R U [ I ] N E D

Royal Pain for Royal Gain

Climbing those stairs must've felt to Braedyn what it felt to those who moved on to the Great Beyond. He was basked in the purest of lights he'd ever seen and transported somewhere beyond his mind's own comprehension. So this was what it felt like to walk the mind of another... He couldn't say he disliked the feeling; he felt weightless as he walked down the corridor, strikingly white as the light that had brought him there. So clean and neatly compartmentalized— did all minds look as Callan's did? So much as he might wonder, Brady couldn't let himself get distracted. He had a job to do there, and as much as he liked poking around in the Prince's brain, it wasn't quite as fun when he couldn't get a reaction. From here, he had to find Cal's older memories, which would be quite a ways down the hall, if Erzia was right about how the whole thing worked. She had been up until this point, as far as Brady could tell.

And speaking of Erzia...

Could he interact with them out there even if he couldn't see or hear them? He guessed he'd just have to find out. Speaking aloud to the seeming nothingness, Brady pretended the others were there with him, even imagined their faces as he spoke. "I'm in, looking for those older memories as we speak."

It felt weird to say as we speak, given they weren't really speaking, but Brady shook it off and kept moving. No need to get so hung up on such minor details.

"You'll want to look for something broken, fractured. Even a perfectly amended memory won't look perfect in the mindscape."

Erzia's voice. In his own head.

After a moment of wanting to jump out of his own skin— was that how Callan and Phoena felt when he invaded their privacy with his own powers? ...maybe he owed them an apology— Brady recovered from the odd sensation, though it did leave a dull ache in his mind. As telepath himself, his consciousness wanted to reject the invasion, but since he still heard her, that must've meant that Erzia's powers were stronger than his. He wasn't surprised. Skill was bound to outmatch Selflessness in that regard any way you looked at it. It just was.

"So, uh, how long do you think it'll take exactly? To find these memories?" How long would he be walking down a monotonous hallway, doors perfectly aligned across from each other, spaced side by side in the same fashion. It didn't seem every possible that anything could be out of sorts in a place like that.

"Just give it some time. Be patient."

Which sounded more like shut your trap and keep walking to Brady, so that was what he did. He was starting to get fidgety, like he might simply go on and on with no end to find nothing, when he stopped his step short and pivoted to look at one of the doors. Its hinges were crooked— not by much but enough to leave it hanging slightly ajar, unable to be closed properly. It had to be one of the twisted memories, which meant that Brady could use it to find the rest. The "trail of false realities"— or whatever Erzia had called it.

"I think I might have found one of the memories. I'm going to take a look."

At least the other telepath gave him another hint as to what to expect and what he needed to do going forward. "The two separate memories are going to be sewn together in a sense. At first, the fake one will be easier to access, but the more you can separate the two from one another, the more they'll start to seem like separate entities. They just need to be unraveled, and it should start a chain reaction in the other affected memories too."

Find the truth hidden in the lies... he could do that, so he braced himself and opened the imperfect memory door.

It was from Callan's childhood. If Brady had to guess, the Grand Commander's son couldn't have been older than his early teens. The pair were on a hunting trip, which puzzled Brady itself. They weren't known for being a tight-knit father/son duo, even when Callan was young. Much about the je Dellal family had been shrouded in mystery— the Grand Commander's face, his family... all in the name of protection. The public hadn't actually known that Callan was a Runeholder as well until after he'd abandoned his training at the Academy. He'd had private lessons with a private tutor— just like Phoena and her master Ellinor. It was a common practice with Runeholders, thought to be the best way to tap into their buried potential, but Callan had given it up— given up on himself— rather quickly. Or so the stories said. Maybe his family official revealed him as a Runeholder in hopes that it would spark a sense of duty within him, but that attempt failed, given he never went back.