Greenland - Nate

Cold fear that wasn’t my own ran down the back of my spine. Concentration almost completely shot, and that’s definitely not good in the midst of handling the mystical equivalent of nuclear power lines. Zombies, wights, ghouls, and many other smelly rotten abominations were coming my way. How I knew that, I don’t really know, but I knew that fact was true from the depths of my soul, almost as if I could see them. I had been completely focused on handling the flows of power and I couldn’t really stop, the process had begun.

[Think, think, think . . . ] I grimaced, glaring at the seed in front of me. [Stupid, stupid, stupid, so close to being smart that I might be actually stupid! I was close enough to the leyline that it should have hid this working!] Then it hit me, a way out of my fucking mess. Taking one hand off of the Yggdrasil seed while keeping the other there, tamping down on the power flow and turning the energy monitoring process into an auto-mind sorcery background process, I conjured a handful of alder tree seed and covered the Yggdrasil orb in them. Gently imbuing them with life giving mana, they sank in as if the orb were soft playdough. Pulling my hand back off, I grabbed a bunch of bloodthorn seeds from my pocket and then two cryocards from the other pocket. [Vaya con Dios!] I screamed mentally, forcing the ingredients into the orb as I pushed it closer to the leyline.

Weaving my nature sorcery through the disparate cocktail, I focused on the interplay of energies as they fought with each, the tangly nature of the alder trees fighting the domination factor of the thorny vines that hungered for my flesh or any tang of iron. The compressed frozen energy of the cryocards creeped into the Yggdrasil orb only to be blasted away by the ever increasing volume of raw power of the leyline. [You, will, SUBMIT!]

My senses via the web of plant life above me alerted me to the incoming horde of undead, their hungry, mindless stampede having no care for stealth, not that it would help. Leaping deer and flitting birds finally made their appearance for the first time as they fled in front of the horde, keeping just out of reach, not knowing that they weren’t the intended prey. My hands vibrated as the Yggdrasil orb almost shook itself to pieces, my sorceries forcing my intent into the orb using Gungnir as a guide. My very first implement, the weapon that let me bat above my weight class, was a product of different energies and substances that found a balance and flowed. This orb, would do the same, by my fucking will.

Undead hands and shovel-like feet tore downward through the earth like a giant mole on crack, each rotted limb flinging dirt aside and even smaller horde members without a care. Feeling actual fear for the first time, I shoved the orb closer to the intangible leyline line, opening up the temporary channel of power to full blast instead of the initial trickle. Searing plain blazed through me, just under the amount of pain I could handle with flesh sorcery’s help, and about a million times more than what I could handle if I didn’t have Gungir. The earth around me exploded outwards as Yggdrasil erupted, the excess energies flowing upwards as alder trees sporting thorns the size of swords stabbed into the incoming horde, temporarily grabbing their attention as I focused all of my will on manipulating the tree as it grew.

For these few moments, I would have an unprecedented level of control in this time of birth, hopefully. The cryocard energy altered the nature of the tree to allow it to withstand subarctic levels of cold while the bloodthorn seeds nature fully integrated into the bark structure of the branches. Each alder seed formed into a separate but tangentially attached trunk, spiraling outwards as its fingers grasped and tore the incoming horde, a raging whirlwind shredder borne of magic. Three massive roots speared downwards, two of which wrapped around the leyline and the other kept going downwards as if to form a massively deep anchor. The alder bark turned crimson, forming into the shape of bladed leaves that popped outwards as soon as the tree's flesh was done growing in that spot.

Over four hundred Hungry Ones were torn apart, ground up, sliced into bits, and dragged down into the dirt as my latest insane creation experienced its first stretch into fresh air. It wasn’t alive in the sentient meaning of the word, it was still basically a tree, a zombie-crunching magical tree. New alder trunks sprang up, never further than ten feet from each other, their spindly branches bisecting and impaling the zombies, each little branch growing more grasping thorns to hold its prey in place. I stayed safe, or as safe as I could, way down even deeper in the dirt using nature sorcery to ‘encourage’ more growth, more viciousness from the newborn.

