Paul’s hands dragged along the ground, his legs gripped tightly by a hand large enough to palm an outdoor trashcan. I expected to see blood covering someone in his state but there was none. Casually, his body was lifted up by that humongous hand and the giant gnawed on Paul’s feet.

  After a moment of worrying at them, the tall humanoid screwed its face up with disgust and slammed Paul’s unconscious body into the ground and stomped on him twice. Paul’s lower legs were covered in saliva but I could see that his feet were still there. The giant hadn’t gotten through his skin. We all stood frozen as it lifted up a crudely hacked up tree trunk with one harm and proceeded to vent its anger.

  Elvis reached out to his left and poked my wife’s foot where it floated.

  “Uhm, mam. This uh, uh, reminds me of that giant bug you killed.” He gulped, staring up at the thick browed humanoid with too long of arms licking its lips as it stared at us. He tapped her harder on her foot and she unintentionally floated away a bit.

  It all hit me in less than a second. This wasn’t some dumb beast. Crude furs covered its body. Bright blue ones reminiscent of sashes adorned its neck and shoulders while much thicker brown ones wrapped around its forearms, forehead and thighs as armor. A heavy stone blade with a wicked point hung from a belt woven from rough vines. Ugly skulls that were broken wide open with bits of meat still hanging off of them swung from that same belt. I saw legs that had clearly been pulled off of both monsters and humans strapped to the backside of the giant’s belt. The eyes were deceptively large, overshadowed by the heavy brow. Its feet clearly did not need boots. I could make out the details of the massive calluses from here.

  “Weren’t there two of them?” I muttered, slowly backing up. In my unthinking haste to catch my wife from falling out of the sky, I hadn’t picked up my weapons.

  A dark hand reached up, clasping pulverized rock. Paul’s head barely lifted up.

  “Run!”

  A wide foot slammed back down on top of him, toes grinding down into the earth. The giant snorted, his overly wide mouth grinning with joyous hunger as he leveled his club at us. “Dwerga!”

  His voice was deeper than the engine of an eighteen wheeler but I caught the gist. Especially when he spit out a toothpick that turned out to be a filed down femur. Stepping aside to dodge the calcium-laden loogie, my hands reached back. As expected, I felt the haft of my warhammer land in my palm.

  My wife floated forward a few feet, her hands raised in the air.

  “Stop!” I hissed, freezing in disbelief. “It EATS people! It was just trying to eat PAUL!”

  My whisper-shout pulled her up short but to my wife’s credit, her ethereal blue aura brightened until it was almost solid. She looked like an alien mixed with an angel.

  “We come in peace.” She stated calmly, slowly. “But we are not weak.” Sandra pointed to Paul who lay underneath. “We would like our friend back.”

  “My queen! Run! Please!”

  Elvis’ face was pale. “It’s so tall! Like, taller than a house!” His hands shook as he gripped his weapon and shield.

  I was surprised at how put together Sandra was. There was no fear in her eyes.

  Zero worry. My asshole was clenched to the Nth degree but my wife was staring this twenty-plus foot tall giant down and I couldn’t have been prouder.

  The giant eyed my wife, anger mixing with hunger. “Dwerga-duun!”

  One second, my wife was floating just out of reach of the giant and the next she was gone. Two trees to our right exploded one after the other. The giant stepped forward to swing again, his backhand coming back around to quickly remove us the way he blasted Sandra.

  My rage didn’t even get the chance to catch up to my brain. Long legs propelled the cannibal giant faster than my eyes would’ve believed. Luckily, a translucent shield sprang into existence, deflecting the shield up.

  “That’s all I got!” Thomas called out, his weak voice reminding me that we’d gone into this situation willingly with two almost-invalids. “I’m still healing!”

  I cursed internally at our circumstances. Damn if we did what we knew was right and damned if we did the other thing. We couldn’t leave Thomas and Eli at the house defenseless in their condition but taking them with us so we could keep them safe had other consequences. And with Sandra out of the picture, the stakes got that much higher.

  Elvis staggered back, horror written all over his face. “It’s, it’s, so big?! And it eats people!”

  I slapped him hard in the face before throwing us both back to dodge the downswing.

  “Pull yourself together, kid!” I screamed, slapping him on the other cheek before shoving him hard towards the wagon. “Save them!”

  “Don’t you dare leave my brother!” Thomas snarled. My brother leaned forward. “Run around in the wagon. The bumps will charge me up so I can make more shields!”

  I left them to it as I did the only thing I could do. I charged.

  Elephants do not expect rabbits to fight back. But this rabbit was beyond fucking pissed.

