The Rise of Greg

by Chris Rylander

  But then all I saw was its stadium-size mouth.

  And eventually, total darkness as it swallowed me whole like flotsam.

  Were it not for two things, I’d already be dead, and you’d be done reading what would surely be the shortest part three of any story in history:

  I was so small compared to the Kraken’s usual prey that I managed to miss most of its front teeth as I was poured down its throat among thousands of gallons of seawater.

  A tiny bit of instinct did finally kick in, and I felt myself turn to stone for part of my travels into the belly of the beast. If I hadn’t, I’d surely be in pieces, since the Kraken’s esophagus is lined with serrated bones the size of broadswords.

  I was back to a full flesh-and-blood Dwarf by the time I landed in the soggy stew of thick goop and steaming, rotting fish parts that was the Kraken’s main digestive chamber. It was pitch-black, and the air was so sour and humid that every breath felt like the last one I’d be able to squeeze out. So I did my best to hold each strained inhale as long as I could.

  But before I worried too much about that problem, I needed to get a bearing on my surroundings and what had just happened.

  You just got swallowed by a whale with crab legs is what just happened, the Bloodletter said.

  Yeah, I know, I thought, as I tried to stand.

  But there was nothing to stand on. My legs were entrenched in a bottomless pit of thick sea-animal paste being slowly dissolved by stomach acids—stomach acids that were already starting to make my exposed arms tingle and itch like I had a rash.

  How are you even talking to me right now, anyway? I thought. Are you close? Can you travel underwater?

  Ha! You wish. Just imagine if I WERE nearby. If you hadn’t thrown me out like last week’s trash. Then I could easily get you out of this. Heck, if you still had me, you wouldn’t even be in this pickle to begin with.

  I was about to come up with some sort of witty reply (no, really, I swear it would have been a really snappy retort), but I didn’t get the chance. I was suddenly thrown sideways and completely submerged in Kraken stomach goo. This was followed by more jostling and pitching, as I worked to get my head back above the goo line, desperate to keep any more digestive juices and dissolving fish guts from getting into my mouth.

  It was obvious the Kraken was moving rapidly, perhaps fighting someone or something.

  I had to get out so I could help the others. Well, that and I also didn’t want to die a slow, painful death being dissolved by stomach acid.

  At least it’s quicker than spending eternity at the bottom of the ocean near an overrated, overpriced, overly self-important city!

  I wasn’t sure if it was comforting to have the Bloodletter back (at least in my mind), or annoying, since he was just cracking lame jokes instead of actually trying to help me.

  The Kraken lurched again, and my head finally broke free from the stomach goo. I wiped as much of it away as I could and took a short, gagging breath inside the putridly muggy stomach.

  The first thing I needed to make an escape was light. After all, I didn’t know just how big this belly was. As far as I knew, I had yet to even touch the inner lining of the stomach wall. But how to create light where there was none?

  You could try lighting a fart on fire? the Bloodletter suggested.

  Ha-ha.

  Just trying to help.

  Blackout’s handle was still firmly gripped in my fist. But could the dagger’s magical powers have an effect that was the opposite of the usual? If I used it in a place with a total absence of light already, maybe it would create light instead of taking it away?

  I thrust the blade into the air, willing it to do its thing.

  Nothing happened.

  The stomach stayed pitch-black.

  I tried not to let myself panic, knowing that a panic attack would only use up more of what very little oxygen was left.

  After all, there were other ways to create light. Ever since I had set my own pants on fire trying to fight a huge Gargoyle several months ago, I’d been working on fine-tuning that particular bit of magic: setting things on fire. And over the past few weeks on the ship, I’d gotten pretty good at it.*

  I focused on Blackout’s blade, not really knowing if the magic would work on metal. To my surprise and delight, the blade ignited with a bright yellow-and-white flame.

  But then it promptly went out.

  I gasped, becoming instantly light-headed. Which likely meant the last bits of oxygen inside the stomach were now gone.

  Yeah, you just used up the rest of it setting your knife on fire, genius, the Bloodletter said.

  Duh!

  How could I have forgotten that fire burns through oxygen like a camel drinks water? At least, I assume camels drink a lot of water. Do camels drink a lot of water? Or was I already suffering the effects of asphyxiation?

  Probably a little of both, the Bloodletter replied casually, as if he had no concern whatsoever for my life.

  Help me! I thought back desperately.

  There was no reply and so I started thrashing through the stomach goo in a vague swimming motion. The darkness was so disorienting, I could only hope I was traveling in a single direction and not “swimming” in circles in the rancid fish paste. But I had no way of knowing until I either passed out and died or found the stomach wall.

  Seconds later, my hand brushed up against a slimy, hot slab of flesh. It had no beginning or end as my hand moved all along the slick surface. This had to be it: the inner lining of the Kraken’s belly.

  I hastily plunged Blackout into the wall of flesh, and visions of slicing my way to freedom flashed before my eyes.

