Unraveling the Mystery

Within an hour Sebastian has set up a video conference in the manor’s well equipped meeting room. Walking into the room, Arthur saw the image of an attractive mature woman, dark hair drawn back into a utilitarian bun and a simple white blouse on the big screen television mounted to the wall. Behind her were rows upon rows of books.

“Arthur Thewell, this is Vivienne Grace, she is a literary scholar and idiolect currently in Washington,” introduced Sebastian.

“Vivienne,” Arthur acknowledged with a bob of his head.

Vivienne’s face spilt with a smile, “Nice to meet you Arthur, I hope this find of yours is as exciting as Sebastian says it is,” she said.

“I certainly hope it is,” he replied with a smile. Walking to the camera, he held the book before the lens, slowly turning pages for her to see.

She analyzed the pages, nodding, jotting some notes. By the time Arthur had turned all of the pages, she smiled. “This manuscript of yours appears to be not entirely unlike the 15th century Abramelin, though I believe this one to be much, much, older. I would absolutely love to get my hands on this and do some testing. Is that possible?”

“Could you do the testing here?” asked Arthur.

“I have access to all my resources here. Why don’t you bring it down?” she suggested.

Arthur looked to Sebastian, the larger man nodded assent.

“I could be there tomorrow,” offered Arthur. “Do you have any preliminary inclination what it might be?”

“I cannot say with degree of certainty, but some of the symbols suggest this may be a summoning manual,” she replied. “I have come across one or two similar works in the past.”

“When you say summoning manual, are you saying like summoning a Djinn or something, I mean, their lore stems from that part of the world?” asked Sebastian.

“Or something, at this juncture I don’t know. Djinn maybe, Rakshaha, until I have a chance to properly examine the book it’s all speculation.” she replied.

“Tomorrow then,” said Sebastian, disconnecting the call.

“Can she be trusted?” asked Arthur.

“She has handled sensitive work for us in the past,” replied Sebastian.

Sebastian made a few calls within the organization to make the necessary arrangements to accommodate Arthur’s journey for the following day.

Arthur was thoroughly impressed with Vivienne’s facility. Working off a private grant (notably the organization), the building was a cutting edge, state-of-the-art research lab. He was able to witness her examination. He assented to removal of binding material as well as sample of the pages and ink.

The pages are human skin, dating anywhere from about 50CE to 150CE, hereditary markers suggest of European descent. The blood is similar but the genetic code is too degraded to be of any definitive value,” Vivienne provided.

“During the influence of the Roman Empire,” Arthur said. “Translation?”

Vivienne nodded. “Some mystic somewhere wrote down what he believed to be a means of binding power or summoning forth a powerful being and containing it. There are very rudimentary elements of an early form of angelic script amongst others and there are several variables I can’t translate,” she said. “Given more time…” she left the rest unsaid but raised a hopeful eyebrow.

“Time is not our friend,” Arthur replied. “If I wanted to perform this ritual, can you provide me a phonetic translation?” Arthur asked, excited by the revelation.

Vivienne laughed softly. “I suppose I could, but you do realize this is no more than fanciful nonsense? Man has been drafting similar texts for years with the hope of calling forth some enchanted being to do their bidding. Like Sebastian said, Djinn or magical lamps with genies go all the way back to mythical Scheherazade and her tales of fancy. ”

“Please, Vivienne, humor me,” replied Arthur, a wisp of a smile on his face, he was familiar with the heaps of lore attached to such things, but his instincts told him he held something different, that this tome might in fact be the real deal.

Despite Vivienne’s hesitance, she did as bade when he reminded her of the fact the book and all it contained were more than likely ‘claptrap’ and probably not authentic.

She provided a phonetic translation, she also identified specific material components and a fairly clear step-by-step process for undertaking the ritual.

It took Vivienne only three days to complete a rough phonetic translation of the book. She also identified the specific instructions related to carrying the ritual out, including the necessity to find a convergent intersection of ley lines and a grocery list of exotic items. She made mentioned to him about an unspecified price quoted in the book.

With the phonetic rendering in hand, Arthur wanted to conduct the ritual.