Twelve
“Holy shit!”
“You can fucking say that again, Burra.”
“Holy shit!”
“Damn, it’s really fucking cold. I think we’re underdressed. Will, did you know this when you called me? This is really our mission?”
“It really is, Eras. I guess you should have asked more questions before you said yes. Although I admit, I have never been to Antarctica, so I didn’t know what to expect. This is obscenely, freaking un-survivable cold. I don’t think we’re underdressed, I think it isn’t possible to be appropriately dressed.”
“I’m wearing five layers, I have a thick bear coat, and I’m still freezing my paws off.” Burra, the biggest of the three, a totem with a bear spirit animal, wasn’t kidding when he said he had a bear coat. He spent the first thirty minutes after they left their transport shaking, rubbing his hands up and down his arms to try to create friction, and up and down his cheeks to try to keep them from freezing into chunks and falling off. He didn’t feel as if he accomplished any of those things.
“How deep do we go, Will?”
“All I know is that it’s deep. I can lower myself down on a column of air, so that will be easy, but I need an assist from you two to pull off the ascent. As far as sealing the fissure, I don’t know how much that’ll take out of me. I get images, impressions, but not details. Something tells me that the future of this job isn’t looking like a picnic.”
“Everything we do as earth warriors isn’t a picnic. That’s why we’re here, to fix things that either we’ve done to the world to fuck it up, or natural occurrences that can destroy it too. Per your permission, last night I told Cari about you, with a gag order. She wants to tell Dani. Dani still feels strong guilt over leaving you.”
“God, yes. Let Cari know to do so immediately. None of this was Dani’s fault, she should have no guilt at all! I guess I should have called her.”
“It’s okay, I get why you are keeping your survival mum for now. Eventually, though, everyone will have to know.”
“Likely, but until I know what the universe and Mother Earth require of me, I want Brigitte and Olivia to have peace.”
“They do. Did you know that Brigitte’s been spending a lot of time with Olivia in Vegas?”
Olivia and Brigitte had become close? Ah, had they bonded over his loss? Interesting. He hoped they were supporting each other to make the pain less. Suddenly all he wanted was to go to them and wrap them in his arms.
Screeching sounds brought him back to the moment. Burra had pulled a heavy piece of scaffolding away from the entrance to an ice cave. They’d just crossed a storm-driven blizzard to the brutally cold, but wind-sheltered cavern where a huge fissure had opened up, and according to Will, the building earthquake they were there to stop.
“Thanks, Burra. Earpieces in? Testing.”
Seconds later, both Eras and Burra nodded.
“Communications up.” Eras looked at the long nycor rope that they’d carried. “This won’t even come close to reaching, will it?”
Lips pursed, Will looked into the crevice that had opened from the fissure below, shaking his head.
“Not even close. Besides, the heat down there would overwhelm you in minutes, even with your vampire nature.”
“You’re sure you can survive this? Will, we can call in everybody and give you full earth warrior support.”
“It won’t help. None of you can survive down there. In addition to the heat, the outgassing, the steam, would be fatal. Please understand, even I could still succumb and die. The earth and her magics have prepared me as much as possible, but if the unstable ground gives away, I won’t make it out. In that case, you guys get back to the transport and get out of here.”
“We can’t leave you.”
“If I go, if the ground collapses, there won’t be anything to leave. I’ll just become part of the planet in a very real way. That’s why I didn’t want to let Olivia know I was still alive. I may not remain that way. This is important. If I don’t make it out, don’t ever let her know that I came back. She’ll feel betrayed by the universe, all the pain coming back. I don’t want to be a memory filled with pain and regret.”
“We understand, don’t we Burra?”
“Yeah,” the big Bear said. “But don’t die again.”
“That’s the plan.” With another long sigh, Will looked back into the fiery hole. “Okay, my earpiece should survive the conditions, I’ve wrapped magics around it. I’m going in, and when I’ve finished, if I finish, I’ll let you know, and then I need you two to connect with me and help me rise back out.”
“You’re sure your magic will help us to connect? Neither of us have ever had that skill.”
“Eras, that’s why I chose you two. Your own connection is strong, and it extends to me. I’ll be able to boost the power and between the three of us, you should be able to help me come back. Like I said, best laid plans.”
Burra surged forward and wrapped his big mylar-covered hands around Will, gave him a cushioned hug, and stepped back. “Be safe.”
Nodding agreement, Eras moved up and smacked Will on the arm. “We’ll be waiting.”
One last moment of hesitation, eyes on his two companions, Will drew a long breath, and jumped.
He’d already called up the air, and it responded by creating a pillow of support around his body, slowing the descent, controlling the speed so that when Will reached the bottom long minutes later, he landed hard, but with no damage. It took a little work to recover his respiration, but when he had, he stayed down as he scanned the place he’d jumped into based solely on universal guidance.
As expected, the temperature wasn’t survivable for a human body unless earth magic protected him, and it seemed to be doing so. Magics didn’t stop his body’s reaction to the heat, though, as sweat surged and he found himself panting. When they’d fought to contain the power and explosion of the magma at Yellowstone last year, he had journeyed into the magma chamber spiritually, but this, being here physically, was beyond that, past imagining, suffocating. The intensity of heat, the vibrant electric colors of fire breathed from the core of this world, the sounds that split the steam-filled air…he didn’t have the words to explain. Now, though, he needed to find a way to convince this fissure to calm down, to seal, and stabilize this land.
An earthquake in this area, along this part of the faultline, would devastate Australia, the United Islands of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, the resulting tsunami possibly striking the Asian continent. Millions would die and the irreplaceable food farms supplied by Australia would be wiped away.
