Chương 45: Brand Collaborations

The frost giants and their two frost salamanders took the path of least resistance south, which meant following the old roads and highways that human civilization had left behind. AK-3, in this case, ran parallel to the dangling ponytail of what used to be the borders for the state of Alaska. This detail wasn't released until after the encounter, but the battle took place near a valley called Rainy Hollow at the narrowest point between Mount Seltat and the skirt of Mount Bigger.

Where most of the route was flanked by dense forest on either side, this particular stretch was rocky scrubland with bare mountains on either side. Before the frost giants arrived, the scene looked like a road running between two piles of coal waste–dark, gritty peaks of loose-looking rock. By the time the frost giants arrived, the bottom of the Rainy Hollow valley was frozen, covering what little green there was with over six inches of solid ice. Most streams and news stations advertised a 9 p. m.

ET battle time, but the frost giants didn't get the memo. They approached Rainy Hollow around 10: 45 p. m. ET, which was 7: 45 p. m. PT there. The Southside of Pittsburgh was the quietest I had ever seen it. The streets were deserted. The ever-present dull grumble of highway traffic was gone. Everyone was glued to their televisions, and I imagined that was the case for most of the country, if not the entire world.

If the frost giants weren't stopped here, they would almost certainly blow through the Canadian border with little trouble. Nathan leaned forward, his face in his hands. Megan sat next to him, biting her nails and bouncing her leg. Beth, another bartender, a barback, and three people from the kitchen stood behind the bar, their necks bent backward to see the televisions overhead. I wanted to pace, but Milly's was too busy for that, so I covered my mouth with my hands and tried to calm my heart.

We had two angles of the impending battle. One was a distant zoom of the giants stomping through the wilderness, most of their bodies obscured by swirling snow, cutting a bright white line through the dark green of the north. The few journalists privy to the location of the battle weren't permitted to get any closer than that for fear of aggravating the monsters. Our second angle was drone footage from behind a group of crawlers waiting in formation on the road through Rainy Hollow.

The government hadn't released specifics of which crawlers were where, but commentators could ID most of them. Everyone there was high-level, making them known celebrities by default. LootLootLouis was in a new suit of lime green platemail. As a spellsword, armor penalties were a delicate balance, and this getup worked around that by not being physical armor. The platemail was actually conjured by enchanted clothing he wore, and it was semi-transparent when you looked closely.

He still had his trademark dreadlocks, but they were bundled up beneath a few layers of protective covering. Valcuree, one of the original participating crawlers for The Wilds: Alaska stood next to Louis in comparatively subdued attire. She usually wore a red bodysuit, but today she wore a parka and snow pants. Her sword, the $10 million weapon that impressed Beth when she first started watching the show, was sheathed at her hip.

Made from Angel Tungsten, an exceptionally rare metal only found in upper-ranked dungeon gates, the sword itself was impossibly sharp and nigh indestructible. Valuable in its own right, Valcuree's sword also had the "Inversion" enchantment, which was especially useful against monsters with elemental properties. Essentially, the sword took on the opposite element of what it hit, so if her sword struck a frost giant or salamander, the enchantment would deliver fire damage.

Anticipating subzero temperatures, every crawler present was wrapped head to toe in a sort of wetsuit that left only a small slit for their noses. Their mouths were covered entirely, and their eyes were covered in high-performance goggles, like something snowboarders might wear. I suspected that the main job for the white mages would be barriers and frost protection, and I imagined that all of the crawlers were kitted out with Resist Frost enchantments as well.

On top of their gear, all crawlers wore high-visibility vests and belts with blinking red and yellow lights in anticipation of the snow and fog expected to be a part of this battle. Any opportunity to protect crawlers from friendly fire, even if a few lights wouldn't do all that much, was worth the effort. Louis and Valcuree were among six defenders and three spellswords comprising a frontline for five fire mages, four white mages, and three wind mages. One of those fire mages was Hifumi Kato, Japan's top crawler.

His look was usually the suit and tie of a classic Japanese salaryman with the addition of a spellbook under his arm. In normal circumstances, that gave him a stylized everyman quality when he crawled, but the full-body cold gear beneath it now made him look more like a dressed mannequin than a person. Kato always ended up in highlight reels because of the two fire spells he used most often.

