Demesne Patron EX SS 3 - A Mentalist's Morning (Patreon)

Emdeng awoke, as he usually did, to the sounds of the bells of Open Hand Demesne chiming the time. Despite advancements in timekeeping technology over the centuries, the bells were still rung at sunrise rather than at fourth bell, which according to his clock wasn't for another few chimes yet.

For a moment, he just lay there on his cot, his brain fuzzy from having just been kicked out of sleep. Then he took a deep breath and cleared his mind. Magic filled him as air filled his lungs, and he began the cyclical breathing technique he'd practiced every day since coming here. He took magic in and flowed along his nerves, energizing the thoughts flowing along them from his brain.

His room came alive as he suddenly sensed the currents of lightning running through the threads of copper along the ceiling beams to the wisplight and the switch that activated it, the small sparks of power that clung to the metal and other materials as their charge of static lightning built up, the silent yet immense pullof the entire planet's presence inexorably flowing through invisible paths from north to south. He could feel every impulse that moved his heart and caused his lungs to breathe, could feel the flow of thoughts across his body as his brain, infinitely more capable than he himself was, directed hundreds of untold functions by itself without his input.

Emdeng sat up, feeling lighter, less heavy, less awkward, his casual breaths of air enough to give his body the magic it needed to move with grace, precision and smoothness. He put on his shoes against the cold stone floor, and got dressed, pulling on the tough linen trousers and tunic, belting on with a rope from which hung his day pouch. Pushing aside the curtain that served as the door to his bedroom, Emdeng stepped into his office. It was a small room, only twice as big as his bedroom, and was the usual perpetual mess it always was. There were nooks built into the walls full of reference books, papers, journals published by the other sects in Open Hand, a few foreign journals from other demesnes. Loose papers were held down by reference books from the library he needed to return—his memory helpfully recalled five books that were due that day and two that were overdue—which he'd have to do by midmorning's sixth bell, or else the librarians would come for him.

He didn't want the librarians coming for him. That route lay valuable time lost to punishment detail he could be using for something more productive, like drawing flowers!

Sighing, he went to his box of rocks to hold the papers down as he got the necessary books together, sweating slightly in the enclosed heat of the room. The only light was what peeked through the edges of the wooden door to the outside, letting in the whistling of wind. Once he ran out of rocks, he had to rearrange some of the books and used those as weights instead, his thought-charged mind remembering the placement of each paper so he wouldn't have to look later. He'd have to index the room soon, the papers were getting increasingly disjointed, even for a Mentalist.

Gathering the books to be returned, Emdeng wrapped them in a carry cloth, pulling the corners tight so it wouldn't shift in his grip as he knotted the cloth together to secure it and make a handle for him to grip. He did one last check in the dark, patting himself down to make sure he was presentable, and then finally opened the door.

Daylight and the driving, near-constant mountain wind of Open Hand Demesne entered his room as Emdeng stepped out into the hall of his sect's bachelors' dorm rooms. Outside, other bachelors of the Life Sciences Sect were busy doing morning chores. Some were pounding out their mattresses, airing their rooms, taking their clothes and sheets to wash at the laundry, walking to the baths carrying their bathing things, sweeping out dust… the usual things scholars had to do to keep their rooms and offices from being a compost pit. Others were doing stretches, calisthenics, drills, thought exercises, and other ways of passive-aggressively rubbing in the fact their rooms were clean and their studies were on track. Or just keeping their bodies as fit as their mind, one or the other. A group of the more senior bachelors—they would likely be raised to Masters in a few months—chatted in a knot in front of one room, partially blocking the hallway. Another bachelor, hurrying and preoccupied, wasn't able to dodge around them sufficiently, clipping his shoulder on one of them and falling to the floor, his papers going everywhere. He let out a cry of despair as the papers were caught by the wind.

"Good morning, Emd," his neighbor to his right, Aando, said cheerfully as the knot of seniors leapt into action, grabbing the papers, launching themselves from each other's shoulder to catch ones lifted high into the air. "Heading to the library?"

