The Giants of Shattered Swamp

by Eddie Patin

  "I am with you, Ranaja," Gliath rumbled suddenly.

  Riley smiled up at the leopardwere and reached up to scratch behind one ear. "I know you are, buddy."

  Jason stared at nothing for a moment. He listened to his body. What Riley had said rang true. He, himself, felt great as well. Jason felt better and stronger than he could ever remember feeling. It might be a good time to take on a bounty like this. Why not?

  "Morgana?" he asked, looking at the young woman who made his heart leap with every smile.

  "I feel good," she said. "I feel strong. I'm still trying to follow and understand all of these wild outings. There's still a lot that I have to learn about your own world, Jason. But we haven't stopped yet, so I suppose we should go on." She smiled at the three of them. "Aside from that time being stuck in the giant's prison, I have been having a lot of fun."

  "Zappo, girly," Riley said with a smile.

  "Okay," Jason said. "Let's do it. But I have to make some things for you guys with focus key blanks before we go." He looked at Riley. "Oh—and we should buy a shitload of blanks from Dave's. I'll be using those a lot more now, I figure."

  "Good call, Jason," Riley said. "We should also get some directed energy rifles like my blaster. Manticores fly like gargoyles, but they're flesh and blood instead of stone. Lasers will be great for taking em down."

  "You know, I guess I can just divvy this up now," Jason said, pulling out the satchel of gold. "It's just twelve ounces." He gave Riley and Gliath theirs, then handed Morgana her three ounces. That would be her first earnings with the team.

  She took the three rectangular tabs of gold with a broad grin. "What can I buy with these? Is it worth a lot?"

  "Sort of," Jason said. "You can buy a lot with that much gold back on Earth. Here, there are a lot of really expensive things."

  "Can we look around?" she asked. Her eyes practically sparkled with excitement.

  "Um, sure," Jason said, reaching into a belt pouch to find more gold for himself. How much was that focus key again? Six ounces? He looked at Riley and Gliath. "How about you guys head on to Dave's to get blanks and look at the guns. I'll sign us up for the big bounty and buy a focus key. We're gonna check some shops then meet you there, alright?"

  Riley eyed both him and Morgana with a smirk.

  "Don't go getting into fights in the street or any shet like that, huh?" he asked.

  Jason laughed. "Never again."

  "Alright. See you love lizards in a few," Riley said. "Come on," he said to Gliath. They turned and left.

  Jason turned and saw Morgana smiling at him. He smiled back at her. He couldn't wait until they were home again, clean, fed, and in bed. Reaching up, he brushed some hair out of her face. Then, he took her by the hand and approached Skinner again.

  He signed up the Reality Rifters to partake in the manticores and unicorns bounty, though he firmly decided that he'd never kill a unicorn for gold; at least not a unicorn as he understood them to be. Jason bought a focus key from Skinner: a long, smooth shard of something like pink glass. Skinner had clarified for him that it was a chunk of pristalline attuned to that particular universe.

  Jason wanted to small-talk with Skinner for a bit. He felt like he really wanted the big guy to like him. But then, he must have overestimated his worth in the eyes of the enigmatic ebony being, because when their business with the bounty was over with, Skinner abruptly turned away to converse with someone else.

  "Come on," Jason said to Morgana. He led her through the crowd to the nearest stairs going back down to the sandy street.

  They walked the shops for a time. Morgana ended up deciding to save her gold, but Jason bought her a beautiful, unique bracelet for the price of two ounces. Well, it was sort of like a bracelet, but could have easily been designed for a weird alien appendage that Jason couldn't imagine. It was a small gold chain with a golden pendant that was far too large for a normal bracelet. The pendant was the unique part, though. It was like a three-dimensional portrait—Jason couldn't even wrap his head around how it sat in his hand—showing a glowing, swirling galaxy inside. It was kind of like holding a flat disc and a sphere at the same time, and the galaxy moving within was so full of detail—millions of stars inside—that Jason couldn't keep from staring at it even after it hurt his eyes.

  Morgana loved it. She marveled at it, watched it for several seconds, then kissed Jason firmly and stashed it away into a pouch.

