by Otto Schafer
When Garrett next saw Jack, he was being lifted from the water by one of the monster’s black appendages. Jack struggled to break the kraken’s hold as the tentacle lifted him high above the creature’s large mouth. Several small dragons swooped down to rescue him, but the kraken quickly slapped them from the sky. Garrett kept waiting for Jack to somehow get out of this, but then the kraken released him. Jack dropped like a baby bird too soon from the nest, arms and legs flapping uselessly. Garrett wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Jack screaming through the chaos. Then, just like that, he was gone, swallowed by a monster of myth – an impossibility. Devoured into hopelessness.
The memory lasted for a few more seconds, and then Garrett’s heart jumped to his throat as the tree whose viewpoint he was inhabiting tipped forward. The ground rushed up as the memory carried Garrett and the others crashing face-first into a group of flailing giants.
The seven friends stood in a circle, gasping as they blinked away the memory, their minds reeling at what they had seen.
“Jesus!” David said.
“Yeah, he’s dead. Jack is really dead,” Pete said.
But Garrett was no longer thinking about Jack, not now. “You guys, there were so many of them!”
“Giants or dragons?” David asked, his face having gone whiter than dead coral.
“Both!” Garrett shook his head as the horror of what was coming set in. “And that… that kraken! Can it come onto land?”
“The trees have no memory of the ocean mother coming onto land,” Governess said.
Garrett’s brows pinched together. He’d have preferred a simple no.
A long silence wrapped the circle of friends as the weight of what they had just seen pressed down on them.
Finally, Garrett spoke. “We’ve been wasting time, you guys! Didn’t you see them! There were thousands of dragons and even more of those giant things!”
“The giants came from the center of the earth, but they are so big and there are so many! And how in the hell are there so many dragons, Governess? It’s only been a few weeks!” Breanne asked.
“Apep is using the Sound Eye to hatch ancient dragon eggs buried thousands of years ago.”
“I know, but I thought they were babies,” Garrett said.
“Yeah, those definitely weren’t babies, Governess!” Lenny said.
“Juveniles are not babies, Lennard Wade.”
“In the army, we had a term for situations like this,” Paul said.
Garrett and the others turned to look at him.
“This is a shit sandwich without the bread.”
Garrett had felt so optimistic. Sitting here the last two days holding hands, telling stories, getting to know Bre. What an idiot! How were they going to get close enough to get into the portal with all that standing in their way? “You guys, no more messing around. Governess, how long before we get to the portal?”
“The redwoods are slowing us down, but we should break from El Tule in three days. We will have a day of travel to your cenote and from the cenote another two days to the Pyramid. However, given the recent events, perhaps we should forgo that excursion and continue straight to the portal?”
“No!” Breanne said. “We have to see Sarah! David has to heal her before it’s too late!”
Garrett nodded, looking up into the canopy. Then across the platform.
“What are you thinking, bro?” Lenny asked. “I see your wheels spinning.”
“I think we’re wasting time,” Garrett said, still studying their surroundings. “Governess, we need to make some modifications to this place.”
“What do you require, Garrett Turek?”
Garrett nodded slowly, locking eyes with Lenny. “We need a new dojo.” Then he looked at the others. “Guys, no more resting. It’s time to train.”
Everyone nodded, still feeling the emotion from the vision and coming to grips with the insanity of it.
Paul cleared his throat. “I’ve been working on battle plans for a few days now.”
“Battle plans?” David asked.
“I seriously doubt we’ll get through that portal unopposed. We need to be ready for a fight. So yeah, I’ve been working on a strategy for how to engage the enemy.” Paul held up some loose pages.
David nodded sagely, as if battle plans were his specialty. “If we go into battle, we need to leverage our magical abilities and work in tandem like group hunts in D&D. Do your battle plans take our abilities into consideration?”
Gabi smiled.
Lenny blinked.
Paul nodded. “Yes, somewhat, but take a look at these for me, David, and see what I’m missing. Also, area-of-effect spells could be really helpful.”
“If any of us could pull one off,” David said glumly.
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Lenny asked.
Paul handed his loose sheets of paper over to David. David beamed as he flipped through the pages, his head nodding happily.
“We all have some kind of special ability, Lenny,” Paul said, crossing his arms. “And like Garrett said, it’s time to train. But we don’t have much time to learn to maximize our magical abilities, and we need to learn how to use our abilities as a unit, like in the group hunts.”
“I guess that makes sense. I just didn’t realize you got all geeked out on this this gaming stuff too, Paul,” Lenny said.
“Geeked out, huh? Yeah, I guess you could say I’m a geek. But who do you think the military puts in choppers, Lenny? Young adults with average grades who are good at sports? Or straight-A students who also happen to embrace tech? Athletics are great but you have to have the IQ to fly, and that’s where my love for gaming started. I’ve been flying simulations since the nineties. Role-playing games came naturally to me after that.”
