Enjoy :)
I've decided to copy the actual story over here ...
Blast it! She could see
the defences were fraying - again. Whoever was attacking was being very
determined, she thought, as she calmed herself and visualised the light of a
sun within her pouring blue and gold energy into the shields and sigils she had
set about herself.
Of course, as far as
she was aware, no-one else at work saw any of this: all they saw was a young
woman having one of her periodic migraines, and waiting, reclining in the best
chair they could find, with a cool damp cloth over her face, until a friend
came to fetch her. And speaking of Greg, where was he? He was the closest of
their little group that could get to her – oh why had she agreed to help here?
– but he had said he would be fifteen minutes nearly an hour ago.
As she grumbled in her
mind, her ears sensed a disturbance in the library (oh no – Greg’s love of Star Wars had preceded him!), and, a
couple of minutes later, he was there, acting the role of solicitous friend
until her colleagues left to allow her to “get her stuff together”.
Immediately, Greg’s
eyes unfocused, and he whistled softly. “I don’t think I want to touch that
aura myself, it’s got so many Algiz and Berkana runes on it.” He paused,
scanning her further, and grunted “Ah – there it is: you’ve got a link going
into the back of your third eye chakra.”
Tara groaned “Unh. No
wonder I couldn’t pick it up. Can you get it?”
“Sure, I’ll just do
some Band-Aid stuff for now …”, his hands busy at the back of her head, her
colleagues probably jealous at the massage from her cute friend, a friend who, with his mixture of indigenous, Afghan, Scottish and German ancestry, had been described as a blue eyed homage to Omar Sharif, “and get the
rest when we get you out of here.”
The pain and
distraction was easing now, and she could feel her breathing deepen and slow,
and her shoulders relax, as her mind came back into focus.
“OK, Greg, I’m good
enough to travel now – many thanks. Shall we go, then?”
“Why, yes, Miss
Monobrow, we shall.”
Tara’s European heritage
had given her a dark set of eyebrows that were all but one (well, that was what her mother had said, although not too many of her family had shared the problem), and she and her
friends had made quite an in-joke of it. She stood slowly, and stretched as
Greg looked round the dark timbered antechamber and back into the library, with
its dome and multitude of long, desk lamp studded tables.
“Where to?” he asked.
Noticing a colleague
hovering into proximity, she replied “Home will be fine, thanks. I’ve got my
med’s there”, and she smiled at the colleague.
Once in Greg’s car,
however, she growled “What’s Ky up to?”
“Entertaining his
parents.”
“Oh – yeah, I’d
forgotten about that. OK, it’s a reasonable day for autumn, so let’s go to the
Gardens then.”
Melbourne had an impressive
Botanical Garden, used for research by those who were serious about plants,
relaxation by those who weren’t, and poncing by the Preening Set running ‘the
Tan’ track around it. For Tara, the massive trees and surfeit of Nature Spirits
and, if they were lucky enough to avoid any school tours, one of the duck-laden
ponds would be a perfect place to work.
Twenty minutes later,
she could see that they were in luck, and they found an ideal space where the
energies of shade-giving trees and reed-lined and duck-dotted water blended in
a comfortable balance, and the grass was not too damp (they had no picnic
blanket to sit on, for this unplanned trip). Tara could see one of the
caretaker spirits, an indigenous woman in this case, although they could take
other forms as well. She mentally greeted her, explained what they wished to
do, and asked for permission to proceed. The spirit smiled, and gracefully
acceded access with a sweep of an arm.
“Nicely done”,
commented Greg.
“Hah! Since you taught
me to do that, who exactly are you praising? Me, or your teaching?”
The corners of Greg’s
mouth quirked upwards, but he said nothing.
“OK, let’s get going.”
Without moving or
saying anything physically, they quickly set up their wards – psychic defences
– to the four corners of the compass, and above and below, and began
rhythmically flushing the space, and their auras, with pulses of various
colours. Greg was partial to the Hermetic tradition, so he performed – again,
mentally, with no discernable physical movements - a traditional ritual known
as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. Tara had eventually
wholeheartedly embraced her mother’s witchcraft, and added her mental casting
of a circle after Greg had finished.
“Feel safe, Greg?”
“Hah! Always. … Well, almost
always, and certainly now, dear lady.”
“Lady! Who you talkin’
to?”
