Land of the Giants, page 56
Tryn roughly tossed her to the side, preparing to meet the attacker head on. The guard hit him with such force that the marquess almost went over the edge of the low wall around the roof, barely catching hold of his attacker’s iron collar in time.
Annabel looked in both directions, trying to find some way of escape. Everywhere she turned, there was only the promise of more madness. The bloody battle raged all across the area as the resistance tried to block the archduke’s ship from escaping. When she looked back, Tryn was squirming around the guard and shoved the howling ice giant off the roof.
Running over to her, Tryn shouted something Annabel could not understand, holding out his hand. Tentatively she accepted, and he helped her rise. Once she was on her feet, the marquess tugged, and they were running through the carnage again.
The booming sound of the airship lessened enough for Annabel to hear her own huffing as they ran down the slope that led from the rooftop to the palace gardens below. Tryn screamed at a confused guard to get out of his way. The ice giant looked puzzled as to why the duke’s son would be running away from the airship. He tried to tell the marquess he was going the wrong way, but a broad-shouldered human, far bigger than any slave Tryn had ever seen, fell upon the soldier. Tryn shook his head at Annabel and skirted the fight, lunging for the garden below. They raced past beds of black roses and mounds of crimson babybells before Tryn finally stopped to catch his breath.
Tryn let go of her and put his hands on his knees, gasping to catch his breath and coughing out the acrid smoke burning his lungs. Annabel pulled the hair away from her face where it clung to her sweaty brow.
The marquess looked over his shoulder, back at the palace, and began to laugh. “We did it!” he exclaimed between laughs, still catching his breath from their flight. “We actually escaped the palace!”
Annabel gave a nervous laugh in response, and Tryn straightened, moving closer to her. He wrapped his arms around her in a warm embrace. His strength was too overpowering for her to resist, and Annabel found her face pressed against his chest.
Tryn’s heart was beating hard as happiness filled his soul. Gently stepping back with his hands on her shoulders, Tryn bent down to look Annabel in the eye. The marquess smiled affectionately. “You are safe now, little one. Now we can get out of the city and be together forever.” His eyes were filled with the wonder of what their future had in store, and he moved to kiss her gently on the forehead. He could taste the saltiness of her skin against his purple lips.
That’s odd, Tryn thought, feeling the sting on his chest. Looking down, he saw the dagger buried all the way to the hilt in the center of his tunic.
Confused, he staggered back, and Annabel let go of the weapon as blood began to run down the handle onto her creamy white skin. Tryn felt the world tighten up around him. “B-but… my love?” he tried to ask, dumbfounded by what was happening.
“Your love?” Annabel asked, her face contorting into a mask of disgust at his words. “What can your kind know of love? All the jotnar can ever understand is hatred and ownership.”
Tryn fell to his knees, the strength of his legs giving out. He reached across an endless distance for Annabel to hold him.
Unrelenting, she backed away out of reach, hands shaking at her sides. “I’ll never let you touch me again, you sick bastard!”
Tryn looked up at her with a profound sadness that melted through her veil of denial. “So much anger…so much hatred,” he muttered to himself, understanding the cracks in their world. “My sweet, sweet Annabel, I am so sorry. Life has been quite unfair to you. If my death can take away this hatred that has festered in your heart, then so be it.”
Annabel could not believe the marquess’s words. Tryn fell backward, the world spinning around him. Overhead a dove glided on the wind, disappearing into a gray cloud.
Annabel lunged forward, catching the back of the marquess’s head as a single tear ran from her twitching eye. Tryn smiled warmly up at her face, his heart at peace. “It’s okay, my love…it’s okay.”
“H-how can you forgive me for this?” she sobbed, trying to comprehend how the jotun could smile at the woman who had just murdered him.
Tryn reached up, cold trembling fingers wiping away her tears. “Don’t you see it, Annabel? I would cross an eternity of stars for your love.”
