Ominous Odyssey (Overworld Chronicles Book 13) Page 18

  "Uh, how thick is the aether storm?" I looked uneasily at the ceaseless arcs of lightning in the gray nebula. "What if we run out of charges?"

  "According to the map, the storm layer is ten miles thick," Adam said. "Travelling at top velocity, the Falcheen could close that distance in five minutes. I think we can make it through with just enough charges to make the return trip."

  "Fine, you did the math," Shelton said, "but can the ballistas shoot the charges far enough ahead while we're moving at top speed, and how long will the explosion keep the clouds open?"

  "Those are really good questions," Adam said. "Unfortunately, I don't know the mass of the aether or the power of the ballistas to calculate those variables."

  Shelton face-palmed. "Just freaking great."

  "On the other hand, we'll be taking a huge shortcut." Adam produced the map and traced the skylet route. "It would've taken us two days to wind our way through the storm instead of minutes. If we angle the trajectory this way, we'll end up where the mapped trail ends."

  "Probably a shortcut to our doom." Shelton sighed. "Can we at least test two charges and measure the velocity?"

  Adam shook his head. "We need every charge we have if we're coming back the same way." He turned to me. "What do you think, Justin?"

  After all we'd been through to get this far, the thought of turning back made me sick to my stomach. "We need to try, but that's not my call." I shifted toward Illaena and waited for an answer.

  She didn't take long. "Prepare to enter the storm."

  "Energize foils!" Tahlee roared.

  Shelton jumped back. "Christ Almighty, that woman doesn't waste time."

  The levitation foils hummed with power.

  She raised her arm and chopped the air. "Fire charges!"

  The soldiers aimed the two ballistas as Adam had indicated and fired. Aether lightning arced out and consumed the stones the moment they made contact with the nebula. Several seconds passed in silence and then a deep boom sounded, like someone had just pounded the largest timpani drum in existence and let the sound reverberate.

  Wind rushed forward, sucking at my clothes and tearing Shelton's hat from its perch. It smacked into the back of a soldier's head where the strap caught hold.

  Shelton snatched back his hat and hung onto it as the vacuum tried to suck it from his hands. The ship shook violently beneath our feet and droplets of water from the lake coated the deck like dew.

  Another boom shattered the air. A crimson glow lit the nebula and gale force winds roared past in the opposite direction. The roiling aether parted, the explosion ripping a tunnel through the gray mass. Our path was ready.

  "All speed forward!" Tahlee cried, and the Falcheen lurched into the foreboding tunnel.

  "I hope your math is right!" Shelton shouted at Adam. He grabbed the railing and hung on.

  I tethered myself and the others to the deck with strands of Murk and gripped the railing to keep myself upright as the ship bucked and shuddered through the turbulence while a lightshow played all along the tunnel edges.

  "Hey, Shelton," Adam shouted.

  Shelton turned his terrified eyes on his friend. "What?"

  "I just measured the last two constants." Adam tapped quickly on his smartphone. "Looks like I was off on the rate of collapse."

  "Justin, look." Elyssa pointed toward the walls of the tunnel. The kinetic force holding it open was already collapsing, and the deadly forces were rushing in to fill the void.

  Shelton scowled. "You picked the worst possible time to be wrong!"

  Adam turned to Tahlee. "Slow to one hundred knots, and fire every twenty-five seconds."

  The first mate cried out the new instructions and the ship slowed.

  Adam counted down on his phone. "Three, two, one."

  "Fire!" Tahlee cried again.

  The soldiers launched two more charges dead ahead. The ballistas launched them at enough velocity to carry them safely ahead of the ship and into the storm, but the rift was quickly collapsing in on us.

  Once again, a vacuum sucked at us before a massive explosion tore another tunnel through the boiling gray clouds.

  "Full speed!" Adam said.

  Tahlee shouted the command and the Falcheen slipped into the new opening seconds before the old one collapsed back in upon itself.

  A new countdown started on Adam's arcphone as the ship bucked and surged through the violent turbulence left in the wake of the explosion. Elyssa's violet eyes lit with excitement, hand tightening around mine.

