Chapter 13: The Bigger They Are...

It took only minutes to find my girls and their fight was going... well. The issue with giants was that they looked so damn human that seeing them hurt always made me feel bad. And that poor fucker was hurt. Both his eyes were missing and he was flailing around wildly, trying to hit my girls and the Chosen One, his left hand already sliced to ribbons. I'd deliberately killed the giant I'd fought as swiftly and cleanly as I could but without any show-stopping finishers the four of them had had little choice but to kill him slowly and painfully.

Or so I thought. To my surprise it was the Chosen One who took pity on the poor thing and used his battering ram miracle to hit the giant right between the eyes with a column of force strong enough to shatter a portcullis. It hit the poor fucker so hard it came out the back of his head, killing him instantly and making him fall over onto his back. As he fell the ground shook hard enough to make all the goblins in the area stumble.

“Well done”, I told them as I approached and Alisha immediately ran up to me and threw her arms around me.

“You're alright”, she said, relieved.

“I told you I'd be fine”, I said as a group of guards on striders rushed past us to attack the still stunned goblins.

“Did you manage to kill yours?”, the Chosen One asked me and I nodded.

“Yes. I had to kill a couple goblins or I would have been here sooner. Should we take care of the Hecatoncheir?”

The Chosen One nodded and Alisha let go as we made our way to the big guy. We had only taken a few steps when we heard another high-pitched squeal from a giant and a second later a colorless mirage sprang up next to me and out of it stepped Lord Isaac.

“I see you're done as well”, he said. “Shall we?”

“You're coming with us?”, Selene asked. “Are you sure?”

“Of course”, the old wizard said. “This is my village and I'm going to make them pay for attacking it.”

Then he looked at the sea of goblins around us that had just scrambled back to their feet and gave them a look of pure disdain that made me like the man even more. Anyone who hated goblins that much had to be an alright fellow.

“Tch”, he said and waved his hand through the air. The group of goblins between us and the Hecatoncheir was suddenly crushed to the ground as if an invisible elephant had landed on top of them.

“Did you even need us?”, Selene asked him as she watched the display.

“'Need' is a strong word, young lady”, he told her. “Your assistance was very welcome since I can only be in one place at a time, but yes, we would have won without you.”

We marched for a couple minutes until just a small patch of trees was between us and the Hecatoncheir. We were about to head into it when I saw something and held out a hand to stop my group. Once again Yume was the last to notice and walked into my hand but from the smile she gave me as I looked at her I could tell that this time had been intentional.

“What's wrong?”, the Chosen One asked quietly.

I was about to point up at the very large spider leg poking out from between the branches above when Alisha hissed:

“More of those spiders.”

“Do any of you fine young people know how to use fire magic?”, Lord Isaac asked.

Yume paused a moment before replying: “I do, but I don't want to set the forest on fire.”

He chuckled. “Go ahead, I shall keep it contained.”

Yume pulled off her cape and began to move her hands in a series of mystical gestures, creating a light blue fireball. She kept going and as her tails danced behind her I felt the Qi rushing out of her and into the fireball, making it denser and more powerful. I'd seen her cast these fireballs with much less fanfare but I knew she was doing it to draw attention away from the Qi technique she'd used to make the fireball this strong. From the very curious look Lord Isaac was shooting her he had clearly noticed that she had used more than just magic, though.

When she was done her tails all stood on end and she tossed the fireball at the nearest spider body up in the trees.

To say the effect was devastating would be to give her too little credit. The fireball struck with the force of a cannonball, blasting the branches apart from the sheer force of impact before exploding into streaks of fire that spread over the trees as if they'd been covered in oil. The leaves burned off in a flash and so we could clearly see the fire chasing down and flowing over the goblins and their spiders that had been laying in ambush and the fire seemed almost alive as it seemed to deliberately go for eyes and open mouths. Any goblin that tried to shriek in anguish inhaled a plume of fire and was cooked from the inside while the spiders' shells ruptured from the intense heat building up inside them.

True to Lord Isaac's word none of it even came close to affecting us. A barrier of space magic kept the fire contained and neither the heat nor the bodily fluids could reach us. When all those who had laid in ambush were dead he contracted the spatial barrier and the fire died out from lack of air, not even an ember remaining.

I had expected him to remark upon Yume's technique but after one look at her worried expression he let it rest. Once we'd dealt with the Chosen One I was sure we could return and talk to him again. He seemed like a decent fellow.

As we walked through the charred forest I asked: “So, did you make Shackled Hollow float or has it always been like this?”

