"In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God’s creation . . . as music.”

Roy H William

As we pulled up for the day, I had not expected to watch the seemingly nomadic and Stone Age giants break my understanding of space and magic. I had yet to process precisely how little stuff they were hauling with them compared to Namir and me. Especially not when considering how much people of their stature would have to eat and drink to stave off starvation, let alone exert themselves in the sub-zero temperatures of the endless ice. They only had a small backpack each, which was vanishingly tiny compared to their size and even their primary weapons. I assumed they were catching prey to supplement their meals, but we had spent an entire day walking, so they had little opportunity. So I was left wondering whether there was a racial ability that they acquired to support their super strength somehow. For example, the Dwarf's durability allowed them to go for days on fewer rations or for their bodies to last much longer.

I would have been starving without having the supply of jerky I had been quietly snacking on under the beast fur mantle that had kept Nyx and me so warm as we traversed the endless ice. The wind may have whipped up snow flurries, but the sky had been remarkably clear of precipitation since the storm stranded us here at the northern edge of the world.

Anyway, I had long since poked my head out of the top of the pelts to watch the snow-covered landscape pass us by. Namir, formerly ranged ahead and around us, had not struggled to keep up with the giant’s long, steady strides across the open ice fields. I could sense him even if I could see him with my constant sensory sweeps returning now, so I was not worried when he was not immediately visible to such a simple sense as sight alone. He would be here soon enough once he had seen we had actually stopped especially as he had already warned me of our slowing.

“Awake, are we?” Bjorn asked as I emerged. The jolly giant stretched out his back from pulling the sledge for so long. But I suspected it was more a ploy for sympathy than an actual necessity with his size and stats.

"Thanks for pulling me today," I nodded in thanks. “I've been awake for a little while now,” I replied, thanking him. “ I sensed we were slowing down and decided to pop out for dinner.”

“Hungry are we?” he laughed at the flight of Nyx who had also popped out at hearing the magical word dinner despite the freezing cold.

“Just a little,” I answered politely, not mentioning the jerky Nyx and I had already demolished. They had been running for most of the day while I had my nap and made my mental and spiritual excursions, not that they knew of those.

Nyx, not noticing any food immediately available, had disappeared back under the bear fur rug after I had rebuffed her freezing feet from skittering inside my clothes.

“Hmm, it has been a while since we broke our fast. Time to do so again.” He added, approaching the craggy rock face we had pulled up alongside and placing one hand against the wall.

Without warning or fanfare, I watched as the rock seemed to vibrate, shards falling off it until he was left with a flat, vertical face. I could sense how his mana was being pulsed into the rockface, and his brow furrowed in concentration as the mana took shape and a stone glyph of the giant magical language formed on the smooth vertical face.

Then, casually, he reached into one of his large pouches on his waist and pulled out what appeared to be a large beast core that he placed against the centre of the stone glyph he had created.

“Might want to stand back a little here.” He grinned as he turned back to watch my face at the outpouring of magic. I had been watching intently but doubted I looked too shocked or surprised as I had been able to watch the entire event unfolding with my magical senses. He seemed a little disappointed.

I jumped back just in case the warning was necessary. However, Erik chuckled at my alarm, and I suspected I was being played with.

“It’s time for dinner he said.” Then, he placed his hand on the beast's core, pressing it into the stone.

Without warning, an enormous doorway sized for giants appeared on the solid stone overlaying the stone glyph, the beast's core embedded in what appeared to be a door handle. The instant appearance was far more shocking than his previous efforts, and he smiled at my confusion. I had been able to sense his previous magic forming and coming to fruition. This, though, had caught me off-guard. The magic snapped into place instantly from the core rather than Bjorn.

He then opened the door to reveal an enormous house-sized room with four giant beds along the walls and a giant table in the centre laden with food. It was an exceptional magic trick the like of which I had never seen before.

“What? How?” I quizzed, taken aback by the impossibility of what I was seeing. Sure, magic made many impossibilities possible, but I had never seen the laws of space and time broken so casually before. The food was still steaming hot in places. What appeared to be an entire fish was cooked as if freshly grilled in the centre of the table.

I turned to the rest of the giants to see if they were equally amazed, but other than a couple of chuckles at my expense, they continued to build what looked like walls of snow and ice around our temporary campsite. A courtyard around or entry but wall that would keep our magical door out of sight should anyone be searching for it.

The only one to pause was when Namir returned to our temporary base.

“Food, Kai.” He answered, still grinning at my bafflement. He was focused on his tummy rather than the magic of the moment. Perhaps he had seen the like before but somehow this had been missed from our lessons. Maybe it was peculiar to the giants and their stone magic?

“Yes, but how?” The food wasn’t what was confusing me. It was the ability of the giants to have a spatially hidden home that was breaking my mind. Could I have one? Was it somehow connected to the beast core, or was that simply powering it? It couldn’t have been hollowed out of the stone as it came equipped with beds, tables and food.

