She clamped both of her hands over her mouth, trying to stop her grief from bubbling over. She tried to maintain control. However, all she could see was the look on Trevain’s face, as he squeezed her hand and said goodbye. Elandria’s entire body was shaking violently with pent-up rage. Centuries of pent-up rage. She had allowed the world to trample her down for too long. She had been a calm and gentle pacifist, but she had never been rewarded for her kindness. Instead, she had watched everyone she had ever loved get hurt, killed, or taken away.
She had suffered.
For generations, she had suffered. She was tired of taking it—she was sick of accepting it, and sustaining and enduring like a good little girl. She now knew that it was in her power to make it stop. She could let it go. She could let go of all the suffering, and rise above it. She could be free, boundless, and untouchable. She could be infinite and limitless, like the sea around her. She just needed to let go. So, she did.
She allowed her hands to fall away from her mouth, exposing the nozzle of the deafening cannon that she had kept silenced and shut for so many years. Her heart-shaped lips were completely relaxed and slightly parted at the center, as she drew in a blissful breath of water.
Then, Elandria closed her eyes and screamed.
The piercing sound stabbed her eardrums as if a thousand firecrackers had been lit in the confines of her skull. Her chest engorged with powerful breath, vibrating and pulsating, as if thunder from heaven itself was being emitted from her very breast. The earsplitting roar eventually gave away to a blinding white silence. It was a silence that was too silent, and created an ethereal ringing sound—an almost electric buzzing noise, or the high-pitched humming of bees.
When Elandria opened her eyes, she saw that she had created a thick, invisible wall in the water, which the unsuspecting soldiers swam directly into. The water in this space was shimmering, almost luminous with the vibration of her song. The men fell instantly, effortlessly, like insects zooming headfirst into a bug zapper. Most of them did not have a chance to show any signs of shock or pain before their skin and muscles were dissolved and liquefied. The sight of the men being disintegrated before her eyes was almost exhilarating. She moved her head slightly to the left, making sure that she directed her voice toward every last man who was marching on her nation. She screamed and screamed, allowing her voice to resonate throughout the miles of water, directed perfectly at her enemies. She screamed until every last man in the horde had been vaporized.
Then, she stopped. She stopped and observed the fruit of her handiwork, as she panted for oxygen. She was dizzy from breathing the Sacred Breath of the sirens; the legendary birthright of her people. She was delirious from accessing the mythological gift of her ancestors. She was feverish as she witnessed and absorbed the conclusion of her triumph.
And for a moment, she was the hero of Adlivun.
This ecstasy lasted only as long as it took for the seas to run red with blood. She was no longer breathing water; she was breathing the blood of her enemies. The bitter taste and heavy feeling of the liquid in her lungs caused Elandria to gag. She choked on the realization of what she had done. Elandria turned back to look at her loved ones. She saw Vachlan holding both of his children, and all of them gazing at her with astonishment and admiration on their faces. She saw Callder holding his brother’s body, and staring down at the older man with anguish.
Coughing on the gory aftermath of her victory, Elandria swam toward them. She indicated that they should all swim back toward the surface. She could not think about what she had done, or she risked falling apart. She moved to Trevain’s side, and looked down at his peaceful expression as Callder dragged him up to the surface. She could not believe this was real.
When they were all finally standing on the docks of the port at Diomede City, Callder laid Trevain’s body out on the pier. He glanced up at Elandria and cleared his throat.
“Gesundheit,” said Callder, with a completely serious expression.
“What?” she said blankly.
“It’s what you say after someone has a really big sneeze,” Ivory explained.
“Except Auntie Elan’s sneezes kill everybody!” Callder said, ruffling Ivory’s red hair and making her giggle.
Elandria narrowed her eyes and glared at Callder. “How can you make jokes when my husband is dead?”
Callder blinked. “Trevain is dead?” He poked his brother in the side. “Hey, Trevain—are you dead?” He waited, and receiving no response, slapped his brother in the face a couple times. “Trevain! Wakey, wakey!”
