by Jeff Gunhus
“Down!” T-Rex shouted behind us.
Instantly, Eva and I dropped to the ground. There was a whoosh of air as one of the Jotnar’s massive fists flew over our heads, barely missing us. But the follow-through was perfectly effective. It smashed into the rock trolls and the goblins, and sent them head-over-heels through the air into the melee of zombies and Lesser Creach.
I turned and looked at Eva on the ground next to me. She gave me a look that said, See what you’ve gotten us into? and then jumped to her feet, sword ready.
I did the same, dodging to the side as another fist slammed into the ground next to me.
“Spread out,” I yelled.
Eva and T-Rex circled around the giant Jotnar, attracting more of its attention. In that split second, I reached into my pockets and brought out the Jerusalem Stones, including the one Hester had given me. I clutched the Stones and closed my eyes, feeling their power course through me.
Then a sharp pain exploded in my leg, and the power from the Stones disappeared as though a plug had been pulled from an electrical socket. I opened my eyes and saw an arrow sticking into my leg.
“Watch out!” Will cried.
Either the warning came too late, or the pain in my leg made me slow to respond, , but the Jotnar’s open hand swatted me like a fly. I was weightless for a couple of seconds, long enough to know I was airborne and due for a hard landing.
I hit the ground flat on my back, knocking the breath out of me. The back of my head cracked into the ice, and a burst of white light flashed in front of my eyes.
A high-pitched buzzing sound replaced the sounds of the battle being waged in front of the castle. I turned onto my side, gasping for air. The arrow sticking out of my leg hit the ice and sent a shot of pain through me, clearing my head.
I clutched the arrow with both hands and yanked it out. I thought I might pass out from the pain. But then something occurred to me, something so terrible that it got adrenaline pumping through my body, mixed with a sense of dread so complete I thought my chest might explode.
My hands were empty.
I’d dropped the Jerusalem Stones.
“No, no, no,” I stammered, getting myself up onto my knees.
I was on the ice of the fjord, an impossible distance from the fight. Maybe forty or fifty yards, half the length of a football field. A great smear in the snow showed I’d slid nearly half that distance, and proved the force with which I’d been struck. There was no way I should have survived that kind of hit. The Jerusalem Stones must have given me some protection.
But where were they?
I scrambled onto my knees, pushing the thin layer of snow around on the ice. It was all kicked up from the zombies marching on it earlier, creating hundreds of little snow piles where the Stones could have landed and then been covered.
Without the Jerusalem Stones, we didn’t stand a chance.
A horrific cry filled the air, and the Jotnar pounded its way down the rock steps toward me. The disfigured side of the head was still facing me, its one good eye squinting until it saw me.
All five of my friends, even T-Rex and Xavier, followed behind, fighting with the other side of the monster, trying to slow it down. They were trying to give me time to get my wits about me and use the Stones. They had no way of knowing that I’d lost them.
I spotted my sword in the snow nearby. I scrambled to it and picked it up just as the Jotnar reached me. I tried to dodge it but I was too slow again.
It wrapped its fingers around me and lifted me off the ground. Its mouth gaped and I smelled its hot, stinking breath. I kicked and squirmed, just like any other creature about to get bitten in half by a predator.
My left arm was pinched to my side, but my right was free. And I still had my sword.
Fighting every instinct in my body, I stopped struggling to escape. There was no way I was going to break free of the monster’s grip, but the approaching mouth was terrifying.
I waited until the very last second, then I stabbed as deeply as I could into the Jotnar’s lip, driving my sword into its head.
It howled again, its disgusting breath blowing my hair back.
Then the Jotnar made a crucial error.
It held me up to its one eye so it could get a closer look at this thing that was poking it. I lunged forward and sank my sword up to the hilt in its eye.
The Jotnar opened its hand and I fell twenty feet to the ice. The pain in my leg from the arrow injury took my breath away, but at least I was free of the giant’s grip.
