The Rogues Who Went Rogue
Chapter 74

As Xandar took steps towards his wife with a proud smile, Toby's voice of mock discontentment cut through the silence, "You got to admit, that wasn't really fair. Lucy had a rock nearby. I didn't."

His vampire partner, Joseph, turned to him and said, "You did, Tobias. You tripped over it."

When laughter ensued from wolves, lycans and vampires, Toby accused, "That was only because you manipulated me into thinking that there wasn't anything there, Joe."

"No, I didn't. I was only trying to manipulate you to see your friend, Lovelace, as your enemy. The absence of a rock was the result of your self-manipulation, minister."

When Toby ran out of arguments while everyone around him laughed, he looked at his best friend whose mate now wrapped his arms around her abdomen and shoulders from behind as the defense minister declared, "I've grown a sudden hate for walls, Lucy." As her indecent beast took in her scent from her hair, Lucianne argued, "At least you could feel the walls, Toby. I didn't even know the manipulation started taking effect until after I killed two imaginary proditors. I was literally fighting nothing."

All contemplative eyes turned to Rafael, who looked at his own best friend and scratched his nape as he admitted, "Perhaps I entered a little too quickly for first practice."

Christian then said, "No no no no no. Rafael, that's not the point...well, not my point at least. The question is: you can create a creature out of...nothing?"

"Every decipio here can do that, Your Grace."

Some of the werewolves and lycans even cursed under their breath before quickly apologizing to their decipio partner. Zelena asked, "Why would you want your victims to fight nothing? I thought the whole purpose of manipulation was to make your enemies fight each other." Rafael explained, "That is the endgame, yes. But we can't deny that, sometimes, when our enemy is charging towards us, there may be no one between us and them. So, creating an illusionary creature between the two sides buys us time to escape, maybe even attack." Toby nodded in understanding and said, "That's actually pretty clever." His objective compliment made the decipios so proud of themselves and their abilities that most, if not all of them, smiled without effort.

Xandar then asked, "For comparison's sake, Rafael, is it easier to create something out of nothing, or change how a creature sees another creature?"

Rafael answered without hesitation, "Creation takes more effort and skill, Your Highness. We'd have to quickly pull out information from your mental archives to understand what you're prone to find true. Then, we'd have to conjure up what the imaginary creatures would look like and how they'd react to threats and attacks. If we're merely changing the physical aspects of another creature in our victims' minds, we wouldn't have to think about how they would react to our victims' attacks since the reaction comes from the actual creature that our victim is made to fight in real life. It really is much simpler."

As everyone processed this, Rafael added, "But creation takes decades of practice to perfect, and even then, it requires a certain level of concentration during execution...and proximity to the victim, of course. So decipios can't have someone attacking us while we're creating something out of thin air. Any level of distraction would tamper with the authenticity of that sort of manipulation. Personally, when I'm distracted, the...thin-air-manipulation I create would be...unrealistic, such as the sounds that should be louder come out illogically softer. I mean, you won't have a ready-to-attack creature standing right in front of you snarl so soft that you start suspecting he's having a sore throat."

Toby shrugged like he didn't mind before he mumbled, "I'd probably laugh at him before I fight him."

After replaying the Blue Crescent attack, Greg said, "I suppose we should count ourselves lucky the decipios from the other day didn't forge something out of thin air.”

Rafael then explained, "And that could be for two reasons, Your Grace. One, they can't do it for lack of skill, which would be good news for us; two, the fact that they were being chased and attacked didn't offer them the luxury to focus on doing something like that." Greg uttered the thought running through everyone's minds, "Let's hope it's the former."

Greg was usually open to new challenges and 'worthy opponents' but this was not something that he'd want a challenge in simply because he knew close to nothing about how to keep the people he cared about safe yet.

When no one else had anymore questions, everyone got back to practice. Rafael slither his way into Lucianne's mind exaggeratingly slowly this time. Even then, Lucianne still couldn't feel him in the first three intrusions.

Greg and Xandar didn't hold back. In the manipulation, Greg saw Tanner, sometimes Livia. Xandar either saw rogues, the Kyltons or Sasha Cummings. They both acted on instinct and attacked each other as soon as the manipulation took effect in their first two rounds, never bothering to fight back the mental walls that pushed them towards an illusion. After that, however, the cousins started noticing illogicalities in the illusions.

When they attacked, their opponent appeared more ferocious than the actual person would, so Greg was seeing a ready-to-kill Livia or Tanner when in reality, they'd cower when he was about to attack. Xandar noticed the same thing with the Kyltons and Sasha Cummings. The rogues were a little trickier for him since those in reality had always appeared fierce.

What was different, Xandar realized when he circled a hand around Greg's neck and lifted him off the ground, was that he smelled his cousin. Sure, he hated the guy but his animal somehow knew that killing and hurting Greg was not on its to-do-list. As they practiced one round afte another, they'd even throw in reluctant apologies if they did end up hurting one another, so it was mostly Xandar apologizing to Greg after the manipulation effects wore off.

In their sixth round, they started trying to push back the mental walls. Greg got so frustrated at one point that he cursed 'f*ck this shit' and summoned his animal's strength to punch through the mental wall with his fist, and the thin wall Pellethia created shattered like glass. The effects wore off, and the empress looked at the duke with a congratulatory smile and said, "That was very creative, Your Grace. But know that strength will only work with thin walls and very untrained decipios. In the end, awareness of a decipio's intrusion will still triumph, so reliance on your animal's senses remains a must-mastered skill."

"Yeah, I just got sick of it," Greg muttered frankly.

Pellethia smirked. "I can tell. We should take a break."

The empress went to watch another pair while Xandar and Greg lay flat on the ground, mentally drained. Xandar suddenly asked, "Why is it that our human and animal instincts combined still trust what we see more than what we smell or know?"

Greg pinched the bridge of his nose and answered, "Basic science, cousin. Light travels faster than anything. Sight is our 'quickest' sense in detecting stimulus, so to speak. The rest of our senses take a little more time to catch up." He then closed his eyes to find some peace from his cousin.

Xandar looked past the condescending way Greg was replying, and he thought out loud, "That means...when we're in the presence with decipios, it's better to start off with our eyes closed."

Greg's closed eyes snapped wide open. That was actually not a stupid idea. But the question was how long should their eyes be closed?

Xandar then elaborated, "If we memorized the scents of our followers and allies, which our animals have already been doing all this time, any foreign scent would be the enemy, then no matter what or who we see, we'd know it's safe to kill."

The duke sat up in silence as he tried to find loopholes in Xandar's reasoning. When silence ensued, Xandar sat up, which was when Greg murmured, "It's good to know that a glimmer of light is appearing from your dimness, cousin. I credit the queen for that improvement. Let's get the empress. We should start putting our theory to the test."

Xandar protested, "Our theory? I thought of that whole thing, Greg."

"After I told you about how quickly our eyes detect stimuli. I get points, too."