Page 65 of Hijack the Seas: Tsunami

The Corps hated this, the detestable actions this world had forced them into; they hatedme, the Pythia who was supposed to lead them but had instead turned up missing when they needed her the most.And who was now trying to get away instead of helping them.They’d had decades of seeing their comrades die attempting to do my job for me, and they were bitter and furious and grieving—for their friends, their world, theirlives—and they were taking it out on me no matter what Jonas said.

Only it wasn’t working, and I didn’t know why.

Pritkin?I thought dizzily, but he wasn’t in the little warded bubble that someone had created.And I didn’t think he had the juice left for something like this anyway.I didn’t see how anyone could, and the witches weren’t helping.

They were just standing there, wands out but drooping, as they stared around in shock.And then, slowly, their eyes all focused on the same spot.Me.

I stared back in confusion for a heartbeat, not understanding anything.Then my eyes went to my outstretched left hand, which was in the universal STOP position, inches away from where all that fury was trying to consume us, while my right...

I recoiled in shock and almost dropped the thin golden thread snaking its way under the side of our little bubble and into the hand I still had at my side—and I do meaninto.It was gushing into my body like a garden hose, but that was a bad analogy, as no hose that slender could have carried much at all.But you don’t need much when you’re sucking on the lifeblood of a god—

Stumbling back, I almost fell and got the impression that most of the witches were willing to let me.But Zara caught me, her face grim and terrible but determined, too.And I suddenly knew who had sussed out the spells for making those skinwalker cloaks.

“We do what’s needful,” she hissed and caught my wrist, the one connected to the hand that was about to drop the lifeline I’d formed to the dying god.

Instead, I felt the connection firm up, with enough power flowing into me to counter the fury lashing at us from the other side of the shield.If anything, it increased in intensity, like the chaos outside.It looked like the war mages had realized that we were getting away, with Zara pulling on me and our little knot shuffling across the floor toward a new blur of color I could just make out through the haze of spellfire.

I couldn’t see it very well, as the ward I was somehow keeping up looked to be six feet thick, to the point that it blurred the room.But fortunately, I didn’t have to.The portal had started up again, or maybe another one had, as this one seemed farther down the wall, although who could tell?

But I could feel it through the stones under my feet, vibrating so hard that my teeth chattered; I could sense it in the air, as if a couple extra atmospheres had suddenly descended on us; I could track it through the war mages’ increasingly desperate attempts to stop us.

They were good attempts.

The floor suddenly reached up with clay-like hands, clawing their way out of cracks in the stone, and tried to grab our feet.Alphonse yelped and stomped on them, and the witches zapped the hell out of them, but it didn’t matter.They reformed almost at once, looking oddly beautiful, like shards of a Michelangelo statue with veins and nails and determined, grasping hands.

“Hit ‘em again!”Alphonse screeched as several began climbing up his legs.Forearms, featureless heads, and torsos followed, pushing the heavy stones of the floor aside and scrabbling upward at us.And no matter how much he fought them, how many times he smashed them to dust, they just kept coming.

“Manlikans!”I yelled, recognizing an old fey trick, and the witches paused their struggle because coven magic is based on that of the fey, and they knew this one.

A second later, a trio of spells hit them, and the arms, torsos, and, in a few cases, entire bodies were gone, bursting apart and cascading off the people they’d been attacking.The sand hit the rocky slabs in a loud scattering, and I breathed a sigh of relief.Or...I tried.

But the air in here had become thin while we struggled.Hot and stifling, it was like being locked in a coffin underground for hours while the atmosphere slowly ran out.But it hadn’t been hours!

It had been maybe a minute, which, even if the ward was air-tight, shouldn’t have been enough to do this.And then I knew it wasn’t when the remaining oxygen was abruptly sucked out, leaving us staring at each other in what was essentially a vacuum.My throat started to burn, my mouth to gape like a fish, and my eyes to dart around desperately searching for something that no longer existed.

And the witches didn’t seem to knowthistrick or understand how the Corps was doing it any more than I did.

“What’s going on?”I could see Alphonse mouthing the words, but couldn’t hear him.I couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in my ears, as everything else had gone eerily silent, with no air to carry the sound anymore.

The Circle was forcing me to drop the shield or die, but I didn’t think that doing what they wanted would have a better outcome.I could still feel the hate raging at me as they were going to do as soon as our protection failed.Or maybe before then, since I’d no sooner had the thought than a sickly green smoke started boiling up around the outside of the ward.

I stared at it in fear and despair—what was it this time?I didn’t know, but it swirled beyond the confines of our small circle of protection, cutting off my limited view of the room and showing me a dim reflection of my face.I looked scared, confused, and utterly, utterly out of ideas.

The Circle had forgotten more magic than I’d ever known, and there were hundreds of them, including Jonas, who wasn’t hitting us with his little bazooka only because he couldn’t afford to let me die.Not until he got a chance to blow me up with his stupid plan that wouldn’t work, that was never going to work, like standing here and suffocating to death!And I was the only one who could stop it.

Faces appeared in the smoke, pressing against the surface of the ward and turned monstrous by its distorting effect.Like their hands, glowing with power as they tried to force a path through our protection, fingers tearing at the cracks that were forming all over the place, maybe because of the gas, maybe something else, because who the hell knew?But they were suddenly everywhere.

I belatedly realized: the storm of magic they’d unleashed had saved us for a few moments, as they couldn’t get near us as long as it lasted.It hadn’t been enough to overcome us on its own, and so had bought us some time as they didn’t like the idea of expending power fighting their own spells.But it had dissipated now, along with the added protection it had brought, and they were coming through.

“Do something!”Zara screamed at me, audible because of the air rushing through the cracks now spidering everywhere.

“Don’t breathe, you idiots,” Topknot was yelling.“It’s poisoned!”

Purple Hair hit the ground anyway, lost in a fog of green.I could see her through my own blurring vision before Butch Cut sent a spell exploding around the inner surface of the ward and shooting outward, forcing back the smoke.Then she and Gray Curls grabbed up our fallen as Alphonse tried to drag us all forward through sheer force of will, and half a hundred guys did their best to oppose us.

“Increase the flow!”Zara said, shaking me.

“I can’t!”

---