153, 1/2

This was Erick’s first true interaction with the Mind Mages, so he had no idea what that would look like. What he did not expect, was for barely any interaction at all.

A package arrived at the front door of the house and Poi picked it up. Erick had already seen that it was the scrolls for the clan mountain spells, but when the package came into the house, it was both the scrolls, and another, smaller case; another cold box, with another four vials. A quick check with mana sense into the past revealed a blip of [Teleport Other] magics (Erick guessed) delivering the cold box into Poi’s hand, alongside the vials.

Poi brought the vials to Erick, and said, “Here we are.”

“That’s it?” Erick asked, “No representative?”

Poi smiled. “I’m the representative for this.”

“… Ah. I see.”

From the comfort of the [Prismatic Ward]ed part of his house, Poi told Erick where to put the maps, and when to move the maps. Erick searched for DNA first, but then, upon finding the actual monsters, and seeing what they looked like and were, he was able to search for the monsters, instead.

And that was the extent of his involvement.

The Mind Mages didn’t talk to him except through Poi, or through code names. Erick did find out that Blue 81 and White 13 were out hunting tonight; Two of the Mind Mages who had helped him back when he was hunting Terror Peaks, when Poi needed a break. They were doing fine. Or at least they said as much. Erick watched as Mind Mages went to work down below, but he had no idea which one was Blue 81, or which one was White 13. Orange 108, the other helper on a few of those nights, was busy somewhere else. Maybe. Erick wasn’t too sure on that. It was entirely possible for Orange 108 to be somewhere down there, killing monsters alongside the rest of them, and him not talking to Erick.

Without much direction but needing to be involved anyway, Erick watched wherever he wanted to watch. Finding the monsters was much more difficult than killing them. The singular time Erick thought about helping, Poi asked him not to. The Mind Mages had been doing this particular work, hidden from the eyes of the world, for a long, long time. They were good at it, too.

For Mind Mages were very, very good at killing mental monsters.

– – – –

In the deep, clear night, the moons shone their crescent light across the Highlands and the stars sparkled in the void. One of the stars was not like the others. It was closer to Veird, for one. For another, it was magic.

Cascading light shimmered into the windy air, illuminating a map that was too far up for the people on the ground to see as anything but yet another star. It was one map of a dozen, scattered across the lands.

For down below, in the cold, desolate cities that had been rebuilt and yet remained unoccupied, and also in the warm cities, where people lived and slept and existed, monsters hid. They ate who they could, keeping themselves protected with dangerous magics, and deplorable means.

The maps found them all.

Blue dots scattered across fields of white light, showing the way to those that needed killing, and places where people needed help.

The Mind Mages acting on the intel of the maps looked normal. A baker, who had finished setting up for tomorrow’s baking. A fishmonger, resting after having cleaned up at the end of the day. A father, who had put his kids to sleep and then kissed his wife on the cheek, and who now walked on the street, flanked by his fellow Mind Mages. Countless others, coming off of work for the day, or waking up for their true job, or begging off of a family gathering and quietly slipping away…

If you didn’t know who they were, if you didn’t know, for a fact, that the tendrils of thought around their heads never fully went away, you would never suspect that they kept the world running, dealing with uncomfortable truths that others never noticed, and which the monsters made sure that no one ever noticed.

All across the land, the Mind Mages moved from their usual, comfortable lives, into the shadows.

– – – –

A mother came out of a fugue to see that there was a monster under her bed; a ball of flesh that whispered and toyed with her memories. She killed the monster in a fit of rage that was quite unlike how she had been for the past week, and then she went crying to her children who she had locked in the other room. Her kids were scared, and then, they weren’t; it was an unnatural transition, but it would pass soon enough. The kids spoke of how they had told her about the monster under her bed, but she had ignored their words and then locked them up when they tried to kill the monster themselves. Now, hugging her babies and out from under the spell of the puppet mind, she believed them. Now, she apologized for the tenth time in a minute. She barely heard the knock at the front door, but she did, eventually, hear it.

