Chapter 23

An Informal Wizard’s Confab.

Gentlemen and Ladies.

Henry Arron Lambert Cordially invites you:

To a cordial and closed meeting of Wizards to evaluate

The plans of the Lambert Clan to release from Crystal Captivity

Those members imprisoned within the crystals of the Mind Ripper

That was recently recovered. Begging that, we intend to provide a

Colingual environment for those trapped souls to reintegrate with

Their respective society’s.

RSVP. Conference from Saturday to Sunday

Co-ordinates for attendance by return mail

Some of the wizards replied as interested to meet for the weekend, arriving on Friday and departing on Monday. As all the stores would be open, as well as the Lounge, it was anticipated as being a good “working” weekend. There were many additional items on the table for discussion. There was a great deal of interest in the library that I had started to accumulate, as well as the ability of getting clarified copies of some documents. Our document repair and replacement team (Paula, Amelia, William and Jeffery) had output that would astound most. And our discovery of the rune insert that allowed anyone to see and assimilate any Spell, Rune or ward would make a definite impression. I had to think about how to present that piece of wizardry. It was potentially the most significant piece of craft that we had found so far.

Ogernaut went a bit insane with ordering and stocking food and drink for the weekend. We got positive RVPs from everyone but Sangoma Djuna, our herbalist. He was going to be busy with some issues in Equatorial Africa and would not be able to attend. I sent him a bag to let him know some of what he missed.

The Wizards Meeting.

“Welcome Gentle beings. You honor us with your presence and delight us with your appearance”. Ogernaut said to the arriving Wizards. “Please come with us to the Lounge for refreshments and a place to enjoy a taste on us.”

“This is different.” Graf von Zaftmund said to his partner, Chen Zhiwei. “I love how this place is finished. Hank must be doing good in the power business.”

Upon entering the Lounge, they were impressed with the appearance of bookshelves on two walls, small tables set between comfortable chairs and love seats, a small stone circular “fire pit” in the center, and a long bar along the back corner furthest from the entrance. Seeing Sir David at one of the bar chairs, the newly arrived pair moved toward him.

“So, this is where the English hide out. In America of all places.” Chen said.

“Yes, and a damn nice place it is, even if it was built by a Yank upstart.” Sir David replied.

“I must say, he seems to have acquired his own distinct taste rather quickly.” Chen said. “I feel the strength of the currents of water and power here quite well. Its’ almost as if a fountain is spinning it into the air around us.”

“I think that’s by design. This is his favorite place to sit and relax.” Sir David said. “I wonder what has kept him busy. Sir Elf, are we early?”

“No sir.” The elf behind the bar said. “I believe that Hank and Natalie are finishing up something of a few gifts to present to the rest of you and they hit a snag. Mr. Von Zaftmund, I have a pint of good German beer for you and Mr. Zhiwei, I have some decent Japanese scotch that I believe that is of your liking.”

“I have to say, Sir David, that Hank has a much more refined presentation for his place then I expected. Right down to expert bartenders. I shudder to think of the cost.” Chen said.

“There is no cost for us.” The bartender, Centurion Riska said. “Hank is a Friend of Fae. He has treated with us fairly at all times. We feel we are in his debt.”

“Our power boy has matured very quickly, I see” Graf said quietly to the other wizards.

“You have no idea.” Sir David said in response.

Conversation was interrupted with the entrance of Itsuki and his companion, Dame Matsuko, who sighted the trio and then walked to the bar to join.

“I see you have found my favorite place to hide” Itsuki said to the trip.

“I see why you hide here. Although hiding from this lovely lady would seem foolish, my friend” Graf said in reply.

“Gentlemen, If you could please come this way we have more comfortable seating prepared for you” A gnome said to the group. “If you will please follow me to this end of the bar we have a table and several couches for you.”

Carl (the gnome) led the crowd to the five lounge couches that were arranged around a table adorned with plates, finger foods, and empty glasses. “Can I have your drink desires?” Carl asked when everyone was seated. “I know yours, Lady Matsuki and Mr Itsuki. Do the rest of you need a refill? Or do you desire something different?”

