Condition Evolution 2: A LitRPG / Gamelit Adventure by Sinclair, Kevin (black female authors txt) 📗

As eager as I was to explore however, I also wanted to take this journey with Ember.

I concentrated on Ember and entered her mind. To my complete surprise, it worked. It was no longer total darkness either. I could see Ember’s mind and in it was a corridor, just like mine.

“Hey, Shaun. I can feel you in my mind. Care to explain what you’re doing?”

I just knew I could speak, and she’d hear me. I had a compulsion to enter the room in front of me and we all know I’m a tad impulsive, so I did. There was Ember sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty room. I noticed a screen on the wall with various flashing images of me, the ship, Ogun and other things, it didn’t make any sense. I turned back to Ember in the chair, sitting with her eyes closed.

“Open your eyes,” I said.

“What the fuck are you talking about? I have my eyes open.”

“I’m standing in front of you, or rather your mental representative. You're sitting in a chair with your eyes closed.”

“Less of the mumbo jumbo shit, Shaun.”

“It wasn’t mumbo jumbo.” I reached out and took her hand.

“Oh. Wow. That felt weird. What did you do?”

“I can see you inside your mind, like I said. You’re sitting here and I held your hand. You have your eyes closed.”

“That’s actually kinda creepy. I hope you’re not doing anything weird to me.”

“Stop giving me shit and just open your eyes. Try to look at my hand on yours, maybe?”

“It doesn’t feel like a hand on mine though. It just feels tingly inside.”

“Try focusing on that tingly feeling and imagine it’s me holding your hand.”

In her Mindscape, as Ogun had called it, a look of stern concentration came over Ember’s face. Suddenly, her eyes snapped open, but her image started flickering in and out of reality. It was totally surreal and scary as shit for me watching. I held tightly on to her hand and pulled her up into an embrace. I have no idea why, but it felt like the right thing to do. The flickering strengthened to the point that it was a fight to keep hold of her, but there was no damn way I was letting go. After a couple of eternal moments, it abated.

When it finally settled completely, she looked up and smiled. “Wow. That was definitely the most intense experience of my life and I’ve been hooked on heroin!” she laughed. I felt a pang of relief that I didn’t see the pain in her eyes that normally accompanied such a statement.

“I could feel my mind trying to break free of my body. Is that what happened to you?” she asked.

“Yup. My mind did leave my body and I went floating off into nothingness. Ogun thought he’d have to come hunting for you, but this just shows how strong you are. You’ve managed to make this, supposedly impossible, leap and not get lost.”

“’Shut up, Shaun. The only reason I’m here still is because you pulled me through and held onto me.”

I shrugged off her praise, “Well, you’re here now. Shall we wander around your head, or would you prefer mine?”

“I don’t know what might be lurking in here,” she paused, then quickly spoke again, “I do trust you. It’s my crazy head I don’t trust. Promise I’ll let you come over once I gotten used to it myself.” She grinned.

“That’s fine. Come to my house and we’ll root around there.”

Within moments, we both materialized into my mind again. We went to the first door we came across.

“Let’s have a look, then,” I said in my thoughts, and opened the door. The room was my nerve center. Don’t know how I knew that, but I did. There were various bundles of cords and I instinctively knew what each of them would do.

“This is my nerve center,” I said to Ember. “I seem to subconsciously know what each bundle does. Can you tell?”

“Yeah, think I can. Do you fancy going back to your body? And see what happens?”

“Not really.”

She made chicken noises at me.

“I’m the chicken. Mrs. ‘No, we can’t look round my head.’”

“Bit different, Mr. ‘Fucking insensitive’,” she said, angrily.

I instantly felt bad, “Sorry for that. I’ll go back.”

She nodded in acceptance, but just as I began phasing out of my mind, I swear I saw her smirk. Fucking bitch! She’d guilt tripped me.

As soon as I reverted to my normal state, I was wracked with pain in my spine. It stopped suddenly, then my legs went completely dead and I fell to the floor. I pulled myself over to the bed with my arms. My legs came back to life, but my arms lost function. I fell forward, smashing my nose on the bed frame which led to an explosion of pain, blood, and tears. I’d had enough, and we’d proven the point, so I went back into my head.

I appeared right where I wanted, in the nerve center just as Ember was gripping another nerve bundle.

“Enjoying yourself?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. Massively. Did I kick your ass?”

“Yes, you did. You tyrant. You’ve bust my bloody nose wide open!”

She laughed, but managed to look apologetic at the same time. “Next room?” she asked.

I nodded. We left the nerve center and headed to the next door along the corridor. I approached, and was about to open it, when a sense of dread overwhelmed me. I turned to Ember. “We’re not going in there,” I told her.

Stop being a wimp.”

“Stop bullying me. My head, my decision. And we’re not going in. Next room.”

“Spoil sport,” she grumped. I couldn’t believe she was giving me a hard time. Ogun had explicitly warned us not to enter bad juju rooms, and she refused to explore her own head. But then, that was Ember.

We entered the next room. It was filled with a large screen showing what I could see out of my real eyes, and a small stats table in the corner. I