by Eddie Patin
"Ranaja and Morgana Soloster are among the giant's pets," Gliath rumbled quietly beside him. "There are many such pets, nearly all dead."
"Dead?!" the giant suddenly boomed, almost making Jason cry out in fear. The word echoed through the hall. "My pets are not dead!" His gentle face wasn't so gentle anymore. The glowing yellow eyes flared like stars. "My menagerie is my art! They are not dead!"
Jason fumbled for words. They had to get up there and see. He had to put eyes on his friends again; had to make sure that they were still alive.
"Maybe ... um..." Jason tried to speak, but his voice was trembling. The giant almost glared down at him. It was terrifying. "I believe you, great Voro!" he said. "Truly your art is beautiful! Can we see it?"
The giant smiled again, changing back to a warm and sincere demeanor as quickly as the black storms that raged in and out of the swamp.
"Small man," he said cordially with his thunderous voice, "you need not call me Voro. My children call me that. My name is Vorealus." He lowered his massive, muscular arms to his sides, then gestured to them with one huge, blue hand. "Come. Follow me. I will show you my pets and my menagerie."
With a final smile, the primordial giant turned to lead them down the hall.
Jason and Gliath exchanged glances.
Would it be possible to solve this peacefully? Could the giant be reasoned with? He seemed a little ... touchy. Then again, for as terrifying and as powerful as he was, Vorealus had to be vulnerable to freaking lava, right?
Jason reached down to his left wrist and fidgeted with his lava key.
He would kill the titan if he had to. Vorealus was big, but he could fall through Jason's rift if he put it right under those massive feet. He'd fall to his doom just like the necromancer's huge stone golem did back on u936.
They followed.
Before long, turning down the corridor after the blue glow, Jason started pulling himself up a flight of four-foot-tall polished stone stairs. Up and up he went, huffing and puffing and trying to keep up with the huge titan that pretty much left them behind without concern. Gliath helped Jason up the last three steps, then, they emerged into a long hallway with daylight at the other end.
"This is it," Gliath said. "There may be more harpies outside."
"Okay," Jason said, unslinging his rifle and gasping for breath. After another sip from his CamelBak, he clapped Gliath on one high, armor-plated shoulder, and they went on. Jason wasn't really thirsty, so still had plenty of water left in his pack. The cool drink made him feel better.
Halfway to the light, Jason reached down to his left hand and turned off his night vision.
Vorealus had totally left them behind. The giant was waiting up ahead out of sight, no doubt. There was something really strange about this mighty giant; more than the fact that he was an immensely powerful telepathic magical titan. Jason couldn't quite put his finger on it, but—even for a strange unearthly creature—Vorealus was off.
Jason stepped squinting into the pale light of the Shattered Swamp's impenetrable cloud-covered sky.
He and Gliath came out into a vast courtyard—maybe the size of a football field—thick with green grass and opulent marble walkways sized for a giant. There was a neat and orderly orchard of weird, alien trees of all sorts and colors; a hundred different trees, maybe, almost wall to wall. Jason didn't smell the odor of sulfur that was constantly present on the surface of the boggy world below, but now, his senses were overwhelmed with bizarre scents and perfumes that he couldn't begin to understand. The trees were of many different colors—some even bright neon pink, orange, and green—and they had strange flowers and branches and petals from other worlds.
The plethora of varied and odd trees was staggering to behold.
Jason spotted Vorealus standing up ahead, near the center of the courtyard, tall and blue and smiling with his arms crossed proudly over his gargantuan, naked chest.
Then, he saw the cubes.
There were many cubes of glass—or something like glass—floating in the air around the center of the courtyard. They hovered in midair as if by magic, all in a ring at various heights around the middle of the courtyard as if Vorealus had placed them there to stand between them all and enjoy them.
Through the light gleaming on the glass cubes, Jason saw dark forms and shadows within. The cubes were perhaps eight feet across. Some floated as low as the treetops, and the highest were just over the titan's head; still within reach of his massive blue arms.
Jason felt a chill trickle down his spine like cold water.
"Are those...?" he whispered.
"Yes, Jason Leaper 934," Gliath rumbled. "Ranaja and Morgana Soloster are there, each within their own cubes."
Jason felt his belly turn cold. He pushed the fear down and straightened himself.
"Be ready for anything, Gliath."
The leopardwere nodded.
Jason led the way, walking down the wide, marble footpath toward the giant. Vorealus stood in the center of the vast, colorful space, smiling at the various glass cubes around him as if appreciating artwork hanging on a wall.
When the two of them passed beneath the first of many cubes hanging in the air, Jason looked up and tried to make out who or what was inside...
He saw a handful of slumped, dark forms in the various cubes. Some bipedal, but there were weird things, too. Most shapes that he could see appeared to be many dead animals and birds of all sorts. Jason saw at least five dead 'rodents of unusual size' like those he'd seen down in the clearing.
Then, as he and Gliath approached Vorealus, who turned to greet them, smiling as if showing off his most cherished possessions, Jason saw some movement in a high cube. A man up there stood within. The man—silhouetted by the bright sky—was wearing a long duster jacket. He immediately began waving for Jason's attention.
Riley.
Jason nudged Gliath and pointed up at Riley. Shit—he must have been ... thirty feet off of the ground?
"Ranaja," Gliath said in a low voice, looking up. His long, black tail swished twice from side to side.
"Can we shoot the glass?" Jason asked.
"No, Jason Leaper 934," Gliath replied. "It is not glass. It is very strong."
"Where's Morgana?" Jason asked, shielding his eyes from the sky and searching the cubes. He didn't see any other bodies moving around.
Riley's voice suddenly appeared in Jason's radio.
"Jason!" he exclaimed. "Holy shet! You're here! And you're just fruking walking into this asshole's place? Be careful, man. This giant guy is fruking nuts."
Jason frantically pulled the radio off of his backpack strap and dug his thumb into the transmit button.
"Riley! Good to hear you; see you. Where's Morgana?! Is she okay? Is she still alive?!"
Her voice appeared next and it made Jason's heart fly.
"Jason?" she said, her voice crackling a little on the radio. "You're here? I can't see you, wherever you are. I'm in a cube next to a big purple tree. Oh—I'm so glad you're here!"
"Me too," Jason said, looking ahead at Vorealus, who was still waiting for them to approach with a strapping smile. "Don't worry, guys," he said. "I'm gonna get you out of here. Hang in there. Over."
"Be careful, Jason!" Morgana said. "There's something wrong with the giant. He goes into rages!"
"Don't worry," Jason said. "I have a plan. Hang in there. Over."
He hoped that his voice didn't sound as unsure on the radio as it sounded to himself.
Jason hooked his radio back onto his strap and shared a glance with Gliath, who stood tall and strong next to him. Then, he looked ahead at the giant. Vorealus waited, welcoming, seemingly eager to talk and show off his 'pets'.
"Let's go," Jason said.
"I am with you, Jason Leaper 934," the leopardwere replied.
They walked forward together. As they closed the distance to Vorealus, the titan seemed to grow taller and taller until Jason couldn't walk forward anymore. The fear boiling in his guts becam
e too much. Stopping around fifteen feet from the primordial giant, who smiled down at them with his yellow eyes glowing and his arms crossed, Jason looked up, took a few deep breaths to try and calm his nerves, then went to speak.
The giant interrupted him with a booming, thunderous voice that made Jason's knees buzz.
"Behold!" Vorealus exclaimed, both with his deep voice and inside Jason's head. "My menagerie! What do you think, little creature? Are my many pets not beautiful?"
Jason paused to look around at the cubes again. They were all full of dead things, it seemed.
"Yes, Vorealus," he shouted up at the giant. "But truly, two of your 'pets' are my friends. Will you please release them to me? A man and a woman that—"
"I have no man and woman here!" Vorealus shouted back with a force that made Jason tremble. The words were like a blast of crackling wind. "All I have collected are the various and fantastic beasts of the swamp and highland bogs beyond the forests! I have no creatures like you."
Jason felt a flush of anger that momentarily eclipsed his fear. He fidgeted with his lava key.
"You have nothing more than a lot of dead animals, some dead people, and my friends!" he replied, feeling his way through the ninth dimension to the lava world. "Please give my friends back to me, and we'll leave this world!"
The giant laughed, putting his mighty fists on his hips and bellowing into the sky.
Then, almost as quickly, his magnificent blue face contorted in confusion. He looked around the many shining cubes as if seeing them for the first time.
Cold dread slipped through Jason's guts like a sharp knife.
"Dead!" Vorealus shouted, almost knocking Jason back with the force of it. His huge, blue face contorted in agony; his glowing eyes clenched as if about to cry. "They are dead! I do not understand it! They continue to die! I do not understand!" The sudden emotion shocked Jason. He opened his mouth to try and convince the confused titan to release his friends again, but Vorealus looked down at Gliath and went on. "And I recognize you now, kitty cat!" he said with a sudden, beaming smile. "I am pleased that you came home! Go to sleep now..."
Gliath looked down at Jason with his eyes wide for an instant, tensing as if to run, then he simply collapsed as if his brain was turned off with a switch. The leopardwere sprawled out onto marble floor with a clang of his armor harness, his long black limbs and tail stretched out.
Jason felt cold, white fear flash through him.
"No!" he shouted, taking two trembling steps back. He looked up at Vorealus. "Stop! Don't do that! Let him go! Let my friends go right now!"
Vorealus started to laugh down at him, then seemed about to sneeze for an instant. Then, the giant's face darkened into an intense scowl. There was a flash of bright crimson light from the titan's chest and his eyes flared like golden fire. The blue skin around his eyes darkened to black, and Jason saw the entire world around him become dim.
Shit.
The sky above the courtyard—far above the walls surrounding them—turned and twisted. Darkness emerged from the air far above Vorealus's smooth, bald head raging with rainbow fire. Black, vaporous clouds descended like a freaking tornado touching down. Jason heard the familiar roaring of another maelstrom. The orchards of weird trees shook and fluttered in the violent wind...
Jason grabbed his lava key, dropping his AK onto its sling. He was alive with stark fear.
The giant loomed over him like a force of nature, burning blue with fire surging all around his body. Vorealus looked angry, and he wielded the fury of nature. Jason was certain that lightning would start leaping off of the giant's skin at any moment.
He had to stop him.
Jason opened a horizontal rift under the giant's feet to send him blazing and sizzling into lava world. Hiss rift opened with a bright orange fireball under the feet of the broken god, quickly unfurling into a brilliant, whirling rim of sparks that roared as loudly as the wind stinging Jason's face and eyes.
But Vorealus ignored Jason and the portal. He casually stepped over it, then very close to Jason—almost knocking him to the ground when the marble under his feet quaked—then bent over as a huge, glowing blue shape, taking up most of Jason's vision.
The giant picked up Gliath's limp, black form.
"Let him go!" Jason roared, taking several steps back to avoid the extreme heat that he knew was coming.
Vorealus paid him no mind, immediately straightening and raising Gliath's body into the air with one hand. As Jason watched in terrified anger, a clear cube like the others suddenly manifested from the giant's fist around Gliath's body. It started small—as if from nothing at all—then grew until it was eight-by-eight-by-eight like all of the others.
"No!" Jason shouted.
With his glowing hand still inside the cube as if incorporeal, Vorealus released Gliath—who fell limp to the transparent floor—then pulled his hand back out again without any resistance.
Once Gliath was out of the giant's grip, Jason released his first rift to lava world and quickly, instinctively opened another right under Vorealus's feet. It unfurled with a roar, spinning beneath the giant's legs, casting sparks all around. Jason braced himself for the massive heat wave that was sure to come...
The rift was open, but the giant didn't fall.
He didn't fall!
Jason could see down into the rift. It was an oozing and fiery vision of Hell. But Vorealus was standing above it! He couldn't even feel the heat! The surface hadn't been broken!
The new cube hung in the air, unmoved by the storm, and Gliath remained trapped and unconscious within. The giant turned and looked down at Jason in placid curiosity. Vorealus's furious, blue face was smoothing—calming—but the storm was still raging darkly around them.
The portal to lava world spun and cast sparks under the giant's feet. He should have fallen in, but he didn't. Vorealus just stood there, hovering over Jason's greatest weapon as if he didn't even notice it.
"Die!" Jason shouted. He pulled up his AK-47, shouldered it, and fired. He didn't aim at Vorealus. He aimed at the rift under the giant's feet. The rifle boomed, and Jason was immediately washed over with an intense, fiery heat as if from a furnace.
Vorealus still stood above the roaring rift as if standing on solid ground with his feet flat. He put his fists onto his hips again, cocking his huge head a little to the side as if confused.
Shit! Shit! Shit! Jason thought.
He raised his muzzle, aimed at the giant's big face, and opened up. He fired several shots as fast as he could, then focused on his front sight and kept going. The AK-47 roared and belched out fireballs of muzzle flash, but the giant looked down at Jason, unmoved. Jason didn't even see sparking ricochets or anything indicating that the rounds were bouncing off of his skin. There was nothing! If the giant had skin hard like diamonds, then there would at least be sparks, or sharp pings of the rounds deflecting. Instead, there was nothing.
"You are a very bad pet," Vorealus said in a deep voice that cut through the storm and the rift to lava world with ease. Jason heard the words echo in his head like a hammer.
Cold, oppressive dread seized his heart.
Jason dropped his AK to his chest and drew his electron particle beam pistol.
He aimed at the titan's chest and fired. The pistol let out a sharp crack and immediately connected with Vorealus, a zig-zagging bolt like white-hot lightning. The beam frazzled and dissipated over the giant's chest.
No effect.
"Goddamn it!" Jason shouted. "Shit!"
Then, he just about fainted from fright as Vorealus took a long stride toward him, raising one mammoth blue hand as if preparing to swat Jason into the ground.
Jason grabbed his home key, let his instinct take over, then found himself falling through a horizontal rift under his feet.
He crashed down onto his hard garage floor, hurting his hip, ass, and left knee, looking up at the mighty, descending blue palm...
Jason collapsed the rift.
The bl
azing orange fire and whirling rim immediately crumpled into a single point in the portal's center, then the gateway and the giant's falling hand disappeared with a pop.
Chapter 26
Jason pounded one fist onto the concrete floor then immediately regretted it.
"Fuck!" he shouted.
Time, he thought. There's no more time!
He had to try again, right away.
Standing despite the pangs of pain in the areas of his body that had connected with the concrete, Jason immediately went for his focus key pouch. He fished out the old troll claw focus key and opened a rift to the Shattered Swamp without so much as a look around his garage.
Now, that bastard had Gliath.
His rift opened with a blaze of orange light and a snap, filling the garage with its roar and whirling sparks. Jason put the focus key away again, staring at the spinning disc of fire, and waited for the instant he could jump through.
Vorealus the crazy fucking titan had Riley, Morgana, and Gliath.
Jason had failed to save them.
He would try again. Maybe the giant didn't fall into his portal to lava world because he'd been in his wacky sky castle, which was obviously full of magic. Maybe it would be different on the ground. Hell—Jason had even shot the membrane of the rift with his AK and—
He looked down at his rifle and pulled it up from where it rested. He'd fired several times. Jason took a few seconds to change mags, put the partially depleted magazine into a jacket pocket, then rushed through the portal the instant he saw the grey and red swamp on the other side.
Once again, he stepped into the Shattered Swamp, but this time, Jason felt angry. He felt his cheeks and neck hot with rage and ... well, it was an indignant anger that he felt! He was perfectly reasonable with the giant. He tried the peaceful route. Once Vorealus started speaking with him, Jason had honestly thought that he could talk his friends out of trouble.
"It's bullshit," Jason muttered, releasing his rift as the odor of sulfur filled his nostrils.
Some R&R...
He'd have to kill the monster. Vorealus was crazy. There was no peaceful solution.
