Chapter 1.5: Student Survey

Inara had caught a glance at the class roster while in Professor Carter's office. Later, Hope found the names of Carter's two grad students, Matt Donahue and Emma Miller.

Inara leads the way out of the lab, my body moving without my say-so, as usual. Her thoughts murmur constantly in the front of my mind.

Carter's students are our best lead. They must know something about his research.

Just be careful, I respond. They're innocents in all this.

Annoyance flickers through our link. She doesn't appreciate me questioning her judgement.

As we walk, I study our companions. Alric looks uneasy, but determined. And Hope seems troubled, though she hides it well. They both had misgivings about Inara's gung-ho attitude earlier. I can't blame them. Inara can be a bit... intense, when she's on a monster hunt.

I wish I could tell them that I'm still here, that I'll try to rein Inara in if needed. But all they see is her face, her mannerisms. To them, I don't even exist.

It's a lonely thought.

Inara scans the student directory on her phone as we walk, quickly locating Matt's office. It's in the graduate student offices on the third floor of the psychology building. We take the stairs two at a time and soon arrive at a long hallway lined with identical doors. Inara checks each nameplate until we find the one labeled "Matthew Donahue - PhD Candidate."

Unfortunately, the office is empty. Inara huffs in annoyance and leans against the wall to wait, arms crossed. The others arrive a minute later, slightly out of breath from climbing the stairs.

"He's not here yet," Inara informs them curtly. "We'll give him fifteen minutes, then track down the other student."

Time slows as we wait in the dreary hallway. Inara radiates an air of impatience, but I retreat into myself, taking in the details that my alter ignores - the curling poster advertising a campus gaming club, the faded name tag remnants stippling the fake wood door, the glitzy sticker proclaiming "My Patronus is Coffee" in bubbly font.

Mundane signs of a life I'll never lead. Matt gets to be a normal grad student, chasing his PhD without the complications of being a prisoner in his own body. I picture him grabbing coffee from the campus cafe before holing up in his office, poring over tomes and experimental data. A life once within my grasp, now forever out of reach.

My resentment simmers, only to sputter out. No use dwelling on what's been taken from me. I focus instead on the scents of dust and cleaning products, cataloging the hallway's imperfections - the cracked paint along the baseboard, the smudged fingerprints around the light switch, the childish doodles etched into the metal doorframe. Anything to distract from Inara's impatience echoing in my mind and the rhythmic tapping of her fingers upon my arm.

Hope is trying to resist the habit of checking her guns. Bad idea in a university. It's been three days since I've gone on a hunt. I hope nobody's gotten killed by a regular beast while I've been playing detective.

When he shows up, it's clear that whatever happened to Professor Carter happened to Matt too. His general appearance is one of neglect: rumpled clothes and the shadow of a day-old beard.

He absently elbows past the agents in the hall to get to his door.

Inara waits until Matt unlocks his door and steps inside before wedging her foot into the gap, preventing him from closing it.

"Matthew Donahue?" she says sharply, injecting authority into her tone. She flashes her Arcanum insignia, the golden crest blazing even in the dim light. "I'm Inara Sellain, an investigator for the college. We need to talk about your performance in Carter's class."

He startles and looks at Inara. “Ah! Wha?” He blinks, but looks like he’s having a hard time focusing. “Ahh… sure.”

Inara brusquely pushes past Matt into his office, her eyes darting about like a hawk searching for prey. My gaze lingers on mundane details - the dented metal bookshelf sagging under stacks of thick textbooks, the cheap particleboard desk with countless yellow scratches, the sleek laptop casting an otherworldly glow across the ratty office chair.

Homework spills across the desk, red pen bleeding criticisms across the scattered pages. He TAs for Psych 101, a role leagues below his capabilities.

Inara fixes Matt with a piercing gaze. "What do you recall of Carter's last class?"

Alric makes his way in, taking a look around. He doesn't expect a side character like this to have any interesting secrets (or secret labs) to be uncovered, but it doesn't hurt to check. And Inara, charisma incarnate, seems to have this.

Threat level: negligible, even if he went berserk/zombie. Hope will watch the hall while listening in.

He stares, blinking more, like a particularly sleepy deer caught in headlights. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, like a particularly fishy deer caught in headlights. “S-s-sorry… I… could you repeat the question?”