“This is quiet enough for us, I should think. Is Hank on the way down?” Matsuku asked.

“He’s in the elevator at this moment and should arrive momentarily.” Gnome Carl replied.

After Carl, the Gnome, left, Sir David spoke to the group in a quiet voice. “Hank has become obsessed with the work of Karudourich, I am afraid. And with good reason. I found myself bespelled by that beast and Lady Eisenham did as well. The disguise was a total remake of the person I knew as someone else. It went far beyond a Geas. Or a Myst. It even worked on my memory and convoluted what I knew into something else.”

“Gott. That sounds like the spell casting that Hitler did in the 1930s.” Von Zelmund said. “He crafted his message so clearly that you didn’t know that it was changing your mind”.

“That’s what it did. I have never been so embarrassed. Well maybe somewhat at that silly gathering in Louisiana and was in the middle of a battle. Which Hank demonstrated some of his abilities then. I tell you, that young man is consistently embarrassing me and making me think twice before making judgements. This young man is a servile cat among pigeons in a coop. He never ceases to shock me.” Sir David said.

“He does do things I never imagined. Which is what intrigues me about his invitation to come here” Itsuki said. “But nothing is ever an unpleasant surprise.”

I didn’t know how long the wizards had been there. I was tied up with Natalie for a few minutes and I was late with her coming down. I knew that Riska was running the bar. He was one heck of a bartender. Not quite as intimidating as Ogernaut, but he was pretty good at getting things settled as well. Today was his first performance.

Setno was working with Paula and Jeffery in the workroom we built in cell number two in the warehouse. We moved the bookshelves to there for those “fly in fly out” volumes we copied, translated, repaired, rejuvenated and then sent back to the “doner” libraries. Some of the libraries had quit calling us, just waited for a couple of days and saw books return. The Papal library bitched about it, but as we got into the history of the original Latin and then the English translations of the bible, we figured out why. It was not a pretty picture. Wizard, Witch, and non-Christian worshipers had no place in the society of Italy, England, Germany or France going back for over two thousand years. The formal religious hierarchies had no use for non-denomination worship. “Suffer not the witch to live” was a very poor translation from Hebrew. But it was a great political saying.

Natalie came down with me. She was my designated second in command, and by gosh her and Lech had done amazing work with a lot of research we wanted to bring up today. I really wanted to get some commitment from a couple of people here on what we were trying to do.

“Show time, my dear.” I said as we walked to the door of the lounge.

“We are ready and waiting”. She answered. Lech said “me too” in my mind.

A Bribe, A plea, and a Plan.

“HI guys. I’m so glad to see you all could make it.” I said.

“Hank, if I had known how nice this place was, I would have come earlier and often. If you are studying here, I wonder that you ever leave. What a large library you are building here.” Chen Zhiwei said.

“Not me. My friends here are doing most of the work. You will be amazed at what all we have managed to get done. First off, for each of you, I have a present. I’ll send Sagoma his as well.” I said.

“What do you have this time, Hank?” Sir David asked. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

Natalie looked and smiled. “Just a few reference books.” She said. “Hank had these made for you all.”

I handed out the six-inch by nine-inch covered notebooks. They were kind of unusual. One one side there was a six by nine note pad with spiral’s across the top. On the overleaf was a six by nine spiral bound notepad, with entries already.

“Aha, I heard about this” Itsuki said. “One to write on, and the other to read from”.

“How does that work?” Chen Zhiwei asked?

“It’s pretty simple actually.” I said. “The notebook on the right is what you write on. Spells, notes, observations, all the stuff we want to write down. Including spells we are working on, runes we are working with, etc.”

“So, what about this is so special” Sir David asked.

“When you close it, all of this is transferred to the notes on the left. And automatically indexed. With type, location and corrected spelling If there’s any mistakes.” I said.

“So how do we find it again?” Helmut asked.

“Simple, you open the book again, and look at the pages. The index is on the top page. All of your spells are there for the asking. You ask for something and it appears. I already put into it some of the spells you have shared with me, as well as something a little extra. Try it.”