Old, rotted blood stained the earth, the poison of its uncontained dark magic not even posing the barest threat to the fundamental power of the fledgling World Tree. As the leyline powered the tree from below, the mystical connection of the tree to its main trunk, Yggdrasil itself, fed it from a dimension removed. Five three-headed spellcasters, a bit more controlled than the rest, flung black fire and ghostly silver bolts of malevolent energy at the tree, scarring bleeding wounds into the trunks. With each blast of necromantic power, the two roots wrapped around the leyline pulsed, pulling more and more power upwards. The scarred knots exploded outwards, the bladed bark propelled by the instant expansion of sap freezing as the alder acted like my cryocards would. From the exposed heartwood, more branches lanced out as if they were wolves that caught a scent.

“SCREEEAAAHHHH! ALSFA’GRAN DECHANZ!” The translation amulet attached to my armor didn’t catch enough of the words to give a good ‘word for word’ translation, but it caught a part of that. One of the sibilant words meant ‘prey’ and another one meant ‘down’. Shit. At least I’m in my element.

Fighting underground isn’t really that exciting, for me, it’s simply an exercise in focus and channeling power. My earth sorcery makes me nigh invincible down here and as long as nothing has earth sorcery or years of practice in living/moving underground, they’ll never win. It’s not like I’m in a cave where there’s room to move around, I’m literally surrounded on all sides by dirt and stone. I myself have half an inch of space which my earth sorcery maintains, but other than that, it’s like easy swimming. Transmuting sections of dirt around me into circular stone blades and other sections into stone spears, I expanded this outward from myself in a full spherical fashion. Keeping one hand on Gungnir as its crystal spear blade was embedded in Yggdrasil, keeping up the will required for its violent, zombie-eating tantrum, the rest of me focused on the sickening invaders. That’s what they are, invaders, scum, pests. Good for nothing except future fertilizer and nothing more. Disgusting.

[Why do we run, scatter before pests? Are we not stronger? Are we not better?]

[Shut it!] I growled back, pushing Svalinn down.

Optimum testing conditions met. Flesh sorcery enhanced body projected to meet this threat level. Artifacts projected to provide more than enough defense/offense for necromantic threat. Recommendation: Dreadnaught Druid.

Great, SAW’s kickin’ in too. Whoop de fuckin who. And, just to add in, there’s that sorcery/magic enforced anger due to being near my elemental opposite. The unreasonable, or maybe reasonable in this case, schismatic anger flared up, forcing me to consider other options. My instincts screamed at me to run, kite away while using the earth and river to drag the horde far below the surface, and my other, newer instincts screamed for blood. My upgraded body howled for a fight finally worth having. The fight itself had dragged myself a hundred feet deep below the earth but the thrill of combat called to me. Quickly checking my magical senses, less than two hundred freaks were left. My tree had taken out over six hundred zombies on its own, most of which were being dragged down to serve as fertilizer.

[Why is now a ‘great time’, huh? They’re real life zombies! Experiment my ass!]

Speeding up my perceptions for a moment to consider what to do, I looked over the conceptualized plan of ‘Dreadnaught Druid’. The projected image was myself but a bit scarier looking. The standard black armor was covered in extra plates of black obsidian so that none of the silver runes shone through, and the image of me had me wielding Poseidon’s Trident, or Neptune’s Shame, in one hand while swinging Gungnir in mace form in the other. Svalinn’s bladed shields were partially extended out of both gauntlets, ready to extend further if any blades or more defense was necessary. Honestly, it looked badass, so badass I just had to try it.

“Fine,” I grunted, rocketing out of the earth as my gear shifted and molded around me. The obsidian add-ons barely weighed anything with my upgraded body’s strength and my trident streaked out of its tattoo on my arm, liquid blue light materializing in my hand as I landed in the dirt. Gungnir’s crystal bladed shrank into a thick, pulsing orb that crackled with raw mana. My leap out of the bowels of the earth put me at the edge of the river surrounding the island, the entrance flashy enough to draw the attention of the insane zombies along with their freaky spellcasters.

