Chương 223: Act 3, Chapter 72: Diagnosing

Day in the story: 28th January (Wednesday) Alexandra May as Jess Hare"How do I counteract this loss of control? What's the reason?" I asked one question after the other, while impatience was slowly rising within me.

"That are two different issues, and figuring out the latter might help us deal with the first," he replied, closing his eyes and massaging the bridge of his nose with a finger and a thumb.

"How are we even going to start doing that?"

"I will ask a few more questions—that for the start—then if that doesn't prove helpful, we will run some tests," he answered, looking back at me while tilting his head to a side.

"Sure," I replied, directing my attention to Dam, who patiently remained silent throughout the whole conversation so far. He sat next to me, and that focused gaze of his was enough to catch the attention of the doctor now and then.

"When did the problem start? Be as exact as you can be."

"It was soon after splitting myself for the first time. I thought it was related to cutting my leg off, but it actually occurred when one of my Personas was moving in the world and I paid conscious attention to what she was doing. However, it did attack the same side of me that was weaker due to amputation."

"Does it always happen when you take over the mind of your creations?"

"No, right now it happens for no discernible reason at all. But it did happen at first when I was making a conscious effort to control myself as one of my Personas. And because maybe I did not make it clear enough—they are still me. I am always present within them, but due to the nature of the Identity I gave them, they are autonomous even without me being in there. It's like this lungs example you made. They are always working, doing their job, but I can stop breathing when I choose to."

"That's how all mages with similar abilities operate. I'm aware," he said, brushing the corner of his eye and glancing at the moisture on his fingertip.

"There is also another issue that might be of importance, but I don't think it is," I answered, and while his antics were bothering me, I decided to put my trust into an assumption that it was how he did his job. Constantly moving could actually help him focus.

"Tell me about anything that you find interesting about your own case," he said and moved to the window of his office that showed the open space of the ward. There was a bigger group of people approaching with another doctor at its helm. Thorne scowled, looking at them, exposing his teeth—half of which were crooked. He closed the blinds and turned back to me and Dam.

"One of those Personas remains away from my conscious ability to control for quite some time now. She was also the first one I created, but the freezes started even before she became unavailable."

"Did she die?" he asked, putting his iPad on the desk and opening a drawer.

"I… don't think so. I still can feel the shadowlight link connecting us, and while she no longer gets any Authority from me over it, I feel like this link splits into different ones through her now and then," I provided an answer, watching him make a ball out of some papers and squash it in between his hands.

"Why can't you feel her normally anymore?" he asked, putting in some serious effort to squeeze the ball even harder.

"I believe that it is related to the nature of the place she is in. I learned that it's under the control of an Eldritch being. But like I said, it started happening before she got there," I answered, and he raised one finger up, indicating that I should pause. Then he looked at the door of his room, forcing Dam to do the same by the gravity of the situation alone. Soon a single knock hit the door and it opened to show the same doctor that was just making a round outside.

He opened his mouth to speak, just to be hit with a ball made of paper Thorne had been making. His head recoiled before a single word came out of his mouth.

"Get the fuck out, Tom. I have patients now," Thorne said with so much anger he spat between the words.

"Also learn to knock and wait for an answer, for Reality's sake."

"I will come back later," the man named Tom answered and closed the door, massaging the point of impact on his forehead.

"That is of little consequence to those creatures. Eldritch beings feed on a particular kind of Authority, and from what we know so far about them, they do not perceive time in the same manner we do, so it might affect you through the link to that Persona." The doctor picked up the conversation right where we left it, as if nothing happened in between. He took a peek at the paper ball lying on the floor and sighed.

"Particular Authorities? What do you mean by that?" I asked him right as he moved toward the missile he'd created and picked it up.

"I am saying that each one of them has a taste for different Authority, and this one might love to munch on control, and if that is its meal of choice and it is sucking it out of your Persona, it might go back in time to drain it of every bit of it, till the moment of its creation through you."

"That's mind-bending," I answered, trying to put as much emotion through it as possible.

"And may be the reason. I advise you to cut off that link and just remake that Persona. It should be the safest option, given what you describe of your magic." He threw the ball in the air and caught it with his left hand as it was falling down, without looking at it.

"I won't do that," I replied, making him raise his brows.

"Why? You know it yourself—you said it—they are not individual people. You won't be killing her. They are extensions of you." He crossed his arms over his chest, keeping the ball in his palm—squeezing and releasing it on repeat.

