The great thing about mythical creatures is that they’re real. They’re just as real as other things we know about but can’t actually touch or see, such as freedom or non-Photoshopped supermodels. I mean, if my daughter asks me, “Are unicorns real, daddy?” I’ll answer, “Sure they are – they’re real mythical creatures!”
Here’s a quick rundown of my personal favorite mythological creatures from cultures around the world. And I have to admit that I’m biased, because many of the ones I’ve listed make some kind of appearance in the Embodied trilogy, my sci-fi fantasy series.
10. Unicorn
There’s already something majestic about a white horse with a flowing mane, but when you add a single long, tapered horn to its forehead, the result is staggeringly beautiful. Unicorns have symbolized purity and grace, and can only be tamed by fair maidens. Kari Marriner, the main character in the Embodied trilogy, finds herself up against a terrifyingly unusual unicorn – and it doesn’t intend to be tamed any time soon!
9. Dragon
I’m going with the easy ones first. Dragons come in two varieties – the European ones that are nasty and have wings, and the Asian ones that are nice and have no wings. Back in the day (before the Middle Ages) dragons looked more like snakes or sea serpents, but nowadays the fire-breathing, bat-winged variety are all the rage. The one that Kari and Starley encounter in Starley’s Rust, book 2 of the Embodied trilogy, is definitely not nice. He’s also related to the unicorn…
8. Mermaid
Quite how an aquatic creature with the body of woman and the tail of a fish came to appear in unconnected mythologies the world over is, well, a mystery. From ancient Greece to Walt Disney, mermaids have figuratively or literally enchanted people for thousands of years, along with their less common counterparts, the mermen. My daughter asked for a mermaid tail for her last birthday, so they clearly aren’t going out of style anytime soon.
7. Minotaur
If you were a man with the head of a bull, you’d probably want to be trapped inside a labyrinth on an island in Greece, but apparently the Minotaur wasn’t super keen on this situation and had to be appeased by being fed seven strapping youths and seven fair maidens every few years. According to legend, the Minotaur was the unnatural offspring of a woman and beast, so eventually Athenian hero Theseus decided to rid the world of this abomination. Or was it really Theseus? In Silent Symmetry, book 1 of the Embodied trilogy, Kari discovers an ancient book that has a different tale to tell…
6. Hydra
The idea of a many-headed serpentine monster with poisonous breath and blood that can’t be killed because when one of its heads was chopped off a couple more would grow back from the stump is terrifying even in modern times because it seems to represent an unstoppable evil, the kind that we’re unfortunately used to hearing about in news of terrorist atrocities. Luckily for the ancient Greeks, the heroic Heracles dispatched the monstrosity using sword and fire. Good riddance!
5. Gorgons (Medusa)
In Greek mythology, the Gogons were horrifically ugly winged women with venomous snakes for hair. But let’s face it, we’ve all woken up in the morning looking like that, haven’t we? Medusa was one Gorgon sister who was able to turn anyone into stone who looked her in the eye. Again, been there, done that. The Gorgon sisters were born of deities and hated moral men, but legend has it that one such man, Perseus, was finally able to decapitate Medusa and thereafter carried her head around to use as a weapon by turning his enemies into stone.
4. Cerberus
Normally “man’s best friend”, this mutt was no stick-chasing, waggy-tailed companion who enjoyed having his belly tickled. No, Cerberus was literally an ancient Greek hell-hound – the offspring of monsters who had three heads, a serpent for a tail and snakes coming out of his body. I’m assuming that he did not walk to heel or sit and stay like a good boy. Cerberus would prevent the dead from leaving the underworld, which, on the face of it, is the kind of guard dog you want.
3. Sphinx
It’s kind of awesome that he enormous Great Sphinx of Giza (meaning “The Terrifying One” or “Father of Dread”) is almost five thousand years old and yet is still the largest monolith statue in the world. The ancient Greeks – who were pretty good at coming up with mythical creatures, and might have done very well writing Young Adult novels – defined a sphinx as having the head of a human, the haunches of a lion and sometimes the wings of a bird. The Egyptian sphinx is typically male, while its Greek counterpart is female. Either way, you wouldn’t want to run into one lurking behind a pyramid.
