An hour later, pain throbbed behind Pax’s eyes, reminding him how much he disliked brain work. Taking action would always be his preference when compared to reading, writing and especially this mental torture Turgan was putting them through. He had them separated into pairs and rotating through various stations. Some had meditation and breathing exercises, while others had puzzles and codes they had a limited time to solve.
Turgan planned to leave them set up in the hall for team members to stop by and train whenever they had free time. Some were easy enough to practice on their own once they’d learned a new meditation technique or thought challenge. Others would be easier with the supplies provided. Turgan had also encouraged them to check with instructors and the library to make their own contributions to team mental training.
Pax decided whoever had created the riddles written on a seemingly endless stack of parchment slips in the small box at his current station was evil. Not only were the answers hard to come up with, but he’d picked Rin as his partner. Not a good choice. She kept getting the answers before him.
“The more you take, the more you leave behind,” Rin read from the next slip. “I’ll let you guess first this time.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Rin just laughed at his sarcasm and waited patiently for him to take a shot at it.
Pax shook his head, running through things you might leave behind. “I don’t know, food?”
“What?” Rin frowned. “You take it and drop it behind you?”
“You eat it and then you—” Pax made an embarrassed sweeping gesture behind him. “You know.”
It took her a second, then her nose wrinkled in disgust. “Ugh, Pax. No. That’s not the answer.”
A chuckle from nearby made Pax look up to find Amil and Dahni grinning at him. They were at the memory station and obviously easily distracted. Their exercise involved trays of small items that they uncovered for one minute and tried to memorize before they were covered again.
“Good one, Pax.” Amil pointed a finger at him. “Way to think creatively and train your brain like Turgan said.”
“Get back to your own exercise, you two.” Rin shook her head and scoffed before snapping her fingers to bring Pax’s attention back to her. “It’s footsteps, Pax. Not food.”
“Oh,” he said with chagrin as he thought it through. “That makes more sense.”
Rin just laughed softly as she pulled the next slip from the stack in front of her. “This is probably the last one before we switch again. Listen. The person who built it sold it. The person who bought it never used it. What is it?”
“That’s easy. Some fancy piece of furniture of treasure, a crafter built for a ’crat that just hid it in their vault.”
Rin was already shaking her head. “Riddles aren’t practical or specific like that. Think of a single word answer.”
“Well, what if the person bought it for someone else instead of for themselves? Food again?” he asked with a laugh, knowing it wasn’t right.
Rin’s head was already shaking. “Food doesn’t always fit as the answer. For a riddle, it has to always be true. Besides, you don’t really build food, unless we’re talking about the tower you boys build on your plates at every meal.”
Pax stopped and took the question seriously, letting his mind sift through and discard ideas. He felt his thoughts strain as he analyzed each word of the riddle. Was there a trick there where it tried to make him think of something obvious when the answer wasn’t? He went back to his one good idea and voiced his ideas to help him think. “What would someone build then sell to another person who bought it for a third person to use? And why wouldn’t the third person just buy it themself?”
At least Rin looked thoughtful, too, instead of guessing the right answer immediately like she usually did. “A baby? Maybe a baby crib or chair?”
“Or a cripple or someone dead,” Pax said, running through more possibilities. Then he had it. “A coffin. The answer’s a coffin. Come on, turn it over and tell me I’m right. Tell me.”
“It could still be a baby crib.” She grinned at his excitement, drawing out the tension as she slowly turned over the slip of paper. She frowned in disappointment. “I’m sorry, Pax.”
He sat back, ready to quit the stupid exercise.
“It’s a coffin.” She barely suppressed her grin.
He stared at her, taking a moment to process.
“You’re right, and I was wrong.” She leaned forward and clapped him on the shoulder.
He immediately tried to swat at her. She scooted back with a laugh before looking around and raising her voice. “Hey, everyone. Pax finally got a riddle right.”
Heads turned their way with smiles, and Pax almost shrank back.
Then he decided to channel how Amil acted in these situations. He hopped to his feet with a grin and took a bow. “Thank you. Thank you! I’d like everyone to note that Rin just publicly announced that I was right, and she was wrong.” He waved a hand in her direction, laughing when he saw her flush with embarrassment.
