A siren blared over the small military town in the Kaliningrad region, where survivors had organized a refuge.
It cut me off mid-lecture on Levitation Charms and their variations.
I gave the makeshift classroom a tired look.
It was set up in one of the barracks, and currently held twenty-seven children between the ages of eleven and fifteen.
Children with magical gifts.
Our future.
I paused briefly on a twelve-year-old boy with chestnut-brown hair, then headed for the exit.
“Lesson’s over.
Everyone needs to go to the shelter immediately.
Move.”
Behind me, the children’s worried voices started up, but someone else would handle their evacuation.
I was needed elsewhere.
Footsteps sounded behind me.
“Dad, let me help.
I can already cast fire charms.
They’re good against the undead.”
“Gregory, what did we talk about?”
The twelve-year-old boy pouted.
“Only when I’m sixteen will I be allowed to fight.
But Dad…”
“You have an equally important task right now…”
I looked into my son’s brown eyes, the ones he’d inherited from Maria.
“…you and the other twenty-six wizard children are our last line of defense.
If our defenses are breached, who else but you can protect the women and children who lack magical gifts?”
“Hmm…
okay.”
I watched my son’s back as he ran off, then left the building myself and ran toward the checkpoint, where my defensive position was located.
Soldiers, both men and women, ran past me toward another section of the defense line.
A visible cloud of vapor escaped my lungs.
The already chilly September day grew even colder.
The undead were close.
The fortifications came into view.
Muggles were taking up positions near them, and one of the few surviving armored personnel carriers blocked the road.
“Gil, you’re late.”
“I know.”
“The kids got you so worn out you don’t even react to the siren anymore?”
“Very funny, Alex.”
The brown-haired Russian wizard leaning against the vehicle grinned.
A battle junkie who got a thrill from throwing explosive curses around, sometimes happy just to see the “beautiful” way zombies flew apart.
Though during the Cataclysm, everyone went mad in their own way.
And Alex’s particular brand of insanity could at least be channeled productively.
I nodded to another wizard, who nodded back silently.
Old Ben, already over seventy, said little about himself, but he was a powerful Transfigurator.
He and Alex were supposed to protect me.
I stepped into the runic circle carved into the stone slab and raised my wand.
“Protege ab omni malo.”
A pale white beam shot into the sky.
I noticed similar beams rising from two other points in the town, cast by other wizards.
The runes beneath my feet began to glow white, and a magical dome manifested in the sky, its edges starting to descend toward the ground.
Several black shapes darted from the forest’s edge toward the fortifications.
Automatic rifle fire crackled, quickly cut off by a sergeant’s shout.
“CEASE FIRE!
CEASE FIRE!
Nobody touches their trigger without my command, you damn morons!”
The two wizards next to me aimed their wands at the descending dome wall, while the most agile dogs, infected with the necro-virus, fell into pre-dug pits.
“Fianto Duri.”
“Fianto Duri.”
Two semi-transparent blobs struck the dome, causing it to form more rapidly until it touched the ground right in front of a dog-Inferno that had avoided the pits.
The moment it lunged at the dome, an electrical crackle filled the air, and a smoking corpse fell to the withered grass.
From the forest and the road, Inferi began to emerge.
Other creatures, twisted by death and magic, learned from their “colleague’s” experience and began circling the dome.
“First platoon, aimed single shots to the heads of the dogs.
Everyone else, wait for the other corpses.”
A dozen shots rang out.
Six creatures fell, while the rest darted sideways.
Smart bastards.
I pulled a Tonic from the bag I always carried and drank it, not stopping my support of the dome.
This battle could drag on for a while.
In the distance, a Banshee wailed.
“You know, I’m just a little bit tired.”
The brown-haired man smiled, leaning heavily against the vehicle’s hull, breathing hard.
The gray-haired old man next to him, hood pulled up, sat on the ground.
I ignored the Russian’s chatter, focusing on maintaining the dome.
Gunfire roared around me.
The constant hum of burning undead filled the air.
They threw themselves at the dome with inhuman persistence, meeting their end under a hail of bullets, spells, and the burning touch of the barrier itself.
Pain shot through my body from the sheer volume of magical energy I was channeling from the ley lines into the protective dome.
“Well, I hope this ends soon.
Blowing up mindless hordes of corpses was only fun for the first four hours.”
The ground trembled.
Several multi-meter tall silhouettes appeared behind the sea of undead surrounding the town.
Alex’s smile faltered under my and Ben’s disapproving stares.
I looked back and gritted my teeth.