  "Will you ever wear it, do you think?" Jason asked.

  "Maybe at home," she replied. "I don't think it's designed for my wrist, Jason. Also, I figure I'll be fighting a lot, and I don't want to break it or lose it. But I love it, and I'll sure look at it a lot."

  She smiled and Jason felt that she genuinely liked it.

  At one point as they were shopping, Jason looked up to see Riley and Gliath approaching. His eyes must have been seeing through a weird semi-transparent incorporeal entity, though, because his friends looked grey and warped. Gliath's normally-sleek black fur was more than a little ragged-looking. They were both headed his way. Jason quickly glanced at Morgana as she pondered the strange, alien tools hanging from a rack outside a stall. He nudged her to point out that Riley and Gliath were coming, but when he looked back to wave at them, they were gone.

  "What is it?" she said.

  Jason looked around for a while but didn't see his friends.

  Weird, he thought.

  "Nothing."

  Another time, as they started making their way to Baylor General Provisions—Riley and Gliath could always meet them back there as planned—something else strange caught Jason's eye. Among the crowd was a single humanoid woman with sleek armor as black as outer space. She had dark blue skin, long, iron-grey hair, and striking sapphire-blue eyes that seemed to cut through the crowd. She wore flowing, black silk and some kind of Merc armor. Jason caught the startling woman's eyes, lingered on her for a moment, then squeezed Morgana's hand, turned away, and continued on.

  The second time he saw the blue woman, Jason figured that she might have been following them, so they hurried onto Dave's to hopefully catch up to Riley and Gliath before he ran into any more bizarre trouble. He didn't want to get thrown into another place like the beer ocean world.

  Ducking into Dave's shop, Jason led Morgana in behind him and immediately looked for his friends.

  Riley and Gliath were standing near the pegboard wall full of weapons, talking with Dave. All three turned to face Jason and Morgana.

  "Oh, hey there, Jason 934!" Dave exclaimed. He had his arms drawn in tightly against his body and was very bundled up. "I hear you quite heroically saved your Reality Rifters from a crazy godlike giant, huh?" Like usual, Dave was padded by many layers of coats and winter apparel. Churn was a cold world, and he was the only human that lived in the Market.

  "Yeah," Jason replied, taking a quick look back out into the street to see if the blue woman was still following them. She was gone. "Well, I had help."

  "This Jason's pretty fruking smart for not being a physicist like the others," Riley said with a smirk. He was handling a sleek rifle of smooth, dark metal.

  "That's good, that's good," Dave said, approaching and shaking Jason's hand. He was wearing fingerless wool gloves. "How many blanks you want, kid?"

  Jason's head was still back out in the street. Had Riley and Gliath ever left? Did they come looking for him then come back? The strange woman following them had also fired up his nerves.

  "Um ... a lot," he replied. "We just want to keep a regular supply of them at home. Maybe ... thirty or forty to start with?"

  Dave smiled and nodded. His beard was stuffed into a scarf; his red hair into three layers of fleece caps. Jason listened to the chugging of the generators the man had running the lights and heaters in his shop. Then, he looked across to Riley and Gliath again. "Hey, did you guys come looking for us a little while ago?"

  Riley removed something like a magazine from the exotic rifle, looked into the magwell, then put it back tog
ether again, shaking his head.

  "Nope," he said. "We've been here ever since the Bounty Boards."

  Jason looked at Morgana. She met his gaze with a curious smile.

  "Are you okay, Jason?" she asked.

  Jason shook his head. Maybe he'd been awake too long, aside from that short, magical sleep that Vorealus had inflicted upon him. Too much time travel, perhaps.

  "Yeah," he said. "Just seeing things, I guess."

  They ended up buying four laser rifles and several power cells along with forty blank focus keys. Riley had insisted upon guns that didn't require adjusting various things that Jason didn't understand. Jason recalled that Dave was from the same world as Riley. They'd both gone through the Guard together back on Ebonexus, and Riley's world was very into energy weapons.

