Stone Bear’s time in the unformed chaos of Limbo had been. . . productive, he decided. The spirits there shrieked and babbled constantly, eternally unsettled and yet finding peace through restlessness itself. It was such a difference from somewhere like Mechanus, where the spirits were eternally trapped in dutiful lockstep! Wherever Stone Bear traveled now, the spirits whispered secrets of faith to him. He quietly absorbed whatever he heard, and the garbled truths were beginning to transform him. He now knew ways to channel spirits that had been closed to him before, and the knowledge filled him with self assurance.
His meditation had helped transform and prepare him, and he had been ready to return when Galthia had arrived at his tiny shelter in the vast Sea of Flux. With a sending to find out where the Defenders currently were, the two of them had plane shifted back to Spira. Now they trekked uncomplainingly across a rugged mountain ridge. Neither of them paid much heed to the icy snow, bitter wind, or driving rain from the storm cloud overhead.
“We’re almost there,” said Galthia as they topped a rise. They had the wind at their back, and the gale was pushing them forward as if eager to be rid of them. “It should be across that hill. . .” Blind to normal vision, Stone Bear couldn’t see the hill Galthia pointed to, but his bear spirit whispered directions into his ear.
Something is coming, whispered the shaman’s war spirit. Stone Bear’s head snapped up.
“Do you see anything?” he asked. Galthia peered into the wind-whipped rain.
“No, nothing unusual other than the storm. . .” He trailed off as a boulder the size of a house fell from the storm cloud above. The ground shook as it hit less than a mile away.
“What was that?” asked Stone Bear.
“A mountain top,” answered Galthia. “Falling onto the temple.” He winced from a blinding lightning bolt and the accompanying clap of thunder. “They’re under attack.”
By the time the gryphons descended from the cloud above, they had both began to run.
-- o --
“Really, there’s very little that a maximized polar ray can’t stop.” Agar was quite satisfied with himself, although he snuck an envious glance towards Emperor Ioun. Some day I’ll be able to match him, he thought. Just not for a long time to come. Proty burbled companionably on his shoulder.
Archmage Ioun braced himself against the wind and turned to Velendo. “It looks. . .”
Velendo couldn’t hear him over the roaring of the gale. “What?”
Ioun looked annoyed, concentrated, and snapped his fingers. The magical hurricane-force storm winds vanished and were replaced by the less insistent gusts from the actual storm. “It looks as if you have things well in hand here,” said Ioun calmly. “General Annel and I will depart, and we will resume these negotiations at a less. . energetic. . time.”
“You know,” said Velendo wistfully as he stared up at the ugly storm cloud overhead, “you’re welcome to stay a while and help rid us of these giants.” His voice was hopeful.
The corner of Ioun’s mouth twitched upwards. “If we had reached an agreement I certainly would, because citizens of my empire would be in danger. As it is, however, I am on foreign soil. I was pleased to contribute to the common defense, but unless circumstances change we can be nothing more than interested observers.” He dipped his head. “Colleagues. Please contact General Annel when you are ready to resume negotiations. Sooner is better than later. We’d just as soon have this question resolved before circumstances resolve it for us.” He turned, and a tiny section of reality caved in on itself. Within seconds, Ioun and Annel were gone.
“Damn,” said Velendo.
“Well,” said Malachite as the bell-like tones faded. “It’s hard to disagree with him.”
KRAAAAK!
The sound of thunder shattered the air and left the Defenders reeling. They clutched their ears from pain and staggered slightly from the powerful shockwave. The force of the rain redoubled, and Velendo understood what was happening as soon as his clothes began to hiss and smoke.
“Get under cover!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, trying to make himself heard over the storm. Then he switched to the mindlink. “Get under cover! This is a storm of vengeance.” He flung himself under the dome-shaped sovereign wall. The others followed, and acid rain dripped from their skin and clothing. The smell of burning hair filled the icy air, only to be whipped away by the wind.
“A what?” asked Mara. She flipped her long hair forward and back, shaking off most of the acidic water. Her warhorse snorted in pain beside her.
“A storm of vengeance. A very nasty prayer, and a very powerful one. Someone must be upset that we killed their giant.” Through the grey sheets of rain he could see the smoking corpse of Imperator Caustus, and from somewhere above he could hear the faint screams as blinded giants and gryphons were caught in the storm. Velendo braced himself for what he knew was coming next, so he was the only person not surprised when six bolts of lightning slammed down on top of the impenetrable dome. Another drum roll of thunder drowned out all sound, and fist-sized hail stones began to shatter on the dome overhead. The corpse of a giant gryphon smacked wetly into the ground nearby. An unseen giant bellowed.
“It’s amazing how quiet the storm is,” said Agar cheerfully across the mindlink.
Velendo scowled. “That’s because you’re deaf.”
