Page 60 (1/2)
It started with , dark tunnel inhead over heels again and again and again
When I ca At the saer A powerful need for et my senses back and be on the lookout
I shook my head, tried to stumble to my feet--I was still in human form--but before I could do much more than push to y that sent ain This time, when I caed to roll out of the way of the energy surge
As I lay there, panting, I glanced down at my hands and saw a scar in the center of my palm A scar I didn’t have, but thatas I could remember It was as I stared at that odd, diaht It was Cecily’s In thisthe battle--as her
The realization galvanized iant blasts of power slaht above my head I ducked and swerved, twisted and turned in an effort to get away from the sea witch--who definitely had the upper hand here It was in all of this dodging that I got ainst more than once
It wasn’t a rock wall at all It was the side of a ship On closer inspection--which I got when one of Tia face-first into it--I realized it ooden An old Spanish Galleon from back in the days when Christopher Colu in the Pacific was anyone’s guess, unless the Spaniards--or so about the ship gave Cecily an idea I didn’t knohat it hich was the oddest thing I’d ever experienced--it was like I was in her body, perforic I’d experienced since being under the ocean, I’d never drea was possible
Before I’d recovered fro another blast of energy at her with every foot of territory she covered Soon, it was Tia through the water
It was no different than any of the other fights I had seen between my mother and the sea witch, at least until Cecily slaht up a se of her distraction to dive straight toward the ocean floor Once there, she burrowed her way under the sand and rocks until she’d created a deep tunnel of sorts that ran beneath the ocean floor and caood look at the ship--and the color of its wood--I realized that the desk Hailana was so proud of had coe and pain, shot through the tunnel after Cecily And that’s when I finally understood what h the outer wall of the galleon Out ca every ounce of old up and funnel hundreds of pounds of it into the opening she had just created in the ocean floor Then, before Tiamat could even realize what had happened, she whipped the reold to the other side of the tunnel, blocked in that end too
Tiah another portion of the ocean floor
I kept wondering how this had ed to trap Tiamat for five hundred years when it had takenthe entire tunnel But then Cecily seey thather his power? I wondered, re the way Hailana’s Council had said my mother hadn’t done this alone At that moment, Cecily stepped back and did exactly what I had done once before with her ic--pulled electricity from the water around her She was able to channel soexplosion like I had She actually old flowed fro and catching Tia metal The monster screeched as she burned, but Cecily didn’t even pause Creating a minicyclone much like the one I had spawned earlier on the beach, she created a tunnel right through the center of the id sea water flash freeze the stuff from the inside out Tiamat, who had to be surrounded by water--who couldn’t function in any other conditions--ended up being alold Barely able toher alive at all was the small amount of sea water she had access to froold
It had been ato kill Tia the job by fashioning a nearly unbreachable cage
The miracle, I realized as I watched Cecily layer on old--wasn’t that ed to contain Tiaotten out
That alone warned me just hoerful she had become in those years trapped below the ocean floor Which did not bode well for o, I told Mahina as I scooped up two of the pearls whose ed, just in case we needed soh she atching htened look on her face
Did that last ure out what you need to do to stop her? my friend asked as we made our way back out to the ocean
You couldn’t see it?