Sarah's Story - Segment #7

Dear readers,

I must say, I was surprised at this week's vote. I was sure you'd want to see the exoverse, but that wasn't the case. And, as always, the readers' vote rules. So, here is this week's post, where Lassett teachers Sarah how to use the silver cuff. Enjoy! 

Segment #7 starts here with a brief lead-in from #6 (or read from the beginning):

“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.”

Sarah frowned. “The thirteenth realm…. He wants to create another universe?”

Lassett shifted against the tree trunk, feeling with some discomfort how the living shell he embodied digested and used the fuel he’d consumed. “There is a story among our kind that such a thing will happen. That a paladin will gain too much power and control, and that wielding that power, he will produce such possibilities as cannot be contained within the current realms. That these possibilities will have nowhere to go but out and will by necessity coalesce and then burst forth, generating a new and wholly different realm.”

Sarah lifted a brow. “That doesn’t sound like a real thing.”

Lassett smiled again. “It is…a myth, I believe you would say. A reminder to those of us who guard progress that the product of our work might be beyond anything we’ve ever considered or experienced. A warning to tread lightly, to know always that we influence something far greater than ourselves. But, above all, it is a reminder to not interfere once we’ve set events in motion, for progress has its own end, and it is not for us to judge the value of that end.”

“And Venquist took that story to heart? He believes that he’s going to be the paladin to create the thirteenth realm.”

“And that’s why the wars,” Benny realized, intrigued despite himself. “He thinks that in order to create these uncontainable possibilities, he has to start with wide-scale events. And nothing gets lots of people involved quite like a war.”

Lassett nodded somberly. “Wars are the most evocative of events, to be used sparingly and only when a lack of war limits possibilities to the extent that progress is not only halted, but reversed.”

“Wait,” Henry cut in, voice rough and hands trembling. “You all start wars?”

Lassett’s eyes shifted rapidly in color, blue then green, green then brown, brown then gold then black then blue then green. And Sarah realized that underlying that change in appearance was a sorrow few humans could emulate. It was the sorrow of a being that had sent thousands, if not millions, of men to their deaths. Even if that act was for the greater good, for an overarching purpose that transcended the life of one person, it came with a toll so huge as to send the payer into irreparable moral debt.

“I have started wars,” Lassett confirmed, but the words were unnecessary. His face had said it all.

Though she wasn’t entirely sure he deserved it, Sarah couldn’t quell the sympathy she felt for Lassett. And so when she changed the subject, it was as much an act of mercy as an attempt to facilitate progress of their own.

“How do we stop Venquist?” She glanced at Benny and then back again. “What could I possibly do to help that you can’t already do?”

“Perhaps nothing,” Lassett answered. When Benny tensed, Sarah squeezed his hand to signal patience, and Lassett continued. “Before, I told you that we cannot affect any creature of free will. That holds true even of paladins, even when those paladins have lost their way. But I have hope that you will be able to affect his will.”

Baffled, Sarah frowned. “How?”

“As a human, you are essentially a charge of Venquist’s. A being whose future he has been purposed with guarding, to the extent that that future is likely to promote progress. And I can assure you, your future is likely to promote progress.”

Goosebumps spread over Sarah’s flesh, but she shook her head. “I still don’t get how I could impact his free will.”

“He has attacked you directly. In doing so, he has violated numerous tenets of our kind, but more than that, he has rendered you an oppressed. A being under the care of another whose safety has been violated by that same caregiver. Under our philosophy, the oppressed have been deemed those whose progress has been hindered most egregiously and are, therefore, most in need of interference.”

He lifted the arm wearing the silver cuff. Though he said nothing and touched nothing on the cuff, the thing opened with an almost mechanical whine. Upon its release, he slid it off and handed it to Sarah. The moment she touched it, a buzz rushed through her body – the physical sensation of a power never before felt by a human.

“This is called a foil,” he explained. “It is normally only activated by the skin of a paladin, but I have been told that in rare cases, an oppressed might be able to use it. It is my hope that this foil will recognize your status as an oppressed and will allow you license with its use. In particular, I hope that it will grant you a license that has never been granted to paladins: the license to affect your oppressor.”

Awed at what she held, chilled by what she thought he was asking her to do, she raised wide eyes to Lassett. “You want me to use this on Venquist?”

“I want you to use that to banish him from the Twelve Realms.”

*          *          *

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Sarah tore her gaze away from the cuff in her hands and looked up at Benny. He’d pulled her to the side, out of earshot of the others, his face dark with worry. And she was suddenly struck by the change that had come over him since all this had begun. Or perhaps that part of him that had always been there, but that she hadn’t seen it before now. She found herself taking a breath as a feeling of heat swept her, and she had to clear her throat before she could respond.

“Of course I’m not sure. But what’s the alternative?”

“Let someone else do this,” he insisted. “Sarah, what he’s asking you to do…you don’t know what the consequences will be. You might kill Venquist. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it, but have you thought about what that would do to you? You saw my dad. He drinks every night to forget the men he’s killed, and that happened forty years ago. This will change your life. Do you want that?”

