by Logan Jacobs
“Punkin’ chunkin’?” I spat out in spite of myself.
“Bless you,” Aurora said politely.
“No, it’s Punkin’ Chunkin’,” I said again as if that would somehow magically make her understand. I didn’t get to explain anymore because another giant flaming pumpkin came soaring over the top of the wall. Aurora threw up a dark matter shield, and the orange gourd smashed across the top of it.
“What is Punkin’ Chunkin’, sugar, and make it quick. I don’t want to hold this shield while big squash gets thrown at us forever,” Aurora asked.
“Okay, dime-store tour version,” I said in a rush, “every year in Delaware there is the Punkin’ Chunkin’ competition. People come from far and wide and build all kinds of devices, catapults, air cannons, trebuchets, and stuff to hurl pumpkins as far as they can. Whoever hurls a pumpkin the farthest wins.”
“What do they win?” Nova asked, very confused.
“The title of Punkin’ Chunkin’ Champion,” I said as if that should have been obvious. “Yeah, when I say it out loud it sounds stupid. Why are we sitting out here? We can fly over the walls. Let’s go.”
PoLarr fired up her jetpack and grabbed me again while Aurora closed the shield around her and Nova, and we all zipped over the formidable walls and into the bailey of the castle.
There were four trebuchets with a bunch of little red skinned elves who operated the pumpkin hurling devices. They were about two feet tall, had pointed ears, black goatees, and little arrow tipped tails like a brigade of little devils. We landed right in the thick of them, and they scattered with cries of fury.
One of the devil-elves had a fancy hat, and I assumed he was the captain of the guard or whatever. He stood in front of the others, drew a cute little sword and yelled in some weird language. The forty or so other devil-elves drew their own swords and waved them at us menacingly.
“Aw, ain’t they cute,” I said to my alliance mates as I dropped the antler to the ground in front of me, pulled my shotgun from its sling, and racked a round into the chamber. “They brought tiny swords to a gun fight. Light em up.”
The devil-elves rushed forward full of might. I blew three of them to a red mist with one shot. Nova cut a wide arch through their ranks with her plasma cannon and PoLarr took down about ten with each Equalizer. Aurora yawned, picked up one that tried to stab her knee and sucked the life force out of him like he was a package of corn nuts.
Two seconds later, the ground of the inner courtyard of the castle was soaked in bright red devil-elf blood. Only the little one with the fancy hat remained. He looked all around at the carnage, threw his sword into the air, and ran in the opposite direction with his hands waving wildly above his head as he screamed.
“Ew,” I muttered as I looked all around us, “I kinda feel bad now.”
“Yeah, me too,” PoLarr said.
“But not that bad,” I shrugged and slung the antler over my shoulder on the rope again. “They fought bravely. Let’s go.”
We were just turning to make our way toward the keep when the portcullis gate flew off its moorings in a giant explosion, and a team of five champions emerged from the ball of smoke with flame guns blazing.
“Scatter,” I yelled as I dove for cover behind the nearest trebuchet. I fired off one of my 10mm grenades at the bad guys as I hit the ground and rolled behind the giant wheel of the medieval siege engine. It flew far to the left and took a big chunk out of barbican wall.
As the smoke blew across the courtyard I saw Gargor, Tyyraxx’s best buddy from our scuffle at the food fair, stride through the wreckage of the portcullis. He held a gnarly looking sub-machine gun in his right hand down by his hip. With his left, he flicked out several signals that the other four champions quickly obeyed.
His alliance moved like a well-honed Special Forces unit. There was an alien that seemed to be made from nothing but tightly packed brambles with a big shrub-like afro made of leaves who made a shield out of his thorny hands that grew before our eyes. One of his teammates, a small flying dragon with an eye-patch and a blunderbuss in his hands, swooped in over Brambles’ shoulder, opened its mouth and sprayed a stream of fire over the top of the shrub shield that sent Nova and Aurora sprawling to the ground. Aurora brought up her own shield, and the fire splashed over the top like a slipstream.
