Sarah's Story - Segment #6

Dear readers,

You have spoken, and the winner is: Venquist attacks! (and we find out where Lassett's true loyalties lie). Due to issues I've been experiencing with the built-in poll widget, I'm currently trying out alternatives. If you have any difficulty entering your vote, please feel free write it in within a comment. And thanks so much for your patience with this process!

And now, here is section #6 of Sarah's Story, with a brief lead-in from #5 (or read from the beginning):

I know about your friend. About Venquist. I’ve drafted an e-mail explaining everything. All I have to do is press one button, and it goes to all kinds of people you don’t want knowing about your secret. People in the government, in the press. This e-mail goes out, and your little game is over.”

“Is it?” He lifted a brow, and she thought he almost looked impressed. His eyes skipped around the hanger, and his hair – which she’d been so sure was brown – suddenly looked darkly gold. “And where are your friends? Did they leave you here alone?”

“They’re safe. They have a copy of this e-mail. If anything happens to me, they send it. But they haven’t read it,” she added quickly. “They don’t know what I know. You can leave them out of this.”

He smiled faintly, and though she was sure it was a mocking smile, it didn’t quite seem like one. His head moved to the other side, and green eyes shifted to blue.

“It is noble of you to try to protect them. Of course, they are already in this. There is nothing I can do about that. But I swear to you, I do not intend to harm them. I do not intend to harm any of you.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I am here,” he responded simply, “to protect you. My name is Lassett. I am a paladin of the Twelve Realms.”

Something about the phrase struck her as familiar. “What are the-”

A terrifyingly loud screech of metal on metal drowned out the last of her words. She glanced behind Lassett to see the side of the hanger rip away from its foundation. In the space where the metal had been, she caught a glimpse of feet and a flash of blue light, and then the wall of the hanger peeled up and back as if it were a scrap of foil. Venquist stood beyond it, a grin on his maniacal face that faded when he laid eyes on Lassett.

“This isn’t your war!” he roared, and he sent another blast from the cuff on his arm. This one pushed the rest of the hanger completely off the ground.

Behind Sarah, the Cessna came to life, the whir of the propellers harmonizing with the purr of the engine. Its door opened, and Benny called from within, “Get in!”

As if in response, the light patter of rain became a torrent. The push of air from the propellers was challenged by a gust that swept across the field, knocking Sarah back several feet. Hail began to drop from the sky, one piece the size of a golf ball cutting a line down Sarah’s brow. And then Venquist aimed his cuff toward the ground, and rocks began to shoot up and toward them with a speed near that of bullets.

“Run!” Lassett yelled, and he stepped in front of Sarah just as one of the rocks came careening toward her. It sliced through his side instead with an eerie tearing sound unlike anything she’d ever heard. A pearlescent shimmer spattered from the gash and arced through the air like a dance.

For a moment, Sarah could only stare, but Venquist wasn’t done. He sent another rock toward Lassett, this one funneled to a viciously sharp point on one side, and the thing grazed Lassett’s temple. He staggered, and Sarah instinctively caught him. And as soon as she touched him, she knew.

He wasn’t human.

He felt immaterial, almost buoyant in the growing storm, as if the wind alone could carry him away. Venquist’s grin returned, a chilling show of triumph made more pronounced by the glare of the plane’s headlights.

“Help me,” Sarah said as she backed toward the door. “He saved my life. We have to get him out of here!”

Benny reached out and grabbed Lassett by the shoulders. Sarah saw the instant that he felt what she’d felt, but he didn’t pause. He pulled Lassett easily into the plane, and Sarah scrambled up after him. As soon as the door was closed, Jack pushed the plane forward. Venquist lifted his cuff toward the Cessna, and as it began again to emanate that light, Benny curled his body over Sarah’s.

And then, suddenly and impossibly, the plane caught air.

