Rise of the Giants: The Guild of Deacons, Book 1

by James MacGhil

  Without any further words I turned and faded from the tent.

  Like a vinyl record skipping several tracks and picking up midstream in a different song, I found myself on the edge of a woodline facing a mighty river. It was dawn. I knelt with my head bowed and left hand placed firmly on my knee. My longsword was drawn with the mighty hilt clutched in my right hand and the blade thrust forcefully in the ground, supporting my weight. I was praying.

  Although I did not understand the words as I muttered them under my breath — I got the gist. It was a soldier’s prayer and I was asking for strength. Rising to my feet and pulling the hood of the dark cloak over my head, I sheathed the sword and walked determinedly toward the riverbank. Toward the bridge.

  I stood alone in the center of the great stone bridge. A thick layer of morning fog clung tightly to the calm waters of the river below and extended onto to the far bank like a hovering blanket. The sound of soldiers gathering in battle formations was evident to my front. In the distance, I gazed outward to see countless legions of soldiers, horses, and weapons of war carefully placed in defense around the gates to the city. Stopping to peer over my shoulder behind me, I saw the invading army assembling in an offensive formation on the edge of the horizon. The battle was imminent.

  Reaching the end of the bridge, I drew the sword with my right hand and resumed the kneeling position. Bowing my head, I muttered something in a whispered voice. Slowly raising my head, my sight projected clear across the great distance separating me from the defending army. It was like looking through a powerful zoom lens rapidly honing in on its target. As it slammed to a halt in the middle of the vast formation of soldiers, a chilling armored figure mounted on a pale horse came into perfect focus.

  As if he instantly knew he was being spied upon, his crimson eyes flashed with fury as he returned my gaze, looking directly at me despite the great distance. Although no words were spoken, I heard them clearly in my mind.

  “Dare you cast Sight upon me?”

  “The Lake of Fire thirsts for you and your bastard sons, Azazel. As He commands it, so it will be. The Balance must be restored. Your treachery has run its course.”

  “You!” he snarled. “Returned from the Realms after so many centuries? Father’s great champion. He sends a son of man to face a Son of the Heavens. Contemptible. You exited this world as a feeble sheep. Your martyrdom was for not. Mankind is mine to do with as I wish. Have you not heard, Deacon? Crawl back to your Father. He has no power here. Nor do you.”

  As the vision blurred, the armored figure bellowed an inaudible command to his waiting soldiers and the morning turned to darkness as the sky filled with arrows.

  With a single word, hundreds, if not thousands of razor tipped bolts smoothly launched from the bows of the waiting archers and blocked out all light cast from the morning sun. Without moving from my position on the bridge, I remained kneeling and looked upward to see them reach the peak of their menacing arc and begin the fatal downward plunge. Closing my eyes I felt an intense, serene focus wash over me as my concept of time changed and everything seemed to dramatically slow to a crawl. Although I knew that the immeasurable barrage of arrows was mere seconds away from impaling me, I felt no dread.

  Instead, I felt powerful. Intoxicatingly powerful.

  Difficult to describe, but it felt like I was drawing upon some form of energy with every breath I slowly pulled into my lungs. The source was uncertain but the sensation was unmistakable as it propagated throughout my body. I felt —indestructible.

  As I stood upright and opened my eyes, an assertive grin stretched widely across my face. With my right hand still clutching the sword hilt, I confidently raised my left hand above my head and curled it into a tight fist. Boldly held in the air, it crackled with energy and pulsed with a subtle white glow. Within seconds, an ethereal gauntlet like glove manifested around my fisted hand and slowly crept along my forearm, stopping just under my elbow. In a spectral flash, it took full physical form and perfectly encased my hand in a weightless, silver-grey metal-like material. Instantly, a brilliant radiance of white flamed fire surrounded the seamless gauntlet and traveled the length of my left arm as it began to visibly shake from the raw power coursing through it.

