The Giantslayer
[đ¶ No Time To Die â Billie Eilish.]
THE FROST GIANT, OGBAL EKRON managed to assemble his horde of huge, dumb barbarians to something of a force.
Several of his men were burning piles of human steak, hundreds more flaming in the present, screaming in their hoarse giant voices and seeking the nearest barrels of anything liquid to jump into. But even water could not douse the flames of [Hellfire] Rafel had poured into their camp. And the witches of Eldoria had intentionally armed the arrows of the Archers with deadly spiritflame. It poisoned the blood and turned the skin into fuel for it, so that the fire never ceased to blaze.
The OGBAL of the Nephilims, Ekron, with a loud maleficent voice ordered all his dumbfounded soldiers to a massive gathering about him.
"Oi! Get your shit together, you fecking wankers! Ye run and hide in the face of mere mortals? All these years among frost and bears, and you'd think ye have learned a thing or two about survival. Get yer running arses to me! Leave the burning ones to burn. There is no hope for them in the infernos of the underworld.
But we must rally. We will not show fear in the eyes of these pale cunts! We will fight back and show them the true strength of the Nephilim. Are we descendants of Titans or blue smudges in the snow? TELL ME?!"
Ekron roared.
"DESCENDANTS OF THE TITANS!" came the answering thunder of his fellow giants.
In the circle of their fallen, burned brothers and amongst a camp razed in orange flames, under clouds black as Erebus' cold loins and in whipping hail of frost, and confronted with the drumming booms of an approaching army, the Nephilims stood around their leader and tried their best not to shiver in fear. The eyes of the dark goddess, Magvath, revealed in the eerie firmament above blinked at their plight.
She would pity the blue Giants if their end hadn't already been sealed by the Fates. Magvath was just present to claim the lives offered. It was her valley after all.
"OGBAL!" A Giant smaller than the others stepped out from the massive circle. He greeted Ekron in title as chieftain of the horde. OGBALâmeaning Chief in the native tongue.
"Yes." Ekron regarded the warrior.
"All graces be to ye, OGBAL! But should we not retreat? Avoid this plunder and live to fight another day? The earth and winds are against us. The fecking sky bleeds hail of fire and snow at the same time. We have survived many a century, surely if we bid our time, we canâ"
The speaking Giant was abruptly clubbed in the head. His words died on his lips as the side of his face was smashed in. His tongue was cut cleanly in half by the shock on his own teeth. Fresh red pooled and leaked out his mouth. Fallen to the earth, the smaller Giant lifted up his eyes to see Ekron poised above him, brimming in sulphur and rage, burning tents his backdrop.
Ekron spat on him.
"You will us to retreat? You are a chicken! Not worthy of bearing our name. You are even worse than the mortals."
Ekron lifted his great club in the air again. It was wide as a beam, hollowed out from a Wyrmwood and thicker than a felled pine. The span of it was so great the shadow of it covered all of the beaten Giant's head. Ekron swung mightily, bringing it down with great impact, and the other Giant's head smashed right off his neck.
The sudden decapitation doused the air with blood. Ekron's club rested heavy with gushing blood. Remnants of the cowardly giant's head rained down with the snow as bits of bone and a drizzle of sticky blood. The rest of the horde quickly fell in line.
Lifting his great blue head, adorned in beaded dreadlocks reaching down to his knees, Ekron was a force of nature. A juggernaut carved from ice. He would not retreat.
Never.
Charms of his Dark Sorceress, the one who reanimated the Stag they sent to the puny whore Queen of the mortals, dangled down his great, naked chest. Slabs of rigid blue muscle heaved as he hefted the club up on his shoulders. Spilled blood leaked down the rotund bulb across his mighty shoulders and down his back.
"We shall not retreat," said the OGBAL of the horde simply. "This is no time to die!"
The Nephilims flowed out behind him in thousands at his words. The Eldorian legions were halfway into the misty vale now. Their arrows and blast had taken to the realms of the Dead plenty of his army, but not nearly enough to make him care. Ekron pointed his club straight out towards the thundering, approaching armies. He said to his horde,
"Squash them like the little bugs they are."
"YEEAAAHHHH! RAAAAAARGH!!!" His horde went thrashing among the ruins of their camp and fallen brothers. They rushed out to meet the Eldorians, pounding down the veils.
