Marked Chapter Twenty-Four

In my concern about the recklessness implied by an eagerness to explore the internet, I somehow managed to completely overlook that I was escorting two intellectuals and bibliophiles into a city library. Despite the lure of the unfamiliar and tantalizing internet, I lost them completely when they saw rows upon rows upon rooms in two floors of books. I manage to convince them to follow me just long enough to establish their escape route in a hallway not far from the bathroom on the ground floor. I suppose it's just as well, since if they're reading books, they're probably safer than exploring the internet unsupervised, although I resolve to check on them periodically as the day goes on.


To my relief, adding the doorway in the library, while still focusing on making it the same Mansion as before, does give me a third exit. Later, when I've had time to recharge, I can test whether I can only access that Mansion, or if I can create new ones distinct from it. One thing is for certain, though: with the ability to make the same Mansion, or renew it, or whatever, I now have a place to put all my stuff.


I take the time to return to the church to finally plug in my phone, then traverse the Mansion to the Hidden Lodge in Eberron. It's the middle of the night; the Hidden Lodge is dark and the fire pit is burned down to grey ashes but a use of my power returns it to its starting condition, with the fire pit lit and shedding light. I have no idea how to read the moons outside to gauge the hour but it can't be far from dawn. I'm going to be here a while so I content myself with reading a biology text book I snagged in the library in hopes of helping with my eventual GED, and eating a sandwich I picked up in the Mansion.


It's kind of a bummer about not being able to charge the phone in the Mansion. I'm leery about fiddling with electricity in it; I'm pretty sure I could convince the power to provide, well, power, but I've read about the differences in electrical systems in Europe as opposed to the US and quite frankly, I don't really understand the difference. Reading the stuff on the power adapter doesn't help me much. I don't understand the difference between watt, amp, and volt, and I have the uneasy feeling that messing up even one much less all three could set my lovely magic home on fire. I do know that electrical fires are one of the types that you don't throw water on. Since I can't just call up the fire department in case of disaster ("Hello, nine one one? My magic Mansion has an electrical fire, can you send a truck to-- hello? Hello?") that means I have to be double careful about adding in anything I don't understand well enough to not mess up.


I wonder what would happen if I were to run an extension cord from Earth to Eberron through my Mansion? What would happen to it if the portal or Mansion disappeared while it was strung like that? Questions for another time. Right now, I'm going to try and read and relax and shake off the nervous jitters I have. About meeting a Bishop. Who in business terms I guess is like a district manager for the Catholic Church? I really didn't get that part.


It's about the fifth time I catch myself reading the same sentence that I toss the book on the bed in disgust. It's not helping at all. I know I really should keep reading it because I'm going to need it for my GED but I just can't get into the mindset this morning for biology. Or should that be, "I can't get into the mindset tonight"? Should I use Eberron or Earth time? Is all this world hopping going to jetlag me? I take my last bite of a pretty good sandwich that I barely tasted this whole  time because I'm just so frazzled by everything else.


I need a distraction, and almost immediately I think of one: my new, untested power. I STILL don't know what it does. Now would be a pretty good time to figure that out. I reach for it, pull on it, and am not really surprised to feel a charge infuse my hand. Alright, then. Touching the book and the bed I'm laying on do nothing. Touching me discharges it; and nothing-- huh. Actually... I stretch my calves, straighten and bend my legs. Pulling off my right shoe and sock, I inspect my foot. Yeah, the blister on the side of my toe is gone, healed up. A healing power? That would be... well, that would be incredible, actually. Even a relatively low powered one could be a massively useful ability, after what Nax described that a spellcaster can create with them. The notion of being able to create healing potions is an alluring one.


I resolve to bring it up to Nax and Chalmer later. But now that I've finished that, I still have a while to wait. I blow a loud raspberry, eyeing the pool I made for Nax, and briefly wonder if it's safe to swim in after she's had Chalmer over. But then, they had the Mansion for that. So it's probably safe to swim in. Except it's gonna look really weird to Father DiMaggio if he notices my hands have bath wrinkles.


I reach into my haversack and pull out the instructional book Nax got for me. As cool as a healing power is, I almost wish I'd first gotten the translation power she said my mark should eventually allow me to use. The things Eranil had to say about magic were evocative, tantalizing. And my notes are in my bag; I pull them out and begin reviewing them.


