Land of the Giants, page 6
The Acadians looked heartbroken, staring out at the lapping waves where their capitol city had been. Corbin could only imagine what memories each of them were reliving, dwelling and aching over the loss of their people. He dared not enter their minds, having vowed to never use his psionicism on allies.
“I am so sorry for your loss,” he said, breaking the sobering silence.
Kyra shook her head, shaking off the icy feeling that gripped her throat. She would not cry here in front of her troops, not when there was still so much to be done. “Do you detect any signs of civilization in the area?” she asked Nero.
Again a screen of floating red numbers and words flashed in the air before Nero for an instant. “Kyra, there does appear to be signs of civilization to the west, about eight kilometers from here.”
Kyra muttered to Stur that she wished the android would stop saying her name every time it spoke, and he just chuckled.
“Right, then fall out, troops,” she ordered.
Corbin caught up with her, walking up the sandy dune toward the jungle. “Marshal, I do not mean to question your judgment, but is it wise for us to enter a jungle none have ever been in before?”
“You mean to say, you do question my judgment, then?” Kyra said. “You Falians speak oddly. Not that I’ll be running my every order past you, but for the sake of your understanding, if there is a nearby civilization, we need to investigate it. When the Citadel takes off, it will be seen for leagues, and we cannot risk being vulnerable to a jotnar aerial attack.”
Before Corbin could respond, Stur swatted them both like flies, throwing them to the side and roaring as his sword crashed against a pincer claw the size of Corbin’s leg that suddenly thrust up at them.
The white sands shifted, rolling down the length of a giant white-shelled crab that was lying in wait. The hulking beast stood to its full height on eight jointed legs, each as thick as Corbin’s arm and bred to run through the loose sandy beach, towering over even the weapon master.
The crab flicked its claw, shoving Stur back. The left claw, which was three times the size of the right, clamped down hard on Oram’s midsection before the man could even brandish his blade. Blood sprayed across the sand in a red shower as the crab crushed his screaming body in half.
The crab turned in a strange sideways walk to face Logan and the rest of the Acadians, its long eyestalks peering down over its body at them. Logan shouted for the men to get out of the way as he and Bipp raced out of reach. The crab batted another of the men hard with Oram’s crushed, mewling body, bowling Rod head over heels down the side of the sand dune and into a shallow pocket. Kyra could only watch on in horror as the pocket filled with a swarm of flesh-eating beetles that tore apart the flesh of his face, greedily burrowing into the howling man’s eye sockets.
An arrow swiftly lodged deep into Rod’s heart, freeing him from the terror of being eaten alive by insects. Nero was already nocking another in place as the troops fell into a semblance of defensive formation. The crab’s element of surprise was over.
It batted at Logan, almost taking him in the side of the head. He howled and threw his blade, which spiraled through the air toward the beast’s side. The kopis blade struck its mark but skittered harmlessly down the crustacean to the sand. “Dammit, why does everything I have to fight have armor?” Logan shouted in frustration.
The crab moved in, grasping with the smaller claw and blocking its mouth with Oram’s dead body.
Stur swung his mighty blade low, sheering two of the crab’s legs off with a crack. The beast did not make any noise but moved with lightning speed sideways away from him, almost trampling Bipp, who rolled between its legs.
Kyra barely had her shield unstrung and up in time to deflect a blow from the deadly pincer. “Corbin, work to distract it! Nero, take out one of those eyes! Lars fall in against the left flank!” she shouted out as she rolled across the ground.
Corbin nodded, dancing inside the beast’s claws, which reminded him of the skex he had battled back in New Fal. He viciously pressed the crustacean behemoth with an onslaught of blows from his voulge while dodging the lumbering hulk’s attempts to strike him with its claws. An arrow zipped past the defending claw, digging deeply into one of the eyestalks and sending the crab into a violent rage.
