* * *
Falco had passed through the forefront of the legion and was thoroughly engaged in combat. The Naga staff had already dispatched a half-dozen Valkyries. The creatures were falling back, the legion advancing, General Cassius issuing orders calmly, insuring the men kept in line. They were doing as well as the X, even better, considering the strangeness of the environment and enemy, Falco thought.
Ragnarok was ever farther ahead of Falco, the battle rage consuming him, the ax crushing into white armor, smashing red eyes.
* * *
“Come on!” Dane bellowed to Ahana. As the Japanese scientist ran into the water, Dane slid down into the Crab.
Loomis had a pistol in his hand, pointed directly at Dane. “Get out! Get out!” the colonel screamed.
Dane ignored him and headed for the controls. When he heard the click of a firing pin hit a cartridge, he spared a moment to snap punch Loomis in the side of the head, sending the man to the deck unconscious.
“Close the hatch,” Dane ordered as Ahana came in.
“Do we have power?” she asked.
“No.”
“What do we do then?”
“We wait.”
* * *
Falco ducked under the Valkyrie’s swipe and with one smooth stroke parted the creature’s head from its body. He shifted, looking for the next target, but they were withdrawing, floating back.
Yells of victory rose out of the throats of the men of the XXV Legion. Falco turned toward General Cassius, and they made eye contact.
“Hold!” Falco yelled. “Hold the line!”
But the men were caught up in the excitement of victory, having faced a dark fear and overcome it, or so they thought. They pressed forward, following the Valkyries over a long, black ridgeline.
* * *
Felix Shashenka had to stop in shock when he saw the hundreds of people strapped to tables in front of him, their bodies in different stages of torment. His eyes went right to his brother, the connection strong. Shashenka drew his bayonet as he ran toward the table.
He had seen many terrible things in his time in the Spetsnatz, but nothing had prepared him for what had been done with Pytor. His brother’s skinned lips twisted upward in a smile as he recognized his sibling. The head bobbed in the slightest of nods.
Felix drew the blade across his brother’s throat, feeling the warm blood flow over his arm. It was the last thing he felt as a golden glow suffused him and his skin turned gray and hard.
* * *
The crystal skull was growing hotter as Rachel pulled Kaia closer and closer to the power portal. Then Kaia realized the heat wasn’t just coming from the skull in her hand but was also inside her own head.
Suddenly it was there, right in front of her in the water. A cylinder of black with red lines swirling through it coming out of the water and disappearing into the haze overhead. She let go of Rachel, and the dolphin regarded her with one eye, chattered something, and then sped off.
Kaia waited.
* * *
Falco was trying to get the men under order, stopping them from their headlong rush after the Valkyries. Cassius was also moving along the line, trying to get control. It took a few minutes, but they finally managed to get the legion drawn in ranks and in place.
Both looked up in shock as a golden glow came over the hill, rolling over the men, transforming them. Falco held the Naga staff up, a futile gesture as the golden wave hit him. He felt unbearable pain, from the marrow of his bones out as his body solidified. His last thought was of his children, even as his heart leapt at the hope of joining Drusilla.
Rows upon rows of legionnaires froze in place, solidified, their bodies encased in solid stone blocks.
* * *
The Crab shuddered slightly.
“Rachel,” Dane said simply in response to Ahana’s questioning look. He could feel Kaia, the heat from her in the distance, and knew she was waiting as long as she could.
* * *
“Wrangell’s beginning to erupt,” Foreman informed Nagoya.
“The power is increasing from the gate,” Nagoya said. “If it keeps up…” He fell silent.
* * *
“Directly ahead,” Dane said, seeing the Devil’s Sea portal they had come through. He knew Kaia wasn’t far away, waiting at the power portal that was also using the Devil’s Sea gate.
* * *
Amelia Earhart had been behind the legion with her samurai and other survivors. As the golden flow swept over the Romans, she turned and ran, the others following. She dove into the lake barely in time as the glow went over the water briefly, then pulled back.
When she came back on shore, there was no sign of the Romans. She signaled for the others to follow, and they headed for their caves.
* * *
Kaia knew she could wait no longer. She could sense the power level increasing in the portal next to her. She wrapped her ancestor’s skull in both hands and kicked with her feet toward the power portal.
* * *
“She’s going in,” Dane said, his hands steady on the controls.
“How close are we?”
“Not close enough,” Dane said.
* * *
As she entered the power portal, the skin on Kaia’s head began to glow dark blue. The skin peeled away, and bone appeared. Her eyes were two burning orbs of blue. Her mouth was twisted in an agonized smile.
A bolt of blue shot from her head into the crystal skull in her arms, which magnified it, and then in both directions through the cylinder of power. Up and down the blue suffused into the black, fighting it. The air crackled thunderously, and lightning bolts streaked out of the power portal.
* * *
Kaia’s head had completely transformed to crystal, power pulsing out of it into the skull held between rigid fingers and slashing into the darkness. With a final surge of power, the fingers went limp.
But the surge was enough as the cylinder of dark power shattered with a massive explosion and collapsed on itself. A tidal wave roared out from the site.
* * *
Go! Leave us. Dane urged Rachel. The dolphin got the message and sped past the craft into the portal.
“Grab something,” Dane advised Ahana.
The tidal wave slammed into the Crab, and both were thrown about as it pitched forward, riding the wave. The nose hit the portal, and then all was still.
CHATPER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE PAST AND THE PRESENT
3378 B.C.
Just in from the coast, in what would later be called France, there had been a strange fog upon part of the land for days. The local people avoided it, noting that even the wind could not stir it. The nearest village was called Carnac, and the word had passed down through the generations to avoid the fog when it came. Anyone foolhardy enough to enter it never returned.
After four days, the fog was suddenly gone one morning. As the people crawled out of their huts, they were amazed to see that the fields where the fog had been were now full of rows of thousands upon thousands of stones. Aligned as if for battle, there were over three thousand stones, stretching as far as the eye could see.
Where the stones had come from, who had arranged them, were both mysteries. But as the months and years passed, it was agreed among those who dwelled close by that on very still evenings, one could faintly hear the cries of men and the sound of metal clashing as if in combat.
79 A.D.
Two months had passed since Titus had dispatched General Cassius with the gladiator Falco and the strange priestess. A courier had arrived from the XXV Legion’s headquarters reporting that the entire legion had disappeared. The courier also informed the emperor that the strange black Shadow was also gone.
Titus pondered this for several days, but since there was no more information forthcoming, he moved on to other things such as the rebuilding of Pompeii and the construction of the Coliseum. He did have General Cassius’s name added to the roll of honor.
The gl
adiator Falco was soon nothing more than a tale a few experts on the games told among themselves and, after a generation, his name was spoken no more.
In Delphi, a new priestess took the place of the oracle. She was a niece of the slain oracle. Her first duty was to add the name Kaia to the roll of the true priestesses.
PRESENT
Dane threw open the hatch, and sunlight hit his skin, a most welcome feeling. He pulled himself up the ladder onto the top of the Crab and peered about. The gate was gone, open ocean all around except for the destroyer headed toward them, the Salvor right behind it, and the top of the FLIP bobbing on the surface. Ahana joined him, blinking in the bright light.
“We did it,” she said.
“We only stopped the Shadow temporarily,” Dane said.
“We stopped it this time in between our world and its,” Ahana corrected. “That’s an improvement.”
“We still didn’t get to the other side.” Dane was weary.
“We will,” Ahana said. “We’ll take the war to their side next time.”
THE END
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Devil's Sea a-3 Page 27