The mother and her kids went to the door.

A Mind Mage stood on their doorstep. The man, who was a baker in his day job, calmly explained how he was here to help her understand what had happened.

Perhaps uncharacteristically, the mother let the man into her home. A minute later, the man had killed and cleaned up a second puppet mind, growing under the grandmother’s bed. The woman atop the bed was ancient and bed bound. She thought that she was talking to her dead husband about the old days; not to a monster.

And then the Mind Mage went away.

Not all of the monster hunting ended happily.

Many of the mother’s neighbors had it much worse.

Three blocks over, an entire family had been replaced by the monsters under their beds. The puppet minds had become puppet masters, and those human-looking monsters had been carefully slipping eggs into homes, wherever they went, all the while acting like the people they had transformed into, subtly converting neighbors who had no idea what was happening until it was too late.

The final count for this monster infestation was 36.

If the village with the infection had been larger, or if a Mind Mage had actually lived there, or if the hundreds of Mind Mages lost in the recent war had not been lost…

Maybe this tragedy would have never happened.

The puppet master infection was tracked to four different main hubs. Two in Eralis. Two in Alaralti.

The final count of people saved was 5391. The final count of people lost was 1084.

In another part of the Highlands, in a small village of five houses, a man complained about a smell inside his house. He cleaned all the time, but even [Cleanse] didn’t seem to clean up the smell. If he had the Sight to see, he would know that [Cleanse] would never work on this smell, for the source of the smell was still there. The monsters were still alive.

They were everywhere.

Putrescent Slugs.

Green. Slimy. Pestiferous.

In the cracks of the man’s house, in the woodwork and in the kitchen, and all over the bed where he slept, green slugs nested in slimy films. They had eaten the man’s mother and father, his sister and his two brothers. They had eaten the neighbors one door down. They had eaten the cows and the chickens. The living neighbors were next, but even they didn’t know that they were under attack.

Inside the single man’s house, the slugs had eaten everything they possibly could, except for the man at the center of the infection, for he was an unknowing host. Slugs crawled over his skin, and eggs dropped from the wounds of his fingers, and yet he could not see the problem.

A woman stepped down onto the land, outside of the infected man’s house, her hooded coat fluttering in her own breeze. She filled the air with anti-antimemetic power, revealing the problem, uncovering buried memories.

The infected man rightfully panicked when he saw what had happened to him.

Putrescent slugs were almost worse than puppet minds. Even if the Mind Mages had told him not to get involved, Erick still imagined how he could solve the problem. He couldn’t simply [Withering] the house to kill the slugs; the slugs had no rads inside of them. Individually, each one was barely larger than a thumb.

The infected man decided fire was a good solution. He started blasting while he was still in the center of the house. He wasn’t fine, but he would be.

The Mind Mage got the infected man out and then sedated him; he would keep for a while. Then the Mind Mage went to the neighbors, half of which were also infected while the rest were already dead. Uninfecting the small village would take a week. Healing the mental trauma would take decades, but no one in the village would ever be the same. Most wanted to move.

The infected man was not the only one to burn down his house that night.

In another part of the Highlands, spiders lived on the backs of fully-cognizant hosts, half buried into flesh, their fangs latched at the base of the neck, their legs wrapped around the spine. The spiders were the size of dinner plates, and they had two modes to them. They inflicted pain upon their victims when their victims attempted to harm the spiders. The spiders inflicted joy when the people did what the spiders wanted.

The spiders wanted to experience sensation, which Poi did not explain in too much depth. That was fine. Erick saw enough of the aftermath of a spinal spider infection to understand the depth of the problem.

The spiders wanted their hosts to drink curdled milk, or raw eggs, or shards of bone. They wanted their hosts to make bread with rocks and sand. They wanted ‘art’, so they had their hosts bleed on the walls, and watch the red run down. They wanted colors and smells and tastes and touches. They wanted, and so they got what they wanted through their hosts.