2. Chimera
The ultimate freakish beast, the chimera has come to refer to any mythical or fictional animal made up of a bunch of other animals. However in Greek mythology, the chimera was a fire-breathing animal composed of the best bits of a lion, a goat, a human and a snake. Noon, one of the main characters in the Embodied trilogy, uses the term chimera to refer to high priests of the Dark Universe once they are embodied in Earth-bound form.
1. Gog and Magog
This two-for-one is probably a surprising entry for most readers. But for some reason I’ve always found these names to be terrifying. Even though I’m not religious, there was a period when I was fascinated by the Book of Revelation as a teenager, and the mysterious characters of Gog and Magog were causing havoc at the end of the world. But these strange beings don’t only appear in Christian mythology. Gog and Magog, wrote an early Muslim scholar, “ live near to the sea that encircles the Earth and can be counted only by God; they are only half the height of a normal man, with claws instead of nails and a hairy tail and huge hairy ears which they use as mattress and cover for sleeping.” Maybe they aren’t so scary – they sound like something from Where the Wild Things Are.
Mythical creatures in the Embodied trilogy
As I mentioned above, all these mythological creatures have a role to play, big or small, in the Embodied trilogy, and that’s because the Thoth, one of the Dark Universe races that come to Earth are embodied as similar creatures. But the Thoth go a step further – they often have extra features that combine different beasts from the classical mythological sources. And at the end of Diamond Splinters, we finally get to meet the terrifying Gog, who is as hell-bent on destroying the Earth as the biblical version. Can Kari defeat the Thoth? You’ll have to read the Embodied trilogy special edition eboo
The Embodied Trilogy
Special Edition Ebook Collection
JB Dutton
Genre: YA Urban fantasy / science fiction
Date of Publication: July 11, 2016
ISBN: 9780991791842
ASIN: B01H7U1QOE
Number of pages: 560
Word Count: 183,094
Cover Artist: Alexandra Nereuta
Follow Kari's exciting adventure in in one special edition of all three ebooks, including bonus author insights, deleted scenes and a treasure hunt quiz..
The Embodied trilogy is an unusual web of adventure, romance, fantasy, and science fiction.
Prep school student Kari Marriner is swept up in a mystery that fast becomes a thrilling adventure when she discovers that mysterious aliens called the Embodied and their pseudo-religion, the Temple of Truth, been influencing her family’s life for decades. She soon finds herself battling dragons, unicorns, and nefarious angels on the streets of New York and in the catacombs of Paris, while having her emotions torn by a handsome alien and a jealous boyfriend. In a final showdown, she must travel to the creatures’ home in the dark universe and make a heart-wrenching choice: rescue her mother or save the Earth.
Special Tour Price $7.99
Excerpt:
The first
sensation was my stomach lurching and spinning. Then I seemed to be plunging
dizzily while simultaneously zooming higher on some kind of impossible
rollercoaster ride. And suddenly I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was
separated from any kind of physical reality, like – oh… oh wow – like I was
totally disembodied. I could sense things but not see them with my eyes. I had…
a sort of mathematical awareness, as though I was plugged directly into the
mainframe of a supercomputer the size of the universe, my mind swimming in pure
information. Geometric shapes twinkled in and out of existence. Lines and
points moved around in constant motion. It felt like a dream made of numbers…
patterns and data combining and separating. Spirals within spirals and symmetries
within symmetries.
“Mom?” I called
out. Or at least imagined myself calling out. Ripples in this web of
information undulated in front of me when I said her name. “Mom? It’s me. It’s
Kari.” More complex ripples floated away.
Nothing.
At that moment
it occurred to me I had no way of getting back home.
“Noon?” I said
hopefully. Oh man – he’d told me how to use the sphere to reach the Dark
Universe but now I was here and totally disembodied, I had no way of
controlling my body to remove the sphere from my forehead.
