ℝ𝕚𝕕𝕖 𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟 [Becboc║Ryees]

[Ryees]

 

Rising from the carcass, Gaelyn took a seat on the log lethargically and accepted the flat stone with a quiet, gracious nod. Sweet and savory was a good way to start a day, and for a few minutes of quiet peace, he was able to slip the events of the previous days out of his memory and exist in a moment that did not try to kill him. He found his mind wandering to Ivy, instead, and kept those thoughts private for the moment. The act of pushing those ideas behind his own personal veil recalled to mind the training exercise that was ahead of them that day.

Gaelyn had already seen more than Ivy likely suspected, when he had raked the intruder out of her head the first time. No doubt this exercise would reveal another layer to him, and some part of him, he realized, wanted that. He was beginning to grow curious what made her tick. The cold, snotty bitch that he had thought he knew at the Academy had long been replaced by a much more complex, nuanced human, whose tough outer shell was paper-thin and inflated by the heat thrown off by the roiling sea of emotions bubbling underneath. What first had presented as coldness was a defense; what had presented as irritable was sensitivity. Gaelyn had a better picture now, of what her life had looked like before she came to the Academy. And he could see why she would.

"Aye..." he answered her back. "It's about time we did, I think." He shucked the last mushroom off the stick and tossed it back into the fire, dusting his hands off and turning to face her. Waiting for her to set her plate aside, he regarded her seriously. "You don't have to tell me what it is, but do you have your focus picked out?"

“Mmh,” she replied through her final mouthful, before shuffling her plate off onto the tree trunk. “I do, but I’ll keep it to myself for now. Give you more incentive to try and figure it out.” She rose her eyebrows in Gaelyn’s direction, but there was an underlying twitchiness about her as she turned slightly to face him. “So… where do you wanna do this?”

Crouching before her, he spread his hands. "Right here," he said simply. "I've heard of entire battlegrounds in the minds at a dinner party, wars fought with every combatant in their beds. Unlike physical combat, mental combat can happen anywhere, any time."

“I guess that much, I should already know,” Ivy said quietly, taking a deep breath and then meeting Gaelyn’s gaze. She searched him for a moment before she spoke again. “Alright. I’m ready. Though if you’re thinking about starting an actual war in my head, I should warn you that now might not be the best time. Just sayin’.”

Gaelyn held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Then he reached out, not with his hands, but with the practiced sweep of his thoughts, a pressure that didn’t press on her skin but moved like heat rising off stone. It was subtle at first, no shout of power, no crackling aura, just a tension in the air like the hush before lightning splits a mountaintop.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “Don’t brace everything at once. Just focus on the surface. Keep your mind clear, steady. Hold your anchor, and keep that memory in front.” A breath, and then, “I’m coming in.”

The world didn’t change all at once. The fire still crackled, the dirt still pressed under his legs. But his awareness dipped below, like slipping a hand beneath the surface of still water, and Ivy was there, not just as a presence across from him, but as a constellation of thought and reaction. Her surface was drawn up, cautious but tentative. A first attempt. She was holding something close, just under the surface. A memory or image wrapped around her like a scarf, something warm and protective.

He didn’t try to guess. He wasn’t there yet. Instead, he gathered his will, not brute force, but focused pressure, and reached toward her with the gentlest application of power. A probing brush, like a fingertip testing glass for cracks. Ivy’s outer layer held. For a moment, it held.

Then he gave a simple push, and something shifted. She faltered. Just a flicker of uncertainty, the thought behind the anchor wobbling like a coin spun too slow. And in that slip, he was through. He didn’t push far. The second layer rippled into view, unbidden, as he crossed the threshold: the smell of chalk dust. Cool stone beneath bare feet. Rows of empty chairs. Ivy’s sanctuary, cracked open just wide enough to show a glimpse of it abandoned. A classroom, quiet and still and hollowed by grief. He guess that this was most likely not the anchor she’d chosen.

Gaelyn stopped short. The breach was enough. He pulled back like a hand from a hot stove, withdrawing with more care than force, sealing the layer behind him as he returned to himself. Reality reasserted itself in slow gradients. Birds chirped in the trees. Kisa shifted slightly by the fire. The warmth of sun against his neck became distinct again from the mental warmth of Ivy’s thoughts. Gaelyn opened his eyes.

