There was a massive explosion outside the room.
Zamek, Mordred, and I ran out to find black smoke billowing out of both sides of the ship.
I ran back to Poseidon, who stood in the middle of the room. “Gawain will hunt me down and make me pay for what I told you. There’s no way out for me now.”
“We’ll keep you safe,” Mordred said.
“Fuck you,” Poseidon said. He tore off the sorcerer’s band, and the explosion of magic threw me back out of the doorway. My magic protected me as I smashed into a wooden cabinet, obliterating it.
“Shit,” Remy said. “I wanted to blow up the ship.”
“You okay?” Chloe asked me, offering me her hand, which I was happy to take.
“Let’s get the fuck off this ship,” I said before thanking Chloe and looking over at the pile of ash that used to be Poseidon. There was a third explosion, which rocked the boat, and it started to tip slightly to one side and then the other, as if we were in an earthquake.
“And fast,” Mordred said.
“Women, children, and foxmen first,” shouted Remy, heading for the door.
Chapter Three
NATE GARRETT
There were no sirens on the way through the ship. Although the sounds of tearing metal echoed around us, a result of the explosions that had been deeper inside the guts of the vessel.
Mordred’s team met up with my original team inside what had once been a dancing hall of some kind, where the wooden floor made it easy for Tarron to make an elven realm gate. Carving the letters into the wood made for a more stable gate than just drawing them. And seeing how quickly the ship was currently being torn apart, stable was good.
Tarron was crouched on the floor, finishing up his realm gate, while Isis, Kase, and Irkalla were trying to keep several hundred passengers, prisoners, and crew calm, which was no mean feat in itself.
“I’m not sure what you did,” Tarron said. “But this is bad.”
“Poseidon,” I said.
“He dead?” Kase asked.
I nodded.
“Good,” Isis said as she walked over to me. “We need to leave.”
“I second that idea,” Remy said.
“Where are the rest of the prisoners?” I asked.
“Too many people to all go at once,” Tarron said. “This is a second realm gate. I burned out the first gate down in the engine room. Sent about fifteen hundred people through to Shadow Falls in a little under an hour. Hence this second gate. Elven realm gates were not made to take so many so quickly.”
“But it works, yes?” Chloe asked.
Tarron nodded. “We have a lot of dead to use for blood,” he said. “But that much power probably didn’t help the integrity of the ship.”
Somewhere outside was a howl that belonged to something quite inhuman.
“What was that?” Zamek asked.
The windows to the ballroom exploded open and water poured in, causing several of the humans to scream in fear before the water remade itself as a young woman.
“Viv,” I said. “Always a pleasure.”
“I brought help,” she said.
“Are we going to ride dolphins out of here?” Remy asked. “Because I would be okay with that.”
“Ichthyocentaurs,” she said. “There’s a herd of them who have been following this ship for a while now. Apparently, they prey on sirens, and seeing how there are hundreds of those monsters here, the ichthyocentaurs have been having quite the feast. They’re going to keep the sirens busy while we get everyone out of here.”
There was an almighty creak, as if someone had opened a door that needed oiling, and everyone was silent as the noise reverberated around the room. A second later there was silence, followed immediately by the deafening sound of the ship being ripped apart from the inside.
The entire deck lifted up, and everyone slid along the room to the far end before the ship smashed back into the water.
“Tarron, does that thing work yet?” I shouted.
Tarron slammed his hands onto the wood, and the realm gate came to life.
“Everyone on there—now,” Irkalla shouted at the humans, moving them all toward the realm gate as more and more awful sounds echoed through the room.
The ship listed, and several humans fell onto the realm gate, vanishing from view before they could be helped up. Hopefully whoever was in Shadow Falls—the destination for the gate—would be able to help out.
“Mordred, Viv, Isis—with me,” I shouted. “We need to stop this ship from going over.”
We all left the ballroom and made it outside as the ship began to list again.
“You got a plan?” Viv asked.
“We just need to give them time to get everyone through the gate,” I said as we all ran along the side of the deck.
An ichthyocentaur leaped over the railing of the ship, its fish tail turning into the legs of a horse, matching the front legs. His long green hair swept over human shoulders. He clicked his lobsterlike claws.
“There are many sirens down there,” he said to Viv. “The damage to the ship is total.”
“How total?” Mordred asked.
“There’s a hole in both sides of the lower decks, letting in water fast,” he began. “Two propellers are all but gone, and there’s a deep gash running under the stern of the ship that’s about twenty meters long. At some point soon, this ship is going to split in two.”
“Can you keep the sirens away from us?” I asked.
A siren leaped up onto the deck behind us and died a second later when I threw a bolt of lightning into its chest.
“Apart from that one, yes,” the ichthyocentaur said calmly. “We have lost two of my brethren, but they have lost many more.”
“That water looks a lot closer than it did when I last saw it,” Mordred said, looking over the rail as the ichthyocentaur jumped over it to the ocean below.
The deck forty feet in front of us groaned and began to crack open, the wooden floor bursting as if something were trying to escape from within. I poured air magic out of my hands, wrapping it down the side of the ship and into the crack, flooding the inside of the ship with it, just as Isis and Mordred did the same. The ichthyocentaur and Viv jumped over the rail, and she turned to water before she hit the ocean.
The half of the ship we were on began to lift, and all three of us dropped to our knees but continued to pour magic into the wounded ship, trying to fill the gap.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to do this long,” Mordred said as sweat poured down his face.
“We’re powerful, but not enough to hold hundreds of tons of ship together,” Isis said.
I looked back at the front of the ship as it lifted further and further off the ocean. “You’re right; we need a better plan,” I said.
“Can you fly everyone off the ship?” Isis asked, clearly nearing exhaustion. Even sixty seconds of trying to keep a ship the size of the Harmony of Oceans in one piece was too much for the three of us. “Because I’m not sure we have a better plan.”
Viv appeared beside us. “The stern is fucked,” she said. “It’s almost broken away from the bow, but when it fills, it will drag us all under.”