“Shit!” Jack muttered as the controls shuddered in his hands. He struggled to process what physics dictated couldn’t happen, even as some corner of his mind registered the faint blue light under the wings. Sarah looked over Benny’s arm to see Lassett propped against the wall of the plane, one hand pressed to the wound in his side. She looked out the window to search for Venquist, but it took her a moment to find him. When she saw him, she let out a small, involuntary, “Oh.”

He was on his back, pinned under Jack’s truck and pelted by the product of his own magic. But even as the hail rained down on him, he aimed his cuff toward the plane and shot one last burst of energy.

“Look out!” Sarah screamed as the blue angled toward them. Lassett opened the door to the stormy sky and aimed his own cuff, and he sent one more defensive blast.

And then he passed out.

*          *          *

Dawn crested the horizon just as Jack settled the plane on the banks of the Little Miami River. Sarah and Benny pulled Lassett out onto the grass, and then the four of them simply stood and stared.

A stream of iridescent white leaked from the wound in his side, but it didn’t quite pool on the ground. Instead, it seemed to dissipate slowly, a gentle glide of dust on the air, a beautiful shimmer in the delicate morning light.

“Is it blood?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah replied, though it didn’t quite register with her who’d asked the question. She knelt beside Lassett and reached with trembling hands to lift his shirt.

“Don’t touch it,” Benny said in a near whisper, as if afraid to wake the being on the ground.

“We might need to clean it,” she argued softly. “Or stitch it, or…I don’t know.”

The sight of the wound was even more shocking than the strange lifeblood. The cut was deep and perfectly smooth, the edges of flesh so even as to seem fake. And something about the singularly neutral feel of his skin caused Sarah’s heart to flutter wildly. It was one thing to suspect that this creature wasn’t human, and she’d certainly thought of almost nothing else during their flight.

But it was another thing entirely to be faced with incontrovertible evidence.

As she pulled her fingers away, her eyes fell on the blood-dust. As if her hand had a will of its own, she felt it move toward the stuff even as a part of her mind screamed for it to stop. And then her fingertips were immersed in it, and a wash of sorrow and joy and powerful lightness filled her. She pulled her hand back with a gasp as tears welled in her eyes.

“Sarah?”

She realized Benny had sunk to his knees beside her, and she buried her face in his shoulder. As his arms came around her to soothe, she whispered, “He’s special. He’s not supposed to die here; this isn’t his place.”

“What do you mean?” When she didn’t answer, he pulled away to look at her face. Cupping her cheek with one hand, he said gently, “Sarah, talk to me. It’s going to be ok; just talk to me.”

“Benny, that’s not blood. It’s him.” She shook her head, and a tear dropped onto her cheek. “The body is just a shell, a…a container. It’s holding him in place, and now that it’s broken, he’s slipping away.”

Benny looked down as Lassett as her words sunk in. And then he looked at Henry. “What do we do, Dad?”

Henry looked at Jack and then down at the body on the ground. Finally, he said, “I guess we wake him up.”

It took handfuls of ice cold river water to wake him. After the third shock of wet, Lassett sputtered to life with a great, wheezing gasp and his chest bowed into the air. His eyes wheeled wildly, their color shifting through the hues on the spectrum with a speed fast enough to make Sarah dizzy. Then they landed on her, and the color change slowed, and his gaze came into focus.

“You’re hurt,” she said quickly. “We don’t know what to do.”

He touched his side with an oddly slow, drunken movement. When he pulled his hand away to see the shimmer of white that rested there, he shuddered. The use of his cuff made quick work of the gash there and on his temple, and in a matter of seconds, the wounds were closed.

His eyes drifted shut almost immediately. Sarah thought he’d lost consciousness again, but after a moment, he said without opening his eyes, “I owe you my gratitude. You saved my life.”

She let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and she said, “Consider us even.”

