RFC-Miniarc-An Average Day-15 (Umphrieltalia))

The mind, the sacred dominion of the individual. The key to their rise or fall. Within, they sheltered their vulnerable hopes and the secrets that could bring them to their knees. Naturally, they trusted their minds, and expected safety within them. Which made any attacks against it all the more devastating.

An intruder in someone’s home was a violation, an inconvenience. Objects could be replaced. A new home bought if needed. If the intruder intended on violence, all but a life could be mended and one had no concerns as to their well-being in death.

An intrusion of the mind was a travesty. The worse one should be able to inflict on another was pain but far more could be done to someone with a vulnerable mind. Something worse than a simple injury could be inflicted on them and the mind could not be mended with the ease of broken bones.

Mental privacy should be an unspoken right to all creatures of intellect but in their world, power superseded all. Those with the right affinity and training could trample through a place they had no right to be in. They could commit the ultimate heresy of transforming such a space, changing the very essence of a person until a man’s mother couldn’t recognize him.

Such power had to be kept in check. There existed only two things that could so. Powerful artifacts made with the mental affinity stone to block the mana’s intrusion, an absurdly rare and expensive item, and people of similar power who used their power for good.

Many influential families and individuals sent their children to the Grand Hall, where they could receive the best magical education on the continent. Should any of the young heirs be compromised, it could spell doom for the kingdom. And though the Hall had many experts, with the tension between the crown and the institution powerful enough to enforce its independence despite its veneer of subservience, the noble families of the kingdom could not leave the protection if their heirs to whoever the Hall deemed fit.

They wanted their own agent, one who’s loyalty was unquestioned, whose power could rival the instructors, and who wouldn’t be afraid to act against the Hall should the occasion call for it.

Umphrieltalia, an orphan brought up in one of the orphanages run by the kingdom, was the perfect choice. The head interrogator himself, a man whose loyalty and morals were without question, had taken an interest in her after witnessing her talent. The only family she knew was the kingdom and she had never shown any inclination to act against them or even compromise her duties in pursuit of a personal goal.

There were some that doubted the woman had any aspirations for her future, thinking of her as the perfect tool molded by the crown. Unmoved by common desires, such as gold or reputation, and immune to emotional traps such as romance and sympathy, there was no better person to wield the mental affinity.

Her placid expression didn’t twitch as she roamed the halls of Gold Dorm with a simple spell activated. People’s thoughts leaked from their minds like a bottle with a hole in it, soaking the space around them. Those sensitive to ‘mental energy’ as Talia’s teacher called it, could pick up on those thoughts, though humans didn’t have the natural tools to translate them in their entirety.

That is where the mental affinity and spells came in. One of the first she’d learned and the one she depended on most while conducting her duties as a dorm mother, was a spell that made her more sensitive to mental energy.

She didn’t translate the projections to words and images. With the amount of people in the dorm, the expenditure of such a spell would drain her mana core in minutes. An expense she couldn’t afford as part of her duties meant being ready to fend off any assailants aiming for the vulnerable heirs.

Not to mention, if she attempted such, she would drown in the inner thoughts of dozens of teenagers. Quagmires of adolescent lust, entitled arrogance, and studious thoughts of aspiring master casters. Both an unpleasant and difficult experience.

Instead, she only made herself more sensitive to the emotion of the thoughts. As she walked through the halls, feelings came to her through the closed doors. She ignored exhaustion, despair, comfort, thrills, and sadness. A rare few mental casters had used their power to become healers of the mind, soothing the hurts no one could see. It wasn’t one of Talia’s many skills and she wouldn’t have learned it if she could. She had no interest in the weakness of others.

Two emotions could stop her mid patrol, anger and fear. One spoke to the possibility that one of the residents of her dorm held intentions to hurt another and the second could suggest the chance that harm may be coming for them.

Whenever she discovered them, she would cast a stronger spell, translating the vague feelings into the thoughts that caused them. Even with her position and the implicit trust of the crown, she did not have the leeway to recklessly use her affinity to dive into the minds of her charges. It made for imprecise work but, with her training in detection and deduction, the clues she could gain without illegal intrusion were enough to stymie any trouble.

Talia took her work very seriously. After all, it was a part of the unspoken contract she had with her teacher. She wasn’t unaware of how he thought of her as the daughter he never had, even if their positions and her temperament didn’t allow for obvious affection. She didn’t disabuse him of that notion and she completed any tasks asked of her.

In return, the kingdom provided her resources to grow, including teachers, spellbooks from past masters, and the freedom to experiment on the more heinous criminals of the kingdom.

