It was stupid of her to think something like this wouldn’t happen.
Marseillan Aureniil was nothing if not adventurous. Ever since she’d been able to fly, it was all the cloud village Mystrah could do to keep her from letting the winds of the Elemental Plane of Air take her away. If the elders had allowed, Mars would have taken to the infinite skies to see the world long before she was ready. Whenever she brought up traveling to her parents, they would shut her down kindly. “Maybe someday,” they would say, yet her tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, and fortieth birthdays all passed without their permission being granted.
As they existed, the rules didn’t make sense to Mars. Under their own decree, no ventanel — air elves — were ever allowed to leave Mystrah or its sister villages in the greater Nation in the Clouds, but the reasoning was stupid, and rooted in something that happened over a thousand years ago. So for many years, Mars came up with more and more reasons why she should be allowed to leave. If I go see the planes, I’ll have more skill and understanding with which to defend Mystrah when I return. If I become lost somehow, my little brothers can pass on the family name. If you were able to leave, then why can’t I?
The last argument was the one Marseillan’s mother heard the most frequently. In her youth, she had been lost on a scouting mission, and returned to Mystrah several years later with an aquinel — a sea elf — attached to her hip; Marseillan’s father. So of course, her daughter would always bring it up. Truthfully, Lanna wouldn’t have minded Mars leaving for a few months, especially if she went to the Plane of Water to understand the aquinel’s culture more. But unlike her daughter, she understood why the elders had certain rules in place, and that there was no hope of changing their minds. So she sided with them. Her daughter could still be happy within the Nation. Alas, as someone who did get their chance outside the roaring walls of wind, Lanna didn’t account for just how badly the itch to leave would overtake her firstborn.
On her fiftieth, Marseillan shot through those solid walls of wind like an arrow, and with nothing but a longbow and quiver at her side, the young woman set sail for the Plane of Water.
Mars made it as far as the Everfrost, a sprawling tundra that bridges the gap between Air and Water, before running into more trouble than she bargained for. One night as the elf sipped water from the crystal pool of a frozen glade, she heard heavy footsteps approaching her camp. She unfurled her wings to take off, but before she could, a wave of snow from the banks she was hiding behind sprayed out at her. Flecks of the frozen, ice-blue dirt that sat beneath the snow raked across her pale skin, and it was all Mars could do to keep her eyes open in order to see her assailant. In the place of the snow bank was a massive frost giant, who dragged behind him a massive club made of solid ice. The giant hefted the weapon over his shoulder, and slammed it down towards Mars. The air elf had trained to be light on her feet, and managed to mitigate the damage; the club clipped her left wing, but not so severely that she couldn’t fly. Before she could react, however, the giant was on top of her.
“INTRUDER!” he yelled in the giant tongue, of which Mars knew a few words. What the hell did I intrude on, she thought. As the elf attempted to get an idea of her predicament, she was forced to the ground, and the giant planted a firm, massive hand on her arm, pinning her. As he wound up a blow with his other fist, having now dropped the club, Mars’ hand found her quiver. From it she deftly picked an arrow with a strong shaft, and stabbed it into the giant’s neck. As he screamed out in pain, Mars could tell it wasn’t going to be enough to kill him, the giant’s skin was too thick. However, she had trained to be a ranger, and as such was resourceful. As she backed up in the snow, she dug her gloved fingers down, and using some magical heat from her hands, pulled up a fog cloud that grew to surround the fighters.
Now obscured, Mars picked up her bow and quiver, and took eight paces back, which she quickly discovered was one too many. Marseillan felt her leather boot sink into the crystal water, and she could sense the water begin to ripple around her. A chill suddenly filled her veins, as if the water she’d drank from the pool was freezing her from the inside.
