Giants

Giants. Throughout history, we’ve known they existed. The ancient Greeks, the Vikings, heck, even the English knew they existed. Yet somehow by the time our generation came around, giants were widely regarded as nothing more than myths. Mere folktales meant to keep kids in their beds at night. Maybe that’s why we were so surprised when the Giants decided to pay us a visit.

Fort Heimdall rang with alarm klaxons. Named after the ancient Norse watchman-god, the fort was positioned directly beneath one of the largest rifts in the world... and one of the Giants’ favorite emergence points.

Eyes still blurry from sleep, I strapped on my armor and grabbed my axe, dashing to the command room. It took a while to find; all of Fort Heimdall’s passages look identical, and my mind was still wringing the sleep from its folds.

“What’s the situation?” I asked, as I burst into the bridge. Red lights flared, and various screens flashed images of the incoming threat.

“Beanstalk class.” Josie said, her synthetic voice ringing in my armor’s helmet. “Around 100 miles out.”

My fingers twitched. Beanstalk classes were the worst. You had to scrub every little bit of your armor afterwords to make sure they hadn’t gotten any of their nasty little seeds in there.

“Any goblins with it?” Goblins usually loved following a Beanstalk class around. The thing’s generation of vegetation provided them with an endless food supply.

“None that we can see. The thing’s moss has gotten into most of our sensors. Our readings are indistinct.”

Moss in the sensors? That didn’t happen. Giants didn’t go near the sensors; they’re made to emit a nearly inaudible frequency of sound that drives the things nuts and keeps them away. We’d do the same thing for the main gates, but they seem too determined to get to the surface for that to work.

Something was very wrong.

“Where’s the squad departing from?” I knew this was bad. But that’s my job. That’s every Jack’s job.

“Docking bay number three.” Josie replied, popping a map into my vision. “Goose leaves in five minutes.”

I broke into a run, my metallic footsteps echoing through the cold, desolate hallways of Fort Heimdall. By the time I reached the hangar, the Goose’s rotors were already beginning to fire up.

“Niles!” one of the Jacks called, a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard and blue-and-red armor that designated him as our gunner. The man reached out his hand, and I jumped out to catch it just as the Goose lifted off.

“Glad you could make it.” the man said in a gravelly voice, giving me a playful punch on the arm.

“Thanks, Jones.” I laughed, grinning beneath my helmet. For most of my training, Jeremiah Jones had been my mentor. Since the Giants took my parents, he’d been the only family I’d known.

“Missions just aren’t the same without the youngest Jack ever to live.” Jones pulled his helmet over his face, cocking his X-Bow.

Every hunter needs a good weapon. When the Giants emerged, most of our traditonal weaponry, short of nuclear and atomic bombs, were completely useless against them. It took a while of tinkering, but some genius eventually figured out how to make weapons that are able to unload massive amounts of kinetic energy per strike. Each of these weapons builds up kinetic energy within its central chamber, then unloads it with every strike. They’re unpredictable, though; if you let them charge for too long, they have a tendency to blow up. Like a lot. It hurts. So the trick is to charge for just the right amount of time, then whack the Giant upside the head, then repeat.

“Comin’ up on the giant!” our pilot, a woman with piercing green eyes and a scar running across the bridge of her nose, shouted over the roar of the Goose’s blades.

“What’s the strategy, Jones?” I asked, as my helmet’s com-link let him hear me loud and clear.

“We’ll get it into position and then light it up, burn away its vegetation.” Jones said, fingering his X-Bow’s trigger.

“Yeah?”

“Then we’ll have you take its head off.”

“Sweet. Great plan.”

BOOM.

“We’re hit!” the pilot called, as flames enveloped our rightmost rotor.

“By what?” Jones shouted, working his way to the front of the cargo chamber as the Goose began to tip.

“By that!” I pointed out the open cargo door at the Giant.

A brief word: those who wrote about Giants in the old days tended to romanticize them a bit. They’re less people and more of really, really, really freaking big animals. They’re not intelligent, like us. If they are, then being a Jack would be way more messed up.

Our Giant was a massive quadroped, with huge tusks jutting from its massive head, and eight beady eyes that glinted evily in the darkness of the cavern. Its back was covered in hanging moss, that slithered around as if alive. Goblins scurried around its feet, dozens of little insectoid creatures with armored red shells that made them stupidly hard to kill. With every step it took, the Giant crushed one or two of the Goblins, but the rest didn’t seem to care.

“We’re going down!” Jones shouted, grabbing a pack and tossing it to me. “Everyone grab a chute and jump.” the other Jacks complied, grabbing chutes and throwing themselves out of the Goose. I activated my parachute, just as the aircraft crashed into the ground and exploded, flooding the cavern with fiery light.

A loud scream followed by a crunch from somewhere off to my right. I looked over, and was horrified to see the Giant’s beady eyes right next to me. The thing had an armored arm hanging from its jagged teeth.

CRUD.

A series of resounding blasts erupted from the barrel of Jones’ X-Bow.

“Get ready to get moving, everyone!”

I gripped my axe, flicking the charge switch. Instantly, the weapon began humming, and vibrating in my hands.

It’s hacking time.