It was up to him, a failure in life; a heavy drinking motorcyclist from the desert southwest who’s greatest achievement before being drafted with the earth warriors last year was inadvertently killing his fiancée and unborn child.
Who the fuck made that decision?
He couldn’t let this happen, so he drew from within, pulled from every corner of the world, reached into the sky to new airborne powers he’d never had before, focused deep into the bowels of this world, sucked every molecule of magics that rode through rock and flesh, and balled it all, turned it into a force to seal the rip in the earth that threatened to tear itself apart.
How he’d been chosen didn’t matter now, all that did was that he was the chosen one to wield magics beyond his understanding to fix this geographic event.
The building magics carried power that he alone could not contain and he realized quickly that while he drew the powers, the magics, together, he was not the conduit that carried them, but the thing that focused the power and guided it to where it was needed, sent it to where it belonged to accomplish this feat of protection.
Will wondered how his body could do what it did as the force of the magics, the heavy air, the fire and brimstone walls of stone around him, drove him to his knees.
Was his head on fire? It felt like it was. At one moment, Will was sure his eyeballs were melting, and then his skin, but he kept pushing the magics, kept feeding them in, kept guiding them. Minutes passed…no, hours, trapped against the rock floor, every muscle spasming, his knees ached, and that was the least of it.
A roar had set up above him that rocketed off the walls from each side except below, and at its peak, sent shrieks through his ears, deafness assured, but it never came.
Finally, when, he did not know, Will collapsed like an airless balloon onto the jagged stone floor, grateful for lost consciousness. If he was done, he was done, and it would be okay.
Will did not wake.
Anxious, far above, Eras and Burra waited through sounds and heat that shot from the fissure so nasty, so extreme, they’d had to move back and take cover under a heavy rock ledge. Hands over ears, eyes closed, they knew they couldn’t even imagine what Will was going through.
Eras believed that what Will was doing couldn’t be survivable, and at the same time, remembered the things they’d all accomplished last year in Yellowstone.
It was a new world they inhabited now, with magic beyond anything they’d ever known or ever heard about.
Collapsed against a boulder, cold on the side that faced the opening of the cave, hot on the side that faced the fissure, the two men sat wordlessly waiting for Will’s voice in their earpieces. Eras thought that there was no way the earpiece would function, given the conditions in the hole, but he still hoped like hell he was wrong. Burra expected it to work, because he wanted so badly to trust in the process and the magics. Both just prayed that Will would get back out safely, and that what he’d gone down to do, would work.
Every few minutes their eyes drifted back to each other’s in solidarity and hope. Finally, after what felt like hours and was probably only one, the desperately hoped-for bing announced the earpiece’s engagement.
“Gentlemen, help a brother out. World safe again. For now.”
Relief and gratitude surged as they pushed off the ground, stiff from sitting so long wrapped in polartex, and carefully made their way to the opening of the fissure.
“I’m going to begin to spin a web of magics from this side. Honestly, guys, I’m so exhausted, I don’t even know if I have the strength, but I have to try. I passed out, how long ago I don’t know, and that seemed to help. Once you feel the magics rise, all you need to do is tap into them and feed your own magic into the web. If it goes well, I should be pulled through the web and back up the tunnel, defying gravity. Ready?”
“Ready,” Eras agreed once Burra nodded that he was too.
Faces over the edge, scalding heat blowing against them, Eras and Burra maintained their positions, and when, ten or so minutes later, they felt the bizarre movement of magic curling away from the opening, they knew what to do and how to do it. Eyes closed, both reached into the spiritual realm and pulled their own magics forth, tying them in with the framework of earth magic that Will commandeered. At the top of the tunnel, Eras and Burra supported the webbed magics that held and lifted Will up from below. There was relief when Will finally came near the mouth of the tunnel and the two grabbed his hands to pull him from the ladderless chasm dropping into what seemed like a bottomless pit. They all tumbled, crashing hard onto the ground, laughing. Will righted himself first and stared at the two men who’d saved his life by bringing him back from hell.
“Brothers,” he whispered, the volume low, the best his scorched throat could produce.
“Brother,” Eras and Burra said simultaneously.
Burra clapped his hands together. “Booze, pizza, and endless junk food tonight, right?”
“Anything you want. My treat. Heroes don’t buy.” Eras stood and held out a hand to Will, who stumbled getting on his feet, but once up, stayed steady.
“I’ll take you up on that, guys. I may be a hero of the earth, but no one’s said anything about a payday.”
“Aw, what you do is its own reward.”
“Still gotta eat. Gotta be able to buy gas…”
For the first time, Will wondered what had happened to his Harley.
“I’ve got your back, Will. We’re in this together, and the children of the moon are financially sound, so anything you need for living expenses, just let me know.”
“Eras…”
“Whatever you’re going to say, bullshit. You’ve taken the hit for the rest of us, let us take care of you.”
Will wasn’t accustomed to this kind of family, to being part of a whole, and while the past year had been leading him from his solitary life toward this kind of communion, he still didn’t know what to say.
Sliding a hand behind his neck, Eras gave him a little shake. “Just say thank you.”
The words didn’t come easily, but it seemed the right thing to do, so, swallowing, he looked into Eras’s eyes.
“Thank you.”
“Good. Shit, guys, is it getting hotter in here? I’m suddenly feeling like I’m smoked salmon.”
Moving back to the opening, Will glanced down.
“The captured heat is feeding back up into the cave. You’re right, shortly it should feel like summer in Vegas.”
“Oh, shit, and me without my shorts and swimmies. Let’s take this party back to Farscape Base and get hammered. I think we all deserve it.”
“That’s the first good thing I’ve heard since you called and said, ‘Hey, Bear, wanna go to Antarctica?’”