Chapter 1

The following characters appear in the opening chapters:

Madailein Kavanagh (Maddy)

Chief protagonist, former Earth Witch, Irish, 5’-6’’ tall, 135 pounds, 38DD-24-37, 25 years old, alabaster skin, long, lustrous black hair, violet eyes, some freckles, beautiful, Magic user

Al

Maddy’s Familiar, a large Manx cat, 16 inches long, white with large black spots, stumpy one inch tail weights about 16 pounds

Joshua Molony (Josh)

Minor Wizard, Maddy’s friend and neighbor, 5’-10’’ tall, 165 pounds, 28 years old, dark blond hair cut short, blue eyes, Magic user

With the return of awareness came Cold. I was Cold and everything around me was Cold. Colder than snow or ice. It was the Cold of the deep freeze, of the tomb, and of death ... the death of all things, and I had no idea of how to escape it.

I tried to escape it by moving, but on moving my arms or legs, what little I was able to detect of them, came Pain to join the Cold. Pain so sharp that it cut like a knife, and made me scream ... and scream for some time, but I could detect no sound though it reverberated in my head like the bells of a church. Why was there no sound? Was I deaf? Or had I lost my voice? I didn’t know.

This was also, while I was looking for why there was no sound, when I realized that I couldn’t see. There was no hint of light there in the Cold. Was I trapped inside of something, and that was why it was so Cold and dark, or was I lying outside somewhere in the Cold with no lights around me. Perhaps the worst thought of all that came to me was that I was Blind. That there was plenty of light, but I couldn’t see it because I had no eyes to see it with.

By now I was in a panic. Who or what was I, and where was I? I had no idea, but thought that I must have come to this state or condition recently, as otherwise how would I know about having vision and sound production? Had I made it up? Were they just figments of my imagination? I didn’t know and that was the hardest burden of all.

Still I did know that the Cold was real and also the Pain, but I had no idea of how I knew that. Had I made them up also, but no both were only too real and affecting me presently. I lay there in the Cold, and a reduced but now constant state of Pain for some time, before I stopped to wonder if there actually was such a thing as time, or if I had made it up, just as I had possibly made up the other things.

I continued to lay there, but of course, I had to wonder if I was really lying somewhere, wherever here was, if there was a here, plus I had no idea of how I had reached here, if in fact there actually was a here. By now though, I was too tired to wonder about things any longer, and gave up to the Cold. The deep penetrating Cold.

I became aware again when Heat arrived. I instantly recognized it for what it was, and it spread through a part of me for a short time before stopping, and the Cold started to reclaim the warmed area. It hadn’t gotten very far with that, when more Heat arrived, and it quickly spread out through me.

This, however, created another problem. With the Heat came the return of Pain with a vengeance, and I screamed and screamed, but there was still no sound that I could detect, and after a time awareness departed again.

“It’s still alive, but God only knows how or why. It should have died a long time ago. The face and most of the head have had most of the skin burned off. The ears, eyes, nostrils, tongue and vocal cords are just gone. Two thirds of the body has third degree burns. We aren’t even sure of the sex, as that area was seriously burned also,” the paramedic told the doctor, as he and his partner, who hadn’t said anything, wheeled the gurney into the emergency room.

“I don’t envy you your job,” the second paramedic finally said, as they handed over the paperwork on the patient.

“Where was it found? What happened? Was there a fire? Who reported it?” the doctor on duty asked, as he took the paperwork.

“It was reported by a homeless guy to a patrol car that was in the area. They called us. We found it out in the middle of an overgrown field. It was the only thing burned, although some of the vegetation in the area had been wilted by the heat. There was no ID or clothes found in the area,” the first paramedic told him, as they left.

Several of the nurses, who worked in the Emergency Room, had come into the treatment room to assist the doctor, but two of them threw up on seeing the body, and the last one left before she did also.

Shortly, the on duty doctor was joined by the head of the Emergency Department. Even he was a little green on seeing the patient.

