“Slow down! . . . . Wait, no, go faster!” “SHIIIIIIIIIT!”

  Kraken’s golem claws skidded down the perilously steep wall. Turns out, it was only one degree away from being a perfectly straight drop to my death. Only the grinding of the claws gouging out wide rivets allowed my heart to not miss too many beats.

  I couldn’t even tell Kraken to be careful at this point. Everything was so white that my depth perception was completely gone. The wall was white. The ice covered tundra below us was white. When I looked out, all I saw was the sun glinting off even more white which then again made everything EVEN MORE WHITE!

  Closing my eyes was almost an afterthought, memories of National Geographic shows reminding me that the sun up here could easily blind if you weren’t careful. Right as I did, Kraken screamed out.

  “LOOK OUT!”

  I just ducked even harder. That warning didn’t mean shit to me cause I literally couldn’t see and we were going down so fast that it was pointless to try and get my bearings in this hellhole of a wasteland. Letting go to shield myself with my arms definitely wasn’t an option either.

  Fear and my butthole puckering tighter than a suburban dog gripping a stolen hotdog from the neighborhood cookout galvanized my sensory-overloaded brain. My Grimoire responded to a terror induced infusion of mana, spitting out a multi-layered ‘Mana-Shield’ spell.

  It was the only thing that saved us.

  Getting knocked off this wall at any point in time would be a brilliant strategy for my opponents seeing as how I was at the mercy of Sir Isaac Newton and his shitty theory of gravity. Well, that and Greenland’s unforgiving surface.

  Ignoring every fiber of my being harkening back to the days of small, stupid monkeys fleeing a hungry predator, I looked straight up.

  Chunks of ice from us still grinding down the wall at a pace akin to a freaking roller coast looked like they were floating as I tried to get a grip on what I was seeing. Long white bones moving in such a way that they reminded me of a terrified spider deceived my perception to the point that I hallucinated a dragon falling after us.

  And yet, that’s precisely what it was. A two headed thing made out of bone so pale that it blurred together with the ice wall of the fortress, the falling ice around it, and the white clouds directly above us.

  I will never admit that I shrieked like a little girl. It was totally and completely a manly holler. Still, without Gungnir, my chances of survival plummeted. Pushing mana as fast as I could into my Grimoire didn’t really make a difference. Inhuman shrieks shattered my ‘Mana-Shield’ and a long barbed spur of bone reached for me.

  Instinct took hold of my fear and stuffed its virulent shrieks down deep in my hindbrain, allowing me to dodge to the left just enough to feel the rush of wind that heralded my death. I let go of Kraken’s golem and jumped just enough so that Kraken continued his wild ride down. Sticking out my arm, I caught the horn of the left head that barely missed me with its serrated teeth.

  “Fuck you!” I screamed, holding on tight with both hands, latching my legs around the spine. I shuffled to my right so that the right head couldn’t just reach over and snatch me up. I watched down below as Kraken landed heavily, one of the main legs of his golem snapping off but mostly okay. The myriad cracks faded away fairly quickly.

  [GET OFF THAT THING!]

  The beast beneath me bucked and twisted upwards, pulling against gravity so it wouldn’t meet the same fate that Kraken almost did. Contorting its body as it attempted to avoid becoming a pancake, I got a good look at my angry steed. Two heads attached to fifteen foot long necks. The right head looks like a snake with a crown of spikes pointing back to protect the neck joint. The left head, the one I was hanging onto for dear life, was a wide tiger skull with bull-like horns that had wicked curves like a classic demon. A set of six wings erratically flapped behind me, looking more like spider’s limbs rather than functioning wings. Streaks of black energy connected the wings creating a weblike film to magically catch the air.

  Casting a sizable chunk of mana into Svalinn, a jagged blade lightly pulsing with Hunger slid out. I jumped backwards and stabbed the blade into the neck joint of the left head right as bone horror pulled up to avoid smashing into the ground.

  Another pulse of precious mana from me sharpened Svalinn’s temporary blade beyond what I previously thought was possible. I didn’t get to shield my ears in time as the demon shrieked, rupturing my ear drums. The mana covered blade tore through, almost severing the neck. The momentum of the beast trying to pull out of its dive flung me to the right and then left. Kicking my feet, I pulled even harder to the left.

  That last yank ripped Svalinn’s blade through the wing joint. A keening wail of pain battered my ear drum but it didn’t stop me from hearing a rapidly spinning WHUMPF WHUMPF WHUMPF. Instinct even harder to the left again just before an ax longer than a pickup truck tore through the bone horror. The twirling handle glanced off my back, sending me even faster into the ground.

  My dragon-ized body with my overly runed armor withstood the impact, but enough was broken that I couldn’t feel anything other than white hot pain radiating from the entirety of my spine.