Symbolism, Similarity, Contagion, Sacrifice, Sympathy, Magnification, and Intent. Symbolism of the fireball, the guano and sulfer, as a symbol for rapidly expansive burning. Similarity, the spreading and widening of the gestures and stance in the final moments of casting. Contagion, the propagation of the spell effect from the caster to the targeted location. Sacrifice, in the expenditure of both mental focus and the spell components. Sympathy, minimally influential on the spell due to the heavy investiture of the other laws. Magnification, the natural properties of guano and sulfer to create fire amplified beyond the meager quantities necessary for casting. Intent, the will to shape and create fire at the target location.


Despite my best efforts, I can't think of anything except Super Mario throwing bouncing fireballs. The mental image makes me giggle despite myself. Bouncing fireballs... Sacrifice...


Sympathy and Magnification...


That's an interesting thought. My new healing power, it FEELS minor, compared to my other powers. But is there a way to magnify it with one of the other laws? Or minimize it to conserve energy, make it usable more often? Although Eranil made me promise that I wouldn't try to reproduce anything he taught me outside his presence. I pull out a pencil from my haversack and write a few questions in the margins to ask about the feasibility and safety of attempting to alter the effects of dragonmark powers. That line about wizards being rare not because students are rare, but graduates are, implied very heavily that it was a matter of survival rather than people quitting. So I'll save my experimental meddling for a more controled, and hopefully safer, environment with experts watching over me.


The theory content of Eranil's lecture was a lot heavier than the mechanics of it, anyway, and despite the promise he extracted from me I think he was deliberately vague for safety's sake. Still, I have ideas, ideas which prompt me to add several pages of my own notes, mostly on the concept of partial spells or self renewing matrices of them. I'm imagining something similar to a matrix subroutine, something that references a preset instruction sequence with a defined beginning and end-- no Sorceror's Apprentice for me, thank you!-- that can be called up at will and only as long as needed. Perhaps anchored into a physical object of some kind if just gathering energy into a constantly idling spell isn't practical or possible.


But that brings up another concern for me based on Eranil's lecture, in that some magics draw in energy from ambient magic levels-- manaflows, I think he called them-- to maintain their effects. And Nax mentioned something about ambient magical energy adding to those concerns, since to the best of my knowledge Earth Bet doesn't have magic, ambient or otherwise. It's possible that, for some reason, we never actually discovered it, but it's also equally possible that the connection I have to Eberron serves as something of a magical extension cord to power my mark. If so, that means that Nax and Chalmer may possibly run out of whatever stores of it they personally have to power their abilities. Which makes it all the more important that I check up on them a couple times today.


I hope that, if it is dependant on manaflows, that my haversack gets enough of it from being near me. And if it doesn't, then I probably need to bring this up to Naxylotriam sooner rather than later.


I feel the sensation of my powers recharging, something I've become quite familiar with over the last couple days in Eberron. I can't be sure of whether it was an hour exactly, but when I get back to the church and check my phone, if it's been eight or nine minutes then I'm going to guess it's at least in the same ballpark. Plus, Nax and Chalmer should probably be reading the books they select over here rather than in the Bay, to give them more time to browse. Although... now I have to wonder, is time passing in the Mansion going by Brockton time, or Eberron time? More questions for later, I suppose.


I'm really racking up a lot of those these days. At some point, I'm probably going to either have to stop asking questions or start hunting down the answers. Regardless, I pick up my notes, grab the textbook, and enter my mansion so I can return to the church and check my phone. Nine minutes since I plugged it in; it seems that the time differential holds true.


The church is quiet; I'm a little surprised Father DiMaggio isn't here yet. The emptiness of the building is a reminder that I'm considering keeping a fairly big secret about people who I brought into the church accidentally. Or, at least, I'm intending to, since I haven't actually had the opportunity to tell him anything yet. I take a seat in a chair at the break room table, keenly aware checking in on Nax and Chalmer is probably pointless. I could make food and water, I suppose, since Armsmaster wanted some of the rolls. In fact, I think that's what I'll do.


The sink confines the water as before, filled to the rim, before it begins gurgling down the drain, feeling like a criminal waste of clean water to me. But I have nothing to contain it in, so it's just not practical. The counter, spread out with paper towels, is covered with even more rolls than the last time I used this in here. Tallying them up gives me a count of a hundred thirty five rolls, which I pile into fifteen bags of nine. I take a Sharpie from the same drawer as the bags came from, and clearly mark eight of the nine bags as "For Armsmaster." I put seven bags in the freezer, as many as will fit, with the remaining two in the fridge.


