Book 4 - Chapter 14

Hogg and Brin took their time getting home. The city was chaotic, with rows of soldiers stomping down the streets and scattering the rioters who spread throughout the city to escape them. Brin might’ve moved quicker alone, but Hogg couldn’t go invisible anymore and there was no reason to take any unnecessary risks, so they went the long way around the press gangs that Brin spotted with his Invisible Eyes.

The most exciting part of the journey, honestly, was watching the Wogan estate. The press gangs did actually end up invading the house, and while they were mostly polite and didn’t break anything, they insisted on searching the entire mansion, room by room.

Sion seemed bored by the entire thing, but Glyn was visibly furious, showing none of the over-friendliness that Brin knew him for.

Rhun was hidden in a secret compartment underneath the cellar, but then he nearly spoiled the whole thing by leaving three times. Twice to use the restroom, and then once because he wanted a glass of water. It looked like he wouldn’t outright break his contract with the Wogans, but he obviously wouldn’t mind “accidentally” getting drafted. After the third time, the [Steward] locked him in place and then covered the trap door with spilt flour, just moments before the soldiers searched the cellar.

It was a strange echo from his past, seeing someone else using flour to hide from soldiers in a cellar.

The journey through the chaotic, rioting city went as well as such a thing could, and Hogg and Brin didn’t run into any real trouble until they were back at their house. 

A single man in Frenaria blues stood outside the front door, waiting. He didn’t carry any weapons, not even a truncheon, but he stood in front of their door, waiting, and he didn’t seem keen on leaving. With his back to them, Brin and Hogg didn’t even need to hide, and only used a spell to block sound to conceal themselves.

“I’ve sent Invisible Eyes through all the buildings nearby. Nobody else is around. And he isn’t holding an Eveladis,” said Brin.

“Seems that way,” agreed Hogg.

“Do you think we could sneak around him and enter from the back?” asked Brin.

“Easily,” said Hogg.

“Should we?”

Hogg shrugged.

“What’s his Class? His [Hide Status] is too good for my [Inspect] to pierce,” said Brin.

“[Herald],” answered Hogg.

Brin swore. [Heralds] were not exactly big fans of his. “Are [Heralds] really strong?”

“Not particularly. Mostly they’re fast.”

What was this guy’s deal? If he meant to draft them, why had he shown up alone? Brin started thinking out loud, “He wouldn’t mess with me, not with Lumina protecting me, and there’s little chance he doesn’t know about that. A random officer in the army might have plausible deniability, but not a [Herald]. He must be here for you. I bet it’s because they know that you’re a [Mage]. They probably figure that if they can’t get you willingly, then they won’t be able to get you at all.”

“They could at least try!” Hogg said angrily.

“What?”

“Look at him. Just one guy? Who does he think he is?”

“Wait. You’re mad they’re not trying harder to take you in?”

“It’s a little insulting, is all. If you gave me an entire army to draw from, I bet I could put together a team of around a dozen level 30s that would have a pretty good job at capturing a level 60 [Mage]. One that isn’t me, at least. The fact that they just sent one guy is a slap in the face. What kind of two-bit hedge [Mage] do they think I am?”

“So you are level sixty! Seriously, it’s so weird to hear you talk about yourself like this. It’s like you have no filter now that you’re a [Mage]. Next you’re going to tell me your last name!”

“Don’t count on it,” said Hogg with a deep frown.

“So what are we doing about this?” asked Brin, pointing at the [Herald].

“You can do whatever you want,” Hogg grumped. When Brin looked over, he had already disappeared, which was pretty impressive since he couldn’t do invisibility anymore. Clearly, Hogg felt the need to reclaim some of his dark and mysterious persona.

Brin thought about it a little longer, and then shrugged. He was probably safe, so why not just talk to the man?

He dismissed the spell blocking sound, and then stepped forward. The [Herald] was humming a tune. They call me Kukubaru because I eat the [Herald’s] words…

Brin cleared his throat and said, “I feel like I recognize that tune from somewhere.”

