Chapter 24 - Giant Problem Solver

Malfus awoke to hell.

There was a throbbing head attached to a neck, with his consciousness trapped inside it. Like a fly stuck in a spider’s web. A horrible, bloated meat prison wracked with searing pain.

Malfus looked down and saw the dagger sticking from his chest next to his heart. It rose and fell with the frantic tempo of his panicked breathing. Bright blood foamed and bubbled around the silvery blade, glinting in the moonlight. It didn’t even look real, more like a theater prop or a first-year illusionist’s feeble cantrip. But the pain it brought with it was very real.

He let out a gurgling cough that sent spears of pain shoot through his insides, then spluttered out a mouthful of warm, bloody spit from a broken jaw. His tongue felt like a salty, swollen slug that had taken up residence inside his mouth. What had he done? What had he agreed to? Why wasn’t anything happening yet? He tried to call out for help, to call out to Rammani.

“Gaaahhhhhuuuuuunnnmm…”

A bleating animal-noise was all that spilled from Malfus’s split lips, he sounded like a dying deer.

The stars, just blurry smears in the sky, started dimming. Right as the world threatened to go black around him, he felt a piercing splinter shrieking in his mind.

+Oh no you don’t! You aren’t backing out of our agreement that easily… Grab the rod.+

Malfus opened his bleary eyes, barely conscious. He lolled his head over to the side and saw a hazy red light glowing in his peripheral vision. Much further away than he would have liked.

Grunting and wheezing, Malfus stretched his hand as far as he could, but the rod was too far. He tried to push himself up with his other arm.

“Gahh!!” A broken bone shifted around in his forearm, sliding through his skin. Pain lanced through his arm, wracking his whole body with nauseating waves.

His breath came out in gurgling hisses. He had to wait for the pain to subside before he could try to move again. Along with his broken arm, his legs weren’t much help either. He felt shooting pain in one whenever he tried to move it, while the other dragged along limply beside it. He relegated to wriggling on the ground like a worm toward the rod. Every inch felt like a mile’s worth of effort. Each movement made the dagger quiver in his chest a fraction closer to his heart.

The blurry ruby was getting brighter, getting closer. His salvation was just a handsbreadth away now. Malfus stretched his fingers out again, reaching for it, reaching… but he was stuck. The sleeve of his broken arm was caught.

Dammit! Just need to get to the rod… no matter what it takes.

Malfus clenched his eyes shut, trying not to think about what he had to do next. In a burst of movement, he pushed himself up again with his broken arm. He howled in pain, freeing himself, and flopped closer to the rod. He reached out and felt the tips of his fingers brush against the cool metal of the rod, pushing it away.

No!

It rolled a few inches away, then started rolling back toward him. His fingers wrapped around it like an octopus. The cool metal grew warmer in his hand. The ruby started glowing brighter.

+Now the real pain begins. You better hold on tight.+

Malfus let out a blubbering, bloody wheeze.

The rod started pulsing in time with his fleeting heartbeat. He felt a sense of weightlessness. Like a leaf floating on a gentle stream. For a few fleeting seconds, he even forgot about the pain.

+Think of nothing else, except for holding onto the rod. Let’s not find out what happens if you let go in the middle of this.+

Malfus looked down and saw he was floating nearly six feet above the giant’s carcass. His grip on the rod turned his knuckles white as held on for dear life.

The rod let out a blinding flash that left red afterimages on his retinas.

An invisible force snatched on his limbs, stretching them outward like he was a puppet on a string. Pain seared through his body like white fire. His broken arm twisted, stretching all the way out until the bone disappeared back under the skin. His twisted leg jerked around in its socket, setting itself straight. He heard his shattered bones cracking as they ground against bloody meat. He watched in wide-eyed horror as the dagger was pushed out of his chest, then fell clattering below him.

The pain was worse than anything he’d ever felt before. He opened his mouth to scream, but before he could, an invisible hand wrenched around his jaw. There was a wet crunch as it slid back into its proper place, followed by Malfus’s muffled sobs.

He wanted to pass out. He felt his grip on the rod loosen.

+NO!+

Her voice sounded in his head, loud as a whipcrack.

+Stay with the pain.+

He gripped onto the rod as tightly as he could with the last of his strength.

He could feel invisible hands clawing inside him, rearranging his organs, popping his broken ribs back into place, twisting his spine. He felt the urge to vomit and defecate all at once.

