Magic InkChapter 28
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I was awakened by Sean's voice as he pounded on our bedroom door a couple of weeks later.
"Gus, Gus! Wake up!" he was shouting.
I sat up and that was when the knowledge hit me. It was like someone had suddenly opened a door and all of the Magical knowledge that I had been absorbing for the last five weeks plus was suddenly right there in my mind - whole and in exacting detail. I just sat there stunned at the magnitude of it all for several seconds. I was brought back to reality by Sean's voice again.
"Gus! Gus, wake up in there! Can you hear me?" he shouted.
"Yes, I can hear you, Sean. I'm awake. Give us a few minutes," I shouted back. All of this pounding and talking had awakened Annie, and I watched as she sat up, and the knowledge blossomed in her mind as it had in mine. Her face lit up like a light bulb.
"Did you have the same experience when you woke up?" she asked excitedly.
"Yes, I did. Sean woke me by shouting and pounding on the door," I acknowledged, and then had another thought.
"He is liable to have awakened our parents also. Maybe we should get out of bed and see what is going on," I suggested.
"Yes, but 'after' we get dressed. We don't need them to see us naked," Annie told me in all seriousness.
We found Sean and Sara in our study room when we got out to the hall, but to my surprise no one else was there.
"No one else woke up from all of that noise?" I asked.
"No, I used a new privacy spell. It's right there in what we learned," Sean told me. Sara was grinning like crazy at something, and the spell Sean had mentioned popped into my mind as soon as he mentioned it.
"The 'Book of Dreams' also stayed here this morning, and there are new pages in it. We haven't started reading from it yet. We were waiting for you two," Sara informed us.
"Yes, from everything that was in my head this morning when I woke up, I can understand that," I told her. We took turns then reading out loud from the "Book of Dreams'. We weren't interrupted as we read, and before we knew it, it was 9:00 AM.
"We should all take a break for breakfast," Annie told us, after checking her watch.
Today was Friday, the 21st of May. We had just finished school for the year yesterday, and it was just over five weeks since we had received our rings and swords from the Eternal Flame. We had been sleeping with the 'Book of Dreams' all of this time, and were just now learning what it had been teaching us.
"You must have all gotten up early," Mother Margie said when we appeared in the kitchen.
"You seemed very busy when we passed your study room, so we didn't interrupt you,"Mother Katie added.
"Yes, we were reading from the 'Book of Dreams'," Sean told them.
"We now know why nothing was revealed before we completed the entire course of instructions," I told them.
"Is it something like we discussed previously?" Dad asked from the table in the dinette.
"Yes, sir. Something exactly like that, and very dangerous if used improperly," I told him.
"Well, come on and eat your breakfast. You can worry about the Magic later," Mother Margie told us. Annie and Sara helped our Moms put breakfast on the table. It was while we were eating that I brought up the topic of the rings.
"We need to demonstrate what the rings can do at some point," I said to start things.
"What kind of demonstration?" Dad asked.
"A power demonstration for now," I answered. "It will need to be outside - somewhere that we can destroy things."
"Destroy things?" Mother Margie asked in shock.
"Yes, the rings are very powerful," Annie told her quietly.
"Where?" Mother Katie asked next.
"The rings have suggested a location," Sean told her without revealing it.
"But where is it?" Mother Katie reiterated.
"I not sure - somewhere out west. Somewhere with mountains and cliffs," Sean explained.
"All right, when?" Dad asked.
"This afternoon," I suggested. "It will take an hour or two."
"All right. We'll have everyone here at 3:00 this afternoon," Dad told us.
We returned to our study room after breakfast and continued reading from the 'Book of Dreams'. We stopped for lunch at 2:00, and then changed into jeans, short sleeve shirts, and work shoes after lunch. We then joined the other members of our family downstairs. Our sisters didn't appear to be happy at having their day interrupted, but Dad had apparently applied some parental persuasion, and they were quiet when we arrived in the large parlor.
"Are we ready?" I asked.
"Yes," was Dad's reply. Annie and I joined hands as did Sean and Sara.
