Brent Stinebaker
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II-49 Core (I)
🕑 Added 2025-07-04 19:09:27 +0000 UTC…And should you encounter an adversary beyond your ability to escape, defeat, or persuade, then the final act you should perform is one of absolute service to New Albion. And to yourself.
There is nothing good that comes from being taken captive. It is a failure above all other failures, and to allow your mind or body to be turned against the Stolen Throne is treason.
We have trained you well. But sometimes not even that is enough to succeed. But still, you can render your failure incomplete.
Still, you have a final choice. To remove yourself from the equation.
-The Ways of the Unseen: Aviary Training Manual
II-49
Core (I)
Uva's favorite enemy was another mage. After all, other magi usually didn't develop Magical Resistance and had to rely on their armor. And, as Confriga's magi were busy exchanging spells with the vampiric hordes, a lot of armor was being shattered, and a lot of minds were being made available for the taking.
She used her mana strands to bind herself to a vulnerable fire dimensional first. She took in the battlefield from some distance away. At the Abyssal Gateway, a clash between order and chaos was taking place. Even diminished, sabotaged, mauled, and compromised by everything Uva's team had done over the past several days, Confriga's forces still formed orderly lines to hold back the Blood Horror menace.
The general composition of Confriga's army took on a semicircular configuration at the front, and they hovered just over the customs and processing building that Shiv barely left standing during his diversionary rampage. The vanguard of Confriga’s army was composed entirely of flight-capable lancers, warriors, or mounted chevaliers. They held back the surging Blood Horror tide from reaching the back line, pressing against creatures of claw, bone, blood, flesh, and wing.
Behind the vanguard were small pockets of elite Pathbearers—specialized teams meant to plug any gaps or eliminate any powerful adversary. Behind them still were concentrated and heavily armored contingents of all-Vulteg troopers. These were likely Confriga's Master-Slayer Corps: the Gate Lord's most dedicated hard-hitters sent out to bring down dangerous foes that shattered the frontliners.
And finally, at the very back were the Gate Lord's most powerful assets: the magi formations. No army was complete without magic, for magic gave you options, reshaped the battlefield, and, for some, even allowed you to compromise your enemy's very minds.
But Uva could see a critical flaw in Confriga's magi formations. There were missing multiple members in critical spots. A good amount of the missing were Adept-Tier, she suspected. A good number probably died while Shiv was rampaging, and some more were still affected by the dysentery that had been spreading through the gate over the past few days.
Even so, Confriga managed to compose fourteen columns numbering approximately 100 mages each. Some of them clearly didn't fit in, were probably recently drafted from a mercenary company or some other position within the gate.
The most potent of all the magi formations were probably the automata purifiers—all of them highly powerful Pyromancers. They were also beyond the reach of Uva’s Heroic-Tier Psychomancy, due to being automata. However, that didn't mean she was helpless against them. After all, Psychomancy allowed you to seize another's mind, and even if she couldn't take the mind of an automaton, she could still take one of their allies and strike the bots down that way.
Hovering high above the group, with a long, black sword drifting just beside him, Gate Lord Confriga glared down at the adversaries. His massive, petal-like wings flared bright, as it practically engulfed the entire sky when viewed from below. The petals unleashed waves of coruscating fire at the charging hordes of the First Blood, and juxtaposed to the intense heat, the mana core cast down avalanches of frost from the sky above. It hammered the invaders with spontaneous blizzards, and summoned more dimensionals to aid the gate’s defending Pathbearers.
Meanwhile, despite being a horde composed primarily of horrible monsters, the First Blood’s army did not simply throw their lives blindly at the opposition.
The vampire had their own magi, though they did not come in organized corps. Rather, most of their Blood Horrors possessed their own magic, more primal, more instinctive. Their spells usually did terrible things to a body, or let them shape-shift in certain ways. Shielded by the dense flesh and by their constantly regenerating forms of the Blood Horrors were the actual high vampires, who then were flanked by a personal guard of lesser vampires meant to further soak damage on their behalf.
Unlike Confriga's army, the First Blood fought as a tide of meat. Most of their army could be described as little more than chaff, just something to soak harm and bury a proper Pathbearer under sheer weight of numbers. Yet within that ocean of flesh were true dangers, high vampires who had powerful skills of their own.