“I am? No I’m not. Don’t be silly.” He tried to speak out loud. “Hello? HELLO?” “Oh, I am! Huh. Good thing I know a cleric or two.” He stuck a finger in one ear and wiggled it.
Velendo mentally shuffled through his collection of prayers and looked vaguely embarrassed. “The only way I can heal you right now is with mass heal. You may have to wait a little while.”
“No problem. How hard could it be to cast spells while deaf?”
A shadow shifted next to him, and Eve rose out of the ground. “Did you see that?” she asked, regaining her normal body. “Something tried to strip my mental powers from me during that fight! I’m not sure what it was, but I could feel it.”
Malachite’s cohort Duncan looked at her in surprise. “You disappeared during the fight. Where did you go?”
“I turned into shadow. When the giant started yelling about how mad he was that someone dominated his servant, well. . .” She blushed. “I thought it might be a good idea to not be especially visible. I tried to dominate both the big giant and one of the smaller ones, and they were both protected from mental control. I hate creatures that learn from past experience.” She looked affronted, as if the protection from good spells on the giants were a personal insult.
Eve was interrupted by the sound of falling zombies.
Almost twenty undead fell from the sky like huge rotting hail stones. Each was roughly eighteen feet tall, their fall barely controlled by some form of magic that guided them to the ground without much harm. Little gobbets of rancid flesh mixed with the pounding rain as almost ten of them smacked down on the dome just over Eve’s head. The rest landed beyond the edges of the dome.
One after another they shambled forwards. “Ockchuuuurk!” they gurgled in hunger, turning unerringly towards the living. Rainwater coursed down their well-preserved skin and dripped into their blank and unseeing eyes. “Ockchuuuurk!”
“What’s that mean?” asked Eve, dreading the answer. She watched as Velendo called a pillar of fire down onto three of them; the cloud giant zombies staggered and steamed, but they kept their feet. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that it’s the giantish word for ‘brains,’” said Malachite. He loosed a positive energy burst of concentrated prayer and faith, and the three burned zombies disintegrated into chunks of twitching flesh. The other undead didn’t pause to mourn their loss as they too staggered forward.
Mara leapt onto her war horse and charged out from under the dome, but the undead giant in front of her anticipated the attack. With one mummified arm it swept Mara from the saddle as easily as an adult might scoop up a baby kitten. Luminor screamed a challenge through his foam-flecked muzzle, but the zombie ignored the horse and concentrated on the grappled paladin instead. The angel Cruciel leaped to her rescue, but her sword blow wasn't enough to badly hurt the undead.
“Hang on, Mara!” thought Agar. “Proty, can you teleport us up there?” He pointed at the top of the garden wall. The writhing mass of tentacles hovering next to Agar wiggled its tendrils, and instantly the two of them were perched in a spot that allowed them a clear line of sight to their enemies.
“There are more coming in!” Agar warned as he glanced up into the sky. He fired a horrid wilting spell at half a dozen of the undead, but none of them seemed to notice. Agar rolled his eyes in embarrassment. They’re undead. Of course they didn’t notice, their bodies don’t technically need water! I should have known better. I hope I didn’t just kill Mara. He watched helplessly as the undead giant that clutched Mara lifted her struggling body up to its drooling and gaping mouth.
“Ockchurk,” it crooned with affection, and its mouth snapped closed on the crown of her head. Sharpened teeth grated and scraped along the outside of her helm. Mara shouted in pain, and in response the giant shoved her head even farther into its mouth. Its rotting tongue probed the top of her skull as it tasted for the still unexposed brains. It made a sad noise of disappointment, and kept chewing. The helm dented slightly under the pressure, and Mara felt a blinding pain in her head.
“I don’t think so.” Duncan sprinted to a spot where he had a clean line of fire on the giant. His muscles bunched as he pulled back the string of his holy bow. His eyes narrowed, his breath slowly hissed from his clenched mouth, and the magical arrow was a golden spear of light as it thudded into giant’s belly. It exited the back in a more spectacular fashion, blowing a hole fully two feet across through the zombie’s middle. “Purrgl?” mumbled the zombie, and used its free hand to experimentally poke a swollen finger into the arrow hole. Rancid juices dripped down onto its hand.
“Still up,” said Duncan with a frown. Malachite sprinted forward. The zombies that were atop the force dome swung at him as he passed underneath, but they weren’t intelligent to understand than an invisible barrier protected Malachite from their grasp. Their fists collided ineffectually with the invisible wall.
The Knight of the Emerald Chapel glared up at the undead giant that loomed like a house above him. “Put her down,” he suggested, and swung the shining blade of Karthos as if he was chopping down a tree. The sword sheared through both bone and rotten flesh, and the giant balanced on one leg for almost three seconds before falling to the side like a felled oak. It gurgled as it fell, and Mara rolled free of its dying grasp before it hit the muddy earth. Malachite continued his swing right into the leg of the zombie next to it, and it too staggered backwards from the blow.