PoLarr had taken to the sky almost instantly and rained down potential death from her Equalizers, but Gargor ducked back behind the wall of the barbican and lay down a stream of covering fire while a large female version of The Thing from the Fantastic Four, only green instead of orange, lumbered through the gate with a big, chest mounted howitzer strapped to her body and a wooly rabbit skull strapped to her back. She squatted low in a wide horse-stance, and the big bore cannon boomed like the guns of hell. I had to cover my face with my hands as rock shards flew into the air. The entire front wall of the keep had been blown to rubble.
PoLarr weaved through the air to avoid the stream of machine gun fire from Gargor. When he pulled back behind cover to reload, she took her opening and poured a stream of hot lead into the rock and ice all around him. It looked like she was just about to get a good bead on his position and maybe take him out when the surrounding air began to explode with shrapnel. Her armor took the brunt of most of it, but she had to pull out of her attack vector and spiral up until she was out of range.
I whipped my head around and saw a lanky leather skinned alien with two arms that grew out of its back hurl ack-ack bombs one after the other into the air where PoLarr had just been. Her back arms moved so fast they were practically a blur as they reached into a large rucksack on her back that was filled with the lime-sized explosives. It reminded me of something from the popular but strange My Hero Academia anime.
“Guys!” I yelled into the comm as I fired off a quick three-round burst from my shotgun at Bramble and Fire-Dragon. “Fallback to the Keep! We need to hold these bastards. Don’t let them get to the throne room before we can.”
I pumped another grenade into the chamber and fired it off as I sprang from cover and sprinted toward the smoldering hole where the entrance to the keep had been. Bullets tore up the ground around my feet and kicked up a fine spray of ice chips as I dove into behind a pile of ice and rocks at the keep entrance. In a flash, I had the shotgun at my shoulder and emptied the mag at Bramble. His twig shield held, but the powerful buckshot tore it to shreds. He and Fire-Dragon had to retreat to the barbican.
“Nova! Aurora! Go!” I barked into the comm as I let the shotgun fall empty on its sling and drew the massive Desert Eagle. The red dot sight came up and settled on Chick-Thing. I pulled the trigger, and the gun bucked in my hand as if it were a demon from the pit of firearm hell.
And it wanted souls to take.
I did a quick double tap. The muzzle flash was at least a foot long as the big eight hundred gain hollow point bullet flew through the air at nineteen hundred feet per second. They hit Chick-Thing square in the chest and sent her stumbling back.
That gave Nova and Aurora the opportunity they needed to haul ass through the keep opening. That left only PoLarr still out in the open.
“Nice strategy there, Human!” Gargor shouted. “You still got one birdie out of the nest though. Zaazoh, go bring the little birdie home.”
The Fire-Dragon, aka Zaazoh, nodded his head and shot into the sky faster than I thought the weird, chubby little Pete’s Dragon looking fuck could go.
“PoLarr you got incoming,” I keyed into the comm. “Looks like he’s got tone, Mav!”
“I see him, Goose,” she said back, and then the sky was awash in flame and bullets. Rocket-Arms threw up more key-lime sized ack-ack bombs.
“Aurora, give a shield so Nova can lay down some cover for PoLarr,” I yelled over my shoulder as I ejected the mag from the shotgun, pulled one from my ammo belt, and slammed it home. I also reloaded three more grenades into the pump action grenade launcher. The antler was digging into my back so I untied them and set them just inside the
entry hall of the keep. I really hoped there weren’t any dudes, elves, or weird animals that were going to try to kill us from behind. “Maybe give us a little shield on the backside as well to prevent any unwanted intruders.”
“Oh, Marc, you dirty boy,” Aurora drawled and then crossed her arms in front of her face. She threw them down at her side and dark matter appeared in the air all around us. As she moved her hands back and forth in fluid motions, the dark matter coalesced into a half-shell cocoon. “Not sure how long I can keep this up though. That little red tamale wasn’t much of a boost.”
“Nova, light that asshole up,” I said as I took a knee and sighted the shotgun down the side of the dark matter shell Aurora had put up. I pulled the trigger in three quick double taps. I’d flicked the selector to incendiary rounds, and they tore into the fresh shield of dense branches that Bramble had put up as if to mirror us.
