The Rise of Greg

by Chris Rylander

  Modern society was barely functioning.

  Humans, aside from the most stubbornly ignorant, were now fully aware that something otherworldly had taken place, and that things would never be the same. Most countries were under some form of martial law, with recommendations for people to remain in their homes as much as possible. It felt like the beginning of a very dark time. Or at least it would have, if I didn’t still somehow believe in my dad’s vision that we could find a way to turn this resurgence of magic into a time of lasting peace. That we could use magic to create a reality this planet has never seen before: one of harmony and natural coexistence.

  I know it sounds ridiculous, but I had to believe it was possible.

  The alternative was too terrible to imagine.

  This particular roadside truck, however, was completely rusted out and very old. It had clearly been there, untouched, for several decades and was not a victim of Galdervatn. Just the same, it was at least a hint of civilization, and gave me hope I was close to where I needed to be. Chumikan was the only labeled settlement or town anywhere near the supposed location of the Hidden Forest.

  Just beyond the dead truck was a lone road sign, roughly cut from driftwood and hand-painted with Russian letters. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what any of the Cyrillic characters scrawled on the sign’s weathered surface meant. But I took it as another indication I was probably heading in the right direction.

  I shivered as I trekked on, the cold wind on my freezing, dripping-wet clothes making the walk nearly unbearable. It felt like my bones were rattling against themselves with each uncontrollable convulsion. The sun was getting low on the horizon, taking away any last traces of warmth.

  Even if I found Chumikan at the end of this road, what then?

  Were any of its thousand or so residents still there?

  Would any of them speak English?

  And if so, would they be willing to help an outsider who had swum in from the sea? Would they let me warm myself by their fires? Would they turn me away, or worse? Would they help me find my friends?

  But most frightening of all: What if I had no friends left to find?

  What if I was alone?

  What if this already insane mission to save the world now rested squarely and solely on my shoulders?

  CHAPTER 6

  Грэг Воняет Как Конский Зад

  Chumikan was larger than I expected.

  I walked through the unpaved streets of the quiet, seemingly deserted seaside town, shocked at just how many buildings and houses it took to make a town of a thousand people. There was maybe even a small hotel, though it was difficult to tell for sure given my complete inability to read Russian. The surprising size of the town made the total absence of people, of any signs of life (including animals), even creepier and more unsettling.

  The sunlight had almost completely faded now, casting the road ahead of me in a strange orange light. I walked through the dark streets shivering uncontrollably, my feet so cold they were numb. It was probably around fifty degrees, but as I had come directly from the cold sea, still soaking wet, it felt like negative fifty.

  Carl, can’t you help me? I thought a final time, as I walked through the streets alone, toward the northwestern edge of town.

  I was convinced I had imagined my other interactions with him back in the ocean. Delusions caused by shock, the cold water, or adrenaline. Those had been, surprisingly, the first real moments of true danger I’d faced since I’d thrown my ax into the San Francisco Bay.

  Ari had forged a new weapon for me, to replace the Bloodletter. Another ax, lighter and more agile than the enchanted relic of Dwarven legend. Also one with decidedly less personality, given that it didn’t talk at all, telepathically or otherwise. Just the same, Ari was a master blacksmith for her age, and it had been a very fine ax that I’m sure would have served me well in battle. But I’d never know since it had surely sunk to the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk, along with the rest of the SVRB Powerham’s remains.

  But at least I still had my trusty dagger, Blackout.

  I tucked the scabbard and handle into my pants and shirt so it wasn’t visible as I continued past another block of darkened buildings. One was a market or a grocery store that clearly hadn’t been open in weeks. The shelves, barely visible through the dirty front windows, were empty aside from a few layers of dust.

  A sign reading Закрыто hung crookedly on the door.

  It was so dark I could no longer make out the peaks of the mountains in the distance to the west. They simply blended with the gloomy clouds and sky. It was dead quiet, and I was still wet and freezing, but I suddenly sort of wished I were already in the forest itself. As if being alone in the woods at night would somehow be less unnerving than being alone in a small, deserted Russian village.

  Though, of course, the truth was that both were equally terrifying.

  I clutched at my wet arms, trying to stop shivering as I walked alongside the dark windows lining the road. A few houses, a few commercial buildings, another market, and what was definitely a restaurant—the tables inside were still set with plates and cups, as if it had been abandoned without warning. Several dirty cars dotted the gravel roads, parking lots, and driveways, having found comfortable places to die.

  Near the end of town, with the sound of the Uda River close by, I turned around to search for any lights in the windows of the small houses beyond the road. For any sign of life. Of course, there was no electricity left in this world, but even candles or a fireplace would cast some noticeable light.

  But from where I stood, there was nothing but increasing darkness.

  Then I saw her.

  A small girl stood near an alley behind a house, just a few blocks away. She had dark hair and wore a teal jacket. She was clearly watching me. We both stayed still as we stared at each other through the darkness, as if we were both afraid any sudden movements might scare off the other.