Faster than starving cheetahs, they all howled and tore at me, a wave of sickening flesh and rotting stench that I countered with a wave of my own. Pointing Neptune’s Shame forward, I pulled with my water sorcery at a source behind me, adding sheer volume where the trident concentrated lines of compressed water that cut through their lines like lasers. The river water smashed into what wasn’t cut down, pushing them back and grinding them into the dirt.

[Rip! Tear! Destroy!]

The next moment, I was in the midst of the horde, smashing with Gungnir and stabbing with the trident. Each stab was punctuated with a blast of rotating water blades to clear the area and each swing of Gungnir was accompanied by kinetic blasts that acted like controlled, mini-grenades. Gore, bits of organs, desiccated flesh, and bone fragments covered me before I had the chance to breathe. Stomping down with my foot, simply to play to my nerdy fantasies, I caused a wave of stone spikes to radiate outwards from me, giving me a bit of breathing room as I conjured a car-sized globe of water above me. Letting go of it, it rained down cleaning me off. Grabbing the runoff, I froze it into icicles that hovered around me, basically a floating porcupine to which the Hungry Ones gladly attacked.

Detecting six separate accumulations of sub-protonic energy. WARNING! WARNING!

Crap, the spellcasters. For a handful of moments, I’d gotten lost in the mindless joy of swinging power. My body, my human body, never felt this good, this invigorated, this full of endless vitality! And for just a minute, that lack of conscious, in-the-moment thinking, could have been my downfall.

Diving back down into the earth, I took stock as I fled fifty feet down. My weapons were devastating, leaving me awestruck. Gungnir and Neptune’s Shame enhanced my abilities to the point where I myself was a magic wrecking ball. Less than thirty of the zombies remained, including the shriekers holding their wiggling balls of black mana. Fighting spellcasters is nothing new, although the simple fact that they’re dead means there’s probably an element to them that I’m unfamiliar with, but to be fair, the point of fighting those that use magic is simple, cheat.

The earth around me began to shake as I struggled with a moment of internal arrogance. That was easy, frankly, too easy. Each swing of my weapons basically caused several zombies to fucking explode, each pulse of magic tore them to shreds, what in the world did I have to fear from them? That’s it? Really? This is what I’ve been afraid of, been working so hard to fight against but it turns out I’m Goliath stomping David into the dirt as his little sling missed? Threads of twitching blackness reached out from the shriekers as I shook my head.

Focusing on them, I prepared a handful of crystal grenades that I pulled from Gungnir’s storage space, over-filling them with mana. Exploded bits of hungry ones touched by the lingering threads of darkness started to hover, slowly floating up and over to where the shriekers continued to howl and shake their implements. I really didn’t want to see what they had in store, and every nerd knows, never give a magic user time to kick off their show.

Grabbing all the earth around me within a hundred yards, I shook it, creating my own personal addition to the Richter scale, a nine point break your fucking legs earthquake. Unceremoniously flung off their feet and into each other, tatteried windpipes sounded cries that reached an even higher pitch as four grenades landed between them. Just before they went off, I inverted the dirt they were laying on, flipping them like a pancake, forcing the explosion to concentrate its heat and kinetic energy in a small space under the earth instead of dispersing it. Not knowing what magical defenses they had, if any, I pushed the makeshift coffin deeper as I grabbed a few more grenades.

KABOOM! The dirt fountained upwards through the softer sediment from the passing stone coffin and the screams cut off. Not taking any chances, I pushed the grenades towards the filled in pocket below. KABOOM! Sealing the remnants of the only real threat away, I pulled myself back up to the surface and raised Gungnir in the air to finish the last of them. Crystal rounds fired out in an uneven rhythm, dropping the remaining zombies.

