The next few weeks passed unevenly, in fits and starts. Orton meditated, worked diligently at his alchemy, and did his best to replenish his meager stored power; he found, to his surprise, that it rebounded much more quickly than normal, and he suspected that his encounters with Cameron and the agents had exposed him to a somewhat different flavor of entropy differential than he typically encountered. Seizing the opportunity, he threw himself into his routines, accelerating his growth significantly beyond his normal rate for this part of the loop.

However, this did not come cheaply; with so much of his attention focused on his own development, he had less time to spare for Enna. In some ways, this was ideal; she spent more time meditating and exploring the idiosyncrasies of her own spirituality than learning by rote, which he knew would give her a better chance to develop to her full potential. In other ways, of course, it was a complete fucking disaster; things between them were often awkward and strained, and Orton felt lost and unsure about it.

Things were good between them at occasional times; they often meditated together, she learned well whenever he needed to instruct her on a particular point or concept, and on the best days, she would cook for him. But those days came less and less frequently as the gulf between them waxed and waned, and she often spent more time socializing with the other members of the house, watching TV or drinking to relax while Orton was off scrounging up graveweed or making excruciatingly slow progress at condensing his pneuma.

The high point came nearly three weeks after her first meditation session, when she underwent her first consciousness alteration; Orton measured her dose carefully, sat with her and talked her through the ordeal while she sweated and squealed, and gently kept her hydrated and comfortable during the most intense ranting and gibbering phases. Afterwards, she lay in his arms for nearly an hour, occasionally caressing and clutching at him. Orton tried not to feel guilty about it, but failed fairly miserably.

The next day, however, something had changed; she was aloof and brooding, and spent most of the day walking restlessly around the bungalow's grounds and scowling at clouds. Orton worried, but felt he had no right to intrude; the journey towards enlightenment was highly personal, he told himself, and interfering would not be welcome. Such are the lies we tell ourselves.

As the evening wore on, she became increasingly restless and agitated, retiring early to drink heavily with the other housemates in the den -- especially Skylar, the blonde lacrosse dropout with the ridiculous soul patch and the trendy absinthe habit. And when Orton heard her go upstairs to the second floor with him and stumble into his room, he tried to tell himself that she was allowed to make her own choices and that he needed to respect her decisions. But his reburgeoning psychic faculties could sense much more than he wanted to about what followed; he experienced an understandable difficulty falling asleep, and when he finally did drift off, he was not pleased by what greeted him.

Nej, sensing his turmoil, attacked him immediately as soon as he entered the dream realm; Orton found himself under assault by a whirlwind of terrifying imagery and powerful emotional blows. Fear rocketed through his synapses as sensations of falling whiplashed into desperate gasps for air as he was sealed into underwater drowning boxes, scrambling for escape from shadowy clawed things. But the gulf of experience between them was too vast; Orton weathered the assault and slowly redefined his foe's paradigms one at a time. The falling sensations became flying ones; the drowning gasps became the freedom of underwater breathing, and the sensations of claustrophobia became the expansive joy of exploration. The last assault, the predatory imagery, became dastardly foes in heroic battles, and before long Orton had complete control of the oneiric space. He did not waste time reasserting his authority.

"Cain't say I ain't enjoyin' this," crowed Nej, despite his current predicament. Orton had decked him out in a puffy pink dress and thrown a curly blonde wig on the dead man's head; he looked like the half-rotted corpse of Shirley Temple.

Orton shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat, buddy. If I'd known you liked being dressed up like a girl sooner, I could have made the last few cycles a lot more enjoyable for you."

Nej made flapping dismissive gestures with his hands, sneering disdainfully. "You're all talk, Orton. You can push me aroun', but I ain't blind. You got one hell of a bee in your bonnet over your Lil' Dip, an' I aim to savor your sufferin'." He folded his decaying arms, giving Orton a superior look. "Ain't no pain quite like knowin' another man's been all up in your garden, is there?"

"She's not my possession, Nej. She's a young woman who's just had her whole life evaporate like smoke. What was she supposed to do, settle for the only guy around and be happy about it?" Orton scowled. "I'm no catch either. She can do what she wants."

"You forgettin', boy," crowed Nej, "you cain't lie to me in here. I know exactly how you're hurtin'. I can just about sink my teeth into it."

"Well fucking good for you, corpse boy. What do you want me to do, congratulate you?" Orton had to admit there was a little bit of catharsis in yelling at Nej.

"Nah. I jus' like watchin' you suffer." He fluffed his golden wig in a preening gesture. "Ain't too many joys left to me, in here."

Orton knew this was almost certainly pointless, but couldn't help himself. "Well, I'm sorry your attempt to cheat death by implanting yourself in my mind and eating my soul to take over my physical body didn't quite work out how you hoped. If it's any consolation, I'm not thrilled about it either. It's not like you're doing me any favors."

"I could," said Nej, assuming a contemplative pose; Orton had to stifle a giggle at the sight. "You could use me as a servitor, I reckon. Ain't nothin they do I couldn't."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Except be trustworthy." Orton yawned. "The minute I gave you control of a process, you'd sabotage me or try to use it to kill me, because you're a spiteful prick." The prospect of using Nej as a servitor -- a sort of imaginary-friend-slash-split-personality common to many esoteric traditions -- was dubious at best.

Nej shrugged. "Ain't like you cain't punish me. An' I already got a chunk o' your egg salad as it is, just like you'd need to give a regular servitor; ain't no reason you can't get use out of it."

"I'm sure your offer is entirely founded in concern for my well-being." With a mental effort, Orton reshaped the space around them; abruptly, the two of them were standing in a shady grove, and Orton wore his typical clothes instead of his sleeping attire.

