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I haven’t posted one of these in a while so I thought I’d put one more out here, just to see what you all thought of the pacing of this one.

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Moniker: @obrian-of-the-surface-world

Book Title: Excavatia: From Dust Arise (Book 1 of the Excavatia Series)
Audio Link: Chapter 11 – The Storm Front – Scene 6 (Run to Sea)
Duration: 5 minutes 12 seconds

Text: Words: (794)

Gusts of wind pummeled Christie as she held tightly to the horse running beneath her at full gallop.  She was blind, the land seemed alive beneath her, jumping into relief and falling into shadow with each strike of the lateral lightning crisscrossing the angry sky above her.
She ducked low beneath the bobbing head of the mare that ran across the trembling landscape, squinting as hard drops of rain pelted her body like viciously cast marbles thrown by a petulant brat angry at his recent loss of the game.

She could see no sign of Laura, and she was running blind, losing the hope of ever finding her again.

A loud crack ripped open the heavens and seemed to dump a veritable waterfall down upon her, through a gaping fissure beneath its vast reservoir.

Her horse screamed in protest, its pace quickened by its terror.  Begglar had said these horses knew their way to the sea, but she did not figure that applied in such a terrible thunderstorm which was gaining in strength by the minute.

Under the rumble of a thousand sky drums, Christie thought she heard the answering shriek of another horse far ahead.  A prick of hope that she might miraculously locate Laura within the storm.

How long had they been out in this?  Thirty minutes, an hour, maybe two.  Time seemed to run counter to the speed of her horse.  The stinging wind and wet and erratic dance of electric light and dangerous darkness piled misery upon misery.  Her skin burned with the cold, her clothing scratched with threaded claws against her body, gripping her with wet slick fingers.

A burst of white light, strobed out of a column of opalescent fire, burning her vision with a negative image of a lone horse running along the crest of a cliffside.  As her horse approached, Christie could hear the sounds of thousands applauding, like a roaring crowd at a massive stadium, in ecstatic celebration of some field of play.  Or a coliseum of blood-thirsty spectators, witnessing brutal gladiatorial conflict in an arena below.

Christie’s horse turned, as it reached the cliffside, running laterally in the direction that the other horse had gone.  The sea below the cliff was a frothy churn of milk, striking the collection of stone reefs, sending spouts of spray high into the air.  The beach was bearded with phosphorescent seafoam, iridescent and deluged, the shoreline pushed relentlessly against the cliff’s edge, swallowing the strip of sand under rolling surf.

Christie grappled for a better grip on the horse’s reins and pulled hard to the left, turning the terrified horse back from following the route Laura’s maverick mount had taken.

Somewhere Laura had fallen.  She could be hurt or even worse.  Her body could have fallen from the cliffs into the swirling waters of the sea below.

Christie struggled to see through the salted sting of the sea air, buffeting her against the bluffs as they curled upward along the battered brow.

The horse was exhausted and finally slowing, but it trembled and protested, bobbing its head in fright, struggling against the bit that halted its forward progress.

Christie quickly scanned the churning waters below and then the area ahead where the land sloped upward from the seaside.  Another strobe of light tore across the sky causing the scene to jump in projection.  Something glowed from the far side of the bend in the curving shore.

Christie goosed her mount forward, loosening the drawn reins, allowing her horse to gallop up the rise towards the turned inlet.  As the terrain rose higher, the winds became more ferocious, attempting to hide from her the source of the glowing light ahead.

As the animal thrust upward upon the upper cliff, Christie gasped, ingesting salty spray that burned her mouth and throat.

Effused in a bluish corona of light, the large rim of the Oculus spun against the spray of the storm, casting a pool of light ahead of its path inward toward the land.  Wet sand dunes glowed like strange lady-finger cookies toward the large ring of light, almost as if they were the hands of a bride extending its fingers outward to accept the glimmering wedding band offered by the powerful hand of her beloved groom.

The seafoam churned around the sandy dune that would soon become an atoll, and then descend within the chiffon lace of the sea’s billowing bridal gown.

A small figure moved back and forth under the glow of the approaching light, stumbling and then rising along the crest-effused dune.
Laura.
It could only be her.

When the Oculus ring closed over the finger of the dune, the sea around it mysteriously calmed.
When the oculus withdrew back into the sea, the lone figure was gone.