Beneath it, Bipp snatched Logan’s lost weapon and gave his friend a thumbs up. Logan screamed for him to stop, but the gnome acted too quickly. Grasping the sword pommel with both hands, he smiled triumphantly as he slammed the blade straight up, all the way to the hilt, into the crab’s belly.
The beast stopped and stood stock still, trying to understand what had just happened, then toppled hard onto the ground, trying to rub off the weapon.
Logan felt his insides turn to mush as he watched Bipp get crushed under the hulking crab’s weight. He let out a cry so blood-curdling even the mighty Stur looked frightened for a moment, and all were shocked out of their wits to see Logan’s hand suddenly erupt with blinding light. Energy fueled by his very life force, connected to the universe through a mystical modification his murdered friend Mr. Beauford had installed, burst from the metal fist and melted straight through the crustacean’s face, cooking its insides like stew.
Before the light of it even died away, seared across all of their visions in a glowing trail, Logan was already running and calling to the other men to help him. They worked to heave the crab over, hoping beyond all reason to save the gnome. Once Stur joined in, they easily flipped the beast over onto its back.
In the center of the large indent, pushed deep into the sand, Bipp was buried, smiling and rubbing his bulbous nose. “Thank Ferrigan for sand. We should visit the beach more often.” The gnome groaned, holding out his stubby hand out for help. When they pulled him to his feet, there was still a perfect indentation where Bipp had been pushed into the sand.
Logan laughed weakly and hugged his friend, while Stur walked up to Corbin, looking curious.
“That is some hand your brother has there. Very interesting.” He stroked his beard in consternation.
“He lost his hand in battle. Logan is often a surprise, even to those who know him well,” Corbin replied. He noticed that Kyra was deeply disturbed over the loss of her men, as she should be. “Are you alright, Marshal?”
“Two men in less than an hour.” She spoke in a low voice, not wanting the other soldiers to hear, while tracing her finger over her face three times, offering a prayer to the Goddess Vaselia. Turning to face the remaining men, she addressed Stur. “This is not the land we once knew. The world of Acadia has grown into a hostile and dangerous land indeed. We must take every precaution from here on out.”
Stur nodded, silently agreeing, and ordered the remaining three men to fall into a marching formation, Lars and Erol in the front and Nero taking up the rear. Logan was too weak to walk on his own after expending so much of his life force through his mechanical fist. Corbin and Bipp helped balance Logan’s weight and took up position in the center along with Stur and Kyra.
“Fall out, men,” he ordered at the marshal’s signal, leaving the picked bones of their comrades behind in a dangerous pit of swarming beetles. “Let’s find this civilization Nero detected and get out of here.”
Corbin could not help wondering what kind of people could survive such a dangerous world and dreaded that they would find out soon enough.
Chapter 3: Welcome to the Jungle
For Logan there was stark contrast between the forests of Vanidriell and the jungles of Acadia. If someone had asked him to describe the Muscari Woods, he would use words such as lush and dense. But now, after travelling through the dank-smelling jungle for half the night, he understood the true meaning of such words. Unlike the forests of Fal, the jungle pressed in all around, with thick vines hanging from fat, tall trees, some with sashes of thick moss blocking his view. It was so hot and humid he could actually see the moisture built up in small pools on the large fronds of ferns, and his clothing clung to him from a sweat the likes of which he had never experienced. The jungle was hotter than anywhere he had ever been. And it was virtually teeming with life, as the sounds of exotic birds, swarming bugs, and the gods only knew what else filled the air.
When they broke for camp, the Falians drifted away from the rest of the group to chat in private. Bipp quickly plopped down in the damp grass and pulled out some flatbread that Kyra had made for their journey. He sniffed at it and wrinkled his nose.
“It’s not the bread that smells foul,” Logan said, seeing his friend’s reaction, “but this infernal bog of a jungle that seems to have been dipped in rot and left to fester.” Logan pulled out the kopis blade he had almost lost and began running a sharpening stone over its edge.
