by Drew Seren
“So what are we going to do?” Skylar asked quietly when it was just Del, Solaria, Melody, and him around.
“I’m hoping when we touch the claw there will some instructions embedded in it or something,” Solaria said.
Del rolled his eyes. “You know things don’t work that way.”
“I suppose you found something in your translation.” Solaria sounded a little snappier than normal, but after everything they’d been through the past few days, he couldn’t really blame her.
“A little bit.” Del sighed. “Whoever put up the warning was trying desperately to make sure if the right person needed it, the information would be there.”
“But they didn’t want to make it too easy,” Melody said, coming back from the cockpit. “We’re about to land, so stay seated.” She glanced over at Phil, who looked to be asleep. “He should be okay.”
“Maybe. We lost the mayor of Wegascu today. I think he took it hard.” Skylar tried not to think about the people he knew who were lost. Lusino and Mutanio were just the latest. They had a lot to do and he didn’t want to get depressed when the thoughts of the dead always brought him back to his mother, and Teir, whose fate he still didn’t know.
“Uncle Phil doesn’t like failing to save people,” Solaria said. “It’s part of what makes him a good member of Intergal Rescue.”
A slight bump signaled that the ship had set down.
“Okay,” Felonia appeared out of the cockpit. “We need to find this totem and figure out what we’re doing.”
An old-fashioned com in Felonia’s ear beeped as Melody opened the ship’s door. She tapped it to accept the connection. “Yes, Zhetallia.” There was no hologram since the com was one that had been in the ship’s emergency equipment. Skylar wasn’t sure what all was being said—all they could get was Felonia’s side of things. “So she’s going after Berginna tonight. Another geothermal city…we’re fairly sure she’s targeting the geothermal areas in an effort to destabilize the planet. Yes, that’s why she hasn’t gone after the spaceport yet. Give us a couple of minutes and I’ll reconnect. We just reached the house.”
“Berginna?” Aniu asked as he joined them when they resumed their walk down the ramp.
“Yes.” Felonia shook her head. “I wish we had some way of figuring out where she was going in time to evacuate the cities.”
“From what we saw coming in, it looks like the whole planet is being evacuated,” Del said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many ships heading through a stargate at one time.”
“We were the only ship heading toward the planet,” Melody added.
“Okay.” Felonia opened the door for them. “See if you guys can find the totem you think might help. Zhetallia wants to talk to us right now. I think the planetary council is trying to come up with a plan. We’ll come find you when we’re done with Zhetallia and the council.”
“Are they still on the surface?” Solaria asked.
Felonia shook her head again. “The council is in a ship in low orbit. I bet Zhetallia tried to reach us all day, but with us underground, the coms weren’t working.”
Solaria patted her arm. “Go call her back and make a plan. We’ll find the totem. We’ve got to stop this before we don’t have a planet to call home.”
“Thanks.” Felonia gave her a big hug. “You’ve grown into such a responsible young woman.” She flashed them all a grim smile. “I don’t think of any of you are kids anymore—you’re all on the verge of being adults.” She stood and followed Aniu and Phil as they went down the hall.
Skylar glanced into the living room. There were more of the polycrates full of things piled around. He pointed toward them. “It’s in one of these.”
Del grinned. “Wow, it’s just like some of the rooms at the museum.” He hurried over and opened the closest one.
“This hunt may take a while,” Solaria said with a weary sigh.
Filzbalm flew out of Skylar’s hood and landed on the back of the couch. “I’m not sure it’s here.”
“What do you mean?” Skylar asked as he made it to a pile of crates on the opposite side of the room from where Del and Solaria were carefully going through things.
“It had a feeling to it. Almost like it was reaching out to the minds around it. I don’t feel that now.” Filzbalm stretched his wings before folding them against his back.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not here,” Skylar said as he stared at the instafoam packing material in the top of the crate he opened. “Maybe all the foam and wrappings are muffling it.”
“Muffling what?” Melody asked as she pulled the instafoam from the top of her crate.
“Filzbalm says he doesn’t feel the totem like he did when Chillarni showed it to us,” Skylar explained.
“Who’s Chillarni?” Del asked.
“One of the archeologists who works with my folks.” Solaria tossed the packing material to the side. “You guys realize we’re going to have to go find more instafoam to repack the crates. We’ll never get things back in just right to reuse the pieces we have now.”
“That’s one of the drawbacks to instafoam,” Del said as he pulled out a silk-wrapped item. “Things never fit back the same way unless you’re very careful with everything.”
Solaria sighed. “And we really don’t have time to be careful.” She tossed more instafoam aside as if to prove her point. “Mom and Dad have a ton of cans of the stuff around. We’ll just redo everything after the hunt is over.” She sighed dramatically as she pulled things out, quickly unwrapped them, frowned and set them aside with a bit more care than she was showing to the form-fitting foam. “This is going to be worse than a mouse hunt in a room full of holes.”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it.” Skylar lost his wonder at Solaria’s ability to turn everything into a hunt reference in one way or another. Skylar looked at the dusty clay bowl he’d unwrapped. It didn’t really look special in any way other than it was old.
