Giantfall

by F. A. Bentley

  “What about the fourth one?”

  “Dead ends with tombs in them. Looks like we choose between--”

  “Brigitte. Whose tombs?” I demanded.

  She looked surprised before replying. “Er, the Careful One’s tomb. That’s the epithet for Andvari, the greatest of the Dwarf enchanters. Also buried with him are some other Dwarves. Hreidmar, one of their kings, and the Dwarf prince, Fraenir. That’s his old Norse name. You probably know him better as--”

  “Fafnir,” I whispered.

  All the pieces clicked into place.

  “We don’t have another moment to lose. Hjelti, Brigitte, we’re going to go pay respects to some dead Dwarves.”

  Chapter 29

  “Wait. I’m coming with you.”

  All three of us turned our heads to Smith when we heard the words.

  “What about Cazador?” I asked.

  “He’s stabilized. The mission is strategic value utmost. Risk too high with just you three. If you can get me a clean shot to Rurik-- Rurikovich, then I can neutralize him.

  Smith trusted me enough to tell me all she knew about this, but the real question now became, did I trust her enough? It was hardly a day ago when she had her pea shooter aimed right at my chest. I shot her a suspicious glare before finally relenting.

  “Let’s hurry.”

  There wasn’t any time to mull it over anyways. If we didn’t act fast then something worse than a dress rehearsal for Ragnarok would befall the Norse supernaturals. They’d gain a brand spanking new big bad on top of all the others. And he’d have modern sensibilities to boot.

  I sucked in a breath when I saw the first of them. Vettir, dressed like the officer on the plane. With Starr’s intel fresh in my head, I found the resemblance between them and Red Army thugs to be uncanny.

  “Careful now,” Brigitte spoke up. “This is a Dwarf tomb. That means there’s a thousand and one different needling traps that you might spring if you’re careless.”

  “Thankfully Rurikovich’s boys cleared a path for us. Practically rolled out the red carpet,” I replied.

  Pun intended.

  Past the hallways we went as fast as we dared, until we reached a high arching ante chamber. The thundering sound of a waterfall echoed in the distance. No bodies here. Just damp moisture and subdued light. Smith rushed up ahead of us and held up a fist.

  She must have seen something. I watched as she put her eye down to her scope, looking about the room. I flinched when she unceremoniously pulled the trigger. Without wasting a second, she twitched to the left and fired again.

  From the darkened archways, two Goblins fell. Their long rifles clattered to the floor as the whole room seemingly came alive. Vetti troopers, officers egging them on from behind in a twisted parody of a Second World War defense line opened fire.

  Ducking behind a half collapsed pillar worth of rubble, we caught our breaths as bullets riddled and ricocheted past the makeshift barricade.

  “Thankfully no snipers to pick us off,” I said cheerfully.

  “You’re welcome,” Smith replied. “We need a distraction so I can pick off more HVTs.”

  “Think you can distract them?” I asked the Giantess

  Brigitte nodded. “Guard me. I need to concentrate.”

  The Giantess knelt to the ground, traced a circle through the air with her eyes firmly closed. Chanting gave way to a mantra of echoing words, until at last she brought her hands together into a clap.

  It wasn’t a very loud clap. If I hadn’t watched her do it I’d have missed it altogether over the gunfire, but when she clapped, the whole room was quickly covered in a thick fog.

  The Vettir officers barked commands, and the gunfire ceased. That’s when the first of them appeared. Ghostly warriors with winged helmets and baleful blue fire where their eyes should be. Rising out of the ground with weapons bared, they set upon the Vettir with merciless abandon from every which way.

  “Necromancy?” Smith gasped.

  I shook my head. "Just good illusions.”

  The misty ghosts couldn’t hurt the Vetti, but the Vetti could sure hurt each other. Fresh gunfire erupted from the ranks, the bullets harmlessly piercing through the ‘ghosts’ and riddling their own troops.

  Smith wasted no time casting a sight spell on herself to pierce the heavy fog. She broke cover and smoothly shut up the Vetti officers that tried to organize the panicked Goblins.

