The Giants of Shattered Swamp

by Eddie Patin

  "Good morning," Jason said, reaching for Morgana's gold and sapphire necklace on the dresser and handing it to her.

  "Thank you," she said, taking the family heirloom and reaching up to hook it behind her neck under her hair. Jason drank in the curves of her arms and lifting breasts as she did. "Why did your phone make that noise?" Morgana asked. She was steadily picking up a lot about Jason's modern world—enough to refer to that strange glass and plastic device of his as a 'phone'—but he sometimes forgot that she came from a world and a time devoid of technology. She didn't even know what an alarm was.

  "I made it wake me up at ten," he said. "I don't want to sleep all day."

  She smirked. "But I thought your current plan was to rest."

  "Rest and recuperation," Jason said with a chuckle. "Yeah. But I've slept enough. I'd like to go on a walk. I usually ... ah ... before my life got all crazy with this monster hunting stuff, I'd go on a walk every morning. It's ... restful to me."

  Morgana began running her hand through her long hair like a comb. "I see," she said.

  "Would you ... um ... like to come with me?"

  Morgana smiled and put both hands to her tight stomach. Jason watched her body as she did and couldn't resist smiling. God—he had no idea that today he'd be in bed with a naked warrior chick from another world! What a wild ride!

  "I'm hungry, actually," she said. "How long will you be gone if I stay?"

  "About an hour," Jason said.

  Morgana smiled and nodded, then unfolded her legs to crawl across Jason to the bedroom floor. Her long hair tickled his chest as she leaned in to kiss him, then she playfully dragged her nipples across his lips before crossing over and standing on the floor.

  They laughed. He sat in bed and looked at his phone notifications after gazing at Morgana with a grin as she dressed herself in new clothes that belonged to her.

  "That'll work fine," Morgana said. "I'll start some breakfast. It should be ready when you get back."

  Jason smiled. This would be the ... third time she cooked for him? Fourth? He didn't ask for it. She just offered. It was something that he really appreciated.

  He scrolled through some Facebook notifications and email, ignoring it all. He was looking for missed phone calls or texts from Ben or Amanda. There were none.

  Looking up from his phone, he watched Morgana. As she buttoned up her pants, still topless, Jason felt a rush of heat in his blood. Damn his plans for the moment—he wanted her again! Putting his phone back onto the dresser, he leapt out of bed naked and at full salute, then rushed Morgana, pulling her into a hug as she raised her arms to protect herself and laughed. Jason grabbed her breasts and breathed in one curve of her neck—soaking up the scent of her skin and hair—then kissed her furiously.

  Morgana kissed him back. After a long, heated embrace, they found their way back to the tangled sheets...

  Jason's boots crunched on the gravel of the hiking path.

  He looked at his watch. It was 10:40. Okay, so he didn't get going as quickly as he'd intended to, but that was okay. It was worth it.

  The morning was brisk but sunny. Soon, the weather would become wintery again. For now, the sun was out, the sky was deep blue, and clouds gathered in clusters here and there. It was funny: just before his whole 'Wilderlands thing', there had been a heavy snowstorm all over Colorado. Now, there was still snow in the perpetual shadows here and there, but most of Ridgeview was melted. Fall weather again. But it was November now. The next storm would come at any time.

  Jason smiled up at the sky. He felt amazing.

  What a hell of a turn his life had taken! Now, he had a wealth of gold, great new friends, and a super-hot girlfriend.

  Is Morgana my girlfriend? he wondered. She'd had a fiancé back in New Bozeman, five years ago, at least. There was no way to tell until he got to know her better whether or not her people even had relationships like he was used to. Probably do, he thought. She was to be married. He saw families there, too; husbands and wives with kids.

  He felt like a total goober for thinking it, but he hoped that Morgana was his girlfriend now. He'd be happy to consider her that, and just the briefest touchdown of a thought of her being intimate with any other men whipped Jason's heart into a firestorm.

  Jeez. He'd only known her for a few days, but was already crazy about her!

