Hinn Ch. 18-21

"The polite word is 'eclectic', Ray. Perhaps more correct is scattered. I'm not part of an organized belief system like Asatru. I acknowledge and agree with quite a few portions of their beliefs but not all. As such, rather than be unfaithful to myself, I decided to respectfully disengage from their organization. It was both easy and hard, because in the whole they wished only to be certain that they agreed with my understanding before letting me go with their blessings and wish that I found what I was looking for. I've found some, but I suspect and hope there's more yet to be found."

"I can respect that -- going off on your own is never easy. If Tauriz or I can be of assistance, we'd be glad to."

"That has some specific meanings to me, Ray -- what does it mean to you?"

Tauriz answered, "That we shall try to help explain the nature of reality as we see it. That we shall gladly discuss things of this nature with you as honestly as we may, and be honest about it when we cannot. What does it mean to you?"

"Much like yours, except further -- that you'd be willing to exchange aid for aid, and harm for harm. A bit like an alliance partially based upon mutually assured destruction -- we'd play nice unless we determined we had to fight, in which case the gloves come off."

"We feel that way about any real fight, Amber. Rules in fights to the death can be your downfall. Rules other times keep you from getting into fights to the death, however."

"I can't contest it, but I have a few principles I feel strongly enough about that I won't put them aside. If I die, I die, not that I expect them to cause that kind of thing, but even if they did, they're that important to me. Freedom is a big, important issue for me, which makes me a little confused about your relationship."

Ray answered, "I was wondering when we'd be having this kind of conversation. I understand, this isn't my ideal of a relationship either even as Tauriz is too good for me. Those that enslaved Tauriz set this up at that time. We are unable to counter it directly, and may never be able to do so ourselves. Which is one of the reasons we're curious about those locations -- they seem to us to have hints that either those that enslaved Tauriz may be present, or their descendants might be, or at least there may be memories and/or legends left behind we might learn something useful from. One of my long term goals is to free Tauriz if I can. I don't have a clear path to doing that yet, but I'm not going to give up on it."

"Do you believe him, Tauriz?" asked Amber.

"I know his heart to be true, Amber. We cannot hide that from each other, it is a part of the nature of our kind of being, of how samum connects us. It can be dampened by the nature of the genie bond, but cannot be falsified. However, were he a typical Master, you would potentially be unable to tell due to the commands they are known to put on their genie, preventing them from even thinking about anything other than fully serving, fully submitting to their Master. This disturbs Ray profoundly, that he too has this ability. I am uncertain how to prove to you that he hasn't put those rules on me, other than to simply state he hasn't, and that I love him for it among many other things."

"Thank you for your honesty, Tauriz, and for your kindness, Ray."

"Thank you for your concern, Amber."

"So -- why do you consider your whoo -- did I say that correctly? -- separate from jawhar?" asked Monica.

"The one, rwh, is constant. If you live, you have rwh. If you do not, you do not. This is a truism to us, something we can perceive from the smallest to the grandest creatures. Of all the beings we are aware of, the angelics are the only type that have no rwh. There is a theory that the essential power they are based on is somehow antithetical to rwh, or perhaps just too potent for rwh to handle safely. There are tales of other creatures which live but do not have rwh, or have something else which replicates the purpose of rwh. I have never met such a being, but others of my kind that I have met had encounters with such beings. While it is not impossible for one of my kind to lie successfully to another, it is significantly more difficult than lying to another without samum. I believed the claims of those I met about those other types of life.

"Jawhar, however, is always the result of a deliberate action of a mind enwrapped in rwh. Without the mind involved, only some very few have ever been able to persist jawhar, thus making the sleeper the target of the assassin, the enslaver. Thus we have drawn a distinction between the two."

"Interesting, thank you for sharing. Our tradition generally doesn't try to persist connections, your jawhar, beyond the current activity. There are stories of the greatest of runesages being able to do so, somehow, but I've never met one who has claimed success at such a task. Instead the runesage has the advantage of the rune construct being a consistent focus for their will, helping them reliably form the connections they desire. This makes their reliability significantly greater than others when more complex patterns of connection are required."

"We do not typically create explicit jawhar designs, instead our intent guides the creation and position of jawhar. While exact repeatability can be difficult, we tend to find the adaptability to the details of the specific situation you need the technique for makes this acceptable."

"Many of our techniques are effectively two-step. The first one sets up an environment, the second is where the rune complex becomes useful as you are then starting from a common, known capability."

"That would make sense -- and with something like that, traditional markings, effects and the like all become repeatable easily, if at a slight cost in speed due to the additional effort needed in the first half. How much can the rune complex help with building the focus needed in the second half?"

"The rune complexes can take a technique which can take an hour or longer to form and make it as quick as any other technique -- a fraction of a second, perhaps a minute for the most incredibly complicated rune complex I've ever seen. This assumes that enough energy, for lack of a more precise term, is available to create and feed through the connections. Thus the slight delay up front tends to be more than offset by the efficiency at the end point. The other major effect a rune complex has is it reduces the, the draw, the fatigue the practitioner goes through using techniques."

"Given the samum powers much of our techniques, that's not generally something we spend much effort on, but even so the efficiency of configuring complex jawhar could be a tremendous advantage. Are there going to be runesages who would be willing to discuss their art in more detail in Long Island?"

