by Drew Seren
Filzbalm had flown it across and found a rocky protrusion to tie it off to. Aniu had gone first, to make sure it was safe, then let Felonia know to send them on over.
The hand-over-hand progression across the rope had almost been more than Skylar could bear. His arms and shoulders burned with the effort by the time he reached the far side. Going up had made things that much harder. He wished the line had angled down so they could’ve all just slid to the next geothermal tube.
“Sounds like there’s a lot of bats in here,” Skylar said. “At least I think the clicks and chirps are bats.”
“That’s them,” Solaria replied in a hushed voice. “I wish Uncle Phil would hurry getting Lusino over here. I want to get some of them for dinner.”
Skylar frowned. “Dinner? We’re going to eat bats?” He was still getting used to the idea that Solaria ate just about any kind of meat. At school, she was always going on about how the meat there didn’t have the same taste as things she killed herself. It was easier to ignore when she wasn’t looking at having something she’d just killed for dinner.
“I bet they’re tasty,” Filzbalm said before Solaria could add anything.
“If properly prepared, they’re delicious,” Solaria said. “But it takes a fair number of them to make a good meal.”
“Kids, step a little away from the edge.” Aniu waved them deeper into the tunnel. “We need to give Phil room.”
Skylar turned to look. Phil was just reaching the spot where the light from the palm beam Skylar had handed over to Aniu illuminated his face. He was panting and his hands shook as he drew closer. Lusino clung to his back with his eyes tightly closed and his own breath coming in short gasps.
“You’re almost here, Lusino,” Aniu urged.
Without needing to be told twice, Skylar stepped back until he was nearly out of the pool of light. The chirping and clicking grew louder. He hadn’t seen any of the bats with his own eyes. Filzbalm had told him they were all clinging to the ceiling and walls just a few feet past the edge of the chasm, then shown him a mental image of what they looked like. They were definitely bats, but they were all a strange off-white color close enough to the color of the snow and ice to blend into the surfaces they clung to. Their eyes were a beady red and they were little more than fuzzy white lumps with leathery wings that stuck out above their bodies as they skittered along their perches.
A harsh oooph drew Skylar’s attention back to Phil. He’d made it to the ledge and let Lusino stand on the rocks there while he put his hands on his knees and panted. “I’m a feeler, not a mover. If being in Intergal Rescue didn’t keep me in peak condition, that would’ve been impossible. Sorry, Lusino, but you need to lay off the farm-raised antelope—they’re awful fatty.”
“No need to apologize,” Lusino huffed out as he sat next to Phil. “From now on, I’m going to start acting like a rural teenager and if I can’t catch it, I won’t eat it.”
“That’s a good attitude,” Felonia said as she made it across the rope easily and landed on the ledge next to Phil. “But I think before we can start planning the next phases of our lives, we’ve got to get out of here and stop this entity who’s determined to destroy our planet.” She wiped a hand across her brow. “Is it just me, or is it warm in here?”
Skylar had been too worried about everything else going on to think about the temperature, but when she mentioned it, he realized it was a bit warmer than the other tunnels they’d been in.
Aniu shrugged. “These are geothermal tunnels, maybe they’re building their energy back up.”
Felonia shook her head. “I don’t know about that. If she’s pulling the power out of them, they shouldn’t be able to restart, particularly not in just a few hours.”
“Of course, if you’re right and they are restarting, we might want to get out of here quickly,” Phil said, straightening. “Because I don’t want to be here when millions of gallons of heated water start rising through that chamber.”
“But it didn’t happen in Glacier City,” Solaria said, walking over to the ledge’s edge. “Why would it happen here?”
“Didn’t you say last night the geothermal network here was the largest on the planet?” Skylar asked, torn between joining her on the edge and keeping watch for the bats to wake up and swoop down on them.
She nodded. “You’re right. Maybe the one here was too much for her to completely drain.”
