The Storm

By: SilvorMoon

The storm came a few days later. The sky had been overcast all morning, and the farm laborers had been working as fast as they could to get as much done as possible, in case the skies decided to open up. When the first drops of rain began to fall, they all gathered up their tools and began hurrying back to the village to wait for the weather to dry out. Jack felt mildly miffed by this; he felt that he could work just as well in the rain as he could under clear skies, but the way the other farmers glanced uneasily at each other as they hurried to get to shelter made him uncomfortable. He didn't bother to run all the way to his house on the other side of town, but instead ducked into the temple, where at least he'd have company while he waited out the storm. Most of his friends were there, too: Carly, Aki, and the twins had all been there for their various lessons, and Crow and Kiryu had followed Jack's example. After a few minutes of waiting around and peering out the windows at the rain, Jack saw Yusei and Bruno hurrying their way as well. He opened the door and let them inside.

"What were you guys doing out there?" he asked.

"We were working on the generator," Bruno explained, wringing water out of his jacket. "Some junk went over the falls and got stuck in the turbines, and they got bent all out of shape."

"Someone told us it was about to storm, and we should get inside, so we came here," said Yusei. "I'm not sure why. We would have gotten soaking wet under that waterfall even if it hadn't been raining."

"It's not going to be one of those storms, is it?" asked Rua worriedly.

"Don't see how it could be," said Crow. "I mean, look at this place. If they had storms like ours, would they be able to do all this with the farms and the trees and everything? They'd need walls like ours to keep them safe."

Aki frowned. "Something must happen, though. Otherwise, Divine wouldn't have been able to threaten them into paying him."

"It's just a storm," said Jack firmly. "Don't get carried away."

The other villagers, however, didn't seem to share his sentiments. Several of the locals were huddled in the corners of the temple. Some of them were praying, and all of them looked frightened. The priests and priestesses moved among them, offering words of reassurance.

Eventually, the thunder became audible. Every time it roared, the people in the temple whimpered in response. Jack felt his nervousness growing, no matter how many times he told himself that it was only weather. He stood by the window to watch the storm pass. None of the locals seemed to want to look.

The lightning startled him. It shot down from the sky with an earsplitting crack and an answering boom of thunder, and struck one of the houses across the way. He had never seen lightning like it. The few times he'd been unfortunate enough to be caught out in a thunderstorm, the lightning he'd seen had been bluish-white. This lightning was an unsettling pink color that reminded him of uncooked meat. Light shouldn't be that color. Another bolt struck the manor across the square, and Jack turned away, feeling faintly nauseated.

The storm ended as abruptly as it came. The thunder diminished, and the rain slacked off. Slowly, people began walking back outside, as though surprised to find that the rest of the world was still there. Jack followed them, looking around warily for the source of their fear.

Faintly but audibly, he could hear the sounds of people crying, and a childish wail of "Mama! Mama!"

"Hey, what's going on here?" Crow asked one of the priestesses. "What was all that? What's everyone so upset about?"

The priestess, a dark-haired woman with three eyes and bat's wings, turned away.

"I think you should ask the village chief about this," she said softly. "If he is still... at home."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Crow asked. "Where else would he be? Why should we ask him if you know the answer?"

"Quiet down, Crow," said Yusei. "If she doesn't want to tell us, we can't make her. Let's go talk to Rill."

They trooped across the muddy square, and Jack walked up to Rill's door and pounded on it. When no one answered, he let himself in, and the others hesitantly followed.

They found Rill in his living room, sitting on a chair and staring blankly into the fireplace. When he heard them come in, he raised his head, and expressions flashed across his face that went from hope to disappointment to murderous fury, and finally chilled into resigned grief. Jack felt a chill and tried to ignore it.

"The priestess said we should talk to you," said Yusei quietly.

Rill sighed. "Yes. Yes, I suppose we should talk. Please, sit down." He sounded very tired.

Everyone sat. Rill stood, pacing slowly up and down the length of the room.

