Legends of Amacia The Awakening
Chapter 40 The Electromagnetic Storm, part 2

At the same time Hanna and Aeolus watched the electromagnetic storm raging over the sea of Calui, the strange cloud formation on the surface over Mt. Aconcagua was growing larger, more ominous, and dangerous by the minute. The strange magnetic/electrical phenomenon of the cloud grew darker, seemingly drawing in all light around it. The phenomenon grew in area as well as volume, spreading out over a three hundred mile radius around the mountain and its top reaching well into the stratosphere. It swirled around like a surreal hurricane, remaining stationary over the peak of Aconcagua, defying all known weather patterns. The smoke and heat from the fires set by previous meteor storm impacts gave it a hellish red glow as blue, orange, and purple lightning crackled through the cloud.

Dan monitored it from Tiamat with the portal hologram along with Jerry and Chris at the same time Hanna and Aeolus witnessed the storm in Amacia. They observed the dangerous phenomenon with mixed feelings of hope and dread. As they watched, Dan zoomed in on Santiago, Chile out of curiosity. The city lay in ruins and deserted because of the combination of the phenomenon that slew tens of thousands at random all around the mountain and the catastrophic meteor storm that had burned everything within seventy miles of the mountain. Two-thirds of the city was burned to ashes and the rest was severely damaged without a living thing anywhere in the city.

“What a tragedy,” Chris commented sadly. “Those poor people didn’t have a chance.”

“I know,” Dan replied. “It caught everyone off guard. So many killed by this unexplained phenomena.” As he spoke, a spur cloud began dropping below the main cloud, swirling and glowing incandescent yellow over the ruins of Santiago.

“What is that?” Jerry exclaimed as they watched the glowing spur cloud over the city start spinning much faster than the main cloud above it. A dozen glowing funnel clouds dropped out of the base of the spur cloud reaching for the ground.

“I don’t know,” Dan replied, awed by the display. As the glowing funnel clouds reached the ground, the incandescent spur cloud, which covered seventy square miles suddenly cut loose with thousands of simultaneous lightning strikes, hammering the ruins of Santiago. At the same time, the glowing funnel clouds touched down in the city, becoming fiery tornadoes obliterating everything they touched along with the continuous lightning strikes. Within two minutes, the dozen smaller tornadoes merged into three giant tornadoes that snaked through the city, leaving paths of destruction three miles wide each as they started at the edge of the city and headed into its heart at over fifty miles an hour. Some of the lightning actually arced from the tornadoes as they acted as giant fiery vacuum cleaners, sweeping away everything in their paths.

Dan, Jerry, and Chris watched this orgy of destruction in horror, witnessing the powers of the planet unleashed in ways they could not comprehend. Anyone within seventy miles of the affected area would have felt the ground tremble from its fury. Fortunately, those who survived the initial disaster when the cloud first appeared with the meteor storm fled at least four hundred miles in all directions to escape it. The trio of observers at Tiamat watched through the portal hologram as the planet itself literally rose up against the works of men in that area, obliterating it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, they saw incoming from orbit: a chunk of iron two thousand feet across coming in.

“Holy Christ!” Jerry exclaimed as the iron asteroid slammed in the center of the city. In a millisecond, everything within a hundred miles was vaporized by the impact as it gouged a sixty-mile wide crater. It sent millions of tons of debris into the sky and, instead of blowing the strange hurricane away, the cloud literally sucked it up the debris and energy from the impact like a vacuum cleaner. It set the cloud on fire, expanding it violently into the ionosphere. At the moment of impact, the Temple of Tiamat trembled slightly.

“My god!” Chris breathed. “Did you feel that? It was the asteroid! It had to be.”

Dan nodded as the hologram suddenly began to sizzle with static for a second before clearing up. Unknown them, in the hell at ground zero, the impact triggered a massive earthquake. The ground quivered and rent with the force of the impact. It triggered massive landslides on Aconcagua and nearby peaks, as well as giant landslides offshore in the Peru-Chile Trench, spawning killer mega-tsunamis.

