Vaughn Heppner: Giants

The histories of our world’s most ancient civilizations all tell of a time that came before. A glittering world of high culture and power. Sumeria, Akkad of the Land Between the Rivers, Minoan Crete, and Egypt all have accounts of a terrible cataclysm, which only a few brave souls survived.

The Greeks speak about Lost Atlantis. Others tell of Lemuria, Mu, and Thule, all destroyed. The Old Testament calls this terrible disaster Noah’s Flood, while the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh speaks of a frightening deluge that destroyed the world.

The accounts agree on several other interesting elements. The Lost World contained wonders, paradises, or Eden: a lush garden planet that strangely held fearsome creatures, huge monsters, and giants. In that world, the gods, or godly beings, freely walked among men and women. And the gods often took the most beautiful as their wives, or as prizes of divine lust.

Heroes arose from those unions. And the seeds of the coming cataclysm were born from it. The greatest storytellers of the ancient world, the Greeks, speak about a war between the Gods and Titans. The Hebrew prophets write that Nephilim walked the Earth, the offspring of the bene elohim (fallen angels) and mortal women.

In this Antediluvian Age lived the prehistoric beasts. Hercules, in his Twelve Labors, slew some of the worst. The ancient Book of Job describes two monsters called Behemoth and Leviathan, which no man dared approach. The Cretans had their Minotaur, while the Sumerians tell of an odd satyr-creature called Engidu, who possessed ‘the strength of a boar, the mane of a lion, and the speed of a bird.’

Fallen angels, gods, giants, and heroes lived among the prehistoric sabertooths, mammoths, and great sloths. It was a time of vast adventure and harrowing deeds. Forgotten legends of that distant era, many millennia removed from ours, speak about a particular daring attempt of the giants. They sought hidden weapons they believed would grant them supremacy on Earth.

But not all beings in this Lost World were so mighty or so strange. Men and women struggled then as they do now. They had warriors, prophets, healers, and mothers. And they knew—or the wisest did—that challenging immortal powers and delving too deeply into forbidden arts could unleash cataclysmic forces. These men and women pitted themselves against legendry heroes, giants, and godlike beings in order to save their world from disaster.

This is their story.

Joash blinked in horror as he peered over the edge of the cliff. “They’re all attacking, Master! Help him! Help him!”

Joash crouched on a high mountain ledge amid jagged rocks, with a cold wind whipping against his face. He clutched a grass rope. Weeks ago his palms had savagely blistered, but now they had toughened into calloused flesh. Unfortunately, his fellow slave was too far down for Joash to drag him up fast enough.

The screeches of the swirling pterodactyls below drowned out his friend’s cries for help.

Joash had a panoramic view of the deadly and uneven contest. His fellow slave had rappelled down a sheer rock-face to the nests perched on ledges less than five feet across. The valley floor plunged a thousand feet below the nests. The slave had filled his straw-lined pack with leathery pterodactyl eggs. Now the flying reptiles swooped at him in large numbers. The biggest had forty-foot wingspans and sinister red crests that no doubt helped balance their terrible beaks. Joash bore a half-healed scar on his back that attested to the wickedness of those spear-like beaks.

“Save him, Master!” Joash shouted.

“Quit your yapping,” Balak snarled. To enforce his edict, the brute backhanded Joash with his hairy knuckles.

The heavy blow sent Joash sprawling against a rock. Worse, he lost hold of the rope. To Joash’s horror, the grass rope rapidly uncoiled as it slid across the rocky ledge. Despite his ringing head—Joash had rapped it against a rock—he dove at the rope, trying to clutch it. The grass line slid too fast, and friction burned his fingers. Joash yelled as he gripped tighter, knowing his friend’s life depended on him. As his hands finally held the line, Joash wedged his bare feet against rock. The rope’s sudden pull almost yanked him over the ledge, but he hung on. Painfully, he began to hand-over-hand drag his friend back up.

Beside Joash, Balak grunted. He had massive bones, immensely powerful muscles, and a broad flat face. When they had lived, the other slaves had whispered to Joash that Balak had Nephilim blood, which is what gave him his size. Balak certainly had a Nephilim’s temperament. Coarse hair sprouted from his body, and he wore bear furs, claiming that once he’d been a beastmaster of Shamgar.

Huge Balak notched a long black arrow to his bowstring. His mighty weapon creaked as he drew to his ear, aimed over the edge, and released with a sharp twang. He grunted a moment later as a pterodactyl hissed in agony. He notched another arrow, drew the bowstring to his tattooed cheek—

Joash fell back as the weight vanished from the rope. He sat, blinking. Then Joash cried out and slid to the edge. He looked over in time to see his last friend repeatedly striking the side of the mountain. His friend plunged a thousand feet to his death.

The circling pterodactyls screeched in triumph, although a few had already flapped to their nests.

Balak eased tension from his bowstring. He turned his head and squinted at Joash.

The baleful look wilted Joash’s courage. He’d thought to catch Balak by surprise and push him over the edge. The brute dwarfed him, and one of the beastmaster’s dire wolves raised its ugly head, watching. The pack rested farther back on the boulders, well away from the edge. They were always eager to come to Balak’s aid.

It seemed Balak was still in a fierce mood from this morning. With his fists, the beastmaster had beaten the third slave to death before breakfast. Balak’s bloodshot eyes told of his drunken revelry last night in his mountain hut.

The slaves—there had been three of them last night—had slept in a trench, chained like dogs to posts. They had been given a single fur to shiver under. Unfortunately, the howling wind hadn’t been loud enough to drown out Balak’s drunken singing.

Once there had been six slaves. Balak had purchased the lot of them at Shamgar over three months ago. They had each been thin and long-limbed. Ideal, Balak had claimed, for scaling the cliffs where pterodactyls built their nests.

“It was your screams that killed him,” Balak snarled. “It interrupted my aiming, made me hit you to stop your blubbering. I ought to pitch you over so you can join him.”

Joash’s belly tensed with terror.

Balak rubbed his coarse face, and then a nasty leer twisted his lips. “It’s your turn now.”

“Master?” whispered Joash.

“I need at least twenty more eggs.”

“The rope—” Joash began to say.

“There is no rope, but I have another pack, which is lucky for you. Otherwise, I’d just pitch you over. Hurry, strap it on.”

Joash had learned these past months to scramble to obey when Balak ordered. He shrugged on the pack. And with his throbbing hands, Joash tightened the straps. One palm oozed blood from the rope burn. But there was no sense complaining. The beastmaster never made idle threats.

“I don’t have all day,” Balak complained.

Joash took several deep breaths, trying to slow his tripping heart. Other than slipping off the ledge, the worst danger was brittle rock that often crumbled under a man’s weight. The rope had always been security against that. But Balak wasn’t giving him a rope.