A Soldier's Life - 475 -

Reposting this chapter and deleting the old one. This has the changes plus 800 new words. Working on 476...250 words in

Chapter 475:

Hill giants were formidable foes. Each of the cursed titans was about 15 feet tall. The dumb brutes were insanely strong for their size, with an adult able to throw hundred-pound boulders hundreds of feet. They were covered in layers of dense, rubbery fat, which protected their body but also gave them a child-like appearance. While they didn’t smell as bad as ogres, they came in a close second.

“How many?” Kyrenic asked, unfazed by the sizable threat.

“Five that I can see,” I said, guiding Ginger with my knees to get closer and hand him the spyglass. We were about three miles away, and the hill giants would not have spotted us.

Kyrenic studied the grotesque scene through the glass, his face turning red in anger, and veins on his forehead showing. He handed it back to me after a few minutes, sounding composed. “The meeting hall is aflame. The shelter would have been in the basement for those unable to fight. Still, seven buildings are not burning or have not been demolished by the foul creatures. There could be survivors. I want to circle from a distance and get a count on the giants. If you think we can manage, I want to attack.” There was a note of pleading in his voice; maybe it was a hope of saving survivors or just revenge.

I looked at Evie, and my thoughts drifted to some poor, frightened dwarf child trapped in a basement of one of the remaining buildings. I could see that child having witnessed the destruction of her home and the death of her family while giants ate them noisily outside. All I could think of was a poor, petrified child waiting for their death. I nodded in agreement to Kyrenic but wondered if he had influenced me in some way.

I swung out of Ginger’s saddle and handed the reins to Baelira. “Wait here. I will take care of as many as I can, and hopefully you don’t need to rush in and save me from my hubris.” Of course, one strike from a hill giant was likely to kill me, so there wouldn’t be much need of saving me. Maveith looked uncertain about the plan but remained silent.

“They would spot you on your approach. While I think you are a formidable warrior, Eryk, even you would not stand a chance against so many giants,” Kyrenic said.

“They will never see me coming.” I pulled out an invisibility potion I got from the manticore dungeon and held it up. “Plus, if I need to run, I have this invisibility potion.” I also moved five aether restoratives into a single pouch for easy access. I knew I could drain my aether at least twice in a few minutes without risk of being burned, but I was uncertain about a third time. I would do it if necessary, as burning out my aether channels was not a major concern, since I had an apex channeling essence to repair them if needed.

“I should be able to take out three or four quickly, and then I will hide. Baelira, stay here and protect Evie.” Evie looked ready to object, but I glared at her and silenced her protest.

“I can help,” Evie firmly declared. As she closed her eyes, the air before her shimmered with a silvery sheen. An image of me standing beside Maveith materialized, mirroring me as I looked at Maveith.

“How long have you had this spell form, Evie?” I asked. This was an advanced form of Castile’s all-seeing-eye spell. It allowed others to see what the mage viewed as she sent out her scrying eye.

A little abashedly, Evie admitted, “I imprinted it just before we left Sanctuary.”

“And in all that time, what have you been viewing through it?” I asked accusatorily with my paternal voice. The young teenager flushed bright red, but I didn’t press her and sighed. “Send it into the town,” I waved. “We can discuss this later.”

We all huddled around the mirror Evie had created. She enlarged it to almost five feet across so everyone could see clearly. Evie was trying to impress us, but it was not smart as it would cost more aether to maintain. She soon gave us a bird’s-eye view of the town and a clear picture of the destruction. “Focus here,” Kyrenic pointed. The eye descended to a gulley in the north of the town, littered with the bodies of animals and dwarves. One large hill giant was among the corpses. It was covered in raw, bloody scabs and didn’t look to be breathing.

“Go back to the center of town,” I ordered, and Evie sent her focus high and descended on the well where two of the giants slept after apparently drinking their fill from the well. “Get above the town again and let’s make sure we know how many we are dealing with,” I said.

As we directed Evie, the wind shifted, and the smell of burning flesh drifted to us as we confirmed six hill giants still moved about the town. “Check the basements of these buildings,” Kyrenic requested. Evie complied, but even though she moved her spell into the spaces, there was no light to see by, so we couldn’t confirm if anyone lived.

“My aether is running low,” Evie said after twenty minutes.

“End it and rest,” I directed. From this distance, there were no sounds from the town as the hill giants were resting. The fighting was over, and we had surprise on our side.

“Where is Alhar?” Baelira asked, drawing my attention. How had I forgotten the elf was even with us? His spell form was becoming irritating. Alhar’s horse was hitched to Maveith’s. I turned toward the town. I didn’t notice him until Kyrenic pointed him out. He was crouched and moving toward the town. He was obvious now, but my eyes had scanned for his form multiple times and passed right over him.

“Should we follow him?” Kyrenic asked, his blade drawn.

I seriously thought about letting the elf assassin go it alone, but shook my head. Why was he even risking his life? There might have been children to save, but he didn’t seem the type to care unless they were elven blood. “Maveith and Kyrenic, you can follow him. Leave the horses; they will be too large a target. I am going to teleport.” Saying aloud that I could teleport sounded weird, like I was a proper mage or something.

Maveith’s armor appeared as he donned his helm, and he took his shield from his mount. The large shield would be his best defense against the hill giants, thanks to its ability to become immovable. He was soon moving with Kyrenic, following the path Alhar had taken along a dried stream bed. I took the spyglass and planned to try something new. I would use the scope to establish my destination.

I had never teleported myself so far before, and I was not sure if I could establish an anchor at this distance. I studied the chimney of a smelter for several seconds, both with and without the spyglass. It was the tallest building in town and should keep me out of sight of the hill giants. To be safe, I targeted a space about a foot above the center of the structure.