Is this NPC Spirited enough?: [1, 0] Result: Failure ❌

He seems to rapidly lose interest and turns to sling his backpack across the back of the office chair. It creaks under the weight.

I don't think this is going to work, I say. Check him for magic and then ask him who else went to Carter's class.

Annoyance bubbles across the barrier, but Inara raises her hands and shapes the spellforms for Spectral Sight. Her fingers dance in precise motions - pinkies folding in, hands tilting, thumbs to index finger. The rectangle formed by her hands flickers and shifts, revealing —

Spectral Sight: [3, 2] Result: Failure ❌

Nothing. Not even the glow of ambient magic. Inara's annoyance spikes, then fades as she takes a deep breath and tries again, repeating the forms.

Spectral Sight: [9, 2] Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

Alric has seen her do this the second and third time now. So there's something about the pinkies, and then like this - Alric's tongue sticks out a bit as he tries to copy Inara's movements - and then just make a rectangle with the thumbs like this? That looks about right. He lifts his fingers to his face, revealing -

Also casting Spectral Sight, how hard can it be?: [2, 5]-4 Result: Failure ❌

Inara's second cast goes better. Even basic rotes are sometimes difficult to catch ahold of if you don't mentally line yourself up properly or have an errant thought. But she casts correctly the second time, catching and reeling in the appropriate construct. Almost perfectly too, she gets a lens fine enough to differentiate the nuances of the magic she sees.

Just in time to see Alric attempt to cast for the same spell.

Alric somehow mimicked the gestures and mindset sufficiently unsloppily enough that with an instance of the rote so close, he was actually able to somehow lurch for it. His mind extends, but his soul hardly has the tools to follow. And while that normally wouldn't be much of a problem and wouldn't cause any magic to happen, he foolishly extends right in the direction Inara just made a groove! His mind slips, stutters, and winks out.

Alric can feel can feel that he did something. In a similar direction that isn't one of the 3 mundane directions that he felt Inara pressing in on him when she tested him for magic, he can feel himself start to tip....

Seconds later, Alric blinks open his eyes to a face full of worn linoleum, woozy from what feels like a concussion that hit him out of the blue.

Alric takes 1 fatigue

Shock ripples through the mindscape as Inara kneels beside Alric's crumpled form, worry creasing her brow. "Alric? Are you okay?"

I wish I could front and check on him myself, but the body remains frozen under Inara's control. Frustration wells within me. I settle for scanning Alric for injuries through Inara's eyes, searching for the rise and fall of his breath. He looks dazed but unharmed, and his eyes blink at me like a newborn fawn, wide and uncomprehending.

Hearing a body fall, Hope spins around the doorframe, starting to draw. Seeing no threat, she stops. "Did he get his mind eaten too??"

“He mimicked what Inara was doing, probably a sloppy cast of a spell.” Lucian is also kneeling next to Alric now.

Matt, for his part, just sits at his desk. Absently marking papers without really seeing them.

Inara's brow furrows. "His form was clumsy, but passable for a novice. Yet without the Gift, the spell drew its power uncontrolled from his life force. At Arcanum I had a class where all we did was cast to collapse like this, learning our limits through experience so we wouldn't have to think about it."

She turns to Hope. "He needs food and rest. Take him to get something sugary from the vending machines - peanut butter cups if they have them, but something calorie-dense."

"I didn't know that was possible. Ok. Come on, Alric, let's get you some snacks. Can you walk?"

"S-snacks sound ggreat.." Before even sitting up, he's already searching for his notepad. He finds it, but misses the pen. "Where's my pen? I m-must've lost it."

It takes him a few seconds to sit up, so he can access his backpack and pull out another pen. Non-glittery. And he begins to take notes.

Sm sol feling bt mvng no, scratch that flling. dd mgc. smmnd hedche. gng sgns, thn "spll drw pwr uncntrlld lf frc" - rsstrs? vlv? nd cnfrm dmg nt prmnnt

For the people standing around him, it looks only like squiggles.

"Snacks, please.." With the help of Lucian, he's slowly making his way up from the floor, looking around. Even though the pen is glittery, he still can't see it anywhere. Defeated, Alric slowly makes his way out of the room, making sure to have someone around, in case he falls again.

I must've hit my head pretty hard. I swear I heard concern in Inara's voice. Maybe not pure evil?

