by Dante King
“That’d be the Death Mages then?” I asked.
“I sense a disturbance in the mana of this place,” Odette Scaleblade said, nodding. She closed her heavily lidded eyes for a moment as we stood still and all the Jotunn started moving in all directions at once. Then she opened them again and when she spoke, her voice was hard. “Yes, the taint of Death Magic wreathed with malicious purpose is definitely in the air.”
A burly Jotunn—and he must have been pretty damned burly indeed, seeing as the species as a whole looked to have been modeled on Zangief from Street Fighter—suddenly loomed up and grasped me by the shoulder. His sapphire eyes were narrowed as he growled and snarled at me, spraying me with a liberal amount of meaty saliva. With his free hand, he was gesturing around the room, every now and again jabbing it at our group of ‘prisoners’.
He’s asking me what the fuck I’m doing apparently giving a bunch of prisoners the guided tour, I perceived.
Well, I couldn’t deny—if that was what he was asking me—that he had a point. It did seem like a silly thing to be doing, especially with the alarm bell clanging away like it was.
I tried to summon my vector, thinking that this might just be the part of our scheme where the half-assed plan fell apart and we started flying by the seat of our pants as per usual. However, to my consternation, I couldn’t summon the crystal black staff to my hand.
Shit. Must be something to do with the potion, I thought.
Luckily, I was saved by Ragnar Ironskin striding up beside me and neatly lopping the Jotun’s head from his shoulders with a large and very sharp sword. It was right about then that I knew that things had gone sideways on us.
“My apologies,” Ragnar said as the headless corpse swayed in front of us, dark blood pumping out of the neck stump and onto the floor. I wasn’t sure whether he was talking to me or the Jotunn he had just killed. “Idman Thunderstone cannot be taken.” He booted the dead Frost Giant over, and it crashed onto a table behind it, spread-eagled.
Ironskin removed the blood from his blade with a super-cool and fluid flick of his wrist. He gestured at the multiple Jotunn that were now staring in our direction, growling deep in their throats baring their fangs.
“In our quest,” he said solemnly, baring his own metallic teeth in challenge, “your blood is a worthy sacrifice.”
I don’t know if the Frost Giants understood Ragnar’s words, but they most certainly got the gist of what he was saying. With a gut-clenching roar, they charged toward us, eyes wide and furious, black claws unsheathed and ready to strike.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A few things went through my head as I watched the horde of Frost Giants storm toward us like a big hairy avalanche. The first was the fact that I wasn’t able to summon my vector, which meant that we—my friends and I, that were currently inhabiting Jotunn forms—would have to fight this out the old fashioned way. The second thing was a thrill of excitement at the realization that this, as far as I was concerned, was going to be a big old-school brawl—the Frost Giants had no weapons and did not cast spells. The last thing, a sort of half-thought, was that I hoped the five magical practitioners weren’t going to get too indiscriminate with their spell casting, get carried away, and accidentally blast one of the eight who were in disguise.
My thoughts were stopped, because the next thing that almost went through my head was a table that one of the Frost Giants threw across the room. I ducked, and the heavy table top flew over my head and splintered on the ground.
Then, as they say, it was on like Donkey Kong.
I hadn’t really considered that being inside of a Jotunn’s body meant that I was now endowed with a Jotunn’s strength. It wasn’t until I blocked a punch from the first Frost Giant to reach me, shoved him away, and then picked up the table next to me with as much ease as I might grab a phonebook, that I understood how powerful these beings were. I swung the table over my head and brought it down on the dome of another Frost Giant who was reaching out to grab at Enwyn. The table splintered spectacularly over its head, and the giant fell back a pace.
“Thank you, Justin!” Enwyn called.
Before I could move in and finish my opponent off, Enwyn had hit him with a Fireball that lifted him off his feet and sent him flailing across the refectory like a comet. The flaming Frost Giant crunched into the stone wall and crumpled lifeless to the ground.
Things quickly dissolved into one of those magical skirmishes that was all flaming limbs, bursts of noise that punctuated an overwhelming soundtrack of destruction, sporadic flashes of light, and the bang and sizzle of magic being loosed.