“Where are you, nel…” the giant growled. He swung a meaty hand around in the fog, and managed to clear enough of it to get a good look at Marseillan with one foot in the pool, and whose silver eyes seemed to be looking for his weak spots. The giant snarled, and leapt once again at the elf. She took a few more steps back, not wanting to risk unfurling her wings completely, and allowed the giant to follow her deeper into the water. However, as she took the final step out of his range, Marseillan lost her footing, and began to plummet into the pool, which was much deeper than she had expected. Furious, the giant followed, determined to rip her out of the sacred spot. With that, the two people fell completely into the pool.
Mars sunk ten, twenty, thirty feet into the water, which once she was fully submerged, felt much warmer on her skin than she’d have thought. Still cool to the touch, but not at all becoming of the frigid temperatures of the Everfrost. The giant was above her, so she had to strain her neck to see around him. The area around her was a dull cornflower blue, and the surface of the pool, now motionless, was a strange, flat disk in the air, which the space continued past, both around and above. As she saw the panicked look on the giant’s face, Marseillan flashed back to lessons she had been taught as a child. No young person living on the Elemental Planes was unfamiliar with portals to other lands that disguised themselves as pools, and she now knew what it felt like to fall in one.
The elf opened her lips to make a witty complaint to herself, and the viscous liquid of the place rushed to fill her mouth. Suddenly, Mars could feel the energy around her begin to shift, and channels of the strange, astral air around her connected the pool with places she couldn’t see. Without thinking of the frost giant for a moment, she twisted her back to see if she could find where those channels were connecting her to. For miles and miles around her in the blue-violet space, Mars saw countless ley lines forming, coalescing into shapes beyond her comprehension. As they triangulated, a rip opened up in the space, opposite the Everfrost portal, and the channels of energy were all drawn to it, creating a vortex that began sucking in — or perhaps pushing out — Mars and the giant. Through the tear, Marseillan felt a slightly warmer gale of wind, and saw a burst of orange and pink light, a sunset unlike one she had ever been able to see on the Plane of Air.
As the vortex drew her close to the exit portal, Mars waited in anticipation of the new world she was being drawn to. Just at the precipice of the rift, the elf felt a massive jolt of pain shoot through her spine as she was sent rocketing through the crack in space. The frost giant had slammed his club into the small of her back, just before tumbling through the portal after her. She would have screamed, but the dull green grass and rolling pastures she saw spread out around her left her too stunned to react.
As they fell, two shadows on a picture-perfect backdrop, the people watching them from below sat stunned. The air had suddenly become tense, and palpable, a feeling which didn’t leave once the rift above them eventually closed. In the fraction of a moment while the giant and the angel were approaching the ground, Eden felt the hair on his forearms stand on end. The angel was perfectly positioned below the giant, and for some reason, she wouldn’t fly out of the way. With how high they were falling from, and the size of the man, she would easily be crushed. He couldn’t let anything bad happen to her.
Only partially conscious of what he was doing, Eden raised both of his arms up, and pointed them at a spot in the air around thirty feet above the gravel, just below the two people in freefall. In that split second, Eden could feel tempestuous power build up inside him, and the wind picked up around his feet. In the moment just before the woman reached the spot he was focusing on, Eden closed his eyes, and put faith in the wind to guide his movements. Just as she was thirty feet away from hitting the ground, Eden’s outstretched limbs shot to the right, like a conductor commanding their orchestra. Following his movements to a tee, a zephyr formed and caught beneath the angel’s wings, and carried her safely a dozen feet away. It wasn’t the smoothest landing, as she skidded several more feet once she hit the ground; the zephyr was strong enough to push her, but not to reverse the effects of gravity.
As Eden opened his eyes again to see the success of his work, he flinched as a deafening boom echoed through the town, like the slow, casual ripples of thunder after a lightning strike. A quiet came over the group of disparate people, five of which had, for the moment, forgotten about their conflict. They all looked to each other in turn, total strangers placed in this tiny town by some strange mixture of their own actions and a touch of fate. Elias and Kishori had known each other for the better part of a month, and Seneca and Eden had been loose partners for a tenday, but any other pair of them had really only just met. They had no reason not to run away from the giant, to call out for better help, or simply to leave entirely.
