The Giants of Shattered Swamp
Page 1
The Giants of Shattered Swamp
A Novel of the
“Monster Hunting for Fun and Profit”
Series
Book 4
EDDIE PATIN
Copyright
“The Giants of Shattered Swamp” is a work of fiction.
All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are either created by the author, used in this fictional setting, or references used within a fictional framework.
Copyright © 2019, Eddie Patin and Lost Woods Publishing LLC
EBooks are not transferable. All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission.
Published in the United States of America by Lost Woods Publishing LLC, 2019
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Table of Contents
The Giants of Shattered Swamp
Copyright
Table of Contents
Book Introduction by Eddie Patin
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
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So What Happens Next?
About Eddie Patin
More Books from Eddie Patin
Enjoy this Excerpt from “Portal Zero”
Author Notes & Appendix –Giants
Book Introduction by Eddie Patin
Explore other Universes.
Hunt Deadly Monsters.
Make a Profit.
When things go wrong on a world of giants, they go wrong in a big way...
Jason Leaper 934 and his Reality Rifters (including Morgana!) are enjoying some serious rest and relaxation after that gruesome gargoyle bounty. When the team rifts to the Market to identify their magical loot from the necromancer's tower, Jason signs them up for a quick 'exclusive' job to collect a troll's head from a swamp-world of giants.
It should be an easy job, then more R&R. In and out, right?
But when the 'shattered swamp' turns out to be under the dominion of a mysterious, invincible, and totally insane primordial giant who captures most of the Reality Rifters to become 'pets' in his sky castle, Jason is in for the trial of his life to save them! Wounded and alone, Jason must use his wits and rifting knowledge--and some new tricks up his sleeve--to rescue his friends before they're killed by the giant's split and raging mind...
The Giants of Shattered Swamp is a fast-paced adventure story and is the fourth book in the "Monster Hunting for Fun and Profit" series about Jason Leaper 934 and his planeswalking Reality Rifters, Monster Hunters for hire. If you love books about guns, survival, vicious and terrible mythical monsters, cosmic horror, time travel, DINOSAURS, and exploring strange new worlds ... read this today!
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This is part of a SERIES!
This is Book 4 in the series "Monster Hunting for Fun and Profit".
If you haven't read the previous books, I'd recommend that you do so that everything makes sense. All books in this series are free with KU:
Book 1 – The Wyvern in the Wilderlands
Book 2 – The Minotaurs of Maze World
Book 3 – The Heart of a Necromancer
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Now on to the book...
Chapter 1
Falling.
The wind tore at Jason's face and hair and clothes.
With his night vision still on in his right eye's image intensifier, he was blinded and completely disoriented. Jason’s stomach was up in his throat and he found himself screaming as the air rushed by his ears.
The bug-man clutched onto him with pointy elbows and knees, stabbing at him with hard, chitinous fingers. The Nothrix bastard felt like a weight pulling him forward, but Jason couldn't make out which direction he was tumbling.
He was simply, dreadfully falling.
Jason Leaper 934 found himself shouting his attacker's name.
"Ghrag!" he screamed over the violent wind in his ears. "Ghrag!"
He was in an unknown world—oh God, where the hell was he?!—surrounded by bright and dazzling colors. As Jason and Ghrag fell, still wrestling and pulling and pushing at each other, blinding colors—blobs of pale greens, ambers, and yellows—assaulted him from all around. Jason's nose, full of air jetting up into his nostrils from freefalling, was invaded with a yeasty, fermented smell like hot bread, sicky-sweet sugars, and starches breaking down; the smell of brewing beer.
Jason felt a line of pain lance across his cheek as the Nothrix sliced him with one sharp claw shaped like a scissor blade made of bug-like exoskeleton.
His thumbs were still in Ghrag's eyes, pushing into the gross creature's fleshy face, still struggling to get the bastard off of him like he was back when they were in the sandy street of the Market. Now, Jason had no fucking idea where they were...
The impact was a surprise. It smashed Jason's entire being.
For an instant, Jason thought he’d hit the unseen, rocky surface of a mysterious alien planet and broke every bone in his body. The fear flooding through him was ridiculous. The adrenaline in his veins couldn't be any thicker, falling through the atmosphere of God knows where. His brain was fried and his mouth was stuck in an animalistic scream...
Just after impact, Jason’s mouth was full of fluid. It was bubbly and pungent. Sweet.
He didn’t splat on the ground. He was underwater.
Under ... something.
The fluid that swallowed his falling body was bubbling violently. Jason suddenly had no idea which way was up. Crazy bubbles and froth and streams of air spun Jason around—still stuck to Ghrag the Nothrix, who slashed and pulled at his face and clothes—and Jason realized that he would drown if he kept screaming.
