Before I landed on the giant’s fingers, he jerked his hand away and smacked me with his other one. As I blocked the blow and rolled through the snow, I lamented how monsters could so easily violate the square-cubed law. Contrary to intuition, giants were not inherently slow. A Frost Giant was almost as fast as I was while being far stronger. It wasn’t fair, but neither were most contests with monsters.
I flared the flames around me to drive back the enchanted snow, imbued as it was by the giant’s will. At this distance, I could no longer see my prey through the blizzard. Before I could charge blindly, snow piled together and ice formed from the air into several sculptures of wolves. The ‘creatures’ then lunged at me. I ducked the first bite and slashed my blade across its stomach. The next wolf bit my left arm while two more grabbed my legs.
With a roar, I swung the wolf on my arm into the wolves at my feet. All shattered from the resulting collision. A couple kicks sent two larger chunks into the remaining creatures and freed me to find the giant. Where is he?
Over the arctic gale, I could not see, hear, or smell the giant, but I did feel the vibration of his steps through my feet. The giant stomped two more times as I ran vaguely in his direction, letting me triangulate his exact position and alter my course. In a stroke of luck, the creature had turned his back to me to assault Derek in our fort.
Giantkind’s greatest weakness was their hubris. They never consider us smallfolk to be a true threat—or worth talking to. To them, we were odd creatures that played around with baubles in the mud because we were too weak to stand tall and too stupid to properly use magic.
That’s why the creature didn’t notice as I climbed his pant leg. To him, I was a bug that he had already squished. When I was in range, I lengthened my blade and whipped it through the bottom of the creature’s satchel. Various herbs and salted organs poured from the hole. If the giant was a spellcaster, then depriving him of spell components could only help.
Unfortunately, he had noticed the lightening of his pack and saw me. “Ah!” His voice cracked like a glacier and cut through the din of the blizzard.
The creature then smacked at me like I was a particularly gruesome spider. I skittered away from the blow between his legs, which caused him to stomp around in revulsion. A shaking above my head clued me into one of his possible weaknesses. Even if I can’t cut him, I can hit him.
I launched from my perch upwards with all of my strength and then punched him in the nutsack. The giant groaned and fell over as I landed back in our fortress. Derek was panting and covered in patches of frostbitten flesh, most congested around his hands. Chunks of monstrous ice sculptures lay about him and were embedded into the walls. A partial cover of his barriers and turrets lined our octagon with many jagged broken sections.
“So glad you could join us.” Derek thumbed off the cap to one of his healing potions and drank it.
The giant’s pained noises grew angrier and angrier until the blizzard burned with new ferocity.
“I think you made him mad.”
“Is this guild mandated banter?” I rushed over to our fire and wrapped it in my aura while feeding it more wood to prevent it from being smothered.
Derek sighed. “It’s supposed to relieve tension and improve morale, but I think the other members are only humoring my family.”
“Poorer people tend to go along with a guildie’s eccentricities.” My former companions standing next to Gabriel and forcing themselves to mock and jeer. “At least yours are harmless.”
Several turrets then fired directly into the air. “I’m hoping the rest of our team sees those. I don’t think we have this by ourselves.”
A shadow grew in the storm as the giant rose again, and ice-hawks swooped through the gaps in our defenses, diving toward us. Derek conjured barriers in their flight paths, smashing them, while I whipped my blade chain through any that neared and tossed balls of green fire at far targets. My Guardian continued to take cuts as the same talons only left spreading rime on me. I really need to get them to wear more armor. The attacks kept coming and the fire grew smaller despite my efforts.
With regret, I ignited our walls with green flames from my armor. The resulting heat warmed the inside of the fort sharply and melted the accumulated snow. Ice-hawks fell from the air as parts of their wings thawed, and our central fire flared bright.
I retracted my aura from it and sagged. Pushing it this far in so many directions rapidly tired even my boundless endurance. I pulled all the flames off my armor and threw them at the giant. The green ball sailed into the blizzard and disappeared from sight. With that gone, I let the heat transfer in my armor normalize and pulled in my aura to give myself a quick break.
But there was no rest for heroes.