  The deafening chatter of gunfire ebbed to burst, which were soon reduced to sparse frantic shots, until the apparitions cleared and all that was left was a lone Vettir trooper. Smith wasted no time mopping him up too.

  “Quality versus quantity,” Smith said.

  “They slowed us down. That might be enough. Ready to go?” I said before seeing Brigitte. “What’s wrong?”

  She was sweating, panting heavily as though she’d ran a marathon with Fenris wolves chasing her.

  “Charles, sorry, I think I went a little bit overboard,” she said, as Hjelti bent to steady her. “I feel ten years older.”

  Dozens of illusions all in tandem. Orchestrating that much chaos in such a short period of time? I’d heard of some magicians who literally killed themselves pulling off spells that big. The heat of the moment made me totally overlook the consequences.

  Smith didn’t look that great either. Her magic must have been more subtle though. I don’t think I’d seen her miss a single shot. The ritual circles carved into her gun must be designed around guiding the bullets to the intended targets. Or perhaps ensuring the bullet itself could harm any supernatural that might normally shrug off physical harm. Maybe even both.

  “Hjelti and I can handle it from here. We have to move, but stay behind us.”

  “Get bent,” Smith replied.

  Brigitte snorted in response too, but didn’t complain beyond that.

  We crossed the antechamber turned war zone. Even in death the Vetti bodies and blood slowed us down. I suppose we should have been grateful there wasn’t another blood ritual here too. Rurikovich must have gotten impatient.

  A hard wooden gate barred our way. Big enough that a Jotun could fit past though clearly of Dwarven make. It was covered in big golden runes and the wood actually looked petrified.

  I drew my wand-sword and pierced it through the gap between the side of the doorway. My skyward slice tore the lock and bar completely and my kick dramatically flung the gate wide open.

  Lis may have rubbed off on me over the years.

  The room stretching out before us was so big that it easily fit a whole waterfall in it, spraying along the sides and draining down into the empty depths below. The floor was not stone but what appeared to be a huge metal disk suspended on chains.

  Circling the room were half a dozen sarcophagi, a score of Vetti troopers with wavering eyes, and a pair of mangy black wolves lying in wait beneath the central tomb. And of course, right in the middle of them all was Rurikovich himself.

  No more hiding. No more phone calls. No more dirty tricks. The graying old bastard himself leaned unsteadily before an opened sarcophagus.

  “Good thinking coming here, Rurikovich. You’ve saved me the trouble of finding a place to bury you,” I shouted.

  Rurikovich’s face twitched when he heard his name. “Well now. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a good long time.”

  As he pushed off the tomb, crutch still in hand, the two gigantic wolves at his feet began to circle around toward us. More dark druids? Crap.

  “Locke,” Smith said, bracing her rifle.

  I held out a hand. The Vetti were pawns, but the Jotun renegades were terrifying all on their own. Monsters in their own right.

  “Never ceases to impress me how many two bit boogeymen come out of the wood works when someone like you shows up, Rurikovich. It must be flattering having Jotun outcasts bend knee to lick your boot.”

  As I spoke, one of the druids snarled, rising onto hind legs and shifting shape. The other peered at Smith and Brigitte hungrily as it cir
cled around behind us.

  “It must be my natural charisma. It’s amazing what a few words can do to the dim witted. ‘We must make your overlords see that each and every Vetti is just as worthy as an Aesir!’” Rurik proclaimed, before bursting into a cruel fit of laughter. “Human. Vettir. Jotun. You’re all only equal only in your stupidity. Tear their throats out.”

  The druids leaped upon us in unison. Only barely held at bay by a whirlwind swing of Hjelti’s ax.

  Outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and probably outgunned, things were looking bad as the shape shifters readied for another pounce. I just didn’t realize how bad things were until I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.

  The Goblin ranks parted to reveal a coven of hags hidden among their number. They scrambled past their fellow Vetti and laid their gnarled hands upon the metal ring. As they did, a sharp ritual circle came alive at the touch of their fingers.

  My breath caught in my throat. Trap. “Get ba--”

  It was too late. Gravity tripled or quadrupled in the space of a single second, and I felt myself crumple to the floor. I could barely move, but Brigitte and Smith had it even worse. Right along with us, the druids were laid flat too.

