There were two major problems with mind-reading spells.
One: that they were master tier and above, and, on top of that, they were heavily restricted, just like mind-erasure spells were. The next day in her office, Valeria told Arielle why.
“Most of the spells detecting or altering the mind have been forbidden except by use of Truth Seekers, or certain bloodlines that monopolize them,” she said. “For good reason. Did you ever hear the story of the Tower of Galion?”
Ari shook her head.
“Well, a very long time ago, there was a Luxarium that was supposed to hold memories of the dead, guarded by the Shen family, cousins of the Li's. In the archive was the memory of a powerful mage, and once the investigators at the Luxarium tried to access it, it instead corrupted their entire archive and led to a massive virus that infiltrated the bodies of some of the investigators themselves. It would arbitrarily wipe and adjust thoughts in their heads, corrupting their memories until it led to a massacre. Luckily, they locked down the Luxarium before anyone could get out, but they all ended up killing each other in there as a result." She exhaled and adjusted her glasses. "That’s one of the worst memory pollution events that happened in the recent era, but there have been other cases where reading minds led to madness or even memory alteration without intending to do so. That is why it is highly restricted today, outside of things like Unknowing potions, which are sanctioned, and of course, the Truthseekers, who are extremely skilled at what they do and manage to do it without causing any damage to the memories.”
“Oh," Arielle responded. That put somewhat of a wrench in her plans. Mind-reading would be the easiest path, but now she didn't know if it was worth the risk.
“I’m telling you this just in case you’re getting any ideas about crafting such a spell," Valeria said. "It would be extremely difficult and virtually impossible to make, but I wouldn’t put anything past you at this point."
She offered Arielle a kind smile, but Ari didn't smile back. She couldn't trust that it was genuine.
Valeria seemed to notice and coughed awkwardly afterward, adjusting her glasses again.
"Anyway," she said. "I would strongly advise against any experimentation with mind-reading. Not only would it be illegal, but it would also be dangerous for both you and the person whose mind you are reading. Mind magic is not as simple as it looks, and it’s not easy to completely erase memories either, even with an Unknowing potion. There’s always a small but non-negligible risk of memory corruption and spread, like with the mage.”
Arielle frowned. So what had the Dean been talking about when he said he could help her better identify lies? Or was that another lie?
She wasn't going to ask him.
"Were you thinking about creating such a spell, Arielle?" Valeria asked, dipping her chin so that she peered at Arielle from over the top of her glasses.
Ari shook her head, uttering her practiced excuse. “No. I was simply curious about why I could not find any mind-reading spells in the advanced spell book.”
"Are you sure that's it?"
"Yes." Why was Valeria asking her again? Was she going to report to the dean? Had it been a mistake to come here?
“How are you feeling?" Valeria asked gently. "I heard you had a rough day yesterday.”
“I’m fine,” Ari said shortly, getting to her feet. “Thank you for your help, Professor Valeria.”
“You’re welcome, Arielle. Let me know if you need to talk about anything.”
Ari nodded and walked out.
Her second stop was the library. Not that she didn't believe what Valeria had said, but she did want to confirm it on her own.
After all, that was what How to Charm Kings had told her to do. Get information from multiple sources to strengthen its veracity.
She'd pored over the book again all night, wondering if she had missed something within that had led to her current predicament.
She recalled most of the information from her earlier reading. It was just that, as time passed, she'd started to ignore the lessons there. She had used the book to get friends, and now that she had them, she used the advice a little less, especially since some of the advice within did not seem to work as well with certain people, like Lyra, for example.
Ari wanted something with a hundred percent accuracy rate. And she would find it. Even if she wasn’t going to make a mind-reading spell, there were still aspects of the spell she could incorporate to strengthen [Empath Sense].
She used Orion to search through the library archives and received mostly warnings and tales of all the negative things that mind-reading spells could cause. Nothing about the spell construction or anything of that sort.
She did recall the Dean saying it was his expertise. So she chose to search in his office too.
