The Giant's Desert

A village where giants live.

Administered by Baron Werbid's territory and periodically resupplied, the settlement was uniquely called the Giant's Fortress Village.

One word would ordinarily suffice to define a place—either fortress or village. That this one bore both names had a reason.

Despite carrying the title of fortress, the Giant's Fortress Village lacked even a wooden palisade. No walls, open on every side—it was a village.

Strictly speaking, it lacked the basic elements of a fortress, so simply calling it the Giant's Village would have been enough.

That was precisely the crux of it. Its inhabitants were giants.

Forget a raid—even wild animals and monsters fled at the mere scent of their bodies and breath.

The crude, primitive houses shaped by enormous hands pressed so tightly together that they produced a wall-like effect on their own.

And even if someone breached those walls, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it wouldn't mean much.

Because the ones living inside were giants.

Few in number and limited in cunning, they nonetheless possessed monstrous strength that could crumple a human in one hand. Any such giant, roused to fury by a neighbor's disturbance, would come swinging a stone axe.

For that reason, the Giant's Fortress Village was both village and fortress. Its inhabitants granted it defensive efficiency practically indistinguishable from a true stronghold.

And now, Aslan was watching that village—the one with the defensive efficiency of a fortress—come under attack.

"Wraiths... so many wraiths...."

A giant's horrified voice. Not even the stench of its breath could dilute the smell of death bleeding from the village.

Aslan grimaced and leaped from the giant's shoulder. Once his feet touched the ground, the screams came through with sharp clarity.

Not human screams—giants' screams.

The cries echoing from all across the village rang out between the tent-sized dwellings, the giants thrusting their heads toward the sky.

As Aslan took in the sight, absorbing the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sounds and ordering his thoughts, the giants who had been wavering stepped forward.

"The Master is with us! The Master will kill the wraiths for us! So we will fight without fear!"

A booming roar. At the sound, the giants who had been paralyzed with fright looked toward Aslan with expressions of bewilderment.

What glittered in their eyes was trust. Abrupt, unearned trust.

"I'm going ahead!"

The giant who had first snarled at Aslan finished speaking, clutched his stone axe, and charged off. Though he loosed a thunderous battle cry, the screams from throughout the village swallowed it easily.

"The vigilance chief is right! We have the Master!"

"I'll fight too!"

The giants, all looking roughly alike, followed the one who had sprinted off with a shout of resolve and plunged into the village. War cries indistinguishable from screams or roars rang out between the pounding footsteps, gradually drowning out the shrieks rising from the settlement.

"...Damn."

Aslan, caught off guard by the sudden turn of events, stared at their retreating backs for a moment, then drew his single-edged sword.

By the time the blade blazed white, he spoke.

"Let's go. Before those idiots get themselves killed."

Ereta drew her weapon without expression, and Angie fell in behind them, gripping her six-foot staff tight.

Aslan led his party into the village.

Once inside, the situation was worse—and more baffling—than he had anticipated.

Giants were running everywhere. Their frantic paths split in precisely two directions.

Some fled. Others charged ahead with the brainless momentum of the giants who had accompanied Aslan moments before.

With trajectories so opposed, collisions were inevitable.

"Grr, out of my way! I'm fighting!"

"You're stupid! Run! The wraiths won't die!"

"No! The Master is here! The Master will kill the wraiths!"

And to top it off, brainless arguments like those filled the air. Aslan's head spun.

But spinning head or not, he could still fight. Tightening his grip on the drawn sword, he burst forward—dashing right between two giants locked in a shouting match.

Shhk!

Still running, he braced the blade with both hands. The moment a wraith loomed right before his nose, he swung upward diagonally. The rising slash split the arm of the giant-shaped wraith apart.

Aslan slid to a halt, and when the wraith swung its other arm, he held the sword in one hand and seized the tip of the Kal with the other.

Clang!

Then slammed it forward. He thrust the Kal's edge into the path of the attack, and the arm that met it sheared off, spraying blue sparks.

The wraith, both arms gone, shrieked and brought its head crashing down. In the same instant, Aslan's sword slipped through, tracing a white afterimage.

A clean thud as the wraith's head dropped. The ringing shriek that followed was the sound of a dead thing cut down and granted true death at last.

Kiiiiiyeeeeee!

The giant who had been pinned flat witnessed the entire sequence and shrieked in shock.

"The Master really did kill a wraith!"

"Then fight, idiot, now that you've seen it!"

Rebuked by another giant, the first one tore a tree out of the ground right beside him.

"I'll fight too! I'll hit the wraiths!"

