Angus showed Erameya into the tower that was made for his grandfather when the castle was constructed. The tower was constructed with more magical runes and shields than the rest of the keep to make it strong enough for a large dragon to land on top. It had rooms and aeries made especially for the dragons. There was a large lawn where a dragon could bask in the sun. The tower was opulently decorated with precious metals and gemstones. The floors were covered with a plush carpets, exquisite tiles, and a variety of woods, each room had a different feel to it. The entry hall was white and gold. The tiles were white with golden inlays, the walls were some kind of white carpet and the ceiling was gold with white trim. There was a large golden dragon in the center of the room. The chairs were white velvet. The tables were a golden wood and the trays were white porcelain.

  “Is this Lebanon Cedar?” Erameya asked as they walked past a table.

  “It is. Grandfather brought it back when one of my great uncles was captured by a Babylonian. He burned the hanging gardens and stole a cedar tree.”

  “Erameya, come in here.” Laird Tokavaig called from a breakfast room. They walked in to see Laird Tokavaig and master Gareth dinking whiskey.

  “My dear, what are you doing here?” Master Gareth asked.

  “Can’t you feel it? She has broken into the spiritual refinement. Her spiritual nodes are even slightly open. “Tell me what happened.”

  Erameya looked at Laird Tokavaig , and then at Angus and back to Laird Tokavaig.

  “Angus, I need you to run to the library and get a book for me. It is called The First Babylonian Scholar. It is bound in red leather.”

  Angus nodded at his grandfather and left the room.

  “Now tell me before the boy realizes that that book is in mt study.”

  “Is it one of the ones you stole from the library of Alexandrea?”

  “Yes, but do let Erameya tell us what happened before she cannot.”

  “I was meditating and going over my cultivation again when I found my spiritual rivers. I learned that in order to do spiritual cultivation I have to do it as Amy Westfield and not as Princess Erameya. I can add the spiritual mana to my core but my rivers for my spirit and body are entirely different. Is this normal?”

  “No. You are two very different people. One of you is a thirty-four-year-old female from a different time and reality; the other is a teenage princess who had a congenital illness, but is now healthy and strong. Even if you were just one person, you would have a very difficult time adjusting to your new reality. As a combination of two entities, you have much more to adjust to.”

  “Then why summon a different spirit into the princess and not her own?”

  “I couldn’t let the princess die of the curse of kings.” Master Gareth said. “If I had summoned her back into her body, the illness would have still been there. A new spirit wouldn’t have the same markers as the original. Your body is healed, you have a much stronger grasp on magic, and you have all of your memories as well as hers. The problem I had, as a kid, was not having the same emotions.”

  “I remember how much she loved Aunt Elfie, and I know I will learn to love her too. I felt a pull toward Ailish and Logi, even before I went to the stables. I remember missing my parents but I do, somehow, miss Logi. It’s like my feelings for people are missing but not my feelings for animals. I think it is may agriculture skill but how do I know?”

  “You cannot. I think if you look closely in the mirror you, will notice that your eyes are those of Amy, not Erameya. I saw, the first time I saw you, that your eyes were different. It’s not the shape or the color more the glint. I think you have other features and characteristics that have blead through. but I didn’t know the child.”

  “If you folks are done talking about thing you don’t want me to know, here is your book.” Angus said as he walked into the room.

  “I was wondering if we should just tell him. If he can be relied upon to keep our secrets, and he is spending enough time with us, will he not just figure it out anyway?”

  “No. No possibility.” Laird Tokavaig shook his head. “But if you tell him or not is up to you. I trust him.”

  “Master Gareth?”

  “I trust him, he’s arrogant enough to keep our secrets.”

  “Do you want to know?”

  “I think so, will it crack my brain?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Tell me and I’ll let you know when I’ve had enough.”

  “I was born January 12, 1990, as Amy Westfield. In April 2023 I was hit by a car and killed. My next memory was waking up with a little girl’s memories in a world of magic. We had magical things like cellphones and internet. We waisted a lot of time with movies and computer games. I had a collage education and a job as a mechanical engineer. Our clothing was comfortable and easy to put on, for the most part. There was a lot of good and a lot that could be improved. I used meditation and yoga to relax myself and that apparently gave me a dangerous jumpstart to meditation.”

  “You skipped at least one important point, but why are you in Princess Erameya’s body?”