  Feeling the power reach its climax, I forcefully extended my fingers toward the sky and released a staggering shockwave of light, heat, and unadulterated power into the charged air. As the wave of throbbing energy exploded from my palm and collided with the onslaught of arrows, I watched in extreme slow motion as they instantly burst into wave upon wave of splintered wood and tiny shards of metal.

  For a split second, time slammed to a complete halt. A seemingly endless cloud of debris hovered in the sky as far as the eye could see. Frozen in time, perfectly still. Casting my gaze across the battlefield, I locked gazes with the armored figure atop the pale horse and defiantly pulled my metal-clad hand into a tight fist as time resumed with a deafening boom that ripped through the air like a clap of thunder. The shattered remnants of countless arrows blew violently upward into the morning sky and incinerated into nothingness as if they were never there.

  “Our Father has bestowed great power upon me, Azazel.”

  “You know nothing of great power,” he replied with a look of disbelief mixed with utter disdain. “My sons will quickly remind you of your limitations.”

  As his face curled into a wide grin bearing his perfectly white teeth, the ground began to quake. Through a swirling cloud of dust I saw the dark silhouettes of impossibly large figures emerge from the gates of the city. Completely dwarfing the legions of soldiers they passed through, with their raw size and bulk, they had the shape and proportion of men but easily five times larger. Giants — heavily armored and wielding oversized swords, battle-axes and spears.

  “The bastard sons,” I muttered under my breath. “You will receive no mercy.”

  Pulling the tip of my sword from the ground, I raised it in an offensive posture, wrapping both hands firmly around the hilt. In a spectral flash, a matching argent gauntlet formed around my right hand and glistened with the fervent white fire. The flame instantly erupted from my hands and encased the mighty sword in a pulsating glow. The air rippled with waves of searing heat and a brilliant glimmer of pure white light.

  As echelons of giant soldiers poured from the city and readied for the coming fight, I confidently strode toward them with a dark grin on my face.

  Like I knew something they didn’t.

  With the blur of a fast forward sensation, I found myself in the middle of the battlefield standing opposite a hulking, manlike creature wearing various components of barbaric bronze armor. The remaining horde of giant soldiers was gathered roughly a mile in the distance, anxiously stirring like a pack of rabid animals on the verge of frenzy. Despite the great distance, I could clearly see the heaving of their massive chests and striations on their impossibly large muscular frames.

  With a badly tarnished and oversized breastplate crudely strapped to his towering shoulders, a brooding twenty-foot behemoth, with eyes like pools of oil, stood directly to my front. Clutching twin battle-axes in its powerful hands, it snarled at me through double rows of deep yellow, animal like teeth. Wave after wave of rancid breath poured from its mouth. In a condescending tone, it spoke with a guttural voice that dripped of arrogance and contempt.

  “Human slave,” it growled. “Endless will be your suffering. The days of man are fleeting. As it was before — so shall it be again.“

  With inconceivable speed and agility, it then launched at me while raising both weapons high above its head. Closing the distance between us in the blink of an eye, it savagely lowered the axes in a decapitating deathblow.

  As my mouth curled into a dark grin, a stiff jolt of power coursed through my body as I impossibly leapt upward and gracefully dodged both blades. In what felt like extreme slow motion, I then casually hovered above the massive creature and firmly wrapped both metal encased hands around the mighty hilt of the longs
word. In a single fluid motion, I then rolled to the left and mercilessly swept the glowing blade downward across my chest. With uncanny precision, it violently lashed into the back of the giant’s broad neck and surgically cleaved the massive head from its shoulders — leaving nothing but a fine mist of dark blood hanging, ominously, in the air.

  The enormous severed head plummeted to the ground with a heavy thud as I nimbly landed in a crouched position. With the sword grasped in my left hand and boldly held out to my side, I slowly raised my head and glared disdainfully upon the watching legion of giants.

  Daring them to advance.

  Maddening howls bellowed from their gaping mouths as the headless carcass of their slain champion collapsed like a felled tree. In an uncontrolled fury, they bound toward me with inconceivable speed, brandishing all manner of weapons in their enormous hands.