“Welcome to our home away from home.” He avoided answering the question and stepped inside, gesturing for me to follow him. “You didn’t think we would travel so far from home with so little.” He motioned to the relatively small backpacks now lined up against the inside wall of the stone home as they continued to through up ice walls around the entrance.

“No, I mean, I thought you must have a trait or skill that allowed you to go without food or that we would be hunting more regularly,” I replied.

“No need.” He answered abruptly before continuing, “We hunt but the truth is that there is not a wide variety of food on the endless ice or enough quantity to support a people of our size. No, most of our food comes from the sea.” He pointed to the steaming grilled fish across the table, awaiting us to sit and eat them as well as to a larder I had missed before entering to the side of the entryway which appeared fully stocked with all manner of sea food.

“Yes, but how?” I was repeating myself, but I had to know.

“What exactly do you want to know?” He asked.

“The space. Where did it come from? How did you create it? How do you carry it? Why form the stone glyph? What did the beast core do?”

“Slow down, slow down.” He continued to chuckle at my explosion of questions. I had seemingly been silent all day long and now I was suddenly badgering him for answers.

“This is a vault.” He stated. “It is formed, created and stored in the beast core all I have done is release it or rather open it to allow us entry.”

“But how?” I quizzed.

“Every magical monster or beast that develops a magical power has that skill or magic imprinted on the core it grows inside. The higher the level of beast the most likely the higher the level of skill or magical imprint its core will hold.”

“Every beast?”

“Every beast.”

“What kind of magical beast holds cores with the imprints of vaults?” I asked, enthused. Other than the desire to have my own home away from home, the difference it would make to logistics, especially those carried by sea, would be insane.

“The hunt of Lodestone Wyrm provided this core.”

“A Lodestone Wyrm?” I asked, confused. I had never heard of such beasts before, but seeing as I now knew they could hold magical gifts, I was keen to learn as much as possible in order to grab them.

“They are gigantic worms their diameter the size of this room.” He pointed to the space surrounding us. “They tunnel through the Lodestone below our feet, and much of the passageways linking us to the depths were created by them tunnelling through the Lodestone.”

“How do they move through solid stone?” I asked.

“That’s their magical power or gift. Their core allows them to store vast quantities of stone in their vaults. Simply swallowing stone out of existence as much as they burrow their way through it.”

“And you killed one?” I asked. How did you even go about finding such a monster within the earth, let alone kill it?

“A long time ago.” He calmly commented.

“How?”

“The same way you would kill any magical beast with a hunt. A carefully planned hunt with both lures and traps.” He grinned enjoying boasting about his success.

Erik having completed the snow walls outside and having entered the room, was not quite so willing to suffer through what was clearly a lengthy and often repeated tale, burst his bubble. “The worm was threatening the foundations of our Thorpe and was lured onto the surface with a suitably large source of mana. Once the majority of the beast was out of the earth, the entire village descended on it, cutting it in two before it could retreat.” He quickly retold what would clearly have been an hour-long story in seconds.

“Or something along those lines,” Bjorn muttered, pouring himself what must have been a but a pint to a giant, but to any human or beastkin looked more like a gallon of ale in consolation of having his storytelling cut short.

“Judging by the size of the tale and the Lodestone Wyrm within it, I would have thought the beast core would have been bigger,” I said, thinking back to the size of the core he had placed on the stone face.

“It was,” Erik replied. “But the village worked it into smaller sections to allow many vaults to be created out of the single beast core.”

“You can create more vaults from the original core?”

“All the fragments of the core hold the same imprint, the same skill or spell. The size is much smaller than the original, but the village found it far more effective to have multiple smaller vaults rather than a singularly large one.” He continued. "It was also a lot easier to reward everyone who had put in the effort to put down the beast as well as compensate those whose homes had collapsed when we were able to separate them into smaller cores rather than keeping it as a prize too precious for any of us to have been able to have afforded it."

“Are any for sale?” I asked excitedly.

“Most families of hunt keep them as their prized possession, but you might be able to convince someone to part with one if you had enough money.” He shrugged. “Do you have any money?”

“Not on me, per se.” I paused, realising that contrary to usual, I was currently relatively poor considering everything. I just needed to find something I could supply that they were equally poor in. The difficulty was that it would be down to what only Namir and I could supply which added a certain level of complication.

Bjorn reintroduced himself into the conversation his son had shanghaied. “No one is likely to sell you one due to the magical nature of the family heirloom, but you are welcome to have a look at ours as we travel tomorrow. Now, time to feast.” He passed around the plates he had made up while we had been chatting. Bjorn, Erik, Namir, Ragnar and I sat down to eat while Ivar kept watch outside the hidden home on the top of the temporary ice walls they had created.

“So, how long do you think it will take us to reach your Thorpe?” Namir asked, changing the topic.

The conversation continued on more mundane matters between the adults but my mind was stuck on the possibilities of what having my own vault available to me might mean to myself and my family should I ever be able to get one or more home.