  The blade made a slash, then another. I kept cutting and slicing at that same spot, moving the knife up and down, struggling to keep my grip on the slimy handle. It felt like I was getting nowhere, and when I stopped to check my progress, I realized I was getting nowhere. The spot I’d been cutting was perhaps a foot long and a few inches deep, and already shifting and moving on me as the stomach churned its contents to aid digestion.

  The Kraken’s stomach wall was probably several feet thick at a minimum, perhaps even a lot more. It might take me hours to cut my way through it with a tiny dagger. And I didn’t have hours—I had maybe twenty seconds before I passed out from a lack of oxygen, according to my burning lungs and pounding head.

  Plus, even if you cut through the stomach lining, the Bloodletter added, there’s no way that knife could get through the massive layers of muscle surrounding it.

  So what then? Just die?

  Greggdroule, I swear, sometimes talking to you is like conversing with a statue of a cow. Use Dwarven magic—use the plorping elements around you!

  My ax was right. Why wasn’t I using magic more? I guess having lived nearly my whole life without magic made it hard to adjust to a new reality in which, technically, the possibilities of what I could do were limited only by lack of necessity, my natural surroundings, and my lack of instinctual creativity.

  I took a final desperate breath of stale, steamy, methane-filled air as I tried to sort out what was nearby that might actually help me. If I couldn’t cut my way out, how else could I escape from a confined space?

  A bomb would probably work, but . . .

  Stop!

  Rewind!

  The answer had literally almost killed me a second ago when I breathed it in like a dolt: methane.

  When organic materials were digested, one of the by-products was methane gas. Usually, animals are able to vent these gases by way of, well, farting and burping. But what would happen if I sped up digestion? If I used magic to help this thing digest its food faster than it could possibly vent?

  You’re going to escape by way of a massive fart?

  I have to try something, I thought.

  No, no. I like i
t. Really. Can’t wait to see this.

  I didn’t bother trying to figure out if the Bloodletter was mocking me. Instead, I focused all my energy on biodegradation. I put all my magical will into the dissolving enzymes in the stomach acid breaking down organic materials. I wasn’t sure if I needed to think so specifically, but it couldn’t hurt. After all, I was desperate, which was one requirement of Dwarven spells.

  Suddenly I was sinking. Not into the stomach goo, but with the stomach goo. The Kraken’s stomach lining was expanding.

  It was working!

  Who knew a real science class in the Human world would someday help me escape a Kraken’s stomach in a future where the old laws of science no longer fully applied all the time?

  I could also tell that we were ascending within the ocean itself as the creature filled with gas. I was thrown violently around as the Kraken thrashed in the water with discomfort.

  I held up Blackout and focused on the blade, using the latent bioelectrical energy around me to heat up the metal. Before long, the black steel was glowing red. It wasn’t much light, but it was just enough to let me see that the stomach had expanded to the point where I was basically inside a huge digestive auditorium, filled with a lake of green goo, fish bones, wooden and metal chunks of boats, and half-dissolved shark carcasses.

  The stomach walls kept expanding, up and out, into the shadows and out of view. From the outside, the Kraken probably looked like a huge sea-monster balloon. More like a ridiculous display in a Thanksgiving Day parade than an actual living Kraken. It probably looked like it was about to explode.

  Then it did explode.

  CHAPTER 5

  I Turn Uda Bay into the World’s Largest Jacuzzi

  It took me a few seconds to figure out that the Kraken had literally exploded.

  At first there was just a whoosh of air and a bright flash of sunlight that temporarily blinded me. Then I was cartwheeling across a blue sky, taking thankful gulps of fresh sea air along the way.

  After a few dozen unintentional backflips, I slammed into the sea, never more grateful to be in freezing-cold salt water.

  I swam to the surface and took a few more deep breaths. After cleaning the remaining goo from my eyes, I finally realized what had happened.

  There were chunks of Kraken everywhere.

  Bits of blubber and muscle bobbed on the surface of the water. Larger pieces, like two giant crab legs still attached to a hunk of torso, were sinking toward the seafloor beneath me. Blood and slime slicked across the surface of the water like an oil spill. Fish carcasses, boat debris, and other stomach contents were spread around me hundreds of feet in every direction.

  But there was nothing else.

  No sign of our ship, the wreckage, the two-headed sea serpent, or any other survivors. All I saw was Kraken stew and a comforting mass of green-and-gray land a few hundred yards away.

  Had the Kraken really swum that far from where we’d capsized? It was either that or else one or both of the sea creatures had eaten the rest of our crew and all of the remaining pieces of the Powerham. But that seemed less likely, even as large as the two sea monsters were.

  I tried to push those things from my mind as I began swimming toward the shoreline in the distance, doing my best to avoid the many chunks of partially digested Kraken meals all around me.

  After just a few yards, I bumped into something metal. As I pushed it out of the way, I realized what it was: the chewed-up and bloody remains of Commander Thunderflower’s distinct, ornately decorated, shiny combat armor. I’d never seen him without it on—ever. Not even bright and early during breakfast in the boat’s makeshift dining room. There were rumors he even showered and slept in his armor.

  Which meant the mission leader, and the supposed greatest living Dwarven military officer, had most likely been eaten by the Kraken.

