Cleaning frenzy

My mother has been in a cleaning frenzy the past few days. I had a bad scare this morning because of it.

I had been scolding myself for forgetting the rebate forms for the hardware I had bought the other day, when I realized that I hadn't seen the forms since my mother started cleaning. I got to work and immediately called my mother, there was a possibility $80 that could have been in the trash.

I lucked out, she had saved the reciepts. But I think I got lucky this time. When mother gets in a cleaning frenzy you never really know what is going to happen.

Anyway, worry subsided and talked about I can post the next part of the story.

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22

Julius handed Maureen the cup of tea. They had eaten lunch, and now had relocated back to the bedroom at Julius’ command. Maureen had propped herself up on pillows, and was almost ready to listen to whatever Julius had to say.

“So why did you insist on explaining the facts of life to me in here, rather than in the living room?”

“Because, you will regain your energy better in here. The bed is better suited to relaxation than that thing that you call a couch.”

“So where will we begin?”

“Well, the beginning is probably good. In this case the beginning is the reality that I know.”

***

You know that I am a vampire, and you know how it was that I came to be. What you don’t know is where I came from, you only know that it wasn’t from your world.

Actually I did come from your world, just another realm of it. I came from one of the many realms that share this fragile planet.

In the beginning there was no separation of the realms. All species coexisted, not necessarily in harmony, but not in constant warfare either.

That all changed sometime in the forgotten past. Something happened that caused the world to change. Some think that the change was triggered by a space rock colliding with the planet, others attribute the change to an ancient war in which a number of mages gathered to cast a single spell. A few may actually know what truly happened, but they do not speak of it.

The changes were subtle at first, so much so that nobody even thought to record them. Then things started to disappear. People, animals, you might wake up in the morning and find that your relatives had disappeared during the night. Sometimes objects would be found missing as well.

Nobody could figure out what was happening. A person here and there could be explained away, but not the number of people that were disappearing. Any conflicts that had existed between species disappeared as well, for a time. They were too concerned with finding the missing to bother with the petty fighting that always existed.

Finally a council of the wisest was assembled. All of the major species were represented, elf, dragon, human, dwarf and the werefolk. For months they debated the problem.

The problem remained unresolved until one day an apprentice mage had difficulty using a simple spell. His master was on the council and was confused as the apprentice had successfully performed the spell multiple times before and had surpassed it in difficulty long before the convening of the council.

The apprentice was asked why he couldn’t perform the spell. He replied that the energy just wasn’t there. Confused, his master decided to investigate the boy’s response. What he found was the answer to the problem.

The mage found that the energy that the boy required for his spell was being drained away. The lower bands of energy were being diverted to someplace new.

The mage was able to follow the path of the energy. He found the missing people, and the missing energy. He also found that those people had no memory of their past existence. He tried to take some of the people back with him, to help them regain what they had lost. He failed.

Every time that any mage tried to bring a person that had been relocated to the new realm they were met with disappointment. They found that a barrier had erected itself on some energy band. Those who had innate energies higher than the barrier had stayed in their own realm while those who had lesser energies had been forced down to the new realm.

The energy barrier didn’t allow for a person with lesser energies to cross to a higher realm. When the mages tried they usually felt the person they were trying to bring caught at the barrier. The few times that they actually succeeded in bringing someone across usually resulted in death for the poor soul who didn’t have the energy needed to sustain himself.

Not long after the discovery of what had happened the energy bands started to stabilize. The energy was no longer being diverted for the creation of the new realm, so the mages could use it again.

When this happened they tried again to bring people across, still to no avail.

A small period of peace settled over the land, then people started to disappear again.

The whole cycle repeated until there were a total of ten energy realms. Each one, except the one with the highest energy, had an upper barrier that none of a lower energy level could climb above. But if you exist in a realm above another it is possible to travel one with a lower energy need than your own.

Finally, after decades of research the mages that remained alive and able found the relationship that determined who had gone where.

The critical factor had been age. Not physical age, but the age of the soul. Immortal and long-lived creatures had generally stayed in what became the third and fourth levels. Initially the mages thought that a magical source of existence had been the critical factor, but then they looked at the non-magical species and found survivors of the separation among them as well.

When they finally discovered the common thread among the non-magic species it was that the soul had reincarnated enough times to force the energy level up. They also found that no new souls were being introduced on the upper levels, only the reincarnated souls of those from lower realms. The souls that achieved enough energy to make the transition to the higher realm.

Everything seemed fine for years after the realms stabilized. Life went on, and many forgot that the other realms even existed.

Then came the prophecies.