  "Lonely too long," he said to himself. He hadn't had a real girlfriend in who knows how long. He'd hardly had a relationship at all other than with his DnD friends. Jason knew that he was just totally infatuated and hopped up on sex chemicals and hormones. "Don't get weird now," he warned himself. He'd have to be careful to avoid getting clingy and obsessive. Otherwise, he'd make whatever he had with Morgana turn sour and awkward. He didn't want to lose her. She was awesome. She honestly felt way out of his league.

  Hopefully, Morgana was feeling attracted to him as well. That was the best he could ask for so early.

  Jason found himself humming.

  He walked with his cane. He didn't need it anymore, but he'd spent fifteen years walking with it, and he liked it. It was also a great self-defense weapon. Made out of polypropylene, his cane was a long club that he could carry openly.

  Reaching back to his hip, Jason felt at his Glock 26. That was the third Glock now. Hopefully this wouldn't become a thing. Back home before leaving, he'd debated between carrying the Glock or the lightning gun. The lightning gun was cool as hell, but it was more like a full-sized sidearm. He was carrying the G26 now because it was small and easy to conceal.

  Jason was fascinated by the high-tech weapon they'd looted from Malydamus. When they were shooting yesterday in the Wilderlands, he'd mostly focused on teaching Morgana how to use her AR and her new Glock 19, but he'd also taken some time to test out both his new Glock 26 and the futuristic energy weapon. After depleting all three of his self-recharging power cells, Jason had a pretty good handle on what to expect from the particle beam pistol. The sights were a little different than those of Earth guns, but he figured them out. And even though the bright, crackling lightning that shot from the strange muzzle zigged and zagged all over on its way to his target, the gun was surprisingly accurate within fifty yards. The most interesting thing was how it didn't act like lightning; not like real electricity, anyway. When he blasted a big, green melon, that pulpy sphere of fruit outright exploded, leaving any pieces not vaporized smoking and smoldering! Jason didn't understand it. Real lightning only hurts people when it discharges through them into the ground or whatever. That melon wasn't grounded, and it wasn't connected with the ground, or sitting in water. There was nowhere for the charge to go from the melon. The shot just dissipated its deadly energy directly into the melon, and that was that.

  He'd still need to explore the weapon some more. The way the 'lightning' conducted and was completely soaked up by his targets didn't make sense. What would happen if he shot an enemy standing in water? Would another one standing next to them get zapped as well? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps the strange result was because it was a 'particle beam' and not actual electricity, like Riley had suggested. Jason had no idea, but was intent to find out.

  After ranging a good distance away from the house, Jason stopped at his stretching point.

  Putting his feet up on the concrete barrier one by one and taking a few minutes to stretch out his hips, hamstrings, and quads, Jason laughed at the mundaneness of his walk.

  He had a feeling that he'd be laughing a lot about normal life in the days to come.

  Jason thought about listening to YouTube videos on the way back like he used to, but his mind was positively racing with so many questions and ideas. He didn't want to zone out.

  His thoughts went back to his hasty and messy escape from the beer ocean world. He'd opened that rift halfway into the tossing sea of fermented fluid and foam. When he fell through, a swimming pool's worth (or more) of that beer stuff came through with him.

  Something in that situation spoke to Jason. It was another way that h
e could probably use his rifting as a weapon. He looked down at his OCS as he walked. What if he had catalogued that world? It would probably be inaccessible because of Jason 113's programed block limiting the OCS's travel to universes only within a 95% tolerance of his u934's laws of physics. Yeah—a world with beer for an ocean was probably outside of that 95%. But ... he could access it with a focus key blank like the one around his neck leading back to the garage.

  What if he carried a blank to a place like the beer ocean world and used it as a weapon against his enemies? He'd certainly used rifting to great effect as a weapon when they were fighting the necromancer. Opening a rift under the feet of that huge stone golem thing to a position in the sky 1000 feet above the mountains sure made short work of what could have been an indestructible foe. What if some nasty monster was coming after him and Jason opened a rift to a place like beer world under the surface? He could create a huge gout of fluid to wash his enemy away! Or, better yet, what if he rifted an enemy into the beer ocean; sending them to the hostile world instead of bringing the hostile world to them?

