The Giants of Shattered Swamp Page 2

  He fired again. There was a slam of force through the fluid. The pistol jumped, and Jason’s hand was empty.

  Shit.

  The dark form of Ghrag stopped, tossed around on the violent bubbles constantly flowing up from below ... then started sinking. Jason felt the claws slide down his armored legs, catching on one boot. He kicked with both feet and the ex-leader of the Nothrix Reapers began slowly descending into the murky, jetting depths...

  Jason looked for his Glock. It was gone.

  Hiss. He took another breath. His senses were full of furious bubbling but Ghrag was sinking away from him, and Jason could breathe.

  Fuck.

  His heart was hammering. His entire body buzzed. His mind was screaming.

  Get back up, he thought, tilting his gaze to the surface while keeping a firm hold of the Spare Air regulator in his teeth. He looked at the bottom of the foam drift. It was a big, dark shape above him, blocking out the light of the sky.

  With one look back down at the roiling depths—Ghrag was gone—Jason started swimming. He tried to navigate the tumbling, bubbling fluid, his body bumping against the foam ceiling, until he found the surface again.

  When his face broke the surface, Jason felt the heavy fear of drowning—closing in around his heart like an iron prison—suddenly fall away. As he felt the spritzing, popping sensations of the fizzy air above the fermentation on his skin, he wanted to smile. He wanted to laugh and cry out as if he'd just won the Olympics!

  Treading bubbling beer, Jason made his way to the foam iceberg again. He saw the larger chunks floating away on the tumbling waves; pieces that had broken off when he and Ghrag had fallen through.

  Then, Jason was tired. Immeasurably, obscenely tired.

  He grabbed onto the side of the drift, dug his fingers in, and looked around.

  It was a bubbling, fermenting beer ocean. He could have never imagined it. The sky was pale yellowish and empty; paler than the canary yellow of Maze World's. All around him as far as he could see was a tossing sea of greenish-brown fermenting beer-stuff, seeming to boil constantly with its own chemical reaction. It was loud and smelled strongly of boiling wort.

  For a moment, Jason thought of taking a piece of foam with him. Maybe it could serve as a focus key to get back here. But then, why would he want a whole world of fermenting beer? Hell—how likely was it that such alien beer would become anything that he'd ever want to drink? He'd taken a few gulps of the stuff, and—

  A cold dagger of fear suddenly pierced Jason's heart. What if the mystery-fluid was poisonous?!

  His face stung in several places. Fuck—that Nothrix bastard had cut him up all over.

  Jason looked down at the thick, bubbling fluid that most of his body was still hanging in, bobbing among the torrential fermentation.

  Is Ghrag really dead? he wondered. He'd blasted him twice with his Glock.

  "Shit!" Jason exclaimed then laughed, barely keeping hold of the Spare Air in his mouth. He was down another Glock 26! His voice sounded strange floating amidst this pungent world of violent bubbling and yeasty air.

  Exhaustion hit Jason like a tidal wave.

  He hadn't slept in ... how long?! At least two days now? He had to get back. Shit—his friends were still back at the Market! They had no way to get home without him. And Morgana! She was last seen running away, alone and in a place full of weird entities, freaking out because she thought Jason had been working with a goddamn demon!

  Jason looked up at the foam drift. What would happen when he rifted back to the Market? Was he banned from there now? Would the Phase Wraiths attack him again? What now?

  He had to get back and rift his friends back home.

  This wasn't his fault! Ghrag had attacked him!

  "Don't fight in the Market," he croaked through the regulator, barely hearing his own voice over the din of the fermenting ocean.

  Well, he had to try...

  Jason struggled to crawl his way up the foam drift. It was steep. He was so freaking tired. When he was up high enough to get his OCS above the bubbling sea, Jason leaned against the spongy slope in a way to keep from slipping back into the beer, unlocked the screen, and pulled up the coordinates for their rendezvous point. There wasn't a flat place anywhere. He was tempted to climb up to the top of the iceberg-thing, but if he fell back in again...

  Fuck it.