As the Blood Horrors practically poured free from the compromised gateway, they moved as a swarm, spreading out, their bodies bursting upon death, releasing thick, vaporous clouds of blood to further obscure the ones behind them. And it was through these vapors that the vampires of the first blood unleashed their spells.
They did not fight using the same tactics or strategies as the Gate Lord's magi. Rather, they focused on breaking the Gate Lord's front line using their formidable Biomancy most of all. And that was something the great lord was critically lacking: Biomancers.
Biomancers, because Shiv, Adam, and Uva had dedicated some of their time to eradicating the gate of the most effective Biomancers, just to make sure Shiv's Bowel-Breaker dysentery modification spread easier. As such, while the Blood Horror hordes were taking constant losses, theirs seemed to be replenishable. But every death on Confriga's side was another heavy loss weighing down the combat effectiveness of his army.
So far, however, the Gate Lord himself did not join in directly in combat. He was simply glaring down, unleashing spells, and directing the mana core to fight on his behalf. Every now and again, he would roar. He would roar, declaring to his forces that if they took one step back, he would take their skulls from them and use them as effigies. His foul temper and his cruel nature remained even now in the most dire of circumstances.
But as Uva observed the Gate Lord, she quickly made a correction. He wasn't just being idle. Rather, he was doing something very, very subtle. Crackles of corrosive energy pulsed between his hands, and the three skulls planted upon his chest plate flashed intermittently, leaking out necromantic energy. Far below, as corpses fell from the sky and tumbled off the bridge, extending forth from the abyssal gateway like a constant downpour of death, she saw the many bodies crackling with that corrosive energy as well.
Necromancy jumping between the corpses, spark like bolts of electricity. And Uva was more than glad she saw that. If she had simply reached out and burrowed herself into a Pathbearer's body, she might very well have suffered some necromantic damage. She didn't know exactly if necromancy could damage her upon contacting her mana strands, but she didn't intend to find out. For now, however, she wanted attrition, and so Gate Lord Confriga needed to be distracted.
But first, she would break his Magi corps and force a true battle of bone to bone, blade to blade, and flesh to flesh. She directed the fire dimensional she currently puppeted down toward one of the magi formations. She extended a few of her Psychomancy threads and began scouring the battlefield.
Uva struck at numerous bodies using her strands, briefly tapping them and pulling away before they could figure out what just happened. She gauged the strongest Magical Resistances within a group and proceeded to create a general map she could follow of minds to seize and potential powerful adversaries to avoid.
There were a few Master-Tier Psychomancers present as well, but they were too focused on contending with each other to notice her, and she specifically avoided them, at least for now. She would remove them when she had the chance as the battle progressed, but she had a few magi columns to collapse first.
It was an elven mercenary Pathbearer who became her second victim that day. His armor was already cracked, shattered by a heavy length of glistening enamel. The unnatural growth of tooth had been launched into the mercenary's armor, but it didn't punch all the way through, sparing his life. Unfortunately, it did break the armor, and that meant he had no more magical resistance, which meant that it took little effort for Uva to slowly push her threads into his mind and stitch her very ego over his.
He gave a brief jerk before she assumed full control. Within her mind, she heard him yell, What, what just happened? What, what the fuck?
She ignored him. He didn’t matter anymore.
He and the other Cryomancers were hovering in place. Below them, the customs and processing building lingered, but it was badly damaged, and the insides were also festering with Blood Horrors, fighting jump teams of Pathbearers. The mercenary and the other mages with him stayed aloft in the air thanks to a Wind-Walking enchantment on their boots, and it was that same enchantment that might bring about their downfall when Uva made her next move.
From the front of the formation came a cry, "Magi, condense spell!" Just then, several spells and projectiles whistled by, and a few less experienced magi flinched out of place. They were quickly stabilized by the veterans as order asserted itself through the form of non-contracted officers.
As one, the magi corps lifted their focus crystals, some bearing staves, others adjusting helmets. They directed their mana into a common point, their fields co-mingling as one, as they all supported each other, building spells that were bigger than any one of them could shape individually, but it also made the spell vulnerable.
Uva knew a little bit about Cryomancy, not nearly as much as the mercenary she currently controlled. That wasn’t a problem because she had access to his free will and memories now, and she commanded him to reach into the spell and disrupt it as violently as he could.
