by Otto Schafer
Settling his gaze instead on the boss guy, he swallowed, forcing himself to make eye contact despite the ugliness of the thing. It had a large underbite like a bulldog – they all did – and when the boss guy spoke, Jack could see a mouth full of yellowed teeth that reminded him of a wild boar. Two teeth stuck out of his mouth from the bottom row, coming to points above his upper lip, and scars crisscrossed his ugly face like a road map.
After the boss spoke, the biggest one with the spear stepped back. Jack glanced around the rest of the group guarding the boss guy. Even their clothes and armor were weird. Their boots, loincloths, and tunics looked to be fashioned out of animal hide and their armor from dark, almost black, bone. Weren’t all bones white? Their heads were all bald except for one long braid that grew from the back. Most of the braids seemed fairly plain, but the boss guy’s hung down over his shoulder and was full of bones and beads. What they lacked in head hair they made up for in body hair. All the ones Jack could see had red hair across their pale shoulders, arms, and legs except the boss guy, but Jack figured it must have burned him off along with a good portion of the beard missing from the side of his reddened face.
“Me, Jack!” he shouted up at the boss.
The boss looked down on him and made a fist.
Careful, Jack, Cerberus said in Jack’s head. Then all three heads bared their teeth.
Jack concentrated on the boss thing’s brain and the cancer he would unleash into it if the boss dared to swing that big-ass fist. But he didn’t think the giant would, and he was right.
The boss pounded the giant fist into its own chest plate and said, “Me, Helreginn!”
Jack let out a breath and smiled. “Hel… Helreginn!” he tried.
The giant nodded, showing his yellowed teeth again. Jack started to recoil but then realized the drawn lips were actually meant to be a smile. He looked around the area, searching. He was standing in what he thought might have been a park. The trees were gone now, leaving only torn-up dirt, but the giveaway was a few upside-down picnic tables and overturned garbage cans. He quickly found what he searched for. The nephilbock watched him closely, so he was careful to move slowly as he picked up a plastic bottle.
Pointing down at the dirt, he knelt.
Shoe necklace stepped forward and knelt down, but Helreginn grabbed his arm and pulled him back, kneeling down himself.
Jack pointed to the dirt again, nodding downward.
Jack met the giant’s gaze just before it slowly shifted to the dirt between them. He had been so focused on the thing’s mouthful of teeth that he hadn’t noticed its strange eyes. It had a pair, but they were close together, almost touching. The eyes themselves were black and bottomless… soulless? Maybe. If souls were even a real thing, it probably didn’t have one.
Come on, you big ugly idiot, follow along. Jack flipped the bottle upside-down and pulled the mouthpiece across the moist sand. He drew the coast of Panama north for what would represent fifty miles, then he drew a circle and pointed in the direction of the city behind Helreginn. The giant looked back over his shoulder and looked back to the dirt. Jack drew two parallel lines past the circle and then pointed to the Panama Canal.
Helreginn followed his finger, looking to the canal, then back to the dirt. He nodded.
Next, Jack pointed at Helreginn and himself and drew an X between the west side of the circle and the south side of the canal.
Again, Helreginn nodded.
Now for the tricky stuff, Jack thought. He pointed across the canal and shook his head no.
Helreginn looked across the canal at the blockade of trees and then back to Jack. Again, Jack shook his head no. Then Jack pointed back to the ground and drew a line from the west of the city through the first parallel line. Before his line reached the second, representing the opposite side of the canal where the trees were stacked up, he turned ninety degrees, creating a third line that now ran parallel between the first two. He dragged the mark out until it exited his sketch of the canal, and then he cut back ninety degrees again, dragging the bottle north just off the coastline.
Helreginn looked at the line, cocking his head sideways.
Jack pointed his finger north, but instead of pointing across the canal, he pointed at the ocean. He flicked his wrist side to side, then up and down, as he pointed.
Helreginn looked back over his shoulder at his men, who were all staring up the coast.
