Absolute Power: A Portal Harem Fantasy, page 15
Mary looked surprised for a moment, but instead of asking questions, she merely nodded. “Of course, that will be fine. Where would you like to lay down?”
“The cushions by your mirror will be fine. I don’t want to get too comfy and end up falling into a deep sleep. There are quite a few things I want to do today, and I have a lot to tell you about.”
“That works,” Mary replied and headed towards the door.
“Callie?” I said, wanting to make sure she didn’t need me for anything.
“Go,” she replied. “We’ll come get you after a while.”
Blair gently leaned her bloodied sword against the wall and glanced at Edwin.
“I’ll get that cleaned up and right back to you, Blair,” he nodded.
Her eyes softened at his words, but she didn’t smile or speak. Instead, she turned and walked past me to follow Mary. I brought up the rear as we headed to the elevators. Once we’d returned to the room where Mary’s secret painting chamber was, the elevator doors slid open and Blair and I walked out. I turned to see Mary still in the elevator.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“No,” she said. “I’m going to get things ready for dinner later and finish up some fertilizing I hadn’t quite gotten to when you were gone. I just need to go up and grab a few things. You two rest and I’ll see you later.”
“Thank you,” I said as her face was blocked by the elevator doors sliding shut.
By the time I turned around, Blair had already laid down on the couch. I felt a small twinge of guilt for lying to the others about needing rest, but it passed quickly. I couldn’t think of another way to find time to be alone with Blair.
Once I heard the elevator sweep Mary away, I walked to the couch and kneeled down beside Blair’s head. Her eyes were closed.
“Blair? Can I talk to you?”
She opened her dark eyes and stared at me. Then she nodded.
“I know you aren’t a Shadow. I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I’m not sure how to help you, but I want to,” I said, a sense of urgency swelling in me.
She continued staring at me, but I got the very strong sense that she wanted to say something. Then I remembered her reaction to Mary downstairs.
“You can’t say what you want to say, can you? Is that why your actions don’t always line up with how your face looks?” I asked.
Her eyes looked away for a moment in such a way that I would’ve expected a shy or embarrassed expression on her face. Of course, her face didn’t move, but I saw that I must’ve been on the right path.
“Is there any way you can tell me what happened in your mind after our battle together? Is it worse for you now?” I paused for a moment. “I’m so sorry if it’s worse,”
Blair sat up suddenly. Her entire face was twisted with what appeared to be anger. “Again!”
“Again?” I stared at her. “What, again?”
“Again! Slower!” she yelled.
“Again,” I whispered to myself. “What does she want done again?” It dawned on me. I’d asked her more than one question. She may not be able to answer more than one. “Is there any way you can tell me what happened in your mind after our battle together?”
Her face tightened, but she didn’t respond.
“Okay, um, is it worse in your mind now?” I asked again.
“No!” she screamed so loud I was startled “No!”
“No? It’s not?” I said, a buzzing excitement blasting through me. “Is it better? Is it the same?” I caught my mistake immediately. “Is it better?”
Her brow furrowed even more, but she didn’t say anything. I ran through the questions I’d asked, and an idea formed.
“I bet you can only answer questions that have ‘no’ as an answer. Okay, how about this? If you could undo what happened to your mind after I overloaded it, would you?”
“No!” she screamed with such anger in her voice it almost hurt to hear.
“I knew it!” I yelled out. “You are not a damn Shadow, and I intend to make certain everyone knows that!”
I took Blair’s face in my hands without stopping to think about her reaction. Her expression changed immediately. The lines of anger disappeared, and her eyes welled up with tears, although the rest of her expression was now blank. Whatever she had inside her simply wouldn’t come out correctly.
“Can I come back into your mind?” I asked. “If I can see the changes, maybe I can figure out a way to help. I don’t want to short-circuit your brain again, but what if that is what needs to be done?”
She stared at me as a tear rolled down her cheek.
“Damn it! I’m sorry. Do you mind if I come back into your mind?” I asked, keeping to one question with a possible answer of ‘no.’
“No,” she replied, but in a whisper.
I took my hands from her face, and she laid down. Then I turned and sat down on the floor with my back against the couch near her head. As I closed my eyes, I thought about how I only mind-traveled once. I wasn’t even sure exactly how I’d done it. All I remembered was closing my eyes, retreating into my own mind, then thinking of hers.
As it turned out, that is all it took. There was no resistance, no effort needed, just a desire to be in her mind and I was there. I looked out over the view, astonished. Her entire mind was different than it had been the last time I was there. The air was a lighter color of blue. There were flashes of lightning but nothing like before. The strikes were thin and there were less of them. They still shook the place, but much less severely. There was something new, however. I was surrounded by huge columns that looked to be made out of very porous stone of some sort. They were cracked and scratched and not very structurally sound from what I could tell but I hadn’t remembered seeing them before. They stretched up so far I couldn’t see the tops.
I took a quick moment to memorize the pattern of the lightning, which was also different from the last time I was inside her mind. I began to walk amongst the columns. I reached out to touch one but thought better of it. I had no idea what they represented, or what they were holding up. The last thing I wanted to do was cause damage. I pulled my arm back to my side.