After that takedown, after the removal of the spiders, some of the long-term affected went rabid because all of their pleasure was gone, and all that was left was pain. Others cried in relief. Others sat there, dull to the world.

Erick, and the Mind Mages, moved on.

As sunlight rose in the east, Mind Mages walked into libraries all across Songli. They pinpointed books with chitinous covers, with pages made of devouring thoughts. Erick was advised to check himself for odd, wandering thoughts, for watching through a [Familiar] was still dangerous, but not overly so. The Mind Mages could protect themselves, though.

The books fought against their destruction with scintillating images meant to charm and incapacitate, and Blood Magic that pulled at the interiors of the Mind Mages, but the images were no use against a trained Mind Mage, and the Blood Magic was easily healed through.

Book slippers were the most innocuous of the various threats Erick helped purge that day, but even so, there were many places where bodies had been hidden behind shelves full of chittering, scrabbling books that had too many tiny legs, and too much blood on their pages.

– – – –

Erick got out of his chair. The night was over. The monsters had been slain. Good had triumphed because Erick decided to help out. How many people had perished in these last months because he had forgotten to help? Too many. He did not blame himself, for the deaths were on the monsters themselves. But he felt like he could have done more. After a heavy think, Erick decided that Terror Peaks was ultimately to blame. And the Shades for making the monsters in the first place.

But Erick could have helped out sooner.

And now he knew that.

Erick said to Poi, “We’re going to have to do this everywhere we go.”

Poi said, “This isn’t your fault. The problem arises from the Underworld, and from travelers unknowingly spreading contamination. It’s a problem that has no real solution. All we have is vigilance.”

“… That’s true, too.”

Erick took a moment to let the events of the night roll away.

And then he noticed something smelled good. He sniffed the air. Breakfast!

Poi gave a small grin.

And Erick headed toward the kitchen, saying, “Smells great, Teressa!”

“Two minutes left!” Teressa called back.

Erick entered the kitchen where Teressa stood in front of the oven, looking at the cinnamon rolls inside. She asked, “Are you done, then?”

“I think so!” Erick said.

“Yes,” Poi affirmed. “The Highlands have just now become the most safe, most populous nation on the planet. Hunters, face stealers, warmongers and terrorists, pirates, larger monster threats thanks to Jane, and now, the worst mental threats. All gone. Multiple plagues; [Cleanse]ed and cleared.”

Poi’s voice was more joyful than Erick had ever heard the man; He was obviously happy in a brand new way. Erick felt his heart soar, to see that, and to hear Poi’s words spoken with such conviction. It was true. This land was safe from many monsters, now.

Erick hadn’t set out to do that, but he certainly had!

Teressa smirked, saying, “I’ve heard that Treehome is doing rather well, too. You’ve done a lot, Boss.”

“Still more to go.” Erick had an idea, and then he worked through it, and decided, “You two have helped me a lot, you know. How’d you like 50 points, each? I have a lot extra here.”

Teressa’s eyes went wide. “50 points!”

“No.” Poi repeated to Teressa, “No. Those aren’t yours.”

Teressa frowned at Poi, then said, “Okay. Well. I’ll take 25. And I decided on Constitution.”

Poi huffed at Teressa. “What! Why?”

“Maybe you raised the right Stats, but I went for a warrior build.” Teressa shrugged. “And I kinda like magic now, and I could use some Willpower. Not Intelligence, though. I’m not doing that.” She looked to Erick, saying, “I discovered my aura, by the way.”

Erick froze, and then he laughed out loud. “I haven’t done anything with that in two weeks!” Excitedly, he asked, “Show me! Show me!”

“I only figured it out a few hours ago, and then promptly Remade [Force Bolt]. But…” Teressa held her hands up in front of her, with palms facing each other and about two meters apart. With a faint smile, she said, “Let’s subvert the Script Second.”