One looked like giant dragons of flame bursting forth to obliterate his enemies, and the other spell summoned oni made of lava the size of ogres. Joining Kato was Billy Blaze, an American crawler from Arizona. Blaze usually wore military-styled boots, pants, and a utility jacket, but instead of a camo pattern, it was all black save for a laughing, flaming skull patch on his back. Behind the party of crawlers were three humvees with spiked tires and four ATVs similarly outfitted for icy conditions.

The drivers of all those vehicles looked like standard military, but they likely had more than a few levels. If they were there to give this party the mobility to flee something as large as a frost giant, it would be silly to send a level 1 into a situation with that much danger. Most countries took soldiers into the Wilds to level on the gates there, so nearly every soldier in the world was at least level 10, but these soldiers were likely between 15 and 20.

That sounds low for an encounter like this, but the gates appeared amidst fears of nuclear proliferation at the very end of the worst war humanity had ever seen. In other words, nations around the world were keenly aware that if the world went to war with nuclear bombs or with crawlers, there wouldn't be a world left, no matter who won. The Geneva Conventions were comprised of five agreements to protect non-combatants in wartime.

The first three covered the treatment of soldiers and sailors who were wounded, sick, or captured. The fourth addressed civilians, and the fifth was the agreement that no country would create or maintain weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear arms. And soldiers over level 10 were prohibited from engaging humans. Nations could maintain high-level assets for gate management, but those assets were not to be used in human conflicts.

It was broadly believed that no country actually followed these agreements and therefore had super soldiers tucked away for a rainy day, but a couple of frost giants wasn't enough to convince Canada, the US, or Japan to reveal their secret stashes of upper-ranked apocalypse-bringers. Those were technically legal if all they did was close gates, but revealing a unique asset in one setting made it harder to hide in another.

From the social leaks, we knew a few other crawlers were expected to be there, like Rockelly from Seattle and Kenny "the Cannon" from Montreal. Rockelly was an earth magic specialist, and while she wasn't the most exciting streamer to watch, she was incredibly active in charity construction projects and often aided the Army Corps of Engineers if she was available. The Cannon, meanwhile, was a power spellbow hybrid.

His most powerful shots needed a full thirty seconds to charge–an eternity in a combat situation–but the result was like something an armament on a battleship would deliver. Neither of those crawlers were visible, nor were several others believed to be participating.

"That party looks too small," Jonathan observed, whispering as though we were in church.

"They probably have a multi-phase plan," Megan guessed. The rest of us nodded that we agreed. Still, we were curious what that would be.

"I'm not over how few fire mages they have," Nathan said.

"I hope that plan is a good one." When the frost giants came into view, their colossal forms emerging from a flurry of white, my stomach tightened, and my breath stopped. The patriarch had an axe with a blade as wide as a basketball court is long over his shoulder and scalemail armor made of blue ice. His rigid beard was a blanket of snow over long icicles. The matriarch was slightly smaller and carried a club. The third giant, their presumed son, was almost as tall as the matriarch.

He had an axe a bit smaller than his father's. Even now, my mind struggles to both comprehend and communicate the scale of these monsters. Whenever I'm in downtown Pittsburgh, I like to look up and appreciate the grandeur of the skyscrapers. From the sidewalk, they towered over me, too big to properly comprehend. The frost giants felt like that but with a crushing sense of impending doom. Man was not meant to fight creatures like this. We were too small and too fragile.

The frost salamanders walking to either side of the giants resembled white iguanas. Spikes of blue protruded around their necks like manes on a lion, and several smaller blue spikes dotted the scales down their bodies. Analysts likened their girth to nine railroad cars bundled together, and their length from nose to tail was equivalent to five tractor trailers. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

For the first time, the commentators who hadn't stopped talking since the moment the giants were discovered finally shut up. The stream was perfectly quiet as the crawlers–and the rest of the world–watched the monsters stomping toward them through Rainy Hollow. A surge of white suddenly filled the screen, blasting toward the party. In the corner of the stream, a temperature gauge popped up. We watched it freefall from 70 degrees Fahrenheit to -20 in seconds.

Magic barriers went up as spears of ice rocketed out of the flurry, every impact sounding like a car crash. The wind mages pushed a gale through the valley. As they fought back the snow, revealing the battlefield once again, the frost salamanders, now surrounded by ice elementals, ran toward the crawlers. The elementals had humanoid torsos with arms of ice while their lower bodies were like white tornadoes.

