"BRACE!" Tiberon roared.
CRASH.
The boat slammed into the crater wall with an impact that rattled every bone in Gavriel's body twice. The sound of a magic boat hitting a cliff at full speed is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds and twice as bad when you're inside it.
Serena's engineering was genius. Serena's passengers were suffering. The two were not mutually exclusive and never had been.
They shot upward along the rock face, the bubble grinding against volcanic stone, sparks of gold trailing beneath them as the rope hauled the vessel higher and higher.
The ascent looked beautiful from the outside. From the inside it felt like being shaken inside a jar by a very angry child who had opinions about physics.
