Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter (69 page)

Spread out before him was an unfathomable darkness that felt strangely inviting. The urge to surrender to it was overwhelming, as if it were a realm where he could free himself of his fears.

He drifted into the darkness with a sense of tranquility, when voices began calling out to him to come back. The voices grew stronger as a constellation of brightly lit orbs surrounded him. Each and every orb felt familiar to him, as if he had known all of them across the ages, and like moths to a flame, they drew closer.

He spoke to them in a soothing voice. “Never surrender to the darkness.”

He immediately recoiled at his own words.
How could I say such a thing when I was about to give up myself?

Faces began to emerge from each orb. They were the faces of children.

“Don‘t be afraid,” he said as they gathered before him.

They reached out and he felt their energy flow through him as their minds became one. “I always thought I was alone,” he said.

“You never were,” a familiar voice called out to him. He tried to find the source amidst the crowd that hovered around him.

It was Nina. She reached out from the sea of faces and grasped his hands. “We have always been here. You were the one who brought us all together.”

They embraced as the constellation of light grew and pushed back the looming darkness.

“Why do I feel like I have known them all of my life?” he said.

“Because we are all alike. We are the children of this Earth. We are the paranormal who have been hunted down and destroyed by a malevolence that does not wish for us to rise and reclaim our rightful place on this world. We all see you as the one bright light in a sea of infinite darkness that gives us the hope we need to reach the distant shore.”

“You have always been in my dreams Nina, I know this now. That’s why you always felt so familiar to me,” he said.

She smiled. “I needed to find someone who could lead us all. I cannot leave the island without putting my life in danger. But not you, you can go anywhere and do anything. You can help us all. You can make this world a better place. We know this to be true, that’s why we have waited so long for you to arrive. But for now Breeze, you need to focus on the present. Remember: don’t push, just move.”

Nina, the voices and the lights faded away as he poured back into his body. His eyes snapped open and he came face to face with the Elephim.

Nina’s words echoed in his mind as he counteracted the spin he was being subjected to by letting his body flow in the opposite direction of it. He could feel himself being stretched thin, yet felt no pain. Time slowed to a crawl as he calmly observed the shocked expression of the Elephim. Far off in the distance he saw a cylindrical platform engulfed in flames as it fell toward Perihelion.

He casually leaned over and grabbed the hand that was gripping his leg. The Elephim shrieked as Breeze flung him away effortlessly. The sound of static subsided as the Elephim fell to the ocean and disappeared beneath the waves.

He then sensed a presence from below. He looked down as Nina rose up to him on a column of water. She pointed at the falling platform and shouted. “There isn’t much time, Breeze!”

He grunted in response and raced to intercept it.

The platform was immense as it descended in a ball of fire. Breeze suppressed his fear as the platform loomed above him with an incredible roar that overwhelmed his senses. He felt like an ant underneath the foot of a giant.

He took a deep breath and felt the energy in his body swell. He channeled it into his shield and expanded it to an extent far greater than he had ever attempted, and then hurled himself at the platform.

He felt the impact reverberate through his body as he rammed it and knocked it off course from its collision course with the island.

The burning platform fell into the ocean in an immense eruption of water and steam that filled the sky with a gigantic cloud, and then rained back down in a deluge. When the sky cleared, Breeze could see the surging wave the platform’s impact into the ocean had created as it radiated in all directions. Perihelion lay in its path.

“Breeze, Perihelion is still exposed! The shields are not up!” Nina cried. She was struggling to maintain altitude with her water column as she surfed atop it.

He barreled down and plucked her off the water column, then accelerated rapidly as they rushed toward Perihelion. She buried her head in his chest and he held her tight.

Breeze raced well ahead of the wave and reached the island before it could crest on the shore. He landed in a lush valley with a waterfall that cascaded down from a rocky mountain. He quickly recognized it from his first day when Excort drove him through here on their way to the dormitory, and remembered flying through the mountain thinking his was going to die.