“Let’s get moving.” Phil gave Lusino a hand up. “Like I said, if we’ve got hot water returning, we need to get out of here.”
“We need to get beyond the bats quietly then,” Aniu said, then started past Skylar.
“But Dad!” Solaria sounded mad. “A bat hunt?”
“Safety first.” Felonia pushed against Solaria, sending her after her father.
Although he wasn’t about to try to explain it to Solaria, hunting wasn’t really his thing. Skylar was pretty sure he wasn’t missing much if they could get past the bats without having to kill any of them. He kicked a rock that went a little farther than he planned and rolled off the edge of the chasm, causing several other rocks to cascade after it. After a couple of seconds, several jolts of steam rose up.
The palm lights illuminated the bats for a moment before the entire wall shifted and the bats all took to wing. It was like an off-white, living wave dropped down on them. Lusino fell to his knees and put his hands over his head. Solaria cheered as she started snatching bats out of the air and smashing them into the wall beside her.
Skylar put his hands over his head and tried to figure out what he should do.
“Solaria has the right idea,” Filzbalm said, and excitement poured through Skylar. “If there weren’t so many of them, I’d help her, but they work as a hive mind. See? They’re attacking her and not the rest of us.”
Peering past his arms, if was quickly evident that Filzbalm was right. The bats were mobbing Solaria. The thing was, she hadn’t seemed to notice. She was moving with quickly fluid actions, snatching bats out of the air so fast it looked like they were serving themselves to her.
“Did you say ‘hive mind’?” Skylar asked.
“Yeah, it’s a strange form of mutual consciousness. There appears to be a colony queen.” There was a quiet thoughtfulness for a moment. “Much like with Solar Drakes.”
Skylar hadn’t learned much in the way of offensive tactics, but he had an idea. “We need to hit her telepathically. If we can stop her from attacking Solaria, we can get out of here.” He didn’t wait to get the okay from any of the adults—he pushed out the way he’d done one other time, on accident. But unlike when his telepathic powers had first erupted at school, he had training and understanding about what he was doing.
“Skylar,” Felonia shouted. “What are you doing? Stop that.”
He ignored her as his mind met with resistance and he thrust harder.
“Skylar, relax.” A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and a wave of calm washed over him.
“You’re making progress,” Filzbalm’s thoughts pushed the calmness away. “Keep it up—I’ll block Phil.”
The resistance Skylar had felt dissolved before anyone could do anything else to him. Around them, the bats seemed less organized. They flew in circles, but didn’t close in on Solaria any more.
The floor around her was littered with small white bodies. Blood dripped from her hands. Solaria stopped grabbing bats and turned toward him. “No fair using powers to end up with a bigger head count.”
Skylar stumbled a bit and broke off the telepathic assault he’d been broadcasting. “Head count? I wasn’t trying to kill them.” His guts twisted. “I was trying to defend you.”
“What did you think you were doing, striking out like that?” Phil asked, lifting his hand from Skylar’s shoulder. “Or having Filzbalm block my attempt at calming you?” He eyed Filzbalm suspiciously. “You shouldn’t have been able to do that. I guess there’s a lot we still have to learn about Solar Drakes.”
“Yes, there is,�
� Filzbalm whispered with a slight chuckle.
Bile rose in Skylar’s throat. He’d never wanted to intentionally hurt anyone, with the exception of the Boarisk raiders who’d attacked Hummassa and killed his mother. The bats were innocent. They were just doing what bats do and defending themselves. If he wasn’t going to eat them, he shouldn’t have attacked them.
Phil’s calm swept over Skylar. “There’s still a lot you have to learn. Something tells me they haven’t bothered putting you through psychic ethics classes yet—probably figured you’d have had those when you first got to Stars’ End like most of the students do. There’s a lot more to being a psychic than just learning to use your powers.”
