looking through the memories stored in the other threads to see if anyone else had any ideas whose work he might be interrupting when the original Brin had dropped the ring.

And now he was here. He summoned six directed threads, and ordered them to look at every drop of mist, every shiny rock, and every inch of seawater for a reflection of Aberfa. They were to store any reflections they saw as memories in his six piece ring.

Five minutes later, the six pieces were filled.

In the first piece, a directed thread had examined the reflection in the sea water. Aberfa leaned down and dreamily stroked the water while talking to Brin. He'd surmised as much from what he'd heard. Then she saw something in the water that shocked her, and she'd stood up. Nothing new there.

Next thread, an impression in the mist. The light cast by the moon made a shadow in the mist that Brin briefly glanced out of the corner of his eye. Nothing helpful.

The third memory was a reflection on a miniscule drop of water, an errant raindrop or perhaps a bit of water from the splashing. In it he saw Aberfa, touching the water with the tip of her finger, but the bit of finger that was underneath the water was changed. It was bluish gray, and had no nail.

He felt his pulse rise. This was it.

The next thread had stored another drop, and this time Aberfa's hand was sunk to the wrist. Under the water, her hand had completely transformed into long, spindly tentacles.

Tentacles. Aberfa had accidentally tasted the water with her real limbs.

Brin dismissed his magic and looked at Hogg. "That's it. I know what she is. She's a sea monster."