on.”
“ You're right; I didn't, and their failures could help understand what the end goal was. But, prior to getting that information from you, we do know that the sacrifices likely involve transfer of magic from a witch to someone else. You said that they had been experimenting in both witch-to-witch and witch-to-human transfers, and we have no reason to believe they'd stop that line of thought. We also know, from a deserter of our cause speaking to Melanie that they are possibly working an angle of mind control. But what we do have from this information is that we know that they need a variety of witches, and that they need candidates to receive the magic they steal from the witches. An operation to get both those groups together is a serious undertaking indeed, especially to keep under the radar.
“ Now the question goes to continuing the time line of our investigation. What do we do from here?”
“ First, you let me at those runes. You'd be amazed at what ideas, and even discarded ideas, show of their thought process.” While Justin was talking, someone had brought a stack of pictures of symbols. “See, this one here,” Fiona indicated the top picture after sorting through the whole pile. “This is a rune to draw out air magic from an air witch. But it's missing components. They've got ones to draw blood, and they'd mix these two runes for that,” she said, flipping through the other pictures to get the ones she wanted. “But they lack an anchor rune. Neither of these is properly made for accepting an anchor, and there's no anchor rune in this stack at all. They can take the magic, take the blood, take the life, but they can't do anything with what they drained.”
“ Could it be that there's a rune missing? The anchor rune might have made the cut.”
“ No.” she sorted the runes into two stacks. “These they used. You can tell by the notes to the sides of them.”
“ That looks like more rune.”
“ In a way. It's a kind of shorthand notation for how well the spell worked. The others were discarded or never used. But even the notes remark on how it didn't end properly. Plus, runes need to be connected. It's almost like your spell is a computer program. You have the overall program, that's the pentacle, that houses the smaller objects of the program, or the runes here. But the objects will call other objects, and they need code to tell them where to link to what and how. Runes are the same. There is no code to attach any of these runes to a transferal or an anchor rune. That's why the spells didn't work.”
“ Do you think they'd have figured it out by now?”
“ Hard to say. If I could see some of the runes they were working on now, I could tell. But if all they've got are refinements on this structure, then no, their spell wouldn't work. But that doesn't mean that the witches would be any less dead at the end.” With that sobering thought, she tidied up the two stacks of pictures.
“ How do you know so much?” One of the CP agents asked. “Are you in league with them?”
“ Don't say that,” another agent hissed. “She's Duchess, and as such is above reproach.”
“ Not Duchess,” Fiona corrected, “But I am Seb's wife.” She saw Seb smile. “And both he and Justin have checked my credentials and declared me firmly on the right side. You trust them, don't you?”
The agents all nodded.
“ So what are your plans going forward, Justin?”
“ Where we go from here is that we plan an offensive. We are looking into the farms where we found Dark Order pentagrams. There are multiple owners over the last ten years. We're hoping that if we look into these other owners and other properties they've owned, that we can find other farms, or other types of buildings, where there are Dark Order activities. Of course, most of those owners will probably turn out to be human. But maybe they dealt with a Dark Order witch. We need names, and we need locations.”
“ My last-known list of
“ You're right; I didn't, and their failures could help understand what the end goal was. But, prior to getting that information from you, we do know that the sacrifices likely involve transfer of magic from a witch to someone else. You said that they had been experimenting in both witch-to-witch and witch-to-human transfers, and we have no reason to believe they'd stop that line of thought. We also know, from a deserter of our cause speaking to Melanie that they are possibly working an angle of mind control. But what we do have from this information is that we know that they need a variety of witches, and that they need candidates to receive the magic they steal from the witches. An operation to get both those groups together is a serious undertaking indeed, especially to keep under the radar.
“ Now the question goes to continuing the time line of our investigation. What do we do from here?”
“ First, you let me at those runes. You'd be amazed at what ideas, and even discarded ideas, show of their thought process.” While Justin was talking, someone had brought a stack of pictures of symbols. “See, this one here,” Fiona indicated the top picture after sorting through the whole pile. “This is a rune to draw out air magic from an air witch. But it's missing components. They've got ones to draw blood, and they'd mix these two runes for that,” she said, flipping through the other pictures to get the ones she wanted. “But they lack an anchor rune. Neither of these is properly made for accepting an anchor, and there's no anchor rune in this stack at all. They can take the magic, take the blood, take the life, but they can't do anything with what they drained.”
“ Could it be that there's a rune missing? The anchor rune might have made the cut.”
“ No.” she sorted the runes into two stacks. “These they used. You can tell by the notes to the sides of them.”
“ That looks like more rune.”
“ In a way. It's a kind of shorthand notation for how well the spell worked. The others were discarded or never used. But even the notes remark on how it didn't end properly. Plus, runes need to be connected. It's almost like your spell is a computer program. You have the overall program, that's the pentacle, that houses the smaller objects of the program, or the runes here. But the objects will call other objects, and they need code to tell them where to link to what and how. Runes are the same. There is no code to attach any of these runes to a transferal or an anchor rune. That's why the spells didn't work.”
“ Do you think they'd have figured it out by now?”
“ Hard to say. If I could see some of the runes they were working on now, I could tell. But if all they've got are refinements on this structure, then no, their spell wouldn't work. But that doesn't mean that the witches would be any less dead at the end.” With that sobering thought, she tidied up the two stacks of pictures.
“ How do you know so much?” One of the CP agents asked. “Are you in league with them?”
“ Don't say that,” another agent hissed. “She's Duchess, and as such is above reproach.”
“ Not Duchess,” Fiona corrected, “But I am Seb's wife.” She saw Seb smile. “And both he and Justin have checked my credentials and declared me firmly on the right side. You trust them, don't you?”
The agents all nodded.
“ So what are your plans going forward, Justin?”
“ Where we go from here is that we plan an offensive. We are looking into the farms where we found Dark Order pentagrams. There are multiple owners over the last ten years. We're hoping that if we look into these other owners and other properties they've owned, that we can find other farms, or other types of buildings, where there are Dark Order activities. Of course, most of those owners will probably turn out to be human. But maybe they dealt with a Dark Order witch. We need names, and we need locations.”
“ My last-known list of
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