“You lost your grip,” he said, not unkindly. “Not on the barrier, but on the memory holding it up.” His voice was calm, neutral, a soldier giving field notes. But there was a faint crease between his brows. “I didn’t go deep. Just far enough to see you let it slip.” He didn’t describe what he saw. She’d know. And if she didn’t… well, they’d talk about it in time.

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Try again. Stronger this time. Wrap it tighter. I’m going to press a little harder.”​

 

[Becboc]

As soon as she felt Gaelyn, like a gentle breeze sweeping across her surface, she tensed both mentally and physically. The sensation was nothing like that of the attack but it was the first time that her mind had been touched since then and everything still felt rather… sensitive.

His steady voice however, and the gentleness of his encouragement was what eventually coaxed her into settling, slowly but surely, as she closed her eyes and tried to relax her shoulders… and finally brought her anchor into her mind.

The archives were cool and dark, made of the comfort of shadows and ancient stories long since forgotten. Ivy had always held a fascination for books and their tales, whether it was born of escapism or simple curiosity, a need to know more of the world, both past and present. At first she had escaped to her father's library, to sit and ready companionably with him, side by side, and even in solitude once he had left her. It became a hiding place from disappointment, from her mother, and she supposed she had never truly lost the need for that comfort, even at school.

In the physical world Ivy inhaled deeply, but in her mind she could scent dust and musty pages. She could hear the echoes of her footsteps, from feet planted firmly upon the stone ground beneath, and the odd thump of a book someone retrieved from a shelf too high for them.

She felt… at home. Like she belonged.

Until a pulse rippled the candelabras above her head. The tremor was small at first, like a barely registered earthquake and Ivy held fast, turning to a bookcase beside her and looking for something to focus on, a title she could bury her nose in and use to strengthen the walls of her protection.

But then came the next, harder this time, enough to flicker the candles and dislodge dust from the ceiling. Ivy's heart began to pound as cracks from the impact began in the walls that encased the books, slow at first, like lines of burning lava trickling down the edges of ridged volcano.

It didn't take long however, flr them to reach the top of the room, for them to crack open like one might peel away the layers of a fruit; Ivy couldn't defend herself against this, not when she felt fear and panic and deja vu begin to flood her mind.

Someone was here. She was not alone. She was supposed to be alone in the empty classroom, the one with the chalkboard and too many chairs. Too many chairs for just she and him, a space designed for learning, for lectures and intelligence that he had gifted her with so readily. This was her safe space, this the one part of her that remained untouched by anyone but him… until now.

Everything began to fall away before Ivy had a chance to react, like a gift being gently prized from her gripping hands. She surfaced like she was slipping through troubled waters, feeling first the warmth from the morning sun, hearing next the swish of leaves, seeing Kisa's familiar, shimmering scales…

As soon as she realised where she was and what had happened, Ivy was stumbling from the trunk like a cat who'd just felt the first signs of rain. She didn't hear Gaelyn's words, didn't want to as she rounded on him, fury glimmering in her eyes and flushing her cheeks, her plate from earlier sliding to the ground with an unceremonious clatter.

"What… the hell was that?!" She demanded of him, her breaths coming too quickly. "We didn't agree to go that deep, I didn't give you permission to see—"

Ivy's voice wobbled and for a moment, her mask of attitude slipped just a little to reveal the hurt, the fear fuelling her words before she forced it back into place.

"You went too far, Gaelyn. That place, it's not…" She shook her head, "Just stay out of it, okay? It's off limits. Even to you."

 

[Ryees]

 

Gaelyn didn't flinch. He stayed where he was, seated, elbows resting loosely on his knees, the ash-washed remains of their breakfast cooling between them. Ivy's voice hit like a gust—raw, sharp, full of hurt and accusation—and for one quiet second, he let it echo. Not because he agreed, but because she needed to say it. Then, calmly, he answered her. "No."

He didn't raise his voice and eh didn't harden it. Hust offered the single syllable like a stone dropped in water, disrupting her fury without fighting it. "You were fine," he added. "You lost control for three seconds, and now you're angry because I saw something you weren't ready to show. That's the point of this."

Gaelyn rose with the slow steadiness of someone whose mind was already one step ahead of his body. He didn't come closer, didn't crowd her, but his presence, upright and centered, cast a longer shadow now in the light of the rising sun. "I'm not trying to root around in your past. It doesn't matter what I saw., it matters that I got in." He took one step back, not away from her, but into position. One boot scuffed across dirt and moss as he turned to face her fully. "You want to be ready next time? Then take a breath. And try again."