The Frost Giant guards were coming thick and fast. However, it was like Madame Xel had said; they weren’t very sharp. With their numbers, they could have easily overwhelmed us, but they acted with no coordination. Each Jotunn charged at us, the sole aim of tearing us limb from limb shining in their blue eyes. None of the giants spared a thought as to what their brethren were doing, or whether they might be able to take us down more efficiently working together.
“They’re solitary creatures by nature, you see,” Ironside panted, when I mentioned this during a brief lull in the fight. “They’re more used to roaming snowfields than actually being employed like this.”
I watched with admiration as the Viking-looking warrior—all chiseled muscles, woad tattoos, and flashing knives—embedded one of his daggers edge upward in the mortar of the wall. As a pair of Frost Giants lumbered toward us, Ironskin ran up and launched himself off the embedded weapon in a graceful side flip. He vaulted over the first Frost Giant, booting it in the back of the head as it went past him. The Jotunn fell forward, its arms outstretched and its mouth open in a snarl, and had the top of its skull cleaved away by the dagger that was wedged in the wall.
The second Frost Giant failed to catch Ragnar as he sailed past its nose. Ragnar landed like a cat. With twin flicks, he sent throwing knives into each one of the Frost Giant’s eyes. The creature didn’t make a sound as it crashed forward onto its front.
A Jotunn suddenly grabbed me by the throat and propelled me backward. We crashed through a couple of tables and some benches, the furniture breaking apart as easily as if it were made of reeds. We fetched up against the meaty buffet table.
The Jotunn managed to get his fingers around my throat and started to squeeze. He bellowed as he tried his best to crush the life out of me, spittle flying into my face as I fought to extricate myself from his hold.
“Fuck me, but it’d... be great if... you motherfuckers learned how to... floss,” I croaked.
I brought my knee up viciously into my foe’s guts, but the creature had abdominals of steel and only grunted. I tried with another knee, this time to that sweet spot in the thigh that usually deadens the whole leg. The Frost Giant winced and sagged a little, but managed to keep his hold on my throat.
With a monumental effort, I brought my hands down on my attacker’s elbow joints and managed to break his hold. Before he could re-establish our close physical relationship, I reached behind me and scooped an entire leg of ham from the table and brought it around in a whistling arc. The ham caught the Jotunn sweetly on the jaw and dislocated it. The beast tried to roar, but my arm shot out. I grabbed the swaying, now useless, lower jaw and ripped it clean out of the Jotunn’s head. The Jotunn’s eyes went wide—not surprisingly, really. It gave a gargled scream, then I slammed his own jaw down into the middle of his broad forehead, punching my big lower tusks through his skull and into his brain.
It was all very gratifying, this hand to hand action, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were wasting precious seconds in this battle.
“Where’s Chaosbane?” I yelled at Madame Scaleblade as I looked around the large room, trying to see where the Headmaster had got to. It was hard to make out anything in the din and flow of the brawl that had engulfed the refectory. I watched as Bradley—I could tell it was him by the distracted way he ran a paw through the fur on his head, just as he would do his own hair
had he not been in disguise—went blow for blow with a squat Frost Giant. Bradley pushed the Jotunn away from him, then slammed his foot down on one end of a bench seat. The other end shot up and caught the Frost Giant under the chin and sent him reeling backward.
“Odette?” I said again. “Have you seen Chaosbane?”
It was then that I noticed Odette sag slightly. Next to her, a Frost Giant that had most definitely been deceased just before—Odette’s bone spear through its chest was a dead giveaway—stirred and got stiffly to its feet. Its eyes glowed now with a green light, and it stood as if waiting for instruction.
Madame Scaleblade made a gesture, and the zombie Frost Giant lumbered off. It grabbed one of its fellows, which was closing on Ironskin from behind, and bore it to the ground, tearing at its hapless target’s back with claws and teeth.
“Chaosbane… Chaosbane…” Madame Scaleblade said, giving her head a little shake. “I saw him a moment ago, in the thick of things as is his wont.” She pointed a finger across the room.