  “Master Gareth summoned me.”

  “And how did you know how to do that or that it was possible. “

  “When I was six years old, I was kidnaped by some rebels that were trying to get my father to do something he was morally opposed to. My father was a dragon, a god level dragon who when he was in his dragon form was, I’d guess, about thirty miles long. He told me that as a dragon gets higher in cultivation his body grows and becomes more pure. My kidnapers crushed my nodes and killed me. My father didn’t want me to enter back into that damaged body so he found your grandfather, who was playing farmer, and gave him knowledge of how to summon a spirit. The Farmer he was working with had a little boy with a backwards heart. He died. Had your grandfather summoned his spirit back into his body the boy would still have been sick. Just like Erameya would have still been sick if I’d summoned her spirit. So, he summoned me. I knew your father was a dragon but Gareth didn’t. Thankfully, I was only six, and Gareth was only four. Erameya has two much longer lives to braid together. Her lives were even more different than mine. There were no dragons in her world. Any questions?”

  “Thousands.”

  “Good,” Erameya grimaced, “Laird Tokavaig, is the problem with my rivers being separate going to hurt me overall?”

  “If they stay separate too long. You need to accept both your former self and your current self. Fully accept, then braid. You will never be able to merge the two lives but you if can braid the pain of Erameya’s life with the loss in your life, incorporating all the love and joy in each you had, you will eventually have a rope you can use as a cultivation guide. Your rivers are not in tubes but more like electrical impulses. You need guides but not tunnels. When you are whole, you will have many different colors if wire in your rope. Does this make any sense? I am trying to use examples you will relate to.”

  “It does, thank you.”

  “Grandfather, is the farm you were working on, Grandmother’s old neighbor?”

  “Yes. He never knew I had magic. Even more than her. We remained good friends until he died. His wife knew I was a dragon, and used to blackmail me with it, but was so grateful when I married Eilean, that she never told him. I have never met anyone who hated magic as much as he did.”

  “You have been to my world. There were several times in our history where all witches were burned, and in our fairytales, princesses were always being rescued from a dragon who the prince had to kill.”

  “Sounds exhausting, having to kill all the princes.” Laird Tokavaig wrinkled his nose.

  Angus laughed, “After what Master Gareth just told us? I wonder how a human killed a dragon.”

  “In the fairytales they used cunning and knowledge but the dragon in the stories were never as mammoth as Master Gareth’s father.” Erameya laughed.

  “Why fairytales?”

  “Fairytales were stories with fairies in them. The term was used for any fictional story.”

  “You didn’t have Faries?”

  “As far as I am aware we had little to no actual magic. Magical beings, gods, undead, shifters, they were fodder for stories. I don’t know of many people who actually believed in any of it. I think there were some true believers in some of the religions, but so many people went to church out of habit not belief.”

  “You said you had magical items like cellphones?”

  “The magic of technology. They were a very convenient means of communication that used radio frequency to send your voice form one device to another.”

  “Stop.” Laird Tokavaig laughed, “if you try to tell the boy about your world his brain will explode. Now I could use a hamburger and a strawberry milkshake with a side of fries. Food is the real magic of your world.”

  “You are such a man. I miss cloths and technology and you want the food? Food can be made it this place. I don’t know how to make buns, but I bet the cooks can figure it out. As for ground beef and vegetables, you eat beef and make sausage, so grind the beef, slice the vegetables, and put them on the bun.”

  “Mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, and cheese.”

  “Mayonnaise is oil, eggs, and acid whipped together. With magic a blending device shouldn’t be hard to make. Ketchup is tomatoes, vinegar, sweetener, and spices, and mustered is ground mustard seed, vinegar, with spices. Cheese is a longer process but you can use milk in a goats stomach and make some okay cheese by letting it cure. The generally accepted method is to let a baby goat drink until the stomach is full and killing it . you then take the stomach and tie it off.”

  “I want cheddar cheese.”

  “Then make refined rennet.”

  “You will have to help me.”

  “I will. I need google. I could search how to make cheddar cheese.”

  “I will go to your world and get the recipes I want, after you become stable.”

  “Deal.”

  “Will you two let the rest of the class in on the secrets?”

  “You will have to taste it once we perfect it.”

  “Are you telling me all of this is for food?”

  “Unhealthy food.”

