--- Atrog & Rania ---

"When did you first notice that you were missing memories?" Dr. Freestep asked Rania.

The old dwarf was a psychiatrist, and had come highly recommended as an expert in his field. In addition to an extensive education in psychology, he was knowledgeable in biomancy, mind magic, and divination. Each of these subjects on its own was complicated enough that most doctors specialized in only one of them. You normally had to wait months for an appointment with him, but given the urgency of their situation the Interim Council had pulled strings to make sure that his team would have all of their mission critical errands done in time before the investigation concluded.

"Five days ago." Responded Rania. "We were talking about how Galanys, who is a teammate of ours, has never forgotten anything ever. And how Dov, who is also a teammate, has now forgotten almost everything ever, because she gave herself brain damage."

"I see." The doctor responded, and shot Atrog a questioning look.

Rania had asked Atrog to accompany her because he is much better with people than she is. He felt flattered, and gladly went with her.

"That's correct." Atrog supplied. "Galanys has an eidetic memory. Dov is genetically modified and made deliberate changes to her brain. She assures us it's perfectly safe."

Dr. Freestep raised a single eyebrow questioningly.

"It's a long story." Atrog added.

"Well, I have never heard of that before. But they are not my patients, so I will not pry. Unless either of you believe it is relevant to Ms. Mortal's memory loss?"

They both responded negatively.

Atrog heard the doctor mumble a frustrated "Adventurers...". Adventurers had a reputation for attracting weird things. Adventuring was a bit like shamanism in this regard. The verdict was still out on whether this was an actual side effect of the Law of Adversity, or just because adventuring attracted weird people. Most normal and sane people did not choose a life of adventure, after all.

"To be clear," Dr. Freestep continued, "The notes I received said that you had an encounter with an Elder Mind Warper more than a week ago. You noticed your memory loss only after this event?"

"Yes." Rania said. "But I think we can safely rule out that the Mind Warper had anything to do with that."

"Oh? And why is that?" The dwarf asked.

"Well, if I do have a Secret Origin Story, and I really hope I do, then obviously those events would have had to happen in my childhood. Mind Warpers can alter memories, but I don't think that they have any way to retroactively rewrite history. I think there really aren't that many beings that can do that."

There are zero of them, Atrog thought. Time travel was a very difficult field and practically impossible for mortals. Through research, wizards had come to know that there were theoretical limitations that even the gods had to abide by. Rewriting history was not possible.

Unless maybe this was another case where Rania would casually reveal mysterious and disturbing knowledge of the fey? As far as Atrog understood, things being impossible did in fact also apply to the fey. They sometimes made it look like they could ignore the rules of reality, but they did have their limitations. They just used trickery to make people think they were more powerful than they are. They were going to talk to an expert on the fey later, so Atrog added this comment to his ever growing list of things to bring up.

"You believe you have a secret origin story? Like one made by Tonos?" The doctor responded. Atrog was amazed how the man managed to say this with a straight face. He supposed a man in his profession encountered weird people quite often.

"No!" Rania replied. "I hope not. Tonos makes terrible Origin Stories where lots of people die, so that there can be more drama! I hope I have a much nicer Origin Story. Maybe my parents were secretly really cool adventurers who retired to help the community. But when they noticed I wanted to be an adventurer too, they modified my memories to keep me safe from their old rival, who will appear later. That would be so cool!"

"Interesting. It sounded like you follow Tonos, but you actually dislike him. Do you believe that you are involved in one of Tonos' machinations against your will?"

"Yes." Rania responded immediately.

The doctor made a single movement of his pen on his notepad, as though marking a standard check box on a form.

"I should probably mention something here." Atrog added. "I understand that you have probably encountered a number of Tonos cultists throughout your career. I have reason to believe that we actually did get wrapped up in one of his plots. An astounding number of coincidences happened to us in the last week. I have submitted a report to the Interim Council, and they are treating it seriously. The details of the report are classified, but one thing I can say is that we encountered Lilian Weaver, and saved her life."

"Yeah, we can totally talk about that part!" Rania interjected. "Lilian is going to put us in her next book anyway, and it will be public. It will be so cool! I have always wanted to be in a book! Maybe one day, when I'm even cooler and better at stuff, I can even be in a book of my own. Where I can be the Main Character! That would be my dream."

She stared off into the distance dreamily. After a few seconds she added "You can be in it too, Atrog! All my friends should also be Main Characters in my book. That's only fair."