"Aando," Emdeng said, nodding in acknowledgement even as he felt a prickle behind him and he stepped out of the way of another bachelor who'd obviously been doing nocturnal studies, carrying an unlit lamp and a notebook and walking with eyes closed to his room. Emdeng doubted he was using his thought for anything but the muscle memory to get there blind. "Where are you off to?" he asked as the seniors plucked the rest of the papers from the wind using their thoughts. One of them helped the fallen bachelor up, obviously chiding him to be more aware.

"The Dean of Bachelors asked me to help some fresh ideas get oriented," Aando said as he did some simple morning stretches to wake up his muscles. Even after all these centuries, kinesiologists still argued about whether stretches had any effects or where just physical placeboes. "You know, show them where the libraries are, mention the rules, best places to hide from the librarians if they're overdue, tell them to hide from the librarians if they're overdue, that sort of thing. You?"

"Library," Emdeng said as the bachelor bowed in thanks to his seniors, who sent him off with a laugh as they continued their conversation. "I should be fine as long as I get there before cutoff. Then I'll go down to the fields for work credit. Need to get out of the office, you know?"

"Well, be careful," Aando said as he closed his door so there was less chance of his papers being blown away. "I hear the Young Scholar is in a foul mood."

"Did she lose at something?" Emdeng said with a frown. The Young Scholar of the Life Sciences sect was usually such a pleasant young woman. Much more sensible than the Young Scholar of the Art Studies sect. Art was barely a proper science! It was too subjective, with not enough quantifiables!

"One of the young males got into the tanks where she keeps fursh for that heredity study she's doing, you know, trying to breed longer fursh? The buck impregnated who knows how many of the females, it's a whole mess," Aando said. "She's going to have a Deadspeaker fursh specialist double check, but from what her interns say, nearly the whole batch got impregnated. It's going to set her research back by a whole season."

Emdeng whistled, shifting his books. "Colors, that's hard to hear. Was it anyone's fault?"

"Apparently the male was just that determined to stick it in something and made it out of this pen by following the mating calls," Aando said. "So yeah, she's in a bad mood. Don't make eye contact unless you want a rant about lesser creatures that only think with their genitals or a sudden peer review."

"Rant against the random chaos of the universe, got it," Emdeng said. "Thanks for the warning."

It was a painful lesson, if it could be a lesson at all, but one every Mentalist at Open Hand Demesne—every Mentalist who was part of a sect, at any rate—had to learn: you can't predict the universe perfectly. Whether that was in precautions, experimental variables, setup, or just having the reference book you needed being available, you needed to learn to roll with the impact so you didn't break something.

Of course, that was the purpose of the Mysteries of Alknowledge, which many people in Open Hand Demesne followed: to study and quantify the world, to eventually make a working predictive model of all of existence. The reasons for why varied: some wanted to know the future so they could control their own fate, or avert catastrophe. Some wanted to know how the world worked so they could build a new world (those who believed this never specified how they'd do it, but always claimed they'd know how once they actually knew enough to build a new world). Some believed it could someday be done, others thought that it was an impossibly infinite pursuit that was worthy by itself.

The morning air was cold, and the wind near-constant given their altitude and the intentionally low roofline of the architecture. Emdeng walked with casual balance, fluidity and efficiency that came naturally to any Mentalist that honed their body as assiduously as they did their mind, nodding to people he knew, his weak, casual sense of the thoughts around him letting him know when he had to step out of the way in amusement as people with books even moreoverdue than his—his books were still within the probationary overdue period—rushed past him at a dead run, clutching their books to their chests as they tried to reach the library before the librarians got them. It didn't count unless the librarians got to you, after all.

