Plane of the Godless

by Peter Hartz

  “One, two, three, four, five...” She got to thirty and waved her hand, and the man came back again, and he was sitting uncomfortably on the floor. Only this time, he was red faced and screaming at the top of his lungs, an effect that wasn’t lost on Valysko, further heightening his fear.

  The man stopped screaming as he saw that he was back in the interrogation room. He took a deep breath, then pulled himself to his feet and ran, still panting in fear, from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Svetlana turned back to Valysko once more after the other man stepped back to the wall with an audible gulp, and pulled him up once more, this time with both hands. His suit and now his expensive tailored shirt shredded further in those razor-sharp talons. Then the talons tore into the very expensive anti-ballistic body armor underneath as if it was so much paper. He gasped in fear as the scalpel-sharp talons lightly scratched his skin, leaving painful, bloody furrows behind.

  “Here is the message I need everyone to hear. If anyone so much as thinks about using my family against me in an effort to get me to do anything for them, I will not be pleased. If someone kidnaps any member of my family or anyone else that they think they might be able to use to compel me to work with or for them, I will find whoever is taken in an instant, and get them back, just as I found your son, whom I have never met before, like I did the guard. And if someone harms them or even scares them even the slightest, I will make whomever it was that did it to them look much like what I left behind in that brothel in Tbilisi. I don’t care who they are, or who they work for. I will turn them into stew meat. Do you understand me?”

  The people watching and listening in front of the security monitor in the other room suddenly looked at each other in shock and dismay. The message she was sending wasn’t just for Valysko Goraya, they realized. It was also for them and who they worked for.

  Borysko stood in the back of the room, a grim smile fighting for control of his face. He was convinced that the message had been sent to both sides. He got his expression under control once more, just as the two men in front of him turned to glare at him.

  “Svetlana wanted me to say something else to you both as well. She will not work for you, because she works for a Higher Power. She will do, on her own, what she knows to be Good and Right, and she will not be stopped or diverted. She explained it to me, and then a Deity came and explained it as well.

  “Any actions she takes are hers alone. If you think you can stop her, think again. If you think you can prosecute her, that is also a fool’s errand. Keep this in mind: on the one hand, she is a fifteen year old girl. She is a minor. On the other hand, she also has been trained by a Deity of unimaginable power and abilities to do what she can do.”

  The two men looked at each other, and Ivan Tarasova, the head of the regional office where Borysko was based, turned back to Borysko. “She’s your daughter. Can’t you just tell her to do what we need her to do? There is no danger to her, only...” Ivan trailed off as Borysko tried, and failed, to keep from laughing briefly before he got himself under control once more.

  “She may be my daughter, but she is no longer a child. She told me that she would refuse to listen to me if I tried to get her to do anything for you. And frankly, there is no way I can do to force her to do something she doesn’t want to do. Did you forget already what she did in there just now? Or what that brothel in Tbilisi looked like when she decided not to be meek and play along anymore?”

  Ivan shook his head. He definitely wouldn’t forget the pictures that Borysko had brought back from his trip following after his kidnapped daughter, courtesy of a certain Georgian homicide detective. “So the reason I let you talk me into pulling that scumbag into the room and letting her talk to him here is because...?”

  “Because she said she was going to get to him one way or another to deliver her message, and it was safer for everyone around him, whether they worked for him in the business, or were innocent bystanders who happened to be there when she did what she did just now. Not to mention, she didn’t want to throw her capabilities out there where everyone in the world could see what she can do. Not yet. She decided she isn’t quite ready for that, and frankly, neither am I or her mother.”

  Ivan nodded in understanding. Containment was a good idea in this situation. Well, containing information, he amended to himself. There was no way, apparently, that once could contain Svetlana Yevtukh.

  “I will continue to work here and uphold and enforce the laws as I always have, if you will have me. But there are limits to all things, and those limits start and end with my daughter and my family.” He looked at them for a moment, and when he was positive that they understood his position, he turned back to the monitors watching the interview room.

  Svetlana had paused, her magically enhanced hearing in this form bringing the sounds from the monitoring room to her clearly, as she listened to what her father was saying in the other room, before continuing.

  “Do you doubt that I can do anything that I have said?”

  “Nononono! Please! Let me down!” Valysko screamed, completely terrorized.

  “Are you going to leave my family, and everyone else I know, alone? And are you going to convince everyone you can that we are all off limits to you? Remember that I know who you are, and if someone else decides to act, even against your wishes, I might start with you to find retribution!” The last sentence was bellowed at a volume that left his ears ringing.

  “Yesyesyes! I will not let anyone in my organization come after you! Please! Let me go! Let me goooo!” For the first time in his adult life, Valysko cried in terror, weeping uncontrollably as he lost control of his bladder and wet himself like a child.

  Svetlana looked down at the urine pooling on the floor under Valysko’s dangling feet in distaste. She set him back on the floor beyond the wet spot, and flashed back to her human form. Then a series of lights flashed from her upraised hands, washing over the hunched, shaken figure of the crime boss. His trauma ended as the healing spell healed the injury to his psyche, and the mend spell flashed over him, his clothing, and the floor, erasing the evidence that he had lost control of his bodily functions or that she had shredded them in her efforts to reach him and pass on her message.

