Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Amber’s eyes glowed with excitement. This was going to be the wildest adventure she, her sister, and the other Dragonlings had ever had—and they’d had some wild ones.
“This is it, folks! The last stretch of the Glorious Galactic Portal Grand Prix!” Amber shouted over the roar of cosmic wind and the snapping of portal energy. She flung her arms wide as she soared along a shimmering silver current.
“Rider One, Amber Reykill, blazing a trail through the unstable vortex network!” her sister, Jade, chimed in beside her, upside down and spinning with wild glee. “Current speed: unknown. Altitude: also unknown. Sanity level—questionable! All systems normal, Captain!”
“Emotionally stable and marginally competent!” Amber replied, laughing as she barely dodged a swirl of crackling plasma. “Hey, I think I just saw Zohar and Alice blink out!”
“Confirmed!” Jade replied, squinting at the shifting threads ahead. “Bálint and Adaline just got yeeted. Spring and Roam—ooooh—major wipeout! It looks like they went down fighting… with each other. My bets are on Spring. What are your thoughts, Amber?”
“Oh, definitely Spring, Jade. She’ll have that cat-shifter chasing his own tail and is sure to leave him buried up to his neck,” Amber replied.
They both burst into laughter as another blur shot past them.
“Was that Jabir?” Amber gasped.
“With a potato chip in his mouth,” Jade said, wide-eyed. “Where does he put all that food? If he doesn’t shoot up soon like his dad, he’s gonna pop.”
Amber snorted. “Hey, that reminds me, did you pack us some food? I’m getting hungry.”
“Of course! There’s a micro-replicator in this bad boy,” Jade said proudly, patting the duffel bag.
Amber looked down when she felt a tremor ripple under her feet—or under the thread, whatever it was they were skating across—and Jade’s smile dimmed a notch.
“Uh-oh. Thread instability increasing. I’m seeing compression fractures,” Jade warned.
Amber studied the thread and nodded. Silver-light veins were splintering through the translucent path beneath them.
“Yep. Classic thread slippage. It looks like Phoenix has lost the last bit of control of the portal. The plasma lines are destabilizing with the quantum tether. Do we have anything in the bag that might help restabilize it?” Amber asked.
“No. You told me that we couldn’t bring the plasma stabilizer, that it was too big and heavy,” Jade snapped back. “I should have just ignored you and brought it!”
“Too late now,” Amber retorted, spotting a glowing cross-thread ahead with a flickering opening just beyond it. “Come on. Less arguing, more jumping. We need to get off this thing before we become space dust.”
“Got it. Duffel bag toss in three!” Jade called.
Amber yanked their oversized duffel bag by the strap and lobbed it with practiced ease to her twin, who caught it in one hand. The two girls worked in perfect synchronicity.
“You go first!” Jade shouted, angling toward the cross-thread.
“Roger that!” Amber kicked off their fraying thread and hurtled toward the alternate path.
She landed on the shimmering thread, rolling and sliding towards the opposite edge before she came up on her knee. Jade shook her head and growled at her. Amber just grinned back at her sister.
“I swear, if you had gone over, I was gonna haunt you!” Jade hollered.
Amber flashed a grin over her shoulder. “Like I’d miss. I’m elegant under pressure. Toss the bag and get your butt over here.”
Amber held her arms out as Jade tossed the bag. She grunted as the weight hit her, knocking her backwards, closer to the edge. She glanced over her shoulder and grimaced. One delicate misstep and she would be a space kabob.
She turned back when she heard a whoop. Jade twisted in midair and landed on the new thread beside her. Amber breathed out a sigh of relief just as the old thread snapped behind her with a burst of ozone and disappeared.
“Thread’s gone!” Amber said, biting her lip as she realized how close they had come to being lost.
They both paused for a breath, hovering on the thinning thread that now resembled a silver ribbon dissolving into mist up ahead.
“We’re going down. Get on the bag,” Amber snapped, her eyes locked on the swirling hole ahead.
“If there’s no space for our wings when we drop, what do you want to do?” Jade asked.
Amber looked down into the swirling space that was growing closer by the second.
“What about the hover-disk?” she suggested.
“Malfunctioned last time.”
“Plasma umbrella?”
“Only good for one person,” Jade replied.
Amber looked at the duffel bag. “Ride it down using the drone feature?”
Jade nodded. “Obviously. Though it’s only tested for jumps under ten feet.”
“We really need to run more tests after we build these things,” Amber groaned.
The words had no sooner left her mouth than the thread beneath them dissolved entirely into a gaping hole of purple and silver.
They dropped, screaming at first before their terror turned to laughter.
They clung to the duffel bag, riding it like a dragon-sized sled as they careened through a silver and violet tunnel that was just like the enclosed super slide their mom had created.
Miniature bolts of energy snapped around them, lighting up their hair and making it stand up. The tunnel corkscrewed, dipped, and launched them like cannonballs toward a round, pulsing exit.
“I REGRET NOTHINGGGGGG!” Amber shrieked.
“WE’RE SO GROUNDED IF DAD FINDS OUT, BUT MOM WOULD LOVE THIS!” Jade howled.
They burst through the exit in a blaze of light, twin comets riding an overstuffed bag of gadgets and chaos—
—and slammed down the middle of a cobblestone street, scattering pedestrians like bowling pins.
Shrieks erupted. A pirate carrying a crate of mangoes tripped and fell flat. A merchant threatened them with a ladle as they flashed past. A brilliantly colored parrot took off, squawking, “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”
Amber shifted, trying to hold on to the duffel bag with one hand and her sister with the other as they spun in dizzying circles, bouncing along the stones until—
THUD.
