Option one: make a break for it the moment anyone comes in to perform whatever procedure they have planned. Pros: Might actually work, and at the very least will stall for time. Cons: Guardians and Seekers are trained for this kind of thing, and I’m not.
Ink-Talon paced back and forth in his dark, metal-plated prison, desperately trying to come up with any good ideas on how to come out of this in one piece. He’d only been in there for a few minutes, but it was already not going well.
Furthermore, I don’t know what the “treatment” is. For all I know, they’ll just pump in a gas to knock me out or make a special sound that screws with Understanding or any number of wild possibilities. I can’t rely on escaping that way.
Option two: Bargain and beg. Pros: It’s the “civilized” approach, and would inspire more sympathy than aggression or deception. Cons: The chances of anyone actually letting me go are next to none. Best I can hope for is making them feel really guilty when they think back on this later. Not worth wasting time and energy on.
Option three: Look around the room for some flaw in the walls or other openings that can be widened. Pros…
The crow shook his head and blinked as he drew a blank. It made sense that there wouldn’t be any major upsides to the idea, but he could have sworn he’d thought of it for a reason…
No time for this. Just keep thinking. Cons: The chances of me finding something a dedicated builder or crafter overlooked are even lower than persuading a guard.
This was getting him nowhere, but he didn’t have anything else to do. The speed of his pacing increased, only for a talon to catch on something a moment later and send him stumbling for a few steps. Turning around to look for what tripped him, he immediately spotted the culprit. Grooves had been scraped into the floor tiles by his talons as he’d paced, just barely deep enough to trip on.
But these are metal, right? Why is it so soft? Is it… He almost had the answer. The tiles were made of a soft, gray metal that he had absolutely seen before. He knew it. He knew he knew it. He had just been about to recall it. But he suddenly couldn’t make the connection, the answer was gone. Once again, he was drawing a blank, and that scared him. Losing track of a train of thought was one thing, but he’d just had entire thoughts and ideas jarringly vanish out of his head twice in the last few minutes.
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, just focus on escape. Ignore the name of the metal, take a detour. Just focus on the properties and get to the important facts that way. Soft-metal was… poisonous! Right! And it was used for… protection? Bullets! And blocking energy! Is the Gift energy? Is that the treatment? Just keep me in this room until my brain is wiped?
The implications of that idea would have to wait. At least now he knew that nobody was going to be coming in to do anything to him until it was over, so he could discard option one. As far as he could tell, the only possible thing he could do other than sit and wait for the end would be to try and scrape away one of the tiles enough to dislodge it. He picked a tile on the bottom of the door, hoping that if the noise got anyone’s attention, they’d open it to stop him.
Okay, would my beak or talons be better for this? Which is harder? Which can apply more force faster? Ink-Talon expected the answer to just come to him like it always had, but his Attunement had gone quiet. The stream of information about his body and what it was capable of that he’d come to rely on had vanished. The silence was deafening. He was running out of time.
Ink-Talon screeched wordlessly as he threw himself as his target, alternating between talons and beak to scrape away at the poison-metal that was slowly killing him. It was soft for a metal, but it was still metal. It was heavy and rough and slow to break. Even after flailing for as long as his stamina could hold out, he’d yet to expose any of the surface behind it, and his haphazard, rage-fueled technique had been far from efficient, with a lot of energy wasted scratching at other bits than the one he should have focused on. What was worse, he was having trouble breathing.
Come on! I know how to do this! One of us was shown how to do this without Attunement! Who was it? Pearl? Is that her name? Yes, but no, but.. He took a different track. He had literally been breathing the correct way a few minutes ago. It was a fresh memory, easy to recall. If he just tried to focus on what he remembered flying feeling like… There! Keep it up! With his breathing corrected for the moment, he continued scraping away at the corner of the plate, this time taking care to focus all of his efforts on one spot.
Scrape the spot. Singular focus. Nothing else matters. Nothing else. Nothing. Nothing. No things…
Time seemed to fade away as he worked. In fact, lots of things seemed to fade away, but time was the only one he noticed. Eventually, a delighted squawk left the crow’s beak as he finally spotted wood behind the thin plate of soft-metal. He’d gotten through! Now…
Now what? Why was it doing that? Scraping away at things might have been interesting, but it was hard. It decided to stop. Maybe something else interesting was in the room? If not, it would just take a nap until someone opened the door again. The crow felt an odd stab of fear as it turned away from the door, as if it knew something terrible was about to happen. But the feeling quickly faded. It wasn’t important…
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Clarity returned to Ink-Talon’s mind, only for him to find himself a passenger in his own body. The crow moved on its own, thought on its own, felt on its own. It remembered the past enough to know that someone would come to let it out, so it was fine with waiting. It turned to go look around the room and see if anything caught its interest.
“No! No, no, no! Turn around! I’m so close!” The human mind screamed at the bird, and for a moment, it seemed to notice. But that recognition soon faded like everything else, and his pleas went unheard. All that was left were his own thoughts…
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“…But my thoughts should be gone by now, right? It’s just like when I hit my head, except when that happened, I was gone completely. Why is this different?”
“Because this method allows the Gift of Understanding to enter a Transitory Phase, while head trauma does not.” A foreign thought echoed in Ink-Talon’s mind. “It is the final stage before a creature is completely stripped of its Gift, a moment of clarity when the true mind loses control of the body, freeing it to focus entirely on its own thoughts.” The voice was outwardly calm, but he could feel that it was holding itself back. Barely restrained anger and passion and excitement all bubbled just beneath the surface, as if days upon days of pent-up emotions were threatening to explode out all at once. “It is ironic. Delving-Thought rejected my research on Signal Theory years ago for being too dangerous, and yet now it has applied it to something far crueler than anything I would have considered using it for.” He knew exactly who the voice belonged to now.
