When a Psychic must flee, they can still sense.

  They may sense the void where a person is. They may sense the impassible bubble of another Psychic’s powers. Creativity with that sixth sense can lead to even more novel uses.

  A Tome precludes these techniques. With only a conduit, I could no more sense my pursuer than I could close my eyes and see with my elbow; a problem he would not have. I could not escape and the impetus was mine to reach a resolution.

  -The Blind Marathoner

  ###

  Light crested on the horizon, revealing the lone silhouette of a boat nestled in a large cove. Joshua gritted his teeth. If they didn’t get moving again, there’d be no getting off this island for months.

  And then Bartholomew collapsed.

  Joshua noticed him first and slid to his aid. Emilie scurried down from Kael’s shoulders, and rushed to join Joshua second.

  “Come on, you can walk, be steelen.” Joshua huffed, pulling the Doctor’s emaciated frame up right.

  “If only I could,” Bartholomew said. “You will need to believe me when I say that my body is done. I am starved. I am ragged.”

  Joshua believed him. Telling someone to give one hundred and ten percent was a hollow rallying cry. As someone who had been there many times in his life, there was a finite output the human body could muster, and all that lay beyond that was muscular failure. Bartholomew had already stayed on his feet longer than Joshua thought possible.

  Kael stomped over with a grunt. “We need to assume that we have no time to spare. We’ll have to drag you.” He said coldly. There was no room for emotion, just a task to be done. He paused, looking out across the tundra between them and the town. “At least two miles. Joshua?”

  “Hm? Oh?” Joshua snapped to. He pulled a freezing hand from his coat and bit down on his thumb, trying to get enough pain to jump start his senses. Just shy of drawing blood, he couldn’t even feel that.

  “Joshua!” Kael yelled at him.

  “Sorry. Yeah. We can carry the Doctor.”

  “No,” Kael said. “You go ahead and hold up that boat no matter what. Take Emilie. If you can buy us that time,” Kael nodded to Gianna. “we’ll get him there.”

  “I don’t see why I can’t go ahead,” Gianna mumbled, watching Kael take off his wind breaker and twist it into a short rope.

  Joshua hoisted Emilie up by her armpits and maneuvered her to piggy back. “You’ll see him again.” Emilie screamed for her dad, over Joshua’s grumblings.

  “And how would you convince the boat to stay?” Kael asked.

  “Only need a hostage. Maybe two,” Gianna said.

  He worried for Gianna as the snow pulled at his ankles, Emilie bobbing on his back with arms around his neck nearly choking him. He knew what it was like to think in straight lines like that, simple solutions to complex problems. If he could grow out of it, he could show her a better way too.

  He realized that’s what he found comforting about her. She was still someone to save, albeit in a somewhat different way. Those were the kinds of people—kinds of distractions—he craved: Gianna and Kael.

  Weary and the weather working against him, it took Joshua nearly twenty minutes to reach the city. The townscape was little more than an impressionist’s interpretation of roads and sidewalks under idyllic, shingled cottages. The snow fought him even in the city until Joshua made it to the main street.

  From there, it was a straight shot to the harbor, where even at the break of day, a crowd had gathered.

  The single boat that Joshua had from atop the hill was still there. It was a medium sized crabber. Metal mesh traps were being shoved into the harbor to make more room on the deck. A substantial number of people were trying to board single file up a gangplank. Joshua wondered how much of the surrounding countryside was in line, there were far more bodies here than houses in the town.

  It wouldn’t even be that bad for most of you, Joshua thought. The Taerose Empire had been ravenous in its accumulation of land, that much was true, but once under administrative control, its territories were completely livable—minus a few freedoms. Worse for us if we’re caught.

  Joshua hunched down and had Emilie climb all the way atop his shoulders. Less likely for her to be jostled, more likely for them to be pushed through the line on pure sympathy.

  Looking back, Joshua couldn’t see any ant-sized Kaels, Giannas, or Bartholomews. That hopefully meant that they were close enough as to not be in view, and, perhaps more importantly, that no one had followed them. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t heard the roar of planes or the boom of distant artillery fire. With any luck, they’d be off this rock before Taerose or the Dark Element had time to realize they’d slipped the noose.

