by Eddie Patin
Were the will-o-wisps and the giant connected? Did killing one bring the giant?
Correlation doesn't imply causation, Jason thought. If it did, then killing the will-o-wisp might have also caused the troll to attack.
"You're right," Jason said to himself, immediately tasting some sulfur-infused mud flinging through the air into his face. He spit.
He watched the bobbing balls of blue light as they explored the darkness up ahead. Jason felt a growing cold dread spread through his body like a disease as the wind battered him back and forth. Alone like he was, he was very vulnerable to any monster prowling around during the maelstrom.
Just as he was wondering how much longer the storm would last, the violent winds died down very suddenly. The dark clouds and black vapors flew away with an unnatural quickness, darkening the horizon—possibly a different horizon?—before totally vanishing into the distant forest.
Jason was left in the middle of the immense clearing, crouching on one of the giant's dry footprints. The sloped valley was like an immeasurably huge 'lane' running between the two different forests of those towering mushroom trees.
Fresh mud and strands of red algae were strewn across the giant's previously-clean tracks.
Jason went on. He followed the giant's tracks through the bog as they cut diagonally across the endless clearing. The footprints gradually leaned toward the forest on Jason's right side as he went on.
At one point, movement up ahead caught Jason's eye and he ducked low. He'd almost forgotten about the ettins wandering the swamp 'looking for pets for Voro'. The words crossing his mind—plucked from a conversation that Jason had overheard between the first ettins they'd evaded back in the beginning—gave him pause.
What a strange thing for a giant to command his minions to do; to search for pets.
Jason shook his head and looked forward again, watching for the movement again. He expected to see another ettin hunting party, but instead, he eventually made out a small group of big, brown animals—maybe a pack of wolves?—running together across the clearing, crossing the giant's path. From so far away, it was hard for Jason to make out many details, but he figured that the animals were about the size of wolves or big dogs, and they blended into the bog.
When one of the beasts stopped atop a giant footprint, Jason could suddenly make out more of its shape. It was not much like a wolf. The huge hump of its back, short legs, and long, tapered tail made it look more like a giant rat; a rat the size of a large dog. An instant later, the huge rat-thing hopped down from the giant's footprint and continued on with its group, journeying across the clearing toward the other forest with repeating, arcing leaps through the bog.
Jason thought back to a movie he saw when he was a kid, then watched it here and there a few more times throughout his adult life: The Princess Bride.
"R.O.U.S.'s," he said to himself, slowly rising to continue when they were gone. "Rodents of unusual size." Jason almost laughed, but then the ghosts of his friends in his heart made him sad and grim again.
He walked from footprint to footprint. He started thinking of the 'primordial giant / titan' from his OCS fauna readings as Voro. Was that really Voro; the twenty-five-foot-tall blue giant covered in weird elemental fire? Would a real titan dry the swamp under his steps to avoid getting his feet dirty? Probably. The troll had called Voro the 'broken god' who shattered the swamp; the god who had created everything and all of the monsters.
Was Voro the titan creature that had stolen Morgana, Riley, and Gliath?
Jason paused to call for his friends again through his radio.
"Hey, guys, this is Jason! Riley, Morgana, Gliath, do you copy? Does anyone read me? Over." Jason listened for a moment. "Hey, if you can hear me, just press the long black button on the side while you're talking and I'll hear you. Anybody there? Over."
His OCS had listed a creature as part primordial giant, part titan. Was Voro some sort of god? Or at least some really powerful creature that the other giants worshipped? Had he really created the ettins and trolls and whatever else, or did Voro simply convince the dumb brutes that he had?
"How do you fight a damned titan?" Jason asked himself, hooking the radio back onto his pack. "How do you fight something that can create life?"
Another black storm suddenly swept in from the forest on his right side, making Jason hunker down again against a footprint. Its harsh winds flung water and mud across his face hard enough to sting. Jason stayed low as it raged for only a few minutes then dispersed again.
"Freaking weird," he said.
He followed the tracks for a long time until they stopped.
At one point, far east along the clearing from the troll's cave, the footprints stopped.
"Shit."
Jason shielded his eyes from the hazy white sky and searched for more tracks all around him. The huge prints, four feet long and separated by twelve feet of bog between each just stopped. They disappeared. There were no more.
He looked up.
Flight? he thought. He was pretty sure that titans could fly.
Jason scoffed at how much he constantly referred to his DnD knowledge for reference. This was the real world! It was another universe, sure, but it was real; not some made-up roleplaying game!
Still, his extensive expertise in a tabletop game had helped him quite a bit so far...
It had been a while since the last black storm had passed.
Jason searched the skies for darkness. It was hard to see all of his horizons. The clearing was a seemingly infinite lane between two towering forests, but he couldn't see the sky very well—the low horizon, at least—past either side full of trees. Pulling up his OCS, Jason turned to the forest opposite the side they'd come from—deeper into this crazy world—and estimated the distance to the trees.
