Enchanting Rendezvous

Chum opened the door and went through it. We barely had the time to notice that there were other figures in the hallway beyond, when he said: "Oop, that's mind control," turned around and started blasting lobs of green, gooey substance at the two of us. I shouted: "Clear your mind," as I did the same myself. I mean, I didn't know it'd work, but it was the only idea that I could come up with at that moment. The rest of this encounter passed in a strange, semi-detached state that came with emptying your mind through meditative practices. You'd think that you wouldn't be able to make decisions or take action without your running train of thought backing you up, but it was actually perfectly doable to a point.

What we couldn't do was cast spells or speak. The chanting or visualization were just concepts too complex to do by subconscious reasoning. So when Chum had spent all of his supplies of goo missing us more or less, I didn't have a solid response. When he screamed and rushed us slashing his claws and snapping his teeth, I just had to trust that I could cast a rank 1 spell before the enemy mage could cast the hopefully higher level mind control spell. I cast it as quickly as I could, and retreated back into my mind. Chum stopped, there was a look of tense focus on his face, before he too went slack-faced and unfocused.

"What are y'all doing all scooped up in there? Why don't you go and come out here so we can see each other properly," a man's voice said with a Texan accent so thick you rarely heard it outside of rodeo shows and novelty steak houses. There was a chant of spellcasting, truncated as if there were syllables left out and I felt it. There was a piece of me that wanted to move towards that voice.

If you've been addicted to nicotine it's not so hard to explain the feeling. I wanted to do it, and my mind was ready to explain why I had logically chosen to do it. But since I had switched off the part of me that could rationalize that decision I only felt the craving and could recognize that it was unnatural. Without my boosted willpower it still wouldn't have been enough, but it was far from the sort of puppeteering body takeover I had feared. I made hand-signs to my two companions, motioning them to move back inside and around the corner.

"Now, why do y'all have to be so shy? I swear on my honor I'd be most courteous to you," he said. Instead we moved next to the door and got ready. I saw a knee enter the doorway, and without hesitation, slammed the head of my staff as hard on the knee as I could as soon as the person coming through put his weight on it. My staff was made of a crystalline glass-like substance, was at least as heavy as a hardwood staff and it had a pointy end. It was no spear or anything, but instead of walking in, the man immediately collapsed and clutched at his knee.

As soon as I saw the collapsed man's face though, it was clear that it wasn't the culprit. Even clutching his leg in obvious pain he had a smile on his face and a blank expression in his eyes.

"Is that any way to treat your fellow travelers, partner?" the Texan man said.

I took a chance. With my increased stats and practice I was pretty sure I could shut off my train of thought quicker than he could cast a spell.

"He'll keep sending more charmed people in. We have to go out," I said and even as I was part-way into my second sentence, he started chanting a more complex spell.

This time I did actually take a few steps forward before stopping myself. It wasn't actually that much easier to rationalize not obeying than it was to rationalize obeying when you couldn't rationalize.

Then, without further thought, I lead the rest of the party out into the next hallway. I quickly scanned it. There were more than a dozen people, maybe twenty. It was a mix of people one could see in the US South, both men and women. The hallway was more similar to the first two we'd seen after the elevator area. And I couldn't determine which one was the spellcaster instantly. So I used two charges of my staff to wordlessly and mindlessly throw up two of the most basic barriers on either side of us, blocking us off from the other people there with only a few feet of space between them. I did it just in time too, because one of the men, a blond white guy in a Stetson, with a jaw chiseled of stone, a smile for veneer adverts and an outfit for the next Marlborough man ordered his thralls to attack us.

Immediately a flash of spells, blades and even several gun-shots hit my barriers, but with all the stacking buffs to those spells, it only hit me five seconds later, and none of the individual attacks dealt any significant damage. Or, at least little enough that I could no-sell it and make it look like nothing went through, trusting that the bastard wouldn't try to attack again after seeing the first volley be futile.

He walked up right to the barrier and touched it with his hand and said:

"Now why d'you have to go and be like that, pals?" he said. It was bait. He knew we couldn't both resist him and speak at once, so he was trying to provoke us to speech.

"Well it ain't like it matters. I know that this here barrier of yours won't last for all too long. So why don't I just keep trying to make you see reason while you sit in there, and try to figure out how to get out of this pickle y'all've gotten yourselves into," he said.

He'd need time to cast his spell. He'd shown his hand, and I knew that he needed at least four syllables of time to cast his most basic spell. While for my most basic spell I only needed "ALO-NIX", I shouted. The portal appeared right in front of him, at his center of gravity and a sharp, heavy icicle fell out of nowhere into his chest. He fell, coughed and groaned.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Fuck you!" he shouted, grabbed a nearby man by the wrist, picked up my icicle and slammed it into his head over and over again until he stopped moving. The older man he'd grabbed didn't resist or even flinch as he died. "Let's keep things civil around here," he said, as he was breathing heavily, recovering from the burst of physical exertion, "We wouldn't want anyone else to get hurt.

I was thinking about it. Not consciously, but there was a bright light at the back of my head. It was an obvious solution. His spells were scarier than mine. If he cast any of the higher level ones, chances were that the fight would be over before it started. I did have something on my side though. The thing that I had used just a few minutes ago on Anna. All I would have to do is make him suffer enough that he was incapacitated just for a second, and then, my infernal brand could really wreck his day. He'd recovered pretty quickly from the icicle. Clearly he had boosted Resilience, or magical armor or both. I had more spells though. Worse spells.

