Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
him, displacing what hope was left. Ge'on'ni was almost to where the exit had
shifted, the other two equidistant.
Alicia helped him to his feet and kept one arm through his. “If you can walk,
start towards the walls,” she yelled into his ear. “Niv... get Ulanda going, please.”
Three almost clear beams shot out, one each from Rilla, Heana and Ge'on'ni,
joining at the center of the dome, floor level. The combined force flared straight
up and down, reaching top and bottom. Slowly the light spread out, following the
curve of the walls downwards. From clear, the light had become a translucent
green, then darker as it flowed along the walls. Their warding might not have
existed for any effect it had.
Suddenly, the bay shook violently. He was on the floor again, Alicia pinned
under him. He was trying to hold onto smooth crystal with his fingernails. At eye
level, starting from the center of the pillar of energy, cracks grew in the crystal
floor straight towards him, startlingly fast and then practically to his nose before
branching out like a tree limb. He held Alicia as the bay shook again. The cracks
would have reached the walls. He looked back. Niv and Ulanda were much further
away than the few feet they had taken. The perspective was confused. Flashes of
yellow light rose out of the cracks with a popping sound. Reacting to this where it
hadn't with the other, their warding flared. Ash shot out in bursts, a storm of ash
whipped into a blizzard by the competing fields, the smell of burning as it fell like
black snow against the clarity of the floor.
“Ulanda!” Rit shouted over the noise. They were further away again than
before, as though the floor was expanding. The two were half lost through the fall
of ash.
“I can't stop it,” she screamed. She and Niv were on their knees, backing
towards the wall.
The protective warding fields were becoming erratic, absorbing the energy
pouring from the cracks and then flinging it outwards wherever a weak spot
occurred. Under them, the space glowed, there was lightening under the crystal
as though their fields were there as well. The growing layer of ash and dust on
the surface separated, forming curving bands, the yellow light shot upwards
between, illuminating the underside of the flakes still falling. Yellow below, green
above.
Alicia was clawing at him. He rolled over, letting her go. Ash in her hair,
smudged on her face, she was crying, but he knew it was from frustration and
anger. “I'm sorry,” he said.
Wiping her face with a sleeve, she laughed shakily. “Don't ever blank out again
when you're on top of me.” Getting to her feet, she looked around. “We're not
going to get out of here are we?” Hazel eyes looked into his as though the lighting
above and below them didn't exist. Stripes on her face like a Xintan death mask.
Ash on the crystal, more stripes. Like those on a large cat, he suddenly thought
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca