The Immortals of Notoriouslandia
Chapter Twenty: The Cold One From Forribarned
Five Years Later
The city of Notoriouslandia had thrived.
Once broken by shadow and flame, it now pulsed with life, trade, music, and color. The scars remained—but they were earned.
The Unbound Team, now legends, had settled into semi-retirement. Peace didn't require swords—not all the time.
This afternoon, they were just friends. Sitting on a grassy hill in the park. Mr. Shonk snacking on salted oceanfruit. Sapphire lounging on a picnic blanket with her crystal blades reshaped into artistic jewelry. Kukranchunlikryting perched in the shade, sipping a customized slushie—radioactive green, naturally.
Descentedrain leaned against a tree, sword nowhere in sight, reading an old paper book.
Then—his phone buzzed.
The Notification
🛑 ALERT: POLICE BROADCAST—GIANT HOSTILE IN DOWNTOWN DISTRICT. POSSIBLE SENTIENCE. EYE-BASED BEAM. MULTIPLE WITNESSES CONFIRM: "CYCLIC CREATURE, VOCAL, FROST TRAIL." 🛑
Descentedrain sat up. So did everyone else.
Mr. Shonk's eyes widened, chewing stopped.
"Did it say cyclops and frost?"
"Yes," Descentedrain replied, already summoning his coat.
Mr. Shonk reached into his bag and pulled out a dusty leather tome labeled:Bestiary of Dangerous Dumb-Looking Things I've Fought or Fled From™
He flipped quickly through pages of claw marks and sketches until he slammed his finger down.
"Humelytrumantrelyclops. Forest beast. Huge. Talks a lot. Easily annoyed. Hates rain."
He paused, frowning.
"But it doesn't use ice. Ever. That's… new."
Downtown Battle
The creature was already in the business district—ten stories tall, single eye glowing bright blue, its voice booming:
"GET OUT OF MY WAY, THIS TREE LOOKS DELICIOUS."
Everything it touched turned cold—cars frozen in place, lamp posts cracking with frost.
Civilians scattered.
The team arrived seconds later.
Descentedrain used a gravitational shield to push people out of danger.
Sapphire flash-stepped into its blind spot, hurling reflective crystal blades that forced it to blink, staggering it.
Kukranchunlikryting launched frost-resistant acid bombs at its knees, slowing it.
Mr. Shonk leapt from a building, trident charged, and punched it in the face.
"You're not even supposed to be here, big guy! What's with the frosty mood!?"
The cyclops roared and fired a beam of ice from its eye, freezing part of a skyscraper.
But after coordinated attacks—Shonk's fists, Sapphire's pressure-point cuts, and Descentedrain's psychic burst to the brainstem—they took it down.
No casualties. No hypothermia.
But something was wrong.
A Discovery Within the Beast
The cyclops shuddered.
And then—its chest cracked open.
Not bleeding—but splitting, like a shell.
Inside, clinging to the ribcage like a parasite, was a creature no bigger than a cat—all crystal fur, ice-blue fins, and razor teeth.
It hissed once, then curled up and turned to dust.
Mr. Shonk knelt, brushing the frost aside and pulling a page from his bestiary's addendum.
"That's an Icemagritalingary. They're mind-jackers. Parasites. They embed in your nervous system and hijack your instincts with freezing command."
"But they live in Mount Flaryintanhing—on the other side of the world."
Everyone fell silent.
"So what was it doing here?" Sapphire asked.
Descentedrain looked toward the north.
"And why would it choose that creature to possess?"
"Unless someone… sent it," Kukranchunlikryting muttered.
Next Destination: The Forest of Forribarned
They regrouped back at HQ.
The maps lit up with an arc from the city to a legendary place none of them had visited:
The Forest of Forribarned.
A warped, overgrown wildland once sealed off by the Immortals themselves. A place full of forgotten monsters, mythic traps, and trees that fed on dreams.
"If this parasite came from beyond its origin point…" Descentedrain said, eyes narrowing,"Then Forribarned may no longer be sealed."
Sapphire's hand hovered over her blades.
"Then it's time we un-retire. Fully."
Mr. Shonk grinned.
