“Fair enough. But if you can wrack your brain and find any other vital information like that nugget, then please let us know.”
“I will do, Ember. I guarantee it. Jotun developed the ability about 900 years ago. I was still very young in my sentience; not a lot made sense to me in those days. I vaguely remember the knowledge was given to him by one of the Fystr elite. But I do know that the Fystr have a very rigid class system, and much is kept from the lower classes.”
“It seems ingrained in their culture to keep people down as much as possible,” I retorted.
“Not surprising, really,” Ember said. “Growing is tough, especially when you’ve achieved what the Fystr have. It’s probably just much easier to keep people down than continue to develop yourself.”
“My old coach used to say, ‘Blowing someone's flame out doesn't make yours shine any brighter’. Which sounded great, until he spoiled it a bit by adding, ‘Unless you're in the ring, then you kick the living shit out of their flame’,” I chuckled to myself.
“Very funny, Shaun. So, how are we going to learn to link our Interface Room with our eyes?”
“I don't know, just try, I suppose,” I replied to Ember.
She spoke to Havok instead, “So, you think he somehow just overlaid his internal vision over his actual vision? I’ll have a try.” She closed her eyes to enter her Mindscape. I loved how hungry she was to do well with the Mental Skills we had developed. As I sat there watching her though, I instinctively knew that she had gone about it the wrong way. Why would you need to close your eyes? That’s just backwards. If you wanted to improve your eyesight, then the opposite would be true.
I decided I’d try to levitate. However, instead of going to my Interface Room, I just imagined what I had seen in there being projected through my eyes. It barely made sense to me, just you get a certain feeling when you're in that room; you have much greater peripheral vision. Nothing happened at first. I did feel a weird sensation, a slight tingling in my eyes. I focused on that feeling, trying to push life into it, then something happened. Nothing dramatic, only I felt my vision begin to slowly broaden, spread out almost. I knew I was on to something, so I forced it to the point that it actually began to hurt. I thought of the time when I had transcended, and that pain led me to, sort of, the next level. With that in mind, I knew this was worth doing. As long as I didn’t get kicked out of my body. I suspected that I wouldn’t, and I trusted Ember to find me somehow. I forced onward. Feeling a snap, my vision disappeared altogether.
“Shit, Havok. Help! I’m blind!”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I can't see a damn thing, Havok! Help me, dude! I've got too much I still wanna see!'' I said, panicking.
“Shaun?” Ember's voice sounded from the darkness. “What's up? What's wrong with you?”
“I’m blind. I can't see anything!”
“I know what blind means, Shaun. Now, what the hell did you do? Havok, can you do anything?”
“I’m looking now,” Havok replied, “There doesn't seem to be any damage. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“Shit! Oh, Shaun. What have you done? Can you see anything in your Mindscape?”
“I never thought of that,” I said, quickly jumping into my Mindscape. Relief flooded me as I could see again, in the Mindscape at least. Ember appeared next to me. “I can see in here,” I told her. “Let's check what my Interface Room shows.”
Upon entering, we saw the large screen that usually let me see what I would view through my eyes. My heart sank when I saw it was black. “Oh shit, what have I done? I’m blind.”
“Wait. What's that in the corner of the screen?” Ember said, pointing out a very small, flashing, blue line of text in the bottom corner. She was over to it before me and began to read it out, “‘Visual update in progress. Merging visual functions. Estimated time to completion, 2 minutes and 39 seconds.’ Oh Shaun, I think you're gonna be okay, you insanely stupid, amazing man. It looks like you’ve done it again! I'll wait to see if you're okay, first. Then, you need to tell me what you did.”
“Thanks for hedging your bets, Ember.”
“I'm hardly going to risk going blind just because you did, you idiot. Let’s just see how this plays out.”
We were down to a minute left on the timer. “I'll just wait in here. I'd rather be able to see,” I told Ember. The vision screen flashed to life, once more showing the room we shared in the Veiletian compound. It looked the same as before, and I was relieved.
I went back to my normal state. My vision was back, albeit weird and disorientating. It reflected the same powerful vision of the Interface Room but more… so much more! I could see nearly everything in the room. It was like my memory of the room had combined with my senses. It was fucking weird, awesome and totally natural all at once. I could now appreciate that I’d never have been able to do this with my Cognition Room as a shit-tip.
“Hey, Ember. This is pretty cool,” I said to her expectant face.
“So, how do you do it?” She asked impatiently.
“Imagine you want to levitate, while at the same time picturing what you can see when you’re present in your Interface Room.”
She closed her eyes.
“No. Keep them open,” I instructed.
She tried once and failed to replicate the feat. Frustrated, she said, “I need them closed. I can't imagine seeing something without closing my eyes. I can only see what I can see,”
“Keep trying. You’ll get there. I felt a tingling at first. Look out for that.”
She continued to try with her eyes closed, so I decided to see if I could
