by Eddie Patin
He didn't want to be spotted or detected somehow by the giant, who no doubt had very keen senses.
The blue, glowing form of Voro was up ahead a few hundred yards distant, striding away. His luminescent turquoise skin was a beacon in the storm and its swirling black vapors. Jason could easily see the rainbow fire of his strange hair—so much like Zayden Skinner's—and the odd blobs of energy constantly rushing around on the surface of his skin.
Voro didn't appear to carry any weapons. He was dressed in nothing more than his odd, Greek-like skirt and sandals. Jason saw electricity crackling through the sky around the titan, branching out into the boggy ground surrounding him with each crashing step.
He was a goddamned force of nature.
When the giant didn't take notice of him, Jason followed, staying far behind. He ran with adrenaline coursing through his veins and a buzzing blot of fear growing in his chest and stomach.
In the dark, swirling gusts of the storm, Jason felt like he had tunnel vision. All was black except for the beautiful, blue godlike being walking away from him up ahead. Even the bodies of Jason's friends—mostly visible as dull shadowy forms in Voro's arms—were bathed by the giant's blue energy and the colors of his roving, elemental fire.
Far ahead—as if acting as scouts for the titan's path—were several of the bobbing blue will-o-wisps. They drifted from side to side as they led the way for Voro through the darkness.
Jason felt fear.
He imagined that at any point in time, the primordial giant might turn around as if he'd known that Jason was there the entire time. He'd just snuff his lights out, just like he'd done with Morgana, Riley, and Gliath. Jason felt—watching the glowing twenty-five-foot-tall god walking the bog—that he'd be powerless against the marvelous creature's might.
After standing still for a moment, suppressed by the growing dread that swelled in his mind, Jason frowned and shook his head. He touched his lava key, which made him feel a lot better.
Got to save the others, he thought. This is the way...
"Get moving," he muttered to himself, squinting against the storm that seemed to be flowing along with them to the east.
He hurried on.
Jason ran along after the giant, from dry footprint to dry footprint, hoping to whatever powers might listen that he wouldn't be waylaid by ettins or some other horrific swamp creatures that he hadn't yet seen along the way.
His AK-47 felt very small in his hands, as heavy as it was.
Jason fidgeted with the molten metal focus key on his left wrist again, thinking that if he did have to fight Voro—if he could somehow survive long enough to get close to him—then he'd burn the bastard to smithereens. God or no, the titan was a physical being, at least in some sense, since he left prints on the ground and was able to hold his friends' bodies. He had to be vulnerable to molten rock. Jason could dimly feel the ground quaking under his boots with each long stride of the giant, so he had to obey the rules of gravity, right? He wondered if the giant could even fit through one of his rifts if he tried to cast him into lava world. Voro was taller than that massive, stone and iron golem that Jason had killed with rifting in the necromancer's tower, but he was also narrower. If the giant's hips and shoulders could fit through, then that'd probably be enough.
If Jason had to fight Voro, he'd burn him up just like he'd done to the troll and the plant monster. He would send that primordial giant to Hell before he gave up on saving his friends...
The huge, glowing titan continued through the clearing, heading east and slightly south like a single, huge blue light in the darkness. Jason pursued.
Eventually, Jason figured that he must have passed the point where he'd hunkered down through that other storm before ... in the future, anyway. Then, he passed the area where the giant rat-things had crossed his path. It was hard to tell, because the sky was black and tumbling with the dark storm. All Jason could really see were the four-foot-long footprints before him and the hulking giant in the distance.
Jason's lungs burned. His heart was hammering and his chest was heaving. He felt his body threaten to go into fits of coughing, but he kept going. The last time he'd run so long without stopping was when he was stuck in the Wilderlands and had 'convinced' that Tyrannosaurus Rex to follow him to the wyvern's cave around the north side of the ridge and down the valley. That time, the monster was chasing him. Now, Jason was chasing the monster. He felt insane for doing it, but he had to know where Voro was taking his friends.