There was finally a pause from the torture. Malfus held on, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

Then streaks of crackling blue-black energy jolted along his skin. It felt like liquid-ice was coursing through his veins. His heart started pounding like a hammer on an anvil. Harder and harder until he could feel it in his eyes and hear the blood rushing in his ears. He watched in amazement as his skin drew tighter, melting around the edges, and knitting itself together before his eyes. He could feel the broken bones fusing together inside his body. Waves of icy cold washed through him, chilling him to his core, to his very soul. He felt entropic energy overflowing through his wards and running rampant through his body.

For a brief instance, a flickering image of the plane of death seared into his mind. It was filled with dark, nightmarish horrors that tore at his frayed sanity, reminding him of the inevitability of what was to come. Then it faded away, taking the pain with it, leaving a chilling numbness behind.

He held onto the rod exhausted, relieved it was over as he was lowered back down. He felt both of his feet touch down on the giant’s corpse and stood firmly upon them; miraculously unbroken. He spread his fingers, bone no longer sticking out of his arm, he touched them to his chest, where all that remained of his near-fatal injury was a small, puckered scar.

+There now… that wasn’t so bad was it?+

Before Malfus could even begin to voice his frustrations over the matter, roiling waves of nausea festered inside him. He retched, spewing viscous, oily vomit an impressive distance. It was putrid, black, and smelled vile.

“Ugh, what was that?” Malfus wiped his mouth, clicking his jaw back into place.

+Oh… just about three to five years of your life, give or take.+

Malfus looked at his reflection in the ruby. It served as a poor mirror, but he saw a thick lock of bone-white hair sticking out from the rest of the black. His face looked even more gaunt than normal, which was to be expected, all things considered, but he saw a few more lines around the corners of his eyes than he remembered last as well.

+Don’t worry, it’s a good look on you. And those years only matter if you end up dying from natural causes anyway, which is rarely the case for most necromancers. Besides, we can always get those years back. I can show you how after this is all over.+

Malfus swallowed. He’d read enough stories about the Eternal Empress to have a pretty lurid idea about what that involved.

+One more thing…+

Malfus winced, already expecting more pain.

+That was just your bargain with big daddy death. Now… it’s my turn.+

The rod flickered and flash, ruby light dancing in the gem.

Malfus felt a syrupy inkiness seeping into the recesses of his mind, slippery as an eel. He heard words in an ancient language echoing down a long corridor. His mind was filled with the dull roar of a hundred tiny, whispered secrets.

His eyes fluttered behind closed eyelids. His mind was flooded with the revelations of minor misunderstandings, mispronunciations, and misemphasis of words in spells as well as a few just plain bad habits that he had been carrying forward for years. Already, he discovered a seemingly obvious method of redirecting negative energy through his body and into his wards that would allow them to absorb more before overflowing. He tried to make a mental note of a few things to fix in his spellbook later, but so much came so fast, it was like trying to clutch onto sand in the wind.

In his mind’s eye, there were dreamlike memories of a vast, sandy library in a place he’d never seen before, shelves brimming with scrolls, parchments, books, and tomes. The memories weren’t his own, but he could still feel the heat of the sun on his skin, remember the dry blowing winds. He tried looking at the words on one of the pages, but everything was murky, as if he were looking through a pool of water.

+Don’t you have any manners? Hasn’t anyone taught you not to watch a woman while she’s getting ready? Go. Hurry up and regain control over your undead. You weren’t gone long enough for your commands to wear off or for any to break free yet…+

Malfus took a deep breath, then dug into the deep, quiet, black earth deep in his mind. Ignoring any pestering worries or outside distractions.

Fading in the back of his mind was the nexus of threads binding the undead to him. It was still intact but unraveling with each passing second. He reached out into the recesses of his memory and grabbed it, refreshing the connections before they faded and dissolved.

He could feel the zombies fighting on, but there were a lot less left to connect to, half of the strands had been severed now. He shifted his mind to one that still remained.

The zombie was surrounded by a tide of pressing bodies, soldiers and other zombies fighting the gnolls around it. Gnolls were still surging into the fort. The giant stood astride the gap and cleaved a piece of stone from the wall with its dragon-skull shield. It threw the chunk of mortared bricks over the wall. It sailed over the gnolls, then dipped down, getting larger as it got closer. It crashed into the zombie Malfus was controlling as well as several soldiers next to it. Everything went black then Malfus shuddered as his awareness was returned to his body. Malfus felt that zombie’s thread severed from his shrinking web.

Have to hurry.

Malfus looked down at his feet. He was standing where he landed, on the giant’s soft belly. It was the only thing that stopped his body from splattering to bloody bits on the rocks next to it. Malfus slid off the side of its belly, dropping onto the ground next to the giant. The stone around it still glistened black with dried blood.

