Wolf slowly trudged towards Oakwood Freeland. A group of ten tormented women followed behind him. Their ages varied, and they wore a random assortment of mismatched clothes Wolf had looted from the bandits’ warehouse.

The women had several things in common. They were clean and healed with a Least grade healing potion. All of them were malnourished, since potions couldn’t help with that, and they had all suffered varying degrees of mental trauma. Unfortunately, potions couldn’t help with those any more than they could help with their overly thin frames.

Some wounds could only be soothed by time.

Wolf prepared a thin broth for the women before they’d even left the bandit fortress. Afterwards he prepared more and more substantial and nutritious stews as days went by. Starved people needed time to adjust to regular food. At least what he’d read in novels.

Writers claimed people could die from eating strong foods after long periods of fasting. Wolf didn’t want to risk it. He was happy as long as these women ate enough to survive and slowly get better.

However, he’d made a mental note to check with a Healer or consult medical books once he got back. He had a feeling this wasn’t the last time he’d encountered suffering people.

After that late dinner, Frida kept away from her fellow victims and stayed near Wolf. She pushed herself hard to keep up with him, asking various questions from time to time.

She was eager to know about a wide variety of topics, ranging from spelling complex words to how she should train once she was well enough.

The group traveled in a formation of sorts. Wolf and Frida led, while a group of six women followed half a dozen meters behind. Those six were all in considerably better physical states than Frida, who was reduced to skin and bone.

However, the bearing of those women was miles behind Frida’s. They quivered, looking left and right, as if expecting another‌ ambush at any moment. They were afraid Wolf would walk too far away from them, that they would lose him, yet the group didn’t dare approach too close, even though they wanted to cling to him like crazy.

Even when they rested, they’d wake up from time to time to check where Wolf was.

Finally, the three women with broken minds lagged behind the group, hardly any different from walking dead. They silently stumbled forward only because the six pulled on their arms whenever they stopped.

Those three never said a word. The only sounds they made were quiet whimpers whenever Wolf approached. Other women had to take care of them in every sense of the word. As long as Wolf was away, their dead faces never showed a hint of awareness of their surroundings.

To help them, Wolf decided to learn a taboo spell. Reforge Mind was a Tenth Order Spell used to freely manipulate a person’s memory from the moment they were born to the present day. It could even be used to implant instructions for the future.

Because of the frail state of his companions, Wolf’s party walked at a snail’s pace. Which wasn’t all that bad. Thanks to frequent breaks for resting, Wolf mastered the vile spell in two weeks.

That evening, while the women prepared jerky and vegetable broth, Wolf readied the evilest of spells in all four of his Tenth Order tapestries. Then, when the group finished their dinner, Wolf cleared his throat.

“There’s something you should know,” he said solemnly.

Wolf looked at the seven women who could understand him, then moved his gaze to the three who sat, waiting to be fed. Those three couldn’t even eat on their own.

“I can make the memories of what happened to you disappear. It’s not a miracle and won’t change the past, but you won’t remember anything. However, there’s a catch. I’ve just learned this spell today, and I haven’t had the chance to practice it. So, if you want me to use it on you, you’d be taking a risk.” Awkward silence followed his important proclamation.

“Um,” Wolf continued without inspiring much confidence in his audience. “Also, I’m fairly certain I can’t control it all that well yet. So I might wipe all of your memories and experiences from the last couple of months or years.”

More awkward silence followed, which Wolf took as the women not understanding what he was talking about

“Meaning you won’t remember anything that had happened to you from that point on,” he hurriedly explained, before once more turning towards the three women with broken minds. “I’ll start by removing their memories while they sleep. In the morning, after you see the results, you can make your choice.”

The six still said nothing. Wolf believed that, other than Frida, they were all considering his offer.

Two hours later, when the three most traumatized women had fallen asleep, Wolf approached them and quietly started the long chant. He was quiet out of habit, not because he was afraid the woman would wake up.

Five minutes later, after finishing the mantra’s last syllable, Wolf placed his hand on the eldest woman’s forehead.

Immediately a jumble of images, smells and sounds assailed Wolf’s mind.

The woman’s life stormed by before his eyes. Her childhood, how she grew up, happy moments, sad moments and then the terrible moments.

Nataly spent two months of abuse in the bandit camp. Fed and pent-up like an animal, going through a hell the likes of which Wolf would never wish upon another living creature. And then, in the last split second, she was rescued by Wolf, followed behind him for days, and then the spell ended.

World spun around Wolf as his stomach churned. He hadn’t changed a thing. Experiencing a whole lifetime in two dozen seconds shocked and overloaded even Wolf’s mind. If he wanted to help the woman forget all those horrors, he would have to suffer them one more time.

Clenching his fist and gritting his teeth, the youth steeled himself and cast the spell one more time.

The erratic scenes played out again. When bandits assaulted the woman’s caravan, Wolf wished to erase everything starting then. However, the speed at which the memories played out was too great. He missed the first couple of days of her imprisonment, but the rest was thankfully gone.

