Plane of the Godless

by Peter Hartz

Phil, on the other hand, was overjoyed. He had often looked at Michelle’s injuries with sadness, seeing the tale of her life’s experiences written in pain and blood on her body, and in her eyes. He couldn’t let her know that he had wished for any way to take away the suffering that fate had visited on the woman he admired so much.

  Now, looking at her, he fought back the tears before they started to flow as he realized that everything he had ever wished for her had come true. She was beautiful, and perfect, and whole. Restored to her youth and beauty. No one deserved it more. Well, maybe Nate, he thought absently. He reached out to give his boss’s sister a hug, a familiarity that was common in more private environs between Michelle and the team.

  Which was when Allison acted. Steven was so wrapped up in staring at Michelle that he totally missed it when David’s sister moved with all the speed and grace of the weapon she had become all those years ago. The edge of a hand scythed in to smash into his nose, and blood sprayed everywhere as it broke under the force of the strike. Her other hand punched straight out into his solar plexus, and he suddenly was gasping for breath and dripping blood everywhere as he bent forward, falling to his knees.

  Allison stepped back, satisfied that the message she wanted to deliver was received by its intended recipient. Cora’s sudden, shocked shriek split the air as she bent over her incapacitated husband, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose. Phil nodded once in understanding. Christine’s hand flew to her mouth. She had always guessed that Allie was deadly, but the proof, and the extent, was a shock to her system that left her unbalanced. She had been on the fringes of combat, but had been spared from direct contact with the forces of war that had shaped and impacted the others on David’s team. The look in the young Asian woman’s eyes was difficult to fathom, and she turned to the human wreckage on the floor in surprise.

  “How does that feel?” The question came out in a normal tone of voice, as if Allison was asking Steven how his day was going. But there was an underlying coldness to it that shocked Michelle, Phil, and Christine. Even Cora looked up in horror at the sound of death in Allison’s voice. She had not had much contact with David’s wife, seeing her at a few social company events once in a while. The younger woman that David had married had always struck her as a little rough around the edges, but a pleasant enough person who had a nice sense of style and a cat-like grace in the way she moved. Cora had never been able to pin down, however, what it was about Allie (as she insisted being called) that seemed to make her uncomfortable. The speed and efficiency with which she had pounded Steven to the floor stunned her, never having guessed that the other woman was capable of such violence at the drop of a hat.

  Allison turned to Cora, and the older woman recoiled slightly. But before she could angrily denounce the damage to her beloved husband, Allison spoke up.

  “I apologize that you had to see that, Cora. He had it coming for what he did to Michelle, and to us all by extension. We are here because he set four men on Michelle, who beat her to death and tried to rape her. It was only because Giltreas healed her and brought her back to life that she is here now. But because her appearance is so drastically changed, she can’t go back to her life before. Steven did all this. Do you understand that? Your husband did this.” The words came out quietly, but with a lot of anger behind them.

  Cora covered her mouth with one hand, horror in her eyes. She always knew that Steven was ambitious, but never guessed that he was capable of anything like this. She crouched down again, and asked Steven, “Is this true? Did you do this?”

  He was still gasping and holding his broken nose, and seemingly didn’t hear her in his agony, so David spoke up.

  “We recorded his confession of his part in all this. We know that he was being used by someone else, and we know he didn’t really understand what they had planned for her. He thought she was just going to be kidnapped and held incommunicado, along with Allison and I, while he took over the company. The men that carried out the attack, though, definitely killed Michelle, according to Giltreas. And they tried to rape her, although somehow she was able to prevent that.”

  Michelle looked away and shook her head in denial at the latest statement of her death. She still didn’t really believe it was possible for her to have died, let alone that Giltreas resurrected her. People weren’t resurrected that way. It simply was not something her mind could process, and every time she was forced to confront it again, she shied away from it, throwing up a wall inside her mind that kept her from having to accept that it had happened.

  She turned away, and stepped several feet towards the dais where the woman who had become her friend sat in her formal role as the Queen of the Elven Kingdom, glancing up at the older woman briefly, before turning away.

  Delara looked at Michelle with sympathy, knowing how difficult her life had become. There was nothing she could do to help the human through it, though. One had to deal with what life dealt them by themselves in the depths of their own mind. No one could do it for them.

  Allison looked down at Steven and Cora, deciding he had suffered enough for now. She pulled some herbs from a pouch at her hip, crushed them together, and cast a healing spell, something she had been working on for the last few weeks of her stay away from home. The spell succeeded, and she reached out and touched the man on the head that she had just pummeled. The green light flared from her hand, passing into him, and suddenly his nose was healed and the pain in his abdomen went away.

  Cora gasped as the light flared from Allison’s hand. That was not something she was capable of understanding; her world view had been shaken so much for one day that her mind simply turned in on itself, and she fainted. Steven only had a single moment to realize what was happening before he reached out and caught her before she fell and hit her head on the floor.