In time—Jason had no idea how long they'd been moving—the storm began receding from his path. He could once again clearly see the wide, sloped clearing and its grey, muddy bog full of red algae, then, the woods full of tall, mushroom-shaped trees far away on his left and right sides. The black clouds and tumbling vapors withdrew ahead of Jason until they were only up ahead, shrouding the giant and beyond.
Then, the sky began to clear, and Voro stopped.
That was the end of the line; the place where Jason had found the footprints to stop.
"Oh God..." he muttered, crouching down low to hopefully stay hidden as the air cleared.
Strangely—amazingly—the thick, black clouds of the maelstrom began to turn, and the entire storm changed course and flew toward the southern woods!
The giant stood still for a moment, two hundred yards or so ahead of Jason, brilliant and regal with Riley, Gliath, and Morgana held limply in his arms. Voro looked into the sky as if he was waiting for Scotty to beam him up. Then, his magnificent form lifted off of the ground. Voro flew. He ascended.
As the black vapors of the storm shrank into the southern trees, Jason gasped when the air above the giant cleared, revealing a gargantuan floating castle several hundred feet over the swamp!
"Fuck me!" Jason said, staring with his mouth gaping.
He took in the complex lines of the bright, stone structure. It floated like some form of alien architecture that didn't make sense, with the bulk of its mass in the middle, surrounded by other towers and strange structures that Jason didn't understand. There were bridges extending over nothing and many designs that didn't make any practical sense; not according to castles or other buildings back on Earth.
It was magnificent. It was staggering. Jason felt like he was totally out of his depth as he watched the glowing titan casually rise through the air up toward the sprawling, floating fortress.
As the black storm faded entirely, Jason's eyes were dazzled by the reflection of the pale, cloudy sky on the smooth, white surface of the castle. The flying palace reflected light as if it was made from the most polished marble. Clouds seemed to emanate from its bulk, masking several sections of the confusing structure behind a white haze.
Voro floated up and up, calmly, with his skirt fluttering around his legs, until eventually, he disappeared into a cloudy opening through some angle of geometry that didn't make sense.
The giant—with Jason's friends in tow—was gone.
"Shit!"
Trying to ignore the blistering fear running rampant through his blood, Jason ran on, plodding through the mud—trying not to trip and fall while staring up at the grandiose, floating castle—until he reached the end of the giant's tracks.
He stood on the final, dry footprint and searched the flying structure for answers. It hung in the air above Jason in a way that hurt his head. Staring up and looking for some sort of way in—how could he get into a place like that?!—Jason saw odd crenellations and walkways around the castle's edges. He saw the offshoot buildings floating in the sky—held onto the main structure by nothing more than elegant bridges—and wondered what the hell those wing-like buildings were for. Squinting against the bright, overcast sky, Jason saw big birds of some kind flying around up there. They might have been birds, but their shapes were strange. Definitely feathered, though.
"I need to rift, of course," he said to himself.
But not on this universe, he thought. This isn't the right universe. He would have to go back to u1243 and find
the castle there before invading.
Jason remembered the massive sky cities back on Maze World. The so-called 'sky people' lived there, far advanced and never seen by him or his team. According to Riley's old friend, Rush, the sky people had brought the minotaurs there to be their food source. The minotaurs wandered the maze-like canyons of the surface for who knows how long until finally devolving into feral beasts.
The sky city that Jason had seen on that world was far larger than Voro's floating castle, but it was also much higher. The massive, shining structure above him now was close enough for Jason to make out a lot of its strange details and architecture, but still a good three hundred feet or more in the air. The lowest pieces of the castle were quite a bit higher than the tops of the towering mushroom trees.
Voro's castle was weird-looking on the bottom; nothing more than an odd underside of a building that would normally be planted firmly in the ground. The entire structure was striking. Even its belly was polished and opulent.
There were no holes or entrances on the bottom.
