NORTH AMERICABeachrock, MassachusettsDave Wilson sat out in the parking lot.
All those sleepless hours sitting at home, he’d been eager to come back to work. Now the time was here and he found himself struggling to find the strength to even get out of the car. The longing for a return to some semblance of normalcy replaced by anxiety over what he’d find when he looked at the faces of the people he interacted with. Trapped in a tiny, little town in the armpit of Cape Cod.
His hand rested on the door handle. He took a breath, telling himself that he’d go in a minute. Then that minute came and he stayed.
Scared? Frightened? He wasn’t sure what he felt, or even how he was supposed to feel. Guilt. Lots of guilt. That much he did know.
A deep breath in. As he exhaled, the man finally steeled himself and dug deep to find the strength to finally open the door.
The sun wasn’t up yet. The parking lot a myriad of darkness and shadows broken up by the harsh street lamps that hung overhead, lighting the path toward the building that seemed to loom ominously before him.
The sign read: Beachrock County Sheriff
The desk sergeant started to stand as Dave passed through the door. “Welcome back, Dave,” the sergeant, Bill O'Shaughnessy, offered as he passed.
Instead of welcoming, it felt damning. Dave found he couldn’t meet Bill’s eyes, instead offering a weak wave as he held his breath and shuffled past.
“Welcome back, Dave.” Joe Rushing that time. Then Mark LaFontaine. As Dave Wilson tried to get to the locker room as inconspicuously and quietly as possible, he was assailed time and time again by people reaching out to him.
And each time they did, he just wanted to withdraw further.
A hand caught him by the arm, pulling him back. “Dave,” Shondra Ramirez, giving his arm a squeeze as she got his attention and said, “I am so, so sorry. Let me know if there’s anything that Rick or I can do for you.”
Dave’s mouth fell open to reply, but words just dried up on his tongue. Instead, he just gave a wordless nod before he turned away.
“Wilson!”
He was almost to the door of the locker room, but the voice that had called out was one he couldn’t ignore. Couldn’t run from.
Taking a breath, Dave turned toward the open office and found his way blocked as the unmistakable pillar that was Shannon McTaggert stood like a mountain, waiting.
Waiting for what? Dave looked up at Shannon’s face for just a moment as he offered, “Hey, Shan...”
A pair of tree trunk-like arms pulled him in. Before his mind had even registered just what had happened, Dave Wilson found himself in a crushing man-hug. “Yeah,” he offered, as soon as he could breathe again. When the hug lingered, Dave reached up to pat Shannon on the back and pulled away. “Yeah. Thanks, Shannon,” he offered, awkwardly fumbling for something to say as he moved around the mountain of a man and finally stepped inside of the open door.
“You wanted to see me, Sheriff?”
“I checked with the county HR,” the sheriff began, looking up as Dave entered, as he turned his full attention to the man now standing in his office. “We can give you more time if you need it.”
“No, Sheriff,” Dave stated softly. Then, swallowing, found his voice a little firmer as he offered, “I’m ready to go back to work.”
“Very well,” the sheriff answered, as he started to turn back to what he’d been doing.
As Dave turned to leave, he heard his name called again.
“Wilson.”
“Sheriff?”
Removing his reading glasses, the sheriff looked up at Dave and offered, “Grief’s not an easy thing to process. It’s okay to have a bad day. You do, don’t be afraid to say something.”
Dave just gave a silent nod of his head, before passing back out of the sheriff’s office.
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SHAYERIS3,600 feet below sea levelThe steward paced in the palace hall that bridged the royal apartments to the landing where their arrivals and departures were coordinated.
At last seeing one of the royal guards, Vulko snapped in an uncharacteristic burst of anger. “Why hasn’t the prince left yet?”
“There was a delay in the carriage house.”
“There’s no time for delay,” the steward rebuked bluntly. “Get him on a transport, now!”
“Vulko.”
The aging sorcerer turned, seeing King Thar making his way from out of chambers. As he bowed, he heard the king’s voice touch his mind again. “You seem tense.”