Inara clicks her tongue in exasperation as she watches Alric stumble out. "I told him he doesn't have the Gift. What kind of fool mimics a spellform without training?"

The desperate kind. I know what it's like, to be stuck powerless and told you'll never amount to anything. That you shouldn't even try.

Inara's half of the barrier radiates implacable certitude. His recklessness proves why some knowledge must remain restricted. Look at the danger he put himself in! I won't enable such foolishness by teaching him more.

Maybe if he better understood how magic works, he wouldn't feel the need to try such desperate measures. Let him borrow a book or two from your library.

Perhaps an introductory text, Inara concedes. Something to hammer home that wizardry is not for amateurs. IF he swears off random spellcasting.

Lucian makes sure Hope has a handle on Alric before turning back. "I am going to leave that be for now. Did your spell find anything?" Lucian is going to start searching the papers for clues.

Rolled: [4 💥 2 = 6, 5]+2 Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

"Let me try again," Inara says, hands already twitching through familiar forms. She raises her finger-window to eye level, peering through it to see —

Rolled: [10 💥 2 = 12, 2] Result: Success with 2 raises! 🎯🎯🎯

Matt ignores the two agents, and seemingly the whole world too.

Lucian finds an instructional pamphlet for how to deploy solidifying geometry, a semiotic construction that inhibits extra-physical Schloss-Platonic surjections.

There are a couple of old books that on the surface appear to be mundane, if dense, texts, but on a second look, might be a bit more. Metamathematical Labyrinths: Navigating Complex Symbolism and Semantic Geometrical Constructions. A receipt from a local bookshop marks a page in the latter book, a section on Feynman diagrams and their merit as mathematical maps of reality.

This casting is an improvement over the last, and the last one was nearly prefect. Inara and Vesper can see details that are normally obscured with the quality of this arcane lens.

Pity there isn't much to see.

Matt has the same symptoms Carter had: the dim aura of a mind sputtering and distant, though this time it is easier to see that Matt's psyche has had bits torn from it, dark portions that should be flickering with thought. The fine gradient of hues faintly light gossamer filaments, that might just possibly indicate some magical knack, though the standard test is still a much more reliable indicator if one has the Gift.

"Qualia weird got him too," Inara says. "Nothing else of note, though." She snaps her fingers in front of Matt's face. "Who else went to Carter's class?"

He startles. "What?"

"Who are your classmates?" Inara asks. "Surely you know one or two of them."

Matt musters a spoon?: [6 💥 3 = 9, 0] Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

"Ah... What class? Sorry, who are you?" A spark of life flickers back in his eyes; for the first time, he seems to be approximately present.

"I am Inara Sellain, agent of the Dawn Commission. I'm investigating the magical phenomenon that occurred during Professor Carter's class. Who else attends his class asides from you?

He pales some. "Um. I'm the TA for Professor Carter's Human Perception class... do you mean that one? Uh. That one shouldn't be magic. Um. I think I have the roster..."

"Yes, that class. Best as I can tell, Carter summoned a qualia weird during an experiment and it got loose. Give me the roster."

He shuffles through the papers on his desk, and then in his drawers and backpack. "Where'd I put it? Sorry, sorry..." He looks in the same few places a couple of times with no luck. "Um... I think I have an email with the list..." He boots up the hand-me-down refurbished computer at his desk.

Inara waits impatiently, her fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm upon my arm as Matt fumbles with his ancient computer. His movements are sluggish and clumsy, like a puppet with tangled strings. He's present, but only just — his glazed eyes move as if wading through molasses.

This creature has ravaged his mind, Inara's thoughts seethe across our link. Just look at the poor guy. He can barely string two words together.

I know. This thing, whatever it is, needs to be stopped. Permanently.*

Inara relaxes slightly, a grim smile tugging at her lips. Good. I'm glad we agree on that much, at least.

I allow myself a crooked smile in the quiet darkness of the mindscape She would not speak of agreement if she could see the full shape of my thoughts. The forbidden tomes hidden beneath my floorboards, pages filled with dangerous ritual sketches. The vaulting ambitions that drove me to disaster.

No, best not to dwell on past mistakes. I straighten my thoughts and focus on the present moment instead. On the task at hand. This creature, whatever its true nature, poses a dire threat — and dire threats demand final measures.

Lucian feels inadequate looking at all the texts laid out across the office. It looks to be... math stuff? Hold on, deploying geometry, that sounds familiar.