Annabel’s dam of denial over the love she felt for this jotun broke. Howling in despair, she begged him not to die. She clutched at the wound, swearing it was not that bad, that they could get help in time. When Tryn did not respond, she pulled him roughly up to his knees again, shaking the dying marquess and screaming at him to stay with her.
“Hold still! I’ll take care of the blue devil for you!” an Acadian called over her shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye, Annabel saw the man hurling his spear toward Tryn’s chest. She screamed for him to stop and lunged in front of the marquess’s body, taking the spear clean through her own chest. Tryn hit the ground with a crack, and the woman he loved fell beside him.
“What in the hell did you just do!” Stur shouted at the soldier, roughly pulling the man away from the pair.
On the ground, lying on her side and facing Tryn, Annabel slowly stretched out her arm, fingers weakly trying to grasp his hand. “I love you too,” she gasped, blood running down her nose and out of her mouth onto the stone.
Tryn’s mind shattered in despair. He wanted to howl, to rage, to destroy the entire world. Yet all he could do was watch feebly as the light faded from her eyes and tears rolled out of his own.
Stur felt his heart break at the pair of lovers, a jotun and a human, sprawled across the ground and reaching for one another. He turned a cold eye on the soldier, who was shaking.
“What did she go and do that for?” the soldier asked. “I was trying to save her before that filthy jotun could hurt her.”
“He wasn’t hurting her. She was trying to save his life,” Stur corrected sadly.
“Ho there, Stur!” Isaac called as he rushed down the sloped path into the garden.
Stur shook himself out of the forlorn moment, noting that the mage was accompanied by the fairest woman he had ever seen. “I see you were able to rescue the oracle,” he remarked, spotting Siribel’s pointed ears and motioning for the other soldier to get back to the fight, which he did readily enough.
“How goes it here?” Isaac asked, looking around at the raging battle.
“We are pressing the duke’s remaining jotnar hard from the eastern side of the city. The lower boroughs have been taken, and most of the noble estates have surrendered. It shouldn’t be long now before we find Thiazi.”
“The duke is dead,” Siribel said.
Stur knew he should feel some sense of victory, but after what he had just seen… Looking back at the dead woman, Stur grumbled when he saw her jotun lover was gone and she lay there with dead eyes, reaching out to no one.
“What is it, man?” Isaac asked, as a look of concern crossed the warrior’s face.
Stur turned away from his brooding, shaking away the notion and focusing on the task at hand. “Nothing, it’s nothing. We should part ways. I’ve still work to do here. We are going to make a push for the archduke’s airship.”
“I fear the time has passed for that opportunity, my friends,” Siribel cryptically informed them.
“What do you—?” Stur began to ask, but the Goliath suddenly whirred into life, slowly lifting up into the sky.
“Archduke! I’ve plotted a course for the capitol, my lord!” the airship captain explained to his liege as the angry wizard entered the bridge.
Marius nodded then thought of something and held up a finger for the jotun to wait. He turned his attention to his banner guard. “Take this jotun to my personal quarters and then report back after you’ve secured a necrophage to tend his wounds.”
The banner guard nodded and carried the lifeless Marquess of Belikar away.
“Sir?” the airship captain prodded, waiting for orders and wanting to be away from the massacre below.
Marius strode over to the viewport, looking through the thick glass pane down at the city. “We are not leaving yet. These scabs want a fight with the Jotnar Empire?” Marius snarled. “Then let’s give them one.” He pointed his bony finger at his air marshal. “Fire the cannons!”
Stur howled for his men to get back, waving for them to retreat from the rooftops as the airship began turning above the palace. A heavy fireball burst out of the cannon, the sound of it like thunder crackling across the sky. The cannonball exploded through the rooftop of a nearby noble estate at an angle and engulfed a group of resistance fighters in flames.
“Fall back! Find cover!” Stur howled again, though it sounded muffled through his ringing ears.
Marius cackled gleefully at the humans scrambling in all directions. The airship twisted around, heading for the mass of the Acadian army, raining devastation down on the city as it went. “Release the tungsten spears!” he ordered.
