Soulmage

Odin appeared in my soulspace the next time I slept, which I'd expected to happen from the beginning. I'd tricked Odin into trading me invaluable knowledge for what amounted to nothing of use; now all I had to do to to come out ahead was not engage them any further.
The first time they appeared, we simply stood in opposite sides of the black-thorned space that represented my soul. I kept waiting for them to say something, but they simply watched me with a vaguely concerned look.
And they just.
Kept.
Waiting.
The first hour was fine. As a child, I'd done nothing but stare at the skies for hours on end. I would have laid down, but I still couldn't figure out how to move my body in soulspace, and besides, I was pretty sure my soul looked the same no matter what angle you approached it from. So I just had to hover there. Existing.
The second hour, I knew that Odin was trying to bait me into speaking. Why else would they be waiting so patiently? The spiteful part of me even cheered in joy. I was wasting Odin's time—time that could be spent planning another invasion or doing... whatever Odin wanted to do... with the students they'd poached.
All I had to do was nothing.
For three hours.
For four hours.
For eight hours.
I swore that the silence was pulling at my ears by the time my soulspace—thankfully, blissfully, finally—dissolved, signaling my return to wakefulness. I sat up, yawned, stretched, and got ready for another day of running experiments on the monkeys in the basement. A couple witches would be coming by later today—both to clean up after them and to harvest the excess emotions they generated—but other than that, the entire day would be a breeze.
The next day, when I fell asleep, it started all over again.
###
I cracked on the second day. Four hours in. There was only so much absolute, unmoving silence that I could handle, and eight hours a day of the stuff was unbearable. I started humming, at first. The wordless tune to every sea shanty to come out of the Crystal Coast. Then I started singing, looping through the verses of the Redlands Anthem that I knew, and making up a dozen more when I ran out. All that time, the Demon of Empathy simply watched me. Nodding in tune with the music.
That passed the fifth hour.
I started growing desperate by the time I ran out of possible rhymes for "dead." I ran through every dirty tavern song I'd heard growing up, then every dirtier tavern song I wasn't supposed to have heard growing up. I sang a song making fun of Witch Aimes, and a song telling Iola to go jump in a rift, and a song about the snowball fight I'd had with Lucet, and a song about how rifts, I wanted out of here, I wanted anything but to be left alone with my thoughts for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours on end.
Odin simply stood there as I sang. Watching. Waiting.
Listening.
###
"Odin keeps showing up in my soulspace," I said to Witch Aimes.
She grinned. "Perfect."
I blinked. "Wait, what?"
"Wasting their time and attention on an academy student who knows nothing of value is the most stunning success the empathic backtrace program could have had," Witch Aimes said, scribbling something on a paper. It looked like some kind of form relating to the city's military. Word was that the Silent Peaks were gearing up for a counterattack.
"But I—" I started to speak, then hesitated. What would Witch Aimes do if she found out that I'd overheard one of the core secrets of the Silent Academy?
What would she do if she knew I'd already let part of that secret slip?
"Hm?" Witch Aimes asked.
"I... it's really unpleasant," I said. "You—you can sever the link, right?"
Witch Aimes gave me a concerned look. "What's Odin doing to you?"
"They..." I swallowed, then said, "Er. Well, uh, they're not really doing anything to me, per se. Just sort of standing there. But—"
"You want me to give up a tactical advantage that's distracting the leader of a nation we're at war with because Odin is standing there," Witch Aimes said, her expression going flat.
"I—"
"Get out of my office," Witch Aimes said, and a spatial rift deposited me back in my home.
###
On the third day, I finally said, "Hey, uh, isn't it weird how I can speak in soulspace, but not move my body?" I justified it as fishing for information, spying on the enemy, taking something from the monster who'd invaded my home and ordered the deaths of my friends.
It would have been more convincing if my voice hadn't cracked halfway through.
To my surprise, however, Odin immediately answered. "Speech is learned, while movement is instinctual."
"I..." I grimaced. "I have no idea what that means."
