When invading someone’s mind you have to understand that it isn’t one-sided. One’s mind is concentrated into a single point and roams around the mind of the other. The person that invades is considered a hazard and the mind defends itself against it. It works just like the immune system, and it actually is kind of an evolutionary adaptation that guards against foreign bodies -- ideas or cognitive agents.

Think about how stubborn people tend to be on their own beliefs, that’s how the immune system works for the mind, they resist change and when a cognitive agent enters their world they fight to the death. But a mind wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t flexible, so normally it takes time for ideas to be accepted when others already occupy the space. In this case, my own mind is invading the same space where someone else’s mind exists -- our consciousness if you will.

However, just like the immune system, the mind must find the foreign agent before sounding the alarm. The person might be aware that their mind has been invaded but it is not their job to direct the defense system, that is left to the subconscious. Most evil wizards -- warlocks or witches -- when invading the mind, intend to take over it, which means replace the subconscious with theirs, or just remove it.

As for an upstanding and law-abiding citizen like myself -- your friendly neighborhood wizard -- I don’t intend to kill the consciousness of my opponent. I intend to obtain information, and that means infiltration and extraction… from his subconscious.

“This is going to be hard,” I said while hiding behind a gravestone in the front ‘lawn’ of the rundown mansion.

I don’t know what counts as his subconscious patrol cars, yet. It could be the bats flying around, the animals… who knows! It’s a mind, anything can happen in the owner’s mind. Of course, I can do anything to myself since I am in my ‘mindly’ form -- a cognitive version of myself, just like a ‘dream self,’ but I’m inside someone else’s dream and might encounter their dream self. So, basically, they can manipulate their world and themselves, too. A battle of the minds. A battle of cognition. A battle of imagination. And I’ve read many comics and watched many cartoons (and if you’re an otaku, yes, I’m also including their equivalents of Japanese culture).

But first things first, I must find a way to get inside that mansion, because inside exists both the conscious and the subconscious, anything beyond is the realm of the instinctual and the ignored, those things your mind does automatically, with processes that happen beyond the need of deep thinking or complex processes. I’m talking about how we catch things in mid-air or avoid things falling on our feet. The calculations may be complex on paper, but your mind makes shortcuts for these kinds of things -- many, many, MANY shortcuts -- and you eventually do it out of reflex.

It’s a good thing I don’t have to fight that part of the brain because it could become rather difficult to fight something that reacts almost instantly to what you do. But I do need to get inside quickly because fighting outside could pose a problem -- besides the obvious ‘not being inside’ -- it would mean that those reflexes could help my opponent during a fight and that will be highly inconvenient for me.

The mansion up close looked taller rather than wider, it was at least three stories high and had a tower that rose to a fourth one. It was made of hard, dark wood -- don’t ask me what type of wood, I don’t work with that sort of thing, I deal with metals. The windows were lightened up, but there was no way to see inside thanks to the curtains. And that also meant it was harder to see from the inside out. This had to be my chance to infiltrate.

I ran up to the mansion and leaned against the outside wall. I started circling, looking for a back door or a basement entrance, or trap door, or an open window -- anything really -- that could let me inside the house that wasn’t the front door.

And as I circled, I began to notice the bats becoming more and more agitated. That had to be a sign that the host must have finally realized that there was something wrong going on. Even if they can’t actually be inside their own mind like me, they can excerpt a force of will to stop. Because all of this happens at the speed of thought, fighting a mental battle takes seconds but they all feel extremely slow to the host. As for the invader, they feel like it happens at normal speed over the small period of time.

The vampire must have noticed that I had used a spell to attack his mind. I had to move quickly it was only time before his will grows with too much pressure to keep me inside. I can handle longer battles, I’ve done it before, but I need to use more power to keep the spell going and his will at bay. That is what good spells are for.

But there were no good ways inside the mansion, and the best options were the third-floor windows and I had no way to climb up -- unless, of course, I was a climber or an alpinist.

There was only one way in and I didn’t like it one bit. It would sound all alarms and make the host completely aware of my presence. They could direct their will at me and their defensive mechanisms will attack me at full power. There would be no way to get rid of them or hide.