“I don’t think this is the right place for an ethics lesson, Phil,” Felonia said. “We need to get moving. For good or bad, the bats have been dealt with. Solaria, gather what you can carry. We’ll leave the rest and hope there are some scavengers in the tunnels that will make use of them. The temperatures are continuing to rise. Filzbalm, we need you to lead us out of the tunnels.”
Filzbalm launched himself off Skylar’s shoulder. “The remaining bats are disorganized enough I should be able to get us out of here without them bringing me out of the air.”
“Just be careful.” Skylar forced himself to straighten. Phil’s calming presence helped him pull himself together enough to move on down the tunnel.
“Come on,” Solaria said, her arms full of bat bodies that were nearly the same color as she was. She followed Filzbalm.
As they went across the area where the bats had been roosting, there were a lot more bodies than could be accounted for by Solaria grabbing and killing the ones she had. The way they lay scattered about, it looked like Skylar had scrambled their hive mind and they’d all flown into the walls in mass confusion, or fear. He wasn’t sure if maybe he’d managed to take out the queen of the group and somehow the others hadn’t known what to do. He’d never caused such loss of life.
A lightheaded nausea filled Skylar and wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to eat anything the resembled the ice bats, and didn’t want to use his telepathic powers like that ever again.
When things like this happened, he totally understood why his mother had been so scared of psychics. If he could do that when he was just trying to incapacitate the roost queen, what would he be able to do once he fully learned to use his powers and could focus his will on any mind he chose? He wrapped his arms around his chest and wished his mother was there to hug him and tell him everything was going to be alright, but she wasn’t and never would be again. He just hoped he’d never do anything like that in the future. He hadn’t meant to kill them. He’d just been trying to save Solaria. It wasn’t fair. The bats hadn’t deserved to die.
22
Exploding Faces In The Snow
FILZBALM LED them out of the tunnel and into the ruins of Wegascu. The afternoon sun was a glow on the horizon. Shadows stretched across the broken ground, casting the whole area in an eerie otherworldly mix of pink and black, shadows and ice.
Lusino dropped to his knees, and wailed. “My beautiful city. She has destroyed my city.”
Phil pulled him up. “Come on. We don’t know where she is and the sun is going down. We need to get away from here before she wakes up and comes after us. Without O’Byrne, I don’t think any of us will survive.”
“The hover car is over by the Intergal tents, south of the city,” Felonia said. “I can get us there, as long as we don’t have any more collapses.”
“I’d rather not go through that again,” Skylar muttered as they headed through the devastated city, keeping the glowing horizon on their right. He hadn’t thought he’d be able to feel worse than he had when he worked Glacier City and found so many dead, but he did. The cold seemed to permeate every cell of his being. It pulled at him and he wanted to find somewhere he could be warm again. But he wasn’t sure even a sunny beach on Hummassa would be enough to warm the frozen part of his soul that had killed the bats.
Filzbalm landed on his shoulder, then went and tucked himself at the base of Skylar’s neck. “I’m with you.” He rubbed his head against Skylar’s jaw.
Skylar reached up and rubbed his gloved finger across Filzbalm’s head, wishing he didn’t have the glove on and he could feel the soft warm skin against his. “Thank you.”
HALFWAY ACROSS the fragmented ice city, Skylar’s com beeped. He pulled his glove down so he could see the screen. It was Del.
“Please tell me you’ve got something,” Skylar said as soon as the connection completed.
“That claw symbol, you said you’d seen it before.” Del’s voice sounded urgent.
“Yeah.” Skylar looked at Solaria who appeared tired as she trudged next to him. “Solaria, where was that claw, paw, symbol?”
She walked a little closer to him. “A couple of different places in the dig site. It might’ve even been on that crystal claw totem thing Chillarni showed us.”
“Wait, a totem?” Excitement edged Del’s voice.
“Yeah, I thought we told you about that.” So much had happened in the past few days… Skylar tried desperately to remember what he’d told who. “It was a long crystal with a paw at the end, complete with claws. I think the symbol was on it. Didn’t we send you a picture of it.”