The [Herald] turned around, showing no sign that he was surprised by Brin’s arrival. “Master Mistaken, I presume?”

Technically, it was Master the Mistaken, but Brin didn’t correct him. “That’s me.”

He pulled a letter from his overcoat and held it out for Brin with both hands. “Please present this to your father at your earliest convenience.”

The letter was heavier than he expected, made of some kind of paper that was as dense as gold. The envelope was blank, except for the words “[Mage] Hogg” written in fine calligraphy.

Brin nodded. “I will.”

The [Herald] nodded and turned to go, but then hesitated and stayed in place. “Come to think of it, I believe I found something that may belong to you.”

He produced another letter from his overcoat, this one smudged and bent from a long journey. He handed it over more casually, so that Brin had to reach to snatch it out of pinched fingers.

This letter had “Brin isu Yambul” written across the front in much more blocky, rigid lettering. The return address listed Galan, of all people. The fact that this was in the [Herald’s] hands meant that Lumina hadn’t been paranoid when she’d told them that people would be intercepting their mail. He turned it over and saw that nothing had broken the seal, but that didn’t mean anything.

“That will be all,” said the [Herald]. He turned and left again. He walked much more slowly than Brin knew a [Herald] could, and started whistling the Kukubaru song again.

Awkward.

Brin rushed inside the house and found Hogg already at his favorite chair. “Letter for you,” he said, and then immediately tore open the letter from Galan and read it out loud. In the letter, Galan invited Brin to join the Order of the Long Sleep, and then in a turn that immediately got Brin’s pulse racing, mentioned a [Knight] who also had the experience of waking up surrounded by undead with no memories. That had to be him, the spy. Arcaena’s [Paladin].

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“About joining joining the Order of the Long Sleep? Could be fun. Let’s wait and see what Lumina thinks,” said Hogg.

“No! The other thing. Have you ever heard of this Order of the Golden Ivory?”

“No,” said Hogg. “But I don’t know many of the smaller Orders outside Frenaria.

“Come on. This guy has got to be–”

Hogg shushed him. “I know. Best not to discuss it.”

“Even here? Do you really think there’s someone who can listen in past all the defenses you set up?”

“Best not to risk it,” said Hogg. He used a black hand of hard light to grab the other letter from Brin’s hands, open it, and carry it through the air so that he could read it without having to stand up or put his drink down. Somehow, the tea in his cup was already hot and steaming.

He read out loud, “In salutation and greeting to the one known as Hogg, the great and esteemed master of the mystical and arcane, a [Mage] in the Kingdom of Frenaria, blah blah blah… We greet thee on behalf of the King of Frenaria, namely King Lancarote Blah blah blah… In accordance with the laws of Frenaria, in common consent and in full agreement of courtesy and good sense do we invite thee to… ok this is the main point here. We invite thee to present thyself to the Academy of Frenaria at the Great First Tower of Frenaria in Steamshield. So it’s about like we expected.”

“So not the war, but the tower?” asked Brin. “I thought Lumina said the Tower was too dangerous for us right now.”

“Too dangerous for you.” Hogg folded up the letter and shoved it in a pocket. “We don’t have to bother with this now. Let’s wait and see what Lumina says.”

“That’s an official summons! Won’t you get in trouble for ignoring it?” asked Brin.

“Nothing says I have to leave right now. Besides, time’s wasting. We should spend this time working on [Split Focus],” said Hogg. “Is your [Meditation] up to 20 yet?”

“Not quite,” said Brin.

“Then get to work!”

Brin was honestly thankful for the distraction. There was no way he was getting to sleep tonight, and the last thing he wanted was to dwell on the fact that his friends were gone. The way he had left things left him sick at heart. Should he have given them a better farewell? But the sorrow was matched with equal parts anger. He had given them an excellent good-bye, where they’d all made a toast and promised to still be friends when they reunited. It was their idea to screw all that up by springing the ill-advised ambush on him.

