Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 453

A faint red outlined her body. I swallowed, concentrating, and her aura sprang up red. Not the bronze of a Shaman, but the red of a Warlock. Her emerald eyes widened as she stared back at me.

“It's gone, Mark!” my wife sobbed. “Someone stole our Gift!”

A sinking feeling entered my stomach. What did that mean?

“I am completely baffled, sir,” Sam replied an hour later as our inner circle met in the Matmown in the mansion's basement. It reeked of musk, and the air was thick with dust. We hadn't needed the Matmown since the Demon Wars ended. “I didn't think it was possible for the Gift to be stolen outside of the Ganubath ritual. And that didn't happen, right?”

“Definitely not,” Mary snapped. “Someone's attacked us.”

“Maybe we should reactivate the Legion, mi Rey,” suggested Desiree, Secretary of War.

“They've been disbanded for twenty-five years,” I sighed. “They're all into their fifties and sixties. The only combat-ready troops we have are the Bodyguards. And they only number three hundred.” Thirty years of world peace had negated the need for soldiers, or even police officers. Everyone on the planet was under our command.

“We should warn the Districts,” 51, Chief of the Guard, said. “I'll start recruiting more to the guard. We do have a class of fifty in training every year in case we have any losses from accident. We could easily do six classes a year. I'll have the guard doubled by this time next year.”

“Do it,” Mary said.

“Let's reactivate the Legion,” Alison added. “We can use them to train fresh soldiers..”

“How are we going to arm them?” Jacob, Secretary of the Treasury, asked.

Rachel, one of his wives, sat next to him and nodded her support. “We mothballed most military hardware decades ago, letting the materials be used for the restoration. There's, what, a plant that manufactures small arms for the bodyguards? That's it.”

“And there's the matter of transporting so many troops,” Leah—Jacob's second wife, and our Secretary of Transportation—said. “Our fleet of airplanes is not large enough to mobilize entire armies. And Boeing only has one manufacturing line anymore. It would take years to ramp up production to more than a few airplanes a year.”

“There are boats,” my son Silas, Assistant Secretary of Transportation, pointed out. “We have plenty of freighters.”

“Those are slow,” Leah countered. “If we need to move troops rapidly, that will not be good enough.”

“Master can make Portals,” Lillian, Secretary of Energy, stated. “And so can Mistress. We used them during the Demon Wars.”

“For small troop movements,” I said. “It takes too much time to move more than a battalion through Portals.”

“We're forgetting one thing, Mark,” Mary whispered. “The Gift. You can't use the Ragily prayer any longer. Do you even have the Legion's loyalty anymore?”

My stomach sank; she's right. “We can't afford to arm anyone not bound by the Zimmah ritual. Anyone else could be turned by a nun.”

“Then we must be vigilant, Master,” Violet, Secretary of Agriculture, declared after a moment of silence. “We should let the clergy be our eyes and ears. There is a church with a priest or priestess in every community. We should rely on them to inform us if anything unusual happens. Otherwise, we may be jumping at smoke.”

Violet's wife, Cindy, nodded in agreement.

“Violet's right, Master,” Jessica threw in. “We have the entire world on our side. Even untrained, that is a lot of manpower we could hurl at the situation.”

“That's a little cold, Jessica,” Korina, Secretary of Education, objected. “We can't just throw defenseless men and women at the problem.”

“No, we can't,” Mary firmly said.

*In an emergency?* I asked my wife telepathically. We strove never to contradict each other's commands in public. In the first few years of our marriage, that had caused a small amount of friction.

Her eyes found mine. *Perhaps in an emergency.*

“That will only be a last resort,” I stated. Mary gave an agreeing nod.

“Maybe we should summon Karen?” Sam asked.

“It will have to be the old way,” I told her. “Without the Gift, I can't summon all the ghosts to fight for me.”

A grimace flickered across Sam's face. “Maybe you should do it, sir. You are stronger than us. Last time I did it...” She shuddered, and Candy patted her hand.

Unfortunately, Karen was equally baffled. All she could say was, “My sight has been obscured in this matter. Heavenly forces move once more, Master.”

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