  She looked to be seven or eight, but it was hard to tell from that distance.

  I plastered the friendliest smile I owned on my face and waved.

  “Hi!” I called out.

  My voice echoed, surprisingly shrill and cracked, in the emptiness around us, as several more Hi’s faded into the forest.

  The girl’s eyes widened. Then she turned and ran.

  Without considering how frightening it might be to have a pudgy stranger chasing you in the darkness, I instinctively ran after her. Only when she fled did I realize how comforting it had been to actually see another person.

  Besides, at this point I had to chase her. She surely knew a place I could go to get warm or find some dry clothes. Without either of those, I doubted I would make it through what felt like would be a pretty cold night.

  “Wait, I just want to talk!” I called out as I ran.

  She didn’t look back as she turned down one street, then another. The small village felt huge as I ran through the maze of dirt-and-gravel streets and alleys.

  I was finally catching up to the small girl when she quickly darted to her right, through a gate, and up the walkway to a house. She opened the front door to a small cottage near the edge of town and disappeared inside before I could get another word out.

  I stopped at the front gate and caught my breath for a second, before walking up to the front door. The distinct flickering glow of a fire or candles lit up the window behind a thin, faded yellow curtain.

  The door was white and dirty, set against a rusted metal frame.

  I knocked (rather politely, I thought) a few times.

  There was no answer, and I heard soft whispering inside.

  “Please?” I called out. “I need help! Just a place to warm up for a bit, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  I punctuated this by knocking three more times in quick succession, anxious to get my cold hand back into my pocket.
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  “Please?” I tried again, trying not to whine, but also not really wanting to freeze to death in an alley somewhere in Russia.

  I waited, debating whether to get more aggressive or to start bawling and pleading for mercy. I also could have just found a different house (one that looked vacant), and simply broken in. But I didn’t have to resort to any of those options, thankfully, as the door finally opened just enough for the shoulder and head of an older man to poke out into the cold night.

  He was tall, at least six foot three, and had all-white hair and gnarly white eyebrows, a gaunt, tired face, and an expression of grim reluctance stretched across his lips.

  Right away I suspected I might have just pounded on the door to an Elf’s house. Which was surprising, since the Council had told us eastern Russia would be made up primarily of Humans, with some Dwarves, and very few Elves.

  Just my luck.

  “Chevo ty khochesh`, Gwint?” the man snarled.

  Of course I didn’t speak Russian, so I had no idea what he had said. But the last word solidified three things:

  I had, indeed, of all the houses in all the villages in Russia, found one belonging to an Elf (an unfortunate happenstance wholly befitting a Dwarf’s luck).

  Gwint was pronounced the same in at least two languages.

  He knew I was a Dwarf and was not pleased to see one.

  But even if I had found a Dwarf instead of an Elf, I might not have fared any better. According to Commander Thunderflower, most Dwarves in Russia fully rejected their true origin. He claimed they didn’t trust anybody who embraced anything besides being Human and he had warned us on the voyage across the Pacific that we should watch our backs in Russia. “Trust no one,” he had said countless times. “Those in the Far East live in isolation for a reason! They’ve completely rejected their ties to Separate Earth. They chose long ago to live in the modern world and have no real allegiances to Dwarves.”

  So if Russian Dwarves felt that way about other Dwarves, I could only imagine what a Russian Elf would think of me.

  “Chto sluchilos`, Gwint?” the man said, the words sounding hostile. “Ty glukhoy, tupoy, ili i to, i to?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “I don’t understand. But I’m cold and wet. I just need a place to dry off for the night, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  The man glared at me. I still had no idea if he understood English.

  “Ukhodi, takim kak ty tut ne mesto.” He made a wild motion with his arms like he wanted me to look around. “Vy zabrali u nas vsye!”

  “Please . . . at least tell me where I can go for help . . .” I tried.

  The man shook his head, looking disgusted.

  “Ukhodi!”

  He started closing the door, but then the small girl appeared beside him and grabbed his hand. He looked startled at first, then annoyed.

  “Vosvrashchaysya vnutr`, eto tebya ne kasayetsya!” he said to her.

  “My ne mozhem prosto ostavit` yego tam,” she said back.

  “On Gwint!” the man replied, motioning at me. “On, veroyatno, opasen i kak minimum vonyuchiy.”

  “On vonyayet kak konskiy zad,” the girl said, glancing at me while holding a hand to her nose. “No on kholodnyy i mokryy. On umret na ulitse segodnya vecherom. My dolzhny pomoch` yemu!”

  “Net.”

  “Da, Papa!” the girl said, getting more animated and insistent. They were clearly close to an all-out argument over what to do with me. “My vse yeshche khoroshiye lyudi. My ne mozhem otvergnut` nuzhdayushchegosya. I ne vazhno, Gwint on, ili net!”

  The old man looked at her and finally sighed reluctantly. Very reluctantly. In fact, the sigh seemed like a theatrical display solely intended to show me just how displeased he was with what was about to happen.

