The Rising Storm
Chapter 9
Starr and her family arrived some time during the night and the next morning after breakfast we all met in her Cloud Suite on the cloaked fourth floor of the mansion for a Reunion of The Sisterhood before going downstairs to meet the others. “So, Marie’s source at Covenant told her that it’s being corrupted at the highest levels from inside by The Dark Lord. Why? All this time and He’s not been heard from. What happened that would bring him out of his rat hole now?” Kinta, a Light Worker and Magi from Pipron, asked. Creedance rose up. “I don’t think He’s been inactive at all – just keeping a low profile and waiting for his chance to take over. With five hundred years or so of peace, Majickally speaking, he has busied himself with causing destruction and chaos in other ways. On this planet alone there’s been war after war after war.” “For every one of The Dark Lord’s puppets ‘the people’ take down He raises up two more. Some of these are so good at their deceptions that they are actually considered heroes and saints.” “The worlds are decimated, entire peoples, civilizations, and species have been wiped out; with Majick all but extinguished in numerous places in the name of science and progress the Mundanes have stood by for eons and done nothing while we continue to wait for them to wake up and ask for our help.” “This isn’t news to most of you, look around this room. What do you see? I see remnants of worlds and peoples that no longer exist for most of us except in ‘Records’ that have survived disguised as Fairie Tales, Legends, and Myths. ” added a Guardian from a small Outworld called Kuetumatt who had arrived with Creedance. “I say it’s time for a new tactic. We can no longer stand by and wait for the Mundanes and those who have forgotten to wake up and ask for help. We are Guardians – we need to start guarding. Tell us what your source reported Sea Wytche.” Marie finished up her story by saying, “After she told me what she’d found out I did some checking; over the past five hundred years six of the thirteen Elders of The High Council have died and been replaced by relatively unknown but powerful Wytches, four men and two women. Until the last half century or so they have kept a low profile making changes here and there; no one paid much attention to them, then the last Elder of Esmeth’s line became ill.” “The bylaws of Covenant state in order to inherit a seat a Council Member must be Crone or Sage over the age of fifty and directly related to the person they are replacing otherwise the seat will be filled by whichever house is next in rotation. If Esmeth dies or becomes incapable of fulfilling her duties the Fire Wytches’ Grandmother Bridgett would have been next in line” “Everyone knew Gran’s opinion that the Covenant should be totally abolished with each Guardian leading their own house independently. This in effect would render the Elders of The High Council obsolete. They couldn’t afford to let her gain a seat.” “So they followed her around and watched, then when the opportunity presented itself they killed her. I’m sorry, Honey,” she said looking directly at me. “As I see it we need to draft a letter of intent to The Covenant legally informing the Elders and everyone involved of our decision to cut all ties with Covenant House. That should force their hand and bring things out into the open, but FIRST we need to make sure we’re prepared, “spoke up Brack, a Scribe and Prophet of Lodine and one of the first Guardians Bridgett had recruited. “Okay. So what do we do first?” someone asked. “Those of us who are already involved in something should get back to work, time is short. The rest of you who have just arrived need to decide how you want to proceed and what you need to do to balance your normal duties with the responsibilities of Guardian House.” “We have a vast number of positions open here at The Araidean Institute for Alternative Studies as well as Guardian House itself for those of you who wish to remain permanently; for the rest we can set up transports back and forth to your homes. Get with the Leaders of your Houses or one of The Guardians and they will advise you if you need help.” “A list of the minutes, job openings, and all the committees will be posted on the wall in the Study by the end of the day; you may decide for yourself what you want to do and sign up. Is there anything else right now?” Andy asked. “Fine. Then let’s get busy,” he said getting up from the table. Andy’s in the Guardian ‘s Executive Offices with Wind Speaks and some of the other Board members, while Anju, Amber and I work with the Scribes and Rememberers translating, copying, and cataloging the ancient manuscripts that have been gathered. He has left his private doorway open and turned the intercom on so we can listen in case we – or our expertise – are needed. Vickie is playing in the Living Room with Pookie and Anju’s daughter Earth Song while the Nanny watches. The retractable circular staircase between our room and Amber’s private loft is also down. “Here Mom. These should help. They’ll make things a lot quicker and take up a lot less space, not to mention give us a portable backup for everything that we can put somewhere safe, just in case. I figured we might as well start with these since you’ve already translated them” she said coming down the stairs and handing me two books. Anju took the disks Amber handed her and walked over to the computer alcove where the Guardian Scribe from Pixal Sardis sat. “Gork, install these programs on our terminals and network them into all the others. One is a translation program for all known, archaic, ancient, and dialects of languages from this star sector. Amber saved it from her Advanced Archeological class and the other is a disk of supposedly fantasy and fictional languages with a decoder she found at some occult shoppe. They should speed things up. Do you know how to use them?” “Yes. You need to order at least fifty more cases of those USBs she has in her hands and a dozen or more of those portable scanners. They’ll be able to cut the time for this job by 70%. In the meanwhile we’ll take whatever she has.” We worked until the dinner bell rang then stopped for the day. The Translations are progressing nicely as are all the projects at the center. The Finance Office approved the purchase of four gross of USBs, two hundred portable scanners and one hundred Nikons. These were distributed to those working in the rare manuscript archives and to the Archeologists as well as to the librarians for The Araidean Institute, the school, and Guardian House and to everyone who worked in my office. Gork had asked for samples of any ancient, native, archaic or otherwise little known languages any one was familiar with. These samples were supposed to include a few dozen key phrases and their alphabetical breakdowns. He then fed the samples into a computer program he had developed; this added an additional seventy six languages to the database. One of the Warriors who worked in Interplanetary Law Enforcement also installed a program that differentiated spoken dialects and languages. By the time the first day of school started and I lost most of my staff, including Amber, to teaching and school administration we were over half way done with the translations.
