by Gunhus, Jeff
“Oh,” T-Rex said, rolling the idea over in his mind. “I didn’t think of that. Do you think it’s going to be that bad?”
“Nah, she’s just trying to spook us is all,” Will said, the certainty gone from his voice. “Don’t you think, Jack?”
I shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
We stared out over the water, each of us alone with our thoughts of what the Academy might be like. Eva had told us very few details beyond a brief history of the place.
Set up in the mountains near the border between France and Italy, the Academy was the last holdout of an ancient institution that had trained monster hunters for centuries. Even as recent as a few decades ago, there were several such places on every continent. But modern technology was making it harder and harder to remain hidden from the public eye. This mountain hideaway was the first Academy, and, according to Eva, it might be the last as well.
“Eva told me that there were real monsters kept in captivity there for the training exercises,” T-Rex said. “Do you think that’s true?”
I shrugged. “We’ve both known her for the same length of time. Have you ever heard her exaggerate about anything?”
“I guess not,” Will said. “This is gonna be awesome.”
I smiled. Will was always the eager one, ready for anything. While this often got him into trouble, I wished I could be more like him. When I thought of Eva’s nervousness for us, all I felt was a twisting knot in my stomach. But I wasn’t going to the Academy to participate in their little training program. The only thing I cared about was finding Ren Lucre’s dungeons and then freeing my father. Eva had promised that the head of the Academy, Master Aquinas, would tell me everything she knew when we got there. I was counting on it.
A soft bell chimed from up in the control tower, a deep, resounding clang that guided our ship safely to shore. I followed the tower’s smooth, sheer walls upward, its top seemingly missing as it disappeared into a thick, swirling shroud of mist.
Three men walk along the balcony outside the steering house. The captain of the ship was one of them, noticeable because of the red glow from the tip of his cigar. These men were true sailors, paid off by members of the Black Guard back in America to take on three stowaways. Sure, a plane would have been more efficient, but try to leave the country when you’re a kid without a passport. Not that easy.
I was about to turn to Will and suggest we head down to bed when I heard the first scream.
It came from a few stories above us. It was a man’s scream, but high-pitched and filled with terror. A cigar hit the deck next to us. Instinctively, both Will and I crouched down to the ground, swords up as Eva had taught us, looking up to the balcony overhead. T-Rex just stood there, mouth open and gazing in the direction of the scream, clutching his sandwich to him. I reached out and pulled him to the ground next to us.
The fog descended further and covered the balcony in a thin, wispy haze. Through it, I could still see the dark shapes of the men on the balcony. They ran back and forth as if trapped. The captain cried out, his arms raised as if to attack something. He struggled with some unseen force, then tipped precariously over the railing.
“Watch out!” I cried.
The captain stood for a second, then stumbled as if forced by a strong shove. He fell backward over the railing.
“No!” Will shouted.
But just as the captain was about to hit the deck, a tendril of cloud bolted out from the mist and wrapped around his leg. He jerked to a stop just above the hardwood surface, held tightly by his one leg.
I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived.
Two other men tumbled down from the balcony, screaming. They were also caught at the last second by long wispy fingers of mist and held upside down off the deck. They struggled and kicked, but they could not free themselves.
The fog churned and swirled and I thought I saw bodies rolling just under the surface. Every so often an arm or a leg broke out from the cloud before dissolving into the night air.
“What is it?” T-Rex whimpered.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back. “But it can’t be good.”
Without warning, one of the tendrils of fog snapped back and forth like a whip being cracked. The sailor flew through the air, smashed into the wall, and crumpled to the floor.
“Definitely not good,” I said. “Come on.”
We ran, still low to the ground, staying as far from the ceiling of fog as possible. In front of us, the second sailor was tossed through the air, end over end until he smacked into the wall.
I lifted my sword over my head as I neared the captain, still hanging upside down. With a yell, I jumped onto a cargo crate and vaulted into the air, slashing the dense cord of mist just above the captain’s foot.