“Thank you for not touching that,” came a voice that made me jump so high both my feet came off the ground.
I whipped around and my jaw dropped open. I was standing face-to-face with Blair, inside her mind.
19
“I didn’t know you’d be–”
“I didn’t know I’d see you, either,” Blair cut me off. “I’m happy you are here, though.”
I stared at the image before me. The feeling of simply being telepathically inside her mind slipped away, replaced by the sense that the two of us had been physically transported to another world together. She didn’t look like a thought, she looked real. The way her chest moved with her breath, the way the wisps of dark hair moved around her face, everything felt perfectly real.
“Why didn’t I see you last time I was here?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.
“You know as much as I do,” she said, her lips turning up to reveal a smile that I’d never seen before and was mesmerized by.
“You’re different,” I said, taking a step towards her.
She didn’t shy away, or grimace, or get angry as I would’ve expected from the Blair I knew. Instead, she stepped towards me as well.
“I’m not different in here. I’m different out there,” she replied. “How did you know? How did you figure it out?”
I was close enough to reach out and touch her but I didn’t. “I didn’t figure much out, just that your expressions and your actions didn’t line up. I work with a lot of non-profit organizations back where I come from, and several are for the elderly. The disconnect between how you act and what you look like reminded me of the onset of dementia in the old. They get so frustrated because they can still think but can’t communicate properly.”
“However you did it, you were right. I’ve been unable to act myself since the insanity touched me,” she said, her smile staying. “But you changed something in me when you short-circuited my brain.”
I looked around us. The environment was a thousand-times less violent than the last time I’d been inside her consciousness.
“So, this isn’t how it is when you aren’t mid-battle?” I asked. “The increase in turmoil here wasn’t because we were fighting?”
“No,” she answered. “What you saw last time is how it’s been, constantly, since the day the insanity reached me. After your little stunt, however, it’s been like this. It scared the hell out of me at first. I was sure I was slipping further away, that this was some sort of progression, but then I noticed the columns.”
I glanced to my right at the nearest column. “These weren’t here last time.”
“They were here, you just didn’t see them for some reason. The columns are what I spent every waking second keeping from disintegrating, up until yesterday. They suddenly stopped crumbling the way they used to. I had to patch, and re-patch and there are an endless number of them, it seems. The relief I’ve gotten from what you did is so enormous I don’t even know how to express it.” Her eyes dropped down, but not before I saw her eyes swell with tears.
I instinctively wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close to me. She didn’t resist but, instead, fell into me, sobbing. I let her cry and when her whimpers calmed, I broke the silence.
“Do you know why the change happened?”
“No,” she sniffled as she pulled herself together and straightened up. “I was out and when I woke up, things were different. All I can think is that you somehow knocked some of the insanity out somehow. None of it makes sense because how? How could you knock it out when I never saw it in the first place?”
“What do you mean?” I asked her, tipping my head to look her in the eyes.
“When the insanity struck me, it wasn’t like something broke into my head. It was more like I suddenly didn’t have what I needed to maintain my own proper thinking. Nothing in here wreaked havoc, I’d simply lost the ability to automatically maintain my own thoughts. It’s so hard to describe. So, that’s what I mean… How could you have knocked insanity out of me if it wasn’t an actual thing to be knocked out?” She was shaking her head, and I could tell she was frustrated.
“Maybe we are thinking about it backwards,” I said.
A crack sounded through the air, and Blair grabbed my arm, pulling me. We rounded the nearest column and darted to the next closest one just as a bolt of lightning struck where we’d just been standing. I’d been so mesmerized by meeting the real her that I’d completely forgotten we were standing in the middle of a mental storm.
“Thank you,” I said with a smile.
“What were you saying? Thinking of it backwards?” she asked as though we hadn’t moved an inch.
“Yes. Maybe nothing was knocked out, but maybe something was knocked loose,” I said. “Think about it. What happens when animals, humans or otherwise, are scared? They either fight, or they run.”
As the words came out of my mouth, a door opened in my thinking, and excitement shot through me. It must’ve shown in my eyes because Blair tilted her head. “What just happened?”
“They run! It’s not insanity that affected your realm, it was fear!” I nearly yelled.
“I don’t scare easily, Hudson,” she replied with a roll of her eyes. “And I can promise you I definitely felt the insanity.”
“No, you didn’t!” I shouted. “You felt a fear so strong, so deep in your psyche that you ran from it. You hid from it. Without you present in your own consciousness, your mind began to fall into disrepair, leaving your body with only its subconscious to keep you alive and moving in the physical world!”
“I’m not following,” she said, thoroughly confused at my rant.
I took a deep breath to calm the barrage of thoughts in my mind. “Okay, I see where that didn’t make sense, but it’s only because you aren’t like everyone else. You have magic inside you, and you are a warrior, but imagine you are a regular citizen of Slanos. The fear hits your psyche. It is so powerful that you abandon your consciousness to hide from it, leaving the inner workings of your mind unattended, without direction. We are able to direct our thoughts. Without direction our minds would run wild, responding to outside stimuli from the world. Slanos is under duress because of Cadence’s disappearance, everyone is terrified that they will go insane, so they do.”