"Hey Inara, do you have that disk we found in the lab? I have an instruction pamphlet here that I think goes to it."

Inara reaches into her embroidered crimson robes, her fingers finding the disk's cool metal in an inner pocket. She offers it to Lucian. "Here."

Darn, Lucian had kind of been hoping Inara would want to give a try with the pamplhet, this is not exactly his wheelhouse here. But no what? Sure. Lets give this a shot.

Can Lucian fiddle around with the disk and pamphet to get it to do anything?: [1, 3]-2 Result: Failure ❌

3 minutes pass of Lucian looking completely flumoxed and nothing really happening. Does an occasional pittiful look to Inara every 10 seconds or so get a reaction?

Poor Lucian, I murmur within our tangled mindscape. Even after two years helping me out, ritual preparation confounds him still.

Inara scoffs, the sound reverberating through my skull. She snatches the pamphlet from Lucian's fumbling grasp.

"Observe and learn," she says with a trace of condescension. My friend's shoulders slump, but Inara pays him no mind, eyes darting across the pamphlet as she skims it.

Experiment with disk: [10 💥 3 = 13, 1] Result: Success with 2 raises! 🎯🎯🎯

Inara reads over the pamphlet. It’s written in unfamiliar jargon, but it is roughly parsable. Semiotic is a word meaning relating to signs. Schloss-Platonic might be an eponym or might relate to platonic forms. A surjection is a mathematical mapping from many to one. Inhibiting a surjection thus is likely equivalent to an area dispel or banishment spell, though there doesn’t seem to be any nuance to its function, instead applying a blanket effect.

The actual deploying seems to be accomplished by spinning the disk within a symbolically enclosed area with the knowledge of what it means and the intent of triggering it. It’s likely to be reusable.

Does Inara try to deploy it? No roll, just yes or no

What a clumsy piece of work, Inara complains. Magus Williams would have failed anyone dumb enough to turn this in for their Introductory Artificing final project.

I can't help myself. What did you turn in?

A ritual array that converts sunlight into mana. Inara sniffs. The nitpicky bastard gave me a B and said it was 'inefficient' even though I had three levels of escapement to reuse wasted energy.

Well, I still think you should try the disk. It might fix Matt's mind.

Might do a lot more than that, she says. It's an unconstrained area dispel and I'm a magical creature. So is Lucian.

I don't think it's a dispel — you said it 'inhibits schloss-platonic surjections'. That sounds more like it disrupts the manifestation of a concept. And since extraplanar entities are basically concepts given form, activating the disk probably just banishes them. It makes sense that it'd be laying around in a laboratory dedicated to summoning entities, too.

Inara hesitates, doubt creeping through our shared thoughts. Then determination hardens her jaw. Okay. Let's hope you're right.

Inara spins the disk. That’s the last thing she has conscious awareness of.

Then Vesper blinks her eyes as the disk slows to a halt.

Inara finds herself reconnected to Vesper seconds after Vesper’s mind fully reconnects.

The disk slows to a halt, its dim glow fading. I blink, and the front is mine. I'm alone in my head.

It's... quiet. Too quiet. This should feel like victory, but instead unease coils within me. Where is Inara? With no body left to return to, did activating the disk destroy her very soul? The thought chills me more than I expect. We may be enemies, but neither of us deserves —

Inara crashes back into our shared mindscape, confusion radiating from her section of the barrier like an arctic chill. She pulls herself together after a moment. What was that?

The disk separated us, I explain. Where were you? During... that?

Inara hesitates, choosing her words carefully. Nowhere. The last thing I remember is activating the disk. Another lengthy pause follows. I feel her gaze upon me, though we share the same eyes. You regained the front first. Are you going to use the disk again?

No, I blurt without thinking. Then, Why?

Bitterness seeps from her, underlaid with a sharp current of fear. The effects could be cumulative. If you use it enough times, you might get rid of me permanently. Even just once was more than any of the Council's healers managed. Take it back to them and I'm sure they could make it permanent.

The thought doesn't feel as good as it once did. Maybe it's just the shock talking.

We can worry about that later, I finally say. Right now we've got a qualia weird to track down.

"Did anything happen? You spaced out for a couple seconds there."

Lucian's question jolts me from my thoughts. I start, eyes darting about the dim office before settling on my old friend. A grin splits my face. Whatever misgivings I harbor about Inara, being in control of my body again feels incredible.