He took a few strides away until the giant lay stretched out before him. A shattered colossus, like a massive statue from an ancient forgotten civilization. It lay down on its back with arm laying across its chest as if it were resting peacefully. A sleeping god, waiting to be awoken.

Malfus felt a reassuring surge of power flow through him from the rod, then the buzzing voice of Rammani sounded in his head.

+Well? What are you waiting for? Let’s get this party started.+

Malfus started flipping through the torn and bloody pages of his spellbook until he found the animation spell.

+What are you doing? Don’t waste your time with that. Allow me.+

He held the rod out toward the giant. He felt a surge of negative energy flow through him. The words seemed to flow from his mouth unbidden, as if they were an afterthought. He created a cord connecting him to the giant, reaching to the plane of death, like pulling a bucket of water from a dark, deep well. Black lightning arced from Malfus’s fingertips to the giant. Sickly green sparks glimmered and floated in the darkness, before extinguishing in smudges of smoke.

There was nothing at first, and then a few muscles in the arm next to him began to twitch and spasm. The entire arm jerked suddenly, the massive hand planting itself on the ground in front of Malfus. Its palm was as wide as Malfus was tall.

The ground shook around Malfus as the giant pushed itself up to sitting. Malfus heard the skitter and rustle of a few small animals ran clear, that had been gnawing on or roosting under the corpse.

It sounded like a tree crashing to the ground as the giant pushed itself up, its broken bones grinding against one another. It towered over him, standing with the awkward grace of a toddler first learning to walk. Malfus’s first instinct was to raise his hand over his face as he thought the tottering giant might fall over on him.

Its left forearm was broken, a bone stuck out from the skin just as Malfus’s had, only this one was as thick as a tree trunk. There were several patches of skin that had been flayed off against the stone as it fell, leaving exposed bloody muscle behind. Aside from that, and the missing eye, it was still in pretty good shape, unless, of course, you count being dead.

Malfus looked up at the giant as it stood at full height above him. He only came halfway up its shinbone. It had to have been at least thirty feet tall.

Malfus looked up at the giant and visualized a mental command. The giant knelt, then reached down. A massive gray hand came toward Malfus as if he were a bug about to be squashed. The hand pressed into the ground next to Malfus, palm side up. The giant looked down at him, head lolling forward like it was drunk. It stared down at him, one charcoal-black eye wept oozing pus, the other, ruined by the ballista, just an empty eye-socket.

It must have smashed the side of its face against the cliff on its way down, because the lips and cheek of one side of its face were missing, twisting the giant’s mouth into a rictus grin. The leering skull face stared down at him as the zombie-giant waited with its lowered hand. Malfus looked at the platform of decaying flesh awaiting him, while second-guessing his every decision.

“Here goes nothing.” Malfus took a steadying breath, then stepped onto the hand. He clutched the rod, clenched his teeth, then crouched down to steady himself.

Malfus felt the hand tremble, then his robes fluttered as he was raised through the air. Malfus wrapped his arms around the giant’s thumb, holding on for dear life as the ground shrank away. The giant rested its hand on its shoulder, the side with the rictus grin and missing eye, then waited patiently for Malfus to climb down.

Malfus looked down at the gap between the giant’s hand and its shoulder. The fall probably wouldn’t kill him, but he certainly wasn’t looking forward to another bargain with death again so soon. He swallowed and stepped gingerly onto the giant’s shoulder.

It took Malfus a moment to learn to navigate the strange geography of the giant’s knobby shoulder, but there was enough room for him to stand there. Malfus looked over at the giant’s head, he only came up to its ear-hole, where a stain of dried, black blood ran down its neck.

The giant’s head turned slightly toward Malfus, awaiting its next command. The hollow, empty eye socket was expressionless, but the torn, leering grin made it look like it was waiting for Malfus to lean into its ear and whisper a joke. Each yellow tooth was as big as Malfus’s skull. He swallowed, imagining how easily they could grind his bones to dust.

Malfus looked at the cliff and pictured the giant’s next task in his mind. Malfus reached out and held onto some of the exposed tendons and cords of muscle on the side of the giant’s neck for balance. Then the giant raised its head toward the rocky cliff and strode forward without hesitation. It reached out with its massive, treelike arms and began climbing.

He gritted his teeth and crouched down, clenching tighter onto the tendons and hoping for the best. Never a fan of heights, now he found himself in the precarious position of being on top of something very tall, whilst it climbed something even higher.

The giant climbed the cliff, taking the handholds at a steady, but unrelenting pace, seeming to have kept all of its former strength. Malfus wondered if it was the same case for giants as it was with human zombies, where undeath allowed it to use the full potential of the body’s strength without the mind to protect it from itself.