“I can’t shake this feeling,” Vulko remarked, straightening back up as he looked at the king. “Like we’re too late.”
Thar seemed to regard his longtime teacher with an almost skepticism. Finally, the king answered, “There’s no danger here.”
With a heavy heart, the steward sighed and answered, “None that we see, my king.”
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NORTH ATLANTIC200 miles off the coast of North Carolina“All ships, all stations, be advised that active sinking of a U.S. Navy warship is taking place in the vicinity of...”
Strom sat in a chair on the bridge wing of the USS Ford. The smell of the salt spray and the sight of the open sea calling him back to his many times throughout his career when he served aboard a warship. Had command of a warship. Could shut out the noise and just focus on the mission or task at hand.
”Captain on the bridge!”
Strom looked back on a reflex trained from familiarity, then felt a slight pang of regret for the fact that they weren’t announcing him. He wasn’t the captain.
He hadn’t been for a long time now.
The one simple truth of growing old in the military. You either got told to retire or else you got yourself promoted out of a job. Opportunities to sail to sea like this were the exception. Strom commanded a desk at the Pentagon, where he sailed the political currents of Washington and traded the fickle whims of the ocean’s breeze for those of the White House.
“Sir.”
That was the captain. Pivoting around in the chair, the admiral gave a nod of acknowledgement as the enviable officer stepped out onto the bridge wing with him. Motioning to the aging carrier that sat in view of the horizon, the captain continued, “Trafalgar’s in position. We can detonate on your order, Admiral.”
“Very well,” Strom replied. A formality. Then, his eyes locked on the once stately vessel of the United States, said, “Sink her.”
“Aye, sir.”
Strom swiveled back around as the captain stepped back onto the bridge to carry out his order. The man’s gray eyes lingering on the silhouette of the Trafalgar. He could hear the commotion from inside the bridge of the Ford as ordered were passed and personnel snapped into action.
The pyrotechnics were invisible to the naked eye, contained within the ship and buried under the water line. From this distance, the old sailor could see the ship begin to list. Trafalgar was going down.
“Sir.”
Strom swiveled around, somewhat surprised at the interruption. As he turned, the man looked up to see the captain there. “Status report?”
“Several of the charges in the aft failed to detonate,” the captain reported simply. Clearly, not surprised at the news he was delivering. “The ship is going down with a different dive profile than we’d planned for. I think we’re going to miss the ridge.”
The admiral just gave a grunt, as he turned back toward where Trafalgar was starting to disappear. Her bow section was submerged, the flight deck slipping beneath the water as the supersection vanished from view.
And thus passed the mighty warship Trafalgar.
With her, so ended his time away from the Potomac.
“The order was to sink it, Captain. You sank it,” Strom answered gruffly, bristling at the thought of trading his underway khakis for Pentagon dress blues. “Take us back to Norfolk.”
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Over a thousand years before, Atlantis has been part of the surface world. Their ways, their culture, had been no different from any number of societies in neighboring regions of the globe.
Then it fell into the sea.
Their ways, their culture, adapted. Yet, the more things changed, the more they tended to stay the same. In many respects, they were as alike as they were different from their surface dwelling counterparts.
Not the least of which was a fixation on the royal family.
Vulko’s efforts to see the prince off in expeditious fashion were stalled by a media frenzy that had sprung up outside the royal landing. It made the steward wonder if the so-called delay at the carriage house hadn’t been a convenient ruse to give the undersea paparazzi time to circle the proverbial sharks.
“Thanks, Osin. I’m Pora with Atlantean News First, reporting to you live from Shayeris. In a surprise announcement this morning, Coral Tower revealed that Prince Garth would replace Queen Berra as the royal sponsor for the opening of a hospital in Crastinus later this day,” A blue-haired Atlantean woman stated, under the floating bioluminescent lights that helped illuminate her for the imaging magic that then projected the report across Poiseidonis. “No reason for the change has been provided, but this marks the first time that the young prince has been assigned official duties and makes him the youngest working royal on record.”
Tucked just out of sight of the sea-going vultures, Queen Berra clung to her son. Letting him go only to pull him back in.