He chuckled. “Everyone thinks that. But no, I am not quite that strong. It has been like this for as long as anyone can remember. I believe there is a dungeon deep under the village that causes the phenomenon but no matter how deep we dig we can't seem to find an entrance. Space magic does seem to run in my family and most who are born mages in Shackled Hollow also have an affinity for it, so that would also support the dungeon theory.”

“How so?”, Selene asked.

“If a family spends enough time close to a dungeon their children develop an affinity for the magic of the dungeon”, he explained. “It makes me wonder what kind of secret the royal family is hiding.”

I perked up at that. “So it's true then?”, I asked. “The Crystal Crown is the manifestation of a dungeon?”

“You'd have to be much closer to the royal family than a simple lord of a backwater territory to know for sure”, he said. “But it is a fairly reasonable connection to make.”

Soon enough we had reached the large clearing the Hecatoncheir was sitting in, watching the battle. I had no idea why it hadn't intervened at all but it had been convenient for us.

The Chosen One stepped forward and pointed his sword at the goblin shaman sitting on the Hecatoncheir's shoulder as he said: “Prepare to meet your doom, foul creatures!” He was physically imposing enough that the line didn't sound utterly ridiculous but still, of the six of us I would have classified him as the least dangerous, at least now that I knew about Qi techniques.

To my surprise it was the Hecatoncheir that answered him. Its voice was weird and off in a way that further made me think it might be like the wendigo we'd encountered a couple days ago, a spawn of Shub-Niggurath. It had one voice that sounded like a giant, though a giant with a throat full of phlegm, and another dozen or so voices that repeated random words with different pitch, volume or inflection, some growling, some whispering, some whining, some cheerful. The secondary voices were, of course, all coming out of the tumorous faces surrounding the real one.

“Little manling cannot harm us”, it said. “Little manling cannot kill us. Mother say help little brother. Little brother say help green specks, hurt man-things.”

“Yeah, whatever”, the Chosen One said and drew his sword, which made my opinion of him climb a little. About a hair's breadth from the bottom of the chasm my opinion was stuck in.

Before we could advance on the Hecatoncheir the goblin shaman on his shoulder yelled out:

“GNAAAA!”

I was wondering what the little shit had gotten all excited about when dozens of goblins burst out of the underbrush and into the clearing until we were pinned between a half circle of the little shits on one side and the Hecatoncheir on the other.

I growled and pulled out my crossbow before putting a bolt right between the shaman's eyes. It hit with enough force to not only kill him but also to toss his dead body off the giant to land on the ground behind him with a wet thud.

“Lord Isaac, Chosen One, Selene, Yume, take care of the goblins, Alisha and I'll take care of the big one”, I said and put my crossbow away before pulling out my sword.

“Fine, you glory hound”, the Chosen One said. He knew I'd taken on a giant on my own. He hadn't seen me do it but he knew I'd succeeded, so he knew I was right in splitting up this way. One thing I could say in his favor was that he had enough military training not to question a good decision.

Of course, that good decision still left me and Alisha against a tangle of limbs in the vague shape of a giant.

“Do you have a plan?”, Alisha asked from right next to me.

“Yes”, I said. “I still have your enhancement miracle on me, so I need you to stand back. If I get hurt I need you to heal me. Otherwise, if you're free to attack, go for the eyes.”

“Are you sure you'll be fine?”, she asked.

“Trust me”, I said.

She nodded.

I stepped forward, my sword to the side, and the Hecatoncheir chuckled at me, the sound a low rumbling with a few high malicious voices echoing its main voice.

“Little manling want to die?”, it asked and raised a leg to stomp on me. On a normal giant that would have been scary enough, a foot the size of a fully grown human coming down like an avalanche, but with the Hecatoncheir it was far more disturbing, a forest of limbs ending in dozens of differently sized feet coming down on me. I might have been able to dodge my way around the feet and find a safe spot but I didn't feel like risking it. I concentrated on my Qi and just as the feet were coming down on me I sent out a cutting wave of Qi Projection that sliced into the tangle of limbs, chopping off a couple of the smallest and seriously injuring a couple of the larger ones. The Hecatoncheir jerked its leg back and howled in agony before Alisha sent a powerful burst of air lances at its face.

The giant only just had enough presence of mind to hold the left tangle of hands in front of its face to protect it, though it got a few of the hands skewered for the trouble. For a moment I thought our combined attack would topple the beast but it righted itself and thrust its right arm forward.

