I tumbled for a time like that, just free falling through a bizarrely lit and steadily cooling flume with a pale end in the distance. Ferrovax's parting grip continued to burn painfully for most of the fall, until the chill breeze whipping past and the faint hum of energy associated with the Dragon's Domain faded away to be replaced by the howl of a frozen tundra. The mark slowed its throb and gradually vanished, just in time for me to finally realize how close I was to a fatal impact below. Darkness predominated the whistling-wind filled drop, but a sudden glint of faint blue-white spear-tips appeared less than three hundred feet below.
Throwing my staff forward with a rush of hastily summoned will, I shrieked out, "Veni che!" in time to blunt the majority of the free-fall, the levitation spell catching my shoulders and the back of my belt in time to slam me face-first and spread-eagled into the foot-deep soft powder below.
Still lacking my duster, as I would realize in the next few moments.
I snapped to attention and stumbled over my own feet trying to shake loose all the icy particles that were suddenly frosting my face in a good likeness of five o'clock shadow and coating my upper lip in the mockery of a mustache, slate white eyebrows running down to my ears in the process. The rest of it ran down my admittedly thin t-shirt and further into my pants.
"Stars and stones! Get out of there!"
Shaking loose what I could of the frosty particles and once more embarrassing myself for the amusement of the fates', I managed to clear the majority of it off and call up a small flame to see by with a command of, "Flickum Bicus!"
I swallowed somewhat thickly a moment later at the four-foot-thick javelin of ice sticking up right beside where my face had landed - and Denarian-level recovery powers or not, getting impaled on that would have obliterated any chance I had to return as a living Wizard. Panning my vision further around, I saw half a dozen more scattered around, most of them far enough away not to be a cause for worry. Even still I had skirted death by inches.
I carefully stepped around the nearest stalagmite and bent down to pick up my staff, examining the aged wood for signs of cracking before releasing a sign of relief that it was unharmed. Then I turned toward the mouth of this cave-flume and ignored the increased gusts of wind to get a better look at where in the Nevernever I had landed. A few twinkling stars dotted the midnight-blue sky overhead, but no moon was visible here and the majority of the land was coated in shadows. I could just make out the rise of the coast in the distance and a few other sharp points that were probably mountains of a kind, and the unnaturally cold breezes rolling in over the snow-tinged slopes at first told me this was perhaps some part of Mab's land.
Then I felt the ground tremble beneath my feet, and a low and drawn out groan of earth crumbling and jostling against itself.
"This isn't going to end well," I muttered warily, turning my body halfway back in the direction I had landed as I pushed the flame forward and saw a figure rising.
And rising.
And further still until it drew the stalagmite from the ground as the end of some sort of demented warhammer, the stone and leather covered hilt gripped in burly blue fingers. Sluggish words tripped over a thick tongue and blue-tinged lips as one massive hand reached up to knock compacted snow out of each thick ear, and I simply stood there gaping like a lark.
"Hva er du, lille Midgardian?" it spoke. I grimaced.
"Uh..." unsure what it had said, Ferrovax's words came back to my mind rather quickly, and I ruled out the chance of this being any part of Faerie.
He had shoved me into one of the nine Norse realms.
I didn't need Bob on hand to tell me what I was looking at, then, as the information steadily built up. A frost giant, or Jotunn, which has many similarities to a Summer Troll - namely in size and the power that usually comes with the territory of muscles the size of small boulders. I suspected they were resistant to magic of one kind or another, but that said, what research I had done after learning Donar Vadderung was actually Odin, and that Marcone had a true Valkyrie on his payroll, had trailed off in the wake of more pressing issues. I had meant to pick it back up, but I just hadn't had the time lately.
It reached around to shake snow out of its other ear before peering down at me more closely, pale-gray eyes murky with tiredness and a hint of surprise. It didn't look stupid or particularly aggressive, but rather like an apprenticing mason had tried to chisel a glacier down to humanoid shape and simply lost track of his reference guide mid-way through. The eyesockets were a little too large and spaced apart from each other on the brow, the cheekbones too elongated, and the chin too jutting. White, furry leather worked over its body in a dozen different straps, holding the rough outfit it wore in place, but not a single natural hair decorated its form.
I took a step back when it lunged forward and wrapped sausage-link fingers around my own hand that was holding the spell active, and before I knew it my toes were scraping the snow as the Jotunn examined the dancing light before its eyes curiously.
"Du er ikke en vanlig Midgardian. Hva er dette?" It said, breath equally as cold as the rest of this place and nearly freezing the spell out of the air in the process. I couldn't make a lick of sense from that and decided that I wasn't going to risk losing a limb for it.
I directed my other hand around to point at its wrist and then released the pent up energy in the rings with a hasty, "Forzare!"
The Jotunn's hand snapped open almost immediately, slinging me away on reflex. That's the thing about certain creatures in and from the Nevernever that most Wizards tend to underestimate - a joint is still a joint, most of the time. Hit that joint with enough force at the right angle and all the other joints attached from that point forward will release their hold. This guy happened to fall into the 'Near-humanoid skeleton - just bigger!' category.