"Everyone move close together," I told them, and when they had, Annie and Sara joined hands. The Magic surged, and Sean and I on the ends of the line recited the powerful new transportation spell we had learned. Both of us traced the glyph for it in the air at the same time.
We all instantly disappeared from the parlor and reappeared somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The location appeared to be an old abandoned quarry site of some kind. There were vertical rock walls with setbacks at various levels. There were a number of large blocks of rock lying on the floor of the quarry.
"This will be a demonstration of the power of the rings," I informed the startled members of my family, who were looking around in amazement.
"Where are we?" Tara asked in amazement.
"I believe we are somewhere in Colorado, but it could be Wyoming," Sean told her, before adding, "I'm not really sure."
"And you moved all of us all of the way here from Statesboro?" Gale asked in disbelief.
"Yes," Sara told her with a smile.
"And without a portal?" Muriel asked in amazement.
"Yes, with just a simple spell," Annie assured my startled sisters with a smile. "Well, maybe it wasn't so simple a spell," she added, still smiling. Edana didn't say anything; she just stared at us.
"This will be a demonstration of the power and versatility of the rings," I told them next. Annie and I had joined hands again as had Sean and Sara. Annie and Sara then joined hands again, also. We all four then carefully recited the spell to activate our rings. We had already started to glow as the Magic power built up around us.
There was a large block of rock sitting on the floor of the quarry about a hundred yards from us. It was approximately ten feet high, eight feet across and six feet deep. Sean and I raised our free hands and pointed our index fingers with the rings on them at the block of stone. At the same time Annie and Sara raised their joined hands and pointed their index fingers at the rock also. We all used the power word that activated our rings and thought 'destroy' at the same time. Three lines of Magic force struck the block of rock instantly.
There was a tremendous 'CRACK' as the three lines of Magic force struck the rock, and then it exploded in thousands of pieces with a very loud 'BOOM', and the air was filled with pieces of the exploding rock flying in all directions. Our flame shield had appeared even as the rock was exploding and prevented any of the splintered rock from hitting us or our family.
We shut the rings down by repeating the power word, and turned as a group to face our shocked family.
"That was one use of the rings," I told the stunned observers. "There are others like this." We turned to face the exposed quarry face where they had been working the rock when quarrying. We raised our arms and pointed at the top of the bottom step. A repeat of the power word with the thought to 'cut' the rock activated the rings. Again the three lines of intense Magic shot out and started cutting groves in the rock from the top of the shelf as we slowly lowered our arms until we were at ground level with the lines of force.
There were now three very deep groves cut in the rock of the quarry face from the top of the lowest step to the ground. We moved until we were at a 90 degree angle to the rock face, and Annie and I projected a line of Magic force to cut the first block free from the wall face. We angled the cut at the bottom, and the block slid forward by itself and toppled to the floor of the quarry. Sean and Sara then cut the second block loose and it also slid to the floor of the quarry.
Our parents, siblings, and their spouses just stood there in shock and awe while we did this. It was several minutes after we had finished before anyone spoke.
"HOLY COW!!" we heard Ed exclaim.
"Just DAMN!!" Bill said following his brother.
"Can we do that?" Tara asked in awe.
"To a certain extent," I told them.
"Your rings won't handle as much power, nor can you generate as much Magical power as we do. You can still do something similar," Sean assured them.
"A word of warning," I then told them. "Once you speak the spell to activate the rings they are permanently activated. That is one of the reasons that they are to always be worn. It only takes the use of the power word and the thought of what you want the ring to do to bring it back to life.
"A second use of the power word will shut the ring down until you activate it again. You must be extraordinarily careful not to use the power word by accident. That is the reason they are usually uncommon or made up words," I explained.
"Each group of you will need to sleep with the 'Book of Dreams' for a night or two to receive all of the instructions on the rings and your own power word," Annie told the rest of the family.
"We're assuming that each group of you sleeps together," Sara said with a giggle.
"Why would we sleep any other way?" Muriel asked in a puzzled voice.
