Mind magic

Spells that target the mind. Focuses around manipulating people’s thoughts, emotions, memories, senses and perceptions. Mental illusions, compulsions, memory alteration, mental communication, emotion spells, mental enhancements and various other mind-affecting spells fall under this discipline.

Mind magic is not terribly difficult to cast and, like divinations, it puts far greater emphasis on shaping skills than mana reserves. Mind magic is very mana efficient. However, except for the spells that target the minds of animals, mind magic is heavily restricted and has a very poor reputation among mages and civilians alike. Thus, mind magic specialists are very rare.

The Cyorian aranea matriarch claimed that humans have "unhealthy attitude towards mind magic", presumably meaning that humans consider all mind magic hostile. When Zorian tried to find out what a psychic is, he discovered that "finding information about mind magic from his fellow mages was like pulling teeth, since the mage guild took a very dim view on mind magic of any sort, no matter how benign". Another example of that is given by Alanic warning Zorian about danger of his simulacrums rebelling against him, especially due to Zorian's (and thus his simulacrums') mastery of mind magic. Instead, Zorian's telepathic abilities let his simulacrums vent their anger at him by telepathically sharing their thoughts and experiences with him, first conventionally (needing physical proximity) and later through their shared soul and still later even becoming one mind with them temporarily.

This "unhealthy attitude" extends even to mind magic affecting self, as Zorian had to steal a "better" library pass to get the memorization spells in the academy.

Regarding the limitations of mind magic, both the classical spellcasting type and the telepathic abilities of magical creatures known to use them, Zorian initially concluded "everyone seems to agree that even expert mind mages can't just rewrite someone's brain on a whim, or in a stealthy manner. It takes a great deal of time and you basically have to knock the victim unconscious or they will be fully aware of what you're trying to do to them and fight it with everything they got – physically and mentally".

The *mind blank* spell is considered to provide immunity to all mind magic, however it is not usable for extended periods of time due to causing paranoid insanity. The aranea are able of achieving the effect of that spell in principle, but even just having the skill (called "going dark") is claimed to be "shady" by Novelty and other aranea. Ultimately, Zorian, together with others, developed a not-very-practical method to bypass the mind blank.

## Use in the story

One of the most used types of mind magic in the story is mind reading. There's a spell to do so (used, for example, by Tinami Aope when she practices it on Zorian), but Zorian does it with unstructured magic. Zorian eventually, after ruining some cultists' minds with his attempts, learned to perform memory reading (also referred to as deep memory scan; it's possible that "deep memory scan" is the aranean term, as it's used only three times in the text, once by an aranea and twice by Zorian). "Memory reading, more than any other branch of mind magic, deeply resembled divination in the way it functioned. You had to decide what you wanted to look for, and if you were asking the wrong question, your answer would be worthless or misleading".

After Zorian was briefly attacked by aranea with sleep magic, he approached Kyron for help with "countering mind magic" and Kyron offered him "resistance training" (using mind magic spells on the trainee so that he can learn to resist them reflexively). Kyron claimed "It was quite effective at making students innately resistant to common mind-affecting spells like sleep, paralyze, and dominate" and "I promise I'll go easy on you". Zorian agreed, and Kyron cast the "Nightmare Vision" spell on him. Zorian nevertheless approached him again in the following restarts. Kyron also used some "nasty pain spells" as part of the training. Tinami was also seen using pain spells on monsters during the invasion of Cyoria in one restart.

Zorian frequently used mind magic against his enemies, mostly to make them kill each other.

There's the *mind shield* spell protecting one from mental intrusion. However, it prevents the user from using telepathy, and "A simple dispel is enough to strip the protection". Later Zorian learned a much better psychic equivalent of the spell from Mind Like Fire, which she called a "mental shell" or "mind shell". It's stronger, lets the user notice weak attacks, and repairable, although it's still vulnerable to dispels. Xvim is also capable of non-structured mental defense, which in his case is just an unstructured replacement of mind shield spell with all its other drawbacks (non-adaptive, and only allowing to detect failure of the defense but not weak attacks). Xvim was, however, much faster in forming it until Zorian practiced with him.

Zorian's mind shield produced by the spell is referred to as "shell" by both Novelty and Mind Like Fire, so it's likely that the aranea simply call such basic mind protection a "shell", while humans call it a "shield".

Rea Sashal appears to have some form of mental defense, as after getting her spooked about cranium rats, Zorian is not able to read from her mind thoughts she doesn't say aloud, although he still can notice her better hearing. Zach also had enough of a mental defense that Spear of Resolve admitted that she "can't do more than read his surface thoughts". Zorian later confirms that Zach's mental defenses are unstructured magic.

Haslush Ikzeteri used a compulsion effect to try to make Zorian leave the tavern where their lesson was to take place, to test Zorian. Xvim also used it to make Zorian ignore the door to his office, until Zorian created a mental shield. Zorian used a suggestion to make an Ibasan mage think his presence in the base is "completely normal".

Zorian, at the suggestion of Zach, uses mind magic on Quatach-Ichl (specifically trying to get the location of his phylactery) to forcibly take the imperial crown from him, after Zach dispels Quatach-Ichl's mind blank.

Zorian uses mental enhancements for focusing on something and rapid calculation

Zorian used the mind blank bypass (called "manifold resonance spell") to bypass the automatic enforcement of Zach's contract with the angels

## References

1. ↑ Disciplines of Magic (Worldbuilding Post)
2. ↑ chapter 17
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 chapter 19
4. ↑ chapter 62
5. ↑ chapter 63
6. ↑ chapter 79
7. ↑ chapter 93
8. ↑ chapter 101
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 chapter 39
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 chapter 42
11. ↑ chapter 18
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 chapter 23
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 chapter 78
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 chapter 106
15. ↑ chapter 25
16. ↑ chapter 40
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 chapter 37
18. ↑ chapter 96
19. ↑ chapter 43
20. ↑ chapter 12
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 chapter 13
22. ↑ chapter 21
23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 chapter 36
24. ↑ chapter 55
25. ↑ chapter 16
26. ↑ chapter 46
27. ↑ chapter 84
28. ↑ chapter 85
29. ↑ chapter 74
30. ↑ chapter 89