The Path of Giants

by B. T. Narro

  “What’s this?” she asked, her gaze on the creature leaning down behind the demigod. It seemed more fascinated with the gem than with Valinox.

  “It’s an Induct stone,” Valinox explained. “I’ve cursed it so it exudes dteria. Keep it with you, and the creatures here will think of you as their kin. Now hurry up and open the portal.”

  He wrapped dteria around his waist and took off high into the canopy, breaking through and disappearing from sight.

  Eden was left, stunned, as the treelike creature leaned down a little lower to investigate the Induct stone she held up in front of her. It was as if Valinox had never existed to this beast, its body creaking as it leaned closer yet.

  “Bruuuraaa,” it uttered close enough to kiss the stone.

  She didn’t feel comfortable standing so close to it, so she hurriedly made her way north with many looks over her shoulder. The beast watched her go for a short time before it started to follow her.

  She picked up speed. The creature seemed to try to match her speed, but it soon fell over ever so slowly, like a tree cut to its last fiber.

  “Bruuuraaaaaa!” it called as it fell, sounding utterly pitiful.

  Eden sprinted away, feeling a little bad for it.

  When she was far enough and could gather her thoughts again, she realized that Valinox did not want her dead, at least not yet. Otherwise he never would’ve given her this Induct stone.

  She looked at it closer. It was black, but she couldn’t tell whether that was from the curse or if the stone itself was that color. She casted Identify to see what her mana could tell her.

  She regretted it immediately. It was like hearing a deafening screech, pain ringing in her head. Her mana wanted nothing to do with it.

  This was not a reaction she would’ve guessed she’d have, considering she had been using dteria for months now. She had noticed changes in her personality, but they were subtle. She found herself less afraid than she used to be, most of all. She wasn’t a very empathetic person to begin with, which was one of the reasons she thought she might be better off helping Valinox win this war swiftly than trying to go against him. It was only after she had come to the castle that she realized how wrong she was about herself. She cared about the people she had agreed to betray. She cared about the kingdom, even if she despised the nobles who preyed on everyone else.

  She hadn’t been able to use dteria very much since coming to the castle, practicing only late at night when she figured everyone else was asleep. Using it didn’t give her the same euphoria that she saw in Leon’s reactions, when he’d used it to help the sorcerers learn how to resist dteria. It felt nice, sure, but she didn’t find herself craving its continuous use, which seemed to happen to most people.

  “I hope this stone isn’t going to alter my mana too much.” She could already feel it dragging her mana to a higher frequency. She wanted to remain a mage of order first and foremost, even if dteria did sweep through the kingdoms.

  Valinox had given her powerful essences of dteria to help her train. Every time she stopped, she had to wait longer for her mana to return to its natural low frequency.

  The forest was misty here so close to the center. She couldn’t see more than twenty yards ahead of her. Could she really open the portal to the fae world? She thought only demigods could do such a thing.

  She stopped in her tracks as she realized that she would see Gourfist soon. What should she do if he woke up? What would be the point in trying to defend herself? He was known to be huge, fast, and powerful. Some rumors even said that he couldn’t be killed. Even Valinox was frightened of him.

  More importantly, what did Valinox want with the fae? Legends said that Valinox tried to get into the fae world when Airinold transformed into Gourfist and started searching for the demigods. Valinox had wanted to hide with Nijja, the demigod of ordia, but Nijja had thrown him out. Eden had been too afraid to bring it up with Valinox. He never took questions arising from her curiosity very well, especially when they made him look bad. He favored those who obeyed without question, something Eden hadn’t done since the beginning of their encounters.

  It was how fast Eden had learned to use the forbidden sorcery that had pleased Valinox the most. But that had worn off as her progress had slowed. She had trouble with curses. They didn’t feel natural to her. It was only because Valinox told her what ingredients to use that she was able to make any curses at all.

  Eden came up with a simple plan regarding Gourfist. If he woke up, she could lift herself somewhat with dteria. She could fly a short distance faster than she could run, but then she would be exhausted. She would hide when she had to let herself down, using the trees and mist as cover. She was small. It might actually work.

  No, that was foolish. Gourfist could sense sorcery. The best thing for anyone to do if he awoke was to stop casting completely, no matter how far and safe they thought they might be.

  Eden’s best bet was to run.

  She made the two-mile journey slowly. Two creatures came out of the mist and surprised her at various points. One looked like the cantar that had attacked Jon, only this one was about twice as big. The other, she only saw its silhouette. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but it seemed to be just as big as the treelike creature, only this one stood on four legs. It had the head of an ugly beast, with long horns and what looked to be a beard down the bottom of its long neck. She froze when she saw it, then ran the other way for a little while.

  Eden didn’t see it again, thankfully, and the large cantar had left her alone. The forest was strangely quiet here. It was as if even the wind was scared to disturb the strange peace in these parts.

  As Eden started to relax, she began to notice that there were a bunch of stones on the ground all around her. They seemed to be gems of some kind, but she had never seen these kinds of gems anywhere before.

  She picked up a smaller one and looked closely at it. The stone was perfectly clear, yet it was hard as metal.

