(The Man’s POV)
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The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the mesmerizing eyes of the woman in front of me with all her beauty. She too was staring down at me with her almond-shaped translucent green eyes in excitement and amazement mixed with a pint of fear. For a moment that felt like ages, I lost myself in her abruptly out-of-context beauty and failed to realize the position I found myself in.
Long and proud, with a fair complexion that contrasts her pitch-black bow-like eyebrows and arrow-like lashes, she was the embodiment of what poets portray their lovers in their creations. Ready to shoot unsuspecting men through the heart and blame them for the consequences…
An attractive, buxom young woman who has got it going in all the right places… An hourglass figure with a moderate-sized bust and just a tad bigger bottom completed with a thin waist and slender body… However, despite all the desire in me to appreciate her beauty, she was definitely not in a state to appreciate poetry right now.
Instead, she was battered and bruised, her braided hair was disheveled and soiled. A fresh and clean wound was running through her cheekbone to her chin, scarring her beautiful face in blasphemy. The scarlet blood from that cut was dripping onto her chest, staining her white shirt with dark droplets. Her blood-stained sapphire robe and gold-embroidered black vest were adorned with cuts and tears in many places, telling a tale of violence. Droplets of a yellowish-green sticky liquid were staining around the burn marks on the sleeve of her left arm, which probably were raised to protect her beautiful face from a worse fate.
‘This is probably the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my whole life despite all the scars and bruises…’ mused Passion inside my head. ‘No, not despite… Exactly because of all those scars and bruises… Like a snowdrop proudly adorning an ice field which no other flower dares to bloom…’
The infant consciousness was definitely one to appreciate the beauty when he saw and one to compose poetry when he felt like it. Just like he was designed to be… However, now was not the time to lose oneself in the antics of Passion.
‘Well, the question is… Why is she looking at me with those eyes?’ I thought while trying to discern where I am, and remember what I was doing before finding myself here out of blue.
Then I felt it, at that very moment. First a slight tingling, then the burning sensation.
No! Not my heart! My eyes were burning for some reason. They were burning with such intensity that I was literally forced to prevent myself from clawing them. Immediately, my vision started to blur as they started to water. Although I blinked several times successively to remove the tears obstructing my vision, all my efforts were in vain.
Then came the real blow like it was waiting hidden in the corner to lower my guard. I was not sure if I felt it on my face, stomach, or brain first. It was as if a giant sledgehammer landed on me without warning. My whole body convulsed, buckling against the imaginary object that hit it. Then my ears began to ring like a bell. I think that was at that moment when I started writhing and screaming.
‘This is exactly what you get each time when you let your mind wander like this.’ berated Reason in my head to answer the previous musings of Passion. However, the latter was not in a state to acknowledge it.
‘Is this voice ringing in my ears of my own?’ he groaned. ‘I can't believe I am capable of making such a sound.’
He was definitely in shock and trying to understand the situation I was in… No, we were in. But alas reasoning was not the strong point of Passion.
‘Wait… Did this happen because I was staring into her eyes? Is this some kind of evil eye? What kind of effect is this?’ slowly he started to lose it while I was trying to collect myself. ‘Damn! Just when I was thinking that her eyes were so beautiful that they can melt my heart.’
Then just as when I started to fear losing control of Passion, Reason snapped.
‘Enough! Stop! Now! None of these matters. Focus! Remember what you were trained to do! Breathe! You need to breathe. In fact, you have to force yourself to breathe or you will die, idiot.’
While I knew what to do, doing it while trying to control my untrained Passion was still beyond my meager ability.
‘So why the thousands of tiny needles stuck in my brain? This fist in my stomach? Nausea? I think I'm going to vomit.’
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Just like I thought I was going to give myself up to the weakness of Passion, Reason snapped again.
‘FOCUS!’ he groaned in my mind. ‘As they teach in the academy… Inhale! Take it through your nose, and give it through your mouth twice as fast. Breathe damn it! Breathe! First of all, the breath…’ and thank God that I inhaled.
“ShShSh”
However, nothing went as expected. The moment I took -maybe the first- breath after I opened my eyes in this foreign place, everything spiraled towards worse. First, my nostrils started to burn, and then my tongue started to tingle or… Was it my lungs tingling and the tongue burning?
Breathe I did, and for the first time in my life, it made everything worse, far worse. Actually, worse was a rather mild term to describe my condition. There really was something wrong going on with my body. Thus, Passion started to bemoan just as expected from a novice consciousness like himself.
