52

Game Genie

Time: Moments later

Place: Susan's cabin

Nita continued to be impressed as she looked about the workshop and the surrounding area. The lake, pond, trees, grass, and clouds were all as Susan remembered them.

And if they weren't, what exactly would that mean?

"Where are we, exactly?" asked Nita, having poked around the place.

"Good question," Susan answered. "I never stopped to consider the physical locality of my Personal and Pocket Dimensions. They come along with me when I transit to other realities, so they aren't tied to that. But yet the objects inside exist, and if I died they would all come tumbling out on top of my corpse. And it was explained to me that any object unique to a world would get left there, even inside here, hence the need for the sub-space pocket."

"Even the house?" she asked, shocked.

"No, no, the house was part of the Dimension. I envisioned it the first time I cast the spell, along with the lake, the mountains, the caves under the mountains, the trees, all of it. Take any part of the original envisioning out of here, and it would just vanish. No, only the stuff I brought in here afterwords would appear. Humm, how does that work?" Susan made a Topics: Dimension check, getting a twelve. "Maybe the objects are rooted to me, but out of phase with local reality? Then the magic is simply reorienting them when it's cast."

"I don't suppose it matters. I just wondered if I could come up with something similar."

"Why not? Your magic is about describing things, right? And you obviously have a similar 'spell' to my Pocket Dimension that you keep stuff in. Just describe yourself a little hideaway."

"Just describe it, she says. Do you know how complex that would be? You would have to name each and every blade of grass, every rock, every piece of timber in a house-"

"So just make the ground and build everything else yourself."

Nita considered. "That would actually be easier. It's so weird, all this." She spread her hands to indicate everything she saw outside. "I'm usually pretty good with life, and this stuff looks alive, like that's a tree over there. But it doesn't feel alive. It's kind of freaky."

"Well, yeah, it's just magic in a certain shape. It wouldn't grow or change, or die. I mean I wouldn't want to have to come in here and cut the grass every week, now would I?" She laughed.

"I don't suppose you would. It's not fair, you getting to just cast one spell and get all this."

"Yeah, well, it's not fair that I had to leave home and track down my father, either. Or come here to save your reality from being gobbled up. But what can you do?"

"I see what you mean. Well," she hefted the cup, "shall we get to work?"

Susan smiled broadly. "Oh yeah, cheating time!"

"You said that before, what did you mean?"

"Set it down over here and I'll show you."

The two went into the workshop part of the cabin, and Nita put the cup down on the potion stained table.

"This area's seen a lot of activity," she remarked.

"Yup, good times, good times. Now, for a bit more magic!"

Susan grabbed some paper out of a nearby notebook, and for several minutes created three new Spell Papers. When she was done she handed one to Nita. "Now, to activate it, just put your hand over it, think about getting better at wizardry, and say 'activate.'"

"And it'll make me better at wizardry?" she asked, unconvinced.

"That's the hope. If not you, then at least Sparkle and myself. See, the description for Augment Skill specifically says 'This does not provide a bonus to any Planet skills.' Like somehow the magic knows one skill is different than another. But whatever. This isn't a planet skill. Now as I see it, your skill at wizardry is broken up into at least two parts. Reading the language in your book and your pronunciation of the words. I remember a story from my world about these robots, right? Only one person in the world could control them perfectly because you had to tell them what you wanted them to do, and only she could get the pronunciation of the words right. Now maybe you have a third skill, some 'magic doing' skill? I don't know. Point is, my magic should figure out what you need to get better if you ask it. Now me, I'm not your type of magic user. But I have a single skill, granted to me by nature of me moving between realities. That of Adaptive Skill. This takes the place of whatever you do in order to do wizardry, that lets me do wizardry. On another world, it might let me use the Force or whatever."

"Wasn't that from a movie?"

"You get the idea. Upshot is, that isn't a Planet skill either. So I can Augment it, far beyond the levels of whatever normal humans can do in this world."

"In other words, cheating."

"Isn't it great!?" Susan was excited.

"I guess if it gets the job done. But why this? You do magic without this, I've seen you." She held up the Paper.

"It's about how I cast magic. I could cast it on all three of us at once, maintain it once, but take a -3 penalty. Or cast it three times, take no penalty to the casting, but have to maintain it three times! That would mean a -6 to everything I did, making me useless for this effort. These," she indicated the Papers, "work around that."

"More cheating?"

"If you like. The symbol on the paper holds the spell rather than myself. It's like a one time use Imbuing without all the time, effort, XP or monetary cost. This gives us the best of both worlds, I don't have to maintain it even once, and there's no penalty to me, despite my benefiting from the whole deal."

"Guess we'll see what happens." She put her hand on it and magic swirled around her as she spoke the trigger word. Susan and Sparkle followed suit, and checked their character sheets. Their ratings were now rather obscenely high in Adaptive Skill, given the energy Susan had put into the spell, and the three got to work.

With a now greater understanding of Wizardry than ever before, the three worked off Nita's copy of 'So you Want to be a Wizard' and created a new spell to put the soul of water back into the cup. Susan found she could read and understand the language of the book perfectly now, and while her understanding of the forces needed to bring the 'spirit' of water back to the cup were incomplete, both her and Sparkle were able to make assist checks in writing the actual spell.

