by Eddie Patin
Focusing on the weapon's sights again, Gliath fired several more times, aiming at the same spot. Each time he fired, the .45acp pistol popped loudly and threw its brass casings away to his right and Gliath heard the slugs impact and deflect from the cube's surface. He hit the glass corner he was aiming at each time, but the slugs didn't do a damned bit of damage.
Ranaja seemed to notice, too, because he jumped to his feet and waved, smiling and gesturing wildly down to Gliath from above.
After a half-dozen shots with no effect, Ranaja gestured for Gliath to stop, so he did. He holstered the Earth slug pistol. The leopardwere scanned the courtyard for danger, but saw nothing alarming. He looked up at Ranaja and hoped that his friend would have a good idea of how to escape. Gliath felt his tail whipping around behind him.
He would help. He would do anything. He had to rescue his good friend.
Just then, Ranaja seemed to have an idea, then grabbed at a bright orange piece of plastic hooked to his belt. He played with the object, bringing it close to his mouth and speaking without sound from Gliath's perspective.
Gliath heard Ranaja's voice appear from the right shoulder strap of his armor harness.
"...hear me now? Gliath, can you hear me? Where's your radio, Gliath? Can you hear—you can hear me! You can, can't you?" Ranaja grinned and held up the orange thing to show Gliath, then brought it back to his mouth. "Get your radio, good buddy! I know you can hear me! It's the polymer Earth device that Jason bought for us, remember?"
Gliath located the source of Ranaja's voice and plucked the Earth contraption from his armor strap. He tried to talk back, and after a minute or so of fumbling, he and Ranaja figured out how the transmit button worked with speaking.
"How about now, Ranaja?" Gliath rumbled.
"Yeah! That's it! The button on the side! Are you out there listening, Morgana?"
There was silence for a moment then Morgana Soloster's voice appeared from the radio as well.
"Yes!" She said. "We can talk when we press the soft black part on the side! Oh God—I'm so glad you two are alive!"
"Me too, girly," Ranaja replied with a smirk in his voice. "Gliath, where have you been?"
Gliath ponderously pressed the button on the side of the radio, then spoke into the black holes on the front. "The castle changes, Ranaja," he said. "I have been escaping the giant and his harpies and trying to find my way back here to rescue you. It appears that the cubes cannot be broken; at least without much larger firepower."
"Yeah, no shet, kitty cat," Ranaja said. "I tried to break out, but it's not glass. Its structure bends light and stuff more like crystal than glass. I'm sure it's magical. I mean—obviously it is. We're fruking floating in midair."
"I also cannot penetrate it with Dawnbringer," Morgana Soloster added. "Where's Jason? Jason, are you on the radio, too?"
They were all quiet for a moment, but Gliath knew that Jason Leaper 934 wasn't with them. He had no idea where their leader was, but he distinctly remembered the giant only imprisoning Ranaja and the human woman when he'd slipped away himself.
"Jason Leaper 934 is not here," Gliath said.
They were silent for a moment. Gliath stared at the radio, waiting for his friends' voices to return.
"He didn't just leave us," the woman said suddenly. "He couldn't have just abandoned us..."
"Of course not!" Ranaja said. "Jason must have gotten away somehow when we were all knocked out by that giant fruker. Either that, or he's dead."
"Oh God..." Morgana Soloster said quietly over the radio.
"But it's probably not that!" Ranaja added. "He must have rifted away somehow. He'll come for us. Gliath," he said, and the leopardwere looked up through the cube at him. "You've got to find him. Get back to where we killed the troll and see if you can track him down."
"I will slay the giant for you, Ranaja," Gliath said. He had to save them.
From high up there, the leopardwere could see his friend smiling. "I don't think so, good buddy," Riley said. "I saw that bastard walking around in the last storm when the castle was moving. I think he's beyond us."
"I will find a way, Ranaja."
"I believe you, my friend," he replied. "But I think the best thing you can do right now is to find Jason. He can rift. He can get us out of here."
"Um ... hello...?" It was a strange voice. A man.
Gliath stared at the radio.
"Who's this?!" Ranaja asked, sounding instantly annoyed.