No, no, that'll kill us all. No, stop, stop, my brother's in this group! She ignored him. She forced him to continue. He didn't have a choice in the matter. Stop! Stop!
It was very common now to hear these voices screaming inside of her. Uva silenced the mercenary. She needed to focus.
"Phase one!" the commander of their column cried, but they weren't going to get to stage two, let alone stage three. As the mercenary Uva controlled poured his mana field into the group spell, he suddenly pushed it outward, driving his mana against everyone else's at an awkward, brutal angle.
Several mages lost control of their spells, interrupted and stunned by Uva's puppet slamming his field into theirs. They cried out, and then Uva's puppet completed his disruption. He pulled back on his hands, making a gesture that resembled a someone trying to rip something apart. He detonated his own spell inside the larger formation. The disruption caused a catastrophic chain reaction, and the entire group spell collapsed inward
Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 103
A colossal slab of ice infused with the collective coldness of a blizzard promptly exploded outwards. A good portion of the entire group froze and then ceased to be as they shattered apart. Uva felt the mercenary she controlled take a shard of ice through the slight rent in his armor left by the enamel spike. It ripped through his body and blood began to flood into his lungs.
As he gargled and gasped, he tumbled from the sky, losing balance and failing to activate the enchantment on his boots. Other magi fell with him, most of them missing parts of their body, some of them only stunned. The mercenary cried within Uva. She directed her strands outwards, searching for her next sleeve.
She saw some of Confriga's Master-Slayer contingents turn in surprise, looking at the falling mages. She considered them, but guessed that they would have rather impressive Magical Resistances, as dedicated warriors, and elite warriors at that.
Then a flood of blood-red magic sailed through the air, detonating all around her section of the airspace. At once, festering spores twisted through the air. Some of the Gate Lord's men began to choke, others convulsed as foul, festering fogs swept over them, melting their flesh and driving the blood from their pores.
Her active sabotage worked. The vampires had spotted the moment of weakness in Confriga's defenders, and they targeted the collapsing section with brutality. Horde or not, there was an instinctive animal cunning to the First Blood's forces. They knew weakness when they saw it. Blood Horrors began to surge towards the space in the sky where the Cryomancers used to occupy.
The vanguard protecting the Cryomancers pushed back. The semicircle that composed Confriga's front line began to fold. His second layer of elite response teams surged forward. Skills shook the air. Hundreds of Blood Horrors began to die, coating the air in the thick mist of blood and bile. But they did their job, for a few hundred of the Gate Lord’s soldiers simply disintegrated into sprays of gore as Biomancy spells swept through them.
The first of the high vampires smashed through Confriga's outer line and was briefly locked in a melee against the Gate Lord's elite forces. And then one of Confriga's petal-like wings swept down and cleaved the vampire in half. She didn't even get to scream. She simply dissolved, both sections of her body tumbling through the air like ash.
More importantly, Uva didn't even see what Confriga did. That's how much superior his Reflexes were compared to hers.
I will need to keep my distance far, far away from him, Uva thought, examining the Gate Lord. And she also felt a strange sense of foreboding about his long, thin sword. It was of a black beyond black, but there was also something else about the weapon. She sensed there was a presence of a mind inside that sword.
Was it awakened? Was the sword like her shield? She turned away from that thought as she noticed the Blood Horror now pushing through the gaps left by Confriga's vanguard. And that was her next opportunity.
She cast her strands forward and immediately seized the mind of a Blood Horror. The benefit of these monsters was how easy they were to create. The First Blood used them in all situations, unleashing them in mass, using them to support their lesser brethren. However, there was a limitation to low quality soldiers. When it came to a Heroic-Tier Pathbearer like Uva, they were just opportunities for her to move across the battlefield. More, she could direct the Horrors with a few meager strands since they were so simple of thought.
She moved her mind from Horror to Horror, hunting for a high vampire to use as her next body. But she also moved with caution. She moved with care. She moved constantly and stayed away from any of the dying Blood Horror. Confriga was still charging up his necromancy spell, and she didn't want to discover what it was like to be inside a Horror as the corrosion consumed them.
As she moved through the many Blood Horrorbodies, she also took the opportunity to stab at Confriga's defenders using her mana strands. Most of them had at least adept tier magical resistance. They broke quickly. She shattered them, but before she usually had a chance to assume their bodies, the Blood Horror would take advantage of their stun states and tear them apart. A growing collapse began to extend along that section of Confriga's army.