She was being conservative with her orbs, so she decided to go closer to conduct her search. She sat at the bottom of the staircase and stared at the passing students as the spell did its job. Several of them looked at her. Some smiled and waved. A few of them cupped their hands and whispered to each other, and it made Arielle uncomfortable. She ignored them.
That was until Riorke, who was walking by, came to a screeching stop and gave her an odd look.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just sitting here.”
“You’re sitting here doing nothing?”
“Yes.”
He cocked his head, a smile teasing the corner of his lips.
“First time for everything, I suppose,” he said, and he winked as he continued on his way.
Arielle frowned when her search did not yield many results, but as she went back to the library, she began to brainstorm more about how to elevate [Empath Sense].
The problem with [Empath Sense] was that it gave her shallow information, like a smile to mean happiness, and a frown to mean anger. It worked by reading the aura of the individual to see which way they leaned emotionally. But she needed more than that. She needed to understand why they felt the way they did. She needed to evaluate their emotional responses, perhaps by understanding micro-expressions.
How to Charm Kings said that a single eye twitch can tell tales of the inner demons a man holds. It can separate the guilty from the innocent and friend from foe.
Arielle understood that they were being symbolic, but it gave her an idea. If she combined Orion with the aura spell, in some configuration, she could probably come up with a system that could predict with a degree of accuracy someone's thoughts or feelings towards a particular thing, just by reading their microexpressions. Most importantly, it could tell her when people were being deceitful towards her, even if she might not be able to tell what they were being deceitful about.
The problem with this was that a spell like that would require multiple simultaneous components operating to give her an accurate result, which would make it quite a heavy spell.
Unless....
She made it a disconnected continuous spell instead.
Theoretically, she could form two simultaneous spells, and the result of each spell would activate the next layer of the spells, becoming a network of prompts and calculations that led to an ultimate result.
So the first spell could read the aura and the first micro-expressions, and depending on the results of that, more mechanisms could be activated for even deeper translation.
Continuous spells typically had higher adept and master tier applications, but not if she did not link spells together. After all, she could observe the results on her own and activate the next layer with ease, so step one would lead to step two, but there would be no actual linkage between them, making them a series of simple spells rather than a single complex one.
This would be more hectic and require more focus from her, which would make the spell less likely to be used on a whim. But otherwise, it could work quite well for a holistic evaluation of a conversation after the fact.
But she needed to identify the steps first.
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It would take her a few days to figure out the formula for such a spell, but luckily, she had time. Her presentation for Woden and her Leyline exams were both at the end of the following week. Her core assessment with Professor Llywyd was after that, too. Which reminded her that she'd decided to warn Elric that Llywyd was investigating her. She’d said as much in a message she’d sent him, saying they needed to discuss more urgent things that she couldn't write down. Elric had not yet replied to the message.
The dean also called her to his office the next morning, with an apology and questions about how she was feeling. She refused to talk when she was there, even when he offered to allow a visit from her family, if she needed to talk to someone. ‘
She remained silent until he nodded, and told her he understood and would give her time. She said nothing as she left.
There was also the surprise exam that everyone was so scared of; the test accounted for most of the dropout rate. Arielle was only concerned for her friends, not for herself. Unless there was a hybrid involved, she was fairly certain she would be fine.
Eventually, she would have to learn how to bypass the hybrid’s powers, too, but that was a problem for another day.
While she waited for Elric to come to campus or respond to her messages, she worked on the detection spell. She also discovered a book on human behaviour in the library, which was supposed to be for seniors going into interrogation and detective work. One chapter spoke about the common signs people gave off when they lied.
Arielle studied them, and she used Orion in the wild while people spoke to her to learn more. She asked Lyra to lie to her and learned that Lyra crinkled her nose a little when she lied. But it wasn't consistent. The wrinkle was more exaggerated, the more ridiculous the lie was. Sometimes she also blinked a little too hard. Arielle might not have noticed before, but Orion helped her note down all these things.