"Some people might consider it a little odd!" Sara told her with a huge smile on her face, but managed not to giggle.
"It's what we do," Tara told her with a shrug. "We don't ask anyone else to either approve or copy what we do."
"I take it that this wasn't all that the 'Book of Dreams' had to teach you?" Dad asked.
"No, sir, there is a lot more, but it requires more power than the rest of you normally possess. We will still need to go over all of what we have learned ourselves to get it all straight in our minds," I told him.
"There are other things that can be done with the rings, but they take practice, and we haven't had time to get into that yet," Sean told the others.
"When will we be able to try out our rings?" Gale asked, excitedly.
"After everyone has slept with the 'Book of Dreams' to learn basic control of the rings, we'll return here so you can test your rings," I told them, before we formed everyone up again, and Sean and I recited the spell to return all of us to our parents' house in Statesboro.
On returning home, the women decided that it would be easier for all of us to eat at our parents' house that night, as we were all already here, and they went to the kitchen to prepare dinner. It was come-as-you-are again tonight. During dinner that night, I brought up some of the other properties of the rings.
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We had just finished taking our seats and Lady Caoilinn had signaled for the first dish to be served when everything was interrupted by a long, loud, high pitched, agonizing scream that was suddenly cut off. I immediately sent out my Magical senses to determine what had happened. I didn't like what I found. "What on Earth was that?" Lady Caoilinn demanded in the sudden silence that followed the scream being cut off. Captain Sean Og was already on his feet and calling for the guardsmen,...
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I awoke the next morning a very satisfied and rested kitty. I instantly knew that it was morning even with no windows to see out or the fresh air of dawn to sniff. The remains of last night's meal, about twenty pounds of meat, were still there and I wolfed it down in short order before starting to clean my muzzle and whiskers, which I had neglected to do last night due to tiredness. Following cleaning up, some of last night's meal was anxious to depart, and I deposited my cat scat in the...
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Grace takes over the narrative: Margaret O’Connell and her Husband returned that evening after supper. As promised, she brought the wedding dress and a box of books, but she also brought two lamps with her. “These are Magic Powered lamps, which don’t require fuel or electricity to work. All that you need to do is activate the spell in them with your Talent, and then you can adjust the intensity of the lamp to the level that you require,” she told Owen and me, before demonstrating how to do...
It was just after 4:00 that afternoon when the radio broke the silence. "Attention all O'Connell teams! We have just received word from the Intelligence Corp that the Persians have landed a short distance down river from Frankfurt. Keep a sharp lookout for their arrival. That's all for now," Grandfather Mark finished. Pat and I used the small pair of binoculars that we had been issued to search the area west of the city, but could only make out the top masts of several ships down the...
On arriving at the Hall for the evening meal, we were surprised to see a larger table set up and that several other guests were already there for the meal. The current conversations all stopped when we entered the Hall. "These are my house guests," Lady Feidhelm told the others. "The young man is Master Kellen O'Connell and the young ladies are the Mac Sweeney Sisters, Airmid and Almha, his Apprentices," she finished. "Kellen, these are my guests for the evening meal: Master Murchadh...
We materialized in the Duke's apartment on the second floor of the Manor house. The lamps there ran on Magic and they were lit. There was a fire in the large fireplace, making it much cheerier than the cell that we had just left. Of course the four girls couldn't see any of this, but they could feel the increased warmth. A large sumptuous dinner had been set out on the large table in the dining area here. It appeared that the Duke and Duchess had been interrupted as they prepared to have...
Mark's Narrative Continues: We didn't see Seamus or most of his people for ten days following dinner that night. Meagan and Maureen did appear for dinner a couple of times during that period, and they borrowed Dymphna for a time as Seamus and Carl had taken Dealla and Cessair with them. Having three Mages in the Ohio country put a strain on our one remaining Mage, Coleen, who was rather busy with two locations to take care of. Things on this side of the Ohio River had not slowed down or...
