Empathy:

Most common of the PSI manifestations is empathy.  The empath’s power centered on their ability to concentrate and expand their awareness, through a crystal, to “touch” every other living thing’s awareness within a given radius.  This power gave the empath a unique insight into the “feelings” of others and, through experience and training, allowed them to read what others were feeling.  Only a small percentage of those with this PSI ability were strongly gifted and afforded advanced training.  A strong empath with advanced training could easily see through most subterfuge that the average layman tried to perpetrate by reading through the surface feeling being forced, to the true feelings that were being hidden. 

Empathy:

Most common of the PSI manifestations is empathy.  The empath’s power centered on their ability to concentrate and expand their awareness, through a crystal, to “touch” every other living thing’s awareness within a given radius.  This power gave the empath a unique insight into the “feelings” of others and, through experience and training, allowed them to read what others were feeling.  Only a small percentage of those with this PSI ability were strongly gifted and afforded advanced training.  A strong empath with advanced training could easily see through most subterfuge that the average layman tried to perpetrate by reading through the surface feeling being forced, to the true feelings that were being hidden. 

Telepathy:

Telepathy was considered to be the most rare and hardest to master of all the PSI powers.  Reading another person’s thoughts was extremely difficult due to the inherent nature of the brain and the abstract nature of thought. Though the brain could be “touched”, the thoughts of the mind were much more elusive.  For a telepath to “read” another person’s thoughts, he first had to touch that person.  Upon contact, a telepath would concentrate his awareness through his crystal and merge his awareness with the other person’s.  Once merged, the telepath had to remain removed from the other’s conciseness and “listen” to the surface thoughts as they happened.  This took a highly trained telepath because, though surface thoughts were coherent in structure and form, thoughts and memories were abstract and buried below in the subconscious.  Only the most powerful, highly trained, and experienced telepath could go beyond the conscious and into the subconscious, but the interpretation of what was found was highly subjective and often suspect.  A trained liar can make himself, and a telepath reading him, believe in any story he fabricates and is the mantra that held tight against telepathic intrusion.  

Telekinesis:

The physical act of moving an object required a force of energy to be exerted on the object for the object to have an equal and opposite reaction.  The telekinetic had the ability to concentrate his awareness through a crystal and affect the electromagnetic fields surrounding an object.  As a consequence, the electromagnetic fields surrounding an object can be manipulated and excited to the effect of becoming a positive or negative charge, resulting in the primary object moving away from, or being pulled to, the charged area of excited electrostatic activity.  The object continues to be excited and moved for the duration of the concentration or until it travels beyond the telekinetic influence.  Advanced telekinetics can open communication portals and travelling portals and are highly sought after by royal families to be employed in their duchy portal stations.

Portals:

Portals were discovered by the act of manipulating the actual space between and surrounding two locations.  In essence, the telekinetic had the ability, through a crystal, to affect and merge two distinct and separate areas.  This can be visualized by the act of pinching two sides of a balloon together and melding the edges of the pinch to produce an opening.  In the case of the telekinetic, the pinch actually occurs in sub-space and has no “relative” effect on normal space except to open a portal.  The portal closes once the telekinetic ceases to apply his concentration on it. Crystals were rated form 1k, used by children for training, to 10K used by the strongest telekinetic for inter-planetary travel.  The 10K crystals were extremely expensive and held by only the wealthiest of families. Inter-planetary portals were limited to certain areas of magnetic alignments on any planet.  Neither the entry portals nor the exit portals were located in the same geographic spot because opposite influences each type of portal had on the planetary magnetic poles. 

From the moment the royal Otharian houses of Telkur and Vogdo discovered ancient Earth, their fates were forever entwined. The Otharians found the people of Earth to be primitive race; savage, uncivilized, and lacking even the fundamental concepts of psychokinesis. They eagerly look forward to the prospect of plundering Earth’s diamond resources. But greed has a way of turning on itself and the exploration is met with disaster

Crystals:

Beyond the diamond's superficial beauty of carat, clarity, color, and cut, the Otharians have discovered another intrinsic “C” within the nature of them: conductivity. This fifth C fuels their PSI powers and power is everything, but power corrupts and greed turns the joint expedition deadly. The horrific truth behind the betrayal and murders are hidden deep within the mysteries of Merlin and Arthurian lore. These secrets have been kept for hundreds of years on both worlds, waiting for discovery.

The wait is over. . . .

THE CRYSTAL FACADE, Book 2 of the "Rule of Otharia" trilogy.

Royal Otharian twins Darius and Dyla Telkur have a big problem: they know too much. While fleeing from a telekinetic assassin in a failed coup to seize the Telkur throne, they defied a centuries old quarantine order and traveled to the strange planet called Earth where they made a shocking discovery that native Otharians are living and working on the forbidden planet. While there, the twins run afoul of a criminal overlord who bears a striking resemblance to their own benevolent Grand Duke, the most powerful man on Otharia. Simply returning to their home world doesn't end the twins' troubles because there are people at home who know the secret too, a secret so powerful it could topple the hierarchy of the royalty itself. The twins soon learn that there are those who will stop at nothing to preserve that secret.

When Dyla's dream visions of the London crime boss portend an imminent threat to her family, she has no choice but to secretly return to Earth and seek answers. Who is this crime boss, what's his connection to Otharia and why does he look so much like the Grand Duke? What the twins don't realize is that they're walking into a conspiracy that involves a centuries old interplanetary diamond smuggling operation between the two planets. Crystals as they are called on Otharia fuel their PSI powers and power is everything. Assassins on both planets are on the move and their target is the elimination of the Telkur twins. Everything is connected, but time is running out. Darius and Dyla must unravel the mystery and discover the identity of th malevolent mastermind bent on destroying them before Dyla's worst nightmare comes true.