She heard the Gate Lord cry out, "Useless!"
Then he released his spell, and she quickly discovered what it was meant to do. From the many, many bodies descending to the rivers below came streams of screaming corrosion. The head of these streams were composed of a swarm of ghostly faces, faces of the fallen, faces screaming and begging to be put back to rest. They surged towards Confriga, but they also shot toward the Blood Horror Uva used as a sleeve and even the Gate Lord's own men.
She avoided the oncoming necromancy simply by jumping to a few different bodies, but most were not that fortunate. The necromancy smashed through them, ripped their souls asunder. She heard them howl in ways that went beyond pain. It was the howl one made when they lost a limb or something essential to their being. That was the sound of skills shattering, of souls being wounded, and Uva knew that pain. She reached into Shiv and felt how much hurt he endured.
But unlike Shiv, most of them broke immediately, their eyes rolling as they blacked out, their bodies spasming as they fell from the sky. Through the chaos, she spotted a new opening. A screaming wyvern tore through the air, its black, insectile body glistening with the blood of its rider. Only the lower half of the man still remained, but she could still make do with the beast itself.
She jumped into its mind and immediately began to push her way through the Blood Horrors. She used her strands to strike at them, to drive them away and fill them with the urge to avoid her. And then she flew towards the second column of magi, a group of Dynamancers who were beginning to summon the beginnings of what seemed to be a colossal force-spell. The force-spell never truly formed because her controlled wyvern crashed into them.
Their commander proved hardier than she expected and endured the blow, pushing back on the wyvern. But even so, his physicality lagged behind his toughness. He was driven into the rest of the column, and several of them broke focus. The Dynamancy spell died, and a wave of heavy force exploded everywhere. The wyvern she used splattered apart. The soldiers casting the spell crumpled and turned into cooked flesh within their armor. In a sudden instant, ten percent of the Dynamancer formation was dead, and far more were wounded, falling from the air.
The Blood Horrors surged through the gaps, attacking all the disorganized magi. But they were intercepted by the elite Pathbearer teams, and the final barrier of Master-Slayer contingents.
"What are you doing?" Confriga roared. "Hold, vanguard, hold! Hold, or I will have your heads.” And he swept his petal-like wings through the oncoming Blood Horrors, uncaring if he hit his own men in the process. Everything burned. Confriga's own forces, the Blood Horrors, the high vampires, everything. His wings unleashed tides of flame so hot, so severe, that just being in the vicinity caused flesh to melt. It was then that Uva realized the Gate Lord likely wasn't just a one-skill Hero, but something perhaps more akin to a True Hero.
She was going to need to grind him down as much as she could.
But to do that, she needed to compromise his army even more. And so she sought out a third contingent of mages, her strands already reaching, and she found another opportune victim. The third formation of magi were Aeromancers. They were especially useful because she wanted to inflict disorder on Confriga's forces and make this a direct break. That would force Confriga to confront them directly.
This time, she pried her way into the body of another Umbral. A mercenary. Uva scorned mercenaries. No faith, no loyalty, no higher cause, merely wealth, and she wore them with the same casual cruelty they traded to slaves in life. The mercenary cried out, but it was worthless. As the Aeromancer formation began to shape a spell, Uva drove the mercenary to control and twist the spell into something unstable. Rather than unleashing a hurricane upon the Blood Horrors, a blast of wind rippled through the air, knocking most of the mercenaries out of position, but also scattering every surrounding formation within Confriga's army.
And the disorganization became too much. As lines broke, Blood Horror spilled through, and it quickly became every man for himself. Whatever coherence the vanguards had were gone now. They were surrounded on all sides, by teeth, fang, and flesh. Biomancers reached out and liquefied who they could. Armors and shattered, while Magical Resistances cracked and broke. Death reigned in the air, and Confriga let out a roar.
"Worthless vermin!" he declared. "All of you, pathetic! I do not need you. I do not need your whimpering ways." And the Gate Lord descended for the first time.
Uva felt a twist of anticipation in her gut. She prepared to jump to another body, but then the Gate Lord did something unexpected. He reached out slowly and grasped his blade.
"Absence!" he declared. "It is time for you to feed. It is time to nourish your depths with the lives of the unworthy."