"Jason?" the Soloster female asked.
"No, that's not Jason," Ranaja said. "Who's on our comm?"
"Uh ... excuse me," the man replied. His voice was rough and limp. "I don't mean to intrude, but, well, you're on the same frequency that my team was on, and it's just good to talk to another human before I die."
"Who's this?" Ranaja asked.
"My name is Callam Malax," the voice said. "I'm in another cube. You guys are in cubes too, right?"
"We are," Morgana Soloster replied. "What are you doing here?"
"Same as you," the man named Callam Malax said. "I'm trapped here by the giant, just like you. Hey—am I right to understand that the one named Gliath is not inside a cube?"
Gliath opened his mouth to reply, but Ranaja spoke for him.
"No, he's not," he said. "Where are you, Callam? And why are you here?"
The man responded by coughing and hacking into his comm for a while. Then, he composed himself and went on. "Sorry about that. Well, I'm whatcha call a planeswalker. I came here to this universe with my team, the Void Drifters, on a bounty searching for ... well ... it doesn't matter anymore. They're all dead now. I'm the only one left, and I'm just about choking to death on my own Carbon Monoxide."
"What's that mean?" Morgana Soloster asked. "Choking on your what?"
"He's out of air," Ranaja said. "I was worried about that. So, these cubes are airtight, huh? Shet. That means we'll die the same way eventually if we can't get outta here."
"Don't count on it," Callam Malax said weakly. "And goddamn—I never thought I'd ever have a headache this bad. Fuck. Well, if you manage to escape, get me out too, will ya?"
"Sure," Ranaja replied. "So, Callam, how'd you get caught? I'm still trying to work what the fruk happened, myself. My memory records give me a little idea of getting incapacitated—probably by that giant's magic, maybe—and I woke up in this fruking place. Shet, Gliath, I'm surprised as hell that you're not in one of these too! How'd you get away?"
"I woke up," Gliath rumbled into the radio, "as the giant was carrying us. I fell."
They chatted for a little while over the radio. Hearing his friends' voices again made Gliath feel a lot better. There was hope. He had to save them—had to save Ranaja at least—and if he could either take out the giant or find Jason, maybe that would be possible. He knew that Ranaja had an artificial lung that would help him last longer than a normal human would, but Gliath wasn't sure how much extra time Ranaja's augments would give him.
"I didn't catch your names," Callam Malax said over the radio. He paused to cough and wheeze. "I got the one named Gliath. Who are the others?"
"My name is Morgana Soloster," the human female said.
"Riley Wyatt," Ranaja said.
"I've heard of you, Riley," the mercenary replied. "Reality Rifters or something, yeah?"
"Zappo," Ranaja said.
Callam Malax told his story.
"So then, we came across a village full of those big, two-headed giants. We didn't plan on just walking on in there and asking for directions to the nearest troll, ya know? But those primitive bastards have great senses and we were spotted easily enough while our Wayseeker was playing with the Riftgate. Well, they overwhelmed us, and that was that. Fuck. Several of my comrades were killed in the initial attack. The other four of us were captured. The stinking giants bound us together and took away all of our shit. I have no idea what the bastards were saying, but at first, I thought we were being prepared for some kind of sacrifice. They loaded us an
d our gear—our Riftgate was broken somehow in the fight and was getting all kinds of wonky—onto a big platform. It was like some kind of altar. Then, they took two of my friends, fucking tore them to pieces, and ate them! Just ... ate 'em raw. I tell ya, Riley, if I somehow get outta this alive—which I doubt—I think my planeswalking days are over."
"But how'd the big, blue giant get involved?" Ranaja asked.
"They fucking worship him or something!" Callam Malax replied. "Me and the only other survivor, a friend of mine named Jesse Hawkes, were given to him like sacrificial fucking lambs. The big blue guy scooped us up, took the broken Riftgate and some other gear, and brought us here. He flies, you know. There's no fucking way we'll escape him. This is like ... his domain. He's like a god."
"Where's Jesse?" Ranaja asked.
"Dead now," the man replied. "I suppose he suffocated a few hours ago. It's been a while since he's spoken to me."