Greg’s mouth did the
quirking thing again, and he shrugged expansively.
Then they began
working.
Methodically, using
Greg as a monitor to make sure she neither missed anything, nor stopped short of
finishing each step, she found all the negative psychic links – they looked
like murky, turgid cords of yuck, Tara had once said – attached to her that she
could, tracked each one to the other end, and used her inner Sun visualisation
to dissolve every inch, every astral ‘molecule’ of each cord, and cleansed and
healed whoever, wherever or whatever was on the other end. After all, these
links were the result of her shortcomings and flaws and wrongdoing or
inadequate doings.
And none of them was
related to the attack she had suffered.
She groaned with
exhaustion, and flopped back onto the grass. The Sun – the one in the sky, that
is – hadn’t moved much, and she guessed no more than an hour had passed,
although the air was noticeably cooler and damper, and some clouds were
building in the sou’west.
“So, what next?” asked
Greg.
She thought for a few
moments. “Ky’s busy, Harry’s travelling, you’ve got a meditation group tonight,
so … “
“ ‘le Oncle’ Bob?”
Tara smiled. Her
mother’s friend, universally referred to as everyone’s “Uncle” Bob was well
known to be a Francophile (and hence the reference to ‘le Oncle’), but not so
well known for the well-disguised psychic master he was, and had the habit of
turning up at odd moments when he was
needed.
“No, I think I’ll do
some work in the astral tonight. I suspect that, if he’s needed, ‘le Oncle’ Bob’ll
turn up when he’s supposed to, and not a moment before.”
“OK, no probs then.”
Greg turned to watch
the cars passing by outside the Gardens, and then added: “Well, we’re somewhere
between the end of school traffic and the start of peak, shall we head off?”
Tara, distracted by her
dilemma, grunted her assent, Greg smiled in reply, and they were off, vainly
trying to brush the damp out of the seats of their pants.
A few hours later,
showered, changed and a good time after having been fed, Tara sat on the lounge
in the living room in northern Melbournian suburbia shared by her and Ky – who
was working his trumpet magic at a gig tonight, and began to work.
She set up her
protection, this time standing and facing each quarter and doing the gestures
and postures she had only visualised earlier that day, and finished with an
invocation to Tyr, the God who was her main Patron Deity. She’d never seen or
sensed Tyr directly, but He’d made His presence known clearly enough, somewhat
to the chagrin of Tara’s mother, who had hoped Tara would have a ‘nice’ female
Deity like Lilith as her patron deity: Lilith, who had given her mother so much
desperately needed fire and passion and independence when Tara’s mother had, in
her twenties, been selecting which cultural influences to embrace, and which to
reject.
In her circle, Tara sat
comfortably, and began shifting her consciousness to a more psychically aware
state, and ‘looked’ with her opened third-eye chakra, to see who was present.
“Hi there. Nice to see
you here.”
“Hi Toby” replied Tara
– also ‘speaking’ telepathically, which didn’t always use words as such, but
the words are convenient for telling the story.
Toby, who appeared as a
young, good looking - very good
looking - male in his twenties, was a guide, an entity who currently had no
physical body, and thus was what is termed ‘discarnate’ or, to be blunter,
dead. He and Tara were completely unfazed by this, and had worked together
often – generally, though, when Tara was sleeping naturally, so she asked “And
to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
“Not that there’s
anything wrong with your company, of course,” she added.
Toby smiled, and
replied “I’m here for the headache – or, rather, the fixing thereof.”
“Ah, OK, then.”
“Shall we begin?”
She nodded – well, her
astral conveyed the impression of a nod, and they began.
Tara found herself
lifted, until she could see both her neighbourhood, and
the adjoining suburbs. They were all covered with what seemed to be a cyclone –
a raving, turbulent, circulating mass of pain, and anger and fear and hate …
and she’d been on the outskirts of this all day, nowhere near the worst of it.
She looked at Toby,
shocked, and asked “Where is all this coming from?”
He gazed back at her.
Tara thought, and then
asked “It’s not me, is it?”
“No, but there is a
significance to asking the question.”
“Ah”, she replied. “Am
I prepared to take on doing something about all this?”
Toby nodded.
“Can I do something
about this?” As Toby opened his mouth she continued "Of significance, I mean –
can I do something significant about
this?”
“What do you think? No,”
he amended ,“what have you been taught?”