‘Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Here! I breathed and look what happened! What is this thing that you made me inhale? Definitely not air. It's like I'm inhaling liquid fire.’
Sadly I had no answer to that. The air I inhaled definitely felt like liquid fire. Luckily, Reason was not one to lose his ground regardless of the situation I am -we are- in. ‘Stop babbling and focus. Don’t let your mind wander aimlessly. Exhale!’
“FhFhFhFhFhFh”
Now, the acquired reflex was a frightening thing. Although I was the one that exhaled, Reason was the one that ordered. He ordered, and my body obeyed. Sometimes it was frightening to realize the extent of the control of one's own subconsciousness on his own body. Especially when one of such sub-consciousnesses was an untrained infant, like Passion. While I was trying to collect myself and barely managing to do so, the woman began to speak and move, or… I thought she did so. I guess…
I raised my head and blinked my eyes a few more times to better see her. When my vision got just a bit better, I saw her lips were moving, but I wasn't able to hear any sounds due to the now diminished but not ceased ringing in my ears. She began to raise her right hand at that moment, with her palm facing towards me.
Before my brain could grasp what was going on, my body was already reacting. ‘Violation of personal space.’ started Reason his tactical assessment, and ‘Ensuring the minimum safe distance.’ Passion answered.
‘Really now?’ I thought. ‘What happened to the two subconsciousness bickering with each other just a few moments ago? Spontaneously acting like a trained team in the face of sudden danger… Not that I complain.’
‘Good. You are not completely useless at least. Now operate according to regulations.’ Reason directed Passion as I started running backward without turning my face, moving my gaze, or even blinking.
‘There goes all the professionalism.’ I thought but Passion didn’t answer the jab despite my fears.
‘Yes, never take your eyes off the danger.’ Reason continued giving directions.
In the very first few steps, the image of the woman began to blur again. Obviously, I was having trouble focusing my eyes, and I can't say that the tears still streaming down their sides was helping in this regard.
I quickly blinked multiple times, again and again, forcing myself to focus, and pumping a flow of energy into my eyes. While Reason prepared the appropriate mental image for the will construct I needed to improve my eyesight.
‘Expanding the pupil with a change in the focal length of the lens…’ was a rather delicate mental image that is definitely dangerous if applied inaccurately. Luckily, the calculation capacity of Reason was tailored just for situations like these.
“[Rasad]” I murmured the versatile trigger word which basically means sight in Imperial, but may also be used with the meaning of to watch, to observe or to monitor, and even to spy. Truly a frightening one if used with proper skill and boundless imagination.
However, that too happened to be as bad a choice as breathing and caused a rather unexpected result: A plethora of colors in my vision with a stabbing sensation in my eyes. I immediately stopped the energy flow and blinked my eyes which this time induced a great recovery in my vision despite the fact that I have already deactivated the will construct.
Regrettably, the rapid changes in my vision together with accompanying mild nausea made Passion too restless to stay quiet anymore. ‘Blithering canvases! What was that? It was like a storm of rainbow butterflies fluttering inside my eyeballs.’
‘It doesn't matter.’ Reason cut him immediately to prevent another fit of nagging. ‘Focus on what you can understand and control now so that you can live another day to focus on what you can't. Watch out for the movement of her hand! Follow the movement of her eyes. You don't know what's coming. At least try to figure out when and where when it is coming. I will try to intercept whatever she is doing and you will deal with the counterattack. Understood? Focus on the simplest counter you can come up with.’
Although that reasoning didn't make Passion calmer it made him more gullible which was enough for now, thus he started his own tactical assessment which was far less professional compared to Reason’s. ‘Understood. Follow her eyes… Well… She doesn't seem to look at us anymore. Her eyes are focused on something behind us. Is there something behind us?’ he thought in my head.
‘This is the oldest trick in the book. Eye Feint! Don’t tell me you are going to buy it!’ Reason prompt again. Alas, it was a little bit too late to prevent Passion from turning his -my- head reflexively.
‘No! Don’t look behind. DON’T LOOK BEHIND! Well, whatever.’
Passion -I- turned my neck slightly and looked behind with the corner of my eye without missing the woman’s movements and saw a second silhouette. This one was farther away than I could focus my eyes on properly, but I was sure its limbs were moving too though I had no idea about the lips.
‘Crossfire? Are you kidding me? Really?’ he muttered incredulously.