But my sword went straight through it like there was nothing there.
I landed hard on the deck, rolled forward and ended back up on my feet. In seconds, Will and T-Rex were at my side. Will brandished his spear. T-Rex still had a death grip on his sandwich.
“Impressive,” Will said. “Now what?”
The mist churned and grew thicker directly above us. There was a swirling vortex, like the beginning of a tornado.
“Run!” I yelled.
Just as I did, the vortex above us transformed into wide, gaping jaws lined with horrific teeth.
We sprinted from the deck, T-Rex screaming as we ran.
The jaws descended on us, a thick neck of white fog behind it. Luckily, we were already on the move as the massive jaws chomped down on the deck where we had just been standing. Shards of wood exploded into the air from the impact.
We ran into the hallway connecting the two sides of the ship. It was open at each end so I could see the night sky rise and fall through the gap at the opposite side. I spun around and saw that the fog was still chasing us, its front end crystallized into nasty looking spikes. As we ran down the hall, we suddenly saw a thick white fog engulf our only exit.
“We’re trapped!” Will shouted.
“This way!” I shouted back.
I opened a hatch in the wall and climbed in. Once on the other side, all three of us heaved against the thick metal door until it swung into place. I tried to spin the wheel to lock the door, when something heavy hammered in from outside. The force of the impact pushed the door open a few inches. We threw our shoulders into the door and slammed it back shut.
“Lock it!” Will yelled.
“I’m trying!” I said, lurching the wheel mechanism over, between the violent bouts of hammering on the outer side of the door. “Push harder! Both of you, on three. One…two…THREE!”
Will and T-Rex grunted and heaved against the hatch. It slammed shut just long enough for me to spin the handle and lock it tight.
There were a few more angry poundings against the sturdy metal door, and then silence.
We all rocked back against the wall and tried to catch our breath.
“Well, that was close,” T-Rex laughed.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Something slammed into the metal hatch again. Only this time we heard a voice as well.
“Let me in! It’s going to get me… Please let me in!”
The three of us froze. It was Eva.
“Help me, please!” Eva cried. “I beg you.”
“It’s Eva,” T-Rex shouted. “Open the door. Quick!”
“Come on!” Will yelled.
The door rattled even harder. I grabbed the wheel to spin it open but a hand reached out from behind us and stopped me. I spun around and saw Eva crouched next to me.
“Open the door! Help me,” Eva’s voice cried from the other side of the door. The fog creature was imitating her.
“It’s called an Aquamorph,” Eva whispered. “A powerful creature that can change shapes and shift from solid to mist in a split second. Usually they aren’t this aggressive.”
“Why won’t you help me?” the voice that sounded like Eva cried.
“We almost opened the door for that thing. We would have been goners for sure,” Will said.
“Please, Jack. It’s hurting me,” the voice whimpered.
“It knows who you are,” Eva said to me. “That’s not a good sign.”
“Now what?” T-Rex asked.
Eva gave the wheel another tug to make certain it was secure and then motioned for us to follow her up the ladder. As she climbed, I noticed the apparatus screwed into the wrist of her missing hand—a short brass pipe tipped with the head of a spear. Before I could ask her what it was, she was already up the ladder and on the deck above us. Will and I followed fast behind.
We were now on the ship’s upper level.
The lights flickered above us as we ran through the corridors. Twice we turned only to see a wall of fog billowing toward us. We had to double-back each time and find a new route.
“We have to get out in the open!” Eva said.
“And then what?” I asked. “Our swords do nothing to it.”
Finally, we reached a doorway that led to the balcony where we had first seen the sailors attacked. The wind shifted and the fog cleared, giving us an opening. We ran onto the balcony and looked down at the fog swirling beneath us.
Even though the wind howled and bashed the ship, agonizing screams from the sailors reached us from the deck below. The raging wind was so loud that we had to yell to hear each other.
“OK, now what?” I shouted.
