Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 48407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
“What?” Manannán demanded.
Finally.
I knelt. Everyone behind me knelt as well.
“Aaron is dead. We’ve returned your gold. Please release your people from your chains.”
“Who are you to bargain with me?”
“The killer of Neig.”
The deity pondered me. I kept kneeling. Dropping a dragon’s name should buy me some street cred.
“I meant for him to suffer for eternity. You’ve cut it short. You released him from his penance.”
“He was wrong to ransom your child. But since then, he has taken other children from their families. They suffer the way your child suffered, separated from their parents, denied the warmth and love of their family. They are innocent. We beg you to undo these chains.”
“They should be punished with him. All of you should be punished for allowing him to live and harm my child.”
I was wrong for killing him and also wrong for allowing him to live, and everyone should suffer. Tuatha Dé, ever so consistent and reasonable.
“We’ve corrected our mistake.”
“Too little, too late.”
I made a small motion with my hand. The three smallest children crawled forward, crying and wailing. We’d rehearsed it.
“Please, Father of Fiachra, Father of Niamh…”
The kids cried.
“…Father of Eachdond Mor, Father of…”
He grunted. “Enough! What do you offer?”
Shit. He wanted an offering. I didn’t have anything. Nothing valuable enough.
Think, think, think…
“What do you offer in compensation?” Manannán repeated.
“This ship.”
“This ruin?”
“This ship is a monument to human arrogance. It had cost untold riches to build and been filled with luxurious treasures, and yet it wasn’t used to transport goods or carry people across the waves from one destination to another. It went around in a circle, returning to the same port with all of its passengers still on board. It was built specifically for leisure, so humanity, in its conceit, could spend a few days floating on the ocean and scoffing at its power. It’s the vessel of people who thought they had conquered the sea.”
Manannán considered it. I held my breath.
“Is it yours to give?”
“Yes. I killed Aaron, so everything that was his is now ours. Please accept this vessel as our humble offering.”
“I agree. Remember my mercy.”
“Always, Lord Manannán.”
He disappeared.
The chains fractured and vanished. Someone cried out, as if unable to believe it.
The sea surged through the hole, licked the fire, and put it out in an instant.
Far ahead, at the cliffs, a wall of water rose, dark and menacing, climbing higher and higher. Something moved inside it. Something with very long tentacles.
“We have to go!” I barked.
Solina grabbed Antonio’s hand. “This way!”
Everyone ran after her, and I brought up the rear, keeping the kids in front of me. Garvey followed us, scrambling to keep up. We dashed down the pitch-black hallway, scurrying through the bowels of the ship on feel alone.
Elaine made a sharp right turn ahead. The caravan of kids followed her and so did I. Mark, the gaunt man, scooped the smallest child up and carried her.
Something hit the hull. The colossal ship trembled.
Boom!
Boom! Boom!
My brain helpfully supplied a vision of enormous tentacles wrapping around the vessel.
I burst through the door after the kids, into a stairwell dimly lit by a single feylantern above. The children pounded up the metal stairs. I rushed upward. One turn. Two…
The door behind me burst open. Garvey hauled his bony body through it and started up the stairs.
Round and round, we charged up the stairs.
The door below us snapped open again. Water shot into the stairwell, foaming and rising.
“Faster!” I yelled.
The kids huffed in front of me, slowing down.
The water caught Garvey. A long, buttery creature swirled in its depths, wrapped around the old man, and pulled him under.
The ship groaned, metal screeching, and moved.
I clung to the stairs.
The ship froze again.
“Almost there!” Solina screamed.
The kids stomped up the steps. I chased them.
Ahead a door banged open.
I rounded the stairs and burst through the door onto a deck fifty feet above the sea. I was on the side facing the shore. The beach was a thousand feet away. A gigantic octopus tentacle, ten feet across, gripped the ship next to me.
When that monstrosity pulled the ship into Manannán’s domain, it would take us with it. Even if we jumped down into the sea, when the ship moved, it would generate a current that would suck us in, and Manannán wouldn’t let us go.
We had to make it to solid ground before he took the ship. That was our only hope.
The children leaped off the deck into the water below.
The tentacles squeezed. Metal screamed in protest.
A thousand feet to the shore. And so far down.
Darin grabbed my hand and ran to the deck. I didn’t have time to think about it. The deck ended, the water yawned at me, for a terrified moment I was airborne, and then I plunged into the ocean.
The water swallowed me. I went in deep and kicked randomly, not sure which way was up. In front of me, the dark mass of the cruise ship slid backward, dragged off by something too colossal for a human mind to comprehend. A current gripped me, pulling me back toward the ship.