"Soulspace is where memories are stored," Odin said, bringing up the triple-plane diagram from earlier. "In order to affect a change in soulspace, you must invoke a memory. Speech is learned, and thus consists of invocations to memories; speech comes naturally to most sapient beings who enter soulspace. Bodily motion, on the other hand, is—with some exceptions for extensive physical training—instinctive, and does not naturally draw from memory. In order to move in soulspace, you must remember movement, not instinctively command it."
Remember movement, not instinctively command it. I tried calling up a memory of sitting in class—
—and abruptly, I was sitting in class, motionless fascimiles of my classmates arrayed around me.
Odin—who'd moved themself to replace Lucet at my side—said, "It's as easy as that."
And after that, the dam shattered.
###
"You know you can tell me anything, right?" The Demon of Empathy sat across from me on a stuffed straw couch. Considering that they were an extradimensional entity, the form they chose was surprisingly human: barrel-chested, broad-shouldered, and even wearing a pair of thin-rimmed glasses that weren't there the last time we'd met.
I sat down on my own couch. It was irritating and ill-fitting, but that just meant it reminded me of home. I was pretty sure Odin had done that on purpose. "I can tell you anything," I countered. "Whether I should is another matter entirely."
The Demon of Empathy leaned forwards, steepling their fingers beneath their chin. "Are you afraid of hurting me?"
Of course a damn Demon of Empathy would see right through me. It was an irrational fear—I'd experienced the Demon of Empathy's power and wisdom firsthand, and to nobody's surprise, even the vilest of the dark thoughts that whispered in my ear were nothing compared to what the ancient entity knew. And yet still I shrugged and said, "I'd hurt anyone else if I talked about it." Even myself, I thought, although I tried not to let it show.
The Demon of Empathy raised a hand, and the scenery around us blurred. I'd gotten better at understanding the strange place that lived in my dreams where the demon and I had our talks. One of its rules, apparently, was that the Demon of Empathy could shift the appearance of our surroundings at a whim. We appeared on top of a clock tower, watching my past self moongaze, lying down next to a girl with dark brown hair that flowed in the wind.
"Other people have confided in you," the Demon of Empathy said. "Does it hurt you when they speak of the dark thoughts that hound them?"
I hesitated. "It... doesn't," I finally said.
"How would you describe how it makes you feel, then?"
I bit my lip. For some reason, it had simply... never occurred to me to even ask that question. "When Lucet told me about what... what her 'boyfriend' was doing to her..." I struggled to find the words. "It felt right. It felt like... like she was lancing a boil. Taking that toxicity out of her heart before its infection reached her marrow."
I was pretty sure that wasn't how infected wounds worked, but if the Demon of Empathy noticed, they didn't say a thing. Instead, they simply asked:
"Then if others giving voice to their inner demons doesn't hurt you, why do you think your inner demons would destroy them?"
From anyone else, I would have snapped at them and clammed up. But the Demon of Empathy knew how to sound genuinely curious instead of challenging, how to set up conversation after conversation so that it was okay for me to be wrong because that meant I could become right, and I whispered, "Because it's just me."
My therapist—and as twisted and darkly amusing as it was that a Demon of Empathy was the closest thing I had to a therapist, that was what they were—simply regarded me with a calm, open gaze, wordlessly asking if I wanted to continue.
"With Lucet, it was someone else hurting her. And we could both hate him for what he'd done. But with me..." I held up a shaking hand, trying to see it as it was now, not as it had been. "It's just me," I repeated. "I'm the only one responsible for what I've done to myself. The voices that whisper in my ear? They're all my voice. Nobody else's. Don't you get it? I am the monster. And if I tell Lucet... won't she hate the monster too?" My voice grew pleading, and the Demon of Empathy opened his arms, and rifts forgive me but I embraced the demon, breaking down in sobs.
"I, too, am a monster," the Demon of Empathy murmured. "I have committed atrocities that would make dark gods jealous, and over my many, many years, I have learned one thing."
The Demon of Empathy pulled back, and their gaze was fierce. "I am the monster, yes. But I am also a therapist, and a leader, and a friend. And if I can be all those at once, you can too."