“Mom,” the boy lamented.
“Last hug,” she promised, her own voice sending chills down her spine as she was suddenly overcome by a foreboding. Like she’d just spoken truth. A truth she very much didn’t want to be true.
“Mom!” Garth uttered, rolling his head and his eyes as he started to swim away.
Her hand caught his, pulling him back as she offered a final word. “Be safe.”
The boy’s purple eyes just blinked, his head cocked to one side as he quipped, “Mom, I’m just going to Crastinus.”
Her stomach in knots, Berra let her son go. As the child swam out to greet the waiting feeding frenzy of reporters and fans, the queen took a breath to try and steel herself.
A familiar presence moved behind her. “Are you all right, my love?” Thar asked, as the king watched their son depart.
“I feel it now, too,” Berra warned. Turning her eyes up to meet her husband’s, the woman asked, “What if Lemuria isn’t Attuma’s target?”
Thar gripped his queen by the shoulders, holding her tightly as the pair watched. And waited.
The peace that they’d fought so hard for, been so proud of, now seemed quite fragile.
Smiling, Garth sailed along the landing, circling over toward where a group of reporters were calling out to him as he waved to the crowd.
To his surprise, Vulko snatched him aside. “Your highness, you must go,” the steward snapped, shoving the boy into the waiting shuttle. Then, looking at the guards at the controls, snapped, “Now.”
Unsettled, Garth just shrank back into the seat at the rear. “Sure, Vulko,” he offered, as the canopy was sealed and the shuttle floated up and away from the landing.
Garth flipped around, standing on his knees in the seat as he peered out the back to watch as the Coral Palace fell away and the city of Shayeris came into view as the shuttle departed.
Standing there, Vulko didn’t feel any better for the departure. A shadow had fallen over Shayeris. At first, he’d thought it nothing more than a passing whale, but now, as the steward watched the shuttle depart, the old sorcerer’s eyes were drawn upward.
Toward the surface.
There, he saw the coming of the end.
The USS Trafalgar had been falling for more than five minutes. Centrifugal forces caused by the displacement of 60,000 tonnes of water had caused the ship to spin as it continued to descend. The Trafalgar had built up a head of speed, plummeting through the ocean depths at near fifty miles per hour. The ship had started to break apart. The superstructure shearing away from the flight deck as it began to shatter into a cloud of debris that trailed behind the main hull that was plummeting like a torpedo into the valley on the far side of the undersea mountain that had for so long been Shayeris’ protection from the surface world. From the submersible machines that avoided the mountain.
The Trafalgar slammed into Shayeris with the force of a nuclear bomb.
The undetonated charges in its aft section exploded with the collision and rapid implosion of its hull, sending secondary shockwaves across the city that spewed coral, debris, and sediment billowing outward in a dark cloud that cast the seafloor into murky darkness.
Garth collided with the back of the pilot’s seat, as the unleashed forces sent the shuttle spiraling out of control.
Then the trailing parts of the ships that had broken off began to rain down as the superstructure broke apart and rained down in a metallic hail.
As the shuttle was spinning out of control, Garth felt an object slam into them.
The smell of blood sent a panic through the boy, as the water inside the shuttle started to turn red. Bracing himself against the side of the transport, Garth looked up and realized that something had impaled the front of the shuttle.
The guards were dead.
Struggling to reach the back of their seats, the boy was tossed about as the shuttle continued to careen out of control. Desperately, he grabbed hold, pulling himself forward. An outreached hand tried to grasp for the pilot’s throttle, but the guard’s body and the metal pole barred his reach.
The shuttle was buffeted, colliding with a thermocline, throwing the boy to the back of the shuttle before it spun and he found himself rolling up along what should have been the floorboard.
An arcane circle formed at the boy’s hand. His eyes glowing as he reacted on pure instinct.
He had no idea what spell he was casting. It was wild magic. It was desperate.
The shuttle seemed to break apart as the child unleashed the arcane, a momentarily tranquility enveloping him before the weight of the ocean rushed back in to greet him in a swirling vortex of darkness that seemed to pull him under.
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