  Valysko realized that his torment had ended, but the message had been delivered, and he looked up from the floor at the girl in front of him. She looked so completely normal and harmless, but that was clearly not the case. He shuddered as she looked in his eyes, her face solemn. It was her eyes, he decided. It was like looking into... He didn’t know what. Certainly she was not some normal fifteen year old girl—the thought was a completely absurd understatement, and he tried not to giggle hysterically at it. He was still trying to find his mental balance.

  “I will not have my family or friends used against me. Do we understand each other?” Her quiet voice was clear, and not at all hesitant.

  “Yes, we understand each other.” He said it quietly, and barely a tremor in his voice, which was almost more shocking to him. “I will do what I can with those that I can influence, but you should know that not everyone listens to me. There are other... factions, groups, call them what you will. They most certainly do not listen to me.”

  Svetlana nodded. She knew exactly of whom Valysko was speaking, and that person would never listen to the man in front of her. Still, it would have to do.

  “There are limitations in all things,” she said, much to his relief. “I will settle for your... faction leaving me alone. Yours is the largest. Anyone else who comes after me will get what they deserve.

  “You might want to consider, as the Americans say, going straight. If I don’t come for you, some other magic user will, and you will be powerless to stop them from bringing you to justice, and not the kind that puts you in prison. You might also want to have a long conversation with a Deity to understand exactly what is happening in the world, and what really, actually happens in the afterlife, to see if you can change what is in store for you when yo
u die. The things you have done so far promise that it will not be pleasant for you.”

  He didn’t say anything, finding nothing he could think of that would matter.

  “Let me get you back to where you were when this started.” He looked up, and nodded his thanks. He picked up his cell phone from the floor where it had fallen as he considered that he had a lot to think about.

  Svetlana nodded, and with a wave of her hand, Valysko disappeared, reappearing in the middle of his group of bodyguards. They were startled, but quickly tended to their duties, securing their boss and hustling him out to his car and away to his estate before anything else could happen to him.

  Not one of them said a word about his suddenly pure-white hair.

  The second officer stepped back into the interview room where Svetlana was still standing while she wondered if she had been successful. She noticed the movement, and smiled at the man she had sent on a little trip earlier.

  “Did you enjoy that? You sold it really well.”

  He smiled. “Definitely. I was a little over dressed for that place, but that helped. It was so peaceful there, in spite of the heat. Where was I? That was an island, right?”

  “Yes, my friend Daniel told me about it. It is somewhere deep down south in the Pacific Ocean somewhere. Was that enough time for you to get into character?”

  “It worked well.” He hesitated for a moment, and Svetlana looked a question at him.

  He blushed briefly, but asked, “Is there any chance I could take my family there for a picnic some day?”

  She laughed. “I will check with Daniel. It is really his private sanctuary.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. Thank you.”

  “No, thank you. You were perfect.” She turned her face towards one of the three cameras that were mounted in the upper corners of the room. “Father, I am ready to go home now.”

  ◆◆◆

  Michelle looked out from the top of the MDST building on the downtown Minneapolis skyline. It was just after two in the morning on a Friday night, and she had been unable to sleep lately as she considered what was happening to the world.

  In the months since she had been ‘raised to Deus’, as the Elven and dwarven scholars referred to it, and especially in the two months since she had discovered what had happened to her and how she had changed, everything around her had taken on an unusual appearance to her altered perspective.

  Now, the city she was in, and the entire world that recognized such things, should have been happily preparing for the Christmas holiday due to arrive in just four days.

  Instead, the entire world was gripped in fear and uncertainty. Wars had broken out everywhere. Conflict was as common as breathing, as everyone formed opinions and took sides on what was happening. And the Gods that had returned were everywhere.

  It had come as a massive shock to every religious institution and organization when the Gods and Goddesses of every mythos and legend suddenly returned at once to walk among the mortals of this plane. Gods with names like Loki, Thor, Odin, Apollo, Mercury, Diana, Artemis, Saule, Medeina, Isis, Ra, Anubis, Hathor, Sethlans, Tinia; the list went on and on.

  By one website’s tally, the list was over nine hundred Mid-Gods and growing rapidly every day, even with the requirement that some form of proof be provided. Video of the Deus in question stating their name and role seemed to be adequate. It also was easily attainable, as the Gods and Goddesses all seemed to share an abundance of ego. It seemed that every God that was ever referred to in ancient myth and legend was, in fact, real, and as eager to learn about this new plane of humans, as most of those same humans were to be left alone by them.

  Some scholars were in shock that the Roman Gods, long assumed to be renamed versions of the same Greek Gods, were actually different beings. Not that this was the most important aspect of what was going on right now, Michelle thought to herself.

  The Catholic Church had come out swinging, with the Pope making a statement that “we are living in the End Times, a time of False Gods and Pretenders that would lead us astray to damnation and Hell and away from the true teachings of God and His Holy Son Jesus Christ, through whom is the only path to salvation and eternal life.”