  She thought a test was in order. She stopped there and casted a spell of ordia on the stone, priming it for an essence. She had done this same thing to many moonstones when she was still in the castle, spending most of her time there practicing enchantments. When she was done priming a moonstone, she would watch Leon put his palm flat against it and cast an erto spell for the better part of an hour. This was how essences were made. Leon picked an element and casted the primary spell of that element until the moonstone was filled. That’s all it took. The moonstone held the essence of the spell within it. No locking spell was necessary. She figured the king was selling the essences for coin, because she didn’t see what else happened to them.

  She tried to do the same thing to this gem, pressing her palm against it and casting dteria. She went on doing this for the better part of an hour. She was terrified of disappointing Valinox by not opening the portal speedily, but if she was right, this might be the thing that saved her life.

  Sure enough, the clear gem started to darken as she went on. Eventually, she felt that it could absorb no more dteria. She held it up in front of her again.

  It looked just like the Induct stone that Valinox had given her, only about a third the size. Valinox said that he had cursed his stone with dteria, but now she was wondering if that was a lie. Either he had gotten a different mage of order to prime the stone before embedding it with dteria, or there was a curse that could prime stones just like a spell of ordia could. There were a lot of similarities between enchanting and cursing, so the latter might be possible.

  She looked around the ground again. So these are all Induct stones here. All the other legends seemed to be coming true, so this one probably was as well: The cause of the Day of Death was when something massive came from the stars and struck the center of the forest. The resulting fiery explosion destroyed much of the forest. It had left a huge crater, now the resting place of Gourfist as well as the entrance to the fae world.

  Eden believed that these Induct stones she was finding in
great abundance had to do with whatever it was that had crashed into the earth. These could be pieces of it—pieces of a star? Or they could have been formed in the fiery chaos. There was no way for her to know.

  She pushed on for a while longer. It didn’t dawn on her until then that she had been going down a steep hill for a while now. Is this the crater? she wondered. Am I close? The dirt here looked no different than the rest of the forest, but there was one major difference: There were far fewer trees. Even the mist seemed to abate here.

  She saw something ahead. Gourfist. It had to be him. It was much too large to be anything else.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Eden approached the gigantic sleeping beast. Gourfist was as beautiful as he was terrifying. He was a winged beast whose feathers were as large as Eden’s entire torso. He seemed to have four legs, the ends of which were tucked underneath his body as he slept.

  The sound of his breath, a slow inhale and then a raspy exhale, created a powerful wind surely strong enough to knock Eden down if she was to stand in front of his beak. He had the face of an eagle, golden-tipped feathers down his neck. The rest of his feathers blended from gray to green, with blue tipped feathers sprouting up around his legs as if to offer extra protection. She could only imagine what kind of claws she might find at the ends of his feet.

  This was once the demigod Airinold. She wondered if he had designed every part of Gourfist before transforming into the beast, or if that had been out of his control. The creature seemed almost majestic, as if Airinold had thought his purpose of hunting down the other demigods was righteous.

  Unlike Airinold, at least Valinox didn’t pretend to be doing good. He was rotten inside, selfish and avaricious, and he didn’t care who thought it. He wanted power, control, and possibly nothing else. What had Airinold wanted? He had been born the most powerful, yet he had given up most of his power to create dteria. What might’ve happened had he created something more beneficial to humanity, something like erto or ordia? Even Valinox had created something useful, mtalia, though it was too low range for most people to have access to it. That was his only fault in his creation. Eden assumed he just hadn’t been strong enough to make it more accessible, like Airinold had done with dteria.

  Looking at this beautiful beast, Eden wondered if there was something more to Airinold’s story. She couldn’t imagine someone like Valinox turning into a beast that looked like this. She imagined he would be more like some of the creatures she’d seen in the short trek here, vicious through and through.

  Was she kidding herself or just stupid? Gourfist could be just as vicious. And there was a good chance she would find that out soon enough.

  A large sphere twinkled next to his curled up body that had to be the portal into Fyrren. She walked over to it as quietly as she could. She had doubted such a thing could exist, but here it was in front of her, shimmering.

  It didn’t quite appear like it was wholly there, Eden noticed as she lifted her hand up as if to touch it.

  Gourfist stirred. What might’ve been a slight movement to him was thunderous to Eden. She started to run, thinking he had awoken.

  She looked back. He still seemed to be in the same position as before. Perhaps he had just adjusted his enormous head. His beak alone was bigger than Eden.

  He was terrifying, but while Gourfist slept, Valinox was even scarier. She found herself hoping she wouldn’t be able to open the portal to Fyrren, the world of the fae. She had no idea what Valinox planned to do there, but she had no doubt that it would help him win this war and therefore hurt everyone who stood against him.

  Eden was a coward. She would admit it to anyone, if asked. She had almost been proud of it until now, always doing what was necessary for her to live happily after her father stopped making any effort for their family. She would be rich and powerful after all of this, and her mother would have a good life. And so would Eden, more importantly. She would eventually forget about everyone who had died, as she had forgotten the fond memories of her father from when she was a child.