Breeze closed his eyes and focused. He then expanded his shield, never once trying to force it, but letting it flow out of him naturally, like a sapling sprouting into a mighty oak that could touch the clouds.

The wave hit the eastern coast of Perihelion and crested over. The sheer wall of water was immense as it reared up and loomed over the island, plunging everything into darkness. His legs buckled as the wave slammed onto his shield.

Nina leaned up to kiss him. “Don’t give in,” she said.

He held her close as the shield rose higher to form a dome that capped the island.

They never broke their embrace as the deluge engulfed the shield and blocked out the sun, drowning them into pure darkness.

They found Breeze and Nina holding each other tightly hours later. The water had long receded and the island was once again basking under the sun as mountainous white clouds floated above.

Excort’s sons had managed to get the generators back up and running and with power restored, the fog was active as it blanketed the island and hid it from prying eyes above. They immediately organized a sweep of the island, along with several RF they recruited for the mission, but they never found the saboteurs responsible for the damage.

Excort then gathered his sons and along with Ray, Oslo, and the others, formed a search party to locate Breeze and Nina after unsuccessful attempts to reach them on the comms. Hours later, they found them in the valley of the waterfall.

Breeze still had his shield raised, oblivious that the danger to Perihelion had long passed. His shield had regressed over time until it reduced itself to a mere fraction of its former size.

Excort shouted at them to get their attention, but the shield blocked out the sound of his voice. Raza placed a hand on Sally’s shoulder and nodded. Sally sighed, and then closed her eyes as she projected toward them. She slipped through the shield and called out to Breeze several times before he responded.

He pulled back from his embrace of Nina and looked at Sally in a daze. After a moment of silence, he spoke. “Are we safe?”

“Yes. Thanks to you, as always,” she said with hint of a smile that faded upon seeing Nina gazing up at him with awe.

He took in his surroundings. The sun was setting in the west as it lit up the clouds with streaks of orange and pink.

Oslo and Raza stood outside the shield. Oslo had his arm around his wife as she steadied him. Ray stood off to the side and Achilles was nowhere to be found. A group of RF who had joined in the search was aimlessly wandering about.

He dropped his shield and Nina rushed to her parents. She bounded into their waiting arms and they held her tight.

Sally retracted to her body as Ray reached for her hand. She took it and together they stood quietly.

Excort approached Breeze. “Well, young man, you did it. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Breeze nodded as he looked around. “Where’s Achilles?”

“It’s in the hangars with my sons for repairs. That robot took quite a beating—”

Breeze flew up and away.

Achilles sat on a bench in the hangar bay holding its head close to its chest and watched as Excort’s sons rummaged through bins searching for spare parts. The mechanical spinal cord, stretching several feet from the base of the neck to the head, was the only link that provided control of its body.

The RF who were repairing aerocraft throughout the hangar complex would occasionally glance at Achilles, but were quick to avert their gaze whenever a supervisor stepped by.

A lone RF with a streak of orange across its breast plate stared at Achilles until its supervisor tapped it on the shoulder and pointed for it to leave. It did, but only after casting a quick glance back at Achilles before returning to its duties.

Achilles noted how the hangars and surrounding buildings had fallen into disrepair.
Oslo struggles to prevent the campus from falling into further deterioration,
it thought as it remembered Perihelion from its glory days with glittering spires, well-kept grounds and hangars filled to the brim with shiny aerocraft.

Lost in thought, it was startled by a voice that emanated from deep below the earth.

You will not stop me,
the voice said with a snarl.

Achilles blinked rapidly and shuddered, when it heard a different voice speaking. It looked up and was greeted by the sight of Xenthan with an older brother standing beside him. Xenthan spoke about parts he and his brother had salvaged from scrap, and how they would perform a temporary fix until new parts could be machined.

Xenthan lifted Achilles’ head and waited while his brother fed the spine back into the body, then lowered the head onto the shoulders and fastened it. The temporary fix didn’t allow for the head to rotate, Xenthan explained to Achilles, and will have to twist its torso and head in unison to see who it was speaking to.