"Dreadful," Morgana Soloster said.
"I don't understand it!" Callam Malax said then coughed and wheezed. "That fucking asshole just puts people in these magic cube cages and leaves 'em to die?! What a fuckin way to go, choking on your own air byproducts. And we're not all of em. Another team must have come after us, because he put three more planeswalkers with green skin—no idea what they came from—into cubes, too. This is no way for a man like me to die. And fuck—my head really fucking hurts..."
"Planeswalking can be really fruking weird," Ranaja said. "Who knows what that giant's thinking..."
The wind gusted noisily outside. The light from the murky but bright sky overhead suddenly fell into shadow.
"Another storm comin," Callam Malax said. "That means he's probably on his way back. Whichever one of you isn't in a cube better get the hell outta here. "
Just then, Gliath looked away from the radio and his trapped friend. His nose filled with the odor of ozone and burning. He felt the presence of the primordial giant before he saw him, and he felt the thumping of the giant's feet even though he was standing on a hovering cube fifteen feet off of the ground...
"Get out of here, Gliath!" Ranaja shouted over the radio.
Gliath snapped the radio back onto his armor harness and scrambled to the edge of the cube, leaping back down to the nearby tree he'd used to get up there before. As he did, the giant appeared, terrifying and glorious, twenty-five feet tall, clean, smooth, and muscled as if carved from stone. His turquoise skin was speckled with dark blue all over and it crawled with light and plasma and who-knows-what that looked like pure elemental power.
The air turned black.
As the leopardwere slinked into the upper canopy of the strange tree that overwhelmed his sensitive nose with alien scents, the giant strode into the midst of the floating ring of cube prisons with his arms crossed over his strapping, blue chest. The silky cloth of his strange skirt fluttered around in wind that his body made. Each step of his sandaled feet shook the tree that Gliath clung to. The giant's eyes burned like small yellow stars as he surveyed the glass cubes with a faint smile on his clean-shaven face.
Gliath ignored the fear racing through his veins. He could hear the castle moving around the courtyard; huge sections smashing and grinding and sliding against each other as his senses were filled with the stunning presence of the giant. The maelstrom tore at the trees; black vapors pulling at Gliath like a living storm that pelted him with pieces of flying foliage and dirt.
The blade is me, and I am its edge, Gliath thought, silently sliding his Blessed Warblade free of its sheath...
Then, as the astounding primordial giant stepped closer to where the leopardwere was hiding in his orchards, Gliath sprang! He burst from the tree, bounding over to the cube he'd been standing on before—his weapon light and deadly in his fist—and when the pads of his feet touched down on the crystal surface, he leapt again, flying straight through the air at the giant's crackling chest. Gliath let out a mighty roar as he sailed through the black storm, ready to seek out the giant's tremendous heart with his Blessed Warblade...
The giant reacted with surprising speed. He seemed to smile at Gliath as he watched the leopardwere fly through the air at him, then bellowed out easy, thunderous words that the Krulax didn't understand.
Gliath heard the words smash through his brain:
"Bad kitty!"
Then, the giant's hand was flying to intercept him and swatted Gliath out of the air! The giant back-handed him, bashing the leopardwere as hard as if he'd been hit by a battering ram. Gliath was suddenly flying away from the giant—away from Ranaja's cube—over the trees, across the courtyard, through a tunnel on the other end, then through the twisting, rotating segments of the rearranging castle until he was out in the open air. It didn't even make sense how Gliath was thrown so far and with a trajectory so flat across all of that space, but now, he was falling down; down to the swamp below the flying fortress in the sky that was shifting like a hundred puzzle blocks before his eyes...
Gliath fell from the giant's sky castle, all the way down to the Shattered Swamp, and when he landed in the random stretch of stinking bog a few hundred feet below, he felt a tremendous explosion of pain as perhaps every bone in his body broke upon impact.
The leopardwere went into shock—staring up at the floating castle where Ranaja was—and faded into the black void where he knew that his ancestors waited for him...
Chapter 17
Jason woke in the Wilderlands again to the smell of mud, the reptilian oily odor of the wyvern's cavern, and the drone of insects outside.
