by Peter Hartz
Anaradelle seemed to relax after the light had faded. “My apologies to you, Michelle, and you, Allison. But I needed to know if I was in harm’s way. I am clearly not, but I can understand if you were surprised. I meant no offense.”
Michelle seemed to be mollified at the moment, and sat back with her arms crossed in a closed position that indicated she felt a need to guard herself. Allison looked over and noted the change in body language of her sister-in-law, and her closest confidant and friend, and realized something had happened that she missed completely.
“What happened? What did you see?”
“Anaradelle here cast some kind of spell that made us both light up like a Christmas tree for a moment. I have no idea what she did, but it seemed a bit impolite to do something like that without asking.” The look she gave to the newcomer in the room, regardless of how she came to be there, or the unusual presence she seemed to have, said she was not happy with the woman in white.
Delara spoke up. “It is not wise to take umbrage with a Goddess.” The look she favored on Michelle was not happy.
Allison’s eyes got very wide and her mouth fell open at the word Goddess, but no one seemed to notice.
Anaradelle lifted her hand in a placating gesture towards Michelle, while looking gently on Delara.
“She is right, my child. It was improper to do what I did.” Nodding her head towards Michelle and Allison, her face was more serious. “I beg your favor. One must never offer insult to those who do not court it upon themselves.”
Michelle lowered her head slightly and nodded, still watching the strange woman in their midst. Allison simply shrugged and said, “Ok by me. No harm, no foul,” which caused Anaradelle to look at her with mirth in her timeless eyes.
“Oh, what a wonderful saying,” the glowing goddess said, laughing lightly. “I must remember that. ‘No harm, no foul,’ indeed.”
Michelle laughed as she gave Allison a quick look. Even Delara smiled widely.
Anaradelle looked back to Michelle, and her eyes narrowed. “I sense no taint of evil, nor evil intent, that clings to either of you, but with you, there is something that seems… I know not what.” She seemed to pause as if considering what she was experiencing. Then her eyes lit up in shock and surprise, and she turned to Delara.
“I must take leave of you all now, Your Majesty,” she said simply, then just vanished without a sound.
Chapter 21
David’s plan for Giltreas came apart pretty much before he could even put it into motion.
After walking over to the end of the area where David parked his carriage, he had pushed a small shiny bump mounted on the wall in a metal plate, next to the word ‘up’. The bump lit up, and a few minutes later, one of the recessed metal walls on either side of the small metal plate slid open to reveal a small room with metal walls somehow painted to look like wood. A metal handle at about waist height was attached around the back and side walls, offering a place to hold on to. David waved Gil (as he now was thinking of himself) into the elevator, and pushed another raised bump, the upper most of three, next to the number 2. The doors closed after a few moments, and as Gil wondered what would happen next, the entire little room started to lift. He looked up in surprise as he felt the motion for a few minutes, but David seemed lost in his own thoughts. A soft, pleasant tone sounded, the motion stopped, and the doors opened. David walked out a small ways, followed by Gil, then stopped, mouth opened for a moment as the sounds of several people cheering came to them both. He then closed his mouth, shook his head, and walked forward. Gil heard him mutter what sounded like, “Great; this will be fun.”
Gil frowned slightly at the tone of David’s voice, and then he glanced where the other man was looking. The huge room was bordered on two adjoining sides with many windows that stretched upwards to the ceiling, where a circular window showed the darkening sky. Two upper floors were in evidence across the remaining two sides of the room, with walls and doors set into them, back away from the glass half-wall that followed the forward edge of the upper floors. A wall of glass ran from one side of the room to the other, with a desk in the center, and two unusual-looking doors of some kind on either side, the left of which seemed to be opened at the moment. Behind the desk was a man in what appeared to be a uniform. But that was not where David’s gaze was fixed.
A huge rock wall dominated the left side of the equally huge room they were in, just inside the glass wall by the desk. The irregular, natural-looking surface stretched up to near the ceiling, which was quite high up above them indeed. The wall itself was reds and oranges and yellows, and had dark grey, brown, and black things stuck to it in locations that seemed to indicate hand and footholds.
Three dark blue ropes stretched from atop the wall where they seemed to be connected to round white things mounted to the beams in the ceiling. They stretched down the wall itself, where they were attached to three men on the wall. Two were at the top looking over the edge, and the other was half way up. Gil was shocked to see that the one still climbing up did not seem to be missing most of both of his legs.
As Gil watched in amazement, the legless man climbed up using his arms alone, a feat of strength that made him nod his head in acknowledgement the man’s determination and fortitude. He was half way up the center of the wall, with the positions on either side taken up by the two men standing at the top of the wall cheering their companion on.
David, followed by Gil, walked forward while watching the man still ascending. With each pull of the man’s heavily muscled arms, he lifted himself using nothing more than brute force, holding himself with one hand while the other reached up for the next hand hold. His pace was not quick, but his movements were deliberate, and seemed carefully planned out. As he reached the top, the two humans at the top let out a huge “OOH RAH, MARINE!” Their hands rose above them in victory as their voices boomed across the room. The last climber pulled himself over and onto the ledge, turning to sit on the edge as he basked in the cheers and clapping that filled the huge room with clamor. Gil was incredibly impressed as he realized that the man had done his feat without the aid of any magic whatsoever.