It was the simplest, most brutish conversation imaginable. Aslan let it stream in one ear and out the other while his eyes tracked the wraiths writhing beyond the one he had just carved apart.

The wraiths weren't only giant-shaped.

There were enormous serpentine wraiths, thick-bodied lizards reminiscent of wingless drakes, and wraiths that resembled textbook trolls as well.

Monstrous wraiths, certainly—but there were animal wraiths too. Aslan found that distinctly strange.

Wraiths were supposed to exist only in humanoid form. To see all manner of them flooding the place felt like a denial of twelve years of journeying, and the journey twelve years before that.

"Gaaah!"

But there was no time to dwell on it. Aslan adjusted his grip and dashed at a wraith that was in the middle of killing a giant right then.

Whenever the Kal's edge in his sweeping sword sliced a wraith apart like paper, the severed wraith screamed and dissolved. The giants, emboldened by the sight, snatched up weapons and hurled themselves forward.

"Giants, stop! Don't just throw yourselves at them!"

And then physical force—being largely useless against wraiths—left them struggling. Aslan felt a mounting frustration as he watched the embattled giants take wounds and die one after another.

He shouted in alarm, but his voice was swallowed among their roars. Clenching his jaw, he tightened his hold on his weapon and went to work more aggressively, cutting wraiths down.

The Kal's edge flared white. No fat or blood clung to it, so its cutting power remained undiminished as it split two, three, sometimes more of the translucent bodies at a time.

The result was a bewildering chain: a giant would be saved, and then charge right back in again.

Aslan was accustomed to killing those who tried to kill him. But watching someone else die for his sake sat far less well. He never stopped swinging.

"Nngh, hell!"

Naturally, there was no way to keep his guard up on all sides. Angie swung her six-foot staff in a great arc at a wolf wraith that had burst out of nowhere—and cursed the moment the weapon ghosted through as if passing through empty air.

Attacks were useless. The wolf wraith seemed to realize it, too; its jaws gaped wide as it lunged. Fangs and maw alike turned an opaque, milky white.

The instant the sharp canines went for her throat, Angie raised the staff to block.

Grk-krk!

The wolf's teeth scraped and gnawed across the staff. Its bite force wrenched the weapon from Angie's grip. The beast dropped low—then lunged again.

Angie watched it spring and lowered her body on pure instinct.

She dropped so low she nearly sprawled flat on the ground. The wolf's jaws tore through empty air, and Angie used the rebound of the clattering staff to spin herself around.

One hand braced against the earth, she flipped her body in a wide arc and drove her heel down onto the wolf's skull.

Cra-ack!

A beast-like counterattack born of astonishing flexibility and explosive speed.

The lunging wolf wraith's head, maw and all, was crushed flat.

"Huh?!"

Staring at the wraith she had just killed as it shrieked and dissolved into nothing, Angie pieced the information together.

With an insight verging on sixth sense, the girl grasped it: wraiths only fully materialized the moment they attacked.

It was a trait no normal wraith possessed.

"Hey! You can beat them to death the instant they try to strike!"

Aslan heard the shout. He thought it strange—and drew his axe.

The troll-like wraith directly in front of him raised both arms high and brought its clasped hands down in a hammer blow. As it descended, the forearms and shoulders unmistakably suffused with that same dull, opaque white.

Aslan threw himself sideways in a wide lunge, evading it.

KWA-BOOM!

Shhrrk!

The downward strike and Aslan's rising axe-swing came nearly at the same instant. The axe blade cleaved precisely through the wraith's forearm. The severed arm dropped, and the wraith let out an enormous howl.

Sure enough—unlike true wraiths, these materialized only at the moment of attack. More than that, their attacks were physical. Aslan registered this oddity even as he swung his single-edged sword to carve apart a leg, then used the momentum of the swing to spin himself into a follow-through.

Shrrkt!

He took the wraith's head clean off in a horizontal cut. Split open above and below the line of its eyes, the wraith didn't even get to scream before it died.

While Aslan aggressively hunted the wraiths, Angie fought with counter-blows that dispatched them, and Ereta, seeing both, began attacking in a more measured but steady fashion. With the three of them pressing the attack, the wraiths' numbers dwindled fast.

"They're running! The wraiths are running away!"

"We won! We're strong!"

By the time the count of slain wraiths had passed twenty, the ones Aslan had been carving began shrieking and fleeing. Those that had been grappling with giants throughout the village turned their backs and ran as well.