“No!” She let out her breath in a huff and deliberately lowered her voice. “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to get into a battle with someone who has Venquist’s powers, and I don’t want to be responsible for sending someone to their death – or whatever the hell will happen to him if he’s banished. But that still doesn’t answer my question. What’s the alternative?”

Benny opened his mouth, but he didn’t have an answer for her. He knew she wouldn’t leave this to someone else; she just wasn’t built that way.

And he would never have fallen in love with her if she was.

He gentled his hand, ran it down her arm. And then brought it up to brush over her cheek. Her dark green eyes seemed suddenly liquid in the shade, her skin made delicate by the circles forming under them. She needed sleep, he thought. She needed sleep, and safety, and that future Lassett had hinted held a multitude of possibilities.

“Let me do it.”

“Benny-”

“You can’t wield the foil,” Lassett said.

Sarah jumped, and Benny dropped his hand and looked over at the paladin in frustration. “This was a private conversation.”

Lassett seemed surprised, and his coloring shifted twice as he said, “I apologize. I sometimes forget your social conventions.”

Benny sighed and waved away the offense. “Why can’t I use the thing?”

“Venquist has not yet directly affected your fate.”

“So then let’s get him to do that. How do we make that happen?”

Lassett inclined his head toward Sarah. “If she dies through Venquist’s actions, then your fate will have been affected. At that point, the foil will accept your right to its use.”

“If she dies? What the-”

Sarah put a hand on his arm. “Benny, that won’t happen. You won’t let it happen. And Lassett won’t let it happen.” She turned to Lassett, her expression grave. “Will you?”

He bowed to her as if in agreement. It was not lost on either Sarah or Benny that a bow was in no way close to a promise.

But again, Sarah thought, what was the alternative? So she asked Lassett, “Will you teach me how to use this?”

*          *          *

They practiced in the clearing by the river, drenched in the sunlight and spurred by the need to move quickly. The controls for the foil were simple: she aimed the thing at what she wanted to affect and then simply thought of what she wanted to have happen.

The implementation, on the other hand, was extremely difficult.

Mental control of the foil required supreme focus of thought, a feat made nearly impossible by the sheer importance of what she was trying to do. Every time she settled on a command, her thoughts drifted to Benny, or to her family, or to Venquist himself, and the foil would become wildly unpredictable.

It helped to use her other hand to steady the thing, as she’d seen Lassett do in the past. But real control came from the mind, and until she mastered that, she’d have no chance against a seasoned paladin like Venquist.

When they broke for lunch, Benny began to walk over to Sarah. Henry waved him away and put his arm around her shoulders.

“Take a walk with me, kid,” he said, nudging a smile out of her.

They walked along the river bank, returning the waves of three kayakers who passed. When they were out of sight, Henry asked, “How’s it goin’?”

She shook her head. “I can’t do it. Not even the simplest things, like getting a pebble off the ground. If I can’t move a rock two inches into the air, how am I ever going to get Venquist to leave this entire universe?”

“What seems to be getting’ in the way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. Tell me.”

She sighed and met his eyes. They were enough like Benny’s to calm her, and she found herself saying, “I get scared. I think about what will happen if I fail. About what Benny would do if I die, about what Venquist will do to my family, and I just…I can’t do it. And it doesn’t matter how hard I focus; I can’t keep those thoughts from popping in there.”

Henry nodded and looked out over the water, lips pursed in thought. After a moment, he said, “Maybe you don’t have to keep ‘em out. Maybe trying to fight all that is what’s givin’ you trouble.”

“But Lassett told me to empty my mind. He said that’s how it’s done.”

“Well.” Henry scratched at the graying stubble on his chin. “Lassett’s not human, now, is he? Maybe what works for him ain’t what’s right for you. Here, bring me that branch over there.”

She looked where he pointed. There was a large piece of a branch about twenty feet down river. When she began to walk toward it, he stopped her.

“No, use the cuff.”

She sighed and aimed the foil. Then she took another breath and tried to focus her thoughts on the branch. She cleared her mind of every thought but that piece of birch, imagined it lifting from the ground, floating gently toward them. The thing quivered on the ground-

-And then Benny’s face popped into her mind, the look in his eyes when he’d touched her cheek. She tried to block the image, but it was too late. The branch stilled on the ground.

“Now, don’t give up,” Henry cajoled. “Try again, but this time, don’t fight whatever pops into that genius brain of yours. Just let the thoughts flow. You have thoughts for a reason; that’s the way your mind is supposed to work. Just let them happen.”

She tried again. Just like before, Benny’s face popped into her mind the moment the branch began to shimmy on the ground. This time, she didn’t fight the image. She let it rest there, a calming, centering thought, while the rest of her was focused on the branch.

And the thing rose into the air, a gravity defying miracle that made her whoop in triumph.

“It worked! It worked!” She hugged Henry, and then she ran back to the rest of the group. “It worked,” she told them, and she threw her arms around Benny.

He hugged her back, burying his face in her hair for a moment before releasing her. When he pulled back to study her face, he couldn’t help but return her grin.

And for the first time, she began to believe that she might succeed.