“Nope. Look, you need to use that.”
The ice and ruins around them exploded, cutting Del’s voice off. An invisible force slammed into Skylar, sending him flying. Anger engulfed him.
“Stop!” Filzbalm’s voice roared in his head.
As suddenly as it started, Skylar’s flight ended, and he hung in the air, just inches from the jagged side of a building. He was fifteen to twenty feet off the ground. Something had stopped the anger too.
Near him, Solaria hung in a similar fashion. Her head was bowed, her brow furrowed, her hands clenched into fists and her eyes closed. A strange haze engulfed her.
“Lend her power or you’ll fall to the ground,” Filzbalm urged as he scrambled out of Skylar’s hood.
“What’s happening?” Skylar tried desperately not to panic, but he was hanging in midair and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do except panic.
“An attack,” Filzbalm said. “Now relax and help her keep you afloat.” The Solar Drake tapped into Skylar’s power—the gentle tug of it on his energy reserves was something he was beginning to feel.
Skylar did as Filzbalm instructed. He let the power flow easily between them, and hoped it was enough to get them safely down. It was one thing to watch Solaria float around in the nearly weightless environment of the Z-GBall court at the school, but on Pantheria, she was holding them against gravity. From the look on her face, there was more than a little strain.
“Ease the two of you on down,” Felonia said evenly from nearby.
Not wanting to take his attention off Solaria and the energy he was pouring between them, Skylar closed his eyes and pushed power toward Filzbalm, who seemed to be amplifying it.
“Leave here!” A voice tore through the area. It hit Skylar’s brain so hard he blinked against the pain of it. Ice and snow showered down on him as the closest ice spire shattered.
“We’re trying,” Phil shouted back. “We have injured.”
Skylar dropped several feet in the air before Solaria stopped his fall. She let out a heavy breath as his heart, that had skipped more than a couple of beats, started up again.
“This isn’t your planet.” The wind seemed to carry the words that shook Skylar both inside and out.
“And it isn’t yours any longer,” Aniu said.
Skylar wished he could take his concentration off Solaria, but he was afraid if he did it would break the flow of power between them and he’d fall the last ten to twelve feet. He couldn’t tell for sure with the broken ice and scattered snow under him.
“If I can’t have my home, none of you will.” The voice sounded like it was coming closer.
“You’re killing thousands of people,” Phil said.
Skylar slowly drifted downward with Solaria at his side. Filzbalm flew off his shoulder and circled them.
“Your people killed all of mine, so why should I care?” A pair of huge, ice blue eyes appeared in the snow that swirled around them. They were round and pupilless.
“If you don’t stop, you’re killing more than just the beings who live on this world,” Phil said.
“And did your kind worry about that when you destroyed my people?” The voice came closer. Beyond the eyes, the rest of its body came out of the snow and ice. It looked like it was forming itself from the snow and ice blowing around it.
Skylar floated gently down, and another mind joined his and Filzbalm’s in trying to keep them all from falling. From their earlier work, he recognized the feel of Felonia’s mind. It was almost comforting as the chaos erupted with them in the epicenter.
“We don’t even know who your people were,” Phil said.
“We ruled this part of space before you came here.” She continued to solidify, appearing vaguely human, but in huge proportions. It looked like her body was going to be nearly ten feet tall.
“Easy, we’re almost down,” Filzbalm said as he returned to Skylar’s shoulder.
“Wait.” The form that had looked nearly solid as it drew closer suddenly exploded outward. “I will not break my agreement with She Who Holds.”
The unseen force that had thrown Skylar into the air vanished. He fell a couple of feet, then stopped.
“Almost down,” Felonia said, then Skylar’s feet touched something solid.
He put his hands on his knees. A wave of exhaustion hit him. He glanced at Solaria in time to watch her crumple to the ground as her father and Phil rushed forward to catch her. He had questions, but he was so tired he couldn’t put them into words before darkness hit him and the snow cushioned his fall.