And something in my mind snapped. I saw the Demon of Empathy for what they were—killer, savior, truth and lie, angel, demon, therapist, spy—and I saw myself in every facet of their being.
If I can be all those at once, you can too.
I sniffled and leaned back, the effort strange even after how much time I'd spent getting used to the dream-plane we met in. I felt its edges begin to fray as I started my return to consciousness.
"Same time tomorrow?" the Demon of Empathy asked.
I nodded mutely, too stunned to do anything else.
"I'll see you then," the demon said, just before the world dissolved.
I awoke in my bed, the echoes of tears clinging dry to my face.
A.N.
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Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. For more, join the discussion at my discord, subscribe to bubblewriters, or support me at my patreon!

LESSON 92. Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.
The idea for today is an extension of the previous one. You do not think of light in terms of strength, and darkness in terms of weakness. That is because your idea of what seeing means is tied up with the body and its eyes and brain. Thus you believe that you can change what you see by putting little bits of glass before your eyes. This is among the many magical beliefs that come from the conviction you are a body, and the body’s eyes can see.
You also believe the body’s brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea. It is as if you thought you held the match that lights the sun and gives it all its warmth; or that you held the world within your hand, securely bound until you let it go. Yet this is no more foolish than to believe the body’s eyes can see; the brain can think.
It is God’s strength in you that is the light in which you see, as it is His Mind with which you think. His strength denies your weakness. It is your weakness that sees through the body’s eyes, peering about in darkness to behold the likeness of itself; the small, the weak, the sickly and the dying, those in need, the helpless and afraid, the sad, the poor, the starving and the joyless. These are seen through eyes that cannot see and cannot bless.
Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances. It keeps its steady gaze upon the light that lies beyond them. It unites with light, of which it is a part. It sees itself. It brings the light in which your Self appears. In darkness you perceive a self that is not there. Strength is the truth about you; weakness is an idol falsely worshipped and adored that strength may be dispelled, and darkness rule where God appointed that there should be light.
Strength comes from truth, and shines with light its Source has given it; weakness reflects the darkness of its maker. It is sick and looks on sickness, which is like itself. Truth is a savior and can only will for happiness and peace for everyone. It gives its strength to everyone who asks, in limitless supply. It sees that lack in anyone would be a lack in all. And so it gives its light that all may see and benefit as one. Its strength is shared, that it may bring to all the miracle in which they will unite in purpose and forgiveness and in love.
Weakness, which looks in darkness, cannot see a purpose in forgiveness and in love. It sees all others different from itself, and nothing in the world that it would share. It judges and condemns, but does not love. In darkness it remains to hide itself, and dreams that it is strong and conquering, a victor over limitations that but grow in darkness to enormous size.
It fears and it attacks and hates itself, and darkness covers everything it sees, leaving its dreams as fearful as itself. No miracles are here, but only hate. It separates itself from what it sees, while light and strength perceive themselves as one. The light of strength is not the light you see. It does not change and flicker and go out. It does not shift from night to day, and back to darkness till the morning comes again.
The light of strength is constant, sure as love, forever glad to give itself away, because it cannot give but to itself. No one can ask in vain to share its sight, and none who enters its abode can leave without a miracle before his eyes, and strength and light abiding in his heart.
The strength in you will offer you the light, and guide your seeing so you do not dwell on idle shadows that the body’s eyes provide for self-deception. Strength and light unite in you, and where they meet, your Self stands ready to embrace you as Its Own. Such is the meeting place we try today to find and rest in, for the peace of God is where your Self, His Son, is waiting now to meet Itself again, and be as One.
Let us give twenty minutes twice today to join this meeting. Let yourself be brought unto your Self. Its strength will be the light in which the gift of sight is given you. Leave, then, the dark a little while today, and we will practice seeing in the light, closing the body’s eyes and asking truth to show us how to find the meeting place of self and Self, where light and strength are one.
Morning and evening we will practice thus. After the morning meeting, we will use the day in preparation for the time at night when we will meet again in trust. Let us repeat as often as we can the idea for today, and recognize that we are being introduced to sight, and led away from darkness to the light where only miracles can be perceived.

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