He was Will. A realization that didn’t come easy finally hit home in the last few months. With practice and talks with Ariadne, Ermon was able to accept the fact that thoughts, emotions and memories were as much a shell as the clothes he wore. And with that realization, his Oblations also changed.

Tonight, he trained focus. He sat in the middle of their Hallow in the primary Unbound Smoke Sanctum in a comfortable chair, and breathed. On one side of him he had a burning candle. He had melted the wax before and added impurities so that the candle would crackle and smoke as it burned. On the other there was a large plastic bottle with a small hole in it out of which water was pouring into a bowl. And in his hands he had a Sudoku book.

Ermon wasn’t any good at puzzles which made this exercise worthwhile. What he tried to do was focus on the task of solving it completely, while still tracking the sounds coming from both the candle and the bottle. It was crazy difficult. And from time to time, the Mage pricked himself with the blunt end of a needle to add pain as an additional distraction. The room smelled of sandalwood and cinnamon. It was good and it gave him more to work with.

In the beginning, his mind thrashed, struggled and completely refused to obey. Attention jumped from one sense to the other and when he worked on Sudoku, Ermon found himself not listening or not smelling or thinking about the pain in his hand instead of the puzzle. This was different from playing a game against himself: here he didn’t need to process information properly, just stay attentive.

After about half an hour, the Warlock was able to reach a sort of detached calm state that allowed him to see make very little progress with the puzzle while still keeping note of sensory input but not processing it. It was a strange feeling. A good feeling that helped realize just how malleable his mind was.

Perhaps I should take some meditation classes or something.