He passed people doing stretches in the hall talking about biology, kinesiology, botany, toxicology, nutrition, and whether old Sanmig's beer was still as good as it used to be, or if one of the younger brewers had managed to make up something with a more interesting flavor profile. He passed Master Sanni was overseeing mental acceleration practice, standing in front of a group and using his mind to throw wooden balls at them as they practiced getting themselves in a state where their mind perceived things so quickly that an arrow would seem to move slowly in the air, not unlike the manipulation of time Horotracts did, except it was internal instead of external. The man was calling out corrections even as the wooden balls seemed to simply launch themselves at the group, telling one to make his breathing more cyclical, for another to bend his knees more and relax his shoulders, chiding another to step out of line and do some more stretching exercises first, they clearly weren't limber enough. Currents of lightning flowed along the walls, carried by copper wires covered in plant latex for insulation.

Emdeng reached the stairs, the wind changing direction and strength as he made his way down from the slope to where the main buildings were. In front of him, the five fingerlike pillars of stone that gave Open Hand Demesne its name rose over the rest of the Demesne, the fortified bulwark with its massive doors leading into the Dungeon beneath it like some sort of protective charm on a bracelet. As he descended, he could see the rest of Open Hand. Over there was the Mathematics and Engineering sect, smoke and steam already rising from their chimneys, their buildings always looking new and orderly, placed in a precise grid despite the fact they were on a mountainside, the work of generations of neurotic engineers and architects that liked their right angles and triangles. There was the, ugh, Art Studies sect, a terrible waste of space and funding though obviously not everyone thought so. Well, they were entitled to their wrong opinion.

The Physical Sciences sect was the largest of the sects, sprawling so much they almost reached the woods of the low foothills and many of their buildings went deep into the mountain itself. In the distance, at ground level, next to the towns that provided Open Hand with meat and other foods that were too difficult of them to grow efficiently because of the altitude, was the Political Sciences sect, guarding the wide, ancient approach up to the rest of the sects, its mechanical and bound tool lifts powered by the core itself, with their entry fees, tariffs, immigration offices, embassies and the standing army of militia. Technically, all wizards of Open Hand of at least bachelor stage were part of the standing militia as non-commissioned officers, but the Political Sciences sect were the ones to make it a focus of their intellectual studies.

In the center of all this were the libraries. General libraries for most introductory and elementary level subjects, sect-specialized libraries for more intermediate subjects, and more specialized subjects according to fields—Medicine had threelibraries, one for Mentalism-centric medicine, one for Deapspeaking-centric medicine, and a third for non-magical medicine—for those doing focused research. The libraries were all run by the Librarian sect.

There was also the Support Infrastructure sect, who ran the agricultural towns around Open Hand, as well as the on-site fields were Open Hand grew some of its own food, interspersed where there was room. They planted the fruit trees for shade in courtyards, cultivated bushes of vegetables around pathways, ran the cafeterias, directed Mathematics and Engineering in maintaining buildings, kept the water flowing in the pipes and the currents in the wires, performed tri-monthly sanitation inspections of quarters, and generally kept the sects from all starving to death or getting sick from wearing the same dirty clothes for weeks on end.

Emdeng reached the Life Sciences library, and began filling in a return form as he stood in line. Despite there being ten librarians accepting book returns, it took a while for him to return his books, since there was always a rush in the mornings. Finally though, he reached a librarian, and was able to rest his load at her desk and undo his carry cloth as she accepted his return form and glanced at it, committing it memory. Wearing the cloth dust cover of their sect over the lower half of her face, she glanced at his books, comparing titles to his forms, perfunctorily opening the books to casually check for damage, forgotten notes or bookmarks, then placed them on the moving belt behind her that would take it to the sort room for other members of her sect to reshelve as she updated Emdeng's library account, charging work hours for the overdue books.

Nodding genially to the librarian, Emdeng stepped aside for another to take his place as he headed for his next destination.

The farm fields of Open Hand didn't look like it from the outside. They looked more like roofless warehouses, with vertical wooden slats all along the walls to let in the wind. People generally didn't look into the slats when they passed the fields. The sight was too disquieting, even for those who've lived in Open Hand all their life. Walking up to one, Emdeng crossed the threshold and entered the vista bound within its walls.