There was no space for argument in the words, only a moment's worth of mercy, maybe two, to let her recenter. Then, without fanfare or warning, Gaelyn punched back in.

And with no subtlety this time, no brushing wind or coaxing tide. The mental strike came sharp and narrow, like a thrown lance of pressure that hit the outer edge of her mind with a crack of pure intent. It was the exact shape of the attack that had almost claimed her above the tree line, a mirroring echo crafted not to harm but to force recognition. There was no anger behind it, no punishment. Just training. Real training.

The physical world shimmered around them again, trees smearing at the edges of vision like wet paint, colors bleeding as the world gave way to the borderlands of the mind. Gaelyn stood still in the clearing, his face unreadable, but his focus was absolute. This time, the attack didn't test the perimeter. It struck at it, and kept pressing.

The impact came like a pressure drop. Air thinned. Time warped. The mental landscape was forming again—or trying to—but the directness of the incursion made it harder to shape. If Ivy summoned her archives again, the stone might tremble beneath her feet. If she pulled up a shield, it would be tested the instant it rose. And behind the pressure, faint but real, was the sense of Gaelyn. His awareness, cool and focused, holding fast behind the spear of willpower.

The message wasn't subtle.

This is how they come for you.
So show me how you stop them.​

​

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[Becboc]

There was something incredibly infuriating about Gaelyn's calm in the face of her storm and Ivy could only stare at him, as if waiting for him to clap back. Instead, he gave her a simple, one word answer that boiled her blood more than anything else could have.

"No?" She repeated the word quietly and then added, in a tone that barely contained her outrage. "What do you mean… No?"

Watching when he rose, she felt her hands ball into her fists at her sides, her frustration ebbing and flowing with the weight of the breaths that flexed through her chest too quickly. Gaelyn was speaking sense, deep down a part of her knew that, but on the surface? Ivy was rattled; rattled by what he had seen, the part of her that no one saw. She wasn't ready, didn't know if she would ever be, not now, not ever.

Before she had a chance to protest again however, Gaelyn was upon her for a second time.

He only gave her a few seconds notice to find her feet, leaving her scrambling around in a panic that only increased in intensity when she felt it; the lash across her mind, the sensation of the physical world rippling, the intrusion. It was no way near what their enemy had inflicted upon her of course, but it was enough to simulate the gut wrenching, throat closing fear of knowing that someone was attempting to pry open her most vulnerable self.

Though knowing this time that someone was Gaelyn, was at least enough for her to rally herself, until Ivy's panic finally gave way to an emotion she was much, much more familiar with.

Fury, red hot and relentless began to pour through her as she once more planted her feet on the stone of the archives floor that she summoned beneath her, face on the outside and inside world set with grim determination. Tremors were already rumbling along the ceiling and Ivy imagined iron walls shooting up around the stone, reinforcing them until the amount of dust particles dislodged from the flickering lights were lessened.

It gave her time. A moment to breathe - but the pressure didn't let up. She could feel Gaelyn hovering behind her defences, prowling and looking for a way in, with only herself stood between him and the entry that he sought.

That was where she slipped again. Ivy could see the classroom, the chairs, the chalkboards, she could feel the door cracking open bit by bit as her panic started to rise; but then just as the opening became wide enough for someone to slip through? Just as she turned to see his silhouette against the light shining from inside?

Her internal world detonated.

What could only be described as an explosion of shadow and force contracted for a second and then another, before it pushed out with the kind of devastating blow that in the real world she envisioned flattening buildings. Ivy had planted a bomb in the middle of her mind and her own rage had been enough to trigger it. She gritted her teeth through the groan of effort that it took to push them both back out until finally, finally, the world became physical again and she stumbled backwards into it, branches and leaves snapping once more underfoot.

She and Gaelyn remained, facing one another like they had been when this had started, but Ivy did not look jubilant, or even smug in the aftermath of what could be considered an achievement. Instead she looked… cold, closed off, her chest rising and falling too quickly, her lips curling back so that she could growl the warning that left her lips before she even had a chance to breathe.

"I said…" She tried through her thinning pants. "Stay the fuck out of my head, Gaelyn."

And then before he could answer her she turned on her heel and began towards the trees, with no purpose or direction other than a need for space; her own message just as clear as his had been.

We’re done here.​