Telepathy is neither a one-way street nor a walkway. One side needs to have the magical talent to communicate, and the other must be willing.
— Exploring the Depths of the Mind
Kanéko stared at a massive gear looming above her. It was metal, but she had never seen anything so large made out of steel. She knew it would take a powerful mage to shape it, but part of her wished someone without magic could mold metal at that scale. The thought saddened her but then her focus drifted to the purpose of the gear.
As she concentrated, she saw other gears and pistons attached to the large one. It was a device of some sort, complicated and massive. A smile graced her lips as she started to work her way through the linkages and ratios in an effort to find the power or the purpose of the machine.
When she gave up, she had lost track of time while the device remained unsolved. It was a wall of mechanical devices that had no purpose or reason. For all appearances, a shifting mechanism for the sake of being there.
She was dreaming, she could think of no other explanation.
Kanéko relaxed almost immediately and let herself enjoy the pointless designs. It was peaceful tracing through the mechanisms, seeing how her efforts with the water screw and what she learned about the mill had integrated into her dreams.
With a smile, she reached out and pressed her hand to a massive piston larger than a house. Impractical but beautiful, she imagined it having beautiful scroll work and designs along the ends.
The piston blurred. Metal rose up underneath her palm as elegant designs spread out like a plant, caressing the metal sleeve. The more she focused on it; the details grew sharper.
Kanéko pulled back and admired her work with an approving nod. She could finally interact with the designs in her head. Sweeping her hand back, she summoned gears and pistons. It only took a moment to rebuild the water screw and boiler from scratch, then pull it apart to reassemble it. She could see where one of the joints was weak and where it probably ruptured. That was what had destroyed the stable. Next time, she wouldn't make the same mistake.
She sighed and let the screw crumble. Turning around, she looked at what her mind had created. The rest of her dream was a field of boilers, smokestacks, and every combination of machine she could imagine. It stretched as far as she could see and disappeared in a haze of oily smoke and steam.
A page fluttered across her vision. She reached out and snatched it before it blew away. It was part of the water screw's design, just as she pictured it in her head. A bit of color bled through the page and she flipped it over. When she saw a little girl's scrawl of herself doing magic, she dropped the page in surprise. It fluttered away, dancing between two mechanized grape presses.
The surface below her consisted of writings and pictures she had created as a child, the dreams she had while sitting at her father's feet, the lessons she learned when she was obsessed with magic. Her world of mechanical perfection was built on her childhood fantasies of magic.
Her surroundings clicked from countless gears meshing, ticked from clockwork devices counting down seconds, and even the faint thud of pistons driving home. The world around her pulsed and beat in time to some ethereal metronome.
Joy filled her as she walked along a trail of magic books and oil pans.
She spotted a hill in the distance and headed toward it. Her bare feet slapped on the paper ground as she ducked underneath a boiler larger than her father's tower. She stopped abruptly when she came to the edge of a chasm, a cliff plunging straight into the darkness of oblivion. The cliff wall beneath her bare feet was made from fantastical devices that shook the ground.
As she admired the world around her, a new smell intruded on her thoughts. It wasn't the sharpness of burning oil or the scent of paper. Instead, it was sour and tangy, fishy. She frowned as she tried to remember the familiar smell. She licked her lips and took a deeper breath. It took her a moment, but then she recalled the black substance on her hand during the cliff collapse.
Kanéko realized she was wiping her hand on her hip. She lifted her hand and stared at the blackness that coated her palm. Thick rivulets ran down her wrist. Where the liquid touched, her skin tingled. She brought her hand closer and sniffed, the fishy smell was coming from the oil.
Frowning, she looked up while still trying to scrape it free on her trousers.
A pair of glowing red eyes stared at her.
She gasped and jerked back.
The eyes were on the far side of the ravine, hovering beyond the cloud of oil smoke and dust rising between them. Unhidden by the rock, they loomed over her in a palpable aura of menace. Each eye was massive, larger than a horse. It had no pupils. It was just a glowing red orb that somehow gave the impression that it was staring straight at her.
Kanéko took a step back.
«We are Damagar.» The words slammed into her mind, twisting her own thoughts to form the concepts instead of dredging up memories like Ruben had done. She felt helpless and vulnerable, as if the creature was somehow growing deep inside her.
It took a step forward, reaching out with one massive paw. Large claws curved out of three distinct toes, and she spotted webbing between each one. She couldn't focus on the rest of the creature's shape through the haze of the ravine, but the foot was clear. When it smacked down on the ravine, it crushed the countless devices into a spray of oil and debris.
«We know you, Kosobyo Kanéko, Kanéko Lurkuklan.» The words pummeled her as the creature stepped further into the ravine. «We are in your head.»
Her concern twisted in fear. She stepped back again, stumbling over a pile of childhood drawings. She flailed out and grabbed the nearest pipe. The metal sizzled underneath her hand only a moment before sharp agony raced up her limb. It was searing hot. Knowing that she would fall if she let go, she forced her fingers to remain wrapped around the burning metal just long enough to regain her feet.
