"The Gathering" - Chapter 2

The Mentalist

It was a coolly enveloping softness, this brightness. Nikolai Pedersen floated almost somnolent, looking around him. He was mindful of the dangers when one is travelling the astral pathways.

It was always a dangerously suicidal undertaking to spy on a goddess’s domain.

Ignoring the slight sensation of his quivering fear, Nikolai concentrated on his destination. A slight tug pulled him to his left. He turned his head towards the pulling sensation and oriented himself to his new surroundings. Almost imperceptibly, the environment changed. From the bright silver light that heralded the gateway to the astral plane, it is now an overcast feel that he is seeing now. The sky—or whatever passes for one on the astral plane—is covered by mottled grays, lilac and shades of charcoal black. As if heralding a gathering storm.

This was the entrance to the unholy domain shared by Lemuderia and Skaven, twin goddesses of chaos and destruction.

Nikolai gulped in spite of himself. Although the first blush of youth had left him two decades ago—now he was a hardened psi-warrior in his prime—he still felt slightly out of his depth. Astral travelling hadn’t been one of his specialties. He preferred to take combat on a physical level, despite the hands-off nature of his psi abilities. In his head, he tried to imagine how he would have looked like to another fellow mentalist if he were to meet one on the astral plane. Would his sandy-haired, craggy face with the icy blue eyes be the visage they see? He remembered the lessons from the Academy when he was younger—that psychics travelling or accessing the higher planes view it each to their own understanding and unique perspective. To him, it was one of flying and the surrounding area looks as if viewed from the air. He started viewing it as such in his first battle training with another psychic at the Academy—a young telekinetic.

His opponent had gripped him in a telekinetic hold and had lifted him five feet of the ground. Nikolai had lashed out by instinct and learnt by accident how he could trigger a psychic feedback in a fellow psychic’s mind. The mock battle ended with him being the victor and his opponent in a coma for three weeks. He had kept his accidental findings to himself and made sure he stayed away from telepaths if he could. He learned to shield his mind from cursory scannings—an inevitable occurrence at the Academy where one is always brushing up against fellow psychics: empaths, telepaths, clairvoyants and their ilk. He had advanced quickly up the ranks and specialized in combat—both in battle and intelligence. He was trained to probe, read, manipulate and raze the minds of his opponents. Even kill them outright by only focusing the sum totalities of his psychic abilities and overriding his opponents’ higher brain functions. Yet he was aware as formidable his powers are, it’ll be as a candle light compared to the power of the divinities he is risking alerting.

A Prime Mentalist of the First Order must conquer his fear! He told himself, playing it about in his head in a litany. Almost mantra-like and he could see the expected manifestation of his words cloaking him in the familiar psychic armour.

Thus bolstered by his mental fortifications, he slipped towards the open astral doorway, hoping the great beings residing will not pay much attention to him as he slipped in. He slowed his flight and slowly descended until he is floating roughly two inches of the ground. He spent a few seconds gently scanning for thoughts around him, needing to know if there were any forms of sentience besides him. Satisfied, he touched gently on the surface of the plane. Masking his mind behind a screen of blankness by burying his higher thought functions under layers of carefully prepared mental noise he began confidently towards his destination.

He missed the slight scrabbling on the rocks behind him.

***

Back on the material world, Nikolai’s fellow mentalists watched anxiously at his seemingly peacefully-sleeping form lying on the rough cot. The occasional twitches on his face elicited concerned murmurs from even the most experienced.

“Are you sure he is well-equipped for this?” a soft voice whispered among them. Andra Marushka was frowning at the table where she was monitoring several crystals. The crystals were attuned to Nikolai’s vital signs: heart rate, mental activity and respiratory functions among others. “His heart rate just spiked into the critical range; his mental readings correlated with the effort of generating a psychic armour.”

There was a murmured exchange among the other mentalists gathered and one young man broke away from the crowd and advanced towards Andra. “Vincent,” Andra acknowledged with a nod. “Thoughts.” She stated it rather than posing it as a question.

“Prime Andra,” he began respectfully without beating around the bush. Andra is a telepath and has no patience for dissembling. “Perhaps it would be better that we recall him and send me instead. I’m more experienced in astral travelling.”

“And Nikolai’s battle training outstrips everyone here,” Andra returned crisply. “Except for the meisters at the Academy.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully and continued monitoring the crystals. “His vitals have stabilized,” she announced, an undercurrent of excitement evident. “He has touched down at the entrance of Artak. Mission completion due in ten minutes.”

The collection of mentalists—five males and three females, counting Vincent and Andra—milled about, occasionally pausing to watch the readings from the crystals. They almost missed the slight twitch of Nikolai’s fingers had it not been Andra’s vigilance for her strident shout of “Convulsions!” stirred the small crowd of observers into motion.

As the mentalists took their positions, Nikolai’s formerly-sleeping form jerked violently on the cot. His back arched upwards, supported only by his feet and shoulders and his face was twisted into a rictus grimace of pain.

* * *

Nikolai screamed silently in pain as his back was savaged by the creatures claws. Stupid! Careless! He berated himself as he pitched forward and executed side flip—his face barely missing the creature’s claws as it came for him again and overextended its self.