But before I
could worry about this too much, the waves of information started to coalesce
into more recognizable shapes. Pyramids and spheres, but not solid ones. They
seemed to be made of… of symbols and binary code. That was it – they were like living
equations! And then weirdly, in one of the pyramid shapes, I could recognize
Noon. I felt as though I could see his mesmerizing face. Even though it was
data or whatever, it was somehow him. The whole experience was kinda hypnotic.
Was it even really happening? In one respect, I guess none of it was real,
because I was literally seeing outside my universe.
“Kari – you made
it,” I heard him say.
“Is that really
you? Cilic didn’t kill you?”
“Well, he killed
Embodied me, but the Mihim brought my diamond pyramid back here.”
This was
super-bizarro. Now it was like the surrounding patterns had gone out of focus
and I could clearly see the pyramid that was Noon’s true form.
“Wait, let me do
something,” he said. “I’m going to recreate a reality you’re familiar with to
make this easier for you.”
And the entire
crazy churning data kaleidoscope sort of crystalized. I found myself standing
in a towering hall with walls, floor, and ceiling made of what looked like
sheets of sheer diamond. But in the depths of the diamond the same patterns I’d
seen before were refracted in a million colors. It was the most beautiful thing
I’d ever encountered.
Silent Symmetry
The Embodied Trilogy
Book One
JB Dutton
Genre: YA Urban fantasy / science fiction
Date of Publication: January, 2013
ISBN: 9780991791804
ASIN: B00B0534UC
Number of pages: 194
Word Count: 54,359
Cover Artist: Alexandra Nereuta
Book Description:
Kari Marriner’s earliest memory is her father’s death in a car crash back in small-town Wisconsin. Now, 12 years later, her mother has been hired by a pseudo-religious organization in Manhattan called the Temple of Truth (a.k.a. the ToT). At Chelsea Prep, Kari develops a crush on classmate Cruz. But when she realizes that Noon, another attractive guy at school, is involved with the ToT, her curiosity gets the better of her.
Kari stumbles upon a secret tunnel leading from her apartment to another in the building, where an ancient book holds images she can scarcely believe, and a cavernous room contains... something inexplicable. As Kari pieces together the incredible evidence, she discovers that the ToT is run by other-worldly beings called The Embodied who influence human behavior and have established a global long-term human breeding program. But why? And what is her role in all this?
Just as she starts wondering whether the love she feels for Cruz is genuine or if her emotions are being controlled by The Embodied, her mother is kidnapped and Kari has to figure out who is human, who is Embodied, and who she can count on to help rescue her mother.
Book One Free
Excerpt:
When I got in,
the apartment was empty. I dumped my stuff and had a shower. I only realized as
I was drying my hair that the apartment was really empty. Flash wasn’t there.
The hairdryer was his nemesis, and the feud had being going on since he was
traumatized by it as a kitten. But he couldn’t resist confronting it. Whenever
I blow-dried my hair he would freak, hissing and arching his back, fur standing
on end. But not this time.
I turned off the
hairdryer and called his name. Nothing. I made little squeaking noises with my
lips, walking from room to room. Okay, this was bizarre. Where the eff could he
be? There was only one sure-fire way of making him come running. I went into
the kitchen and opened the cupboard where the cat food was stored. I shook the
bag loudly. Silence.
Wait, there
wasn’t silence.
There was a
muffled voice coming from... coming from? I bent down to follow the sound. It
was coming from the cupboard.
The cupboard was
a medium-sized space, maybe three feet high and 18 inches wide, and as I stuck
my head inside to listen I felt like I was somehow entering another world. It
was a gut feeling. You know, the kind you can’t explain but know you should
trust. Some people call it instinct, but Mom explained to me once that the gut
and the ancient lizard brain are linked. This is the “fight or flight” response
that you feel when you’re threatened. It’s helped us survive over millions of
years of evolution. And it’s rarely wrong.