As each of the wizards started to open their new “pocketbooks” they noticed that the front cover asked for their Thumbprint. “Just put your thumb on the center of the page.” I said.

“Same trick as the stones, I see” Sir David said. “It knows me. My god, all the things I have given you are right there. That’s amazing.”

“And it’s written in Japanese Kangi” Itsuki said.

“Not mine. Its’ formal German Script” Helmut said.

“Ok. Mine is Mandarin” Chen Zhiwei said. “We write on the right notebook, and it transfers, indexes, spell checks and aligns in the pages on the left?”

“And I don’t suppose it ever runs out of note paper?” Sir David said.

“They are not supposed to. Let me know if it ever does.” Hank said. “Also, it’s a true Grimoire. No one else can open it and read it except you.”

“Hank, where did you get the spells for this? I sense three or four running at the same time.” Itsuki said.

“They were things we were able to glean from the documents that have passed through here in the library. Including in it is the “ownership” spell. From Philians the Greek.”

Everyone sat up when I said that. That spell allowed a user to look at a spell, or enchantment, or rune language, and it would translate itself, and the mage then owned that spell as if he had done the development, education, debugging and repetition needed to master it.

“Where on earth did you find that?” Sir David asked.

“Couple of places. First was in the burned books in the basement of the Vatican library. You know, the ones that were assembled in 800 AD and burned in place to be “forever destroyed.” The others came from the buried reference that were sent to King James in the 1500s for the Protestant Bible. Of course, all these “Witch” works were only supposed to be there for reference and then burned. But they responded to our initial inquiries and wonder of wonder, they coalesced and rebuilt themselves.”

‘Hank, I don’t think the British museum will be very amused at your copying of religious artifacts. The church of England is rather protective of their artifacts.”

“That’s ok. We are pretty much finished with all of the Church of England, the Vatican and the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem. We have managed to find the deliberate notes on translations from the Ancient Hebrew that were made in the “age of the Enlightened Mind.” Including all of the deliberate translation screw ups that the papal authorities demanded. We have some ideas of what happened, but we need to dig up a little more proof.” I said.

“You are talking about turning things upside down. Again.” Sir David said.

“Hey, I’m just a high school graduate. Nobody pays attention to a kid.” I said with a grin.

“Hank, this is all interesting, but what is it you wanted to enlist us into?” Itsuki asked.

“Nope. For what I am working on, I think Paula can better explain it.” I said.

Our friend Lech came out, looked around and went to the bar. Natalie blushed looked at him and she said “Go sit in the corner. Please don’t pay him any attention, he’s just a pest sometimes.”

“That’s the Polish Eagle. And he’s now your Familiar?” Helmut asked with awe.

“Yes. He has taken refuge within me. Long story. We can talk about that later. But first we want to update you guys on what has been going on, and why we need your help.” Natalie said.

What followed was Natalie doing her careful presentation about the events of the last three weeks. Sir David managed to bring things to a bit of a pause when he asked what happened to Karudorich when we took him to the Fae colony in Brazil.

“Well, part of him is right here. In a crystal. Brimstone cooked the rest.” I said.

There was a moment of silence while everyone considered that.

Which led into the explanations of what we were working on. And what our project goals were. When Paula finished after an hour, I saw a lot of interest in everyone’s eyes.

“Ok, Hank. You put the bait in the water. Where is the hook?” Chen Zhiwei asked.

“First, we need some type of environment that each of the prisoners can execute which allows them to build their own small world within the confines of their crystal prison. To get out of the darkness. Second, we need a means of giving them images, documents, and other items to allow their minds to reconnect with the outside world. Third, we need to build a collaboration where they can communicate with each other. A town hall of sorts. And this town hall needs to have open communication from them to external people. I think that using the Amulets that the Clan Lambert is using will allow that. Long term goal is the restoration of the contents of the crystals to living bodies but that is a long, long way off.”

“Even for the Non magic humans?” Helmut asked.

“There are only four of them, they were scholars in England and Italy, and France. And one personal friend of mine. If we must, maybe we can build some spells for them?”

“Well, I’m not going to ask if we have enough power resources to push these spells into existence. But what do want from us?” Chen asked.

