Chapter 10

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.