He sat back in front of her, ready to defend himself as he watched her decide whether or not to hit him. “Hey, you started it.”
“True.” She let out a rueful chuckle. “And you did get that one before me. So, we’re making progress.
A bell chimed from the front, and everyone stopped what they were doing.
“That’s enough of the stations for tonight.” Turgan gave them a pleased look. “We’ll move them up against the far wall so you can come use them when you have some free time.”
“Time for taming, now?” Tasar asked.
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“One last exercise and then yes.”
Pax wasn’t the only one suppressing a groan. Their team was definitely an action-oriented group. That just meant Turgan’s brain training was probably even more essential. Pax decided to stop complaining and treat it just like conditioning class, something unpleasant but necessary that would make him stronger.
“Last thing is the two mental techniques I found to help counter an Interrogation.”
That got everyone’s interest. It was one thing to shore up their mental attributes. But if they could keep their thoughts from betraying them, they keep their secrets intact even if they drew enough attention to warrant an Interrogation.
“First, I want you to think of someone you know who talks way too much. They just won’t stop, and you have a hard time getting a word in at all. Does everyone know someone like that?”
“Like you, when you have a list of jobs for us to do?”
Laughter broke out, and Turgan joined in, tipping a head toward the speaker. “Yes, like that, but even worse.”
Like Whisk? Talpa asked with a humorous undertone.
Yes! Pax barely kept from laughing and made sure to keep his thoughts restricted to Talpa so he didn’t hurt Whisk’s feelings.
“This is the babble or drown out technique. The second one is called a redirect technique. With enough practice, you will hopefully be able to do both instinctively. As we all know, under the stress of battle, it’s easy to forget things you’ve learned unless you train until they are second nature.”
Heads bobbed in agreement as they waited to hear more details. Pax wasn’t sure how good he’d be at mental battles, but he was eager to try anything that would help. Of everyone here, he had the most secrets to protect.
“First, for the babble technique, you’re going to pick an innocuous topic that won’t arouse suspicion, but that you know you can go on and on about indefinitely. For example, you could choose your worry over being a good student. When the Inquisitor checks your surface thoughts, they should sound something like this.”
Turgan’s shoulder’s hunched, and his face twisted with worry. The confident leader transformed into a worried student in an instant.
Pax’s eyes widened in surprise at his leader’s unexpected acting skills.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. Why do they want to talk to me?” Even Turgan’s voice whined with worry. “This is going to mess with my grades. I know it will. What are my professors going to think? Everyone will think I did something wrong. Does this mean I’m going to be kicked out of the academy? What will my parents think? They’ll send me to some dangerous wall on the outskirts. No. No. No. Why does this kind of stuff always happen to me?” The last trailed off with a desperation heavy in his voice. Turgan straightened and smiled at them.
The rest of the team stared at him for a long pause, making Turgan’s grin widen.
“Impressive,” Rin whispered to Pax.
Someone started clapping and a moment later, everyone joined in.
Turgan’s grin widened as he raised a hand for them to stop. “Now you can pick any safe topic that you are confident you can babble about in your mind indefinitely. Just thread a bit of your innocence and worry into your monologue to deflect suspicion.”
He waited for a few nods before he continued. “I’ll explain the second technique, give examples, and then you’ll practice. For this one, you will pick a few of the most dangerous secrets you want to keep an Inquisitor from finding out. Then brainstorm a few words that might lead you to think of that secret. For example, if you wanted to keep Mage Incedis’ role in the rebellion a secret, you would prepare to respond to the following words: Incedis, rebel, instructor, rebel leader, and any others you could think of. Then, for each word, you design a safe tangent for your thoughts to travel when you hear that word. Like, what could you think of if I asked you what rebel leaders you know personally?”
“Some pudgy warrior out in Quarrybrook that I hate?” One of the warriors said with a question in his tone.
“Make it more detailed. A name. A person. A location. A rumor you heard.”