“What have you done so far?” he asked the duty doctor.

“I’m still trying to get a nurse to assist me. They are trying to find one of the ex-Army Medics who work here to assist me. There isn’t a lot we can do for it,” the young doctor told him

“Have you given it anything for the pain? That is probably all that we can do for it until it dies, which I don’t expect will be long in happening,” the Chief Doctor told him.

They were soon joined by a large male nurse in green scrubs. He was usually assigned to the operating rooms of the hospital. He had been an Air Force medic.

“Was there a plane crash?” he asked on seeing the patient.

“No, it was found in a field somewhere,” the junior doctor told him.

“We usually only saw things like that when there was an aircraft crash. Any idea of who they were?” he asked.

“No, no ID and no clothes,” the doctor told him.

“Give it something for the pain, Green,” the Head of the Department told the male nurse. “A large shot. That’s about all we can do. I don’t expect it to survive much longer. It’s a miracle that it has survived this long, but we can make it comfortable till the end,” he finished, as both doctors walked over to the next treatment room to check on the other patients that had been brought in.

Green went to the cabinet where medications were kept and removed a large capacity syringe, and then picked up the end bottle of pain reliever from the shelf where they were stored. After filling the syringe with the contents of the bottle, he walked over to the patient and surveyed it for the least injured area with a vein, where he could inject it. Tearing open an alcohol swab, he swabbed the area and then inserted the needle of the syringe into the selected vein and emptied it.

Green had no more than turned around to record the administration of the pain reliever and the use of the bottle for their records when the reaction took place.

I felt the stick of a needle over the constant pain and then something was injected into my body. I had no idea of what it was, but it spread rapidly, and that was when the unexpected happened. Something went through me like an electric current, and it knotted up every muscle in my body. It was ten times or more worse than the pain, but it only lasted for a very short time.

It had only lasted for a short time, because that was when the Magic from the Ley Line grabbed a hold of me and shook me like a rag doll. It felt for a few seconds like I was being roasted as the energy surged through my body.

Following that initial burst of energy, the Magic began to do what it found necessary, as I had no control of it at that point. What it did was to restore my body with a few changes, changes that it must have considered necessary, or worthwhile at least. Within a couple of minutes, by my subjective time, as that was all that I had to go by at the time, its work was finished, and I felt the Magic cut off.

On opening my eyes, I found myself looking up at a large array of lights, which were all turned off presently. I was lying on something four feet or so above the floor, and I noticed that I was naked. There was a man dressed in green scrubs standing near me. He looked to be in shock and like he had seen a ghost. His mouth was hanging open, and he had a small glass bottle in one hand and a large syringe in the other.

“Where am I?” I asked on sitting up. I also noticed my now large breasts as they flopped forward when I sat up.

“You’re in the Emergency Room of our hospital,” he answered before turning and calling “Doctors” in a loud voice. I had already decided that if others were coming in here, that I needed something to cover myself with.

Moving gingerly, as I wasn’t sure of just how much or how well I had been restored, I turned until my legs were over the side of what I recognized as a gurney, and then slipped to the floor. Removing the sheet from the gurney, I wrapped it around myself from my now ample breasts to as far as it would reach toward the floor. Two men shortly appeared in the space where we were. They also seemed shocked to see me standing there.

In the meantime, I was looking at the bottle in the first man’s hand. It had a number on it, and it appeared to be 904... , no, with a closer inspection it was 704838706.

The new arrivals had stopped beside the first man.

“Who is she?” they both asked.

“That ... that is / was the patient!!” the one in green told them in an upset voice.

“Have you been drinking?” the older man asked.

“No, I gave it ... her the shot, and the next thing that I knew, she was sitting up on the gurney. I had only started to fill out the log on what I had used. It can’t have been more that two minutes or so after giving her that shot,” he explained.

“What was in bottle 704838706?” I demanded in a hard voice; drawing their attention back to me.