  Michelle turned to Steven. He was holding his wife as he carefully lowered himself to a kneeling position, trying to support her and prevent her from getting hurt in her current state, when he suddenly felt Michelle’s gaze on him. He looked up before realizing it, but then he turned away in shame.

  “Oh no, you don’t get to just look away and pretend that nothing happened.” Michelle’s words bit into him as the stinging tone they were delivered in registered. He still couldn’t look up and meet her eyes as his wife slowly came to in his arms.

  She looked up at him, blinking her eyes as she tried to clear her head. Allison knelt down next to her, and looked a question up at Giltreas as he stood behind the couple on the floor. Gil shook his head, conveying that there was nothing else wrong with her other than being badly shaken up. Then she spoke up.

  “Cora, can you get up? We need to get you back on your feet, hon. Can you stand?”

  Cora turned to David’s sister, and for a moment, the look on her face showed that she still wasn’t sure about the younger woman, but then she reached out to the proffered hand, and allowed Allison to pull her up to her feet. She was unsteady for a moment as she looked at the floor to maintain visual reference for her point of balance, but was able to stand unaided after a few minutes. She then turned to Allison, who was still supporting her hand and arm.

  “Why did you attack Steven? And how were you able to fix him so easily?” The questions came out in a shocked tone that was still not entirely level and steady, and Allison smiled as Steven stood up behind his wife.

  “I am sorry you had to witness that. I just couldn’t sit back and let what he did go without a response, but he isn’t the one behind all this. From what Dave told me, he was being used. He’s an idiot, but there are bigger targets on the range.” The flat hard tone of Allison’s voice brought a shiver to everyone that heard it.

  Cora still did not understand everything that had happened, and her mind was full of questions, but she had no idea where to begin putting her voice to them. But then she realized that Michelle was talking to her husband, and she stopped to listen to what was being said, to try to pick up more pieces of the puzzle her life had sudden
ly fallen into.

  “Why did you think it was a good idea to do business with the NSA, or with any government agency for that matter? I really need to understand why you thought assault and kidnapping were legitimate tools of business. Where did you learn that? Your father? Did he put you up to this?”

  Steven was at first contrite as he listened to Michelle’s voice as she spoke calmly to him, but when she brought up his father, he bristled and stood up. “He didn’t put me up to anything!”

  “So all this was your own idea? Or did someone else whisper in your ear and tell you it was a good idea to have me and dragged out into the woods to be raped and beaten to death?”

  David winced as her calm, even tone of voice registered, as if she was simply discussing a staffing question or the weather. He knew that she was more furious than he had ever seen before when that dispassionate tone of voice came out of her in situations where she should be anything but.

  Steven opened his mouth to try to explain. “The Senator’s aide said that you had developed something that threatened national security. It had to be brought under the control of the government so that it could be properly utilized in our national interests, and to make sure that it would not be used against us.”

  Michelle stood aghast at what Steven said. Did the man have any original thoughts in his head at all, or did he simply parrot what he had been told?

  Cora had been listening carefully, trying to find any way to discredit the claims that Michelle, David and Allison were laying against Steven, when he all but confirmed everything they were saying. Then she heard her husband so blindly quote what had obviously been a line he was fed to justify whoever had used him to get to Michelle and her family, and her heart sank into her stomach. She’d always known her husband was a bit naïve, but she’d always thought of it as harmless, and even endearing.

  It was part of what drew her to him so strongly back when they’d met in college – a sweet, innocent, harmless naivety that seemed to make him come across as younger than he really was. But now she saw how that same innocence had been used against her husband, and used to harm good people that Cora cared about. It was too much to handle, and tears came to her eyes as her emotions welled up.

  Michelle seemed to know exactly what Cora was thinking as she turned back to the older woman, and held out her arms with a gentle expression on her face. Cora took to the offered sanctuary and held on to the woman who had suffered so much at her husband’s hand while she struggled to contain her emotions and compose herself.

  Allison turned to Steven, and he flinched back from her once more, fear written plainly on his face, but she simply gave him a lopsided look as she realized that he had been used as well. It was not in her makeup to apologize, but the short single nod of her head towards him seemed to be what he was going to get. He didn’t trust himself to respond, though.

  David happened to look up at the dais at that moment, and saw Delara sitting there silently on the Throne of the Elven Kingdom, simply observing. Her seneschal stood behind her right shoulder with an expression that could at best be described as bored, but something else lurked there, just below the surface.

  David had asked Giltreas to open a gate to Delara’s home so that he could brief Michelle in person some thirty minutes before they had come through, and Michelle had nodded her head silently to his news, not really surprised at who turned out to be the snake in the grass. But she had cautioned her brother to go easy on Steven, since he was definitely not the top bad guy in all this.

  She also told him something she had observed in the older man: he was someone who believed the first version that someone brought to him, and had difficulty changing his mind when confronted with a new version, even when the facts clearly supported it. It was something that she’d quietly learned to work around, because he was a very good accountant and CFO.

