cheek of a dying wife. “Goodbye old girl,” he whispered.
Captain Bonifast tossed the lantern down where the mound of black powder lay on the floor in the hallway. The glass bell shattered, releasing the flame and igniting the powder. By the time the hiss of burning powder began to run down the hallway toward the fully stocked powder room, Levi Bonifast had already gone.
Ethan and Gideon paused at the open entrance to the galley. The sunlight beamed through the stained glass window at the far end. “Where is he?” Gideon asked.
No sooner had he voiced the question, than Captain Bonifast appeared in a hard run. “Don’t stop, lads! We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t kill us too!” He ran past them into the galley. The captain threw his body, shoulder first, into the window. It exploded outward, sending shattered glass and Bonifast into the sea below.
Ethan and Gideon ran hard and leaped through the shattered window after him. Ethan shifted into the spiritual realm as he left the ship. He watched both Gideon and Bonifast hit the water below. The captain’s words pounded in his brain-“we’ll be lucky if it doesn’t kill us too.”
Ethan shot downward into the sea and found his two friends dazed and struggling against the current. When the powder room went off, it would blow out the bottom of the ship first, causing a massive concussion wave in the water, killing anything in the vicinity.
Ethan concentrated on holding them and grabbed the two men by their clothes. He surged forward-his body traveling through the ether while their mortal forms dragged through the blue water.
Ethan focused on the white granite cliffs before him. They were still several hundred yards away. The water’s drag on Gideon and Captain Bonifast held back his progress as Ethan fought to get his friends to safety. Bonifast and Gideon held their breaths, unsure if it was Ethan pulling them.
Only seconds had passed since they had entered the Azure Sea. Captain Bonifast still counted down in his head.
The men of the boarding party, from one of the Man-O-Wars, descended steadily into the bowels of the wounded Maelstrom. They encountered several members of the crew along the way. Their captain dispatched them without mercy. He did not like prisoners.
Presently, they heard the sounds of shouting and of glass shattering. They continued deep into the ship to investigate. A faint, flickering light caught the eye of the captain of the Man-O-War. He led his boarding party down the stairs to the lowest deck on the ship. The design and layout were unfamiliar to him. It was difficult to ascertain exactly where they were. Several of the men, with lanterns, came to the front and handed the captain a light.
They descended into a dark hallway. A door stood at the far end. A flickering light outlined the doorframe, coming from the room beyond. The smell of cannon smoke hung in the air. The boarding party reached the door at the end of the hall and the flickering light. The captain held up his lantern to read the writing on the door. Powder Room. The Man-O-War’s captain screamed, “GET OUT!” These were the last words any of them would ever hear.
Ethan pulled upward and his friends breached the surface of the water. Both Gideon and Captain Bonifast gulped air as they found themselves hauled like fish from the Azure Sea by invisible hands. Bonifast’s count ended-“two, one.”
Ethan had managed to get his friends nearly 250 yards from the battered Maelstrom before the black powder ignited. KA-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! The explosion sounded like a hundred cannons trying to go off at the same moment.
The Maelstrom bloomed like a fiery flower behind them before the sound ever found their ears. The old pirate ship erupted in every direction at once, sending flaming debris into the sky. A shockwave surged outward from the explosion like an invisible juggernaut, smashing everything in its path.
The three Man-O-Wars, surrounding the Maelstrom, ripped apart as the shockwave hit them. Their sails were shredded and set on fire as the masts splintered, falling like trees toppled by a mighty wind. A fiery cloud engulfed the entire lot of them, as more explosions erupted from the powder stores onboard the enemy ships.
When the shockwave hit Gideon and Bonifast a second later, it sent all three of them reeling. Ethan was pulled by their bodies as the blast wave tossed them all back into the sea. Ethan shifted back to the physical world after they hit the water. His friends quickly came back to the surface for air.
Levi Bonifast watched as the black mushroom cloud rose from his ship. There was nothing recognizable about the old seabird now. Had it not been for the fact that they were all in the water, the two young men might have noticed several tears tracing down Bonifast’s stubbly cheeks. “I guess I’m a civilian now,” he muttered under his breath as the three men bobbed in the sea.
SEWER RATS
The Maelstrom was no more. Nothing but ash and burning debris remained. But Captain Bonifast, Ethan, and Gideon did not linger to watch it burn. Bonifast had a plan. “We’ll enter the palace ourselves and find your sister,” he told Ethan.
“But how? How can we get inside from here?”
Here was a good two hundred yards from the granite cliffs now towering above them. They were crowned at the top by the king’s palace, now the home of Mordred himself.
“I’ve scaled many a rock face before,” Gideon said, “but it would take equipment we simply don’t have to get up that cliff.”
“You’re not thinking, boys,” Bonifast said. “If you knew anything about the palace, then you would know there is a series of drains which lead away from it to the sea. Now, how do you suppose they drain into the Azure?”
Ethan and Gideon looked at one another puzzled, then at the white cliffs ahead. “Through the rock?”
“Precisely! We only have to swim over to where the rock meets the water, then find the drains. I’ve heard from old acquaintances that the drains will lead you right into the throne room if you know what you’re doing.”
“People have gone through them before?” Ethan asked.
Bonifast smiled. “Oh yes, they have. I’ve not been myself, but that’s the only direct way I know of.”
They heard the sounds of a distant battle above them. “King Stephen must have already begun his attack,” Bonifast said.
“Perhaps we should join him,” Ethan suggested.
“He won’t be able to breach the walls,” Gideon said. “No, I think the captain’s suggestion is probably going to be our best bet for getting inside and rescuing your sister, Ethan. Besides, the battle with Stephen will have Mordred and his forces preoccupied. No one will expect us.”
“I’ll go ahead while you two swim for the cliffs,” Ethan said. “I’ll have the best chance of finding the drain.”
Levi and Gideon nodded their agreement, then began to tread water toward the pristine rock ahead. Ethan entered the spiritual realm again, floating up from the sea. He raced ahead of his friends toward the cliffs.
Ethan watched the sky expecting to find the angels still engaged in battle, but they were gone. The edge of the demon cloud remained barely visible above the top of the cliffs. Ethan supposed the spiritual warfare must have moved over the battlefield where King Stephen fought to breach the city walls.
Ethan soared upward as he reached the cliff. His supernatural eyes scanned every crevice of the white rock, looking for the drain coming from the palace above. It took him nearly twenty minutes of going back and forth to find it. The drain gate had been painted in white and grey to match the cliff and it was not as big an opening as Ethan would have hoped for.
The gate was located twenty feet above the water level. This presented the problem of getting Levi Bonifast and Gideon up to the drain in order to enter. The drain tunnel was roughly three feet in diameter. It would be a tight squeeze. Provided it did not open up into larger tunnels higher up, this would be a long and tenuous climb to