Corbin followed suit, crossing his legs in the grass and resting the shaft of his voulge across his lap. He took in the jungle once more. Where Logan found the place to be a constant source of irritation, Corbin could not help but revel in it, marveling at the beauty of the dense woods. “I can’t believe the Elders could have been so wrong about the surface. It’s amazing up here.”
Logan snorted. “Corbin, don't you see?” Corbin shrugged, not following his meaning. “The Elders have been lying to everyone all this time. They lied about the wildlands. They lied about the Crystal. How can we trust in any version of history we have been taught? I can only imagine what else they’ve misled us about.”
Corbin cocked his head, putting the pieces together as his older brother laid them out. His hands rolled across the shaft of his voulge and he drummed his fingers on the bronze spear. Not for the first time in the last month, he felt quite foolish for his naivety. “Yes...of course. What was I thinking?” he said bitterly. “If the Elders have been misleading everyone all this time about everything else that matters, why should I be surprised to find what they told us about the surface is also false?”
“Exactly.” Logan rose to pace back and forth, getting more worked up as he thought over the matter. “And another thing—what in the bloody hell was Zacharia doing in a relief carved well over two centuries ago?”
Corbin pictured the carvings they had discovered lining the ceiling of the King's Hall in the cursed ruins of Ul'kor. High Elder Zacharia had been pictured there helping the gnomes create the great crystal construct so that they might bring life to previously uninhabitable caverns in Vanidriell. “The curse that fell over Ul'kor was certainly nigh on two centuries ago, there is no mistaking that. And by the accounts Bipp has given, no one has so much as stepped foot in the place since then.”
Logan snapped his fingers and pointed at his brother. “Right. So how in the world could Zacharia have been there? You know, they have all these laws against magic use, but how much would you like to bet that damned bastard is a dark wizard?”
“That would make sense,” Bipp said, eyeballing Logan's portion of bread. “If this Elder fella you’re referring to practices the dark arts, he could live a longer lifespan than is typical for your kind.”
“How can you know this for certain?” Corbin asked.
“In the Book of Lost Souls, Yuri the Whisperer gives a personal account of how certain necromancers were able to extend their lives long past the moment of death.”
Corbin arched his eyebrows and shivered at this revelation. “Oh? How do they do such a ghastly thing?”
“Dunno.” Bipp swallowed a hunk of the bread, chasing it down with a hearty gulp of water from his flask. “We only had to read the one excerpt as an assignment in my Arcane Lore Studies. I guess it never occurred to me that the material would ever have any real world application, eh?”
“Well, I'd venture a guess that whatever we find up here is going to be vastly different than what we were taught as children,” Logan said.
“I’d say what we’ve already seen has been enough to make that statement truer than a toad’s warts,” Bipp agreed.
The three of them fell silent as Stur made his way over to their gathering. “We must go,” he said with a sense of urgency. “Erol has found someone traveling through the woods.”
“Are they friendly?” Bipp asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Stur said. “But we’re going to break camp post haste and follow them. Perhaps this stranger can lead us back to the civilization Nero detected.”
They had been following the woodsman for almost two miles. Stur was like a magician, picking up the trail in this dense foliage. He said it was merely a matter of knowing where to find the information, pointing out the broken or bent plants that were so alien to Logan, he would not be able to tell if they were supposed to look that way or not. He marveled that the muddy ground held no footprints, instead filling back in fairly quickly. When the ground became muddy in New Fal, it was more like clay, holding form to anything pressed in it, while the ground here in the jungle was spongy and resilient.
Kyra held up her hand, halting the party, who were all doing their level best to remain undetected. A few yards in front of her, Stur crouched so low his knuckles touched the ground, trying to hide his hulking form amidst some tall grass.
Logan could not make out what the warrior whispered to Kyra and threw a funny face at Bipp to convey his boredom. The gnome bit his fist to keep from giggling, and Corbin elbowed him with a glower.
“Stur spied a glimpse of our mark through the trees ahead,” Nero stated in a voice precisely quiet enough for the situation. The android’s superior robotic hearing had picked up the whispers.