"I understand," he said at last, "that there are storms in your world. You call them 'spiritstorms', perhaps because you once believed the beings that emerged from them were spirits. I understand that these storms do such great damage that your world is nearly unlivable, and that you have to wall yourselves into protected colonies in order to survive.

"We don't have these kinds of storms in our world. Our world remains lush and fruitful; our peoples thrive here. What we do have are called the Reaping Storms. When they pass through, the lightning strikes, and wherever the bolts touch, someone quietly vanishes, as though they had never been there. They are taken to your world, just as you have been taken to ours. Sometimes, they find their way back. Most of the time, they are never seen again." He looked up, his expression haunted. "Your world is not a hospitable one, and your people would not give our kind succor, as we have assisted you."

"That's why you looked so worried, when we first showed up," said Bruno slowly. "You were paying Divine to keep the storms away from you, but when we got here, you knew they'd be back."

Rill sighed. "Perhaps it was wrong of us to attempt to avoid the burden that everyone else in this world must bear. I don't know. I would do it again, if I could. If I knew how to use you as the man you call Divine used you, to open a gate and buy our safety, I would do it."

There was a moment of uneasy silence.

"Rill," said Ruka softly, "where is Merina?"

Rill didn't answer. The look on his face was all the answer anyone needed.

Jack got to his feet so suddenly that it pushed his chair open. The sound was shocking in the still room.

"Jack, where are you..." Yusei began.

"I'm leaving," said Jack. "Don't follow me."

"Jack..." Carly called after him, but he didn't listen. He didn't want to hear anything else, not from anyone.

He stormed out of the manor and down the street in a blind fury. He wanted to hit something, to rip up trees and tear apart the sky. All around him, he could hear the cries of parents who had lost children, children who had lost parents, friends who had lost friends and lovers who had lost lovers.

I could have done something about this.

The thought burned in his mind. He had been wasting his time here. As soon as he'd gotten out of Divine's grasp, he should have started looking for a way to get back to his own world and finish what he started. Instead, he'd allowed himself to be lulled into a false state of security. He'd told himself that he was safe and happy here, that he and his friends were better off here, that there was no real need to go back. He'd told himself that there was nothing he could do.

I never even tried.

He was beyond the borders of the village now, walking towards the hills. He passed a tree and struck at it, hard enough to take the skin off the back of his fingers. It hurt, but not enough. Blood dripped from his hand. He ignored it. He walked faster and faster until he was running. He wished he had his cycle, but it was long gone, like so many things he was probably never going to see again. His parents. Satellite. Chevalier. His old life. The Yliasters had taken so much all ready, and it seemed like they would go on taking everything he got close to. This was no random act of nature. This storm had been conjured on purpose, to punish Divine for letting Jack and the rest of them escape, and nobody back home cared that Rill and everyone else in the village was suffering because of it. They wouldn't have cared even if they had known.

Carly was right when she said I should be thinking of going back. I was a fool not to listen to her.

But what should he have done? He had no idea what to do anymore, and no idea where he could go where his mistakes wouldn't catch up to him. He couldn't face what was pursuing him, and he couldn't get away.

Standing at the top of a tall hill, Jack threw his head back and screamed in frustration. It echoed off the sides of the mountains and through the blank gray sky.

His voice broke, and he lowered his head again, and closed his eyes. They burned. He wasn't sure if crying would make him feel better or worse, but trying not to do it gave him something to fight with.

A few seconds later, he heard a distant roar. At first he thought it was only an echo of his own outburst, or perhaps a distant scrap of leftover thunder, but then it came a second time, louder than the first. Something was coming towards him.

Jack opened his eyes. A dark speck was hurtling across the sky, wings pumping, scales flashing red even in the sunless sky. It moved at a comet's pace, until it was so close that he could almost pick out its individual scales. It swooped over him, stirring his hair and clothing with the wind from its wings, then turned and flapped back towards him at a slower pace, pumping its wings to slow itself. It dropped out of the sky to land on the hill in front of him. Jack reached out a hand to touch its snout, and it snorted and nudged at his fingers like a friendly dog. Its breath was warm and smelled of cinnamon and burnt paper.