  I shoved the armor away, knocking it free from a hunk of blubber that had been keeping it afloat. The metal breastplate sank quickly.

  I kicked harder against the cold ocean waves, desperate to get out of the sea before I came across the remains of any more shipmates.

  The shore ahead of me was slate gray and rocky, with a solid, lush tree line rising above it on a shallow ridge. There were no people or buildings in sight.

  The water was freezing cold, and I did my best to warm myself with a Dwarven spell. Nothing seemed to happen, but the effort alone distracted me from the biting salt water and the distance I still had to swim.

  Bloodletter? I called out as I swam. Carl?

  No reply.

  Was he ignoring me? Or was whatever link we’d somehow had moments ago suddenly gone again?

  I didn’t know, so I just kept swimming.

  A little closer to shore, the dark blue water became cloudy, brown, and murky. Which meant freshwater was emptying into the sea somewhere nearby. A good sign, since the huge map of Russia hanging in Captain Smeltfeet’s quarters had depicted a large river named the Uda draining into the Sea of Okhotsk near the town of Chumikan. So I likely wasn’t too far from our intended destination. Unless, of course, I was near the mouth of a totally different river altogether.

  After what felt like hours of swimming, I pulled myself upright and looked over the rolling brown waves, toward the shore.

  It seemed like I was even farther away somehow!

  There must have been a nasty current. There was clearly no way I could swim against it, but perhaps I could propel myself with magic, like I had done in the past with wind. The same spell should, theoretically, also be possible with water. Which is, after all, another natural element of the earth.

  Almost as soon as I attempted the spell, focusing on my desperate need to get to shore, I felt a surge from below on my backside. It was almost like a powerful, oversize Jacuzzi jet was suspended right behind me under the water. The magical current launched me forward so fast I actually created a wake. I struggled to keep my head above water as I skidded across the surface like a speedboat.

  After just a few minutes, the rocky beach was approaching quickly. I did my best to cancel the spell as I neared the uninviting coast of what I hoped was eastern Russia. But I’d already built up too much speed.

  Seconds later, I was rolling onto the shore, tumbling end over end on heaps of small gray rocks. After shaking off the minor cuts and bruises, I stood up gingerly, feeling solid land under my feet for the first time in a month.

  The coast was a massive stretch of drab rocks as far as I could see in one direction. In the other, it came to a small point a hundred yards away, cutting off my view beyond it. About thirty feet from the water’s edge was a gently sloped ridge, on top of which sat dense rows of tall Picea obovata spruce and Abies nephrolepis fir trees.

  There were no buildings or any sign of Human activity, aside from hundreds of random pieces of garbage and plastic that had washed ashore from the sea. There weren’t even any power lines or old fishing sheds in sight.

  The plan had been to make landfall a few miles north of the small village of Chumikan, then begin our trek due west from there, into the dense, mountainous, and mostly uninhabited Siberian forest of Khabarovsk Krai. Stoney’s brain was our only real map to the entrance of the Hidden Forest, where the Faranlegt Amulet of Sahar was rumored to be.

  Without knowing where exactly I was, I had no clue which direction to go. But I at least knew Chumikan was near the mouth of the Uda River, so it stood to reason that if I headed inland and followed the shoreline toward the higher concentrations of murky freshwater, I would find the river (and thus the town) eventually.

  It was at least a start.

  I sighed and climbed up the rocky embankment toward the edge of the tree line. It was steeper than it had looked from the water, but using Blackout for leverage, I was able to get up to the forest floor, overlooking what I hoped was Uda Bay.

  The muddy freshwater feeding into the s
ea stretched out in both directions. To my left, along the endless rocky shoreline, the brown water appeared to fade out somewhere along the horizon. Which meant I likely needed to head to my right, toward the point.

  As I picked my way through the trees, I tried calling out again telepathically to the Bloodletter.

  Carl? Say something.

  Again, no reply.

  The forest was unnaturally quiet. No birds, no animals, no voices, no nothing. The only noise was the whispering of a light ocean breeze and my own footsteps crackling across the dry forest floor.

  Where was the Bloodletter? Had he really been talking to me back in the ocean? Or had it all been in my head?

  After a surprisingly short hike through the woods, perhaps just several hundred yards from the water, I came to a break in the trees. A winding, light gray gravel-and-dirt road ran along the shore.

  I knew from the old map that there were basically no marked roads in this region (if I was anywhere close to where I was supposed to be), and so I deduced that this path must lead to Chumikan.

  I picked up my pace as I walked along the gravel road.

  It stretched along the coast ahead of me, totally deserted aside from an old truck resting in the woods a few hundred feet away. This wasn’t an uncommon sight anymore. There were now billions of cars stalled in the middle of millions of streets all across the world.

  When Galdervatn made its full return about a week after I was liberated from Edwin’s “prison” on Alcatraz, the world basically descended into chaos. Along with the resurgence of even more magical monsters and creatures, there came a total end to modern machines of all kinds. Not just computers and electricity, but also anything with an engine. Nobody knows how or why, but even refined fuels lost potency. You could throw a match into a barrel of commercial oil or gasoline and literally nothing would happen.