I did not have time to deal with a Jotun Draugr.

  I did not have the tools to deal with a Jotun Draugr.

  I certainly did not have the balls to take on a Jotun Draugr.

  In fact, I’d rather personally feed my own family jewels to a local wood chipper than fight something roughly six hundred times my mass and weight.

  “I would not, could not, with a nuke.

  Starting a fight with that would make me puke.”

  Really. It was just the fear. Worse than the iciness trying to freeze my spine into an unbending caricature of bone. Worse than the frigid fingers working their way into my brain trying to get me to do something unbelievably stupid. My rhymes might suck donkey balls but the fear actively trying to stall my dragonized body into inaction was far more dangerous than my mind futilely attempting to distract me from yet another way Mr. Death found his bony fingers knocking on my door.

  I mean, what could be more unbelievably stupid than storming a castle with a goddamn JOTUN DRAUGR running about.

  What part about an undead giant wasn’t scary enough that I didn’t instantly beat feet to the nearest shore and leave this godforsaken useless piece of land to the undead? I mean, this is the kind of giant to EAT the other giants. Jotuns are big enough to take on dragons and live! Ancient tales of Thor said that in his adventures, he mistook a Jotun’s glove for a cave. Doing the wild math on that would mean that the bitch was standing over 140 feet tall.

  Fuck THAT.

  I mean, I’ve done some unbelievably ballsy shit, to my credit, but it’s fair to say that I was at least reasonably up against a wall and not anticipating betrayal. You don’t see betrayal coming. That’s why it fucking hurts when it happens.

  Here I go rambling again while my knees try to knock out a tune of cowardice.

  The staircase had the minor kindness to be big enough for Kraken to fit, even with my oversized butt sitting on his back. The levels flew by faster and faster, Kraken shifting the golem’s form closer to an oddly long wolf, or a wolflife train with legs.

  “Stop playing around and step on it!” Nervousness clawed at the back of my mind, and the sides as well. The glimpses of each floor that I saw puzzled me and that only made me more uneasy. One of the floors was fit for a king, a double king bed draped with a crimson duvet and sheer curtains tailored with real gold. Piles of jeweled trinkets were strewn everywhere, as if a beggar suddenly lived the life of a king and had no real taste other than the basic idea of ‘need more gold!’

  Not that I didn’t appreciate the Dwarven mindset, but what kind of creature tries to live like royalty in the frozen heart of Greenland?

  I really didn’t want to find out but something told me that I would anyway.

  Torture chambers, rooms of glass tanks holding immeasurable amounts of blood, miniature zombies in stasis with extra zombified organs glowing with unusual brightness, I couldn’t keep my eyes to myself but Kraken was hustlin’ so I didn’t really get a good look into the horrors of the castle.

  Finally, bursting out into the last upper room with a massive window, Kraken tore off to the side using the upper ledge of the window as a scaffold to flip out onto the side of the tower. The wind futilely attempted to tear us off. Five bounds were covered in half as many seconds. Ice chips tore where the long talons of Kraken’s golem gouged into the outer wall of the ice fortress.

  Ice, that started out pure white the closer to the edge it was, shifted closer and closer to midnight blue where it finally turned to a shade away from black in the very center. The almost black ice curved and spiral upwards before splitting into a circle held up by two arms. I counted the fingers on each hand.

  “Why the fuck do they have seven fingers each?” I muttered, using my hand to block out the piercing sun.

  “Most gnomes do.”

  I wasn’t expecting an actual answer to my question. At least not one that wasn’t from Kraken. Shit gets weird when you have a talking spirit-familiar who can speak directly into your brain. Then, differentiating between mental speech and audible communication, well that can blur over time.

  [Shit.]

  Refocusing my vision so I could look past the piercing rays of the just after noon sun on a clear wintry day, I finally noticed a small figure standing next to the portal. And the fucker was facing away from me, casually watching the chaos unfold in the tundra.

  “We are an odd race, one given to tinkering, enchanting, gears and clocks and insurmountably minute machines that require intense focus and incredible dexterity. Our slaves have all four thumbs lopped off, so that they are relegated to their proper place: manual drudgery. What is worse than no longer being capable of crafting a new masterpiece? What punishment debrides the mind to the point of insanity more than shoveling shit or sweeping dirt when you used to be a creature capable of crafting absolute marvels?!”