  A hideous grin wide enough to eat my entire chest let out a stench that hit me from ten yards away. I did not stare back into those jet black eyes. I did not listen to the insane gibbering of my fear scratching at the walls in the back of my mind begging me to curl up and hope the giant eats everyone else and leaves me alone. I reached deep into my core, my magic, and pulled.

  Everything comes back to the Earth. It defines the borders of the oceans. It directs the flow of the rivers. Our understanding of the presence of dirt and its sheer volume and density provides the very foundations of what makes up our reality. And it applies to every fight.

  I kept my eyes on the giant’s hips and feet. Even though it was freaking huge, it was still built like us, like humans. It requires force to move, applying force from the back foot to push against the ground to propel the hips to snap forward which moves the core and the other foot. And THAT OTHER FOOT expects that the ground beneath it will be there.

  In essence, the giant expected to move at its usual pace and power because the ground had never betrayed it before. But I PULLED. My Terrastria, my Earth Magic, shifted those expectations. As the giant’s right foot came down, the dirt beneath that foot pulled towards me like a mudslide causing the giant to do the most awkward splits. With its legs splayed forwards and backwards and it yowling in pain with its hands to the sides trying to brace against the unexpected strain, I planted my feet next to its ankle and swung for the hills.

  The blunt head of the hammer pulverized the delicate bones of foot and ankle as I swung once, twice, three times! I reveled in its pain, alternating between the sharp blade of the ax head and the blunt face of the hammer. I almost didn’t move in time but luckily some instinct screamed at me. Jumping back to avoid the hand trying to squish me like a fly, I skipped forward a step to bring down the hammer on the giant’s hand. I spat on the ground before dodging back.

  Everything in me wanted to trash talk the giant. Yell, ‘This is for my wife you gnarly fuck’, or the classic ‘fuck you’. But that’s how you end up dead. Trash talking leads to monologuing. And monologuing leads to getting caught by surprise. But I had the surprise advantage. This ugly cannibal wasn’t used to something my size fighting back. To it, I was food.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Also, I was too angry to speak. I wanted nothing more than to imprison the entire giant up to its neck so I could take my time slowly drilling through an eyeball with an Alchemically enhanced serrated sword. I wanted revenge and I wanted to do it slow. But my anger did not override my will, it clarified my choices. It seared the useless thoughts to ash and only left decisive action.

  As its eyes were hazy with pain, lurching to the side to relieve the strain of the splits, the giant pulled its destroyed hand to its chest, cradling it. I saw the top of its head. That head wrap of fur only covered the front and back, a wrap around the head that left the top exposed.

  My magic and my body were in perfect sync. Stone bunched up beneath my feet providing me the most stable surface to get set and with a blast of will, my warhammer left my two handed grip at over twenty-five miles per hour. The ground beneath both assisted by pushing me forward a bit and stabilizing my lower body to properly exert all of the force my superhuman body was capable of.

  Like a clumsy lightning bolt, the warhammer hit the exact exposed spot on the giant’s head but at the wrong part of the rotation. The hammer part instead of the ax blade crashed into the skull and glanced upwards.

  The piercing bellows of agony knocked me off my feet. Dirt churned, blurring my vision. A strong hand snatched me up by the arm, yanking me back to my feet.

  “Gotcha boss!”

  Wiping my helmet visor clear of dirt, I saw that Elvis had saved my life. The giant’s club had smashed a crater right where I was rolling.

  “Sorry.” He said regretfully. “I just froze.”

  The earth groaned as the giant pulled itself to its feet. I couldn’t believe my eyes as instead of falling to the ground dead because I ALMOST caved its skull in, the massive fucker just scratched at its head, greasy hair ripping out as its nail dug into relieve what must have been an annoying itch. The tree trunk club bent as it held most of the giant’s weight.

  “It’s like I’m a mosquito!” Cursing the ridiculous durability of the gargantuan monster, I ran through my options. It took me less than two seconds to realize that I personally was outclassed. I needed help. I needed Elvis.

  “Damn it, kid. If you’re ever going to earn your bacon, today’s the fucking day! I’ll knock the bitch over and you kill it.”

  Elvis nodded grimly, his hands tightening on his shield.

  “Drop that.” I ordered. “Two handed warhammer to get through his skin. You’re going to need it.”

  Without waiting to see if Elvis followed through, I set my feet and again pulled at my core. My feet sank deeper into the dirt and magic flowed up into me, into my core where it fused with my own energy pooling until I felt like I was going to burst. Exhilaration flowed through me and I couldn’t keep the angry, almost hysterical grin of rage from my face. I prepared to exhaust myself to sink the bitch far down into a tomb of stone.

  Big, tall, and ugly seemed to consider its options for a split second before deciding that it did in fact want to finish what it had started. Even hobbling on a bad ankle, the giant covered more ground than expected.