Despite this, when the angel cried out in pain, feeling for the first time the damage dealt to her spine, Pax and Kishori both ran towards her. Meanwhile, Elias watched the giant slowly rise, looked back to the rest of the town where they had come from, and thought about all the people there that this giant could hurt; stalwartly, he secured his shield to his left arm, unlatched his blade’s scabbard from his belt, and taking a moment to rest his thumb on the pommel, unsheathed the sword, letting the scabbard fall to the ground.
Seneca looked on as the trio completely forgot about her and Eden. “Come on, E, let’s go.” As she glanced over to her partner, she saw a determined look in his stormy eyes, and sparks forming at the tips of his fingers. “What are you doing?”
Eden glanced at the half-elf. “We can help…”
Seneca sighed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She readied her new blades.
Ki began to help the angel off the ground. “Are you okay? Who are you? Where did you come from?”
“Kishori, calm down,” Pax said. “Let’s not overwhelm things. Where are you hurting, ma’am?”
The man’s presence was overwhelmingly calm, and just standing near him helped Mars forget a little about the pain. “Ah… fucker hit me in the spine with that thing,” she said, pointing weakly to the ice club, which the giant was using to brace himself as he stood. As she spoke, Mars tried to flex her wings a little, eliciting another shock of hurt. “Right in between my wings.”
Pax and Ki each nodded, and Kishori began muttering an incantation, causing her palm to glow with a radiant white energy. “If something’s broken, I won’t be able to mend it easily, but I can at least mitigate the pain. May I place my hand on your back?”
Mars nodded weakly. She could barely stand, and couldn’t feel her wings, but the woman’s palm on her back soothed her. As Kishori held Mars up, Pax nodded to them, and turned to face the giant.
The human looked down to the elf. She had never seen someone with wings before, and it was a sight to behold. Mars had beautiful light brown hair with occasional streaks of blonde, which was perfectly wavy. Her wings were the same color, with what Ki guessed was around a fifteen-foot wingspan. Her eyes were a beautiful, layered silver, which shone despite the circumstances. “What’s your name, beautiful?” Kishori asked with a wink.
“It’s Marseillan. Mars… Can they really kill a giant?”
“Let’s hope so,” Kishori said, not sounding too sure of herself.
As they spoke, Elias slowly approached the giant. No longer leaning on the ice club for support, the giant stood nearly two dozen feet tall, far higher than any of the surrounding buildings. He sneered at the young knight, and lifted the club off the ground. The giant said something in his native language that Elias couldn’t understand, and with speed that he hadn’t anticipated, lifted his club and swung overhead at Elias. There wasn’t enough time to dodge, so the knight brought up his shield and braced.
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Elias immediately regretted not trying to get out of the way; the shield was heavily dented with the powerful blow, and he felt his arm buckle under the weight of the attack. He managed to stay standing, but Elias didn’t think he could absorb another blow like that to his shield arm. The man grimaced, and tightened his grip on his sword. He had sparred plenty with his siblings and cousins growing up, but as Elias felt his sword arm tremble, he was forced to remind himself that he’d only ever been in a couple real fights before, none of which were against real people, much less giants.
“Hey, asshole!” Elias heard someone shout behind him. It was the blade thief, who held both of the pilfered swords in a single hand, while her other hand was tucked into a hidden fold in her cloak. In a flash, she ripped out her hand, hurling a dagger at the giant that caught him just below the collarbone. It didn’t seem to dig too deep, but she had made herself enough of a distraction to give Elias the courage to shove his own blade forward. The knight sunk the sword deep into the giant’s gut, so deep that he had a hard time ripping it free. As he tried to wrench the longsword out of the giant, he inadvertently pulled himself towards the giant, who grunted and batted Elias away with the back of his hand.
