Part 18
A terrible
sense of foreboding…A bang woke Tom. He jumped up wildly, looking around
for the source of the noise, until he realized his water cup had fallen off the
shelf. What time was it? He didn’t even remember falling asleep.
Tom shook off
sleepiness, hunger gnawing at his stomach. It must be close to dinner, then.
Hopefully safe to exit the room. Tom hoped Nathan was alright. That old man had
seemed so cruel.
As Tom made his way
down the hall, he was struck again by a strange dread, and suddenly his throat
felt tight. An image flashed in his mind, an open flame in a room, or a book.
He reached for the image, or maybe a memory, but it passed quickly. When it
vanished, however, he felt even more weighted down. Maybe he needed more sleep.
Nathan wasn’t at the mess, and Tom picked at the day’s meal,
hoping he would show up. He didn’t have much appetite, and when he sat down he
realized his chest felt tight. He tried to relax and force himself to eat.
The food tasted awful, the fish
crumbly in his mouth. Across from his table, a baby was crying, its mother
trying to shush it.
Tom put down his food, his stomach flipping.
Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The air felt strange,
and he took a deep breath, his heart pounding. Something…something was very wrong.
Then the ship shuddered with a
tremendous impact. The tables jumped, chairs flipping, and Tom stumbled. Panic
filled him. Something terrible was happening, and he had no control. The ship
shuddered again, and suddenly he was sliding sideways, his feet slipping on the
wood.
“Mom!” someone
screamed. Others were screaming too, and then he heard “The ship is burning!”
It suddenly all
made sense. He had felt it… the gathering of power. A fire mage had attacked
their ship!
Another blast
rocked their ship, and Tom whipped his head around. Where was it safe? He let
his instincts guide him, running from the mess where people were huddling,
terrified.
He didn’t know how
he knew, but he could tell when the ship would rock from the impact of…what, a
fireball? The ship would pitch, but Tom wouldn’t fall, able to ride out the
waves created from the ship rocking back and forth. No storm could move a ship
this huge like this. He half wanted to go to the deck and see the attack for
himself, but he knew that would be suicide. A sense guided him away from the
danger, lower into the bowels of the ship, past his room and near steerage.
He smelled burning
wood, and planks above him gave way, falling into the hall and spreading the
flames. He jumped back, and terror filled him at the sight of the leaping fire.
Smoke burned his eyes and throat, and he couldn’t breathe. He turned and ran
the other way, close to panic.
Another impact hit,
but this time the ship didn’t right itself. As he ran, Tom’s foot fell through
soaked planks. He screamed as the whole floor gave way. He swam now, in rising
water, with flames above him. Planks from the ceiling fell around him, and he
had no choice but to dive.
It was darker down
here, the only light from the fire above, and he couldn’t hear anything but
muffled splashes and hissing as burning wood fell into the water. He swam away,
faster than he though he could swim. He heard a tremendous splash, and suddenly
everything became pitch black. The ceiling had collapsed.
Panic filled him, and
his lungs burned. He needed to breathe! He didn’t want to die down here! He
swam up, but he had no sense of direction, so for all he knew he only succeeded
in swimming deeper.
He banged on the
ceiling, or perhaps the floor, he couldn’t tell. His vision blurred, his
muscles burning from lack of oxygen. His lungs hurt, and finally he gave up,
breathing deeply. He expected to cough and drown.
Instead, energy
filled him. His lungs filled with water, he knew that, but it didn’t choke him.
He could breathe.
Tom stayed
motionless and breathed, shock freezing him in place.
Then something else hit the water,
sending adrenalin through his veins. He had to get to safety. There must be a hole,
he thought, that lead to another part of the ship. And in the water, he would
be safe from the flames.
He kicked his
legs, and it was amazingly easy to swim now that he wasn’t panicking about
breathing. He could barely see, but he sensed the slight movement of the water.
He followed the weak current, and found a good sized hole in the side of the
room he was trapped in. He squeezed through, and suddenly things grew much
brighter.
He was in a water
filled hallway now, probably on one of the lower floors. He could still sense
the fire, but the impacts of the fireballs themselves seemed to have stopped.
He swam through
the hallway, dodging planks of fallen wood. He knew he could probably surface
somewhere, but he didn’t want to. He felt stronger here, and safe, and he could
at least think without panicking.
It must have been Auros, or one of
his fire mages. The co-celebration must have been a ruse. He remembered the
rich man on Auros’s ship, and the fear that he had felt. That man must have
been a fire mage, if not a lesser fire lord.
A tremendous crash
up ahead interrupted his thoughts, and he saw bubbles rise from the settling
wood. How odd. As he swam closer, the sight chilled him. Someone was trapped
underneath the planks. He rushed to the wood, and saw a wisp of short blond hair.
His blood ran cold.
Nathan!
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