Eva stared into the fog, looking for something. “We need to find its center,” she yelled back. “It’s the only way to stop it.” She looked up and pointed to an area above us and to the right, a point that was just off the ship’s edge. I didn’t see anything at first, but then I noticed that the fog swirled around it faintly in a circular motion—it was a giant version of the vortex we had seen earlier.
“It looks like a hurricane,” T-Rex said, his hands held up to his face to protect himself from the wind.
“Is that it?” Will shouted.
“Can’t be sure,” Eva yelled. “We need to get closer and draw it out. That’s the only way to make it vulnerable.”
“Get closer?” I asked, looking up into the sky. “How do you suggest we do that?”
Eva nodded at the communications antenna on the roof of the bridge. It was constructed much like a ladder and stretched high into the sky. A red light flashed on and off at its peak, swaying to and fro as the ship rolled on the waves of the ocean. At first I thought she was kidding—then I realized she was just nuts.
“Come on,” she shouted. “I need your help if it gets angry.”
She clambered up a maintenance ladder that went from the balcony to the top of the bridge. I looked at Will and T-Rex, half-hoping they would try to talk me out of what I was about to do. But instead they both gave me a thumbs-up.
“Good luck,” Will said, just as another round of screams came up from the lower deck. I couldn’t help but wonder what this creature would be like angry.
I climbed up the ladder to find that Eva had already started up the antenna. She shimmied up the metal girder like an acrobat, despite the spear-tipped device in place of her left hand. She paused long enough to look down at me staring at her from below.
“Come on!” she yelled.
I sheathed my sword, jumped onto the antenna and climbed. As I did, the wind picked up, whipping my clothes against me. The higher I got, the windier it became. Worse, the antenna swayed dramatically from side to side with our combined weight. I felt like I would lose my grip at any second.
The vortex swirled out from our position about twenty feet both above and away from us. Hard to spot from the balcony, it was clearly defined now, pulling fog up from the deck on one side and spitting it back out from the other.
“Hold on,” Eva said. “This might get tricky.”
She leveled her arm that was tipped with the spearhead and took aim at the vortex. Timing the sway of the antenna, she waited until we were closest to it. Then, in the split second before we went the opposite direction, she pressed a button on her wrist and the spear shot from her arm, a rope trailing behind it.
Eva’s shot was right on the mark. and the spear disappeared into the vortex. Eva pulled on the rope and it went taut, as if the spear had hit something solid just on the other side of the wall of fog. Then, things got crazy.
A terrific roar sounded, followed by an explosion of wind that blew out of the vortex, bending the antenna back from its sheer force. I lost my footing and clung to the metal girders with my arms as my legs flapped around in the hurricane force winds.
I heard a cry from Eva and felt her fall past me. I reached out and grabbed her, catching just enough of her shirt to divert her fall and swing her back onto the antenna.
I looked down and saw that her legs were wrapped around the antenna and she clung to the metal girders with her left arm. Her other arm was still holding the taut rope, which seemed to be trying to tug her off the antenna and onto the hard surface below. I looked back at the vortex, where the rope disappeared into an incongruous black shape, no more than a few feet wide. .
The hurricane blast turned into a twisting wind, bashing against us from all sides. The antenna swayed back and forth, Eva and the vortex locked in a deadly game of tug of war.
I managed to hook my feet to the antenna while I unsheathed my sword. I twisted almost upside-down, trying to reach Eva.
“What are you doing?” Eva yelled over the wind.
“I have to cut the rope!” I yelled back. “It’s going to pull you off!”
“Get the center!” she yelled. “It’s unprotected! That’ll finish it! Get the center!”
I twisted back upright, sword in hand. The black mass in the center of the vortex was still a good twenty feet away, even after the antenna’s sway tipped us toward it. There was no way I’d reach it.
I heard a cry from Eva. She still had herself braced against the pull of the rope, but I could tell she wouldn’t last much longer. I knew what I had to do.
