The Wanderer - 247 (Patreon)

Chapter 247 – Battle of Minds

[2009 – November – Sunday]

Her breathing calm and even, Emma seemed outwardly relaxed as she sat in her armchair with her usual poise and grace, though her eyes were closed and her mind engaged to its limits.

Hundreds of strands of mental energy spread from her mind and fused into the ambient flow of psionic energy, some of those strands manifested into fine needles while others turned into veritable spears of mental force. There were also those that just followed the natural flow of the ambient energy tracelessly.

But one thing all those strands had in common was that they all aimed at a mental sphere formed by what seemed to be a black light that revolved around itself.

Her telepathic attacks shot forward with lethal intent, the psionic energy seemingly vibrating at shifting frequencies and ready to break into the dark light mental sphere.

And yet, each and every one of the several hundred strands of mental strength was blocked by a dark tendril of opposing mental strength, even the hidden ones had not been able to fly under the radar of her opponent's perception.

Changing her tactic quickly since she realized that mere quantity and variety would not allow her to win, Emma sent out a wave of mental intent and stirred up a storm of psionic energy that made the flow chaotic and unpredictable.

Once again sending out her thoughts and turning them into pure containers of mental strength, she controlled them to meld into the chaotic storm of psionic energy with such finesse that they truly seemed indistinguishable while firing a few more 'needles' at her opponent's mental sphere as an additional distraction.

What she did not expect though was that her opponent did not stay passive and likewise unleashed a wave of mental strength that not only turned the ambient energy even more chaotic but also acted as a defense.

Her former attempts to hide her offensive in the psionic storm now fell mute since even she could not continue to hide the strands any longer, which caused them to be found almost instantly and subsequently destroyed.

Now frowning ever so slightly, Emma sent out a wave to calm the psionic storm since its existence was no longer to her advantage, and no sooner than when she had done so, she sensed that the first few of her dozens of mental shields had already been infiltrated.

Realizing that her opponent had been able to hide his offense in the chaotic storm that had made even her retreat and change her strategy, Emma understood how incredible her adversary's control and perception truly were.

But she was still a long way from giving in as she once again used the natural ambient flow of psionic energy to send out almost a hundred strands into her surroundings while simultaneously repairing her shields and destroying the invading strands.

Her own strands didn't attack though, instead, they all suddenly transformed and turned into decoy mental spheres absolutely indistinguishable from her own while she concealed her original mental presence in the natural flow by consciously reducing her mental activity and compressing her mental sphere to its limits.

It was an incredibly dangerous and rare technique, and Emma knew only a single other telepath that was capable of such.

Her move represented the absolute peak of mental concealment and deception techniques, especially since all the moving decoy spheres contained decades worth of fabricated memories that varied from sphere to sphere.

Only an Omega-level mutant like herself could have the capacity and sheer telepathic strength to do what she was doing, shifting nearly a hundred perfect replicas of her mental sphere around while hiding the real one by pressuring her own mind to compress to its utmost limits.

There was no way to distinguish the decoys from the real thing since she had basically mirrored her compressed mental activity into them by splitting off parts of her consciousness, which helped massively in relieving the strain on her mind.

And while this carried a risk since it made her more vulnerable to attacks, Emma knew that even smaller parts of her consciousness were a formidable force given her status as a mature Omega-level mutant.

Without the option to distinguish between the mental spheres, her opponent could only target each of them and endure the resulting flood of memories that would try and confuse his senses.

Still, Emma was merely buying herself some time since she knew that this would not stop her adversary for long.

She also knew that she should go on the offensive, striking a condensed blow of mental strength to forcefully breach her opponent's defenses, given that a silent infiltration seemed almost impossible with how perceptive her opponent was.

But she was hesitant since telepaths basically attacked by using their own minds as weapons, which meant that a possible backlash could have serious consequences.

Still, hesitation and doubt were likewise very dangerous for a telepath since they could potentially weaken one's mental strength and intent. Knowing this, Emma was sure that she had to take a chance or risk being slowly whittled down and defeated.

