Free Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) by John Daulton Page B

mitigating most of the shock, at least the physical variety.
    And so he was sailing through the darkness. He thought he heard Orli’s voice again, right after they took off, but he was waggling around too much to know where to look.
    Flashes of light went by him as he soared along. They flew over—and under—grate upon grate upon grate. He got the sense that each grate was on the order of several measures long, at least as measured in the direction they flew, separated by spans of dark emptiness. They were traveling down the length of the ship, so he could not tell how wide the grates were. He thought perhaps they might stretch all the way across, as he saw no vertical supports anywhere. But he could not be sure. Orli’s people had things that defied gravity. And these creatures obviously had some ability with mana, if the manaless bubble around the ship—or that was the ship—was any evidence.
    He saw other aliens as he and his captor flew along. Some were working at various tasks, anchored to the grates with tentacles like tent wires reaching up, out, and across at various angles. Others flew past, going back in the direction from which Altin had just come. Those rode upon air currents blowing the opposite way, riding wind on a level below the grates over which Altin and his alien … escort flew. He surely hoped it was an escort and not an executioner.
    He wondered at what oddities the creatures were, and once again thought this might not be as bad as it seemed. He thought that perhaps it was promising that the creatures worked together, suggesting a cooperative nature and, at least between themselves, some degree of civility. He surely had reason to cling to that idea. Though he might just as easily be on his way to the slaughterhouse right now. It did seem, however, that he was hardly big enough to be much of a meal for creatures of this size. There was also some hope in that. Unless he was but a bit of caviar. A single egg of the novafly perhaps. He cringed as they flew on.
    The alien carrying him angled left, toward a bright oval light that glowed with the orange hue of starfish. As they neared the light, he could see it was anchored to the far edge of another grate. The alien flew right over it. It reached up with two tentacles and grabbed onto the grate above them. Another two tentacles grabbed the grate near the light. It pulled itself—and Altin—down toward the light.
    The wind changed, buffeting him all around. It whisked and whirled, but much less violently.
    The alien pulled them into the change of wind pattern, sending out new tentacles to grasp farther down the grate. Another tentacle reached off into the darkness beyond the light, grabbing something unseen above, out of sight and at least a quarter measure away. He wondered what it was.
    The creature pulled them onto another grate, and then spidered along it for a time, across the direction of the wind and right along the edge of the grate. Looking out over the edge, he saw a vast expanse of nothingness off to his left, a wide gap between this grate and the next. When the creature reached up into the darkness again, they were climbing up a wall. It was the hull of the ship, or at least it seemed to be, for it was solid, made of that same green-brown protein as everything else, and it had a gentle curve to it.
    The alien snaked its tentacles up the surface, buoyed some by occasional updrafts that couldn’t have been a third of the strength of the wind that had carried them through the ship. But it was enough to help with the climb in intermittent puffs. In short order, they were at what Altin realized must be a hatch, for there were controls near it, and it housed a very large window that looked up into the storm clouds of Yellow Fire’s roiling sky.
    The creature sent a tentacle toward a giant boxy shape that looked as if it had grown out of the wall. There were holes in it arranged in geometric patterns, several of which had lights nearby. The