  "It's so beautiful and terrifying," she shouted over the rush of wind.

  "We'll be snuffed out like farts in a hurricane if this tunnel collapses," I shouted back.

  She laughed.

  Shelton cast an angry glare my way. "Next time you go on an adventure, I'm staying home!"

  Adam and Tahlee coordinated another salvo and a new hole formed in the storm. The Falcheen carried us from one fleeting haven to the next, the hull shaking violently every time we hit an invisible pocket of turbulence. Minutes ticked past, and the supply of charges dwindled.

  "I don't understand," Adam said. "We should've been through by now."

  "Five minutes ago by your calculation," Shelton hollered over the roaring wind.

  I was about to throw in my two cents when a rod of lightning arced across the rift and clipped the back end of the ship. The stern spun sideways and the Falcheen careened out of control.

  Shelton's eyes went wide. "Oh shi—"

  There was no way to fire the charges ahead of us, no way for the navigators to wrestle the ship back under control in time. I channeled a dome shield over as much of the deck as I could an instant before the dark clouds swallowed us.

  Adam grabbed my arm. "Don't channel Murk or Brilliance, Justin!"

  Before I could open my mouth to ask why, aether lightning pummeled my shield, as if drawn to it, like electricity to a ground.

  "Release the shield!" Adam shouted.

  Instead of letting it go, I tied off the weave and sent the shield hurtling off the ship. The lightning followed it, arcing across it like a plasma globe before I lost sight in the thick gloom.

  "What about the foils?" Shelton said. "Those things are full of energy."

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when magical energy crackled across the hull. The navigators cried out and leapt back from their stations. The Falcheen listed slowly as the energy faded from the levitation foils. We were at the mercy of the storm.

  Illaena turned to me, eyes filling with acceptance. "We have failed."

  As if that was the cue, the levitations foils burned through the last bit of energy and the ship began to fall.

  Tahlee didn't seem the least bit fazed. "Deploy emergency wings!"

  Soldiers and navigators rushed to large levers set nearly flush into the deck near the control rods and began pulling on them with all their might.

  "Help them!" I shouted to the others and ran to assist two soldiers with a lever. We hauled back and the lever ratcheted into place. A wing the size of something you'd see on a jumbo jet sprang from the hull and locked into place. The rest of the emergency foils clicked into place and the Falcheen's downward momentum settled into a shuddering glide.

  Lightning struck a fore section of the deck, leaving a hole behind. Another bolt crashed into the deck only feet away. The aftershock knocked me across the deck, momentarily blinded and deaf.

  Another nearby explosion thudded dully in my ringing ears. Cries rose up all around me and the ship tilted crazily beneath my prone form. This is it. We're dead. I hated not being able to see in the last seconds before my death. Raising a fist in a last act of defiance, I shouted, "Screw you, lightning!"

  Apparently, the timing of my death wasn't quite as fast as I'd imagined, because my hearing slowly came back and the spots in my vision faded until I could make out the deck beneath me. Strong hands gripped my arm and pulled me upright. Elyssa looked more beautiful than ever, probably because I thought I'd never s
ee her again.

  "Are you okay?" she asked.

  I blinked rapidly and dug a finger in my ear as if that would help anything. "Yeah." Another bright light blinded me and I prepared for more lightning. That was when I realized the sky overhead was blue, and the blinding light was the sun. "What the hell?"

  "Don't ask me how, but we made it through," Elyssa said in a wondering tone. "We must have been close to the end when the ship went out of control."

  I looked around and saw the healer on deck tending to the wounded. Adam sat with his back to the railing, a relieved look on his face while Shelton puked over the side. The navigators had resumed their stations and it seemed the levitation foils were once again holding us aloft. The aether storm roiled a hundred yards to port, angry arcs of lightning threading its surface while overhead, the sun shined down from clear skies.

  Holding tight to Elyssa's hand, I walked to the starboard side and looked out across endless blue sea. "This is the center of Voltis?" I hadn't known what to expect. A part of me had thought there might be an eye to the storm, but certainly not a place like this. On the other hand, where was the secret weapon? Unless it was underwater, there didn't seem to be much here.