Discerning their shape against the backdrop of snow was difficult, but I estimated thirty to forty of them moving through the valley. Balls, columns, whirlwinds, and dragons of fire scorched across the valley as the fire mages unloaded on the ice elementals. An explosion of orange struck the head of one salamander, followed by a sonic boom a full second later. That was one of the Cannon's arrows, fired from somewhere well behind the frontline. The blast peeled the skin off the left side of the salamander's face.

It didn't go down, but it was gravely wounded. It stumbled before charging even more swiftly, enraged by the attack, using the last of its strength to seek revenge. Balls of ice as big as our apartment soared down from above. The giants were obscured completely by their blizzard, but they were casting. I wondered in that moment if frost giants had an ability that allowed them to see through snow. Probably did.

The wind mages and white mages blocked most of those projectiles, but one slipped through and crushed a humvee and two ATVs. They disappeared instantly beneath the mass. If you hadn't seen the people there a second before, you wouldn't know they were underneath. The whole of the valley quaked, and the camera cut to the most distant view of the battle. Two lines of explosion ripped across the mountains on either side of AK-3.

The flashes and the speed of the timing suggested these were controlled blasts, like you might see wiring a building scheduled to be demolished. Confused, the giants paused their advance, glancing about at the dirty cloud now surrounding them. Boulders hurled out of the dust, looking like baseballs in comparison to the size of the giants. They raised their arms to block, and more charges went off, this time alongside the road, far closer to the monsters.

"That's what all the earth mages were for," Nathan mused. A torrent of stone and dirt bombarded the giants as the sides of the mountains slopped off into massive rockslides, propelled by gravity and the push of powerful earth magic. Soon, the giants were obscured entirely by clouds of dirt. Spears of ice and sprays of freezing air shot out of the cloud, but they didn't seem deliberately aimed. These were blind shots the giants hoped hit the crawlers hiding in the mountains.

The impacts looked like missile strikes, impossible to survive, even for high-level crawlers. While the fire mages turned their attention to the totally healthy frost salamander, three spellswords and three defenders broke formation to intercept the wounded salamander bearing down on the party, Louis among them. The camera cut to his view.

With his hand, he sprayed fire, a dense line like that of a flamethrower, and burst with super speed to flank one side of the salamander while Valcuree and the third spellsword flanked the other. Only one defender followed Louis. The moment the salamander turned away from Louis to deal with the other crawlers, a blur of speed rocketed him at the white lizard.

His sword burst into flames, and with one swing, he cut an arc of fire along the side of the monster's body, the blade seeming to extend impossibly long to strike. The salamander shrieked and breathed what looked like blue fire at Louis and his defender. Louis dove behind his ally's summoned barrier as they were both engulfed in the blue fire. When it cleared, a small mountain of ice stood where the crawlers were a moment ago.

"He's okay. He's okay," Nathan repeated to himself. A glow from inside the ice grew in intensity, and Louis smashed through his frozen prison. The salamander, seeming to assume those crawlers were dead, devoted its attention entirely to the other two spellswords and their two defenders. Louis leapt onto the monster's back, cut a gouge near its spine, and then stabbed his sword straight down.

While the salamander thrashed to shake Louis loose, he held onto his sword with one hand and punched the other into the open wound.

"He's pumping fire magic right now," Megan explained to Jonathan.

"See the steam surrounding him? He's cooking it alive from the inside, basically." Meanwhile, the other salamander was nearly cooked alive from the outside. A barrage of fireballs joined the slithering forms of dragons wrapping the body of the monster like constrictor snakes. Two burning oni leapt in and out with red spears, sinking deep thrusts and disappearing before the salamander could reach them with a strike. Another one of the Cannon's arrows boomed as it exposed the salamander's ribs in a spray of meat.

A loud horn cut through the chaos. The dust around the giants had settled enough that they were visible again. The female frost giant was trapped beneath rubble. She was alive and struggling to push rocks off her chest. She wasn't entirely pinned, but she was downed at least. The male frost giant shielded his son with one arm and continued to coat the mountains around Rainy Hollow with thick ice and craters from orbs and spears of ice. The dirt and stone continued to pile up. He was nearly buried up to his waist.

