Dry for the first time in days! Thanks be to Talos and Umberlee for staying their wrath!

We sleep tonight in Iniarv’s Tower, guests of the Watchers of Helm. Selune is waning gibbous, three degrees from the eye of the beholder. The night is cool and clear.

We have discovered the source of the headaches, we believe. A disease, a parasite, a malady, spread from mind-to-mind contact with the Maiden Lyra. Her powers as a Scion are so great that contact with her has granted the rest of us powers as well. We have no control over such gifts, however, lacking her inherent talent and years of training, and regardless of the gifts it bestows, the pain is unbearable, especially when trying to rest.

I have tried to control my new powers, but they are beyond my understanding, requiring neither word, nor gesture, nor components to call forth. They happen on their own, without my calling, and manifest as strange hallucinations. Synchronization of senses if you will. I can see sounds and feel light. Voices appear as colors and the sun itches and burns my skin like a flame.

The powers become stronger day by day, as does the pain. The others claim that I awoke last night, beset by madness and delusions, intent on doing them harm, but I am determined to withstand this affliction and learn to control the gifts that have been granted to me. For surely these gifts granted by a magical Maiden must be the next fulfillment of Alaundo’s prophecy!

The Maidens have lent me all their books of spells and lore to peruse and study. Without prompting. This, plus my synesthized visions, must surely mean that I was meant to complete the synchrotization of their magical arts into a new fabric of arcane lore.

I found this line in the book gifted to the Lady Frantiska by her mentor, the Simbul of Aglarond, which has perplexed me:

“Because it has been discovered that Toril does not revolve about the sun and does not rotate on an axis; because the “stars” have been found to be lights only a few miles away; because almost every pronouncement from this hall of learning issued since its corner-stone was so solemnly laid has been a mistake, a joke, an error or a hoax — the older and more susceptible of the professors who once played whilst here in the shadow of the refracting telescope have gone away to die of chagrin while the younger of us take a short trip to what we have so often jokingly referred to as “the constellation Orion”. Back in thirty days."

What can this mean? The world rotates? Revolves around the sun? The passage was buried amidst spells for calling lights and tracing trajectories of missiles. Has the arcane science by a process of maniacal exclusion of telltale data, of telltale phenomena, foisted an algebraic Mother Goose upon the world in the name of astronomy?

This night, alone, I turned back to the beginning and read this vigorous and astonishing book straight through, and then re-read it for the pleasure it gave me in the way of its writing and in the substance of what it told. The Magistrum, Doré, should have illustrated it, I thought. Here indeed was a “brush dipped in earthquake and eclipse”; though the wildest mundane earthquakes are but earthquakes in teapots compared to what goes on in the visions conjured up before us by the Simbul. For she deals in nightmare, not on the planetary, but on the constellation scale, and the imagination of one who staggers along after her is frequently left gasping and flaccid.

To think such a book was given freely to her student.

Regarding my topic of last night. This book also includes some keys to the art of teleporation. This diagram, for instance. And these words.

Charge your physical body with energy.

Then close your eyes and see your visual body standing in front of you.

Then construct a Portholes like you learnt in the section on Portal¹ in front of your visual body.

Then visualize that your energy is blending with your visual body.

Next focus your mind on traveling a distance of one kilometre from where you are.

Then see your visual body walking into the Portal.

Next see the Portal opening one kilometre away from where you started and see your visual body walking out of the Portal

Then walk back into the Portal and back out to your starting point.
Remember Practice this exercise by expanding the distance but always make sure you can do this one before moving on.

¹ I had to look this up for, even reading it through thrice, the science of the Simbul is hard to comprehend:
“A Portal is a wormhole of energy made within the light matrix of the physical plain. We can make Portal from the chakra energy, prana energy, and kundalini energy found at the base of the spine and merkaba energy found in the light matrix of the physical body and auric field. Portals can be used in Time travel, Interstellar travel, Dimensional travel and Blank Slate Technology.”

With the aid of a clairvoyant or scrying pool, a mage can choose a target, be it people or objects, and cast a teleportation spell to bring them to the mage. The stronger the mage, the larger the objects can be, and they can be brought over larger distances. Still, this technique requires at least one very strong mage or wizard. Notable examples of this include Seles and Prazac’s wizards rescuing the Surface Explorers from the Tower of Magi disaster and Rentar-Ihrno’s fortress, respectively.

Those notes that Lyra has from her mother include the following useful incantation, but not a complete spell of teleporation.

“Interanimam etcorpusobligare, ut transferrent regnumper aliumanimum. Etmitte tehincrealitastempusconteram.”

Cross-referencing the many tomes now available, I found this interesting gesture highlighted in the Book of Finnot. Again, for wand or hand, this gesture inscribes spells of quick exit, not gateways between worlds, but between points in the same world. As Finnot so wisely wrote:

“Fleeing in the face of danger is sometimes the wisest—and the bravest—course of action. This spell allows you to do just that, no matter how many walls stand between you and freedom. Note that the sheer speed and intensity of the translocation process makes it unsuitable for long-distance travel. It will, however, reliably extricate you from any cave, maze, dungeon, or gingerbread house that you happen to blunder into.”

The black lines, here, describe the bending and folding of space. This must be a singular fluid gesture. The red line, again, describes the breaking of that space, punching a hole from one point to the next.