"I understand that, doctor, but I also gave those parts of me autonomy to carry on certain tasks, and for as long as I believe she is doing that, I will not take that away from her."" Stupid. Just send her again on the same task."

"That might not be possible. I am sure it won't be—some things can't be put on pause and resumed whenever we find it plausible, doctor."

"Wouldn't that also be backwards?" Dam asked all of a sudden.

"I mean, if the Eldritch feeds off of her through time, wouldn't that mean that it should have been more severe near the beginning, when she only just created that version of her?"

"No, Damien. It does not have to feed linearly through time. It might take a nibble at the beginning, because that's when it took its first fucking bite, then take a bigger bite now, and come back to take another nibble last Thursday or next Friday. It might also want to prolong the feast or take it all in a single sitting, depending on how it operates. And lastly, it might not be our reason at all." He called him by name, and Dam never introduced himself to him. They know each other.

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"I see," I replied.

"What else could make me lose control? Have you had similar cases to mine?"

"Yes, I have. It's usually foreign Authority messing with a mage." He answered, taking a moment to look into Dam's eyes before turning back to me. His face did not look angry now, but more relaxed, sagged, and old all of a sudden—as if all the tension was replaced by something deeper rooted.

"Wouldn't I be aware of it? Fighting it off?"

"Aren't you doing that? You said that it eases off in time. It might be your Anima fighting it off."

"I would know."

"No, it can get under the radar. Anima is an unconscious process. You may be fighting it and be unaware." Dam moved uncomfortably in his chair. I believed he wanted to tell him about Anansi.

"Let's say I have a more direct way of talking with my Anima, would she be always aware that she is fighting something off?"

"What?" the doctor asked, pushing himself away from the desk and standing in front of me, bending over to look into my eyes. His breath smelled of citrus, menthol, and cigarettes. Not the best combination, but I could not even flinch.

"What do you mean by talking?" He added, while I wished for the ability to ask any of my Persona's noses to be my only one.

"What's usually understood by the process. My Anima has a personality and identity and I can talk with her through my soul. She's pretty fucking great, actually." I allowed myself to curse, since he'd done the same in my presence. [Thank you for the praise.]"That's another first I've heard about. How does that work?" he asked, grabbing my chin and moving my head around, looking into my eyes at different angles. Dam moved uncomfortably in his chair again, putting his massive hand on the table.

Thorne noticed that and released my face from his grip.

"Like if I'd talk with myself, but I can't accurately predict what I'd answer to any of my own questions, and she has access to all those details about my magic that are supposed to be felt and not known exactly. She even can quantify my progress in the Domain growth."

"You must be at least stage three if your Domain started creating life in your image. And how long ago did you source your Domain?"

"I never said that I am a sourceress."

"First of all, it's in your acts. Second, it's obvious by the way you talk about things. So how far along are you, and when did you create the soul core?" he said and turned his back to me, while hobbling to his own desk. His leg had to be damaged somehow. It was much stiffer in action.

"I am at stage three, like you said—""It's called an Expansion stage," he interrupted me. I glanced at Dam through my side sp-eye-der and noticed him nodding to that.

"Expansion, whatever. I am around 13% of essence required for advancement to the next one."

"That's remarkable," he said, turning back to us.

"Most mages would provide a vague answer."

"27th September is my birthday as a mage." I disregarded his comment.

"Four months!?" He hit his desk with a fist.

"How? Are you chugging down soul core fragments? That can't be, you would not have access since you are a sourcerer. But with the ability to exist in multiple places at once and teleportation—it seems plausible to expect faster progress than average. Much faster if you are working on your art and exploring this fucked up world."

"Doctor?" I asked, trying to get him out of the spiral of thoughts my declaration put him through. It almost seemed like I could see all of that information going in front of him as a stream of consciousness.

"Yes?" he answered, looking back at me and opening his eyes wider.

"I did consume essence from two fragments. Could that be the reason?"

"There are some risks about doing that, especially for sourcerers, as they have an underdeveloped Domain, so any foreign influence can be dramatic when you fight for those essences. But I would rather rule that out—if that was the case, it would happen immediately upon taking that essence."

"I did not know that," Damien mused.

"I'm sorry for putting you at risk, child."

"Don't worry about it, Dam," I replied.

"So the Eldritch being or foreign influence are the most likely causes? Can we check if it is either of those with some test that will not require me to remove the links?"

"We can test for both in part, but I still find it interesting that your Anima became lucid. Does it not know if you are under attack?" [If we are, I can't tell—no.]"She says she can't."

"That doesn't rule the possibility out. I've seen cases of mages fighting off others' spells for decades—unknowingly."