Come on, you big bastard. This isn’t that hard to understand, Jack thought. You get in the canal and let it take you out! You don’t cross all the way. Then you turn and go up the coast! Jack pointed into the canal again, then motioned left to signify out the canal. You got to stay on the coast and in the water. Oh shit, Cerb, maybe they can’t swim?
Then I suggest they learn, the dragon replied. One way or another, they have to cross the canal. I might be able to carry a nephilbock, but their weight would be far too great for the juveniles.
The giant stood and began talking to his men. To Jack, Helreginn seemed concerned. “Helreginn!” Jack shouted… and realized the other warriors didn’t like that at all. But Helreginn held up a hand and everyone went quiet. Jack pointed at Cerb and then back to the ground. The giant knelt down again. Jack pointed at the nephilbock and the line he’d drawn, and then he pointed at the dragon, then at the coast. Jack put both balled fists up to his mouth and roared as he opened his hands and pointed again to the coast. If you stay off the coast, we can protect you!
Helreginn nodded slowly. Again, he looked back at his men, pointed at the opposite side of the canal and then down the shoreline. The giant placed both his massive fists against his mouth and roared as he opened his fist. This time, as disgusting as it was, Jack was sure the ugly face of Helreginn was smiling.
Jack returned the nod and smiled. “Shit yeah!” He walked back to the shoreline, looking out into the ocean. This was the first time he had ever been to the ocean. Look at us now, Danny! They thought we’d ’mount to nothing, but look at us now! He climbed onto Cerb’s tail and walked all the way across his back as the giants watched. He looked at the king and toward the canal again as Cerb flapped his mighty wings and took to the air.
Well done, Jack, Cerberus said.
It was well done. He had come up with a way for the nephilbock to get past the trees all on his own, without Apep or the queen telling him how. Jack Nightshade’s Horde! The giants are going into the water. When they do, we need to protect them from the trees along the coast! The forest may try to push into the ocean and drown them. We need to burn them back and make sure they can’t get to the nephilbock!
Cerberus said, Jack, call the other horde commanders and tell them your plan. They can assist us.
I can’t talk to the other hordes, Cerb, Jack said, peering out over the dragons gathering off the coast.
No, you can’t, but you can talk to the other horde commanders, Cerb said.
Wait, what? This would have been good to know back in the jungle, Cerb!
No. In the jungle, your actions spoke louder than words. You didn’t need to speak to them.
Jack shook his head. His dragon wasn’t even two weeks old, and he was already talking all smart like. How do I do it?
Just like you do with the horde. Just focus on them and they will hear.
Jack nodded and closed his eyes, calling out to Ahi, Mivras, Zudrian, and Jymas. They answered – it worked! Jack explained what he had told the giant’s leader, Helreginn.
So! Aim your hordes at the beach and burn ’em as far back as we can! Don’t let the trees make it to the water! It was a simple plan to keep the giants offshore and burn the trees as they attacked the shoreline. This limited the trees to attacking from only one side since they couldn’t attack from the south, north, or west. These trees were thick, though, and bigger. Jack didn’t know what trees these were, but he knew they had to be some kinda tropical jungle tree. Some had weird trunks with strange horizontal offshoots that looked almost like legs. Others had horizontal blade
shapes that ran several feet up the trunk before finally tapering into a normal-looking trunk. But in the end, what did it matter? They were wood, and wood burned.
Hey, Cerb, can I ask you something? You got three heads. Does that mean you got three brains too? That why you’re so smart? Jack asked.
Hmm, I don’t know. I don’t think I have three brains.
How do you not know how many brains you have! Jack laughed.
How many ribs do you have, Jack?
Jack frowned, trying to puzzle it out, but before he could wager a guess, Cerb asked, How many teeth?
Shit, he knew this one.
How many arteries? How many hairs on your head? How many bones in your hand? How many—
Jack stopped laughing. Alright already, Cerb! But I know I got one brain!
