Before Beasts, There Was Light--Book 9

Breaking Point

Max and Ray were where he had left them. They must have been thinking along the same lines as him, as they were both leaning over the GPS system on the dashboard and conversing in low murmurs. They both readily made room for him as he stepped between them.

The map displaying their location was not a welcoming one. Icy, uncivilized expanse stretched out for some hundreds of miles. They had passed the Elutian Islands and reached the outstretches of frozen Russia, but not much in the way of cities or towns were here. Also, as Kai mentioned to Ray and Max, with hard winter now on them, most bays would be frozen up, so even if they did reach a town there would be a few miles of ice to traverse before reaching it.

"And a lot of these blips aren't even real towns," continued Kai. "They're mostly outposts for radio signal and the occasional researcher. The season for scientists and the such is out, however. No one is insane enough to traverse the Artic during its darkest, coldest months of the year."

"Yeah, it's creepy how dark it is most of the time," added Max as a peppy side note. "It's kind of cool. Like it's only day for a few hours and then the sun vanishes again."

Kai didn't mention that it wouldn't be so cool when their ship finally gave out and they were out on the ice, fending for themselves in constant subzero temperatures. He also didn't mention that these outposts most likely wouldn't have a doctor or antibiotics of any sorts as he took note of the blotchy flush beneath Max's freckles.

"On the plus side to Tala waking up," said Ray, "We'll have a backwoods survival pro and a dude who can control ice all rolled into one."

"Survival techniques can only do so much where no life was meant to be," said Kai, frowning. He tapped on a few of the dots signifying towns and pulled up any footnotes or censor data on them. Ray and Max made echoing noises of appreciation.

"I didn't know it could do that!" said Max.

Kai passed over the first few dots, as they just served to prove what he said about them being outposts. There was a good size supply town some way more south, but it was almost eight hundred miles away. He wrinkled his nose, retracted his search, and instead of going South went inland. Just as he had known, though, there was nothing. So he once more went back to the nearest town and calculated the distance and time. They could almost half the distance if they went out onto open water. However, if Tala woke up before they could reach it...but if he woke up while they were next to land, they wouldn't be much better, having hundreds of miles to traverse on foot in unforgiving, frozen wasteland. And there was no way they could just chisel Tala out and try to mend the hole themselves. They weren't sailors, and they were even less of shipwrights.

Max and Ray, who followed him throughout all this, kept a solemn silence.

In the corner of the cabin, Eiden, the sleeping light denizen, groaned and shifted.

"Could we fly?" asked Max after a bit.

"Despite what Tyson and Ayah may say, it's even colder in the sky. My body has ways to keep me warm while I fly, and Ayah probably vibrates the air about her to stay warm, but I don't know about Tyson. Last time he tried to fly was when we were two hundred or so miles farther south, and even then his lips were blue. Over a few thousands miles..."

"Not to mention Ayah isn't a strong enough flyer to carry anyone," added Ray. "Nor is her brother, no doubt. I don't know if he can even carry himself."

"And the waters too cold even for me now," said Max, almost sheepishly. "Shucks, all the powers of the universe and we can't even get out of the cold."

Which brought Kai to the other reason he had left Ayah. Without preampture, he launched into his dream with Dranzer and how she had told him to find Kenny and Dizzy, who was the guardian of space and time and could traverse the space necessary to get them to the other world their counterparts were on.