A magic circle appeared in front of it and it reached into the circle, its arm vanishing up to what passed for its elbow. It took me half a second to realize what was going on before I turned tail and used a Qi Burst to dash towards Alisha.

A matching circle had appeared above her and the tangle of limbs reached through it, the exact same spell as the tentacle portals cultists of Shub-Niggurath could summon up but instead of a conjured tangle of tentacles the Hecatoncheir had used the spell to send its own limbs through space.

If I hadn't used the Qi technique I would have been too slow and would have had to watch a forest of hands squeeze the life out of my beautiful elven priestess but I had used it and so I was fast enough to shove us both clear of the attack, though we landed within the circle of goblins the others had been fighting.

I spun my sword around in a wide horizontal arc, cutting through four goblins, before gathering Qi again and taking Alisha and me out of the group of goblins and back to fight the Hecatoncheir.

“That attack”, Alisha breathed. “Wasn't that...?”

“Yeah, same as those cultists”, I said. “Shit.”

“No, this is great”, Alisha said. “I've been itching to use that new miracle I got.”

I smirked. After we'd helped Selene slay her Dark Lord Alisha's patron goddess Brigid had given her access to a miracle called Cleanse which was apparently specifically designed to kill Outsiders and Undead. Sadly in the weeks since then we hadn't had any opportunity to try it out since we hadn't encountered any Outsiders. Well, except for the wendigo I'd fought with Yume but obviously Alisha hadn't been present for that.

“Alright”, I said. “You cast your miracle, I'll keep it distracted.”

I advanced toward it and yelled out: “Hey ugly!”, before sending out another Qi Projection, right at its face.

This time it didn't get its hands in the way in time, not that I thought that would do much against this particular technique, and it suffered a bad diagonal cut across its ugly mug, only just barely managing to jerk away enough to avoid losing an eye.

Now that I had its undivided attention I dashed off to the side, running normally so it could actually follow me.

“Over here!”, I taunted as I shot a crossbow bolt. I missed its main face but I hit one of the tumor faces right in the mouth and from the way the main face winced that probably hadn't felt very nice.

I dashed away again and fired another crossbow bolt at it and finally I managed to turn it away from Alisha entirely.

“Hold still, manling”, it told me and then knelt down to try and grab me.

I used a Qi Burst to dash between its legs, very deliberately not looking up as I went because with the bizarre anatomy of its limbs I really didn't want to know what was under its loincloth, and the stupid thing actually reached between its legs to try and catch me and only just managed to not fall over.

And just as it righted itself and turned back towards us Alisha had finally finished the lengthy incantation and finished it with:

“Cleanse!” The magic circle of orange knots around Alisha created a dome of energy above it and then rapidly expanded outward.

Us mortals were left untouched and all the goblins around us shrieked in agony as the bright light hit their eyes. The Hecatoncheir, though? The energy hit it like liquid fire, not just burning it but sticking to its skin and searing as it went. The thinnest of its appendages went up like kindling and the medium ones shriveled up under the intense heat that nobody but it seemed to feel. Only the thickest and sturdiest of the split appendages survived and on its legs those few weren't enough to keep it upright. What passed for its knees buckled and collapsed, sending it to the ground. But no part of its anatomy was affected more than the canker over its heart. I thought I'd seen devastation when Yume had annihilated the goblins and their spiders in the trees but that display had seemed tame compared to how Alisha's miracle tore into the canker on the giant's chest.

It burned away all traces, leaving a jagged hole behind. From the way the injury looked I was almost certain the canker had been unnaturally grafted onto the giant's flesh at some point, the holes under its skin suggesting that the canker's veins had burrowed themselves into its flesh like roots.

When the miracle subsided the Hecatoncheir, or rather the giant, was lying on his back, taking long ragged breaths. The removal of the canker had clearly been traumatic and the ribcage and the heart underneath were visible. I climbed onto the beast and as I stood on its chest it tilted its head to look at me. Before, the beast had seemed almost child-like and dumb but now it looked different. The giant looked to be in immense pain and said, in a single raspy voice no longer echoed by the tumorous faces that had been burned off:

“End it. Free me. Please.”

I was almost certain this poor beast had been infected by some bastard cultist of the Black Goat, probably against his will, and now his body was so ravaged that a swift death was the only mercy I could give him.

“May your soul find its way across the Styx”, I told the giant before ramming my sword into his exposed heart.

**

I took a moment to mourn the poor giant before turning around to help the rest of our party fight off the goblins and noticed that there were no more goblins to fight. There was an area about forty feet squared that had been flattened as if by Zeus' angry fist and the area contained a couple dozen squished green corpses, so that told me pretty much everything I needed to know.