Checking the box, there's only two of the large gallon freezer bags left. I still have two more uses left, and literally nowhere to put the results. In a way, it's kind of like Mr. Gladly's world events class, describing the food crisis in Japan following the sinking of Kyushu. It's not that there's an absence of capacity, but the surplus capacity isn't in the same place that the need exists, causing problems for both the people with the surplus and the people with the deficit. With Kyushu, shipping was badly inhibited as it always was in the wake of an attack by Leviathan, meaning that there just wasn't a way to get the food to the people who needed it, and in addition to the nine million killed in the attack, the entirety of Japan suffered shortages, riots, and impoverishment. The number of dead from starvation, disease, and lack of clean water still isn't known for sure, due to the large numbers of undocumented Japanese who fled the country.


I can reach them. I can't just go to each of them individually, there's not enough hours in the year to travel to the places where I can do good each day. But then, I'm supposed to be learning magic to infuse into physical things, aren't I? If I can create things to do what I do, that's a better use of my abilities than running around like a headless chicken. Just make the items as permanent as possible, and ship them off to where they're needed. That would probably do the most good over the long run.


That would be creating more surplus, true-- but it would be creating a surplus that's portable, that isn't tied to my presence. And it doesn't have to be limited to food and water; Hidden Lodge can create instant housing. With some tweaking, some blending of it and Magnificent Mansion, I could maybe make something that would create an apartment instead of a small cabin. Or stackable modules, each one the size of a full house on the inside, with a fully customizable layout and janitorial staff.


I'm still writing in my notebook when I hear the clack-clattering thud of the front door to the church, and voices. Not long after, the door between the church and hallway opens, and I see Father DiMaggio and another man enter.


"Titania!" Father DiMaggio greets me. "I see you're not wearing your sling. Are you sure that's a good idea?" At my nod-- I'd almost forgotten about my arm, really-- he continues, "Well, we'll still be seeing Heals on Wheels, just in case, but the Bishop flew in early so I had to pick him up first. And speaking of whom, I'd like to introduce you to His Most Reverend Excellency, Bishop George Wellhausen of the Archdiocese of Boston, out of St. Paul's Cathedral."


Bishop Wellhausen is about three inches shorter, with broad shoulders, short cropped light brown hair going to gray, and sharp, attentive, deep set eyes. Unlike Father DiMaggio, who's wearing a subdued black suit with a priest collar, the Bishop is wearing a black robe, with a red belt-sash thing around his waist. His eyes almost seem to drill right through me, and I feel a bit of apprehension at the muted upturn of his lip. "A pleasure to meet you, Titania."


"Uh, thank you... Bishop?" I try.


"If you're looking to be formal, the proper form of address is 'Your Excellency," the Bishop replies, "although I don't expect or require it. You may refer to me as George, or Mr. Wellhausen, if you are more comfortable with one or the other of those."


I'm no expert, but I know being a Bishop is a big deal. If nothing else, Bishops have their own chess pieces. "I don't mind, uh, Your Excellency," I manage to stammer out. "If you've gotten as far as bishop, then, you deserve the title that goes with it, so, uh..." Oh my god this is awkward. Think of something that's NOT stupid to say. "I guess Father DiMaggio told you about... me?" I wince internally as the words come out of my mouth. Implying a breach of trust by Father DiMaggio for bringing his boss in isn't wise. I want to work with them, not alienate anyone. "I mean, he has to tell you things that happen here, so you have to have been told about me. Right?"


He seems to find my Scrabble tile dialogue amusing. "A little. I'd like to know more, though, from you. But as Father Salvador said, that should wait until after your injuries are checked over. Yes?"


I shift uncomfortably. "I don't need it. Really. Their resources have to be stretched thin, and I'm fine today. See?" I hold my arm up, move it around easily. "I just needed to rest."


Father DiMaggio frowns, as Bishop Wellhausen just watches me. After a second, Father DiMaggio says, "Titania, we discussed this. I want your arm looked at by a doctor."


I sigh. "Right..."


"I would feel best if we go do that now," he continues. "Heals on Wheels is scheduled to be at the Bekin Street Shopping Center today until one. The earlier we get there, the less time you'll have to wait."


I nod with resignation. "Alright. I don't need it, but alright."


The three of us leave the church, get into Father DiMaggio's SUV, and depart for the Bekin Street Shopping Center.