  A musty sailor directed Emilie to the ground as they filed over the gangplank. It wasn’t wobbly or wooden like he’d seen in movies. Still, the few inches of ocean underneath him, between the boat and the dock, sent a chill through his spine.

  Near land, there wasn’t anything egregiously life-threatening hunting the shallows, not normally, but he’d still come out of the drink with leeches or blood jellies clinging to his skin. Further south and out of the artic waters, some brightly colored poisonous centipedes. Or trillios, nasty little things. They were all too similar to worms for Joshua.

  In his estimation, it was a reason why oceanic beaches never took off. People had tried every few decades. It started with hanging out wide nets to create a safe zone for women wanting to get out of their bussels. More recently, it had come into vogue for the upper middle class. He had seen commercials advertising beaches along the Imperadas.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  As if they hadn’t seen the blockbusters where the meshes failed and the trillios got in. The insanity.

  In any case, he and Emilie made it into the musty steel hallways. The two followed a procession in a straight line up and out to the deck, crew at points blocking hallways and waiving them on.

  It was cold on the deck, colder than the walk in. They were just high enough to catch the full brunt of the wind that had scattered the other refugees into tight, huddled groups. Joshua found one such group and handed them Emilie: “I’ll be right back. Stay here and don’t wander off. Your dad is coming, remember.”

  The little girl sat petrified as an elderly woman pulled her closer and put a protective arm around her

  The older woman said, “I’ll watch her, dear.”

  He’d probably get yelled at for this, but that was later-Joshua’s problem.

  He looped around the balcony, looking at the refugees below still crowding on to the crabber. The deck was filling up fast but there would be room for everyone. Despite this, there was a rush below. The sailors were nearly pushing people on, screaming for women and children to the front. It would take about fifteen minutes for everyone to board, but the maddening of not just the crowd but the crew told Joshua they wouldn’t make it that long.

  Looping back to the stairs, a hairy arm barred his descent back into the ship, that and a rush of bodies storming up from below. “Gorie rude,” Joshua cursed under his breath. Oh well, the captain is probably up anyway. The iron stairs up to the bridge were equally barred. A quick plea to the sailor falling on deaf ears.

  What peaked Joshua’s interest between one comatose response and the next ‘no’ was the nervous energy of the sailor. Twitching muscles. A tapping foot. Suppose I can’t blame you, Joshua thought. Can’t say I’ve ever had a war coming my way either. Maybe I should be more worried.

  All traditional avenues to the man in charge cut off, Joshua approached the railing again and inspected the bridge’s cabin. He could try and climb over and up, but that seemed tenuous. He placed a hand on the wrought iron railings-- slippery and wet. Not only did it rule out the climb as anything other than a last resort, but it also formed a dark pit in his stomach, some déjà vu.

  As Joshua began walking back to the opposite railing, to check on the progress of Kael, Gianna, and Bartholomew, a frantic series of yells rose up from the dock.

  He poked his head and saw the gang plank removed, two dozen bodies below screaming to be let on board. Joshua whipped his head around. He saw panic on the faces of the few sailors still topside, yelling at each other, hollering up to the bridge.

  The words came frantically, stirring those on the deck into a nervous vibration. Some seemed lost, panicked as their family members still hadn’t boarded. But the one-word Joshua heard more than the others was ‘blockade.’ It cut with the wind. Of course, Taerose wasn’t just forcing a march across the land, they would hem in the island from every side. It was shocking to him that this would be new information to anyone.

  Joshua could feel the ship coming to life, a rumble in its depths.

  But they hadn’t left yet.

  He glanced nervously at the railings and the tenuous climb up to the bridge. I can’t believe I’m actually considering taking a hostage right now. Gianna may be more of a bad influence than I am a good one.

  Swatting away that idea for the immediate second, Joshua looked to the hills again. His gaze shifted downwards to the end of Main Street. Trudging forward as fast as they could, Kael and Gianna struggled with red faces and the end of Kael’s windbreaker wrapped around white knuckled hands. Slung between them was Bartholomew, the coat stretched under his armpits, his arms wide like a crucified man.