June slipped into July, and we still hadn't found time to return to the Other Reality to visit the girls still there, and to see how they and the Daughters they were carrying were doing. We had planned on returning several times, but every time that we had, something had come up to prevent us from leaving. Aside from the normal work in the fields on the growing crops, and our work in the printing plant, several emergencies had developed to prevent us from leaving. The first was one...
Because of our late start, there was no way that we could make the fifty kilometers to Gray before dark. We passed through the hamlet of Belleauve that afternoon, and had neared Mirebeau-sur-Beze before deciding to stop for the night. We looked for, and found, a wooded area with a pond nearby, at the edge of an open field. Pat and I had unsaddled our riding horses, unhitched the cart team, and removed their harnesses before we took them out to the pond for a drink. The women were preparing...
Monday started a week of discoveries and amazement for our future wives. While Pat and I hit the books, as the old saying goes, on Monday morning, our Sisters and female Cousins took our girlfriends shopping in Statesboro. They went on the small bus that makes regular trips to town several times a day so that our people can shop or run other errands. The first shock was the bus itself. It's one of the small types of buses that can carry 25 or so passengers, like those used by many churches...
Characters introduced in this chapter: Shannon O'Connell (Shan) Sheena's twin, one of Mike's future wives, 5'-4" tall, 104 pounds, 34C-21-30, 15 years old, long flaming red hair, deep green eyes, some freckles, and terribly cute Sheena O'Connell (She) Shannon's twin, one of Pat's future wives, 5'-4" tall, 104 pounds, 34C-21-30, 15 years old, long flaming red hair, deep green eyes, some freckles, and terribly cute Clare O'Toole Cathleen's twin, one of Mike's future wives,...
At home on Monday we all relaxed for a while except for the need to weed the fields and some maintenance on the new Tractor. Sean and I took Annie and Sara out to show them how to weed with Magic. They were surprised that they knew the spell, and at how easy it was to weed the large fields with Magic. Later our Moms took them out and introduced them to the herbal garden and weeding by hand because many of the herbs and other things growing there would be considered weeds by the Magic spell,...
"Shannon, what are you doing?" Savannah demanded, standing in the hall behind us. Shannon's head came up off my chest, and she turned toward her Sister in a more determined way than I had seen before. "It's all right, Savannah. He will take us with him and will marry both of us," she told her Sister. Savannah gasped in surprise. "Really? Both of us? Are you sure?" she asked in a doubtful voice. "I told Shannon that I would marry both of you. I will be glad to have both of you as...
Annie and I spent a troubled night with thoughts of Weres waking us from time to time, as I was sure others in our family did. We had all heard tales about them, but had always assumed that they were just that - tales, and not anything real. We were about to discover if they were real or not. Annie and I were up early for breakfast and were joined by Sean and Sara, who were up equally early. After breakfast there wasn’t anything to do at our houses, so we went over to our parents’ house to...
Mark resumes the Narrative: I didn't have a chance to return to the barracks room until sometime later. I had checked with all of the Platoon Leaders and the remaining leaders of Olive Hill. I had also created the permanent Portal to Hickory Hill to get supplies in here. Wolf came over to me as I entered the room. He had very hesitantly left the girl that he had rescued, who was asleep on one of the bunks. "I'm sorry that I let you down, Mark, but I ... I just couldn't leave Saoirse....
The sun was already up when we rose the next morning. It was dry and fairly warm in our defensive shell, and the fire that the Eternal Flame had left was still burning. While the women started on breakfast, Pat and I fed the horses. "We are going to take the horses for a drink," I told the women, as we prepared to move the horses through the defensive shell and our wards. They didn't like this, and were always skittish when we did it. "Breakfast will be ready in a bit," Shannon called...
The following Monday, the 4th of September, was Labor Day, and on Tuesday, the 5th, we all started back with our home-school studies. Pat and I were now Seniors in high school. Thanks to the work done by the 'Book of Dreams', Shannon and Sheena were now in their Junior year of high school, while Clare and Cathleen had started their Sophomore year. Gretchen and Petra, because of their late start with the 'Book of Dreams' were only on eighth grade work at present, but were advancing rapidly...
