Vivid Dream Reality 3

by Savannah Maun

  Meanwhile, I needed to start taking people to Lagbit's World. I gave a choice to the victims with as much information as possible. The addiction that they had been subjected to could be beaten but would remain with a craving that may never go away. I could also remove their memory of their abuse and if I transformed them into elves I believed the craving would disappear. Becoming an elf had its own dangers as had been proven by Cari's abduction. So I was only willing to transform those who really wanted me to and who were willing to relocate to an Elven enclave. So far that meant Fiji, New Amilyf or the Isle of Wight. Any family members who wished to join them would be welcome, provided they meant no harm to others.

  The majority of girls wanted to become elves, but only a few wanted their memory removed. Some of them felt that those experiences had made them change fundamentally and to forget would return them to a naïve state, ready for the world to harm again. Those who wanted to forget that it had ever happened and still wanted the transformation needed to create a video to talk to themselves about what had happened and what they had decided.

  Those who didn't want either, we removed their memory of any Elven intervention and dropped them off at a hospital some distance from the warehouse.

  I left Lacy to continue the investigation while I took the first group through. We chose those most damaged to go first, which was the girls suffering from their abuse and addiction. There were a series of blow up beds with headsets ready for us. I was going to try to switch headsets and do a week in Lagbit's World multiple times in one day. I settled down comfortably, reached over to hold Vee's hand and hit resume.

  I woke up feeling an urgency to get stuff done and the realisation that there was no rush. After Taigoa I had to explain to a disappointed Myra that Wendy was not joining us this week. Mia had sort of forced my hand, but I felt it was because she appreciated Wendy's power and trusted her, which Myra could understand, even if she still felt emotionally upset. I had hoped that Wendy would be available by the time I had arrived in New York, but Mia had suggested Wendy go to Florida.

  Myra needed to go and sort out the latest humans that needed help, so we arranged a meeting after dinner that night. Myra was going to try and transform three again to see how she felt and whether we could increase the speed of our population growth.

  There wasn't much more I could do until then, so we went back to our normal routine of fun and lessons. I was getting a better grip on the Elven written language and was now beginning to be able to read some of the history and culture.

  Dinner included Leaf (Lagbit World's Leaf) and Geri, but we didn't discuss our situation until after we had enjoyed our meal and were ready for the serious conversations to ensue. I had been thinking about it during the day, so I was able to lay out our present circumstances quite clearly. I then waited to answer any questions. I had some questions but waited until I had heard their immediate responses first as I didn't want to influence their responses.

  “I would like to say that this human trafficking that you are talking about doesn't happen here, but I have heard that in the human empire similar things have occurred,” Myra commented.

  “And you feel sure that your investigation will find out what has happened to Cari?” Mary asked.

  “Yes. Between Lacy, Killash and Andi, I'm confident that we will work out where she has been sent, but I worry about what she is going through until then.”

  “What are you going to do about these criminal organisations that are responsible?” Kayla asked.

  “I feel a strong response is required. We can't solve all of humanities problems, but if we aren't aggressive enough, they will presume we are weak,” I replied.

  “Are you? Weak I mean?” Mary asked.

  “Yes,” Vee answered for me. “With our druids and their familiars we are a lot stronger than they think we are, but our numbers are small and we can't increase them that quickly, so we could be overwhelmed easily. Most human armies are in the hundreds of thousands to the millions.”

  “That is why I transformed three today to see if we could increase how many we can treat per day, but I am shattered again. I don't think I could do that every day,” Myra added.

  “Would you mind if I observed the process?” Geri asked. “I'm not sure if magic can help in any way, but I think it should be investigated.”

  “Of course,” Myra replied. “Since I managed three today, we have three more to do and two more days to do it in. I will go through the whole process and be happy to hear anything you can think of.”

  “So you will have a number of condemned criminals that we can copy elves onto? And druids are proving to be the most powerful additions?” Leaf asked.

  “Yes, but I was also wondering about having elves with particular skills. Druids with Earth familiars who might be able to help with construction, maybe water familiars to help with fishing and maybe elves who know how to construct a town using those abilities. They will also need to be open to learning as Earth has some different requirements and their designs need to work with our world,” I answered.

  “Earth mages are usually the best at building walls and houses. They can add wards into the walls that increase their strength,” Geri pointed out.

  “What about Stanton?” Leaf asked. “He gets around that by making the walls significantly thicker and has the strongest Earth familiar of us all. He usually works with an Earth mage to add those wards, but that isn't going to work on Earth. Have you worked out why magic doesn't work there? Maybe there is a way to overcome that difficulty.”

  “I have a theory, but there is no way to test it out,” Geri answered. “Nor can I think of a way around it.”

  “What's your theory?” I asked.

