Ominous Odyssey (Overworld Chronicles Book 13) (23 page)

The
Falcheen
swooped down toward the lake, and for a moment, I wondered if we were about to submerge. Instead, we parked right over the water, the bow facing what looked like the mother of all thunderstorms. Bolts of aether lashed out and pummeled the land not fifty yards from the tip of the ship's nose, revving my pulse and making me jump back.

Shelton took out his staff and clenched it.

"You look like you're ready to abandon ship," Adam noted dryly.

"Darned tootin'!" Shelton tapped the end of the staff nervously on the deck, the reflections of aether lightning playing back and forth across his eyes. "I might as well throw myself in a meat grinder if we're planning to go through that."

Illaena frowned and consulted the holographic map. Tahlee traced her finger along a line—presumably the route—and shook her head.

I walked over to them. "What's wrong?"

"These skylets have moved," Illaena said. "According to the map, they should be just inside the storm." She showed me the chain of floating land masses. "By flying the ship beneath them, the skylets would have sheltered us from the lightning."

"There must be another way," I said, though I couldn't think of anything except moving laterally through the rift between the outer and inner layer.

Adam had apparently been listening and spoke. "I have an idea."

Shelton poked his head in the group. "What's wrong?"

"The route is gone," I said.

"So we make our own," Adam said. He turned to Illaena. "Do you have more of those spiky aethids you used to disperse the lightning in the tunnel?"

"Yes, but we will be flying blind," Illaena said.

"Not if we modify the charms on the stones." He held his hands out as if holding a ball. "The stones are charmed to soak up energy and hold it in. If we charm the stones to unleash it all at once, it should give us what we need."

"Do you know how much energy one of those aether discharges produces?" Shelton said incredulously. "You're turning those stones into massive bombs."

"That's the idea," Adam said. "Think of them as depth charges, but in the sky."

Shelton frowned. "That's the worst analogy I've ever heard."

"What do you expect these sky charges to do?" Illaena said.

"The stones will temporarily neutralize the aether." Adam made a circle with his hands and expanded them. "With any luck, it'll clear a path."

Illaena nodded at Tahlee who gave the order.

A few minutes later, two sorters hauled a net filled with large spiky aethids to the deck and set them next to the ballista mounted on the bow.

"The enchantments have been modified," one of the sorters said. "Be sure to launch them far from the ship, or they'll do more damage than good."

"Understood," Tahlee said.

Soldiers installed another ballista next to the first and loaded each with the sky charges.

"Hope this works," Adam said nervously.

Shelton grunted. "I just hope you don't blow up the ship."

Adam sidled closer to the crossbow and inspected the charges. "We'll need to fire them about five degrees to port and starboard."

Tahlee angled the trajectory of each ballista. "Like so?"

He nodded. "The moment they explode, we'll need to go as fast as possible through the opening and fire two more charges every thirty seconds."

"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 see 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."