And as Confriga split the sky behind him with a single stroke, Uva's mind reeled as she tried to process what she was seeing. There, through the gap Confriga left on the surface of the world, there emerged a shadowy shape. It was a colossal monster, perhaps half the size of the Jealousy. It had far too many eyes, far too many mouths, and from its body extended far too many clawed limbs. The thing chittered, it sang, and it plunged forth, reaching out and snatching anything it could out of the air. It consumed Confriga's own forces, but mainly slammed into Blood Horrors.
Flashing spells of crimson crashed against the creature's body, but it laughed. It simply mocked them.
"Tasty."
And from its eyes surged beams of darkness, beams that swept across the first blood hordes, and slowly she saw the creature, once nothing but quivering blackness, lined with maw, eye, limb, and claw, fill. The beings it ate and consumed with its rays of darkness filled its interior. As it unleashed its power, she felt several mana fields spreading out from its body. Cryomancy. Psychomancy. Neither at anything higher than Master…
Uva took a chance and jabbed it lightly with one of her mana strands. The monster grunted and launched a lashing limb in the direction of her strand but failed to notice her.
Magical resistance, likely at Master Tier… Uva considered.
Master Tier. She could break Master-Tier with enough focus. And suddenly a new, wonderful opportunity opened for Uva. She extended her tendrils from all over the battlefield as she began to jab at the monster Confriga just summoned. If he thought this creature was going to be his salvation, he was wrong.
She was going to turn this creature against its summoner. In fact, she looked forward to turning it against him and discovering just where the Gate Lord's capabilities truly lay.
Parallel Thinking > 57
***
"Alright, Valor, let's… try to make sure this works," Adam said. He did his best to maintain his concentration as he formed a large spatial barrier around the adamantine elevator shaft connecting Confriga’s obsidian tower to the third gateway in this damned gate. Adam and Valor hovered just a few meters away from the shaft, and behind the bobbed the colossal bulk of the Graven Cage.
So far, they were unnoticed. Mainly thanks to Adam’s Veilpiercer. He shot a patrolling dimensional, and a second later, they appeared right beside the obsidian tower without exposing themselves to any danger. Sporadically, though, a mana bomb would go off somewhere, and Adam would flinch as he felt an invisible tension grow. Still, he and Valor were in position. All they needed to do was burn through the shaft with Necromancy and intercept the falling elevator.
It was going to need every bit of timing Adam could muster, but he could do this. He and Valor could both do this. It was practically an easy job compared to what Shiv and Uva were probably going through right now.
"Alright. Ready, Valor?" Adam said. He activated his vambrace and immediately nocked a Veilpiercer arrow. The corrosion spread from the small Necromantic fissure he left in the air, and he aimed his shot at the spatial bubble he formed around the elevator shaft.
"Let your mind go blank," Valor told Adam. “Your muscle memory will be enough.”
"I got it," Adam said, annoyed.
"Do not focus overmuch."
"I said I got it," Adam snapped.
The Legendary Pathbearer grunted and slowly drifted back, ceding the moment to Adam. He was nearby, the cage was right there, he had enough mana, he could melt right through that adamantine. Or maybe, maybe he'd pour a bit more dimensionality… a little bit more, yes. He paused as he unleashed some more of his Dimensional mana. The spatial sphere around the elevator shaft thickened, turning into a shroud of darkness coated with distortions.
Once more, he prepared to fire his corroded Veilpiercer—
Something smashed into his back, something hard. It launched him out of the air as he went tumbling. His corroded Veilpiercer went off to the side and tore a hole through another building.
Valor cried out and barely avoided a hit himself. Something crackled through the air, something Adam either couldn't perceive because it was invisible or too fast. The Young Lord coughed as he adjusted his position. He flexed his burning wings and dashed to the right, only to take another blow to the chest. This time, the wind was fully knocked out from his lungs and his eyes rolled.
"What the hell was..."
"Sniper!" Valor cried. "We are being targeted!"
But just then a shot cracked into the back of Valor's skull and the Legendary Pathbearer went reeling off into the air. The outline of Necromancy that traced his body vanished as every separate fragment comprising his current form dropped, descending toward the molten rivers below.
