Flashback Hadrim

[Ayara Orin - Migrated]

8th of Spring, 491AV

Ayara first encountered magic when she was four years old. She sat across from her new mentor. Ayella Myosotis radiated a crisp calmness. She made everything seem and sound intended, as if time passed according to her will. "What do you know of magic, bittara?"

The title stung. She wasn't three anymore. She was krova now. Even her mother had stapped calling her bitta. Eventually. Sometimes. Her mother had also told her to respect Ayella in all things. "Nothing."

Ayella raised a single, perfect eyebrow. "Truly? Nothing? Nothing at all?"

Ayara fidgeted nervously. "Well, I've heard stories. But Mabda Moiraine always says to only ever believe half of what you hear, and always check your sources. None of my teachers know anything about magic, and I don't know which half to believe, so..."

There was a brief silence, and then Ayella smiled. It was a proud smile, and Ayara felt inexplicably proud for being responsible for it. "Good. Very good. Moiraine is a good teacher."

Ayara was beaming. For whatever reason, she wanted to impress this woman.

"I know some magic," Ayella said. "It is called hypnosis. I can use my eyes and my voice to affect how people think."

Ayara's breath caught. "Have you- have you been using it on me?"

"No," Ayella said, still cool as ice. "But I would like to, if you'll let me."

"Why?"

Ayella leaned forward, and Ayara found herself mimicking the gesture. "Have you ever forgotten something important because you were thinking about something else? Have you ever made a mess of something because you were distracted?"

Ayara thought for a second, and then winced at a memory. "I got lost once because I followed the wrong person for a whole bell. And sometimes I forget to do my chores. And sometimes-"

Ayella held up a hand. "That's enough. I didn't ask for a confessional. What I would like to do is teach your mind a way to stop being distracted. Later, I will also teach you how to remember things, but we won't need hypnosis for that."

Ayara thought about it for a long minute. Her mother had told her to respect this woman, hadn't she? She wouldn't give Ayara to someone dangerous. She gave a nervous nod. "Okay."

"Good. Very good. Let us begin. Take my hand." Ayella held out her hand, and Ayara clasped it with both of hers. There was an edge to Ayella's words, cutting thought from action. "Relax. Relax your body. Feel your heart beat. Feel it beat to this rhythm." Ayella began to squeeze Ayara's hands rhymically, and she could feel her heart slowing to match. Her breath caught in panic. She had lost all control of her body. "Feel yourself breathing slowly. Inhale for three heartbeats. Exhale for three heartbeats. Inhale. Exhale. You are calm. You are in control of your own mind. Your thoughts and memories are like fabric in the loom, and you are the weaver." The panic faded. Her body functioned without her now. She tested it, willing her heart to beat faster, her body to pull away. It was no use. Her mind had been separated from her body.

It was remarkably liberating. Her thoughts lay before her, crisp and clear where they once flickered like shadows in the candlelight. She plucked at one, and it came to the front of her mind. She was going to talk some spicemeat out of a friend after this. Attached were her plans. The favors she could call in. The promises she could make. The words she could say. She followed a word until it led to a meaning. Branching out from the meaning were more threads, and still more from those, and until eventually she got lost in her own mind. Ayella's voice echoed in the thoughtspace. "I want you to think of a word that means nothing to you. This will be your mind-clearing word. Say your mind-clearing word now."

"Hadrim." She was in control of her own voice again, plucking the strings that moved her mouth and tongue and lips from the space in her head.

"Very good. Your mind-clearing word is Hadrim. Your mind is clear now. When you hear the word Hadrim, your mind will be clear. Understand?"

"Yes."

"When you want it to, your mind will return to normal. Let me see you do it now."

Reluctantly, Ayara let go of the threads in her mind. They held still for just a breath, and then it all came undone. She chafed at the feeling of her mind settling back into chaos. Her body was under her control again. "Hadrim."

Her heartbeat slowed. Her breath came once every three heartbeats. Her mind was hers to do with as she wished. She let go of it. "Hadrim."

"Hadrim."

"Hadrim."

She was about to make the switch again when Ayella interrupted. "That is enough. Your mind-clearing word is a tool. It will help you focus, but you should only use it when you need it. It will calm you when you are afraid, but it will also calm you when you are happy. The mind-clearing word is for thinking, not for feeling. Guard it well. Hadrim."

Her body reacted, and Ayara's surprise rattled against the walls Hadrim built around her mind. She pushed it away. "You can use it too?"