With a thought, she turned the decoy spheres into information bombs as she condensed them into needles of mental strength and directed them all against her opponent, taking no longer than a fraction of a second to do so.

Naturally, this was nothing but a distraction as the constructed memories contained in the needles of condensed psionic energy would not only disrupt the natural flow of the ambient psionic energy, it would also temporarily turn it into a minefield full of memories that would attach itself to any consciousness that touched it like a virus.

Such a mental 'virus' was extremely dangerous for normal humans but against strong telepaths, it could barely serve to drain an opponent's mental strength since it was comparatively easy to pick out foreign elements from one's own minds for a trained and experienced telepath.

Not to mention that the natural defenses and resistances of a telepath with great strength or potential to such an invasion were basically unmatched.

Simultaneously focusing to the absolute limits of her mental capabilities, Emma condensed her mental strength and consciousness into another needle of psionic energy though this one carried incredible hidden strength. It was akin to comparing a straw needle and one made out of diamond, even though they did not look different from an outside perspective.

Attacking like a ruthless assassin, she struck decisively while her opponent fended off the needles containing the compacted and fabricated memories acting as a mental virus.

And just when the attack connected and she tore through the first three defenses of the mental sphere like a hot knife through butter, it suddenly collapsed in on itself and shattered. Emma's mind barely touched upon half a dozen fragments when her consciousness was suddenly flooded with foreign memories.

She quickly realized that they were fabricated since they were too clear and lacked certain 'depths'. After all, as an expert in memory manipulation herself, she knew how to identify real memories with a glance.

What she also realized was that the mental sphere that she had attacked was but a decoy, constructed after her own method and simply impossible to distinguish from a real consciousness.

Without a doubt, she had fallen into a trap and just as she was about to regather herself after separating the foreign fabricated memories from her consciousness, she felt a trace of foreign mental strength hidden in the fragmented memories slip past her mental barriers one by one at record speed and invade her mind.

With a grave look on her face, Emma reacted quickly and managed to stop the invasive strand of mental strength and push it out again while relying on her natural resistance to mental pollution to clear away the 'viral' memories.

Breathing a sigh of relief and putting up a defensive stance, Emma seemed to have been forced into a very passive position and she already felt more than three dozen other strands of foreign mental strength trying to bypass her mental defenses again.

This time though she didn't fight back as aggressively but just fended them off defensively while spreading out her perception to its limits, enduring the assault from more and more directions and angles.

Her defenses got successively circumvented or downright broken through and when finally her last few lines of mental barriers were facing her adversary's attacks, a bright glint appeared in her eyes before their crystal colour turned almost completely purple, burning with potent power.

And then, all of a sudden the discarded pieces of the memories that she had fabricated and sent out as distractions transformed into focal points that exerted a minute force on the ambient psionic flow.

There were hundreds and thousands of these pieces and together they turned the gentle flow of thin ambient psionic energy into a condensed and incredibly violent torrent that was strong enough to shatter the mind of a telepath that even rivaled herself in strength.

She had developed this technique by herself over the years in case she would ever have to battle a telepath of equal strength and comparable experience. It was a killing technique that relied on raw force and one of her greatest trump cards in actual battle.

It relied on her talent to manipulate psionic energy to guide the natural flow of the ambient psionic force and build up a destructive torrent that was stronger than any of her own attacking methods before directing it at her target with relative precision.

And right now, it was aimed in the direction where she had sensed the concealed mind of her opponent while enduring the continuous assault. She had purposefully not defended as well as she could have to track the traces left behind by the mental strands and find their origin.

The overwhelming storm of psionic energy moved silently but with absolutely deadly force as it ripped through the concealment and crashed into the dark light mental sphere of her opponent.

The expected result didn't come to pass though as the mental barrier set up around it had been torn apart with formidable ease but the sphere itself stood unmoved like an indestructible monument.

It was a simple yet shocking testament to the fact that the mind of her opponent possessed an inherent strength that made even her strongest killing technique utterly ineffective.