Somehow, he shut his mouth. He held what little breath he had left inside.
He was still alive ... for the moment.
Jason forced himself to open his eyes even though he was so afraid and amped up that he wanted to explode out of his skin. He pushed his thumbs harder into the bug-man's eyes
as he tried to calm his flailing brain and figure out what the fuck was going on.
He was in a body of water—no, fermented, yeasty fluid—that was roiling and bubbling madly around him as if it was boiling. It was like a hot tub with its jets on full-blast.
Not boiling, he thought. Still alive.
Can't breathe!
In a surprising moment of clarity, Jason watched through the bright and colorful haze in front of his open eyes for the direction of the bubbles. He used to SCUBA dive back when he was a teenager with his parents. He remembered, back then, being taught that if he ever lost his sense of direction while diving to watch the bubbles. Bubbles always go up.
Unless this is a weird universe with a different set of physical laws, he thought.
Fuck it.
He tried to kick away from the bug-man, who struggled against him; a dark blob under the foaming, fermenting fluid. Ghrag pulled at him. The Nothrix bastard reached up with his deadly claws and tore at Jason's face. He turned his face away, hoping that Ghrag wouldn't slice his neck.
Jason fought for the surface. The fluid felt weird. He was being pushed around by the constant torrent of bubbles and turbulence.
His chest hitched. Jason's brain tried to force him to take a breath of the mystery-liquid, but he resisted and felt his diaphragm pulling in ... in ... in toward his spine.
Shit!
Pulling his legs up, Jason planted his boots against the Nothrix's flabby chest then pushed hard. One of Ghrag's sharp-fingered hands lost hold, but the other still grabbed at Jason’s minotaur-hide jacket. Shit—that jacket had saved his life multiple times now. That bug-man would have cut him to ribbons without it! Jason realized that he was still pushing against Ghrag's face, forcing his thumb's into the nasty fucker's eyes, so he released. He tried to punch Ghrag in the face, but underwater, it was no use.
Jason kicked again. Ghrag held on and pulled himself up Jason's torso with his spiky limbs. The Nothrix might have been screaming with black hatred, but all Jason could hear was the bubbling and fermenting of the beer-like liquid around him.
His face broke the surface.
Yes!
For just a moment, Jason felt the turbulent fluid break away from his face. He felt the pinpricks all over his skin from the many bubbles popping and blistering around him. He detected air and took the best breath he could.
Then, he could see!
In that quick break of the surface, Jason saw through his half-blinded right eye and his normal left eye that he was in an ocean. It seemed like an ocean. The sky was pale yellow and the tossing sea around him was greenish-brown and full of icebergs. It bubbled furious everywhere as if Jason was in Hell; a sea of fire. But it wasn't fire. It wasn't hot. It was sweet, yeasty liquid fermenting vigorously. For just a second, his ears had been free of the fluid, and Jason heard a world full of a roaring boiling sound.
Then Ghrag pulled him under again. He was back in the shit again.
Jason reached up with one hand for the surface once more, kicking at Ghrag as hard as he could, and his hand hit something that felt like a floating block of Styrofoam. Jason let go of Ghrag fully and did his best to swim for the surface, kicking off of his attacker. He scrambled to get above the waves, praying that he could make it before he drowned. His right eye was a wall of bright green—the image intensifier overloaded with the light of this mysterious daylight world. He closed it and struggled for the surface...
Jason emerged again and coughed once. He took a gulping breath against the sizzling air full of popping, yeasty bubbles. He felt Ghrag seize his right leg and began clawing his way up.
The icebergs weren't ice. Jason struggled to keep his head above the fluid’s surface and saw several flecks of dried foam separating around him. Some were the size of bricks. Some were the size of ice coolers. One large piece of dried foam bumped him in the head, and Jason went under for a moment as he passed beneath it.
He kicked at Ghrag again—the bug-man was now fully clutching onto his lower body—and swam furiously with his arms to keep his head up. He saw a foam iceberg; literally like a freaking iceberg floating nearby on the tumultuous sea of green and brown. His mouth was full of sweet starchiness and his nose was full of pungent yeast. It was like beer. No—not like actual beer, but more like the syrupy wort of beer when brewing, just before shutting a brew away into a fermenter to convert the sugars into alcohol. And it was bubbling fiercely. An ocean of fermenting beer! The surface was thick with froth and foam that tumbled around on raging waves of bubbles with drifts of dried foam of all sizes.
Jason swam for the largest iceberg in sight, pulling with both arms, fried by adrenaline and desperation, yanking the thrashing bug-man along with him.
He had to get up; had to get out of the beer!
He cried out in pain when one of Ghrag's claws found the hole in his armor where he'd been gored by the minotaur back on Maze World. He felt the scissor-like finger punch into his skin and twist.