So what was
different in there? What was my subconscious reacting to? The smell. Yes, that
was it – something smelled different in there, and it wasn’t cat food. Now the
muffled voice was louder, more distinctive. And I could tell that there were
actually two voices, a man’s and a woman’s.
I put my head in
further and another part of my gut sent me a second message. The dimensions
were wrong. The cupboard stretched back much further than it should have, back
beyond the kitchen wall.
I withdrew and
stood up. I opened the cupboard above it and moved the cereal boxes to one
side. This one was only a couple of feet deep. Looking back into the cat food
cupboard, it was obvious that it went back at least a foot more.
I stood with my
hands on my hips for a moment, trying to process. And where on earth was Flash?
I called his name again and listened. Suddenly the voices stopped. I bent down
and put my head back in the cupboard. There was a stale smell, and... was that
a draft? I reached inside and felt around. The cupboard was so deep it was hard
to see the back clearly. I shuffled inside, resting on my forearms and prodding
the back wall with my fingers. It moved slightly. I pushed harder, and with a
groan it swung open at the bottom. It was hinged somehow at the top, like a
large flap. I opened the flap wider and felt a distinct whoosh of cooler,
damper air hit my face. I peered through the opening but it was pitch black
inside. Then the voices started again, this time much clearer. I still couldn’t
make out what they were saying, but it was definitely a man and a younger woman
talking.
Pushing the flap
open even wider I realized that I could fit through the opening. The other side
of the flap felt like a tunnel or duct the same width and height as the
cupboard. The trouble was, it was too dark in there to explore it. I needed a
flashlight.
Mom is nothing
if not resourceful. There were always spare batteries in the house when I was a
kid. A first aid kit that nurse-Mom whipped out at the first sign of fever. And
a well-stocked emergency box in an easy-to-reach location.
Five minutes
later I was back in the cupboard, flashlight in hand.
I wriggled
inside on my hands and knees, then pushed the flap open again. I crawled
through it, testing the strength of the surface beneath me as I went. The
tunnel creaked a bit – I guess it was made of wood – but it seemed pretty firm.
I advanced, the tunnel’s blackness stretching out in front of me. The flap
swung shut and the dank air enveloped me.
I stopped and
listened, probing the tunnel with the flashlight. It seemed to go on forever.
“Flash?” I whispered loudly. But all I could hear were the echoey voices. I
carried on crawling forward. They seemed to be getting louder. The young
woman’s higher-pitched voice was easier to make out than the man’s gravelly
rumble.
I thought I
heard her say, “...control of it...here, I can get...here...make it...” Just
snatches of sentences. The man said something in reply. When I was crawling,
the noise my jeans made on the wood made it impossible to distinguish
individual words in what the woman was saying. I shone the flashlight ahead of
me. Was that a turn in the tunnel? As I got nearer, I could tell that there was
a junction to the left in the tunnel up ahead.
I reached the
bend and looked around it, the flashlight beam sweeping the tunnel walls. There
was another long stretch that ended in...? A bend or a drop? “Flash?” I
whispered again and listened. Now both voices were more distinct. They were
definitely coming from further along the tunnel.
“...can’t stop
them,” said the man.
“That’s just
it,” answered the woman. Then silence.
I crawled
onward, accompanied only by the swoosh and scrape of my jeans and shoes. Half a
minute later I reached the end of this stretch of tunnel. Now there was a turn
to the right, and a section that went upward. I raised my head to look up this
chute. For a second my brain made a connection. That was it – garbage chutes!
These big old buildings were usually equipped with them. Maybe that was what
this was. But why did the tunnels go sideways? No, it made no sense.
I knelt at the
junction, searching for an explanation. Then, before I knew what was happening,
I screamed. Something had dropped from the chute and landed in front of me.
Something alive. I scrambled backward, heart in mouth, the flashlight making
crazy-ass shadows on the tunnel walls.
In seconds I was
back at the first turn, but as I tried to crawl around it, one of the belt
loops on my jeans snagged on a nail. I tried to pull it off, frantic. I glanced
back down the tunnel and saw a movement. It was coming toward me. It was...