  I counted the fingers on the being’s right hand where it gripped a marbled cane. Yup. The dude had five fingers.

  “And seeing as how mechanical thumbs just do not measure up, and healing potions do not regrow limbs, and the cultivators had hunted all Sorcerers, including Flesh Sorcerers, into oblivion, to what would I turn my focus? What else could a former slave focus their hate upon? Revenge.”

  Even though I wanted to hear the rest of the monologue, I couldn’t waste this opportunity. No matter how much I desired to hear the story, the dramatic pauses with bad timing cause of the Alien accent, the coming-to-God moments, and then how meeting and killing me would set the asshole up for future success and ultimate goal-completion, I didn’t give a fuck.

  “ The Darkest of Arts opens hidden doors to unseen realms, ones rife with forbidden knowledge or forgotten secrets-”

  The moment during Mr. Moody scaring the ever living shit out of me, quietly making his presence known while I was fighting off momentary sun blindness, Gungnir had been sneakily charging up a set of five Dwarven ‘Mana-Bolt’ infused into an oversized cluster crystal shotgun shell. It was more akin to a beefed up claymore. Just for good measure, a layer of ground up sunstone was caked on top.

  [I’m not paranoid. I’m not paranoid. I’m paranoid.] My inner monologue spanged off my quickly growing fear as my vision cleared.

  Kraken furiously whispered through our mental link just before the figure began to slowly turn around. [SUN STRIDER!!!]

  With the creature's hood pulled back, I would’ve mistaken the being for a short, pale human pulled from a funeral home’s freezer. The ears were a bit pointy and the head was smooth and bald. However, I didn’t wait to get a good look at his face. With him facing mostly away from me, I seized the moment before it could slip away.

  It didn’t even take a push of will to set the claymore off. From arming the beast within Gungnir to setting the enchantment to go off within the next twenty milliseconds, my breath caught in my throat.

  KWATHOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Pushing with everything I had, I hauled my ass forward the split second after the blast towards the DayWalker, chasing the shockwave. Gungnir howled with Eldritch energies leaking from its spear-form as my brain struggled to shackle my fear.

  Burning gobbits of flesh steamed from where the vampire’s viscera lay on the freezing floor around the portal. Most of him was gone, as if Pac-Man had taken a huge bite out of his shoulder and core. The gaping wound stretched from his mangled neck past his left hip, so much so that he fell to the left completely unbalanced since his shoulder, hip and 70% of his spine were just freaking missing.

  But even the sight of that didn’t stop me. Fighting the undead in the southern parts of Greenland had trained me well. Overwhelming force, all the time. Remove the head, burn the body, smash it finer than white tropical sands.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Nothing less.

  Part of me wanted to just stomp the cretin’s head flat but Gungnir would suffice. Mana tainted by my mostly locked away sorceries coalesced at Gungnir’s speartip briefly before atomizing him one chunk at a time. First the head, then the neck, followed by the shoulder and the rest of his chest and stomach.

  I took a step back and glanced around, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “THERE!”

  Kraken pointed at a small ball of black congealed blood bouncing around, picking up the vampire’s remnants.

  “He’ll reconstitute given more time!”

  Kraken’s warning galvanized me into action, his words tickling the back of my mind. I did have a weapon for such a time as this, loathe as I was to use it.

  “Fuck.”

  Quickly shuffling through Gungnir’s storage space with my mind while Kraken sent out tiny lasers to keep blasting the growing blood ball, I kept flipping through the well-organized mess that was Gungnir’s inner area.

  Grumbling as I searched, I stepped back even further so as to not get entangled with this madness even more. “Not grenades, not crystal rounds, screw the asshole angel swords, Grimoire’s not even helpful right now . . . WHERE ARE THEY?!”

  “The last box on the right furthest away from the swords!”

  At least Kraken’s good for something. The box was smaller than I remember, colder too. I probably didn’t put enough insulation around it.