"I have to say, creating spells in Wizardry is much easier than creating them in magic," remarked Susan when they were done. "It takes me days, and I have to 'consume materials' which I still don't quite understand the purpose of. We just kind of dashed that off."

"It's usually not this easy though," countered Nita. "Your spell must really be working."

"Naturally, as Simon the Chipmunk would say at Christmas time."

"Don't let her fool you. She used more then half her considerable amount of energy to create those spell papers," said Sparkle. "You really do like throwing energy around, don't you?"

"It was important. And it's not like we can get attacked here. I've gotten 8 back already, sitting here is 'light activity' after all."

"Who cares how she did it, the important thing is I think we can wake this cup up, and we're a quarter of the way to what we need. I really thought we should be talking to other wizards, but you've come through, Susan. I'm... sorry I doubted you."

"Eh, everyone does. They come around in the end. Now, what's next? Just reading it aloud? I mean do I have to make checks to understand it or anything? Casting from writings for me is kind of involved."

"Nope, we just read it. Though I'm not really sure what 'make checks' means."

"And I doubt I could explain it to you. Okay, can you see all right, Sparkle?"

She put her front paws up on the table and stretched up. The other two tilted the paper and she nodded.

"Oh, just a second!" said Susan, and wrote "And now we begin the spell." in English at the top. (Luckily these people seemed to speak and read English just fine) "We'll read that first, as we'll all have to be in sync, right? That way if we're off right away we'll know it."

Nita seemed vaguely impressed, and the three began to read.

The Dimension was quiet, as there was not any such thing as wind to rustle leaves, or scores of birds chirping. No cars, no sirens, just a faint babble of water as it flowed past the cottage. Nevertheless, something odd started happening as the three read the spell. Somehow it seemed to grow even quieter, the voices of the three blending together and calling forth power. Almost if the magic that made up the objects in this Dimension were listening to the spell that was building up around them.

It feels different than magic, Susan thought, about halfway through the spell. How about that.

As their voices died away, the three looked eagerly to the cup, which sat unchanged upon the table.

Susan tapped the side of it. "Uh, did it work?"

"I don't- I don't think so. That's odd. A spell always works."

"Wait, what? No it doesn't, you backfired your Teleport spell when I was fighting Biddy!"

"Let me clarify- a spell always does something. Not always what you expect, but we used wizardry, I felt that much. But this cup doesn't seem any more awake than it was before."

"Should we try again?" asked Sparkle.

Nita shook her head. "We read the spell perfectly, with my abilities augmented I could tell that. Reading it again won't have any different outcome."

"Maybe it's too far gone," suggested Susan. "Maybe we'll have to start with a new cup, do the binding from scratch."

"That would be... less than ideal."

"I agree, but what other option do we have? It didn't work."

"I'm not sure. Let me think a minute."

"Sure."

Susan got out some drinks from her fridge and sat sipping hers as Nita paced around. She looked at the cup, silently read the spell over again, and scowled at nothing. "As much as it pains me, I think I'll try to reach my sister, Dairine. She might have some ideas." Nita closed her eyes, standing still a moment.

Is she doing a spell, or what? I thought they had to speak them?

"That's odd," Nita said at last, opening her eyes. "It's always been easier with Kit, but I should at least be able to... I'll try it the other way." She went over to her book and tried sending a message through it, but was surprised when it threw some kind of error message back at her.

"It must be because we're in here," she said at last, closing the book. "I've never seen a message like that before."

"What do you want to do? The spell will expire if we leave here, it'll be the end of the 'scene.' I don't mind casting it again, but one more round of those at that level is all I have in me for today."

"No, it's all right. Scene..." she chuckled. "Your magic sure is weird. Now can we go to another wizard in the area? Get a second opinion?"

"Sure. I'm not against working with others or anything, but didn't you yourself say, when we met, that the wizardry put the wizard who could solve the problem on the case? It picked you, and you came to Ireland. Doesn't that mean you have to work it out yourself?"

"It's not a cut and dried thing. Yes, it can mean the wizard has to take care of it, but that's usually just when we're starting out. Otherwise it can mean I'm just the one to get the ball rolling."

"Oh, I get it. Come along then." She shoved the cup into her sub-space pocket and reached for the writings to open the door and get them back to the real world again.

The girls (and cat) got some lunch, and Nita honestly told her Aunt they had been poking around museums that morning, and were going to go look at some old castles in the area that afternoon.

"Heaven knows we have enough of them around here!" said Annie. "I'm glad to see you enjoying yourself."

"Did anything come up about that explosion?" asked Susan.

Annie shook her head. "No gas pipes or anything in that area. No charred remains from a conventional explosion either. I guess it's just one of those Irish mysteries."

"Oh, okay." Good. Come to think of it, why doesn't Nita just ask her Aunt about the spell? Actually, has she ever said anything about knowing she's a wizard? But she must, they're family. But I suppose she would have to be sure a non-wizard wasn't around, and there's always people coming and going around here.

