Psionic Power Bestowal

Alex, Chet, and Amirilia walked out of the tall grass and into an idyllic little town full of beautiful, elven looking folk. Shops lined the square. There were restaurants and coffee bars as well.

Lights ran up and down the street. The town seemed fairly modern. At the very least, it ran on electricity. He didn't see any cars, but that didn't mean they didn't exist.

Alex wondered how they got their supplies. He didn't see any roads in or out of the town. The whole place seemed to be surrounded by tall grass. Maybe it was just hidden.

Amirilia led them to a spiritual center, where a service was being held. They sat in the pews and watched the service. Alex and Chet followed along with Amirilia and did everything she did.

Their religious practices seemed to be centered around nature and their connection to it. There was a point where everyone in the spiritual center lined up and came to the front of the spiritual center where they would drink from a bowl of water with a stone in it.

Alex looked closer at the stone. It glowed slightly. The dimensional core! They were using it in their spiritual practices. Interesting. That did not bode well for their mission or the morality of taking the core back to Earth.

He would have to see if there was some way they would let them borrow it for safekeeping. After the service was over, Amirilia led Alex and Chet up to the spiritual leader.

"Alex and Chet, meet my father, Father Doren. Father, meet Alex and Chet. I found them amongst the flowers. They seem to come from a faraway land because they don't have ears like ours," Amirilia said.

"What an astute observation, Amirilia. A pleasure to meet you both. May I speak with you a moment, Amirilia?"

"Yes, father," Amirilia said.

They walked over to the corner of the spiritual center behind a wall, but it was easy to tell that they were arguing over something. Alex could just imagine it in his head.

The father was probably telling her she shouldn't have brought strangers into their community, and she was probably saying about how they should be welcoming and kind to everyone, not just those in their community.

Alex tried to stare straight ahead to make it seem like he wasn't paying attention to their conversation, but their animated gestures were so obvious, he could see them even in his peripheral vision.

Sure enough, when they came back, the father said, "Amirilia reminded me how we should be welcoming and kind to everyone. Not just those in our little town. Why don't you join us for dinner tonight?"

Alex had watched too many movies if he could guess their conversation that easily. He needed to get out more. As horrible as it was to say, this alien invasion had been really good for his mental health.

Seeing Amirilia interact with her father made him think about his own parents. He really hoped they were ok, but he didn't have much hope for it with the way things were going.

If he was being honest with himself, he hadn't thought much about his parents since the invasion started and he got the system. He was too caught up in the excitement of being useful and being needed that he forgot all about them.

This made him feel a deep guilt in the pit of his stomach. A guilt he couldn't make go away.

He tried to rationalize and tell himself that going to help his parents now would be selfish and that he could save so many more lives elsewhere, but the reality was, he didn't want to deal with his familial responsibilities.

He wanted to be important and useful and needed. He liked what he was doing. It made him feel like the solution to the world's problems, just like video games made him feel. That was a reality he didn't want to face but he had to.

Amirilia grabbing his hand pulled him out of his thoughts.

"Come with me," she said.

Alex grabbed Chet's hand, and Chet shook it off and followed behind without having to hold anyone's hand. They went into a back room of the spiritual center.

There were a few chairs, a desk, and a bookshelf. It looked like they were in the spiritual leader's office. They probably were.

"What's going on?" Alex said.

Amirilia moved the chairs around so they were facing each other. She sat in one and motioned for Alex to sit in the other. Alex sat down.

"I want you to teach me how to heal. And then you can teach Chet how to speak." Amirilia said.

"Oh. Sure. We can try that now," Alex said. "Give me your hands."

Amirilia put her hands in front of Alex and he grabbed them from underneath. He didn't actually need her to do this to access her mind, but he had seen psychics do it a lot in movies.

He figured it made people open up more mentally and allow themselves to be vulnerable, which he did need Amirilia to do if he was going to be messing around in her head.

Alex started with telepathy as his base skill and concentrated on creating a skill that allowed him to transfer knowledge.

[New skill created: Knowledge Transfer]

Then he created a telepathic conduit from his mind to hers. He focused on telling her brain how psionic healing worked. How the bio-scan skill functioned and how regrowth worked.

Then he opened his eyes and said, "Done. Now try to perform a bio-scan on me."

Amirilia's eyes opened wide, and she said, "Ok!"

Amirilia focused on performing a bio-scan. She knew how it worked and what should happen when she did it, but nothing happened. No matter how many times she tried, nothing happened.

"I can't do it. I understand how it works but I don't have the power. I don't know how it feels to perform it," Amirilia said, disappointed.

That look of disappointment was like a knife in the heart to Alex. She was so innocent and kind that it just made you want to make her happy. It was the same kind of feeling he had when he was around Morcai.

"How it feels to perform it," she had said. That was the problem. He taught her how it worked, but not how to generate the sensation that created the action.

"I still might be able to teach you. I was just thinking about it wrong," Alex said. "Give me a second."

"Ok!" Amirilia said.

Alex focused on the feeling and how to generate that feeling. How to create the feeling that created the action that performed the skill. He was thinking about the entire process now and not just how it worked.

[New skill created: Psionic Power Bestowal]

Yes! That was what he wanted to do. He wanted to bestow Amirilia with the power of psionic healing.

"Ok, give me your hands again," Alex said.

"You still have them," Amirilia said.

He looked down and realized he was still holding her hands.

"That I do," Alex said laughing.

Alex focused on teaching her mind how to perform psionic healing, down to the feeling and even the thoughts that generated the feeling. The first skill he tried to teach her was bio-scan.

[Checking subject for psionic capacity]

[Psionic Capacity: High]

[Psionic Power Bestowal: Successful]