But Ari knew it wasn't enough. She would need to know more.
She would need to study more people and more mechanisms that reveal deception.
Lyra didn't think all that was necessary. She told Arielle as much.
"I'm worried that you're going too far here," Lyra said. "What happened was hurtful, but you don't need to rewire your whole brain to analyze everything all the time to avoid getting hurt again."
"Yes, I do," Arielle said stubbornly. "Because then they can't fool me."
"Everyone gets fooled once in a while, Ari," Lyra said. "What happened wasn't your fault. It was the dean deliberately breaking your trust for whatever reason. Apparently, the academy is known for stuff like that, but you don't need to put yourself through all this stress. It's not going to be good for you."
Ari shook her head as she continued reading.
"Ari," Lyra said.
"Yes?"
"Look at me."
Arielle finally obliged, looking up at the seemingly worried expression of her friend.
"I don't want you to keep hurting yourself over something you did not do," she said.
"What hurts is feeling stupid."
"Yes, but you shouldn't feel like that. How on earth are you stupid? You're one of the smartest, most perceptive people I know. You learned how to make tea perfectly from watching me do it once. You learn spells on a whim, understand connections between things that I never could. Your mind just prioritizes different things, and there's nothing wrong with that."
Arielle didn't have a response for her, so she went back to reading.
"So stubborn," Lyra murmured as she stepped out while Ari continued working.
Ari wrote everything that she learned, filling up scroll after scroll. She would need a new book soon. To make matters worse, she was starting to run low on her Elfheim orbs, meaning she would soon have to rely on her student quota once more.
She'd gotten so accustomed to having enough orbs to do everything she wanted that she didn't know what it would be like to restrict herself once more. She wished she could teleport to the elven realm and get more.
But she wasn't supposed to meet Telip until after the trials, and even then, she doubted he would help her with teleportation anytime soon, especially after the thing with the rune she made. He was annoyed that she had tricked him into helping her make a rune before he felt she was ready.
So it looks like you deceived him, too. A thought crept in. Does that make you just as bad as the Dean?
No. She hadn't done it to mock Telip or hurt him; she had done it to help Lyra.
And according to the Dean, he'd done it to help you. And what about Valeria, whom you just lied to earlier this week? Who were you helping then?
She shook the thought off and stubbornly continued on her initial trail of thought. Her lies didn’t hurt people. They were only about protecting herself.
The dean’s lies were...different. Somehow.
Anyway, back to teleportation.
She wondered vaguely if she could teleport to Elfheim using the same method she'd used in the temple, except this time, on her own. It was a silly idea because she didn't even know how to open this supposed gate, and so far it had been the Drift who had gotten her there. Not to mention the risk of getting stuck in the In Between again, which she couldn’t have gotten out of without Cornelius.
Although she had somehow gotten there without the knowledge or permission of the overseer, Payn.
Cornelius told her that it was unusual. Why? Why was her method different? Why was she different?
Now that she thought about it, it occurred to her that there were a lot of odd things about her that she'd simply accepted as normal. What caused it? Was she a hybrid after all? Or was there something else to it?
Arielle was overwhelmed with the thoughts of so many things.
That Thursday, as she sat in the cave once more, she told her blue orb about the dean and how she felt so different. She also told them about her process of documenting everything she knew about people and what they wanted.
She started with those she knew best.
Lyra was her roommate, kind and tidy. She wanted to be free of her aunt's curse, and she wanted to make her family proud. She also wanted to be Ari's friend, presumably.
Maus was her friend, and he was a hard worker who sometimes slouched and lacked confidence. But he was also brave other times, although sometimes stupidly so.
Elric was also her friend and her pretend cousin. He took care of her because he cared about her. No one had taken care of him when he attended the academy.
The lines of brief information weren't enough. Even pages upon pages weren't enough. She felt like she didn't know enough about them.
She needed to know more.
She leaned back on the wall of the cave and sighed. “It’s much harder than I thought it would be. People are so strange and complicated. I wish they could be like you guys. I mean, I understand you implicitly because you’re all so simple.”