Well, good! I don’t know because I have not been taught, but if you are asking, it is just me in here. I control my three heads like you control your two arms and ten fingers.
That makes sense, I guess.
I was going to say like you control your mouth, but you don’t! The dragon laughed.
You’re a real son of a… Hey, look! The giants are going!
The nephilbock spilled into the ocean water right where the canal met the ocean and began their swim across the wide canal. Soon thousands upon thousands of nephilbock were crossing the Panama Canal. On the opposite side, the trees crunched together even tighter, shifting onto the beach, preparing for the nephilbock to hit shore.
I guess we know they can swim! Jack said, as Cerb flew high above the canal.
The trees are pressing in for miles, Cerb said.
Time to attack! Let’s light ’em up!
Jack diseased the front line of trees, pulling the raw power from the forest into himself, only to channel it immediately into Cerb. The three-headed beast roared in triplicate, raining orange napalm of hellfire onto the coastline directly across from the nephilbock. Behind Jack and Cerb followed five hordes of dragons.
As Helreginn and his followers reached the center of the canal and were just making their first ninety-degree turn toward the open bay of Panama, the last of his army poured into the canal. Trees all along the coast were burning. Some were pushing forward into the water, trying to wade out to the nephilbock. Jack wondered if they could do that. The canal was deep and, as the trees pushed into it, some disappeared beneath the current while it swept others, too buoyant to stay vertical, onto their sides. Still others managed to hold themselves upright only to fall victim to dragon fire. Jack’s plan was working perfectly!
Then something completely unexpected happened, and Jack couldn’t understand what he was looking at. The ocean beyond the mouth of the canal began to boil.
Cerb! Are you seeing that? Jack said.
I see it! Cerb said, flying closer to the roiling water.
A long black tentacle broke the surface of the water, reaching up into the sky, swiping a juvenile dragon from the air like an annoying gnat.
Jack’s whole body broke into a sweat as dozens more of the long tentacles burst upward from the ocean into the sky. There was nothing in the world this big – nothing. Yet there it was, a black dome the size of Petersburg’s town square rising from the center of the tentacles. “Careful, Cerb!” Jack shouted as an oil-slicked tentacle big around as a telephone pole swung past, close enough for Jack to feel the whoosh as it passed.
Cerb roared and spit fire at the monster tentacle, but it was moving too fast. On past they flew, changing direction and only narrowly avoiding another tentacle as they climbed high into the cloudless sky.
Below them, the black monster continued to rise. That’s a kraken, Cerb! An actual kraken! He’d seen them in popular movies plenty, but even in the movies they were never this big! The movie that came to mind now was an eighties movie called Clash of the Titans. When Jack was too little to be left alone, his dad would dump him off on Danny so he could go out drinking. Most of his childhood, he and Danny had spent Saturday nights watching old movies. Clash of the Titans was one of his favorites until the DVD got so scratched up it wouldn’t play. In the battle with the kraken, Perseus petrified it with Medusa’s head, turning it into stone.
As the monster’s tentacles continued to bat down dragons, it pushed toward the mouth of the canal. Within a few minutes, the massive monster was close enough to reach its long appendages into the mass of nephilbock. The giants were trying to fight back, but they didn’t have their feet under them. They couldn’t draw the weapons secured on their backs while trying to swim at the same time.
They’re sitting ducks! Horde, split up. Half attack the kraken, the rest of you go for the trees!
The mass of nephilbock flailed, trying desperately to cross the rest of the canal, but it was ten miles wide!
Jack, tell the queen what’s happened! Have her send the dökkálfar! He has the Sound Eye, perhaps he could defeat this beast! Cerb said.
Yeah, great, now that he was finally gaining the respect of the hordes and maybe even the elder dragons, he was just supposed to call in Daddy to come save him?