Flash.
My limbs sagged,
I stopped struggling, and the loop unhooked from the nail. The cat meowed and
trotted up to me. Laughing in relief, I petted him. “You... you... I love you!”
I said, happy to have found him. And happy that he wasn’t a giant rat. Or
something worse that the depths of my imagination had conjured up in my state
of panic. He purred and snuggled against my nose.
“Kari.”
I froze.
It was the young
woman’s voice. Distant, but distinct. I strained my ears to hear more but I was
already far from the source of the sound, and Flash’s purring obscured the rest
of the words. But I know I heard it. I know I heard my name.
“Kari.”
Starley’s Rust
The Embodied Trilogy
Book Two
JB Dutton
Genre: YA Urban fantasy / science fiction
Date of Publication: January 2015,
second edition April 2016
ISBN: 9781311725493
ASIN: B00ONKYNOC
Number of pages: 206
Word Count: 60,934
Cover Artist: Alexandra Nereuta
Book Description:
Six months ago, Kari Marriner’s life was torn apart. Now turned 17, she’s looking for answers in her rural Wisconsin hometown. But just as the Embodied seemed to have vanished, there’s a new, more terrifying visitor from the Dark Universe.
Back in Manhattan, a charismatic English artist named Starley convinces Kari he can find her missing mother if she flies to Paris with him. He also shares an incredible secret from the dawn of mankind. But Starley is not who he seems. Before she knows it, Kari finds herself standing in front of the Mona Lisa with him, yelling out, “He’s got a bomb!”
And that’s when things go totally insane. The Rebel Embodied’s henchman, Cilic, returns to Earth on a deadly mission. The body of Kari’s treacherous friend Aranara is washed up on the banks of the Hudson. But is she really dead? In the Paris catacombs, Kari and Starley are hunted by a nightmarish mythical creature that’s all too real.
A family mystery, an exiled race, freakish beasts, jealousy, love… and death. Kari has to face them all in this fast-paced fantasy thriller.
Amazon Paperback Amazon UK Paperback
Excerpt:
The sun was
setting behind the buildings. A big barn with half the roof missing. A grain
silo. A couple of smaller shed-type buildings, one with no door, the other with
the door hanging off its hinges. And a farmhouse. Windows shattered. Front door
gawping at me. I gulped and sent an ILY back to Cruz. He liked those.
Then I had the
strangest feeling. Like a disruption in the atmosphere, but also in my mind.
The air changed somehow, and I heard a rumbling of distant thunder. I could
have sworn that the fading daylight got brighter for a few seconds. The hairs
stood up on the back of my neck. It made me stop moving. Then reality seemed to
snap back to normal. I kept going toward the farmhouse.
I saw something
move.
The setting sun
had backlit the barn so it was hard to be sure what it was. A horse, I think. A
big, black stallion moving around in the barn.
My mind filled
in the blanks. Probably a horse that had escaped from a neighboring farm and
made a new home for itself here. Okay, cool. No mystery. Maddie must have seen
it and her mind made it fit the legend.
I lay Maddie’s
bike down in the grass, careful not to make a sound. I tiptoed toward the barn,
not wanting to startle it. I turned on the flashlight app on my phone. Clouds
were gathering, the light was fading. More distant thunder. I just needed to
find it, take a photo and show Maddie. Her grandfather would know what to do,
how to capture it safely and find its owner.
I entered the
barn, still creeping quietly. Ew. It certainly smelled like a barn. There was
hay strewn around on the ground. My phone flashlight was practically useless.
It illuminated a patch, like, five feet in front of me. In the dim light, I could
make out a row of stalls on each side and a hayloft up ahead with a ladder
propped against it.
Now I thought
about it, the smell was kinda weird. I grew up around here and although I’d
never spent any time on a farm, I sensed that there was some kind of extra,
non-farm smell here. Hard to identify. But yucky and familiar all the same.