  “Fuck!” I spat, spitting up blood and shattered teeth. Coughing up more blood wrought a kind of agony I had never felt before. I couldn’t see anything but empty white tundra from where I lay. I hated how my tongue could greet the air without teeth getting in the way. There shouldn’t be holes there. Mustering all of my strength, I flipped my head to see my death heading straight for me.

  Eyes whiter than snow sat in the sunken head of the undead Jotun stalking towards me. Dreadlocks swung about his head, bones and skins woven through them. At least I couldn’t smell him yet, the wind picking up fiercely behind me. His casual walk didn’t fool me. Its legs were so long that it was eating up the distance without even trying. A weave of bones and sinew clanked against a loose shawl of shitty armor, tatters of chainmail from a bygone age.

  “Fuck!” I coughed, feeling around with a limp hand to prop myself up. Mama didn’t raise no bitch. I was going to greet this fucker in as upright a position as I could manage.

  Spot saved me from doing so on my knees, like an actual bitch.

  I had never been so happy to be proven wrong. An unearthly howl mixed with a hellishly angry roar startled the Jotun. It’s like Spot couldn’t decide which part of his heritage to call upon as his battle cry and a mix of both just poured out in his absolute rage.

  Giants fought in full view of me, Spot at his largest, twice the length and height of a city bus frothing with flaming spit and barks that spat shockwaves of fire and force. Each one a shotgun blast powerful enough to put a tank to shame. The Jotun didn’t stand a chance as it got caught from the side, stumbling off balance.

  My heart sang with pride and joy as Acantha peppered the Jotun with her own considerable blasts of fire, each one a different color. The green fire clung to the burning garments, dripping down like flaming oil. Purple flames kept cropping up and dying out before exploding forth again with even greater fervor.

  “This is for you, master of my master.”

  A soft furry hand covered in gore carefully pulled me onto my side and exposed my neckline. I looked up to see the weary face of Versonae pushing her mini Flesh golem to my upper chest.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  The dull gray and green of its skin spread out against my own before several dozen tendrils began piercing inwards. I was in too much pain already to register what should’ve been exquisite agony before the Flesh Golem temporarily severed me from my senses. I reached my hand around, gripping Versonae and looking around.

  “Kraken!?” I gasped, forcing my lungs to work. Another tendril branched off to deal with pieces of bone poking through my diaphragm. “We have to get to Kraken!”

  My body seized as it struggled to cough up more blood clogging my windpipe. More tendrils branched out to soothe my nervous system and even more to reroute the offending liquid. Acantha gently laid me back down.

  “Wait!” I gasped. “No! Need to-”

  She reappeared five seconds later with my own Flesh Golem that had fallen off during my wild ride.

  “Stop fighting me, master of my master.” Her soft voice held a frustrated growl. Turning me over, she placed the second golem to my lower back. “Your legs shouldn’t be facing that way.”

  The neural inhibitors of my golem bucked as it suppressed an intense bout of nausea. Biting my tongue was all I could really do.

  “We gotta go!” Kraken’s much dimmer combat golem scooped me and Versonae up, depositing us on his back. “Keep him steady, we’ll need him in a few.”

  “FUCK ME! HELP SPOT!” Sputtering with all futility did not help me in any way as I watched my dog grapple with the Jotun. Acantha was really his saving grace, her lancing jets of unholy fire giving Spot room to breathe. At least the giant hadn’t gotten ahold of its axe yet. My dog’s jaws were latched around the Jotun’s shoulder, flaming drool sizzling and burning at the frozen skin. I could hear it as the wind died down. Spot’s front legs scrabbled against the tattered armor, preventing the Jotun’s arms from getting a good purchase on my dog.

  Kraken let out a snarl unbecoming of his usual character. “This thing is almost out of power!” He cursed. “Over half of it went into rebuilding itself after that fall!”

  Versonae seemed to fight with herself for a few moments. Reaching into a pouch behind her back, she pulled out a sunstone brick. “Here, Reeanth said Johnny had stolen a few of these sometime ago. Would this help you?”

  Kraken’s golem snatched it up, the arm ingesting it as if it had its own mouth. “Perfect! Let me reconfigure just a bit, scale down on the extra armor, reorder the-”

  “How is this helping?” With Versonae holding me still and shielding me from stray fragments of ice fire landing all around us like some usual Tuesday night in the Middle East, I barely heard her words over the impacts.

  “Just fucking fire already, you miserable fish.”

  The golems form didn’t stop reshaping itself but its head did turn to shake in my direction.

  “Arcane reconfiguration is no joke! You try downsizing without sacrificing too much WHILE BUILDING A SOLAR CANNON!”

  Motherfucker didn’t even give me time to properly rasp a retort.

