Asmundre mulled over what he had seen in the giant’s village. From outside, it had appeared just like all the other huts. Maybe it had an extra chimney; he hadn’t been paying attention on the way in. A steady clank, clank, clank rang from inside, and the door was thick heavy wood banded in black iron. Yohan shoved at it, then waved Asmundre up to help, and together they pushed it open. Inside - the clank became a deafening gong.

The inside was all one room. At the far end a giant, fur glistening with sweat, hunched over an anvil, hammer in hand. The source of the clanking. Behind him, a forge as tall as the rock that guarded Asmundre’s home stood. High flames rose in it, and the giant spared not a glance for them as Yohan marched confidently across the room.

It was a smithy, and at first, Asmundre wondered what exactly Yohan wanted to show him here. It seemed a primitive way to work metal. The village smith had several machines to do it. No swinging a hammer by hand there. Racks of tools and their finished products lined the room. Bins of metal ore and smelted bars and quenching barrels. And overhead the ceiling was black from soot.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Until the giant noticed them, and let go of his hammer, and the thing continued to beat away at the anvil.

Only then did Asmundre notice the lines that covered every inch of the forge and the anvil and the tools and even the floor. So fine and faint they vanished whenever he didn’t seek them out. They made the lines of power etched into the surface of his ice box back home seem like deep gouges.

“There’s a legend,” Yohan had said. “The Midgard did not always pilot the blood mechs. Long ago, before the wall was built, the Midgard were their mechs. The machines were but extensions of their flesh. They merged with them. Flesh and metal one.”

Asmundre clenched his gauntlet.

“Midgard these day’s anti shit compared to the old times.”

Kitten lurched under him. They continued more or less northward, based on the direction to the wall, and Kathuk said they were at least two days from Bried. That depended on how many Jotnar they ran into. Kathuk had smiled when she said it, but Asmundre didn’t think she was joking. Forest gave way to rolling hills dotted with stands of trees which would be tall if not for the wall rising in the east, and ahead the land sloped downward into a deep valley lost in mist, the tops of massive pines poking up like the quills on a porcupine. Bried was somewhere beyond that, Yohan claimed, and the way up the other side was more treacherous than the way down.

The giant smith had taken the knife he shaped on the anvil and slashed his own forearm with it. A multitude of scars criss crossed there. The blood had flowed down onto the blade and - there had not been lines there. It was still hot. Freshly forged. And yet, the blood flowed into grooves and tracks.

That knife - more sword in his hands - now hung from Asmundre’s belt.

“You still troubled,” Kathuk grumbled.

Asmundre shrugged.

“Just sit back and enjoy the scenery,” Yohan said. As before, he rode at the back.

Asmundre wanted to. But his thoughts could linger only on the smith, and Lillian. Would learning how to work his own blood help him rescue his sister?

“Oh. Kathuk forget.” The giantess fumbled about in a pouch at her hip, and drew out a small velvet bag. It looked small and delicate in her fingers. “Gift. From Kathuk.”

Asmundre took it. Oh, it was a lot heavier than it looked. Something hard and angular shifted in the bag.

“Open it.”

The bag closed with a drawstring. Working his thumb into the knot, Asmundre widened it and let the contents spill into his palm. Inside was a metal cube about the size of two finger joints on a side and covered with fine etchings. The corner stabbed his palm, drawing a small dot of blood, and he almost dropped it.

“Careful,” Kathuk chuckled. “Very sharp.”

“What is it?”

“Blood cube,” Yohan said. He peered over Asmundre’s shoulder. “In Valhalla we use them to test if someone’s got the touch. The inquisitors carry them. Smear your blood on it.”

Asmundre obliged. Even that tiny bead was enough to light up several of the lines.

“Is tool,” Kathuk said. “Tool to teach. Blood control cube. Adz learn forms.”

“I’ve never heard of them being used to teach.” Yohan leaned back again, interest already lost. “But whatever. If it helps you learn blood magic then good. That’s what we need.”

“Teach control,” Kathuk grumbled. “Much power in little cube. Take not many skill to use, many skill to use well, yes? If Azz learn, then Valhalla, yes?”

Asmundre nodded. “That’s the plan.”

The lines faded, the power of that small drop of blood expended. Asmundre turned the cube in his hand, mindful of the sharp corners. The lines continued on all sides, fine, delicate, tracing swirls and patterns of interlocking shapes. How would a cube that lights up help him learn to do what that blacksmith had? This metal already had etchings. And it wasn’t like the cube came with instructions telling him what each pattern did.

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Kitten swayed under him, patterns carved across his hide of interlocking metal scales. Asmundre squinted. If he concentrated - it was subtle. Very faint - but if he concentrated, then he could see that with each step, the etchings on the little Jotnar’s haunches glowed.

He rolled the the cube over into his palm, clenched his teeth, and stabbed the corner down. Blood welled in his palm. The cube soaked it up. All the lines burst alight, the glow chasing itself around the patterns. Asmundre squinted at it. When two bursts met, there was definitely a pattern to the direction they took. Some secret of the magic was locked away there, just out of his reach. He could almost feel it. A tingle…

Yohan slapped him on the shoulder. “Kid, are you listening?”

“Huh?”

“Jotnar,” growled Kathuk.