"Dragon," said Jack, as if in a dream, "you found me. You came through the storm looking for me, didn't you?"

The dragon whuffed warm air at him again.

"What about the rest of your friends? Are they here, too?"

The dragon made a rumbling noise, a bit like the trill a cat would make, if a cat grew to a hundred times its usual size.

"Well, can you find them for me?"

The dragon gave another reassuring snort.

"Then get them," said Jack. "Get as many as you can, because we're going to need all the help we can get."

The dragon pumped its wings, with enough force that it made Jack stagger backwards a few paces. Then it was airborne again, and sailing confidently off beyond the mountains. Jack watched it go. Then he turned and ran back towards the village.

He found his companions hanging around the bonfire pit, looking shell-shocked.

"Jack, are you okay?" asked Carly hesitantly. "When you ran off, you looked... upset."

"I'm not okay," said Jack, "and I'm not going to be okay until the people responsible for this have been dealt with once and for all."

"I hate to tell you this, Jack," said Bruno gently, "but they're over there and we're over here. There isn't anything we can do."

"There is, and I'm going to do it," said Jack. "The storms are portals back and forth between the two worlds. I'm going to find one and go back."

"You can't do that!" said Rua. "You'll get yourself killed or something. Anyway, how are you going to catch a storm? They don't stand still like the doors do."

"I'm going to have help," said Jack. "There's a dragon that keeps following me around. It's already been back and forth between the storms at least once - it knows the way. I'm going to ask it to carry me through." He folded his arms across his chest and did his best impression of a man whose mind will not be changed. "Don't try to talk me out of it, either, because I'm not going to listen."

"I'm not going to try to talk you out of it," said Carly. "But if you're going, I'm going to try to talk you into letting me come with you."

His expression softened. "You don't have to come. You know it's going to be dangerous."

"I know," she said. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to let you run off and leave me here to maybe never see you again. If something happens to you, I want to be there to know about it."

"If you're going, I'm going too," said Yusei. "For my father's sake, and Professor LeBlanc's."

Bruno nodded. "And I'm going where he's going."

"Count me in," said Crow. "It's not that I don't like it here, but I miss my kids back in Satellite. I'm ready to go home."

That was more support than Jack had expected. He looked thoughtfully at the rest of the group.

"Anyone else?" he asked. "I won't blame you for not coming if you don't want to."

"I'm up for it," said Kiryu lazily. "If only to haul off your stupid carcasses if you get yourselves killed."

Jack smiled a little. "Thanks for your support."

Rua and Ruka looked at each other. They both nodded.

"We'll help," they said in unison.

"Are you sure?" Crow asked. "I mean, you just got back together with your folks, and now you're asking to leave again?"

"I know," said Rua, "but we'd never even know for sure they were alive if it weren't for you guys."

Ruka nodded. "We trust you. You'll get us back safely when it's all done."

Jack privately wasn't so sure about this, but he let it slide.

"Right," he said. "Then we'll leave as soon as the dragons get here."

"Wait," said Aki. "I'm coming too."

"What brought that on?" Crow asked. "You planning to go back to your old boyfriend? Because if that's what it is..."

She shook her head. "No. I'm not going back to him ever. But you're going to need my help. They're right, Jack - the storms are dangerous to pass through. I can help keep the passage stable. I've learned a lot from the priests and priestesses here. I think I can do it. You're going to need me."

Jack considered what she was saying, and decided she was serious. He nodded.

"Better hope they bring enough dragons, then."

There were enough dragons. Within a few minutes, the red and black dragon returned, with a number of his friends in tow. Jack recognized the white on and the one with all the eyes, but some of the others were new. There was one covered in what appeared to be gigantic rose petals, and a green one with wings like a butterfly's, one that seemed to be made entirely of metal, and one that looked like nothing so much as a cross between a crow and a centipede. They all crammed themselves into the town square with a lot of shuffling and folding of wings. There was barely room for all of them.