Tara sighed, and
grumbled that the situation was one she had become aware of for a reason so she
was probably – definitely - meant to at least try.
Toby smiled
encouragingly at her.
“Stop distracting me.”
He smiled wickedly at
her, and she grumbled some more about misplaced use of cuteness. At that, Toby
laughed.
“OK, so, fun over” – she
glared at him – “for now, next question?”
Tara thought carefully
for a few minutes – or what seemed, in the astral, to be what she would have
called ‘a few minutes’.
“O-kay … this is bigger
than anything I’ve ever dealt with before, and I don’t have my usual team –
apart from yourself, so … is this something where there is a key point or place
or time or thing or PERSON, that I can do something to – something within my
abilities, something that will change this situation?”
Toby smiled – this
time, one of his genuine smiles, the sort that lit whatever part of reality he
was in up.
“Very good,
grasshopper.”
Tara rolled her eyes,
and replied, seriously: “Is this something I am allowed and able to know, and
are you able to guide me there and through what needs to be done?”
Toby’s smile broadened,
and he replied softly “Yes, Tara, there are no karmic or other limits upon this
situation; it needs input from your side” – meaning someone with a physical
body, someone who was therefore incarnate – “and this could be both an
opportunity for you to be of service, and an opportunity to learn.”
She nodded tightly back
at him, feeling the pre-psychic combat tenseness building.
“OK” said Toby, binding
them together with a cord of gold and blue energy, “Let’s go, and I’ll help you
keep your shields up.”
As he said that, he
moved his hand to the middle of Tara’s back, and she felt an oddly gentle flood
of warmth and confidence suffuse throughout her. With that, her shields
psychologically stood up straighter, and they started off through the storm.
She felt as if she was being tossed and pummelled, but the blows were softened
by her shields and her stomach felt strong enough to be settled through all the
turmoil.
After a subjective eternity,
she saw the classic ‘eye of the cyclone’ ahead, and, standing arms upraised in
it, was a woman, screaming dementedly.
She thought to Toby Is she trapped there? Is that why the storm
is here?
No, he thought back to her. Come down to the physical and the etheric.
With that, she had the
sensation of sinking, knowing that the sensation was just her mind interpreting
the change of frequency as they moved from the lower astral to a frequency
where they could observe both of the frequencies labelled as etheric and
physical.
The woman was there
too, sitting beside a bed occupied by a younger woman. The despair made it
clear that the young woman was special to the other woman – perhaps an adult
daughter? The ages were about right for that, and there was no sense of the
intimacy of lovers – and the young woman had clearly suffered some calamity to
be a hospital bed hooked up to so many machines.
Protected from the
astral storm by being in the eye, they could use the sense of speaking, and
Toby complimented Tara.
“Yes, well done. The
woman is indeed the mother of the other, who had recently got her life together
after some major problems, when she was the victim of an accident: a gust of
wind tore a branch off a tree, and the young woman was struck, and is now in a
coma.”
Tara nodded, and Toby
prompted “Do you see how the energy is arranged?”
Tara looked: she could
see psychic links coming out of the mother, extending upwards and twisting
together into a rope. A she moved her perception further up, she could see the
rope was moving – almost like a tornado, which was creating the larger cyclone
(or typhoon, or hurricane, if one was in other parts of the planet).
She brought her
perception back and looked at Toby, and saw the astral of the young woman
standing beside him.
“Oh! You’re – you’re …
I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Catherine”, she
replied. She looked at Toby and asked “Is this the woman you said could help?”
He nodded, eyes still
on Tara.
“Catherine, I’m sorry
for what has happened to you and your mother. At the risk of asking you to
state the obvious, would you tell me as exactly as you can, what it is you
would like me to help you with?”
The young woman
shrugged helplessly, and said “Well, all of this!”
“Do you want me to help
you pass over, or to see if I can help heal the injury?”
“No, that’s not it.
Toby has explained to me that I will eventually die, but not until my children
are themselves adult, so I’ll be able to see them and be some part of their
lives as they grow, and I don’t want to lose that.”
Tara opened her mouth,
then paused. Catherine hurriedly added “I know they’re grieving, and upset, but
I can meet them in their dreams – and I have, a few times, but I can’t get near
my mother, and she’s … she’s… hurting so
many people.” Tears were rolling down her face as she added “Can you … can
you save her from herself? Please?”