Ronan whimpered as he clung to Vachlan, and Ivory held her breath.
“Uhm,” Callder reached up to scratch his head. “Just give him a second. He hasn’t been shot in a while, and he’s getting old. He doesn’t bounce back from it quite like he used to.” Callder slapped his brother in the face a few more times. “Biiiig brooother!!! Please wake up now!” Callder laughed nervously. “Uhmmm, I think he’s faking.”
Elandria took several deep breaths to calm herself. “Please stop defiling his body,” she commanded Callder.
“Hey! How about I defile your body instead, now that you’re single?” Callder joked.
There was a deathly silence as Elandria stared at him with the fuming look of a widow who had just slaughtered thirty-thousand men with a single breath.
“Too soon?” Callder asked weakly.
Vachlan cleared his throat. “Stop that, Callder. It’s disgraceful.”
“Sorry, Gramps.” Callder lowered his chin, with the look of a scolded little boy.
“Is he really dead?” Ronan asked softly. He tugged on Vachlan’s collar nervously. “Is Uncle Trevain really gone forever?”
Vachlan laughed, and deposited his son onto the ground beside his sister. “Did you die when you fell off that roof, champ?”
Ronan shook his head. “No.”
“But you did go to sleep for a little while, didn’t you?” Vachlan asked. When his son nodded, he smiled. “That’s just what your body does to help you get better faster. That’s why Trevain is sleeping.” He then moved over to the wounded man, and looked down at him thoughtfully. After a moment, he delivered a massive kick to Trevain’s hip. “Now wake the fuck up and stop scaring the bloody shit out of everyone!”
“Bleep,” said Callder, in a delayed reaction to Vachlan’s swearing in front of his children.
Trevain groaned and lifted his head. “Ouch. Was I hit by a freight train?”
“Oh, Sedna!” Elandria sobbed, throwing herself down on his body. She began to rain kisses all over his face.
“Owwww!” Trevain said, clutching his chest in pain. “What’s going on? What did I miss?”
Ivory and Ronan both giggled and ran forward to jump on Trevain with hugs as well.
“Ow, ow, ow,” he said, wincing, but he hugged them back dutifully.
“Nice job faking us out, bro,” Callder said with a sigh of relief. “Elan thought you were dead, and she went crazy and deep fried the American soldiers. It was insane. I’m surprised she didn’t disintegrate the islands, too. You shoulda seen it! It looked like these guys were suddenly in a giant microwave, and just whoosh…”
Trevain looked at her in surprise. “You did that, Elan?”
She nodded, tearfully. “I thought you were dead. I got angry.”
“Remind me never to make you angry,” he said, kissing her nose. He smiled. “I guess I should have more faith in you.”
“I should have more faith in you,” she said. “I should have known that one bullet wasn’t going to kill you. You Ramaris men are as tough as steel.”
“We sure are!” Ronan shouted, peeling the remnants of his cast off his leg. “Look, Auntie Elan! I can walk! I can run! Try to catch me!”
The little boy took off running down the pier.
Elandria stood up with worry. “Ronan, get back here!” she said in a panic as she immediately lifted her skirts and chased after him. “You’re going to hurt yourself!”
>
Trevain, Vachlan, Callder, and Ivory laughed at her reaction.
Abruptly stopping his laughter, Trevain grabbed his chest grunted. “Remind me not to laugh for a few days,” he told the others sheepishly.
Vachlan’s attention was suddenly caught by something in the distance. “Holy shit,” he said. “I think we’re still deeper in hot water than we think.”
Trevain and Callder looked up to see the hundreds of warships approaching the islands. They stretched as far as the eye could see, from one side of the northern horizon, to the other. Trevain immediately began struggling to stand.
“Help me get to Aazuria, now,” he ordered. The other men nodded and moved to his sides to support him.
Ivory remained on the pier for a moment, staring out at the warships. “Whoa,” she whispered. “That’s a lot of really big boats.”