With my sword back at my side so I could climb with both hands, I worked my way up the antenna toward the blinking red light at the top. As if being buffeted by the wind howling around me wasn’t bad enough, torrents of slashing rain began to pelt me from every direction, making it hard to see and even harder to climb.
Higher and higher I climbed, the antenna’s mast, narrowing as I approached its tip. By the time I reached the red blinking light, I could easily wrap my arms around the whole of the metal pole. Good thing too, because the antenna bent back and forth so wildly that it felt like I was on the back of a bucking horse.
I followed the line of Eva’s rope and saw the point where it was attached. If I timed the sway of the antenna right, I might be able to come close. Just as I pulled out my sword to get ready, a burst of wind blew me to one side. I scrambled just to hold on. As I did, I felt the handle of my sword slip from my fingers.
“No!” I yelled as it tumbled down and disappeared into the fog below. I felt a surge of panic. I lost my sword. There was no way I could stop the Aquamorph now. Everyone on the ship was going to die. And it was all my fault.
I searched my pockets for a weapon… anything! But I came up empty-handed.
“Hey!” A voice called from below. I looked down and saw Will standing on the roof of the bridge, my sword raised over his head. “You need this?” he yelled.
I waved at him and threw my weight into the momentum of the antenna’s sway. As it dropped to its lowest point, Will threw the sword up into the air. He mistimed the toss and I had to dodge to the side to avoid being impaled. The sword clanged off the antenna, but I was able to still grab it by the handle with my free hand before it bounced into the murky waters below.
Below me, Will and T-Rex cheered.
The antenna reached the bottom of a giant sway, as far from the vortex as we were going to get. Eva cried out from the tension on the rope. I focused in on the black mass in the vortex as the antenna began its return trip in the o
ther direction.
The wind and rain pelted me as the antenna sped toward the vortex. At the very last second, I jumped from the antenna, windmilling my arms through the air to get as much distance as possible, praying I would reach my target.
Sword out, I slashed upwards, severing the rope connected to Eva, then jammed the sword down into the center of the black mass.
BOOM!
The mass exploded and I was catapulted backward, head over heels into the night.
Luckily, I was thrown past the edge of the ship. I slammed into the water, the force of the impact knocking the air out of me. By the time I got my wits about me, I was deep underwater. I clawed and kicked my way to the surface.
Finally, I broke the surface and gulped down mouthfuls of fresh air. As I treaded water, I looked back at the ship. A brilliant white light shone where the vortex had been. The fog covering the ship was being sucked up into the light as a high-pitched whistle filled the air.
The moment the final traces of the fog were gathered up, the light shrunk to a mere pinprick. But the whistling continued to grow louder and higher-pitched.
The point of light exploded in a grand display of fireworks with an ear-shattering sonic boom. I ducked under the water to escape the noise and when I rose back up the waves had calmed and the night was again clear. Searchlights from the trawler were activated and in a short time they had a bead on me.
By the time they dragged me on board, Eva had made her way down from the antenna and was waiting for me on the deck with T-Rex and Will.
“Dude, that was crazy!” Will cried, high-fiving me. “I mean, I could have done it a little better, but still.”
I smiled and looked at Eva. “Now you can’t tell me the Academy is going to be more intense than that.”
Eva smiled. “Yeah, I can,” she said. “But that was a good warm up. You guys better get some sleep. We’ll be there tomorrow.” She turned and walked into the ship.
“A good warm up?” Will asked, shocked. “How bad is this place going to be?”
“Don’t worry about it. She’s just trying to scare us,” I said.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe she was telling the truth and that the Monster Hunter Academy was going to be more than I could handle. Try as I might, I couldn’t get to sleep that night; my head was filled with images from the battle, and, worse, images of my father locked away in Ren Lucre’s dungeon. I knew the Academy was the path to finding and saving my father. No matter how hard it was, I couldn’t fail. I couldn’t afford to.