[18th December 2007]

[O'Neil Farm, County Cork]

It was good to be home for the Christmas I found as I sat on the sofa here in the sitting room. Laid out before me on the table were some of my reading material now that I was on a break from the combination of physical training, relearning secondary school, 'missions' for the Minister, and the intricacies of weapons handling. Turned out I was a terrible shot to start with and it was going to take a while to fix that, just like it was with the basic training they were putting me through to turn me into something resembling fighting fit. Being the squishy wizard was always a problem, especially when so many of the possible threats in this world having won the super-powers lottery in my view.

Slow progress due to being forced to split between school, work and travelling but it was still progress at least. Though in truth compared to my first human iteration this time around was a lean, mean, fitness machine even compared to the scrawny dude I'd been when young. Compared to orc me though I wasn't exactly at prime condition and up against the likes of Batman's sidekick or even just baseline human super-villains I was just asking for a beating in my opinion...and that of my 'mentors' over at the Curragh. Despite that I was glad of the nice two week break over the Christmas period to just relax, talk to Mam and Dad and catch up with those friendly enough with me like Una and Oscar up the road. That and actually get a chance to read through the books provided through the National Library thanks to my governmental patrons.

Or at least 'John Fortune' with an address in Mullingar had gotten access to them. All thanks to the wonders of G2, or The Directorate of Military Intelligence, at the request of O'Mahon and his staff. Beyond a handful of people around myself, the already secret identity ARW members, and the Minister of Defence my actual name wasn't really known by many; even the Cabinet and party leadership only knew my basic details and the cover name. Every record of Sean O'Neill meeting with officials in recent months had been hopeful scrubbed and replaced with 'John Fortune', and then a further layer added in the classification of my secret identify as 'Agent Amergin' after Amergin Glúingel from the Milesian Saga. I smiled softly. Fate at work perhaps, I hadn't even come up with it after all.

"YOU WANT A COFFEE IN THERE? JUST BOILING THE KETTLE THERE NOW FOR A CUPPA TAE!" came out from kitchen as I reached over and picked up the writing pad and pen to my side. Shouting back was the easiest option I found as turned my attention to the various books from my little collection and my own personal spell-book.

"NO THANKS MAM! GIVE A SHOUT IF YOU NEED ANYTHING OR WHEN DINNERS READY OKAY?"

Which...shouldn't hopefully be for a few hours I figured as I muted the crappy midday cartoon series on the television with the remote to remove another distraction from my 'study' session. I'd have to give these little darlings back after all so best to make as much use of them while could. Not something that was made easy by the Ye Olde English that permeated the two older copies 'lent' by the National Library, or the fact they could just be absolute nonsense. I'd gotten history books and various reference material, strewn out around me on the coffee table and sofa, to help cross reference these old grimoires. I'd placed the usual wards around the sitting room of course before starting and made sure to prevent them getting dirty or stained. I could use certain cantrips if I did but I'd much rather not mess up the valuable documents I'd been loaned. That'd kinda piss off alot of people I'd expect.

It was funny really, on this Earth there were ways to actually prove, under test conditions, that magic could work and have practical applications...yet it never really got traction. Even some of the little tricks I'd learned off me Gran before she passed away had shown some signs of causing a 'magical' outcome yet there was a massive science bias towards magic 'not being real' or being 'parlour tricks' at best. It'd been shown to me only recently in DCU's science wing that even though I could prove my claims it was largely greeted with annoyance or disbelief rather than wanting to understand it. Yes the government had accepted it but that was as much down to desired outcomes and practical uses on their part than caring about the theory behind it all. I was that actual wizard who did things for them with magic that actually worked. Huzzah! Drinks all around!

'Well have to work on that in the future' I thought to myself as I tried to make sense of this old work on magic circles and protection wards. Of course I already knew an extensive amount of such wards from Faerurnian magic but how those wards would interact with those of local magic users was something I needed to know for sure at some point before someone shot a spell at me. I knew they worked perfectly fine on non-mages thanks to those oh so helpful burglars we found stunned in the shed about two years ago. A nice useful field test of all the defence wards I'd integrated into the family home and farm I'd found. It'd been both a useful way to rebuild my skill-set and help defend my family...though honestly most of the outer spells were just misdirection and 'bad feeling' spells as I liked to call them. Those should 'discourage' anyone with hostile intent without giving any appearance of magic while those in the house proper should hide and defend against most magic users or meta-humans. Or at least I hoped they would alongside the desire that they'd never need to be tested.

