Page 130 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

There were so many that Rask just stared for a moment, as he had never seen that many people at one time. Nor had he ever seen the silver hairs, who always seemed so icy cold and devoid of emotion except hate, full of the same panic he felt clawing at him. And holding onto small, mountain-shaped wooden creations, like some that Rask had seen flying over his homeland occasionally, and been told to avoid at all costs.

They could spit fire, he had been warned and were there to search for the locations of his people’s settlements from the air. That was why they had to hide their cave entrances carefully and never return home while the wooden birds were in the sky. He had only glimpsed them through the treetops before and hadn’t realized how small they were.

Yet multiple people were packed inside them, and more were clinging to the outside and begging not to be left behind.

Some of those were getting towed along the ground and into the air as a few of the strange creations took off, with no flapping of wings as they didn’t have any. They levitated how Rask had seen some magic users do to small items back home. Were they magic, too?

He supposed they must be.

But there weren’t enough of them for all the people, and some of the desperate crowd didn’t know how to operate them. Many of the birds stood idle while people hedged around them, screaming into the crowd for those with knowledge. The knowledge that his silver hair seemed to possess, for he threw a guard out of one and made it rise jerkily into the air.

But those inside were fighting him before he could make off with it, and more were on the ground, jumping up with the springy grace of their kind, latching onto it, dragging it back down.

“Let me go!” the silver-haired woman he had been carrying yelled. “Leave me and go help him!”

Rask let her go and left her with the troll child, who she hugged to her bosom, both of them watching him with huge eyes. He pushed through the crowd to the odd craft, grabbed the edge, and started towing it back across the floor while being hammered by the guards inside and the people around him. But his blood was pumping so hard that he barely noticed, and when he reached his small band, who had gathered together in a defensive knot, he tipped the craft over and watched the guards inside fall out.

They didn’t seem to have expected that but were quickly back on their feet and brandishing the lightning spears that Rask had learned to hate from his experiences on the road. They could rupture even his skin, and he wasn’t sure what to do about so many until his silver hair yelled, “Drop!”

Rask dropped, and his rescuer activated something inside the craft that had lightning emerging from underneath it, spearing out just above Rask’s head and targeting the guards. They fell twitching to the ground, people screamed and ran, and he looked up at the elf.

Who had just attacked his own people to spare a crowd full of trolls.

“Get in!” he screamed, looking half-crazed.

Rask did not get in. He helped the others do so instead, not sure that the craft, which was one of the larger varieties but still relatively small, would hold them all. But they made themselves fit, and somehow, there was room for him to stand in the doorway and cling onto the side, gripping the roof with all his might as the crazy thing went skittering over the floor, knocking people down and causing even more unrest, if that was possible. But not taking off because his half was too heavy and was dragging the whole thing down to the point that it scraped the floor on his side.

But when he went to step off, his silver hair screamed at him incoherently, and some of the women grabbed his legs and would not let him go.

And then they were over the edge of a cliff, plummeting and spinning about like a top as the unevenly weighted contraption struggled to fly. But fly it did, in fits and starts, while other such craft zoomed past it, heading off into the night as fast as they could. His vessel was more sluggish, and when the silver-hair finally got it to stop spinning, they moved away from the burning city slowly enough to give Rask an excellent view.

It was not one he would ever forget. The great domes were burning now, as the gods seemed to be concentrating primarily on them. The fires were already so huge that they stained the clouds that the city sat among at the top of a great peak, almost as if it was composed of them itself.

But this wasn’t the pretty red-gold of a sunset; it was a bloody hue to match the carnage as everything burned. The city went up like a torch as he watched while the rains beat at him, the light dazzled him, and the terrible beasts feasted on live and burning flesh. And as their tiny band of survivors slowly limped their way into the night, entirely silent.

For what was there to say?

The vision shattered, and I found myself on the floor, unsure how I got there. Probably rolling around with Rask, for the Common’s images were so real it was almost as if you were experiencing them yourself. And while this hadn’t been as deep of an immersion as I’d felt before, where the lines between myself and the person I was following had blurred, it had been deep enough.

I felt the bruises Rask had taken in my own flesh, smelled the burning city in my nose, and tasted his panic on my tongue. And I guessed Æsubrand did, too, because he suddenly tore up from the floor and launched himself at the first enemy he saw. Which must have been me because all I could see through the still-turning shards of that other time was his face. And if ever anyone had looked like murder—

Bodil dropped him with a word, and he fell flat on the floor. I lay there, still half out of it and wondering what had just happened. And watching a shard of memory showing Rask and company dodging pieces of the fiery city that explosions were sending flying out at them.

I hoped they made it, I thought dizzily; I hoped—

“What the hell—” Alphonse said, jumping to his feet.

“We have to leave him,” Pritkin told me flatly.

“What?” I looked up at him, uncomprehending.

“We can’t risk bringing him with us. I can’t watch him every second, and he obviously means you harm.”

I blinked at the fallen silver hair, my mind and Rask’s still intertwined enough that that was the only name I could remember for his people. “Did they make it?” I asked Faerie. “Rask and . . . and the others—”

“Yes,” she said. “Surprisingly. Their craft was overloaded, but it took them back to the road where the slavers had been. There, they met up with some of his people and, after a discussion, were taken into their caves. They retreated farther into the mountains and remain there, one of the dwindling islands of survivors.”

“Cassie!” Pritkin’s voice brought me back somewhat, and I felt Rask slipping away. I looked at Æsubrand some more. Svarestri, I thought.

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