Jason pulled up his OCS to check the castle's distance. He also wanted to make another bookmark. Perhaps, if he made a bookmark in third-dimensional space without the higher dimensions or temporal coordinates, he'd be able to rift back to the exact same spot when he returned to the actual u1243...
He hesitated to turn on his OCS's screen.
A thought occurred to Jason that really 'cooked his egg' as Riley would say:
What if he was still on universe 1243 after all? What if the Riley, Gliath, and Morgana in the giant's arms were still his own? Jason's memory around the time of passing out from his wound and the poison was pretty hazy. Had he seen another Jason appear down below after all and merely forgotten? If that was true, and the other Reality Rifters and Voro himself were none the wiser as well, then Jason wouldn't have been shunted off to another universe at all, would he? What if universe 1243 was always meant to include a future version of Jason popping in and out of space-time at the moment when he went back again to chase the giant, unremembered by Jason 934?
The idea of seeing himself see himself without remembering from his own memory ... made Jason's head hurt.
Could it be possible that in his own reality, he could have passed out, healed up in the Wilderlands, then came back to save his friends, missing himself passing by along the way because he'd been unconscious at the time or couldn't remember?
Where could he go next? What was his next move? Go back to the second bookmark again, and wait for himself to pass by twice? Or ... would he even pass by the second time if he was on an unknown universe right now? Unless ... he really did pass by...?
Jason stared at the castle. He looked back down at his OCS for a few seconds, his mind tumbling over and over again in his skull...
"Shit..." he muttered, then unlocked the screen.
Time travel is fruking weird, he heard Riley's voice echo in his head.
Jason set his fourth bookmark in this world: "Under the Castle". He looked at the universe he was in, afraid of what he might see...
Unknown.
So he wasn't in u1243 anymore.
"Shit. I must have missed something."
This was so confusing. Maybe he'd overthought it. So he had been shunted off somehow. Well, it could be anything, couldn't it? Maybe he altered the course that a bug in the mud under his path would have otherwise had taken, then logically couldn't have been in u1243 anymore.
But it's always been, he thought. He didn't go somewhere else or change anything. He just suddenly existed in the one universe where that had happened, right?
"This is gonna drive me freaking crazy..."
Focus! he thought. Riley! Morgana! Gliath!
Jason shook his head, lowering his OCS and looking up at the castle again. As he did, he heard the sound of wind tearing through the distant trees and within seconds, another black maelstrom was flooding in from the south. Dark vapors rushed forth from the tree line and the sky became choked with a violent gloom.
He looked up at the castle again and watched as it was completely engulfed in the speeding, black clouds. Jason felt the wind rip at his eyes and skin. He felt the sting of mud spattering on his face.
Watching the castle until it completely disappeared into the black, Jason hunkered down and waited.
What to do now? he thought again.
Part of Jason was terrified that the giant would descend from his shining castle in the sky and find him waiting. He wanted to leave, but he was also indescribably curious about the connection between the storm and the will-o-wisps and Voro and the—
"Over there!" a low, buzzing voice suddenly bellowed from far away. Jason barely heard it through the roaring wind of the storm.
Shit.
It was an ettin. It had to be an ettin.
Jason turned toward where he'd heard the voice. He could barely see the shadowy forms of three quickly approaching brutes through the black vapors.
His blood turned cold.
Then, his attention was drawn to several blue lights appearing in the sky. In the dark maelstrom, he couldn't tell what they were, but he had a pretty good idea. Something about the way they moved in formation made him think that they were the running lights of a spaceship—like a UFO—twirling and heading down toward him. As Jason watched the descending lights, he saw the crackling blue edges of the nearest one.
Definitely will-o-wisps, he thought.
The strange blue balls of light were spiraling down from the castle.
"Hey, it's a little guy!" a guttural, deep voice bellowed through the wind, far too close for comfort.
"Don't kill him!" the buzzing voice added. "We will deliver him as a pet!"