  If he had an extra focus key blank back when he was still on that beer ocean world—and wasn't out of his mind with panic and exhaustion—he could have created a key to that place. Then, he could use it to cast enemies into the beer ocean, where they would no longer be a threat and probably drown like Ghrag did.

  Like I almost did, Jason thought.

  Hell—he'd already used rifting to save his own ass when that gargoyle had tried to drop him to his death. Jason had used the cloud world key around his neck to open a rift and bounce before splattering onto the cobblestone street. He chuckled at the memory. The idea had come to him quite naturally while falling to his death.

  He could probably come up with some ideas for a hostile world like beer ocean world that he could use to make enemies fall into—just like when he made that stone golem controlled by the necromancer fall to its destruction. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and that golem had been pretty freaking big.

  But what universes could he use? What coordinates did he already have available to him in the OCS? There was that ocean world with hydras and mermaids that he'd found. Maybe he could go there and drop a blank into a part of really deep water. Maybe he could get Riley to do that with his flyer...

  "Need blank focus keys," he said to himself.

  Jason walked for a while through the valley along the ridge heading south again. His own world's version of the ridge extended up to his left, to the east—all pines and pockets of snow and granite; no crocodiles or cannibals or raptors—and the houses at the end of Kestrel Drive appeared again on his right.

  Reaching up into his collar, Jason felt at the smooth acrylic focus key to cloud world hanging from its paracord necklace. Jason looked around to see if anyone was on the path in sight. He scanned the nearest houses to see if there was anybody possibly watching him from backyards.

  The coast was clear.

  Turning toward the ridge, Jason left the hiking trail and trudged up the slope for a little while. He stopped when he found a boulder about the size of an old tube TV. Making sure again that no one was watching, he reached into his collar again and grabbed the cloud world key.

  Jason opened a horizontal rift under the rock. With a flutter and a snap, a bright orange rift unfurled and the small boulder instantly disappeared, sucked into cloud world by the immense speed of its own gravity.

  The boulder fell into the bright white world, bounced, and came up into Earth once again. At the apex of its bounce, Jason tried to hurry up and release the rift before it fell into cloud world again, but he was too late. When he closed the rift, the boulder had already fallen back into the other universe, and there it remained.

  "Damn," he said.

  Didn't really think that through, he thought. Now, Jason would have to go there and physically move the rock out of the way, otherwise it might be sitting right in the middle of his 'trampoline zone' if he ever needed to bounce during another falling emergency.

  Changing orientation between vertical and horizontal was getting easy. Jason supposed that he might try other angles and shapes in time. Could he change the size of his rifts? They were already big enough to allow pretty big creatures to fall through. He was able to pass the huge golem and the massive alpha minotaur.

  Then, Jason remembered the weird, moaning steel skull from the necromancer's tower. He'd thrown it into cloud world to temporarily get rid of it during Morgana's rescue. He would need to pick that up, too. Maybe it was still there, sitting in the weird cloudlike fluffy stuff, moaning away several feet away from the destination rift coordinates.

  With a sigh and a smile, Jason returned to the hiking path and resumed his walk home.

  When he arrived a little while later, he ducked through the game trail that split the thicket of scrub oaks, emerged next to the invisible Wilderlands rift below his backyard, then trudged up to his back door. Jason found Morgana, Riley, and Gliath about to have breakfast in the kitchen.

  "Hey, Reality Rifters!" Jason exclaimed with a grin after opening the door.

  When he stepped inside, Jason just barely caught a glimpse of an 8-inch-long curved blade—like a single claw of the X-Men's Wolverine—extending from Riley's left elbow, sticking out behind him. The claw slid through the cyborg's Merc armor and back into his arm like quicksilver with a schink sound. Riley wasn't wearing his duster coat. Morgana was watching Riley speak with rapt attention and Gliath was sitting at a dining table chair watching impassively, appearing far too long and lean for the Earth furniture in his warrior form.