  They met resistance hitting the crowd as those with less resolve were breaking away. The fighters in the mob were screaming now, pulling bottles and heavy objects from their trunks and sacks, and throwing them at the side of the boat. A man jumped, his finger nails scraping down the riveted sheet metal.

  Joshua looked over the deck for a rope, and found only one the diameter of his thigh. It looked too heavy to handle alone, and even if he could move it, he’d be caught by the crew long before he managed to get it this far over.

  “You’re going to need to jump!” Joshua yelled down. They shrugged. He made his hands into a cone and screamed it again.

  “Jump?” Gianna hollered back.

  Joshua cursed again, startled as the boat began moving. “Geh-fyr.”

  ###

  “Yeah, I know,” Kael grunted under his breath. He lowered Bartholomew gently and pulled his jacket back on. “Help me put him on my back,” Kael asked to Gianna.

  “I don’t like being touched,” Gianna said.

  "Good, you’ll be doing the touching,” Kael said, Gianna backing off further. Kael arranged Bartholmew’s body and pulled him into a fireman’s carry, straining to get the six-foot man’s weight over his shoulder. He was fifty pounds lighter than expected, but Kael was still on the verge of begging for help.

  But then he was up-- enough.

  And Gianna couldn’t help make what would happen next suck any less.

  Kael looked up and eyed the boat, his eyes tracing their way from straight ahead right to the deck. It was a good fifteen feet, maybe twenty if you included the side railing in the verticality.

  “You good Doc?” Kael asked, but Bartholomew only gurgled incoherent vowels.

  The boat had started pulling out and was an extra foot from the dock. It was now or never. Kael braced himself, looking around to make sure no one was close. Randos seeing him use his powers hardly mattered right now.

  His knees bent. He pooled his energy in the ground just under his soles.

  Kael jumped, slightly. And just as he hit the peak of the hop, the energy he had pooled into the concrete dock released into an explosion. The force caught him, blowing him upwards and towards the deck.

  He reached the height of the arc, still short, and began to dip.

  Air was fickle. Fluid, moving, hard to infuse the atoms with energy. When he had first learned to control his powers, he had been told to ignore air altogether. It took one hundred times more energy to create the same result from a chunk of dirt.

  Kael had to pour a lot of what he had left into it. The drain was focused, complete. He felt his body chilling in a wave running from his brain downwards. He screamed from the core of his being.

  The air under him erupted. It was more light and heat than actual force, but it caught him from underneath and propelled him those last couple of feet up and over the railing.

  He and Bartholomew crashed into Joshua with his arms out. And the three of them hit the deck in a clump.

  ###

  Joshua pulled himself from under Kael and Bartholmew and went back to the railing. The ship was moving in earnest from the port. The people were screaming and running for their lives thanks to the explosion, some scrambling to pull themselves off the ground seemed to have been knocked off their feet by the blast. Of course they think they are under attack. Even if they knew about Syches, what Kael had done was insanity; and now it was Gianna’s turn.

  The girl looked freaked, though.

  “Can you not do that?” Joshua screamed across the widening gap. “You kind of need to right now.”

  He saw her mouth move, sounding off a flurry of syllables that Joshua had to assume weren’t all real words. She barred her teeth and bent like a track runner, their eyes meeting for the first time.

  He nodded.

  She proved she was insane.

  The dock erupted in light and fire. The explosion was far, far too much for launching a single person that distance, let alone alive. But alive she came, rocketing towards him in a fraction of a second. Up but not quite over. Another couple inches and she would have been shiny, but the tip of her foot caught the railing, transitioning her momentum—and her head—straight down. She slammed into the deck, her face and body flattening themselves against metal.

  Joshua sat mouth agape for several heartbeats before looking to his brother for help. Kael was writhing in pain, holding on to his shins and cursing up a storm. Doctor Bartholomew, lack of medical qualifications and all, lay still on the deck, blue and comatose.

  Joshua took a deep breath; he could handle this. Everyone was here, alive; he just had to find the way forward.

  And then he heard a wave of noise across the deck. Faces turned forward as the crabber cleared the harbor and its protective hills. The sailors fell to their knees in prayer, sobs broke from the clustered groups, there on the horizon a Taerosian battleship lay in wait.

  The blockade was ready for them.