As Elias hit the ground, he felt pain on each side of his body; the right from the giant’s substantial slap, and the left from colliding with the gravel without being able to break his fall. He shook it off, and backed up a few feet to unclasp his shield; he would need both arms free to use his other weapon. As he prepped, Elias watched as Pax and the thief approached, and the thief’s accomplice began to charge up some sort of arcane, electric energy around him.
Eden, for his part, had no clue what he was doing. He had only woken up a week ago, and since then, most of the magic he had performed was accidental, or manifestations of things he wanted to happen, but didn’t think he could actually do. That gale he summoned for the angel was the first intentional “spell” he had cast, if that’s even what it was. Well, here's hoping we can get two in a row! As he concentrated, Eden squinted his eyes shut again, and reached into the energy inside him. I can do this, I can do this…
Slowly, the sparks that had been forming around the man’s fingers spread to his forearms, his triceps, and finally his shoulders. Eden raised up his arms, and paying careful attention to his stance, pointed his left arm at the frost giant, holding the palm of his hand open to the sky above, while the right arm was bent and pulled back, as if he was about to shot put a bolt of lightning at this giant. After releasing a breath, he opened his eyes, stared straight at the giant, and thrust his right hand forward. Instead of shooting out, however, the static refused to leave Eden’s arms. “Alright, fine… I’ll bring it myself.”
Eden approached the giant, sidling up beside Seneca and the golden-eyed boy; the two of them had been getting closer to it slowly, occasionally jumping out of the way of clearly telegraphed attacks. “Sen- I mean S, what’s the plan?”
“Ugh, must I do everything?” she asked rhetorically while weighing the swords in her hands. They were fairly high quality, especially coming from a smith that Sen figured didn’t have a huge market for weaponry. The cutlasses had a slight curve to them, evocative of the blades she had practiced with at sea. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Eden’s crackling hands. “Well, since you were the one who wanted to stay, why don’t you wait for a good opening, and then… I dunno, shock him as hard as you can.”
Eden nodded, and was about to respond when the golden-eyed boy beat him to the punch. “Sounds good!” With zero hesitation, the man who had just been dodging around the giant leapt at him, unleashing a flurry of unarmed attacks on the giant. When Eden glanced at Seneca, he saw her sneer at the man, and knew immediately what was about to happen. He hadn’t known the half-elf for long, but one look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know about what kind of person she was; she was not about to let this random man best her.
So, Seneca jumped into the fray. Her fighting style was just as scrappy as the monk’s, but more cutthroat. She swept her blades left and right across the giant’s legs and torso over and over as she danced around the creature, occasionally using his immense size against him, as she would duck under the giant’s legs, or contort her own torso to dodge his meaty punches. The monk, for his own part, did much the same, although he carried no weapons. Eden could see that his fists emanated a soft glow, which was becoming more clear as the sun dipped lower in the sky. While Eden’s two more dexterous allies bounced around the frost giant, he saw the knight approach again, now wielding a fancy-looking glaive, the socket-shaft of which was decorated with silver filigree. There was a turquoise and lilac-colored ribbon attached to the shaft that twisted in the wind. Looking more solid than he had a few moments ago, the knight didn’t slow his pace as he approached the giant. As Pax and Seneca each took a step back, Elias swept the glaive over his head, aiming straight for the giant’s chest. As the giant managed to lift his club in time to parry, Eden spotted the glaive get wedged thoroughly in the ice, sending cracks across the club’s surface like a web. The knight had managed to catch the giant, if only for a moment; it was the chance Eden needed.
Alright, I really need it this time, Eden thought. As if something had heard him, the sparks returned quickly to Eden’s grasp, and dust around his feet began to stir as the wind picked up. Without thinking about it too hard, Eden jumped at the giant, placing each of his finger tips against its massive belly. With a shout, Eden released the energy directly into the creature, eliciting a deafening scream from him.