The innumerable horde of blue Giants and the hundreds of thousands of armored Eldorian, Atlantean, and Rocasian integrated fleet clashed in a devastating pillage of battle. The twang of smashing metal could be heard echoing out from the vale into the frosty deep of the Alps. Blood and several limbs flew high into the black skies.
The snow rained like it had never rained before. The cold froze the blood on torn flesh. The clash of armies was a gory sight. Magvath's watchful crimson eyes up in the dreadful heavens looked upon it and smiled.
Each single Gold Cloak bravely faced off a Giant. It didn't matter his size. Rafel had been right; the snowstorm helped. Most of the Nephilims were to tall and the mist of the vale too thick to see below their knees. Not until the Eldorian soldiers were crawling up their backs and knifing out their insides. It didn't help the barbarian horde that they had no armor on.
Eldorian soldiers were yelling everywhere, locked in gruesome duels in every single corner of the valley with their larger adversaries. Bloodthirst and vengeance shimmered richly in their eyes and the silver of their immaculate chainmail were soon blemished in the spilled blood of giants. The mighty were falling, the instruments of war destroyed. The Legions of the Fae kingdom had marched nearly a month to this godless wasteland of ice. They were damned fucking sure going to get their comeuppance.
Fallen bodies soon dotted the vale. Soldiers stomped on pale flesh and fought on. Rivers of blood turned the snows brown and screams of dying people hit the freezing wind from all corners of the battlefield. Steaming insides, and twisting fresh intestines littered the foggy earth of the valley. In the sunless endless night, swords glimmered black gold in violence.
But Eldorian soldiers were tireless.
Their witches made it so, refueling their limbs with fresh energy and augmenting their own mortal weaknesses with their own [Magical] mana cores. It also helped the legions greatly that fighting on their sides were terrors of unmatched strength. These elite forces of their army took the blue Giants ten heads at a time. They would be the Legends Bards would spin songs about.
There was Yemaya, the majestic brown-skinned goddess. Her ripe bronze flesh glowed with her inner [Divine] aura. Blue tendrils of water magic danced and rippled around her form in her battle armor. She leapt off her riding Lizadron, high into the fog that swept the valley, transforming into a fifty feet shocker of beautiful, ethereal, sea goddess.
She towered over the huge Nephilims. They were ten feet. She was five times that. She was known in this giant form by many names. She was CALYPSO to the Pirate marauders. TEFNUT to the isles who worshipped her. And Yemaya the Magnificent to her Atlanteans. In this colossally epic transfiguration of her, she brightened the entire vale with her shimmery blue water magic. Her aura haloed the earth up to the grim sky.
She rode with her Atlanteans in war. Her silvery trident, the Waverider, in her grasp she took fifty of the blue enemies in one fell swoop.
The Queen of the Eldorians herself tore through the horde majestically on her Griffin. More of the dreaded cosmic flames pulsed in her palms. And she hurled balls of the [Celestial Fire] gravelly at the giants, without remorse. They scampered in fright at her flaming hands.
"Yes! Run, you blue motherfuckers!" Giselle shrieked aloud. Her maniacal stride was back in character. It was almost like an alter ego. Her crazy was deadly.
Rafel's sensual women, CorazĂłn and Aya Naamah rode furiously themselves in thier ivory chariot. They furtively sought out the horde's Dark Sorceress with their eyes.
As expected, the [Blood Witch] was surrounded by a small company of Nephilims who stood to defend her as she reinforced the horde, one small zombie reanimation at a time. The sorceress' evil work demanded focus. Aya Naamah, wielding a tapped version of Rafel's [Shadow] ability, something she had gained off her Lord Master during shared intimacy, she cleared the company of seven feet orcs that surrounded the dark sorceress.
She didn't fight them physically. But she grappled with their shadows. Bending the umbras with her ability and twisting and choking the shadows cast until the giants themselves all suffocated. They landed as one stiff heap to the cold earth. The mist swamped their fallen corpses in seconds.
With her defense gone, the sorceress attempted to escape the battlefield.
Shockingly, she was a Manticore.
A rare breed but not uncommon among Blood Witches.
Like an aggrieved fairy, she tried to scale the valley on her bat wings. But CorazĂłn was ready. Aya Naamah took the reins on the chariot as Cora summoned to her fingertips a shiny [Legendary] lasso. Like a crack of lightning, she whipped the ropes into the air and caught the flying sorceress by her scorpion tail.