The sudden realization that soon he’d be losing Hogg as well made it too much to handle. He needed a distraction.

So he meditated.

The exercises Hogg had given him were sort of strange. For some of them, it was obvious what this had to do with [Split Focus]. Brin would throw and catch a ball with one hand, while bouncing another ball on the floor with another. Or he’d think about walking east while at the same time think about swimming west. For that one, he wasn’t sure if he was really splitting his focus because he just imagined looking at a screen where the top half showed him walking while the bottom half showed him swimming, but Hogg said that was good enough.

Other exercises were more strange. In one he was supposed to imagine reciting the history of Frenaria while at the same time running through an endless maze. In another, he had to [Meditate] while sketching random objects around the house with his left hand.

Just using [Meditation] while doing something other than holding perfectly still would’ve been impossible on his first go-around, but he had enough experience with the Skill that he managed to keep it activated even though it wasn’t high-leveled enough to do any heavy lifting.

In two more hours of practice, the System interrupted him.

You have leveled up Meditation. 17 -> 18

Hogg snapped shut the book he’d been reading. “Alright, good enough.”

Brin shook his head, trying to clear the fog that had risen up over two hours of concentration. “What?”

“The 20 [Meditation] thing is a guideline more than a rule. Go get some sleep. We’ll start on [Split Focus] training first thing in the morning,” said Hogg.

Brin didn’t think he’d be able to sleep with all the worries running around in his head, but when he stood up a wave of fatigue threatened to pull him back down. By the time he made it to his room he was already closing his eyes, and he barely felt the mattress underneath him before he fell asleep.

He woke to the sound of eggs popping on the frying pan in the kitchen–Hogg always used too much grease. He rubbed his eyes and stumbled into the dining room and sat down. Marksi chirped at him, but Brin was too groggy to even look in that direction. He summoned some random shapes of light for the dragonling to eat, and from Marksi’s satisfied squeaks, he’d guessed correctly.

Hogg soon entered the room and put a plate of eggs and toast in front of Brin, along with a glass of yoghurt. The yoghurt was fish-flavored, which was a Blackcliff thing, but it had the effect of waking him up. The eggs and toast he saved for last, hoping they’d remove any memory of the flavor of that yoghurt from his mouth.

Hogg took a long, slow, and loud sip of his morning tea. Since he usually had excellent table manners, he was doing this to be annoying.

Brin sighed. "Alright. Let's talk about [Split Focus].”

“You sure? I mean, a master of magic is offering to teach you one of the most important secrets of your Class, but don’t let that hurry you. Take all the time you need.”

Brin could admit he might be moving a little slowly this morning, so he shrugged off Hogg’s attitude. “Let’s start. How can I use [Split Focus] like you do? You implied it should be possible even though I have [Multithreading]."

"It is," said Hogg. "The reason I know it's possible is because there are people who can split their focus without having the Skill. But let's back up a minute. What do you know about brain damage?"

"Is that a burn? Because if so, it was too subtle," said Brin. “I had a pretty big day yesterday and–”

"It wasn't a burn. Since I am an adult, I am having an adult conversation."

Brin snorted and answered the first question. "Brain damage is really bad. Small injuries can suddenly come back to bite you as an adult, and in battle pretty much anything that pierces your skull will kill you."

Hogg blinked in surprise. "What? That's not true! Plenty of people survive head injuries. The weird part of head injuries is how uneven they are. One guy will take an arrow to the head and drop dead immediately. Another guy will have half his head blown off with a [Earthmover's] stone, but then go on to live a long and happy life with no obvious consequences. I’ve heard of a guy who had a brain-eating parasite that took 90% of his brain and he never noticed. I personally knew a [Warrior] who lost an apple-sized chunk of his brain to a barbed arrow. After a few weeks he was back on his feet, none the worse for wear, though he still ended up paying [Physician] to grow back the missing part.”