  Pulling up the bookmark and focusing on the coordinates, Jason oriented himself through space-time, opening a horizontal rift just under his tired body, inside the beer.

  He rifted.

  In a flurry of movement, loud sound, and orange light, Jason fell through the ninth dimension and out onto the sandy ground of Churn in the Market. He landed on his feet, immediately fell down, then was thrown to one side by a heavy wave of beer-fluid that poured through with him from the other world. The torrent of liquid pounded him like a small swimming pool being dumped onto his head. He released his hold on the rift as quickly as he could.

  The fiery orange rift, swirling like a huge hula hoop above him—also acting as a huge faucet pouring beer ocean into the Reality Rifters' rendezvous point—roared and whirled for just an instant more before cutting off the flow to the beer ocean world as it collapsed in onto itself, finally winking out of existence with a pop.

  The wave of fermenting beer-stuff flooded through the alley, spreading into every corner and out into the street full of alien foot traffic. Jason's eyes were immediately relieved by the dim, pink atmosphere, and his wet, naked face quickly became icy.

  With the roar of the portal and the furious bubbling gone, Jason's senses were smothered by the quiet of where he'd landed. He heard many people and non-human entities making noises of surprise and annoyance out in the street past the end of the alley.

  Everything stopped.

  Jason took another hissing breath from his regulator, let it drop from his lips, then he collapsed into the mud of beer mixed with sand.

  "Oh my fucking God..." he muttered, relieved to just be lying there on the ground.

  His body buzzed. His mind was a fog of insanity.

  That ... was freaking crazy.

  He heard strange sounds coming from the area where the alley of their semi-private rendezvous point connected with the main street. There were other creatures there looking on in curiosity, no doubt wondering why a deluge of beer-fluid just flooded into the Market from there. Shit—Jason probably made a hell of a mess on this dry, cold planet. Then again, this was the Market. Weird shit like this probably happened here all the damned time.

  Jason didn't bother looking up. He just closed his eyes and laid in the mud. He needed sleep; needed to rest there just ... for a minute...

  "Holy shet! Jason!"

  It was Riley's voice.

  "Jason! Oh my God!"

  That was Morgana.

  Footsteps quickly approached. Jason forced his eyes open and struggled to sit up in the sand-muck. God—I must look like shit! he thought.

  Before he managed to sit all the way up, Jason felt strong hands lifting him under his arms. He looked around and saw Riley's concerned bearded face. The cyborg's eyes were wide and dark. It was very dim in the Market. Jason's night vision was off. The light of the beer ocean world in his right eye with the image intensifier was still dazzling him, flashing around like pale ghosts across his vision.

  "I'm..." Jason struggled to say. Then, "Beer..."

  "Holy shet!" Riley repeated, rushing around to crouch in front of him. Jason felt the soldier straightening him until Jason leveled off into a lazy sitting position. "Jason! You're alive!"

  Jason looked around. He was suddenly very cold. Of course he was. The Market was very cold and he was soaking wet, covered in beer. Morgana dropped to her knees next to Riley, staring into Jason's face with alarm. She hesitated once, then reached out to grab his shoulders, as if making sure that he was still stable. It was too dark to see her pretty, green eyes...

  "Alive," Jason replied. "God—I'm so freaking tired!"<
br />
  "I heard you were zapped by the Phase Wraiths!" Riley said. "Can you get up? Are you hurt?! Your face is all cut up! Do you need my healing potion?"

  Jason considered it for a moment. Ghrag had sliced him up pretty good, but he didn't feel anything broken. He was just extremely tired, totally fried by freefalling into the fermenting sea, fighting for his life, then now ... very cold.

  "Hurt, yeah, but ... no potion," he replied. "It was Ghrag." He spit out the name.

  "Ghrag Chaukchew?" Riley said. "People said that you were fighting."