“Jolly good show, miss priestess”, I heard Lord Isaac say as I approached. “That flash of light was a great touch, made it very easy to deal with the goblins.”

“So why did you get all sentimental for that freaky giant?”, the Chosen One asked me.

“That canker in his chest twisted him”, I explained. “That used to be a normal giant.”

“But the only being that can do that...”, Lord Isaac began.

“Is the Black Goat”, I finished. “Yes. Which begs the question of why a Dark Lord would work together with Outsiders.”

The Chosen One frowned in confusion. “I'm afraid you've lost me. What's it matter? Evil is evil.”

I shook my head. “Let me put it this way”, I said. “Outsiders are beings so vile that normally even the evil gods and the Dark Lords kill them on sight. But for some reason this Dark Lord had a being corrupted by an Outsider as a pet.”

“So you're saying the Dark Lord managed to subjugate something that was even more vile than him?”, the Chosen One asked. “Sounds more like an accomplishment.”

“I think it's the other way around and the Dark Lord himself might be corrupted.”

The Chosen One shrugged. “I don't think it matters. We were going to kill him anyway.”

I didn't really think he'd gotten how serious this situation might be but I couldn't really disagree with his conclusion. I was very interested in finding out what god the Dark Lord had gotten his power from, though.

**

As we headed back to see whether the guards needed help the battle was already over. Thanks to Lord Isaac's apprentices the guards hadn't suffered any casualties as the apprentices had teleported those in danger of being overwhelmed away to safety. None of the apprentices were anywhere near as strong as Lord Isaac but their support had still managed to save a lot of good people. From what little I'd seen of them I knew that not a one among them was as powerful as Alisha and that was despite wizards usually being more powerful spell-casters than clerics.

“So”, I asked as we made our way back, after Lord Isaac had made sure his guards were alright. “I'm curious. How high would Shackled Hollow float if it weren't for those chains? And when were these chains constructed?”

Lord Isaac smiled. “Well, according to my family's history, before Shackled Hollow was founded the disc of rock floated as high as it does now. The weight of the buildings pushed it down but each year it floated a little higher, allowing my ancestors to erect more buildings. Eventually they had to chain it down to make sure it didn't float away. At this point, if not for the chains and the buildings, I'm sure it would float a hundred feet higher.”

“Is there a reason you're keeping it this close to the ground?”, Alisha asked. “Wouldn't it be more practical for your gatherers if it floated a little higher?”

“There is, actually”, Lord Isaac said. “The ecosystem underneath the disc is very delicate. The albino bees cannot handle direct sunlight and their honey spoils if the conditions change too much. So we need to keep the disc where it is so that all our trade goods stay viable.”

“What is that silver honey even good for?”, the Chosen One asked.

Lord Isaac was about to open his mouth but I answered. “It's an incredibly rare alchemical ingredient. It's supposedly very delicious but in the capital at least it's so expensive that nobody would be insane enough to just eat it.”

Lord Isaac nodded. “It's as he says. The silver honey is incredibly rare. Albino bees hate the sun so they only fly out during the night. Most flowers only bloom during the day, so the bees can only harvest from the few flowers that bloom at night. So between the special bees and the very specific flowers they harvest from the honey has many special properties. Of course, those who live here are spoiled and don't really understand how rare it is since they all have steady access to it. Forcing them to raise the price was one of my most unpopular ruling decisions, but other merchants were practically kicking our doors down and buying up all our stock before.”

“Of course it's still far cheaper here than it is in the capital”, I added. “The merchants in the capital apparently sell it with insane margins.”

“Indeed”, Lord Isaac said. “Which is why many alchemists still come here themselves. But we welcome those. Why, there is this one beautiful young herbalist who visits here every few months who I am all but certain is more important than she is letting on.”

“How can you tell?”, Alisha asked.

“Just a hunch, really”, Lord Isaac said. “As a noble one quickly learns to identify those born of status. Isn't that right, Miss Priestess?”

Alisha blushed. “I am not a noble”, she said, then added after a pause: “Technically. But what's it matter if she is someone important?”

“Nothing, really”, Lord Isaac said. “I merely make sure that everyone here treats her kindly so that if she is indeed someone important she might look favorably upon my little village.”

We walked a little while longer before Lord Isaac said: “I hope it goes without saying that we will be holding a little celebration tonight and that you are all welcome to join. You did, after all, aid us in our hour of need.”

“You said you would have been fine without us”, Alisha accused and Lord Isaac shrugged.

“Yes, and?”