Tara’s compassion for
the younger woman’s suffering overwhelmed her, and she hugged Catherine,
feeling her energy flood into the other woman, and gladly drawing some of
Catherine’s pain and suffering into herself.
When the moment felt
right, she held Catherine at arm’s length, and said “I will do whatever I can,
I promise you.”
She turned from the
weeping woman to Toby.
“So, boss, how should I
best go about this? Any suggestions or bright ideas?”
He nodded, and replied
“We’ll both handle this one. Catherine, I need you to be with your mother as
much as is possible through this. We’re going to be taking away energy that,
harmful though it be, is something she is doing because she wants to protect
you, and it is the sensing of your nearness that will help her soul to guide
the incarnate mind through this process.”
Catherine nodded,
turned towards her mother, and drifted off.
Toby held his hand up
when Tara began to speak, until the daughter was firmly into her mother’s aura.
“OK, I’ll give you a
run down on what’s happening here. The mother – her name is Yvonne, by the way
– has had a few recent incarnations as an ultra-aggressive male, and took this
life on to balance those out a little. One of those former lives was as someone
with incredible magickal power. In this life, she’s been ultra-sceptical,
partly in a misguided attempt to balance her own personal indulgence, and
partly in reaction to the absolute horror of what she had done.”
Toby paused, and looked
sadly at the woman before continuing.
“Unfortunately, she’s
just bottled everything up, and, being so sensitive to the possibility that
she’s done something wrong, she can’t be worked with in terms of getting her
latencies under some sort of control – let alone properly resolved, and she’s
doing nothing to properly address the wrongs she has created.”
“So … what do we do?”
“Sadly, she’s out of
control, and without any conscious will, she is actively harming many people –
and places, and other entities.”
“So we stop her.”
“Yes. But as gently as possible.
What she is trying to do is to shut down anything which could further harm her
daughter, and since she subconsciously recalls the damage she did by psychic
means, she is blindly shutting down ANYTHING that has anything to do with
psychism.”
“The ex-smoker effect,
” commented Tara. At Toby’s silent query she explained “Someone who gives up
smoking is stereotypically supposed to be an absolute terror on all other
smokers.” She shrugged her astral shoulders and finished “It’s like all such
generalisms – generally groundless.”
Toby’s image projected
the image of a smile.
“Yeah, I know. I’m
nervous, OK? So … I’ve been noticing that big link coming out of her heart …”
Toby nodded, and added
“There’ll be others helping us, and Adam and I are going to try to stop you
getting too hammered.” Adam was another guide Tara worked with from time to
time.
She nodded, drew in a
breath – which flooded her aura with energy, and dove onto the link at a point
half a dozen metres away from Yvonne’s heart.
It was like coming into
a bull-riding competition where the bulls were on some violent street drug. To
say the link tossed and twisted was like saying a major earthquake vibrates the
earth somewhat. The struggle started to push her consciousness into a void, and
then back to her body, then switched between the two so quickly she thought she
would either throw up or worse. Then the energy in the link started to try to
dredge up every moment of doubt, fear or weakness – at that Tara almost laughed
in relief.
Her ‘le Oncle’ Bob had
drilled her in the importance of being comfortable with one’s personal flaws,
imperfections and past mistakes, as negative entities would try to throw them
against her as a means of weakening of distracting her, or getting her so
caught up in despair that she either gave up trying, or stopped too early.
Strengthened by the
link’s diversion of energy into a pointless attack, she let the flaws and
energies fly through and about her as they were dug up, as if she were
transparent to such matters, and clawed relentlessly closer to Yvonne’s heart
chakra.
This
was what she had
been born for, and she felt exultant as she reached close enough to
plunge her astral hand into the heart chakra pulsing turgidly before her
– and stopped,
recognising that surge of exultation as a danger. She forced herself to
focus
on the pain that Yvonne was going through, feeling the link thresh more
desperately
than ever under her, and gently reached in to the energy fields, taking
care to
synchronise her energy as much as possible, and then she allowed her
compassion
to pour through her outstretched arm. After a few minutes, Tara started
thinking of the lives where she had made mistakes, and how she had
recovered
from them. She could feel the tornado being cleared away, and a
sensation of
sunlight dissolving clouds after a storm, dissolving and dispersing the
cyclone
that had ravaged Melbourne’s north and east. She drew that sense of
sunlight to
her, and focused it through Yvonne’s heart to build up a sphere of
golden light
around Catherine, gradually extending it out until all the key parts of
Catherine’s life were also protected.