  "I ran after..." Jason looked at Morgana again. She was watching, looking him over. A clump of beer foam fell from Jason's arm to the muddy ground. The young woman crossed her arms, hugging the blue overcoat that Jason had given her close to her body. Her long, dark-brown hair flowed out all over. "Morgana, are you okay?" Jason asked, quickly freezing to the bone. "We didn't ... Skinner isn't a demon. We're not—"

  "It's okay," she said, suddenly reaching out and touching Jason's shoulders again. She recoiled as if noticing and afraid that he was cold and soaking wet. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get you..." She trailed off.

  Morgana had run off after realizing that Zayden Skinner was the same creature that she and her rebels had consorted with to kill the necromancer. That was before Jason and the Reality Rifters had visited her world for the golem heart bounty. What had she called Skinner? Xarzeth the Black?

  "Don't worry about it," Riley said. "It's all fine. We're paid up on the gargoyle job and Morgana ... well ... as soon as you were rifted out of here by the Phase Wraiths, we all just focused on finding you."

  Jason saw a big, black form move behind Riley. He looked up with a gasp then saw that it was only Gliath. The tall and sleek leopardwere was watching the conversation with impassive yellowish-green eyes. He was like a shadow in the darkness of the alley. Jason couldn't even tell where his jet-black fur stopped and his armor harness began.

  Reaching down, Jason turned on his night vision. He could hardly find the switch in his numb hand. The dim pink world of Churn was quickly bathed in pale greens. He could see.

  Damn—he really did make a mess. The entire rendezvous point was full of mud and standing pools and bits of beer-stuff as far as he could see between the various tent stalls and merchant structures.

  "What about...?" Jason began, trying to piece together the words he wanted. He was exhausted. "The Phase Wraiths—will they get me again?"

  Riley stood, pulling Jason to his feet. Jason's arms and legs were numb and slow with cold. He shook his head to clear it from the fog building in there. Not only had they been awake for two days or so fighting gargoyles and the necromancer back on u936, but now he'd also survived that crazy ordeal on the beer ocean world.

  When Jason was finally standing straight on shaky legs, Riley smirked.

  "Don't know," the cyborg replied, looking around. "They haven't appeared again yet, right?"

  Jason looked behind him and saw several human mercenaries and strange creatures of varying heights and features looking back at him from the street. Some of them broke away and started to move on.

  "What the hell happened to you?!" Morgana exclaimed, rushing forward and tentatively touching Jason's shoulder again. Her eyes showed fear and bewilderment. Jason loved her face. She was so striking. She looked back and forth between Jason and Riley. "Where'd you go?"

  "Don't fight in the Market," Riley said, scratching his beard.

  "Who's Ghrag?" Morgana added.

  "Ghrag's dead," Jason replied, picking up his Spare Air canister from the ground.

  "For sure this time?" Riley asked.

  Jason tried in vain to brush the mud away from the regulator on top of the canister. "I guess so," he said. "I shot him twice in the middle and he sank down into a beer ocean."

  "Beer ocean?!" Riley asked, cocking his head.

  "Yeah. Freaking crazy. A whole sea of fermenting beer as far as I could see with foam icebergs."

  Jason told them all about it as his face grew colder. By the time he was done, his mouth felt like it was freezing up and he was having a hard time forming words.

  "Fruk..." Riley said. Jason saw that the bag of wyvern eggs was still slung around the cyborg's back. "Shet—you're looking really cold, Jason. You're all wet! We should head back to base before you get hypothermic."

  "Did you try to sell the wyvern eggs?" Jason asked.

  Riley scoffed. "No! We were scrambling to figure out what the fruk happened to you! After we caught up to Morgana and talked to some other planeswalkers around where you got zapped, we came here hoping that you..." He stopped, smiling. "Well, shet. You made it back."

  Jason started shivering. "Well, let's try to find a buyer real quick then get home and get to bed."

  "Nah," Riley replied. "There'll be time for that later. We need to warm you up and get you out of that wet gear. Let's go home."

  "Okay."

  With that, Jason turned his image intensifier off again and reached up with numb fingers to find the 'home key' around his neck. He opened a rift to his garage. The portal appeared with a flutter and a snap. A small, spinning orange fireball quickly unfurled into a roaring and sputtering vertical gateway that cast sparks all around the rendezvous point. When the dry interior of Jason's garage gradually appeared through the smoothing center of the whirling disc, he stepped through, and the others followed.

