Karen knelt down as she tried to feel the magical traces that Azaria had left for her. Azaria was standing near by watching as she tried, giving hints every time, she failed.
"This is impossible, how long did you say it would take to learn?"
"I would say that it took me around 60 years, the first 20 or so were spent just trying to find the trail."
Karen quickly did the math based on the rough time dilation that Hermione, Septima, and Zach had calculated, "So you're saying that if I was to spend three quarters of an earth year here, I'd just about learn to feel the traces of magic."
"That's pretty fast, but yes."
"That's also unacceptable, as my wife has been missing for 5 months already, and I'm not prepared to make that nearly 3 years. At that point I might as well give up and wait for her to rescue herself or die."
Azaria considers that for a few moments, trying to see it from her point of view. Even trying to imagine that Nym's had been taken didn't lead to that sort of anxiety after such a short period of time.
Coming to a snap decision Karen abruptly stands up and turns to face Azaria, "You have been practicing our form of meditating on our magic yes?"
Caught of guard Azaria replies, "Er, well yes, sort of, I mean."
"So you have found your internal magical world?"
"Yes, but"
"Great, how are you at changing your magical level using that technique and resetting to earth in an emergency?"
"Ah, well, you see, I've still been exploring it as it's fascinating."
"Right, you have two days, I'm going to hold you here while you practice. Once that time is up we're going to your home world and then progressing to the next one, that you said was less travelled than the ones between these worlds."
"Yes, but."
"No buts, I need to learn to track and you're the only one that can teach me as Hogwarts is stuck at Hogwarts."
Karen raised a comfortable wooden cabin with running water and flushing toilets using the runes that she'd learnt, making the current location very comfortable indeed before foraging out some food while Azaria started meditating.
Azaria sighed and settled down to meditate after trying to leave just failed, as did her magic. Karen was truly scary, and she didn't even know it. She wondered ideally if she'd be another bloody rose while trying to rescue her wife.
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A couple of days passed, and privately Azaria was amazed at how quickly she got the hang of this when she had Karen metaphorically breathing down her neck. Well, that and the imminent threat of dying as she tried to cross the boundary if she didn't. It wasn't clear what her own people did in order to move closer to the sea of magic, but she was pretty sure that it wasn't this. As if they were going to meditate it was on the world around them and not on the world within them. She got her things together and got ready to go to her home world for the first time since the failed assassination attempt by him.
Once they arrived at her home world, Azaria immediately had a quick sense around to see if there were any recent traces of passers-by. Not finding any, she settled down to enter her world.
Karen watched as Azaria checked the area around them to see if there were any Sidhe around before she took a meditative pose. When Azaria nodded, Karen smoothly moved to the middle realm and readied a knockout spell while she waited for Azaria to appear. When she faded in, she seemed to be doing fine. Just in case, she was ready to haul her back and then knock her out and take her to earth. Around an hour later Azaria stood up and looked at her hands in wonder.
"Are you ok?" Karen asked
"I… I don't know. I think I am, but I feel odd."
"Well, we can come here for nearly 7 years at the weekend, so let's just take it easy, if you feel up to leaving me a couple of traces to discover, I'll work on that for a few weeks while you get your bearings back."
Azaria looked at her in shock at the flippant way she mentioned spending a few weeks here.
"How comes you're suddenly so blasé about spending time here when you were panicking not two days ago?"
"Do you remember what they discovered about the time dilation out here?"
"Only vaguely, they were making so much progress so quickly I haven't been able to process it yet."
"Zach said that the only reason that the first three worlds don't have time dilation is that the links between them are so strong. However, once you get out to the next 5 worlds it almost goes 3 times as fast on each world you travel through. However, once you break into the boundary to this part, it's more convenient to measure how many earth years pass per day, and on your home world it's nearly 3.5. Here it's more like 7 or 8. If we can get you out to the world that I trained Victoria on, it's somewhere between 25 and 30 years per earth day.
"Are you sure you're ok, you look a little spacey."
"I… erm, I just want to have more of that."
Karen sighs, "Go set me those trails and then I'll keep you here while you let your magic go. While you're doing that I'll set up the cabin."
The next few weeks passed in a relaxing fashion for Azaria, as she was able to finally spend time absorbing the lessons she'd been learning. She wasn't sure how Karen could keep being so industrious while she was here, but she was looking forward to being able to bring Nym's out here for a romantic weekend where she could show her around. Maybe there was something to the Human's need to do things so quickly after all.
One day Azaria comes over to Karen, "Karen, would you be able to teach me how you stop people from travelling so easily, as I can't even feel your magic when you do it."
Karen looks a little embarrassed, "I'm not actually sure how I do it. You know the bubble technique that we use? I extend a second bubble out that just contains the faintest trace of magic I can manage. When I do that I can feel the change in magic that signifies that something is trying to change worlds, and I just counter it. I learnt it by watching one of the predators in the next world after they forced me to fight once by stopping me from retreating. I'm afraid that's the best description I can give you. There are some small creatures here that use that as an escape mechanism, so you could try and practice on those. But before you do, you need to get your magic low enough that you register as a muggle for the Healers testing device."
Azaria says some very uncomplimentary things in her native tongue about Karen's parentage for suggesting that requirement.
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Lyasa looks up while she and Petunia are meditating.
"Petunia." She whispers.
"Yes?" Petunia whispers back.
"I just felt our clan bond for a moment, and then it was gone."
"What do you mean?"
"You know my sister, Azaria is our clan head?"
"I do. Why?"
"We all swear fealty to the clan, and the clan head is the one that carries those oaths. I felt mine strengthen for a moment that means that the Clan head is in this realm."
Petunia hugs Lyasa, "We'll both find them, and when we do our clan will be safe again."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I gave Karen magic at the shore to the sea of magic. So when we get the whole clan away from here we can teach her if she needs it. Then we'll have two Titania's in the clan. Two Titania's I'll add that can live in the midlands.
"Now tell me how you've been getting on with your meditation on the body, and I'll tell you how I've been getting on with the senses."
"It's weird, I don't think I've found my magical body, but I've found something as I seem to be able to move more easily and precisely. I don't think I would have any problems with knowing just how far to swing the sword now, but I'm not feeling the same thing that Garund was describing."
"My senses seem to have become more sensitive, in that I'm able to pick up more details in what I can see, hear, feel, smell, rather than being more easily overwhelmed. I think it's also added detail to my magical world too. Have you noticed any changes to your inner world?"
"I'm not actually sure. Maybe."
"Well, let's swap so that we can each see what the other was talking about. And take a couple of weeks to check over your inner world. Let's check back in with each other at the beginning of the Dark."
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"What have you found?" The Emperor asked his voice.
"We've discovered the secret to wandless magic, though we're no closer to being able to travel the dream as yet. The key was that one of the Curse Breaking team in Egypt was heard talking about Occlumency. We were then able to deduce that meditation and the initial stages of learning Occlumency are one and the same.
"However, we have found a slight snag, in that concentrating on your magic for that long leads to it starting to react to your subconscious desires. I wouldn't recommend following through on this until we have discovered how to offset that aspect. We are still aiming to send some students to Hogwarts next year, our intelligence says that the Qing Empire and Mughal Empire are both going to do the same. We don't know much about the other empires and states as they offer their citizens far more freedom than we allow ours."
"Very well, I assume that you've re-read the prophet article for clues as to how they learn to control their magic?"
"Not since we had this breakthrough. I will ensure that our researchers do that."
"Are the people that are trying to move through the worlds being supervised by non-magicals?"
"They are."
"Then I await your next report."
