Plane of the Godless

by Peter Hartz

  Chapter 33

  Daniel stood in front of his school locker in the high school hallway, glad it was Friday. While the changes he had undergone in the last month had been profound, maturing him mentally in such a short time, he reflected with an internal smile, he still had to deal with the reality of high school. He was about to turn to speak with his neighbor, when a sudden push from behind slammed him face first into the locker door he had just shut.

  The world spun crazily for a moment as he caught himself from falling. He heard the indignation in Rachael’s voice in protest of the action, and her hand went to his shoulder to see if he was ok. He cast a quick spell to heal himself from the results of the impact, then turned, even as his mind knew who his assailant was. He smiled at Rachael to assure her he was ok, then that smile disappeared as he started down the hall after the one that had pushed him.

  Thomas, as he preferred to be called, was the star linebacker from the football team, and a senior. He was also an inveterate bully, finding a lot of pleasure in pummeling unsuspecting kids. He was laughing with his buddies at his latest efforts in reminding others of his magnificence, when a hand grabbed his arm and threw him through an open door into an empty classroom.

  He staggered as he caught his balance, ending up next to the teacher’s desk at the head of the room, and turned with his best, most innocent smile on his face, confident that he knew the teacher that had pulled him into the room. Then he paused.

  “Danny? What do you want, you punk? Having trouble standing up by yourself?”

  Daniel smiled, and waved his hand at the door behind him. The door closed, moving without a cause, clicking closed quietly.

  “Thomas, you and I need to talk. And by talk, I mean I will talk, and you will listen. Do you understand me?” The tone of Daniel’s voice was soft, but confident and firm.

  “I ain’t talking to you. Get the hell out of my way before you have another accident.” Thomas tried to use his larger size and greater strength to push past the junior, but to his surprise, he was unable to move the boy in front of him.

  Daniel let Thomas try to push him for a while, but he had cast a strength spell along with the telekinesis spell before throwing the larger boy into the room, and Thomas had no luck in his efforts. Then he spoke up.

  “You are a bully. Bullies are cowards. You pick on and beat up on kids that can’t defend themselves from you. You have been doing it for as long as I have known you, since I was in first grade and you were in third. You were even held back a year in junior high because of it. Everyone knows you are an angry, petty, childish, pathetic little person inside who is going to end up in jail because you don’t know how to deal with others in a mature way, and you have anger issues.”

  The calm recitation of Daniel’s opinion made Thomas flush with anger, and he acted the way he always knew how: he stepped forward and swung with all his might at Daniel’s face with his fist.

  Daniel’s open hand flashed up and closed around the end of the bigger boy’s fist, stopping his swing with speed and brute force. The effort was simple, and was drawn on the skills that Sekur had pounded into him over the training sessions he had put Daniel through. Daniel had wondered out loud to Sekur at the time why he needed to know physical fighting skills when he was a gifted mage, and Sekur had responded with a question. “What happens if someone is able to interrupt your spell casting by hitting you? You need to be able to cast spells, certainly, but you will also find yourself in physical confrontations where using spells and magic to defend yourself will either not be possible or will not be a good idea. Spells can do enormous damage, but when fighting, powerful spells are rarely a sharp, focused tool. And there will be times when the damage a spell can do is not the best solution to the problem you face.” A small but significant percentage of time from Daniel’s training was dedicated to physical endeavors, both with and without weapons of all kinds. After so many relative years, Daniel felt wary but confident in any confrontation that might get violent. And after so many contrived fights he had been put into under Sekur’s training, he had learned how to deal with people like Thomas.

  Now Thomas tried to pull his fist back to swing again, but Daniel merely tightened his grip, holding him in place. Then the classroom door opened behind him, and Rachael barged in, followed by Thomas’s two team mates with whom he had been laughing just a moment before.

  Thomas continued his efforts to pull free, all the while snarling curses and threats at Daniel, who merely ignored him for the moment as he looked over his shoulder at the newcomers to the room.

  He rotated in a half circle while keeping Thomas in front of him so that Thomas’s back was to the door, to enable him to keep an eye on the bully’s two friends. He didn’t want to get jumped from behind and have to fight them off as well.

  Thomas stopped for a moment to try to catch his breath, and Daniel smiled at him, a cruel smile that was full of condescension, which lashed at Thomas’s pride. He doubled up his left fist, and swung that as well, pulling with his right hand to try to catch Daniel coming towards him to increase the damage, but it was a trivial thing to swing his right hand to his right, pushing Thomas to his left and throwing his aim off. Thomas made three more attempts before stopping, but he still was cursing and threatening Daniel.

  Daniel tightened his grip on Thomas’s fist, and rotated his hand down, forcing the bigger boy down to his knees to prevent his own wrist from being broken while causing a flash of pain that made Thomas gasp out loud.

  The two boys started forward at that point, but Daniel held up his left hand in warning, and they subsided, not sure what to do. Then the two boys and Rachael gasped in shock as Daniel yanked the bigger boy to his feet once more. His right hand left Thomas’s fist as his left flashed out and grabbed the bigger boy by his shirt, slamming him to Daniel’s right and up against the cinderblock wall next to the black board. Then he pulled him back and lifted the boy up, effortlessly slamming him against the wall again, but this time with his feet dangling six inches or more off the floor. Then he turned, and threw the boy away into the aisle between the desks like he was a rag doll.