At the same time, Aurora opened up a little murder hole in the dark matter for Nova to stick the barrel of her plasma cannon through.
“Taste plasma, knave!” She shouted and let fly on full auto. The blazing plasma splashed all around Rocket-Arm, and he had to jump from the battlement perch he’d taken up on. He landed on his feet but I heard an audible crack as his ankle snapped.
Chick-Thing had to stop reloading her chest-howitzer to lumber over to him and shield him from more fire. Nova’s cannon blasts crashed across Chick-Thing’s back in great red sparks.
By now, the incendiary rounds had done their work and Brambles fists were engulfed in bright orange flames.
Above, I could still hear the whoosh and chatter of Zaazoh and PoLarr’s battle over Ice Castle.
Gargor growled in rage as he emptied his sub-machine gun into Aurora’s shield. Cracks formed, and the shield began to splinter.
“PoLarr you need to get down here now,” I said into the comm as I fired the shotgun dry again. She didn’t reply.
I pulled myself away from the edge of the shield and ran into the entrance hall of the keep. There was a long spiral staircase that wound up a central column and a larger hallway that lead into the depths of the mountain. I had no idea which way was safety or folly.
“Ah, fuck it, I always wanted to fight on a staircase,” I said to myself. Then I ran back to the fight as I changed mags again on the shotgun.
Aurora’s hand still flowed back and forth around her body. Her tattoos glowed with pulsing blue light and sweat glistened on her brow even though it was well below freezing.
I glanced out into the courtyard just in time to see a flaming meteor slam into the ground. I hoped like hell it wasn’t what was left of PoLarr. A second later my hope was answered when she came screaming into the keep with her exhaust on full speed. Once inside she pulled into a tight twirl and killed her jetpack. She dropped ten feet to the floor and stuck a sweet ass superhero landing.
“Whoo,” she hooted. “Jester is dead.”
“Aurora, we’re good, you guys fall back,” I shouted and fired a grenade. I racked the pump and fired again. Racked. Fired. The explosions came in a quick thump-thump-thump succession.
A moment later Aurora and Nova met PoLarr and me near the base of the staircase. I tugged on the rope of the antler which was resting nearby and threw it over my shoulder again. I then began to haul ass up the stairs.
“Let’s go, ladies!” I yelled back to my team who were following behind me.
The spiral staircase wound around and up three floors to open from a rather narrow point into a great throne room. It was a long rectangle with a vaulted ice ceiling adorned with great gothic arches. At the end of the room was a slightly raised platform that had an elaborately carved ice throne atop it. Seated in the throne were the skeletal remains of what I assumed was one of the Lords of Ayezi. They were covered in old, tattered time-worn robes. The bone-fingers were clasped on the hilt of a blue-bladed broadsword with its point stuck in the ice of the platform. At various positions down the length of the room were what looked like snow knights. Like, if someone in Canada had an ice sculpting competition and decided to say, hey, I wanna do weird, sort of snow men knights. That’s what these things resembled. They were six feet tall, made of compact snow and ice like armor, with small shields, and battle maces. Oh, and they all also had cute button noses and eyes made out of coal. For real. All in all, there were eight matching pairs of them leading down the hall.
“This looks bad,” Nova said as she eyed the snow knights.
“I agree,” I nodded.
“What do we do now?” Aurora said out of breath.
To answer, a lime ack-ack grenade sailed into the room and bounced on the floor near our feet. Without thinking I kicked it as hard as I could back down the staircase and then dove for cover.
It exploded in the close confines of the corridor and was loud as hell. The boom shook snow and ice from the ceiling and put cracks in the walls.
It also woke up the snow knights. Who were fucking pissed.
Then all hell broke loose.
I heard the boom of the chest howitzer from below and then a huge portion of the floor exploded outward and then fell away. Luckily it took about half the snow knights with it. Unluckily, I fell with the snow knights.
I reached out and snatched hold of a long, floor-to-ceiling tapestry. My shoulder damn near wrenched out of its socket from the sudden stop of my downward momentum, and I had to let go. It had slowed me enough, so that I was able to land in a roll and come up not much worse for wear.