At the sight of the fleeing wraiths, the remaining giants loosed howling cries. The ones who hadn't made it lay sprawled on the ground, dead.

Most of them were the giants who had guided Aslan.

He turned his head and scanned, but there wasn't a single face he recognized. Aslan sighed.

"Damn."

Partly because he had thought he could at least manage the introductions, but mostly because the knowledge that some had died for his sake sat bitterly with him.

But nothing could be done for the dead. As Aslan put away his weapons with a heavy expression, a giant draped in rattling bones and hides approached.

"Thank you for helping us, human! I am the chief of the Giant's Fortress Village!"

A boisterous roar. At the ringing shout, Aslan blocked one ear and winced.

The speaker showed not a trace of wariness.

Blessedly, the way the giants kept shouting "Master" without even knowing what it meant seemed to have prevented them from growing guarded.

The chief stopped right in front of Aslan and opened his mouth.

"We have been asking for help for many days! But you humans came very late! Many giants died! Why you are late, I—"

"Wait."

Aslan was debating how to answer the chief's interrogatory tone when an alien sensation brushed against him, and he cut off the exchange.

The feeling—something he could clearly perceive thanks to his heightened mana and luck—was unsettlingly familiar yet too faint to classify.

That faint presence was spreading along the path the fleeing wraiths had taken. It crawled like bugs across his skin, a silent shudder that rippled over his scalp.

Frowning at the sensation, Aslan tracked the footprints spreading in the same direction and dropped to one knee.

Close to the ground, the tracks were clearly not human or giant. They peppered the route the wraiths had used to flee.

Above him, the chief, cut off mid-sentence, looked around at the other giants and shrugged, his shadow falling across Aslan's head. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Aslan used the moment to sort the information.

Wraiths were supposed to appear only at night.

Yet these had emerged in broad daylight and slaughtered giants.

Their method of killing was wrong, too. Wraiths usually stole life through curses or life-drain. These had attacked in an unmistakably physical fashion.

Furthermore, wraiths should be all but immune to physical force—yet Angie, Ereta, and the giants had been able to put them down.

Tracks stretched along the direction of their retreat, and creatures ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that shouldn't be able to become wraiths had turned into them anyway.

Aslan gazed silently in the direction the wraiths had fled, then rose.

"Human! Why did you suddenly stop talking? I'm not finished yet—"

"Chief. One request, if I may?"

"Ah?"

Aslan cast a sidelong glance at the chief, who was scratching his chin.

"Call the giants who killed these wraiths and have them gather those weapons."

*

This forest had no name.

That was partly because the village near it was too famous for the forest to compete, but the larger reason was that the forest simply had nothing to boast about.

It was utterly ordinary. Not many beasts, nothing special to harvest. No village nearby, and almost no value as a trade route.

Consequently, human feet rarely passed through, though bandits sometimes cropped up here. But now the forest lay deeply silent.

Behind that silence, something lurked.

Hidden in the darkness, it resembled a giant—yet it was not.

Four arms, six breasts, and from its elongated form, pus streamed steadily.

Two upturned eyes were set into its forehead, and the other two eyes rested intact wherever eyes were supposed to be.

The intact parts stopped there.

One entire half of its face had been torn open, the raw flesh laid bare, leaving no doubt that this creature was far from normal.

The malformed giant rolled its eyes in their sockets for a long moment, then looked ahead.

It had been shaping something bluish with all four arms. Whatever it was, the giant set it down and began to walk. Two of its four arms dragged along the ground behind it.

From the direction the malformed giant was facing, countless wraiths emerged and crept toward her.

The wraiths pressed close and rubbed their heads against her body, her legs, her arms. She let out a low crooning sound and fumbled over them with her hands.

The wraiths—missing arms or legs, some with faces half-split open—acted as though they were nestling against their mother, and the giant patted them like children.

As her caressing hands brushed over each wraith, they stopped at a deep, open wound.

"...Ahhh...."

Her rolled-back eyes showed only white. The troll-like wraith keened softly as it accepted her touch, and the giant's hand sank deep into the raw-seeming flesh that wasn't quite raw.

Crack. Crack-crack. The wraith writhed in a silent scream of agony. The malformed giant-kin rolled her eyes forward again.

"Is there... still a living... kinsman? No... no, it's not...."

In the wound her hand had traced, a lingering divinity was softly blazing away, eating at the wraith.

The divinity inside her jumped and pulsed as though resonating with it, driving her deeper into pain.

All four eyes flipped over once more, and from within them, she wept in a trembling voice.

"Mama?"

The dying lesser deity shed tears and fell into frenzy.