***Tirnanog, Aerie Flagship***

***Vanya***

I glared at the communication device, treating it just like the chalice of poison it represented.

Only once showing the stupid thing the contempt it deserved, did I turn my attention to the traitor as my mind went through a myriad of possibilities. Previously, I had discarded them as too unlikely to consider. Oh, I hadn't ignored the idea of traitors, but without investigations finding any solid proof, committing more resources to a witch-hunt was out of the question.

I poked lightly at Brook's surface thoughts, just to test his resistance while I thought.

My mental abilities may seem like clairvoyance to outsiders, but I was painfully aware they were anything but. Based on what I knew I could easily come up with a myriad of scenarios for the future, but preparing and reacting to every single possibility was simply impossible.

Now, a very unpleasant scenario had turned likely enough that it could no longer be ignored.

“Gaia's sagging tits!” I cursed.

“Language!” Tianna reprimanded me immediately.

“She has a point,” Teresa Frost commented drily while glaring at Brook.

I turned to the Aerie elder and bowed to her. “With your permission, I would request the assistance of everyone you can mobilize who has the Second Sight mutation. One communication device in the hands of a Thich delegation is one thing. A second one in the hands of one of my people opens unpleasant possibilities.”

Teresa clicked her tongue. “Where there's one...”

She left the sentence unfinished. There was no need to spell it out.

“There are more,” Magnus did so nonetheless.

He stood with Gunner next to the cell's entrance. The two had called us unexpectedly to the ship's jail and presented the most recent result of Gunnar's investigation.

I closed my eyes and winced. “At this point, it is a possibility we can no longer exclude. My predecessor's corruption, inviting the enemy into our halls, and now this. I have closed my eyes for far too long. It is high time to clean the house.”

“But shouldn't we have found hints if there are more of these traitors?” Tianna asked. “I vetted everyone in a government position after the Thich delegation revealed their true colours.”

“I am not concerned with people in high positions,” I replied stoically. “They have something to lose. But...” I sighed before I continued. “Greta housed the Thich delegation for months. More than enough time to corrupt some people in low positions. Social pariahs without prospects and not much to lose. At least from their narrow-minded point of view.” I gestured at Brook. “Like him. And if there are just a few more, they could do untold damage to our war efforts.”

I narrowed my eyes and dug a little deeper into Brook's mind when I found what felt like a weak point, so I applied a bit of pressure. He shuddered and to my astonishment, he resisted the intrusion.

“I am afraid breaking through his mental defence will take me some time.” I chewed on my inner cheek as I considered the implications of Brook's resistance. “Someone trained him and trained him well. A very powerful psychic.”

“I am surprised he isn't already spilling all his secrets as powerful as you are,” Magnus commented.

“Oh, he would be spilling if I desired to,” I replied. “But if I tear apart his mind with force, I might not get as much information as I could if I had been careful. It's like having a porcelain vase with information written on the inside. If I carefully peer in through a hole and take my time, I will eventually learn everything there is to know. Alternatively, I can just crush it and try to put the pieces back together. If I do that, I will get at least some information very quickly, but I have no guarantee of ever restoring all the information.”

It went without mention that doing it the hard way would leave Brook as a babbling idiot. We would either have to put him down, or I would have to invest the time to painstakingly put him back together. Bluntly said, I wasn't willing to invest so much time in someone of Brook's calibre.

I hummed as I poked yet another spot, causing Brook to twitch. “Minds are very complex puzzles.”

“Then I suppose we should stop distracting you,” Teresa commented and turned towards Magnus. “Thank you very much for your help. There is no way to tell what could have happened if this spy was allowed to roam around freely.”

Magnus raised his hands. “Oh, please don't praise me for finding the bastard. Gunnar did all the work. I was only there for the final step of the investigation.”

“Of course.” Teresa gave Gunnar a nod of acknowledgement. “We thank you for your assistance and expertise in this manner.”

“Oh, there is no need.” Gunnar scratched the back of his head. “If my people join forces with yours, we would be stupid not to give it our best.”

She turned back to Magnus. “And about Astra. I have heard she was badly injured?”

Magnus nodded. “She was, but the doctors say she will be fine. Just has to stay still for a week or two.” He laughed. “Can't say the kids will have anything to complain about if she is forced to stay at home for a few days. Isaac will be delighted.”

