Grimm Tales: Rise of the Yokai

Chapter 16 Roar of the Thunder Beast

I stepped through the gate, and out onto Hatteras Island. The beach around me looked to be deserted, and for good reason: the storm clouds blanketing the sky were even worse than the ones back home.

There was no rain falling (at least not yet), but the amount of thunder and lightning was beyond anything I'd ever seen or heard. This close to the storm, each thunderclap shook the ground, making it feel like the world was breaking into pieces.

Streaks of lightning shot from cloud to cloud, lighting up the inside like the world's biggest lightbulbs. Set back from the beach, far enough away to protect it from erosion and damaging storm surges, the Hatteras lighthouse stood above the trees. Each flash of lightning that lit the sky showed off the iconic spiral of black and white paint twisting up the tower like the stripes of a candy cane.

The sand around us darkened as the portal snapped shut behind us and took its light with it. It was barely past noon, but the raging storm clouds overhead had made it much darker than a summer day had any right to be.

I think Jason tried to ask me something, but his voice was drowned out by another crack of thunder.

"What?" I shouted.

He moved closer and tried again. I could tell Jason was yelling but I could barely make out what he was saying.

"Where sh—" BOOM "—looking?"

"What? I can't hear you!" I yelled.

How were we supposed to communicate with so much noise? I could barely hear myself think, let alone make out what any of the others were saying.

Miroku waved his hands to get our attention and motioned for us to come closer. As the five of us joined him to form a loose circle, he brought out his staff and planted it in the ground in front of him. Miroku muttered a few words I couldn't make out, and a translucent dome of purple energy rose around us.

As soon as the energy bubble closed over us, the noise dropped off considerably. I could still hear the bigger booms of thunder, but the lighter rumbles were barely even there anymore.

"Ugh, my ears'll be ringing for a week," grumbled Tobias, rubbing gently at his ears. "How'd you do that?"

"I'm good with barriers," said Miroku. "This is a pretty easy one that blocks out some of the noise around us and keeps anyone outside the spell from hearing what we say."

"Neat trick," said Tobias. "You'll have to teach us that one sometime."

"So, any idea how we're going to find Izanami?" asked Kora.

I thought for a moment. "If Nick was having trouble getting a location with his locator spell, we probably won't be able to do any better. Maybe we should just—"

A girl's voice rang through the air. Even with Miroku's spell, she was as loud and clear as if she were standing next to us.

"Well, you certainly took your sweet time. I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to get here."

I turned, and where before there had been an empty stretch of sand, stood Izanami and Rin. With a wave of her hand, Izanami dispelled Miroku's magic, and the dome of energy crumbled away.

I braced myself for more deafening thunder, but it never came. Lightning still flashed across the clouds, but the thunder that should have followed was gone. The sky was silent.

I've weathered plenty of big storms. Growing up on the Atlantic coast, storms and hurricanes were just a fact of life. The noise that came with them didn't bother me. In fact, I'd always found storms to be almost soothing.