David had not realized how tired he was until a knock on his door awakened him. “One moment,” he said as he struggled to his feet. He was a little unsteady for the first two steps but fully awake by the time he reached the door.

  A young man with violet hair and eyes stood there, wearing the green sash of a healer trainee over loose-fitting trousers and a “puffy” shirt. “Greetings Grand Mage, I am Healer Diaville. Tajee sent me, as she is exhausted from this day’s efforts, and I am her best student. As I was also an artist before my gift was realized, she believes I may be the best one to understand what you did today and thus to be able to expin it to others.”

  David blinked at him. “I, um, I guess that makes sense. Come in, I was just napping. It really took a lot out of me.”

  “I can well imagine. The first time I healed a broken bone I passed out for almost an hour. And that was only a finger. Now I can manage a full upper leg with only about a five-minute rest after, but it has been five years.”

  From the washroom, David asked: “If this is too rude, please just ignore me but is there a story behind your hair?”

  “Most who meet me ask that, some more boldly. My grandfather was an Aelfor, making my mother an Aelforling. I only have the hair and eyes and a gift for the arts, though mother and I were both more oriented to visual arts than music for some odd reason.”

  Diaville had taken a seat next to the only table in the room. David pulled another chair over and sat across from him. “I will try to go through this as well as I can recall. Let me know if I need to slow down or try to expin a step further.”

  Daville’s violet eyes looked eagerly at him as he simply nodded, and David began creating an illusion showing exactly what he had done up until the moment he passed out in the meeting chamber. Diaville asked him to pause a few times and made notes on a sheaf of papers he had brought along.

  David was almost finished with his recollections when his companion asked, “And how did you come up with this idea?”

  David thought about it for a moment; he was not sure he could expin electromagnetics - but then realized he might not have to. “Do you know how a lodestone works?”

  “It is akin to sympathetic magic; the stone senses, somehow, magnetic fields and points to a magnetic north, unless something with a stronger field is nearby. Is that what you mean?”

  “Almost exactly. I essentially created a magnet, a lodestone, to draw out the forces that I saw in the wounds.” Saying this, David changed the image between them to one of an iron nail, then created a coil of copper wire. “Alone this nail and this spring are just tools. Put the nail inside the spring and nothing happens unless you can apply a current to it,” David moved the two items together and then added a “Jacob’s Ladder” electrical effect between his hands and the combined objects. “Now it will draw any magnetic material to it. Remove the current and it falls inert. I just had, essentially, nails of Water and Metal and a coil of Spirit instead of actual items, and the electrical current was my own energy. The Water and Metal drew the physical poison out, while the Spiritual poison was drawn to me without those two forces to bind it to the wound. Already weakened by the effort, that poison overwhelmed me and knocked me out.”

  “Ah! That is why you were so pale that another Healer had to help you recover!”

  “Oh? I had not known of that. I will have to thank that person!” David excimed.

  “Her name is Alyira, and she is probably our best counter-toxin expert. She managed to divert the poison into a stone that I believe she still has,” the Healer replied. “She passed out before you awoke and is in her chambers recovering.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow I should look for her to thank her and see this stone. It sounds like she used it to do the same thing I did, on a smaller scale,” David mused.

  “You may be right. From what I understand of them, toxin-takers work on a principle of like attracts like, so this is simir to your magnet idea.”

  David considered this for a moment. “I believe you have a point there. Hmm, I have a lot to think about now.”

  “As do I,” Diaville replied. “I thank you for your time, Grand Mage, and hope we may speak again at some point. I really should take my leave now, though.”

  “Definitely, I am sure you still have wounded to tend to after all that happened.”

  “Yes. The ones who we believed would recover unaided now need to be observed to verify we were correct, or to provide additional healing if we were in error.”

  David nodded and walked him to the door, shaking his hand as he left.

  Once alone, David walked back to the table and slumped into the chair his guest had vacated. He sat there for several minutes, his mind bnk and his body resting, and then decided he should exchange notes with Malcolm if he could.

  He sent out his Astral Projection and found Malcolm was not at their apartment. He quickly began scanning for his mind and found it nearby, at a pce that felt familiar but that he did not recognize until he manifested.

  “Liz would do a better job at this of course … David!” He heard a familiar voice behind him.

  “Hey David,” Malcolm greeted him. “Guess you figured out we are at Carol’s tonight?”

  David looked around and realized that they were, indeed, in Carol Bishop’s dining room. Carol was wrapping a bandage on the arm of Detective Ross, who seemed to be missing a sleeve from her top.

  “Looks like you guys had a day at least as, uh, interesting as mine,” he said.

  “If by ‘interesting’ you mean in the context of the old Chinese curse “‘May you live in interesting times’ I believe you are correct, old buddy,’ Malcolm responded.

  Liz walked into the room as he said this, said “Hi David,” then froze, looked at him again, made an exasperated sound and said: “Yet another thing to add to the list of stuff I need expined.”

  Detective Ross suddenly stood up from where Carol was tending her injured arm. “David, when we, ah, met two nights ago there was a kind of silver cord stretching behind you into … nothing I guess?”

  “Ah yes, the Astral Cord that connects my projection to my physical body. What about it?”

  “Tonight you are standing on a silver path, of what looks like cobblestones.”

  David looked down but did not see what she meant

  Sensing his confusion, she moved closer and bent down, then she gnced up for a moment and her green eyes met his: “you can't see it? Right here,” she said, and reached down to touch the path she saw as David realized something.

  As David cried out “Detective, your eyes…” she touched the path that apparently only she saw…

  Carol and Malcolm watched in shock as a bright green pulse of light filled the room and when it was gone, so were Audrey and David!