"Good job, dragon," said Jack. He reached up towards the red dragon's head and patted it on the snout. It twisted its head so that he could slip his hand through its neck plates to give it a good scratching, and Jack obliged it.

"The Red Daemon's Dragon," said Ruka.

Jack looked at her. "What?"

"That's his name," she said. "I know it's weird, but that's what he said. It sounds better in dragon-language."

"Nice to know," said Jack, not without sarcasm. "So who are the rest of these, then?"

"That's the Stardust Dragon, the Hundred-Eyes Dragon, the Black Rose Dragon, the Ancient Fairy Dragon, the Black Feather Dragon, and that over there is the Power Tool Dragon," said Ruka.

"Sheesh," said Crow. "What's wrong with, yanno, Fred or Bill or something?"

"I don't care what they call themselves," said Jack. "I'm just ready to get out of here."

"We should pack some food," said Bruno. "And some supplies and things."

Kiryu gave him a look. "And your computer things, right?"

"Not all of them," said Bruno. "That would be too heavy. Just the important things."

"Fine," said Jack. "Pack some things and then let's go."

They didn't waste any time. There wasn't very much they had that they could pack. They threw some food and water bottles into their bags, folded some spare clothes and picked up some sturdy knives they could use as weapons in a pinch. Bruno and Yusei collected the professor's drive and the notes they had taken on it. At the last minute, Rill appeared, carrying a wooden canister of teyva powder.

"For the road," he said, "and for good luck, and perhaps to remember us by."

"Thanks," said Yusei, stuffing it into his bag.

"We'll be back," said Jack. "And we'll find your wife."

Rill's smile was wan. "I appreciate the sentiment."

There wasn't very much room left in the town square for a dragon to stretch out, but the Red Daemon's Dragon did what he could, pressing his belly to the ground and stretching his neck down the street. Jack clambered onto its back and pulled Carly up behind him. The perch was more comfortable than he would have expected. The dragon's spinal plates were almost saddle-shaped. If he closed his eyes, he could almost have believed that he was sitting on his old cycle, except that cycles didn't breathe.

Then the dragon went up. That first flight had been terrifying, with the wind of the storm whipping around him and the sounds of the colony collapsing below him. This flight was exhilarating. The dragon surged into the air, swooping in easy spirals around the village as it waited for the others to join him. One by one, the others rose up into the sky, so that the village was almost entirely overshadowed by dragon wings.

"Which way?" Jack called.

Aki pointed. "The storm went that way, but I don't know if we can go fast enough to catch it. We might have to..."

The Red Daemon's Dragon roared. Jack grinned in spite of himself. This dragon, at least, had no doubt of its ability to catch anything. It flapped its wings with a sound like thunder, and carried its riders forward in a wild burst of speed.

Jack's cycle had been a good one, one of the best available. On flat terrain, he would have bet on it against any other machine on earth. But smooth, flat terrain wasn't an easy thing to come by in a world of shifting sands, sudden rock slides, and erratic earthquakes. Even so, he had thought that most of the time, he and his cycle could go fairly fast together.

He was wrong. His cycle didn't go fast. A dragon went fast. The air rushing past him was like a hurricane, and his eyes watered from it. He was forced to bend forward until he was plastered along the dragon's neck, to avoid being dragged off by air resistance. The earth whizzed away beneath him so fast that it looked like little more than a blur of green.

It was the most fun thing he'd ever done. If the stakes hadn't been so high, he would have whooped for joy.

Dragon, if you and I get through this alive, we've got some good times ahead of us.

The dragon roared. He wondered if it knew what he was thinking.

All too soon, Jack began to catch glimpses of lightning on the horizon. He thought he could see a place where the clouds were thicker and darker, moving in lazy swirls. Pressed as he was against the dragon's back, Jack could feel the tension in the great beast's muscles.

"Steady," he said, and the sound of his voice was snatched away by the wind.

They slackened their pace as they sailed towards the edges of the storm. The Black Rose Dragon eased towards the front, perhaps to give Aki room to work.

"I'm going to need your help," she called. "It will be like before."