I then caught Gargor’s fist with my face.
I’d seen it coming just a fraction of a second too late to be able to avoid it completely as he swung his big green scaled fist from behind an ice column. But I was almost able to roll with it so that he didn’t knock me completely the fuck out. I bounced off the wall of the keep, spun under another punch and jumped back to give myself a bit of room.
“Ohh, got a little something on your face there, human,” Gargor said with a smirk on his ugly smushed, horny-toad face.
I reached up and touched my nose. When I brought my glove away, there was a smear of bright red blood on it.
“Looks like you’re a bleeder, just like your trainer, Grizz,” he jibbed. I could tell he was trying to stall and enrage me so that I’d do something stupid. It was a toss-up if the gambling was going to work.
“Marc?” I heard Nova shout in my comm. “Are you okay?”
“Um, yeah, little busy at the moment,” I said back as I backed away from Gargor. In the fall I’d lost both my shotgun and the antler.
“You dropped the antler, we have it up here,” she said and then was drowned out by a loud rip of machine gun fire.
“Get it in front of the throne!” I yelled and drew my SVA. Once again the big battle blade emerged from the cylinder, and I held it in a double handed grip like a firefighter while I took a second to glance around to get my bearings. I’d fallen back down to the first floor which was in total ruins at this point.
“We’ll try Marc, but things are a bit crazy up here, and the snowmen are dicks,” PoLarr said into her comm.
“Do your best,” I added and then saw the green rocky form of Chick-Thing buried under what had once been the floor I’d stood on not two minutes ago.
“We always do,” PoLarr responded and then her comm went silent after a burst of gunfire and static. I had to trust that my gals were okay up there because I had Gargor to deal with down here.
“Ole Chick-Thing must have been more brawn than brains, huh?” I asked Gargor as I pointed to her crumpled body under the rubble and slowly started to circle to the lizard’s right.
“She served a purpose,” he responded with not the slightest hint at sadness that one of his alliance mates looked to be down for the count.
“Don’t get all choked up there Gargamel,” I taunted.
He chuckled. Then he pulled out a handgun that looked just like a Needler from Halo and began to shoot at me.
I had kinda thought we were going to do the whole barbar
ian combat thing since I’d gotten out my axe, but ole Gargor was apparently a stick in the mud and just wanted to shoot the shit out of me. Bolts of purple energy shot from the gun and I held the big blade of my SVA up as I ran for cover.
I felt two of the energy blasts glance off the blade before I had to bring it up in front of me to stop the downward strike of a snowman knight’s mace. This match just kept getting better.
“All I wanna do it kill Gargor, and get the fuck out of here,” I grunted as I shoved the blow from the snowman knight aside and then came back up, twirling the blade in my hand, to take the thing’s head off. “But nooo everyone wants to ruin Marc’s day.”
“Marc,” Aurora’s voice came over the comm, “we’re almost in position up here. PoLarr and I are holding off a few snowman knights. Nova’s getting the antler into position.”
“Ohhh, isn’t this exciting folks,” Chi-Chesire’s voice boomed in the confines of the keep. His face appeared on the wall. “Team Havak looks to be the first team to be able to move to the next round. This is a top three match and while they have suffered some casualties, Gargor’s Gorgeous Gang looks to be poised to take the number two spot and will be allowed to fight again another day. This is why I just love the Crucible of Carnage, ladies and gentlemen. All the twists and turns. Always on the edge of my seat.”
His face faded from the wall. I noticed that Gargor had the skull of the wooly rabbit strapped to his back. All I had to do was stay out of his way for long enough for Nova to get the antler in front of the throne, and we’d teleport out of this winter wonder nightmare.
I snuck behind another one of the great pillars that held what was left of the ceiling in place. Gargor scanned the room. Looking for me.
“Ha!” He yelled. “You hear that, human? You may live through this yet. That’s okay. I’ll get you some other time. I should have expected as much from a sentimental sap like Grizz. With a trainer like him, no wonder you’re a pussy.”
“Oh snap,” I muttered. I felt my fuck it switch flip from off to “Hold my beer” and charged at the big lizard.