I could feel Clause having his regularly scheduled mid-day panic attack. The problem was it was a bit early, and I wasn’t in a position to bug him and get his mind off of whatever it was that set him off today.

It wasn’t easy being me.

I sighed and got the bar ladies’ attention to pay for my drink.

The ale was cheap here, and her kid had talent, so I always came here for some food and drink. It was a positive that the crowd was less angry drunkards and more salt of the earth type folks just coming in for a drink and some food, it made the atmosphere not terribly stifling like half the public houses in the city. I had always gone for their sandwiches, but most just got porridge, or some broth and left.

“Kath, can I pay and get a sandwich to go?” I called out.

Kathy was a miller’s daughter, and she was a homely kind of woman. Her husband and eldest daughter cooked, and she did work in the front. Brown hair, brown eyes, light-skinned and rather bland.

“Sure Strause, 21 coppers,” she told me before turning to yell into the back. “OI, sandwich for Strause.”

I took out my coppers and paid the kind woman. Kath was, as always, a dear. I could feel the emotions coming off of her and they were refreshing.

That was my curse.

It was sometimes a blessing too, but mostly a curse.

I could feel a lot with my skills, and they grew every time I levelled, the biggest problem was I could feel way too much.

Right now, at this moment, I was sensing something along the lines of four thousand people, and a whole lot more animals. Every rat, cat, dog, bird, horse, man, woman and child. Everything that felt an emotion, I could feel them, the closer, they were, the stronger they were.

Within a certain range, I could even feel their surface thoughts, like a whisper of words.

I couldn’t read everything… well, I could, but that was a complicated mess that wasn’t worth it.

I always could, and I hadn’t understood why until I got to my first level, and it had left me troubled.

And so, I had gone looking for people and places that I could stand being around, places like the Copper Pot tavern, and people like Kathy. Little beacons that radiated positive emotions, which in turn, affected those around them to act more positively.

My first class, the thing that I had gotten, was [Primordia Fledgling] which was a start, but [Immaterial Senses] was its first skill, and it had taken the feelings and given me a better understanding of what the feeling meant. What Primordia was I had never found an answer, it was likely too old to be well understood, but it was related to me and what I could feel, and that was all I needed to know.

Emotions, feelings, the interplay of thought and emotions and their effects on things around them. If one person thought good thoughts, they affected the world around them, including the people. Negative emotions did the same, and most people didn’t have good days or good lives.

The world felt like a giant tapestry of light and feeling, swirling and changing from moment to moment. It permeated every space, ever-present and as ever, a giant pain in my ass.

Sometimes things would move around, invisible to the eye but present in my sight, following around people with particularly strong emotions.

Another reason why I always came here? Kath, her daughter and the tavern had a few of them, little sprite things that followed them around. They didn’t speak but I paid some attention to the little things that seemed attracted to the atmosphere.

Joan, and John and Kait each had one that followed them around little balls of sunshine yellow that followed their counterpart around, two in the kitchen, one next to Kath, and two next to Joan.

I got up from the bar, mug in hand, “Kath can you call me back when the sandwich comes out?”

“Sure,” she told me, waving in my direction while she walked over to give a regular a refill.

I made my way over to Joan. Who sat out in the back with her two little meeps. When I got outside, I saw she was staring off into space. She was a year or two younger than I was, and I had decided to help her out with her second class.

She was just as lost as I had been, and it was for the same reason.

She was like me, picking up on the primordium, and I had been explaining and teaching her what I could. She was, quite possibly, one of the most genuine people I had met, and that made her quite possibly my favourite person to be around.

She was trying to sense the two meeps, and the two turned to me and waved their wiggly tassel-like arms before turning back to her.

“Hello Strause, you’re… going to go soon, right?” She asked, feeling out the answer.

“Yes, I’m sorry that I can’t spend some more time with you today,” I told her.

“No, no. Even I can feel that brother of yours, honestly, I hope you can help him more permanently.” She told me.

“Yeh,” I replied scratching my head in a bit of embarrassment, “I wish I could just stay here, but I’m fairly sure if I don’t go Clause will just lose his mind and do something stupid.”