Huge, five-to-seven-meter tall, blue-skinned giants.
Wearing loincloths made of animal hides and gripping tree trunks as clubs, they charged toward the dome, crushing any undead in their path.
The corpses showed some “gastronomic interest” in them, but only weakly.
The first tree trunk to strike the dome made me hiss as the dome’s magic consumption spiked.
One of the giants tried to pass through the dome but withdrew his burnt hands with a howl.
Seeing this, the other giants pounded the dome with their clubs with renewed vigor, ignoring the small-caliber bullets that ricocheted off their hides with sparks.
The heavy machine gun on the armored personnel carrier opened up.
Ben and Alex raised their wands. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Three of the two dozen Jotuns fell.
The rest, under a hail of heavy machine-gun fire, began to retreat, covering their heads with their hands.
My sigh of relief caught in my throat as an enraged roar filled the air.
“GUOOOOO!”
A ten-meter-tall giant stood before the dome.
Wearing more skins than the others, with an amber-colored pendant hanging around his neck, he looked like a king among giants.
Covering his face with one hand, he reached for the dome with the other.
The amber stone on his pendant glowed yellow.
The touch of his palm on the dome nearly sent me to my knees, a searing pain shooting through my entire body.
My vision blurred.
The sheer amount of magic passing through me made me feel like I might burst into flames at any moment.
“Hit him with a ‘Flit’.
Hit him while the wizard is still going.”
Two trails of smoke from the Muggle military positions and a red beam with transfigured blades from beside me flew toward the blue figure.
The giant’s form was obscured by smoke.
A second later, an enraged cry rang out.
A blue fist emerged from the smoke and slammed into the dome with full force.
With the crack of the collapsing dome, I fell onto the dying runic circle.
The magic from the ley lines, no longer feeding the spell, began to surge through my body.
I watched as one of the giants stepped on the armored personnel carrier, crushing it, and scooped up one of the soldiers with his hand, bringing him to his head.
“AAAAAAAHHH!”
With a crunch of bones, blood sprayed onto the giant’s hands and face from the headless soldier.
“Damn it, fall back!
Let the soldiers detonate the napalm barrels!”
I felt myself being lifted by Alex.
Old Ben transfigured the surrounding debris into animal shapes that charged into the horde of undead.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the “king” giant heading deeper into the military town.
Toward the shelter.
Toward my son.
My barely responsive hands pointed my wand at the giant’s back.
Hunger.
Flame.
Destruction.
“Fiend…”
“Wh…”
The chaotic, foreign magic surging through my body seemed to plummet into the forming spell like into an abyss.
“…fyre.”
Heat that felt like it came from the very depths of hell blasted my face.
A twisting tornado of fire, with silhouettes of skulls flickering within, erupted from my wand.
With a hiss, the hungry flames engulfed the nearest undead and five of the giants.
I stared, unblinking, at the tongues of fire approaching the ten-meter-tall giant.
They licked uselessly at his blue skin and then spread to the nearest building.
I stared in disbelief.
How?
This was Fiendfyre.
Fire whose very essence was destruction.
How had this bastard…
“Gil!
Gil!”
I stared blankly at Alex, who was shouting at me.
“Contain the fire!
Contain…”
Around me, the crackle of fire and the screams of people being burned alive filled the air.
Several explosions went off.
Fiendfyre slammed against the magical shield Alex and Ben had erected.
With mounting horror, I tried to regain control of the Fiendfyre, but like a wild beast that had slipped its leash, it refused to return to my command.
“AAAAAAAHHH!”
“It hurts!”
“Save me!”
Screams.
Everywhere, there were screams.
The flickering skulls and grotesque silhouettes in the raging fire seemed to laugh.
The smell of burning flesh made my breakfast rise in my throat.
My hand waved my wand uselessly, no more effective than any branch picked up off the ground.
A tongue of flame licked my forearm.
A moment later, it would consume me.
“Dad, let me help.
I can already cast fire charms…”
I.
Am.
Your.
Master.
The Fiendfyre twisted violently around me, surging like a colossal wave toward the forest, incinerating every undead in its path, before collapsing and vanishing without a trace.
“Alex, we need to…”
I choked on the hot air burning my lungs and finally surveyed my surroundings.
All that remained were hot, smoldering stone, melted metal, blackened earth, and falling ash.
Ben, Alex, Sergeant Nesmeshyn (who I sometimes shared a drink with), and the soldiers of the second company of the radio-technical regiment were gone.
A coughing fit wracked my lungs.
“Cough.
The shelter.
The children.
Grisha.”