“Run!” I shouted to the others. “I lost the Jerusalem Stones. Run!”
The Jotnar let out a terrible, high-pitched squeal. I dodged its huge feet as it stumbled across the ice. All four of its hands were on the disfigured face, touching it all over. When they finally moved away, I saw that the face was slack. Its mouth drooped open and the single dead eye was fixed in its socket.
That side of the Jotnar was dead.
Which only made the other side more dangerous.
The Jotnar spun and the other face stared me down with pure hatred. It roared like a wild animal and came charging at me, totally out of control.
I jumped out of the way and the creature tripped and tumbled to the ice. I heard a huge crack as the ice field absorbed the Jotnar’s great weight, but not loud enough to give me any hope that it might fall through. A thousand zombies had marched across it and they weighed more than the Jotnar.
Daniel, Eva and Will slid to a stop at my side as the Jotnar got to its feet. I turned and saw Ariel, T-Rex and Xavier sprinting back toward the castle. One of the dragons had left its position circling, above the castle, and was flying toward them.
“T-Rex,” I yelled. “No, go the other––”
Eva yanked me to the ground as the heel of the Jotnar’s foot passed just over us.
Daniel also fell to his hands and knees, but he transformed into his werewolf form. With a snarl, he bounded across the ice and jumped onto the Jotnar’s leg, tearing into it with his claws.
Eva ran to the back of same leg and hacked away at the giant’s Achilles’ tendon. Will took a position right beside her, fending off the Jotnar’s other hands.
The Jotnar roared and swatted at Eva and Daniel, spinning frantically in an effort to shake them off. While they kept it occupied, I turned my attention to back to T-Rex and Xavier. The dragon was bearing down on them.
“Hey!” I shouted, running toward them, waving my hands at the dragon. “Over here.”
The dragon didn’t change course.
I tried mentally communicating with it. Even without the Jerusalem Stones, it was worth a shot.
“Hey you big, ugly lizard,” I said, focusing my energy on the huge reptile. “If you want a fight, here I am.”
The dragon shrieked, raised its right wing and banked hard in my direction. It swooped so close to the frozen fjord that its wings kicked up big swirls of snow.
Once I got the thing’s attention, I was terrified. I turned and ran parallel to the castle, away from Eva, Will and Daniel’s fight with the Jotnar.
The dragon bore down on me a lot faster than I’d expected. It let out a shrill cry and I felt a surge of heat behind me.
That was my cue.
I cut hard right, using every bit of speed I could find, barely dodging the stream of fire that billowed behind me, blowing chunks of ice off the lake surface.
The dragon beat its wings and soared straight upward. It angled its head so that one of its eyes was looking right at me, refocusing on its target.
Executing a slow roll, it fell back to earth, its wings tucked back so that it looked like a torpedo coming toward me.
I ran back the way I’d come, weaving through the debris of the dragon’s last pass over the ice.
Again, the second I felt the heat, I dodged, but this time toward the Jotnar.
The dragon’s flames carved another swath through the ice, getting so close that my clothes smoked.
But the beast was so focu
sed on me that it didn’t see the Jotnar in its path.
Eva, Will and Daniel jumped aside as the dragon fire hit the Jotnar.
The giant covered its head with all four of its arms, warding off the blaze.
Then, with a roar, it grabbed the dragon’s tail as it flew by. The dragon screeched at the Jotnar and flapped its wings to try to escape, but the giant had too strong a hold. With incredible power, it slammed the dragon into the ice; first in one direction and then the other, back and forth as though beating a wet rag against a rock.
Finally, the dragon broke loose and flew jerkily upwards, one of its wings bent back at an odd angle.
The Jotnar raised two of its fists into the air while the other two beat its chest in triumph.
Daniel and the other ran up beside me.
“If that was supposed to take them both out, it didn’t really do the trick,” he said.
“Follow me,” I said as the Jotnar turned its attention back to us.