“Indeed.” She said, without her upbeat tone.

“Don’t worry, Joan, I’ll be free soon,” I told her.

“Is this about your sister doing something?” She asked.

“Yeh, she up to something. No clue what, though.” I told her, knowing what she was going to say.

“You missed her plot? Your slipping, Strause.” She teased.

“Yeh.” I admitted, “Clause is tiring me out.”

“Well, good luck with him, your food’s coming out.” She told me, waving goodbye without ever looking at me.

I nodded, “See you, Joan.”

I headed back in to pick up my sandwich and reached the counter just after Kath called me over.

“Thanks, Kath, you’re the best,” I told her before leaving into the street and putting on my face.

My skill [Concealed Expression] made my face look like a goofy smile. It made me look like I had no care for anything. It was disarming. And it was one of the things I used to protect myself.

Mages were sensitive to mana, I, for the most part, didn’t use mana. And when a mage saw you do something like use a skill that didn’t use mana, they got incredibly invested in getting an answer out of you.

I only wanted to have to disappear a man once. Never again.

I picked up [Gossip] right after, which used mana in a way that I could use. I had no idea how it worked, and I didn’t care. It was a minorly useful ‘look, I’m normal please don’t probe me’ class.

I walked down the street, everyone oblivious to my passage as I walked through the street and the chaotic swirling of hundreds of separate emotions. It was like walking through a river, the presence of them had a weight to them. There were more of the meeps too. Anger meeps, sadness meeps, a few lust meeps at certain places; each of them had a slightly different look, with the negative emotions being larger than the others.

Each of them moved out of my way, capable of feeling my presence, and my emotional weight. I was a whirlpool, held as neutral as I could be, the size was that of my mindreading, a few feet wake of energy around me in the center of a whirlpool that pulled things in.

The surface thoughts of those I walked by were equally terrible, a non-stop string of whispers buffeting me continuously.

It was a pain in the ass.

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I would walk past a man, who cheated on his wife. A girl who was pushed into working as a prostitute. A villager from beyond the city thinking about how bad the harvest is going to be, thinking about how he’s going to feed his children.

There is no filter, no lies, only the non-stop thoughts of Humanity and those that walked with them. A Wood Elf who saw everyone as inferior, a Beast Kin who felt isolated and wanted to find a mate, and ten people considering ending their time amongst the living. I did what I could to wave away the worst of it and introduce some good where I went by them.

Every here and there were a few who had nothing but positivity, people who loved their lots in life. There was one that was psychotic, and I had to sick a guard on him.

Each step was an unending slog until I made it to the inner district and, from there, into the walls of the manor.

I dropped my skill when I went through the front gate, so the guards didn’t freak the fuck out and try and cut my head off.

In here, it was much more… soft. The emotional canvas was still all-encompassing, but with fewer sources, it was thinner and less intense.

I nodded to the fourteen guys that are always ready to smash anyone not cleared to enter the front gate, and they nodded to me.

I could tell they were a little tense, but it was the type of tension where they couldn’t do anything about what was happening. That was a bit disconcerting, if a guard couldn’t do something, it was generally not a fantastic situation.

Considering the feelings coming off of Clause, I was fairly certain that everyone in the noble quarter could feel it. I strolled on in, finding my way up and over to Clauses study, through the house where the staff were tense and did not understand why they felt the way they did.

I could admit, Clause's emotions were horrifyingly potent, they were the type of thing that could bring forward a meep.

I strode over the carpets and through the halls until I got close enough and started making a racket.

“CLAUSE, GUESS WHAT!” I started yelling.

I could feel him react. He was not in the mood; it honestly caught me off guard. Most of the time, he would be a bit pissy, but Clause was not the type of guy that would react to an annoyance with anger. He didn’t have a hair trigger.

Despite that, Clause was leaking anger.

It took me back.

I toned myself down a bit, making my way to his door before knocking.

“Hey, Clause, can I come in,” I asked him.

I could hear him shuffling things around inside, fear, anger, and panic tinged the room beyond his door, mostly the sickly yellow of fear.

