The Fire Giant (3)
The giant's mouth gaped wide. Between its red gums, molars had grown in wild, packed tight together. I gathered dao power into two fingers and aimed them at the creature's gaping maw.
A pillar of ice, charging like a bolt of lightning.
The ice pillar surged like lightning and rammed itself deep into the giant's maw. The giant clenched its jaw, then simply crushed the pillar between its teeth and ate it.
Crunch. Crunch. Shards of shattered ice rained down onto the snowfield, and the giant's blood spewed white steam as it sizzled through the frost.
It was a sight to chill the marrow.
I hurled Ice Heaven Strike again and again. Pillars of ice thudded home into the creature's body one after another. With a savage howl, it wrenched one of the embedded pillars free and hurled it back at me.
Before my body could be smashed apart, I transformed into a small bird and soared into the sky. At a safe height I returned to my true form and began preparing my second technique.
The Verse of Animated Figures.
The ice shards strewn across the ground clumped together and fused, forming five enormous snowmen. Each one stood tall enough to reach the giant's chest. They scurried to life, latched onto the giant, and blocked its way.
And the giant bit out a snowman's throat, seized its limbs, and tore them off.
They're made of ice, not actual snowmen, and yet they're bursting apart exactly like real snowmen would.
But thanks to the time the snowmen bought me, I was able to complete the barrier enclosing the creature.
Five talismans claimed the five directions of the cliff. The barrier's power bore down hard on the giant's body, crushing it from the crown of the head.
"Grrrrr...!"
Pressed flat against the ground by the invisible force, the giant groaned.
"Grrraaaaagh!"
It thrashed and shrieked in a horrifying scream. Its muscles swelled as though they would burst, and wormlike veins bulged across its hide. Then its body began to heave, little by little, lifting away from the earth.
...Seriously? It means to tear the barrier apart with brute strength?
I snapped my head up to check on the talismans. The ones affixed to the cliff were losing their power and peeling away.
At last the giant clawed at the barrier and heaved itself upright. Flesh flapping in tatters, it came bounding across the frozen ground on all fours, like a dog gone mad.
My hair stood on end, and yet at the same time a strange exhilaration surged through me.
I had never learned the daoist arts to kill people.
I had learned them to kill spirit beasts.
How desolate I had felt when I attained the supreme pinnacle of the Incarnation Realm, only to discover there was not a single spirit beast left in the world to test myself against.
I raised two fingers and drew my dao power to its peak.
Quaking Wind Slash.
A wind slash capable of cleaving a mountain peak in two tore across the air. The giant's hide ripped away with a sound like fabric being torn.
The giant paid its wounds no mind. It did not slow. It seemed convinced that the moment it laid hands on me, everything would be over.
But just how many of me would it have to catch?
I clasped my hands together and chanted the incantation.
The art activated, and countless copies of "me" began springing into being.
"Hahaha!"
"Hey, come at me!"
"Is it me you want?"
Each of me shouted its own taunt, and each of me scattered in its own direction.
The clones had no great strength; a single flick of a finger would scatter them like dust. Nor were they agile, and looked at closely, even their faces differed from mine in subtle ways. That was the extent of what a daoist of the Original Shadow Realm could produce, but for fooling a creature with the wits of a monkey, it was more than enough.
"Grrr...?"
While the giant floundered, unable to pick a target, I prepared my next technique. Something different this time. Something far more powerful...
Then it happened.
"Kghk!"
An extreme cold surged up my throat. I clamped a hand over my mouth, choking down the cough. Ice-flecked blood soaked damp and heavy into my palm.
...So this is how it's going to be, huh.
Fine, I had drawn my dao power to its very limit. But a flare-up, of all things, at this exact moment?
A deep shadow fell over me. It was so vast I couldn't even gauge its edges. The giant stood looming directly before me.
"Grrrr..."
"Hey!"
A familiar voice.
"Over here, you ugly bastard!"
At that moment of utter desperation, a young knight came galloping down the valley with a torch in hand.
It was Kaldrik.
His horse was frothing at the mouth; I knew from experience what a coward the beast was.
The giant's body turned slowly toward Kaldrik. The horse reared up on its hind legs and promptly dumped its rider onto the ground. Even after being thrown, Kaldrik dropped where he sat and waved the torch for all he was worth.
"Look at me, you bastard! Your opponent is me! I, Kaldrik Fairchild, hereby challenge you to a duel!"
"GRRAAAAGH!"
When the giant roared, the pressure of it sent Kaldrik sprawling backward. His dignity took a beating, but he had finally succeeded in drawing the giant's attention.
I steadied my trembling body. This was a chance Kaldrik had bought with his life. I could not afford to waste an opportunity this precious.
I pointed my left hand at the giant. My dao power drained away in one massive gulp, like water poured into a bottomless jar.
My meridians twisted violently, and ice-flecked blood surged up my throat. Pouring in everything, my strength, my curse, all of it, I loosed the largest, most powerful Quaking Wind Slash I had ever produced.
