The alien culture lesson that I knew was incoming attacked me before I could get any goddamn information from Kraken. The mean looking fuck with the hatchets didn’t hesitate. The instant he saw me he blasted off, his wings giving him the lift needed to get to me. I’ll never forget the look of sheer insanity in his eyes, just the raw unreasonable hate sent in my direction. For once I acted with instinct, pulling the river water around me and blasting it at him as I yanked myself back and down into the river trying to put some distance between us. All I could hear in the back of my head was some drill sergeant from years ago joking about using the terrain to your advantage. He would yell ‘Location, location, location’, like some greasy real estate agent looking to score on a first time home buyer. But to be fair, the dude was right. The river was definitely my location.

Blades of fire cut into the surface of the river over and over, the winged nephilim flying over in a screaming maniacal rage. Sitting deep in my consciousness sorcery, I had time flowing in my head twice as slow as normal allowing me to keep pace with what was going on. My flesh sorcery was actively fortifying my brain making sure that I didn’t get an aneurysm from the stress of processing twice as fast. My body moved ten feet to the left just as the entire river parted. All I saw before it crashed back together was the silent glare from the blue-bladed freak, his samurai looking sword steaming thick blue smoke.

[Forget the dwarves and minotaurs!]. Kraken was right. I shot off a quick mental call for help and then quickly gave the order to drown the prisoners and freeze them together. My elementals happily swirled around, forcing water into the lungs of the minotaurs and dwarves and then dragging them to the bottom of the river where they stuck them to the big rocks down there. Pulling out Gungnir, which had been in knife form the entire time in my boot, I willed it into staff form and planted it in the giant ice coffin full of hundreds of quickly dying bodies. I didn’t even allow myself a moment of remorse as I yanked on the weakened life force of all of the minotaurs and dwarves. Relying on my instincts from flesh sorcery, I knew that the best time to yank out someone’s life force is the moment before death when their defenses are down. Trying to do so before when they’re conscious and active is just too much work when you have someone’s entire being fighting you.

Gungnir soaked up the power, channeling all of the life force into the Chaos shard that made up the heart of my most powerful weapon. Slapping the slot in Svalinn, I yanked out the planttrops that I had made so long ago, the thorny vines capable of explosive growth, shoved them all in a ball and froze them together in a ball of ice. Using water sorcery, I planted all of my planttrops deep in the mud and channeled all of that life force from Gungnir straight into the makeshift seed. Looking up, the axe-wielding fuckface was still blowing his load all over the surface of the river, the flames coming nowhere close to me.

“Come on you useless bitch, you owe me this,” I growled in my air bubble, constantly making sure to use water sorcery to keep it fresh while checking on my mental links. Thank the heavens this stupid idea worked because it was the only reason I’m still kickin in this fight. A shockwave shook the river, emanating from where I planted my planttrop seed cluster in the muddy bottom, stirring up the muddy silt turning the visibility to zero. Shutting my eyes and relying on my magical senses to feel the world around me, I added to the churning of the river to make sure nobody could see my silhouette.

Activating my security monitoring protocol on a preset background mental process with my consciousness sorcery, I focused the rest of my attention on the vibrating cluster of overcharged seeds. Wrapping will and mana together, I formed a rune of control out of ice and as the thorny vines exploded into existence I forced it onto the vine. Twisting the original purpose of the vine, I used nature sorcery to control its growth until it stood out of the water. Grabbing onto a protruding thorn, I rode the veritable giant as it erupted into a many armed monstrosity oozing river mud. My giant grabbed a boulder out of the river with two vine tentacles and flung it at the two nephilim on the river bank as three other arms smashed the flying axe wielder out of the sky. I didn’t even watch him skip across the river even though I really wanted to.

My magic as a whole tends not to be flashy. I primarily work with mana, which is invisible to the naked eye, and water and earth, which every human is familiar with. I don’t shoot out fire or lightning which of course is what everyone pictures when they think of sorcerer or magician. Big explosions aren’t really in my repertoire unless I have a lot of time to plan and I make the perfect runes, but one simple fact has escaped me for too long, I can go BIG. And dear lawd’ it was worth it just to watch that little shit’s face when my oversized vine monster smacked him into next week. My face though, I did have my own look of pure and utter shock when I saw that the several ton boulder that my monster threw simply bounced off of a magical shield where the two nephilim were standing.

The one holding a staff just smirked, or kept smirking? I don’t recall paying too much attention to his face, or its face. The nephilim had a sort of homogenous beauty about them that made it hard to tell if they were male or female. But what I could see was arrogance, that’s what it was. Obviously this dick was the cause of the glowing shield as the sword wielder just wasn’t there anymore. As I frantically looked around for him from atop my thorny giant, pounding thumps reverberated the edge of the forest.