The ground shook beneath her. She looked up with surprise as ripples raced through the countless devices around her. Axles and pistons snapped as the ground buckled in expanding waves. Spurts of oil and smoke followed.
Kanéko got back to her feet and peeled her hand away from the pipe. Strips of flesh were left behind to sizzle and cook away, filling the air with the smell of burning flesh that quickly mixed in with the oil. Blinking past her tears, she clutched her hand to her chest.
She had burned herself repeatedly while working on the water screw. It wouldn't take long for the initial agonies to fade. Tensing, she counted up as she waited for her body to remember.
As the sharpness of her pain faded, so did the quakes. Panting, she waited for the throbbing to subside.
When she looked up, the glowing red eyes were still staring at her. Damagar had continued to approach, but it moved slowly. Its bulbous shape was just coming down into the ravine, crushing acres of the pointless mechanisms. Oily smoke swirled around it, revealing a heavily textured surface over an obsidian body. «We communicate, nothing more.»
Kanéko stared in shock, her pain forgotten. Damagar's shape teased her memory, it was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. She frowned and peered at it closer, wishing the oily smoke would clear to give her a better view.
Responding to her thoughts, a wind blew across the ravine. It tugged at the haze of smoke and dust, drawing it into streamers that rolled through the pipes and around Damagar's body. She could see thick ridges and wart-like knots on its dark skin. The large bumps disturbed the streamers of smoke that raced around its body.
With a final surge, the haze was clear, and she could focus clearly on Damagar.
It was a toad. A massive obsidian toad with glowing red eyes that looked like cracked rubies. From the size of the ravine and its feet, she thought it was about eighty or ninety feet across and about a hundred long, excluding its feet. Each paw was easily a rod across. The maw of the creature slowly opened, and a tongue ran along the ridge before it snapped its jaw closed again.
She shuddered at the sight. The tongue was thicker than her torso.
Damagar took another step toward her, crushing countless gears into scraps of metal and spurts of oil.
Fear rose inside her. She didn't want the creature to get any closer.
The far side of the cliff pulled away from her, stretching the bottom of the ravine along with it.
The disruption pulled Damagar away from her, but that didn't stop it from taking slow, measured steps that crushed new machinery. Its eyes never left hers and she could feel the pressure of its thoughts approaching her, terrifying and overwhelming.
Kanéko tensed with anticipation.
Despite the growing presence, it didn't speak again. No powerful thoughts slammed into her consciousness; no memories were forcibly dredged up from her subconscious.
Her fear ebbed. She watched it continue to pace toward her, the cliff still drawing away out of sight, but the creature continued to stalk her wordlessly. She clenched her hands into fists. Agony blossomed on her injured palm, but she pushed it aside.
Time continued to inch forward. Around them, the broken gears squealed against each other, and a rapid clicking noise rose up. The smell of machine and fish oil filled the air, both burned in the back of Kanéko's throat.
Finally, she couldn't wait any longer. “Well? What do you want?”
Damagar blinked one eye and then the other. It took another step.
“If you don't want anything, get out of my dreams! Out of my head!”
It finally responded. A pressure built up inside her head and she heard the whisper of a dozen different voices crashing into her mind. Concepts and thoughts were burned into her thoughts, drowning out the squeaks, hisses, and scrapes of metal that surrounded her. «… must kill the Broken Thought ... before it kill us.»
She closed her mouth with a snap. When Damagar didn't follow up, she said, “W-What? What are you talking about?”
«Kill the Void Child, the Broken Thought.» It seemed as if Damagar had tried to frame a description but failed. She knew what it was talking about though, there was only one other person with her. Like before, it was as if it couldn't picture or even name Ruben directly.
Kanéko remembered how Ruben plucked the memories out of her mind. She knew that Damagar could do the same, to find the perfect words, but the idea of the creature inside her head left Kanéko feeling cold. She turned her head away from Damagar, looking down at the ground to avoid looking into its eyes.
A small black frog was at her feet. It looked up with tiny crimson eyes. «We're already here, Kanéko Lurkuklan, Kosòbyo Kanéko. You cannot escape.»
She caught movement in the corner of her eye. Looking over, she saw another small frog.
«We only communicate.»
When Damagar used a plural to describe itself, she didn't get an image of the giant toad. Instead, it was a group of figures projecting in unison, a choir of distinct personalities that combined together spoke as Damagar. None of them were human nor were they even the natural creatures she had read about. Instead, they looked like the monsters and nightmares twisted out of animals. There were bipedal cats, bird-like creatures with wings for arms but human-like faces, and even one beast that looked like a bear without hair.
Curious and with her anger dissipating, she concentrated on the swirl of individuals that popped in her head. With her focus, words and descriptions welled up into her consciousness: the leaders were Strategy, Preparation, and Observation. There were others, dozens with more specific titles related to the body like Right Leg, Heart, and Breath. The names were surprising. They were all names for abstract concepts or functions, not arbitrary labels.
It only took her a moment to realize their names and functions were the same. Damagar needed all of them to even move. The creature was too big and powerful for a single mind to control its form. It needed all of them.