Stronger maybe, but certainly not quicker…

More than halfway there now, Malfus gripped the rod tighter as he looked up at the lip of the cliff, wondering if the Inquisitor was waiting for him there. The revelation of him being Kaylee’s father flashed in his mind. If he did manage to bring Kaylee back, he had no idea how she would react if she found out he was responsible for the death of her father. He didn’t have a clue what their relationship was like. She’d never once spoken about her parents, but then again, who at the academy did? Except those that came from the families that were either exceedingly wealthy or exceedingly powerful. Doubtful anyone would want their peers at the academy to know that their father was a member of the Vesenian Inquisition. An open enemy to most mages across the Ossory Empire, and not just the necromantic kind.

The giant was near to the top now. Only a few more handholds away. Malfus could feel his heart beating faster and his stomach tying itself in knots as he gripped the rod. He could start to hear the distant, muffled shouts from the soldiers and gnolls still fighting above him.

The giant’s first arm crested the top of the cliff and it pulled itself up. Malfus mentally rehearsed the words for a spell in the front of his mind, eyes darting side-to-side, looking for the Inquisitor, ready for a dagger to come flying at his face at any moment.

Not here…

Malfus let out a sigh of relief. The giant pushed itself onto the top of the cliff. Malfus gripped on tight, he thought for a second it might totter back over the edge, but it pushed itself up the rest of the way then stood up.

From his vantage point, Malfus could see the fighting on the other side of the fort. The soldiers wouldn’t hold out for much longer. Malfus urged the giant forward. It marched over toward the fight the way a small child playing at being a soldier might, with stiff, jerky movements.

Malfus gripped onto the giant’s neck tighter as he watched the distant battle. The borrowed power and knowledge from an ancient necromantic tyrant was a great thing indeed, but riding on the back of a giant and towering over everything will do wonders for anyone’s self-esteem.

********

“Whoa, whoa there. Easy does it, fella.”

The horses knickered and reared as Peshka approached. The closest was a sable mustang with scared chestnut eyes. It snorted, nostrils flaring as Peshka stepped closer, its eyes darting around.

“I know. Trust me, I know. But it will be alright. Just calm down for ol’ papa Peshka.” Peshka spoke softly and approached with his hands raised.

One last desperate calvary charge was all he had left in his tactical repertoire. He doubted he’d be able to find the pale-furred leader of the gnolls in the thick of it, but he’d rather die doing something instead of waiting to be crushed by a boulder doing nothing.

The six horses shifted uneasily, pulling at their tethers to the hitching post along the far wall. The closest one finally started to calm. It looked at Peshka with a single, large brown eye.

The ground started shaking out of nowhere. Peshka stumbled forward. The sable horse panicked, rearing and kicking, nearly knocking Peshka to the ground.

“What the bloody devil?”

Peshka turned and looked over his shoulder. In the distance, by the fallen tower, he saw a colossal shape standing over the rubble.

Peshka ignored the protests of the horses, a smile forming across his face.

“Well… the bastard managed to do something useful after all.”

*******

As Malfus got closer to the battle, something caught his eye, just a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. A black-cloaked figure darted between shells of buildings, moving along the perimeter of the fort, sticking close to the shadows along the wall. Malfus knew it was him. Knew it was the Inquisitor. He tried to keep tracking him as the giant moved, but then the shadow disappeared in a crack between two of the buildings.

“Dammit!” Malfus spat.

He thought about turning the giant around, away from the fighting to get to the Inquisitor, but he was so close to the battle now he could hear the screams of the soldiers. He knew every second counted. Choosing to chase the Inquisitor could take minutes to corner and smash that slippery bastard.

+What are you doing? Just go smash that the little church mouse.+

“No. There will be no one left alive by the time I catch him.”

+Who cares? Revenge is so much sweeter.+

Malfus urged the giant toward the battle.

+Suit yourself. Let’s go have some fun then.+

Malfus focused. In order for this to work, he knew he’d have to hurry. He couldn’t get caught on top of the giant once the two monsters started fighting one another.

He was just about to be in spell range now. He’d have to make the most of every second. He held onto the giant with one hand and raised the rod with the other. Malfus closed his eyes and felt his connection to the entropic energy swirling around him. He could feel the vibrations of each of the giant’s colossal steps as he rode the undead siege engine. He began casting, savoring the power that flowed through him with each of the spell’s syllables, eyes darting around, looking for the right spot.

There.

Right as he was uttering the last words of the spell, he found a spot near the center of the battle with gnolls and a few undead, no living soldiers.