Aazuria had almost reached Naclana and the other men when the warships began to close in on the islands. She was moving swiftly toward her cousin when one of the ships fired a blast in the middle of her path, which knocked her backward, off her feet. She gasped, turning over and flattening her body to the ground, as she began crawling away from the point of the blaze. This turned out to be a wise idea, for another torpedo was launched into something quite near to her. Her ears were ringing from the explosion, and she could feel the heat against her skin. She kept crawling away, hoping to get to the safety of the city buildings before she could be caught in the middle of one of these explosions and toasted like a marshmallow.
The first place she could get was behind the service building of a small gas station. Being at the center of the bridge caused the islands to have extremely high vehicular traffic, and there were plenty of gas stations near the exits of the bridge. Aazuria realized that a gas station was not necessarily the best place to avoid explosions, but she needed a moment to catch her breath before making a run for the next nearest building.
Once she had found her strength, Aazuria rose to her feet and bolted for cover inside the Royal Bank of Adlivun. Of course, this building was heavily constructed of glass, so it did not provide that much shelter. However, she ran behind the counters, and ducked alongside a few dozen tellers and civilians.
“Have you considered using the bank’s safe as a bomb shelter?” Aazuria whispered to them.
One of the tellers nodded. “We would, but I’m not authorized…”
“I authorize you,” Aazuria said. “I’m Queen Aazuria Vellamo, and this is an emergency. Get all the women and children into the safe. Fit as many as you can.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the teller, crawling to the back of the bank. Aazuria raised herself to look over the counter, to examine the clearing explosions outside. What she saw surprised her. It looked like the explosions that had occurred near her had not been intended for her at all. The bombs had been directed at enemy tanks. Her heart jumped a little at the implications this might have, but she remained confused and uncertain. She continued to stare at the battlefield while the civilians poured into the safe.
“Queen Aazuria, you should get into the safe!” shouted a teller.
“I—” She trailed off when she noticed a tank pulling up alongside the window of the bank. Aazuria gasped and ran back to the safe, and shoved the teller inside and slammed the door just as gunfire began to pelt through the bank. She had only taken one step away from the metal doors when there were already shells being embedded in them. She ran through the halls of the bank and took shelter in the first room she could find; a janitorial closet.
“Shit!” she said, looking around for something to use for cover. She did not have time before gunfire began ripping through the room. She threw her body down to the ground, and placed her arms around her head, as the tank demolished the small bank. Aazuria cried out in pain when she felt a large cabinet fall across her legs and back. Followed by parts of the walls. She knew that her injuries were not fatal, so she tried to grit her teeth and ignore the pain. What bothered her most was the dusty air caused by all the debris. She heard a huge explosion, and suddenly the tank went quiet.
Aazuria blinked dust and plaster out of her eyes. She frowned in suspicion. Were the warships really destroying the tanks? Was it possible that that gargantuan navy could actually be some of their allies? Her question was answered when someone entered the janitorial closet, and began clearing the debris off her body. She grabbed her weapon and twisted her body, expecting the worst. However, she found that she was pointing her gun toward the face of the Prince of Atlantis.
“Taranis?” she whispered.
“At your service, my lady.”
She was so relieved that she could have cried, but she only lowered her weapon and tried to wriggle out from beneath the cabinet. He assisted her, and soon, she was sitting against the wall and rubbing her legs. “How—”
“I was in the neighborhood,” he explained, “and I heard you could use a hand.” As he said this, he reached down and offered her his hand.
She took it happily, and tried to stand, but found that her legs were too weak. “Dammit,” she said, trying to use the wall to lift herself off the ground. However, the walls were also having trouble standing, and room’s ceiling began to cave in. When Taranis reached down and picked her up, and whisked her out of the room, she was grateful.
“You know you saved all those people by putting them in the safe?” he told her as he carried her. “Why didn’t you go inside with them?”