“I think I have an idea of what he wants”. Helmut said. “Don’t you? Itsuki?”

“You want Helmut’s illusions to provide them with an illusion of their own space, that they can modify and live in instead of what they have right now. You want my work on Translation to help them to understand each other when you build the artifact that allows them to see as meeting each other. And you, my powerful friend, intend to craft a meeting house and communications hub that allows them to visit a joint world and bring about new information and experiences to help them to grow.” Itsuki said. “And my lovely friend to help with her knowledge of charms and stones to be able to move information into and out of their stones.”

Dame Matsuko smiled. (Her nerve regrowth had worked better then we thought during the week after New Years. Her face had character now, and expressions, and not just a blank Geisha mask.) “Whatever I can do to help you, Hank. Whatever I can do.” She said with a smile that was natural.

“This is what you call a “Integration Project” isn’t it, Hank?” Sir David said. “You want several different components to work well together to provide a much greater end result.”

“I believe that you understand what we are looking for. One of my people, Barbara, has the overall plans and has identified the different spell books and references I think we need. We are still going through the donated stuff from the Elven Library and the Dwarves as well. Amelia and William are organizing that material as we speak. We are allowed to copy, index, and align similar operations from their works into a Library organization. Much like your Grimoire’s but it’s for all of the books in the library.” Hank said.

“My God, Hank. This is a massive undertaking.” Chen Zhiwei, said. “I think the last library with that much material was destroyed in Constantinople by the fourth Crusade. Most of that was destroyed by Michael VIII.”

“Which is why the organization effort is so important. We want to find the holes in the collection, as well as the duplicates.”

“I can see how this will impact development. And I also see this impacting education of newly found emergent.” Sir David said. “Are you going to do that education here?”

“Nope. I have commitments from Reggie to look for a place to locate a school in the US. I am afraid of going into Europe right now. And Pan Asia is pretty much closed off as well. I want to have something similar to the Swiss school had. The one that Clement V had closed as well as allowing the King of France to hunt down the Templars.” I said.

“You have gotten a lot of strange introductions to European History, Hank.” Helmut said.

“Hank, we are not used to finding such calm judicial knowledge in someone so young.” Chen Zhifei said.

“I understand. Even some of my friends feel I am a threat.” I said. I was not looking at anyone specifically, but I am sure it was heard by a couple.

“So, how do we build this “link of Crystals.” Sir David asked.

“We are already working on that. Paula, if you can proceed.”

The House we will build

“The study of the Ripper and the crystals it used was a careful and detailed undertaking that both Paula and Jeffery did before it’s shipment to the Fae colony along with Karudorich. And the runes, treatment and the analysis of how it was constructed was compared carefully to the documents that the Elves sent in support of the construction project.” Hank said to the group.

“There’s no doubt that there was evil genius in constructing this device” Barbara said to the assembly of Wizards. “But what one can do, others can repeat, if they study enough. We have seen how the crystal support system is built to move the information from the mind to the crystal. We have duplicated the crystals using those we have already here. From the Restorer that we got from the Elves, we can see how the flow is supposed to work bi-directionally with the crystals, as well as what is needed to provide voluntary communication into and out of the crystals.”

The group was silent as Barbara continued.

“We determined that what we needed was a support for each crystal and connection between all of them. The substance we tested was the same as the crystals themselves, which is a substrate of Quartz known as Smoky or Black Quartz. All of these are with a hexagonal structure. By careful machining of the base of a long piece of created Quartz we were able to construct a base for the crystals to be inserted. We then used the same rune and charm to see if we could first link two crystals together. Which worked. We now have two crystal prisoners able to communicate directly via a structured channel as described in the Recovery helmet.”

The group was stunned. “Hank, what this team has done Is amazing.” Sir David said.” What are your next steps?”