Jack waved, acknowledging that he'd heard her. The others did the same. She nodded, and he saw her shoulders rise and fall as though she'd taken a deep breath.

He felt it long before he could see it. It was very much like the first time he'd helped to open a gate. That time, it had been like someone had latched a hook into him and was drawing something out by force. This time, he was participating voluntarily, and he threw everything he had into it. He heard his dragon roar, and had just enough energy to wonder if it was doing something as well.

The quality of the storm changed. The clouds seemed to be changing color, turning faintly brownish around the edges. Lightning jumped sideways from cloud to cloud instead of striking the earth. Jack's skin prickled from the electricity. The air was becoming hot and difficult to breathe.

"Hold on!" Aki shouted. "It's going to open!"

There was a snap of lightning loud enough to make Jack's ears hurt, and he gritted his teeth and fought the urge to clap his hands over his ears. The dragon lurched sideways, wings pumping wildly as it fought to keep an even keel. Squinting against the wind, Jack looked up to see that the center of the storm had become dark... but not completely dark. If he looked closely enough, he could make out the ripples of sandy earth and the occasional jutting rock. He'd never seen it from quite that angle before, but he knew it was home.

"Let's go!" he shouted, and urged his dragon forward. They surged through the opening, surrounded by the whirring wings of the other dragons. His vision was blocked by them for a few seconds. Then the world turned upside-down.

Suddenly the Red Daemon's Dragon was diving straight towards the ground at an alarming rate. Jack gave a shout of surprise, and Carly clung to him so tightly it hurt. The dragon's wings swung out to pull them into a dive, and Jack's stomach gave a lurch as they shifted direction. Then the dive straightened out, and they were sailing smoothly over the empty desert. Looking down at it gave Jack a peculiar feeling. Part of him was glad to be back on familiar, if dangerous, turf. The other part was thinking that the air tasted cleaner in the other world.

"Is everyone in one piece?" Bruno called.

There were various affirmative replies. The others sounded slightly shaken by their trip (and the resulting drop) but everyone was accounted for and unharmed.

"So, where do we go from here?" asked Kiryu. "Any bright ideas, or should we just fly around in circles for a while?"

"We need to find a familiar landmark," said Yusei. "Flying in circles might not be such a bad idea. Let's make a big circle and see if we can spot something."

The Stardust Dragon bellowed agreement and tipped its wings slightly, changing its flight path to a gradual curve, and the other dragons followed its lead. For a few minutes, they rode in silence, eyes peeled for anything that resembled a landmark.

It was Crow who first spoke up.

"Hey, isn't that Bat Rock?" he asked.

Jack squinted in the direction his friend was pointing. On the horizon, he could see four uneven peaks of rock - one tall one, two smaller ones, and then a large one. Viewed with a certain amount of imagination, one could imagine that the rock was shaped like a bat with outstretched wings.

"You're right," he said. "Let's land there so we can plan our next move."

No one disagreed with the idea, so the dragons turned and began flying swiftly towards the rock. Now that they had a definite destination in time, they covered the distance in only seconds. Soon all of them were perched on the ridges of Bat Rock like a flock of oversized birds, while their human companions made their camp in the shelter of a crevice in the stone. They didn't have tents or fire-making material with them, but the gap in the rock was enough to provide a certain amount of shelter, and the Red Daemon's Dragon parked itself in front of the entrance to fend off the chilly night air. Other than being a bit dark, it was quite comfortable.

Jack settled down with his back against a smooth portion of the wall.

"So, what do we do now?" Crow asked. "We got any plans, or are we just winging it as usual?"

"I don't know what we plan to do," said Jack. "What I want to do is to shut down these storm machines permanently, and to give these Yliasters a piece of my mind, in whatever order works out best. If anyone has any ideas how to do that, I'm listening."

"We promised to look for Merina," said Aki quietly.

"Well, if she was anywhere close by, we would have seen her while we were flying," said Crow. "She's probably holed up under a rock, just like we are."

"I'll take suggestions for finding her, too," said Jack.

"Did you guys ever make any headway with those notes from Professor LeBlanc?" Carly asked.