  It stumbled again as an unexpected assailant joined us. Paul’s thick accent rang out.

  “I said, RUN! Boss!”

  His dark hands scrabbled up the broken boulder as he hoisted himself higher, fire burning in his pupils. As the giant turned to deal with the food he thought was dead, two boulders flew out of the broken trees cannoning into his good knee. Sandra flew up like a deadly firework, translucent blue fire wreathing her aura.

  “THAT HURT!”

  She floated five feet in the air and the ground shook and three boulders ripped free from the earth beneath her.

  “I TRIED TO BE NICE!”

  The menacing creature’s hunger quickly turned into a rictus of fear as my wife slowly floated towards the giant like an avenging herald. Her blonde hair floated in all directions, her powers turning her into a static plasma ball of telekinetic power.

  One boulder shot into the air disappearing from view. The other two rotated around her faster and faster until they too vanished from view. What we didn’t see, but felt rather than heard, were the impacts. Two holes appeared in the giant’s chest and then that boulder from the sky came down to add to the destruction.

  From the knees down, the giant simply didn’t exist. It all happened so quickly that I couldn’t give the order I wanted. Luckily, Elvis decided Sandra’s presence was enough to bolster his courage. As the giant’s bloodied, holey torso crumpled to the ground with fluids and guts leaking out across the dirt, Elvis dashed forward, his rage empowering his muscles as he brought his warhammer down over and over onto the giant’s head and eyes.

  I said nothing as he kept swinging, the head that was once larger than a beachball disintegrating into pink and reddish pulp.

  “You gonna call him off?”

  I jumped at Thomas’ voice.

  “You scared the shit outta me!” I snapped, sprinting over to check on my brother and Eli. “You guys okay?”

  Eli nodded furiously. “It was like watching X-Men on the big screen, but we could’ve actually died!” He gulped. “Do you need healing? I’m feeling much better and Thomas can almost walk.”

  My brother glared at me. “You have other priorities, man.”

  I followed his finger towards the floating figure wreathed in blue.

  “There’s too many people to care about.” I muttered, not really meaning what I said. “Being the de facto leader is stupid. Fuck this shit. I didn’t sign up for it.”

  Trying to keep the complaining to a minimum, I slowly relaxed the blazing ball of light in my core and let the extra energy slowly drain down my legs and back into the earth. I walked back towards my wife, my head on a swivel.

  “Hey babe, you okay?” I reached up to take her hand, giving her soft grip a gentle squeeze. “It’s dead. You killed it and Elvis is just making sure. Come on back down to earth with me, hun.”

  Humanity bled back into her eyes as the rage began to leave. She floated down slowly and I led her back towards Eli.

  “We’re gonna check you out real quick, not going to lie, thought you were dead there for a minute.”

  Color returned to Sandra’s cheeks and her hair fell back down instead of standing up as if she were touching a light socket.

  “Grant?” Her wavery voice almost ripped the tears from my tear ducts. I caught her weight as I pulled her into a hug.

  She weighed nothing more than a doll to me, her slight form moving easily as I whipped her around to place her in the wagon.

  “Check her, scan her, fix anything, everything that could be wrong.”

  I left no room for argument and Eli, to his credit, nodded and got to work, putting his hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey, easy on the kid.” Thomas admonished, sitting up straighter. “We need him and she looks fine to me.”

  I leaned in, my eyes wide. “Did you NOT see her getting line-drived out of existence? We are going to sit here until I know for sure she is okay.”

  My fingers left a handprint in the solid steel of the wagon’s frame.

  “Breathe bro. We got magic angel kid working miracles. If I’m going to be alright after tangoing with a giant, big sister-in-law is going to be just fine.”

  The adrenaline of the fight made my hands shaky. I didn’t trust myself to speak much so I did the only productive thing I could. I stood there holding my wife while looking around.

  Thomas leaned out of the wagon. “Hey Elvis! Where’s Paul? Do you see him? Is he okay?”

  I turned to see Elvis carefully lay Paul in the wagon next to Eli.

  “He’s unconscious.” The big kid’s gloves were stained with blood and I started there for a moment before realizing it wasn’t Paul’s. Paul’s skin was unbroken and that was a miracle in and of itself.

  I made an odd hissing sound as I assessed Paul’s condition. His dark skin caught the sunlight at odd angles, his limbs clearly broken and the bones underneath the skin poking up in unexpected places.

  “Unbreakable skin.” I noted quietly, shaking my head. “But his bones are obviously broken. Elbows don’t bend that way.”

  “I can help.” Sandra remarked, her voice tired. “It’ll be the same procedure as fixing Thomas and I’ll probably need Elvis’ help to reset and rebreak the bones.” She turned her exhausted but still million-watt smile to Eli. “Do you feel up to fixing him?”