She never deluded herself into thinking that the support was a result of emotion. Emotion didn’t drive the kingdom to establish the orphanage in Summer Spire. She’d known that from the moment she arrived but if she hadn’t, it would have been made clear the moment her mental affinity was discovered. The difference in her treatment before and after couldn’t be compared.

She preferred it this way. Talia had never understood the illogical actions caused by emotional attachments. Her teacher thought she was cold to people she didn’t know but she didn’t feel one way or another about anyone. She engaged her teacher and the members of the interrogators she met regularly simply because doing so brought her more benefits.

As long as they continued to benefit her, Talia would never betray a benefactor, whether they be a saint or a devil that escaped the Abyss. However, if someone else could offer her more benefit, she’d betray a benefactor without a second thought. A trait most would despise but her time amongst the nobles of the capital taught her that those in power held the same belief. They simply hid such behind flowery words.

Despite her work ethic, she was distracted as she wandered the halls. The qualifiers, a usually quiet affair, had caused quite a stir. The death of Sebas Hoffen, nephew to the king, was not taken well by his father. As the crown’s hand in the Hall, many had questions for her. There was no way for her to stop what happened but someone needed to be blamed and she was in the right place at the wrong time.

Then there was the problem with the crown agent, Orphelia Yemen. She had requested her cooperation and Talia had refused. Something she had never done before, for any reason. She doubted anyone in the capital could fathom her reasons but the fact that she had made a decision against the agenda of her “owners” had them uneasy.

No doubt, that had prompted the request to return to Summer Spire, delivered by the once great Manuel Reis Quintana himself. If refusing Orphelia made them nervous, her refusal to her teacher’s request, the head interrogator himself, had them in a panic.

Talia knew she didn’t have long before their methods became more direct. Someone would be sent to confirm her loyalties or lack thereof. And once she refused them, and made it implicitly clear that she no longer held the king in her eyes, things would get…nasty.

Before then, she wanted to secure her place by the side of Lourianne Tome. It had been difficult finding time when she was an initiate, as their schedules were both full. Talia had an endless stream to work, taking orders from both the Hall and the crown.

As a dorm mother for the dorm hosting the most influential adolescents and young adults in the kingdom, she had to keep them satisfied while also reigning them in, lest they think they could own the dorm. Every day, she had to review dozens of requests, relating to understandable needs for their studies and more exuberant requests for luxuries the spoiled residents somehow couldn’t live without. She patrolled the dorm, ready to protect her charges from outside threats and themselves, if need be.

She was also in charge of the dorm’s servants. While they could manage most of the day-to-day activities without direction, they needed her to sign off on supplies and review their expenditures. Also, it was her duty to manage any altercations between the residents and servants, which mainly consisted of her warning horny young men off the maids.

Rarely, they transferred their attentions to her, which gave her a chance to demonstrate the pain that could be inflicted with careful application of the mental affinity. It never left a mark and they never tried their luck twice.

Her duties for the crown covered a lesser scope but was just as intensive. She was, in essence, the king’s eyes and ears within the Hall. All her communications went through her teacher for deniability but it was the crown that was interested in which heirs were having a secret affair, which had shown promise, which were failing, and any other secrets.

They expected her to extend her eavesdropping to the instructors and alert them to new spells, new alchemical products, and, most importantly, if Dunwayne was done being polite and made a move to declare independence from Harvest. Simple work that required little effort but composing the reports was time-consuming.

Thankfully, she had no more need to waste her time with eavesdropping. She could use her free evenings to visit Lou and her “thrall” that was anything but.

Many thought that Talia’s eyes were a handicap. She thought the opposite. Far too many were deceived by outward appearance. Thoughts never lied. Neither did mana and it had shown her many interesting things.

Such as the fact that Lou’s thrall, a creature that should have only three affinities, physical, mental, and fire, had a fourth, the water affinity, and enough mana in her core to make Talia very nervous. She had done some research at the Summoner Hall and found that there was only one kind of succubus recorded with four affinities and that amount of mana. A creature that held knowledge of the mental affinity the illustrious interrogators couldn’t dream of.

Amazingly, the secret of the elemental wasn’t the biggest secret of that house. That honor belonged to Lourianne Tome. The girl that was not a girl. Or, at the very least, so monstrously talented, she may as well not be human. That was before accounting for what appeared to be a second mana core in her chest.

She was sure that the elven woman had secrets of her own but they couldn’t be discerned with casual observation.

One of the people on her mind was waiting for her when she returned to her office. Talia could recognize her easily from the vague mental energy she could perceive even without a spell. Her thoughts sounded like a taut bow, a personality that seemed still but was in fact waiting for the chance to be unleashed.

“Talia,” Kierra said warmly from the direction of the dorm mother’s desk. “What are you still doing in that plain robe? Have you forgotten that we have plans tonight?”