  But Michelle had unknowingly learned the same thing about Steven that Cora had known since shortly after she met him for the first time: he was shockingly naive inside. One or two simple statements here and there had been enough to clue her in. She’d always wondered how he had been able to get through college and get his MBA like that. Most people would have had it burned out before their first year of college life was over. Then she met his father at a company function, and it made more sense.

  Steven worshipped the ground his father walked on. It was subtle, but it was clearly there. And his father encouraged it, all but demanding that he be given his rightful deference as head of their family, and as a very senior member of an older accounting firm that served Fortune 500 companies across the country. It was an approach that left very little room for original thought in a son that was totally dominated by the much stronger personality of his father. And while she could not detect any malice in the father, who seemed to be a good person, it had warped Steven’s world in a slight but distinct way. Steven saw his father as successful and capable, who gave money to charities and helped people where he could.

  But Paul, Steven’s father, had one foible that had upset Michelle: he was an elitist snob. His support of the middle and lower classes only went so far, but those below him on the social strata needed to stay in their place: there was only so much room at the top, and those roles were already filled. His old-money family perpetuated the message from father to son, and Steven’s two brothers seemed to be fully on board with the family message.

  Now, though, Michelle’s finely-honed ability to read people and summarize them, a skill that had come in handy in her role as a business owner building her company, put together a new picture of Steven, and with everything she now knew about him, she realized that he was in danger, as was Cora.

  “Steven, you have really stepped in it. I think you were meant to be the fall guy for my murder, if you were to be left alive at all. It would neatly tie up the loose ends left by this stupid little stunt of theirs, and place the company into receivership that would enable the NSA to take what I wouldn’t give them. More likely, you would simply be disappeared, and probably with Cora. With no one left to complain, the idiots who thought this up would have free rein to do whatever they wanted.”

  The words came out quietly, and David almost gasped out loud as the truth of her statement hit home. David stared at Steven for a moment before turning to Michelle.

  “Well, in that case, what the hell do we do now?”

  Chapter 29

  The world had gotten a lot larger, and way more stranger, in an incredibly short amount of time, Daniel reflected. In the four weeks since he had healed Jimmy’s father, he had been having the most incredible dreams.

  The first night, he had dreamed that he was in a meadow on a hillside, surrounded by stately pine trees that were so thick he couldn’t see through them. The entire open area was about the size of four football fields side by side. The grass slanted slightly down hill, and a small stream gurgled and bubbled through the center of the field.

  As he stood staring at the beautiful place, he became aware of a figure walk out of the trees across field before heading towards him. He was plain looking, dressed in a flowing robe and sandals, and a simple walking staff of some type of wood was his only possession.

  When he had gotten close enough, Daniel could make out a middle-aged man with almost black hair and eyes, and skin a middle shade of a man who spent a lot of time in the sunlight.

  He had regarded Daniel seriously for a moment, while Daniel simply returned the look gravely. Then he smiled and spoke.

  “Hello, Daniel. I am Sekur. It is time for your training to begin.”

  The time had flown after that. It felt like each night in his dreams he lived in the meadow for weeks at a time. And all the while, his instructor taught him things that greatly extended his abilities in magic. Sekur’s ability and knowledge of magical arts seemed endless. And everything that was presented to him seemed to make sense in a way that he didn’t understand. It was less like learning, and much more like remembering something that he had known
once, but had forgotten. He progressed rapidly, and was astounded at what he was able to accomplish. He made mistakes, some of them horrific and painful, but his teacher also showed him how to undo the damage of his failures. It wasn’t always easy, but he was up to the challenge. Most of the time.

  Every morning he woke up, back in his bed in what he referred to as the real world, fully rested, as if he slept soundlessly, but his memories of the night before remained intact, and the skills and abilities he picked up while dreaming stayed with him.

  Time seemed to fly while in that meadow. Day turned to night, and back to day again. While in the meadow, he was studying under Sekur’s intense training and teaching. He worked around the clock, not taking a break to eat, sleep, or even to relieve himself. He didn’t seem to have the need to. He had asked Sekur about it, but Sekur had told him that he had to figure it out in his spare time. He had spent a lot of time thinking about it, and decided that the training was entirely inside his mind, where the physical body’s needs didn’t come into play.

  Daniel reflected what his instructor said in last night’s session. He was told that he needed to go to a specific medical building in another city, and wait in the lobby until someone specific came in. Then he was to demonstrate what he had learned. Sekur had even shown him what the person looked like. Daniel recognized the man as a prominent football player on the Denver Broncos. While Daniel was a fan of the Arizona Cardinals and not the Broncos, he definitely respected the wide receiver’s skills and abilities. The rookie had made a difference on a team that needed leaders, but a week ago had gone down with a season-ending, and possibly career-ending, injury to his knee, the same one he’d ripped up pretty badly on college, the local paper had said.

  Now Daniel looked up as his subject hobbled in from the parking lot. He stood up and walked over to where the injured football player stood on his crutches, looking at the building directory.