  Under Dave's approving grin, Riley showed Jason and Morgana how the rifles worked. The four he had chosen were remarkably similar to 'Earth slug guns' as he called them. They each had triggers, magazine-like power cells with mag release buttons, a charging handle to engage contact with a fresh power cell, and iron sights. The only thing that was different than the controls of an Earth rifle was a switch that allowed the shooter to choose between a longer-range beam and a shorter-range beam that was split to be more powerful. They were nice guns.

  Jason considered one of the power cells.

  "But ... lasers that can actually do harm require huge amounts of power. This cell holds enough power for several shots?"

  "Forty shots," Riley said. "Different tech. A totally different level of civilization and development, dude. One of these power cells could probably power a whole city block back on your Earth for like ... a week, maybe. And each cell will be good for forty shots before needing recharging. A lot of power goes into directed energy weapons."

  They talked with Dave for a while. Jason tried not to think about the woman with the sapphire eyes, or the strange other Riley and Gliath he'd seen. He was sure that he'd seen them! Then, Jason's thoughts began racing toward ideas of manticores and unicorns and dozens of other mercenaries on a world with a mining problem...

  Chapter 33

  It wasn't even dark yet back home when Jason returned them all to Earth of u934.

  All of this planeswalking was really messing with Jason's internal clock. Once they touched down into the garage from the Market and went separate ways in the house for a few minutes—to the bathrooms, bedrooms to organize gear and change clothes, the fridge for beer—Jason made his way out of his back door with a cold Laughing Lab in his hand. He'd shucked his weapons and backpack, but still wore his minotaur-hide-jacket, Merc armor, and his OCS. He'd also grabbed his backup OCS—Jason 1241's—before stepping outside.

  For a little while, Jason stood out there in the afternoon sun, watching a man with two kids and a dog passing by on the hiking trail down below. He waved at his neighbors two houses down, who he could see barbequing in their backyard.

  Jason didn't even know what freaking day it was.

  Then, he sat on the dirty chair at his dirty patio table that had recently been covered in snow, and put both OCS's down, side by side. He explored the system—using the screen this time—to figure out how to synchronize their databanks. Riley had once told him that the OCS was designed by 'Jason Prime'—presumably the first Jason to really get into rifting—and that eventually, Jason 934 would understand the in's and outs of the system as if he'd designed it himself. Well, Riley wasn't wrong. The interface was very intuitive to Jason as if he'd thought of where to put everything. He did design it on some level, after all. Eventually, Jason figured out how to sync, and began overwriting all of Jason1241's slightly-older data with what was on his enchanted OCS now.

  Riley came out with a beer.

  "Whatcha doing?" he asked.

  "Syncing OCS's," Jason replied. "I figure, after that stuff with the giant and seeing the need to keep an eye on the rifting details more, that I should back up my OCS every once and a while."

  "Good idea," Riley said. "That's the dead Jason's?"

  The words made a small ball of cold in Jason 934's stomach.

  "Yeah," he said. "1241. I kept his OCS and Merc armor for backups."

  "Another good idea, Jason."

  "I'm going to make you guys necklaces," Jason said, looking up at Riley from the processing OCS screens. He took a swig of his beer. "I'll break three focus key blanks, give you guys one half of them, and I'll keep the other ends. That way, if we ever get separated again like that, I can just rift straight to you."

  Riley smirked. "Alright, Jason," he said. "Just ... if I ever get myself a woman, don't spy on us when we're in the bedroom."

  They laughed.

  Then, Riley dipped into a pouch and pulled out a small piece of metal. Jason instantly recognized it as half of a focus key blank.

  "What's that?" Jason asked. "Where's it go to?"

  Riley smiled down at the focus key piece in his gloved hand. He took a swig of his own beer and looked across to the ridge.

  "Jason 47," he said.

  Jason felt a stab of shock. That was a key to Riley's first Jason?

  "That leads to him?" Jason asked. "Really?"

  "I reckon so," Riley replied, looking at it again, "if he's still alive, that is."

  "Where is he?"