“First, we need the effective spell crafts from Helmut and Itsuki. They must be able to create an image the prisoners and outsiders can relate to, and common language for all to understand. Because we are dealing with people who are from different eras, and different nations each with different languages we need to have common ground. Fortunately, our first two spoke English. Our next piece of spell craft that we need is a means that allows each individual to create their own illusion of their own home, and a joint illusion of what we want a town hall to look like. One can be a strict can based on some physical image that all can see in common. The other has to be taken from each individual’s own memories that they can also modify as they need to become more comfortable.”

“And this must be usable by all of the races in confinement. We probably need to find a way to provide a “User manual” to each one of them” Hank said.

“Which will need a blending of our work, Itsuki and me” Helmut said. “Where will you insert this spell of ability to communicate and refashion their environment?”

“It must be in the construction of the Town Hall. Because we are using the facilities of the crystals as used by the Restorer Helmet to pass information in and out, we need to have it available as a “Common Utility”.”

“So, let me get this right. You want to etch the formal spell ability into the basis of this plug-in house with forty sockets to allow all of the crystal prisoners to see, talk, hear and interact as if in a common space?” Sir David asked.

“And allow them to retreat to their own crystal cave and modify it to suit their own personal needs.”

“Thank god you don’t have to provide housekeeping on your Crystal Hotel” Dame Matsuko said.

“That’s not the really hard part.” Hank said.

“What is?”

“Well much of this work is demonstrated as working. The real Cecile Henrard is already talking with Cindy Taylor on the two-connection crystal house we have built. So, we know that mental to mental communication works. We need to add the spells to the framework and teach the non-Mage (Cindy) to use this. From there it’s just a build assembly project. What I promised Arno was that Fae (and others) would be able to communicate with the prisoners as well. So we need to find a method less cumbersome then the Helmet to allow living people to “plug-in” to the Town hall as well.” Hank said.

“Hank. What if we find that there are other prisoners out there?” Helmut asked.

“I know. That’s why we are building a black Crystal path with fifty slots. Just in Case.” Hank said.

“So you need three pieces of Spell Craft so far. One is a communications spell that works within and without the “Town Hall” you are building. One that allows the current residents to tailor their own place in this construction to fit what they are familiar with. And one which lets them share experiences, information etc. with the outside world.”

“And with each other. No more isolation. And the channel must be bi-directional. Outsiders need to be able to share with the residents, and vice versa.” Hank said.

“This is your stage one, this platform between. What are you doing with restoration to physical bodies?” Chen Zhiwei asked.

“That’s being researched as well in a non-magical direction. But I am afraid that will take some time. And we need to have the subjects able to be restored. It won’t do well to have them just dumped back into bodies after this long interval without some level of acclimatization to the new world they are now in.” Hank said.

“You have really thought this out Hank.” Itsuki said. “You have had help but you have really driven this to a level of detail to make it possible.”

“I have had help. Great help. And we are committed to do this for these people. For their good, and also to recapture the knowledge that they have. There was a reason that Karudorich put these people in a can. And kept them there.” Hank said. “Now how would you like to help?”

It’s just us girls

Suddenly, the silence was again shattered. Cindy Taylor, having lived in silence and darkness for what seemed like years, suddenly found herself being connected with persons, one after another, all who she had met when she spent time with Hank in Augusta. They didn’t stay long, time with company rushed by, but it did break the isolation when someone else was there to talk with. And they were friendly. Of course they could be. They were only there for a short time. But Hank promised something better.

“Well, let’s hope that this works. You are putting Cecile in slot one and Cindy in slot two.” Hank said.

“Yes, and we are going to use this extension to get into the environment that we hope that the bridge creates.”

“I guess it’s time to gear up.” Paula said. “Let’s see what we get when I go inside this way.”’

Cindy felt alone again. But she had an environment around her. She was not in the black space anymore.

“Ok, Hank. She is doing her own exploration right now. What’s next?”

“Let’s see if we can contact Cecile next. Try to take her through the same awakening. And then see if we can get the bridge between them to work. Let Cecile know we are doing it.”

Cecile was not quite as shocked by Paula’s suggestions. She had felt something in the dark that was approaching her and she prepared for it. Having been painfully treated in the past, she had no expectations of smelling roses. Cloying and a hint of them. “My favorite smell was apricots.” She thought to herself. And suddenly she smelled that.