“There was no time,” she answered, wincing at the pain in her legs. Once they were outside, she placed a hand on his collarbone to indicate that he should stop walking.
“I should be able to stand now,” she told him. “If you give me your arm, I should be fine to walk.”
“Well, I could do that,” he said, as he casually strolled by the blazing tank, “but your cousin and a few of your friends and family members are gathered over there by the bridge to Russia. I think I’ll seem way more heroic if I show up holding you like this. I feel more heroic. Do I look heroic?”
Aazuria sighed. “You are heroic. Taranis, you saved Diomede City.” She paused, looking up at him in the dim light, and spoke in a hushed voice. “You might have saved all of Adlivun.”
“You really love your home, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she responded softly. “Thank you.”
He smiled down at her. “It was nothing. I figured that after all the pain I caused you and your friends in the past…” He cleared his throat. “Also, I was instrumental in causing you to lose Valhalla. I can’t bring your old home back, but the least I can do is try to protect your new home.” He gave her a small wink. “I figure I have a lot of work to do, so I would start big and try to make a good impression.”
She laughed lightly, allowing her head to roll back against his shoulder. “Well, this is big. This is very big.”
As they approached her family members, who were all gathered near the bridge, Aazuria noticed a few things. First of all, the warships had destroyed all of the tanks and infantry marching on the bridges toward Diomede City. The war was over, for the time being, and it looked like the city was secure. They had won.
The second thing she noticed was that Elandria’s dress was soaked with blood, and that she was on her knees beside Trevain’s body. She gasped when she saw that Dylan Rosenberg was performing an emergency surgery on her husband.
“Trevain!” she shouted in horror. Everyone looked toward her, and she pressed her hand against the Leviathan’s chest. “Put me down. Put me down,” she told Taranis quickly. He complied, and she tried to run toward Trevain, but her legs gave out. She fell, but ignored this and crawled forward to his wounded body. “What happened?” she whispered. “Is he okay?”
“He’s going to be fine,” Dylan said. “The bullet landed in an ideal place.”
“Zuri,” Trevain said, reaching out to grab her hand. “It barely even hurts. Why can’t you walk?”
“Parts of the bank fell on me,” she said in embar
rassment. “It’s nothing. You’ve been shot!”
He shrugged. “I’m perfectly fine. My grandfather got shot with three bullets and walked away from it, and you think I can’t handle one? I am just a bit… winded. That’s all.”
“Thank Sedna,” she said. “We really got lucky here.”
“Auntie Zuri!” Ronan said, running to her side and giving her a hug. “My leg was hurt, but now it’s all better! You’ll be able to walk again soon!”
“Thanks, Ronan,” she said, squeezing his tiny body with a smile. “I’m so glad to see you up and about!” She turned back to her husband as the child ran back to his sister. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked him.
Trevain squeezed Aazuria’s hand to reassure her. “Of course! Hey. You should hear about what your little sister did.”
Being confident of his safety, she turned to Elandria. “You look like hell,” she told her sister with a smile, touching her bloody dress. “What happened?”
“I murdered upwards of thirty thousand men with my voice,” Elandria explained with a blush.
“Oh,” Aazuria said in surprise.
“She’s going to need therapy for that,” Dylan said, without taking his eyes away from Trevain’s bullet wound.
Meanwhile, Callder had gone to Taranis and was giving him a grateful hug. “Thanks for coming, man.”
“Thanks for letting me know what was happening!” Taranis said. “Aazuria probably would have been too proud to contact me.”
“Who are you?” Vachlan demanded, marching directly up to Taranis. “And where did you get these ships?”
“I am Prince Taranis Evenor of Atlantis…”
Vachlan paused, swallowing loudly. “You’re the Leviathan?”
“Yes, that is one of my more widespread monikers…”
Vachlan moved forward, until his nose was less than an inch away from Taranis’ face. The two men were of identical height, and similar stature. “You mean to tell me that you’re the man who made my wife get a tattoo of his name on her…”
Maelstrom Page 26
