Astrid fell silent. After a while she spoke again, almost pleadingly. “I just can't do it, guys. Is there another way?”
“No. This is the only way we know,” Ember said, but I had a different idea.
“Raaaar!” I shouted at the absolute top of my voice and squeezed Astrid’s hand as I did it. The result was dramatic; Ember jumped out of her skin and immediately started shouting and screaming at me for being an absolute prick. Astrid opened her eyes, blinking rapidly in panic. I stayed calm and held her hand firm. Ember quickly grabbed her other hand again, still cursing at me, while Astrid began flickering. Just like Ember had before.
“Okay, Astrid. Stay calm. You’re in your Mindscape and everything is fine,” I said, soothingly.
“Yeah, Astrid. We’re here to help you. Come on,” Ember added.
The flickering intensified, and we both held her tighter in our group hug, until finally she began to settle down. “Wow! That was insane!” she said, exhausted.
“You did it, though. You transcended, thanks to this absolute ass,” she turned to me. “You could’ve warned me. I nearly jumped out of my bloody skin.”
“That's kinda the point, Ember. Anyway, it worked, and we’ve another thing we can try going forward.”
“Oh, guys! This is amazing. It's all I've wanted since I came out of Anatoli. I've finally leveled up.”
“Do you know already?” I asked puzzled.
“Know what?”
“About the stats,” I stated.
“What stats? What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Come on, back out of your Mindscape and we'll go and transcend Rufus.”
“I want to explore,” she said almost petulantly.
“No,'' I said, firmly. “We need to get moving. I don't want to explain everything twice. Rufus first, then we’ll show you everything you need to know – that we know, at least. Obviously there’s lots we don't know yet, but Ogun drip fed us information when it could have all been so much easier. Now let's go.”
We all entered our normal state and looked to Rufus like a pack of wolves staring at a deer. “Okay, Rufus.” I eyeballed him with mock seriousness. “You’re up! Astrid is done.”
“Excellent. Hit me with it.”
“You okay if Astrid comes in? We need to walk you both through a few things, and it’ll be better to only do it once.”
“Why not? The more the merrier. My mind is gonna be like party central.”
“Yeah, man. It's going to be great!” I said, before turning to the others. “Now, the same script as before. Yeah?”
“Sure,” both women said, grins stretching across their faces. With a nod from me, we all entered Rufus’s Mindscape, meeting Astrid in the corridor. “Wow! What is with the corridor?” she asked.
“It holds all the rooms in your mind. Once you're a bit more experienced, you can appear directly in the room you want to be in,” Ember answered.
“That’s amazing, and interesting. I can’t wait to study this place.”
“Yup, it is. But shall we go and wake Rufus up?” Ember said.
“Of course we should. Lead the way.” Astrid said, still looking around in wonder.
Rufus broke through the barrier to transcend pretty quickly: probably because I brought my shock tactic into play a lot earlier in the proceedings. He also stabilized quicker, and the general consensus was that it was down to having three people involved. Worth thinking about for people in the future.
“Okay, Rufus. Any dark secrets I need to know about?”
“Uh, not since therapy, no,” he chuckled, and looked uncomfortable.
“So, are you okay if we use your mind as a walkthrough?”
“Yeah, sure, why not?”
“Ember, would you like to do the honors?” I asked her.
“Might as well. Okay, guys. This is your Cognition Room. This is where you operate from, when you’re outside your body. That screen next to the chair displays all the thought images you process. You can use it as a lie detector. It's cool.”
“How?” Astrid asked.
“Simple. If a person says one thing and thinks another, lie. Boom! Simple. You'll work it out. Just as long as you know the basics, which we never did, for far too long. Come on. Next room,” she said, abruptly.
As we walked out into the corridor, Astrid and Rufus looked around, awe-struck. It was hard to remember just how awesome these places were when you had spent so much time in them. “Okay. While we're in the corridor, you should know there’s a bad juju room; it's essentially death to enter. It's filled with all your despair and self-doubt. Don't go in,” I said with finality.
“Really? You're taking the piss, right?” Rufus scoffed.
“No, not at all. You’ll know what I mean when you come to it, but I’m just letting you know. It isn’t hiding the land of milk and honey. It’s genuinely bad, according to Ogun. Right, here we are, the Interface Room. Come on in, guys. This is where things get very interesting.”
We all piled into Rufus’s room. “Okay, guys,” said Ember, taking the lead again. “That big screen allows you to navigate and use your telepathy. We were led to believe by Ogun that you had to reach a certain level of ability and Mental Clarity to be able to compartmentalize your mind. This would, in turn, allow you to work from without and within.
“However, Shaun and I very recently discovered you can apparently attain a visual upgrade. We don't exactly know if our increased Mental Clarity allowed for it to happen, but it’s something we’ll show you how to do once you get your bearings. The most interesting thing about this upgrade is that Ogun evidently didn't know about it. In fact, a large percentage of Fystr didn't know about it.”
“You’re saying you two just happened to stumble upon this amazing secret that hardly any of the Fystr knew about? How would you even know that? It seems more likely Ogun just hadn’t told you yet,” Astrid said.
“Ogun only told us how he navigated the Mindscape, which was by his
