"When the Gods Grow Angry"

(Author's Note: This scene contains what is perhaps my single favorite exchange of dialogue in all my Vodola posts. I'll leave it to you to see if you can figure out what it is ... )

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Cayenne and Vodola took one look at the erupting mountain, then Vodola ducked back down into the stateroom. When she reappeared moments later, she'd shed her habit and was fastening the padded tunic and leggings around her.

"What are you doing?" Pyr shouted. "There's no time for that now!"

"There's always time for being smart," Vodola retorted. "With that volcano blowing like that, those lizards could come swarming out of the jungle any moment."

"If they do, they'll have too much on their minds to pay any attention to us," said Pyr.

"Unless they mean to steal the Indigo for themselves to escape ... in which case they'll use their blow darts and anything else they can to take this boat away from us." Vodola finished applying her fencing suit, buckled on her twin shortswords outside the leggings, and slapped the helmet over her head. "If you want my advice, you should put yours on too."

Cayenne regarded the padded vixen. "You look like a spaceman."

"What's a spaceman?"

"Just something I read about in a story once. You sure that'll protect you from the lizards' darts?"

"It's the best we'll be able to do on short notice. Come on, let's get the boat in the water!"

All three of them hopped down and ran to the back of the craft, Pyr disregarding Vodola's advice about the fencing equipment. Setting their shoulders to the Indigo's flat stern, they pushed and heaved for all they were worth, but only succeeded in shifting the vessel by a few inches. Their footpaws slipped and slid in the loose sand, the shifting stuff that Vodola had hated from her very first moments on this island.

"This'll never work!" Pyr complained. "The boat's too heavy!"

"I'd planned on digging a trench out to the tideline, and letting the water flood in and raise it on high tide," said Cayenne. The otter threw a glance back at the volcano. "No time to wait for high tide now."

"If only we'd pushed it closer to the water while Vink was still here," Vodola said. "I bet the four of us could have done it."

"Hey, look!" Pyr pointed farther down the beach, where a small swarm of the savage rats had flooded out of the trees and now stood milling about in total confusion. "They don't like this any better than we do."

"As long as they stay down there and don't bother us," Vodola growled from behind her helmet. "It's those lizards I'm worried about. No sign of them yet ... "

Vodola had no way of knowing that the basilisks, who lived at the base of the volcano and worshipped it as a god, were already no more. When the lava had begun to flow, they had not panicked and fled but had instead thrown themselves prostrate on the ground in rapture. And there they'd stayed even as the river of molten rock cascaded over them, drowning them in burning agony. The masters of this island had been annihilated by an even greater master.

Another thing the trio could not have guessed was that the seismic activity had not been confined to the island itself. Offshore, on the deep bottom of the ocean, the ground had also shifted abruptly, and the sea was soon to make its displeasure known.

"We need ropes and pulleys!" Vodola shouted. "I think I saw some in one of those other wrecks. Let's go get them!" The padded vixen raced off toward the other beached vessels.

Cayenne gazed at the surf. "Even if we can find ropes and pulleys, there are no rocks here that we can hook them up to. Maybe if we pound in some heavy timber stakes ... oh, fur and flamation!"

Pyr glanced away from Vodola's retreating figure to see what had made the otter utter such an exclamation. The vixen's jaw dropped.

A wall of water was marching across the sea, straight toward them.

"Vodola! Get back here!" Pyr screamed at the top of her lungs, but Cayenne was already pulling her bodily toward the Indigo.

"No time! We've got to get aboard!"

"We can't leave Vodola behind!" There were tears on Pyr's face.

"Maybe that padding will help her float," Cayenne said as she bustled Pyr up the gangplank. "And if we're very lucky, maybe the Indigo will float above that as well. Now get below and batten down the hatches, and let's pray that any of us get out of this alive!"

As they raced for the stateroom, Pyr saw that Cayenne's cheeks were moist too