Heart Of Atlantis

that close to it may be challenging,” Alaric said. His hands glowed with blue-green light as he called to his magic, in preparation for whatever suicidal trick he was planning.
    The problem was, she didn’t know how to stop him, or if she should even try. It didn’t seem like a job anybody else could handle.
    “What can I do?” She scanned the room for ideas of any way she might be able to help, but came up empty. The only variance from the blank palette of bare walls and floor was a series of niches that may have been designed originally to hold plants or art, high up on the walls, above and out of the Trident’s current firing range pattern.
    “What if I find a way to get up there above the line of fire and drop down on top of it? Do you have a rope—”
    “If I had a
rope
, I would tie you up with it,” Alaric growled. He whirled to face her, and his eyes were flaring with heat and magic. “Do you ever, even once, not immediately decide to throw yourself in the middle of the most dangerous situations possible?”
    She pretended to think about it for a second or two, and then grabbed his arm and yanked him out of the path of a blast of green light that blew a hole in the door behind them.
    “Nope,” she said. “Lucky for you, since
you’re
the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. A sane woman would run
away
from you, not toward you.”
    He cast his gaze up, as if asking for divine intervention, then grabbed her and kissed her so fast she almost didn’t realize it was happening. Then he stepped between her and the Trident and hurled a barrage of energy spheres at it as fast as he could form them.
    These weren’t the destructive kind, though. Quinn watched as the spheres joined together to form a large bubble around the Trident. The bubble at first dispersed the force of the magic blasts, and then contained them altogether.
    Quinn started clapping. “Great job. Now what?”
    Alaric didn’t answer, and when she turned to look at him, she discovered why. His face was taut with strain, and he held his hands out in front of him as if physically holding the force field or energy bubble or whatever it was in place.
    “Can’t hold this alone for long,” he gritted out. “Go get help.”
    She paused to pat him on the back. “Hey, it’s the magical symbol of a god. It’s got big juju. I’m impressed you managed to stop it at all.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Big juju?”
    “I’ll explain later.”
    She ran out of the room, shouting for help, and almost collided with Myrken, who was wringing his hands right outside the door.
    “Get all your most powerful people in there to help Alaric contain that Trident,” she told him. She paused, remembering what Alaric had told Ven back in Japan. “I’m going to the palace to find Christophe and Serai. He mentioned them as the most magically powerful, right?”
    Myrken just stared at her, and she started to get mad. “Look, if this is some kind of ‘we don’t take orders from women’ thing—”
    “Humans,” he muttered. “Your gender is immaterial.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Even worse, you . . . you . . . species racist. Get your ass in there and help Alaric, or I’ll make sure you don’t live to regret it,” she snapped out in her best rebel leader voice.
    The man all but saluted and headed inside, shouting for the other acolytes as he did. Quinn didn’t wait to see what happened, but ran for the door so she could go find the castle.

    Alaric fought with the brutal power of the Trident for what felt like years, until Myrken and several of the strongest acolytes arrived to help. He ruthlessly drew on their power to help contain the Trident from unleashing any more of those unstable blasts of magic. It wasn’t the physical damage to the room that concerned him. The Trident’s magic had been an integral part of the infrastructure of Atlantis since the continent first sank below the waves. Without its underpinning, he didn’t know how long everything else would hold together.
    Conlan entered the room, followed closely by Quinn, Ven, and Erin.
    “Christophe and Serai aren’t on Atlantis, but I got Erin,” Quinn said.
    Erin was already calling to the Wilding, and Alaric felt the cool breeze of her human magic swirling around him, its eddies whispering dark promises of mayhem and madness.
    “Erin,
stop
,” he said. “We can’t know how the Wilding would interact with the Trident’s current unstable magic, and we already know it doesn’t