I rubbed at the bridge of my nose after a little while and rested back into the nice comfy sofa behind me. Bad news; it was really damned hard to make heads or tails of the text in front of me. Not only was the whole thing phrased weirdly to me, with oddly spelled words, but the fact was the author seemed to ramble about things or just make the assumption the reader knew certain things due to background knowledge. Sadly these older books were not laid out in a reader friendly format like modern day science manuals. Nine Hells this one was even worse than some of the tomes orc-me had read. I sighed.

Good news was there might actually be something to it, or at least bits and pieces of the jumble of things that might actually work. One or two of the old illustrations and details of the incantation looked vaguely familiar and the history books hinted at the author having some sort of abilities. Assuming I figured out the methods behind the randomness anyway.

"I really need some sort of proper trainer, or someone to give pointers on all of this" I muttered to myself, turning back on the tv volume for a bit to take a break from the reading. After another long hour of trying to understand one particular chapter I was no closer to understanding it than I had been when I'd started looking at it. Several pages of discarded scribble notes lay crumbled up on the floor after a several attempts at working through the problem on them. There was definitely some low level...something...there to be found but right now I was drawing a blank. Getting access to someone with greater knowledge would make things so much easier and let me allocate my time better. I lay back into the sofa and sighed softly.

Problem I was still back to the original problem of not having an easily available source of magicians available to train me. Minister O'Mahon in fairness had given a decent enough effort in my view to searching out for anyone local who might be able to help me out. Sadly most of them were either charlatans like that woman in Dublin, or had only the basics of the very basics like this friendly auld fella not too far away in Kerry. Been a nice chat but beyond some good info on fairy forts and leylines there wasn't much he could teach as he didn't know how he did some. He just did, and had, done so all his life apparently. Sadly I wasn't going anywhere near the Fey and the Old Gods owing to my own nature and past dealings with some of their counterparts. Getting recognised as a shard of...

...well that'd be problematic to say the least. Which also ruled out Jason Blood the more I researched my rather limited options over the past few months. Or, well, less Blood than his alter ego Etrigan the Demon Knight would could be fine with me...or react violently, or suspect things about me, if I started trying to get him as a 'teacher' of sorts. There were several others that my memories indicated might be out there but there weren't any official records or indications of them as best I could tell, and those that were visible enough were rather far away or ones I'd prefer not to approach due to visibility. Zatanna Zatara was evidently a child in this reality when I'd looked up Zatara; though her father was a rather famous stage magician and actual magician who'd been born in the UK...till he moved to the US. Which somewhat far away across an ocean and somewhere I'd like to avoid till I could...ya know...defend myself properly.

I picked up a newer copy of an older document that wasn't much in circulation evidently. It'd been quite useful even if decades old and written for the US government and public by someone named Doctor Fate who'd been part of the allied (American really) All-Star Squadron during WW2. According to records he was someone named Kent Nelson, but again...America and I had no idea if he was still alive as he'd very obviously stopped being Doctor Fate decades ago. In Europe the only visible one that was visible was some magic and sword wielding woman named Janissary, but she was in Turkey and nobody (as always with superheroes) knew who she was. Those I remembered most clearly from decades ago; Raven, or Rachel Roth, Tim Hunter and the like just didn't seem to exist here for whatever reasons. Which left...?

"Constantine" I muttered to nobody at all. I really, really, didn't want to go near that walking disaster area over in Liverpool after the reports that were publicly available. Considering the British governments view of magic how much of that was actually true was anyone's guess really. All I knew was he wasn't in jail and was working as some sort of occult detective only a short ferry ride across the water. That and I'm still pretty sure money would be convincing enough to get me some of the basics out of him unlike several of the others. I rubbed at my face to wake me back up. Seems I'd have to go and try talk to that fecker in the coming months if I was serious about what I needed to do. Which meant talking to the Minister andguys at G2 at some stage for the 'official' channels to things. Gah!

I sighed. Feck it. I'd enjoy Christmas first and worry about painful physical training and talking to chaotic neutral/good brits in the new year...

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