As his connection to her grew deeper, she felt hundreds of other personalities still sleeping in its mind. The ones that responded to her were the only ones awake. They spoke to her, but she could imagine the noise if they were all aware of her.
Cold fear rippled through her dreams, and the ravine spread further apart. She shook her head and held up her hands. The storm of thoughts was already too much, she couldn't take more. “Out! Out of me!”
«We will leave, but we need you to extinguish—» She felt Damagar reaching into her mind. His thoughts were jumbled and powerful, surging around in her thoughts as he forced her memories to rise up to the fore. «We cannot see it. We cannot name it beyond a label, the Void Child, the Broken Thought.»
As Damagar responded, Kanéko concentrated on its powerful thoughts. She could almost pick out the individual personalities that pummeled her. Each one had different motivations and desire. Damagar's Right Leg only wanted to move; Strategy was trying to keep her mind away by shifting her attention to Damagar's Heart. She lost herself in feeling the beat of a powerful heart even as she realized she had been misdirected.
With all her effort, she forced her attention back on Damagar's Strategy. “Why me?”
Damagar responded by driving its memories into her mind, burning away everything but the intense images she was forced to experience.
She saw herself on the cliff, but as Damagar perceived her. Her thoughts leaked out from her mind, exposing her jealousy and growing friendship like a cloud of pollen. Her thoughts were ordered and neat but, at the same time, fluid.
Next to her, Maris was a chaotic storm of rapidly shifting emotion and ideas. They moved from happiness to sadness, from affection toward Kanéko to the itch on her butt.
Ruben was not in Damagar's thoughts at all. His voice, his presence, even his footsteps didn't register to the creature. Like before, the two girls spoke to empty space.
Damagar knew that the cliff would collapse before even Maris registered the shift of stone and the loosening of soil. Its blood had seeped into the ground and weakened it.
She tried to focus on why the creature's black blood was in the ground, but Strategy managed to redirect her thoughts to the moment when the cliff collapsed.
Kanéko watched as Maris plummeted to the ground. Feet above, her air magic manifested and caught her, softening the blow so she landed gently on the ground instead of being smashed into the rocks.
A sudden explosion startled Kanéko. It came form the top of the cliff as a howling storm of brilliant blue blossomed into existence and then collapsed into a tear into reality itself.
She had never felt or heard the explosion that Damagar experienced.
Curious, she forced her own memories to superimpose on top of Damagar's. The explosion happened at the same moment Ruben yelled for Maris. The only difference was she heard a booming voice echoing in her head. Damagar never heard Ruben's voice, only heard the blast.
The physic creature's experience became starkly different than Kanéko's. While she was trying to pick her way down to Maris, it was fighting a powerful pull from the fissure.
The suction clawed at its mind. It left jagged rips that burned away Damagar's memories and yanked at the distinct personalities that made up its thoughts. The invisible storm attacked Damagar as Kanéko blissfully inspected the crater her friend had created.
In the psychic world, Damagar's personalities panicked as they were assaulted by the inescapable pull of Ruben's presence. Most of the personalities were unable to respond, they were focused on moving body parts or preparing long-term strategies, not defending against a void that threatened to destroy them.
However, one of Damagar's personalities rose up to fight. Stubbornness was a humanoid frog armed with a ragged spear. It had been crafted from one of Damagar's earliest experiences and represented the drive to keep going even through mortal injuries inflicted centuries before.
Stubbornness never slept and it was ready to fight. Before any of the other personalities could be ripped from Damagar's mind and destroyed, the humanoid frog tore itself free of Damagar and flung itself into the psychic storm that threatened them all.
Kanéko's heart pounded in her chest as she was forced to experience the sorrow of watching a fragment of Damagar's personality sacrifice itself. Every sense of hers had been pulled it to feel, hear, and even smell as Stubbornness was swallowed up by the all-consuming void that Ruben had become.
Then, just as more personalities were about to be ripped free and destroyed, Stubbornness's claws reached out of the void to grab the edges of the fissure. It yanked the tear closed before it was lost forever.
Just as quickly as the physic void had formed, it was gone and Damagar could no longer perceive Ruben.
Sorrow and despair rose up from Damagar as the realization that it had lost its drive in an instant. Without Stubbornness, a sense of loss flooded through the other personalities. They had no direction beyond surviving through spite.
Strategy responded by waking up another fragment of Damagar's mind, Self-Preservation and then Anger. The former would wake quickly, but not too fast as to awaken—
Damagar's thoughts were interrupted sharply as Strategy severed the link with Kanéko. Even her world of machines and fantasies disappeared in an instant, leaving in her in a darkness where sleep would quickly swallow her.
In the moments before she lost consciousness, she thought about what she had experienced. It was clear now why Ruben wasn't supposed to “think hard” as Maris said; he was a threat to psychic creatures but those who had no ability to sense those powers would be untouched by his presence.
No wonder Strategy tapped Self-Preservation. It needed to survive. She guessed it also meant that Damagar was set on destroying Ruben before he could destroy it.
Any other plan faded away as she fell into a dreamless slumber.