  All was silent but for the approach of a single unsteady gait. Rurikovich’s false leg hovered into view, clanging down right in front of my face.

  “Too bad Mr. Locke. But you just don’t live to be my age without learning a magic trick or two of your own.”

  Chapter 30

  I’d never seen someone look quite as smug as Rurikovich when he began pacing back and forth in front of me. “What you’re feeling now is your powers being turned against you, warlock. It must be so hard to have your mighty magical powers stripped from you. Outwitted by a normal, everyday, base, miserable, Mundane mortal. Pathetic.”

  It was anti magic alright. That’s why the Jotun druids were crippled by it too. The more power you had, the stronger the effect. Brigitte and Smith struggled to breathe, let alone resist. I struggled to crane my head around. The Goblins, hag and soldier alike, dared not set foot inside the circle. Even if they weren’t magically adept, they’d be affected.

  I turned my gaze to Hjelti, whose warlike tendencies did nothing to abate Rurikovich’s trick. Supernaturals were magic of another variety. Even if they couldn’t manifest it themselves they were innately fantastical.

  Rurikovich was the only one blissfully immune to the spell.

  “Don’t tell me you plan on gloating for the next thirty minutes, Rurikovich. They sure don’t make them like they used to,” I struggled to say.

  The words got a chuckle out of the old man. “I’ll have time to indulge once I’m finished tying up loose ends. In reverse order of importance.”

  Slowly, calmly, Rurikovich reached into the folds of his coat and retrieved a pistol from within. A Tokarev semi automatic handgun, if I had to take a wild guess. It was battered, still deadly even in old age, and completely lacking a safety.

  Much like its owner.

  He aimed right at my forehead, checked the sight, then pointed it at the nearest Jotun renegade and fired. The loud bang echoed through the cavernous room, and a red hole in the dark druid’s forehead marked his demise. His comrade roared in futile rage.

  “Rurik! Oathbreaking bastard!” the remaining Jotun druid bellowed, before he was shot dead too.

  The clink of the spent casing as it struck the metallic floor was crystal clear.

  Total silence for a moment, and then Rurikovich shrugged. “I may be old, but I know a bad deal when I hear one. They wanted me to release an old friend of theirs from here and practically threw themselves at my feet-- Heh. Foot,” he corrected, clinking his metallic substitute, “without more than a verbal agreement.”

  “Killing your allies?” I asked.

  The old man tsked at me, shaking his head. “All the old monsters were playing on the same team. It never occurred to them even once that someone as… Agreeable to their tastes as I am wasn’t playing on anybody’s team.”

  “Except your own. Rurik the Red doesn’t share.”

  Rurikovich smirked. “One hundred and forty.”

  I paused. “What?”

  “My age.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I was exactly forty one years old when I came across Rasputin’s trove. In the ruins of her majesty the Tsarina’s manor. My fellow revolutionaries had no idea the value of what we’d come across. I offered to... ‘dispose’ of it.”

  Cold sweat beaded on my brow. Rurik hadn’t risen to prominence in World War Two. He’d become a warlord in the time of my great grandparents. No wonder he knew every trick in the book. He’d been alive long enough to experience every footnote in it his damn self.

  “That’s how you came into contact with magic for the very first time,” I said.

  “And again after the fall of Berlin. I’ve lengthened my life span seven times now, and still it’s not enough,” he spoke, a low anger bubbling in his throat. “What’s the point of lengthening the lifespan of a weakling mortal man?”

  Rurikovich’s gaze drifted from me to Brigitte, his face souring at the sight of the Giantess that infiltrated his ranks. I had to act fast or Brigitte would be dead in a heartbeat.

  “So that’s why you came to the Careful One’s tomb then. To pillage it, take Andvari’s cursed ring and use it to turn yourself into--”

  “Please, Mr. Locke,” Rurikovich replied, his eyes falling back onto me but his body still turned towards Brigitte. “You make it sound like I’ve come to steal livestock or buxom brides. All I wanted was one little ring of gold; to shed this pathetic mortal shell.”