The giant lumbered forward and stomped on my traps. “Suffer!” The necrotic elemental in my satchel cheered on as the buried stones erupted into waves of enfeeblement that stumbled my prey. Glowing green lines crawled up his veins and pulsed as the curse settled in.
Not to be deterred, the giant swung his club through one of our walls, letting in packs of ice-wolves and ice-bears. Derek sealed the entrance with barriers and conjured three turrets to blast them. One of the larger bears assaulted the center shield over and over again as its compatriots were cut down until it finally broke the blue energy only to meet my fist as I filled the hole.
Flames snaked from the walls and pooled in my hand while I kept the horde back with my blade. Once it was ready, I sent a torrent of flame through the assembled assault force and melted them into the ground.
The giant swung his club on the spot again and was caught by Derek’s barriers. The strength of the attack drove my guardian to his knees, but he gritted his teeth and held up the sky.
I hooked myself onto the club and ascended it in three quick hops. This time when I reached the giant’s thumb, I kept running up his arm. He let go of the club and flailed his hands at me. With my blade wrapped around my arm, I climbed the giant with a heat knife in either hand. They easily cut through the furs and provided leverage to fling myself away from his attacks.
A few lucky hand swipes forced me to jump to his chest, which left me a viable target for both hands. As they swung toward me, I could either let go to avoid them or fling myself upward. Naturally, I chose the latter.
Once inside the giant’s beard, the smacking ceased. Instead, the creature wrung his braids and constricted them around me. This would have been my undoing if I didn’t locate a pocket formed from the incompressible baubles and bones in his braids. I was not alone in this bubble of safety and extant residents took umbrage at my intrusion.
A giant man has giant lice. The bloodsuckers latched onto my armor and probed for gaps with their needle-like mouthparts. While they managed to navigate around the plates, the chain underneath stopped their efforts long enough for me to grab their heads and pulp them. The messy work yielded a plentiful pile of corpses that I ignited after sucking in a deep breath.
I guided the flames up and out, consuming more of the beard as it went. Once the giant noticed the heat, he shouted and let go of his braids. I took that moment to slide down into his shirt and wedge myself right below his sternum, above his heart. He should have noticed my grasping hand, but the giant was too busy shoveling snow through his beard.
After taking a moment to steel myself, I focused my aura around my blade and willed it to not only be sharper, but to better represent the concept of sharpness—no—to better exemplify sharpness. My aura and blade sung at a harmonic that only my shade could perceive. This felt right, like discovering that a well-used limb had an extra hand this entire time, but you never bothered to move it. Of course my ability was adjacent to this. I would’ve never known to try without the Crafting knowledge I had gained.
As I plunged my blade into the creature’s chest and carved a hole for myself, the flesh and blue blood fell away to reveal a pump made entirely of ice, a solid thing that didn’t beat. It only flowed the ichor through the creature’s body.
The giant pawed at his chest and sent snakes of ice up his shirt to bite at me. I ignored the vipers and hacked the heart from its crevice. Meat and sinew parted from my sword with every strike. My black armor turned blue as the creature's blood coagulated by freezing into tiny crystals. When fists slammed into me, they drove me deeper into the giant and closer to where I needed to hew.
When the heart was finally free, I dragged the ice boulder out of the hole and rode it to the ground. The giant bellowed in frustration and pain, but it didn’t stop moving. A Frost Giant was merely inconvenienced by removing their heart. Without it, their mastery of cold decreased. The blizzard cleared as the giant chose to maintain his creatures over the obscurement after losing a piece of his power.
I ran toward our base with my prize dragging behind me. Our bonfire still blazed and the sounds of fighting included monster wails, lasers, and a woman shouting before bursts of flame. I ran through the gap in the wall and found my entire team holding back the giant’s summons. After smashing a couple wolves with the heart, I gently placed it on top of the bonfire and joined my team in the defense.
“We need to hold—” I wobbled from fatigue. Causing equipment to better exemplify an aspect was significantly more efficient than raw reality manipulation, but it wasn’t my ability and using my aura that much drained my reserves. “...until it melts completely.” The world fuzzed as I forced my eyes to remain open.
Riena leaned over and whispered into my ear, “Wake up.”
