Robert felt the squid struggle against his spell but it punched through. His mind was invaded with alien images and sounds he couldn't decipher. For a moment, he was defenseless as he struggled to separate the thoughts he got from the squid from those of his own mind. Once he did, he imagined how much of a double-edged sword that spell was. Could the people he tried to control reverse the flow and control him instead?

He wiped blood from his nose and felt his eyes sting. His essence pool had dropped by more than half. This meant that at the apex of one star, he would use it only four times before his essence reached critical levels. With his consciousness back to where it belonged, he studied the connection. He could sense that the squid's mind was at arm's length, metaphorically speaking. The creature was floating idly in place, tentacles waving slowly.

Robert gave it a command to move ten feet ahead. It obliged. Spin around with the tentacles spread like a pinwheel. Join the tips of the tentacles and wave from one another. Make hearts. Spit acidic ink onto a tree. The squid did everything he commanded like an obedient automaton. That was exactly what the unique spell granted by the Mental spirit from Cerebelon did. Complete domination.

The mind blackout spell had different ways to use it, with varying essence costs. Those of a failed casting or using it only to stun a target took about half of the cost of a full cast, and then the upkeep costs. Robert found that it was less than his essence regeneration, meaning he could keep the squid dominated indefinitely. Would the same hold true for a human being? Robert shivered at the thought. That's why he named the spell with that vague descriptor, to make people think it only stunned the target. Sufficed to say, those with the power to dominate people's minds weren't seen in the best light possible by their peers.

Now, came the hard part. Exerting control was good but what he wanted was to change the squid's thoughts to make it believe Robert was its master and long-time friend so he could use beast bond on the creature. The first thing he did was to confirm the squid couldn't use essence in any way. It didn't have a star, placing it in the mortal realm, side-by-side with other animals. And people without a Prime Vestige, Robert bitterly remembered.

He grabbed the squid and entered the liminal void. This would take time and he'd rather not spend his precious real-world moments with that. And if things went south, he could release the squid and let the void take care of it. There, he sat and started to slowly unravel the thoughts and memories the squid had. He first got used to its senses. How the squid saw heard and felt the world around it was radically different from Robert's. Its hearing was tuned to lower frequencies and its sideways-facing eyes gave two different visual inputs he couldn't merge with his brain. Over time, that slowly changed.

What he noticed was that he had to pay the same essence upkeep in the liminal void. Without regenerating essence, it meant the break-even point didn't exist. He needed to leave dominated creatures outside in the real world or risk running out of essence in the liminal void. For this visit, it was okay because he spent a short amount of time in the real world between finding the squid and bringing it back here.

Hours later, he got used to the squid's senses. It was awkward to have two sets of senses at the same time but one hour later, he learned how to dial back the sensorial input's intensity to manageable levels.

Now came the hardest part. The memories. Robert ran the memories in reverse. He saw the patrol of six Mollusks wading through the vegetation, searching for prey. They were rather hungry and wanted some tasty meat. The mollusk bugs and small invertebrate animals – everything in that realm was either a plant or a mollusk – gave sustenance but they wanted the good meat, the red one.

Robert stopped. Were they after human meat? He went back to sifting through the squid's memories.

They set out to hunt from an outpost. A place with mud huts that were crawling with mollusks of all sizes. From larvae to bigger, more developed forms of the ones he was used to fight. The mollusks they found near the passage were all juveniles. As he experienced the memories, things became clearer. They needed to taste the red meat to become adults. Hunting near the passage was a... rite of passage for them.

He saw the day-to-day of the squid in the outpost. Taking care of the larvae, watching the snails and slugs train with their weapons in an orderly fashion...

Wait, what?

He went back into the squid's memories. He saw a row of smaller slugs with their spears, thrusting in sync while a bigger, older, and scarred slug oversaw the training and gave pointers.

What the hell?

That was not behavior irrational creatures displayed. The mud huts? Earth birds, without hands, could make nests that put most human children to shame with mud and twigs. But weapon training? Hell, even weapon manufacturing, crude as they were, was already a display of intelligence.

Why didn't he see it before?

Because he was told they were irrational. Mollusk corpses were worth a decent amount of cash; both his greed and need to conform to social norms made him accept the lie for a fact. And if they had a social structure and culture, they might also have... language. That's what Robert did next. He tried to learn the language using the comprehend languages spell. It should take mere seconds for human languages, but the Mollusks were alien through and through. Before he could glimpse more about their language, his timepiece chimed. He had five seconds left in the void. Robert stopped using any spells save for mind blackout, and transitioned back to reality.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Now, what to do? The moral dilemma was obvious. Robert was, unwittingly, robbing the squid of its agency. Releasing it would mean risking a fight. While he could go back to the liminal void and evade, the risk wasn't negligible. Killing it felt cruel. It was risk-free, the squid wouldn't know what hit it. Removing the memories of this interaction and letting it go free, while it sounded good at first, meant he was brainwashing the creature. Changing its memories and thoughts to make it believe Robert was a friend was a sin he wasn't willing to commit.

Once again, he wished he was a protagonist in one of those stories where a clever solution appeared out of whole cloth. But no. The natural outcome of this fight was if he had not used his forbidden spell, death for the mollusk party. Should he numb the squid's senses, put it to sleep with a mental command, and then kill it? That sounded too much like assassination.