She felt Yvonne sigh,
and felt a hand lightly grasp her shoulder – Toby, drawing her back.
As she did so, she saw
a crowd of other people around Catherine, and Toby explained “They can reach
her now; she will be looked after.”
He looked at Tara. “And
you need healing – more than I can give you, so let us return to your body.”
How was that
going to help? she wondered, too exhausted to put any fire into or even behind
the thought. But as she let herself sink back into her body, she saw a glow of
blue and green light nearby, and recognised Ky’s energy. Oh! He’s back. Of course.
It was an effort to
open her eyes, but she did so when Ky grabbed her hand.
“Well, I’m glad to see
you back here and not twitching and thumping all over the place.”
“Yeah – unh.”
“No – don’t sit up yet.
Give yourself a minute or two.”
“Uh, OK. Um, was I-”
“Yeah, you really were.”
“Oh. Big clearing job.”
“No kidding, Sherlock!”
Sarcasm was so not Ky’s scene, she thought.
“Sorry – I’ve been
dealing with this all day. Greg had to bring me home.”
“And you didn’t think
to ask him to stay to help?”
Tara woke fully at
that, and sat up carefully and slowly.
“I. Did. Not. Know. How.
Big. It. Was. Going. To. Be.”
As she spat the words
out, she realised the concern in Ky’s eyes was real.
“I’m sorry, Ky. I’m
still a little strung out by all that, and it was big – all the way out to
Eltham was being affected by this … poor woman, who was just trying to protect
her daughter – her daughter in a coma. And you know how the guides can be – by the
time I’d got going, it was too late to stop and ask for help anyway.”
“Yeah, well, someone
actually did ask – in a way”, replied the slightly mollified Ky.
Tara raised her monobrow
at him.
“We did enough of the
gig to get paid, but a few patrons wound up ill, so the venue decided to close
down early, and when it did I had the feeling I should just come straight back
here.” He narrowed his eyes, and continued “I kept hearing this very bad, truly
appalling faux Français accent mumbling something about “Eet ees herrrr beeg
test”.
She smiled. “So I
should thank the mysterious 'le Oncle' Bob, eh?”
“Yeah”, replied a
serious Ky. “That, and the nastiness of whatever you cleared.”
He held up a hand to
forestall her protests.
“Yes, I know it was
some poor woman trying to protect her ill - no, comatose daughter, but … I
think the energy is what made people feel ill at the gig, and I felt it all go just before
you came back.”
Tara settled back onto
her elbows.
“So. I did … some good?”
“No, you did a lot of
good. But you were thrashing around, and you have got bruises that I can see,
and I let myself in through your circle because otherwise you would have broken
it.”
Tara felt a chill
around her heart. If the link had caused her to break her circle, she would
have become vulnerable – either directly, or through something getting into her
physical environs while she was in trance, and maybe causing a fire.
Ky could see the impact
that had had, and added softly “We’ve talked about this before. No big work on
your own, OK?”
Mutely, Tara nodded,
and then settled down to taking a census on her aches and pains and bruises. None
of which were in her head now, so she supposed that was a plus.
* * *
She was awake. Blast -
there was something she had missed! The clearing had gone too easily: she’d missed something - someONE else. She sat up in
her bed, and swore – and again when Ky, obviously outside her bedroom, stage
whispered “Tara? Are you awake?”
She was too disturbed
to even grump out a no, or some other smart remark: she opened the door, and
said “I missed someone –someone big.”
“Yeah, I got woken with
the same message.”
“Hm. That probably
means-”
“Yeah, I heard a car a
minute or two ago.” replied Ky, still stage whispering. He coughed, and spoke
normally: “I’ll turn on our lights and open the door.”
Two minutes later Tara
and Ky had been joined by Greg and Harry, their little band’s scarily powerful
shaman, who also played trumpet in Ky’s brass section – Tara being the
saxophonist (when not being a librarian) and Greg the one with a trombone.
They’d been working together musically for a few years now, and psychically for
almost as long.
“So … just passing by,
or need a cup of sugar?” asked Tara.