  “Really?” Angus rolled his eyes.

  “Yes, ”Erameya shrugged. “I would prefer, socks, shoes, and jeans. Rubber. Rubber trees. This world could make rubber! With the possibility of flight, we could have someone farm rubber trees, harvest the latex, and make into rubber thread. The weavers could then weave elastic and socks!”

  “You would be loved by all if you invented rubber.”

  “Stop! Please, you’ll make my brain explode.”

  “We may, at that. Erameya, will you show me your screen?”

  “Why does your demographics extended show your weight, height, eye color, and hair color, and mine not?”

  “Maybe the system thinks you are arrogant enough. Honestly. I believe it has more to do with what you wanted and expected the system to show.”

  Laird Tokavaig steepled his fingers in thought. “your core is now three. You are not finished with spiritual refinement, so I don’t think it has to do with cultivation. I could do with size or refinement.”

  Erameya focused on the word core and thought that if this were a game she could right click and have the stat explained.

  A small screen overlayed the main screen.

  Core:

  You now have a core instead of a mana pool for mana storage. Your core is able to store much more mana than a pool. ‘Core 1” is a one-to-one ratio. ‘Core2’ is a two-to-one ratio. ‘Core 3’ is a three-to-one ratio. E.G. if your mana capacity is 120 and your core is two, if there is 20 points of mana in your rivers, your total mana would be 220 if you had a mana pool.

  “Could you be more wordy and vague? Basically, the number represents the multiplier for core density.”

  “You do realize that your mana stored is over 400?”

  “Yes, and my mana pool would be about 1800. I don’t know of any way to see how much of the stored mana is in my rivers and how much is in the core.”

  “What matters is conservation.”

  “Your cultivation looks good. I am glad to see you are grinding open these nodes not smashing them open. When you get to ninety percent open you need to spend the rest of your cultivation in my molting room. The last part of spiritual purification is body purification. You want that to only happen when you are naked in a molting chamber. If you feel your body is going to start its cleansing, stop cultivating, and get here as quickly as possible. You do not want to touch anything once you start molting.”

  “Thank you. I have a long list of royal duties to attend to tomorrow. Master Gareth, will you teach me potion making if you have time after court? I have martial arts training mid-afternoon.”

  “I’ll make time.”

  “If it is your wish, I’d like to be in court with you.”

  “Please. I have so much fear of making a mistake and ruining someone’s life. The amazing thing is both of me fear this.”

  “You are the leader, your job is to make decisions others have to live with. Making ones you can live with too? That is more tricky. You have to follow your heart.”

  Erameya was up early. When Delphy came to help her dress, she had a pair of leather leggings with all the pockets she wanted and the closure was a zipper and snap. Once she was dressed in her tunic and leggings, she sat in the lotus position to meditate and cultivate, after about half an hour she did her yoga. By the time Delphy came to help her dress for court, she had had breakfast, gone running on the track around the training field, checked on her animals and bathed. She was grateful for Delphy’s chatter as she helped her dress and combed her hair. Delphy disapproved strongly about her putting her leggings on under her shift. She smiled as Delphy berated her. Anything to distract her from the day ahead.

  As she finished getting ready, there was a light knock at the door. “Erameya? Would you like to walk down with me?” Aunt Elfie asked, “I know how much you dislike court days.”

  “That would be fantastic. Is Laird Tokavaig here?”

  “He is seated in the throne room.”

  “Thank you. We had better go and do our duties.”

  After hours of listening and talking, pandering and domineering, judging and sentencing, Erameya was striving to pay attention to a farmer as she went on and on about how her neighbor stealing life from her plants with his magic, and how his farm was beautiful and green while her farm was dry and brown.

  “My first question is, do you irrigate?”

  “No, it rains enough for my oats.”

  “Is your ground too wet or too dry? There can be any number of reasons two farms next to each other have different crop yield. Is your neighbor here?”

  “He is. Hugh, get up here.”

  “Yes…” Erameya paused as she accidently identified the person standing.

  “Mr. McGilius, approach,” Erameya beckoned him forward. “Are you a druid?”

  “Aye, M’lady. I am a member of the local grove.”

  “Mr. McGilius, do you irrigate your land?”

  “I irrigate or drain as needed to keep perfect growing conditions. I also feed life energy into my plants to speed up the growing prosses.”

