Chapter Two: New Revelations

Tom and Carl's:

Arriving on the back doorstep of Tom and Carl's house Kit knocked on the door and Dairine popped up beside him, panting. "Come in," called Tom.

They walked in, Kit still clutching the papers, and Tom and Carl emerged grinning at them.

"Where's Nita?" Tom asked and Carl waited expectantly for an answer.

"That's what we've come about," Kit replied, slapping the papers down on the table with a flourish. He then began to rapidly recount the events of the day to Tom and Carl. When they got to the part about meeting the Transcendent Pig, Carl held up his hand to slow them down.

"What did you just say?" he asked incredulously.

"The Transcendent Pig said that Nita sent us there on accident and Dairine said that it takes a lot of power to do that, so he showed us these papers," he repeated in one breath, picking them up and handing them to Carl.

When Tom walked back into the room with to cans of coke, he saw that Carl had a death grip on the papers that Kit had put down earlier. Walking close enough to catch a snippet of the conversation. "Yeah, the Transcendent Pig – Nita – Dairine. Power levels,"

As he sat down, Carl handed him the paper. He read Dairine's without looking too surprised, but when he got to Nita's his jaw dropped open in shock, and he looked at Carl, who nodded, confirming that he had the same suspicions.

He turned to Kit and waved the papers in front of his face. "Are you sure that it was the Transcendent Pig who gave you these?" At Kit's nod, he stared at him thoughtfully for a minute, before tearing his gaze away and back to the papers. "Of course it was – who else would have these kind of papers?"

A frown graced his lips as he examined the further, even testing the type of paper. Kit watched them, thinking that they knew as little as he himself did. Dairine, on the other hand was convinced that Tom and Carl were keeping something from them. She pursed her lips, "Wish I knew what they were hiding," she murmured.

With her wish, came rain. Dairine looked around and noted that Kit was also being rained on, though the rain was exclusive to them – well, unless they were outside. A clap of thunder and a flash of lightning streaked across the night sky, making Tom and Carl look up. Tom tucked the papers into a plastic file and whispered something to Carl, before they truly took in the sight in front of them. Kit and Dairine had stood up, and were shaking, their clothes sticking limply to their bodies as their teeth chattered. The rain continued to poor, and Tom and Carl roared with laughter, and clutched their sides. The rain continued to poor, and even when Carl handed them each an umbrella it did nothing to stop the getting wet. Sobering quickly, Tom surveyed them seriously. "What happened to cause this?"

Kit shook his head and held up his hands in an 'I don't know,' kind of gesture, while Dairine thought.

Eventually she seemed to come to a conclusion. "I'm pretty sure that Nita did it," she stated, then proceeded to outline her argument convincingly. "We'd just come back from the Transcendent Pig, and we had appeared in Nita's room. She demanded to see the papers that Kit had – it was a little strange, I don't know, but she didn't seem to be Nita – more like she was someone else. Anyways, she demanded to see them, but Kit wouldn't let her, because of what the Transcendent Pig said, remember? And I suppose, because it was stormy,"

"You suppose what?" Tom prompted gently.

"Well, she said 'May the rain catch them up, wherever they are,' so,"

Tom 'hmmed' speculatively. "In Speech?"

"No, English"

Tom and Carl looked at each other, aghast, their suspicions well and truly confirmed. "Dairine, Kit, if we tell you something will you swear that you will never say anything, or tell anyone?"

"Yes?" said Kit questioningly Tom and Carl both sighed with relief as Carl recounted a story to Kit and Dairine:

"As you all know, Powers can occasionally choose to live a life on Earth – something to do with it being boring 'up there.' Many years ago, there was one such power – Octavius – and he… fell in love with a… maiden… in the village that he was living in, and fathered her child. She, the mother that is – Katarina – had actually used a kind of spell on him to make him fall in love with her, because she was the daughter of the Power who made the emotions of love between two people. She never told Octavius this, and they lived happily, having a son and four younger daughters between them.

"But Octavius and Katarina did not realise that their son, Domenic, had been born extremely powerful. This was because when he became a wizard, his power levels were normal, and Octavius and Katarina were so glad that they did not bother to investigate further, even thought they should have done, for there were many signs. But they did not want a power for a son, they did not want to be upstaged by him or have him turn against the other powers, so they only saw what they wanted to, and missed every sign, from subtle to blatantly obvious.