  "That's amazing!" Morgana said. "Your hidden technology is really interesting, Riley," she said, turning and smiling at Jason. "Hi!" In one hand, she held the handle of Jason's largest skillet, full of scrambled eggs with diced up meat, potatoes, peppers, and cheese mixed throughout. In her other hand, she held a serving spoon. There were four plates on the table. Gliath's plate held a stack of raw deer meat.

  "Hey, man!" Riley exclaimed to Jason with a smirk. "I heard you open a rift outside."

  "You heard that?" Jason asked. That was ... maybe a mile away? Perhaps he wasn't as far from home as he'd thought.

  "It's a distinct frequency that I've programmed my aural processing to pay extra attention to," Riley said. "It's good to pay attention to that shet in our business, you know?"

  That made sense.

  "Sure. So, what was that?! What was that blade in your elbow?"

  Riley scratched his beard and smiled. "Didn't I tell you about that, Jason? It's not a blade; it's a spike. It's my subdermal spike."

  "No, I didn't know you had a spike in your elbow. That's really cool. But it goes backwards?" Instead of being like Wolverine's claws, going forward in line with his forearm, the spike had been sticking out in the opposite direction like an extension that gave Riley a really long and dangerous elbow.

  Riley crossed his left arm over his chest after quickly checking to make sure that Morgana was out of the way, then, the spike slid out of his left elbow again with a schink sound like in the movies. It was indeed sticking behind Riley, albeit slightly curved.

  "Yeah, everyone wonders about that," the soldier replied with a smirk, looking down at his spike. "But it's a backup weapon. If I ever need it, chances are pretty good that shet's gone diagonal and I might be unarmed. I tell ya, Jason, it's gotten me out of a few fruked up situations where I've been jumped from behind."

  "I bet."

  Riley retracted his subdermal spike and pulled out his chair, sitting as Morgana approached with the skillet. The eggs smelled amazing.

  They all started eating in earnest.

  "So what were you doing with your rift?" Riley asked at one point.

  Jason took a bite of breakfast sausage with melted cheese and a chunk of eggs melded to it. "I was thinking of how I can use rifting as a weapon," he said. "In fact," he went on with a smile, "you wanna help me experiment, Riley? I have an idea involving cloud world. "


  The cyborg cocked his head and smirked. "Well, I reckon that depends. What sort of experiment?"

  "I'd like to try to rift you there; catch you under your feet like I did with the necromancer's big golem."

  "Into cloud world?"

  "Yep."

  "Well, okay, sure."

  So they tried it. After breakfast and cleanup, Jason and Riley went into the garage as Morgana watched and Gliath curled up onto the couch in his leopard form next to Zelda.

  Jason intended to try and catch Riley off-guard, dropping him into the other universe. First, he rifted there himself and rifted the big rock out of the way, bringing it back into his own garage and asking Riley to move it down the slope past his backyard. The cyborg was unexpectedly strong and carried the TV-sized boulder as if it was a basket of laundry, then casually tossed it down the hill. Then, Jason searched for the moaning skull. He found that dreaded device still making a low, evil noise that vibrated his bones and would have surely hurt his ears if he still had his natural eardrums. After a very uncomfortable moment of exploring its shining steel surface, Jason found a button at the base of the skull where the spinal cord would be. When he pressed it, he was rewarded with blessed silence. They stacked the evil steel skull into the garage next to the wyvern eggs.

  Then, Jason proceeded to rift Riley unwillingly into cloud world under the soldier's feet. It was extremely difficult because Riley was wired like a damned gazelle, but the cyborg started to ease up on his unnatural reflexes enough to let Jason have some practice. It wasn't long before the back and forths between u934 and cloud world had Jason and Riley feeling warm and giddy.

  "Try it from farther away!" Riley exclaimed with a broad grin.