Greg blew a raspberry
back at her, as they settled in to their favoured positions - Harry on the
floor, leaning against the wall near the gas heater, Ky and Tara sharing a
lounge opposite the heater, and Greg perched with crossed legs on a kitchen
chair.
Ky began.
“Harry, how much do you
know?”
“Greg filled me in on
today’s work in the Gardens.”
Ky nodded, and added “OK, I got home and
found Tara doing some powerful work.”
He growled “Solo!”, and
then asked Tara to explain what had been going on.
She did so, succinctly,
and finished with waking up to a psychic alarm call, the feeling that there was
more work to do.
“And that brings us to
here.”
Harry responded first.
“Yeah, that storm’s
been building up for a while, but there’s no way that woman could have created
that on her own: she lacks the strength now – I checked – even if she had been
powerful in a past life.”
Tara opened her mouth
to speak, but Harry got in first.
“I know you did
powerful work - I felt the storm lift, and I’m not surprised it was as rough as
the two of you have described, but … I think there was a major uncooperative
involved as well.”
The little group had found
a major split in the earthbound spirits they worked with. The majority were
either lost, or caught up in some emotion, be it anger or grief or resentment
or remembrance of physical or other pain, and basically their focus could be
shifted from the frequency of this world to that of the astral (where they
should have gone after death of the physical) relatively easily - by healing,
clearing negative energy (pain, confusion, the aforementioned anger/grief/resentment,
and the like), talking, and changing the immediate environs of the entities to
prove that they were no longer in the physical world.
Uncooperatives, on the
other hand, knew where they were, and what was going on, and deliberately, maliciously used that to influence
others, harm people they didn’t like, and build networks of influence –
control, as the four termed it.
Uncooperatives fought
back, much as the link into Yvonne’s heart chakra had …
Uncooperatives were a
much, much, much smaller group than
cooperatives.
(Even smaller, and
proportionally scarier, were the uncooperatives who were still incarnate … )
Before they even
thought of checking for that possibility, Harry stated the obvious – “We need
to get our protection going and our game faces on, people” – and they started:
Greg with his Hermetic work, Tara her magickal circle, Harry a circle of
shamanic stones, and Ky a ritual that drew on his Chinese heritage – and, as a
side benefit, left the room with the crisp smell of an incense that Tara adored.
Ten minutes later, they
were sitting on the floor inside the circles of power that they had created, circles
they had practised doing together until, after countless failures, they had a
combination that harmonised.
They discussed their
options, and decided a spirit canoe, using Harry’s shaman skills, was likely to
be the safest and most effective way to work. And at least a group of four
musicians would have no problems with a suitable drumming rhythm to guide their
journey …
Harry led them into the
Underworld. It had been difficult, at first, for them to be able to split their
awareness so part could stay drumming, and part could journey - in fact, it had
taken several years of hard work and frequent practice, but they had eventually
mastered the knack. Once there, they all had made enough journeys to have
allies – power animals, most called them – to call on. Tara’s was an Owl, and
she sensed Toby there as well: she turned to look at him, and was startled to
see he had shifted into the image of a dragon. Harry called to her to keep up,
and she did so, starting to feel the exultation of a hunt from her Owl.
Their communication
could be described as telepathy, but in truth they had worked together so
rigorously, and for so long, that it was in truth more akin to a group mind: one
had a thought, and it came into existence in the others at the same time the
first thought of it.
They were following the
scent of negative energy, a powerful hatred, from the Underworld location that
corresponded to that part of the astral where Tara had worked earlier. As they
travelled, they became aware of a red glow ahead – Harry thought it was like a
volcano, viewed from just over the horizon, and they all agreed. As they closed on
it, they could feel pulses of discordance, and smell gusts of acrid smoke, and
then they were close enough to see the raging figure at the heart of this
eruption of hate.
The entity had adopted
the image of a dinosaur – a T Rex, and Greg, who had had nightmares about these
as a child, gulped. Harry turned, and threw a handful of powder at Greg’s eyes
which solidified into a set of goggles.
“Ah – thank you bro!”
Tara and Ky looked at
each, and then at Harry. “Filters to take away the image and leave the truth of
the energy behind” he explained.
“Got some for us? asked
Ky.
“No, it takes too much
effort to make” he grinned back. “And besides, there’s a tactical advantage in
dealing with what he sees himself as.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“It’ll make it easier
for the three of you to keep him – and that’s a pronoun of convenience only at
this stage – busy.”