I ran as hard as I could, aware that the Jotnar’s frustration with the battle against us was likely going to make it even faster. But I was hoping it was also going to make it careless.
“Stay close,” I called out, twisting in and out among the debris from the dragon blast, splashing through puddles of water from the melted ice.
“What are we doing?” Eva said.
“Just trust me,” I said. “Will and Daniel, go left when I say. Eva, you’re with me.”
The Jotnar bellowed right behind us. I didn’t need to turn to know it was nearly within reach.
“Now!”
Will and Daniel cut one way, and Eva and I went the other.
As I hoped, the Jotnar took a second to decide which group to chase. It stopped, looking back and forth.
I turned to glance over my shoulder. It was standing in the exact right place: The intersection of the two blasts of fire from the dragon. It was where the ice would be weakest.
But nothing happened.
My heart sank as I realized that the ice must still be too thick.
The Jotnar took a step toward us... and the ice finally gave way.
The monster fell through up to its waist but stopped itself with its four arms. It grinned in relief as it pressed against the ice and slowly pulled itself out.
But the ice all around it was weakened, and broke in chucks wherever the monster tried to grab hold. Its arms flailed as it thrashed and screamed. But not for long. The Jotnar may have been many things, but a good swimmer wasn’t one of them. After one more violent struggle to climb out, it seemed to simply give up and slide under the surface of the lake. Gone.
I turned to Eva and the others, expecting a look of thanks. Or at least relief. Instead, they all looked at me with horror.
Then I figured it out. I looked at the hole in the ice and then back at Eva and Daniel.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
The Lord of the Lesser Creach had gone to its watery grave with the one thing we needed most of all.
The fifth Jerusalem Stone.
Without it, I wasn’t going to be able to transform Daniel or Eva back into their human form. They were stuck as a werewolf and vampire forever.
“We’ll recover it,” I said. “Once this is all done. Somehow.”
I looked back at the hole, now just smooth water. I remembered from geography class that fjords could be thousands of feet deep. We all knew it would be nearly impossible for us to ever find it.
The fifth Jerusalem Stone was gone.
That was a problem.
30
“What are we going to do?” Daniel asked.
“Can vampires swim?” Will asked.
Eva scowled. “Hundreds of feet down under ice? Uh, no. Can you?”
He shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask.”
T-Rex, Xavier, and Ariel were running back toward us. I led the others to meet them. “We need to find the other four Stones. I dropped them somewhere out here.”
“You dropped them? How could you drop them?” Daniel said.
“Well, I got slugged by a giant and sent flying through the air,” I snapped, disliking his tone. “They were kind of hard to hang onto.”
Eva kicked over piles of ice as we walked through the debris field. “They could be anywhere.”
T-Rex waved his arms as they got closer, shouting something I couldn’t quite understand.
“We have to find them,” I said, heaving over a block of ice nearly my size. “Without the Stones, I don’t think we stand a chance,”
I could tell both Eva and Daniel were trying to process what had just happened. Up to this point, the hope of being transformed back into human form had always dangled in front of them. With that hope all but gone, they were lost in their own thoughts, imagining the lifetime ahead of them as Creach.
“Guys, I’m sorry. It sucks, I get it. But I need you both here. I promise I’ll do everything I can to make this right when the battle is over. If we’re even alive.” I pointed to the castle. “All I know is that we need to get in there and face Ren Lucre. With everything working in our favor, there was always a good chance we’d fail. And now… now…”
“…and now the story they tell about our victory will be even greater,” Daniel said with a grin. “You can’t have a great victory against insurmountable odds unless you have odds that are insurmountable, right? Besides, I’m finally getting the hang of this transformation thing. It’s not so bad.”
I looked at Eva and knew she wasn’t going to be such a fast convert. Her face was dark, and her expression pinched with concentration. It was the look I’d seen a hundred times before when she was in battle.