He rifted and ended up with a destination not far enough and partway into the ground. Then, Jason tried again, placing the other side near the tree line. When the destination appeared in a satisfactory spot, he stepped through, looking back at the distant orange gateway he'd left behind and the giant's trail of footprints that was even visible from up by the forest's edge.
Jason released the rifts then looked around. From up near the trees, he could see the sky over the opposite forest well enough. All was normal as far as he could see over the forest where his focus key had placed them in the first place. The sky was also clear in both directions following the open lane which—checking his OCS—ran to the east and west.
He paused to look behind him for ettins or other enemies.
According to his OCS's compass, which worked in a way that Jason didn't understand since his actual, physical compass didn't seem to work on this world, he was standing in the forest south of the clearing. Their original destination with the focus key was in the north forest. He'd been following the tracks to the east.
Jason turned to the south. Was the sky on the other side of these massive trees black? Jason searched the shadowy, swampy woods for enemies, but all he saw were the colossal mushroom-shaped trees, the weird and bulging cages of root structures at their bases, and all of the mud and red algae he could ever want.
Looking up, Jason eyed the nearest towering tree. Way up there, wide branches emerged from the massive trunk; the base of the mushroom-cap-like canopy. He estimated about how high it was, tried to figure his way onto that immense branch, then tried to rift up there; up to the base of the canopy a hundred feet above the ground.
It took a few tries to achieve a destination portal that wouldn't have dumped him into a long fall to his death, but eventually, Jason opened a roaring rift that led straight to a branch as wide as a car.
As the gateway sputtered and whirled, shooting sparks all over the mud in front of him, Jason stared through the window to the upper branch and sighed.
He really didn't want to go up there.
"Are you nuts?" he asked himself.
You've got to solve the problem, he thought.
" I guess I could m
aybe see more from up there..."
There you go. Big-boy pants time.
Ignoring the fear clawing its way up his stomach and chest, Jason slowly stepped through the sputtering rift. When his leading boot connected with the bark of the high tree bough, Jason first made sure that it wasn't slippery because of some weird environmental reason or something else he hadn't expected. The surface of the hundred-foot-high branch was dry and chunky, just as it should be. Jason finished stepping through then released the rift so that he could think in relative silence.
As the portal collapsed into a single point, vanishing with a pop behind him, Jason was left way up the huge tree at the base of its canopy, standing on a comfortably huge branch wider than any tree branch he'd ever seen in his life.
First, he turned to face the goliath tree trunk. Then, he looked down.
Big mistake.
Seeing the drop off of either side of the branch hit Jason with a wave of dizziness. He yelped and stumbled forward, clutching onto the huge trunk. The tree was so huge, Jason felt like he was the size of a squirrel. Still, he could easily fall over one side or the other if he screwed up.
When the swell of panic passed, Jason opened his eyes again, holding the tree trunk that was like a wall of thick bark, and looked up into the canopy. The leaves of the tree were as big as his hand and strangely disc-like, fluttering all around him, colored a dull red.
Jason didn't recall seeing any dead leaves down on the swamp floor below; none at all, in fact. Did these weird, mammoth trees never lose their leaves?
Peering through the foliage, Jason found that he could see the horizon that he couldn't see before from below.
The sky was black.
Shit.
Checking the compass of his OCS, the inky-dark horizon was to the south. Jason frowned. Wasn't the black sky to the east before? He hadn't been tracking the direction of it since he came back to this world, but he thought he remembered that the storm came from the east...
"This place is so weird," he muttered, tempted to look down again but stopping himself.
Jason pulled the walkie-talkie from his pack and radioed for his friends once more.
"Morgana," he said, holding the button. "Riley. Gliath. This is Jason. Does anyone read me? Over."
There was no answer. No noise or chatter at all. Jason very much doubted that the ettins had radios of their own. He tried a few more times, drinking water from his pack to calm himself, then put the radio away again.
As Jason looked deeper into the forest to the south from his high perch—toward the storm—he searched the ground as well as he could while trying to avoid looking directly down. The woods were thick with the huge trees, but there was also a fair amount of space between them. While he searched, Jason paused to scrutinize what might have been another clearing a short distance to into the woods.
He saw smoke.
Straining to see more, Jason peered and squinted and frowned, trying to spy through the maze of tree trunk columns that blocked his sight. If he could see farther, he might be able to make out more...
"Note to self," he said. "Bring binoculars on the next one."
Then, Jason gasped, grinned, and pulled up his OCS. He didn't need binoculars! He could look anywhere with his Omniversal Cosmic Scanner; anywhere that he could correctly estimate the coordinates for, anyway.
On his second attempt trying to place his destination rift twenty feet lower than himself and a hundred yards in the direction of the smoke, Jason was finally able to make out some sort of village deeper in the trees.
It was a very crude, primal sort of village, crafted from rough planks and chopped wood, held together with coarse, hand-woven ropes. There were several huts—more like yurts—on raised platforms, and several huge fire pits. Through his rift, Jason could see something in the middle of the village that resembled something like a ... a stage? Maybe a sacrificial altar of some kind? It was stacked with various gear and junk that definitely didn't belong in this world: metal crates, perhaps weapons, metal structures that might have been partially broken down but didn't really look like anything to Jason.
