Liraeth returned from foraging with a handful of edible mushrooms he had found growing in the lee of a fallen tree trunk, with the dried provision he had with him it would be enough to feed them for tonight. He stayed  away a little longer to search in vain as the light faded from the forest. In truth, he could not help but feel nervous about what was to come next.

He had to tell Tenth about what was happening to him, the full extent of what had been done to him and the possible side effects that it may be having on his mind and memory. Liraeth was not sure how he would react to such information, he had seen little ill intent or hostility from the Knight so far, but there was no telling how he would take this revelation. Liraeth could had his own feelings about it all, simmering constantly being the surface, anger, disgust... pity. 

And then would come the next trial, he would have to see if this thing was in his power to undo, or at the very least, make safer somehow. Magic of the mind was a subtle and delicate art, and he did not know whether he would have the skill in order to do such a thing safely, without causing any further damage or pain to Tenth. 

He sighed to himself and watched the river flow by in the deepening dusk. There was no point in putting this task off any longer, it would not grow any easier, nor become less painful.

As he walked back along the bank of the river, he could see a fire crackling away at the spot they chosen to set their camp at. The Knight was silhouetted against the orange flames, sat on the grass, his hands clamped firmly over his ears, shuddering to himself. Liraeth tried to imagine what was going through his head, what it must feel like, being so used to be stripped on one's will, without the memories to make sense of one's life. He must be kind to him, Tenth deserved someone being kind to him.  

"Yes, thank you for dealing with the fire, Tenth." Liraeth deposited the armful of mushrooms at the side of the fire. As he knelt down he unfastened the multicoloured travelling cloak. The Knight was only wearing his linens, and the night was closing in. Liraeth had good woollen tunic, dyed bright blue with woad, under which he wore a linen shirt of his own. Tenth had greater need of his cloak tonight than Liraeth did, he lightly tossed it to him with one hand. "Here, you look cold." 

The mushrooms needed brushing down and cooking before they would be palatable, so Liraeth busied himself with that, cleaning them off and skewering them on twigs so they could placed above the coals. He hummed to himself as he did so, some song he distantly remembered from his own long lost childhood, what little of it he recalled before he entered the Academy. 

Once they were sizzling away above the raked out coals there was nothing left from him to do other than begin to talk. He started slowly.

"So... there's a couple of things that I think I need to tell you, Tenth." Liraeth shifted away from the fire, sitting himself down next to the larger Knight, close, but not too close. "The reason I came here is that I was investigating rumours that the Conclave had heard of about the practice of dark magic in these lands, coming from this forest. As I travelled here, I became convinced that the source of these rumours was the castle of your Lord. And when I arrived, I found two pieces of evidence to support this theory, the first was some signs of a ritual that may be cause of the destruction there. The second... was you, Tenth."

He studied the Knight's dark brown eyes as they caught the flickering light of the fire. He was searching for any sign of distress, any sign that what he was saying was too much for his fragile psyche to currently comprehend.

"I didn't want to confuse or frighten you before, but you seem a little better now and I think you should know, someone has placed a spell on you. I believe it to be a type of curse, known as Geas, that compels the... subject to follow orders without question. It can be a dangerous and difficult piece of magic to use well, and it may have caused some the trouble you have had with thinking recently, as well as with you struggling to remember certain things."