He moved his limbs, feeling for the pain of his left leg. He reached for the bite-valve of his CamelBak water bladder, even though he wasn't as thirsty as he usually was upon waking. The wound in his thigh twisted and panged smartly, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it was the previous morning. Jason was stiff.
"Day three in the Wilderlands." Jason said to himself, taking a long drink from his backpack's bite-valve and swishing the water around to wet his mouth.
How much time has passed in the real world? he wondered. One of these days when he had some time to spare, he'd have to do an experiment, checking the time before leaving home, then spending exactly twenty-four hours here, then going back to see how much time had passed on Earth.
"Then, I could calculate how long an hour here would take back home," he muttered, sitting up and wincing against the pulling pain in his thigh. For the most part, Jason felt pretty good everywhere else. His aches and pains were mostly gone—other than the stiffness of sleeping on the hard, dried mud of the tunnel, and his healing leg was the only injury left remaining.
He slipped on his minotaur-hide jacket and regarded the laid-out Merc armor. He frowned, anticipating the smell of sulfur and urine soaked into the suit's interior.
I bet I could clean that down at the creek now, Jason thought. Hell—he should bathe in the creek and clean his gym clothes, too, while he was at it. He'd pissed his shorts as well.
Jason wasn't hungry. He'd eaten plenty of charred and thoroughly-cooked minotaur meat over yesterday's afternoon and evening. When he rebuilt the fire after the incident with the Albertosaurs, he immediately set to cooking the raw meat he'd brought along. One of the steaks had already thawed out too much and had gone bad, but the other from the fridge was just on the fresh side of iffy, and the ones that had been frozen solid were totally fine. Now, he had a good supply of medium-to-well-done meat and had eaten two steaks over the rest of yesterday, then one right before bed. Prior to going to sleep, he'd also topped off his AK-47's magazine again, remembering that he'd shot the Albertosaurus several times.
He pulled out another steak and ate it right there, chasing the lukewarm meat down with a bottle of warm water. Then, Jason pulled some fresh gauze out of his pack for changed his leg's dressing. He put his pack back on, slung his rifle, and draped his Merc armor over one arm.
"To the creek," he said to himself.
Bath time with the crocodiles, he thought, immediately feeling a small clench of drea
d inside.
Leaving his cane behind, Jason limped his way up the tunnel to the cave's mouth, passed around the dead fire full of ashes, then straightened himself as he walked out into the primordial morning.
He stretched and took a deep breath, filling his lungs with clean but humid air thick with the scents of the forest. He carefully laid his armor onto the ground next to a big minotaur skull, which gleamed white in the sunshine.
Hobbling to the edge of the slope, Jason peed and watched the colorful and camouflaged herbivores down in the valley to the south grazing.
He didn't see the mini-rexes. Jason wondered whether or not the big Albertosaurus he'd shot had survived. Sure, it was a huge animal. According to his OCS, the Albertosaurus sarcophagus—the Earth version, anyway—could grow up to 4200 pounds; two tons. Maybe in the heat of the moment he'd missed a few times, but Jason had to have hit it with at least some shots. 7.62x39mm was a powerful round for a medium-range gun. It could punch through concrete. The mini-rex was big...
"Not as big as an elephant," Jason said to himself, done pissing and putting himself back together. "Or ... what the heck is two tons back home? Do bears get that big? I don't think..."
Turning back to the cave, Jason trailed off when his eyes picked up a huge shadow moving at the tree line just north of the entrance. The instant he heard the scraping of gravel from the thick woods there—detected something big coming his way—Jason let out an involuntary yelp as his insides were suddenly blasted with cold, numbing fear.
He opened his mouth to shout, but no sound came out. Jason scrambled to pull his rifle around with hands that shook madly. It was stuck. He gave up on the AK and thrust both hands before him, holding his lava key...
"What the fuck...?!" he finally screamed as a towering black shape emerged from the woods there. One foot made a heavy thump that Jason felt through his boot soles, vibrating his legs and knees like an electric shock.
For a split second, he thought that it was the wounded Albertosaurus. It had been waiting there for him in the night to take revenge!