Cora dragged her back to earth. She crashed into bloody mud on her lion paws.
"That's too much creatures to be mixed in with one human, don't you agree babe?" Cora hopped off the phaeton with a dark smile. It was directed at the heaving manticore.
Aya chuckled. "I agree. What is she now, a meta hybrid? Is this the price you payed for reassembling corpses into grotesque caricatures of life?"
"Fuck you bitches!" The monster sorceress spat up from the ground into Cora's face.
The silver-haired knight, CorazĂłn in her boyish regale, complete with a red plums shooting out her helmet hissed in the blood witch's face. She was quietly circling her dagger in her grasp, the blade whirling around so fast it couldn't be seen.
"No, bitch!" said Cora. "Fuck you!"
And she plunged her dagger right down the top of the female manticore's head. It sank in to the hilt, breaking out the jaw in the process. Cora mercilessly pulled it out ventrally. The blood witch's head split in two halves, right between the eyes. She fell, dead as a doornail into the coldness.
Cora smiled and turned to Aya. The girls gave each other high-fives.
They together lifted up their eyes to the heat of the battle.
In the front lines, where the hottest charge of war endured, stood there Lord Master. His Grace, the Atlantean King, Israfel BlĂŒdThĂŻrste rose in a mountain of blue Giant corpses. All of them slain by his hand. A hundred thousand and more. Cold sweat settled between Rafel's brow.
He pulled off his winter wolf helmet.
The Nephilims were down to a trickle.
He hadn't even used the [Divine] Resurrection Amulet hot against his breast.
One idiot giant rushed for him. He dodged the swipe of the man's spear and swiftly cut him down at the waist. Then he looked out across the battleground of bloodied entrails. His eyes searched, searched for a particular large entity whose death would bring a final end to the raging battle. It was at this same time that the mighty OGBAL, Ekron lifted his eyes from breaking a Gold Cloak's neck too.
He saw Rafel. Their eyes met. And in a silent language, both men drove through the muck of clashing bodies for each other.
WHOOOOO!!!
Rafel whistled for his black Pegasus. On Agamemnon's strong back, as he rode in the wind to Ekron, he called gravely to his infernal system.
"EQUIP WARHAMMER!"
[Ding!] A flatscreen of notification glowed in his face.
[Andorran Warhammer successfully Equipped!]
[Hammer of Agrippa, the DIVINE Relic of Horror.]
[BATTLESTAR: Gold Knight.]
[DAMAGE: +2 500.]
[ROOT DEITY: Sol.]
[ILL: Yellow Lightning of Paralysis.]
Yemaya's closest lover, her merman Gawain, tried to accost the giant, Ekron. It was a futile attempt.
He had his head bashed in right into another warrior's strong helmet. Metal caved and both skulls squeezed like rubber. He was dead before the goddess could do anything about it. She yelled into the black skies at his fall. Her wail in her giant form shocked the battlefield to stiff quiet.
Auras of blue water magic sloshed around her body as she dwarfed back to normal size. She picked up the fallen Atlantean in her arms and softly stroked his long brown hair. The rest of her harem would not be happy. Gawain was the only male and therefore granted some necessary spice to their lovemaking.
Yemaya's eyes were terrifying as she lifted them up to the giant responsible for her lover's demise. It was war. All men must die, but why hers?
She herself would claim Ekron's head but she knew it was Rafel's prize.
"Make the blue cunt pay!" She screeched up to Rafel as he barreled past her on his Pegasus.
OGBAL Ekron, Chieftain of the Nephilim horde was not sorry for offing the bastard cuck of the water goddess. His concern was for the little Ginger riding on the winged horse for him. A Warhammer shimmered onto the hellion's right hand. And Ekron watched it with a quizzical eye. It was rather mortifying.
He could already tell its [Divine] heritage, even from this distance.
Ekron looked around the battlefield in the two seconds before Rafel reached him. Most of his host were gone: burned, shattered, decimated bits on the misty valley. The ones not dead were in chains, kneeling in their great huge forms in caked mud before Eldorian officers. Almost all the fighting had stopped. All eyes were now locked on him.
On him and the Ginger.
The last fight.
Ekron began to wonder how this came to be. He had severely underestimated the moxie of the Fae legions. Led by a Demon Lord, Ekron should have mitigated his stupidity. But rather than go out like a coward, he sucked in a great lungful of metallic air. He tasted the blood on the arctic winds and raised his mighty battle club.