A ripple of false energy alighted my nerves and pulled on stores I would have to replenish later, but future woes were better than dying now. I nodded in thanks as Riena drew me into the bond. Casimir’s illusions and Derek’s turrets manned the walls and kept most of the horde back while Nyla roamed to crush large threats that broke through. Riena held the final line of defense with her drones and the help of the boys’ punches and kicks.
The Frost Giant took one glance at our battle formation, crouched, and punched in the direction of his heart.
Derek interposed the fist and summoned eight barriers between him and it. The giant smashed through each of them—slowing marginally—and slammed into Derek, sending him backwards and bashing the heart with his head. He flopped onto the snow and struggled to rise. A faint red patch marked the collision point.
That was less than ideal, but we still had this. The more the heart melts, the weaker the giant will be. Nyla and I should be able to deflect the next fist. If the giant is still moving, then Riena will have to catch the final attack with her golem. We can do—
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[Threat to the Blood detected]
An all too sterile electronic voice cut through reality and brought with it a gray wave that slowed the world to a crawl. My heart beat slower, my breathing stalled, and my eyes moved like molasses. Only my perception remained at normal speed. All around me, friend and foe alike were held in the same near stasis as the voice reverberated from all directions.
[4 allied heroes, 3 allied drones, 27 allied summ—illusions, 1 enemy monster, 83 enemy summons… Threat assessed to Blood… Recommending countermeasures—REJECTED]
[“Well, this is odd. Everyone is accounted for. So what triggered the alarm? Demiurge, transport.”]
A second sun appeared in the sky, far brighter than the first. The stasis broke and white hot beams lanced from the sky, obliterating the ice animals, melting the snow, and reducing the Frost Giant to ash. Before any of us could react, those same beams swept over us, restoring all our wounds. The heart was now free to burn unmolested—preventing the giant’s recovery—while the new sun descended.
Riena was too stunned to move. Casimir pulled his creatures around us in a defensive formation. Nyla glared right at the sun, sighed in relief, and laid back on the grass in exhaustion. Derek pushed himself to his feet and looked around bewildered.
I laughed and waved at the man known by all, but who knew few. “Since when could you teleport into occupied portals?” I shouted up at the ball of light.
The glare from the falling star dimmed as its pilot grew closer and resolved into a guy with messy black hair, a clean shaven goatee, a white dress shirt, and black slacks. His tie was loose and a hint of inebriation lingered in his purple eyes. None of that distracted from his sculpted physique and a face equally at home leading armies or lounging in a café. “Interplanar translocation is exclusive to tier 7 Crafting, as I’ve discovered recently,” Artemis Santoro, the Savior, explained in effortlessly charismatic tones.
Lights flashed in his eyes as he tapped on holographic keyboards and ethereal mechanisms shifted the near translucent cannons floating around him fully out of visible reality. Rather than flying on his own power, the Savior stood on a shifting platform of dazzling lights that consumed Riena’s attention more than the man himself as she mumbled to herself about MP infused quantum computing.
Artemis’s face relaxed in recognition. “Ah, Exemplar. I had trouble placing you. Were you always a—never mind.” He looked between us. “You wouldn’t happen to know who might be my kid? At least, I hope they’re my kid or my program glitched. I would hate to think I already have grandkids.” He grimaced and continued typing away at his keyboards.
“Progeny? None of us have made that boast. I’m surprised you know me,” I said while reeling internally that he did know me. There was no way my contribution to high tier raids were worthy of his notice.
The Savior waved away my remark. “I know all of the named, especially the ones who were named far younger than I was.”
“Please, you were biding your time at Aspiration and had already named my ability before I manifested it.”
“‘Biding my time’ she says,” Artemis guffawed. “That’s one phrase for the most harrowing period of my life. Before we catch up—” he casually said like we get coffee all the time and weren’t having our first non-raid conversation. “—where is my kid?”
Rage erupted from Derek as he shouted, “You are NOT my father!”