Shraaaaak. Through dimming consciousness, I watched the giant's torso split in two. Like a banquet of blood spread open in hell, gore and viscera sprayed magnificently in every direction.
...Eating lunch really is a lot of work.
Drenched head to toe in warm, wet viscera, I crumpled where I stood.
"Young Lord Iden!"
Someone took hold of my upper body, holding me up.
"Young Lord Iden, are you all right!"
When I forced my eyes open, Kaldrik's ashen face swam into view. I lifted my arm with what little strength remained. White, hard growths had sprouted all over it.
This time it was no mere ice. These were flowers of ice. And I knew all too well what that meant.
"...A wellspring of magic power."
"Pardon?"
With a trembling arm, I pointed at the fallen giant. I no longer had the strength to speak, or even to keep my eyes open. Kaldrik set me down and ran off somewhere.
Left alone, I slowly froze, clinging to each thin thread of breath.
A sense of déjà vu washed over me.
Hadn't something like this happened before? After my fight with the Flower Thief, there before my master's grave.
Then I felt someone part my lips. Something round and hot was pushed down into my throat.
No... hot didn't begin to cover it.
It was as if I had swallowed the sun.
The scorching sun slid down my throat and blazed with all its might. The chill that had been devouring my limbs was driven back by the heat until not a trace of it remained.
With great effort, I raised my upper body and sat up straight.
I guided the sun's heat and bored through my frozen meridians one by one.
Each time another meridian opened, the horizon of my dao power broadened. And each time that horizon broadened, a new enlightenment came to me.
At last, having forced open every frozen meridian, I rode the momentum and hammered at the source of the Cold Yin Severed Meridian that had nested in my lower dantian.
Dong... dong...
Each blow against the severed meridian tolled in my ears like a phantom bell. Like a blacksmith tempering steel, I hammered at it, and hammered again.
But no matter how I beat it, the severed meridian only dented; it would not vanish. If the newly absorbed wellspring of magic power was a sun, then the severed meridian existed like a moon.
Finally I gave up hammering the severed meridian and guided the heat into my middle dantian. And so the sun settled at my center. I could feel the mild warmth of high noon, and the vital heat of life flowing through my arteries. An immense dao power, beyond any comparison to before, surged up from my middle dantian like a raging blaze.
I opened my eyes, quietly.
The first thing I saw was the backs of a great many people. Kaldrik's young men stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a ring to shield me.
"You've come back to us."
Kaldrik hurried over. He was caked head to toe in dust, but his face was full of joy.
"It is a trifling strength, I know. But I thought that I must, at any cost, protect you, Young Lord Iden."
"It was no trifling thing. You helped me more than you know."
If Kaldrik hadn't drawn the giant's attention at exactly the right moment, things could have gone very badly indeed. And there was no need even to mention what the soldiers had done, guarding me as they had.
During qi circulation, even a slight shock can bring on deviation. And I had been absorbed in the extraordinarily delicate work of repairing my twisted meridians. It was never a task to attempt in a valley like this, laid bare to every outside threat.
"What about Srudal?"
"It looks like Sir Srudal's fight will be settled shortly."
The soldiers split into two files, clearing my line of sight. Srudal was overwhelming Thorvalg one-sidedly, a two-handed sword gripped in a single hand.
A two-handed sword that a human could scarcely lift with both hands looked no larger than a longsword in Srudal's grip. His swordsmanship was as measured and elegant as his character, like a hero stepped straight out of a fairy tale giving a demonstration.
"Ah. It's finished."
At last, Srudal drove a final blow into Thorvalg. And so the fire giant, long the torment of Fairchild's people, followed its mate into death.
"I still can't believe it," Kaldrik said, his voice charged with excitement.
"The fire giant has been the scourge of Fairchild since before I was born. My grandfather and great-grandfather both lost their lives facing the thing. I... I had never even imagined that a person could stand against that monster face to face and win."
Looking again at the sprawled female giant, I found myself marveling anew.
"She really is enormous."
"Yes. Truly enormous."
Kaldrik gazed at me with a fond, satisfied look.
"Warriors of Fairchild!"
Kaldrik wheeled around and called out to the surrounding soldiers in a voice that rang across the valley.
"Today we have witnessed a new page written into the annals of history. The old enemy that heaped so much pain and sorrow upon us for generations has fallen at last. Today's battle is not merely one victory. It is a great milestone, one that assures the survival, the hope, and the future of our domain!"
The soldiers' burning gazes turned upon me.
"All of this glory belongs to the hero who stands before us, Young Lord Iden Esterji! For all of us, he staked his very life, and showed strength and courage beyond the ordinary!"
Kaldrik cried out in a trembling voice, clenching both fists.
"Soldiers, raise your voices in cheer! Sing his name through the ages. For as long as we live, his courage will remain forever in our hearts. For as long as our descendants endure, his deeds will never be forgotten. Salute the savior of the Fairchild domain, Young Lord Iden Esterji!"
As one, the soldiers drove their spears into the ground.
Kaldrik turned back to me, laid a hand over his heart, and bowed low.
I felt my chest grow warm. And it was not only because of the fire giant's inner core.