Droplets of thick, semi-gelatinous gray blood ran down from pock-mocks left behind by the force of my spell, and the frost giant's expression faded from curiosity to flat anger. He stepped forward with a disgusted sound and slapped me upside the head from where I had landed on my back and hastily scrambled to a crouched position. I was just about to reach my feet when the blow struck, glancing off of my chin and snapping my head upright. I must have soared near to twenty feet before dropping down into a deep snowbank, rolling to a stop against a small hill below.
Tingling ran along my spine and raced up my neck while I laid there like the ragdoll I had temporarily become, wondering at my luck not to have been ripped apart from the impact. Darkness edged over my gaze as the frost giant thundered down from the flume entrance, shaking the earth with his every step.
That sort-of itch finally resolved itself in time for me to shake off the dizziness. I pushed to my feet a little sloppily and recovered my staff from nearby with a hasty "Ventas Servitas!" and then hastened to gather my will together, readying something with a stronger kick to it should the Jotunn continue forward. It slowed down when it saw my ready if somewhat unsteady stance, hefting the warhammer half-heartedly.
"Elendige Midgardian." With that oath the Jotunn spared me an ill look and marched off in another direction, seemingly giving me no further mind.
"Huh." I exhaled with a winch at the residual pain in my bones, watching it retreat and raising a hand to rub at my aching head. "That... could have been a hell of a lot worse than it was." I rolled the shoulder of the arm he had gripped and tested the muscle for injury, then repeated the effort here and there, stretching the rest of my body to make sure I wasn't injured worse than I thought. "Maybe they aren't entirely as much like Troll's as I had thought." It was certainly possible. If I hadn't struck first, it might have been content let me be after a time.
I shook my head. I didn't have the luxury to assume anything, anymore, until Oberon was dealt with.
Giving it another few moments to insure there wasn't about to be a sudden bull-rush from the distant frost giant, I turned away and began to work along the slope toward the mountains in the distance.
Above and behind my head a dull brown raven about the size of an eagle shook off ice from its stony perch and took flight after me.
I paid it no mind at this point in the journey.
Despite the lack of clothing and the intensive chill about the land, I never grew too cold, and my thoughts felt less fatigued all and all than I could remember happening for... months, easily. Maybe even a year or better.
I began to attribute that to Lasciel's influence and tried to keep track of how much time had passed since calling her coin to hand. It seemed to be about three and half very-precious hours, as I trekked up and down along the Jotunnheim traversing through unending banks of snow.
I eventually reached a spanning river twice as long as the Jotunn I last met had been tall, when was the one back at the flume. They shouldn't have been so far and few between, unless there was something afoul of late. Perhaps the mutterings about 'Midgardians' meant they had taken to hunting down the frost giants. I simply didn't know. The odds of it being something more unpleasant crept up from the back of my mind.
What if whoever was responsible for all of this, the Black Council in all probability, truly was predicting my motions? Could they be setting up traps with enough surety and accuracy to kill me now that I had accepted Lasciel's coin? And for that matter, I still didn't know how much longer until Oberon returned to full strength - but if I felt like being frank, I found that his imminent return to godling-hood didn't matter as much as finding and doing something about him before my own internal meltdown was averted.
I didn't have time to stop and try to consider either unsavory situation.
I came to a stop several feet back from the water, watching as the churn of the river whipped up a vicious somersault of waves that crashed back to the surface like liquid hammers. There was simply no way I'd be able to cross that and not get swept up into the furious assault, but I'd faced similar conundrum's and found some way to get through it before. Just as I remembered a spell that might work I heard the raven's caw, and looking up toward that direction I watched as the scale-covered feathers of each wing glided smoothly over the massive surface, and it landed on the other side and turned the head back to observe me.
"Right." I said with a general sense of unease. "Now I'm being eyeballed by a stone-and-scale-covered avian with only one eye left to it." As the words tumbled out of my mouth I recognized why that should sound familiar, and a temporary sense of relief followed - perhaps I wasn't as shafted as I had initially thought, between Ferrovax and Odin having their attention on the situation as well.
"So you're one of Donar's pets?" I asked, and the raven cocked the head down and toward one side a fraction as if to answer. "Good to know he's still out there watching things; I could use the help." I said before stepping forward to plant my staff firmly at the very edge of the river, so that a few inches of water soaked the base of the wood, then began to breath in and out deeply in preparation for the evocation about to be worked. My eyes closed, trusting the raven to caw again in warning if anything approached that I should be worried about, and then I gathered in my will to feed down into the staff.
Unknown to my senses, the wood began to release little wisps of curling smoke as the sigils along it stood at attention in magnificent contrast, and the representation of Laciel's name on my hand came to life to match.
I barely felt a delicate-presence touch my conscious mind before my eyes snapped open and I released my will into being with a hearty cry of, "Gravitus!" and then the churn of the river was quelled beneath the rush of amplified gravity.
Chapter Six concluded.
Translations:
"Hva er du, lille Midgardian?" What are you, little Midgardian?
"Du er ikke en vanlig Midling. Hva er dette?" You are not a common Midgardian. What's this?
"Elendige midgardian." Miserable Midgardian.