So, I decided, that if there was no better way to do it, then I had to make a big entrance.

Remember all those movies and stories about vampire hunters? Well, that used to be part of a wizard’s job before vampires became more culturally known, a long time ago. Vampirism was rampant but we used to handle them and keep them at bay. Not myself, mind you. This was all back on Earth, thousands of years ago. And soon vampires and wizards ended up in wars that extended for years, before reaching peace -- which were more like mutually understood cease fires. But the ceasefires could last many years, even decades, before the wars began again.

And now I felt like a wizard of old, hunting my old nemesis. I wasn’t going to do it in my current attire! I was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, with a big stamp of a commercial drink logo. My pants were plain brown and were roughed up through the years. I don’t wear hats so my hair was left aerated.

I wanted to look cool. I wanted to look like a proper vampire hunter, wizard or not. What better way to look like one than imitating a ‘professional.’ We all love old movies and television series. When I talk about movies and television, and vampire hunters, there’s only one person that comes to everyone’s mind.

I smirked as I looked down at myself. Dark shirt, with very stylish metal buttons. Black tight pants. A long, black, leather coat that was left open to let my inside attire flash freely. And, of course: “Hmph. Looking good,” I said, and I grabbed the tip of my big and long, black hat. I could totally catch people’s eyes with this, and I bet it looks badass. I could definitely get laid in this.

But leaving badassery aside, there was a secondary reason for changing myself to this beautiful form. It all has to do with the mind. See? I think about everything. If I fit the idea of what I thought a vampire hunter was like, then I could gain power myself. And if my opponent understands that I’m a vampire hunter, then it’s sure they imagine I’m in there to hunt them down. A psychological attack, and psychological fortitude at the same time.

All I need besides my attire is a huge crossbow in my right hand (check), and a nice powerful wand in my left (check). I could change my pretty hat for a conical wizard hat of the past, which I also thought was cool enough for me, but might look ridiculous to this vampire. So, I kept the hunter hat.

And, now, for the big entrance. Let’s place a bomb. Oh, no, I’m not playing here, I’m trying to induce more psychological attacks… and it’s also fun at the same time.

I placed a charge on the front double-doors lock, started it up, and step to the side behind a column. Ten seconds later, kaboom. The door’s lock blasted and the door only rattled open, the door barely swinging back. It didn’t matter, though, I wanted to kick that sucker down, and I did. God, is it good to be me, I thought, and blasted the first figure I saw as the smoke beyond the door cleared away from my vision: “flamma!” I shouted and smirked a wide smile.

The figure was blasted with flamethrower magic and instantly caught in flames, burning and turning to ash, shrieking in agony with the most ear-piercing, agonizing wail I’ve ever heard. It hurt listening to it, it hurt feeling it, but only for a moment, the rest of the time it felt damn good to be as cold-blooded as possible and know there really are no consequences.

I turned to the right, pointed my crossbow to another figure, a monstrous bat-like creature without the wings and looking rather ghoulish. I pulled the trigger and felt a little push from the crossbow on my hand as the bolt released from it and impaled the monster in its heart.

Wizard Avarez, two; disgusting leech, zero.

I set the crossbow down and held it with my foot, then I pulled the string with my back and set it on the lock, ready to shoot another bolt. I place a bolt from a box that hanged from my back, on the crossbow, and readied it up. I decided not to use the crossbow too much because cranking it up takes a long time. But I also had to be careful with my magic since it still does use my will and my energies to pull off inside the host's mind. So I placed the crossbows on my shoulder, handing it over my back with a strap, and pulled a sword that just materialized from my own imagination.

“Come on, you little leech!” I bellowed, taunting the vampire. “I’ve come to vanquish you.”

Does it show that despite my fascination with such a figure, I know not a single line from the character? I had to be creative and improvise.

A roar made the mansion tremble, coming from above me. I knew that his dream self must be somewhere on the higher levels trying to protect his mind, the center of his consciousness. Maybe it was protecting itself, as the dream self was also the personification of its consciousness.