Gil turned to look at David, only to see his companion and Michelle’s brother clapping and hollering as loud as the rest of the people gathered round the wall as he walked forward towards the group of men and women, a sense of pride and awe across his face.
The two humans on either side clapped the last climber on the back hard enough to push him over the ledge, and he held on to the strap that lowered him back to the ground with one hand as the other showed his middle finger back up at the top two people who had just pushed him off. They laughed, then as the saw their friend was lowering himself hand over hand down the wall ok, first one then the other turned their backs to the wall, crouched into a sitting position, and pushed off backwards, coming down to the floor just after the first one had landed. He then pulled himself back into a chair that had wheels on it.
David walked forward to where the man sat in his chair, a huge smile on his face. The other people gathered around him helped remove first the strap that had lowered him back down, which was quickly attached to a point on the wall, then the safety harness that was wrapped around his lower torso and the stumps of his legs, which were missing below the middle of his thighs.
As Gil approached, he realized that he had rarely seen such massive upper-body muscles outside of a smithy. The short-sleeved shirt he wore proudly proclaimed “Property of the USMC.”
He didn’t see David approach until he heard a voice saying, “Well, now I have seen it all. Good job, Nate. That was incredible.”
The smile on Nate’s dark-skinned face seemed to freeze for a moment, and he turned to look up at David, only to see David’s outstretched hand. He reached out and shook hands with David, and then the smile grew more natural once again.
“I told you I would do it eventually. Not going to let something like a little wall stop me after all that,” Nate said, his voice de
ep and rich.
“Yeah, I know. I knew you were stubborn enough to do it eventually. I’m just glad I was here to see it.”
A shouted “GO!” interrupted them, and David looked around to see three more people starting to climb the wall. This time, it was two women and a man, and the man was not in the lead. Nate turned the chair to watch, and laughed.
The woman in the center seemed almost to be a spider as she rapidly ascended the wall. The other woman, on her right side, was only a little behind. The man, however, was only half way up as the other two made it over the top.
“Woo hood!! Air Force whoops Army again!” the first woman to the top let out, and everyone laughed, including the man on the wall, which caused him to lose his grip and head back to the floor as more laugher crashed over everyone. The women jumped off, descending to the ground, and the one that had climbed the center of the wall removed her safety line, handed it to the next person, and hugged the man who didn’t make it to the top. He returned the hug, picking her up and swinging her around as she shrieked in laughter.
David looked around, seeming to count how many people were at the wall, and he shrugged. “Well, I see everyone is here. What is this, a climbing party?”
Another man stepped over to David, and spoke up. “We were all at Mark’s house to watch the Vikings game, and Nate said he could climb it. We decided that there was no time like the present, and we all came down after the Vikings lost. Again.”
“Well, does anyone have any place they need to be?” David looked around, and saw that the serious tone to his voice had everyone on the floor’s attention. No one seemed eager to leave, so he nodded. “Team meeting in 15 minutes in the third floor tech training room. We have some stuff to talk about, and I need to introduce everyone to a new team member.”
The looks Gil got from his place at the front of the room as everyone filed in were curious, but he was relieved to see that they were not openly hostile. The room was interesting. There were steps up both sides of the room to four different levels, each with seats for six people, and a narrow table that stretched completely across to each aisle in front of the rows of seats. A white cloth was suspended from the ceiling against the front wall in front a white glossy panel that stretched from one side of the wall to the other, and started at waist height to extend up above his head. A low table and chair next to one side of the screen. It was, Gil decided, a very well built room for teaching. He wondered how much his old mage trainer would have appreciated it.
The last one in shut the door, and David waited until the stragglers had found their seats. Nate had parked his wheeled chair next to one of the tables on the lowest level. Gil called up his Physicker sight, and was aghast at what he saw in the bodies of the people in the room.
Old injuries that had not been properly attended to were liberally scattered across nearly every physical form in front of him, including the two women who had climbed the wall. One person was missing an eye. One was missing some of his manhood and parts of his guts.
Nate’s injuries were the worst, however. The forces that had wreaked such havoc on him had left their mark, but had not dimmed his spirit in any way, as evidenced by his triumph over the wall a short time ago. Still, Gil winced inside as his sight showed him the extent of the man’s injuries. Part of an ear was missing, and the eye on that side, while clearly still his own, could not see. Two fingers on that same side’s hand were gone. There was what appeared to be metal bits and pieces embedded in his lower back, and his spine was severed in two places in his lower back. Gil was shocked that the man was smiling at all, let alone climbing a wall like he had just witnessed. The pain he appeared to be in just sitting there in his chair would have overwhelmed many a lesser being. Gil was about to stand and respond to what his sight showed him, when David walked to the door and closed the blind on the window next to it, then spoke up.