  Thomas sat there stunned on the floor for a moment, wondering what was happening, and how Daniel had been able to get so strong and be able to handle him so easily.

  Daniel stepped over to him and bent down, and spoke again.

  “You are going to stop being a bully. Do you understand me? You are going to go to the school guidance counselor and get help. Preferably today. Or I am going to beat you to a pulp every day until you do. And if I hear about you, or any of your team mates or friends doing anything to harm anyone else in this school, I am going to beat you, and them, into a quivering mass of snot and drool and broken teeth. Are you understanding me here? Or do I have to start beating on you and your two friends here right now? I will be more than happy to, if you think you don’t understand what I am saying.”

  Thomas nodded quickly, desperate to do anything to get away from Daniel at last, but certain that he would be able to get away with anything he wanted with anyone else.

  Daniel read him correctly, though.

  “I don’t think you believe me. Let me reiterate.” He stepped back, and raised his right hand once more. This time, Thomas rose off the floor with a shriek as an invisible hand gripped him. He was swung through the air and dropped next to his friends, whose faces were white with fear at what was happening to their ringleader. Then the door closed once more as Thomas bolted towards it to get out of the room, his friends right behind him. Rachael didn’t budge though, he noticed.

  Thomas reached the door, but while the knob would turn, the door wouldn’t budge. He pulled with all his weight, but it still wouldn’t move. Then he heard Daniel’s voice behind him once more.

  “Do we understand each other?” He turned and nodded, his last vestiges of defiance evaporating like fog in sunlight in the face of his overwhelming fear.

  “Good. You can go.” The door opened slowly as if to preve
nt the swinging door from hitting Thomas as Daniel held it tightly in an invisible grip.

  Thomas barely made it to the nearest bathroom before fear and adrenalin caused him to throw up all over the floor. His two friends could only stand in white-faced shock and watch him, unsure of what to do.

  Rachael looked at Daniel in shock as he turned away and looked out the window, his shoulders hunched slightly as if in defeat.

  “What’s wrong? You won! Why do you look like you lost?”

  He turned back, and she winced at her long-time school mate’s facial expression.

  “Because I did lose. I lost my temper. I may have done more harm than good.”

  Rachael was shocked at what Daniel was saying. It sounded more like her dad than a sixteen year old boy talking, and the maturity in his voice was a strange thing in someone so young.

  “How did you do all that?” The question burned its way out of her before she could stop it.

  He looked at her and smiled, but the smile was tired and strained as he tried to understand the ramifications of what he did with Thomas just a moment ago. “I have discovered some rather interesting abilities some weeks ago.”

  “What kind of abilities? What can you do?” Her questioning was focused and direct, something he expected from someone of her intelligence. They had known each other for many years, and lived a couple blocks from each other. While not the best of friends, they were social, but not much more.

  Rather than answer her question, he asked her one instead.

  “Are you going to the search for that missing college girl today after school?”

  “I am, why?”

  “You will see what I can do then. But you have to promise me to not get involved. Don’t talk to the media after. And certainly don’t talk to the police. If you are asked, the only thing you should say is that you think my name is Daniel.”

  Understanding dawned on her as she nodded. Then, “I have to get to my last class. See you later.” Rachael hurried out of the room, her mind a whirl. She couldn’t pay much attention in class, and was so distracted even the teacher asked her about it, but all she said was she had a lot on her mind.

  The teacher accepted the explanation at face value, moving on to the duties at hand.

  ◆◆◆

  Later that afternoon, Rachael saw Daniel in the crowd standing in the parking lot in front of the Sheriff Deputy’s car, and saw two news vans parked nearby. Her breath caught in her throat as she took in the scene. There were dozens of law enforcement officers there from several jurisdictions, and the cameras were rolling as the officer heading up the search was holding up a picture of the college girl who had been missing for several weeks.

  “…So, based on the most recent information we have, we believe her body is somewhere in this park. We are going to search it from end to end. We seem to have about two hundred searchers here, which will let us cover a good portion of the front half of the park tonight. Remember! If you find something, stop where you are, and call someone with a radio over to have a look at it. Don’t touch it, and try not to disturb the ground around it if at all possible! In addition to finding Alana, we also need to collect any evidence of what happened to her, so the guilty party can be charged and convicted.”

  Rachael nodded. The case had been in the news several times since the beautiful girl’s picture had been plastered everywhere by her frantic family. She was not the usual type who conjured up such a response. Alana Monroe was part African American and part Pacific Islander, producing an exotic-looking girl that, while not a super-model, but was still pretty. Rachael had noticed that the efforts to find missing girls seemed to be in direct relation to their beauty, and she was happy that the effort was being expended to find a girl that was more average, and normal, like her.