I walked to the edge of the invisible barrier. I quickly said "Fus!" and my spellbook flew in front of me. The man hadn't even tried to cast a spell in the brief moment that it took me to get my book in front of me. It flipped over to the greasefire spell at my thought. We locked eyes.

"So that's how it'll be, pardner? Draw on three? Fastest man wins? Aw shucks, you know just how I like it," he said. I said nothing, of course, still glaring the bastard in the eye. He was a murderer and… Well, I don't even know. Earth had neither laws against mind control, nor a cultural taboo over it. All I knew is that there should be one, and it should be sharing second place with a few other things just below murder. Finally he smirked, said "Alright, on three then," and actually walked ten paces back.

He said "One," and immediately started casting his spell. Which was alright with me, since I'd started casting on around the letter 'n'. We both finished together, and I fell in love with him. Or, well, that's the best way I can describe it in retrospect. I didn't want to fuck him, nor did I think of him as a member of my family or a very close friend. It was like all of those things, but without the mess and complications of humanity. He was beautiful, cool, clever, and I wanted to be just like him, or I wanted to do whatever he wanted me to. I wanted him to like me so badly it was almost a physical hurt.

At the same time, a bucket of flaming oil fell onto his head. What can I say, there are more and less complicated forms of magic. Oh no, I thought, he's screaming, he's in pain, I have to help him. I was just about to do just that when a lash of fire scorched against the back of my neck. I screamed, more from the memory of that time a cinder elemental had nearly melted my skin off my body than the actual pain. I turned around and saw Anna twirling threads of fire around her fingers.

"Are you out of it, or do I need to keep burning?" She said.

I turned and cranked up my brand against Tex as hard as I knew how. His screams went from swearing and hollering to wretched, deep animal shrieks. Instantly, I felt whole, healthy and full of mana. I poured a second helping of greasefire on him. This time it burned even brighter. And the pseudoportal of fire looked more sinister, taking on a hellish aspect.

That's where I learned that there is a downside to a high resilience and many hitpoints. If you're in enough pain to be debilitated, you would be screaming for a very, very long time after you start begging for death. Only when I finished him off with a final burst of shaped icicle, did he stop. And only then did I realize that I hadn't actually thought my moral dilemma through to the end. I'd just went ahead with my plan. Anna was looking at me, and at first I thought it was fear that I saw in her eyes. But it was worse than that. She understood.

"What- what in tarnation just happened?" An older, Ron Selleck looking man said, and it was over.

After a few minutes the barrier lowered.

I would have liked to say that the spell was broken and the people under his sway were grateful and understanding, but apparently that wasn't really how it worked. Even if they understood intellectually that they had been controlled, a good half of them connected him with positive emotions and leadership. Almost half of those actually refused to admit that they were controlled. They insisted that he had every reason to do what he did, and that they followed him on their own free will. Thankfully they were a minority, because I was pretty afraid that they would actually attack me.

It broke out into a pretty heated argument among the group, actually. And when Anna and I stepped away from it, in the end they didn't even follow us or seemed to notice me leaving. I looked around before looting Tex's corpse. There wasn't much there, though I did get nearly 50 gold pieces from his pocket. It was strange, it more or less transferred directly to my own money counter in my Journal. There were two sheets of paper on him too, what looked like spell scrolls. I rolled them up and stuck them in my backpack.

There was a scratching from my Journal. I knew what it was going to be before I opened it.

Log Hero Jeremy Hock killed. Experience to Level 13 2200/15000 Achievement Unlocked: Murderer!

Achievements:

Murderer! You have slain a fellow Hero in the Tower. Do you feel it? Do you feel the rush? It's different, isn't it? So long as it was goblins and trolls you could pretend, but you've reduced another man from your world to a corpse. Congratulations!

Reward Earned: Trait: Murderer (1)

Traits:

Murderer (1)

You have killed another person with a Journal. You monster. You may increase any attribute by 1. Progress to Murderer (2) 0/10

The reward was far too good. A whole level only got you 1 attribute point normally, and it was far easier to kill 11 people than to gain two levels at my level. The incentive to-

"It's scary, isn't it?" Anna said, "The reward is way too good." I looked at her. She looked guilty, but she wasn't shrinking back. She hadn't damaged the man directly, there was no way that she got the achievement. Or, rather, there was no way that she had got the achievement just now. "You did what you had to do. The reward doesn't matter," I said. "Doesn't it? There are a lot of assholes around. Sometimes I think, well, why should they get a chance instead of me," Anna said. "We have a chance. A good one. We don't need this," I said. "I know. I know. I only have one rank too. Just- stay safe, Alex. If it comes to it, you matter more than anyone else," Anna said. "No I don't," I said. "You're my friend. You matter more," she said. And it was both frightening and sort of sweet. "Anyways. We're not killing more people, and I hope you're not suggesting that," I said. "No, of course not. Just- If you have to. If it's self-defense. Don't hesitate," she said. "Oh. Well, if that's what you meant, you too," I said. "Yeah. I won't make that mistake again," she said. And then she wouldn't elaborate any more.

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