The Savior glanced him up and down before typing a few more keys. “Derek Bane, son of Sophia and Fredrick Bane. And they are…” He snapped his fingers. “Right, the party after we sealed six elder elementals and rescued Absolute from being converted into an actual ice queen. I told them we should have used protection…” His eyes opened wide. “Uh, not that you were a mistake! Your parents were very enthusiastic about the whole thing. There was so much fluid flying everywhere that night. When Sophia got pregnant, I assumed it was Fredrick’s since they never said anything…” He trailed off. “Oh no, I owe so much back child support. But hey! Your brothers and sisters are going to adore you.”
“I AM Fredrick Bane’s son.” Derek remained adamant. “Not yours.”
The hope of mankind sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “Not according to my algorithm, kiddo. It’s designed to detect and alert me whenever one of my family is in trouble, blood related or otherwise.”
“Well, it’s wrong. Take me out of the list or something.”
The Savior kept typing and mumbling to himself. “Let’s see. Barrier creation and turret formation. Interesting abilities for a Bane. If we check the shade scan—”
“Hey! That’s private medical information.”
He laughed. “Oh, are you serious? Pfff, when you accepted a second ability, you became one of my patients.” After a few more clicks, he stared at an image that only he could see. “Fascinating, your shade treated all three of us as parents despite my minimal involvement in your rearing.”
“That is weird,” I interjected. Shade and aura studies were one of my special areas of focus. “Could it be that the parents intended to have one of the Savior’s kids and the biological reality reinforced that intent until it warped Derek’s abilities?”
Artemis rubbed his chin. “Quite possibly, but such bioessentialist experiments failed in the past.”
“No one else has had a legend of your magnitude, and did such experiments account for accomplished auramancers like Sophia Bane?”
“Hmmm, I’m more inclined to think there are social connections and frameworks I’m missing to explain the…”
Casimir gripped my shoulder and pulled it close to whisper, “Nerd out later and let Derek talk with his biological father.”
Our healer didn’t account for Derek’s enhanced hearing. He responded, “There is nothing to talk about.” He then glared at the Savior. “Mr. Santoro, please remove me from your erroneous alarm system. You’ve interfered in a school assignment and inhibited our shade growth. Having such protections in place would only further limit the potential of my team and get us killed in the future.”
The Savior unfocused from his work and turned to his bastard. “In a few years, we won’t need to manually grow our shades anymore. At least, not to these levels. Come to my compound, meet the rest of the family, decompress, and enjoy all the advantages that were your right by birth.”
Derek clenched a fist and barely kept his voice even. “My upbringing in the Bane household was plenty privileged, and I would never abandon my team or family.”
Artemis rubbed his face. “Come on, kid. I’m already feeling bad about this. We can stop by your parents’ place first and talk this all over. If you’re worried about your team, I can give them gear and resources to more than make up for your absence. It’ll be fine.”
“Mr. Santoro, my answer remains no. Please correct your system and leave.”
The light in the dark, the bane of Titans, mankind’s greatest shield and mightiest sword, groaned and said, “Fine, have it your way.” He tapped on his keys some more. “People will tell you that it is more noble to lift yourself up and not take the easy way through life. That is foolishness. Seize every opportunity, resource, and ounce of happiness you can. The metaphysical teeth of the multiverse seek to devour us all. Make them choke on it. Clog the apparatus of suffering and shatter the wheel of torment. Do not play the intended game. Break every rule. Only from a position of unassailable strength can you afford to lift up others...or turn down help.” He sighed. “I hope you live to regret this decision, Derek. When you do, seek me out and learn what true power is.”
The glow around him began to intensify.
“Oh and Exemplar, Dr. Stanley informed me of your issue. We should both have time around the winter solstice to address it.”
“Great!!” Holy shit. The Savior himself is going to personally give me a second ability. Obviously, I couldn’t slow down or go easy on my current studies, but I could hope again.
“See Derek, real heroes take any advantage they can get.” With those final parental words, the Savior folded space around himself and compressed into a dot before vanishing and sending out a spatial ripple in all directions.
This distortion rolled through the crystal supporting our portal, shattering it and causing it to collapse.
[“Oops! Oh well, that should correct for any help I provided. Good luck!”]
Derek let out a scream and punched the giant’s heart until it collapsed into slosh and evaporated in the flames. “That fucking asshole.”