Flagging in agony, Jason took a gulp of beer-stuff and coughed, sputtering and scrambling for air again. The atmosphere of the planet was humid as hell—full of fermentation, of course—and Jason felt a rush of fear. He was terrified of drowning in beer. That fucker Ghrag had attacked him in the Market to goad him into fighting back and the Phase Wraiths had teleported them both to this world. Now, he was going to—
Jason's flailing hand struck the huge drift of foam.
Ghrag’s claw slipped out of his wound. Jason kicked and thrashed around, trying to get the bug-man off of him, then seized the huge foam shape with both hands. He tried to pull himself out of the beer. Amazingly, Jason found himself halfway up onto the drift—climbing up its chunky, soft slope, digging his gloved fingers into the Styrofoam-like stuff—before Ghrag finally let him go.
The Nothrix suddenly burst out of the bubbling froth and pulled himself up the side with long and spiky bug-like arms and legs. His one remaining wing whipped around limply like a fleshy fern frond.
Both combatants scrambled up the side of the chunky drift, trying to fully get out of the beer ocean. Ghrag was faster.
Jason pulled one knee up onto the foam. He balanced long enough to reach to his left hand with his right, then hit the switch embedded in the web of his left hand to turn off his night vision. He was instantly relieved when the fire went out of his right eye.
The world bubbled furiously around them.
"I kill you!" Ghrag screamed, launching himself down at Jason, who was barely hanging onto the foam drift. Jason watched the Nothrix's strange and angry face fly toward his—the weird head something like a mix between insectoid features and a fleshy potato.
"Fuck you!" Jason shouted back, struggling to get all the way up onto dry land.
The instant Ghrag crashed into him, the drift split under Jason's body, and both human and Nothrix went plunging into the beer sea again.
They fought under the surface. Ghrag was in Jason's face, tearing at him with his slicing claws—thankfully stopped mostly by his minotaur-hide jacket—and Jason was pushing away, kicking and punching harmlessly under the thick, bubbling fluid.
I'm going to die here, Jason thought, feeling a flood of fear sweep through his chest. His senses were swallowed up by the roiling fluid.
He kicked for the surface, then hit a ceiling; the huge foam drift passing over his head and shoulders.
Shit!
Going to drown, he thought.
Then, Jason remembered the ‘Spare Air’ canister he'd taken from the last Jason's cache back on 'the Fridge' world. It was an emergency SCUBA air canister, good for maybe a minute's worth of breathing in case of an emergency while diving.
Well, this was a freaking emergency.
It was lashed to the left side of his backpack with molle webbing. Jason contorted wildly, trying to reach the Spare Air with his left arm while pushing against Ghrag with his right hand and both legs. The Nothrix was pulling and lashing at him like a wild animal, trying to cut him; trying to get a good h
old on him. The bastard was in full kamikaze mode! Jason supposed that Ghrag knew that the Phase Wraiths would eject them from Churn if they fought in the street—he'd probably been counting on it! The fucker had been laughing as they fell into this world! The bug-man shithead was trying to kill himself and take Jason out with him!
Jason's hand found the solid cylinder. It was the size of a tall, skinny water bottle. He pulled, ripping it away from its quick-detach sheath, then drew it around to his face. After an instant of fumbling, he stuck the regulator into his mouth, blew out the weird beer-stuff already in there through the one-way clearing valve, then took a huge breath...
Hiss...
Air!
Some beer stuff flecked across Jason's throat with his first desperate breath, and he coughed twice through the regulator, exhaling through the clearing valve. The device worked just like it was designed to. Then he took another deep breath.
Pain streaked across Jason's nose. Ghrag's hand lashed past him, almost knocking the Spare Air out of his mouth.
Fuck!
Jason reached up and found that the two of them were still stuck under the huge, foam iceberg—at least part of it.
Why wasn't Ghrag drowning?!
Using his left arm to fend off the Nothrix’s claws, Jason reached around behind his back. He fumbled through his floating jacket tail and gripped the handle of his Glock 26. Drawing the pistol, he brought it around and pressed the muzzle against the bug-man's twisting, striving body...
Jason fired.
The concussive force was shocking. Jason felt a wave of force hit him in the face underwater (underbeer) and Ghrag's slashing hands suddenly flew away. The power was surprising for just a nine millimeter.
He tried to fire again. The trigger wasn't ready; the Glock hadn't fully cycled. Pulling his feet up, Jason kicked at Ghrag while reaching down and blindly pulling the slide with his left hand, manually cycling another round. He took another hissing breath from his Spare Air. The Nothrix stirred into motion again, pulling at Jason’s legs—he felt a slicing pain in one calf—then the Earth man reached out with his Glock, extending the muzzle as close to Ghrag as he could...