Dr. Freestep was silent for a few seconds as he took all this in, before he responded. "Well, that's a first! I have never had a patient who was actually affected by Tonos before. And I thought I had seen everything. In this case I think we can skip that entire line of questions. It's not the most pressing matter anyway.

"You mentioned earlier that you encountered the Mind Warper before you noticed any memory loss. Suppose for a minute that the memory loss is unrelated to any secret origin story you may or may not have. I would like to determine if the Mind Warper might have erased the memories of your childhood. Did anyone else in your team suffer any after effects?"

"I don't think so?" Rania responded, touching Pebble on her necklace. "Pebble was really very scared at first, but he got over it quickly."

"Pebble is the rock you are touching right now, correct?" The doctor interrupted. "My notes mention that you are a shaman. You can talk to it?"

"Yes, that's right." Rania responded. "Other than that, some of us have had trouble sleeping for a bit, but it was not that bad. Galanys had it the worst because she has really good memory. But she said that whenever she felt sad, she just kept replaying the scene in her head where we killed the Mind Warper until she felt better again. To remind herself that we won. She knows psychology too, you know? She is very smart!"

"Huh. An interesting approach to self-therapy. Well, so long as it works for her." The dwarf said, and looked to Atrog for confirmation.

"I believe that all of us are in good mental health, except for Rania's loss of memory." He supplied.

"I still think that it's not because of the Mind Warper, though." Rania said. "When you have two theories that could explain something, then the simpler one is usually correct, right?"

"That's right." The doctor agreed hesitantly, looking a bit confused.

"If my parents already modified my memory when I was young, then why would a Mind Warper modify them a second time later? That sounds unnecessarily complicated. And the theory that I have a Secret Origin Story is way simpler than the one that I both have a Secret Origin Story and also the Mind Warper messed with my head."

The doctor looked physically pained at this string of logic, and Atrog felt with him.

What followed was a fifteen minute diversion as Dr. Freestep and Atrog both tried to explain the concept of Occam's Razor to Rania. She seemed to interpret it very differently.

"Let's put a stop to this discussion. We should make the most out of our limited time together." The old dwarf eventually said. "It is clear that your shamanistic talents have given you a very different outlook on life."

The stereotype that shamans were crazy existed for a reason, Atrog knew.

"What I would like to do," Dr. Freestep continued, "is to cast a number of spells on you and then go through a list of questions. In my experience it is usually better to have a longer discussion before I start casting spells. But in this case I believe we should skip ahead."

He then spent an hour casting various spells on Rania, and asking her questions. Many of the questions were standardized tests. Some weren't even questions, but instructions to imagine a particular situation while the doctor read her surface thoughts through magic.

"It is a difficult case." Dr. Freestep concluded. "There are some alterations in your mind that shouldn't be there. I have seen the victims of Mind Warpers before, and several of my long-term patients are shamans. What I can see in your mind does not quite fit either of them. I can't quite rule out that the damage caused by Elder Mind Warpers looks different from that caused by younger ones. I have never had a patient who survived such an encounter before. But all in all, it is much more consistent with the effects of shamanism. I understand that you are a very talented shaman, and therefore likely more heavily affected than most."

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Therefore, I find it unlikely that you have any residual damage from your encounter with a Mind Warper. Unfortunately, I am not an expert on shamanism. I would like to recommend you to a specialist for further consultation."

After that, the old dwarf filled out some forms and handed them to Rania. One of them was an official statement confirming that there were no lingering effects from the Mind Warper's attacks. The Interim Council had been concerned over that, which was the reason they were sent to a psychiatrist on such short notice in the first place.

While that was the official reason for their visit, Atrog had hoped that the man could shed some light on what was plaguing Rania. He was concerned for her, but unfortunately it looked like this problem could not be solved so easily. At least it had not been a complete loss. Rania had received a transferral to a specialist. They could only hope to get to the bottom of this eventually.

"I think that diagnosis was stupid." Rania said, clearly upset. "Spirits wouldn't just mess with my head like that and make me forget stuff. They don't do that."

Then after a few seconds she added. "Well, they do that sometimes. But when they do, they are much better at it and I would have never noticed. So that can't be it."

Oh gods, why? Every time Rania talked about the spirits they sounded more disturbing to Atrog than before.

--- Atrog & Rania ---

They would finally get answers, Atrog thought.

After his report to the council about the many strange insights that Rania had revealed to them, they had directed them to talk to an expert at the university. It was not a high priority, but the shaman Ithang, who Rania helped a week ago during the demon incident, had vouched for her. As a result, professor Haven had been only too happy to make room in his busy schedule to listen to them.

