by Logan Jacobs
She wrapped the foot in a large cloth and slung it across her back, and the three were just about to set off toward the castle we had seen earlier when a giant Wolf-Ram-Hart leaped from the back of the frantic herd and ate them all with one crunch of its bulldozer sized jaws.
“Oh my god!” I yelled out in surprise and disgust. I’d seen two of the champion crushed by the beast’s gravestone sized teeth, their blood and bones turned to mangled mush as the thing chewed quickly and then swallowed. The third champion tried to bring the sniper rifle to bear, but the beast stepped on him with a paw-hoof and then tore his upper half from his lower half. Blood and entrails fell steaming to the cold snowy ground. The massive beast then ate the rest of the rabbit.
“That was horrifying,” Nova said with absolutely no emotion in her voice. Which told me she was as shocked as I was. I don’t think any of us saw that coming.
“What the hell is that?” Aurora asked as she consciously closed her mouth from the stunned O shape it had fallen into.
“I called it a Wolf-Ram-Hart in my head,” I said, mostly because that’s what it kind of looked like. It had the body of a gigantic wolf but instead of paws its legs were that of a stag or hart, and there were both curved ram’s horns and massive antlers that sprang from its luxury sedan sized wolf head. Instead of a tail, it had a little puff of pelt at its rear end like a deer. The whole thing looked incredibly strange, like it had been drawn by a fourteen-year-old fantasy nerd hopped up on too much Mountain Dew and weed.
“Sounds about right,” PoLarr said and nodded in agreement.
We watched as three more of the Wolf-Ram-Harts bounded up to join the first one. Their white-gray fur rippled in the wind that swept in off the mountains that surrounded the valley we were in.
“Guess we know why the big rabbits were running off in such a tizzy,” Aurora noted.
“Okay, slight change of plans everyone,” I threw out as I pulled my semiautomatic shotgun off its sling and checked to make sure a round was in the chamber. The gun was of an alien design that resembled a Fostech Origin-12 shotgun that had a slightly curved, stacked magazine which held twelve rounds that I could manually adjust to go from buckshot to slugs to incendiary rounds with the flick of a switch near the trigger. It also held three ten millimeter high explosive grenades in the second barrel that worked like a pump-action shotgun. The heavy gloves I wore to protect my hands from the bitter cold made the whole process a bit cumbersome but it was better than getting frostbite and my fingers falling off. In a holster on my right leg was a brushed chrome .50 caliber Desert Eagle with a tactical red dot sight fixed on the barrel. I hadn’t had a lot of time to pick my weapons when Artemis and I got to the gym and for some reason, the two guns just spoke to me. Something about it being a frozen tundra where one might have to face polar bears or walruses or wooly rabbits.
After seeing the giant wolf-ram-hart I was glad I had weapons with considerable stopping power. My large winter coat that looked like something from a Northface catalog prevented me from bringing both of my SVAs on this outing. There was just no way to adjust the mag-holster carrier that I normally wore to fit over the jacket in the short time we had before the match started. I had to compromise and one of the SVA’s was slid into a holster on my left hip like a short sword. “I say we wait until this heard of furry death passes us by, and then we go find something way less toothy to kill. Sound good?”
Everyone nodded and we continued to watch as the wolf-ram-harts drove the wooly rabbits toward a choke point at the end of the valley where they just started to feast on the poor defenseless three-ton bunnies. It was a pink blood with fur apocalypse about a hundred yards away from us, and I guess we got kinda distracted because no one noticed the hot, steamy, chuffing that came from above and behind us.
I thought I smelled a kind of rotting meat mixed with bad dog breath and then noticed that there was steam that puffed around the rock top we were all laid out on. I turned my head slowly around with my shoulders and upper torso following behind until, sure enough, I stared up into the muzzle of one of the wolf-ram-harts that was ten feet away. I nodded my head mostly to myself then turned slowly back toward my teammates.
“So,” I started to say very quietly and with barely contained terror, “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but, um, there’s a big wolf about ten feet away that I think wants to eat us.”
My alliance mates took the news about as well as anyone could, really. They glanced at me sideways and nodded their heads slowly, then three things happened all at once and as fast as a lightning strike.
