People rushed past her in a frantic stream, nearly tripping over each other, and it took serious concentration for her to stay ahead of them. She had barely reached Cheng-Huang’s ship when Aran caught up to her, a little short of breath. “The Unda are notified and they’ll do everything they can on their end to protect the sea,” he reported. “What are you doing?”
“This ship isn’t fully protected,” Sevana nearly wailed.
“What are we protecting them from? The ash?”
“And the gases, they’re nearly as deadly.”
“We can’t just fly it out of this area?”
Sevana shook her head roughly. “It levitates but I didn’t have time to figure out the navigational system. It’s still buggy.”
Aran thought hard for a full second before nodding to himself. “I can do something about the shield at least. Focus on getting people aboard, I’ll set the shield up on the ship.”
How many people were there in the village exactly? It was a vital question, but she hadn’t remembered to get a count and so had no way of knowing the answer at this point. Cheng-Huang had said a little over five hundred souls, but there wasn’t even a way for her to count them as they streamed on board. She could only pray that she and Aran could work fast enough to protect everyone and then do her best to fulfill her own wish.
Time blurred, along with any sense of direction, as Sevana kept an eye on the steady stream of people rushing into the ship. They came aboard in threes, sometimes fours as parents carried in children. They packed into the interior like living cargo, but not one person voiced complaint, just commands to each other to come in closer, make more room. Sevana’s ears were hyper-sensitive to any sound coming from the volcano and every time she heard a groan, or the hiss of gases escaping, her nerves jumped. It felt like hours but it was mere minutes since Tian-Mu’s mad scramble for the volcano. The ship was mostly full at this point, so Sevana had to hope that most of the village was here already.
She saw it before she heard it, as a plume of ash escaped straight up, like a dark thundercloud rising in a column into the sky. In that moment, she knew. Chi-Lin had either not been able to catch Tian-Mu or hadn’t been able to stop her.
The phoenix’s seal was broken.
Like a physical wave of thunder, a shockwave rushed over her, the sound loud enough that Sevana nearly leapt out of her own skin. The top of the volcano disappeared from her sight completely as smoke rolled out along the sides in every direction. It was likely the heat of the lava pouring out that was making it smoke like that.
Wrenching her attention back to the shields, she stepped out onto the gangplank, pulling people up and pushing them in, trying to hurry the stragglers along. There were still twenty or so people, mostly elderly, that were trying to get on board. They couldn’t raise a shield until everyone was in, as the barrier wouldn’t recognize anyone not already inside of it. Her eyes anxiously darted over her shoulder toward the volcano, and the ash cloud quickly heading their direction. Would they make it?
A hand caught her arm and whirled her around. Sevana spun, balance upset enough that she automatically grabbed onto the person reaching for her. She knew even as she moved who it was, and didn’t try to lash out as Aran brought her in close. He slammed the door closed behind her just as the ash plume started pelting the side of the ship.
Sevana looked up into his face and saw every emotion she felt reflected back at her. The anger, worry, frustration, helplessness. “Did we get them all?”
“I don’t know,” he responded grimly over the roar of the volcano.
There was no time to sink into despair yet. She pushed away from him, heading for the navigation systems. There were people barring her way, of course, and she had to shove and elbow them aside to force her way to the prow. “Da-Chin!” she called as she rammed her way forward. “DA-CHIN!”
“Here, Artifactor!” a thin voice called from somewhere at the back of the ship.
“Get me a head count!” she commanded. He would know better than she how many people they had. And how many they had lost.
Finally, she reached the navigation, then paused when the realization hit that even if she knew how to operate it, it wasn’t safe for her to touch it. Especially now, with her emotions all over the map and her magical core feeling twitchy. She turned, found Aran at her back, and requested, “Get us airborne. We can’t risk the acid eating through the hull.”
Aran leaned over her shoulder, hands grazing the dials. “This is the same as your design?”
“It is my design. It operates the same, we just can’t move it from this spot.”