  After that, it seemed that almost every other established religion had come out alongside the statement, decrying the ‘False Gods’ and reassuring their true believers that nothing had changed on the supernatural level, and that these, as one Islamic cleric stated, “apparitions and ghosts of the sins of a decadent, evil life, must be shunned and turned aside from, lest they lead to death.”

  Judaism was officially, at least, taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude, but even there, rabbis were counseling their flocks to ‘follow their hearts and faith’, something that didn’t go over well with everyone in that religion.

  Pagans of every sect and variation were jumping out of the woodwork to crow as loudly as possible that because, since the Gods were telling anyone who would listen that they had been gone for over five thousand years, that they alone were right, and had been right all along, and that they were the only true religion. It was mostly met with the dead silence of no one else listening, as always.

  And everywhere there was magic. The oddest thing was, everyone seemed to be able to perform at least some minor level of magic. Healing spells were the simplest of the magical skills that everyone was able to perform, to some degree or the other. Everything from scrapes and cuts to outright stabbings and shootings were, if not shrugged off, moved on from with almost a sense of apathy. The videos had helped that quite a lot.

  Apparently someone had filmed Giltreas out in the woods somewhere making a new supply of potions for his personal stores. Gee, she wondered who that was. Giltreas had found a campsite and set up a small fire. Then he had identified everything needed, from what type of pot to concoct them in, to what utensils, to exactly how much water and what herbs, plants, and grasses were needed. Most of them were readily available in the forests and on the plains, just lying on the ground waiting to be used. Some were common weeds, and regular grasses that grew wild. The rest were found in supermarkets across the planet. The total cost of the materials needed to make a set of four full potions of each type was generally around five to ten dollars if everything was purchased. It was even less if the components were harvested directly from the field.

  From there, he had explained, step by careful step, how to make first a healing potion, then a cure sickness potion, then a cure poison potion, then a cure blindness potion. And then he went over how to know if they succeeded or not. To say it had not gone over well in certain circles was an understatement.

  The American Medical Association had come out to strongly criticize and condemn the videos as ‘the dangerous and potentially illegal practice of medicine without the oversight and constraints that such critically important things, such as the scientific approach of modern medicine, require to prevent serious injury, impairment, or death from malpractice and malfeasance.’

  That dire pronouncement had quickly been followed up by a wheelchair-ridden young man, who had been crippled since birth by Cerebral Palsy, making his own video. In it, he had made his own healing potion, and drank it as soon as it had cooled enough for him to get it down. The dramatic video had been posted only four days later, and the incredible scene of his arms and legs straightening and suddenly becoming fully functional had not been lost on the masses of people who sent Youtube.com into a tailspin trying to see the videos of the life-changing potions and how to make them.

  The U.S. Congress had gotten into the act at that point, passing the CHASM Act. The Coordinated Humanity Against Sorcery and Magic Act had been conceived and voted on in less than three days, and it promised severe consequences for anyone caught practicing magic against the specific orders of the American Medical Association. Some people on the Internet were calling it the Completely Hopeless And Soulless Morons Act, which Michelle couldn’t argue against, really. Not that she would have.

  No provisio
ns in the CHASM Act were allowed for the magic shows and sleight of hand demonstrations that had been a hallmark of the entertainment industry since the origins of Hollywood and Vaudeville, and that had started a class-action lawsuit by entertainers seeking to define the law to exempt what types of magic were acceptable, and what wasn’t. But that hadn’t been the only aspect of magic that had upset the government and the courts and the local and national law enforcement agencies.

  Gun control had been a hot topic of Democratic elected officials for decades, since the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, and before. Background checks and restrictions had been the path to domestic tranquility and lower crime, according to those who preached that society’s ills were cured by keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.

  Michelle snorted to herself as that bit of logic rubbed her grey matter the wrong way once again. It was a simple equation, to her at least. If someone with a gun was going to rob someone, would he be more likely to rob someone he or she thought might be able to defend themselves, or someone he/she knew was unarmed? And, had no one ever murdered anyone before guns were invented? The silly statement that gun-rights advocates had been throwing about for the longest time came back to her now, too: a gun-control advocate was simply someone who hadn’t been robbed at gunpoint yet.

  But all that paled in the face of what magic could do. A simple spell that just about anyone could learn to cast, that everyone seemed to decide to call the magic rock spell, had turned the entire gun control discussion on its ear. Why did anyone need to spend the money and expense on a gun and ammunition, not to mention go through the hassle of government red tape for permits and approvals, when you could just learn a simple spell and pick up a small rock the size of your thumb and accomplish the same thing, if not more? A video making the rounds of the firearms websites rocked everyone back on their collective behinds when a magic rock spell cast by someone who seemed to be very familiar and experienced with it, accelerated a half-inch diameter round stone made of granite instantly to a speed of nearly three thousand feet per second. The caster merely had to hold the stone in the palm of his hands, or between two fingers, and cast the spell while visualizing the specific spot on the target that he or she was aiming for. The impact of that much granite at that speed was an explosive combination, to say the least. The wooden post the caster was aiming for, which looked like a leftover section of a telephone pole, ended up with a hole blown clear through it that was over three inches in diameter at the point of exit.