Tales Of Grimea Read Online Free PDF Page B

unleashed, could
cause the very world nausea.
    I had gone within his cell, which was the
only one beside mine perpetually unlocked by prison wardens, in
order to bring the man some soup and stale bread. He sat there upon
cracked stone, weathering whipping wind laced with ice. The window
next to him was unbarred, for none could climb down the
mountainside in such freezing condition. Not that he would try.
Kurlov Gregerovitch was here of his own volition, though naturally
the mind controlled guards treated him better than most. That was
why I found him wrapped in a course blanket, shivering contently.
I’d found out early that the master enjoyed having pain inflicted
upon his body, as long as he could control frequency and
intensity.
    “Master,” I said to him by way of greeting,
to which he nodded at the hot bowl of soup in my hands. I handed it
to him, accompanied by a loaf of bread. Ignoring its greenish hue,
the brown skinned man set upon his meal with the grace of a noble.
Dipping chunks delicately into the murky liquid with two of his
fingers, the man said, “Say, Mardow, how fares your training?”
    “It’s not faring at all, Master. I am no
closer to leaving my skull.” The words were spat out, for it had
been a month already since the man accepted me as his pupil in
psionic, and the only thing he’d told me was to try and leave my
skull. It was less of a technique and more of a described state,
according to his explanation, where the mind can come in touch with
what is beyond it. “I don’t understand. How does the brain do
something like that?”
    “Not the brain, boy!” snapped Master Kurlov
in annoyance, his beard and wavy hair seeming to writhe. It seemed
to cause him frustration as well, and I wished there was someone
else I could ask. “The mind is different from the brain. The second
is housed within the temple, but the other wanders freely around it
like a cloud or a soul seeking salvation.” His words made no sense
to me, but that was the paradox of attempting to learn something
completely new: The action never makes sense until you were already
able to act it out. Thus I kept my peace and let the man speak.
Outside the wind howled agreement and the drop beckoned as it
always did. “To leave is to find enlightenment and awareness. You
begin to understand truths and touch others.”
    “But how, master? How do you reach that
state? Is there a mental trick or exercise or-“
    “I don’t know!” His eyes shined, and I could
tell that he was thinking so I let him at it. It was frustrating to
be stuck at the doorstep of knowledge for so long, and so my temper
fumed. As he thought, two prisoners powerful enough to be allowed
out the cell walked around, although they gave Krulov a wide berth.
Had I been alone they would have bullied me, but I was with the
master. I pulled a hair out of my grey beard, placed it on my palm,
and blew in their direction. Scret hissed quietly but the other
pulled him along.
    “The key isn’t to think hard, but rather to
think wide.” The master had oily hair, and now he brushed the
straight length with his dirty fingers. He was dressed in a coat
and cotton gloves, and I wish I knew what color they’d originally
been. There was an emblem at his chest, stitched out, but the thing
was so faded that I could not for the life of me make it out, and
he’d never told me anything about himself. “You let your mind
expand and at first it stretches you thin then you understand that
thin is relative because space is for physical things. When you’re
there the understanding from your mind will touch things and tell
you things relative to what they know back home. Ah, but the selves
won’t match at first because the me and the I only exist as me and
I in the center, and when the world is the world and not what my
world then what I see of me isn’t what I see but what the world
sees and things become as they are. Thus one touches the all and
begins to understand with a new