  Two cryoshards appeared in my hand, their icy surface almost perfectly reflecting the bright noon sunlight. These ones were special. I had made one deck of fifty-two cards way back when as part of my paranoia prep, and what made them different is that their base material was in fact diluted Nephilim essence. My Water Sorcery plus Nephilim blood in the cryoshard form gave me a very small but extremely powerful weapon against anything undead or unholy, and this fucker qualified for both.

  Gungnir shrank into a smooth headed mace and I carefully stuck one of my cryoshards to the mace. It looked rather funny but I knew this would get the job done. The other card, I flicked it to Kraken who caught it without looking.

  Not needing to improvise a plan with me, Kraken lunged forward with his golem, two of the forward arms, the skinny ones, grew even skinnier as the hands at the ends of them fanned out to look more like glowing catcher’s mitts. The right hand glowed blue and gold, the energy of the sun mixing with the cryoshard at just the right angle to make it look like Kraken was holding a star. I held my ground, ready to pounce.

  “Just catch it already!”

  “This is harder than it looks!”

  Minutes passed as the sentient ball bounced around picking up more and more of the vampire’s gore that glittered a menacing black and red. Time and time again we missed until I got so frustrated that I stepped closer to Kraken and nicked my exposed chin on the edge of Svalinn’s gauntlet.

  The floating blood ball froze, quivering with indecision. At that moment, Kraken struck, lunging forward and clapping.

  “Infuse the card now!” I screamed, not exactly sure what would happen next.

  My familiar sent waves of mana through his golem’s slender right arm, the motes of power connecting with the cryoshard. The four rounded edges of the Nephilim infused weapon began to glow a horrific blue.

  Without a moment to spare, I listened to my gut, stepping forward and swinging Gungnir so hard that Babe Ruth himself would be proud. The side of Gungnir’s mace head with my own cryoshard made contact with the golem’s right hand.

  My swing plus Kraken’s momentum and perfect timing of disconnecting the golem hand coincided with the first cryoshard going off. The swing itself with the second cryoshard directed the ensuing explosion outward.

  Frozen liquid that contained an extremely diluted essence that originated from Heaven itself exploded twice over, turning the Sunstrider to dust.

  An inhuman roar manifested throughout the frozen tundra. It wasn’t even sound, more like a scream of rage reaching across the thinning dimensional veil. I couldn’t help the shiver fighting its way down my spine, absolutely bypassing my recovering nerve and flesh golem enhanced neurology.

  “He’ll be back,” Kraken said calmly, turning towards the portal’s antenna. “A DayWalker that uses a phylactery and a greater imbued blood clone? Or a True Second Self plus a lich’s arts?” The massive golem shook its head. “We need to, how do you say, put some metal to our petal?”

  “Uh, flip it, and then ‘pedal’, with a ‘d’, not a ‘t’.” I laughed, shaking off the fear. “Flowers have ‘petals’ with a ‘t’ and a pedal is for making mechanized vehicles go.” I turned to the antenna. “And how the fuck is an antenna not fucking pointy? That looks like a big ass circle for a portal!”

  Kraken’s long legged golem easily kept up my job, the massive black construct looming over us. We headed towards the purplish pedestal at its base that screamed, ‘control panel’ even to my monkey brain.

  “IT’S FLAT! WHERE ARE THE BUTTONS?!” I yelled, looking at an impossibly slick plane of metal that could easily trick the eye into believing it was perfectly polished stone. “Kraken! Work your magic!”

  I could feel the eye-roll even though I wasn’t looking at him. What a turd of a familiar. I shook around a few brain cells and laid Gungnir in knife form on the pedestal and then did the same with my Grimoire. The leathery book slapped the hard surface of the pedestal harder than I intended. “Whoops, sorry book.” I patted it nicely for half a second before exposing my palm, lightly cutting it, and placing my bleeding flesh on the Grimoire.

  “Kraken! Now do your magic!”

  Crimson light poured out from the underside of my Grimoire, the dark surface of the pedestal fighting back with its own darkness that came alive. Muttering darkly to himself, Kraken tapped Gungnir which unleashed small, concentrated pulses of transparent mana. After a minute of grumbling, hieroglyphs revealed themselves across the pedestal; small columns began to jut up from the surface with a high pitched grinding noise.

