Before I continue the story, I would like to clarify a few details. To make some of my thoughts known, separate from Hal’s.

  I am aware of what technique the silver-eyed man used to control both Hal and, to a lesser but more lasting extent, Birnerd. Unfortunately, Hal wouldn't come across anything useful about it for some time, and he'd never come to understand it fully.

  Knowing how it works, I can look back on those days with clear eyes and say that Hal was ridiculously lucky. Only a portion of his survival was from my effort in that seed in the dark, and the rest was by fortune and fate. Hal knew nothing, and it was only chance that it didn't kill him.

  He trusted Birnerd, even if he would’ve claimed otherwise. Had that skill worked any other way than it did, Hal likely would have died.

  As it stands, the silver-eyed man couldn't control Birnerd to such an extent. He could issue longer-lasting commands, and he likely did. But the more hold you want the order to have, the less time it lasts.

  Birnerd was almost certainly under some longer-lasting ruling. But he was still himself, his thoughts remain his own. I know this to be true. But Hal was going off of faith that this was the case.

  How fortunate he was that his faith was well placed.

  With that said, let us continue our story.

  Unfortunately, Hal's conversation with Birnerd wasn't as fruitful as he would’ve wanted. The older man could speak with relative freedom about almost everything he knew. The issue is that Birnerd wasn't exactly a font of knowledge. His ability to gather information was surprisingly bad, considering how well he tracked Hal. It makes me wonder how easy it would have been for other elements to find Hal if things had gone differently. However, that’s speculation for another day.

----------------------------------------

  "What can I expect from his son?' Hal asked cautiously. "Can he do what his dad does?" He added to the question.

  "Kid’s named Heinrick. He's older than you; he just took his first class. And as far as I am aware, no. He's never shown any ability to control people like that, at least not in front of me." Birnerd said while leaning back against his chair. He almost looked relaxed, but Hal could see an unreleased tension in his muscles.

  "Personality?" Hal pushed.

  "Little shit." Birnerd laughed out. "Kid’s stuck up his own ego. He'll try to push you around, treat you like one of his servants. I'd say let him, as long as doing so doesn't get him killed." Birnerd didn't hold back his opinion.

  "What about other guards? Am I working alone or with a group?" Hal asked blandly.

  "As far as I am aware, you are the only one hired as a guard." Birnerd practically sighed at the word. "Heinrick might have put together a team, more kids of other rich bastards if he did, but I don't know." Birnerd twisted his head around while talking, trying to put on some semblance of a show.

  "What about the actual trial? What kind of timed objective can I expect?" Hal was getting the tiniest bit annoyed at this question-and-answer game.

  "Can't help you." Birnerd flared his hands out. "Never took the trial myself, but what I've found out is that the objective is unique to the person." He leaned against one hand while putting the other in front of his face. "One of you might get a goal to pick a flower in a particular part of the trial-" Birnerd walked his fingers along the arm of the chair. "-While the other might get a goal to kill a monster before sunset." He twisted his hand to grab at the air in a crushing motion.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Do you know anything else that will help me?" Hal asked with more than a bit of annoyance creeping into his voice.

  "Hmm..." Birnerd placed his hand to his chin to think. "No, not a thing." He finally replied.

  Hal's hands twitched with a desire to reach out and shake Birnerd like a rag. The man was so flippant about his uselessness that it drove Hal beyond annoyance to anger. But after a moment of empty glaring, Hal let his ire fade away with a single sigh.

  >He's surprisingly worthless< Instinct commented in his usual flat tone.   

  >...< Hal conveyed that he had nothing to say to this. >I'm still going to help him.< Hal replied.

  >Dhakhaan rhaan der o.< >Fate be with you.< Instinct said before he seemed to pull away to an impossibly distant place right beside Hal.

  >...< Hal had many things he wanted to respond with, many less than kind. But he held his mental tongue because he knew Tinct was constantly dealing with issues Hal had no desire to face.

  "How long do I have until the trial?" Hal asked, doing his best to release the minor stresses built up within.

  "You won't have to wait around for long; no worries there." Birnerd danced around the answer for a moment. "The trial ground opens in half a moon. So while you don't have long to wait, you do have time to make any preparations you want." Birnerd countered his own words instantly.

  Maybe for the older man, it wasn't long. But for Hal, fifteen days near a man who likely wanted him dead was nearly an eternity.

  "Right," Hal said softly, making a mental note to spend as little time as needed in the mansion.

----------------------------------------

  Instinct wanted to care about what his brother was doing. But the most he could do was reply to Hal when he needed help and check in on occasion. Anything beyond that would interfere with what Instinct was doing.

  He walked along the mental plane that he and Hal shared, the image vastly different than when Hal first visited.

  Gone was the barren, stone-like ground; it'd long been replaced with a false grass growing from imagined dirt. Once a swirl of images, memories, and thoughts mixed among mana and spirit in a ceaseless storm, the inky sky was now a vibrant blue, darker than that of reality. The storm still existed, moving it wasn't impossible. But dispersing it was tantamount to suicide for Hal and Instinct. Now, it fulfilled the role of the sun, brightly shining uneven light across the pasture Instinct had crafted. The land was no longer infinitely flat, but grand rolling hills that vanished into the horizon. Buildings dotted the land, locales Instinct had learned to jump between, but building a new one took time.

  They were no more than huts with a single room with a spot for Instinct to sit and think, to push further changes onto the realm.

  While many would do this to make the place more hospitable, to make spending time in their own mind a less jarring experience, that was not why Instinct made these changes. Instinct committed to these alterations because it highlighted spots that presented an issue. Instinct’s blood told him what others found here. The memories of ancestors long dead spoke of a core, linked to a storm of thought, surrounded by threads of life.

  Hal hadn’t found a core when he came here. He found Instinct, bound and chained to this infinite land, endless in every direction.

  When Instinct came across this inconsistency, he started searching. He scoured the mental land, looking for a sign of that core or even a shredded piece of the threads of life that should surround it. But he found nothing, no indication that such a thing even existed in this place.

  That was until he found a crack.

  The land, infinite in every aspect, had the tiniest crack, barely the size of Instinct’s pinky. It wasn't by chance that Instinct had found it. It was a grand rend on the horizon when he first saw it, leaking thoughts up to the storm above. But as he moved closer, the crack closed until it reached that final size, with no visible leak coming from within.

  That was why Instinct started making these changes. On the infinite stone land, a crack was shockingly hard to spot. But, Instinct could not change the gaps; he could not open them nor close them himself. They resisted any changes he made, including the rolling grass hills with a dark blue sky above.

  Around the broken sections of land, the sky returned to an empty black, the storm dominating the expanse above. The grass died and withered before the land returned to that stone-like blank slate.

  That was what Instinct was looking for. So he could understand why this place was so wrong, and look for the core that should have been here from the beginning.