*          *          *

Jack rummaged through the plane for food while Henry and Benny worked on building a fire. Sarah’s lips burned with questions she knew would have to wait for the others. When Lassett aimed his cuff at the river and three fish floated up out of the water to land gently at Benny’s feet, Sarah considered her restraint to be of Herculean proportions.

“What are you?” she asked him for the second time, once they were all seated around the fire with the fish crackling comfortingly in the heat.

Lassett repeated his previous answer: “I am a paladin of the Twelve Realms.”

Benny frowned. “Do you mean the geography thing?”

Weak as he was, Lassett still managed to smile. “No, although there is a certain symmetry between your world and the exoverse.”

“Exoverse. Wait…are you saying that the Twelve Realms exist outside of this universe? Or…”

“Or they contain it,” Sarah guessed, picking up on Benny’s train of thought. “Our universe is one of the realms, isn’t it?”

Lassett nodded. “Very good. Your universe is the Twelfth Realm. Also known as the Corporeal Realm, and sometimes as the Realm of Realities.”

A rush of awe and wonder swept through Sarah, an incredible mix that left no room for skepticism. “Which realm are you from?”

“None. I am a product of the exoverse at large, a being with no beginning and no end. I have only endless alternative states of existence.”

“Only,” Benny said with something akin to distrust.

Sarah glanced at him, but he shook his head and waved his hand as if to tell her to continue. She turned back to Lassett. “You called yourself a paladin. That means a protector, right? A guard?”

“It means defender of a cause,” Henry supplied. He looked at Lassett with the same distrust in Benny’s eyes. “What cause do you defend?”

Lassett accepted a makeshift plate of fish and crackers from Jack, and he bit into the crisp and flake of the meat before he answered. “I defend progress. There are only three realms in which such a construct even exists, and it is the most vital here. Everything within this realm requires movement and growth. When these things are lost, more than life dies. Ideals, possibilities. Alternate futures. I preserve the opportunity for their existence.”

“How?”

“By changing what I can. By setting events in motion using the tools I have been given so that the best possibility of progress – with all other factors considered – is opened to the realm. The Twelve Realms exist within varying levels of solidity. This realm, your realm, is the most solid, the most corporeal. That is why I wear this.” He gestured with the cuff on his arm. “It allows me to control all things of ultimate solidity – with one exception. I cannot direct the bodily or mental movement of beings with conscious thought. I cannot affect free will.”

“You’re talking about humans.”

That ghost of a smile graced Lassett’s face again. “Humans, among others. But as Venquist has targeted humans, it is to you that I must turn for assistance.”

“Is that why you sent that package to Sarah?”

Sarah looked at Benny in surprise, taken aback as much by the accusation in his tone as by the meaning of his question.

“Yes,” Lassett answered. “She can help me stop him.”

“How?” Sarah asked.

“No,” Benny interrupted before Lassett could respond. “This is bullshit. You’re telling me you’re some magical creature who can move tons of metal and heal what’s basically a bullet wound with the push of a button, you can transport out of this universe, and somehow you need us to stop one of your own? No deal, we’re out. Come on, Sare.”

“Benny.” She said it softly, and when he shook his head and started to rise, she put her hand on his knee. He stared at it for a moment, that gentle touch that was so new and somehow felt so natural, and then he met her eyes. “I understand why you’re mad, and I’m glad you’re looking out for me. But I need to hear what he has to say.”

He held her gaze for several heartbeats, a muscle ticking in the corner of his jaw. It took everything he had not to simply pick her up and carry her away, but he could see in her eyes that she needed to do this.

So his only choice was to stay with her and hope he could protect her when the time came.

When he nodded curtly, Sarah took his hand and turned to Lassett. “Venquist is one of you?”

Regret passed over Lassett’s face, clearly deep enough to cause even Benny’s heart a twinge of sympathy. “Yes, he was one of us. A defender of progress, like me. Somehow, sometime, he lost his way. And now he seeks only one end.”

“And what is that?”

“He wants to create the thirteenth realm.”