"Yes," Ayella said gravely. "Anyone can, and they don't have to be a hypnotist to do it. I will teach you how to use your mind-clearing word without saying it, but I will never hypnotize you again."

Ayara was puzzled. "But wouldn't that be easier?"

"It would," the teacher admitted. "And you can remember all of history by writing it down, and what would your teachers be good for then?"

"So..." Ayara thought for a minute. "What are you good for?"

Ayella smiled again. "You will have other teachers. Some will teach you mathematics, some will teach you history, some will teach you politics, but none of them will teach you how to think."

[Ayara Orin - Migrated]

15th of Summer, 493AV

Ayara met her teacher around the same table she had learned her mind-clearing word. Ayella had been playing some game of tiles, and the pattern lay half-finished between them.

"Today I will teach you how to remember what you see."

Ayara perked up excitedly, glowing with pride. Moving to a new subject meant Ayella considered her competent enough in the previous subject to advance on her own. Using her mind-clearing word without saying it had taken a season. Remembering what she heard had taken a year. "I look forward to it."

Ayella smiled. That smile meant just as much to her now as it had when they first met. "Good. Begin." She covered the table with a vibrant green cloth, and handed Ayara paper, quill, and ink. "Draw the pattern."

Brought up short by the abrupt beginning of the lecture, Ayara took the material dumbly, staring at the table as if her eyes could pierce the cloth. She caught herself, and took a breath. Hadrim.

All was still, and Ayara picked up the memory of the moment before as she picked up the quill. She could follow the thread of their conversation crisply, thanks to her training, and realized she should have been anything but surprised. The pattern did not come. She could remember her mentor's eyes, and the lines of her face, and the shape of the room, but the pattern, subject to a half-second of attention, did not resolve. Her hand hovered over the inkpot. She gave it three seconds, and let go of the hadrim. Presenting a solution or nothing at all had taken her a week. "I do not remember it," she said, frustrated.

Ayella only nodded. "Joy. Emerald. Smile. Seven. Forty six. Intangible. Fungal. Lascivious. Again."

Hadrim. The cloth came away for the space of a breath, and then the pattern was obscured. Ayara was so focused on committing the list of words to memory that the image faded quickly. She frowned. "You expect me to do both at once?"

"Yes. Review. Mizahar. Aquiras. Petrichor. Fletching. Again."

[Ayara Orin - Migrated]

The Cribellum - 61st of Winter, 495AV

Observation and deduction was taught in public places. Today, the Cribellum.

Ayara and her teacher walked the stacks. Ayella picked one, seemingly at random. "Three books are missing from this shelf. What are they?"

Hadrim. Ayara recreated the past bell in her mind, looking at the books she had seen people carrying, matching them to their proper places in the Cribellum. She found one that way. "Collected Thoughts on Pre-Valterrian Culture: A Post-Valterrian Perspective."

She had to go back further, extrapolating from incomplete data. "There was a woman shelving travelogues two bells ago. Third to last for shelving was something related to old Alahea. Given the subject, probably some explorer's journal. Zeltivan, maybe. I've never seen her shelve a stack in more less than half a day. She doesn't do one thing for very long."

The third. What was the third? She pulled and plucked at her memories, scanning glimpsed titles and text, matching title to subject to reader. Nothing. She could not find the third. "I don't know the third. Either I missed it, or it's missing."

"It's missing," Ayella said, to Ayara's great relief. "The librarians are having fits over it. You presented your findings, admitted the gaps in your knowledge, and presented concrete possibilities without condition or caveat. Good answers."

There was that smile again. Ayara tucked the compliment into its own space in the hadrim where it glowed like a warm ember, lighting the pathways in her mind.

[Poison]

Skills: Interrogation 1, Meditation 2, Observation 1

Lores: Encountering Magic for the first Time; Hypnotism: Affecting how People think; „Hadrim“

Notes: Moiraine is a character from the Wheel of Time. In the future you should pick original or less well known names for your NPCs.

The magic is called "Hypnotism" not "Hypnosis".

I really don't think that clearing one’s mind works as quickly as you describe it. If you practice meditation regularly, you will eventually receive a state of clarity quickly, but not after the first try, after one word.

I’m also not sure about the way she is taught to remember things and observe her surroundings.

I would suggest you read the Wiki article on Hypnotism and also talk somebody who knows more about Meditation than I do (Meditation is one thing I’m not very familiar with myself, especially since there is no Wiki article for it).

I still awarded you XP and Lores. While there were some aspects of your thread I wasn’t sure about, some were okay.

Please send me a PM, if you have any questions or any issues with my grading.

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