Clause didn’t answer me; he just kept doing something with his undoubtedly large piles of parchment.

“Clause, are you organizing your papers? You know you can get those put into a book, right.” I told him, opening the door and stepping in.

Clause was the only thing I could focus on when I got into the room.

He had some kind of skill that focused people on him, stopping me from understanding what was going on around him. He also had a skill that made him look great, the bastard.

I had to pay attention to look passable, and he could sleep under his desk, not bathe, and look like I wanted to.

“Bastard,” I told him.

“Bastard.” He retorted.

Clause was sitting at his desk. He always was sitting at his desk. If he kept sitting there, he would slowly become one with his chair.

“Come on then, what's so bad it’s making the gate guards nervous.”

“Something I need to deal with.”

“So, between a lord stubbing his toe, to Father pissing off the emperor…” I asked.

“Not as simple as that, Strause.”

“Well, come on, use your words, Clause what are we dealing with,” I told him, gesturing to give it to me.

When he sat there, unmoving, face blank as always, my hands started to go from ‘give it to me’ to ‘Gremlin wants’, my hands whipping back and forth.

The tension in the room lightened, just a little, which was my number one goal.

Clause’s fucking emotional weight was intense, overwhelming even. Which was somewhat ironic considering his total lack of emotional comprehension. He was even more weighty than I was, and I was abnormally heavy. My emotions could affect others much easier.

The Primordia had some analogous effects to reality. If an emotion interacted with someone, it needed to have enough… force, to get through the emotions coming off a person to affect them at all, if it did, then it lost force.

That meant that a single normal person might be able to be affected like a mouse. In contrast, a hundred mice might affect a young person or a dog. In order to affect someone like the gate guards, you would need to have a LOT of weight, and unless there were a lot of people all feeling the same way, that required a hefty person.

I was hefty, Clause was hefty. Anna’s guest was the heftiest, but weird stuff was going on with her. God stuff. Everything went sideways when a god was involved.

Now I wasn’t a [Scholar], and I didn’t think like one either. But if I could reduce the amount of Nightmare energy Clause gave off, it would affect others less.

That was a little important.

Inside the relatively isolated confines of the noble quarter, there were fewer people to carry the rancid vibe, fewer people to spread it.

But Clause was giving off enough panic that he could cause a cascade of damages. Mass panic, stampedes, and general civil unrest would occur if he walked through the city center.

My job?

Take it out at the knees, so Clause didn’t spin off a catastrophe.

The things I did so I could talk to Joan.

Clause took a small breath, and let it out, releasing a little more of the energy.

“The fog.” He started.

“The fog …” I said, trying to get him to continue these thoughts.

“The fog… Is a giant undead.” He finished.

I blinked. “That… Sounds bad, but is it?” I hedged.

That sounds really bad, incredibly, super bad. But at the same time, it’s done nothing bad… Yet. It’s done nothing bad yet.

I looked at Clause, and he looked at me, and we just stood there for a while.

I folded first.

“Yeh, ok, that’s less than perfect. How did you find out?” I asked.

“Annabeth sent a letter. Apparently, the fog is trying to get her guest.” He said, pressing his hands flat to the desk.

“Well,” I spoke.

It was a weak response. I didn’t know what to say to that. She’s been here for a while, so presumably, the fog can’t wander in and grab her.

What does the fog do? It’s fog, how does that even work?

“I guess this is a haunted region,” I told him.

“Very astute.” He replied.

“Can’t you get the priests over her, the [Clerics]?” I asked.

He actually stopped and thought about that.

“Well.” Clause started. “They are afforded greater prestige and privileges because of the nature of the valley being haunted…”

I could see his mind working.

The valley was one of the three places in the empire that was considered ‘haunted’ because of what happened when Moarn was destroyed.

Three places were destroyed overnight. Three places, there one day and dead the next, all destroyed at the same time, on the same day.

Moarn, Carcus and Louisaberg.

Each of them has an undead problem, each of them was once important but had fallen from grace substantially, and each played their part in kicking off the upheaval, which resulted in over 1000 years of war.