"Whoa. Hold up. [Physicians] can regrow your brain?" asked Brin.

"Some can, just like your skin, hair, and bones. Complicated organs can't be grown, but if it's just tissue they can take a sample, grow it up in a vat, and then patch it in again where it's missing."

"That's insane. I've never heard of this," said Brin.

"Sure you have. You know that [Beauticians] can grow hair, right?"

"That's different. They can make hair longer; they can't cure baldness," said Brin.

"We're getting side-tracked. They can take something on your body and make more of it. Well, they do the same with brains. Take a little glob of it, grow it into a long sheet, and then scrunch it up and stick it in the hole. Brain-damage fixed."

That sounded like a lobotomy, and if Brin remembered correctly, the people that got those never recovered. “Nothing about that sounds ‘fixed’! Sounds like that person would have a permanent mental disability that even a [Mind Healer] couldn’t fix! I’ve heard of people surviving brain injuries, but they usually end up with some weird side-effect, like losing their sense of smell or paralysis in half of their body.”

“Sure, but that goes away on its own,” said Hogg.

Brin groaned and put his head down on the table. This was another one of those things where he wasn’t used to the effect of high Vitality on the human body. People could survive wounds that would’ve killed anyone in his old world, and apparently that meant that even head injuries healed themselves at a much faster rate. He refused to believe that this world’s medicine was anything close to as good as his old world. Instead, they probably just used their high Vitality to get away with all sorts of barbaric methods that would’ve killed anyone back on Earth.

“No more world-shattering revelations before breakfast,” said Brin.

Hogg smiled and took a bite of his eggs. “Technically this is during breakfast. And it’s not my fault you come from a world of robot-loving barbarians. I can’t be expected to know what kinds of ordinary things from everyday life will offend your provincial sensibilities.”

Brin scowled. “We were insanely advanced compared to this world. We knew a lot about the brain, too. I remember a machine that could tell what part of your brain was being used for which tasks. Like, this front part will light up if you’re thinking about a math problem, and the sides will light up if you’re thinking about getting stung by a bee.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” said Hogg, shaking his head. “The one thing we’ve found with brain injuries is that it doesn’t always matter what part of the brain gets squished; the rest of your brain will readjust and fill in. If the left side gets demolished, the right side of your brain will figure out how to make up the difference. Or vice versa. But what happens if your brain gets cut in half, right down the middle, but both sides stay alive and in your body?”

“I don’t know,” said Brin. “But probably nothing, from what you’ve been telling me so far.”

“That’s right, nothing will happen. Your two halves will find some other way of syncing up, like with the sound of your voice or the feel of your body. But what if we put half of your brain to sleep, and let the other half control your entire body? Then when night comes we switch which one is asleep and which one is awake. We go for a month like that. By the end of the month, the two halves of your brains are starting to diverge. You’re starting to have two separate personalities, and neither of them really know for sure what the other one was up to during the day. Then, after a month, we reconnect them.”

“That sounds awful,” said Brin. “If that really happened to someone, I’d be surprised if they didn’t go completely mad. But that’s basically what’s happening with [Split Focus], isn’t it?”

Hogg snapped and pointed at Brin. “Exactly. [Split Focus] isn’t just a Skill for splitting your mind. If it was just that, we’d never take it. [Split Focus] is a Skill that protects you from going insane after splitting your mind.”

“That sounds totally fine and normal,” said Brin.

“It’s neither of those things,” said Hogg. “It’s a difficult and dangerous process that most [Illusionists] take years to master, if they end up figuring it out at all. Luckily for you, you know someone who can speed that along. I learned this method by stealing a book that had been loaned out from the library in the Tower, so before we go forward, I need you to understand that this isn’t the kind of thing you should blab about to everyone you meet,” said Hogg.

“I promise I’ll keep it a secret,” said Brin.

“I didn’t ask for a promise, so long as you understand,” said Hogg.

“I understand.”