It was July before more checks showed up. It was Wednesday, the 13th, to be exact. On Thursday, the 14th, we returned to Nassau to deposit the latest checks and some excess funds from our parents' regular bank account in Georgia. Our parents were maintaining a large reserve of cash on hand in their house now. They had built it up over the last eleven months. This deposit brought them to over 225 million dollars in the two Nassau banks. It would appear that we weren't the only ones moving...
Mankato's (Robert's) awakening: I awoke next to the woman who had rescued me. From the size of the Talent that I could feel and the amount of Magic energy surrounding her, one would assume that she was a woman of large proportions and stature. In fact, the woman next to me was short with large breasts and a slim but very female figure. In her sleep, her breasts rose and fell rhythmically, and I watched them joyfully for a considerable period of time. At last she awoke and sat up. "How...
Characters introduced in the next two chapters: Lady Caoilinn O'Doherty Master Cahir's Wife, the current owner of Glenveagh Castle, 5'-7" tall, 135 pounds, 36B-24-37, 32 years old, dark blond hair, gray eyes Master Cahir Imprisoned the Mac Sweeney sisters, Lady Caoilinn Husband, 5'-7" tall, 175 pounds, 41 years old, Long brown hair and brown eyes Donough Servant, 6'-2" tall, 255 pounds, 27 years old black hair, blue eyes Sean Og O'Doherty Captain of Guards, Lady Caoilinn's...
I hated to interrupt the Sisters' fun, but it was getting late in the day, and we needed to come to a consensus on what was to be done. "Would you ladies like to leave here with me?" I asked when they took a little break after exploring the room. "Leave?" they both thought in my mind. "Yes, go somewhere else with me." "We had never considered that we could go somewhere else!" Airmid said in surprise. "How would we do that?" Almha asked. "I can use my Magic to transfer us to...
We awoke fairly early the next morning, as the Sisters wanted to see this new castle. I was worried about what Ken had said, and that they would be disappointed. We quickly dressed in our Wizard's robes, but I didn't know if Ken and the O'Hallinan Sisters were up yet. "Ken could still be asleep," I told my women, who were ready to leave for his apartment. "No, they are awake and up," Airmid told me, confidently. "Are you sure?" I asked wondering how she could know that. "Yes, we...
New characters introduced in the next two chapters: Gretchen Servant, Mikes bed mate, 5'-5" tall, 115 pounds, 34B-22-32, 17 years old, long black hair, blue eyes, a sweet but rather plain looking girl "I'll cover the differences first, as they are marked," Grandfather told us after he had finished his meal, and we all had some more of the excellent wine. "They will allow you to understand the similarities better. Also please realize that all of these events have been caused by the...
Margie resumes the Narrative: Romero New York hoodlum, 5’-8’’ tall, 165 pounds, 36 year old, black hair, brown eyes We moved Mr. Franklin’s concrete mixer, a steam powered Ransome 7 batch mixer with an elevating charging hopper attached to the site of the first house on Monday, the 25th of March. Mr. Franklin was concerned as the mixer weighed some 8,000 pounds, but it really wasn’t any challenge for me at all. My Ancestors had moved much heavier loads longer distances with no trouble. I...
Even before the others had started dinner in the cafeteria, the flashing lights and sirens had appeared outside the defensive shell. They had been preceded by, and were followed by, helicopters of various police and news organizations. Those arriving included: the Fairfax County Sheriff's department, the Virginia State Police, the FBI, and others including local radio and television news reporters. There was a multitude of details to be taken care of before our family would be able to join...
Owen continues the Narrative: I spent most of the remainder of the day in the shop with Joe. There was work to do on some items that the local farmers had brought in for repair. Frank joined us to observe later that morning. “I’ve always been interested in blacksmithing, but there wasn’t any opportunity to do it or even to see it done where I used to live,” he told us when we had taken a short break after finishing the work on the first item. “Where did you live?” I asked, curious. “I...