The Pirate's Legacy: New Horizons

Chapter 18: The Helping Hand

Veins of cracks grew deeper in the mortar that held together the bricks surrounding the starving black mouth. The bricks wriggled loose from the force of the vacuum, like baby teeth about to fall off. With a jolt that seized up his entire body, Roger realized the wall was about to collapse. One brick fell and was immediately sucked in. More would follow very soon. Em, Colosi, and Gillespie would be buried alive—if they weren't already dead from whatever waited for them beyond the wall.

Roger pushed off the statue and threw himself into the power of the vacuum, ignoring Craig and Dukes's cries. Two more bricks were sucked in. He had almost reached the pillars when another loose brick took with it the entire right section of the wall, and then the rest came down. The hole was obscured by a billowing cloud of dust and mortar, but Roger could feel an incremental decrease in the vacuum's strength as the bricks filled the hole. He twisted his body to the right so that when he sailed through the dust, it was his non-sword arm shoulder that slammed into the pile of rubble. Pain exploded in electrifying agony, blunting the edge of the otherwise sharp sting in Roger's cheek after his head banged against a brick and its jagged edge scraped deep into his cheek. A string of hot oaths forced their way through Roger's scarred lips. Far away, he could dimly hear Craig and Dukes jump off their individual statues. Their shouting voices grew louder as they swam over to him. Through the haze of pain, Roger pushed away from the rubble and got onto his feet.

Craig, the first to reach him, caught the captain by his uninjured arm when he stumbled. "Cap'n, are ya—?" Craig's hazel eyes widened at the sight of Roger's injured side. The pain Roger felt was made ten times worse because of the salt water. His shirt and skin on his right left side had been cut up. Craig and Dukes followed with their eyes as green blood spilled like oil from their captain's shoulder and cheek. More green spread slowly across the back of his shirt and down his torn sleeve.

After Craig helped his captain slump on his uninjured side against the rubble, Dukes grabbed his own shirt and began to tear a long strip from the bottom. Despite the irate captain's protestations, the two subordinates wrapped his shoulder wound with the makeshift bandage. Though it turned green as well, no more blood seeped into the ocean water. Roger pushed away from the rubble once more before ordering the men to help him dig out the bricks. When Craig protested, not for himself but out of concern for Roger's injured shoulder, one fiery glare shut him up and propelled him toward the rubble. After a few precious minutes spent moving bricks and mortar, Dukes stepped back with his mouth slightly ajar. Craig swore. The wall had repaired itself back its original condition. Even though the fallen bricks lay at the men's feet, new bricks had replaced the old ones. The wall looked as it had before the pillar had fallen on it.

Roger spun on his heel, turning his back on the wall. The pillars on their side of the courtyard stood like tall sentinels. Not one of them was missing from its spot. The pillar that had come loose during the battle against the shark had been put back in its place as if it had never fallen. Roger couldn't recall having seen the pillar right itself. His entire attention had been concentrated first on the immediate danger of being sucked into the hole and then on Em, Colosi, and Gillespie. Roger reached into his back pocket and extracted the map. He found the courtyard they were in. Ignoring the scarlet line, he flipped and folded the map in rapid fashion until he found there was a bathhouse adjacent to the courtyard on the side through which Em, Colosi, and Gillespie had disappeared. To get there, however, would take away more precious time Roger would rather use heading toward the throne room, where the trident was, than retrieving them.

Grinding his teeth so hard that the muscles in his jaw twitched, Dread Robin growled, "We leave now. The faster we go, the sooner we get to the others before they do something stupid and get themselves killed."

MMMMMM

When Em opened her dark brown eyes, a pair of lifeless white eyes stared back at her. As soon as she realized it was the dead shark lying inches from her face, she shot up in a sitting position and scooted away until her lower back bumped into something soft that gave a small moan. Em spun around. Matt Colosi lay on his side, one arm twisted underneath his body. In her hurry, she had hit his stomach. "Oh, sorry," whispered Em. Her eyebrows furrowed as her eyes traveled over Matt's freckled face. His eyebrows were scrunched close together. A tight grimace revealed his crooked teeth. Initially, Em thought the cause of his pain was the arm twisted underneath him, but as she moved back to give him room, Matt stretched out his arms and drew his legs toward his chest in order to wrap his hands around his right ankle.