"Domenic learned soon after his becoming a wizard that there had been restraints but upon him on his birth, and the anger that he felt was new, an emotion that there had been little of in the world before then, and never in such strength. What right did they have to deprive him of his heritage, Dominic fumed. His parents had not noticed his power being bound as they had been living away from the powers for a long time, and lacked the knowledge. They had been slowly becoming more human, while Dominic was slowly becoming more inhuman. He used his wizardry to create entropy, which would free him from his bonds.

"Then Dominic searched for a way to keep himself living for all eternity without the help of others, eventually succeeding and renaming himself 'The Lone Power.' Then, because he had no followers, he placed a curse on the Wizards of Earth. Once every millennium, in the shape of a human boy or girl, the soul of a power would be created, and tempted both ways. The Power would live a normal life, or something resembling normal, until they became a wizard. And when the wizard reaches their full power, they would be able to use magic without using the speech.

"The Lone Power would teach the young power all his knowledge, gathering himself a band of followers that would help him ruin his parents and the other powers for the bonds they placed upon him. Fortunately when the powers were born he had no way of knowing and sometimes if the power had not come into its full power he put it to its death or crippled them. So the powers did not suffer but every time a human power was born it was born more and more powerful, eventually resulting in a power that could perhaps be stronger than the Lone One."

Carl paused as if reluctant to continue, "That is the story of the power millennia. We only learnt of it around about when Nita was born. We were told to be on the lookout for the new power – tell me, Dairine, is Nita a Scorpio?"

At Dairine's nod, Tom smiled and took over. "At first, Dairine, we thought that you were the power, but that, ultimately, was an idea to be discarded. For your life before you became a wizard was far from ordinary, what with Nita becoming a wizard before you, and your power levels hardly appeared normal, another qualifying feature. No, you had too much attention drawn to your situation. We were looking for someone a fair bit more normal. We feared then, that the Lone One had perhaps gotten to it before us. It had never occurred to us to look at Nita, the all too boring and ordinary – as far as wizards go – sister."

Kit let out an exclamation of objection. "Nita isn't boring!"

Carl was quick to correct his partner's mistake. "No, that's not what he meant. All he meant was that Nita didn't bring the attention to herself like Dairine and several others did."

"But now, looking at these papers, at the comparison – our cause is safe. We are saved. There is nothing else that we need do," Kit and Dairine still did not see what this meant and stared at him dumbly. Carl groaned and hit Tom, who took over abruptly.

"Power's Sakes," he exclaimed. "don't you see, we've found the power! It's Nita!"

Kit and Dairine looked at them in dismay. "How is Nita the meaning of life?" Dairine asked, still preoccupied with the Pig's clue.

Kit sighed exasperatedly. "No, no, Nita can't be the meaning of life. You're not thinking straight! Not my pareja," he added to himself quietly.

"The Transcendent Pig must have it wrong," Dairine appeared not to have heard a single word of Kit's rant.

"Nita can't be a power," he appealed to Tom and Carl pleadingly.

They shook their heads solemnly, the image ruined by the massive twin grins they were sporting, and told him that she was the power, that the papers proved it beyond all reasonable doubt.

They dug out their manuals and turned to a page. It and the following few pages were filled with strange poetry foretelling Nita's birth. "We've been on the lookout since she was born."

Dairine scrutinised the poetry, finding it difficult to believe that this was about Nata, her sister who had always lived in her shadow. It look like, where Wizardry was concerned, things were turning around. "We were only Advisories then," they added.

'Kit, Kit?'

Kit shivered at Nita's voice in his mind, and placed a finger on his mouth so that the others would be quiet and he could concentrate.

'Where are you?'

'Tom and Carl's, pareja,'

He felt her nod. 'I'll be right over, okay?'

Kit nodded and the connection broke. Grabbing the papers roughly, he shoved them hastily into a pocket of other space. Picking up on what the conversation had been about, they all grabbed anything that could be somewhat revealing to Nita and dropped it in Kit's pocket. He just had time to close it, before Nita appeared in the room.

"Hello!" she greeted brightly, seating herself on the couch, squashed up so close to Kit that she was almost sitting on him. Kit smiled to himself. It was a kind of pleasant feeling. "So: does anyone have any idea what I'm supposed to do for my job?"

They all shook their heads, soon burying themselves in conversation about Nita's job and hypothesising as to what she might have to do.

Revised January 2006