Professor Haven was a goblin, like many members of public education. Goblins were unusual in that both their mental and physical development was very heavily dependent on their upbringing. The same was true for other species of course, but in goblins the difference was much more pronounced. As a result, goblin culture placed enormous value on child rearing, education, and continuous self-improvement.

A goblin who subsisted on food found in the wilderness and only learned from tribe elders would develop into a small, ugly and dumb creature, unable to speak beyond primitive grunts, and usually quite aggressive. If that same goblin was instead raised by professional caretakers and given a balanced diet throughout his childhood, he would grow up to be taller and more intelligent, and his skin would be smooth rather than leathery.

Any feral goblin could have been civilized if they had had a more fortunate upbringing. But once a goblin had grown up feral, there was no real way to reverse the process, and they were little more than bloodthirsty monsters that preyed on others. Civilized goblins viewed their wild relatives with a mix of disdain and pity, and the differences were so pronounced that feral goblins were largely treated as a type of animal rather than person. The word 'feral' was one of the strongest insults in goblin culture.

"I have read through your reports, and it all sounds quite fascinating." Professor Haven said. "The most interesting issue to me are your claims about the miasma of Greenwatch. Nobody else has ever talked to the miasma before, as far as I have been able to find out. I have cross-referenced reports about other Cataclysm Containment Zones. In a few cases, we do have reports of increased spirit activity. However, all of these cases are unsurprising. An area haunted by ice elementals, for example, naturally will have frost-related spirits in it. That particular example actually suggests an explanation for what you experienced. The miasma might be a form of poison elemental that has not previously been recorded."

"That doesn't sound right to me." Rania responded. "The spirits there didn't feel like they were poison to me. More like anger and a desire for revenge. Pebble also agrees with this. They aren't really about poison. They are about revenge."

"You say that the spirits 'are about revenge'. Do you mean that they are vengeful, or are you being literal and they represent the concept of revenge."

"The second one. They are made out of anger and revenge. Pebble is pretty sure about that."

"Amazing. I really think we should mount a small expedition there and see what other shamans can make of all this." The professor responded.

Atrog knew that while the man was an expert on shamanism, he was not actually a strong shaman himself and would have to rely on the help of others. He was an academic and a subject expert, not a spellcaster.

"Is it possible for you or others to talk to Pebble?" Atrog found himself asking. "He seems to know what is going on."

"I wish it were that easy." The professor replied. "There is very little chance that this would work. Spirits are often very personal and respond differently to different shamans. Moreover, they often refuse to be studied. I can not conduct scientific trials the way other scientists do, because the subject of my research will actively mess with my data. The most reliable way to learn about spirits is simply to listen well and collect information from everywhere. If you go actively looking for knowledge, chances are you will just shoot yourself in the foot."

"The most sensible approach is to just send other shamans into the area and ask them what they sense." The professor continued. "I will ask for a research grant for this. It sounds very promising."

"I'm glad I could help!" Rania said. "I hope you can find out why the spirits there are so angry. Maybe we can find a way to calm them down!"

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, but let's not get our hopes up too much." The goblin smiled back genially.

To Atrog, this sounded like it would take a long time until they would hear back about this. Academia simply moved at a different timescale than adventurers did.

"Now, besides the miasma, you also made a number of comments about the fey." Professor Haven continued. "I'm afraid for most of these I am going to have to give the same response, which goes like this: Average people believe that the fey are chaotic. Smart people know that the fey are actually very lawful creatures that follow their own rules and customs unerringly. But the wise understand that the fey have so many rules, and exceptions to those rules, that they are chaotic for all practical purposes."

"That's true." Rania said. "They really have a lot of rules."

The professor ignored her immediate agreement and went on to explain further. Atrog got the impression that this was part of a lecture the man had given many times.

"But worse than this, most fey do not like to explain their rules to outsiders. They are obvious to themselves, after all, so they don't see why others wouldn't know about them. I am sure that we do occasionally get the rare fey that genuinely wants to explain things. The problem is that for each fey like that, there are a hundred more who like to play pranks, and think it is funny to trick mortals into believing incorrect rules."

"They find it funny when we embarrass ourselves. As a result, even the most basic rules we believe we know can not be trusted entirely. There might always be an exception to them. Sometimes we aren't told about the exception because it genuinely doesn't occur to the fey to cover every possibility, but most of the time the exceptions are skipped on purpose, as a prank that all too often turns lethal."