One, the wolf-ram-hart, growled deep in its gas-tanker sized chest and opened its muzzle that was full of pink shreds of rabbit carrion to attack. Two, PoLarr activated her jetpack and shot out from the rock top like an arrow. And three, Aurora grabbed Nova and me, and I felt a cold tingle as all three of us shimmered and then disappeared under Aurora’s veil.
The wolf-ram-hart shut his mouth with a loud click as it looked at the spot where we had been just a second before cocking its head quizzically in that way that only dogs can with a weird, sudden jerk. The thing couldn’t figure out where its snack had just gone.
It didn’t get long to try to figure it out because PoLarr screamed out of the sky with both her Equalizers blazing like a dive-bombing jet fighter. She strafed the back of the beast, but the gun's bullets did little more than blast little tufts of the things thick fur into the air as it turned and wheeled on her angrily.
That gave Nova, Aurora, and me the chance we needed to get away from the raised dinner plate we’d found ourselves on. Aurora let go of us, and the veil faded as fast as it had shimmered into place. I made a mental note to ask her how the heck she knew she could veil others as well as herself later.
Right at the moment, though, I needed to get out of the way of a giant furry predator.
Aurora did a quick back roll, pushed herself up with her arms and shoulders like a high-diver, and then pushed off to disappear off the side of the granite rock we’d been lying on. Nova did a cool kip-up and went from lying flat on her back to standing with her plasma cannon in her capable hands in the blink of an eye. She racked the big bolt on the gun with a dangerous glint in her brilliant green eyes and then began to rock-and-roll.
The cannon made a fwump-fwump-fwump sound as she fired at the wolf-ram-hart. The bright blue plasma blasts hit the side of the beast, and it recoiled away as if it had been kicked. Unfortunately, that was about all the damage the big gun seemed to do. Well, that and it made the dog-sheep-deer very angry.
PoLarr continued to shoot at the overgrown mutt from the sky, and it snapped and growled at her, but she zipped out of the reach of its muzzle again and again. I thought we could probably take the thing down if we were able to concentrate fire but then another one showed up, and my thoughts went into sheer survival mode.
The second wolf-ram-hart had tried to sneak up on us from the other side of the granite outcropping we’d been perched on but luckily Aurora had seen it coming and thrown up a dark matter shield as it tried to bite down on Nova and me. It let out a startled yelp as it got a mouthful of dark energy instead of a tasty morsel. The two animals barked and chuffed at one another as if they were speaking and broke off the attack. One disappeared completely again while the other began to make slow circles around the rock.
“They’re pack animals, guys,” I said into the comm. “This one is trying to draw our attention while the other one either gets help or is going to spring another sneak attack.”
“Agreed,” Nova said as she loaded a fresh ammo pack into her cannon. “I don’t think we can keep both of them at bay for very long, Marc.”
“Much less actually bring one down,” PoLarr added from above us. She scanned the surrounding area for as far as her eyesight could penetrate into the white haze of the tundra. The glare and sheer stark brightness of the landscape made visibility deceptively bad.
“Maybe we won’t have to,” I said as I reslung the shotgun and pulled my SVA from its sheat
h at my side. With a flick of my thumb, the laser-honed blue-gray curved axe blade formed on the business end of the foot-and-a-half long metal cylinder. I made a quick adjustment, and the blade grew to twice its normal light Viking axe size to that of a two-handled battle blade that Conan himself would have been proud to wield. I’d figured out how to adjust the blade size a few weeks earlier during a training session and had been waiting for just the right moment to try it out.
“All we need is a trophy, right? Chi-Chesire never said we had to kill the thing. PoLarr keep an eye out for Fido Number Two while Nova and Aurora you keep Fido Number One busy. Draw it to the side of the rock face when I give you the signal. Once we get the trophy, PoLarr you swoop in and give me a lift while Aurora you and Nova bug out on some dark matter. We can regroup at the base of the mountain just outside the curtain wall of the castle. Sound good?”
“Sounds batshit insane, sugar,” Aurora replied.