Sighing, Emma looked into the darkened green eyes of her younger brother as he smiled at her with a faint quirk of his lips, his chin resting in his palm while his elbow was propped up on his armrest, a few strands of his hair hanging in his face and adding an untamed note to his otherwise charming appearance.

He was wearing a black button-down shirt with long sleeves, a pair of black slacks, and some dress shoes, a hand-tailored suit jacket sitting around his athletic frame. Evidently, he was dressed formally, tie and all, as he sat to her right sight on the long wooden table in the apartment that she preferred to use while in the city.

He looked almost devilishly handsome in all black, his prominent green eyes impressionable as always.

"You win.", Elijah said calmly, seemingly completely unbothered by the fact that she had just tried to shatter his mind with an ocean-like torrent of psionic energy. And with his two simple worlds, the somewhat chaotic ambient psionic force turned calm again and returned to its natural flow.

“And rather brilliantly at that.”, he complimented with a smile, clearly speaking of the last technique that she had employed.

Emma wanted to grumble at the fact that she had exhausted not only a lot of her repertoire while sparring with him telepathically but that he also didn't seem the faintest bit fazed by her trump card. She was very aware of the fact that she had won the spar but lost the fight.

But then again, her amazement at Elijah's newly developed telepathic abilities overshadowed her minor frustration by far.

They had sparred for almost two hours and during this time, Elijah had learned at a frankly terrifying speed, mimicking and adapting her techniques with appalling perfection.

Even Jean did not learn that fast and she was the most talented telepath that Emma had ever come across with her daughter Celeste being placed second. But while both of them learnedand practicedtelepathy, Elijah was different.

He didn't learn, he understood. He didn't practice, he mastered.

The speed at which his mastery over the finer details of psionic-manipulation-based telepathy grew was inconceivable and it was this that made her recall the term that Selene had used when she spoke of Elijah – 'higher being'.

Now, Emma was beginning to truly understand what that really meant. It wasn't just a name that represented mere strength, it described an existence that defied the very laws and rules by which mortals lived.

In the span of less than three days, Elijah had turned from someone who could barely consciously manipulate the ambient psionic energy around him in the most basic way with his consciousness to someone who could go head-to-head with a mature Omega-level telepath while holding back god-knows-how-much.

Even by her most modest estimation, given by the fact that her trump card had done absolutely nothing to the mental sphere that housed his mind and consciousness, Elijah's pure raw strength as a telepath was far, farbeyond hers, and his finesse was catching up quickly.

Sighing with a smile, her mind feeling somewhat fatigued, Emma looked at her younger brother and she couldn't help but see in him the future of the Frost family, someone that could walk ahead without fear, someone that they could rely on.

In fact, it wasn't just the future of her family, Emma also saw the future of the mutant race in Elijah, even though she knew that he had no intention of leading them or involving himself too deeply with such matters.

Minutely corrected her posture, her smile turning wry as she softly rubbed her temple and replied with a small laugh: “Maybe we should not have done this before the meeting with the Wakandan emissary.”

Smiling, Elijah just leaned forward and gently tapped her forehead, which simply banished the exhaustion caused by their rather intense telepathic spar.

“I just suppressed your exhaustion temporarily until you can get a proper rest tonight, so don't overtax yourself or you will have a headache coming your way.”, he explained with a caring tone.

Smiling helplessly, Emma looked at her younger brother affectionately as she asked: “Is there something that you can't do?”

“Yes.”, Elijah replied with a simple smile, before he added with quiet but absolute confidence, “But eventually, there won't be.”

His words caused her movements to still momentarily as she just looked at his youthful features and calm green eyes.

Emma understood his answer not as the joke or boast that others may have heard in it. Instead, she knew that Elijah meant what he had said. And she found herself believing that they would come true someday.

Smiling, she rose from her seat and moved to his side to affectionately pinch his cheek before grabbing his cup and moving to the kitchen to get him another cup of tea.