Part 1, Chapter 1, Page 1

I was a problem child from the day I was born. My birth itself was an unremarkable event, but the moment they took me from my mother's womb and sent me to the temple nursery, I was having none of it. Of course I don't remember any of it and can only retell what I was told.

My mother, Lia, was a Priestess of the Hidden Moon, healer by day, holy prostitute by night. I was but one child out of dozens she had birthed by that point. As for my father, I could never even guess who he might have been. Children of the holy prostitutes were not raised by their parents, but instead by the temple as a whole in the orphanage. These children were set apart only by the tattoo on the bottom of their left foot. Most would never even know who their mother actually was, only that they were a "child of the moon."

As already noted, I was having none of it. An hour old, freshly tattooed, and I would not cease my screaming. Not crying, not whimpering—screaming. I did not sleep, I would not feed, I only screamed. An entire day and the following night, I screamed. Upon the morning sun, my screams continued, but none could hear them for I had long since destroyed my voice. The silent screaming only ended when they finally brought my mother to me. When her hand touched my brow, I fell immediately to sleep and portrayed the illusion of a normal innocent infant.

For the first week, she couldn't leave my side for more than a few minutes at a time. If she was gone too long while I slept, I would wake and scream. If I were awake, she could go more than a meter or two from my crib. My nature baffled everyone. Though there were many wise priestesses and acolytes living within the temple, many with potent abilities, none could fathom my problem. In the end they had to call for external wisdom to get to the bottom of my problem. At the ripe old age of one week, my tiny under developed mind was subjected to Analyze.

I suppose I'll need to explain a bit about the world at this point. Everyone I've ever known was born with at least one psychic ability and more came around puberty when their mind reached it's threshold point. Most common were the Telekinetic abilities, able to physically influence the world in astounding ways. Lia for instance was a third star Biokinetic with twenty five ranks earned in healing. Less common, but only just, are the Psionic abilities such as Telepathy and Empathy. Then even further down the list were things like spatial manipulation or even time. But, at the very bottom are the Cognitive abilities. One such branch was Sensitivity, from which the Analyze ability comes.

Analyze is a way to pick apart the mind of another piece by piece and comprehend it. As you can imagine, this is not a pleasant experience. Everyone goes through it shortly after puberty once a child breaches threshold, simply so they can understand themselves and know where to focus their training. Putting an infant through it? Yeah that's not normal. On top of which, each branch has an exponential rating, generally described as stars. To analyze each star rating also requires exponentially more mental stamina. If you don't meet the requirement, you don't learn much.

So, this terrifying old man came down from the magi institute with fifty ranks in Analyze and a stamina pool as vast as the sea. Since my mother was a third star Biokinetic, he started by testing me at that level, and failed. Took a nap, came back refreshed and attempted a fourth star analyze, and failed. That's right, I was born with a fifth star skill branch, it was called Neuropath. From that branch I had a hard passive called Phantom, seventh rank already.

Stars are a measurement of potential power, simply an exponent. If you had one star, that would be single digit power, two stars; tens, three stars; hundreds, four stars; thousands, and so on. To analyze a star required that same exponential amount of stamina. Potentially it could be analyzed much slower using your natural recovery to feed the analysis. However, being exponential meant that anything beyond three stars in difference could take a day of meditation depending on your stamina!

Phantom caused me to experience the senses of those around me as if they were an extension of my nervous system. I'd spent nine months linked with my mother's nervous system. Everything she felt, I felt. What she ate, I tasted. What she smelled, I smelled. What she touched, I touched. Even her kinesthesia. When her arm moved, I knew the position and location of it. At that young age I was obviously inexperienced and underdeveloped, but I learned via muscle memory and sensory input. The reach of my Neuropathy was no more than a few meters to start with. When they sent me to the nursery, they had effectively amputated half my body, sure a phantom body, but to my infant mind there was no difference. Sure, I felt others too, but they were foreign, alien, unfamiliar. Only mother's body felt like a part of me.

That was my first week. Once they understood the problem they did what any sane rational person did, and put a crib in my mother's featureless chamber so I could stay within range of her at night, as she served as holy prostitute. During the day, of course, she carried me around on her back as she tended to the sick and wounded. To say the least, my nerves were subjected to sensations well beyond the normal simplicity of infant life experience. Acquired tastes, were acquired. Adult dances, motions, and behaviors embedded themselves in my feeble mind. Pleasures of the flesh and body horrors both were inflicted upon me in heaping portions.

Mother wasn't an idiot, she should have understood what was happening. Perhaps the Magi's description of my ability had been lacking in some way. Perhaps she had been too distracted by playing wet nurse for a fussy babe. I wasn't her first child, but I was the first and only one she actually raised. My five star skill branch meant that everyone and especially the temple had their eye on me, but no one really paid attention to what that ability was. And so, I grew up with a very skewed perception on what was normal.

By the time puberty came around I'd vicariously experienced more sexual partners than there were steps in the Magi Tower. Through not only Lia's senses, of course, by then I could sense everyone in the temple! I had also been subjected to and experienced death, stabbing, slicing, burning, rotting, paralyzing, impalement, poisoning, flaying, even dissolving. Of course, I had been vicariously put back together nearly as often as destroyed. By the age of five I'd learned a second Neuropathy ability, Sync. That ability could be turned on and off, but at that point I didn't even know it was an ability! For the next ten years it remained active. Not only did I feel the sensations of those around me, but I shared them. Those who suffered had their burden shared and lessened. It wasn't an opiate, but it helped and the temple recognized my soothing presence—which demanded my service in the healing ward.

At age seven, my second skill branch opened up, though this too I did not realize at the time. Only looking back can I recognize it for what it was. Another passive skill, Sympathy. This one had no toggle though. Not only did I feel the senses of those around me, but from then on I also felt their emotions. My mother's sexual partners became sources of strange and intense passions while her boredom was a stark counterpoint. In the healing ward, the terrors felt by patients nearly overwhelmed me at first, but in time I adapted. The fears were something foreign, not my own.

The most difficult thing to adjust to, however, were the emotions directed at me. I had felt physiological responses before in others around me of course. A flush, a flutter of the heart, the swelling of an erection or inner clench tied to desire. These sensations had however been remote and anonymous until I became an Empath. The morning that I woke to empathy I walked past an acolyte on my way to breakfast. I felt his erection along side a sudden burst of lust tied to darker, crueler desires. Dressed only in my thin summer nightgown, innocent and unaware, I was only seven after all. I'd looked up, and found his eyes upon me, specifically my narrow immature hips. It left me breathless, but not afraid. What was there to fear? I was intimately and deeply sympathetic to their needs.

Other emotions were targeted at me however, emotions that I couldn't cope with: Jealousy, hate, annoyance. I learned how to act, when to talk, and when to hide. Every person had their own inner realm that never reached the surface. My mother's smiling face concealed boredom, her voice full of welcome and mind full of tedium. There were of course brief moments of tender love, she was not heartless, but I learned to the depths of my soul that I was her burden in all places but the patient ward. Only when caring for the sick and wounded did my existence prove value to her. When I held the hand of a legless soldier and his screaming stopped, she was thankful. When I drew the fatigue from her exhausted body with a hug, she relaxed. Only in service, did I reveal worth in her heart.