  I could feel the magic pulse once, then stillness for eight long seconds. Kraken made a motion for me to be patient. Complying wasn’t really in my nature but even I could rise above my magnificent flaws.

  For about ten more seconds.

  A sudden buzz on my leg cut off my impatient groan. I pulled out Setan Kober from its place on my calf sheath, trying to keep a hold of it as it vibrated frantically.

  [LET GO! YOU IDIOT!] Kraken snarled with exasperation. [Let me help you.]

  “Sorry.” I muttered. Under Kraken’s direction, my Centauri nano-tech body suit, SAW, reached out through Svalinn’s right gauntlet. Silvery metal threaded out, connecting my Grimoire to the pedestal on a deeper level. My exposed artifacts all began to glow and the hieroglyphs on the pedestal blurred out before reforming into words that I could understand.

  PROTOCOL OVERWRITTEN - - - - GOAL ASSIMILATION COMPLETE . . .

  ARTIFACT IMPLANT MODULE ASSIMILATED . . . SCANNING . . .

  ERRORS DETECTED - - - ERRORS DELETED

  ERRORS DETECTED - - - ERRORS DELETED

  ANTITHETICAL ENERGY DETECTED - - - ERRORS DELETED

  [It’s on a loop, ignore it and let go of Gungnir and the freaking knife!]

  I hastily complied even though it pained my soul to do so. I kept a serious grip on the Grimoire, feeding it as much mana as it needed, pushing just the right amount at the right time so it could keep on serving as my main interface between Kraken and the alien pedestal. I could almost feel a completely separate thread, a hose of alien information parsing itself out this set of mystical connections. Finally, the pedestal lit up as it swallowed up Gungnir and Setan Kober. Their essences flared brightly even through the black surface. Within a minute, they shot forward and up the structure to the circular antennae.

  Both Gungnir and Setan Kober appeared in a dark flash of shadow and light, floating in the dead center of the antenna.

  “That’s really weird, man.” I said, still intently watching the error messages pop up and get wiped away.

  [It’s on an internal feedback loop, so nobody is getting notified of the problem. I’m also forcing this damn device to make itself understandable using the interface of your Grimoire with its embedded Centauri de-scripter functionality.] Kraken answered quickly. [The essence of the knife weakens the antenna’s connection to the main portal line stretching out to whatever world the Hungry One’s control and uses as a waystation to get here. Gungnir is exuding a bit of Celestial essence from the Angel sword to further disrupt the connection. Once this gets going, we get going, leaving Gungnir and the knife here.]

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Kraken turned the golem to look at me. [Well, cause there'll be fireworks, and pain, and other stuff, but mostly pain then fighting and pain with a side of suffering and then it’ll mostly be over. Anyways, the plan is figured out, you just gotta endure.]

  PROTOCOL UPDATED - - - - HIGHER ESSENCE DETECTED . . .

  IMPLANTED CONFIGURATION RUNNING . . . SCANNING . . .

  ERRORS DETECTED - - - ERRORS RESOLVED

  AUTO-DETECT INCOMPATIBLE ESSENCE - - - ERRORS RESOLVED

  FORCED COMPATIBILITY DETECTED - - - EVENTUAL DEVOLUTION DETECTED

  [Give it a little more input from SAW, can’t forget about the nano-tech, just feed it a bit more mana . . .]

  DANGER PROTOCOLS DEACTIVATED - - - ALL SAFETY PROTOCOLS DISENGAGED

  ALL SAFETY WARNINGS DISENGAGED - - - WARNING - WARNING

  PURPOSE OVERWRITTEN - - - INFINITE LOOP INSTATED - - - SIDEWAYS FEED INSTATED - - - DISSOLUTION PROTOCOL INSTALLED - - - DISINTEGRATION FILTER INSTATED - - - BACKUP PROTOCOLS WIPED

  AWAITING UNSHIELDED CONNECTION TO INITIATE FULL RESTART

  “Uh, does that mean what I think it means?”

  Kraken’s golem formed an unnatural smile. It unnerved me.

  “Yes, this antenna, once we update the actual portal down below, is now just a glorified shredder machine.”