Mind magic

One of the most used types of mind magic in the story is mind reading. There's a spell to do so (used, for example, by Tinami Aope when she practices it on Zorian), but Zorian does it with unstructured magic.^[15] Zorian eventually, after ruining some cultists' minds with his attempts^[9][16], learned to perform memory reading (also referred to as deep memory scan^[17]; it's possible that "deep memory scan" is the aranean term, as it's used only three times in the text, once by an aranea^[17] and twice by Zorian^[9][18]). "Memory reading, more than any other branch of mind magic, deeply resembled divination in the way it functioned. You had to decide what you wanted to look for, and if you were asking the wrong question, your answer would be worthless or misleading"^[19].

After Zorian was briefly attacked^[20] by aranea with sleep magic, he approached Kyron for help with "countering mind magic" and Kyron offered him "resistance training" (using mind magic spells on the trainee so that he can learn to resist them reflexively). Kyron claimed "It was quite effective at making students innately resistant to common mind-affecting spells like sleep, paralyze, and dominate" and "I promise I'll go easy on you". Zorian agreed, and Kyron cast the "Nightmare Vision" spell on him. Zorian nevertheless approached him again in the following restarts. Kyron also used some "nasty pain spells" as part of the training.^[21] Tinami was also seen using pain spells on monsters during the invasion of Cyoria in one restart^[22].

Zorian frequently used mind magic against his enemies, mostly to make them kill each other.

There's the mind shield spell protecting one from mental intrusion. However, it prevents the user from using telepathy^[21], and "A simple dispel is enough to strip the protection"^[21]. Later Zorian learned a much better psychic equivalent of the spell from Mind Like Fire, which she called a "mental shell" or "mind shell"^[23]. It's stronger, lets the user notice weak attacks, and repairable^[23], although it's still vulnerable to dispels^[10]. Xvim is also capable of non-structured mental defense, which in his case is just an unstructured replacement of mind shield spell with all its other drawbacks (non-adaptive, and only allowing to detect failure of the defense but not weak attacks). Xvim was, however, much faster in forming it until Zorian practiced with him^[10].

Zorian's mind shield produced by the spell is referred to as "shell" by both Novelty^[12] and Mind Like Fire^[23], so it's likely that the aranea simply call such basic mind protection a "shell", while humans call it a "shield".

Rea Sashal appears to have some form of mental defense, as after getting her spooked about cranium rats, Zorian is not able to read from her mind thoughts she doesn't say aloud, although he still can notice her better hearing^[9]. Zach also had enough of a mental defense that Spear of Resolve admitted that she "can't do more than read his surface thoughts"^[3]. Zorian later confirms that Zach's mental defenses are unstructured magic^[24].

Haslush Ikzeteri used a compulsion effect to try to make Zorian leave the tavern where their lesson was to take place, to test Zorian^[25]. Xvim also used it to make Zorian ignore the door to his office, until Zorian created a mental shield^[10]. Zorian used a suggestion to make an Ibasan mage think his presence in the base is "completely normal"^[26].

Zorian, at the suggestion of Zach^[27], uses mind magic on Quatach-Ichl (specifically trying to get the location of his phylactery) to forcibly take the imperial crown from him, after Zach dispels Quatach-Ichl's mind blank^[28].

Zorian uses mental enhancements^[29] for focusing on something and rapid calculation^[30]

Zorian used the mind blank bypass (called "manifold resonance spell") to bypass the automatic enforcement of Zach's contract with the angels^[14]