  The earth trembled beneath my feet.

  As the vision started to distort, I thrust my longsword to the sky and muttered words in a strange language. Upon completion of my speaking, the white flames that encircled my sword instantly tripled in intensity and danced with impassioned purpose. In a blur of movement I reversed the sword and thrust it with all my power into the ground before me. As it penetrated the surface, a boundless wall of infernal white fire erupted from the earth like a raging volcano. It stretched from left to right as far as the eye could see and subsequently raced forward with unbridled speed toward the charging mob. Reaching the front of the formation, the fire mercilessly ripped through the endless throng of giant men until they were nothing more than blazing silhouettes against the morning sky. Their screams formed an inhuman sound of unthinkable pain which rung continuously through my ears as they methodically fell to the ground and were swallowed by the earth.

  My final vision was that of the crimson gaze of the dark figure as he rode from the battlefield at great speed atop the pale horse. His eyes were laden with a combination of astonishment and absolute horror as he faded into the fleeting distance and melted from sight.

  “Dean, It is time to open your eyes. And See …”

  Upon hearing my name I instantly woke up. As my eyes focused, I realized that I was lying in my shitty, olive drab cot.

  I was me again.

  “Lottery,” I grumbled sweating and gasping for breath. “Why can’t I dream about winning the fucking lottery? Big frigg’n yacht. Scantily clad women. Fruity drinks with little umbrellas. Why can’t I dream about that shit?”

  Chapter 2

  Shaking my head in disbelief after experiencing the one hundred and seventy-seventh iteration of the same dream since arriving in Bosnia, I wiped the sweat from my forehead thankful that I’d woken up. Sitting up in the cot, I reached over to the empty ammo crate used as an improvised bedside table and grabbed my notebook and a pen. A few months ago I started keeping a journal documenting my outlandish dream experiences. Figured it was a good idea for a couple reasons.

  One, I’d need it for the intense psychiatric treatment I’d require when we got stateside and my mind finally snapped, which I was fully expecting to happen at some point soon.

  Two, although the dream was generally the same every night, there seemed to be small details sporadically revealed every few iterations. Things like names. Words. Symbols. In some versions they were either audibly muted or visibly blurry, but in others they were clear as day. While I had no clue as to the significance of the revelations, I found myself extremely curious.

  Like I said, I had some serious therapy waiting for me down the road. There was no doubt.

  Last night was interesting. I picked up on a few things I hadn’t noticed before. A couple names came through loud and clear. There was also a strange symbol shown to me in two separate instances. I It looked like an off set ‘X’ with a ‘P’ running through the middle of it. As I made the notes and wondered what it all meant I heard voices and the sound of people stirring outside my tent.

  Glancing at my watch, I noted that it was almost o’five hundred. Damn. I overslept. First Sergeant Tony Coates, my second in command, usually kicked my ass out of the rack by now. He must have been feeling sorry for me this morning. Said I’d been going out on too many missions lately. Was going to burn out. Bullshit. We had three more days in this shit hole. I was doing just fine.

  I command a team of specialists from an undisclosed unit of the US military. A veritable ‘strike force’ highly proficient in Noncombatant Extraction Operations — NEOs. Rangers, shooters, door kickers, demo experts, snipers — that’s us. Loners and expendables. You wouldn’t hear about us on the evening news. In fact, you wouldn’t hear about us at all. We were formed in the past few years as a grand experiment to handle situations that never made it to the watching eye of society. The dirty missions that required soldiers with the darkest of skills.

  We were the best of the best or the worst of the worst depending on which end of our weapons you sat. The Army wasn’t concerned about what to do with us at the end of the experiment because they figured we’d all be dead. Seemed logical enough. I’d tell you the name of our unit but we didn’t really have one. Seemed all the good ones were taken. Typical.

  As far as the world was concerned we were part of a training battalion stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Northwest Florida. Instructors at the infamous swamp phase of the legendary U.S. Army Ranger School.

