Page 144 of The Shadowed Oracle
Only a vision, Ingrid thought, separating from Dean to look around the ship for the culprit. She must’ve pulled it from the cosmic consciousness above. Because it couldn’t be real. It was only more disembodied voices, only in her head. Just her magic. She could’ve sworn to it. Would’ve bet her life on it.
Until she watched Dean spin on his heels, searching for the source of the threat.
“It’s not over,” Arryn said again. The prince was dozy from the thumping he’d taken to his head, but his mouth was still capable of forming the most sinister smirk Ingrid had ever beheld. “You’ll never escape her. Not her, not therealher. You haven’t seen it. It’s not over.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Clouds had clustered,blotting out the sun again. A light rainfall sprinkled the deck at a slant, pushed by the gusts of wind now blowing hard against the ship. The captain whipped the wheel around and pointed the head of the bow at a forty-five-degree angle, while the crew managed the sails and rudder to combat the disadvantage.
Zig-zagging south, slowly. Tacking to gain lift. Making it maybe a half-mile from the dock before the specifics of Arryn’s warning became clear.
Those dark shadows Ingrid had seen following them as they reached the outskirts of the city—they were not Occanthus flyers. No, they were more familiar. She could feel the haunting recognition in her bones, sending her right back to that shower floor. Back to when she hadn’t known the name of her enemy, only did her best to ignore them.
“Shades!” Dean called out to the crew, the black spots now looming overhead. “Focus your mind! Get out your viseer stones if you have them!”
It was doubtful the crew had many run-ins with the ghostly creatures. They weren’t the type of Viator to be hunted. Yet, these weren’t the usual Shades, either. They all operated inrhythm, diving and flying faster than any Ingrid had seen before. Her tormentors on Earth were far less sentient, far less physically formidable. Whereas these—these were Enitha’s Shades. In the same way Haxus’ and Arryn’s spell had held, the souls she’d trapped with her ritual symbols still answered to her, and were somehow armed with the superior power she’d granted them.
Appearing and evaporating in a blink, the ensnared spirits attacked while shrouded in plumes of black smoke. A deckhand near Ingrid was consumed by a dark cloud and pushed overboard, falling with a loud splash in the open sea. One of the smaller sails was torn open. The foremast took splintering blows. Then a mass of smoke manifested itself on the stern, inches from the captain.
The crotchety male took one look at it, shuddered, and erupted in a whimpering bout of screams and yelps, letting go of the wheel. The ship was left at the mercy of the wind. One of the sailors rushed to his captain’s aid, but before anyone could even begin to rectify the state of the ship?—
“Wranes!”
A trio of them, coming from the docks, soaring so close to the water that they left ripples of foamy waves in their wake. Their beady black eyes and pointed hellish claws fixated on their target.
“Get down below! To the cabins!” Dean shouted.
He was too busy sending beams of light from his viseer stone to look at her, so it took a moment for Ingrid to process what he’d said. To realize he was speaking to her.
She quickly dismissed him. “I’m staying!” she barked back, keeping her knees bent and striking upward once a plume of onyx-colored mass appeared. It was like trying to catch a fly made of vapor. She lifted her father’s necklace and, to hermild surprise, the stone shot out a white stream of power and evaporated one of the Shades in seconds.
But the Wranes were still closing in on them. Keeping her head low, she shuffled to one of the crates they’d taken with them from Maradenn. Two viseer stones had been hidden in the bottom compartment. She grabbed them both, found Lucilla, and tossed her one in a soft arc.
“Do you have any magic left?” Ingrid asked.
“Yes, but…” Lucilla glanced down at her palms, then at the sea all around them. “I don’t know what good it will do. Out here, like this.”
With no soil, no earth.
“Have you ever tried?”
Lucilla lifted her head to meet the Oracle. “No, suppose I haven’t.New things. I don’t try them very often, dear.”
“Then it’s about time.” She patted her back gently and ran off to the helm of the ship. As she passed Tyla and Veston and Raidinn, she informed them of the Wranes in case they hadn’t heard Dean over the sound of all the destruction being done to the ship.
They hadn’t.
“Protect the sails,” Raidinn said, nodding to Tyla’s bow. “I’ll help the crew.”
Ingrid continued down the long deck and stopped at the wheel, where the captain was still screaming a high-pitched drone, tugging at his hair and swiping at the air like a madman. His loyal crewmate tried to console him, calling his name, shaking him by the shoulders, but to no avail.
Ingrid did the only thing she could think of to help.
“Get angry,” she shouted at him. “Get fucking angry! Tell them to piss off! Tell them to?—”
The captain only wailed. A stomach-churning, childish squeal from the very deepest part of him.
“Fuck it,” Ingrid muttered, and, rearing back with every ounce of her strength, she slapped him across the face.