After casting the spell twice, Wolf more or less understood how it functioned. He also understood that he was very far from the level of mastery required to use it proficiently.

This spell worked just like his big brother had told him before. To use magic, you need proper intent. For this one, you also needed the ability to think in parallel, to act while observing, and a bunch of other things Wolf would remain unaware of until he had some more practice.

After the split second, during which Wolf analyzed his errors, Nataly woke up.

“Aaaaaa!” the tormented woman screamed loudly.

She was at a loss. A moment ago she was being beaten and abused and humiliated, and, in the next moment, she was under the open sky.

Gods save me, she prayed, wondering what happened.

Nataly wondered how she’d gotten here and why a seven-year-old held a hand to her forehead. She broke down screaming and sobbing and pleading.

Fortunately, Frida and the six fearful women intently followed Wolf’s actions, deliberating his offer. At that moment, all seven of them had reached the same conclusion. There ain’t no way in hell I’m letting you do that to me.

After a moment of confusion, the women jumped to help Wolf’s first test subject.

While they calmed Nataly down, Wolf steeled his resolve and went to try the spell on the second woman. Unlike the first time he’d cast the spell, seeing someone’s life laid bare before him didn’t surprise the youth.

He used the general flow of time to remove everything after she’d joined a caravan this year. Wolf erased the last two months of her memories, just like with Nataly, but he’d once again made a mistake. Bandits captured Tommy less than a month ago. In his desire to not leave any mental scars, Wolf wiped away too many memories.

Thankfully, Tommy didn’t wake up. She seemed much more at peace than she did a minute ago.

The third test subject was the most successful. Fearing he would cut away too many of Rina’s memories, Wolf started erasing once the attack began. He was considerably more precise this time, leaving Rina with only half an hour of events after the attack on her family’s caravan.

With each use Wolf felt a substantial increase in proficiency with which he cast Reforge Mind. But he still had no idea how the memory modification part was supposed to work. Just the removal of memories was difficult to control, let alone changing and implanting things as you watch sometimes quite distracting scenes from another person’s life.

Thinking about the problem, and how he lacked test subjects, Wolf came up with an idea. After a very short moral debate, he decided not to kill all the bandits he encountered. Maiming would immobilize them just fine. Then he could use those bandits for practice until he got the hang of the spell.

As for the woman, she shifted and cried out in her sleep. Luckily, her memories stopped almost immediately after her torment began. Her sleeping mind processed it as a nightmare.

“It’s done. All we have to do now is wait for them to wake up,” Wolf said after taking a couple of moments to gather his thoughts.

The youth was oblivious of the changes he’d gone through. He was slick with sweat. His hands trembled, and his voice was shaky. In but a few brief minutes, Wolf had experienced four lifetimes, and even a mind as strong as his was strained by such a heavy load.

Reforge Mind was originally designed to be used once a week at most, to prevent the caster from getting confused about their own identity and to keep them from going insane. What Wolf did just now was nothing short of torture and mutilation of his own mind.

Yet the youth said good night in what he believed was a nonchalant, relaxed manner.

The eight gathered women watched in disbelief. This young man seemed to have completely forgotten about the woman whose mind he’d just tempered with. And Wolf really had forgotten about Nataly.

Two lives’ worth of memories, filled with traumatic events, stood between him and the distant point in time when the woman woke up screaming. In fact, Wolf barely remembered that his first test subject even existed.

Night passed, and Wolf actually slept. He had no strength left to carve the seventh column and rested instead.

Then, in the early hours of the morning, test subject two woke up. Wolf knew this woman was called Tommy. Her parents hoped for a boy after four girls straight, and they’d decided to name the baby Tommy even if it turned out to be a girl.

Tommy hated her name. She thought it was horrible. It was practically a curse which plagued her life.

Now that she woke up, Tommy felt lost. She traveled with the caravan, then she passed out without a reason and woke up here, wherever ‘here’ was. Tommy looked around, but couldn’t even find the wagons.

“Where am I?” she asked loudly.

Her shout immediately woke up everyone. The six women instinctively turned around, looking for Wolf. Only after confirming that he was still with them, slowly getting up, did they ease up a bit. He hadn’t left them behind tonight either. As for Tommy, the women didn’t seem to care much about her. The woman seemed lost, but she wasn’t crying and screaming like the forty year old from last night.

Tommy’s half-shout woke up Rina. She’d had a horrible nightmare. Everyone was dead or dying. She wore tatters, and the second bandit was about to… then she blessedly woke up.

Rina was a bit more rational and a lot more fearful than Tommy. But she also realized something was wrong. Her family and their caravan vanished, replaced by a bunch of women she didn’t know and a boy who’d just sat up.

“What’s happening?” Rina asked gingerly.

Her dream just now terrified her. But she had to ask who these people were and why she slept in their midst so trustingly. Did they drug and kidnap her? Was that vile dream true?

Finally, seeing their confusion, Frida approached Tommy and Rina. She calmly explained what had happened. She did so, not out of the kindness of her heart, nor because she pitied these two. In fact, she looked down on them. She’d suffered in the bandit camp the longest and still kept her mind intact.

