Carem sat beside the playground doing his best not to look sketchy as he observed the children while he whittled on a toy.

The toy was for cover, in case someone asked him why he was sitting at a playground. He’d already given away several of them in the last couple days since he’d begun practicing ilethan mind-magic. In just a few days, they had come to know him as ‘the toy guy’.

Children adapted quickly.

Empathy had been easy, simply copying other people’s behavior as closely as possible while trying to use Bent as a sail to catch and experience their emotions, understand why they felt the way they did. Carem had plenty of experience handling other people’s thoughts and beliefs, and he was able to make significant progress on just the first day, prodding his Bent out of his body into the patterns that felt like old habits.

They were complicated, to be sure, but he felt like he was uniquely suited for them, imagining impossible shapes in higher dimensions with…Well, not ease, but certainly not terribly difficult.

Now he was trying to build on empathy and branch out to mind-reading and implanting emotions.

There were a few drawbacks to this.

Mind reading was simply an advanced version of empathy, very difficult to do with any accuracy starting out. It would be best for him if he was trying to read the mind of someone whose thoughts weren’t exactly kept under wraps.

i.e. A child.

Additionally, implanting emotions, the first step to mind control, was insanely difficult without a Skill on anyone with a System, and if the target’s Stability was high, not only would the spell not take, the System would have time warn them of external influence.

The perfect solution to both problems lay in the chubby-cheeked little brats running back and forth at full speed, flinging dirt and rocks at each other while their mothers took a much-needed break.

The copper-collared matrons spoke to each other about hopelessly mundane subjects, making Carem want to bit his tongue in frustration as the babble flowed over him like a wave of pointless.

He wasn’t here to get insight into these women; he already had plenty of that. Carem’s hand unconsciously went up to his bag of teeth, lingering there for a moment before he returned to the knife, carving the scales on the wooden sliver.

Carem eyed two brats playing peacefully with dirt and one of his wooden figurines, a large fish with a gaping mouth and big, jagged teeth. They were playing some kind of sea-going adventure.

Carem built the sail, an invisible Bent construct shaped a bit like a slightly bowed disk, the concave side pointed toward the closer brat sitting in the mud.

No,~~~ got to ~~ ~~~~~~~ last ~~~~

“No, you got to be Allastan last time!” one of them screeched at the top of their lungs, a fraction of a second after the scrambled thought echoed through his mind. Another one of the benefits of working with children.

They immediately pronounced their thoughts at the top of their lungs, allowing him to verify the accuracy of his reading and adjust his practice. It would be nearly impossible if he were trying this on an adult who often weighs the result of their speech before speaking.

To be sure, there were adults who spoke exactly as they thought, but they ywere still adults, and far more perceptive than children.

Carem folded up the invisible sail and brought it back into his body, hiding his black Bent veins beneath his other hands, his mind aching slightly from the effort of manipulating Bent without a Skill to assist.

Now, let’s try a something a little more intrusive.

Carem packaged up all his frustration and anger, folding it over and over, massaging it into a package of undulating Bent that seemed to leech the color out of it like a piece of paper sucking up water.

I don’t know exactly how this works, but let’s try it like…this.

Carem wrapped the colored writhing Bent shape into a tight arrow of energy, pointed his finger beneath his concealing palm, and let the arrow fly toward the temple of a little girl playing house with a friend.

“What are you doing?” A woman’s voice interrupted Carem’s concentration, making him flinch. The invisible arrow went wide, and with a soft pock, there was a thumb-sized hole in a nearby tree just past the little girl’s face.

Carem reigned in his disappointment and looked up into the face of a lovely girl, unmarried, and young. She looked at him curiously, eyeing the half-finished sliver in his hand.

“My sister and nephew died recently.” Carem lied, simultaneously setting up his primitive mind-reading sail. No time like the present to get some practice.

Oh ~~, ~~~~~ terrible!

“Oh no, that’s terrible!” She said with a gasp.

“I wasn’t particularly close at the time, but it woke something in me, I suppose,” Carem said, glancing down at the unfinished toy in his hands. “I felt like I wanted to get to know him, but it was already too late. Before I knew it, I was sitting at playgrounds, making toys.”

He waggled the unfinished wood with a self-deprecating grin.

Intimate details shared, bonding initiated, engage reciprocal sharing, Carem thought, bored and resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

“My father died when I was eight,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I think I can understand what you’re going through, just a little.”

I killed my father, then myself in my father’s body. I doubt it.

Carem half-chuckled, half scoffed. Engage disbelief, prompting her to push more forcefully.