By the time he reached the lower layer of artifacts, he didn’t have anything more than a pile of the clay bowls and wondered how they could be of any interest to anyone, even as Del had to exclaim how interesting everything he unwrapped was and how they all showed evidence of a prehistoric society that was more than just bipedal cats. At least one of them was having a good time as they raced to save Pantheria.
“SOMEONE HAS already opened this box,” Del announced as he reached the bottom of his stack.
“How can you tell?” Solaria looked into his box. “Oh, the instafoam isn’t there. Maybe Chillarni got into a hurry and missed this one?”
Skylar remembered how fastidious the woman in the dig site office had been. “I doubt that.”
Del frowned and reached into the crate. “This might be where it was.”
“What makes you say that?” Skylar rolled his shoulders that were aching from digging through the crates. He walked over to Del’s latest crate, welcoming the chance for movement.
“Look here.” Del traced an indention in the foam. “From what you said this looks like the right size and shape for what you described.”
Skylar peered in. The spot was just slightly larger than the crystal claw had been, but with each of the items wrapped before being encased in instafoam, that made sense. “Unless there was more than one of them, you could be right.” Skylar wondered who had taken the totem, and how they were going to find it. It was their best chance at saving the planet, even if Del hadn’t explained how it worked.
Solaria sighed and put her hands on her hips. “I hate it when prey slips through my claws. But who would’ve taken it?”
“Are you looking for this?” Aunt Blizza’s voice jerked then all around.
Skylar stared as she held up the crystal claw. It radiated a bright light. When he’d touched it back at the dig site, there had only been a little bit of a glow. The totem seemed to be responding to something about the old woman holding it.
“That’s it.” Solaria jumped over the couch and hugge
d her great aunt. “Why did you take it out of the box?” She reached for the claw, but Blizza moved it just out of reach.
“It was calling to me.” Her eyes didn’t seem to be looking at any of them, but were focused on the crystal in her hand. “If I didn’t know better, I would swear it’s alive. The angry one. It’s attuned to her.”
“Attuned to her,” Skylar said. “The claw is on the same psychic frequency as the thing that’s taking out the geothermal areas?”
“More than that,” Blizza said. “They seem to be parts of the whole, but I have no idea how that is possible. She’s awake again.”
“Blizza’s been going on about her being asleep all day, then she said she was awake, but Blizza was holding me in her rooms with her,” Leonada said, emerging from the hall. Her dark fur made it look like she was emerging from the shadows themselves. “Solaria, I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I came here. I’ve been helping Blizza as she would let me, but once I was in the house, she wouldn’t let me leave. I hope it’s okay. My whole family was in Glacier City. I don’t have anyone outside of school now.”
Solaria moved around Blizza and hugged Leonada. “Of course you can stay with us until we go back to school, and probably afterwards too. We’re good at taking in orphans—just ask Skylar.”
Skylar didn’t like the attention suddenly being directed at him as Solaria, Leonada and Blizza looked his direction. There was something piercing in Blizza’s gaze as it moved away from the crystal. She seemed more together than she had before. It was like the crystal had woken something inside her. It made Skylar shiver.
Blizza seemed to look through him. Her gray eyes glazed over for a moment and she shook. “Can you hear the screams? So many are dying.”
“Berginna.” Skylar’s guts knotted. Felonia had said that was the city being attacked. “We need to get to Berginna.”
Solaria looked down the hall. “Mom, Dad, and Phil are still talking with the council.”
“If what I learned through the hieroglyphs is right, we shouldn’t need them,” Del said. “We have all the talents represented with just us.”
“So why wait?” A thrill went through Skylar. He knew Solaria’s folks would be worried, but they didn’t have time for them to finish with the council. “Melody, can we take your ship and get there? Maybe we can save a few lives.”
“Sure. But we have to try and not destroy this one.” Melody grinned and led them out the door. “Mom’s going to be really pissed if it doesn’t come back exactly the way I left with it.”
After spending months cleaning up the farm zone of the school after one of the school’s shuttles got destroyed on their last adventure, Skylar didn’t want anything to happen to the ship either. He paused at the door. “Shouldn’t we at least leave a note for your folks?”
“They’re taken care of,” Blizza said with an eeriness to her voice that gave Skylar shivers.
He almost ran down the hall to find them and make sure they were okay, but he didn’t really think the old woman would hurt them. Maybe she had simply telepathically told them what was going on and just had an odd way of saying that.
“Filzbalm, can you sense anything from them?” He desperately wanted to make sure everyone was fine.
“They are asleep,” came his quiet reply.
“Of course they’re asleep,” Blizza’s mental voice burst into their private conversation. “You didn’t think I’d kill my own family? I’m not a human. You might be a light, but you still have a lot to learn.” She didn’t even turn toward them as she continued toward Melody’s ship.
Her interruption into his private link with Filzbalm gave Skylar chills. Even Professor Aduncus said their link was something he couldn’t intrude on. He didn’t like the idea of Blizza being more powerful than the professor, but unless he was going to prevent them from finally doing something to stop the carnage, he couldn’t say anything. He had to go along with his friends and do everything he could to make the world right again.