  Kraken’s sunstone golem shrank a foot in height and one of its arms molded like liquid metal into a cannon stabilized by two thin protrusions sticking into the ground. Another arm reached around and gripped the sidebar to aim.

  Versonae covered most of me with her body as the most science fiction lookin’ laser propelled three quarters of the entire cannon arm at the rampaging giants. The wickedly mystical chunk of sunstone barely missed Spot’s skull, ripping through his floppy ear but landing mostly inside the Jotun’s chest.

  “Just wait . . .”

  Some feeling started to return to my toes just as Versonae got up in an awkward crouch to drag me behind Kraken. I kept scrabbling to the right so I could see my best friend doggedly ripping at the Jotun’s shoulder so it couldn’t use its other hand to scrape the offending spike from its upper chest. Kraken’s golem shrank yet again into a four legged configuration with a tail sporting a set of gripping claws at the end. Both Versonae and Kraken hoisted me on the golem’s back.

  “Wait, no! Turn back! Help Spot, damnit!”

  Versonae shook her head at me, some of her own blood from a gash in her arm flicking across my own tattered armor. “Where giants fight, cubs get stepped on.”

  “What she said.” Kraken’s agreement didn’t forestall his usual explanations of whatever actions he’d taken. “The sunstone spike is releasing its energy in pulses that grow in intensity until the Jotun can barely move.”

  Kraken looked to our left as Versonae cursed. “Shit.”

  “Welp, time to go.”

  Being too weak to protest unfortunately did not mean that I couldn’t feel my body being indelicately hauled on top of a rock solid golem and jostled like a coked-up racehorse as Kraken beat feet. The awkward gallop did allow me to see the cause for concern, my very own fan club coming my way.

  Something finally connected in my spine, yanking all the fragments back together, reconnecting that useful bundle of nerves. My breath caught in my chest before I regained control of the flesh golem.

  “FUCK! RUN FASTER!”

  Versonae smacked me across the face. “Mana shield, now! Put one up!”

  Arguing was pointless. Obedience is better. Obedience is the pathway to living just a little bit longer.

  Damn. I sound like somebody’s bitch.

  Yet my thoughts didn’t keep me from following through on what was a solid recommendation. Living past today is definitely on my to do list.

  Overlapping hexagonal ‘Mana-Shields’ sprang to life just in time to catch three globs of acid. Somehow, I had hung onto my Grimoire. My magic book sat in my palm, now currently the size of one of those travel New Testament books churches used to hand out. Tiny little thing. Gotta give Cassandra props. The work she made me put in back at New Richmond really let me pull some cool stuff out on the fly.

  I could still hear her voice ringing in my head. Shields are key because wizards are weak.

  What a douche.

  I mean, she ain’t wrong but . . . damn . . . her training methods bordered on the side of cruel and unusual punishment. That, and my three days of fugue-state meditation training down in the tunnels. Plenty of time for me to scald my reflexes into containing the instinctive ability to throw up ‘Mana-Shields’.

  “Stop GRIPING AND PUT UP MORE SHIELDS!”

  Kraken’s roar snapped me out of the blood loss induced hysteria sending my brain off into pointless little daydreams as a horde of murderously hungry corpses stumbled and skidded across the ice. They were far from normal zombies, the slavering undead plaguing popular television tropes that lacked the ability to walk with any kind of coordination. These were gnarled abominations, frostbitten amalgamations of corpses shaped into hideous caricatures of demented monsters.

  I put up more shields. And well before they melted underneath the onslaught of spewed acid or hurled bone weapons, I made even more.

  Minutes ticked by as Kraken dragged Versonae and myself around the fortress to get away from the Jotun who was still fighting to the bitter, inevitable end.

  “DUCK!”

  A furry hand grabbed me by the neck, yanking me down just as another shield came alive, catching three bolts of acid and a weather-bitten club. The churning skies of blue and gray instantly changed to the black of a darkened tunnel and I saw the mouth of the tunnel guarded by five sunstone golems race past me. Being carried backwards by my spirit familiar on a very uncomfortable golem is like riding the world’s worst reverse roller coaster.

  Painful. And nauseating.

  “Your legs better be working!”

  Versonae hauled me up by my shoulder, gave a rather manly grunt, then tossed me up and over the odd stillness of several lines of my golems at the ready. The gore covered forms of Reeanth and Johnny caught me.

  “Get him down those stairs!” A dark form with startlingly light hair landed in front of my golems. Her helmet was bigger than I remembered.

  “Is that Judy?” I mumbled, trying to keep myself from passing out.

  Her hulking revenants marched in unison just as something oddly warm and clammy covered my face.

  “I gotcha boss. Hold on. You got a lot of work ahead of you.”

  Darkness took hold as I was half carried, half dragged down a wide flight of stairs.

  Only I could hear myself cursing. “Assholes.”