  "It's bizarre." Elyssa looked back at the wall of gray behind us and followed its curve. "Is this what it's like in the middle of a hurricane?"

  "I have no idea." I zoomed my vision on the horizon, but there was nothing but more and more water. A terrible suspicion welled up in me. What if Kaelissa was wrong? What if we'd just sacrificed dozens of lives to reach the eye of the storm where nothing existed? Even worse, what if this had been a clever lure crafted by Arturo or Kaelissa to keep me away from Pjurna?

  If Voltis held no secrets behind its deadly walls, we had just endured everything for nothing.

  Chapter 21

  "How could I have been so stupid?" I felt sick to my stomach.

  Elyssa looked confused. "What are you talking about?"

  "We've come all this way for nothing." I jabbed a finger toward the aether storm behind us. "Now we're trapped inside Voltis while Kaelissa and Arturo have their way with the nation we left undefended."

  Her forehead wrinkled. "Except they're not undefended. Our army is in Tarissa and they're plenty capable of defending her without us."

  Elyssa's argument cast a blanket of doubt on my logic. I was so used to being in the middle of the fight that I hadn't stopped to think about the real scope of my importance in the army.

  She continued. "If anything, there's more danger of civil war from the Darkling legions than invasion from Brightlings."

  It was a depressing thought, but also the truth. "So you think there's actually something out here?"

  "There's a lot of ocean out here." Elyssa waved a hand at the vast area. "There's still plenty of exploring to do."

  I hoped she was right.

  Though the crew was tired, Illaena ordered the Falcheen forward. I switched to demon vision and found an aether stream a hundred feet off the surface of the water and pointed it out. The ship glided into position and the navigators were finally able to park it and get some rest.

  "The Znosh never made it this far?" I asked the captain.

  She shook her head. "They simply marked this area with an X." Illaena displayed the map and scrolled to the end of the trail forged by the Znosh. It appeared to end inside the storm several miles from our current position.

  "Great," Shelton grumbled. "Maybe we'll find buried treasure."

  Holding his arcphone out at arm's length, Adam turned in place, a curious wrinkle in his brow. "That's odd."

  I blew out a breath. "That sums up just about everything on this trip."

  "No, I mean the readings are odd." Adam projected a holographic graph showing several jagged lines in hues of red, green, and yellow. "I ran a series of tests on the atmosphere in Eden and compared them to Seraphina. Basic elements like oxygen, nitrogen, and so forth are nearly identical, though the O-two content here is slightly elevated."

  "That's great, Einstein." Shelton folded his arms. "Why don't you skip the science part before you make everyone's eyes glaze over?"

  "I think it's interesting," I admitted.

  Elyssa elbowed me. "Because you're still a nerd at heart."

  Adam swiped away all but three lines on the graph. He pointed to the lowest one. "These are the atmospheric aether levels in Eden." He highlighted the line that was far above the other two. "This is Seraphina."

  I frowned. "So, what's the middle one?"

  Adam pointed down. "Right here in Voltis."

  "Not surprising," Shelton said. "I'll bet the maelstrom sucks up most of the aether in the air."

  "Possibly." Adam displayed two other lines. "The problem is, oxygen is closer to Eden levels, and the sun here is fractionally brighter than on Seraphina."

  I reflexively looked up and immediately regretted it as an intense white sun nearly blinded me. Others winced as they repeated my mistake and blinked tears from their eyes. It didn't take me long to realize where Adam was headed with his analysis. "We're not in Seraphina anymore, are we?"

  He shook his head. "I don't think so."

  "Well, ain't that peachy?" Shelton took out his arcphone and began running scans of his own. "Guess that means Voltis is like the pocket dimensions back in Eden."

  "Does that mean we're in the Glimmer?" Elyssa asked.

  I shook my head. "No, the Glimmer is nothing but shattered land and stars. Unless this is a pocket dimension, we must be in one of the other realms."

  Shelton blew out a breath. "Too bad it ain't Eden." He looked at Adam. "Any guesses as to where we are?"