Corbin watched in horror as the airship shuddered, releasing its payload. A flat spear as tall as a house tore from the base of the vessel. When it crashed through the nearby buildings, the ground quaked under the impact, splintering and rising in a crater around the immense weapon of destruction.
“Logan!” he shouted telepathically, pointing a warning finger at the airship.
Logan was surrounded by eight jotnar warriors in black steel armor. He elbowed the closest jotun in the side of the head, knocking the ice giant away from him, and pulled back, swiping his mighty blade in a wide semi-circle to keep the encroaching band of jotnar at bay. Looking up to see what his brother was referring to, he was startled.
“Destroy that abomination!” Marius ordered. Clouds of steam spit from the weapons control panel as the pressure built up for another release.
Logan slid his right foot back, forming a T-shape, and spread his legs wide as he crouched in the Aegis and pulled the mystical armor’s sword all the way back around him.
Marius’s eye twitched, seeing the armor move into an offensive pose. “Release the damned spear! Release the tungsten now!” he screamed. The airship rocked as another deadly tungsten spear released, this one aimed for the Aegis.
The Aegis twisted sharply as Logan channeled every ounce of strength he had into his throw. The Aegis’s sword whipped through the air like a dart, flying fast as an eagle. With a massive explosion, it ripped into the hull of the airship. At the same time, the ground shuddered as the tungsten spear pummeled the Aegis, driving the ancient armor down hard into the shattered cobblestone.
Isaac gasped as the Goliath spiraled in reverse, completely out of control as the lower section of the airship fell away in pieces, which fell on the city like meteorites. He waved his staff in the air then stopped and thrust it forward with both hands, aiming a bolt of lightning at the blade stuck through the ship’s bridge. His magical blast channeled through the Aegis blade, sending a web of electricity crackling across the entire hull.
The magical towers atop the archduke’s airship exploded one by one in blue-ringed fiery blasts, each one breaking the sound barrier and sending out huge concussive rings of air. The devastating attack hurled the remains of the Goliath down onto the city. The palace roof was crushed as the exploding ship crashed into it, and the ground quaked as if it would fall from under their feet. Stur fought hard to retain his footing while the world shook.
Corbin ran for his brother, who was lost under a cloud of smoke and dust where the tungsten spear had hit. He screamed into the smoke, choking on the acrid taste of burning metal. The ground where Logan had been was sloped in a crater with the crushed remains of the Aegis at its center, stuck to the ground like a ragdoll by the archduke’s weapon. When Corbin reached the armor, armored jotnar were already climbing down after him, looking at the wreckage for signs that the armor would come alive again.
“Logan!” Corbin screamed again. Surely the fates could not be so cruel as to bring his brother back just to take him away again?
Through the ringing in his ears, he could dimly make out a whirring sound as the Aegis’s breastplate opened halfway, getting caught on the tungsten spear buried through its waist. Corbin climbed over the hot mithril, caring not for his own safety and waving away the smoke. Logan’s metal hand came over the lip of the opening, and Corbin grasped it. He gave a heave and pulled his brother, choking on the grey smoke, out of the armor. Logan’s forehead was cut open, and black soot covered his cheeks, but for all that, he was alive and well!
Commander Erruza pointed at the armor and called his soldiers to arms. “Look, my friends, he is only a human! Now is our chance. Destroy the infidels!”
The jotnar shouted and raced down the shattered crater with their swords raised.
A whistling sound came just before Gandiva crushed the commander’s breastplate, throwing the jotun onto his back, dead on impact. When the weapon returned to Logan’s hand, every jotun in the area had stopped and was staring at him fearfully.
“Yeah…I’m only a human,” Logan taunted. “Come and give it your best shot.”