“Ok, we have an issue. Someone made a run at Michelle last night.” The place went deadly silent at the statement, and a low murmur started up. David held up his hand, and instantly, silence reigned once again. Everyone in that room deeply respected and appreciated Michelle, as it was hers and David’s company that was giving them so much, in terms of training, skills, experience, and a career. To everyone in that room, including David, someone making a run at her was the same as if they had made a run at all of them, and they were all combat veterans. It bonded them together closer than family, and they gladly included Michelle in that, though she had never served. David always wondered if it was because of how she had overcome all her own personal challenges in the injuries she had faced, a state familiar to them all in the friends, family, and fellow members of the teams of which they had been part.
“Gil here intervened. She is safe and unharmed. Gil has offered to help find out who was involved, and help deal with them. I need Gil to look like he is a member of the team, even though he has never served in any branch of our military. I don’t know much about where he is from, but I have been there, and I am convinced that he is trustworthy.” A hand shot up, and several more as several people in the room looked at Gil, then back to David. Some continued to stare at Gil, however, as if trying to see what secrets he might be hiding.
“Yes, Phil.”
Phil spoke up, clearly not happy with what he was hearing. “Are you sure Gil is not involved?”
“Yes, I am sure. Gil took care of the four men who were. It’s complicated.”
Phil spoke up again. “What do you mean, ‘it’s complicated’? Who is he? Where did he come from? How did he take care of four men?” The questions came quickly, and some nodded in agreement at the questions being asked.
David glanced at Gil, a look that was not necessarily worried, but it showed Gil that David was getting in over his head. He leaned forward slightly and started to open his mouth in an offer to speak up, but David simply shook his head and looked back at the men and women in front of him.
“Gil is not from anyplace nearby. He has some rather impressive skills that I have never seen before,” David said, and Phil spoke up again.
“You’re telling me he took out, what, four men by himself, last night? What kind of skills? What are you hiding? What aren’t you telling us?” Phil had been an investigator in the Army, and it showed as he focused in right away on the fact that David was being a little indirect in his statements. His eyes leveled back on Giltreas, and the look was not favorable. “How did you do it? What never-before seen skills helped you do all this?”
David simply looked over at Gil, and Gil stood up. He strode to the front of the room, crossed his arms, and spoke just loudly enough to be heard by everyone. “Magic.”
Disbelieving laughter came back to him from most of the occupants of the room as it became apparent that his statement was not well received. Gil smiled internally, wondering if he had some of the bard’s showman in him. Probably, he decided.
Phil didn’t laugh or show much of a response. He merely looked over the person standing at the head of the training room carefully. He was dressed in a pair of normal shoes, jeans, and a shirt, all clothing that would fit in anywhere. His hair was cut very short, and other than the greyish color of his skin and hair, he appeared to be very non-descript. He held up his hand to the people around and behind him, asking for silence.
“Prove it.” The two words echoed into the silence.
Gil looked over at David, who simply shrugged a nod back at him. Then he looked back at Phil. “Are you prepared for the consequences of your words?”
Phil just sat back and waved a hand at Gil. “I trust Dave. I don’t know you. What magic could you do that would impress me? What could anyone do? Magic is nothing more than sleight of hand. Parlor tricks to confuse kids and the gullible. Don’t get me wrong; I am as impressed as anyone when they pull off a particularly well-executed trick. But I have never seen anything miraculous in it. And certainly nothing that would help someone take care of four adult men.”
“Very well.” Gil wave
d his hand, and suddenly it was totally quiet in the training room, except for the sounds of the huge winged grey/black wolf that Gil changed into, as it looked back at Phil, then around the room at the other suddenly frozen men and women in the room. The wolf walked over in front of Nate, then shook itself and sat down, cocking its head as if to see how the man would respond. Nate swallowed as the huge form stared him straight in the eye for just a moment. Then it stood, and Gil was standing there once again. He held out his hand to Nate, who stared at it as if it were a snake. Then he blinked, and took the proffered hand. And just like that, his whole world changed.
David saw the four colored flashes of light, and suddenly, Nate was completely, utterly whole again. Every injury and amputation was erased, as if it had never happened. Giltreas held onto the hand of the now-restored human as Nate’s eyes became impossibly wide, and his dark-skinned complexion paled.
Then, suddenly, into the silence, Nate felt himself pulled upright out of the chair, and he nearly fell as he realized he was standing on his own two bare feet. He looked down, still desperately holding the hand that had pulled him up, and nearly choked out a laugh as he saw the pants he was wearing, carefully cut to cover up the disfigured stumps his legs had once been, barely extended to just above his knees.
He looked back at Gil with incredulous eyes that suddenly started to fill with tears. As he started to sob and his knees threatened to give out under the emotional weight they were abruptly not strong enough to carry, Gil wrapped his arms around the larger man, and hugged him tight. Nate simply returned the hug, and wept on Gil’s shoulder.
The rest of the room was as silent as a funeral where the deceased had suddenly sat up in his coffin and asked for a beer. And none of those eyes were dry as they witnessed the restoration of the strongest, the most wounded, and the most deserving of them all.