Kyra ran through a series of hand gestures, ordering the team into different positions, readying to move forward and corner their target. Once they grabbed the unsuspecting foreigner, they would be able to get information about the area, determining if the Citadel would be in danger.
Logan could see the man’s outline through the heavy leaves covering the area. He was only thirty yards ahead, and they crept up on him from the right side.
Something about the man struck Corbin as odd, and he could tell Logan felt it as well. Perhaps it was the way he had stopped in the middle of a clearing, so casually sitting on a rotting log covered with moss and layers of mushroom. Or maybe it was the way he moved, a little more fluidly than seemed normal. Corbin probed for a connection to his brother’s mind and shook his head. “Look at his neck. Something’s off here,” he said, including Bipp in the telepathic message.
Logan squinted while Kyra and Stur circled around, sliding into position across from them. The man bent over to pick up something from the ground by his feet, and Kyra held her fingers up counting down from five. The stranger’s head lifted, and Logan understood his brother’s meaning—his neck was longer than it should be.
Bipp grabbed Logan’s sleeve, pointing behind them. Something had moved in the trees, rustling leaves as it went. Logan screamed out the warning a second too late as Kyra and the Acadians sprang into action, sprinting from their hiding spots to surround their target with weapons drawn.
Corbin whipped around and held his voulge at full length, the tip of the polearm’s blade pressed against the neck of a humanoid that emerged from behind them.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see the man they had been tracking standing with his back to Kyra and her men, holding up his hands in mock surrender and flicking a long, thick lizard tail. Logan felt his blood freeze with the realization that they were the ones cornered, as all around them the jungle began to move, rustling as shadows emerged from their hiding places.
These humanoids were not the Ul’kor cobolds he had battled before, which were outmatched by his sheer strength and ferocity. No, these were an entirely different threat altogether.
The lizardman in the clearing turned to face Stur, wearing the coy smile of a snake that had lulled its prey into a false sense of security. They were built similar to humans, with lean muscular frames accustomed to survival in these dangerous jungle lands. Their skin was a deep green with smooth scales that glimmered in the fading moonlight peeking through the canopy of trees. They held wooden spears, bows, and makeshift clubs in reptilian clawed hands—three long fingers and a thumb that was smaller than a man’s.
Logan counted at least twelve of the lizardmen surrounding them and wondered how long they had been tracking the human explorers before deciding to reveal their ambush. Some of the humanoids had iguana-like protruding faces, with ridges that ran from the top of their smooth heads down their backs, while others had flatter, softer features that were almost human. All were adorned with various bracelets, armbands, and necklaces made of wood and bone, with animal skin loincloths that hung at different lengths around their waist.
The lizardman they had been following appeared to be the leader of the hunting pack. He laughed from the center of the clearing, the sound of it deep like a human, which somehow seemed surreal emanating from this creature’s sharp-toothed mouth. His golden eyes sparkled mockingly as he spoke in a language Logan had never heard.
Kyra exchanged confused looks with Stur, who moved slowly and deliberately, motioning for her to put down her weapon. Logan deemed the move wise. Even if they managed to take down a handful of these savages, they would still be hopelessly outnumbered.
Corbin did not share the sentiment, gritting his teeth and growling as he pushed the tip of his weapon harder against the caught lizardman’s throat. The leader looked over at them and saw the threat. He called out to his men, ordering three of them to surround Corbin and protect his cornered tribesman.
“Corbin, don’t be a fool. Lay down your weapon,” Logan coaxed, not wanting the situation to escalate, at least not until they had a better idea of what they were in for.
Corbin’s eyes cleared, the cloud of bloodlust washing out of them, and he stepped back slowly, pulling the tip of his blade from the lizardman and laying the bronze spear in the grass, leaving a tiny pinprick of blood on the frightened lizardman’s neck.
“Drop your weapons men!” Kyra ordered somewhat reluctantly, cursing herself for not realizing they were walking into an ambush.
_preview.jpg)
