This World Belongs to Us

6: Sumita

Sumita was already wide awake when the morning sun burst through the window of her cabin room. She sat in a corner, performing her morning ritual. It was a ceremony designed and performed by her alone. She belonged to no religion or system of beliefs.

Sumita took a deep breath, and cast her Vi Athenemate on herself. She started to see things in the room that could not possibly be there. Strange faces in the walls, alien devices on the floor, and horrifying visions of abnormal burning monstrosities. The bedroom was no longer a place for rest and relaxation; it was a plaything for the mind.

This morning ritual had a very specific goal. She was to torture her own psyche to the point where she felt legitimately unsure whether she was truly in control or not. It was then that Sumita would focus, hone her senses, and through great mental and physical exertion she would put an end to the visions and cease the cast of her Vi Athenemate.

She had designed this ritual with two objectives in mind. The first was to remind herself that both reality and perception were nothing but concepts dreamt up by limited minds. The second was to test her own mental ability with both the fear of losing her mind, and then with the will of bringing it back. This ritual was legitimately dangerous. If she was not fully confident in herself, she ran the risk of taking her Vi Athenemate too far and disassociating her mind from her perceived reality.

Sumita's Vi Athenemate was one that humans were terrified of, and for justifiable reasons. It had its roots in the realm of perception. Focusing on a single target, she could cause aberrations in the person's field of view. She created illusions of her own design and made her target see things that weren't there. These cracks in perception were usually small changes, like making her target see a nearby rope as a vicious snake. But the limits of her Vi Athenemate did not stop there, and if she really wanted, she could draw visions out of her subject's deepest fears. If she chose to cast her Vi Athenemate in this manner, she could potentially make her victim lose his sanity, as he would be unsure whether anything he saw was real.

Due to this, Sumita was very restrictive with the usage of her Vi Athenemate.

She mainly used it to trick shopkeepers into perceiving that the five dollars she handed them was actually worth twenty. Her Vi Athenemate was limited purely to vision. While she could create any vision for the eyes, she could not alter the perception of any other senses. Therefore, it would be impossible to hand someone a rock and tell them it was one hundred dollars. The person would feel the difference and the illusion would break.

Sumita's morning ritual lasted for a half hour. It had been successful and she felt strong willed and ready for the day. Searching through the small amount of supplies she had packed, she found some simple but warm clothes, put them on, and headed downstairs. She heard noises coming from the kitchen area, and spied Azarial sitting at the dining table pouring some Irish cream into his morning coffee. Sumita found this a little strange. As she understood it, alcoholic drinks were mainly a treat for the evenings or late afternoon. She reminded herself that his activity could be explained by the fact that they were somewhat on vacation.

Azarial had not noticed her presence, and she felt slightly mischievous after the basement exploration last night. She cast her Vi Athenemate on Azarial and conjured the image of a coffee pot on the table. This pot suddenly became sentient, grew dark red eyes, and broke apart its outer shell to scream silently. Azarial recoiled in surprise and spilled a small amount of his coffee. He then grinned at the image, and raised his right hand to the ceiling. Sumita winced as a blinding flash of light suddenly rippled through the cabin. It was enough to break her concentration and dissolve her creation. She stepped out of hiding and walked up to the table.

"You could have done much worse," Azarial said with a smile. He stood up and fetched a dish towel to clean off the spilled coffee.

"I didn't want you to spill your whole cup," said Sumita as she sat down.