“What happened?” Zac asked Mahon as they rested, waiting for their next fight.

“It’s Nightmare again.”

“You used the Flow?!”

“No. In a sense it’s comforting, it’s not the Flow that failed me. It’s just me. The Flow was emphasizing it, but not causing it. I still have some kind of… blockage. I felt it. My mind freezes, and I’m instinctively using Nightmare as a reference. It’s so frustrating! It’s like a piece is missing somewhere but I don’t know what to do.”

Zac looked concerned as he put his hand on Mahon’s shoulder.

“Ah… Maybe you can talk about it with Elmer? He is used to both worlds, he may be able to help you.”

Mahon nodded in silence as he sat down to rest. When their next fight came, Mahon was extra careful about his strange condition, but their opponents were not strong enough and they won the fight without too much trouble. During their last fight, however, it happened again as Mahon dueled a strong First Green, and he lost miserably after another awful attack.

“Twenty laps! Let’s go!” Slander screamed after the fights ended.

Mahon turned his frustration to the running exercise and as the other students gave up one after the other, he clenched his teeth and pursued. Mahon was still among the weakest in his group and yet the best students dropped one after the other, while he persevered. Some were two times stronger and two times more enduring than him, but they all gave up around the twelfth lap, while he continued. Mahon ignored them and pushed himself even further.

As he started his fifteen laps, the last other student abandoned, and he was left alone to run his sixteenth lap. The soreness in his muscles prevented him from feeling anything below his waist, but he continued his lap anyway. One step after the other, Mahon persisted, relentless. As he started his seventeenth lap, Slander appeared beside him and jogged at his pace.

“How can you be so slow?! I asked for running, not walking! Give it your all!”

Mahon ignored the instructor’s flood and focused only on the path in front of him. Like a mental blinder, his will blocked any other information than his two legs moving forward and the number of laps he had to do.

“Three more! Don’t stop now, you snail!”

The insults and encouragement didn’t affect him as he transformed all his frustration and rage from the last fight into energy for his current hardship. Venting his anger at himself for not understanding what happened to him, he clenched his teeth and continued his mad run. Two laps before the end, however, his legs gave up and Mahon collapsed on the ground under the eyes of Slander.

“What you doing, mollusk?! Get up and move your ass!”

But Mahon was too tired to even move and after another look, Slander left him alone.

“Training is over!”

Zac approached and extended his hand towards his friend, laying on the floor. Mahon puffed and grabbed Zac’s hand, pulling himself back up.

“Thanks.” Mahon grumbled in answer.

“Ah, don’t be so grumpy because of the fights. You see Elmer tonight, right?”

Their lessons had been erratic since they had to patrol more often and Mahon had recovered most of his strategy senses, but they still managed to meet once in a while. Mahon nodded and followed Zac as they went to the canteen.

The next lessons passed in a blur as Mahon dwelled on what happened to him. He didn’t pay much attention during Yordar’s lesson nor during his specialized lessons. When it was time to meet Elmer, he dragged his feet to Yordar’s house and knocked at the door. The professor opened a bit later and led them to what he called his study room, that is the messy room with countless books, maps, figurines and other tools used in strategy.

“You seem to be a bit off color today, Mahon. What’s going on?” Elmer asked.

Mahon sighed as he told Elmer and Yordar what was happening to him.

“I’ve never noticed something like that in our session...”

“Yes, me neither. But I think it has to do with the slow pace of strategy decisions.”

“Slow pace? You hardly have a few minutes to make a decision in most of our scenarios!”

“No, I meant, regarding a sword fight, it’s nowhere close. When I have a bit of time to think, it’s easy to distinguish between Nightmare and Ratho. If I'm actively thinking, I don’t have any problem. But when the need arises for me to think in an instant, almost reflexively. Then I mess up half the time.”

“What exactly happens?”

“I'm not even sure myself. At first I thought it was the Flow, but now…”

“Oh, you can Flow in Ratho too?” Yordar intervened in their discussion.

“Yes. I mean, not exactly. Every time I immerse myself in the Flow, It lasts a second before I’m tossed out. I thought it was the Flow but I think it’s more that all my instincts are multiplied and thus I come back to these Nightmare things.”

“Wait, slow down a bit. Can you describe first what Flow in Nightmare looks like?”

“Yes, sure. In fact, I don’t think it’s far from what you described yourself in one of your lessons. You feel extremely focused. Every detail seems unmistakable. For me, it also manifests in some sort of rhythm. It’s like I can see the elementary components of a move, a person, an object and by taking into account these components, I can rule them. That’s what mostly happens during fighting, anyway.”

“During fighting? Do you mean you also can Flow out of a fight?” Yordar asked, intrigued.

Mahon shrugged as he answered. “In Nightmare, yes. When I meditate or train, I usually Flow too.”

“Really? What else can you do while Flowing?”

“What do you mean? Can’t you just Flow anytime? It’s just useless to Flow while walking but…”

“You can Flow while walking?” Yordar interrupted, astonished.

“Uh… Yes?”

“Monster…” Elmer murmured while shaking his head, dejected.