Amber smirked a little. "My little sister is being a bit disingenuous. She's a runesage. Not one of the grand masters yet, but not a neophyte either. One of the grandmasters considers her the best practitioner of her generation, in point of fact, and that grandmaster is the one all the others take their trickiest problems to. She really knows what she's doing."

Monica blushed, "I'm sorry if you think I was being less than forthright."

"You have a right to your privacy, Monica. We are not being completely forthright with you either, there are more factors involved in what we do than we are comfortable discussing at this point, so -- we forgive you. Do you forgive us?"

"Of course -- of course!"

"If it's not too private a matter, is there a rune complex you can show us? I'd like to see what, if anything, we could do with it."

"Well, this is a fairly simple one," she said, taking off a ring. "Look at the inner surface."

Ray did, with Tauriz watching through his memories. "That certainly doesn't look trivial."

"It makes the ring glow, is all. With care in how it's activated, the color and brightness of the light can be adjusted"

"Can you show us how you fill it with essence?

"Very simply. Push essence into it. The rune construct redirects it until it's full. Once it's completely full, it overflows at specific points, creating the, the jawhar which are needed to enable the desired effect."

"And how do you set up the other variables?"

"That's generally one of the secrets of the runesages, frankly."

"Oh! Our apologies, we don't mean to push."

"You've already given me a large number of ideas to try. I'm not saying no -- I'm just asking you please not to pass the knowledge on without checking back with me or another runesage you trust first. Are you willing to accept that?"

"We really don't intend to pry at the secrets of your practices."

"I'm offering. It's OK. There's an Asatru practice known as 'recognizing the master' that I'm following here. That allows a master of a craft to recognize similar levels of skill in another who is not an Asatru fellow, and to allow trading techniques without requiring the other to apprentice in the normal manner. I hereby recognize both of you as masters of the art, even if you've never scribed the first sigil."

"What would you have of us, under this practice?"

"Just what we have been doing -- sharing knowledge, perspectives, and insights into our shared art. Nothing more. No commitments to continue to do so, either. It's a way to keep me from having to demand years of your lives apprenticing before I can share advanced concepts and details of techniques, a short cut on my side only. It has no impact on you that you do not otherwise agree to, such as agreeing or not about not to share the setup for using rune constructs without checking first."

"I see. We're honored that you consider us so. Thank you -- we appreciate your regard. And if you're talking about only the details of how to set up an environment of jawhar to activate rune constructs, not anything else regarding jawhar, we'd agree with your request."

"So be it, masters. Welcome," she grinned. Her happiness was contagious, and Ray and Tauriz couldn't help but to return the smile.

"So, no place is better to insert jawhar than another?"

specific spot or spots where it must be fed in for it to be effective. By default it starts as a small, flickering flame without heat dancing on the top of the band."

"So, were I to empower it, by default it'll be a candle light?"

"Exactly correct."

Ray put jawhar into the rune complex. Almost immediately, a small flame appeared. Unlike Monica's stated expectation, this flame boiled with heat. The air curdled above the flame, dancing as it was given a serious hotfoot.

"That's not right," Monica said. "Stop! STOP!"

Ray pulled the jawhar back out of the ring, making the flame fade immediately. Monica grabbed a pillow and threw it at the ring. The pillow knocked the ring out of Ray's fingers and they fell, unharmed.

"It seems that your techniques do things differently enough that I'd be cautious in the extreme using rune complexes. We might need to do something like that elsewhere. An old pit mine, perhaps, something like that"

"We can close off that space, let nothing in or out, and yet perceive it. Would you allow us to try again, with those defenses in place?"

"How good are those defenses? Because I have no idea what was going on there."

A thoughtful looking Tauriz said, "Now that I think to check, it appears there are... records. Records of those of our type using devices borrowed or taken from humans. The results were often destructive, but one we deem a hero found some way to use that combination very effectively. Unfortunately he broke oaths, leading swiftly to his demise."

"Let's hold off on trying more. Please, double check your rune complex, I'd hate to have caused it any damage," Ray said as he handed the ring back to Monica.

Monica slipped the ring back on. "The complex is undamaged, but there's an .... odd echo to it. I think I'll let it rest for a while and test it somewhere safe."

"If we walk or drive somewhere, we'll have an escort with recording devices all over. So -- it may take a while. Hrmmm...." Ray wished in Hinn to determine what was going on with the ring and the rune complex. He learned a lot of information, very very quickly. Shunting the bulk of it to Hinn, he kept a summary on all of it and detailed information on changes to the ring.

"It appears that an echo, a residue of samum now resides in the ring," clarified Tauriz. "That appears to be the echo you felt, Monica. Interesting. If you can harness the ring now, you might be harnessing a portion of samum, which might have useful properties. I do not think we should be experimenting with it though, unless it is carefully constrained or in a truly a life or death circumstance -- there are instabilities in the fragmentary samum within the rune complex which make me cautious."

"Interesting," was all Monica said as she tucked the ring into a small silk pouch which then disappeared into her suit jacket.

"If you're willing, I'd really like to test that more later when we can find someplace safer."

"Oh, agreed! Definitely agreed. And -- it should be tested together. I do not intend to test it alone!"

"We'll be glad to assist however we can, Monica," Tauriz confirmed.