"Some," said Yusei. "I think if we could get at the main controlling computers, we might be able to make some more progress."

"Which ones?" Carly asked. "Don't each of the colonies have their own?"

"Well, yes," said Bruno, "but they're all synced to each other. There's only one main one, and it controls all the others. It's kind of hard to explain."

"Wait, that doesn't make sense," said Carly. "How can they be synced? You can't run wires between the colonies without them getting torn up, and you can't send signals over the airwaves without the storms disrupting them."

"I don't think it's really the storms," said Yusei. "I think it's the energy that causes the storms - and that energy is coming from the generators. It's so powerful, it swamps all the other signals in range."

"So we have to find the main computer and shut it down. Sabotage it," said Jack. "Let's blow it sky-high."

"It would have to be done extremely carefully," Bruno warned. "Just shutting the computers down won't solve the power imbalance issues. It might just cause the storms to rampage out of control. Even if it doesn't, it will shut down all the power in every colony in the world all at once. There would be panic."

"There's got to be something," Jack insisted. "And whatever it is, it has to be something we can do fast. We aren't likely to have time to spend weeks tinkering."

"What if..." said Ruka hesitantly. "What if we opened a door? Or lots of doors. They don't cause storms."

"Hm," said Yusei. "That is a thought. If we could open up stable doors instead of uncontrolled storms, it might allow the energy to be equalized safely, without damaging either world."

Carly said, "You know, when the fairies were telling me stories, they said that the two worlds used to be connected, a long, long time ago, and the people and monsters used to live side by side together. They say even now, everything in their world has... sort of a reflection in this world. That's why some people here have a monster that sort of bonds to them. It's like their monster-self."

Jack looked out the front of the cave, where the Red Daemon's Dragon was still guarding the entrance. So, his monster-self was a gigantic clawed, winged, firebreathing terror? He could live with that.

"I don't see why any of it matters," said Kiryu. "How are we going to get into a colony and be left alone with a computer long enough to make it do anything?"

"We could cause a distraction?" Rua suggested. "That's what they always do in the stories. Somebody causes a distraction and someone else goes and steals the emerald or whatever."

"What emerald are you talking about?" Ruka asked him.

"Not a real one! That was just an example!" said Rua, frustrated.

"It would have to be a pretty darned big distraction," said Crow. "I mean, I don't spend much time in these cities, but I have a feeling they don't leave humongous weather computers lying around where anyone can push their buttons."

"The main one is in the Momentum colony," said Bruno. "I've been there. I could probably get back in if I had someone to cover me. Unless they've completely changed the security protocols..."

"You can do it," said Yusei. "I have complete faith in you."

"Then let's do it," said Jack. "We ought to be able to find our way to Momentum from here. We'll break in and cause a distraction while you two technical types rig the machines."

"Yeah, I'm sure it'll be just that easy," said Kiryu. It was too dark to see his expression, but Jack suspected he was rolling his eyes.

"I never said it would be easy, did I?" Jack asked. "I just said we should do it."

"Oh, well, that's a big help," said Crow.

"In case you hadn't noticed, we do have some backup," said Jack. "I'd imagine six dragons is enough to cause a pretty big distraction."

"I dunno," said Crow. "You might have a point, but it still seems like a pretty big gamble..."

"More than six," said Aki.

Everyone jumped. She had been so quiet that in the dark, they had all but forgotten she was there.

"What do you mean, more than six?" asked Yusei.

"I can get us more than six dragons," she said. "Or more monsters, anyway. I am a monster caller, after all."

"You know, that might just help," said Crow. "How many do you think you can get?"

"As many as are in range," said Aki. "I'm not sure how far that is, but I can try."

"I'll help, too," said Ruka. "I'm pretty good at it by now."

Jack stood up. "Let's ask the dragons. As the rate they fly, they could probably get the word out to every monster for miles around."

"So what are you saying?" asked Bruno. "Are you trying to rally an army?"

"Well," said Jack, "you did say we needed more than six monsters..."

To Be Continued...