He nodded understanding, touched the right button, and his magic flared for a moment as the ship responded to his command and lifted into the air.
Whatever happened next, at least the people were safe. Relieved, she sank her head to rest against his chest and for a moment, a long moment, just breathed.
All of this destruction, insanity, this fear and hurt that could have been avoided. And now she stood in the middle of it all, untouched only because of one man’s solid protection of her. Without him, she and most of this village would have been completely destroyed, dead before they could even try to get off the isle.
Surely one woman’s jealousy was not worth this much heartbreak.
It took two hours for the volcano to empty.
Sevana had blessed the fact that this wasn’t a particularly large volcano several times, but never as much as now, after it had erupted. Because it was a little on the smaller side, it didn’t take as long for the lava to flow out, for the ash and gases to escape. So they didn’t have to stay trapped inside their hovering ship for days, waiting. That was just as well, as they had no provisions on board the ship, and it couldn’t sail to somewhere else, so it would have meant a slow death to all of those on board.
Once the air had cleared enough to see, she almost wished that it hadn’t. A thick layer of ash coated everything—mainland and sea—so much so that it looked like a macabre version of a winter’s day. Not a single patch of land remained uncovered.
With her sight unimpeded, she could see straight toward the volcano. The tall cinder cone was no more. The top of it was completely gone, melted away, and there were traces of red hot trails all around its top. They were cooling fast, but it was clear evidence that the lava had flown out in all directions. Fortunately for her frayed nerves, Sevana could also see that their barrier had held up even under that extreme pressure. There were a few visible cracks, but it was still there, protecting the village from being buried under an avalanche of melted stone.
With the majority of the threat gone, Sevana went looking for Da-Chin. The elderly man looked beyond haggard and sagged with anger and depression.
“How many?” she asked him quietly.
“There are seven people missing,” he responded just as quietly.
Seven. She closed her eyes and felt like screaming. Maybe she was, on some internal level. “We will look for them properly, but stay here for now. I need to go and make sure that the barrier held up. It seems to have, but at the same time, I’m not sure if the water under us is safe or not. Stay here. Aran and I will check out the situation and then come back.”
The elder inclined his head, either in agreement or despair, she wasn’t sure.
Sevana had no idea how to offer comfort in this situation and wasn’t about to try. She wasn’t in the best of moods herself. Instead, she moved off, going to the gangplank that was still attached by ropes to the dock. With Aran’s help, she managed to slide down it safely enough to the docks.
The first thing she checked was the water. It looked choppy, and it smelled off, as if touched with sulfur. That wasn’t a good sign. Sevana wasn’t sure if it was dangerous enough to offer damage to the ship, but she wasn’t willing to risk it just by eyeballing the situation. “Aran, can you tell if the water is acidic?”
He stared hard at it for a moment before stating decisively, “It is not. It does have traces
of lava in it, but it’s from further away. We can land the ship safely here. Should I do so?”
“Not just yet. I want to see how well the barrier held up before letting anyone off.”
Aran didn’t say a word to her, just stayed close to her side as they silently forged a path toward the main pedestal. The ash was thick here, like snow or sand, difficult to wade through. A little of it got into her shoes, underneath her socks, and became an irritant. The annoyance didn’t penetrate through her fog of disbelief. She couldn’t even recognize the place anymore. What had been a green, thriving area now looked like a ghost town that had been abandoned for centuries. Sevana was deathly afraid that most of the animals on the isle had not made it, as they hadn’t had time to evacuate any of them, but if there were corpses nearby she couldn’t see them under all of the ash. It was just too thick and pervasive. There were also signs that the barrier had not been high enough to contain the rocks thrown free of the volcano. Sevana counted four buildings that had chunks missing from the roofline, where high velocity projectiles had impacted them. It was infinitely better than losing the entire village, of course; the barrier had protected it for the most part. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t damage to contend with.
This was a nightmare. Only it was worse than a nightmare because there was no possibility that Sevana could wake up from the dream.