Magic swirled around my body, transforming it.
A moment later, I was streaking through the military town as a bright, shimmering mist.
Pain shot through my body.
My hazy consciousness didn’t immediately register the approaching wall.
“Cough.”
My head spinning, I got to my feet.
Something wet was running down my face.
The world spun around me.
A dozen smells assaulted my nose.
“Grrrrr.”
I noticed several blurred shapes on four legs nearby and waved my wand at them.
“Waddiwasi.”
Nearby debris flew at the creatures, sweeping them aside.
Staggering, I walked toward the smell.
I had to hurry.
Before the “king” got to…
The ground rushed up to meet my face.
I heard a crunch in my nose.
A wet sensation now appeared under my nose.
I tried to get up, but my body lurched, and the contents of my stomach rose to my throat.
“Bleeech.”
“Damn it.”
With disgust at the sharp smell of my own vomit hitting my broken nose, I crawled aside and finally got to my feet a minute later.
The source of the familiar smell was close.
More carefully now, I walked toward it.
Somewhere in the distance, the chatter of machine guns and the howl of creatures echoed.
I rounded a storage building and came out onto the road to the shelter, the building under which the bunker was located.
“No.”
“Master Geysek, when will we start learning the Patronus Charm?”
I stared in disbelief at fifteen-year-old Adam Reis, his torn body hunched over by a pair of dogs with empty eye sockets and patchy, hairless hides.
My wand hand moved automatically, tracing the pattern of a curse that, in any other time, would have landed me in Nurmengard.
Pain.
Decay.
“Interitus duo.”
Silently, the two creatures collapsed into masses of rotting flesh.
“You were supposed to be in the shelter.”
I looked to the side and saw a partially gnawed leg in a woman’s shoe sticking out from under a pile of rubble.
Alice.
“Teacher, I know it’s better to wear trainers or other shoes that are better for running.
But I can run just as well in these.
They have low heels, and my mom used to wear similar ones…”
The blonde girl had stared at the floor, head bowed.
She’d just turned fourteen.
My body trembled as the source of the familiar smell dawned on me.
I moved faster, no longer looking at the bodies of other students lying nearby.
“Dad, save me!”
A voice full of agony came from a twelve-year-old boy leaning against a wall, trying to push his intestines back into his torn abdomen.
Several smoking dog corpses lay nearby.
“Now.
Right now.
Grisha, Daddy’s here.”
With a trembling hand, I cast a diagnostic charm.
The information about the body’s condition flooded my mind.
My wand, made of birch wood and a unicorn hair, fell from my hand.
“Dad, you’re going to save me, right?
I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.
We just wanted to help…”
I hugged the thin boy’s body and held him close.
My throat tightened.
“I think I can see Mom.”
“Sleep.
You…
did well today.
Mom will take care of you now.”
“And you…
Dad?”
“When this is all over…
I’ll come to you.”
“O…
kay…”
I gripped his clothes tightly.
Rasping breaths came from his mouth.
My mind was filled with emptiness.
Shuffling sounds and dull moans came from behind.
I turned my head and looked at Adam, crawling toward us, leaving his internal organs behind.
His green eyes stared ahead, glassy.
Something inside me cracked.
I turned back and kissed the dusty crown of those dear chestnut-brown hair.
With steady hands, I laid the body down and raised my palms over it, channeling magic into them.
Flame.
“Incendio.”
The boy’s body burst into flames.
But unlike ordinary fire, which would take hours to reduce a body to ash, the magical fire, directed by me, finished in seconds.
Only ash remained on the ground.
I picked up the wand from the ground and stood on aching legs.
My business in this world wasn’t finished yet.
I inhaled deeply the fresh air of the morning forest, which stretched across the ridge of the Ore Mountains, forming the border between German Saxony and Czech Bohemia.
Birds chirped around me, welcoming spring.
The skin of my face felt the rays of the rising sun filtering through the treetops.
I looked down.
Huge, frost-covered footprints on the ground ended abruptly ahead, disappearing before my eyes.
But that was no longer important.
I sniffed the air again.
The smell of roughly processed animal hides and ice.
And another scent, almost imperceptible: the smell of a stone so similar to amber, one I would never forget.
I walked forward, releasing magic around me.
After a few steps, instead of the typical Central European mixed forest, I was surrounded by giant forest titans, as tall as sequoias.
Wald der Riesenbäume, the Forest of Giant Trees.
A vast natural spatial pocket located in the Ore Mountains of Germany.
I looked down and saw the tracks of giant feet.
The Jotun tribe I was looking for was close.