  “And how do you do that?”

  “I sing to the seeds as I plant them. I sing to them as I weed. I sing to them while I water. I sing to them while I harvest. I will, once in a while, let life energy flow directly from me into a plant. My skill is song.”

  Eamey nodded and looked around for Andrew. She needed to ask Angus before she proceeded with the explanation she wanted to give. She found Andrew in the back where he was supposed to stand, but when she met his eyes, her identify skill activated.

  Her identify skill shocked her with the revelation, Erameya lost control and started to draw in copious amounts of mana. As he turned to leave, she threw a three-inch rubber ball of magic at his head. It hit his temple and knocked him unconscious. She forced herself to breathe deeply, and realized Laird Tokavaig, Master Gareth, and Angus were all touching her trying to get her attention. She stopped drawing in mana.

  “Duncan? Will you remove and restrain him? I will see to him when we are finished up here.” Erameya noticed the stunned faces of her court and smiled tentatively. “I beg your pardon, I just realized he was the spy I was warned of.

  “Mrs.? In all the excitement I have forgotten your name. Would you kindly remind me?”

  “Mrs. Hently. Most call me Farmer Hently.”

  “And which do you prefer?”

  “Mrs. Hently.”

  “Great, Mrs. Hently, did you see and or feel what just happened?”

  “Both, My Lady.”

  “Good. That was magic. I took the energy out of the air to the extent that everyone

  could feel it. Druidry is different. Prince Angus, may I tell her what you told me?”

  “Yes, your highness.” Angus bowed his head towards her. He, Master Gareth, and Laird Tokavaig were all still hovering behind her.

  “Rub your hands together in front of your stomach until they are hot. Now focusing only on your palms, pull your hands apart and push them back together. What did you feel.”

  “The air was a little thick when I was trying to push my hands together.”

  “That is life energy. Did it come from inside you or from the world around you?”

  “Inside.”

  “Your neighbor is a druid. They use life energy, not magic. Maybe you should ask him to show you how he cultivates instead of being angry and blaming everything on him.”

  “I will, thank you.” Mrs. Hently smiled and curtseyed.

  “I need the room cleared now. Any supplicants I didn’t get to, I will see on my next court day. Do inform Duncan of your name and basics of your problem before you leave, so I can talk to you first.

  “Guards, take me to where my former steward is being held.”

  After they left the throne room Erameya nearly collapsed onto Laird Tokavaig. He held one arm and Angus had the other.

  “Check your character sheet.” Laird Tokavaig whispered.

  “I have way too much mana, I have been trying to compress it into my core but I am too worked up.”

  “Push it into your leggings.”

  “Magical leggings? How did you know I was wearing leggings?”

  “You’re you.”

  Erameya put her hands in the slits in the side of her dress made for reaching her coin purse. She placed her hands on her new leather leggings and pushed her magic into them. She continued feeling it go into her socks, shoes, chemises, drawers, and her dress. Even her belt and the little jewelry was filled with magic. She pulled her hands out, of her dress slits, and stumbled. Catching herself against Angus’ thigh, her hand landed on his new leather trousers for support. Once all of his clothes were filled with mana, she felt a little better. “I am, I believe down almost to my full mana capacity.”

  “What did you do to my clothes?”

  “I don’t know. I was just expending mana.”

  “You had better look at them with your screen.”

  Trousers, Magical:

  Self-Healing

  Self-Cleaning

  Minor Adjustments

  Durability increased

  Flexibility increased

  “They are just better.” Erameya tried to smile but was still overwhelmed with magic.

  “Master Gareth, do you happen to have a potion on you?”

  “A minor healing potion.”

  “Give it to her, she can fill it with all the mana she can fit into it.”

  Master Gareth handed the vial to Erameya. She pushed as much mana as it could hold into it. Mana not only flowed into the potion, but into the bottle and cork.

  Unbreakable Glass:

  Glass cannot be broken even when dropped or crushed.

  Infinite Cork:

  Cork will fit most receptacles it is placed in.

  Cork can only be removed with will.

  Healing potion, Major:

  Will heal any wound before death.

  Will heal most illnesses.

  Erameya smiled. “Give this to Abner, it will heal the wound even Laird Tokavaig could not. You will have to use will to pull the cork.”

  “Thank you, and how are you?”

  “Better, let us go see our spy.”