Looking around with both my eyes and my magical senses, a wasteland surrounded me. My earthquakes, tsunamis, water jets and bullets had completely torn up the area. Even the Yggdrasil thicket was looking ragged. “Shit.” Sprinting over, I worked my way tree by tree, using my own blood as a healing reagent for the trees, my nature sorcery to closing gashes in the bark, soothing the irritated knots containing embedded necromantic flesh. A soft crack caught my attention, pulling me away from my work.

Behind me, a greasy horizontal cut hung in midair, an empty blackness that wept green fog at the tips. Clawed hands reached through as screams once again rang out. “Oh hell no! No creepy ass portals on my island!” And I do get that there’s no one around to hear me except for myself, but fighting in pure silence just seems wrong. All my real combat experience comes from movies and the last year of my life, so, when in Rome.

Pointing Gungnir forward, my trusty mace unloaded charged crystal bullets as I conjured SAW’s Nephilim water arms as backup. In my left hand, I held a grenade the size of a soccer ball and topped it off. This particular explosive was a result of Acantha and I putting our heads together, and yes, each one had its own name. This one was Big Bertha, the other ones were Madam MOAB and O-bomber, hehehe. Eerie crimson runes emitted bright green ethereal fire that covered the outside of Big Bertha, mainly Acantha’s work, that allowed mana to be converted into wytchfire. I only had time to make about three of these with her before the shenanigans kicked off but if there’s one thing I’m good at its blowing shit up. And with her help, we’re really good at blowing shit up. The overcharge feature pretty much allows a grenade of this size to be a miniature backpack nuke. After arming it, the estimated radius of instant devastation would be enough to take out six square city blocks.

As soon as the bullets cleared away enough space from inside the rift, I launched a few standard crystal grenades through for good measure, should be enough to clear the area for my Big Bertha here. Running to the side of the portal so I wouldn’t be directly in front of it, always mind blast zones, I waited for two solid breaths. The initial grenades went off but the portal didn’t close. Turning Gungnir into its knife form, I sheathed it and pulled out a little enchanted light stone.

“I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t, but I really want to.” Muttering to myself usually gets me an answer because Kraken’s there to give a yay or nay but right now, he’s two miles away playing babysitter and golem-minder. And what I really wanted to do was get a glimpse of what’s on the other side of the portal. I didn’t do it back in Arizona when Phoenix was shit city, and right now, most everything in the immediate vicinity of the other side of the smelly ass portal should be teeny tiny bits and pieces. Just a glimpse, I can handle a glimpse.

Alley-ooping the light stone into the wavering portal, I pulled Gungnir back out to full ready and ran around, not quite sticking my head in the portal while holding my breath. The little piece of enchanted marble clattered on what sounded like stone. For all I knew it was stone. The ground within six feet of the light stone was solid black and just beyond the dome of light was solid ink. I couldn’t make out any scuff marks, signs of explosions going off, nothing. Not taking any chances, I backed up and tossed in Big Bertha, my mana flicking the internal enchantment trigger. Five seconds till wytchfire induced hell broke loose.

Now from my meager understanding of how portals work, something explodes on one side but doesn’t shut it down, then part of that explosion will come back through the opening. Which means that in this case, only one direction is in danger, whichever way the portal is facing. My ass gathered every bit of power at my disposal and fed it into SAW and Svalinn as I sprinted behind the portal and kept going until I hit the river where I dove under. Sitting at the bottom about thirty feet down, a tongue of flame the length of a skyscraper shot out, kissing the sky and abruptly cutting out. After floating to the surface and sticking just my hand out to make sure the air wasn’t nuclear hot, I hopped out onto the island, taking stock of my surroundings again.

Evil gash looking portal was gone. The wytchfire tongue didn’t kiss anything on this side of the portal, and every bit of zombie was dead, or dead again? Maybe double dead, that works. Mental exhaustion washed through me as my earth sorcery went to work, tilling the soil to erase the evidence of the fight and bury the remnants of the Horde. Internally, I felt happy as I washed away my tiredness with flesh sorcery but I’m sure the stank from that many risen dead would never leave my nose. The next hour was spent finishing the cleanup, fixing the damage to alder-Yggdrasil-thicket and then hauling my butt back to the beach.

