Page 129 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Fortunately for the silver hair, Rask had landed on the bottom. He felt the creature’s body hit him, but it was so light that no damage was done. And he likely wouldn’t have noticed if there had been.

He found himself lying on the cold iron bars, feeling them start to burn through his hide, as he had no protection like the hand wraps that had covered his palms or the leather wrappings on the cuffs. But he barely noticed that, either, as he was too busy staring through the bars at what was happening around him. And wondering if he’d hit his head, too.

Rain was everywhere, reflecting torchlight across water-slick stones. Some of the torches were in people’s hands, showing their frantic, terrified faces; others were guttering against the cobbles, getting snuffed out by rain or running boots. He didn’t know where he was or what was happening—why were the silver hairs in such disarray?

And then he looked up.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Rask just lay there for a long moment, staring at another great sun opening in the stormy skies and spilling out a tornado of beings. Some were huge and godlike, in the form of elves but the size of towering trees and glowing like stars. Their hair floated around them on the currents of their power, and they were so bright that he could barely look at them.

But he tried because the others, flanking them on both sides, were. . . He didn’t have words for what they were. As hideous as the others were beautiful and hungry, like a baying pack of wolves.

Suddenly, Rask returned to himself and started struggling, grabbing the cage bars and trying to pull them apart. Not because he thought he could get away, but because he didn’t want to die like this, like vermin in a cage. He would die on his feet like the warrior he had someday hoped to be.

“What are you doing?” Someone yelled. “Come on!”

He looked up to find his silver hair staring at him. He’d found a guttering torch and held it up with one hand while holding the back door of their prison with the other. From the outside.

“How did you get it open?” Rask asked, blinking.

“By taking the goddamned keys off the goddamned guard, you big oaf! Now come on, if you want to live!”

Rask came on, scrambling out of the hated iron prison and getting back to his feet. The silver hair hadn’t waited on him but had sprung at the rest of the cages, some still upright, others not, from their caravan. He was running about, fighting guards, why Rask didn’t know.

The world was coming to an end, and it hardly seemed worthwhile.

But he had nothing better to do, so he helped, pulling off guards who apparently had not yet looked up as they were beating on his ally instead of running. Something that Rask put a stop to by smacking their heads together until they stopped moving. Meanwhile, the silver hair had grabbed more keys and opened more cages, screaming at people to go, go, go!

Although where they were to go, Rask had no idea. He stared around, getting a brief glimpse of a vast expanse of rain-slick stone, where people were running and screaming and smacking into each other or standing and staring upward as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, either. And of a vast city behind them made of golden stone and topped by massive, bulbous domes like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of.

Normally, the city would have left him speechless with awe, all on its own, but these were not normal times. The tornado was landing, with some of the strange, terrible creatures close enough now to jump to the ground, hitting with terrible splats, growls, and screeches that hurt his ears. But the fall did not seem to harm them.

They were back on their feet in an instant and tearing into the crowd. Their prey included those still trapped in the cages, some of whom were trolls like him and taken in the same raid. But others had silver hair, just like their captors.

In the end, it didn’t matter, as the beasts didn’t care; they—

“Stop staring!” his silver hair screamed. “And come with me!”

Once more, he came, dragging some of the wounded they had been able to save under each arm, one a silver-haired woman shrieking her head off and the other a troll even younger than him, who should have been chasing minnows in the pool's clear water.

Instead, he looked around dazed, his eyes reflecting the torchlight yet probably seeing nothing. Rask hoped his mother was among those saved, but no one was calling for him. No one was doing anything but running, seeing gods and demons, for that was what they must be, returning together to destroy everything.

Rask risked a glance behind him just as something huge jumped at him so quickly that it was merely a blur against the darkness. And was hit by an enormous bolt of lightning from somewhere above, just before it could devour them all. Its smoking body slammed into a door as Rask ran through it, already crumbling to ash, and he glanced back again to see crisscrossing bolts of power tearing through the night.

They hadn’t been saved, he realized as they ran down a hall; they had gotten lucky. One of the gods’ energy bolts had taken out their servant as they were throwing them at everything now. No one was likely to help him here, as the whole sprawling city seemed to be under attack at once.

But his silver hair knew where to go, and the people he had released surged around them in the hall, following his lead as they had no other. Rask kept pace with the fleet-footed throng despite his size, living up to the name his mother had given him long ago when he passed older boys in races when most of those his age could barely toddle about. He had always been fast for his size and had more reason than ever now.

The wall they were racing beside started crumbling around them. It hedged the great stone expanse outside, or rather, it had. It was quickly falling apart, forcing him to jump over huge sections that were failing and falling or being blasted inward even as he tried to run past them.

He dodged as best he could and kept going while parts of the ceiling broke on his back. He did not know why their group did not turn more toward the place's interior, away from the bolts, but perhaps the silver hair was afraid it would collapse on top of them. Although it seemed to be doing that already!

It was getting hard to see, with billowing clouds of dust highlighted by the bolts of energy cutting through and zigzagging across the hall. They were catching some of the runners broadside, evaporating their bodies into scatterings of ash before blowing out more walls farther in. Rask ignored them as there was nothing else he could do and kept moving.

And in moments, his decision to trust his would-be rescuer was rewarded, although he wasn’t sure with what. They burst out of the disintegrating hall and into an enormous cave, the biggest he had ever seen, yet more caves were connected to it. He could see some of them ahead in a long line, but they weren’t full of trolls.

They were full of silver hairs.

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