The Plane’s Children – Chapter Six – Emersli1

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10 Minutes

Tony just sat and stared for a moment.

“Mine.”

“Yes.”

“But I’m not online.  And not likely to come online at my age.  Is this something that always happens and no one ever talks about?  Spirit … beings sitting and having a conversation off the clock, as it were?”  Well, Tony hadn’t become an investigator because he lacked curiosity, after all.

Alone smiled.  “No.  Actually, Grumpy thinks that may be why I’ve not found my otherself.  I have to be able to talk to you for you to understand, and help me find the answers.”

Tony’s ears perked up.  “Grumpy?  Like the dwarf?  Wait … I’m assuming an ‘otherself’ is the animal form a spirit … person … would usually take.  What answers?  Do YOU know anything about this case?”  Tiredness had been at least temporarily wiped away by nosiness, and a desperate need for something to point his investigation in the right direction.

“I know what happened, but not how, why or who.”  Alone looked incredibly sad.  “Amalda Vernon was the spiritmate of the one we called Flicker.  Flicker appeared suddenly on the Plane.  They were badly injured.  I tried to hold them together, but they unbecame … right in my arms.  This isn’t something that should be possible, that we should be physically hurt on this lower plane.  None of us understood … so I went and asked the Plane.”

“Unbecame?  Died?  She died?  And that’s never happened before?”  The strange vocabulary was throwing Tony a bit.  Translation issues, maybe?  What language did spirit animals speak to each other?  Surely not English.

Alone sighed, looking heartsick.  “No.  Dying is something our spiritmates do.  They die, and then they go somewhere in the upper plane that we’ve never been able to find to wait for rebirth on the lower plane.  We just return to the settlement to wait for the call to rejoin our spiritmates.  Of course, we can choose to unbecome … to let go of ‘self’ and rejoin the Plane … but it has never happened violently.  And definitely not because of violence done to us here.”

Tony was feeling more and more out of his depth here.  This conversation really needed an anthropologist, but he knew that if he called Blair … well, that wasn’t going to help him find answers for Matthew Caulfield.  Or justice for Amalda Vernon.

“OK, so for right now … we concentrate on the case.  I need you to tell me everything you remember about … Flicker … and what happened to them.  And whatever the Plane told you.  Is that like … God?  Is God seriously expecting ME to find answers They can’t?”  Tony could feel a panic attack coming on, fueled by his strict Catholic upbringing and current relaxed beliefs.

Alone looked confused.  “I do not know this ‘God’.  I’m sorry.  I may be old, but I’ve never othered … never been here on the lower plane before.  I don’t understand exactly what you’re asking.  The Plane is our home and our parent.  We are the Children of the Plane, but truly all life … lower, upper, perhaps even places we can’t perceive … was created by the One.  Is that who you mean when you say ‘God’?”

Tony had his head between his knees at this point.  “I think that conversation needs to wait for Blair.  I can’t even begin to … yeah, no.  We need to focus on Amalda and Flicker.”  Pulling out his phone and setting it to record, he placed the device on the coffee table.  His visitor studied it curiously.  

“OK, start at the beginning, please.”

Casting a doubtful look at the phone, Alone began.  “I was still in the schoolroom.  The children had been dismissed, but I was getting things ready for the next day.  There was a … sound.  A terrible scream from outside on the commons.  I ran as fast as I could.  Everyone who heard it ran to see what was happening.  From a distance … it looked like a pile of trash.  Then I got closer and I could see it was a person.”

“They were … so hurt.  So damaged.  I gathered them up, but their essence was leaking out too fast.  I tried to stop it…”  Alone was crying again at the memory.  “I couldn’t stop it.  And then they just unbecame.  Right there in my arms.  Steadfast came.  They were Flicker’s crossmate.  The mate of Amalda’s pair.  Steadfast was angry and confused.  They said they were attacked in … dreams?  They didn’t understand.”

“I told them I would go to the Heart of the Forest and seek out the Plane.  Steadfast insisted on coming with me.  The Plane had no answers.  They said the answers had to be found in the lower plane.  They sent Steadfast back to their spiritmate.  Then they told me my spiritmate was here and would need every advantage to find the answers.  I was to carry Steadfast’s message to Sage and then descend.  I could not wait to find my otherself first.”

Tony gave the matter some thought.  “Can you describe the wounds?  I’m sorry.  I know it hurts you to remember.  I’ve had friends die in my arms too.  But I can’t see or autopsy the victim, so I need your eyes.”

Alone took a deep breath and wiped their eyes.  “The wounds … were deep.  Gouges.  Claw marks.  Maybe even … teeth.  I don’t know.  It was not like from a fall.  You know.  Broken bones, but all the damage on the inside?  They were … a tearing, rending sort of wounds.  Does that make sense?”

“Make sense?  No.  But I understand what you’re talking about.  I just don’t know how anything could touch Flicker and not Amalda.  Amalda’s body was completely undamaged.  So the attack was centered on the spirit … partner?  What DO you call yourselves?  I don’t want to keep offending, but we generally refer to you all as our spirit animals.”  Tony felt as though his usually smooth communication was fumbling blindly.

Alone laughed softly.  Tony was a good person.  “We are your mates.  We give you what you need to be grounded and connected when you use your gifts.  We refer to you as our spiritmates.  That term would work.”

“So, you’re supposed to ‘give me every advantage’.  What do you think that means?”  Tony looked at his (possible) spiritmate.  

