Vuela

Chapter 19

The next time Vuela unfastens her eyes, the entire group was standing in front of a cliff.

"There's nothing here. We're just standing on a cliff looking at more bloody trees!"

It's more than safe to say that the whole pirate crew is turning into a melting pot boiling a riot on the inside. The guiding light literally ends in the middle of the sky above the lower jungle. It fades away into the map before Savage can touch it. Vuela's heart skips beats as she uses the pen to try to open the map again, trying not to laser her fingers off. With every single stroke of the pen, nothing's switching on. The more attempts she tries, the more the girl is urging to vomit.

"Vuela Hawkins, this is not funny! Where's the loot?"

"It's not letting me open it back up!" she truthfully exclaims.

"Well, you better get it back open or else!" one of the pirates demands as he thrusts her onto the dirt.

She collides with the solid ground, her knees digging in first. Vuela clenches the map in her hands, doing her hardest to not let it go flying off the cliffside. So many voices roar into her ears. Some demands, some threats, the other Sora struggling to get to Vuela before any of the pirates can do her any harm. Her protector can't do anything when it's two against a dozen grabbing his body. Maybe it isn't a dozen, but the teens are outnumbered when it comes to pirates keeping promises (which Vuela recalls that they only do when they got what they want out of innocent, unfortunate souls).

Vuela places the map onto the mossy ground, so that she can use her free hands to stable herself at the very least. Her left hand sinks lower than her right but not in the natural unleveling of the dirt after a storm kind of way. She peers down, and she spots a familiar carving.

A rectangular carving! And with symbols similar to the map that she has been trying to protect for the past few weeks.

Vuela wipes the green away, and her suspicions are correct.

A keyhole of sorts. Perhaps this is a way...

Vuela slides the map into the not-even-deep hole.

The ground flashes a color yellow that no one living had ever seen before. The yellow races into lines on the ground that the whole party is standing on. Some of the pirates attempt to avoid the lines that they assumed to be dangerous though Vuela, Sora, and Savage discover that the warmth was harmless. The lines surrounding the map in its cozy spot shimmer out from the ground and curve to form a perfect abstract circle in front of the treasure hunting party. The lines continue shaping the vision by adding small imperfect shapes in random places without connecting to the outside curving lines.

"It's a map of the Earth," exclaims Vuela, recognizing the shape that she has seen from mostly everywhere throughout her life. "It's a globe projection." She presses on one of the islands of the shining, floating globe.

In front of it, a wide, door-like portal appears, showcasing a sunny beach with the vast ocean stretching out into the horizon. In near view, pointed fins cut the water's surface, some larger than normal, others average-sized.

"Is that Shark Bay?" Savage's pitch in her voice is higher now than any other time Vuela has heard it before. "That's on the other side of the planet!"

"This must be how San Martín managed to escape a raiding without being caught," Vuela lectures, pressing on the map, showing more locations, specifically ones that had red dots on them. "These are showing every single place that San Martín raided for his riches."

Savage shoves the girl out of the way and starts pressing her fingers on random spots on the map. "But where's the treasure?" she growls. "This thing's supposed to show us where it is, isn't it? Why isn't it appearing?"