“That’s my stock in trade, baby,” I said with a wink and a bit of cocksure arrogance. My team definitely did not need to see how scared as hell I was on the inside.
“Works for me,” Nova nodded.
“What do you want me to do if Fido Two does show up?” PoLarr asked as she reloaded her Equalizers.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Play fetch? Okay, we all set?”
Aurora, Nova, and PoLarr all nodded.
“Team Havak, go!” I yelled and grabbed my battle axe in both hands as if I was about to chop some wood.
PoLarr flew into the air with the blue exhaust from her jetpack extended like angels wings. Nova dug her heels into the dark granite surface of the rock and brought her low slung plasma cannon around and took a bead on the wolf-ram-hart that had closed a good bit of distance in its circling. She loosed a few blasts that hit just in front of the beast and threw up explosions of snow, ice, and dirt. It stopped Fido One from its constant spiral toward us. The big beast got low on its haunches, the hackles on the back of its neck stood in a mohawk of white-gray fur, and its crystal blue wolf eyes bore into us like a harbinger of death.
“Guys, we got problems,” PoLarr said from above us, and I heard the wail of her jetpack as she soared by in a blue-flamed arc. As she did, her jetpack spat out a series of bright red flares that hung in the sky and helped burn away some of the white out. Behind Fido One were three more of the huge, hulking, horny, antlered Darwin stumping creatures. “And more problems.”
PoLarr pulled her arc and zoomed over our head as she released four more of the flares. I followed her path with my eyes and sure enough, there was Fido Two approaching from the rear with two more wolf-ram-harts. That was seven in total.
“Well, that plan went right to the dogs didn’t it?” I asked to no one and everyone as the beasts howled in the frigid winter air and began their attack.
Chapter Eighteen
“PoLarr! Nova! Plan B!” I shouted, braced myself, and started to run as hard and as fast as I could towards the edge of the rock fifty yards ahead of me. “You two keep the pack back. Aim for the noses. That should make them think twice.”
“Copy that!” PoLarr affirmed.
“Will do, Marc,” Nova nodded as she set her feet and pulled her plasma cannon around to face the wolf-ram-harts to the north of us. PoLarr’s jetpack screamed as she pulled up and hovered thirty feet off the ground with both Equalizers in her more than capable hands ready for violence as she aimed toward the animals to the south of us. Nova’s plasma cannon sent blasts of superheated neutrons at the wolf-ram-harts that paced at the perimeter.
Her aim was stellar.
I heard several yelps and saw one of the things get a full blast right in the nose. It yiped like an old school cartoon character and tried to bury its nose in a snow drift.
“What about me, sugar?” Aurora said in the comm. “I’m veiled down here at the base of the rock all by my little lonesome.”
“Not for long,” I said and put on a last bit of speed. Fido One had spotted me and wanted a Marc flavored treat. And not the sexy kind. The beast was hunched low on the ground with its hackles up and slowly advanced on the big rock. “Distract big ugly there when I jump.”
“Okay,” Aurora responded, and I saw the telltale purple-black flicker of dark matter off to my right and far below me as I closed the gap to the edge of the big rock. “Wait? Did you say jump?”
“Yes!” I screamed as I launched myself as hard as I could into the air with the big bladed battle axe held high over my head. Fido One barked angrily and reared up to snatch me out of the sky like a frisbee. “Now!”
Just as the great beasts muzzle became all that I could see, and I was washed in a blast of its fetid, hot, dog breath Aurora hit it in the ear with a bolt of dark matter. The wolf-ram-hart shut its mouth and turned toward her which exposed the entire left side of its head to me. I was already hurtling through the air and about to start falling to the ground so I’d hoped I’d judged the damn jump right as I took aim and brought the axe down with all my might.
The blade flew true, and I felt a slight thunk as it sliced cleanly through the thigh thick base of the wolf-ram-hart’s right antler. The antler tumbled down and landed in a puff of snow as I bounced off the shoulder of the animal, kicked off with my feet into a backflip, and landed next to it.
Fido One cried out like a dog with its tail caught in a door and stopped dead in its tracks. Its head listed to the left as if its whole skull was off balance, which, I guess it was, so I reached down and picked up the Christmas tree sized antler in both hands and held it over my head.