Upon arrival, I found that considerable ground had been covered in regards to the fortification of the beach. The walls were freaking huge and that pylon was just peeking over the tops of the walls. Not really wanting to answer questions that I knew Kraken already had coming, I packaged up a copy of my memories from the past couple hours and shot it to him while I cleaned myself off and hopped into a bed molded out of sand. A quick touch of flesh sorcery put me into a condensed sleep and I was out.

Three hours of shuteye brought me back to full wakefulness, bright eyed and bushy tailed, can’t really tell since I haven’t had coffee in who knows how long. I substitute the morning rush of caffeine with flesh sorcery but it’s not the same, definitely not the same. Although, I’m pretty sure that I didn’t fall asleep in what looks to be the Amazon rainforest. And I definitely didn’t go to sleep naked.

*******

Argentia La’febre was bored. Living for a few thousand years is great but the simple fact is, it’s not really living when you’re undead. The spun tale sounded so glorious, illustrious, just out of reach of where children’s stories tried to take you. Eternal life, no pain, not having to worry about gods in control of your fate when even Death spits you back out. What they didn’t tell her is that the undead don’t have sex either, and by all the powers that be did she miss sex. It was more out of nostalgia that she kept her form young-ish, looking relatively new through advanced necromancy and body stealing rituals, but it was still dead. And then just to shove the stake in a bit more, that evil little twist in the heart, the Lords of Bones and Shadows stuck her on this godforsaken mudball.

Standing on the precipice of an enormous ice castle, Argentia looked out over what the previous occupants called, “Antarctica”. A beautiful but abandoned deathtrap where nothing remotely humanoid lived. Endless miles of ice, windswept and lonely, were most of what she could see. The ocean glimmered at the edge of the horizon, the various Auroras crackling every twelve hours or so, allowing her to play.

Using her Grand Mirror as a troop dispensary, she entertained herself by sending small packs of Hungry Ones randomly into the world, watching for as long as the Aurora held out. They never lasted long, especially without the constant cloud cover to block the infernal sun, but at least she got to watch some blood fly. It was only by chance that her portal today chanced upon a strange mana surge near the base in the North. Fortune held her hand, keeping her from a true unmaking as the inner blackness of the Mirror Realm kept an strange explosive from entering through her one-way portal. A bit oblong and around the size of three human skulls squished together, the red and green runes exploded, completely destroying the contained tunnel of the Mirror Realm. When you get to be this old, it takes a lot to scare you, but this was a bit more, it was, unsettling.

Black bones taken from dragons’ thighs formed the side of the Grand Mirror’s frame while well-aged wizard sternums pressed to make a cohesive whole formed the top and bottom. After containing the blast, even the dragon bone was cracked up the side and little flickers of green fire licked at the top-right corner and just wouldn’t go out. She had been ordered to only use the mirror for scrying, but even the Grand Lichs understand boredom . . . she hoped.

*******

Merlin

Stupid boy. Maybe, not really. He didn’t know. Wytchfire had been outlawed in certain kinds of conflicts. The damn flames just don’t go out until there’s nothing left to burn. Earth was still up for grabs and too many players were angling for it, which meant the risk factor was just too damn high. Can’t have anybody else figuring out there’s another sorcerer on the loose, especially one of my blood and that kind power. The witches will want him, the undead are always recruiting, or hungry. The Centauri pissed away their avenues to that kind of power and the freaking Council will have a fit if they find anymore of my offspring.

Time stood still for an eternity, Merlin’s subjective eternity, as he gazed upon the sleeping figure of his distant descendant. “Too strong, too ignorant, and way too out in the open.” With a grunt and a wave of his hand, Merlin’s controlled wave of Chaos washed over the sorcerer, each bit of gear falling off and unmaking itself, folding into small disks each stamped with Merlin’s mark. “At least I redirected the bomb before it went to where it was going to go. Hehehehe, overeager zombie butts. Earth is mine.”