"I'd prefer to avoid that if possible. Decades sound like way too long."

"Let's go." He said, and took a spiraling metallic cane, that looked like a horn of the unicorn from behind the desk.

"It will be a long walk," he said to Dam, who measured him up and down.

"And since our last meeting, Dam, I had an unpleasant experience of meeting with a Dragon who was not happy with the service I provided." He waved the walking stick in front of Damien's face.

"What happened, Hugh?" he asked, taking me into his arms again.

"It came in here looking for help for an unpleasant condition that I am not at liberty to discuss." He said, opening the doors. Caroline, who sat on a bench at the opposite wall, jumped to her feet and joined us, but did not say a word.

"Even though I was able to help, it did not like the way in which I'd done it and attacked my Domain through me."

"Is that possible?" Dam asked.

"I learned it the hard way. Apparently Dragons can use you to open a way into your world when they are close enough, bypassing the need of closeness to the entrance. I tried protecting my soul core, but he destroyed it, leaving me crippled at a soul level. Something not unlike what is afflicting you, Miss Hare. My soul core is still healing, while my own soul waits for its turn."

"How could a dragon even get into these halls?" I asked.

"I fought drakes and they were enormous."

"Dragons have an innate ability to change into an Elf at will. He came in here like that."

"So any Elf can be a dragon in disguise?" Damian asked, carrying me without a single grunt. We moved through the hospital's corridors. They somehow evoked both feelings of dread and hope, as they changed the colors, the smell, and illumination from something awfully looking like rotten, moldy rocky enclosures of a cave, to colorful, clean walls of modern health infrastructure. They were not permanent and swapped from one to the other in fluid motion.

"No—shit." He replied and winced as something staggered his motion.

"They are too prideful for that—all of their friggin kind. Contrary to regular elves, they do not have any feathers, and their head ridge is more pronounced, and they have long and adorned horns. They look more demonic than regular demons do."

"Are they singing like the elves too?" Dam asked.

"They can, but they can also speak like we do. Did you know that they were Elves once? Years of genetic and magical experiments turned them into dragons as we know them today."

"That I did not know," Dam replied. I wanted to ask them how they knew each other, but I had a pretty good idea about that and did not want to sour the mood, so I remained silent about it. Instead, I tried relaxing while I was being carried.

We reached the examination lab around ten minutes later, as it required lots of walking, and out of the three people who were able to participate in this glorious activity, only Caroline was able to go at a good pace. And yet, out of common sense, she decided to match the tempo provided by the one person who actually knew where we were going, so yeah—we moved very fucking slow. Dam helped me onto the bed, laying me there gently, while Thorne hobbled close to the adjustable machine that hovered over it.

It looked like a satellite dish riddled with many lamps and overgrown by a crystalline structure that would probably focus the light at its peak point. When he targeted that tip onto my midsection and brought the whole thing inches away from my body—I shivered in my mind, as my body was not kind enough to cooperate.

"You can stay," I told Caroline, who was tactfully going out of the room.

"Really?" she asked, turning back to me. All eyes beside my own focused on her, waiting for her decision. She closed the doors and moved close to the wall, leaning against it.

"I will be quiet, I promise."

"This crystal will shoot a thin line of shadowlight into your system that you must accept," the doctor said, ignoring Caroline completely.

"It will analyze your Authority composition and determine whether there is even a trace of something foreign in you."

"And what about the Eldritch being?" Dam asked.

"If anything is being fed on from her, we will see it going lower in real time," he said, right as the machine hummed to life, hitting me with a laser-like beam of shadowlight. I let it through unobstructed.

"See?" the doctor said to Damien, who stood next to him. He had shown him something on the monitor, pointing at it with his finger.

"Different colors are representing different Authorities in the structure of her soul."

"Why is it this massive?" Caroline asked, forgetting what she promised.

"It went through all of her open shadowlight links to represent the entirety of her soul stretching out into the world. The part that turns into this mist-like illumination must be that Persona in the Eldritch house. Seems like there is no active feeding anywhere over the whole field of you."

"Levels stay stable," Damien mused.

"I have good news, Miss Hare," the doctor said, standing up from behind the screen and hobbling closer to me.

"There is no foreign Authority anywhere within you, nor is there any leakage."

"And that are the good news?"

"No, those were the bad ones, as we still do not know what is causing your condition," he answered, smiling ear to ear.

"So what are those good news?"

"That you are an interesting case, miss Hare. I'd like you to stay here for some time."