The Restored: Chapter Forty

Memories exploded throughout the Malapert as Kelly projected them into the minds of everyone in range. 

Memories, not images. 

Pulling things out of memories was a different skill than constructing images from imagination. Imagination, for one, tended to be more perfect than memories. Memories were limited – the memory of a walk would blur the buildings together, would lose the details of passerby, and would blank out text that a person didn’t stop to memorize, let alone read. The mind was a marvellous thing, but it wasn’t a match for a recording spell.

If you created an image in your mind, however, you could add more details in. You could make the buildings more distinct, ensure that every passerby had a unique face, and add text to newspapers, though it took more effort. With spells designed to preserve specific images in order to be referenced later, it could be done even more effectively. 

That was why his invisifield spells were so effective – they ran off imagination, not memory. He just had to be able to imagine the area without them in it. 

But even though memories tended to be foggier and more imperfect than a constructed image, there was one scale that even masters of mind magic struggled to reproduce: authenticity. 

Authenticity was hard to measure. The book that Kelly’s dad’s friend had given him suggested it was an aspect of the Dreamscape that was tied into the world, in the same way that physical laws were tied to the Elemental Fields, or the way souls were tied to the Fallen Void. They claimed that the reason emotion and logic seemed to change and warp dreamscape magic in equal measure was that the weight of the magic was determined by a person or spirit’s authenticity. 

Kelly wasn’t even a master of mind magic, though he was prodigal in his own way, and he certainly wasn’t well read in planar theory. For all he knew, the book was right in every detail, or wrong on all of them. 

But what he did know was that, when projecting a memory into a person’s head, there was a sense of authenticity and reality that was hard to fake. It was possible to imagine false scenes and insert them into people’s minds, but he couldn’t manage it. 

His magic washed over the ship, and with it, a feeling of truth and authenticity. He showed the memories of them opening a portal, sneaking on board. He showed a memory of them holding a massive number of explosives that ran the gamut from enchantment to alchemical. He didn’t show them where they’d been placed, but he did show them that they only had ninety seconds before detonation – not enough time to find and disarm them, but enough time for people to rush into the Wandering Path if they needed. 

And on the tide of those memories, he projected his voice. 

“Please. If you are here on contract with the people who live here, leave. The portal is open. It is not worth dying for.” 

Kelly frowned. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but there was distinctly something worming at the back of his head. But since he couldn’t identify anything directly, he just kept manipulating his aura, trying to find what was wrong.

“ For those members of Nexus who want a chance to abandon your power and live normal lives, come with us. You’ll face trial, your crimes will be exposed, but you’ll live. Don’t throw your life away.” 

Something was definitely off, but it was hard to say. People were panicking, a pair of servants who were wearing uniforms of a chef nearly slamming headfirst into Kelly as they bolted into the portal. 

Most of the servants seemed to be abandoning the ship, in fact. While Devi had offhandedly mentioned all of them were thoroughly checked, in case they might be spies for Saxum or Zheren, they were ultimately not the super elite, the rich and powerful. 

The constables who had been assigned to guard the ship were slower to leave. Some of them had begun to rush around, looking for the explosives that had been planted, hoping that they’d be able to disarm them. A few had gone through the portal, and Kelly thought he heard other constables jeering them for cowardice, but he was tired, so tired. Maintaining this spell was harder than it should be. He had to keep pushing into the minds of everyone in range… 

Time continued to tick down, and several members of Nexus arrived, carried up by the commotion and noises. That wasn’t right. They should have gotten his message too. He’d directed the second half of the message at them. 

He tried to shove his message into their minds, and finally figured out what was wrong: the message was sliding off. 

That was to be expected in the case of the chairman, who had a complete mental shield, rather than a simple abjuration array built to block the mind link spell. Kelly struggled to even sense the man’s mind underneath the spell. But the rest were bright and clear to his sensory arch-star, and he should be able to reach them. 

He reached out, focusing his full intention on one of them. He didn’t know who they were – they might have been one of the judges on the Overriding Judiciary Council, or maybe one of the C-Suite members from a major corporation, but they weren’t one of the members he could recognize on sight. 

He tried to focus the message purely onto that man, and he felt it. Once again, the message slipped off, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. In the seconds where whatever was causing his spell to slide off had to adjust to a shift in target, Kelly could feel a second mind within his own, pushing and jabbing at him, using magic in a way that reminded Kelly of how he used his own spellcraft, while also being distinctly different, definitely alien. 

Kelly focused then, rapidly altering his spell, racing to reach out to one member, then another. The members were reacting in their own way too – some of them grabbed maids or manservants, demanding answers, others were trying to work with the guards. All the while, Kelly pushed on, trying to figure out how he could trick this thing. 

