seymoure ([personal profile] seymoure) wrote2009-09-15 10:54 pm

The Perfect World Fallacy - - Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Suicide Missions and Other Problems

Suddenly attention shifted from Ima Than (the Eurasasian woman) to Chance Rabin at the podium. It seemed that someone had just handed him a piece of paper that he studied with some concern.

He cleared his throat as if preparing to tell everyone that the room had been booked by another party and everyone would have to leave. Just as he stepped warily forward and bright little red-haired girl rushed to him with yet another slip of paper. He took this one and scanned it quickly and his affect changed for the better, but only for a moment.

“I have just been informed that we have passage to Invenshall with impunity,” he said hopefully.

The room buzzed, while Harriet did her RCA Victor dog impression, tilting her head and looking dumbfounded. Claus moved to her side and whispered, “Invenshall is a fabled land that up to this moment I only regarded as myth.”

“I want to know how we are going to get across a continent that holds us as ‘shoot on sight criminals.’ Not where we can go for a vacation,” Dante responded.

“Invenshall is the key,” Sebastian sid in a tone that drew her eyes to him and him alone, “It is a portal. It exists on a nearby plane. You can only go there if you are invited, and you can try for a hundred years before you get that invitation.”

“That’s nice, but…”

“We can enter the land from anywhere on Earth, with an inviting spell,” Claus told her, “And we can exit to any point on the planet from there.”

“You mean we could go in through the wardrobe…” She surmised.

“And come out in the Blue Room of the White House,” her friend finished for her.

“Nice. Why haven’t I ever heard of this place?”

“As I said, I thought it was a story. Even though it is in one of the closet mystic dimensions that lay closest to us, it is a realm that most humans will never even hear about,” the big man said, “But once you have been there you are considered a member of their country. You can always return with but the mention of your Invershallian name. We will have to visit the Castle and be named and then we can use the passage at will, up until we tell anyone else about the place.”

“So someone here got the invitation?” Harriet questioned.

“We have the largest group of powerful wizards in the world,” Claus chuckled, “Our odds were pretty good.”

“Folks . . .” Rabin said in a voice that said the second shoe was about to drop.

Everyone in the room turned slowly to look again at the stage.

“Though the person is cloaked expertly,” he continued, “At least one of the eight involved in the assault . . .”

He drew a breath that could have filled the room with CO2.

Not one person in the room didn’t have a good idea what he was about to say. They were a sharp group and you don’t frame an announcement like that that was about to make confetti fly out of anybodies butt.

“At least one of us is a spy for the other side.”

© 2009 by C. Wayne Owens

Link to Chapter 1
Continue on to Chapter 25