They were watched, often left by the wayside as little more than a ruined landscape, not worth the forces it would take to hold them.

Louisaberg had never recovered, it fell into the earth. Collapsing down into the tunnels and mines before it became a dungeon, and was guarded by an army of [Paladins], keeping whatever terrible evil lay at its heart down in the dark where it belonged.

Carcus had been a place of knowledge, and rested there, a mass grave that was still inhospitable to life. A shell of stone and rubble swarming with the undead who guarded the necropolis.

And Moarn, a once prosperous breadbasket that could have fed the empire of today, was reduced to a lake with constant food shortages. It was the only one of the three that was still hospitable enough to support people

Each area had a very heavy reliance on people who could suppress the undead, and most of the time, that was with a [Cleric] or [Paladin].

Each had problems with [Necromancers].

And in Moarn, the clergy had cut a deal to help keep the undead down, to be treated like nobles.

I could see the idea running through his mind.

“I still need to talk to the Hunters guild about their mess with Annabeth,” he said. “And the craftsmen are always looking to show off. And the [Lords] are starting to think about jumping ship….”

“You have a plan?” I asked, watching as each sentence caused the emotions to drop in intensity.

“I think I will call a meeting of the [Lords]. I can do it, and Father can’t block it while he’s in the capital.” He said.

“That could probably work. Calling everyone together could get things rolling, I honestly don’t know, Father never taught me about that stuff. Fixing everything at once while everyone is here, I presume.”

He nodded, sliding out of fear and into the strange calculation of what he needed to do.

“Is that all? Cool, I can go finish my sandwich now.” I told him, taking a bite of the meat and sauce.

Excellent, as always. I’d ask Kait to marry me, but Joan would be pissed.

“Wait. Can you send a letter to Annabeth, maybe bring her over?” He asked.

I raised an eyebrow and took another bite of the amazing sandwich, and, just to add to the effect, spoke with my mouth full.

“Why?”

“Gross Strause, and because she’s a mage. She’s the only one that might figure something out before the [Clerics] get here, and it’s her guest the fog wants.” He pointed out.

“Ok, I’ll get a letter sent to Anna. Are you going to lose your mind again today, Clause? Because I have a party to get to,” I told him.

He waved me off, “Yes, yes. Go on then, just get a letter to her. I have things to plan.”

I left his office.

That was quick, I can get back to Joan before lunch… Too quickly…

I started squinting off into space for a second, trying to do the mental athletics of guessing if something was too easy before I wrote to Anna, tracked down the smartest bird I could find, which was suspiciously intelligent, and got on my way.

***

I got to go and spend some more time with Joan.

A whole twenty minutes.

“You know Joan, sometimes I hate doing what I do,” I told her.

“You’re going to have to narrow that down a bit Strause.” She chided.

“The thing where I stop things from going off the deep end. I don’t get paid enough for this.”

“You don’t get paid for that. Neither of us do.” She said the obvious joke answered with just as much obvious mirth in her voice.

“Yeh, but I’m like a super professional mind reader you know? Ow stop that. I surrender.” I told her, only for her to start hitting my shoulder until I surrendered.

We sat behind the copper pot, eating a late lunch for a few minutes before I got up, dusting off my backside as I headed out.

Again.

“Joan, when do you think I’m going to be able to get off this wild ride,” I asked her.

She tapped her finger to her lips and put on an over-exaggerated thinking face.

“Well. Based on historical evidence… Never?” She guessed.

“We need a guild,” I told her.

“So, it’s we now, Mr. professional mind reader?” She mocked.

“Mr.? I’m a [Barons] son.” I told her, holding a hand to my chest like I was about to clutch at my nonexistent pearls.

“Sorry. Lordling professional mind reader. Go on now, Strause, before I make a guild and don’t let you join.” She said with a smile on her lips, waving me off with the only hand that wasn’t holding a sandwich.

I waved goodbye to Joan and got back to it, replacing my genuine smile with the fake one everyone else got, and I got back on the wild ride. Putting out the next fire that could cause problems, just like I would with the next, in the never-ending series of events that everyone called life.