When Scarlet stalked off, quite obviously in a mood, Keera was left flabbergasted. Her diminutive companion had never talked much about herself, or anything, really, mostly just giving orders or explanations about the tasks at hand, but there had always been an air of danger around her. It had been that air of danger that made Keera question what she had done to be on Verdun, that and the various knives Scarlet had hidden on her person had fueled her imagination with visions of murder and intrigue. However, her parting words painted a very different picture, making Keera question just what had happened, while doubting that Scarlet would actually tell her.

And she wasn’t willing to push Scarlet on that, not after the time she had spent alone in town, calling it stressful would be putting it mildly. Even as harsh as Scarlet was, her actions seemed to have purpose, she was trying to help Keera become able to survive on the harsh world. Unbidden, visions of Scarlet leading her through the water, making sure that potential enemies had no chance to pursue, them came to her mind, making her blush. Forcibly banishing those thoughts from her mind, she looked into the remains of the fire, trying to think of something else, anything else.

Some time later, she jerked up from her dozing near-sleep, wondering what they would do about night-watches. Scarlet had vanished into the darkness and she had no idea where the other had gone and she was not willing to call out, for fear of attracting some predator to their fire. Despite the order to keep her mind concealed and hidden, she send out mind-pulses, like a radar, reflecting back from thinking minds. She felt a mind nearby and merely seconds after she started, she heard Scarlet hiss a command in the dark.

“Stop it, fool. Those pulses can be felt for miles!”

Keera looked around, having only a rough heading for the mind she had felt when suddenly, something large and heavy landed in the darkness to her side. She tried to turn, jump away and take a defensive posture, all at the same time, causing her to fall over her own feet, landing in a tangle of limbs.

“What did I tell you about concealing your mind?!” Scarlet hissed, having just leapt down the last bit from the tree she had slept in.

“I…” Keera started to stammer “I just wanted to know what to do about a nightwatch.”

Scarlet was quite annoyed. She had found a nice tree to sleep in, after getting annoyed by Keera’s wide-eyed optimism, only to be awakened when a searching mind-pulse washed over her. Her mind needed a moment to rouse itself from sleep and into something resembling rational thought, realising that the searching mind was Keera’s, causing her to hiss in annoyance.

After getting down from her tree and causing the other to clumsily fall over, her mood didn’t get better, especially when Keera looked ready to cry. For just a second, she was ready to abandon the project to make Keera useful, to simply dump her in the forest and go her own way, let the fool become one of the village whores, it would be no skin off her back. But, she realised, Keera was her best bet to mold someone into a reliable partner, someone she could rely on to her back, if only because she had planted the mental seed. If she gave that seed enough time to grow, sometimes slipping into Keera’s mind when she was unconscious, she should be able to forge Keera into a follower that would go to her own death with a smile on her lips, if it meant that Scarlet would be rescued.

Such a follower, or maybe calling it a slave would be more accurate, would be priceless and hoping that she managed to get someone pliable enough to mold in such a way was a long shot. It had worked with Keera due to a measure of trust the other had in Scarlet and the relationship the two of them had and the desperate state Keera was in. Making use of those emotions, linking them together and focusing Keera’s mind onto Scarlet as the deliverance from her state was comparatively easy, laughably easy even, compared to other major mental reconstructions. It was not a topic she was well versed in, having only brushed about the effects of mental reconstruction and how to spot such a thing when looking for spies.

Forcing down her annoyance, she reached out to Keera, pulling her to her feet.

“I’m sorry for barking at you, but scanning for minds is dangerous. I really don’t want to risk a fight with another prisoner, not if I can help it.” Scarlet explained, almost biting her tongue to be friendly and nice to Keera, even allowing the other to hug her and hugging her back, knowing that it might be an effect from the seed she had planted. Positive reinforcement was useful, especially when the seed was first taking root.

Rolling her eyes when she noticed Keera crying, she patted her back, waiting her out. There were blubbered attempts at speech and after a few of those, Keera managed to get actual words out, apologizing to Scarlet for making her angry, pleading to not be left alone and similar nonsense. Scarlet simply kept reassuring Keera that everything would be fine and similar platitudes before showing her how to climb the tree she had slept in, showing her how to wedge herself and her sleeping back between branches to make sure she wouldn’t fall and so on. It was annoying to almost tuck a grown woman in but she calmed herself with the mental mantra that the kindness would be fertiliser for the mental seed.

After looking down to the remains of the fire, making sure that they wouldn’t be wakened by a sudden forest fire, Scarlet went back to sleep herself.

The next morning, Scarlet woke with the sun, looking over to Keera’s still sleeping form, happy that the other hadn’t managed to wiggle free from the tree and fall down. While it would have amused her, Keera might have been hurt, slowing down their journey and that would have been annoying. So, short term amusement that she would have been forced to hide against long-term annoyance?

After stretching a little, Scarlet climbed down, letting Crysna out to move around a little as well. She was planning to let Cyca do most of the fighting for the day, so Crysna would mostly be in his crystal form and she had noticed that her monster’s behaviour was happier, for lack of better word, and the effort keeping them in their crystal form was lesser when they were allowed to play in their projected forms for some time each day. That and the sometimes very feline behaviour of Cyca made Scarlet wonder just how the Crystal Monsters came to be. They were certainly not acting like animals and their minds were structured very different from animals as well, making her curious.

During the days she had hunted alone, she had imagined a few scenarios, some of them more outlandish than the others, imagining everything from ancient, alien civilisations creating them for their own enjoyment, something of a world-sized amusement park that was now explored by humans or some sort of recreation project. She had tried to come up with natural explanations but had been unable to come up with anything that sounded even remotely plausible. She still considered a natural explanation the most likely reason, even if she had no idea how, but she was quite sure that her own lack of information was to blame for that.

While Crysna happily swum around in the brook, Scarlet washed up, enjoying the cold water on her skin. Once she felt clean, she started a new fire, planning to prepare breakfast. But before that, she climbed back into the tree, carefully waking Keera up.

“Good morning, sleepyhead. If you want breakfast, you’ll have to come down and complete your first round of mental training. By the time you are done with that, I’ll have food ready.” Scarlet told her when Keera was blinking the sleep from her eyes.

Scarlet had to suppress a grin when Keera looked around owlishly especially when it became so obvious that she had noticed Scarlet’s state of dress, or rather, undress, blushing bright enough to be used to signal the Federation-forces in orbit. Climbing back down, Scarlet heard soft muttering from Keera but ignored it while starting to make breakfast. She was soon followed by Keera who was still bright red, but again, Scarlet ignored the others state. When Keera instantly sat down cross-legged, in the position she preferred for her meditation for some reason, Scarlet hummed in approval. She knew how painful the exercise Keera was using were, having used them in the past, but discipline was one of the keys to psionic power.

With that in mind, she tried to make sure that the breakfast was a tasty reward, a carrot to motivate Keera in her training. And to make her think of Scarlet as the benevolent mistress that took care of her.