“Finally! Spike, here boy! Sick Em!” My furry and scaly mixture of a canine bowled through the forest and slammed into the magical shield, barking flame after flame at it as Lyra was catapulted straight at me from Spot’s sudden slam on the brakes. A smaller vine deftly caught the dryad around the waist and brought her to me, her scent filling my nostrils. She smelled of a field after fresh rain. Shaking my head to shrug off her natural ‘come-hither-ness’ that all dryads seem to have, I pushed her into my spot. “Can you control this thing?” I asked, pushing her hand into the trunk of the vine giant. Deftly manipulating the green energy inside of my creation, I bound a temporary tether to Lyra’s hand. She nodded as soon as I did. “Good, kill the nephilim. I want them dead. This thing is yours if you can do that.”

Diving back into the river, I pushed my worries about Spot and Lyra in combat with an enemy that scared the scrap out of Kraken away. One problem at a time. The hatchet wielding nephilim, who I now call Crazy Eyes, was easy to spot underwater as his flaming hatchets were still burning wildly as if they were made out of phosphorus. The stream of bubbles combined with the hissing flares gave me a target as I controlled all of the water around him and blasted him into the silty mud. Manipulating the mud as well, I kept pushing him deeper into the river bottom, freezing every inch of mud above him as Crazy Eyes went further down.

His magical presence, a searing white glow wreathed in shades of red and orange didn’t diminish with distance but instead grew brighter. [What the fuck Kraken? Why isn’t he dying?!], I cursed, pouring on the power. [These tactics killed a freaking fire dragon!].

[Twisted they may be, they still have an internal connection to the Lower Reaches of Heaven also known as . ].

[How do I kill them!], I raged, interrupting Kraken from his lecture mode.

[You can’t. Nephilim are the mingling of mortal races and angels, but only the lowest of Angels, those serving in the lowest reaches of Nirvana would dare to lower themselves to create such things. Nephilim are driven mad by their tenuous connection of power that links them forever to the layer of heaven that their sire came from. Their purpose is to fight demons as Heaven’s fodder. They shouldn’t even be here. They wield weapons forged from their own soul and have some powers that Angels themselves have, but the most common and frustrating one is their ability to regenerate from almost nothing. Imprisonment is the best option you have.], Kraken explained in a huff.

[Fine,] I growled, my anger flowing down my magic, encasing the poor bastard in alternating layers of ice and solidified rock. As the makeshift coffin grew thicker, I forced portions of it to harden even further into a blade and slice the nephilim into disparate parts. [Can’t fight if you can’t move bitch.]. Examining my handiwork, I noticed that the magical presence dimmed but not by much. My gruesome actions might damn my conscience but quartering Crazy Eyes twice over might keep him out of the game long enough for me to win.

Tasking five elementals to stand guard over my riverbed of coffins, I took the other fifteen with me as I erupted out of the water. The sight that greeted me was both scary and hilarious. Spot had somehow gotten through McStaffy’s shield and was shaking him by his bumpy wooden staff as if he were a toy rope and Lyra’s samurai dude was desperately chopping away at the vine giant’s relentlessly growing thorny arms. His sword was dripping blue fire that was retarding the growth of new vines but my giant couldn’t be stopped, especially with incredible amounts of stolen lifeforce inexorably powering it forward.

“Good boy Spot!” I yelled, cupping my hand and trying not to giggle like a little girl. That poor magic user that Spot was whipping around was not having a good time. “Fetch boy! Bring’em here!” My trusty companion walked over, still wrenching on the staff, the nephilim’s feet at least ten feet off the ground. Dropping the dazed wretch, he started barking as I used earth sorcery to sink the guy into the ground until only his implement was showing. “Get the stick boy, come on, get that stick!” Unable to resist now that he was encased in solid stone, Spot had no problem taking the nephilim’s staff, worrying at it as if it were a normal stick. Recreating my quartering solution on sucker number two, I shoved him about twenty feet down in a coffin of stone where he was separated at the wrists, shoulders, neck, knees, and ankles.

With Crazy Eyes and McStaffy out of the way, I resisted the urge to just sit and watch Lyra with my behemoth take on McStabby. Seemingly immune to frustration, McStabby’s face didn’t even change as the vine giant just kept growing more spiny arms and lashing out with them. The severed pieces themselves actually started reconnecting where they fell on top of each other, creating a treacherous terrain. Every wave of his sword not only cut through the outreaching arms, but ethereal blades of energy also cut out from the path of the sword giving him more reach than any swordsman should have. Moving almost faster than the eye could see, McStabby skillfully wove a shield of blades with his one sword, dicing everything around him. Turning on his heel, his eyes narrowed just before he exploded in my direction.

Spot moved just a hair faster, interposing himself between me and my attacker, snarling liquid flame as his giant body grew even more scales than ever before. Dragon dog versus an angel’s bastard with his sword, I’m not sure who would win that fight. Luckily, I didn’t have to bet on one or the other as I planned on straight up cheating. Summoning Svalinn’s central power to the fore, my trusty dragon soul artifact generated a magic shield right in front of Spot’s just after the flame spit left his mouth, thankfully not in front of it though. I knew fighting hand to hand with a dude like this was beyond insane so I wasn’t going to attempt it. I brought a gun to sword fight.