Jason finally broke his eyes away from the mesmerizing dance of the descending will-o-wisps, just in time to see the closest ettin advancing on him.
Shit! It happened so fast! Where the hell did they come from?!
The nearest two-headed giant was perhaps thirty feet away, charging through the black gale. It was thickly-muscled, heavy, and far taller than Jason himself; as wide as a truck! Through the darkness, Jason could make out the shape of a long, curved horn extending from the skull of the smaller of the two heads.
He didn't want to wait and make friends.
Jason touched his lava key, felt his way through the omniverse, then opened a horizontal rift right into the monster's path. Its thunderous steps shook the ground. Jason's knees buzzed with its thumping weight.
With hardly any effort, Jason connected the dots across space-time and an orange fireball flared to life with a snap, spinning wildly in the darkness and flattening into a blazing horizontal disc of crackling energy. The ettin's huge, lumpy body was immediately lit up by the sputtering, orange light. Its two sets of black eyes glittered in the fiery glow as the rift threated to swallow the creature. Without enough space to stop, the giant plunged forward into the other universe, crossing the boundary into lava world before the rift had even revealed its destination.
Jason felt a blast of heat that made his eyes water. He raised a hand to protect his face as the rift—twenty feet ahead of him—belched fire in a spectacular display.
There was no scream. There was only heat, fire, and the blazing red and orange of the magma inside. Jason could hear a tremendous hissing mingled with the heavy bubbling of the lava and the roar of the portal. He saw the other two ettins running behind their now-well-done comrade stop in their tracks. Their caveman-like faces showed obvious terror in the flashing light of the rift and the magma before them.
Jason felt powerful. He couldn't help but smile. The rift to lava world was like an open oven right in front of his face, but he didn't care. He knew that he could use his mind and his rifting power to protect himself as a weapon in ways that other people could scarcely imagine.
Then, he saw the flash of blue light and knew that the will-o-wisps were close by.
Looking away from his blazing portal and the petrified ettins for a moment
, Jason saw the blue balls of light coming for him. He saw electricity crackling across their surfaces. He didn't know whether or not he could kill them with his AK, and he didn't want to find out if they were incorporeal—without physical forms—or not. What would happen if those things touched him?
Jason didn't want to find out.
He had to get back to u1243 and save his friends.
Jason released his hold on the rift to lava world as he grabbed his home key. An instant after the portal to Hell closed up with a pop, he opened another right in front of him, leading back to his garage.
He rifted home.
The instant he felt concrete under his boots, Jason released his rift to the unknown universe, hoping that the bobbing will-o-wisps closing in wouldn't follow him home.
The roaring rift closed in on itself, vanished, and Jason was left in relative silence.
He took several deep breaths, realizing that his chest was heaving and his heart was pounding.
The craziness of the giant situation and the floating castle and the charging ettins and incoming will-o-wisps suddenly felt like tons of sand crashing down on Jason's brain. He took several shaky steps toward the stairs that would lead inside, turned, then plopped his ass down on the top one.
"Holy shit..." Jason muttered. "What am I gonna do?"
Find the castle in u1243, he thought. Find the castle and rescue your friends.
He spent a little while simply breathing. Kicking back, he let his head rest on the closed door to the living room.
Then, Jason heard a small squelching sound.
Opening his eyes, he searched for the noise's source. His attention landed on the metal case with the troll's head inside. It had grown itself out again; regenerated in a way that let it extend bizarre, rubbery tendrils of green flesh out from the holes in the crate. The troll tentacles reached around one side until binding together again then spreading out a few feet across the garage floor in a pale, green mass.
It was like some weird, horrific growth from an Anime movie or something...
"Oh my God," Jason said, frowning as he looked at the quivering mess. He saw some hairs growing from pores in the rubbery skin in areas. It was like the troll had been trying to grow fingers out of the case, but they twisted and grew and shrank here and there randomly, making an organic mess of gross flesh that trembled and made ... that squelching sound...