"What the hell...?" he muttered under the roar of the rift before him. The gateway—loud on the origin side but invisible and silent on the destination side without its surface being broken—spun madly and cast bright orange sparks all over. The sparks mostly went over the sides of the huge branch and down to the swamp floor far below.
Well, it was a start. Maybe he could find some clues there to lead him to the giant.
Who would have a village like that? he thought.
"Probably ettins."
He didn't see any of the brutes down there now, but he hadn't seen any other semi-intelligent life so far other than the ettins, the trolls, and Voro. Obviously, he wouldn't be able to just stroll right up to an ettin village and ask for directions. But maybe, if he was careful, he could look around and get some ideas. Perhaps if he made a large enough show of strength with his lava key, the ettins might be cowed by his power enough to speak with him reasonably. Then, Jason could find the titan and his friends!
It was worth a shot.
Releasing the rift, Jason opened another to bring him back down to the boggy forest floor.
As he stepped through, his boot landing on the spongy ground again, Jason felt relieved. High up in the trees was definitely a dangerous place to be. What if another storm had passed through while he was up there?
"Focus," Jason said to himself. He released the rift.
Time was passing. He had to find his friends.
Checking the compass on his OCS to make sure that he was still going in the right direction, Jason unslung his rifle and set off.
Then, two steps away from where he'd rifted back down to the swamp, Jason was suddenly yanked to the left by a heavy, wet thing that came out of nowhere and wrapped around his right arm and his side.
"Whoa—shit!" he cried as something powerful and unseen dragged him across the mud! He smacked into the ground, being quickly pulled to one side.
Jason was instantly disoriented, spinning this way and that being dragged by what felt like a thick, meaty cable. Adrenaline dumped into his blood. His heartbeat started racing, pounding in his ears.
A second or two later, Jason stopped, suddenly squeezed from all sides and pulled into hot darkness. He struggled but found that his body was tightly wrapped up by something tough and leathery, but dark and wet. Fluid passed over his face. He felt wetness breach his collar under his armor and soak his t-shirt and chest. All he could see was a faint pink light, almost as if the light from outside was penetrating some sort of skin or membrane...
Jason opened his mouth to scream, but found a nasty, hot fluid that tasted like fermented orange juice pushing against his lips and teeth. He fought but found his arms pinned against his sides. His legs felt like they were tied together. He felt the warm fluid invade the opening between the bottom of his armor at his ankles and the tops of his hiking boots.
He was inside a creature!
Jason was in something's huge mouth—or in its throat or stomach—and it was trying to eat him! He couldn't move! He couldn't move, and he couldn't breathe!
Chapter 20
Jason was stuck. He was hot and wet and smothered with terror.
He couldn't breathe.
As he fought back against the organic walls that held him with his elbows and his legs, Jason felt like he was underwater. He kicked out against the weird, constricting prison, struggling to keep the stewing, foul fluid out of his mouth and nose. The walls felt like warm, curved sheets of Plexiglas that bucked and rolled with each weak blow, but held firm.
The interior of whatever monster was trying to eat him was dark, but Jason could dimly see the light of day glowing through his dim surroundings as a dark-pink haze that reminded him of movies portraying the inside of a mother's womb. Shadows of long veins twitched with each of Jason's desperate strikes and the idea of being inside something scared the shit out of hi
m.
When Jason tried to scream, he felt a thick film press against his mouth. Oozing, hot fluid that tasted like turned orange juice tried to invade his mouth.
He found himself suddenly terrified that the fluid—all around him and seeping into his armor and clothing—was some kind of acid; some sort of stomach bile that would burn out his eyes and start eating away his skin at any moment...
Jason struggled to reach his rifle. He'd lost his grip on it when he'd been swallowed, but it was attached to him by its sling and was now a hard, long thing twisting around in front of him. Trying to hold his breath—adrenaline flying through him and threatening to push him over the edge into a full, animalistic panic—Jason reached down for the weapon. He found the receiver and sharp edges of the rear sight. Being careful not to accidentally yank the trigger, he felt along the AK-47 in the dark, wet, tight space until he found its grip with his right hand and the handguard with his left. It was aiming down—compared to his body, at least—so Jason strained to pull his legs back and fold them out of the way as far as he could to avoid blowing off his knees or feet. He flipped the safety off and fired.
The weapon going off in front of him within the gullet of whatever the hell had swallowed him was a shock. It was deafening loud, sure, but it also exploded with concussive force and heat. Jason was once again thankful for his cybernetic eardrums.
When nothing changed after one shot, Jason opened up, firing again and again, bucking and rolling with the force of the weapon, buffeted around in the soft, almost body-tight organic prison. He shot until he couldn't shoot anymore. When the trigger stopped working, Jason figured that he was either out of ammo or the weapon had jammed in the gross, orange juice stuff, but nothing had changed.
Damn!
Dropping the AK back into the tight, wet void in front of his body, Jason blindly scrambled for his OCS. When he found it with his left hand, he realized that he wouldn't be able to bring it up in front of him far enough to see.
