Bob and Alice were longtime friends of Kryss and enjoyed the "real-world" mystic background he added to their fantasy gaming sessions - it often lent an extra layer of believability to the role-playing of their AD&D expeditions. He also tended to bring good snacks. As well, they had benefitted from his occasional stock tips, so they knew the guy had some sort of special knack going for him, as he had made a living without working for over 3 years now.
Bob quickly noticed Kryss seemed distracted tonight and was gazing intently at assorted people and objects as they waited for their last member, Trent, to arrive. Cindy and Don had arrived only a couple minutes after Kryss, and Don was setting up the table and maps for the night's gaming. Kryss casually mentioned that they should sell, or even short-sell, any gaming or gambling stocks they had interest in, and Bob made a post-it note to do so tomorrow. When they asked Kryss why, he just said that a whole new way of cheating seemed to be on the horizon, but that he didn't know yet how the details would pan out.
Trent soon arrived, and the group got settled around the table. The current party quest was for a magical tome that had been captured by orcs in a raid on a merchant caravan. It was thought to be held in a run-down castle controlled by the local orc lord. The party set out and managed to find the castle after dispatching an orc guard patrol. There was then some debate about trying to infiltrate and steal the tome, vs trying to wipe out the orcs and take over the castle and all loot it might hold. They decided to hope stealth worked and try to steal the tome and any other loot they came across in getting to it, rather than hope they could take out the entire settlement, which they guessed at nearly 100 orcs - they would just run out of spell and healing power, they feared.
They managed to get into the castle, but in scouting for where the treasures were held, the sounds of Cindy's paladin armor gave them away, and alarms sounded. After running battles and taking out 30-some orcs, they found themselves barricaded in the treasure room at the end of the evening's play session. The party would have a whole week to think up ways out of the trap for next Monday's game.
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Kryss had been fastinated all evening watching the interplay of energy across the game. On every dice roll, he could see futile colors of intention coming from the players, hoping to influence the outcome. But he could see a disconnect - like everyone was sending a signal out, but not getting a response or forming a connection with the target. He activated Imbue several times over the evening, and could tell it had an effect, but it still didn't seem to actually guide any dice results. The initial connection could be made that way, but the actual force and guidance would require something more.
After the others left, Kryss let Bob and Alice know he had made progress on the clairvoyant front, and showed them he could guess a hidden card accurately. They seemed impressed, but it felt like they still suspected he had just found some trick or illusion - not that he could blame them. Now wasn't the time to "prove" anything - just getting them interested was fine.
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Getting home, he settled down for a "normal" night's sleep for the first time since his ritual. Of course, it didn't work out that way. He quickly found out that he had to learn to "turn off" his expanded awareness if he expected anything like normal sleep. If he didn't, his mind kept brushing against sensations from elsewhere - and he wasn't ready to find out what that meant or how it worked. Sleep came most easily if he started out in a self-directed lucid dream, he found. i.e. he would just create a fantasy in his mind, follow the plot, and gradually release control and awareness until it became a true dream and he was actually asleep.
The cats woke him mid-morning, demanding food and attention by batting his hair back and forth - reminding him it was well past time for a haircut. After batting kitty-paws and doing play chases for a bit, he fed the cats and had breakfast, getting more used to the altered tastes and sensations. He even threw out several cans of cat food that simply "felt bad".
Checking out the internet, the world still seemed to be mostly as he'd last seen it - an endless struggle for money and attention. On Youtube, though, there were more meditation live-streams than usual, by a wide margin, with quite a few claims that "activation was underway", or that "the indigo children were waking up" or other statements to that effect. Of course, there were ALWAYS such videos around, but the uptic and the number of live streams on the topics were well beyond anything he'd seen before. Seeing that Hurtag himself was one of the live panelists, Kryss dug out The Keys of Enoch from the ritual books he'd packed up the day before and flipped through it - using Imbue.
He landed on page 247, which talked about a "light-parent body" creating a "super-spectrum", and of a "Master Control energy used to set Light vibrations". As always, reading the Keys was like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle using only 1/4 of the pieces, but Imbue DID seem to fill in some of the gaps.
For the next 2 hours, with some graph paper, dice, and hints from Keys, Kryss worked to see if he could actually control a die roll. The first hour was flat failure, though Imbue did show him what numbers the 20-sided die most favored. In the second hour, he managed to create a true "attachment" to the die, and even got a new "skill" in his "status" called "Influence", but actual results in controlling the outcome weren't happening. He did have fun letting the cats play with the die and "feeling" it being tossed about as he sat back with his eyes closed. He was even able to find it and pick it up - eyes still closed.
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Professor Edwards was having a bad day. The zener card results weren't following anything like the distribution they should have, and he wasn't finding the usual overt cheating. Most of the results were normal, of course - random chance. But two of his students seemed to get the first few guesses correct on every run, before falling back to random. And now it was happening with a third student. Worse, if given a minute off between each guess, one of the students was able to get EVERY card correct! And he claimed not to know how - just that he could direct "energy" at the card and "know", but that "energy" ran out quickly. And the third student had picked up the same ability after hearing it described!
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The World Series of Poker was buzzing that afternoon - the usual level of bluffs just weren't working. Security was ramped up, people were questioned, but no explanations were to be had. Those calling the bluffs mostly simply said they just had a feeling it was a bluff, and what poker player wouldn't go with their gut?? Gaming stocks started falling sharply in after-hours trading.