Was that an
animal noise in one of the stalls on the left? Or just the wind blowing through
the holes in the walls? I crept toward the stall very, very carefully. My hand
holding the phone was shaking. Come on, Kari. Get a grip. The sides of the
stalls weren’t high enough to conceal a horse. Unless it was lying down in the
hay, of course.
I reached the
stall where I thought I’d heard the noise. I waited a second, held my breath,
then stepped in front of the stall’s open gate. It was empty. And that’s when
the hairs stood up on the back of my neck again. But this time there was
another, all-too-familiar feeling along with it.
It was the
feeling I had when Noon was in my head. Yet not exactly the same. This was
unpleasant, even disturbing, and somehow stronger.
I spun around.
In the barn doorway stood the black stallion. Protruding from its forehead was
a long, tapered horn. It really was a unicorn. It raised its head and my mind
felt like a heavy blanket had been draped over it. It eyed me purposefully. My
irrational fear as a little girl came flooding back, multiplied by a million. I
almost peed my pants. Was this a bad dream? Maybe I would wake up surrounded by
My Little Pony’s in my 8-year-old’s bedroom?
If only…
The unicorn took
a step forward. The feeling in my head got even stronger and now I could swear
that I heard the name Noon repeating over and over. Not his voice, just his
name. Was the unicorn Embodied? I didn’t get a chance to wonder about this
because now the feeling in my head was becoming worse… painful. I was convinced
that my mind was being probed by this astonishing creature. In the space of a
few seconds, the pain increased and so did the repetition of the name Noon
until it was so excruciating that I felt like screaming. I put my hands to my
temples and opened my mouth. As I was about to close my eyes, I saw the unicorn
start to charge toward me.
Despite the
pain, I managed to fling myself to one side and into the empty stall just
before it reached me. It galloped past and I heard it stop. My head was still
throbbing. I staggered to my feet, one fist still pressed to my temple. Maybe I
could make a break for it.
The unicorn
appeared in front of me, blocking the stall entrance. I was totally trapped. I
looked around in desperation. A broken wooden handle was poking out from a pile
of hay in one corner. I grabbed it and pulled out a pitchfork. The unicorn
advanced into the stall, its head lowered so that its horn was aimed directly
at my head. The pain coursed through my brain like a river of electricity.
I swung the
pitchfork at the unicorn’s head. I missed, but it backed up, startled. I swung
again. It made a snuffling sound and stepped back further.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!”
I screamed.
The unicorn
cocked its head to one side like it was listening to me. The pain in my brain
diminished.
I swung again
and shouted the same thing.
The unicorn drew
itself up to its full height and then something even more incredible happened.
It raised its tail. But this was no stallion’s tail. It was like a huge peacock
tail, shimmering with shades of black, gray, and silver. The tail fanned out,
probably ten feet wide, and despite the pain in my head, I lowered the
pitchfork, just standing there in awe. What was this being? It seemed to
possess incredible power and at the same time be unimaginably beautiful. In
fact, it was all the more terrifying because it was so beautiful.
Diamond Splinters
The Embodied Trilogy
Book Three
JB Dutton
Genre: YA Urban fantasy / science fiction
Date of Publication: May, 2016
ISBN: 9780991791835
ASIN: B01DFUUIA8
Number of pages: 212
Word Count: 62,257
Cover Artist: Alexandra Nereuta
Book Description:
Prep school senior Kari Marriner has a heart-wrenching choice to make: rescue her mother or prevent aliens destroying the Earth.
Having faced down mythical beasts and trans-dimensional villains, Kari has finally unraveled the mystery of the cult-like Temple of Truth and found the diamond sphere that can free her mother from the evil clutches of the Thoth high priests. But to find out how to use the sphere, Kari must team up with the one person she can never trust: Aranara, the treacherous sister of her missing soulmate Noon.
When a submarine trip to the bottom of the Hudson River ends in death and disaster, Kari is scarred, both emotionally and physically. She wants to run and hide but digs deep and finds new sources of inner strength. As the storm of the century hits New York, a child’s life hangs in the balance and Kari gambles everything in a final confrontation with the genocidal Thoth.