Lenny raised eyebrows and nodded. “Okay, so what do we need to do?”
Garrett drew in a deep breath and held out his hand palm down. “Hands in. We only got a few days to master our abilities and become one single fighting unit.”
Lenny’s hand went in, followed by the other sages.
All eyes fell on Governess.
“If you are fighting with us, get your hand in here, Gov,” David said.
“Hmm, yes, I have seen this in human behavior. This is the one-for-all and all-for-one ritual humans perform to give them an illogical sense of hope against impossible odds.”
“You are really killing the mood here,” David said.
“Please stop talking and just put your hand in,” Breanne said.
“Very well. I shall partake in this human tradition.”
Garrett smiled at the stack of hands piled atop his own. “Guys, no more fooling. You saw what we’re about to walk into. We only have a few days to get there and god only knows how long before the portal actually opens, but when it does, we have to be there, ready to step through.” He paused, meeting all their eyes one after the next, letting the statement sink in. When he was finished locking eyes with each, he smiled and nodded. “Six months to save the world… It’s up to us.”
One by one they repeated, “It’s up to us!”
When it was Governess’s turn, a long moment passed into awkwardness before she slowly tipped her head. “It is up to us.”
Epilogue: Jack
Tuesday, May 3 – God Stones Day 27
Panama Bay
Jack flailed his arms and set his jaw as he plummeted down, down, down. Seconds were all… only seconds. The duration of a single exhalation before the spiked teeth of the kraken were there to greet him, as unavoidable as gravity.
The spiked mouth tapered inward as Jack slammed into the south wall of the kraken’s mouth, or throat – or whatever the fuck it was. If not for the foot-long, serrated spikes, the gooey wall would have been soft – would have been. But the spikes tore through him. Ripping the flesh of his left leg and right ass cheek. The worst was the one that pushed in underneath his right shoulder blade and through his lung before exploding from the right side of h
is chest.
Jack tried to scream, but no sound would come. Instead, his mouth stretched open in a silent, torturous yawn. Blood erupted from the back of his throat like vomit, filling his mouth, gagging him with its viscous copper tang. He coughed it out and down the front of his leather jacket, gasping in a hoarse rasp. He could hardly breathe. When he tried to look down at the spike sticking out of his chest, his vision blurred. Don’t look! God! Somewhere above him, a nephilbock hit the wall, shredding across the spiked teeth to rain blood and then itself down over him. When the giant struck him, it ripped Jack free of the spiked tooth holding him in place. The serrated spike tore flesh from him like an arrowhead being pulled backward.
Jack’s vision narrowed again as his consciousness threated to leave him. He flailed for purchase, slipping closer toward the bottom of the meat grinder where all the spikes came together in an amalgam of teeth scissoring across teeth. Sliding, sliding, sliding, he grasped at the at the spiked teeth, but the serrations ripped skin from his hand. Only a handful of feet from the meat grinder, Jack’s boot gripped a spiked tooth, its recurved serrations digging into his rubber sole. He stopped, stuck fast to the wall again, but just barely. All his weight balanced on his right foot.
Below him, the dead nephilbock churned through the kaleidoscope of gnashing teeth. Bones crunched and snapped with loud cracks and pops. Jesus, that was going to be him – any second, that sound was going to be him! His bladder released as his body shook with fear. Oh god, Danny! Oh god! The leg supporting all his weight bounced uncontrollably, threatening to buckle.
Jack’s right hand was useless to grip with. The spike through his chest had seen to that. With his left he tried to hold on to a tooth pressing against his hip as best he could. But he couldn’t maintain this. He wasn’t ready to die! Not now! Not before Garrett! He looked to his left and saw only more spikes, each about a foot apart. He looked to his right, expecting to see the same, but he saw something else. There were spikes everywhere, sure, but two spikes over he also saw a gleam of something metal! A weapon! It had to be! From his desperate angle he couldn’t be sure, but what else could it be? Scared – more scared than he had ever been – he willed himself to twist his foot and turn onto his right shoulder. All around him the kraken roared, its rumble vibrating through Jack’s very soul.
From his wobbly right leg, Jack jumped toward the glint of metal. His left hand wrapped around the object protruding from the wall as his face, chest, and legs slapped against the oil-slicked surface. Jack winced as the kraken’s tooth bit into his side and upper left thigh, but he held on. Jesus Christ, he held on.