The main pedestal was just out of sight of the village and it took her agonizingly long minutes to reach it. The pedestal itself had not been under any protective barrier—they hadn’t even had a chance to design a shield for it. She wondered if they’d had power to divert to create something.
When they rounded the bend, to her surprise, the pedestal was not within sight. Instead there was a simple rock box in its place, standing long and wide enough for a group of people to stand upright inside of it. “Cheng-Huang’s work?”
“It must be.” Aran sounded relieved. He strode straight forward and rapped on the side of the stone. “It’s safe to come out!” he called.
The stone glowed briefly with power and then sloughed off, retreating to the earth so that it formed a perfect square free of ash. As it did so, it revealed the three deities and Master, all of them still with their hands on the pedestal, channeling in their energy. After giving his surroundings a long look, a tight expression came over Master’s face. “And we were trying so hard to avoid this.”
Sevana also felt just as frustrated, just as dismayed that this was their outcome after working so hard to avoid it. “Master, the barrier? Did it hold all the way around?”
“I don’t think it did,” Master denied sadly. “About twenty minutes in, we all felt a jolt; after that the barrier has been acting very strange. I think we have a hole somewhere. It doesn’t appear to be toward the village, though, which is cause for thanks.”
“The hole is not,” Aran confirmed. “We managed to get the people on board Cheng-Huang’s ship, so they are fine for now. But this concerns me. Is the hole at some other point of the isle, or facing the sea?”
They all shrugged their ignorance. Considering what they were doing, none of them could really leave and take a look. Right now it wasn’t safe to venture far from this area anyway, so Sevana only saw one option. “Aran, did you see Jumping Clouds on the way in? I was looking but under all of this ash….”
“I know where we left it, I’ll see if it’s still flyable.” Aran patted her shoulder in reassurance before moving off.
Sevana blew out an aggravated breath. “We’re going to be in disaster relief for weeks at least. Master, do you have a Caller on you?”
“I do.”
“If you’ll activate it, I’ll send the word out. I think we need reinforcements.”
Master did not disagree and immediately fished out the Caller from his pocket and set it flat in his hand.
Sevana spent the next hour calling Sarsen, Jacen, Pierpoint, and anyone else she could think of. Sarsen, knowing her trouble, immediately offered to send out word to his own contacts and save her the aggravation of trying to do it all on her own. She received several promises that in the next twenty-four hours, people would be coming with as much equipment and food as they could haul with them. Considering the people that she was speaking to, that was a significant amount of help; Sevana knew that at the very least, the place would not be a disaster zone for long.
From what she could see, the barrier had done part of its job, and the lava was cooling around the edge of the isle. In time, it would be an extension of the land here and give people more room to spread out on. Right now, it was a very narrow silver lining in an extremely dark cloud, but it did give some hope for the future.
Emotions in a turbulent whirl of failure and growing anger, Sevana turned to walk back to the village. It was time to let people out of the ship. They had a lot of work ahead of them.
Any luck that Sevana might have had was not to be found today. Possibly because of her emotions, partly because of her exhaustion, her magic was wild and refused to cooperate in any way. Even doing simple things, like powering on a device, were dangerous for her to do. As she found out the hard way.
That meant that she was down to doing manual labor, as she didn’t dare go anywhere near her tools for fear of melting them, and Sevana hated manual labor with a passion. It was drudgery, nothing more, and it didn’t activate her mind at all. She found it more boring than sleep, and that was saying something. But on the other hand, she couldn’t sit idly by while there was so much work to be done. They didn’t have enough hands as it was. So no matter how reluctant she was, Sevana forced herself to keep going and to apply her back and hands to whatever task lay in front of her.
Doing something she hated doing, no matter how good of a service, made her already dark mood go pitch black.