I nodded my thanks and made my way through the carnage. I had no real idea who was a genuine Jotunn and who was a Frost Giant in disguise, and so I hurried through the fight, making a point not to engage with any Frost Giants in case I wound up attacking one of my friends.
“Chaosbane!” I yelled as I saw the Headmaster of the Academy blast two Frost Giants out of the way in a burst of black and purple mist. His two enemies were flung away like dolls, spinning through the air like a pair of great furry ballerinas, revolving so fast that their limbs stuck out at right angles from their bodies. They reached such a pitch of rotation as they flew through the air that one of the poor fucker’s arms was ripped free of its body and smacked another Frost Giant in the back of the melon, knocking him cold.
“Justin, is that you?” Chaosbane called as he stepped nimbly up onto a table to avoid the sweep of Jotunn’s arm. “It’s hard to tell what with the full body beard and what not. Maybe I should change you back?”
“You can do that?!” I yelled. A hairy arm gripped me from behind, and I performed a judo throw that sent my assailant tumbling to the deck. Once there, I put the boot in a good four times to curb any enthusiasm he might have had at the idea of getting up.
“I suppose,” the Headmaster answered as he blasted a giant with his wand.
“I’d say we’ve pretty much lost the element of surprise, wouldn’t you?” I yelled back.
A Frost Giant, whose way of brawling I instantly recognized as Rick’s, lifted another Frost Giant over his head and brought him down hard onto his knee. Even over the confused clamor of the battle, I heard the gunshot crack of Rick’s unfortunate adversary’s spine breaking. It was a textbook backbreaker that would have had Vince McMahon pulling out a contract and chequebook to sign him up.
“I suppose that you’re probably right on that score,” Chaosbane said critically.
With a lazy flick and sweep of his wand that made him look like he was drawing a circle in the air, Chaosbane cast the counter-spell.
Instantly, I felt the change. It was as if I was deflating rapidly. My stomach lurched once more, tightening. My breath became raspy for a few seconds, and I went itchy all over. It was like the quickest, most intense allergic reaction.
Then, it was over, and I stood as myself, as Justin Mauler, Creation Mage, once more.
I summoned my staff, and the black crystal weapon appeared in my hand. “Hey Pops,” I said to the spirit inside the vector, “you’ve got a front row seat to the action.”
I whirled the staff about, seeking enemies now. I saw that the rest of my student friends had also been turned back to their original shapes. Bradley had instantly adopted his Crimson Titan form. He was laying about himself with a sword that I could tell he had summoned with a Flame Barrier spell. Alura, Cecilia, and Janet were causing mayhem over in one corner of the refectory. Cecilia fired out Frost Shards at any Jotunn that came close. Alura—though it was tricky to see—was using her transparency to befuddle the Frost Giants, luring them in before attacking them with her rock-hard fists. Janet, whose face was grim and set and determined, was firing ranged Storm Bolts at Jotunn that were further away. Even as I watched, one of her spells narrowly missed a Frost Giant, who jerked back to avoid it, and exploded against a far wall in a burst of rippling, smoking electricity.
To increase my view of the proceedings I hopped up onto the long table that Chaosbane was currently occupying. The Headmaster was taking a long pull from his flask as I joined his side. As I watched him, he casually pointed his wand at a Jotunn that had decided to join us. There was a flash of purple light, and suddenly the Jotunn’s arm had been scooped from its body, leaving only a disgusting, bloody, open cavity. The creature gaped and then collapsed, as the arm burst back into being, sprouting out of the back of its head. There was a brain clutched in its hand.
“Mm, not quite what I was expecting,” Chaosbane said as I looked on in amazement at the complex bit of magic he had just performed. “Yet it packed a punch and did more or less what I was after.”
I turned, intent, on asking him what the hell he had intended. Then, I perceived that Chaosbane was actually looking with a judgemental eye at the flask from which he had just been drinking.
I shook my head in a sort of impressed incredulity. “The fucking Chaosbanes…” I murmured.
Enwyn shot a Fireball at a Frost Giant that was only paces away from her, but the creature moved aside, and her spell incinerated a chair behind it. It roared defiantly at her and snorted snot through its bulbous nose.
