Time grows short

Before Vel could ask further about that less than helpful answer, the figure went on “My liege, our time grows short. I am as yet far away, and our connection is tenuous. I know you have many questions; I will do my best to answer them when I can. I am on my way to you and will contact you again when I am close, keeping the connection will be easier then. It will take a few days though. Until then, practice using your gifts, but be careful to avoid anyone noticing them. You are still ****. From the impression my scout got, you seem to have barely used them til now, possibly only subconsciously.”

“I have not used them at all, until today, I do not think I even had them.” The figure seemed doubtful “Do not be so sure, my liege. Have you never calmed a tense situation just by willing it so? My scout found you riding, tell me, do horses respond well to you?” Realization dawned on Vel “Oh shit….” The chuckle again “Yes, my liege, your gifts were always there, your brush with the scout simply made you conscious of them.” The landscape around Vel flickered, the figure cursed “Our time is at an end, before we go, let me leave you with this…”

Vel woke up. He didn’t question what happened, or that it had been real. What would be the point. He mulled over what the mysterious figure had told him, and the implications of it. Ruler of everything. That sounded like it would be a bit of a hassle. It seemed like something he could safely worry about later, though. He wasn’t even head of House Andros yet, ruling anything would need to wait. Could he trust the strange figure? It had given him no direct reason not to, but surely it would be foolish to just blindly trust a being just because it appeared in his dreams and called him its liege. On the other hand, he was entirely in the dark here, he had little choice but to accept any guidance he was offered. It was also pretty neat to be referred to as someone’s liege.

He spent a few more minutes just laying there, brow furrowed, going over the dream or vision or whatever it had been. The entity said it wanted to leave him something as the dream ended, what though? Had the ending of the dream prevented it from doing so? Something jumped to the forefront of his mind, it took Vel a moment to sort out what it was. Knowledge, perhaps instructions of a sort. The figure had somehow gifted him some information about his powers. He now knew that what he had thought of as pushing out his mind or consciousness was a technique called feeling and was considered the most basic one among mindmages. Huh, mindmages, that was one question answered. It also did not really work by pushing one’s mind outwards. The knowledge he had been left with compared it to feeling one’s way along the surface of a wall in the dark. That wasn’t all though, he had been left instructions for two techniques that were new to him.

His **** to push through the membranes or walls of minds out of fear of alerting his targets had seemingly been warranted, as one of those two techniques was a way to probe deeper without risking that. Known simply as probe, it was a way for the mindmage to extract certain knowledge or insight from within a target’s mind without needing to fully breach it. This was achieved by temporarily breaking off a tiny sliver of one’s own mind, leaving said sliver with instructions on what to look for, and it could then slip past the defenses of the target and return with the requested information. There were clearly limitations to this though. For one thing, this was a tiny sliver, there was a limit to how much information it could store. There was also the matter of mental defenses. The probe should have no difficulty getting past the natural defenses of most minds, but those with particular mental fortitude or those trained to defend their minds were another matter. There were also magical items that could ward one against mindmagic, but here the gifted knowledge told Vel that such items would be of limited help against him, as his powers were more divine than magical in nature. He was not sure what exactly that meant. It seemed that, as soon as one question was answered, another manifested.

The last technique was an interesting one. Following the naming convention of deceptively simple names, this one was called influence. Apparently, this was the only technique that allowed a mindmage to affect the disposition of a target without breaching the target’s mind. It could be used on a breached mind too, to much greater effect, but for now that was beyond Vel. On an un-breached mind, it would allow him to either increase or decrease the emotions he could feel on the surface. So, when he was feeling Rose earlier, he could have increased her arousal or her desire to please. That could certainly come in handy. It would only work with what the target was already feeling though, and either increase or decrease that, it would not allow him to introduce new emotions. He should also be cautious about altering emotions too quickly or heavily, as the target might notice sudden and intense mood swings and might reasonably think something was wrong with them.

Besides that, he had been left with some other useful knowledge about his powers. His powers would work better on people he was closer to and who trusted him, as their minds would be more open to him and his influence. The same applied to animals, though their minds in general had fewer defenses and were easier to work on, as they were generally simpler. It made sense then that he was able to use his powers so easily and subconsciously with horses, especially the two horses he owned and had strong bonds with. He really wanted to see what it would be like now that he was aware of these powers and his connection with the mounts. It was still dark out, though, and Vel figured it was still the middle of the night. He should try to get some more sleep and rest up, he would need his energy tomorrow, as he intended to give his newfound powers a real test.

It did not take Vel long to fall back asleep, despite his mind being awash with ideas about how to test his powers. The rest of the night passed peacefully and Vel had no further dreams, at least not that he could remember. He slept uninterrupted until he was awoken by a knocking on his door, and a timid voice asking to come in.