“Yeah?” replied Tara. “And
what will you be doing? Selling tickets from the sidelines?”
Harry smiled, looked at
the Toby-dragon, and replied, in his usual enigmatic fashion, “You’ll see …”
And with that remark,
the two of them disappeared, and the three were left to fight the angry
monster.
Tara merged into her
Owl, and swept behind the creature, sending balls of her favourite golden light
at points that felt key in the creature and the red glow around it. Greg was
dancing – literally a shuffling, folksy sort of solo dance - in front of the
creature, and in doing so creating streamers of his favourite green energy that
tangled the creature: each streamer would be let go of the moment the creature,
dwarfing the tiny human in front, grabbed it to try and pull Greg close enough
to harm. Meanwhile Ky had sunk into the image of earth beneath the creature’s
feet, and was pushing a massive tidal wave of earth at the creature’s feet.
Slightly – only
slightly – put off balance by the three, the creature tensed to leap – and arched
back in pain, almost as if it had been electrocuted. Sensing something spectacular,
and probably hazardous, about to happen – no doubt at the hands of Scary Harry –
the three friends zipped together, and formed a cocoon of light so brilliant
that it had no colour. At the last moment, Greg formed an image of an anchor,
and Ky complied, holding them to the image of earth in that location.
When she was thinking later
about what happened next, Tara felt it was like being in an exploding Sun, but
a Sun made of hate and pain and despair. As the buffeting eased, they turned
their awareness to where the creature had been, and saw what looked like a
Roman soldier – a Centurion from two millennia ago, held fast in ropes of purple
by Harry and Toby. Within moments, other figures appeared and joined in, and the
Centurion was submerged in figures of Light, the combination encompassing the full
spectrum of colours. Exhausted, Harry and Toby eased their grip on the ropes,
others taking their place, and shambled over to the three.
“Wow” commented Tara.
“What she said” added
Greg.
“What did you do?”
asked Ky.
“Beat the bad guy”
quipped Toby.
Harry tried to laugh
but, too exhausted, flopped to sit on the earth.
Greg looked at Ky and
Tara, and the three directed healing energy to Harry. He looked quizzically at Toby,
who shook his head and, after a pause, joined in the healing. As he did so, he
explained what had happened.
“Shamanism doesn’t only
work the Underworld, and what our young friend here did was to jump the two of us
from Underworld to Overworld, to a place where we could come back inside the Centurion’s
defences in the Underworld.”
This was a technique
that all four had used, taught by ‘le Oncle’ Bob to Tara, and passed on by her
to the others, although they had used the shifting around the various etheric,
astral and other nonphysical worlds, not the Shamanic view of Reality.
“When we came through”
continued Toby, “which we could only do because you had his attention so fully
engaged, we were able to shatter the structures he had built up from within, and
the rest you saw.”
Ky asked “Who was he?
How did … all this come about?”
“He had been a Roman
Centurion who died in the battle of Cannae. Humiliated by the scale of the
disaster, he refused to accept the defeat - let alone his death, and started working for what he saw
as the ‘greater Roman glory’. Of course, the Ancient Roman Empire - well, it
was a Republic back then, actually – was a pretty nasty, aggressive,
expansionist place in many ways, and that’s what he kept doing: building an
empire purely for the sake of building an empire.”
Harry asked “So we were
up against someone who had two thousand years of experience?!”
“Slightly more,
actually.”
The intrepid four
looked at each other sombrely.
Toby laughed.
“Come on, cheer up you
lot. Didn’t you have fun? Wasn’t that a pleasant way to pass the night?”
Ky groaned “The entire
night? Oh no, I’ve got so much to do!”
Toby smiled, and
replied “Come on, let’s return. You all stopped drumming some time ago, so we
can just travel back. No need for any canoe.”
They assumed it was
done with Toby’s help, but they found themselves back in their bodies,
transitioned back to the physical incredibly smoothly, and only ten minutes had
passed.
“Okay people” announced
Ky, “Just pass out here. Just get comfortable first, alright?”
With the ease of long
practice, they did so, and spent the rest of the night in deep, peaceful sleep.
Copyright © Kayleen White, 2014 (where this date is different to the year of publication, it is because I did the post some time ago and then used the scheduling feature to delay publication) I take these photographs and undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary or artistic merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit, of course :)