Pain shot through his hand and down his arm as he flapped his right leg around, searching, floundering for purchase once again. It was too much! His weight was too much to hold with only one flesh-torn hand. But then, Jack kicked something hard with his foot and stepped up onto it. He had a grip on the metal object and a foothold. He laid his face against the soft tissue of the kraken’s mouth and tried to breathe – to rest. Tears ran down his face as he tried to compose himself. Behind him, dragons and nephilbock continued to rain down into the meat grinder, and he knew it was only a matter of time before one hit him again. If he fell again, there would be no saving himself.
Jack looked over at his left hand. He could see now that he was holding the hilt of something. Probably a sword, but he couldn’t tell because the hilt was the only thing he could see; the rest of it was buried in the wall of the kraken’s mouth. But it didn’t matter what it was. Its only purpose for Jack now was a handhold. He looked up through blurred eyes. How many stories to the top he could only guess, but a lot to be sure. The climb out of this would take a miracle, even if both legs worked and his lungs weren’t filling with blood.
He held on and focused. Here we go, Danny. Mustering all his hate, Jack thought of the moment he would kill Garrett Turek and all his friends. He needed to do this right – he needed precision. Jack forced his right hand to lift despite the pain, placing his palm against the flesh of the kraken.
The area beneath Jack’s palm began to rot. Energy drew into him, warming him and dulling his pain. A spiked tooth near Jack’s face rotted and fell away. The kraken roared, but the roar sounded more like a thousand zombies moaning all at once. Jack hoped that was for him. Ignoring the stench of decaying flesh as it putrefied and then liquefied, he continued to concentrate on pulling the power into himself. His torn ass cheek mended, as did the smaller punctures from the kraken’s tentacle teeth. The elephant sitting on his chest lifted and he could finally breathe again.
Beside him, a dragon smashed into the spiked teeth. It screeched and spit fire, coming dangerously close to killing him and ruining everything. Now, with both arms working, Jack pushed into the rotten fleshy pocket he had just created, pulling himself into the newly created cavity. Then, fighting through the rancid smell, he allowed the infected area to spread just enough for him to pull the sword free of the now-dissolved flesh.
Jack collapsed back into the cavity of flesh. He was healed, and he was safe – for the moment, anyway. For the first time since he crashed into the ocean, he could think about something other than the moment. He was alive. And if he was alive, then Cerberus was alive. Cerb! Cerb, where are you? No answer.
A long minute that felt like a lifetime passed as Jack continued to call for Cerberus.
Cerb! Cerb, can you hear me?
I am sorry, Jack. I had a problem, but it is dealt with. Where are you?
A problem! What problem? He wondered what problem could compare to his own.
Mivras the Blue and Zudrian the Old tried to kill me.
What? And what happened?
They failed, epically. Now, where are you, Jack? Cerb asked again.
Jack pushed himself forward and peered out into the kraken’s mouth. Giants and dragons fell one after another into the meat grinder below. How many hundreds of Apep’s army had been killed? Apep’s voice came back to him. Show them how powerful you are, Jack. I will show them! They’re going to write songs about us, Cerb!
Jack, what are you doing? Where are you?
I’m about to pick a fight with a kraken!
Glossary
Ancient Language of the Gods
Eshmue mue rayeshmue!: Give me haste!
Okimue, Esh muezaeak oz ak ff esh!: Vines, I beckon you to my will!
Shiak!: Shield!
Spanish
Lo siento: sorry
Juro por Dios: I swear to god
Quién está allí: Who is there?
Alto: Stop
María Purísima: Holy Mary
¿Está bien?: It’s okay?
¡Sal de mi mente: Get out of my mind
Nahuatl
El Tule Ahuehuete: Old man of the water
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, as always, I want to thank my wife for her patience and honesty. She allows me the time I need to create a story and her support means the world. Thank you, my love.
I want to thank my editing team, specifically Kristen Tate at the Blue Garret. We did it again! And there is no one I would rather do this with. As always, you made editing fun and I learned even more through the process. Without you and your team there is no book… at least not a very good one.
A special thanks to the readers who took the time to not only read my work but also review it. Reviews are incredibly important to authors and I appreciate each and every one. It’s like warm apple pie with just a little bit of ice cream on top… only better.
Finally, I want to thank my friends and colleagues who read the early drafts, for the conversations on the long Saturday trail runs and over lunch at work. Thank you for getting excited with me.
Otto Schafer, May 2021
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About the Author
Otto Schafer grew up exploring the small historic town in central Illinois featured in The God Stones series. If you visit Petersburg, Illinois you may find locations familiar from the books. You may even discover, as Otto did, that history has left behind cleverly hidden traces of magic, whispered secrets, and untold treasures.
Like many of you, Otto Schafer always wanted to write though, occupied with raising a family and building a successful career, he struggled to find the time. But the stories refused to rest, springing into his mind as he ran the forested trails of Illinois and invading his dreams at night, until finally he began writing them down.