  Eden had been telling herself this for many months now, but she was starting to doubt it might be true. It was too late, however. No going back now.

  She quietly made her way back to the shimmering portal while keeping an eye on the sleeping beast. The sphere was translucent, blurring the image of Gourfist behind it. It didn’t have any color to it, just a haze of white light around its edges. Without that light, she might not have even realized it was there. The portal had to be at least ten feet fall and equally as wide.

  All right, how the hell do I do this? She put her hands up close to the rift, staring at the massive beast all the while. He didn’t stir this time, so she focused on what she could feel.

  Ever since learning ordia, her mana had blessed her with new sensations her normal senses couldn’t possibly pick up. In the same way that she could smell people before, it was now as if her mana could smell them and provide a much stronger scent to her memory than her nose could.

  Not only did people create a mana-scent she could pick up, but so did enchantments. And so did this portal.

  She suddenly felt her mana connect to the mana of this rift. Oh, fascinating. New powers became available that she had never felt before. She felt as though she could push and pull at the fabric of the rift, shaping it to her will. It was malleable like clay, but there was life to it, a desire.

  It wanted to open, but something prevented it from doing so. It seemed to be an ancient…spell? No, it felt more like an enchantment, she thought, as she pinpointed her mind on the feeling. However, it was more powerful than any enchantment she had felt before.

  But the magic that composed it was just like everything else in the world. It was much easier to destroy than it was to create. She just had to remove this enchantment keeping the portal closed, and the portal would open on its own. She opened her eyes.

  I should disobey. I really should.

  She knew she wouldn’t.

  Eden let out a breath. I’m a coward. There was no point in delaying any longer.

  She broke the enchantment.

  Peace broke with it. The portal sucked in all the air around her as it swelled, nearly pulling her in as well. Then there was a crack. Light poured out, blinding her for the moment as she fell back and covered her eyes.

  The ground started to shake. She got up, preparing to run, but it was too late. Gourfist was awake. It was not the portal that had shaken the earth but his massive talons pushing himself up.

  His shining eyes were fixed on Eden. There was so much anger in them.

  “Oh shit!” she yelled, fear forming the words.

  Gourfist screeched. It was two sounds, deep and shrill, power and pain. The hot wind blew Eden over herself a few times, the sound deafening.

  When she got to her feet, Gourfist was shaking his head as if clearing out his grogginess. She thought he might’ve forgotten about her for the moment as he took his gaze off her. She ducked behind a tree and made herself small and still, poking her head out to watch.

  Gourfist worked out a few more kinks as he fully woke up, twisting himself and then smacking his long tail against the ground, vibrations humming through Eden’s body.

  Then he peered right at her.

  “Shit!”

  She made a run toward the beast, for the portal. She could see the image of another world inside, colorful trees unlike any in Curdith Forest.

  A shadow fell over her as Gourfist’s talon rose up. She dove into the portal.

  *****

  I was just leaving the castle to head to Koluk with everyone else when we heard Gourfist roar. This one was louder to my ears, even though I had been closer to the forest when I had heard him the first time.

  Although the sound made me frightened that he’d awoken, I had something more immediate to worry about because the sound had absolutely terrified our horses. Hadley lost complete control of her mare as the animal rushed back toward the stables, but Reuben jumped off his horse
to help.

  “Use the reins!” Reuben was shouting to Hadley.

  “I’m trying.”

  I was too busy watching the northern skies to offer assistance. This roar had sounded different. Not only was it louder, but there seemed to be more emotion in it, as if something had really pissed off Gourfist just now.

  A couple of guards were stationed by the lowered drawbridge. More of them stood watch from the castle ramparts above. Everyone was quiet as we all stared. I was sure I wasn’t the only one who had a bad feeling about this.

  My horror came true as I watched a gigantic winged creature emerge out of the forest many miles away.

  “Raise the drawbridge!” shouted one of the guards.

  “Leave it open!” I yelled back. It could be precious time that we didn’t have if Gourfist chose the capital as his target. Besides, what good would a drawbridge do to stop a beast of that size? He was probably taller than the castle walls, and he could fly.

  “The king’s yelling to us,” Reuben said. “But I can’t hear him.”

  We hurried back into the courtyard.

  “Put back the horses and get into the castle!” the king screamed from the third floor of the keep.

  With the help of the stable master, we did as we were ordered. Soon we were about to run across the courtyard and enter the keep for safety, but Charlie was standing at the open drawbridge, staring at Gourfist growing ever bigger.

  “Oh my god,” he uttered. “It’s true.”

  I grabbed him by his arm. “Come on, Charlie!”

  Gourfist had been asleep longer than I had been alive. It wasn’t by chance that he was now awake. What had done it? Had Valinox killed someone?

  All the castle workers who were outside rushed to make it indoors as quickly as they could. Reuben was first to the open door of the keep. He took his place with the door in hand, ready to close and bolt it shut once all of us were inside.

  I was the last one because I had slowed down across the courtyard. The keep was not where I wanted to be right now. It didn’t provide a good view of the sky and the surrounding city of Newhaven, which I was more worried about. The people of the city didn’t have stone walls to protect them.