She jerked forward and then rocked for a second before she slid sideways onto the cobblestone, holding her head and laughing as the world spun crazily around her.
Her gaze locked on a black boot pressed against the front of the bag. A goofy grin tugged at her lips as her gaze followed the boot from its shiny tip upward.
She wheezed, sprawled on the ground, and stared into the bemused eyes of the man standing over them.
“Ten out of ten on the landing,” she said, clutching her head as she struggled to sit up. “Minus one for dignity.”
Jade lay flat on her back on the duffel bag, staring up at the towering figure in front of them.
“Oooooooh,” she said, blinking. “Nice outfit. You look like a royal purple banana—in a good way.”
Amber studied the man. “How much for those feathers, mister? I’ve already got three experiments that I could use them with! Check out how they spark, Jade. James would love one.”
“Yeah. Fascinating. I wonder what happens if you stick your tongue to the end of one,” Jade said.
“You don’t want to know. It is very unpleasant,” the man chuckled in response.
Amber tilted her head curiously as she studied the man’s clothing.
His coat was deep purple with gold embroidery so fine it shimmered.
His tricorn hat perched jauntily atop a head of raven-black hair, and a trio of long, glimmering feathers sparked faintly with electricity as they moved in the breeze.
He quirked one brow at them, and then, with a flourish, he swept the hat from his head and gave them a full courtly bow.
“Ashure Waves,” he introduced, his voice rich with humor and command. “King of the Pirates. And who might my unexpected guests be?”
Jade beamed. “I’m Jade Reykill, Chaos Specialist, Resident Genius Number 1, and Princess of Valdier.”
“I’m Amber, resident genius, Valdier princess, and all that other blah, blah, blah stuff,” Amber said, taking Ashure’s offered hand and letting him help her to her feet.
“Valdier… I’m not sure I’m familiar with that isle. Is it near Earth? I’m familiar with that world,” Ashure said.
“Earth? That’s where our mom’s from! Have you been there? It’s really cool. We go visit Grandpa Paul’s ranch in Wyoming sometimes,” Jade exclaimed.
“Valdier is a planet in another galaxy or dimension or something. I’m not sure how Phoenix’s portal works yet. We are still analyzing it,” Amber said.
Ashure frowned. “Phoenix from Valdier… That name really does sound familiar,” he murmured, scratching his chin.
Jade nodded. “She came here once. She was telling us all about the different isles. We wanted to visit the Isle of the Monsters. They just sound really awesome. But pirates are pretty… cool, too.”
Amber snorted out a laugh because Jade had called pirates stupid before. Ashure’s lips twitched as if he knew her sister was just being nice for the last bit.
“The boys wanted to come here. They were going to steal a pirate ship, find your hidden treasure, and other stupid stuff,” she said.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to worry. They’re not very good at stealing, fighting, or finding things. They mostly sit around talking big, playing video games, and eating a lot, especially Jabir,” Jade reassured him.
“They may not be the best fighters, but we are,” Amber laughed, patting the duffel bag.
Jade nodded and grinned at Ashure. “We kicked butt against a group of bad guys who were trying to steal one of my mom’s new inventions.”
Ashure looked around at the growing crowd before he cleared his throat and motioned for Jade to rise off the large bag they had ridden in on. Amber helped her sister up.
“It looks like we blew past Phoenix’s rule of don’t engage,” she murmured to Jade.
They both grimaced at the size of the crowd that had formed around them.
The odd creatures were listening with mounting interest to their conversation.
It was obvious that two young girls mysteriously showing up and creating pandemonium in the cobblestone streets of the Isle of the Pirates didn’t happen often.
“Perhaps it might be best to take this conversation somewhere more… private,” Ashure suggested. “My wife, Tonya, would love to meet you. You appear to have a lot in common with her.”
“Really? Oh, that’s cool. I guess none of our other friends came here,” Jade said, gazing around her.
Ashure shook his head. “No, I believe if any of your friends had arrived, I would know about them.”
Amber bit her lip when Ashure snapped his fingers and a huge creature that had only one eye in the center of its forehead stepped forward.
“Please see that this is delivered to the palace immediately,” he ordered.
“Aye, Your Highness,” the cyclops replied with a bow.
Amber stumbled to a stop and stared in awe when a group of colorful creatures that looked like monkeys appeared.
Her mouth dropped open when the mischievous creatures grabbed several pieces of fruit before being chased away.
They dove off the dock into the water, chattering and waving their fists at the merchant who was shouting at them.
“Wow!” Jade whispered, leaning closer, her gaze showing that she was referencing everything: the cyclops, the colorful creatures, and the people surrounding them.
Amber nodded.
“Sea monkeys, the bane of my existence. I fear Nali must have learned of my recent acquisition of a shipment of fine bourbon that was meant for the Isle of the Monsters,” he said with a sigh.
Amber giggled when he winked at her and motioned for them to follow him. She couldn’t help but be fascinated by all the creatures they walked by. It was like being on one of the space stations and seeing all the different alien species—only on steroids.
Maybe the pirates weren’t so stupid after all, she thought as a Minotaur passed by, leading two black horses whose hooves shot out sparks every time they stepped down.
“What are those?” she breathed, staring after the creatures.
“Another reason Nali is upset,” he chuckled with a pleased grin. “Her prized Lightning stallions were also on that ship.”