Placebo

“Clarity,” the chant of the spell dragged my thoughts out from the darkness. I could think again, emerging from a mist that I never remembered entering. The first sensation that came to me was a soft object that held up my head. To make sure I was really lying on a bed and not someone’s lap, I opened my eyes before moving a single inch of my body.

I was greeted by two faces. Lyla had her hand on my forehead. She was kneeling beside the bed. Sabedra sat at the foot of the bed with a smug look on her face. We were back in the guest room at the Everhart mansion.

“I told you Clarity would work,” Sabedra said.

“What happened?” I asked. The last thing I remembered was Lyla defeating Nephrite in the archery match.

“You started acting weird after the match, so I flew us back to the mansion.” Sabedra patted her chest, fishing for praise.

“Thank you so much.” I could give her this much. Sabedra nodded and reached for a cookie from a plate on a nearby desk. I squinted my eyes at the plate. This didn’t look like what Sabedra had on hand before I lost consciousness.

“The chefs were making the pastries in the kitchen here,” Lyla explained. Maybe I shouldn’t have thanked Sabedra after all.

But I had bigger concerns than Sabedra’s motives. Once the fog in my mind cleared thanks to Lyla’s spell, I recognized it as the affliction that lowered my guard when the rainbow panther attacked. It was Coyote’s drugged mental state seeping into my mind. With the right arm returned and the associated pain gone, nothing was balancing the numbness out anymore.

I explained my theory and the situation at Nautia. Lyla immediately rushed to schedule a meeting with Cyrus. And it was only Sabedra and me in the room again.

“Can you feel the calmness right now?” Sabedra asked.

“A little. It is getting stronger by the second.”

“Hmm… Try casting Clarity on yourself.”

“Did you forget that I can’t use magic?”

“But you now have a mana link to Lyla Everhart. I can see the thread just barely.”

That hadn’t even crossed my mind, even as Lyla’s inner thoughts were speaking in my head at this very moment. I grabbed my forehead and chanted with a deep breath, “Clarity.”

Nothing happened.

“Oh, for learned magic, you have to understand the spell to use it,” Sabedra added.

“And how does this spell work?”

“I told you yesterday.” She must have been referring to the barrage of words she threw out when Cyrus introduced the mage training grounds to us.

“Oh, Lady Sabedra, the Dragon of Knowledge. Can you grant me the privilege of hearing your explanation again?” I even bowed to her.

Sabedra blushed a little. “If you phrase it that way…” She was so straightforward to convince. The Clarity spell relies on the understanding that the body has two modes: an active mode and an inactive mode. The spell balances the two modes, usually from the active mode to the inactive mode. But in my case, I needed to be pushed towards the active mode to counter the calming effects.

“It sounds simple, but it takes years for mages to actually grasp it. But since you are connected to Lyla Everhart, you should be able to draw from her years of magic training.”

Converting what she said into modern psychology knowledge, the two modes would be the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. These two autonomic systems govern the fight-or-flight response and the rest-and-digest response, respectively.

I closed my eyes and envisioned the body parts involved in the sympathetic nervous system, imagining the effects of the fight-or-flight response. And then, without even touching my forehead, I chanted, “Clarity.” My voice was granted an ethereal quality, as if it resounded in my mind and never left my lips. The numbing fog that crept into my mind receded with that single word.

“I guess it didn’t work,” Sabedra murmured. What was she saying? That definitely worked, even more effectively than what Lyla cast. And my hands glowed too.

“It worked. The spell cleared my mind.”

“You cast the spell, but no mana was used.” Sabedra fell into thought, grabbing another snack. It didn’t take her long to get to the answer. “The calming effect is all in your head. Those mana threads. They give you information, but not the actual state.”

In other words, she suggested that it was all the placebo effect, a product of my beliefs. I couldn’t discount this possibility, since my body wasn’t actually drugged. The calming effect might really have been a series of sensations that were transmitted to me, in the same way that thoughts were. And I could already ignore inner thoughts so well that it exceeded my inborn ability to filter out physical noises in the background.

I first developed this skill after Coyote was captured and drugged. The persistent mumbling of her inner world permeated my mind at every moment, so much so that I got used to it. I was able to use what I had learned to tune out Lyla’s mind chatter, to respect her privacy and protect my sanity.

It wasn’t a stretch to assume that I could also learn to ignore mental states. Maybe I could draw inspiration from the principles of mindfulness, which taught me to let the states pass without identifying with them.

Before I could think over the best way to train myself, the door was burst open. It was Cyrus, his glare directed straight at me. I regretted blocking out Lyla’s thoughts, because they would have surely warned me of this. But again, I needed his help, so this confrontation was always inevitable.

“Good. You are finally awake,” Cyrus said before even entering the room. There wasn’t an ounce of concern in his voice. He was more like a police officer visiting a suspect at a hospital. “How are you taking responsibility for the mess you made?”

“Brother! Don’t blame him!” Lyla caught up with him from behind.

“Did any of my actions violate your traditions?” I asked.

Cyrus clenched his fist so hard that it was turning white. The veins on his forehead bulged. It was refreshing to see him this angry. And there was nothing he could say; he would have stopped me back then if he had thought of any valid reasons to. Also, my plan wouldn’t have worked if Lyla hadn’t wanted it to. He should have been yelling at her instead.

“You can go back to Nautia yourself. I WON’T do anything to help you,” he could only answer.

“Brother! We need your help!” Lyla grabbed onto Cyrus’s sleeves. I silently approved of her tactics. The appeal to Cyrus’s brotherly emotions could work here.

“You aren’t going.” Cyrus glared at Lyla. “You will clean up your mess with me. Start by writing apology letters to every guest who attended your wedding.”

“I’m going. I’m going. I’m going.” Lyla lightly hammered Cyrus’s arm. What is she? A kid?

Those “attacks” seemed to be effective against Cyrus. His expression softened a little, but he bit his lip, probably in an effort to resist his sister’s cuteness. “Fine. You do whatever you want. But I can’t help you any more than that. I have work to do.” It was probably the most compromise he would give, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with this.

“Lord Cyrus, have you heard of noblesse oblige?” I asked, reciting the phrase in its original French glory.

“You can’t make up words and ask if I have heard of them.”

“It’s a phrase from an ancient language that I have read about recently.” Technically, I wasn’t lying; French really does have an ancient history. “It meant that as nobility, you don’t get to only enjoy your status; you also have to fulfill your responsibilities.”

“And how will I be fulfilling my responsibilities if I go to Nautia?”

“You are hearing reports of a mage who can ignore one of the fundamentals of magic and manipulate memory. Don’t those reports sound concerning to you? And now one of your kin is going alone to the city where that mage is located.”

Cyrus glanced at Lyla and then at me. He rubbed his forehead while letting out a powerless sigh. “You are the biggest danger to Lyla. You even grew back an arm. What was up with that?”

Lyla fell into thought with Cyrus’s question. Then, a realization hit her, and her face warped into a cold scowl. She must have realized that I had connected to her. I didn’t check her thoughts to verify it, since she was already rapidly switching her target from Cyrus to me, slapping me as if she were playing the drums. “Pervert! Pervert! Pervert! Stop spying on me!”

Stop phrasing it in a way that people can misunderstand. I was too scared to check what expression Cyrus had on his face. The chill I felt on my skin was enough information for me. I am doomed.

While I was fearing for my life, Sabedra munched on another piece of cookie, with no intention of helping me.