Teresa sighed in relief and lost her serious expression. “Indeed. I have yet to take a few days off to get to know my newest grandkids. This might be the best opportunity before the conflict starts heating up again.”

They were about to leave when a guard interrupted them by entering the cell. She saluted and nodded at one of the guards who were set to watch the prisoner. “I am here to relieve the guard.”

I would have thought nothing of it, paying a change of shift no more heed than any other normal procedure. If something hadn't tingled at the back of my neck.

My Precognition was turning haywire, so I surveyed the room for a possible reason.

Naturally, my eyes went to the only thing which had changed inside the room since the sensation started. Was it time for a change of shift? Why now? Why was a simple guard stumbling so blatantly into the cell instead of waiting outside for the high-profile people to finish their business?The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I blinked, suddenly noticing the subtle psychic influence which was worming its way through the room and into my mental defences. Upon examining it, I found it was an attempt to suggest that everything was alright.

So I clamped down on my mental defences and returned my attention to the newcomer.

The new guard felt like a human, looked like a human, and even behaved like a human, but she was anything but. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong exactly, but people with my power set came to know what a human mind should feel like. And more generally, what a human looked like.

Just like a botanist may learn to tell two very similar and yet distinctly different plants from one another at a glance after handling them in the thousands.

Whatever this woman was, upon a second look I knew immediately it was nothing but a crafted shell. A very convincing shell, but a shell nonetheless. Not only that, there were all the small imperfections. The way her eyes' movements didn't match the focus of the iris. Or the a tad bit too smooth movements which reminded me of things which had no business in human company.

My mind tallied up all these hints within a fraction of a second after turning my full attention to the newcomer. Individually, all these things could be explained by one unusual mutation or another. But put together with the fact that my psychic power slid off this woman's mind like it had an oily coating, I could only draw one conclusion.

I pointed my finger at the newcomer and retreated from her, all too aware of my physical weakness. “Kill her! Kill her now! She's not human!”

Everyone in the room looked at me, then followed my finger to the nameless guard, reacting too damned slow. The only one who drew her knife without question was Teresa before she stepped between me and the guard.

Faster than I could follow, the guard moved. Her skin unfurled like a tapestry and she crashed into my closest friend. Claws ripping, a barbed tongue slicing, and Teresa was thrown into me and we went down as the thing's carefully crafted mind came undone, revealing the horror beneath.

Just like its body, it unfolded into something utterly inhuman, blasting out raw emotion like a small star. The thing was fear incarnate, turning itself into what I could only call a psychic bomb.

I shuddered and tried to combat the raw power of this attack, pushing it away from everyone else, but it was to no avail as the alien mind overwhelmed me. All I could do was hold onto my rationality as my more basic instincts screamed to flee.

The guards were pushed back, not by physical force, but by their raw inability to confront this horror. In front of this thing all humans, all who knew fear were nothing but prey, unable to confront it, unable to fight.

The ship began to tilt slightly as something went wrong on the bridge. It looked like not only this room was affected. Faced with this creature's psychic power, all who came in contact with it knew nothing but to flee or to remain still in shock, incapable of action.

Faced with this thing, the sea of human minds on this ship parted like frightened sheep.

All but one.

A single man crashed into the creature's back, a laughing man clad in armour.

He lifted it like a doll and brought it down on one knee with a crunch. Yet it seemed unfazed as it wound itself out of his grasp and returned the favour with a slash of a clawed hand. Just looking at the thing was hard, as the furling patterns on its writhing skin seemed adverse to the mind.

In turn, the laughing man was unaffected and blocked the attack with his armour.

I was still trying to force back the psychic fire which had been set loose as they fought, lightning sparking between them. Containing the mental power made my head want to explode.

The thing was inhumanly fast, but the laughing man was faster. As they traded blows, a blade slid out from beneath his gauntlet and stabbed the thing in the side. Still, the creature caught the hidden blade before it could cause vital damage. They wrestled for control over the blade before the laughing man head-butted the monster and used the moment it was dazzled to tackle it against the far wall.

The airship's reinforced cell walls held, but the hardwood cracked and shuddered beneath the impact.

