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((Double Monday -- Page 2 of 2))
His brain was marginally more prepared this time. The battering of sensations hit him like a wave, and again, he felt the same panic from before. But he retained enough of presence of mind now to stop his hand from letting go, to override bodily instinct with force of will.

It got worse.

He lost space. He lost time. He was losing himself. But he saw it again. The blanket. The veil. He put his hand forward--or some crackling, imagined representation of his hand, at least--and tried to grasp the veil. It was already partly peeled back. He just had to pull it the rest of the way.

And so he did.

He regained space. He regained time. He regained himself.

But the storm all around him did not cease. Still, it pummeled him, his mind, with so many sensations and emotions and distractions that he couldn’t even distinguish them from one another before they were replaced by something else, something newer, better, terrifying, worrying, encouraging, mortifying, ecstatic, dull, soul-crushing--

Endless.

It was folly to engage with it. He had to keep himself. Himself. His own mind. His own focus. These emotions were not his own. They were external. They were sorcery. Witchcraft. Whatever. It didn’t matter what they were. They didn’t matter. Only he mattered.

Him and the world around him. The real world.

And through it all, the swirling and somehow visible mayhem of emotions, he could see what he wanted to see.

Lenos, standing right next to him.

But of course, his name was not truly Lenos. And it was not Kogibur, either. The man didn’t have a name. At least, not one that was given to him by his mother. Because the man had never known his mother. Or his father, for that matter. He’d been an orphan of the Higher West Layer, as Royo himself had been. He had been treated with contempt in the community home in which he had grown up. He had been lastingly scarred by that experience, to the point of trusting none but himself. And a woman. In his adolescence. A woman who then betrayed him for money.

It could be no surprise, then, that Lenos did not fully trust Royo now. And that was not mere suspicion on Royo’s part. He knew that Lenos had reservations about him. He could see it, as clearly as he could see the man’s face.

But he could also see that Lenos did trust him a little. Which was more than Royo would have expected, quite frankly.

And it didn’t stop. Royo could see still more. Wavering and fleeting feelings, hovering around Lenos, whispering about his soul and his past. A job he’d taken. A mentor he’d had. Threads of his life woven together into a grand web that was as easy to navigate as it was to think. Royo had only to look where he wanted, consider what he wanted, and Lenos’ knowledge was Royo’s knowledge.