An enervating ray of black lightning, thick as his arm, arced through the air like a hungry serpent. A second later, it exploded into the ground, leaving a sphere of black void that engulfed at least a dozen gnolls in the cramped space.

Their ragged howls and screams died out just as quickly as they started. All the gnolls left behind were little more than shriveled husks. The zombies caught in the blast with them were unaffected by the negative energy and ran off, looking for their next targets.

Panic spread like a virus once the gnolls saw the undead giant lumbering toward them.

A deep, bloodcurdling roar pierced the din of battle and panicked cries. The giant stepped over the gap in the wall, uncaring as it smashed several fleeing gnolls under its foot.

Have to hurry.

The giant roared in anger at the sight of its fallen kin. It said something in its language that Malfus couldn’t understand. Its deep voice was heavy with grief.

Malfus urged his giant forward, trampling and kicking through the ranks of gnolls. The attacking gnolls broke and panicked. They stopped coming in through the gap completely, more retreating and pushing back.

Malfus held on tight as the undead giant reached down and scooped up a handful of fleeing gnolls, grabbing three. They squirmed in its closed fist as the giant raised them up overhead, then slapped its hand down flat onto the wall, ending their protests in a wet splat. The giant left its hand on the wall, and froze like a statue.

The living giant roared again and started charging its undead brethren. Malfus scurried across the giant’s outstretched arm like a rat across the rope of a docked ship. As the giant approached, Malfus felt everything shake, but the zombie-giant held fast. Malfus jumped the last few feet from its wrist, right as the giant collided into it, roaring like a scorned god.

They smashed into the wall right as Malfus landed, sending him sprawling through the air. He landed hard on the flattened gnoll corpses, knocking the wind from his lungs.

The giant snarled, raising its dragon-skull shield in the air to smash against the undead giant still fumbling on the ground.

Malfus raised the rod and started chanting the words for the spell as fast as he could spit the syllables. They were still fresh and echoing at the forefront of his mind from his last cast.

The giant roared as it brought the skull down.

A black bolt of enervating lightning, darker than the night sky, streaked from Malfus’s fingertips. The bolt lanced through the void between them, striking the giant. The black lightning arced in spiderwebs across its face. The giant lowered the shield, grasping at its face, then howled in pain as its cheek shriveled up and withered away, turning leathery and gray like mummified flesh. The eye on that side of its face turned into an opaque, calcified orb.

It roared in anger, then turned to the wall, glaring at Malfus with its one good eye. It raised its arm to crush him like an insect. The shadow from its hand loomed over him.

A bony fist smashed into the giant’s face like a battering ram. Bone crunched and teeth cracked as the fist made impact. The giant reeled backward, howling as the zombie-giant lurched forward after it, arms reaching for its throat. The giants grappled and locked-up with one another, smashing and rolling along the wall. The living giant’s dragon-skull shield was more of a hinderance to it with the zombie-giant so close. The two titanic hulks fought against one another with the fury of dragons, oblivious to the fleeing gnolls smashed underfoot with every step.

Gnolls yelped and shouted, scrambling to get away from the giants. More gnolls were trying to push back outside the gap than come in, while the gnolls inside the fort were cut off by the giant’s fighting one another, splitting the gnoll forces in half. Malfus heard the gnoll’s warhorn sound from somewhere outside the wall.

+Nicely done, but be careful taking risks like that. My pretty neck is in your hands right now too.+

Malfus pushed himself up. He had more to do.

The three dead gnolls lay not far down the wall from him. Malfus turned to the three flattened corpses and began the incantations to raise them. He worked quickly to weave the threads to the plane of death between him and the corpses.

No more risks this time.

Bones cracked and popped back into place as they rose from the ground. They grabbed the weapons they still held, then the three of them stood just down the wall from Malfus.

Nice to have some company up here.

The giants collided into the wall again, not far from Malfus, shaking the entire wall. He had to grip onto the balustrade to steady himself. He needed to get them outside, away from the wall, but he had to take care of one more thing first.

Malfus closed his eyes, trying to shut out the titanic confrontation going on right in front of him. He focused, concentrating on his death-sense. Focusing on all the dead below him.

Empowered by Rammani-Thuul, his death-sense stretched far and wide.

He could feel scores of dead below him. The bodies, hacked apart, littered the ground underneath the soldiers still fighting. More being added to their number with every passing second. Malfus stood by the wall, looking down at the fighting below. He raised his arms like a preacher before his congregation, speaking to the dead. He began chanting the spell, rod held high and black robes fluttering in the wind.

It was a simple matter now of connecting to so many at once with Rammani’s borrowed knowledge. He began casting a spell that would raise them all.