Since it was impossible to mentally grasp the creature, I turned my focus to the laughing man, hoping I could help him somehow. But just as when I had tried to look into the pair's minds previously, there were dozens, maybe hundreds of minds at work within Magnus all at once.

And all of them knew fear, except for the laughing man who now held the creature by its throat, choking it with glee.

“You are not fearing me as you should, laughing man!” the creature rasped, alien and yet understandable. It grasped at the hands which held it, but Magnus’ fingers could just as well be steel as they combined with slithering filaments encasing the creature’s neck.

Surprisingly, the laughing man stopped, not laughing like before, but still chuckling. “And why should I? I fought worse things than you.”

“All humans know fear!” the creature answered. “I looked into your minds and it is an inseparable part of you!”

“Aah, but am I?” the laughing man questioned. “Human, that is?”

“You are wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!” the thing concluded, denying reality like some child.

Its captor only nodded.

“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful,” the laughing man mused as his hands wrung the creature's neck just a little bit tighter, the slightly pointed fingertips digging into its writhing skin.

The creature's barbed tongue shot out, sliding off the laughing man's faceplate as it tried to find a weak spot. It tried to dig its tongue into the less protected area between the chest plate and the helmet where the neck was exposed.

Dozens of filaments answered, catching the sinewy intruder and locking it in place.

“You will not end me. You are prey!” the creature blasted the area not with a scream, but with yet another purely mental assault. The raw power almost brought me to my limits.

“But I will,” the laughing man replied, sounding amused by the creature's claim. “For I am waiting at the end of everyone's path. Whether you challenge the world or the multiverse itself, at the end you will face... me.”

The creature's neck finally snapped as arching electricity charred its skin and armoured fingers dug through flesh and sinew, separating the monster's head from its shoulders.

And with its death, I was suddenly free again. My mind throbbed as if I had tried to combine the worst migraine with an attempt to brain myself.

“Vanya!” Teresa rolled off of me and pulled me to my feet. “Are you alright?”

“Physically, yes. Mentally, no.” I held my head as tears began to well up in my eyes. My head felt like it had been split in two. Whatever the thing was, I would never repeat my attempt to suppress its psychic bomb. “I tried to suppress it, but it was just too damned powerful!”

Upon returning my attention to Magnus, I found him ripping out the creature's tongue. Then he threw the monster's head up in the air, having it spin it before catching it again. “To be or not to be. That's the question. I think I will mount you on a wall as a trophy.”

All around us, people slowly regained their wits.

Teresa gestured at the guards. “You, run to the bridge and find out why the ship is still tilting! You, join him and return with a damage report as soon as possible. We need to know how far the effect spread. How many ships were affected?”

The two guards she had given orders to ran off.

“The ship may have been affected, but I doubt the effect spread to the whole fleet,” I reassured her. “Psychic effects exponentially lose in power with distance. It was powerful. More powerful than anything I encountered before, but it wasn't strong enough to reach out more than a kilometre or two.”

“Let’s hope so. Though, that's still far enough to affect some nearby support vessels,” Teresa replied. “And why was Magnus unaffected? I am not a dedicated psychic, but I received extensive training in dealing with mental attacks and I was utterly incapable of doing anything!”

I pursed my lips, my eyes drifting warily to the man who had saved us. How to explain? Insanity? Multiple personality disorder? I wasn’t quite sure what Magnus and his partner were at this point, but somewhere along the line, their mental state had left the ranks of normal humans behind.

“It’s the sub-personalities!” Magnus replied, less worried than I would be in his shoes. “One of them is just badass!”

I almost did a double-take. “Badass!?”

Staying quiet would probably be better, but I just couldn't do it any more. “Badass!? I have no clue what is going on in your head, or what you ate to get the mutation which is messing with your head, but whatever this ‘sub-personality’ is you have up there, it is utterly insane! I have never felt anything like it! It’s a psychopath! It has no concept of fear and utterly relishes combat of any form. And that's it! It literally has no other purpose!”

Magnus smiled at me, sending a shiver down my spine. “Don’t worry. On the flip side, he is one of the happiest dudes I ever met. But enough about me. We should worry about what happened to the ship and the crew. I can’t imagine it’s a good thing if everyone suddenly stops what they are supposed to be doing on a vessel like this.”