Chapter 9 - The Debt of the Deep
The leviathan's colossal tail swept through the cavern like a falling mountain.
The impact slammed into the rock walls, causing the entire roof of the sea cave to collapse in a thunderous avalanche of massive basalt boulders.
"FALL BACK! FALL BACK!" Arthur shrieked, turning and sprinting blindly through the falling stone toward the tunnel exit.
The tactical guards were crushed instantly beneath twenty-ton blocks of granite, their cries cut short as the cavern floor collapsed inward into the dark abyssal trench below.
Thomas lay on the shaking floor, watching a massive boulder fall straight toward his chest. He closed his eyes, smiling softly through the blood on his lips. He was ready. He had seen her. She was alive. She was safe.
THUD.
A warm, wet shield wrapped around Thomas's body—a thick, muscular section of the leviathan’s fin slammed down over him, forming a protective vault of living armor that absorbed the full weight of the collapsing stone roof.
Dust and darkness enveloped everything.
For ten long minutes, the earth shook, the ocean roared, and the grinding of stone echoed through the dark earth.
When the shaking finally stopped, a thin beam of pale, gray daylight pierced the suffocating darkness.
Thomas coughed, pushing himself up through a gap in the rubble. The giant fin had vanished back into the water, leaving him completely unharmed beneath a mound of fallen stone.
The cave was gone. The Siren's Basin was now an open, massive cove exposed to the overcast gray sky. The tactical team was gone, buried under fifty feet of stone.
And sitting on a single, surviving basalt rock twenty feet away, his legs crushed beneath a fallen granite pillar, was Arthur Vance.
Arthur was sobbing, his clothes torn to shreds, his hands bloody as he clawed helplessly at the immovable stone pinning him to the earth.
He looked up as Thomas stumbled toward him through the dust, holding his broken ribs.
"Thomas..." Arthur wept, his eyes wild with terror and agony. "Help me... please, Thomas! The tide is coming in! The water is rising!"
Thomas stopped five feet away from his brother.
May you like
He looked down at Arthur, then turned his gaze toward the dark, foaming surf of Blackwood Cove. The tide was indeed rushing back in—swift, cold, and relentless, black water already swirling around Arthur’s waist.
And beneath the surface of the rising water, twenty yards out, two glowing golden eyes watched them both from the dark.