Rafel's Pegasus was driving furiously for him.
Incoming. . .
Just another second!
SWOOOOP!
Ekron swiped and missed. He already knew it was the only shot he'd ever get. His only chance at a next breath.
Rafel had dove right under his club's great Wyrmwood head, bending so far back on his riding stallion the back of his head touched the steed's pelt. He had lain flat on Agamemnon to avoid the hit. The blunt force of Nephilim superhuman strength would've sent him to the other side of the valley, possibly wounding him terribly.
Yet, Rafel dodged.
Giselle on her end, her flaming fingers of [Cosmic Touch] in a giant's steaming head, saw Rafel's evasion in slow motion. She would clap but for the man's brain literally cooking in her palm. Her hand melted right through his skull.
Rafel was now behind Ekron.
And he was rolling his Warhammer.
He turned it in fast circles in the air, so quickly a gaze couldn't catch where the metal ended and where it begun. Streaks of yellow lightning sparked and licked up his right forearm. His whole body was haloed in the eerie light. The relic of horror was charging, readying for release.
Rafel kept spinning it, until a great whirlwind formed out behind the whirling circle.
It was just as Ekron began to turn to face him.
Rafel was on his flying horse. Agamemnon had paused in the air, midnight wings black as a crow's beak and beast eyes as infernal as its rider's. It beat its wings and floated in the cold wind under the black skies. Ekron's blue eyes widened in his large head and Rafel let the [Divine] weapon loose.
The Warhammer flew straight as a released javelin, covering the distance to Ekron in a millisecond. It rushed out so fast a shockwave eroded the vale from the force. It sank into Ekron's chest on the axe side, sending the fifteen foot Giant staggering to a forced kneel in the brown snows.
Blood poured out of the hole in his chest.
His great warclub crashed heavily to the earth.
Ekron lifted up defeated eyes as Rafel guided his Pegasus to the fallen Chieftain. Rafel slid off the saddle and walked to the man. Even on his knees, Ekron met his eyes squarely. Rafel put up his hand and twisted his axehead in the man's chest. Ekron grunted an spat blood. The gothic metal had struck home: his heart.
The yellow lightning from the Warhammer's intrinsic [Paralysis] ability petrified him to a stone.
Ekron was dying. And he couldn't lift a finger to save himself.
He leaked all over Rafel's silvery battle-sandals.
The redhaired Winter Demon grabbed and raised up his huge blue head by the fat and untamed dreadlocks.
"Bet you didn't see this day coming, huh? When you'd get skewered by a puny mortal, eh?"
Ekron coughed out more blood with a weird laugh. The blood was thick, laced with oozing life.
"âbut you're not a PUNY anything now, are you, Lord BlĂŒdThĂŻrste? It just hit me now you know. Who the fuck among all the Eldorians would risk a journey to the realms of ice and the land of Giants. I'll spare you the thoughtâno one.
You are not an Eldorian. You see, you are not even mortal, Apollyon. That's why you possess such keen stratagems to conquer. It's in your blood, demon. While I didn't see this day coming, I am glad it's you who shall claim the life of OGBAL EKRON. A noble death in battle.
Storytellers shall speak tales of this black night when Giant and man fought. It is an honor, Apollyon to die by your hand. But a greater one even. . .to die by mine."
And before Rafel could lift a finger, Ekron fell forward on the Warhammer. The deadly axehead tore into his failing heart, through palpating red muscle and out his great back. The strength left his broad shoulders and the mighty Nephilim Chieftain hunched forward in death.
He impaled himself on Rafel's weapon.
Suicide.
"Not a honor. A torment," said Rafel numbly. "As you are about to find out soon."
He kicked up the great blue body and pulled out the Andorran Hammer. He looked around at the legions of still standing Eldorians, the smiling Atlanteans with hope in their eyes, the brightened stares on the faces of the Rocasians; one unified Continent. Everywhere on the grim battlefield, it was the look of victory.
A slender peek of sunlight, like a stalk protruding from the dark clouds, slipped out and shone proudly as a golden beam of wispy light.
It highlighted the silver armies of Eldoria. In blood and brawn, they had been tried. The Crusade of Rumbrun was fuck all.
Rafel raised his Warhammer gloriously into the air.
"YAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The Legions cheered.
They had conquered the land of the Giants.