Nyla kip-upped to her feet and asked, “Uh, did the Savior just kill us?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, the portal will reopen somewhere on this planet. I imagine, for most groups, the Frost Giant was meant to destroy the portal and send the invading team wandering. We’ll need to find it, and it is probably relatively nearby.” Whether that meant days or months of exploration was yet to be determined.
The blue sun had continued to grow and seemed on a crash course with the relative west, casting the ruin of our base into shadows.
“Riena, I hate to ask this, but could you help me restore our shelter? We have limited time until sunset.”
Our Commander continued to mumble to herself, so I squeezed her shoulder. “Huh?” Riena responded.
“Can you help me restore the base?” I repeated.
“Sure, whatever.” She waved a hand and we were in a fully stocked cottage that had windows looking out into the remnants of my construction. “Mari, did you see the computing structure on that disk!? I didn’t know half of those things were possible! There are so many applications for true before-before calculations.” Riena tapped her foot and whined, “I miss my workshop. I have so many ideas I need to implement NOW.” In frustration, she pulled a tablet from her extradimensional storage and began sketching designs.
Casimir poured himself a glass of wine and stared at the lit fireplace with a pig roasting over a spit. “Why were we building a base, when you had this?”
Riena shrugged, “Mari needed practice. Why do you let me give commands?”
“Fair.” He took a sip of drink before grabbing a two-pronged fork and ripping off a chunk of pig.
Nyla joined him in the feast. “Shockingly, Riena is not the biggest nepo baby on our team.”
Derek sat on the goose feather couch and placed his head in both hands. “I’m not… I… fuck.”
“Boohoo, Mr. my-dad-is-the-most-important-person-ever.”
“He’s NOT my da—”
“Yeah yeah, your spunk donor. It’s such a burden that he wanted to whisk you away into a life of bliss.”
Derek lifted his head and snarled at her, “Like you would just abandon your team mid-mission to—”
“YES!” Nyla threw her hands in the air. “Do you think I want to be arm deep in entrails all the time rather than idly learning Crafting from the unrivaled expert in complete safety? If the goddamn Savior was my secret pappy, I would be out of here.”
Night had begun to settle and creatures crawled from shadows to hunt. None looked in our direction, either from disinterest or concealment magic; I couldn’t say. Riena had long moved past the Runes of Creation for her gear. I sat by Nyla and examined my equipment for damage while asking, “I thought you like being a Vanguard?”
“It’s grown on me. I didn’t want to be one, but my ability didn’t fit any other role.”
Derek took a moment to cool the storm inside of him before speaking. “Nyla, while I understand you would rather have my problems, this shit bothers me a lot, and I would appreciate if you didn’t make light of it.”
“I’m sure you would, but it ain’t happening.”
Our Guardian stood and left the room before his rage could spill over. Riena stopped musing on new designs long enough to notice the dysfunction in her team. “Why don’t we all get some rest? The monsters shouldn’t be able to detect this place, but my drones will keep watch.”
Casimir yawned. “Sounds good to me.” He then retired. Riena then went to a larger room while Nyla spread on the couch.
As I was seeking a place to meditate, a snake licked my nose and whispered, “Feed me.”
“Again? You had food this morning,” I whispered back.
“Yeah, and? This should also be a good time to introduce me to Derek. They’ll learn about me eventually. We should control when they learn.”
I suppressed a sigh and barged into Derek’s room, “Hey man, I need one of your cookies for my snake monster.”
Latching onto any distraction, Derek retrieved one from his pack and tossed it to me. “I thought you got rid of that. Isn’t that a big part of your deal?”
I pulled off my helmet and held the dessert aloft for Coatlie to consume. “What are you talking ab—Do you call your penis a snake monster?”
“No, but I assumed you did.” His eyes focused when Coatlie unfurled and nibbled on the cookie. “Ah, so you were being literal.”
“Riena already knows,” I clarified.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Coatlie asked.
That caused Derek to blink. “You know what? No. I refuse to care.” He summoned a pyramid of barriers around himself and then forced himself into unconsciousness.
“I think that went great!” The snake then gobbled her meal.
Since the room was big enough, I sat on the floor and meditated until morning.