Blair stared at me, processing my words, then shook her head. “That’s not what happened to me, though. I get that I’m not the same as a regular citizen, but I never hid and the damage still progressed in my mind.”
I grabbed Blair by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Do you believe that Cadence’s magic balances the psyche of the people in her world?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied.
A jolt of excitement surged in me at her answer. “Do you believe that we will find her? That her power can be restored to the realm if we reach her in time?”
“That is my hope, yes,” she answered.
“That is why you weren’t affected the same,” I said, nearly shaking her. “You knew Cadence on a deeper level. She means more to you than someone who simply holds her as a figure-head of sanity in their minds. You were hit with the fear of her disappearance causing horrible decline for your people, but you believed there was a chance to keep that from happening. So, instead of completely retreating and losing all interaction with your consciousness, you stayed and started fighting it. Repairing the columns, learning how to navigate the storm in here… all of it was you fighting for what you believed in more strongly.”
Blair looked up at the sky around us and drifted off in thought for a moment. She gently pushed my hands off her shoulders and stepped away. Stepping slowly in a circle around me, she examined every inch of our surroundings before she turned back to me. “I’m fighting to bring Cadence back inside my own head?”
“Yes!” I called out, elated that she was finally understanding the message I was trying to convey. “You believe the lack of her presence is driving people insane, but you also think her return will fix it. You are a magical warrior, so you chose to fight. You simply picked the wrong location for the battle.”
My elation dampened a little when I saw her shake her head. “That doesn’t line up, though. Why would your short-circuit stunt have changed anything if that was the case? Something happened, physically, when you did that and when I woke up things were different.”
I grabbed her shoulders again, unable to stop myself. “Why did you battle with me? What were you hoping would happen?”
“I wanted to find out if the random human who had showed up had a chance in hell to be strong enough to beat Kasen, who is god adjacent,” she replied as though I should’ve known.
“And, after I put you down, did you think that was a possibility?” I stared into her eyes, praying she’d make the connection I was trying to show her.
“Yes, after you beat me, I believed you may, at least, have a fighting chance,” she replied.
I continued looking at her, waiting. The confusion in her eyes suddenly shifted to shock, then awareness. “Oh, no. No. No. No. How can that be?”
“Yes? How can what be? Tell me,” I urged.
“The change in my mind happened because I saw hope that the fight I was fighting had more of a chance of working! I was less fearful,” she yelled, finally reaching my level of excitement.
“Yes! You are less afraid that all your efforts would be in vain! How did Callie not see this in you? She’s the goddess of life and what is life built on other than biology and a will to live?” I said.
“Callie has a whole world on her shoulders. I don’t blame her for fearing me a Shadow. Mary either. All they saw was everything happening around them. Callie has tried to see the minds of Shadows and couldn’t get in. When she tried with me, she couldn’t get it. There was no way for her to know. She may be the goddess of life, but she’s not the goddess of mere existence and that’s all something does when not connected by consciousness. Even the grass has a level of consciousness.” Blair replied.
“I don’t know anything about plant consciousness, but I do know a bit about fear. I’ve seen it make people do crazy things to otherwise sane people. Nothing like what’s happening here, but when masses of people take their own lives because their investments tank in the stock market simply because they fear for their reputations and their material possessions, I’d say fear does some crazy shit,” I said with an involuntary chuckle.
Blair’s posture went stiff. “That means… That means I can…”
She twirled around, looking up at the sky around us, following lightning strikes across the blue in her mind. She closed her eyes and her chest heaved as she drew in a massive breath and held it. Suddenly the electricity in the air changed. The lightning no long came down from the sky, but instead stayed in the clouded sky above. At first the collection of power brightened the air, then began to dim as its intensity decreased, simply dissipating from the sky. The air was filled with tiny crunching sounds as the surrounding columns began to heal their own cracks and become smooth again. The place turned from blue to white in a massive flash that was so bright I threw my arm up over my eyes to shield them. Then, in a sudden blast of brightness, I was flying through the air.
I opened my eyes, terrified that Blair’s mind had somehow broken in her attempt to do whatever it was she was doing. I found that I was no longer in her mind with her, though. I was in my own body, sitting on the floor next to the couch where her body was laying.
I scrambled to my knees and turned around. Slipping my arm under Blair’s shoulders, I lifted her to sit. She was still unconscious and her head rolled back. Propping her against the back of the couch, my heart was racing. What if I had been wrong? What if I had stopped her fighting spirit, and she’d succumbed to destruction thinking it was fixing everything?
“Blair, wake up. WAKE UP!” I yelled. “WAKE UP!”
Her body stayed limp as I shook her. I stopped long enough to put my head on her chest to check her breathing, praying with everything in me that she was alive. I couldn’t feel her heartbeat and her chest wasn’t rising with breath. “No, no, no. WAKE THE HELL UP!”