Asmundre snapped his head up. They were still on the slope, the mist looming before them. Birds dotted the sky above, soaring in lazy circles. And something rising out of the trees. Something huge. No, Kathuk was huge. Kitten was huge. This wasn’t a thing, it was too big to just be a thing. This was an entire place that just happened to have legs. A back like a mountain range with waterfalls made of mist pouring off as it rose, four thick metallic legs, a massive gleaming beak. The mountain snapped off a pine and chewed it, bits of wood raining into the forest below.

Asmundre stood up, balancing capriciously on Kitten’s back.

“What is that thing?”

“Did you listen?” Yohan grumbled. “It’s a Jotnar. A damn big one too.”

“It’s a mountain!”

“Call this one Galkhopikkin. Not largest.”

“There are bigger ones?”

“We don’t fight these ones,” Yohan said. “All the blood mechs in the fleet wouldn’t be enough to take it down. Besides, the bigger ones are usually not interested in climbing over the wall.”

Yeah, because there weren’t enough trees inside, Asmundre thought, the realization like a bitter pill. The more he saw of the world outside the wall the more wrong the old stories seemed. Kitten lumbered onward, down the slope toward the immense creature. “Uh. We’re still heading toward it?”

“Galkhop harmless.” But despite that, Kathuk withdrew a revolver, sized appropriately from her hand, from the bag at her hip. That explained the cartridges on her bandoleer. Asmundre couldn’t imagine what that revolver, large as it was, could do against a mountain.

“Watch the sides,” Yohan said. “There’s other things besides Jotnar in the mist.”

The mist rose around them, first swirling around Kitten’s feet, then lapping at her haunches, and finally swallowing them entire. Great trunks loomed suddenly out of the fog, the world a dozen paces away reduced to a featureless gray wall. Kathuk growled incessantly, a low rumble from deep in her chest. Asmundre wondered if it was some subconscious reaction to fear.

Something crashed in the trees to the right.

“What was that?” Asmundre cried. He couldn’t see a thing.

Kathuk trained her gun on the mist, holding it steady as a rock until a massive metallic leg appeared and swept across their path. Bigger around than Blood Fist was tall, it ended in a wide articulated paw with four massive claws. Galkhop’s foot. If that thing stepped on them, would Asmundre even see it coming? The paw fell with a thump muffled by the mist. A tree creaked, then fell, invisible beyond the gray barrier.

“We’re under it now,” Yohan muttered.

“Yes,” Kathuk said. “Hellions quiet now. Most dangerous part of valley.”

Asmundre held his tongue. An indeterminate amount of time passed during which half visible trees slid past and a deathly silence settled around them. Even Kitten seemed to creak less, to step lighter. It could have been hours, but was probably just minutes that seemed to last forever. Then the land sloped upward. The mist thinned, then parted, the sunlight blinding after that fog, and the crest of a hill waited before them, just ahead.

Asmundre let out a huge sigh. “Glad we’re out of that.” His voice echoed back, louder than he had expected.

Kathuk tensed, and as they crested the hill, Asmundre realized his mistake. They had not left the mist, but merely found an island in the middle of it, a hill in the valley tall enough to rise above it. Kathuk turned and trained the gun behind them, so Asmundre looked.

They had come under the massive Jotnar. The underside formed a sort of mobile cave, deep gloom following beneath the beast wherever it roamed, and dotted across its belly were hanging black shapes with glowing yellow eyes. Several already fell, unfolding into leathery bats, but no bat had a head or claws like that. They appeared tiny at this range, but proved larger than expected as they glided forward. Much, much larger.

A deafening roar made Asmundre flinch. He realized moment’s later that it was Kathuk’s revolver.

“Ha! Ha!” Kathuk roared, smacking Kitten into a run. Now, the mist seemed like the safer place. It waited for them up ahead, promising to conceal their flight from these flying monsters.

Crack, spoke Kathuk’s gun. The first bat dropped from the sky, but now dozens more followed it.

Asmundre clung to kitten’s back as the mist surged up around them. They’d made it - the bats couldn’t possibly find them in this fog. So he thought, until a black shape sprung from the mist, upon them before they could see it, narrowly missing with the long claws on it’s hind feet.

“Grasp strong!” Kathuk barked.

Yeah, no shit.

She fired backward again, but the gun only clicked. Kathuk grunted. “Not reload and ride. You shoot.”

Kathuk pressed the gun into Asmundre’s hands. It was massive and heavy, he could barely hold it up with both hands. He tried to pass it further, to Yohan.

“Don’t look at me,” the ex Midgard said. “I don’t have the touch.” But he did clamber around to put himself between Asmundre and Kathuk, and started pulling cartridges off the giant’s back.

Asmundre examined the weapon. A barb protruded from the handle. Etchings ran from it, meandering like a river, up and around the barrel. Of course, the thing ran on blood.

Yohan grabbed the cylinder and yanked it back, quickly shoving six more cartridges into the chambers. “It’s easy,” he said. “Just point it at what you want to kill and try not to let the recoil knock you off.”

Right. Asmundre raised the weapon. A bat burst from the mist dead behind them, directly in his line of fire, and Asmundre reflexively pulled the trigger. He couldn’t tell if he hit it, though, because the recoil was like getting smacked by a mech. The gun slammed back into his chest, knocking the wind from him.

Another bat appeared. Gasping for air, Asmundre raised the revolver and fired. But this time he was ready.