“No, really,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Her hands were warm. “I spent years trying to find a way to replace the…” Her monkey brain struggled for the words. “The potential that I’d lost.”

Ah, so that’s why she’s comfortable approaching older men.

“My mother died in childbirth,” Carem said with a shrug, sprinkling in bits of truth in his tale. “My father in a brawl when I was fourteen.” – technically true – “ My sister was my last relative, and I hadn’t seen her since she was given away when I was four. Hearing about her existence and her death in the same sentence,”

Carem hung his head.

“It was just a blow to realize how alone I am.”

I Want to ~~~~ him ~~~~ better. The girl’s thoughts tumbled through Carem’s mind haphazardly, and Carem suspected that if he hadn’t had so much practice drawing the line between his own thoughts and those of other people, he might not even be able to parse that much, they came so fast and laden with emotional baggage.

“I guess that’s what got me thinking about children,” Carem said, struggling mightily to maintain three lines of thought: carving the sliver, maintaining the spell, and maintaining the lie he was feeding the credulous young woman.

“Have you thought about settling down, marrying, having kids?” she asked, sidling closer to him on the bench.

“No, I –“ Carem began to reflexively refuse before he caught himself. He honestly had never even considered such a thing. It was beyond the pale. The idea of himself in the role his own father had played…

The thought made all the hairs on his neck stand up in disgust.

But… He glanced over at the young woman invading his personal space, then out at the matronly women scowling at her and whispering to each other.

A family would be the perfect practice dolls. They would be dependent on him, and he would have dominion over them. The government would side with him were his wife ever to claim any wrongdoing.

A sharp pain interrupted his thoughts as his knife caught a knot and his wrist carried through, flicking the blade forward and through the meat of his thumb.

He hissed in pain and clamped his palm down over the wound, blood oozing out between his fingers.

That’s a gusher! Carem’s father’s words echoed through his mind, forcing him to recall his father proudly demonstrating how far his nicked finger squirted.

She must have interpreted his grimace of disgust as a need for assistance.

“Here, let me help!” she said, tugging a small cloth loose from her garb and prying his hand away before binding his thumb, stopping the bleeding in a matter of seconds.

“Much appreciated, miss…”

“Erina Toren” She said with smile.

“Carem Sageva.” He said, introducing himself.

One of the children tumbled to the ground and started bawling, and she stood up with the speed of experience, brushing the child off and setting him back on his feet. The little boy got over the pain and continued playing as if he hadn’t just been bawling his eyes out.

“My younger brother Seeva,” she said apologetically as she came back. “Mother simply can’t watch all of them by herself.”

“I see,” Carem said, glancing at her, then out to her brother.

Now there’s a way to get rid of this annoyance.

He painstakingly recreated the Bent contruct, dying it in the the emotions of frustration and anger. This time, however instead of a sharp, hard image, like an arrow, he settled on something penetrating yet gentle, like a vapor. A mist of anger.

He pushed it forcefully toward the boy playing with her brother, and allowed it to seep into the boy’s skull through his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. A moment later, the boy picked up the wooden toy and struck her brother over the head with all the force a child could muster, sending the little boy to the ground with a bleeding scalp.

Seeva wailed at full volume while the other boy’s mother pulled him away and spanked him mercilessly, Erina pulling him away from the playground and wrapping his head with makeshift bandages before apologizing profusely to Carem and hauling her brother away.

In a matter of seconds she was gone, and Carem could now honestly say he’d successfully used mind magic to manipulate a situation.

Carem glanced down at the bandage on his thumb, rubbing it and enjoying the sharpness the pain brought to him as he irritated the wound.

Children, huh?

“You seem like a nice man,” One of the older women said, sitting down beside him, her jowels drooping on the side of her face as she met his eyes.

“Stay away from that girl. She’s used goods.”

“And does everyone believe that?” Carem asked raising a brow.

“Everyone knows that. Her whore of a mother sold her first Forming Day to Debian Gor to act as his Trial Wife, but the man didn’t claim her. Don’t be fooled by that pretty face, if he didn’t claim her after that, there’s something deeply wrong underneath. She’s definitely not a virgin, and most likely got something wrong in the head.”

“Good to know, thank you.” Carem said with a fake smile, his list of information about Elina growing, although gossip was to be taken with an enormous grain of salt. Carem ran through the list of traits that made her an ideal wife candidate, and was surprise when it largely matched the list of traits he looked for in a woman to absorb.

She’s likely got poor self-esteem, habitually seeks out older men to ingratiate herself with, so they take care of her. Docile, helpful. Spurned by others, increasing reliance on me as her connection to the outside world. She’s beginning to seem like the perfect prey.