25
Into The Cold
THE FLIGHT from Solaria’s home to Berginna was unusually quiet. Del and Melody had explained what they had deciphered about the crystal claw. It wasn’t as much as Skylar would’ve liked, but he supposed he should be happy with what they had. The whole time, Blizza clutched the totem like a little girl clinging to a favorite doll.
Strange, wispy lights danced across the sky as they drew near to the city. They were a brilliant mix of green, white, blue and gold.
Solaria stared through the cockpit window. “What is that?”
“Looks like an aurora of some sort,” Del said. “You’ve said she affects the electromagnetic spectrum—maybe the lights are a side effect of that.” He frowned “I’ve never heard of any being who could manipulate electromagnetism. It’s one of the primal forces of existence.”
“The longer you live, the more you will discover you have never heard of,” Blizza said. The closer they flew to Berginna, the more she sounded normal, like her brain was all there and there wasn’t anything wrong with her.
“I live for learning new things,” Del said.
“And you should,” Blizza replied, never turning from the brilliant light display. “Your kind have always been the ones who consume information. You might not always be the ones to discover new and interesting things, but you make sure it’s available for everyone else.”
She was direct, but something in her words made Del flinch. To Skylar, it was almost like she was insulting something about the Tursiops, but he couldn’t exactly put his finger on it.
“Where should we set down?” Clive asked as he banked the ship slightly.
“Wherever looks safe,” Melody said.
Clive shook his head. “Nowhere out there looks safe. This light show is playing havoc with my instruments.”
The land around the city was dotted with small houses, most of which were dark. A huge fountain of water erupted from the ground near the city center. Berginna was powered with geothermal energy like the other towns had been. There was a good chance they knew where their quarry was.
“She’s got to be near there.” Solaria pointed toward the geyser. “There’s a park just to the north of there.”
Leonada shuddered and looked down at her hands. “I can feel her. It’s just like Glacier City. She’s so angry.”
Skylar put a hand on her shoulder. “You can stay in the ship if you want.” He didn’t like the idea of them having to help Leonada back to the ship if she suddenly stopped in the middle of their attempt to halt the destruction. It might cause the whole thing to fail.
“No.” She straightened and squared her shoulders. “I…she needs to pay for what she’s done.”
Blizza laughed—it was almost a cackle. “Child, how do we know that she’s not paying us all back for something that was done to her years ago? We’re trying to save our world, but maybe it was her world first.”
The ship dropped, then regained some altitude. The move made Skylar’s stomach bounce and Filzbalm dug into his shoulder.
“That’s not possible.” Clive pulled back on the steering yoke. “We’re not going to be able to get too close. The magnetic fields are too powerful. I’m heading outside the city.”
“We don’t want to destroy Mom’s ship,” Melody said quietly, almost as if she was trying to remind herself, or find a reason to fly home.
Solaria growled softly. “There’s some ice flats over there.” She pointed to the south of the city. “Let’s get landed so we can close in on foot.”
“Fine,” Clive grumbled. He turned the ship and it soared toward the spot Solaria had indicated. He set the ship down without even the slightest jostle.
“I think we should stay fairly close together,” Blizza said. “We’re stronger as a group.” She paused as she walked out of the cockpit. “Even you, pilot. Your skills may be needed before this is over.”
“I’m just a pilot,” Clive argued and made no move to rise from his chair.
&nb
sp; “You’re also a mid-range feeler,” Blizza countered. “We may need you.” She continued walking out of the ship.
Skylar stared at Solaria and almost asked if Blizza had always been so scary powerful, but he didn’t want the old woman butting in again, so he kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself as they followed her out of the ship and onto the ice flat.
Outside the ship, the winds were fierce. They tore at Skylar’s heavy coat and made him thankful for his thermalsuit. Filzbalm curled up at the base of his neck and wrapped his tail around Skylar’s throat. Del pulled up his collar and shivered.
“Okay, it’s really cold,” Melody said. “We need to make those warming rings for all of us.”
Solaria rubbed her hands together. “I have to agree. I’ve never felt it this cold.”
“We need to move quickly,” Blizza said. “It’s only going to get colder.”
“It was frigid the night she attacked Glacier City,” Leonada said. “It’s almost too cold for Pantherians out here.”
Blizza sighed. “And complaining isn’t making it any warmer. Our prey is this way.” She took the lead and never once looked over her shoulder to make sure any of them followed her into the city.
The first ground quake took Skylar by surprise. Somehow, he managed to keep his feet, even as Del, Clive, and Melody fell. The Pantherians swayed and shuffled, but didn’t fall. Blizza barely slowed down. She didn’t seem nearly as frail as she had around the house.
“What’s causing that?” Clive asked as he got back to his feet.
“She’s claiming the ground water,” Blizza said. “The places where the water was holding up the ground are collapsing. We have to hurry.”
“Why?” Skylar asked as he gave Melody a hand up, then really wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“Because we don’t want her getting away,” Blizza snapped. “She’s growing stronger.”