“Jotnar warriors of Belikar!” Kyra called from the top of the crater as wafts of smoke parted to reveal her form. The crushed, burning palace could be seen over her shoulder in the distance. “Duke Thiazi is dead. Your defenses have been laid to waste.” As she spoke, more Acadians began to appear through the smoke, slowly coming down the slope for the jotnar. “The empire could not save you, for you have lost this war. Now you have a choice. Do you want to die, or do you want to live?” As she asked the question, the look of grim determination on Kyra’s face told the soldiers that she would gladly kill every last one of them if she had to.
One of the larger warriors let his sword and shield clatter to the ground, and he fell to his knees with his hands behind his head in surrender. Logan smiled across the distance at the marshal as the rest of the horde followed suit and fell to their knees.
Corbin grasped his brother’s forearm, helping him down from the armor, and gave him a hearty hug. “I thought we’d lost you!”
“Can’t get rid of me that easily, little brother.” Logan laughed, though it hurt his side, and slapped Corbin on the back, choking down tears of joy before breaking free.
Together they surveyed the city around them with immeasurable awe and profound humility. Somehow against all odds, Kyra’s army had overthrown the jotnar. The city was sacked, the battle was over, and for the first time in over two hundred years, the humans of Belikar were free.
Chapter 25: Departure
It had only been several weeks since the revolution, but to Corbin Walker, it felt like an eternity. Every fiber of his being ached to get back to Vanidriell and save his people from the slavering hunger of the false god Baetylus. However, in the days following the great battle of Belikar, there was much to be done.
Everyone marked it as a miracle that Logan had walked away from the Aegis with only minor wounds. It was his second brush with death since coming to possess the mystical armor. When asked how he had survived the fall from the cliffs, Logan told most people made up fantasies. “I rode the dragon’s tail to the daystar and was blessed by flying apes,” or “I guess years of practice falling out of trees finally came in handy.” Then there was Corbin’s favorite, “The Valkyries themselves came down to bring me to Valhalla, but I told those angels of death, ‘No thanks, ladies. I’ve got a war to win, and I’m running late.’” That was the one that made Kyra groan, though she was overjoyed to see the Falian alive and well. Particularly since his arrival turned the tide of war in their favor.
It was Tiko who explained what really happened. Apparently, when they hit the bottom of the canyon, Logan landed on top of the hulking hill giant in an iridescent pond, crushing the monster but narrowly saving Logan’s life.
The Agmawor were praying around the pool for Seti’s guidance. The pool was their scared shrine to the dead, and Logan had fallen from the sky in the dead center of it. When the Aegis arrived, the Agmawor marked it as a sign their god was not upset with them for the recent civil war and dragged the massive suit of armor to High Priestess Luana.
When Logan spoke to them, Luana knew who he was, remembering the soft-skin’s voice from the day she took power over her people. The high priestess had wanted an end to the bloodshed between the Agmawor and Agma for quite some time and saw Nero’s blessing from Seti as an opportunity to gain the power to do just that. In fact, when Logan arrived, she was already meeting with an envoy from the Agma tribe.
Logan explained what was happening and resumed his pilgrimage back to the mage’s tower. Luana declared this to be a sign from Seti, and soon Logan found that both the Agma and Agmawor were following him to his destination, laying their spears at his feet and begging for the gods’ blessing. The lizards knew the jotnar would eventually find their hidden jungle and did not want to wait around to see what the blue-skinned devils might do to them.
The rest, as they say, was history, or at least that was as much as Tiko was able to garner in such a short time.
The Agma and their cousins only stayed for a couple days after Belikar was taken. With the glory of battle over, there was not much more to keep them there, and the lizard people ached to part ways and get back to their sacred jungle.
Logan asked Tiko if he would join them in their journey back to Fal, but the proud hunter bowed graciously and declined. He was eager to be wed to Kalilah and start their family. His place was by her side, no matter how much he yearned to accompany his new friends on their adventure. Kalilah was a healer now, and she was never needed more than after the battle at Belikar.
They were sad to see the lizardman go but parted as friends, promising to see each other again one day.
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