Another zombie reached a long arm under the force dome and grabbed Eve in a huge fist. She looked horrified until the air around her shimmered with the tang of burning metal. Before the undead giant could pull her out her form faded slightly into translucency, and Eve slipped effortlessly out of the giant’s grasp. The undead reached for her again in confusion, and again Eve’s ghost-like flesh slid free. Angry now, the giant slammed a hand down onto her, but Eve seemed to pass right through the grasping fingers as if she were a ghost. Then Duncan emptied four glowing arrows into it, and the monster collapsed next to Eve in a shower of rotting intestines.
“Thank you, Duncan,” Eve said primly as she stepped away from the corpse. She had had a lot of practice avoiding zombie effluent when she was back in Nacreous. The edges of her body shimmered intangibly.
“My pleasure, Eve.” His smile was wide, but his gaze was questioning. “Glad to see you’re okay.” He drew another arrow and turned to the zombies.
“More coming down,” warned Agar, and another wave of falling undead smacked into the ground around them. “I see. . .” He squinted through the storm in time to see a charging Galthia hammer one of the newly arrived zombies into submission. “Galthia’s here!” he announced happily. “But there’s a giant with him, and it’s alive!” Agar readied one of his more powerful spells. Something distracting caught Agar’s eye over near the corpse of the dead Imperator, but even his sharp vision was unable to pick out any details through the driving storm. He dismissed the glimpse of movement and focused back on the incoming giant.
“Any chance that it’s Stone Bear?” asked Velendo as he blasted two zombies out if existence. "I know he was with Galthia in Limbo." Another burst of sunlight from Malachite rolled across the battlefield, searing away undead skin and bone. Agar squinted into the dimness.
“Oh, right. It’s Stone Bear, all right. . . but since when could he change into a giant?” Agar shrugged and cast chain lightning at the zombies. The smell of burned flesh was whipped away by the wind. Then Agar glanced back over towards the Imperator, gaped, and threw both hands in the air in frustration. ”Damn it!”
”What?”
“Remember the big dead giant emperor we just finished killing, the one who could have killed us if he got his hands on us? His corpse just disappeared.”
“WHAT?” The chorus of offended voices rocked Agar.
“Vanished, and I don’t think it’s invisible. Someone must have teleported off with it while using these zombies for cover.”
“Swell,” said Mara in disappointment as she wheeled Luminor around and smashed through a giant’s backbone. “You think they can bring him back to life?”
“Probably,” answered Velendo. “That stumpy little giant who escaped has a lot to answer for.”
“Little?” asked Agar. “I’ll point out that he was four times my height.”
“Yes, but the Emperor was about twelve times your height. Everything is relative.”
Only three undead giants remained standing by the time Galthia closed with the group. He sped into them, trusting in his natural agility to keep him safe. He was severely disappointed when one of them snatched him up in both massive hands and lifted him up to its drooling mouth. The giant bit down, but Galthia yanked his head back just in time.
“I’m tired of you creatures!” yelled Velendo, swinging his shield around. “In the name of Calphas the Wallbuilder, be gone with you!” He focused his faith, and for a few seconds the sound of cascading masonry drowned out the rattle of the driving rain. All three of the giants turned to run in abject fear, but Mara and Malachite cut one down before it shambled away.
“It didn’t drop him,” observed Velendo in dismay.
“No,” said Eve. “It surely didn’t.”
“It was supposed to drop him.” The last two giants were fading into storm. Velendo could just see Galthia squirming before they were lost to sight.
“Indeed it was,” said Duncan as he drew a handful of arrows from his quiver. “I may hit Galthia with one of these, but I bet it’ll hurt him a lot less than having the top of his head bitten off.” Fast as lightning, Duncan knocked and fired the arrows into the concealing rain. His aim was superb; Galthia’s body blocked one of the arrows, but the other three whistled into the lumbering giant’s back. Explosions of light swept through its frame, and it dropped Galthia as it swayed on its feet. It took only seconds for Galthia to regain his feet and finish the monster off.
The last undead sprinted across the ridge as fast as its legs could carry it. Stone Bear was the only thing between it and safety. Ahead of you, the shaman heard the spirit of his great grandfather whisper into his ear. A foe!
Stone Bear changed his direction of running, and felt the spirit of the giant whose shape he had borrowed delight at the prospect of mayhem. He sensed the giant’s footsteps long before his spirit sight saw it. To Stone Bear’s vision, the undead giant was a mass of rotting flesh possessed by the inchoate power of the storm; seen through the eyes of his raven overhead, the monster was a rain-soaked abomination of dead tissue. Stone Bear thrust out one gigantic arm and caught the zombie across the throat with all his considerable strength. Then he caught its arm and spun it into him, twisting until he heard something palpable snap. He caught its injured neck in the crook of his arm, and the creature was dead - truly dead - long before Galthia ran up.
He had missed the Defenders. It was good to be back.