The trees pushing toward the shoreline were still burning, but with the dragon horde split, the giant trees could make it to the waterline before burning up. This was so bad. As the nephilbock closed in on the shoreline and into water shallow enough to get their feet under them, tree after tree tipped into the ocean. Nephilbock were being crushed from one side as this new beast devoured them from the other. The tentacles stuffed one giant after another into a skyward-facing mouth, yawning open to show a spiraling row of bone-white spikes, blood-soaked and pointed.
Helplessly, Jack watched as thousands of nephilbock fled away from shore, back into water too deep to stand. To come any closer would put them within reach of falling trees. They couldn’t maintain this! If the giants couldn’t hug the coast close enough to get their feet under them, they would tire and drown. Shit, shit, shit! What had he done? He had trapped them between a rock and a hard place. Two separate hells, but hell nonetheless, and now he was about to get Apep’s army killed!
Cerb dodged another tentacle. Jack! Dragons and nephilbock are dying by the dozens! I can’t get close enough to the kraken’s face to do any real damage! Make the call!
He was right. None of the dragons could burn much more than the thing’s tentacles. He should make the call before he lost everything.
Yeah, forget that! He didn’t have Medusa’s head, but Perseus didn’t have a three-headed hell dragon and the power to disease any living thing! Cerb, if you stop trying to attack it, can you dodge the tentacles and get me close?
You think you can disease something this big?
Well, I’d like to find out!
Jack, even if you can, I can’t stick around long enough to focus my flames on it and not get taken out by all those arms.
I don’t want you to, Cerb.
Jack explained the plan as Cerb dove toward the kraken.
Approaching from the south, they swooped down and north. When they were close enough, Jack thought about the last moment of Danny’s life, right before Garrett let him die. He gripped Cerb’s horns tighter than he ever had as the dragon maneuvered in all directions, dodging one tentacle then two. It wasn’t until Jack felt the kraken’s power flowing into him that he and Cerb seemed to draw its full attention. Jack held on for dear life as Cerb tried desperately to dodge dozens of tentacles covered in hook-shaped claws.
The monster belched out a roar that seemed to come from Earth itself.
Jack, still drawing in the kraken’s power, felt as though he was being electrocuted and couldn’t let go. The kraken’s life force was unlike anything he had ever felt! He needed to release it… now! Cerb! he cried.
Hold on, Jack, not yet! Just hold on!
I… can’t… Jack’s vision began narrow, but instead of everything going black, the tunnel that closed in all around him was red. His body shook violently, trying to hold on to it… trying! He felt the sensation of Cerb dropping low again, and
as the red tunnel of vision closed, he thought he might die, might come apart at the seams, might somehow explode into… into soup.
Now, Jack! Release it now!
Jack let the power go. And when it went, it poured through his hands into Cerb’s horns and they both screamed!
Fire poured from Cerb’s three heads just like it had in the forest, but instead of orange and black, this time all three heads poured black fire, as black as the space between stars – as black as Jack’s soul. But the fire was not meant for the kraken. No. To save the giants, Jack had to be sure what he aimed Cerb at would die and die epically. Besides, even if he had attacked the kraken with Cerb’s fire, how many nephilbock would be burned or boiled to death in the process? Instead, Cerb’s flame cut a swath of instant incineration from the north side of the canal five miles up the coast, four miles deep.
The fire was so intense, so pure, it burned the trees to instant ash. Jack felt the wave of heat whoosh past, even from their position far off the coast. Blinking back the red in his vision, Jack looked over the side of Cerb. The nephilbock closest to shore resurfaced, having ducked underwater to avoid being burned by the wave of heat. Now, thousands of giants pushed onto the shoreline. Their feet were under them and they could begin their advance north up the coast, now out of reach of the kraken.
We… we did it, Cerb! Jack said, letting go with one hand and flexing it. He winced at the pain shooting up through his arm and fumbled to grab ahold of Cerb’s horns, his fingers half numb. Cerb? Cerb, we did it. Look. The nephilbock are making it to shore.
Cerb didn’t answer as suddenly the dragon’s wings folded back slack. They banked hard to the left, dropping from the sky. “Cerb!” Jack yelled.