A bolt of grey Force coalesced in her right hand and smacked into her left, followed instantly by another manually cast [Force Bolt]. Teressa’s faint smile expanded into a real one, showing off her lower fangs and her joy of the moment. And then she cast three [Force Bolt]s in quick succession, proving her capability.

Erick clapped his hands. “Good job, Teressa! Very good job!”

Teressa practically beamed as she shook out the hand that caught the Bolts. “I probably had it easier than you, since I don’t use a [Personal Ward].”

“Nonsense! You worked hard on it, right? Just like you did with mana sense.” Erick looked from Teressa to Poi, and said, “You both work very hard. You deserve something extra from what we’ve done here, and for what you’ve done for me. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you, Poi, and your coordination. We would have been blindsided multiple times if it wasn’t for you, Teressa, and your Sighting and sensing of outsized threats.”

Poi looked unconvinced.

Teressa laughed. “I had to find some way to make myself useful.”

Erick frowned a little at Teressa’s self-depreciation. He said, “You’ve been great.”

She shrugged. “If we go to the Core, I need to be better than ‘great’. I’d have to have enough power and ability to rival Killzone, and I am not there yet, at all.”

Erick glanced between his people, saying, “I don’t expect it to be that bad?”

Poi had been looking at Teressa, but he switched to Erick. “It will be that bad.”

“When we find some level 90 monsters down there, we need to be able to fight and kill them. Every single one of us, individually.” Teressa said, “Think ‘Daydropper Queen’ for every single monster with the possibility that we might come across multiples.”

Poi shook his head. “Fight them? No. That is not how it’s going to happen. We’re doing delay tactics and running as fast as we can. We will need Killzone-level of power to be able to do just that much. But we won’t get there with points, Teressa.”

Erick frowned. “I was expecting to kill monsters.”

Poi frowned a little, too.

Erick said, “You know Ava Jadescale, that snake shifter in Candlepoint? She said that the wrought Geodes keep people from going that deep because then there’d be level 90 people walking around all over the place, meaning that the monsters are not that hard to kill.”

Poi said, “Any trip to the Core will cost lives unless the group is small, able to hide from everything, and exceedingly mobile. [Teleport] doesn’t work at that depth. [Teleport] is unreliable anywhere past the surface.” He added, “I never said it before, for it is not my place, but I say it now: Ava was delusional when she said that. Teressa has some of the danger level correct—”

“Course I do!” Teressa said.

“—But you also have it wrong. Our capabilities do not allow us to actually fight anything at the level necessary for us to be ready for the Core, and 25 points isn’t going to change that.” Poi said, “And you don’t need the 25 points, either! You’ve got nearly 250 extra from Erick’s rings; same as me.”

Teressa looked chastised at that. She looked at her hands, and the rings on her fingers. “Ah.”

“Oh! You guys deserve more than that!” Erick said.

Poi said, “I’ll take the Constitution.”

Teressa frowned at everything, and nothing at all.

Erick said, “Teressa. You want 25 points, you can have them. You deserve good things for the good work you’ve done. You want a [Blink] up on the path to being a mage? I will make that happen.”

“No.” Teressa said, “Poi is right about… a lot. I just…” Her voice trailed off.

Poi filled the silence, “We need a lot more preparation before a trip to the Core. Erick could probably do it on his own, but the rest of us also need Elemental Bodies. Getting to the Core isn’t even an option if you don’t have multiples of those. As well as redundancies in all of our spells, and items, and everything else. Food might not be an issue, but we should plan like it will be an issue.”

Moments passed in silent thought.

“I guess I hadn’t given it too much thought until now, but you might be right.” Erick said, “Anyway… Okay. Maybe a trip to Oceanside? They have elemental dungeons there with lots of slimes. That was already on the itinerary, but it could be moved up. I need actual downtime to work on my own aura control, too.” If he was at Oceanside, he’d certainly have to talk to the Headmaster, which might not turn out well, but… It would have to be done. Erick said, “We could each get new Elemental Bodies. You two could certainly use [Lightwalk] and I can help you get [Greater Lightwalk], for sure. Maybe I’ll get [Water Body], or [Stone Body]. Anyway. The cinnamon rolls are done.”

