A Warped Champion howled and charged me from behind. I didn’t look back as half a ton of stone came down on his head and crushed him flat behind me. His oversized sword chopped down and bit into the stones a half-inch from me, and I mentally wagged a finger at Sergeant Grym above me, who just grinned.

Three berserkers converged on a troll, burning Axes rose and hack-hacked as the green-skinned Lesser Jotun shrieked and was chopped down, effectively disarmed first and then just hewed into with burning Weapons that foiled its ability to heal itself.

A great club came crashing down, and Silent Jhon smashed it over to the side with his Fangmace, whipping back to send the beak of Crow through its thick neck. Before it could drop its club, Talatha danced up the weapon and inserted her Longsword into the gaping wound. Lightning crackled over the ogre’s thick skull, its thick body convulsed, and Jhon spun his wife down from up there, both of them ducking low as another ogre swept a great axe over their heads. Their Weapons bit into the back of its knees from opposite directions, hawser-like tendons snapped, and the ogre stumbled and fell.

Grym descended from overhead, and Slag came down on the thick skull like the mighty Hammer it was. A furnace roared, and the ogre’s skull exploded in fire and charred bits.

Riann came booking around a corner, the ground trembling from the impact of massive footsteps. Behind her a whole line of brutish hairy brutes twelve feet tall were pounding after her, visibly salivating at the prospect of a tender lunch.

The hill giants poured into the open street like a hairy tide, loping after her with strides twice as long as hers... and she veered off to the side.

A black dog and a white dog, kitted out with carefully-groomed hairy crowns that could defy a hurricane accenting flowingly skirted feet, were waiting there. Oh, wait, they were seven feet at the shoulder, and had glowing eyes, and-

One. Two.

The deep screams didn’t last at all long as the two blasts of fire and ice overlapped, but didn’t cancel one another out in the slightest, seemingly feeding instead of neutralizing one another.

A green-spotted manticora came bursting through a stone wall, sending three berserkers flying. The next second, the leopard-bodied creature was smashed over by a brown-furred form even more massive than it was. Brown slammed a heavy paw down on the scorpion tail dripping lethal venom, bit down, and tore off the end of the heavily scaled thing with a massive pull as the manticora screamed at him. The massive bat-winged panther could only yowl as the great brown bear, enchanted to twice normal size, wrapped it up in a crushing embrace and began to crush it, nearly a foot of fur, hide, and fat ignoring the ripping of its claws and teeth.

A group of werewolves came howling to the attack, and a fireball detonated among them, sending furred flaming forms flying furiously fevery fwhich fway. Silver-tipped arrows hissed out, whist, whist, whist, and the lycanthropes went spinning away with the arrows buried in their skulls. Shard Reserves from Liiss cut down a fourth one, and as the fifth and sixth still alive surged back to their feet and leapt at the two sisters, Riann nocked two arrows at the same time and released.

The two didn’t even break stride as the werewolves crashed down in front of them, racing towards Brown as he rose from the ripped and torn carcass of the manticora. With easy familiarity, they grabbed onto the inflated bear as he rose over twenty feet to his full height, and they jumped over onto the stone wall of a crumbling fortification, giving them the high ground and a better place to snipe from.

The greenhag coming out of invisibility probably thought she was being sneaky as she leapt at me. Since she was using her nails, she led with them. I reached out, grabbed the extended limb, pivoted in a classic Moon-style throw, and this seven-foot Hag with a potbelly and smelling like a dozen rotting swamps was suddenly sailing tail over teakettle through the air. She hit the ground hard and awkward, rolled, and looked up in confusion, totally amazed at being thrown by someone so much smaller than she was.

Brown looked down at her from way up there. She started to scream as a few tons of bear came down with his steel-shod claws hard together.

Man, Hags have ear-grating voices...

A group of trolls crashed through an old stone building. They were a full ten feet tall, larger than others of their kind, with darker skin, and armored plates nailed directly into their skin. They were also carrying human-sized polemaces or greatswords in one hand, and had an air of being the toughest brutes around.

There was a whoosh, and the head of the one in the front exploded as something heavy and burning swept past.