  After unloading a lot of gear, the Reality Rifters all moved forward with one unified goal:

  Sleep.

  They'd all been awake since before the previous night hunting gargoyles then going off to rescue Morgana from the necromancer's tower.

  Jason first tended to his wounds. The spot where Ghrag had stabbed him through the hole in his armor wasn't as bad as he'd thought. It was nothing that a little time regenerating in the Wilderlands couldn't fix. It was the same with the slices on his face and on his calf. He figured that he'd just clean them off in the shower, then, the next time they visited the dinosaur world, his injuries would heal up just like all of his raptor wounds had. In the meantime, the cuts on Jason's face looked kind of cool.

  After giving Morgana some of his own sweatpants and another t-shirt to sleep in, Jason made his way to the shower. He climbed in—armor and jacket and all—to steadily warm himself and wash all of the fermented beer-stuff off of him and his gear. Fifteen minutes of warm water later (and trying to avoid falling asleep standing up in the shower), Jason left his rinsed off backpack in the tub, hung up his Merc armor and minotaur-hide jacket on the shower curtain rod to dry, dressed himself, and left the bathroom to check on Morgana.

  Riley and Gliath were shut away into his parents' old bedroom. Jason imagined that Riley was already sleeping in his folks' old bed with Gliath in his 'primal form' curled up like a giant black cat, sound asleep nearby. Either that, or the cyborg was splitting up the team's considerable shares of gold from the golem heart job. They'd decided to settle up in the morning.

  He found Morgana dozing on the couch, wearing his clothes and hugging the pillow he'd given her for their power nap the day before.

  Jason stood and tiredly watched her. He smiled. She'd fallen asleep without any covers.

  He walked up as quietly as he could on his exhausted, clumsy feet, gathered up the blanket he'd given her before, and tucked her in. As he did, Morgana opened her eyes and smiled up at him with a sigh.

  Jason felt a warm jolt pass through his chest.

  He kneeled down on the carpet next to her.

  "I'm sorry about almost getting you killed," she said quietly.

  Jason sighed and smiled. "It was my own fault," he said. "Ghrag tricked me into fighting, and we were cast out of the world."

  "That wouldn't have happened if you weren't running after me."

  "Yeah, well," Jason said. He reached up and pushed a lock of dark hair out of her face, which forced him to smile after a tingling sensation flew through him. "Everything turned out okay."

  Morgana smiled and
reached up to touch Jason's face. Her hand was warm. Her touch was like a golden fire on his cheek. Jason felt his heart leap.

  "Thank you, Jason," she said. "Thanks for coming after me."

  He knelt and smiled like a goof, watching Morgana's eyes for a moment before swooning a little from tiredness.

  Jason stood. "Goodnight, Morgana."

  "Goodnight."

  Chapter 2

  Jason woke slowly.

  He immediately realized that his face stung and his muscles were sore all over his body. Sprawled in the covers of his bed—God, so comfortable after not sleeping for so long—he slowly sat up with a groan.

  Right away, just like every day of his life before a few weeks ago when he started all of this crazy stuff with the Reality Rifters, he reached for his phone.

  It wasn't there.

  Oh yeah, he thought. It's probably still in my backpack.

  Jason had no need for his phone when he wasn't on Earth of u934. He laughed softly to himself. His room's door was closed, but he could tell that the house was quiet. Before his accidental vacation in the Wilderlands, he'd be tied to his phone every day from the instant he woke up until bed, checking and browsing Facebook, looking up videos on YouTube to watch while on his daily walk, and maybe checking the news. But now, he hardly ever even thought about it.

  Swinging his legs around, he wondered how his Earth friends were doing. How were Amanda and Tom in Portland? God, that seemed like so long ago already. He wondered what Ben was up to with Jason's infinity charger prototype; if his old friend had discounted the business idea and the concept of infinite free energy as just crazy talk, or if Ben was obsessing over the device right now.