“Quirky believes you need to come online.  And I would help you as any spiritmate would.  Maybe I will find my otherself when you come online.  Maybe Grumpy is right and we need to be able to talk rather than just commune?  I don’t know.  But the Plane indicated we were to work together to find the answers.”

Tony sighed and leaned back in his chair.  He looked down the hall to his bedroom and over to the counter with his now stone-cold soup.  Then he looked back at Alone.

“All right, how do we do this?  It’s highly unusual for someone to come online at almost forty.”  Tony was kind of flummoxed.  Most sentinels and guides came online in response to some sort of need.  Finding justice for Amalda Vernon, and Flicker, might be a need but … he didn’t know how to get there from here.

“I can feel you.   It’s like someone stitched a cover over you.  If I tear it off…”  Alone reached out to him.

Tony took their hand.

And the world exploded into a riot of sensations and feelings, and it was all too much.

‘I am here.  We are together, as we were always meant to be.’

Together, Tony and Alone spiraled into the dark.

When Cuetla pulled him out of bed, Blair hit the floor in complete disbelief.

That only lasted long enough for him to feel the empathic distortion that had settled over the DC area.

“Chief, what’s going on?”  Apparently Tecu had tugged Jim out the other side of the bed.  Blair unrolled himself from the sheet and crawled around the end of the bed to see his partner sitting on the floor.  Tecu had brought Jim two shoes and was doing his best to get them on his feet.

About that time Blair’s vision was obscured by the shirt that was unceremoniously tugged over his head by his determined spirit animal.

“I’m not sure.  It feels like a high-level guide just blew here in DC.  Not sure why Cuetla and Tecu are in such a hurry.  We don’t even know where to go yet.”   Just as Blair got one arm through the shirt (only to realize that it was actually Jim’s shirt and not his) both their phones began to go off.

Sharing a look, they each answered.

“Ellison.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

Blair didn’t know what Jim was hearing, but the excited operator at the S/G Center in DC was rattling off an address … an address that seemed way too familiar.  Turning to look at his partner, Blair cut in to the woman’s excited babble.  “Yeah, thanks.  We know where that is.  We’re on our way.  Better send a recovery team.  We’ll meet them there.”

Jim had ended his call by the expedient application of an abrupt hang-up.  “It’s Tony.”

“Yeah, and it feels big.  Let’s get going.”  Jim took one extra minute to look over his partner.

“Nice shirt, Chief.”

Then they were out the door, Blair squawking indignantly as he went.

By the time they made it to the street, a driver was waiting for them in a clearly marked S/G Center vehicle.  Clambering into the back the two men settled themselves quickly.  “Let’s hit it!”  The distortion was getting worse, now pressing heavily enough that even their mundane driver was breathing hard.

Then suddenly, terrifyingly, it stopped.

The heavy sensation released so quickly it left Blair nauseated and dizzy.  He reached out empathically, and more or less bounced off an impenetrable shield.  How had Tony gotten his shield so steady?  Newly online sentinels and guides needed to be taught how to build their shields.  Latents like Tony were given instruction in the theory, but Blair had never heard of a guide who was able to erect their own shields from the jump.

Well, it was Tony.  Who honestly shouldn’t be coming online at all at his age.

The car pulled to an abrupt stop outside and Blair and Jim scrambled out.  The recovery team pulled up in the S/G ambulance just as they were entering the building.

There wasn’t room for all of them plus the gurney in the elevator, so Blair and Jim invoked Prime privilege and went up first.  Racing down the hall towards Tony’s door, Blair had just a moment to wonder how they were going to get in if Tony couldn’t get to the door.

Jim didn’t even slow down, just lifted his foot and delivered a targeted kick he probably learned in the police academy.  The door crashed open and Blair and Jim spilled through into the living room.

Tony passed out on the floor was totally expected.  The person passed out beside him was not.

“Who the hell?”  Blair looked at the man … woman … person in consternation.  Surely Tony hadn’t placed a booty call this late at night?  And why would they be here, unconscious, unless they were Tony’s partner?  Had they just accidentally found each other after one o’clock in the morning?

The recovery team had made it to the apartment, and began to assess the people lying on the floor.  Suddenly, the Guide-Paramedic leaned back in shock.  “I can’t … this is strange … Prime Sandberg, could you try to reach them?  I can’t tell which of them is the guide and which is the sentinel.  And this doesn’t feel … right.  I don’t know …”  They trailed off in uncertainty.

Blair sat down by the pair and reached out psionically for Tony first.  The impenetrable shield was still there, and was definitely a guide’s shield.  But the physical energy swirling around it screamed sentinel.  Giving up for the moment and reaching out for the unknown person, Blair found himself immediately rebuffed and back in his own head with only a sense of vast age and psionic power. 

It felt like … it felt like touching Cuetla.  His spirit animal was standing protectively over Tony and giving Blair a decidedly unimpressed look.

Considering a minute, Blair asked, “Does everyone here see two people on the floor?”  Jim and the Guide-Paramedic both nodded quickly, but the other two sentinels looked at Blair like he was crazy.  Not a look Blair was unfamiliar with, but right now …

“OK.  I think maybe, the unknown person that only some of us can see is Tony’s spirit animal.”  Tecu growled in displeasure, and Blair wondered what he’d done.  “Let’s put Tony on the gurney and see what happens.”