Excerpt:
Aranara pushed
at the hatch. Nothing happened. Whether it was the water pressure or some
safety mechanism I don’t know, but she stopped trying and went back to the
control panel. The sub reversed. I looked through the transparent bottom and
saw Noon’s pyramid coming back into view. As soon as it was directly beneath
us, she climbed onto her chair and aimed the gun at the globe-shaped acrylic
window. With a surge of terror, I realized what she was about to do.
“Nooooo!” I
screamed as she fired. I was kneeling on the floor of the cabin beside
Mangold’s body. I automatically shielded my face. The bullet ricocheted. The
dome had cracked instead of shattering. She shot twice more, not even flinching
from the flying bullets. The crack spread. Water started to spray in. I reached
up to try to stop her, but she held me off with one hand while she fired again
with the other.
The window
bulged inward. Then it burst. Water poured in and I screamed again, clawing at
her uselessly as she pulled away enough acrylic to make an opening big enough
to swim through. The water gushed like a torrent. She got hold of the sides of
the hole she’d made and somehow managed to pulled herself out. The sub listed
to one side and my reality shifted. Everything felt like a dream. I was in a
reversed fishbowl. The air was inside and the water was outside, with Aranara
swimming in it, downward toward Noon’s pyramid on the riverbed. The water was
already up to my knees. There was nothing I could do. This was where I was
going to die.
Wait – maybe one
thing! I had shut Noon out. Maybe he could do something. I closed my eyes and
calmed myself as best I could. “Tell Aranara to help me. I’m going to drown.”
I heard nothing.
The water was up to my waist now. Spray. Smell. Sickening fear. I looked down
but now it was impossible to see where Aranara was underneath the sub because
of the river water rushing into the cabin. Did she already have the pyramid?
Was she blocking Noon’s communication with me somehow? The water reached my
chest. The dreamlike state disappeared. New panic set in. There was only one
chance. Once no more water was flowing into the opening that Aranara had made,
I could try swimming out through it. But we were seventy feet below the
surface. Could I hold my breath long enough? I saw something move at my feet
and looked down. I let out a huge scream as Mangold’s head floated up next to
mine. Oh god, oh god. The water was up to my neck. I stood on the chair. My
head was touching the top of the dome. The water was now level with the
opening. I had to fill my lungs with as much oxygen as I possibly could from
the few inches that were trapped at the top of the cabin. I breathed deeply.
One, two, three deep breaths. The water lapped at my chin. Four. I held my
breath.
I pushed off the
chair toward the opening. It was barely wide enough. But before I could reach
it, the submarine pitched downward. The hatch hit me in the back. The opening
was further away than before, below me now. I swam toward it. The acrylic was
at least an inch thick. I caught hold of the edge of the opening with one hand
and pulled myself forward. As my head went through, the submarine lurched to
one side. A searing pain in my cheek. I held on tight. Now I could use both
hands to pull myself through. Then I was out. My lungs were already starting to
hurt. Daylight was so far away up above. Suddenly an arm circled my waist. It
was Aranara. She didn’t even look at me, just kicked with both legs, pulling me
away from the listing sub. I felt myself getting dizzy as we rose faster than a
normal person would be able to. The pressure was enormous. The air was forced
out of my lungs. I passed out.
About the Author:
After graduating from film school in London, England, JB Dutton emigrated to Montreal in 1987, where he still lives with his two young children and their even younger goldfish. He spent over a decade as a music TV director before moving into the advertising industry as an award-winning copywriter for clients such as Cirque du Soleil. JB Dutton has written novels, short stories, blogs, screenplays and a stage play. He also writes adult fiction under the name John B. Dutton.
Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6949179.J_B_Dutton
Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B009297EM2
Professional Facebook page: http://facebook.com/JohnBDuttonAuthor
Twitter handle: @JohnBDutton
Tumblr: http://JohnBDutton.tumblr.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnbdutton/
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