  "I don't know." Riley held the key up for a moment for Jason to see, then tucked it away again, back into the same belt pouch. In that moment, Jason could see the number '47' scratched onto the metal's surface. "I left Jason 47 when he was hurt by a night hag that we were hunting down. The bitch had escaped through a rift into some sort of universe where time was different. Really fruking different. When Jason 47 ran after her—from the moment he set down into that world—he started aging really fast. By the time he got out again, he was something like eighty years old, and in a bad way."

  "Holy shit," Jason said.

  "Yeah, you said it," Riley replied. "Well, he had to find a universe with an anti-aging effect to fix himself after that. Me and the rest of the team couldn't go with him, so he introduced us to Jason 113. We all went to work for 113 after that. That was back when Goran and Artemis were still with us."

  "So what happened to him? 47, I mean?"

  "He gave me this key before we left him, but I don't know how things turned out for him. Jason 47 told me about this 'Eden world' as he called it that he already knew of, but the time reversal was really slow there. He wanted to find something better. I don't know what happened to him."

  "But why didn't Jason 113 ever take you there? Did you show him that key?"

  Riley sighed and took a long swig of his beer.

  "I did, yeah. But Jason 113 wasn't all that interested in looking for the old Jason. So, we never did."

  God damn, Jason thought. That was terrible. Jason 113 just never bothered to help with that at all? How the hell couldn't he?

  "Why the hell not?" Jason asked. "Why wouldn't he help you with that?"

  Riley sighed again, then smirked and shrugged. "Eh," he said. "Don't worry about it. I ... uh ... I wouldn't want you thinking that I'd ever go back to my old boss or anything." Riley stood away from the exterior wall he'd been leaning against and turned to go back inside. "Gliath and I are gonna hike out into the ridge to test the new—"

  "Riley," Jason said, standing and catching him by one arm. Riley stopped and waited. "I'll take you to him. We'll do that sometime soon, okay? After the manticore job?"

  The cyborg smiled, briefly eyeing Jason's grip on his arm.

  "Thanks, Jason. You're a good guy. Now, Gliath and I are gonna go test the weapons before sundown."

  Jason released him then turned to look back at the hiking trail, the ridge, and the mountains beyond it. He looked at the contrails left by two planes in the distance, brilliantly lit up by the sun. "Wouldn't you rather I just rift you to the Wilderlands for a bit?"

  "Nah," Riley replied. "We'll just hike over there real quick-like. Don't worry. We'll be back soon."

  Before Ril
ey and Gliath left with the new energy weapons, Jason caught all four Reality Rifters in the kitchen. They had a quick discussion about the magical items from the necromancer that Vorealus had identified. They all unanimously decided that Jason should keep the Comprehension ring, and also, since he was their ticket home and out of any tight situations, he should also keep the ring of mind fortification. None of them would have gotten out of that last world if Jason had been made to fall asleep like the rest of them. The violet Arcano stone that would provide protection from magical attacks went to Morgana. True, she already had some kind of protection from her newly-enchanted amulet, but her strength in the group would lie in slicing and dicing evil creatures with Dawnbringer, so she needed any defenses she could get. The strangest item—the orange Arcano stone that would provide rejuvenation and sustenance—they gave to Gliath. Jason posed the question: if Gliath needed food for energy to regenerate, what would happen if he had all the food he ever needed from the stone's magic? Everyone wanted to find out. They also decided to stash the evil 'Shadowblade' and sell it when they could. Jason put it in his gun safe.

  Later, Jason sat at his computer desk with his keyboard, mouse, and mouse pad pushed aside. He wore both magical rings without awkwardness, and was glad to not hide them from Riley anymore. He was working on two paracord necklaces and painting four focus key blanks that he'd snapped in half. He used different colored paints. The blanks were metallic, but Jason had no idea what they were really made of. He could break them, but only at the cut in the middle where they were meant to be broken. They were tough everywhere else. On each pair of blanks, he'd written the appropriate Reality Rifter's name with a thin Sharpie marker on each half.

  When they all returned home earlier, Jason had made sure to return the other half of Riley's backup 'home key' into the tool cabinet where he'd found it before the rescue.

  Riley and Gliath were still out with the four rifles. Morgana was watching TV and relaxing after a shower. She and Jason had showered together with Riley and Gliath out of the house, and Jason was still smiling.