No, Frida went to soothe Tommy and Rina to demonstrate her usefulness to Wolf. To show she could do things he couldn’t.

Wolf really did feel grateful he didn’t have to explain everything to those two. He didn’t want to tell them that their loved ones had died during a bandit attack. Even worse, some of them died days or weeks after the raids had happened.

Seeing the women scream and sob, Wolf wanted to feel good about what he’d done. He’d restored the sanity of three broken women, but he’d paid a terrible price to do it.

Last night, nightmares plagued him. He was a woman, abused by hordes of dark, vile demons, reliving the memories of those three.

Wolf rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, driving away dark memories, wondering when the disgusting, uneasy feeling in organs he didn’t even have will pass. Attempting to drive away the horrors, Wolf forced himself to focus on Reforge Mind.

While women gathered, trying to soothe each other’s wounds, Wolf sat to the side, thinking about the spell he had cast last night. Reforge Mind was definitely the most vile thing he’d ever seen. However, Wolf found interesting alternative uses for it.

Altering memories could be used to implement knowledge into people’s brains. If he could somehow make fake memories for Frida in which he taught her how to read and write, it would save them both some time.

Thinking up to there, Wolf realized something. This spell implanted realistic memories in the subject, deleted them, and could even add usable knowledge.

It bore striking similarities with something Wolf had experienced once before. The youth suddenly shuddered at the thought.

Years ago, in the cave of inheritance, he’d had lived and experienced lifetime upon lifetime in a matter of days. Sure, what Wolf had done last night with Reforge Mind was much cruder. But he couldn’t help feeling like the only difference was his low level of proficiency and understanding. The principles behind both instances were the same.

Questions began popping up in Wolf’s mind.

Has that old man changed anything?

Did he give me some delayed orders?

Am I acting based on my own free will, or did he just make a persona he needs?

What if he implanted the love I feel for Father?

What if he implanted Father?

These and many other existential questions caused tremors in Wolf’s Mind Hall. The shaking, which gradually grew stronger, woke Silver up.

The egg immediately knew her-his master was distraught, going through a danger of some sort, but she-he lacked the wisdom and life experience to understand the exact details, or to offer any help.

Master. You seem to be having a hard time. Is there any way I can help? Silver asked earnestly with her-his crystal clear voice, hoping there was something she-he could do for the struggling youth.

As the words echoed in Wolf’s mind, the young man shook his head and closed his eyes. Then he opened them on his throne and looked down at the six-legged egg. The shaking of the Mind Palace subsided.

“Thank you,” the Mental Aspect said dazedly. “I needed someone to snap me out of it. I think I’ll be fine now. I just need some time to think about a couple of things.”

Wolf was certain this was a backlash from the spells he’d used yesterday. All his doubts were irrational. Even if someone faked his past. Even if everything up to now was a lie, how he lived his life from now on was up to him.

“I should just act the way I believe is right. That’s what’s important,” the Mental Aspect tried to convince himself.

He knew this was the proper way of handling the situation. He knew this is how he should treat this seed of doubt that had germinated within him.

Wolf knew this, but knowing something and coming to terms with something were two vastly different concepts.

For example, everyone knows that if you try harder, you will get better results. Yet only a fraction of the populace follows through on what they know to reach their desired goal.

Wolf’s head was full of errant thoughts, but at least those random thoughts couldn’t shake the foundation of his being.

Those thoughts slowly shifted to things Wolf had to do right now. To the group of women he had in his charge, Oakwood Freeland, Mage Academy, what to cook for South the next time they meet…

Wolf’s mood stabilized, but the core issue remained unresolved. Wolf buried it deep under the mountain of things labeled as more important at the moment. Most things were more important than unsolvable existential questions, and Wolf didn’t need any help from the world to escape from them.

***

What was a ten-day trip for Wolf stretched into a month-long journey when he traveled with ten frail women.

During this month, the women greatly recovered, both physically and mentally. The only exception was Nataly. The forty-three-year-old woman was better, but still far from being well.

Once they finally reached Oakwood Freeland, Wolf left the women in the villagers’ care. Frida, in particular, was Rand’s charge.

The first mission Wolf issued for her was to get healthy and get strong. Then she was to learn the basics of melee combat and familiarize herself with the sword, or whichever weapon she chose.

As expected, Frida was a quick learner. Even before they’d reached Oakwood Freeland, she was already more proficient at reading than Rand was. Wolf gave her some introductory books on magic and promised to send the rest once he returned to Silver City.

Wolf promised to send her the potions needed to advance her Sword-Sage Order. He even left behind all the Least Energy Recovery potions he had on him, save for one.

That way, when Rand exhausted himself, he wouldn’t suffer from bouts of fatigue caused by Internal Energy deficiency, and Frida wouldn’t have to go through it when advancing her Sword-Sage Order.

After doing one final check and making sure everything was fine with Oakwood Freeland and its residents, Wolf headed back for the Mage Academy.