“Ha!” I yelled at the animal. “Bad dog deer goat thing! Now get!”
I set the antler down and pointed off to the horizon with my axe. The wolf-ram-hart whimpered and whined. The pack behind him all pulled up short and watched what was happening. Nova and PoLarr stopped their barrage of fire.
“Go on!” I yelled and advanced on the animal as if my axe were a rolled up newspaper. “Get out of here!”
The big multi-species mutt backed away slowly then turned tail and hauled ass away whining like a bitch. The others stood still for a second and stared at me.
“You want some too?” I shouted and raised the antler up. They all shuffled uncomfortably and looked at each other. “Go on. And don’t eat any more rabbits you sons of bitches. Ha!”
My last yell startled them, and the pack broke and followed their lopsided former alpha dog off into the tundra.
A second later, PoLarr dropped Nova off and landed next to me. Aurora unveiled, and we all stood and watched the creatures gallop off over the horizon.
“Cesar Millan can suck it,” I said with a self-satisfied smile. PoLarr gave me a quick little high-five.
“That was interesting,” Nova said and brushed a stray hair back into the hood of her jacket.
“That is one way to put it, sugar,” Aurora agreed. “Now that we have a trophy, can we get to the castle and, I don’t know, maybe go inside where it is warm.”
“Copy that,” I said as I pulled a length of rope from one of my many cargo pockets, tied it to the cumbersome oversized tree branch antler and tied the other end of the rope around my waist. “Let’s go build a motherfucking snowman.”
PoLarr snickered but Nova and Aurora looked at me as if I’d hit my head.
“I get you, Havak, very funny,” PoLarr said as she fired up the jetpack, grabbed me under my armpits and lifted us both up into the bright blue sky. Aurora created a disk of dark matter energy under her and Nova, and they soon joined us. We flew high enough so that if there were any other alliances out there in the snowy tundra, we’d be able to spot them and hopefully we’d be out of the range of their handheld weapons. The downside was that it was even colder up here in the great blue yonder.
Off to our left, I caught sight of a skirmish between two groups of champions as they fought over the fallen corpse of one of the wooly rabbits. Laser blasts flew across the snow-covered surface of the planet and reminded me of the beginning of Empire Strik
es Back only without the AT-ATs. Which was kind of a bummer.
A burst of wind buffeted us violently from out of nowhere and for a second I thought PoLarr was going to drop me. But thankfully it died quickly, and we were able to find some smoother air as the ice castle got bigger and bigger on the horizon. I looked over to our left and that big storm front had gotten a hell of a lot closer. Blue lightning crackled through the dark gray clouds that roiled and broiled with winter menace as a white blizzard blew across the tundra under the clouds.
“Let’s hope it will be easy to get into the castle,” I yelled into my comm as the wind whipped at my face. “I do not want to get caught out in that.”
PoLarr started her descent as we got close to the fortress. It was a magnificent structure that turned out to be made from sheets of crystalline ice that must have been ten feet thick in spots. There was a great curtain wall that came from the solid rock face of the mountain and connected four three-story tall watchtowers. From what we could see as we set down about fifty yards from the gatehouse of the keep, which is where I assumed the throne room was going to be, the wall had been carved directly out of the mountain face. A massive barbican of stone and ice with a large portcullis gate looked to be the only way in or out of the place. A rushing river of emerald green water came from high up the mountain and snaked around the front of the castle to act as a moat before it disappeared into a tunnel near the curtain wall on the other side. Chunks of green ice floated in the river like sharp gems.
The four of us stood and looked up at the mighty three story barbican gate. I imagined we looked like a poster for some dark fantasy film. I picked up the antler and adjusted the rope so that I could sling it over my shoulder.
“Should we knock or what?” Nova asked as we kind of just stood there, and the wind kicked up needle-like ice shards from the snow all around us.
As if to answer there was a loud twanging sound from behind the curtain wall, and a second later a big flaming orange pumpkin soared over the battlements and crashed in a napalm-like spray of fire and pumpkin guts thirty feet to our left.
