Chapter 7:1 A Small Footpath Into Darkness
The Master's satisfaction was a toxic thing. Like aged wine stored too long in a musty oak cask—fragrant on the surface, but leaving a bitter aftertaste. After the incident with the Memory Box, the atmosphere in the sanctuary shifted. It didn't become warmer or more familiar. That was impossible. But it became... focused. Like a sword newly sharpened; the danger was subtler, more ready.
Max, who had survived the emotion-eating shadows, was no longer like an exuberant puppy. His pale yellow euphoria had been eroded, replaced by a denser, golden yellow, sometimes interspersed with flashes of wary grey. He was still chatty, still prone to seeing the world through cheaply tinted glasses, but now there was a small pause before he launched into his enthusiasm. A pause in which my cynical mind imagined him re-feeling the sensation of his soul being sucked dry.
Of course, he thanked me. And like mud clinging to a boot, he now considered me a sort of emotional "anchor." Annoying.
"You're like a stone in the middle of a river," he said one afternoon, as we practiced projecting sound illusions in the main chamber. I was trying to create an echo of footsteps from an empty corridor. He was supposed to be practicing feeling the difference between real and illusory sound. "The water—I mean, the emotions—flow around you, but you're unmoved."
"I'm moved by consistent stupidity," I muttered, focusing on maintaining the sound's energy pattern. "And even stones erode. It just takes longer and a bit of wasted patience."
He laughed, a sound still too bright for a place like this. But at least now, his laughter no longer echoed recklessly. He was learning, however slowly.
The Master, as usual, observed from the shadows. He was the reluctant stage director. Our lessons became more intense, more inward-facing.
"The greatest danger is no longer physical creatures," he said one day, his thin finger tracing the edge of the blue weather-record tablet Max had once touched. "Felswurms, Drakonids, even armed men... they are predictable. They attack from the outside. The true enemy, the enemy of the Order of Thymol and all who seek to control truth, attacks from within."
He looked at us each in turn. His flint-like eyes seemed deeper than usual. "The mind. The soul. That is the battlefield. Inquisitors like Hadrian will not burn you at the stake. That is too quick, too... merciful. They will immerse you in yourselves. They will find your deepest fear, your most buried desire, and use it as a snare to tame or destroy."
Max shivered, his blue aura pulsing briefly. I just crossed my arms. "So, we learn to be the masters of our own madness?"
"Something like that," answered the Master. "We will learn to probe, to defend, and if necessary... to counter-attack. Max, your empathy is not just an antenna. It can be sonar, it can be a tunnel. And you," he looked at me, "illusions are not just for eyes and ears. The strongest illusions are those that deceive the heart and instinct. That make an enemy doubt the reality of their own mind."
The training we underwent after that made the Library sessions feel like child's play.
For Max, the Master took him to a small room filled with ordinary stones—no memory crystals, no scrolls. Just cold rock and earth.
"Every object, even the most mundane, holds emotional traces of anyone who touched it," instructed the Master. "The traces are faint, almost inaudible, but they are there. Take that stone." He pointed to a flat stone in the center of the room. "Feel it. Don't force an image. Capture only the 'feeling' of it. Was it left in haste? In sorrow? With ill intent?"
Max knelt, placing his hands on the stone. He closed his eyes, concentrating. The aura around him pulsed calmly, blue mixed with green concentration. He was silent for a long time. Then, he frowned. "It's... hollow. But not empty. Like... someone sat here a very long time, but thought of nothing. Just waiting. A feeling of... empty patience? Or silent despair?"
The Master nodded, once. "Good. That stone was the Hermit's favorite seat when he contemplated an unsolved magical puzzle for years. You caught the impasse, the needle-pricked patience. Now, try to distinguish it from this one." He tossed a small stone from his pouch.
Max caught it, and immediately yelped, throwing it away as if burned. His face paled. "Pain! Anger! And it's very angry!"
"That is a stone I once used to crush the skull of an Order of Thymol spy who infiltrated here, years ago," said the Master flatly. "My anger still clings to it. The lesson: some traces can still wound. You must be able to sense that danger from a distance, before touching it."
My own training was far more... abstract, and equally exhausting.
The Master had me sit in the center of a circle of salt mixed with silver dust (from his seemingly endless supply). "High-level illusions do not create objects," he said. "They create context. They manipulate the space between objects. Today, you will not create anything. You will create a 'feeling'."
"I'm quite good at creating feelings of annoyance," I retorted.
"Silence and listen," he cut in. "Choose an emotion. Fear, for instance. Now, instead of projecting an image of a monster, try to radiate the 'essence' of fear into this circle. Alter the quality of the air. Alter how the light falls. Make anyone who steps into it feel uneasy for no reason, feel watched from behind."