  Geri took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts. “There are different types of magic. Priestess magic that relies on channelling the power that Lagbit supplies. The amount that Lagbit can supply depends on the number of worshippers. Your world has a very limited number of worshippers, so it is not surprising that Priestess magic is also limited. Druids open a channel to allow a being from another realm to influence our world, so provided they can still open that channel, it shouldn't matter what world they are on and it doesn't. Mental magic doesn't require any outside energy, just that which we already have within us, so again it doesn't matter which world you are on. Elemental magic as wielded by mages requires us to gather the energy that exists between all things that we call mana and then shape it to our purposes. So my only conclusion is that mana in your world either doesn't exist or is so low in concentration that it can't be easily gathered. I can't believe it doesn't exist or everything would die, so I think it must be very low.”

  “We do have myths of magic working so maybe something happened to change that,” Vee suggested.

  “That is worrying.” Geri frowned. “I had thought it was just a difference between our worlds but if something is causing the mana to leave your world, well, if the mana goes completely, everything will die. Life can't exist without at least some mana. I will need to think on this.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause before Kayla got us back on track.

  “How quickly do you need your volunteers?” Kayla asked.

  “We can wait a few weeks as we have quite a few others who need help and we can do those first,” I replied.

  “Some of our strongest warriors are men who are on our front line. It will take them three to four weeks of travel to return.” Kayla turned to Mary. “What do you think?”

  “They won't have the reproductive potential, but I think you are right. Until we can solve the population issue, security is the biggest concern.” Mary turned to Geri. “Can you contact the front line and explain everything.”

  “Certainly, Your Majesty,” Geri responded, recognising a command when she heard one.

  “Leaf, I do have one question. When we flew to New York all the druids were tired, but I didn't even feel a strain. Do you know why?” I asked.

  Leaf looked puzzled.

&
nbsp; “I think I might be able to answer this one,” Geri commented. “I think Tia is not a druid so much as she has an ability to connect to different worlds. Connecting to this world would be a lot harder than opening a channel for a familiar. I would suspect that familiars would love her as they would be able to freely interact with whatever world she is on, for as long as they want to.”

  “Maybe you should do another familiar ceremony and see if you can attract another,” Vee suggested.

  Leaf looked thoughtful. “Do you mind if we test this out a bit first? I don't want to put you in any danger.”

  “Test it thoroughly, Leaf,” Mary commanded. “There must be no risk involved.”

  Chapter 14

  After that disturbing conversation, I didn't sleep that well that night. The question that was bothering me was 'is Earth slowly dying?'. Environmentalists were talking about Global warming, but I remember watching a program that talked about the number of species becoming extinct each year. Was it more than just man's interference with nature? Human fertility had dropped alarmingly, but I thought that was because of all the chemicals that were man-made, interfering with human biological systems. Maybe it was due to decreasing mana levels.

  Vee didn't give me the opportunity to brood too much, distracting me with wonderful sensation. Later Leaf approached me for testing. I didn't need to see how strong my familiars were, just whether I could channel them all for long periods of time. Leaf was the strongest druid in Amilyf and she could channel one of her familiars for about twelve hours which reduced to around four hours for channelling two and a little over an hour for all three.

  The big difference between mages and druids was the idea of control. Mages worked hard to create specific effects and if a spell didn't do exactly as expected there could be dangerous side effects. Druids communicated with their familiars who then choose what to do. We didn't control our familiars, merely asked and we didn't control the channelling either. If the familiar was needed they initiated the process, which was where the danger in having more than three familiars existed. Druids firmly believed in the intelligence of their partners and that they would not deliberately endanger them, so if too much energy was being used because of the channelling, the familiar would automatically retreat and close everything down. The worry was that it would happen too fast for a reaction. Each additional channel opening caused more strain than a simple linear progression would suggest. The thought was that if Leaf was to have another familiar she would only be able to hold all four open for minutes and she was the strongest druid, arguably, in the world. The majority of druids with three familiars could only manage minutes and a fourth would be expected to wear them out in seconds.

  What this meant was that Leaf didn't think it would be safe for me to try for another familiar unless I could hold all three open for at least two hours, which was almost double what she was capable of. Ideally, you needed to prove that your familiar is active for that length of time and with a wind familiar that is easy. An electrical familiar is both rare and difficult to prove that she was active and an ice familiar needs water to be obvious. In the end, we created a miniature storm with small lightning crossing between clouds and snow falling.

  I was supposed to notice the energy drain when one channel was open and more with each additional one, but like before, I felt no difficulty. After two hours with no letup and still no obvious draw, Leaf asked me to hold it until I started to tire. If I had to concentrate on it, I would have been bored stiff, but all that work was done by my familiars, so I just had to be within the vicinity.

  After dinner that evening we all trekked outside to observe my little storm still in progress so I was officially declared a freak and allowed to try for another familiar. Geri was still working on all the questions that we had raised and had nothing further to add.

  The next day I went for the familiar ritual again. This time my hand that was buried in the soil became encased in stone, glowing with a whitish green colour. I brought it to my forehead for my Earth familiar to join me.

  We then had to return to Earth to swap the six people connected to me before logging back on. My routine went back to relatively normal, except my druid training was to connect to my Earth familiar.