The girls took the bus to the address her book said the castle was to be found, and Susan asked about something she had been wondering about.

"You were quite truthful back there," she remarked. "You don't happen to have Compulsive Honestly do you?"

"You mean could I lie if I needed to? Sure. Before I told my parents I was a wizard I had to sneak out and do things on the sly. Why?"

"Wait, your parents aren't wizards? Huh, another blow for the Slytherin 'pure blood' agenda."

"It just worked out that way. For whatever reason my father didn't have what the Powers needed, and so he wasn't offered wizardry."

"Weird. Anyway, I just wondered. It's the Paragon in me, trying to work out people's Backgrounds and Weaknesses. I just thought, if you did, and there came a time we needed to, say, stretch the truth, that I should do the talking."

"Are you sure it isn't just your Curious," asked Sparkle softly from the seat beside them. Of course, normally a cat wouldn't be allowed on a bus, but a cat with human level intelligence didn't let a little thing like that stop her. "Making you want to poke your nose into everything?"

"Could be, that one hasn't come up in a while..."

"That won't be necessary," continued Nita. "It's just not a good habit to get into, when you're a wizard. The easier time you have of lying, the more chance it might get into a spell. And in wizardry, what you put into the spell becomes real. So you have to watch it."

"Got it."

"That would be an interesting spell, actually. You cast it on a person and get a look at their character sheet."

"What Planet would that fall under?"

"Good question."

Having arrived, the girls walked up to the enormous castle, and Susan looked around interestedly. "Yup, it's a castle all right." Stone walls, somewhat overgrown with vines, towered over them. "Ah, there's a door!"

"Wait, are we just going to knock?" asked Nita nervously.

"Why not?" asked Susan.

"Hello," Sparkle said to a cat looking at them from underneath a nearby bush. It hissed and ran off. "How rude."

The three made their way to the door and Susan used the heavy iron knocker to announce her presence. They waited.

"Maybe no one's home?" suggested Nita.

Susan, having rolled only an eight on Spirit Sense couldn't say one way or the other. There was a lot of life around there, and Ley Lines aplenty to mess up her senses. "Then I guess we-" she started to say when the door opened a crack.

A man in a suit stared down at them.

"Yes?" he enquired.

"Is the master of the castle in?" asked Susan. "We must speak to him about a most urgent matter."

"Are you expected?" asked the man.

"Ah, probably not, but you never know, right?"

The man didn't so much as think about cracking a smile. "And who shall I say is calling, and what shall I say it's about?"

"Just give him this," said Nita, handing the rolled up pieces of paper that held the spell the three had made. "And tell him Nita Callahan needs his help with it."

"Very well," he said, taking it. However, he didn't disappear inside but rather stood looking it over. "Is this some sort of joke?"

The pages were written in the Speech, the local equivalent to Susan's magical symbology that she envisioned when doing her magic. Not any kind of human language, the writing would have just resembled scribblings to anyone not also a wizard.

"He'll understand, believe me," she answered.

"Wait here," said the man, closing the door on them again.

"I guess everyone is a little rude around here," remarked Sparkle.

"They probably get people wanting tours of the castle or something all the time," suggested Nita. "But I didn't expect a butler."

"Hey, if you've got money enough to buy a whole castle in Ireland, you can afford a manservant or two. Wonder if there'll be maids?"

"Didn't you get enough of maids back with Louise?"

"Like one can ever get enough maids."

The three waited, Susan bouncing around on her heels or wondering if anyone would see her if she flew up to the top of the castle and had a look around.

"Give them a few minutes," said Nita when she raised her hand to grab the knocker again. "Look at the size of this place. It probably takes them two minutes just to go from one end to the other."

Wonder if she has Timekeeper?

Moments later, the door opened again and a rather short man was standing there, holding the papers with the spell on it. He had a somewhat fine mustache, but it might really be something when it grew up, and he had a serious look about him. He looked evenly at the two, then to the sides and behind them. "Where are the rest of you?" he asked, "and why did they send such young people to deliver this? What's going on, what's this all about?" He shook the paper at them.

"Perhaps if we could explain..." started Nita.

"Oh, of course, where are my manners? Shaun O'Driscoll, Senior for Europe." He threw the door open and stuck out his hand. "But I suppose you already knew that."

"Susan Felton, dimensional traveler," said Susan, shaking it.

"That's nice," said Shaun, reaching for Nita.

"I'm Nita Callahan, from New York."

"Nice to-" he looked back at Susan, freezing in mid-shake. "What did you say?"

"Dimensional traveler. Look, can we come inside? This is going to take a little while."

He looked down at the spell again. "I guess you better. I'll have Niall make some tea." He threw the door open and was only slightly surprised to see Sparkle following them in.

"She's with me," Susan explained.

"Ah, right. I guess some cream as well."

"Actually, as with most cats my age, I'm lactose intolerant," said Sparkle, looking up at him. "But if you happen to have some tuna water, that would be just lovely."

"I'll... see what I can do?"

"Appreciate it."

"I think they both enjoy it," Nita muttered to herself. "Shocking people, that is."