Page 38 of Hijack the Seas: Tsunami

“Turn what down?”Butch Cut was starting to look frantic, staring up at the ceiling like she was ready for the rest of it to fall and bury us.“We have togo!”

You have to go!Pritkin yelled.Now!Those bastards are coming in—

“I know!I’m waiting for—”

We’re coming.Don’t you dare leave!Bodil commanded.

“Then come faster!”

What?Pritkin demanded.Who are you talking to?

“Bodil!She and the others are—”

The other half of the ceiling caved in, probably because someone was now stomping on it.I had half a second to glimpse massive toes coming down through the soil, and then I was dragging Butch Cut out of the door, just in time to see Bodil coming down the hall with an armorless Æsubrand in tow, along with Enid, her bright red hair floating around her like she was underwater.Which she soon would be because the internal wards were failing, and the river was flooding in!

Or it was until Bodil sent it upward instead, in a giant column headed like a fist toward the creature tearing through the soil after us.We pounded down the hallway just ahead of it and behind the horde of mages, going I didn’t know where because these corridorschanged.It was what they were designed to do when threatened, to confuse an interloping force, but I didn’t know how well that was likely to work with a god or two ripping apart the landscape.

Or how I was supposed to find my way through here with the hallways constantly shifting and our group having to wade through a field of mud because there were leaks everywhere!

But I didn’t have to worry about it, because Pritkin had it handled.If by “handled,” you count the floor suddenly dropping out from under us like a glacier had just calved with us on top.Leaving us sliding down an almost perpendicular drop with just enough of a slope to keep us from going airborne.

I screamed, mud splattered us from all directions, and a couple of mages that had fallen in with us were bisected by giant knives suddenly sticking out from the wall—more of the Circle’s old protection wards waking up and getting lethal.And Pritkin was yelling something loud enough to shatter my head.Goddamnit!

“What?”I yelled as we hit down hard enough to rattle me.And as Bodil and Æsubrand dragged me off the ground after landing as surefooted as two cats, and jerked me down the hall between them.

Because there was a hall there, the same one in fact, just stories lower than it had been a minute ago.Or maybe it was a new one; I couldn’t tell with all the mud in my eyes.I couldn’t tell anything, and they were pulling my arms off!

I said there’s no time!Pritkin’s voice crackled.Jonas has invoked Far Horizon.This whole place is about to go up!

I didn’t ask what that meant.I didn’t want to know.“Caleb—”

We have him!But we don’t have you!

“Then how do we get to you?”

Hold on!

And, damn it, he meant that literally because the corridor suddenly took over, swinging abruptly enough to the right to throw us all against the wall.That included some wide-eyed mages who had somehow survived this far, but even though none of us were in disguise anymore, they didn’t try to attack.I doubted they could have even if they’d wanted to, as we had just commenced the wildest ride ever.

I’d pelted down some corridors in my time, but that wasn’t what was happening here.The corridor was doing the moving, and we were left hoping for the best as it burrowed through the ground like a crazed earthworm.Or like one of those moving walkways at the airports, if it stopped churning under your feet and started slamming through the concourse like a runaway train.

The mages hit the ground, Butch Cut grabbed a rock jutting out of the wall and held on for dear life, and Æsubrand grabbed Enid, shoved his pike into the ground, set his feet, and hung on.Only Bodil didn’t seem affected; she stood there with her arm around me, with the air of someone in an elevator waiting for the ride to end.The gentle white light that all fey give off in our world shimmered around her, serving as the only illumination this far underground.

Until it wasn’t.

“What isthat?” Butch Cut screamed.

Since the wildly bucking corridor we were in contained mages getting slammed back and forth like candy in a piñata, falling earth, flailing tree roots, and water that was constantly hitting us from various directions as the hallway squirmed this way and that, I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Until she grabbed my head and turned it toward the golden glow coming from behind us because one of the gods had figured out that it was easier to get down here if he wasn’t the size of a small skyscraper.He had shrunk himself down and also lit up like a floodlight to be able to see.Or maybe that was just the spillover from all those mages he’d been eating.

And he obviously wanted more.

Or maybe he wanted something else because a roar of ravenous intensity rippled through the air around us, and those laser-like eyes focused—on Bodil and me.

Shit!But Pritkin had noticed him, or whoever was driving the crazy train we were on.‘Cause the god suddenly disappeared as the shaking, moving causeway suddenly tore through the earth—

Straight down.

---