The trolls gawked as the one in the lead collapsed... and more importantly, there was no sign of him starting to regenerate and getting his head back together. He just fell, dark blood spraying and going suddenly still.

Blooding wasn’t a very popular Arsenal choice for no reason, and troll-killing was only the most common use of it, making Cursed wounds that a troll’s ability to regenerate couldn’t affect.

Endure roared back to Briggs’ hand as he strode towards the three remaining armored battletrolls, completely unperturbed at their presence, radiating poise and confidence. The three naturally took a step back at seeing him coming.

Fido’s jaws closed on the throat of the first one, burning with a fire so hot it completely overwhelmed the troll’s fire resistance, ripping it off its feet. From atop his back, Estemar’s Lance plunged into the side of the second, smashing it completely off its feet with the force of the Smite raging through it. As the last one jumped away in reflex, Shirley grabbed one of its legs, and pulled, spun herself, and tossed it with agility and grace completely belying her size. The troll shouted in alarm as it was sent flying, crashing off a patiently tolerant wall and skidding across the ground, its leg half-frozen.

It looked past its very long nose up at Briggs, at whose feet it had stopped. He hummed deep in his throat, and Endure descended and rebounded in little more than an eyeblink. Troll skull sprayed in all directions. Briggs paced onwards towards a group of ogres that seemed to be having a roar-fest with some berserkers, Endure leading the way with a low, ominous roar that took the biggest one in the head, removed that obstruction to its movement, and opened a hole in the line of ogres the berserkers were quick to flood into.

A swirl of gray and black lines followed the arc of Ancientaxe’s heavy Glaive, cutting through heavy bodies like mud. Great stony bodies, looking like rough statues still capable of moving, shuddered and fell as the brawny urkhar tore through their ranks like an old, deadly wind, cursing at them in Jotun. As their glittering blood sprayed through the air, the regret in their deep cries could clearly be heard as the legendary Butcher of Giants, the Ancient and the Axe of the Brotherhood of the Void, pursued his true calling.

How many millennia had the Brothers been there to hunt them when they strayed from the ancestral teachings, when they whelmed for war against the smaller races at the urging of this or that power, entity, force, religion, or madman? Now, the Hags had charmed them and brought them here with honeyed words of ancient wealth and power, rightfully theirs... and now they were dying.

Dying, as so many Jotuns and other elder races had, under the steel of the Ancient and the Axe!

A Hag appeared nearby, another greenhag witch, gesturing and about to bring in something fiery, when Barus walked up and slapped her with his Spear, disrupting her spell and causing a fiery backlash which sent the much-larger Hag flying back into the wall behind her. Not really hurt, she struggled back to her feet...

Two burning arrows nailed her eyes to the wall behind her, just after a trio of glowing green Rays drove into her chest and reduced everything in her midsection to goo... not that anyone wanted to look there.

Barus gestured, and from the boiling clouds above, a Thunderbolt came crashing down into a knot of redcaps charging into the fray, three-foot imps waving ogre-sized battleaxes eagerly. Shrieking iron-booted bodies went flying in all directions, and speeding arrows from Riann’s overwatch sought them out and kept them down. Those not hit came screaming in towards the bearded Druid and his waiting bear-Spear, which he lowered to greet them.

Shirley stepped out of the street behind him, lightly extending her head over his and past as the eyes of the murderous little bloody-hatted bastards got very wide.

“One!” Barus smiled politely. They didn’t have time to reply properly as Captain Shirley obligingly counted off.

A sabretooth tiger and a red-haired berserker who looked familiar crashed through a few hide tents and rolled up to me, ripping into one another energetically as they tumbled towards me. I scooped up my arm as their mass hit me, and heaved the cat up and over me... Whoops, is there an archway there? Silly me, sorry about that...

It crashed into the stone head first as I dragged Hungrun along before the cat fell back down, hauling him up to his feet to stand there in surprise as Tremble, floating and Singing overhead, zipped his fallen Axe back to his hand. I politely ignored the fact that his hands had four-inch claws growing from them at the moment, and he had fine golden fur over most of his body.