"For example, the famous archmage Stillsong spent three decades regularly trading with the fey for knowledge and artifacts. He was killed by an archfey during a routine trade of blood roses for books. He had made that exact same trade many times before. It's somewhat famous among researchers, because the man took extensive notes on absolutely everything he did. There is a large reward for anyone who can explain what was different about his last trade that would explain his death."

"Oh, I know that one!" Rania said excitedly.

"It's an unsolved mystery that has attracted the greatest minds for hundreds of years." The professor said in a tired and annoyed tone of voice. "I get around a dozen students every year who claim they found the pattern. But sure, give it your best shot."

"Stillsong did his last trade on the twenty-third day of a new moon, which was a blood moon during a leap year. That means it was Opposite Day for greetings. So when he made his normal greetings, which were always extra polite, they were instead super insulting. And the Duchess of Silent Nights took offense to that."

Rania's voice turned sad as she added "It's really tragic. He was just trying to be nice."

"Opposite day for greetings." Professor Haven responded flatly. "Well, that's a new one for me. I have never heard of Opposite Day. Unfortunately the circumstances you described as a condition for Opposite Day are so specific that it is very unlikely we would have enough historical data to prove it right or wrong."

Atrog got the impression that the professor now thought of Rania as an idiot, and she almost certainly did not notice this. He didn't have any idea about shamanism himself, but he understood that if he let her continue to talk, the professor would probably end up dismissing her entirely. Rania just had a way of sounding unbelievable. Even he had trouble believing her, and he had seen her be correct many times before.

"Professor Haven," Atrog began, "if it is as difficult as you say to get verification on these things, then I do not feel like this line of conversation will be very productive. Rania is not the best at explaining things, but I trust her, and so does Ithang who I understand is a well-respected shaman. Is there anything we could do to prove her claims?"

The goblin took a moment to think before he responded. "There isn't really anything that can be done to prove you right or wrong by experiment. It's the same problem as with spirits. The fey refuse to be studied, and will actively mess with your data. There is the famous case of professor Oakbell, who spent his entire life studying fey behavior patterns and had much greater success than anyone before him. Then, two centuries after his death, a student noticed that the data he originally collected had a hidden message in it. Then people investigated further, and found even more messages. It turned out that an archfey had noticed him, and had made a game out of it to have all her subjects try to get hidden messages into the data he was collecting. Overnight we found out that his entire life's work had been a prank."

"So no, proving her correct is impossible. But one thing that can help is to improve her reputation and credibility. One of the biggest problems in our field is that there is too much noise drowning out the signal. For every genuine insight, we get a hundred people who made the wrong connections, but got lucky."

"With all due respect, Rania, but you do not strike me as the sort of person who could work in academia and establish credentials over time. Am I correct?"

"Yes." Rania responded. "That sounds boring, and not at all adventurous. I'm really only interested in adventures and adventure-related activities."

"Right. Well, there is one other option." The professor continued. "It's relatively recent, and very expensive. The Coros organization has developed truth-telling spells that are reliable enough to be practical. Moreover, they are experts at detecting half-truths and evasions, as the fey are fond of."

"You have provided me with a large list of claims about the fey that are all very difficult to verify. If you can explain all of them while under truth spell, they will be able to verify that you are telling the truth as you know it, and they will be able to rule out the majority of tricks that the fey commonly use. This will not in any way prove that your claims are true, but people are going to take you a lot more seriously with confirmation like that."

Atrog suspected that by 'people' the man mostly meant himself.

"That sounds like a fortunate coincidence then." Atrog replied. "The Interim Council already paid for us to have our claims about our most recent mission verified. I will ask them if this can be extended to also cover other information that is not immediately mission-critical."

He had a good feeling about his chances to convince them. They would have to go through the process to verify their claims about the miasma anyway. If those were proven to be correct, then it would make sense that Rania's other claims might be true as well. And even if they had to pay for this themselves, Atrog would gladly do it. This knowledge could be important for everyone, and it would also be good for Rania and for his own peace of mind. The Coros charged a lot for their services, but they had enough money now that they could afford it. More importantly, they had grown in power through the Law of Adversity, and so their future missions were sure to pay equally well.

Professor Haven grumbled a bit about how unfair it was that they could actually go to the Coros just like that. Apparently he had spent several years trying to make a deal with them to ensure that the reports of shamans could be more easily verified and trusted. But the Coros were a business, and the shamanistic department was simply not affluent enough to afford their services.

They spent another half hour talking to the man, but predictably nothing came of it. It looked like the Coros would be their best bet.