"It's nothing," I blurt by habit. But Lucian knows about Inara. I don't have to hide from him. "The disk knocked us both out of our body, but I got back first." I pause, wetting cracked lips. "Uh, this is Vesper, in case you hadn't realized."

Lucian would smile if the implications weren't so concerning. He's going to put his thoughts on that aside for now. "Okay, do you think that was a you thing or a using the disk thing? Is this our ticket to desummoning the weird?"

"I'm certain it was because of the disk," I say, my hands fidgeting with the hem of my robe. "We've never separated like that before, not even during the Council's extensive experiments."

I glance at the metallic disk, its surface glinting in the dim light. My initial elation fades as I consider the implications. This device can sever Inara's soul from our shared body. The thought unsettles me, like a pebble in my boot I cannot dislodge.

"I don't think we should use the disk again," I finally say. "At least, not until we understand it better. There could be unintended consequences."

"I meant the disc doing something weird because of your situation. I agree you probably shouldn't, but I am up for attempting if you can explain what you did to activate it."

I smile at Lucian, grateful that he's not asking why I suddenly care what happens to Inara. "It's easy to activate. Just spin it within a symbolically sealed area, knowing that doing so will activate it and intending to do so."

Okay, let me give this a try. Actually...... hmmm. So we should expect nothing, me to blank out for a couple seconds, or you to associate and me nothing if its range is big but just affected you. If its as easy as you sound I probably shouldn't do it now and just hold on to it instead. Once Vesper hands Lucian the disk he puts it in his jacket pocket. "Alright, lets go find Hope and Alric."

"Probably a good idea," I admit. "I'll be sure to stand far back from the weird when you use the artifact." I hesitate. "So you're on board with killing the weird?"

Lucian shrugs, unconcerned. "How sure are we anything we could do would be killing it? For all we know it goes home once it is takes enough damage. And if it is killing it, I'm not losing sleep over it. I am currently thinking of it as a wild animal. I do eat meat after all."

"Good," I say. "Just wanted to make sure Alric hadn't gotten to you — I like that guy, but Inara's right that his naievety will get people killed if we're not careful." I pause. "I'd like to try the Sunfire Lace first, though. We don't know what the range on the disk will be if it's not contained in an area, and it'll probably be hard to get the weird back in a circle."

"Yeah, hopefully that scare earlier knocked some sense into him. I agree, do your thing first."

I nod and reach into my robe to retrieve Inara's phone, type in her password, and message the group chat.

[Inara] hey guys, we're finished with matt. found something that might help with the weird if sunfire doesn't kill it. where are you? is alric feeling better yet?

Lucian, roll Notice

Lucian rolls notice: [4 💥 3 = 7, 4]+2 Result: Success with 1 raise! 🎯🎯

Thinking back on it, Lucian lost a few seconds too. Inara and Vesper just noticed automatically because of the effects it had because of their unique situation.

For Lucian it felt more like a zoning out for a moment.

Matt now just blinks at the computer. His email is open, but he has a vacant look on his face again.

Lucian stops moving as it occurs to him. “Scratch that, I think it did affect me, my memory is definitely fuzzy there, just snapped out of sooner. I think this probably means it’s safer at least for you than we thought. Don’t think that changes anything else.

My robe swishes against the worn linoleum as I pace Matt's dingy office, sunlight streaming through grimy windows to cast everything in shades of muted gold. Lucian watches me, ears twitching at every scuff of my boots. I halt before the desk, fingers worrying at a loose thread on my sleeve as I study Matt. The spark of life he showed before is gone, snuffed out by limp hands and a dissociated stare.

"I still don't want to use it," I say, a little more firmly than before. Embroidered cloth creaks beneath my tightening grip. "Not unless we absolutely have to."

Inara's voice whispers within my mind, sharp and brittle as broken glass. Your concern is touching. But her jagged spikes of sarcasm can't quite mask the anxiety threaded through her words.

Thread sync Chapter 1.7: Hunt

My phone chimes. I glance at it and my heart stutters — Alric found the weird, or, rather, it found him. "We have to go." I'm already halfway to the door. "The weird is attacking people in the quad."

"Crap, all right lets go." Lucian quickly follows her out.

</Scene> Chapter 1.7: Hunt