The Chained Watcher

Backstory: Naptime

This bit is mostly for exploring how Grian dealt with Listeners without murdering them. Also, he's enjoying being an enigma quite a bit, just messing around with a bit of harmless trolling.

~~~

Why is it that Listeners so consistently try to either stab him or get someone else to stab him?

Oh, don't get him wrong, he knows exactly why they do that, but that doesn't mean he can't be annoyed whenever they do. He doesn't have any particular desire or reason to kill them beyond their habit of making a nuisance of themselves, but he's a bit lacking in methods to deal with them without beating them unconscious.

It's not like that's a hard thing to do for most of the Listeners he ends up having to deal with, but constantly resorting to the brute force solution is starting to get on his nerves. There's no elegance or finesse in beating someone into a pulp, so maybe it's time to find a better solution.

Spinning a recently enchanted feather between his fingers, he started cataloging his options.

There's no way negotiation would work, not with Listeners. He's a Watcher, their self-assigned mortal enemy, why would they willingly leave him alone? Maybe he should make an item that knocks out its targets? But then he'd have to carry it on him at all times, and that would be more annoying to remember than he's willing to deal with. Besides, there's always the possibility that the target resists, so no magic item this time.

Well, if a magic item wouldn't work, maybe there's something that he can learn. The Listeners won't stop fighting unless they are rendered incapable of continuing, so all he needs to do is figure out how to do that without beating them up. Simple, right? Sigh...

Theoretically, a mental strike can knock someone unconscious, but there's a high chance of causing some kind of semi-permanent damage if the power difference is too vast. The Listeners he's most likely going to be trying to knock out would be the equivalent of Tier 3 at most, and at his current Tier he might accidentally put them in a coma instead of putting them to sleep.

He hadn't gotten much practice in the finer points of mental influencing either, since messing with the minds of mortals had never been an interest of his. It's not like he's incapable of it, not with the natural talent Watchers have in messing with minds, but he never felt the need to do it. Unfortunately, that seems like the least dangerous way to incapacitate a Listener without causing harm.

Well, if what he needs to practice is gentleness, he can try different methods on animals when he goes walking. If this happens to let him have an excuse to go on more frequent walks, then who can complain? It's not like he has any deadline for this, so what does it matter if it takes him several decades to get a technique worked out?

Smiling, he set down the magic feather, walking out to go start practicing.

~~~

So that took longer than expected.

Finding the balance between using enough pressure to put an animal to sleep and being gentle enough to not actually hurt it in the process was surprisingly difficult, but he's finally managed it. Gently brushing his finger over the head of a sleeping hawk, he smiled. It was tedious to get right, but it'll definitely prove its worth to have learned it in the end.

On a definitely unrelated note, he'd gotten a fair bit of practice with trying to heal something that's not himself using his magic. And his self-made spell works! Barely, but it works! He wouldn't want to try it on something that's not unconscious, not with how much pain it seems to cause, but it works and that's what matters.