  "No." Adam put his hands on his hips and looked around. "There's only one way to find out, and that's to do some exploring."

  "Brilliant," Shelton said. "Maybe we can find the natives and ask them."

  Illaena stepped over to the railing and looked out at the ocean. Tahlee stepped by her side, her flaming red hair dancing in the breeze. When I joined them, I noticed a spark in Illaena's eyes I hadn't seen before. She looked excited.

  My sense of adventure crawled out from beneath the fear, doubt, and other emotions dominating the journey here, and I felt a spark of wonder fan into flame. We're in another realm! After everything I'd been through, I sometimes forgot there was more to life than endless war.

  "Are we truly no longer on Seraphina?" Illaena asked me.

  "If Adam thinks so, then yeah, I'd have to agree with him." I leaned over the edge and looked at the azure water.

  "You did the impossible," Tahlee said. "You did what even the Znosh could not do."

  Illaena shook her head. "We all did."

  Shelton and Adam's voices rose in debate.

  "What I'm asking is, if we go out another way, do we end up in the main part of whatever realm this is?" Shelton said.

  "I don't know if the other realm is confined to Voltis or not," Adam replied. "Maybe Voltis acts like an Alabaster Arch, transporting from one realm to another."

  "Or maybe the two realms touch here," Elyssa suggested.

  "Yeah, or that," Adam said.

  I opened my mouth to toss in my two cents when a huge dorsal fin broke the surface of the ocean. Two more fins soon joined it, all swimming in a perfect line.

  "Holy pork-fried pants," Shelton said. "Are those sharks?"

  "Anyone bring a fishing pole?" Adam said dryly.

  Three aquamarine creatures leapt from the water. With long lean muzzles, and scales that shimmered like polished metal, it only took me a split second to properly classify what I was seeing.

  "Sea dragons!" I shouted.

  But that wasn't what had everyone's attention. Mounted on each dragon was a female rider.

  The dragons spread webbed wings and glided up toward us, their riders staring serenely at us as if this was just another day in their lives.

  Elyssa's eyes flared wide. "Do you think we're on Draxadis?"

  I was too stunned to answer.

  Illaena issu
ed orders, and Tahlee's shouts rose above the bellows of the encroaching dragons.

  "Ready foils, adjust heading a hundred-eighty degrees!" Tahlee grabbed one of the dragon spears from the soldiers as they prepared to repel any invaders.

  I'd seen enough dragon attacks to know that we were no match for three of them. Our only hope was a fast retreat. The only problem was, where would we go? We couldn't go back into the maelstrom, and unless we stuck to the aether stream, the navigators would tire rapidly without rest.

  Before the Falcheen could take flight, the dragons were upon us. I channeled a sphere of Brilliance in one hand, and Murk in the other, prepared to unleash everything I had on the riders.

  "You will come with us," one of the women said in melodious voice that was more song than speech. The words were Cyrinthian, but heavily accented, almost another dialect. Her inhumanly large eyes made her alluring and horribly creepy all at the same time.

  Only one other person I'd met spoke that way and had the same huge eyes that these women had. Though I'd only spoken with Melea once, she'd also creeped me out like these women—these Sirens.

  The dragons glided in circles around the ship, none making an attempt to land on the deck. Illaena looked like a trapped animal, eyes darting all around the ship.

  "We wish you no harm," the Siren sang softly. "Come."

  I felt a sudden yearning to do exactly what she said. Judging from the glazed looks on the faces of the others, it seemed obvious we all did.

  Illaena shook her head as if resisting a waking dream. "What sorcery is this?"

  "Stop compelling us," I said in a stern voice.

  The Sirens exchanged knowing looks, and their presumed leader, a woman with flowing green hair and deep blue eyes, nodded. "It was not our intent. We have not seen outsiders in some time and forgot the effect our voices have on others."

  A cold knife of fear buried itself in my guts. Could these Sirens make us do anything they wanted by singing? I didn't want to find out, but right now, we had no choice but to accompany them.

  Illaena seemed to reach the same conclusion. "Lead the way, and we will follow."