“Bingo,” I whispered. And moved on to search for the cowardly vampire, hiding from the little human, mortal coming to eat him.

As I ran up the stairs I noticed the many steps that came from one side of the upper corridor. Many more vampires were coming up, and I began thinking about I had decided to bring a sword to a swarm fight. This needed a little more power to deal with it.

I gather my will into my mind and thought of a gale, a great typhoon, a powerful storm from a tropical storm, surge and all. And I thrust my wand forward, directing the wind through the upper floor railing. “Tempesta!” I shouted, and wind blew past me, coalesced a meter in front of my wand, and then blasted through the railing and floor, against the ghoulish monsters, and through the ceiling. Bodies flew all over, some even through the hole in the ceiling.

I’m a powerful wizard, but I don’t have control over most of what happens, and my energies get spent quickly. I needed to avoid more encounters, and I needed to go up quickly. The third floor had to be it.

I rush to the stairs that were obviously right above the first one -- and thank god for good functional architecture and the feeble mind of a dumb vampire that only thought of mansions as pretty and functional, rather than making something that was supposed to guard him against a cognitive attack.

Now that I’m up here, there was no reason to find the leech itself or the control center, all I needed were files. That meant looking for the library. All floors must have a library, but the upper floor should have the most important ones.

“Okay, little leech,” I whispered to myself, “where do you keep your books?”

Left or right? Left is for art, right is for math. Calculations, information, that’s the right side of the brain. The information about my nephew must be right. Don’t ask how I know this, because I don’t. I’m improvising, and this line of thinking must be correct. Must be, because if it isn’t, then I’m in bigger trouble.

And as I ran through the hallway I spotted a small library with a desk with files on top, and a filing cabinet right behind the desk.

“Ha, ha! Bingo!” I screamed and I jumped into the room to search for the information.

Not long after, I heard the same roar coming from much closer. I began rummaging through the files as fast as I could. If I don’t find it fast, I won’t have time to look for it if I have to fight off more monsters.

Nothing on the desk, so it must be in the cabinet.

“Come on, come on, come on…” I pleaded the open air, the void, the cosmic powers -- anything, really -- before I began noticing a smell. “Huh?” I sniffed and sniffed, as I kept searching for the files I need, and then I stopped. I started turning my head wide-eyed looking around. “Oh, no.”

Smoke. Fire. No, it wasn’t the monster I burned a few minutes ago. The fires die out after I stop supplying it with power, and the wood shouldn’t have caught fire if there was no one there to imagine the place catching on fire, that’s how imaginary, dream world works.

I looked at the window to the side of the library and saw flashes of orange illuminate the window from the outside.

“Sweet Mary,” I swore. “He’s burning it down. He’s going to take us both down!”

“Found you, little sheep,” someone said behind my back.

I felt the hair at the back of my neck flare-up, and a chill ran down my spine.

“Sweet, delicious, little sheep,” said the same voice.

I turned around to find the vampire’s dream self looking at me, behind the library’s doorway, his face was beginning to morph into the same bat-like ghoulish creature I just thrashed, but he was growing in size as it transformed.

“Are you lost? Come,” it beckoned. “Come. I have something for you.”

“Sweet Mary,” I swore again. “Good Merlin, give me power.”

The monster stopped mutating and when its body grew bigger than the doorway, it moved a hand grabbing the sides of the doorway and pushed it, broke it aside. It started to hunch down to move past it but gave up midway and his back broke through the top.

I looked around to see if there was a way out. Then, I looked at the file in my hand and I swear there had to be a bigger power somewhere because the file I held had the name of my nephew, Jaser Humancattle. His surname was actually, Josemind, but the vampire must have either not cared or not known about it.

Now I had to find an escape route out of the mansion.

Window?

There had to be a better way than falling three stories into the flames below.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said the vampire, and began lifting its claws to snap at me.

No time to think. Time to act.

I threw myself at the window. I closed my eyes. I felt the hard glass as I smashed myself into it. It hurt like hell hitting the glass before it gave in to my weight. I heard the window break, the sound was somehow deafening up close. And I started to feel weightless.

Here comes the freefall.