“Let’s find the Stones and end this,” she said. “But I can’t live like this, not forever.”
I didn’t know how to respond. Thankfully, T-Rex, Xavier and Ariel finally reached us, and got me off the hook. T-Rex was so breathless that whenever he tried to speak, it just came out as a weird huuuhhh huuuhhh sound.
“Jeez, sounds like you’re going to pass out or something,” Will said. “Take a second. We’re gonna be here a while looking for the Stones Jack dropped.”
“Did you see how far I flew through the air?” I said.
“Yes,” Xavier said, trying to catch his breath too. “And I saw approximately where you landed. You slid a long way on the ice. The distance actually indicates that the force of the blow from the giant was––”
“Get to the point, kid,” Ariel said. I noticed she wasn’t breathing hard at all.
“We followed the slide backward to your point of impact,” Xavier said. “Testing my hypothesis that it would have been the likely spot to find the Stones.”
T-Rex, finally able to speak, opened his hand to reveal two Jerusalem Stones. “We… found… them…” was all he could manage.
Xavier opened his hand to show he had the other two. “Right where we thought they’d be.”
We all shouted and exchanged high fives, feeling for a second like we’d just won a basketball game instead of finding the magical relics that were essential to saving the world.
“It was the little one’s idea,” Ariel said. “Pretty clever.”
Will clapped Xavier on the back. “Thanks, man. We all owe you one.”
I held out my hand and T-Rex put the Stones into it. I was amazed at how they always seemed to fit perfectly, their size adjusting depending on the circumstance. I gripped them tightly and felt their power vibrate. It reminded me of being near a large idling engine. Even at rest, the potential of power hung in the air. The additional fourth Stone felt familiar, and I imagined I’d already been at least partially connected with it while Hester and I had been touching. Still, I could feel the added power throb in my chest.
I pointed to the castle where the zombies still fought the Lesser Creach. “It’s time to join the fight.”
“I have a better idea,” Ariel said, a gleam in her eye. “You have a thief as part of your group; why not use my skills?”
“Wha
t did you have in mind?” I asked.
“The front door is usually a lousy way to break in somewhere,” she said, nodding over her shoulder to the far end of the castle wall. “It’s better to go through the back door whenever you can.”
I got what she was suggesting. The other option meant wading into the chaos of the main battle, so it was an easy decision.
“Lead the way,” I said.
We all followed Ariel, keeping parallel to the castle walls and the fight that raged there. I knew that Hester was in that mix of zombies and Lesser Creach. I hated to think of her mindlessly hacking away through the melee. Without the Jerusalem Stone inside her, she couldn’t control the other zombies and she didn’t have any sense of who she was before her transformation. Along with Eva and Daniel, she was another person I’d let down by losing the fifth Jerusalem Stone.
I pushed the thought away and tried to focus on the mission ahead. We all cast glances at the sky, worried that one of the other dragons would barrel down at any minute. But they stayed put, only two of them now, circling lazily far above the castle like sharks waiting to attack. The dragon the Jotnar had beat-up appeared to have retreated somewhere else to tend its wounds.
We quickly reached the side of the castle where the wall terminated in the sheer cliff face. This was where a narrow road was cut into the rock so there was land access to the castle when the fjord was water instead of thick ice. It was only wide enough for a single car so it give an invading army an access point. But there was a gate in the wall here and it didn’t look like it was defended as we ran up to it.
“When you’re trying to break into a place, always look for the least defended access point,” Ariel said to me. “It doesn’t look like they even…oh no! Everyone down!”
A cloud of arrows flew from behind the castle wall and arced through the air toward us. There were hundreds of them.
And we were exposed. Nowhere to take cover.
Time seemed to slow down. I could feel the shower of arrows approaching us like a dark cloud crossing the sky.
Eva and Daniel threw their bodies on top of T-Rex and Xavier.
Ariel and Will crowded over me, willing to take the arrows themselves so I could live.