Book One – Chapter 16

Still, he struggled. Not constantly, but in fits and starts. At first, it had been bursts of effort punctuated by rest. Now it was mostly rest, with occasional flickers of struggle. He felt light-headed. Well, he always was, in the mental sense, but now it was physical. Fatigue had moved in like a fog, thick, clinging, and hard to see through. Time blurred around the edges. He was not sure how long he had been hanging here. A long time, surely. Long enough for the blood to crust, the piss to freeze, and the silence below to settle back in.

His awareness returned when he was struck by a flash of genius.

Though it was not a flash of genius per se. In fact, it was not a flash in any literal or remotely jolting sense. Not an eye-opening bolt of clarity, nor a sudden illumination slicing through mental darkness. Nothing so direct or dramatic.

No, what occurred in Nagrak’s mind unfolded with geological patience — less like lightning and more like a reluctant glob of mud slowly forcing its way through layers of compacted rock. The thought did not spark. It oozed.

You see, where most gathered insight by the bucket, dipping into some innate, pre-dug well of common sense, Nagrak’s mind was not so well established. With a foreseeable amount of effort, the average person could draw from an average mind an average amount of such metaphorical water — sometimes a little stingy, sometimes a bit murky, but in general perfectly fine for drinking, yes, perfectly serviceable thoughts. For Nagrak, though, insight did not come in such steady streams. It did not even come as a trickle. No, his thoughts were more like droplets — small singular, and rare.

In short, he was not well-minded. His mental landscape was rock-dense all the way around, mostly filled with metaphorical mud in between, thick, slow, and prone to stagnation, wherefore no-one had bothered to build a well to begin with. Thus, he could not retrieve ideas at will.