ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-FOUR: The Inward Path
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The path was long, and the weight was heavy; those were the facts of the environment that stood out the most to Alden even as he passed by things that would normally have made him pause and wonder.
The route curved and curved, winding deeper into the soil until the walls towered above him and Yenu-pezth. There was one place where the fading light of the day reached them through a thousand glass shapes embedded into the corridor, and in another, water fell in trickles through a curtain of vines. For an unknowable while, they sat together on a rock that jutted out from the soil, and Yenu-pezth explained to him how she thought their sessions should go.
It would be therapeutic, but in many ways, it wasn’t like any therapy he’d had before. And one of those ways was very important—some outcomes could be guaranteed.
“You’re young,” Yenu-pezth said, “and you shouldn’t have experienced too much significant pressing or alteration of the mind.”
Her ringed toes were stretched out in front of her, wriggling against a patch of ground carpeted with short, springy grass.
“When you are sure something within reach of your mind would be better if it were different, stronger, or absent—and when I agree that the alteration will not harm you—it will be changed.”
“Anything?” Alden asked.