  The crowds started to thin out, and Daniel walked forward part way once more to get a good look at the picture of the missing girl. A couple deputies noticed him looking, and looked at each other. The teen didn’t fit the usual pattern of a perpetrator, but they were alert anyways for anyone that was acting suspiciously. They were all aware that perpetrators often took part in the search efforts, for whatever reason. Then they stared at him for a different reason. He began to glow, starting with his eyes.

  The bright, clear fall day masked it at first, but then it became more evident as the glow grew brighter.

  A reporter had been speaking into the camera that was strategically placed to capture the speech of the officer talking to the crowds, and she stopped as her cameraman started waving frantically and pointing over her shoulder. She turned, and stepped out of the field of view of the camera as she took in the glowing teen boy standing some fifteen feet from the nearest law enforcement officer.

  Daniel seemed to hunch slightly, pulling his hands in front of him, then he stood up slightly, his hands going out from his sides, and the glow moved with them, to form a dome that stretched out to a diameter of nearly twelve feet, and over seven feet tall. It shimmered and wavered in the bright sun, but somehow it didn’t prevent people from clearly seeing what was happening inside.

  Gasps and screams could be heard from the searchers, and especially from the missing girl’s family, as more began to happen. Daniel dropped his backpack, and pulled out a blanket from it, tossing it slightly into the air where it began to float.

  The officer coordinating the search stared in shock at the event in front of him, not sure what was really happening, or what he was seeing, but the need to investigate was a key part of his makeup, and he stepped forward, two others at his heels. He reached out carefully with one hand to touch the glowing dome for an instant, but didn’t feel anything from it. He reached out once more, and touched his little finger on his left hand to it carefully. It felt solid, not harmful in any way, and he placed his entire hand on it. It did feel slightly warm, and it seemed to move slightly, but not because of his actions.

  He realized he was being watched, and looked up into the eyes of the boy inside the dome next to the floating blanket. When they made eye contact, the boy nodded once, a slight smile on his face below his glowing eyes, and the officer flushed as the boy conveyed something to him in that nod. Acceptance, or perhaps a look that said, ‘ok, I’m going to continue now that you’re done.’

  Then the boy’s face became more serious, and he looked away, his eyes glowing so brightly now that the light was emanating from them, almost obscuring his face.

  His arms swung out and straight down at his sides, and a wave of energy flashed out, causing a booming noise as the ground shook briefly, taking everyone by surprise. Those who hadn’t been looking at him suddenly turned to find the source of the sound and the vibration in the ground, only to stare at the spectacular event taking place right in front of their incredulous eyes. Then the hands came together, and a light flashed into existence front of him, causing everyone to gasp.

  The light disappeared, and body parts came into view floating in mid-air in front of the boy, to the horror of the watching people. A red glow flashed over the parts, followed by a yellow flash, then a green one, then a blue one, and the body was suddenly whole. Alana’s family gasped as they recognized their missing family member. The blanket suddenly and quickly flowed around her like water, to protect the modesty of her naked form, and then the no-longer missing girl’s body lowered gently to the asphalt of the parking lot, the excess of the blanket piled under her head to gently support her.

  Daniel closed his eyes, and prayed to his teacher for his help with the next part. He felt the pulsing energy infuse him, and his entire form glowed with a bright red light that was almost painful to see, intense even in daylight. His hands floated up, then thrust down, and the red light left him to infuse the body wrapped in the blanket at his feet.

  Alana woke up on the hard ground, wrapped in a blanket. She opened her eyes, dreading what she would see as her last memory of the man that had assaulted her and hurt her so badly came to her. Instead, she saw a teenage boy standing above
her with glowing eyes. She shied back suddenly, realizing that she was naked and wrapped in an unfamiliar blanket, then her eyes widened as she took in the glowing barrier around them. Then she realized she could see perfectly without her glasses.

  Daniel spoke quietly, and Alana realized the barrier around them seemed to block the sound from outside from getting in. She had to concentrate on what he was saying.

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said its ok, Alana, you’re safe now. You’re ok. Everything is ok. You’ve been gone for a while, but you’re back now, and everything is ok. Look, there’s your family.” The soothing tones calmed the chaos in Alana’s mind, and when she looked where he pointed, she saw her mother, father, and two sisters pressed up against the barrier, tears in their eyes as they desperately tried to get through the clear, shimmery barrier to her, their missing and now-returned beloved daughter and sister.

  Alana scrambled to her feet, trying to hold the blanket around her, and Daniel steadied her as she stood, helping hold the blanket in place. When she was on her feet, he asked, “Are you ready for me to drop the barrier?”

  She nodded, and the barrier came down, and with it came the sounds from the parking lot where the search had been headquartered. Everyone seemed to rush into the now-open space at once, and Alana found herself swept up in the arms of her parents and sisters, while Daniel found himself wrestled to the ground and forced into handcuffs. He gave no resistance whatsoever.

  When he was stood back up, there was a nasty, bleeding scrape on his face that the now-close television cameras both caught. He winced as the sudden pain made itself known. Then he murmured something, and a green glow came over his face. When it was gone, the gash was gone as if it had never been there before. The reporters both thrust microphones into his face as the deputies and officers tried to wrestle him away from the crowds and into the back of the waiting squad car, slamming the door before anyone else could dive in with him.