Achilles sensed the hangar had grown quiet. All of the RF had stopped working to observe what was transpiring, but quickly returned to work when Achilles swiveled its torso and head together to look behind it.

Xenthan shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen them behave this way before.”

Achilles abruptly stood up and thanked them, then marched past row upon row of dilapidated aerocraft until it stepped out of the hangar and into the fading sunlight just as Breeze was landing.

The robot’s eyes lit up with a mischievous twinkle as it pointed out the potholes in the tarmac. “Are these the result of your practice landings from when you originally arrived at Perihelion? You are quite adept at leaving an impression.”

Breeze laughed. “Glad to see you’re back to your old self.”

“Old? Unfortunately, yes. Improved? Unable to ascertain at this time.” Achilles swiveled its head and torso in unison. “Merely a temporary condition, as Xenthan eloquently informed me.”

Breeze stared solemnly at the robot as Achilles placed a hand on his shoulder. “You have performed admirably. You reached deep within yourself and formed a shield that thwarted the wave that would have destroyed Perihelion. I was told you were in stasis for quite some time as you kept the shield raised.”

“How long was I out there for? It feels to me like minutes.”

Achilles’ eyes lit up. “Several hours had passed, according to Xenthan. He would relay to me updates during the search for you and Nina while he and his brother scrounged for parts to repair me. I would have joined, but my engagement with an Elephim resulted in my head being removed from my shoulders. Quite inconvenient!” it chuckled, then paused for a moment before speaking again. “Apparently they found you in a valley not far from the bay embracing Nina with your shield raised. Sally had to project into it to get your attention. Odd how those ladies are always able to slip past your defenses.”

Breeze’s face reddened while Achilles’ eyes shined brilliantly. “You have accomplished much since your humble beginnings.”

Breeze shrugged and looked away. He was about to say something when he quickly lifted a hand to his ear and nodded. “Excort just sent a message over the wireless, says Mila is making dinner for everyone at the dining hall. Let’s head on over.” He held out a hand. “Care for a lift?”

Achilles laughed and brushed it away. “I have had an abundance of airborne adventures for now. Let us endeavor to keep our feet on the ground,” it said, and then looked up at the sky. “Just for a little awhile at least.”

The robot pointed toward the shore. “The beach is past those dunes; let us follow it back to the hall.”

“Aren’t you worried about getting rusty?” Breeze teased it.

Achilles’ eyes dimmed. “After what we have experienced, it is the least of my concerns.”

Several days later, Breeze sat with Oslo in his office late one evening. The Elephim that ambushed the island after their departure for Appalachia left a trail of destruction as every building on campus was wrecked and ransacked. Oslo’s office was hit the hardest. The old man spent the last several days with Raza putting everything back together. The books on the shelves that lined the walls of the office had been ripped and burned, as was the furniture. The sailorman lamp was also a victim, but it had been patched together and returned to its prominence on the desk.

The lamp reminded him how he once sat across from Oslo in this very office as a total misfit when he first arrived to the island. He found it strange how Perihelion now seemed to fit him like an old glove.

He also understood why Oslo persevered for so long. The old man was living in a world dominated by the memories of Earth’s glorious, yet distant past, but burdened with the truth that humanity was traveling along a road to oblivion by their unwillingness to discover it. People had blinders over their eyes, Breeze realized, blinders that were purposefully put there by a malicious and hidden force. Yet many were unwilling, or unable, to remove them.

Breeze abruptly sat up in his chair. “Oslo, there is something you need to know; when that Elephim grabbed me and spun me around, something strange happened. It felt like time was slowing down and space was stretching before me. I then heard voices and saw the faces of children come out of the darkness within orbs of light looking for my help. I felt a sense of peace as I told them not to be afraid and to never give in to the darkness. I don’t know what made me to say those things, but I knew that I was right. What happened to me out there?”