The Temple of Thoughts and Memories

Chapter 12 - The Scientist

"I-it's you!" Amity exclaimed, pointing at Felix.

"Oh, I suppose you saw my logs?" they said, raising an eyebrow.

"Well... yeah," Amity responded.

"I will tell you, the Farsearcher is asleep right now, so you mustn't worry about it finding you, Luz, or Edalyn," Felix said as they poured themselves a cup of tea.

"Wha-- How do you--!?" 

"Know their names? I'm sure you have many questions. Sit," Felix suggested calmly, gesturing towards the chair across them.

Amity unsurely walked over and took a seat across Felix.

"Water?" Felix offered as they held up the teapot above her cup.

"That's not tea?"

"No! I wonder why everyone thinks that I drink tea just because I'm a calm and famous scientist..." 

"Sorry, I just assumed, well, since it's a teapot," Amity quickly reassured.

Felix paused for a few seconds before finally saying, "I suppose you have a point."

They poured water into Amity's cup and began sipping their own. 

"So... I know you have questions," Felix said. "Do you want to ask me some?"

"Um... well-- I guess first; what is this place?"

"It's kind of difficult to put into words, if I'm being honest. It's the mindscape of the Farsearcher and it's commands."

Amity stops sipping her cup. "Commands?"

"I know you've seen them. They're the copies of you with a personality as bland as rice."

"What's rice?" Amity questioned. Their ears were pointed, so it couldn't be some obsolete human food.

"Ah. Right. Not everyone knows of human delicacies. Well, some of it came upon shore one day."

Nevermind. It was a human food.

"Returning to the topic, however, you've seen them, yes?" Felix continued.

"I-I guess." Amity thought she understood. "Well... Uh... could you just explain everything?"

Felix laughed. "I'd better save some breath, it's a long tale.

"28 years ago, as you may know, I began my logs and research on Dark Magic. I created Grometheus, which ended up escaping due to my carelessness. I know from you now, though, it has ended up locked in the underground of your school. When Grom haunted me and locked me inside the cage to perish, I wrote my final log. And eventually, I transformed into the Farsearcher, which was a fate inevitable no matter what I did in that chamber.

"The Farsearcher, however, is not the same as Grom. Grom enters your mindscape and selects your greatest fear. On the other hand, the Farsearcher enters the mindscape, and instead it will find loved ones or things you may recognize and materialize them. It is why the name of my laboratory has become the temple of thoughts and memories. Because the Farsearcher steals those details of your memories and thoughts and brings them to reality to fool you. You can't trust anything it does."

"But... aren't you the Farsearcher?" Amity questioned.

"Oh, of course I am. This is just my conscious," Felix said, directing their body with a wave of their hand. "The area in my mind here is the one place uninfected."

"Then... if this is your mind... how come I'm in it?" 

"Well, you're infected as well."

"What!?" Amity yelped.

"Oh, yes, you'll slowly transform into another Farsearcher. Say, what's your surname? Perhaps we could name it off that--"

"I don't want to turn into that!? Why am I?" Amity cut them off.

"You let the Farsearcher catch you. It held you too long, and now it's hijacked your mind. It's only a little bit until you're completely transfigured." Felix looked very uncaring about the fate of Amity.

"Can I stop it!?"

Felix shrugged with a sound of indifference. "It'll be nice to have someone else around here." The two of them stared in silence.

"Would now be a bad time to mention you will periodically transform before permanently becoming it?" Felix said tentatively. "Such as right now?"

"What!?" exclaimed the Blight child.

"And you may attacking your friends."

"Can I go back to the real world? Now?!" Amity asked, desperate.

Felix nodded. All of a sudden, Felix, the table, teapot and so on vanished from reality, almost, stranding Amity in darkness once more, and then the room appeared again. It was completely trashed. Couches smashed, walls punched, scratch marks in a lot of places. Wait, the Farsearcher didn't have claws. Right?

Eda was passed out on the floor, a potion bottle beside her body. She must've turned into the owl beast, which explained the scratch marks. Luz was standing in the middle of the room, her expression fearful and she was very beat up, it seemed. Which made sense, if the owl beast and second Farsearcher were in the room. Amity looked down at herself. She was neatly sitting on the (now broken) couch, as though she were just enjoying a nice cup of tea.

"A-Amity?" Luz stammered, staring at her. Amity could now notice she was holding up a stick of wood. It looked like the leg of a chair? "What-- what just happened?"