The blue orb bobbed in agreement.
“If it's this hard to understand even my friends, what will I do about people like Yseult and the dean? And even Vittoria? How will I know when they’re lying to me?"
"Did I hear my name?"
Arielle jerked as the sound filled the cave, and she got to her feet. A portal appeared and spat out Vittoria, who smiled upon landing.
“What are you doing here?” Arielle asked, immediately on alert. "You're not supposed to be here."
"Technically, I told Elric that I would not kidnap you again without his permission, not that I would never see you again," she said. "I'm here because I heard you talking, and I believe I can answer some of your questions. I'm also here with a warning."
"What warning?"
"It's about Elric," she said. "I think he's in trouble, and you might be the only one who can help him. Well, I could help him too, but I'm not going to."
“Why not?”
“For reasons your young pubescent brain cannot possibly comprehend."
Arielle narrowed her eyes, and Vittoria's smile widened.
"Just kidding. It's mostly because I want you to do it. I'll explain why after."
Arielle wanted to check if she was lying, but she hadn’t perfected her spell. Nevertheless, she used the [Empath Sense] to search for deceit and began to use Orion to evaluate her facial micro-expressions.
"If you're using your little spell on me, let me save you the effort. I'm being honest. I can take a truth potion right now if you want me to. Since you value honesty so much, it actually makes things much easier."
"Why are you telling me this?" Arielle asked. "You want me to trust you again?"
Vittoria's smile lost some of its sardonic bite. "I know you may not believe me, but I understand what you're going through. I, too, had to learn to lie when I was around your age, because people found my true, honest personality too abrasive and barbaric. They preferred it when I softened it and spoke politely like the true lady my mother raised." She shrugged. “All society’s crap dumped on the unsuspecting. Perhaps that's why I prefer to no longer be a part of it."
"Why are you telling me this?" Arielle repeated, because she sensed this conversation wasn't all casual. “What do you want from me?"
Vittoria evaluated her with her gaze, saying. “I listened to most of the conversation you had in here with yourself."
Ari's eyes widened in apprehension. How much did she hear?
Vittoria touched the wall, tracing her finger through its grooves. “This cave used to be special to me, too. Mostly because I frequently got in trouble and got punished to sweep up manalings here. Then it became the place where I would spend time practicing spells and creating backdoors so I could leave campus whenever I wanted. The dean closed three of my backdoors, but he didn't catch the rest."
"That's not what I asked you."
"I know. Truthfully, it will be too complicated right now to get into what I want from you. Let's just say I'm curious about you." She shrugged. "I heard what you said, and I can form a guess about what the dean did to put that look on your face. That old man... he thinks he's so different, but at the first hint of inconvenience, he defaults back to the same manipulative shit his predecessor was known for. It's the hallmark of the academy after all.”
Arielle remained quiet, eyeing Vittoria with the same suspicion she gave most adults these days.
"I will admit that I was worried when you weren't terrified after the encounter with the hybrid. Most people would be. I thought that meant you didn't understand the situation. Now I'm realizing it was me who didn't understand."
Arielle was about to call Rava, who was somewhere on the island waiting for her. She asked one final time, "What do you want?"
"To be blunt, I want someone to break the system that currently enslaves us. I think, Arielle, that you are that person.”
Arielle thought about it and shook her head. "I'm not interested in that right now. I just want to protect my family and Elric."
“What a coincidence." She smiled. "Those two things tie into it. In fact, that’s why I’m here. Elric needs your help right now. He's about to get ambushed on his way to the council, and we both know he's not the best at combat."
"Ambushed by whom?"
"A gang of Phasewalkers likely hired by Yseult, including one who is a prodigy. Don't ask me how I know."
Arielle’s heart quickened. "So you're here to take me to him?”
"Of course not. I told him I wouldn’t kidnap you." She winked. "But I’m sure Tamsy Lous, the Desert Witch, might want to make an appearance?”
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