It was insane. But I tried. I focused, recalling not the dramatic fear of facing the Drakonid, but the silent fear of the first nights after fleeing the Order's group, the fear that every shadow was Hadrian. I tried not to think of images, but of sensations: the cold in the spine, the tightness in the chest, the strained silence.
For a long time, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, the small flame at the room's far end—our only light source—flickered. The air felt heavier. I myself felt the echo of that fear return, like poison leaking back into my bloodstream. It was working, but in a primitive, uncontrolled way.
"Too unsubtle," commented the Master from outside the circle. His voice sounded slightly muffled, as if there was an invisible veil between us. "You are shouting it. Try again. Whisper it."
These trainings exhausted us both to the bone. Max often woke from nightmares, feeling the echoes of foreign emotions clinging to his mind like soot. I, on the other hand, felt my head splitting between reality and the layers of illusion I was weaving. Sometimes, while fetching water from the pool, I feared I might accidentally make the water feel menacing just by my presence.
A strange dynamic developed between us. When Max was overwhelmed by a surge of emotion from a practice object, I would sit nearby and deliberately project my indifference—not through empathy, but by creating a very subtle suggestive illusion around him, a kind of "aura of disinterest." It was like turning on a fan in a stuffy room. Max would slowly calm, able to separate himself from the emotional wave assaulting him.
Conversely, when I struggled to maintain a complex illusion and began to lose focus to cold sweat and a threatening headache, Max would approach. He didn't do anything spectacular. Just sat there. And through his strange sensitivity, he would... attune himself to the rhythm of my energy, then radiate back a small but steady feeling of calm. It was like having a living internal metronome. Annoying, but effective.
The Master called this our "flawed symphony." Two instruments not designed to be played together, yet somehow producing an audible melody.
We thought that was the core of our lessons: enduring attacks from within. We were wrong.
One morning, no different from any other, the Master returned from one of his short trips outside (he still kept secret how he came and went undetected). His face was grimmer than usual, and his normally dense silver aura now rippled like water struck by a stone.
"The time has come," he said, his voice heavier than usual. "You will face a true test. Not here, in this safe place. But outside."
Max and I exchanged glances. Outside. The word felt alien, dangerous.
"What test?" I asked, trying to keep my voice flat.
"A trail. A small footprint," answered the Master. "There is a village, two days' journey from here. It's called Harrow's End. A small, ordinary settlement on the forest's edge. Yet, in the past month, three of its inhabitants have vanished. Not sneakily. They walked out of their homes at night, into the forest, and never returned. No signs of struggle. No cries heard."
"The Order of Thymol?" guessed Max, his voice trembling.
"No," said the Master. "Their methods are not like this. The Order would make an example. This is... subtler. Slicker. I have observed from a distance. There are residual psychic energies there. Very faint. Not magic in the usual sense. It is more like... a dream leaking. An illusion so strong it can draw people in and swallow them."
He looked at me. "This is your domain, Apprentice. But not a visual illusion. This is an illusion targeting yearning, true fear, or deepest desire. A psychomimicry." Then he turned to Max. "And to feel its source, to track the 'taste' of that dream without getting ensnared, is your domain. The two of you must go there. Identify the threat. And if you can, neutralize it."
"What?! Us? Alone?" Max nearly choked.
"The two of you," the Master emphasized. "I will observe from afar, but will not intervene unless your lives are truly at stake. This is the application of everything you have learned. In the training room, everything is controlled. In Harrow's End, reality is your opponent. And perhaps, your own dreams are your greatest enemy."
Max's protests bubbled up, but were cut off by the Master's cold stare. "This is not a choice. You must learn to operate in the real world. You must learn to rely on each other in a real way, not in simulation. And..." he paused briefly, "...I have reason to believe that whatever is happening at Harrow's End is merely a symptom. Something larger is waking. And we need to know what it is, before the Order of Thymol does—or before it grows out of control."
Preparations were swift and grim. The Master gave us simple provisions, a crude map, and two small talismans—silver medallions that felt warm to the touch. "These will offer minimal protection against direct mental influence," he said. "But do not rely on them. Your own strength and cooperation will save you."
Before we departed, at the mouth of the winding secret passage leading to the surface, the Master gripped my shoulder. "Remember, Apprentice," he whispered, hard and clear only for me. "He is the Empath. He will feel its pull first, stronger. Your task is not only to protect him, but to use what he feels as a map. Your illusion must be the cage that holds the dream, or the knife that dissects it. Do not be fooled by the beauty or terror it offers. It is all a deception."
"And if it isn't a deception?" I asked, staring into the darkness of the passage ahead.
"Everything in this world, in the end, is a deception," he answered, and gave me a gentle push forward.