The second my feet touched the ground, I unclipped my chute and charged. A few of the Goblins rushed me, mandibles clattering in irritation. Before either of us could take a swing, their chitinous shells shattered, splattering the battleground with green goop.

“Nice shot, Jones!” I called, turning back to see him reloading as smoke poured from the barrel of his X-Bow.

“Don’t mention it, Niles.” he grinned, “alright, Jacks! Let’s get those flamethrowers up and running!”

“We don’t have flamethrowers, sir.” our pilot said, loading a smaller handgun-sized X-Bow. “They went down with the Goose. It’l be impossible to salvage anything, at least not in time.”

Jones swore, pressing his X-Bow’s barrel to the skull of an incoming Goblin and pulling the trigger. “Looks like we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.” he growled. “Jacks, prepare to engage on my command.”

A chorus of humming greeted my ears as the group switched on their weapons. Swords, axes, hammers, and chainflails were shifted to an offensive stance.

“Charge!” Jones shouted. “I’ll give you some cover fire. Go for the beanstalk’s legs!”

Goblin shells exploded around us as we rushed toward the giant, which continued its plodding advance toward fort Heimdall, seemingly oblivious to our presence.

Oblivious, that is, until the hacking started.

I swung my axe, which had been building up energy uninterrupted during the charge, and the Giant bellowed in pain as the blade cut deep into its leathery hide. The vines covering its back began to flail and lash in irritation. A few of them darted down lime verdant snakes, coiling themselves around some of the Jacks and lifting them up toward the Giant’s mouth.

Heck no. I jumped toward the vines, aided in my leap by my power armor. I swung my axe madly, and severed several of the vines. But I couldn’t get them all. A few of the Jacks were still flung into the Giant’s open mouth. We were running out of Jacks.

“We need to retreat!” I called to Jones, but he wasn’t able to hear me. He continued his relentless firing on the Goblins, sending chitin flying with each hit he landed.

“Get back!” I heard our pilot shout. I looked up to see an enormous foot descending toward my head. I scrambled out of the way, almost dropping my axe as the Giant stomped right where my I had been just seconds before. I swiveled, shaken by the tremors caused by the impact, and slashed a wide gash in the leg, aiming for where what we knew of Giant anatomy said the thing’s achilles was.

Success!

“He’s down to three legs!” I shouted over the din as the remaining Jacks continued their assault.

“Good work, Niles.” Jones said. “But I don’t know if that’ll be enough. We’re almost out of Jacks.”

I blocked a strike from an incoming Goblin with the haft of my axe. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

“How about the Jonah Maneuver?”

A long silence from Jones followed closely by “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!?” except there may have been more expletives.

“I’m dead serious, Jones. Jonah may be our only shot at this. You said it yourself, we don’t have enough Jacks left to do this.”

“Who’s going to be willing to do it, then?” Jones demanded.

“I’ll do it.”

A loud boom as Jones launched a small explosive shell into the midst of a Goblin mob. “I promised your parents I’d take care of you, kid. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m not gonna let you do this. I should be the one to die, if anyone else needs to.”

“Nobody else needs to die. Not even me.” I replied.

“How do you figure, considering you’re going to dive into a Giant’s mouth.”

“Who said anything about me going in there?”

I grabbed hold of one of the Giant’s vines and tugged. Sure enough, it coilded itself around my waist, and I was yanked into the air, tugged toward the mouth of the Giant.

It’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine.

The next thing I knew, I was eye to eye with the Giant, an unnerving experience considering that most giants’ eyes are all white.

The thing looked at me almost quizzically, as though it was trying to figure out what sort of desperate straits had driven me to this madness. I was beginning to wonder that myself.

Then with a flick of its vine, it tossed me toward its mouth.

I only had one shot at this.

As I whizzed past the Giant’s massive tusk, I shot out a hand and grabbed it, crying out as the force of my momentum strained my arm. Only my armor kept that arm from tearing clean off. As soon as I steadied myself, I gripped my axe.

“So long, old friend.” I muttered, before chucking the axe straight into the Giant’s mouth.

The Giant began flailing about, trying to shake me free. I gripped its tusk as tight as I possibly could. It bellowed and hollered, eyes filled with mad rage. The Goblins beneath us shrieked as they were crushed underfoot.

The Giant’s stomach made a sound no stomach should ever make. The beast stopped, eyes suddenly wide.

And then it blew up.

A few hours later, I sat in my room, staring out the window at the darkness in the caves beyond. It was still terrifying, knowing that there were things out there, things that wanted to hurt us.

But I wasn’t a kid anymore.

And I had a very literal axe to grind.

“Hey Niles!” I heard Jones call from the doorway. “Dinner’s on! Hawkins made his famous Goblin stew.”

“I’ll be right down.” I replied.

I stepped away from the windowsill. Staring defiantly back a the blackness.

“There’s nothing I can’t handle.” i said, even though I knew nothing could hear me. “Give it your best shot. I guarentee you it won’t work.

“You can’t stop a Jack.”

And then I left, and joined the others for dinner.

Tate Makechnie is a sophomore at ASD. He enjoys slinging spells, pulling swords from stones, and reading.