  “Khorosho!” the old man snapped, stepping aside. “On mozhet sogret’sya i vysokhnut`. No potom on uydet!”

  The girl smiled and looked at me, then motioned for me to come inside.

  Most Dwarves would have turned and run at this point (if they hadn’t already). They’d rather take their chances out in the wilderness, freezing cold and dripping wet, than trust an Elf.

  But I wasn’t most Dwarves.

  My former best friend was an Elf. The reigning Elf Lord, to be precise. Furthermore, when I was his prisoner for about a month, I’d gotten the chance to meet dozens of other Elves. And almost all of them were as kind as any Dwarf or Human I’d met in my life. That experience had shown me that, aside from some superficial differences, we were, in the end, more similar than not.

  But the point is: in a position where most Dwarves would have run screaming into the forest to die cold and alone, I instead smiled gratefully at the small Elven girl and followed her into their warm home.

  CHAPTER 7

  Two Deaths Cannot Happen, but One Is Inevitable

  The tension was unrelenting.

  We sat at their small dining room table, the room lit only by the orange flames from the fireplace in the corner. I was draped in a huge bathrobe (one of the old man’s, I assumed) and a massive blanket. My clothes were drying on a line strung up in front of the fire.

  I could tell from the man’s expression that he was going to promptly burn this bathrobe the moment I departed.

  The bowl of beet soup with a deep red broth in front of me was half gone, and it had been a struggle to get down even that much. I mean, borscht with no meat? Who’d heard of such a thing! But I also didn’t want to be rude, and so I forced down another few spoonfuls. It helped that I was hungry, which wasn’t really different from any other time in my life.*

  “Thank you again for your kindness,” I said to the man.

  He glared at me, clearly aware of how much I was not enjoying his borscht.

  “On govorit spasibo,” the girl said to him, translating for me.

  “On blagodarit menya, a sam korchit rozhi!” the man scoffed back angrily.

  “What did he say?” I asked the girl, who had told me her name was Roza.

  Her English was surprisingly good for someone so young living in such an isolated rural area.

  “He say, ‘You are welcome,’” she said, though we both knew that was not at all what the man had said.

  Despite the obvious tension, I knew I needed to try to get some information from these Elves. Too much was on the line.

  The war between the Elves and the Dwarves hadn’t technically resumed, but with Edwin attempting to seize control of all magic with the amulet, and the Verumque Genus Elves (led by my old school bully, Perry Sharpe) currently building an army of monsters to take over the world by force, it was only a matter of time before things got bleaker and more violent. It was essential to stay on track and finish the mission, even if I had to do it alone.

  I had to locate the lost Amulet of Sahar before Edwin did.

  “Ask him where I can find the Dzhana River,” I said to Roza. “How far away is it?”

  While I obviously didn’t possess Stoney’s mental map to the Hidden Forest, I at least knew the starting point was where the Dzhana and Uda rivers met. And on the old map in the ship, that spot hadn’t looked too terribly far away from Chumikan.

  Roza nodded and translated.

  The man replied with something curt, which was true about everything he’d said so far.

  “Why you want to know?” she translated. The man added something more. Roza nodded and faced me again. “Why you here?”

  I nodded and looked directly at the old man’s cold blue eyes. I’d learned, since realizing I was a Dwarf, that there’s no better bridge to trust than honesty. So I would hold nothing back from these two. After all, they had already basically saved my life by welcoming me in to warm up and dry off.

  “I am looking for a magical forest realm,” I said, speaking slowly, pausing often so Roza could tran
slate. “It is said to be somewhere in the Siberian forests of the Russian Far East. I have been told to begin my journey from the place where the Uda and Dzhana Rivers connect. I’m hoping to reunite with my companions there so we can resume our travels together.”

  Before the girl even finished translating, the old man was already shaking his head dismissively and saying something low and quick.

  “What is this nonsense you are speaking?” Roza translated. “There are no magical forests around here.”

  I might have believed him if something in the girl’s eyes hadn’t told me he was lying.

  “Well, that’s fine,” I said. “If there’s no magical forest, then I will discover that in due time. And so surely there’s no harm in me looking.”

  The room filled with silence as the man pondered what to say next. Roza watched him with an intensity I wouldn’t have thought possible from someone so young. Finally the old man looked right at me and nodded, his icy-blue eyes almost hypnotic.

  “Ya znayu chto ty ishchesh` Amulet Sakhari,” he said. Though I didn’t fully understand him, I clearly recognized one word, and I knew he wasn’t just giving directions to the Dzhana River. “No reka Dzhana ne pomozhet v poiskakh.”

  I looked back at Roza.

  She clarified something with the old man before facing me.

  “He say, he know you seek the amulet,” she said, and I dropped my spoon into my beet soup in surprise. “But Dzhana River will not help you find.”

  The man was speaking again, and the girl translated for him.