"Valor!" Adam cried. Then two more shots hit him. One hit him right at the ankle, tearing something. The Young Lord cursed. The other crashed into his collar and made him twist backward. But as Adam reeled, he activated his vambrace on instinct or reflex, and it was good that he did. For the moment he created another corrosive fissure, two pulses of pressure spread through the air before him.
Enemy Jump Mages came to ambush him. His corrosive fissure expanded into a small realm that drew all Dimensionality and spatial mana into it as if a micro-anchor.
Two sets of screams filled the air, as twin teleportation spheres were drawn into Adam’s corroded domain. The insides of the realm lit up with an eerie, acidic green. What emerged from the fissure in the end within were two badly withered corpses—both of them wearing crow masks.
For a second Adam thought he dealt with the people who were ambushing him. Then another heavy shot smashed into his back and he went tumbling forward across the open air.
Repulsion Shroud > 58
"Shit!" he growled to himself. His Repulsion Shroud managed to launch him off a bit further, and the next shot hissed by him. He focused his Seer of Horizons, allowing his legendary armor to take the shot for him. He searched and then directed his senses out to observe himself from a third person perspective. The next shot came and impacted his lower rib. He felt something click, but nothing tore or broke. It just hurt to breathe a little.
He didn't see the projectile, but he did spot a flashing glint far in the horizon from the window of a distant descending building. Immediately, Adam cast his senses there and found himself looking at a raven-helmed stranger, another one of those raven-helmed bastards.
Seer of Horizons > 111
The Young Lord sneered. He formed a Veil piercer arrow, and he infused it with the corrosive mana of his vambrace. His senses were locked on the raven-helmed stranger even as they cycled what seemed to be some kind of long-barreled ballistae. It let out a brief whine, and he had a feeling that once it finished making that noise, it would fire again.
But the Young Lord didn't give them that chance. He knew where they were, and even if he couldn't see what they were shooting at him, that didn’t matter. He just needed to kill the shooter first.
Adam fired his Veilpiercer. A splash of corrosive mana tore open a rift in front of him, and it continued down, creating a dimensional pathway all the way to where the raven lay in wait. They didn't even see the arrow that killed them.
They were shooting at him from over two kilometers away, and in the span of a single second, Adam spotted and fired back.
The Necromancy-charged Veilpiercer smashed into their skull at immense speed, speeds fast enough to render the raven-helmed stranger a function of physics rather than biology. The necromancy, then, was a final dishonor. It shattered their soul just as their body dissolved into nothing but ash and paste.
Veilpiercer > 107
The Young Lord laughed. "Let's see you shoot me now, you bastard."
And then, Seer of Horizons alerted him to something else. There was another glint from a building three kilometers away, and another from a building one kilometer away, and a glint from a bridge just a few hundred meters away. Then three shots hit him at once, and this time Adam felt his left shoulder dislocate.
"Godsdamn it!" the Young Lord roared, frustration far greater than his pain. “System! You bastard! Just give me a moment! Just one!”
More shots came from all around. Every impact rattled the Young Lord, and a few chipped off pieces around the Graven Cage. Adam’s eyes widened as he adapted. He formed a Hydrokinetic limb and fired a shot back at the nearest enemy. A crow atop a nearby bridge burst apart as a dense Veilpiercer crashed into them.
But Adam wasn’t done. He pushed his wings and arced through the air. He slammed his left shoulder into the Graven Cage and did two things at once. First, he relocated his shoulder. Next, he pushed the construct through the new dimensional pathway he just made and left it stashed there to hide it from further risk of damage. When that was done, he dove out onto the bridge and splashed down against the hot blood of the crow he just killed. Adam cast his Awareness out again while prone, recalling where his enemies were as he shaped a few more arrows.
They lost track of him now, but he could still find them. And he was very, very unhappy that they shot him. And even more unhappy they shot his mentor in the back of the head.
A second later, he found another raven staring down the barrel of another strange weapon. They looked confused. And they died confused as Adam released a trans-dimensional arrow into their throat, decapitating them.
“One,” Adam growled. “I counted at least one more.” He prepared another arrow. Paused. And then prepared four more in each of his newly shaped arms.
Comments
Veridescent
I honestly still don't quite get the screaming mind thing, how the people taken can think of alternatives at all. Given uva is specifically affecting their minds and overlapping I would think she would synchronize such rhat actions would seem natural, inevitable. Worse in a way as discrepancy would be low and memories of survival worse. Just something thats been irking me
