“Good news, Tiffany is following the squirrel at a distance. Apparently, he could feel the probe in his mind and realized what was going on quickly. He learned to guard his mind as part of his duties guarding the tomb.” Ethel suddenly explained after opening her eyes from the meditation she had been in. It had been four hours since she had last spoken to Cal, and he had been starting to worry before she finally spoke.
“Alright, good. So now the question is: do we go hunting, or do we make our way back to the others?” Cal asked. He knew what he wanted. The squirrel leader was far too dangerous to be left roaming while they explored, and he had no other idea of how to handle it besides hunting it down.
“We should probably hunt it down, but what do we do when we catch up to it? Other than your rage, which doesn’t seem like something you can easily switch on, or I can copy, for that matter, how we deal with the mental intrusion?” Ethel responded.
“See if there’s any tips Tiffany can give us. In the meantime, I’ll get us out of our hiding space. It’s just too dangerous to involve everyone else, and I think we have to do this alone and as quickly as we can.” The more Cal thought about the possibilities of what the squirrel could do now that it had been in his mind, the more worried he became. What if it tried to make contact with the Gryalth? Or somehow hunt down his family before they could get back. No, his mind was made up. They had to stop it now, even if that meant leaving Ethel behind while he let his anger flare. This all paled into comparison to his biggest fear: what if the monster was able to control him and hold the loop as long as it chose until it found a way to make itself loop-aware or just rewrite enough of his memories that it altered him from loop to loop, assuming that it was possible that was a terrifying danger he had never considered before.
“Tiffany doesn’t think we have time to do much in the realm of remodeling how we think, but we worked out an idea that should at least temporarily block out its ability to take control of either of us. And just so you don’t say I didn’t warn you, it’s going to be painful setting it up and even more painful every time it has to be used.” Ethel said after Cal had spent several minutes ruminating on his fears as he sunk further into the ground, slowly creating their escape path.
“I can deal with pain; what exactly do we need to do, and how quickly do we need to do it? I should have us back in the main tunnels in the next twenty minutes or so,” Cal wanted to get back into the action and ignore the new line of troubling thoughts involving an enemy getting a hold of his brain.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“You don’t need to do anything, well besides finish off creating that tunnel. I need to put a little vine in both of our brains; it’s going to go through the back of our eyes, so try not to squirm too much. The vines will have enough autonomy that anytime they detect an outside influence on our brains, they will clamp down. The pain should be enough to let us push through any weaker influence, and hopefully, our focus on killing the bastard will distract him from being able to exert his full force on either of us.” Ethel explained her rapidly constructed and extremely dangerous plan.
“Got it. Keep hitting him as hard and fast as we can so he can’t overthink us.” Cal responded, pushing more rocks aside. He could do that with less ranged blasting and more lightning punches to the asshole’s face. That sounded cathartic. A few minutes later and he cracked through to the existing tunnels.
“Here,” Ethel said as she walked up to him with a tiny green thread in her hand. “I already did mine. It hurts worse than I expected, so be prepared for that. Just put it in like you would a contact lens, and it will do the rest.”
Cal plucked the small plant from her hand and lifted it to his eye. He placed it gently on the eyeball and rapidly blinked. He felt the thing slowly squirm its way into the back of his eye socket, and then the pain started as it pushed its way up into his brain. It felt like someone was repeatedly stabbing his skull with a fire poker. It reminded him of some of the pain he had gone through in forming his core.
“Dammit, that really stings!” He yelled out as the pain continued.
“Yeah, and it will probably hurt a ton more when it activates, but it’s the best I can do in a short time, now get your ass back on your feet and follow me. Tiffany sent me a mental map.” Ethel said.
Cal, who hadn’t even realized he had collapsed down to his knees with the pain, stood back up as it finally started to wane. “Alright, I think I’m good now anyway. Where to?” He still winced slightly as he spoke, but the majority of the pain had faded.
“This way,” Ethel pointed at one of the tunnels, and she started down it, surprising Cal with just how fast she could go when motivated. “Tiffany is reasonably sure he hasn’t gone far. I’m guessing his size isn’t exactly compatible with the squirrel's mobility, and who knows how often he even uses his legs with his powers. Such a waste of a great talent.”
“Yeah, it’s too bad we probably destroyed the pond when the room collapsed. I wouldn’t have minded adding in some telepathy, good old mind magic,” Cal said as they ran.
“Never mind about the waste part. Now that you say that, I think it’s for the best that the pool is gone.” Ethel huffed out as she continued their run.