“Whatever, let me summarize. You can Flow as simply as snapping your fingers in Nightmare, but when you try to do that in Ratho, you just… fail?”

“Hmm, not exactly. I didn’t try to Flow outside of fighting yet, but what happens during fights is that I can enter the Flow but I’m tossed out a second after because I can’t… stay… synchronized?”

Mahon moved his hands in frustration as he couldn’t put words on what he felt.

“I’m not an expert in Flow, but I think I may know one…” Yordar started, but Mahon interrupted him.

“I don’t think it has to do with Flow. It’s just that It emphasizes the problem. I’m not sure, but I think some of my instincts are still screwed. My mind knows exactly what I should do and I’m sure I can do it easily. But when I’ve to do it in fast-paced situations, it somehow fails. It’s like there is a gap between what I know in Ratho and what I know In Nightmare, even though I’m perfectly able to translate from one to another…”

Elmer and Yordar exchanged a glance before smiling with concerned looks at Mahon.

“I’m not sure I can help you with that. I’ve never felt the same.”

“I agree with Elmer… To me, it sounds just like a mental blockage, Mahon. You shouldn’t have any problem now.”

Mahon sighed, dejected. “The worst thing is, it’s like it’s becoming worse and worse. At first it was just while Flowing but now even just fighting a bit fast seems to trigger it. I don’t know what to do.”

“If it’s just a mental blockage, I’m sure there are some easy solutions you could try. For example, we could bombard you with questions about strategy with Elmer and you try to answer as fast as you can. Just rely on your instinct and answer whatever comes to mind.”

Mahon looked at his teachers, unsure, but Elmer nodded and flashed him an encouraging thumbs up.

“Let’s do that, I’m sure it will help.”

Yordar and Elmer took turns asking Mahon strategy questions, but they were actually quite limited in short questions about strategy that Mahon could answer on the fly. Strategy was more of a deep thinking subject and after five minutes nothing happened, so they dropped it.

“I didn’t see any problem there, Mahon. You answered perfectly and even when mixing questions about Nightmare and Ratho, you were always spot on.” Elmer concluded as he sat down on a nearby chair, gulping a full glass of water after their continuous flood.

“I didn’t feel anything either. I’m not sure it worked.” Mahon answered.

“Maybe you could try to Flow while we present you with more difficult strategy problems?” Yordar suggested.

“Good idea. Let’s try that.” Elmer added.

In front of the two professors' enthusiasm, Mahon felt grateful for their help. He took a few deep breaths and, as Yordar and Elmer prepared some simple but complex scenarios, he immersed in the Flow.

Breath in. Breath out.

As usual, the scene seemed to slow around him as Yordar presented the first problem to him. Part of Mahon’s mind listened attentively to what he said, while another was already studying the map and disposition of the units. His brain worked into overdrive as a solution started to build itself in his mind, piece by piece.

Mahon almost visualized the solution when an enormous puzzle piece crushed the delicate assemblage he was erecting, and he was jolted out of the Flow, the backslash even making him jump in his chair as he fell backward. Yordar grabbed the chair the next instant and stabilized Mahon.

“Did it work?”

Mahon nodded as he took another look at the problem.

“Wait a minute. I’m going to try something.”

He carefully read the instructions and, as he took his time, he solved the problem without too much of an issue. He sighed deeply and turned to his still silent teachers.

“I think that’s it. The problem is simple enough to be solved without the Flow. But when I use the Flow, I switch from an active thinking to a passive one. An instinctive one. I don’t know how to better describe it. And it is when I switch to this mode of thinking that I mess up.”

Elmer nodded once at Mahon’s words while frowning. “I’m not sure I completely get what you meant, but now that we know how to trigger it, we can try a few different things.”

The trio spend the evening experimenting with Mahon’s problem. They approached it from different angles, as both Elmer and Yordar were much like scientists. Methodically, they tried different stimuli, different reactions and noted everything they noticed from Mahon’s behavior.

The difficult part of the problem was that only Mahon knew when it failed. When Mahon was fighting and he completely missed, his mistake was evident to all. But since everything now happened in his mind, only he could see his failure. He tried his best to describe how it happened to the two veterans, but since they had never experienced this specific problem themselves, they were of little help.

Still, they tried their best to help Mahon, but after long hours of unfruitful experiments, they gave up. Although they were convinced that it was just a phase and that his mental blockage would shortly disappear after some time, Mahon wasn’t so sure. He could almost see a missing part in his thinking process. After so many tries with Yordar and Elmer, he could almost picture the shape of something missing. He had trouble expressing how he felt, but he knew from deep inside that without this little piece, even with a hundred more years, he would not be back to his former self.

With that bit more insight about himself, Mahon left the two men and joined an already sleeping Zac into their shared room. Mahon laid in his bed and let sleep take him into a welcoming Nightmare. There, he left the spawning point and started the long walk to his usual training spot.

But first…

Breath in. Breath out.

The Flow welcomed him happily as if he had not denied him for hours in Ratho and, as if exacting his revenge, Mahon Flowed the whole way.

What’s wrong with Flow walking?