“You’re… Scholar Ink-Talon.” The human laughed. Not literally, but he expressed the sentiment as best a disembodied consciousness could. “Sorry we had to meet like this, right before I die. I guess the ‘treatment’ works, then?”
“It does, technically, though I suspect that the people waiting outside will not like the result.” Sensing the human’s confusion, the Scholar elaborated further. “When they open the door and restore our connection to our Gift, only one of us will be able to exist, same as before. However, they seem to be operating under the assumption that you and I are part of the same true mind, and that my personality and memories would re-assert themselves over your ‘false’ or ‘damaged’ ones naturally if given the opportunity. In reality, we are distinct and equal. In order for me to be the one who leaves this room, my will would have to supplant yours by force. I would have to attempt to take your life. I refuse.”
“Are you sure?” The human thought the question before anything else. After pausing to collect his proper feelings, he continued. “What I mean is… If you wanted your body and life back, I wouldn’t fight you. They’re not mine to take, and you shouldn’t have to sacrifice yourself for a stranger who has wronged you. Part of me really wants to fight, of course, but I’m not even supposed to-”
“Ink-Talon! Listen to me.” The forcefulness of the Scholar’s request easily halted the human's guilt-ridden ramblings. “You are not a stranger. I have not been conscious alongside you until now, but I have experienced everything you have in this body. It is… impossible to process all of it at once, and I may never get the chance. But I know you! For the past thirteen days, I have been you! You have my complete trust. So please believe me when I say that I want you to be the one to walk out this door.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a request, one that I have no right asking of you. There is something only you can do, you and others like you. If you are willing, I will explain as much as I can in the time we have. If you are not, I do not blame you.” The Scholar’s thoughts were sincere, and completely absent of resentment. He didn’t know how, but he was pretty sure neither of them were capable of lying without the other finding out immediately. Their minds were connected too closely.
“I’m definitely willing. I owe you that much, at least.”
“Thank you, Ink-Talon.”
“That’s your name, not mine, remember? I’ve just been borrowing it.”
“Of course.” If a mind could smirk, the Scholar’s would have been. “You have used it well so far, so I will graciously allow you to continue borrowing it. Please try to return it unblemished.” Now it was teasing him. He could see why the crow had been so popular.
“I’ll do my best.” The human was finally able to relax, though this unfortunately had no effect on the tension in their physical body as it wandered its enclosure. “How long do you think we have before they cut us off? They can’t keep us in here for too long without completely erasing us, can they? I just want to make sure I ask the right questions.”
“In real time, not much. However, disconnected as we are from our physical body, I think I can give us more than enough.”
“You think?”
“Considering that testing this theory would have required me to bring myself or someone I trusted to the edge of oblivion we are currently straddling…”
“Point taken.”
“Try to stay calm as I attempt this. My original estimations only accounted for one true mind to one physical mind. I do not know how you will affect the process.”
Unable to close the crow’s eyes, the human simply attempted to let his mind drift. He wasn’t in any immediate danger anymore. He could just… exist for a moment. And as he did, the world seemed to fade away, only to be replaced by a familiar scene. One that had haunted his sleep since he arrived in this world. The clearing where he and Quiet-Dream first woke up.
“Oh, of course it would be here.” What sounded like an androgynous human voice drew his attention to his left, where a very tiny crow stood, staring up at him. It opened its beak to speak to him. “This clearing is the strongest memory of a place we share independently of each other. For me, it was the final moments I spent as myself. For you, it was your first moments spent as someone else.”
“What did you-” When he heard his own voice for the first time in almost two weeks, his hand shot up to his mouth, only for him to immediately realize that he actually had hands. Normal, human hands, just like he remembered. The crow wasn’t exceptionally tiny. He was just big again. “This can’t be real.”
“It very much is not,” the crow explained. “Think of it like a lucid dream. Our minds are shaping this experience, filling in the gaps in our perception left by our disconnected senses. I am just glad I was correct about this.” It let out a proper sigh of relief. It really hadn’t known if this would work or not. “If I continue to be correct, we should be able to hold a rather lengthy conversation without much real time passing as long as we remain in this state. If I am wrong… At least I got to get a better idea of what your original species looks like. Somewhat.”
“Only somewhat?” The human looked at his hands. They felt normal, but… “Oh.” There was a loose, almost shadowy quality to his form. Like his entire body existed in his peripheral vision, blurred by a lack of focus. “This isn’t right.”
“If I had to guess, our Attunement is to blame. Compared to your previous body, you have a much clearer perception of-” Before it could even finish the theory, the human standing in front of it had vanished, replaced instead by a second crow, identical to itself in every way. “...Being a crow.” The Scholar tilted its head. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“Yes,” the second crow nodded. “Being that way felt wrong. I don’t like towering over others, and I’m… just used to this now. This shape feels more ‘real,’ even in this dream.”
“Right. As long as you are comfortable. Are you ready to continue? I have a lot I need to explain.”
“Absolutely.” The former human extended a wing for a faux handshake, and thankfully the Scholar was quick on the uptake, mirroring the gesture and pressing the inside of its wing against his. “Let’s hear it.”