Nej, too, was dressed in the apparel he'd worn when alive: a starched white dress shirt and black slacks, with a thick green apron over it. The dead man regarded himself with disbelief. "Well, ain't this a surprise. What, you don't wanna dress me up like a doll no more?"

"You want a chance to prove you don't completely suck, Nej; okay, I'll give you a shot." Orton winced. "And maybe you'd be less of a dickhead if I didn't push you around so much. To be honest, I don't know that I like what that says about me." Despite his words, Orton knew he was probably wasting his time; as an engram, Nej's capability to grow was limited unless Orton gave up more of his own mind, which was definitely not a prospect that enthused him. Nej would likely remain the petty, selfish bastard he'd been when he died, no matter how many heartfelt conversations they had, until Orton either figured out how to expel him (a tricky proposition, since he was stamped onto portions of Orton's own thought processes) or died, which would destroy them both. But just because Nej was unlikely to grow and change didn't mean Orton had to be, too; and there might be ways he could use this to his advantage.

"So," said Nej, crossing his arms and ankles and leaning against a young spruce, "how we gon' work this, exactly?" He picked at his skeletal, gap-ridden teeth with a yellow and curling thumbnail. "Can't imagine you'll let me ride along in yer wakin' hours."

Orton sat on the ground, folding up his legs into a lotus position. "Well, you want a job as a servitor, I'd say you should act like one. That means a binding, a covenant, and a domain. You're a mage, even if you can't do much in here; you know how these things work."

Nej considered. "Might be worth a shot. But you ain't likely to trust any o' those I come up with."

"Fair enough." Orton shrugged. "How's this sound: I bind you to act in my conscious mind only when bidden, to always obey my dismissal, and to perform any tasks I give you to the best of your ability without any attempt to distract me, fail on purpose to screw me over, or otherwise betray your duty as a servitor. In return, I will allow you to experience the waking world through my senses except when I want privacy, and grant you domain over one isolated cognitive subprocess at all times."

Nej whistled. "That's a lot o' power. I ain't complainin', but damn, boy."

"It's not that much. Cognitive-only domain means you can't affect anything other than thoughts, and isolation means you can't affect physical or spiritual domains with your thoughtforms or interfere with my own thoughts." That won't stop you from manipulating me, but you can do that already, he thought sourly. "But a covenant comes with punitive clauses too, Nej. If you violate any of the bindings, you'll be subject to their power; and to be frank with you, that might erode you to the point that I could expel or dissolve you. So this is a big-ass risk for you. Up until now, you've had something very close to immortality as a ghost in my mind; if you fight the binding, you could end up destroying yourself, and I certainly won't cry any tears over you."

Nej nodded. "Could be. Could be. But mebbe I find a way to snake my way into a lil' bit more power. Or maybe we find a way to coexist, though I can't say I think that'll be likely."

"Right." Orton felt tired, even in his dreams. "And that's totally not just you telling me what I want to hear."

Nej squatted down, looking Orton in the eyes; Orton shuddered a little at the dead man's dried-out gaze. "Mebbe, Orton. But it's yer brain I'm thinkin' with, here, an' that means I'm affected by you jus' as much as I get to use it against you." Orton had to admit that was probably true. "Mebbe you get a kindler, gentler Nej cause o' that. Maybe I use this to kill you. Maybe you use this to kill me. After all these years o' tormentin' each other, ain't all those options gettin' attractive?"

Orton had to admit the argument had a lot of merit. "When did you get so philosophical all of a sudden? Next you'll reveal some deep inner truth about me, or something."

Nej snorted. "If'n you want an epiphany, maybe try askin' yerself why yer own mental projection is still a teenager after a hunnert years, instead of a old man."

Orton shuddered. "No fucking thank you." There were some facts about himself he'd probably never be ready to learn.

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Gentry staggered backwards and sat down heavily, panting. Getting one's hands dirty was never an enjoyable activity, he felt, as he mopped as much blood off his face as he could. Not to mention the damage to one's wardrobe.

This last scuffle had been rather lively indeed; the owner of the sacred seedling had been rather spry despite his advancing years in addition to being quite a powerful spellcaster. It had been fairly bracing when he had walked through jets of super-hot flame as though they hadn't been there and begun doing all manner of impressive martial arts in the general direction of Gentry's own august person, and if his enchanted spectacles hadn't shown him the superlative glow of the cavalry saber hanging on the wall of the old fellow's den, he might have been killed. Not to say that the fracas hadn't been quite spirited; the fighting had been fierce enough that the sword had snapped in two, but not before opening some rather grievous wounds on his opponent which had slowed him down considerably. Gentry had managed to hack the other gentleman to death with the broken-off handle of the sword, but it had not been at all a civilized end to the battle. He'd also sustained a few broken ribs and a number of bruises, and his ensorcelled glasses had gotten smashed, so it wasn't as though he had come out of it smelling of roses himself. He tipped his hat to what remained of the elderly gaffer's corpse. "Well done, old sport," he muttered.

Still, a win was a win, as the locals say, and the weather in Tampa was quite nice this time of year, in contrast to the cold that still gripped much of the land of the continental states; he had a mind to stay for a while. Perhaps he could find some diverting reading material in the old fellow's belongings. He rose and went in search of a towel to desanguify himself, then began rooting around in the usual likely places for occult tomes; the backs of closets, secret compartments, and under the beds. On his third try, he found what he was looking for, but ran into an unexpected obstacle; instead of the sensible characters of the Latin alphabet of his heretofore universal experience, the books and scrolls were adorned with all manner of spidery, flowing ideograms in a language he was unfamiliar with. Well, thought Gentry with as much equanimity as he could muster, it appears I must make a bit more of a multicultural effort. He hoped the local library would be open.