71 Vhalar, 719
Location: Melrath Wilds
There was nothing quite as putrid as the smell of a whole lot of slaves who all had to camp out with each other. They were filthy to begin with not to mention they all had to go to the bathroom. Everyone seemed not to mind, except for Abra. He wished he had the supplies to camp elsewhere. The slaves were up early in the morning at the command of their master who, unlike them, got to sleep atop his throne that was carried by slaves.
Abra was in a strange middle ground situation. He wasn’t in charge but he was allowed to sit with the master while he performed his experiments on the slaves. Yestertrial he had tried to cause long term happiness in a slave who had some kind of depression. Totrial, he was looking a little less happy. A thorough look in his tangle showed that the depression was slowly building up again. Using Tapestry on his tangle showed renewed sadness associated with his terrible life and fear for the whip that had been used to hurt him that very morning. The triggers Abra had instilled in the slave to get happiness out of being a slave had been used up already, much faster than Abra thought they would be.
Based on these observations, Abra already concluded that a permanent alteration to the tangle was impossible, at least at his current level. Changing who someone was at their core was more complicated than hacking away at undesirable emotions. The slave master didn’t seem to care though. He wasn’t paying up unless he produced results. If Abra couldn’t come up with a permanent fix then he would be getting the worst of the slaves as payment, if that even.
The day went on and the experimentation continued. Abra went through about five other slaves and changed different parts of their tangle’s emotional makeup. He got in the weeds with programming their tangles by assigning a variety of triggers to them. He got to watch in real time as they responded to the triggers and took some mental notes on how he could improve. Associating abuse pleasing emotions made them less fearful of abuse and even thankful if he input enough triggers. It was only temporary because abuse was pretty severe, but Abra thought that the same principle could be applied in other applications. If it was possible to make someone associate positive emotions to an event then it might just be possible to train someone to like an emotion.
Abra was no psychologist so he couldn’t put the thought he’d gained to much use yet. He decided he had spent enough time working on the slaves and there was little else to do but observe how they acted throughout the rest of the day. The avriel guards and the slave master were instrumental to noting observations. They enjoyed seeing how these modified slaves acted when they whipped them and abused them. Abra couldn’t sympathize with that level of cruelty, but he could understand how someone could learn to love that sort of thing. The torture he liked was more psychological than physical.
Eventually there was nothing left for Abra to do but let the slaves get observed. Abra occupied himself in the meantime by playing with his portal making ability. He had largely ignored this magic because he thought it was a bit obtuse and useless for actually travelling or making money. He had been informed by the Syns many times that it was essential to work on those abilities so he finally decided to sit down and practice since there was literally nothing else he could imagine doing in the meantime.
He couldn’t see the utility if he had to be honest with himself. He had a good grasp on creating phasing portals and even making small window sized portals was within his purview. He could even blink although that was usually a draining affair. He had never seen a rupturer in combat either since the ones he had seen were usually stuck sending other mages here and there with their larger portals. Even in Raeila the rupturers were usually hired by the wealthy families so that they could travel at a moment’s notice which to Abra was rather degrading. Who in their right mind would be happy being the pet of a noble. That kind of job wasn’t worth any fortune they could have promised Abra.
“Don’t get too caught up in your thoughts,” he scolded. He instead cleared his mind only so that he could focus on his rupturing spark. He knew that somewhere within that spark was the knowledge of all it could do and all it would be able to do. He let the spark use his ether freely to experiment with the space around him. He felt the spark form a portal before his very eyes then close it prematurely. It created another portal but this time it was more distortion than portal. Since Abra was still sitting next to the slave master on his throne, the portal pushed into Abra’s body and dissipated when its edges were disrupted.
“What are you trying to do?” Abra thought to the spark. He gave the spark more ether so that it could try what it wanted with more force behind its actions. It formed another portal but at this point it was so distorted that it could barely be called a portal. It was as if all the colors in the rainbow had been mushed together into an ugly block in space. Abra once again felt the portal touch his body and dissipate as they passed through it.
“I think you’re making things worse not better,” he thought. Rupturers were supposed to make portals so you could go through them, not condense distorted space.
The third time must have been the charm. The spark distorted the space in front of Abra again but this time, when he passed through it, he felt his whole body slide just a little backwards. The portal had actually pushed him which was unheard of to Abra. Any competent ruptuerer could have told Abra that what he just did was create a Skystepping portal. A physical distortion in space that could be used to step on. Abra thought he had just discovered something new though and tried again. He drew looks from those around him while he experimented by creating more skystepping portals and touching them. None of them understood why he was so excited but he was just a weird mage to them anyway.
No matter how much Abra tried, he couldn’t get the portals to last more than several trills. The surprise of actually making one was distracting and that alone made it difficult to concentrate on what he meant to do. He had to focus extra hard to stifle his surprise in order to try extending the length of the portals. It didn’t seem to matter how much ether he put into them, they just weren’t meant to last. He made a handful of these distortions before the slave master got annoyed with him.
“If you’re going to keep doing that then it might be best if you travel alone,” the master said. “we’ve already slowed because of your theatrics.”
Abra immediately stopped and hung his head. He had let himself get carried away as was usual when he discovered something new. He decided to sit tight for the rest of the day and went back to taking notes on the slaves. Just before camping, Abra finally decided to stop notetaking so that he could discuss his payment with the master.
“About payment, what were you thinking?” Abra asked.
“Payment? You speak of payment when you haven’t delivered any results?” The master gave him a cold look. He actually did value Abra’s services but he didn’t want to admit it.
“I think I’ve delivered plenty of results. We’ve demonstrated that the slaves can and will act happier and less depressed once I’ve worked them over. You have slaves laughing when they’re whipped for fuck’s sake. How is that not a result?” Abra wasn’t the best negotiator so he was a bit harsher than he should have been.
“Nothing permanent has been proven yet so you have earned nothing in my eyes. If you part with us now you receive nothing.” The master, unlike Abra, was an excellent negotiator.
“I think you can make a lot of money off of them even if it isn’t permanent. Who wants to buy a slave so depressed that he has to be drug along the snow? The way I see it, those Unwanteds are aptly named. Nobody wants them. I don’t even know why you have them if they’re worthless.” Abra struck a nerve but he did have a good point.
“We’ll see then,” The master said, “if I can sell the Unwanteds then I can part with some form of payment. Until the sales happen, no payments.” That was that as far as negotiations went. Abra was left hanging dry, having to rely on the master’s good will if he wanted any payment at all. He was going to have to find some way to convince him.
"Abra", "NPC"