Forgetting about the club for a moment, the giant slammed his free fist onto Eden, like someone swatting at a mosquito without a moment’s hesitation. And like the mosquito, Eden was not quick enough to dodge, and hardly felt the blue hand clock his head and shoulder all at once.
“Eden!” Seneca screamed, as she saw her friend slump to the ground unceremoniously. She flipped the two cutlasses in her hands, and attempted to stab the giant with both at once. Using the surplus of rage that the sorcerer’s shock provoked, the giant ripped the club free from the glaive’s influence, and ran it across the rogue’s side as the tips of her blades just barely pierced his thick skin.
Pax managed to jump out of the way of Seneca’s body as it flew through the air towards him, but made a point of laying a hand on her cheek briefly as he dodged. When Sen hit the ground, her side hurt like hell, and half a dozen of her ribs must have been broken, but she still felt okay, a surge of warmth spreading to her body from her face. She looked up at the nark, who had this meritless look of determination on his face. It wasn’t confidence, in fact, he looked scared. It was as if he didn’t think he could win, but wouldn’t allow himself to lose. The man used the back half of his dodge away from Seneca to plant both feet on the wall of a nearby building, just like he had in the alley. Not giving up his momentum, he pushed off the wall to get an extra bit of height, and hopefully hit the giant in the jaw.
With that same speed he used against Seneca, the giant twisted his left arm and grabbed Pax’s whole torso with a single hand. Now that Pax was higher up, the giant lifted him just a bit more, and slammed him into the low roof of the house they’d been fighting outside. Pax’s legs dangled off the roof, and Sen could tell that he was clearly knocked unconscious.
The giant laughed heartily, and looked at Pax, Eden, and Seneca, all beaten, bloodied, and in various states of consciousness. Elias looked on in horror, and took two nervous steps back. In broken common that boomed through the square, the giant spoke. “Heh… Puny humans… No fight giant. Only get blood and broken skull.” The massive being raised his club above his head, and moved to stand over Eden. “Even storm cannot survive cold…”
As the giant brought down the chunk of ice, Sen winced as she heard the loud crack of ice against something solid. But when she flipped over to see what had happened, instead of seeing her friend, bloody and brutally beaten, she saw a circular glyph in the air, a lavender shield that caught the club. Mathematical patterns danced along its edges, and a faint string of translucent, arcane yarn stretched from the shield to the alleyway behind the winged elf and the healer.
Leaning against the crumbling stucco facade of a home, there was a man in black and navy blue robes lined in silver. He had piercing blue eyes that looked colder than the giant’s, and Seneca could see that the woven arcana that was connected to the shield originated from his wrist. With brown skin and dark hair that was styled up, with several locks falling onto his forehead, the man would have been undeniably handsome, if not for a nasty-looking burn scar that covered the entire left side of his face. As Seneca’s mind wandered, she thought that depending on who was looking, the scar would actually either make him far less or far more attractive.
“What is going on in this town…” the man muttered. While his right hand held the shimmering shield above Eden, the man clutched a small object in his left hand, and after channeling arcana into it, projected a ball of shining white light above his palm. Streaks of half a dozen different colors swirled around the ball, until eventually the whole light shone a dangerous red-orange. As the mysterious figure raised his hand, holding the apparent ball of flame closer to his face, he winced, and the mote of energy quickly shifted to a brighter, more acidic orange, which the man then launched at the giant. In midair, the light formed into a true, large globule of acid, which fell and landed squarely on top of the giant's bald head.
He let out another furious roar, and as if picking up a clump of snow to form into a snowball, the giant dug his fingers into the stone wall of the house Pax lay on top of. The giant wound back, and hurled the chunk of wall at the caster without further thought. The wizard attempted to bring back his shield quick enough, but before it returned to him, the wall collided with him, sending him flying further into the alley behind him. If he wasn't hurting before, he certainly was now. Barely awake once more, Abel wondered what he'd gotten himself into, and suspected he wouldn't try getting back up for some time.