  “Dragon’s greed? At your age, I’d expect a bit more self restraint,” I taunted.

  The old man’s pride got the better of him. “It’s not greed. I’ve earned it. Through guile and cleverness I’ve overcome the mightiest wizards and the supernatural watchdogs put in place to keep me out. Look at you! All the magical might you’ve used to kill my ‘revolutionaries’ with impunity has utterly failed you. Every Vetti the North over is willing to die for my cause, and if I could outwit you simpleton sorcerers as a mortal Man, just imagine what I will be able to do when Andvari’s ring turns me into an undying dragon!”

  “I suppose you expect me to say something along the lines of, ‘you’ll never get away with this’?” I asked.

  Rurikovich’s eyes lit up with baleful mirth as he cocked his pistol at my forehead. “Not at all, Mr. Locke. All I expect you to do is die.”

  It was now or never.

  The sound of the pistol firing echoed through the cavern, accompanied by a blur of motion. Deafening silence a heartbeat long, and then, screaming. Rurikovich’s.

  The old man toppled onto his back, holding the stump of his right hand and writhing in pain. His pistol, still held by his severed hand, hit the metallic floor with a sopping thud.

  “It can’t be!” Rurikovich roared. “How? It would take an archmage of unimaginable power--”

  I stood to my feet despite the anti magic, my beloved mundane dagger gripped in my blood splattered fist. I could feel every Vetti heart in the room thrill with confusion and terror.

  “So many chances to study my magic, and not once did you ask yourself why I hadn’t melted a building with an inferno of pyromancy or raised an army of the dead when in a jam. Here’s my secret, Rurikovich. I barely have enough magical talent for party tricks.”

  Rurikovich blinked. “But--”

  “Mages always underestimate Humans. But Humans always overestimate mages,” I replied.

  Rurikovich’s face twisted with rage, realizing he’d fallen for the very same trick he used to fly under everyone’s radar. In a ragged voice, he screamed, “What are you cowards waiting for? Attack!”

  Three things happened in little more than a split second. The hags dropped the anti magic barrier to charge, Brigitte, Hjelti, and Smith rose to their feet, and Rurikovich jammed his remaining hand into his coat pocket.

  Ste
adying Andvari’s ring between his teeth, Rurikovich slipped the legendary cursed item onto his finger. That’s when he turned into a Dragon.

  Chapter 31

  For the purposes of collecting life insurance, it was important to note that we were about to get killed by a Linnormr, not a true dragon.

  Dragons have two wings, four legs, and a reptillian body. Linnormrs however are distant cousins at best. Their body was like a spiky snake with two crooked claws jutting out of their sides. They were infamous for the sheer quantity of toxic fumes they could belch out over a length of time, and Rurikovich was shaping to be a very scary Linnormr.

  With only two limbs left to speak of, the old man contorted, arching his back and groaning as his skin bore scales and his bones cracked to accommodate the painful metamorphosis. He grew immense in the blink of an eye. More and more until his metamorphosis was complete.

  Towering. Monstrous. Pitch black with a rash of red scales down his spiked back, Rurikovich peered down at us with sharp draconic eyes.

  Almost as quick as I could leap behind Hjelti’s raised shield, the dread serpent opened his mouth wide and spewed a stream of venom. The Giant warrior braced himself properly, weathering the spray of sludge with enough presence of mind to tilt towards the oncoming Goblin gun line.

  Bullets pelted off the mighty shield, but with every passing second I could see his shield melting away more.

  “Rurikovich’s breath must be acidic. Toxic to boot, too, I bet. But without Hjelti, we’ll be short work for the Goblins.”

  Brigitte clamped a hand down onto my shoulder, rising to a knee. “You leave the gunmen to me. Just give me a breath.”

  “Smith?”

  “Wilco,” came her curt reply.

  “On three then. Scatter. Thin the Vettir. Leave the lizard to me. One. Two!”

  Three. Brigitte cried out in exertion, forming a dim sphere between her hands, breaking it in two like an egg. As soon as she did, a thick gray fog erupted from her open palms, blanketing the room with enough obscurity to play a game of pin the tail on the Linnormr.