He stood at the edge of a field that was easily a taum wide and two taums long, planted with rows upon rows of grain that moved weakly in the wind passing through the wooden slats of the walls that defined the vista. It was colder in here, since the sun's heat entering through the open roof was diluted, and slightly darker as well, but enough for the crops to grow. Next to him, beside the door, was a desk on which sat another Master, Master Jota. The green-haired man put the Art Studies journal he'd been holding sideways aside, and pulled open the log book. "Working today, Bachelor Emdeng?" he asked, his thought-enhanced memory easily letting him recall Emdeng's name. Emdeng had been here before, after all.

"Yes, Master Jota," he said. "Library fees, and I've been in my office too long."

Master Jota clicked his tongue. "Aren't we all? Well, grab yourself a bucket, there's a slot open for irrigation work. Start with row fourteen and work your way towards row twenty-eight, then come back to me."

Emdeng touched his middle to the bridge of his nose, between his eyes, respectfully. "Thank you, Master," he said. That was good, muscle-intensive work, let him work on his legs, and no need for kneeling.

Master Jota returned the gesture and sat down to get back to his Art Studies journal as Emdeng headed towards the field's reservoir, where water was brought up by bound waterwisps—not that he could perceive them. He wasn't a Whisperer, after all—into a long stone cistern. While modern technology could easily come up with something to handle this work, and did in many of the lowland farms, work hours as a means of currency was a tradition in Open Hand, lest everyone stay in their offices getting fat and arrogant, or doing nothing but vain body sculpting for their own self-aggrandizement. And so everyone worked. To be allowed into the cafeterias, to keep offices, to be allowed to borrow from the libraries, to use facilities, to buy paper and ink for pens…

It was part of the ethos established by the founders of Open Hand innumerable many centuries ago, from a time so ancient even the librarians had lost those history books, of a balance between the mind and body, working to cultivate harmony between both. While it wasn't a philosophy unique to Open Hand, it certainly predominated here. In many places, Mentalists only honed their minds, forming within them great palaces and mighty fortresses of memory and knowledge, with sharp wits and cunning, able to accelerate their minds such that they could conceive the most long-winded and intelligent arguments in heartbeats. Their thoughts, projected from their bodies, could batter down bulwarks of darkwisps, lift weights of many tons, and be heard in the ears of the mind at great distances… all while their bodes withered to emaciation or grew obese with hedonism and sloth.

So the Mentalists—and other wizards, but there were a lot of Mentalists—of Open Hand worked to cultivate harmony between their minds, their bodies and their magic, studying and learning, and in Emdeng's case to contribute to the alknowledge.

He picked up two of the jugs of water, large things made of copper and reinforced with iron, with a little spigot that he could point to one side that would spray the plants as he walked, and made sure the spigots were closed since everyone, including him, had a habit of just leaving the things open when they brought them back. Alas, an unfading memory was no match for sloth and convenience. He grabbed a carry pole that wasn't sweaty, and brought the jugs to the cistern.

Taking a deep breath, he drew in more magic, gathering it within himself with every breath, turning it into thought. Still breathing, he extended the thought out of his own body, reaching for the jug, enfolding it like a strangely-shaped hand, making sure to have a 'finger' supporting the bottom so it wouldn't slip out of his grip. Narrowing the range of his thoughts to a mere hairs thickness around the jug, he kept on breathing, giving himself a healthy reserve as he picked up the jug and used it to scoop up water from the cistern like he was holding a large cup. He had to do it much slower of course, since this was a larger volume of water, but in no time, the jug was full. He had to exert more force to pick it up out of the water, since it was now substantially heavier than before. Still, he didn't need to hurry and carefully set it on the ground, then picked up the empty one and filled that too. Other, more experienced mentalists would have been able to lift both jugs at once, shaping their projection of thought into a more complicated or elaborate shape to hold both securely, but he was in no hurry.

With both jugs filled, Emdeng attached them to the carry pole, bent his legs, and hoisted the pole on his shoulders, keeping his back straight. He adjusted the pole, then began whistling pleasantly to himself as he walked carefully towards his assigned row…