Though he and his son managed to stay mobile, kicking away boulders and yanking free of dirt, they weren't keeping up with the earth mage deluge. A plane appeared on stream, speeding toward the giants with a bucket dangling beneath, like what you would see during a forest fire. In that context, the plane would dip low, drag the "Super Scooper" across a lake, and then dump it on the fire. The bucket spilled a thick slurry, like rusty mud, onto the giants, and a second plane sped in from another angle.

It too dumped its bucket, but the younger frost giant blasted it out of the sky with a stream of icy stones as it flew away. A third plane was about to dump its bucket, and the matriarch, still on her back, shot it out of the sky with a spear of conjured ice. The plane erupted in a fireball, an explosion far too large for a single plane. Then it hit me. I knew what was in the bucket.

"They're dumping an accelerant or something," I said.

"Huh?" Nathan grunted, sparing me a quick glance.

"Watch." The fire mages focused all of their spells on the giants while the earth mages continued to throw mountains at the monsters. The visibility was total shit. Other than a few spells of blue and white bursting out of the dirt and fire, we couldn't see what was happening. But we could hear the roars of humanoids burning alive, even through the noise of the crushing rock and the crackling inferno.

In the days after the battle, we would learn that this slurry was Thermite-Sol, a highly flammable material suspended in a sort of gel. A thermite reaction is hotter than molten lava from a volcano, by the way. A form emerged from the chaos and fled the way the giants had come. The younger frost giant dragged a broken leg, carving a deep trench in the dirt and snow as he went. Half of his body was on fire, billowing black smoke. None of the crawlers shifted their focus.

They continued to pour their magic onto the other two giants.

"Why are they letting it run?" Jonathan asked.

"They want to be sure the biggest two are dead," Megan answered. The stream returned to the view of the distant camera. The younger giant was running toward a small lake on the northern side of Rainy Hollow when one of Kenny's arrows blew through its left shoulder, exploding that arm into pieces. The giant went from a frantic hobble to a determined drag where every step took focus and effort. Then it fell face-first, three of its steps short of the water. Other than a few twitches, it didn't move again.

The horn blared again, and all of the other crawlers stopped attacking and casting. The wind mages sent a gust forward to clear away the dust and foggy steam that now filled the valley. One of the matriarch's arms stuck straight up out of the blackened rock, as if reaching for help. The patriarch looked as if it too had attempted to flee, but it didn't get farther than falling in the direction the younger giant ran, most of its body buried beneath charred rubble. The whole city of Pittsburgh cheered.

You could hear it echoing down the street in every direction. The threat was eliminated. The frost giants had been stopped from reaching civilization.

"Remember when I said trying to overwhelm ice giants with fire would be tough?" Nathan asked.

"I guess I was right, but I didn't see the earth strategy coming. Like dude, that must have been the world's largest earthen oven. Straight up cooked them." Our smiles and shouts died down when we saw casualty totals appear on screen. At the time, only seven were confirmed, two of which were in the plane that got shot down. Several other crawlers and military were missing, however. The search lasted another five hours before the total was in.

Two spellswords, one fire mage, four earth mages, seventeen military–eleven Canadian and six American–died in the fight. As the celebration at Milly's continued around us, Megan leaned toward me and asked softly, "Can you imagine having to arrest one of those crawlers?"

"From the stream, you mean?" She nodded.

"I can imagine it going very badly."

"What happens if a crawler like that is pegged for CKing? Who the hell could enforce any sort of punishment on them?" I shrugged.

"At that point, it's probably more like negotiating with a nation-state. Impose sanctions? Freeze assets? Bar them from entering certain countries? You got me."

"Theo Kabuga was, what, level 22? His main force were all level 10s and higher. They wiped out over a million people before the UN stopped them." Kabuga was one of the masterminds behind the Rwandan Genocide of the mid-90s. Together with his allies, they overthrew the government, assassinated the president, and began hunting Tutsis, very few of whom were over level 1. It wasn't the only example of a crawler-led bloodbath, but it was the most recent.

"Yeah, that sounds right," I replied, unsure of what else to say. She looked back up at the stream, the screens mostly obscured by the jumping, cheering crowd.

"Maybe it's good that we have things like frost giants to keep crawlers busy."