"Time to add a forest chapter to my bestiary."
Kukranchunlikryting cracked his neck.
"Let's bring matches. I don't like trees that move."
They packed.
They planned.
They would leave by morning.
And something deep within Forribarned had already begun to watch them.
Arrival at Forribarned
The sky turned gray as they approached the borders of the Forest of Forribarned. Once protected by two towering crystalline pillars, etched with Immortal runes and psychic locks, it had stood sealed for centuries.
But now—
The runes were shattered. The pillars cracked, one snapped in half and the other oozing with black crystal rot.
"Seal's broken," Descentedrain said grimly, inspecting the fractured base."Something either inside… or outside… wanted this open."
Sapphire ran a hand along the moss-covered symbols.
"I don't like this. This wasn't supposed to be possible."
"And yet," Kukranchunlikryting muttered, unsheathing his acid-infused blade,"we're here."
Into the Forest – The Cyclops Gauntlet
Once inside the forest, the team was immediately met with chaos—cyclopes of various elements, all mutated, and all under some kind of unnatural influence.
First came the fire cyclopes—huge, red-skinned, magma-blooded beasts hurling inferno boulders. Their veins glowed, and every roar came with a burst of ash.
Mr. Shonk shouted while dodging one of their fire-blasts:
"These are being controlled by Dytrantyruitiy! Fire-jacking parasites from Mount Flaryintanhing! They shouldn't be here!"
They fought back with storm-forged precision. Sapphire froze one's legs with adaptive crystal blades while Kukranchunlikryting infected the other's throat with heat-repelling toxin gas. Descentedrain took the last with a mental slam and cracked its skull with a solar-gravity burst.
Then came the ice cyclopes—frost-coated and silent, their breath freezing entire trees. No challenge—until their steel kin arrived.
Steel Cyclopes and the Name of Another Mountain
These were towering, glinting beasts forged from raw metal—iron-gray skin, mechanical eyes, and spears made from train track steel. Their movements were precise, calculated.
Descentedrain ducked a crushing metal fist and cursed:
"These aren't possessed by fire parasites—this is something new."
Mr. Shonk flipped through the bestiary again, eyes widening.
"Yep. These are infected by Irortyrunigratyunghegger parasites. That's from a whole different mountain."
"Let me guess," Sapphire said, hurling a crystal glaive into a steel cyclops' jaw."Also impossibly far from here?"
"Other side of the planet."
"How. Are. They. All. Here?" Kukranchunlikryting snarled, melting the knee joint off one steel brute.
"That's what we're going to find out," Descentedrain said, finishing the last one with a psychic slice.
The Kingdom of Cyclopes
They advanced deeper through the forest until the trees parted—
—and the ground gave way to a hidden valley.
Below them, carved into the forest floor, was an entire kingdom of cyclopes.
Massive cities built into cliffs, spirals of smoke rising from war foundries, strange floating platforms that ferried different types of cyclops to different areas. Each section of the kingdom was divided by element:
A fiery region with rivers of lava.
An icy region carved into glaciers.
A storm zone that cracked with constant thunder.
A metal fortress bristling with cannon towers.
They were organized. Coordinated. Too intelligent.
At the center of it all was a massive coliseum.
And inside that arena towered an abomination:
The Bruytereginagrating—an overgrown cyclops, nearly 80 feet tall, with four arms, each pulsing with a different elemental glow:🔥 Fire🌊 Water🌪️ Wind🌍 Earth
It moved like a god of destruction, and its eye glowed with both sentience and wrath.
"That thing's no accident," Descentedrain said."That's a king."
A Camp in Enemy Lands
The team retreated to a cave carved into the hillside above the valley.
There, they began constructing a camouflaged outpost—complete with toxin wards, energy shields, and reflective crystal beacons.
Sapphire activated a multidimensional scanner.
"We need a plan. A real one. Not just 'punch everything until it works.'"
Mr. Shonk scoffed.
"To be fair, that's worked most of the time."
Descentedrain looked down at the kingdom, jaw clenched.
"Someone's moved parasites from two mountains across the world, broken seals, and built a kingdom of elemental cyclopes."
"This isn't random."
"This is war."