With a rumble, the rest of the arch fell down on the sabertooth, adding to its woes. A breath later, a glowing Axe came raging down on its narrow skull, ending its troubles, and the mighty Hungrun went bounding back in the direction he’d come from, moving much faster than a man that big had a right to.

There was a group of minotaurs charging along, and Estemar came sailing over a wall and smashed into their rear flank with Captain Fido, sticking one of them and bowling two more off their feet. Barus waved his hand, and vines and roots lashed up onto those plate-sized hooves, wrapping around them as they moved at speed, and whoops, there they went stumbling and skidding, brought up short of their targets by the grasping plants.

“Two,” said Estemar calmly, as the minotaurs on the ground looked back at the rumbling furnace of destruction behind them.

A couple actually survived the inferno that came howling over them. Grym walked up through the flames, Slag went pop, pop, and their pain became a thing of the past.

Hmm, that one was colored blue. Slag patiently tapped it again, and it stopped moving after the additional six-inch indent in its thick skull.

My, such exciting times... yes, yes, we’d save some putty-tat for the hellpuppies...

------------

They’d dug out a small pit... small by Jotun standards, at least. The bones were cracked and piled up in there, and the rats and flies were naturally at them, and a lot of shit and piss was piled on the things in addition, lending it a uniquely appealing aroma.

Fido and Shirley were sniffing the various bones as Liiss magically brought them up closer for inspection, and AA was looking them over, too.

Everyone turned around as a bright blue explosion of fire erupted behind us. The Jotuns had a fair amount of booze here, but after one contemptuous sniff from Shirley, nobody dared to drink the stuff. So, the berserkers had, in their ire at not being able to steal the alcohol as spoils, dumped it on the burning piles of dead Hag employees. Happily, the brutes had a fair amount of wages, and everyone knew what those were good for now.

Talatha was overseeing the harvesting of tendons and hides for Gauntlets and Girdles, not about to let this opportunity pass, and the berserkers were all over it, too. Strength of Giants, here they came!

After Estemar and Barus Healed them all up, of course. A Paladin healing Berserkers... I rolled my eyes, wondered about the world, and ignored it.

“Buncha different magical monsters. That manticora was Warped, of course,” the tusked AA indicated the bones. “Advanced, Shadow, Primal, Giant, Fungal, Earthen, Ossified... and that is a worrisome one.” He indicated a nigh-spotless length of bone ivory, looked like the rear leg of a cat. “That’s a Lesser Exemplar Lion.”

Huh. Everyone’s eyes turned on the shimmery barrier of dilated time a hundred yards down the road, where time looked to be passing at about four times normal, and it was currently early evening instead of late morning.

The Hags had constructed a rough wall of elemental stone and scavenged buildings to keep creatures from wandering outside into the landscape to hunt the walking meals coming out of the Rift. They’d had a decent haul... the pit was full of bones of the dead, most probably eaten by the numbers of Jotuns here.

Lesser Exemplar Lions were the diluted children of Exemplar Lions...

“There’s Exemplar animals in this place? Why?” I had to ask. The affairs of Exemplar creatures shouldn’t be drawn to a place like this.

“The disruption of time creates a massive confluence and saturation of magical energies flavored with temporal compression. It’s exactly like a time-lost land, heady and satisfying to powerful magical creatures,” AA growled, fixing me with his red eyes, finding me unimpressed but agreeable. “There’s going to be a ton of creatures affected by magical energies here, especially vermin, which probably forms the foundation for stuff getting eaten by all the other stuff.”

“Fungal. That means shit is coming up from the Felldeep,” I observed.

“Shadow and Earthen likely, too. These would be the weak ones, shunted to the edges of the area where the magic is least strong,” he grunted.

“Well, doesn’t that sound exciting.” I didn’t believe the force here was actually threatened by what they’d killed... but might have been intended as insulation if something stronger decided to wander out. “Hey, you wanna help me bring down a wall in time?”

His crimson eyes glanced at me, down at that barrier of passing time. “Why not?” he grunted, his tone expectant.

“Briggs!” I called out. “Need a welder over here!”