[Not really,] Zorian responded. [I’m only starting with the investigation. Truthfully, this is bound to be a task spanning numerous restarts, so you shouldn’t expect quick results.]
[Yes, of course. Well, I have nothing else to add so unless you have any additional questions we can meet each other next week to check on each other’s progress?]
[Actually, I have two questions,] said Zorian.
[Ask away, then.]
[First question: Can you explain to me what exactly you mean by ‘flickermind’ and why you disdain them so much?] Zorian asked. [You keep saying that word and it sounded terribly insulting and bigoted.]
The matriarch twitched her legs, emitting some complex emotion that Zorian couldn’t decode with his limited empathic abilities. That tended to happen a lot, actually, since the aranea were so thoroughly different from humans in both body and mind.
[I apologize if we offend,] she finally said. [It had been quite a while since we had a real, sustained contact with a human, and there are bound to be misunderstandings and points of contention.]
[I notice you didn’t actually answer my question,] pointed out Zorian.
[It is like you suspect: a flickermind is a creature that isn’t psychic like you and me. I’m sure they can be wonderful people, but I — as well as most of my fellow aranea — find it hard to truly take them seriously. It’s like meeting a society of people that are born blind… they can obviously manage without sight, but you’d probably still consider them fundamentally crippled.]
[You never did tell me what being psychic entails, you know?] Zorian pointed out.
[Everything, from the smallest grain of sand to the very gods themselves is connected through the great invisible web that suffuses all creation,] the matriarch said. [Psychic people are open to these connections, and contact the minds of others, or even the universe itself, to perform what you humans call magic.]
[That explanation sounds… almost religious,] said Zorian.
[The great invisible web does feature prominently in our spirituality,] the matriarch admitted. [What was the other question you wanted to ask me about?]
[Ah, yes. I had found a human empath that might be willing to teach me some of her skills. I wanted to ask you for your opinion—]
[No!] the matriarch interrupted. [That’s a terrible idea! Your human empaths are bad teachers! Their ‘training’ consists of nothing but showing people how to shut off their link to the Great Web and keep it closed most of the time! They brainwash their students into believing that sensing emotions is all there is to their powers and that the rest of the mind arts are immoral! They make a mockery of the great gift!]
Zorian blinked in shock. He had intended to produce a reaction by broaching the topic in question, but he had no idea the matriarch would be affected this strongly! Anger and outrage simply poured off the matriarch, making it clear that she cared about this issue very, very much. For the first time since his first encounter with her, he remembered that she was actually quite a terrifying creature.
[That’s a lot stronger denunciation than I expected,] Zorian admitted, forcing himself to remain calm. [Care to suggest an alternative, then? I really want to get this ability under control.]
[Have I not promised to help you with that?] the matriarch asked.
[And then you ignored the issue completely,] Zorian answered.
[I thought you needed time to come to terms with it. You didn’t exactly act thrilled when I first informed you of your gifts. Maybe if you hadn’t waited six months before contacting me we would have been on the same wavelength?]
Ouch.
[But no matter,] the matriarch said, [this whole argument is pointless. If you want to learn how to use your gift effectively, I’ll be happy to help. Come back tomorrow at this time and we can begin with your lessons.]
She turned to leave before pausing and sending him one final parting burst of communication.
[And then, once you experience the Great Web in its full glory, you can go to that human empath and see for yourself who is right.]
Chapter 21
Wheel of Fortune
In the tunnels beneath Cyoria, Zorian sat cross-legged with his eyes closed, trying to sense the minds of nearby aranea with his own. That was the task he had been given by the matriarch as his first lesson, and it reminded him uncomfortably of Xvim’s mana sensing exercise.
It wasn’t going too well. That was another thing it shared with Xvim’s bullshit lessons.
[It has only been 3 days,] the disembodied voice of the matriarch admonished him. [You’ve barely even started. Don’t be impatient.]
«There’s got to be a better way of learning this,» Zorian complained. This kind of trial and error method was something he could have done without her help. As far as he could see, the only way the matriarch was really helping at the moment was by being an experienced practitioner ready to step in if something went wrong. Which, now that he thought about it, was quite valuable when messing around with something like mind magic. Or any magic, for that matter.
[That, and there is also the little fact that it’s easier to sense and contact Open minds than those of… non-psychics,] the matriarch remarked, fumbling a little towards the end. [I somehow doubt you would find many Open individuals to practice on back on the surface. Fewer still would be willing to let you connect to them. Anyway. I realize that these initial stages are tedious and boring, but they are necessary. And if I have not explained things satisfactorily, I apologize, but I do not know how to do it any better. This ability is not something I learnt, it is something I do. Aranea learn how to do this as very young children, much like human children learn how to walk and talk. Can you explain to someone who has been paralyzed all their life how to move their legs?]
Zorian frowned. So he wasn’t even able to master telepathic baby skills? Wonderful. Just wonderful. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he tried to consider the task in front of him and how to solve it. Yes, yes, the matriarch insisted he should just keep trying until he eventually succeeded by sheer weight of effort, but he was a mage damn it! Mages did things smarter, not harder.
Being psychic meant being a natural mind mage. For all that the matriarch kept bringing in her weird aranea spirituality into it, that’s what it all boiled down to. A psychic could read thoughts and emotions, trawl through people’s memories, hijack their senses and motor control, communicate with them telepathically and gods know what else, but all of it was mind related. Even the matriarch admitted that aranea used modified human magic for things like her speech spell and the rest of their non-mentalist magical arsenal.
Divinations were the key, he felt. If psychic powers were mind-based, why did they also enhance divinations?
[Not all divinations,] the matriarch remarked from the sidelines, apparently following his train of thought. [Only the ones that put information directly into your mind. The Gift helps you interpret the results of such spells more easily, and since most high-level divinations pour at least a part of the information straight into your mind… well, you can imagine how useful that can be.]
Suddenly, something clicked in Zorian’s mind. According to the books he read about the mind arts in the academy library, spells that were meant to read people’s thoughts were not terribly difficult in principle. The problem was that the result was totally incomprehensible to most users, unless they spent years training themselves how to interpret the results. Spells that aimed to establish telepathic communication also suffered this problem, though to a lesser extent — so long as the people in question spoke the same language, they could at least exchange verbal communication in such a fashion. In other words, human mind spells were remarkably like a divination that tried to simply dump its output into the mind of the caster… which wasn’t something most mages were equipped to handle.