The giant huffed, satisfied with the hit, and spoke in his native tongue again. “Alright, it is time for you again, nel… you’ll get your dues for stepping in His portal…” The giant began walking slowly towards Marseillan, dragging the lengthy ice club across the gravel all the way.
The air elf’s eyes widened, and she could feel the human woman’s hand on her back begin to tremble, although she made no attempt to move. She had extended a kindness so quickly, it went against everything that Mars had been told about the Material Plane her whole life. I have to try.
Marseillan stumbled forward, suppressing a belt of pain as she moved away from the healer. Tossed several feet to the side was Mars’ bow, which she scooped up as quickly as possible. The pain in her spine was screaming at her to stop moving, to run back to the healing hand, but Mars didn’t care; she was far too angry at the giant, for every reason. She drew an arrow from the quiver on her belt, and nocked it in her longbow. The agony in her back only served to enhance her concentration, as she thought about the acute, precise ache as an extension and sign of her own precision and desperation. With a small breath out, Mars loosed the arrow and watched it cut through the air and get lodged in the giant’s right eye socket.
Now half-blinded, the giant let out a bone-chilling scream, and sprinted towards the air elf. With the extra distance, Elias unconfidently swung his glaive at the giant’s ankle, and managed to make a significant cut. As the giant started to topple, he maneuvered his left arm to dole out the people’s elbow, and while Mars managed to scramble out of the way in time, the elbow caught on Mars’ bow, wresting it from her clutch and shattering it under his weight.
As the giant began to stand again, Mars stumbled backward, and bumped into the healer. As the elf looked behind her, she saw the human woman steel herself, and raise a dagger. “Don’t worry, Mars,” she said. Kishori traced her fingers across the flat of the blade, and a sheen of slick green liquid formed along it. “I’ve got this.” The frost giant reached towards Ki, and when she extended her arm to stab him with the poisoned dagger, the giant grabbed her wrist and twisted it brutally, eliciting a screech from the girl. The giant lifted up the girl from her snapped appendage, and threw her into a wall without a second thought, instantly knocking her out.
The giant leered at Mars, who without a weapon, simply backed up from the beast of a man. Far on the other side of the neighborhood, Elias trembled in his armor and backed into a building. The giant laughed cruelly. “Well, nel… I will give you the luxury of my name, but nothing else… I can see now… to Forsad the Frigid, you aren’t worth the time it would take to cave in your skull. Instead, live with the pain of being displaced. You deserve it.” With that, Forsad looked in the direction of the rest of town, and grinned toothily. The frost giant picked up a heavy boot, and put foot after foot as he walked across the courtyard.
Mars finally let the blinding, fiery pain take over her body, and shed a few tears. As the giant walked away, however, she felt the wind shift around her. The tempestuous man who had shocked the giant was unconscious, and she had no more energy with which to cast, yet the wind still caught on her wings. The elf looked around, and she could almost see tendrils of the air manifest in the low sunlight of golden hour and swirl around the neighborhood. Eventually, she caught it out of the corner of her eye; atop a low roof, the wind coalesced around the young man with the golden eyes. Whether it was energy of his own, or the air around him that brought him up, Mars watched in awe as the monk stood up.
There was a magnetism to that man. Abel, Seneca, Elias, and Mars all looked up to him in that moment, and even on the brink of death, Eden and Kishori creaked open their eyes to see what he would do. As energy returned, Pax’s sclera and pupils suddenly shone the same color as his irises, for just a moment. Like honey muddled into tea, Pax’s hope was diffused in the square, and while no one else made attempts to move, they knew the fight wasn’t over yet.
“Hey!” Pax shouted.
Forsad turned, and narrowed his eyes at the hopeless human. The blinding sunset was eclipsed by the man’s shadow.
“I’m not done yet.”