Pulling knife-form Gungnir from my belt, I willed it into a staff and stabbed it into the ground, powering up the cannon enhancement. Just like I predicted, the sword wielding acrobat blew right past Spot by going up and over him as if he were a freaking high jumper. But you can’t turn in mid air on a dime at this distance even if you have wings, which I proudly took at advantage of. It worked beautifully. Gungnir spit my crystal shard bullets at my psychotic target like a machine gun on crack. It was all I could do to hold on as fifty rounds ripped his personal shield to shreds and another thirty tore him apart. Wet meaty thumps followed the rain of blood as his sword landed point first into the ground twenty yards away from the bullets’ impacts. Flexing my will, I gathered the pieces of McStabby into their own stone coffins and buried them. Doing the same to his sword but at least fifty yards away from his piecemeal corpse, I looked at my battlefield.

[It’s not fair! You cheated!] Kraken yelled in disbelief, coming out of Gungnir to also look at the mess I made. [Everyone runs from Nephilim, everyone! You’re just too damn ignorant to know that it’s good for you to run away and never look back! And minotaurs!?]. Kraken pantomimed waving his tentacles. [You just swipe your hand and the river does all the magic damned work!].

“One last thing,” I chuckled, turning towards the woods. “Spot! Fetch!” I sent a mental picture of the dwarf who pressed the red button, the one who started this entire mess. I cleaned myself up as my dog tore off into the woods to bring me his new toy. Gathering up the nephilim’s weapons, the two red flaming hatchets along with the chewed up staff and the now silent blue sword, I attempted to put them inside Gungnir’s storage space but they wouldn’t go.

“What gives?” I said, forcing more energy into the auto-storing enchantment. [Kraken, put these away, I can use them later when I figure out how they work.].

[You’ve exceeded the energy threshold here. Only mundane items will fit now,] he clarified. [The angel swords with the feather take up all of the available energy here. Anything else will split your weapon wide open. You can maybe put some more bullets and basic supplies but nothing overtly powerful.].

Uprooting Gungnir and planting it in the middle of the clearing where all of the rifts had opened, I put it on an alert cycle so that it would let me know if any more rifts suddenly opened. Reaching out with my earth sorcery, I pulled the three sets of nephilim bodies out of the ground in front of me, still encased though. It was clear to anyone with a hint of magical power that the pieces weren’t dead, if anything they were desperately trying to get back to their original places. Sticking the weapons off to the side but still where I could see them, I forced Kraken out of Gungnir and got in his face.

“What do you mean I can’t put magical shit in there anymore? Last time I looked there was plenty of goddamn space!”

[There is not enough energy in your spatial matrix to hold that kind of condensed power! It doesn’t function like a normal box where there’s a specific amount of space. The more high energy items you put in there, the smaller the box you have. That dumb it down enough for ya?]. Two of Kraken’s tentacles were propped up on his ‘hips’.

“So how much space would I have if there weren’t angel swords in there?”, I asked.

[QUIET! That’s not the kind of thing you say or think out loud you imbecilic twit! Do you have any idea how many paladins and holy warriors would be knocking down every door to this planet if they knew you had what you had???].

“So what the hell should I do with them, or those, whatever you’re supposed to call pieces of partial angel spawn?” I said, looking at my grim collection. “I could bury them but that’s gettin’ kinda old. They have a kind of energy that I can’t really mess with; kinda feels like trying to grab a steel ball slathered in oil. Got any ideas?”

[Feed them to your dog. Dragons of all kinds love a good snack. Besides, some of that power originated literally from one of the Heavens, and since you plan on fighting the undead with all of their sickness and death magic well . . . ]. Kraken looked me up and down, a feeling of curiosity colored with a hint of fear. [Look, we have things to do real soon but I have to say, I’m glad that I’m your familiar spirit. You took down three rogue nephilim as if they were nothing. Any other race I can think of other than dragons, Titans, mountain giants, and Duke Elementals as well as Demon Kings would have run, pissing themselves the entire time. And if they did get away, they’d have nightmares for the next twenty years, looking over their shoulders expecting imminent death.].

Going with the paranoia rolling in my gut, I kept conjuring layers of stone over the various bits and pieces of my enemies, while using a bit of nature sorcery to heal the scarred land around me. Even though Gungnir was about ten feet away, the bond forged by blood was strong enough that I didn’t have to touch it to pull from the pool of power. “Look, I get it dude, you’re freaking out about the nephilim right now, but have you already forgotten about that little area over there?” I said, gesturing towards the clearing that had rifts opening and closing randomly. “We’ve already had three kinds of not-friendlies come through there and who knows what’s next? How the hell do we close it? And why is it doing that in the first place?”