James Somers - The Realm Shift

The hallways down below had filled with smoke and the floors and walls were stained with fresh blood. In some places, the walls had burst out from explosions caused by cannon fire. Ethan set Gideon and Captain Bonifast down on the floor and materialized in the physical world again.

He shook them, shouting, “Wake up!”

Groggy, the men began to recover. “Captain, we must escape!” Ethan hissed, hoping the boarders wouldn’t hear him.

Gideon started to stand on his own. Captain Bonifast shook himself and said, “What’s happened, lad? Where are we?”

“The crew on deck is dead. I’ve pulled you both down below. We have to find a way off the Maelstrom before it’s too late,” Ethan said.

Just then, all three heard the heavy thump of boots pounding the deck above them. Hearts raced. “We’ve been boarded,” Bonifast whispered.

Captain Levi Bonifast patted the wall where they were standing. “They’ll not have you my beauty,” he said to the ship as if consoling the glorious old girl over their predicament. Then the captain turned to Ethan and Gideon there in the half-light and said, “Come on, boys, we’ve got a job to do before we leave.”

Normally, Ethan would have been smiling at the thought of doing a job of nearly any sort with Captain Bonifast-he was such an interesting fellow to be around. But the wild look on the captain’s face had transformed to one of desperation.

It was the kind of expression that one might find on a mother whose children she is about to defend to the death in the face of overwhelming odds. It was the same face Ethan saw in nightmares when his mother pulled him and his sister from their beds-the same grim resolve to look death in the eye, then run headlong toward it.

“What are we going to do?” Gideon whispered as the boys followed the captain down into the depths of the ship. Ethan followed, suspecting it would be terrible whatever it was. Captain Bonifast did not answer Gideon’s question.

The captain had chosen a course of action. Nothing would deter him from what was about to take place. He grabbed two oil lanterns from the wall as they descended almost as far as was possible. The captain handed one lantern to Gideon, then with the other, he pushed through the door at the end of the hall.

Gideon asked again, “where are we-”

He stopped in mid-sentence as the door Bonifast had gone through swung closed before him. It read, Powder Room. Gideon turned with the lamp in his hand to look at Ethan. Ethan swallowed big, but the lump held firm in his throat. He hunched his shoulders at Gideon and waited for the warrior-priest to follow the captain. Gideon turned back to the door and proceeded through cautiously, his grip tightening on the lamp handle as he did so. It would not do for fire to drop in this room.

When Ethan and Gideon went inside, they were struck by how many barrels sat stacked inside. “There must be a few hundred of them,” Ethan said.

Gideon put another hand on the handle of the lamp he was holding. They saw the glow of Captain Bonifast’s lamp down a corridor through the barrels. It bobbed back and forth carelessly. Then the captain slowly crept back toward them and the door. Under his arm, he carried one of the smaller barrels. Bonifast poured a steady line of black powder onto the floor.

“Back out the door, boys,” he said. They complied quickly. It was a bad idea to argue with a man holding twenty pounds of uncorked black powder under his arm and holding a glass oil lamp in the other.

Captain Bonifast followed them out the door. He continued to pour the black powder line on the floor, over the threshold, and down the hall beyond. When they reached the end of the hall at the stairwell, Bonifast emptied the rest of the powder in a small pile and set the barrel down. “Listen, men, when we head up the stairs we’ll be going for the galley on the next deck. There’s a large window of stained glass coming out the rear of the ship. We’re going through it before this blows.”

They heard the thump of boot steps above them again. “We’ve got to hurry, lads,” Bonifast said.

Ethan and Gideon knew where the galley was. They ran ahead of Bonifast, leaving him on the stairs with his lantern in his hand. Levi Bonifast slid his palm over the wooden planks one last time, as though caressing the 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.