“This is obviously a bluff!” one of them said, shouting to try and take command of the situation. “One of the demons must have mental magic. Why do you think all of us with high quality mental defenses didn’t hear it? The portal is a trap – the Arenamaster was known to have claimed large areas.” 

That caused a few of the people to freeze in indecision, and one or two of them to even step out of the, and Kelly shifted to focusing on them again. He slammed the memories into their mind, and told them that the Nexus man was wrong, infusing it with as much truth as he could. Many of those who had frozen bolted into the portal. 

This second mind, whatever it was, didn’t stop Kelly from sending out that message. It was only blocking him when he tried to reach out to Nexus members. And it was good. Better than Kelly was. But it had to stop Kelly every time, while Kelly only needed to get through once. 

Unfortunately, Kelly was on a time limit. A minute and a half wasn’t long at all, and most of it was gone now. He focused, and then used his familiar boon. A second copy of his memory spell appeared as the first started to dissolve, and he targeted both of them at a single Nexus member. 

The second mind averted one, but the second one landed, bypassing the man’s mental defenses, since Kelly didn’t use a mind bridge. 

The man’s eyes widened, and he turned to sprint toward the portal. A bolt of force shot from nowhere – quite literally, it fired out of thin air from about ten feet to the left of the portal. The man’s suit was well enchanted, and the bolt didn’t hurt him, but it did slow him down. Another Nexus member grabbed him, trying to demand answers. 

Fifteen seconds left. Almost all of the minds remaining in the airship were Nexus members, with the ones that weren’t being a handful of guards who were either dedicated to the cause of Nexus, didn’t believe the memories, or had no regard for their own life. 

The one Nexus member who Kelly had managed to get through to broke free of the one grabbing him, and sprinted toward the portal. Kelly reached out a hand to help the man in. 

Then a hand reached out and grabbed Kelly by the back of his collar. With surprising force, he was hauled into the portal. The moment he was inside, the portal snapped shut, and Kelly’s sense of all of the man’s minds vanished. 

He whirled around to see Devi holding him, looking at a pocket watch. 

“Time was up,” she said simply. 

Kelly’s spells dissolved, and with his attention no longer focused on holding them together, he was better able to think. Things started to click into place. 

“Like hell it was! You have a nightmare spirit. You were jamming me from being able to reach out to a Nexus member! Then, when I did anyways–”

Before he could finish his thought, however, his eyes were drawn away from Devi. Everyone’s were, in fact, as a heavy crackling began to rise through the air. The wards around them began to flicker, flashing in bright colors, fizzing with sparks, popping with blasts of air, and then they detonated. 

As far as explosions went, it wasn’t much. It wasn’t even a true explosion, just the byproduct of a lot of spells failing at once. There were simply so many spells, of so much power, all collapsing due to a bomb going off in the real world, that the puffs of air, sparks, and flashes of light combined felt more like it. 

Kelly was thrown off his feet, and he wasn’t the only one. Several of the smaller servants who had come through the portal, or the more malnourished looking ones, were knocked to the ground, and there was a general sense of confusion. Jin managed to stay standing, and she yanked Kelly to his feet, then whispered into his ear. 

“We can solve this on our own. But for right this moment, we have almost two hundred people who rushed into this world in a panic. Many of them don’t have auras, so being here is going to start mining at their lifeline and soulstuff. They don’t have long before that starts taking a permanent toll. If they panic and start running, they could die. Understand?” 

Kelly froze. His mind had been cleared when he’d no longer needed to focus on the spells, but he clearly hadn’t thought through the entire situation. Jin was right – there would be time to address what Devi had done later. Right now, they needed to get the people out of here. 

“I understand,” he whispered back, and Jin hauled Devi to her feet next, whispering something in her ear as well. Devi couldn’t hear it, but he suspected that it was just a nicer version of what he’d been told – after all, Jin seemed smitten by the other girl. 

“Right,” Devi said, clapping loud enough to get everyone’s attention. Despite being in an empty field, the sound reverberated loudly, as if she were in a cave. “Everyone listen up! I’m glad you managed to escape, and I’m sorry we did that.” 

“You’re a terrorist!” one of the guards who had been either sensible or, depending on perspective, cowardly enough to flee shouted. “You–” 

“Enough!” Jin said, stepping next to Devi and raising her hand. “I’ll stand trial later. Right now, we have a limited amount of time before the drain gets to be too much.” 

“I have an extraction point about ten minutes walk from here,” Devi said, picking up from Jin’s speech. “It’s in a safe house I set up. There’s food and water there for everyone, and it’s warded. It should be safe until the archmage can clear out the demons.” 

At that she turned and walked off. Kelly paused, looking around, before he stepped up to follow her.