In the end, he chose to give it a warrior's death. Robert left the squid floating in the air, walked to the other side of the clearing, and drew his sword. He then lifted his control.

The squid hissed and shook its tentacles. Its beady eyes stared at Robert. He wished to say they were filled with hate but he knew not how to read mollusk body language. He used lesser haste on himself, along with thought acceleration. A spray of ink flew his way. Robert ran out of its range. The squid turned around, squirting all the ink it could. Behind Robert, leaves and roots hissed. Once the spray ended, Robert dashed forward and slashed once. The squid was cut in two.

There. Robert felt like shit. And he didn't even try to use beast bond. It wouldn't work as the shell wasn't meant to affect sentients. Could he modify that? Yes, but then the spell would be called enslave. He felt dirty for having such a black power. His only hope was that it wasn't too late to climb back from the slippery slope he leaned on.

Robert didn't even collect the bodies. He left them behind and made his way back to the passage.

*

*

On the other side, he was ushered to a cramped meeting room that only fit four people around a round table. When he entered the room, Jeremiah was already there.

"Sit, Robert. We need to talk."

Robert sat across the table from Jeremiah. He stared at the executive with tired eyes.

"Did you manage to use beast bond to tame a squid as you proposed?"

Robert lowered his head to avoid Jeremiah's gaze and shook his head. "No, sir."

"Why was that?"

Anger flared inside Robert as he recognized the provocative tone in Jeremiah's voice. He raised his head back. "You know why, sir. The Mollusks are sentient."

Jeremiah nodded solemnly. "Yes they are. And yet we hunt them. We process their bodies for chemicals. No, they don't become food as some delvers often suggest."

Rumor had it the hub's restaurant had a secret menu with mollusk meat. Officially, it didn't exist. While Robert might have good reason to not believe Jeremiah, that didn't seem like something he would lie about now that Robert knew the passage's dark secret.

"The deviant I killed wasn't really a deviant, was it?"

"No. It was an Arch-mollusk, so to speak."

"Does that mean they manifest Primes just like us?"

Jeremiah frowned and nodded. "Yes, they do. And this is the main reason Samson keeps this passage open to the public. When the mollusks manifest Primes, it is usually because the delvers that were fighting them died."

Robert connected the dots. Save for the storage rings on the bodies, the equipment he looted from the dead delvers wasn't that valuable. Not so valuable to warrant closing passage for days and combing through that hellish jungle. But a Prime? Hell.

With a sigh, he answered Jeremiah's unspoken question. "The reverse recognition squid didn't manifest a Prime."

That drew a faint smile from Jeremiah. "Thanks for sharing. We already knew that. It was one of the things Titania queried about you. How many Primes did you come into contact with since you started delving here."

Robert clenched his jaw. "Did I pass the test?"

"It was not a test."

But it was. It was always a test.

"Are we done? I have a bus to catch."

"I believe so. What do you intend to do with the information you learned?"

Robert let out a dry chuckle. "Go to Madam Morleppe and blow the whistle."

Jeremiah laughed. Robert laughed but with less enthusiasm.

"Is this information classified, sir?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll do it as the company rules dictate if you don't mind."

"I don't."

Robert stood up. If he was mentally tired after finding out the passage's dirty secret, he was exhausted now. He felt that not even the liminal void would help him. "If there's nothing else, sir, I'll take my leave."

"Go. And Robert."

"What?"

"Make the best out of your time at the Imperial Academy. You are there to help Amanda succeed but also to improve yourself. Don't just become her shadow."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir."

Jeremiah nodded. Robert left the room without saying another word. He could only imagine the dozens of other passages with sentient creatures. The lies people said to keep hunting and murdering intelligent aliens. But would the others spare the same kindness toward humans if the roles were reversed? He remembered how much the squid craved human flesh. It was their rite of passage, after all.

Perhaps he was being too harsh. Faced with extinction, what actions were off-limits? Were ethics and morals privileges of the strong?

He finally found Freddy. "Hey, boy. We need to travel."

The Taulusian hound wagged its tail as it approached to share some love. Robert obliged and scratched Freddy's neck, between the ears, and brushed his back.

The two left the passage facility and walked to the nearby bus station. Robert sat in the corridor seat, shielding Freddy from the other passengers. The hound rested his front paws and chest on Robert's lap, then curled to sleep. Robert distracted himself with Freddy's camouflage coat. He thought how simple was Freddy's life. The hound had not a care in the world.

*

*

Freddy pretended to sleep. When he heard his two-legged master talk to himself about using Mental magic to rewrite a squid's mind to turn it into a bonded beast, he shivered in fear.

On one thing he agreed a hundred percent with his master. Mind magic was scary. But he returned without the bonded beast. Why was that? He didn't doubt his master was strong enough to find and dominate a squid. The answer then was, that the squid wasn't a beast to be bonded with in the first place.

Freddy's fear grew. He had to stay in his master's good graces. Be the perfect pet, like one of his Earth cousins would.

He could only hope his master would honor their side of the covenant. So far, the two-legged did nothing to make Freddy believe he wouldn't.