“Good. In that case, this technique has two parts. Those meditation exercises will all come together and if you do it right, you’ll separate your right and left hemispheres and functionally split your consciousness in half.”

Brin hurried to take the last few bites of his breakfast before he forgot about it and then said, “I figured it would be something like that. But I have no idea how to even start.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, that’s gross. And that leads me to the other step.” Hogg withdrew a small green potion from his jacket pocket. It looked as thick as mashed potatoes and wholly unpleasant. “To be taken on a full stomach.”

Brin took the potion and pulled off the lid. He was immediately stuck by the stench; it was like rotting meat drenched in gasoline. “What’s it do?”

“It’ll split your mind in half. Then once you have a feel for it, it’ll be a lot easier to understand how all those [Meditation] exercises come together and you’ll be able to do it again. For someone without [Split Focus] this would be enough to drive you mad, but I wouldn’t say it’s effective as a poison. No one in their right mind would drink something that smells like that,” said Hogg.

Brin grimaced and then before he could think about it, downed the potion. “Oh no. Oh, man, oh no, Sancta Solia! It tastes worse than it smells. It’s like menthol, but instead of mint it’s acidic, and blegh, it’s filmy! It makes me want to scrape my tongue off. Give me a glass of water or something, I need… oh no.”

The bad taste in his mouth fled, but in it’s place was a bad feeling in his body. He felt… strange. It wasn’t pain, it was strange, but it was such a high-pitched intense strangeness that he thought any amount of pain would be preferable.

His whole body was wrong; like the pins and needles feeling of his foot falling asleep through his entire body, but also disorienting like watching his hand go numb and start moving in a way he couldn’t feel.

He stood, but everything was awkward, none of his limbs moved the way they should and he fell to the ground. Marksi scampered over to see what was wrong, but Brin didn’t want him to see him like this. He tried to brush him away, but his arms flailed wildly rather than doing what they were told.

Even his mind felt wrong. It had worked, he realized with growing horror. There were two of him in here. It was loud; it was so loud. He could hear the other him thinking; that wasn’t him, it was another foreign entity inside his own body, and yet it was him. He was terrified of that other mind, and he could feel its own extreme fear as well. It would do anything it could to stop this, even if that meant reaching over and snuffing him, the real him, out like a candle. No, which was the real Brin? He didn’t know.

“I hate this. I hate it. Make it stop!” Brin said. He could talk; that meant he was the real Brin, right? He could hear the other one thinking, and he could feel the trapped feeling of wanting to scream and not being able to. In mortified fascination, he gave the other one permission to use his mouth, and it said, “No! It’s me! Don’t let him do what he’s thinking of doing. I’m me! Get him out!”

Hogg knelt down next to him and caught his flailing arms. “Sh, calm down, it’ll pass. This is normal. This is what we were going for, remember? You’re both you, just remember that. Breathe. Try to stay calm.”

Brin focused on his breathing, but it was hard since the other one had partial control of his lungs as well. They had to work together to synchronize, but he didn’t want to. He wanted that thing out of his brain! After a few seconds of panicked gasping, his vision started to go dark and he changed his tune.

Breathe. We can work together and breathe. We don’t want to share, but we don’t want to die. Breathe, and then we’ll figure this out.

Brin breathed. In and out. Again, and again. The temptation came up to think about something else, but he squished it down. As long as the other him was doing the same, he’d cooperate and just focus on breathing. [Meditation] was a lifesaver, and he felt the other one slip into it as well. Like this, they didn’t have to fight. They could just breathe.

Gradually, Brin’s other mind seemed to grow quieter. In the silence of [Meditation] where all they thought of was the necessity of keeping their breathing going, it became harder and harder to tell them apart.

Eventually, Brin realized that he was completely alone in his own head again.

Through training, you have increased the following attribute:

Mental Control +5

“I never want to do that again.”

“That’s too bad,” Hogg said. “Because the next step is learning to do that on your own.”