The jowel-y woman nodded to herself and moved away, returning to her tittering friends. Carem made sure thank her by driving her brat to bite her leg until she bled when she retrieved the child from the field.

The sight of the woman screaming and trying to detach the rabid boy was the first thing to get a genuine laugh out of him.

A few hours later as the sun was going down, Carem retired back to his home. He spent hours sitting in his rocking chair, running his fingers through the teeth in his bag as he rocked back and forth, staring out at nothing as he sank into deep thought.

He stood out, being his age, as wealthy as he was, without a wife.

Standing out was a good way to get noticed.

Carem need the camouflage of a family, or sooner or late, someone would start to pry. Carem couldn’t exactly pretend to be gay, plenty of women from the pleasure quarter knew him intimately, and he didn’t want to adopt a successor as part of a ruse.

****

To Erina it must have seemed like a whirlwind romance, but to Carem, it was a banal slog. Over the course of several weeks he ‘swept her off her feet’, proving that he didn’t care about the rumors about her –He actually didn’t, but not for the reason she thought – he courted her in person and bought a house for her mother and her myriad brothers and sisters, taking on the burden of supporting all of them as a gesture of good faith after she’d already promised to become his.

Why did he go that far for a woman when he could simply purchase a trial wife during her Forming Day like Debian Gor? He certainly wasn’t lacking the funds. It was the beaten down, harsh life experience that tasted the best on his Roots, and so he must have unconsciously decided that was best for a wife as well.

Everything he did was calculated to cause this girl to fall in love with him, and deepen her perceived debt to, and connection with him.

Finally, when she trusted him completely, she told him about her Forming Day. When she’d been taken as a trial wife by Debian Gor. She’d actually already had her System since she was nine and snuck off to play near a slaughterhouse.

She lied to everyone about it, concealing that she’d gotten a Break, because if people knew her first Break had been spent, her value as a wife would be greatly diminished.

And so when she had taken part in the Breaking Day with the other children her age, and Debian Gor expressed an interest in her, she’d been terrified. The older man had expected her to pick up cooking and cleaning and nightly services quickly and easily, but she’d been clumsy and panicking, so the man had sent her back to her mother, spreading a rumor that she was useless as a woman.

Well, that was nothing a second Break couldn’t fix. Sure she had a Skill for Hide and Seek and higher than average Body for a woman, but Carem didn’t see the problem, from a cold, analytical point of view.

He arranged another Break for her at their wedding, taking advantage of one of his properties that handled slaughtering livestock. They gathered everything they had and some livestock from beyond, and killed the lot of them, raising the Warp concentration in a little miniature Breaking day party. A few of the men who worked for him even reached their third break, to much celebrating.

Elina fainted with a smile on her face.

During her second Forming Day, she passionately devoted herself to learning the Skills her husband requested of her, all the normal Skills a married woman would be expected and more besides. Skills such as Bent Manipulation, Support, and Mental Conduit, allowing him easy access to her mind.

She showed no hesitation when he asked her to learn the Mental Conduit skill, shrugging and joking that she had already trusted him with every other part of her, so why not?

It took weeks of sustained effort, but with a willing subject, Carem was able to master the basics of ilethan Mind magic, using them to shape his bride into something more than she used to be.

I can honestly say she’s not unhappy, Carem thought, idly running his thumb over the ridges and peaks of Elina’s teeth as she knelt beside his rocking chair, her mouth held open for him, storing longingly into his eyes, while her mother and siblings busied themselves cleaning his home, sparing not a single glance for their oldest sister.

They didn’t remember her anymore, but it didn’t feel right separating them.

~I love this.

~this is right.

~Feels so good

~So wonderful

It gave him a chuckle every now and then, listening to their happy thoughts while he caressed the hard ridges of Elina’s teeth. The only part of her he wouldn’t change.

I think…I think I’ve come as far as I can without some kind of a challenge. Carem thought to himself, frowning in thought. He needed to try meeting the foreigners.

It had been weeks of lying low to avoid the attention of the foreigners, but if they hadn’t come after him by now, they most likely either didn’t know his face, or didn’t care if he’d killed the Ilethan girl.

“Bent.”

Elina obediently held out a hand, and he put her fingers in his mouth, watching her shudder in expectation as she used Bent Manipulation to condense Bent inside his mouth.

26/32 Bent remaining.

27/32 Bent remaining.

“Good girl.” He said, sending her a pulse of primal pleasure through the connection between them, causing her to shake slightly.

A man’s gotta train his animals, after all.