Rin cleared her throat. “How about the cowardly traitor of a Mayor in Quarrybrook who forgot everything the empire has done for him as soon as a few weak rebels slipped into his town and threatened him?”
“Better.” Turgan pointed in her direction. “Build a whole bunch of details around the concepts and then practice responding. When an Inquisitor asks what plans you have to help the rebels, your instinctive response needs to be outrage and a huge list of all the things you’re doing to help the empire and root out the rebels. In fact, by flooding your thoughts with those ideas, you’re back to the babble technique. Pretty simple, right?”
The rest of the team murmured their agreement, looking thoughtful as they considered the instructions.
“Doesn’t mean it’s easy,” Turgan said. “And we need to practice. We’ll start with one-minute rounds. One of you will imitate an Inquisitor’s glare while the other practices the babble technique first. Halfway through, the Inquisitor will ask pointed questions, and you do your best to follow your planned redirects.” He held up one of the hourglasses he’d been using to time the stations and flipped it over. “I’ll give you all a minute to prepare. Go.”
Sound filled the hall again as everyone discussed ideas with their friends.
“I’ll be the Inquisitor first,” Pax said before Rin could speak. “What topic are you going to talk about?”
“Fine.” She narrowed her gaze at him. “I’ll talk about food and baking. What about you?”
“Food?” he asked in surprise.
“What?” She frowned at him. “I can’t have something I enjoy besides battle and endless training?”
“No.” He hastened to reassure her. “I just didn’t know you were into it. And your roasted nut treats are amazing.”
“Well, now you do. And thanks.” She looked mollified. “So, what’s your babble topic?”
“I don’t know. It has to be something believable, but not too close to something I can’t let slip.” Pax knew he could easily babble about being a good enough air mage, how mean Graybrew had been and his hope for a better relationship with the new instructor. But what if details about Graybrew’s death popped into his mind at the worst time?
“What about Taming? There aren’t many secrets left to hide about that.”
Her idea pushed his air mage idea away. He liked Taming a lot better. “I could go on and on about all the work involved, the missions to get baby beasts, my worries about being trapped to just tame all day and night. Plus, don’t they know that I’m doing the best I can to help the empire with taming beasts for the Steelshade squads?”
“As long as you stay away from the actual process of taming.” Rin looked like she was second-guessing her idea. Can’t have anything to do with your light mana or helping us with our mana come up.
“Ugh.” Pax shook his head. “Why is everything in my life full of secret landmines?”
Rin gave him a helpless shrug. “Well, you can’t do baking with me.”
“So, you’re saying I don’t have any hobbies?”
“Name one that isn’t directly related to getting stronger and fighting?”
Pax opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Rin’s smirk was enough. She didn’t need to actually say I told you so.
Pax shook his head and moved on, searching for a safe babble topic. Then he had it. “Our crew. I can go on and on about all of you and how worried I am that my trouble will affect you. I could just keep cycling through a new worry about each crew member indefinitely.”
She frowned thoughtfully. Can you stay far away from the topic of our new spells?
“I think so. If I keep it focused on you as my friends, not as mages, and living or dying in the war and all the troubles now.” He nodded. “And I can keep sprinkling in how angry I am at the rebels for causing all this. You know, pretend it’s them I’m mad at instead of the empire flicks.”
She nodded, just as Turgan rang his bell. “All right, Mr. Inquisitor.” she said. “Give it your best.”
He scowled at her, channeling his most intimidating demeanor while she adopted a confused and anxious look.
“I’m not sure why I’m here.” She sounded very tentative and worried. “I’m trying to be a good student. And I’m even helping the cause by working in the kitchen and baking. We need to make so many loaves and rolls to prepare for the troops leaving, not to mention keeping all the hungry students and instructors supplied. The ovens are so hot, but I don’t mind doing my part. Besides, I get a break now and again to work on kneading the loaves and mixing up the sweet bread batters. I sure wish I had something good to eat right now, because this meeting is stressing me out—”
Pax had a hard time keeping his admiration from slipping out through his Inquisitor act. Rin was a natural at this. If only she was the one drawing everyone’s ire instead of him.