  At this very moment we should have been enjoying a day off at a beach somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico with a case of Corona and Jimmy Buffet’s greatest hits. But unfortunately, we weren’t.

  We were holed up in a secured compound tucked into the remote, mudladen countryside on the outskirts of the thriving Bosnian metropolis of Brcko. Not exactly a hopping vacation spot if you get my drift. So, how did we score such a primo assignment?

  For the past five years it’s been home to a multinational military task force conducting ‘peace keeping’ and ‘stabilization’ operations on the tail end of the Bosnian war. Roughly eight months ago, a dramatic, unexplained spike in civilian abductions along the Bosnian/Serbian border caught notice of the military and we got the call.

  We were referred to as the Quick Reaction Force — QRF for short. Not having much contact with the larger task force, we were a bit of a mystery. Although they didn’t know us, they knew why we were there. Innocents got snatched by bad guys — we got them back. It’s what we did. I’d be lying if I told you we weren’t good at it. There were none better.

  “Morning, First Sergeant,” came the chipper voice of Sergeant Willis from a few steps outside my tent. “Have you seen Captain Robinson? I have a message from Task Force for him.”

  Willis was a supply sergeant from the Task Force main compound in Brcko and one of the few people authorized to know our location and actually interact with us in person. He made an incognito supply run to us every two weeks. Food, water, and bullets. He occasionally showed up with a few cases of beer when he could get his hands on it. God bless him.

  Despite the fact he was incredibly young, a bit green, and not a true soldier by our definition, we’d grown to like him over the past few months. Well, most of us anyway.

  “What the hell’s so good about this particular morning, Willis?” Abruptly answered First Sergeant Coates in his gruff morning voice. I smiled, envisioning the death grip he most likely had on his Green Bay Packers coffee mug and intense scowl plastered across his face. “And why are you here so goddamned early? Wasn’t expecting you until tonight. Lucky we didn’t shoot your happy ass on mere principle.”

  Tony was a career soldier. A genuine American hero and one hell of a good friend despite the fact I was the commanding officer and he the first sergeant. We’d been together for more than five years now and seen more shit than either one of us cared to talk about without large doses of alcohol involved. I’d put my life in his hands on more than a couple occasions. Granted, it was usually by his doing my life was in jeopardy in the first place, but what are friends for.

  It kept things interestin
g.

  “Apologies First Sergeant,” Willis replied. “Got a bunch of supply runs today and had to get an early start. But I did bring some of that Italian coffee you like. Fresh brewed about an hour and a half ago. Made it right before I left.”

  “Well shit, Willis. Why the hell didn’t you say so,” Tony replied completely changing his demeanor. “Might be a good morning after all. Don’t be shy with that stuff now, Sergeant.”

  Chuckling to myself, I envisioned Tony dumping out the shitty Army coffee in his mug and holding it up for Willis to pour him some of the good stuff from his thermos.

  “Goddamn — that’s good,” Tony muttered as he happily slurped on the Italian goodness. “I take back all the bad shit I’ve been saying about you.”

  “I live to serve, First Sergeant,” Willis snidely replied with what I imagined was a shit-eating grin.

  “So what’s this important message for the Captain you were spouting off about?” Tony asked. “He was on patrol last night. Not out of the rack yet and he’s off limits for the next couple hours.”

  “Understood,” Willis awkwardly replied as he realized he wouldn’t be able to speak directly to me. “I — ah — wanted to let him know that Father Watson and Doc Kelly are in the vicinity and may stop in for supplies.”

  “That’s it?” Tony scoffed. “That’s the important message that you drove out here at the ass crack of dawn to deliver? What the fuck?”

  “Actually — No, First Sergeant, I — ah — was hoping to talk to Captain Robinson about —”

  “For Christ’s sake Willis, Spit it out!”

  “Well, it’s just, I wanted to ask him if he’d be up for some sparring.”

  “Sparring?” Tony asked. “You want to box Captain Robinson?”