Paul rushed into the portal chamber right after the Temple trembled. He ran up and saw the glowing cloud swirling over Mt. Aconcagua, merging with a plume of destruction from the asteroid impact. Dan, Jerry, and Chris were like deer in the headlights. He saw the calamity in the hologram and bowed his head, uttering a short prayer for the remnant. As they watched the plume of fire slowly disperse into the swirling cloud, they suddenly saw something ominous heading toward the coast. “Lord, be merciful!” Paul breathed as Dan shifted the view to the ocean to see what was coming: a wall of water three hundred feet in height moving at almost six hundred miles an hour. As it approached the coast, it grew to almost a thousand feet and swept away everything in its path. It inundated the impact sight and washed up to the foot of Aconcagua before receding. It extinguished the fires and the land where Santiago once stood became a giant lake sixty miles across and over five hundred feet deep. They stared at the destruction and marveled that even with the hit; the glowing cloud continued to strike the area with thousands of lightning strikes along with the fiery tornadoes that was now swirling around in the lake, becoming steaming waterspouts.

Paul shook himself and said, “The wrath of the Lord is just beginning to be poured out. This is but a taste of what’s coming. I just came here to tell you that our seismographs went off.”

Dan looked at him and asked, “Really? What did it read?”

Paul looked Dan dead in the eye, saying, “I’m not the expert in it. But Raymond said that it was centered in Santiago, Chile and that it was off the scale, close to twelve on the scale.” Dan, Jerry, and Chris gawked at the number.

“Twelve?” Dan asked with total astonishment. Paul nodded and Dan added, “There hasn’t been a twelve since the Richter Scale was set in place! This is phenomenal! If that doesn’t get the attention of the world, nothing will.”

Paul shook his head, saying, “They’re in gross darkness. They will not see. Only the remnant will see.”

“Dan; if that mega-tsunami hit Chile, where else will it go,” Chris asked.

Dan immediately snapped out of his shock and zoomed the hologram back to the Pacific Rim could be seen. “Technically, this wave could affect the whole world but the people on the shores of the Pacific are in the line of fire,” Dan stated grimly. He suddenly turned to Paul and said, “You should get on the air right now and warn the world of this wave. Tell the remnant that if they are near the coast to flee immediately if they wish to live. This wave is a killer and will smash everything before it to bits.” Paul nodded with a grunt and took off running to the uplink without a word.

“Do you suppose Hannibal and the team are still alive after this hit?” Jerry asked in a very worried tone.

Dan looked at him, saying confidently, “They’re all right. Even though there’s been no official word for months, I know they’re alive. Gabriel said so. But I can’t prove it to you so you’ll just have to trust me. Our friends are okay. But until they make contact, we must believe that the Lord has preserved them, wherever they are.”

“I’ll definitely say a prayer for them,” Jerry replied, hesitating before heading away. “Do you want anything from the cafeteria?”

Dan shook his head, saying, “No. After what we just saw, I don’t have much of an appetite.”

Jerry patted him on the shoulder, saying, “I’ll bring you something to drink.” Dan nodded as he stared at the devastation in the hologram. While he watched, a coronal burst blinded the hologram for a second. When it came back up, the glowing spur cloud with its fiery tornadoes and lightning barrage vanished into main cloud. It all ceased as quickly as it started and total darkness fell over the whole area underneath the main cloud. It swirled and churned like a monster hurricane with almost black clouds with a touch of red from the fiery debris the meteor impact had thrown into the air.

Chris stood there for a moment as Jerry walked away asking, “Do you have any idea what this thing is?”

Dan shook his head, saying, “It’s some kind of strange electromagnetic storm unlike anything ever seen before. I can’t even begin to understand the mechanics behind it, but I’m sure Planet X and Gabriel’s Hammer are responsible for this incredible storm.”

“Hmmm,” Chris murmured, rubbing his chin. “It’s very possible. We know nothing about close planetary interactions. Do you think we’ve seen the worst of it?”

“Not a chance,” Dan stated grimly. “My gut’s telling me that this storm is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”

Chris patted him on the back, saying, “I really hope you’re wrong.”

Dan looked at him as he shut the hologram down, putting the earpiece back in the console saying, “So do I Chris; so do I.”

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