  That evening Geri joined us again and I could tell that she had something good to impart. She was practically bouncing on her seat, but Mary and Kayla insist on leaving business until after we enjoyed our meal. I think Mary was taking a perverse pleasure in being patient and making us all wait until the last dish was served and taken away.

  “OK Geri, you have our full attention. What have you found out?” Mary said.

  “I'm still working on it, but I did have a thought that might work to help Myra with the transformation ceremony. The making of the essence appears to be relatively straight forward and she told me that all the priestesses are now involved in making an essence of every female elf in every town and transporting it here. The process that is tiring is pushing energy into the human until they have managed to use it to transform.

  “That energy appears to be entirely priestess energy, provided by Lagbit, so I was sceptical of finding any magic spell or technique to replace that with. However, Lagbit moves in mysterious ways and a simple paper cut suggested an answer that in hindsight is obvious,” Geri answered.

  “A paper cut?” Myra asked confused.

  “Well this is a bit embarrassing, but the paper cut really stung and I didn't want to bother a priestess with it, so I used this,” Geri said, pulling out a necklace with a piece of amber in it.

  “Is that a healing charm?” Kayla asked, picking it up.

  “Exactly. A simple healing charm, that can be made relatively cheaply and is fairly common. It contains healing energy that is initially charged by a priestess and then naturally recharges itself using ambient mana over a period of several days. None of them contains that much energy but we can gather huge quantities of them and they will recharge themselves over time. We will have to experiment a little. I suspect that it will still need to be directed, but it shouldn't cost you energy and so shouldn't tire you. I was thinking we could make a platform completely covered by these charms, the patient lies on it and I think I could create a spell to release the energy slowly rather than all at once. You trigger it at the right moment and then watch the magic happen. What do you think? Could it work?”

  “Then you would have to wait for the charms to recharge before you could to it again?” I asked.

  “No, we just make multiple platforms and swap them out,” Geri explained.

  I turned to mum, who had turned thoughtful. She looked at Geri. “That could work,” she said cautiously. Then she smiled. “Let's do it.”

  Mum and Geri disappeared soon after chatting about how to go about it. It couldn't be implemented immediately, as they had to gather the resources or make them before they could create this platform and then, they only created one to see if the concept would work. Then they had to test the spell that would cause them to discharge slowly into whoever was touching them. That, of course, discharged them all, so it was going to be another three or four days before they had recharged and could be used. Mum thought it was a good idea anyway and could be used with anyone who needed healing. It was undirected energy, so wasn't going to replace the healing that the priestesses performed. Because of that, even before it could be tested, more healing charms were created, so that these healing platforms could be made if successful.

  It lifted all of us to find a possible solution to one of our issues. On a personal note, I was pleased to be able to at least vaguely connect to my Earth familiar who called herself Nadi. I was still worried about the lack of magic on Earth and whether that meant it was dying and I knew Geri was still working on it because he asked me to speak to Branch. Branch had a wood familiar and so was able to communicate with trees and somehow, all trees are connected. Geri was hoping that they might know or at least answer the question of is the situation getting worse or was it st
able.

  Chapter 15

  I woke up and removed the VDR headset. In theory, I could have swapped headsets and immediately returned to the game, but I was feeling tired and I wanted to wait until Wendy could join us. Mum coped with her absence but there was an underlying sadness throughout the week and I didn't want to put her through that if I didn't have to.

  I checked with Andi to find Wendy was only four hours away, driving up from Florida. Plus if these healing charms worked we could go in one day at a time and transform as many as we could connect. I wasn't going to leave Vee behind or Wendy, which left five spaces. I asked Andi to remind me to contact Katie and maybe Brett and see about trying a headset with more than seven connections. At the moment, five per Lagbit day would be our maximum if this healing platform worked and that would mean we could convert thirty-five per week in Lagbit's World or per two hour Earth session.

  Leaf, Branch and Vienne were still asleep, resting from the arduous journey. Vee and I had a little to eat and drink, doing a little meet and greet with our helpers and the girls. Vee showed her class and beautiful soul, managing to connect to everyone and brighten their day. I checked in on Lacy, but she just told me it was a work in progress. Then I retired for a sleep. Inda cut off the sound from the rest of the warehouse and I settled in Vee's arms.

  When I awoke the sun was shining. After a little bit to eat, Dani made a few ice walls to create some privacy so we could wash up a little and at least put on some fresh underwear. Normally we had more ground support organised, allowing us to have fresh clothes and wash regularly at various campsites.

  I gathered all the druids together to explain about having a fourth familiar and the possibility of more to come. I am not naturally boastful and downplayed things a little, but Vee didn't let me get away with it and talked about my miniature storm that we used to determine whether it would be safe to try for another familiar. I included our hope that using healing charms could allow us to transform more people and then talked about Geri's worries regarding a lack of mana. I then tasked Branch with finding out what she could while I started taking more people to Lagbit's World. Harriet was going to accompany her as it was daylight and we needed to keep a low profile. I asked them all to speak to Lacy and see if she needed them to further her investigation.