“Ah!!” Teressa practically jumped. She spun around to the oven and pulled out the cinnamon rolls. “Ohh~ Perfect.” She stared at the browned baked goods for a moment longer, her thoughts trailing away.

“If you don’t want the points, Teressa, that’s fine. But you still want Constitution, right?” Erick asked. “You too, Poi?”

“Oh yeah.” Teressa nodded, as she set down the rolls and slathered frosting all over them. “For sure.”

“Yes, sir,” Poi said. “That is one thing that we can do right now, that we cannot get anywhere else.”

“Then, here you go. Both of you.” Erick held out his hand, and a ring appeared upon his palm. Ophiel had made the ring while they had been talking. The ring was large enough for Teressa’s pinky, but small enough to still fit on Poi’s thumb. Erick sat down at the dining table, placing the ring in the center. “Constitution. I don’t feel comfortable letting too much of this jewelry out, though, so your rings are going to stay normal All-Stat rings.”

Teressa and Poi stared at the ring for a long moment.

Teressa said, “I wouldn’t want you to give us this ring permanently, either.”

Poi added, “I agree with this decision.”

Both of the intended recipients went silent, neither of them going for the ring.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Both of them were still apprehensive.

Erick broke the silence, “Bring over those rolls.”

Teressa eyed the tray of rolls in her hands, and then mumbled, “Oh. Right.”

Teressa set the cinnamon rolls on the table, along with three plates.

Teressa and Poi sat at the table. Teressa looked to Poi. Poi looked to Teressa.

Erick imagined what Jane would have said, if she were here. She had already headed off for Star Song before sunrise, so it was just the three of them in the house, at the moment. Erick was both sad and glad for that, for he wanted to ask Jane her thoughts on allocating points, but also didn’t want to have an argument about giving points to Teressa or Poi. Just by guessing… Erick supposed that Jane would have said that people were trying to kill him, not his guards, therefore he needed as much defense as he could get, and he shouldn’t be giving away any of the points he had gotten.

At least Teressa and Poi had decided to get Constitution, though.

Eventually, Teressa asked Poi, “Are you gonna go?”

“You can go first,” he said.

She furrowed her brows. “Okay. Now I’m not sure.”

“… Now I’m not sure, either,” Poi admitted.

“Oh really?” Erick snarked, “I couldn’t tell.”

Teressa scoffed, “It’s a big deal!”

Erick asked, “It’s not that bad, is it?”

Poi rhetorically asked, “You have a question mark on your ‘human’ Status, and you don’t think Constitution is a big deal?”

Erick thought for a second, and said, “No. It’s not that important. What happened to me will not happen to you. You’re only getting one New Stat. You should be fine. Everyone else who got one New Stat is fine.”

Teressa nodded, and said, “That’s true,” as she picked up the ring.

Poi watched, eyes a little wide, as Teressa took off her old ring on her right hand, and slipped the Constitution ring onto her pinky. Erick watched as sunshine yellow spread through the grey of Teressa’s soul, like sunlight flickering behind storm clouds. The moment passed, with clouds turning a bit whiter, a bit brighter, and then settled. Grey returned, but it was a different sort of grey.

Teressa slipped the ring off of her finger, then set it down in front of Poi. She breathed. She said, “You know what? That feels… odd. More solid. Whatever happens, I’m glad the decision is done.” She put on her old ring, and then her eyes crossed, briefly.

Erick winced. Yup. Stat Dissonance. Erick expected that. He said, “That should go away soon enough.”

Teressa blinked a few more times. She breathed, then said, “Oh. Yeah. It’s going away. Okay. There. It’s gone.” She glanced at the air and smiled wide. “Ha! I started off at 21! Didn’t know that was possible. This means 21% less damage taken from all sources, right?”

“Health damage only; but yes.”