I hit it right in the back with a Blazing Bolt, blowing it into smoking chunks, which reminded me of something that you might have found on the Frost Giant’s buffet table only a few moments before. There was no time for sentiment in the middle of a shitfight of this magnitude.
As an insurance policy, I conjured a quick Arcane Mine and tossed it down the far end of the long table. Then, knowing that I was protected from any Jotunn coming from that direction, I spun about and punched a couple of Frost Shards through the legs of one that was trying to sneak up on Nigel. Nigel hit the maimed Frost Giant with a blast of wind that swept it across the floor and bowled it into a group of three others that had just joined the fray. The Wind Mage was doing what he did best; harrying the enemy from the air with localized tornadoes that buffeted them this way and that, spinning them off balance when they tried to gather themselves for an attack.
On the other side of the doorway that we had arrived through only a few minutes before, I could make out the tramp of feet and some harsh bellowed commands. Ensuring that there were no immediate threats in my vicinity, I conjured a Magma Bomb in each hand and tossed them through the doorway. There was that unique squelching whumpf as the mana grenades went off, then a satisfying rain of Frost Giant body parts and liquid magma sprayed through the door.
“Man alive, how many of these naughty furry fellows did Idman employ here?” I heard Madame Xel yell. I looked for the succubus in the melee and saw that she was staring off to the opposite side of the refectory. Another dozen Frost Giants had appeared. They looked absolutely fresh, not to mention pissed at the sight of all their slain comrades.
Alura and Damien were fighting side by side nearest to this fresh group of Frost Giants. They were far enough away that it was going to be touch and go for me to get to them in time to help. As I watched, Damien ducked a ruthless punch from the Frost Giant he was fighting and then set an ember burning in his enemy’s coat with a simple touch. The fur-covered monster went up like a dry pine in a forest fire and started running about the place with flailing arms, until Alura hit it with a Crystalize spell and solidified it on the spot. For good measure, Damien then hit it with a Fireball and blew the Jotunn to smithereens.
The leader of the fresh group of Frost Giant guards raised his arm and chopped downward in the universally acknowledged signal for charge. The dozen monsters launched themselves forward, vengeance written in every one of their hearts.
; “I’ll take care of these cranky-butts,” Madame Xel said.
She stepped deftly out of the way of a couple of Frost Giants that attempted to grab hold of her. Chaosbane’s wand swept blithely across and suddenly Xel’s would-be attackers had traded heads—albeit, they had them reconnected the wrong way round. They fell dead in a heap at Madame Xel’s stiletto-clad feet.
The succubus reached into her long coat and pulled out a couple of bottles of sludgy gray potion from her pockets. She popped the corks out of the glass flasks with her thumbs and grinned.
“This is what you get for being foolish enough to join the rat-race, boys,” she said.
She tossed the flasks, spinning, underhand, and they smashed perfectly in front of the crowd of oncoming Frost Giants. Whatever was in the potion was clearly as slick as motor oil because the Frost Giants went down in a comedic tangle. Slipping and sliding and fighting to hold their balance, but to no avail. Their thick fur was coated in the viscous, unctuous potion.
There was a brief pause, during which even the few remaining Frost Giants paused in their scrapping and looked with interest at what might happen to their comrades.
A slow steam started to come off the potion-covered Jotunn as they lay on the floor trying to get to their feet. Then, with the sound of a can of soda being cracked, one of the eight-foot Jotunn simply turned into a rat. Just like that. No muss, no fuss. One moment a tolerably scary yeti-like creature, the next a middle-of-the road sewer rat. There was the sound of eleven more cans of soda being opened in quick succession and eleven more rats—all with the same dirty-white fur that they had had as Frost Giants—popped into being.
“Kill them quick!” Madame Xel said. “The spell will only last for a minute at the most.”
There was a mad scuffle of stamping and stomping as all of us endeavored to squish the rats before they could turn back into their formidable former selves. I managed to catch the last pair with my Telekinesis spell and dash them against the nearest wall.