Just then, Nia Reign, Queen of the Unda, came out from the ash-covered waves. She stood on the shore, radiating power in angry pulses, the like that no one had felt before. Even Tian-Mu’s angry tantrum from before paled in comparison. In a voice like that of a mother storm, she boomed out, “SELLION OF SOUTH WOODS! I WILL HAVE WORDS WITH YOU!”
In a saner, calmer state of mind, this summons would have worried Sevana. As it stood, she was angry enough that she threw down the shovel in her hands and marched right for the upset Unda without a second’s thought.
The whole isle heard her, of course, and Master as well as Aran were running for both women at top speed. But Sevana was closer and she beat them there by several hundred feet. Feet planted, arms akimbo, she faced Nia Reign head on and snapped out, “What?”
Nia Reign’s power flared as her anger spiked. She was already glowing like shiranui, only a more volatile shade of blue with hot-white arcs strewn throughout. Her dark hair was filled with so much static electricity that it literally stood on end, looking like she had a dark halo backlighting her. With her rage so intense, this normally beautiful woman looked like every child’s mental image of a sea witch. “You dare address me so?”
“You dare interrupt me while I’m trying to clean up this mess?” Sevana growled back. Flinging out a hand to indicate the area behind her, she continued heatedly, “I’ve already had one angry goddess today throw a tantrum and destroy this place just because her little feelings were hurt,” this last part dripped in sarcasm, “and now you’re standing here looking about as calm as she was. What are you going to do for an encore? Sink the isle completely?”
At that point Aran caught up with her and tried to wedge himself in between both women. “Apologies, Nia Reign, we are all very distraught by the destruction wrought today. Sellion worked long and hard to avoid this end, and—”
Nia Reign threw up a hand, silencing him, her eyes never leaving Sevana’s. “What do you mean, a goddess caused this?”
Sevana wasn’t in the mood for explanations and so spat, “Tian-Mu.”
That seemed to be explanation enough. Nia Reign’s eyes closed in a fatalistic manner and her anger flared again before abruptly abating. “I
was told only that the volcano had blown, and that the barrier had failed to completely contain it. I assumed it to be the fault of those working on the problem.”
“Apologies,” Aran said again, quietly now. “I was rushed in giving you the message, I did not try to fully explain. Tian-Mu came this morning after learning that we were going to release Feng-Huang here, and she had a conniption when we refused to do things her way. We had no way of stopping her.”
Nia Reign held up a hand again, this time in reassurance. “Peace, Son of Aranhil, I know you. I thought you careless, not destructive. No matter the reason, destruction like this is evil, I think. Tian-Mu was a gentle woman that was gifted immortality and power by the gods. Her jealousy has undone her good character.”
Sevana didn’t care if her husband had openly cheated on her. It didn’t excuse Tian-Mu from this.
Master puffed up, finally joining them, a little winded from his mad sprint to the shoreline. Sevana spared him a glance but nothing more. She still had an upset Unda queen demanding her attention.
Eyes narrowed into dark slits, Nia Reign hissed, “I must think of how to deal with her.”
“You won’t get the chance,” Sevana swore vehemently. “Not if I get to her first.”
Regarding her thoughtfully, Nia Reign stated, “A mortal cannot harm a god.”
Staring her down, Sevana replied flatly, “I’m half-Fae. I’ll manage.”
Aran shifted uneasily beside her but even he wasn’t quite sure how to interrupt without having two women hand his head back to him.
After a long, tense moment, Nia Reign unbent enough to give her a cool smile. “I somehow believe you, Sellion. It is a shame that you are of the Fae. I would have welcomed you among the Unda otherwise.”
Thereby suggesting she was ruthless enough to please even this woman? Sevana smirked back. “I’m flattered, Nia Reign.”
“As you should be. I do not like many mortals, half-Fae or not. I now understand why Aranhil likes you.” Clapping her hands, she dismissed the subject. “I am doing what I can to clean up the area under and around the shoreline, but there is damage there that will take many seasons to heal.”
The Canard Case (The Artifactor Series Book 4) Page 15