Nikolai moved into position and sent his thoughts into the creatures mind, forming his attack in the form of a telepathic hammer-blow he usually favoured. He virtually pulped the creature’s mind—again, and again … and yet again—until it lay twitching in its final death throes. Up close now that he could see it in repose, the creature resembled a humanoid-sized monkey but that was where the similarities ended. The creatures head sported only a single yellow eye—now turned unseeing towards the plane’s dull sky—and a beak-like mouth filled with serrated teeth. The creature’s hands possessed 4 fingers, each ending in bladelike claws as opposed to nail-like talons and no opposable thumbs.

As he was finishing his inspection, he felt a slight tingling and pull from behind him. No, he realized as the tingling grew in force—it came from his own astral body!

No! He railed as he felt the beginnings of a psychic surge build up around him. I’m not done yet!

He struggled against the inevitable pull as he felt his consciousness being wrested away from the astral plane. He knew it was a futile effort but his battle training ignored the fact that however much battle had tempered him, he was no match for the concentrated efforts of eight Prime Mentalists—four of which were meisters of telepathy.

The tingling built until it felt as if his astral body were collapsing in on itself. He felt no pain; he expected no pain for Vincent had explained that the tearing apart of one’s astral self was the norm when exiting one’s astral travel. As he felt his vision greying out and faded into oblivion, he steeled himself for the jarring disorientation he had read from his time as a student at the Academy.

* * *

“Welcome back, Nikolai.”

The voice was soft and feminine. Had a slightly breathy, ethereal quality. His eyes were shut. No, blindfolded, he corrected himself.

He flexed his limbs—imperceptably. He was unfettered but there was a strap across his chest holding him down against the firm mattress of the bed. The metal buckle of the harness rubbed against his left rib. He reached up with his right hand only to find soft fingers holding his own still.

“Allow me,” the soft voice said gently.

The blindfolds were removed. He opened his eyes slowly, squinting against the bright glare of the lights emitted by the light-crystal placed right over his head. That was the only source of illumination in the room. He cast about him. Clarity came slowly, with edges feathered and blurry. He blinked twice to clear his vision but the feathered edges remained. He could make out the features of the woman however; wavy pale blond hair, almond-shaped cerulean blue eyes. Her perfect porcelain-skinned face marred by a slight frown as she visibly worried about him.

“Eden,” he greeted as he looked around. “I’m in the recovery room,” he grimaced. “How bad was it?” he asked, feigning nonchalance.

“Prime Andra said it was normal for a beginner …” Eden Bennet began, her agitation visible in the tremolous voice.

“Cut through the hogshit, woman,” Nikolai snorted weakly. “I had my ass handed to me on the astral plane. Go ahead, you can say it.”

His small verbal abuse seemed to jar the other’s agitation. At the back of his mind, Nikolai wondered at the wisdom of doing so. Eden might not be a mentalist like Nikolai or Vincent but she is not without her own reserves of power. Just how powerful those reserves might be is anyone’s guess considering she was newly recruited, roughly a year ago. Judging however, by how fast she had advanced through the ranks Nikolai suspected Eden might just bear watching.

If only to safeguard his back, he decided.

“You were overconfident and not the right candidate for the mission,” Eden said, seemingly rallying after the slight rebuke. “Vincent was better suited.”

“Vincent doesn’t have my combat skills,” Nikolai grunted, undoing the harness holding himself to the bed. He tossed the buckles aside and sneered at the blond. “What, no breakfast in bed?”

“None for the prideful failure,” Eden retorted coldly. “Yes, Vincent doesn’t have your combat skills—or combat training, rather,” she continued. “He does however, have a record of seventy-six astral reconn missions with no mishaps.” Pause. “No detections by astral natives—that was an astral reaver that attacked you, by the way,” she rattled off, pushing herself to stand.

She started for the left side of the bed, heading towards the curtained wall. She leaned against the wall bordered by the curtain and pushed them aside, letting the glimmer of a midmorning’s light filtering through the dim room.

“Why did you insist on this mission, Nikolai?” she asked softly. “People like you belong on the battlefield …”  

“Don’ go there, witch,” Nikolai growled.

“… Or intelligence missions. Not traipsing the astral pathways.” She continued, relentless.

“… Or do you have something to prove?” she probed further, her voice silk in steel.

Silence.

The two of them stared at each other. The tension was palpable; one could almost cut it with a knife.

“You don’t know anything about me!” Nikolai grated and made a snap decision, and allowed his consciousness to expand … quickly reaching out towards Eden and into her … Nothing. He tried again, this time more purposefully. Again, nothing. He probed again, exerting more of his power into the effort only to encounter a resistance. From her.

Impossible! He thought. He looked hard at Eden and noticed her small frown. She’s resisting me? he wondered.

“You mentalists think that your powers gave you the right to toy with other people’s minds,” she stated calmly. “What makes you think I didn’t prepare myself for any confrontation with your kind?” her voice turned hard at the last word, almost spitting it out. She glared at him as she spoke, her right hand reaching towards the curtains and pulling them open with sudden force that the flash of illumination slightly dazed him. He almost missed her hissing out one word: “Tershat!”

He barely had time to throw himself off of the bed, taking cover as the wide window exploded into a rain of shards cutting across the room. As he rolled up from his improvised shelter, grimacing against the cuts in his skin, Nikolai realized then that he may have made a very grave mistake antagonizing a spellweaver.