It took time to link the spell form at this distance without an anchor. It was like tying tiny strands of threads to where I wanted to go, and when I felt the connection was strong enough, I yanked on all of them while feeding aether into the spell form. I dropped a foot to the roof of the smelter, shaded by the chimney, and crouched. There was no heat from the building, but the air here had an acidic quality that assaulted the eyes and nostrils.

I drank the invisibility potion and watched my body fade into nothing. My decision not to save the potion to escape might be a terrible judgment, but I didn’t want to get spotted accidentally. I had read about the potion extensively in my time in Sanctuary. Like the invisibility spell Lesna used, the potion created a veil around a person. If that veil was disputed by attacking or pushing aether out of your body, you lost the veil. Disrupting the invisibility granted from a potion would also occur with any surge of aether, like teleporting or using my dimensional space, so this was just temporary stealth.

The stench of fecal matter and death wafted through the air as I moved to the edge of the roof no longer fearing exposure. The depression in the north of the town was filled with bodies, dead livestock, and the single dead hill giant. I frowned when I saw that two of the bodies bore tabards of Kyrenic’s order. Kyrenic had probably already noted it through Evie’s spell window. There were also at least fifteen dwarf soldiers among the dead and numerous heavy horses. This must have been one of the patrols supported by Kyrenic’s order.

Two hill giants were currently scavenging among the dead bodies for a tasty morsel; a third was fixated on the burning town hall, perhaps smelling the cooking meat inside and salivating. The two sleeping brutes were near the well in the center of town with overturned buckets and muddy ground nearby. Both of those giants had numerous wounds on their fat rolls.

I checked on the others before deciding to act. Alhar was still a mile out, and Maveith and Kyrenic were a mile behind him. I should have about eight minutes before Alhar reached the town. I descended the one-story building and walked silently through the shadows on hardened earth to the two sleeping brutes near the well. One was lying face down, a pool of drool under his mouth. His hands had caked blood from either his feast or the fight. The other looked to be a female with sagging breasts down to her waist. She was snoring, her crooked, yellow teeth being exposed every time her red, stained lips flapped. I checked, and no other giants had their attention focused this way. I couldn’t send out an earth pulse, or my invisibility would be broken, so I walked up to the two sleeping giants.

Rhuuk’s broadsword appeared in my hand, breaking my invisibility, but the blade was already coming down on the back of the neck of the face down one. The powerful two-handed swing made a meaty thwack, and the audible cracking of vertebrae told me I had succeeded in cutting the spinal cord. I yanked the blade free as the body twitched but would never again rise.

I focused on eliminating all residue of the invisibility potion in my system with the purify self spell form. Taking potions so close together resulted in severe indigestion, sometimes crippling. The female’s eyes were cracking open, crusties falling away from thick, bristly lashes. I multi-tasked, using two air shields to pin her to the ground. She looked momentarily confused by the resistance as the broadsword came for her throat. The blade failed to kill on the first blow, just cutting into her larynx through layers of fat.

She surged up in panic, her scream muted by her exposed throat. The shields only held briefly, and I reset my stance and swung again. The hill giant had turned, and I caught the side of her neck, cutting through fat and reaching the jugular this time. A jet of blood shot twenty feet into the air and barely missed me. As the titan stood, each beat of her heart sent another lance of blood until she covered the wound. Her other hand covered her throat, and she tried to scream again. It was a strangled cry that had more blood than sound come out of her mouth, but it was enough.

The other hill giants heard their companion’s wail and came to help with their answering cries. Rhuuk’s blade vanished, and Heartseeker appeared as I slipped into the shadows. When the first hill giant charged around the corner, taking out part of a building, I removed a portion of his chest. He took two more steps before realizing he was dead and crumpled to the ground. The aether from the restorative was already surging through my system, and I tossed away the empty vial.

The female’s eyes were wide with panic and anger as she found me. She made the mistake of removing her hands from holding her wounds closed, and a fountain of blood poured from her neck down her chest. I felt no remorse for the creature as it weakened and fell to a knee. The two giants that had been scavenging the bodies came thundering toward us. I sent out an earth pulse, but the sixth giant was not in range. The pulse confirmed there were survivors in a cold cellar of a building nearby, but I didn’t have time to study the feedback before I was spotted.

Backpeddling and checking behind me with earth speak, I layered air shields in front of me. The leading hill giant, its face a mask of fury, tripped on the air shield and tumbled forward. As it braced for its landing, I planted the butt of Heartseeker in the ground and let gravity do the work for me. The tip of Heartseeker was angled toward the giant's sternum and easily pierced it. The shaft bowed dangerously for a moment before snapping straight and bursting through the hill giant’s back, but missing the spine as I had hoped, shredding the heart.

I abandoned the spear and drew magebane as the fifth giant moved around its fallen companion. Not trying to prolong the fight, I removed a thin layer around the giant’s waist. Both its legs continued one step, leaving the upper torso to slide to the right. The utter confusion on the hill giant’s face would have been humorous, except this was a serious game of life and death. The giant reached for me, but I danced easily out of its reach, and just seconds later, it had lost too much blood and stilled with the others.

I had emptied my aether twice in less than a minute and felt only a mild warning in my aether channels. Not only had my aether pool grown, but so had my aether tolerance. I was confident I could use my pool a third time without risking burning my channels.

The ground was vibrating from the sixth giant, a smaller specimen, just ten feet tall, with fewer layers of bulbous fat protecting it. The juvenile was the one who had been so engrossed in the burning flames at the meeting hall. It slowed and paused at the carnage, slowly processing that its entire clan was dead and not even noticing me as I drank another aether restorative. He was not innocent in this act; skulls, both humanoid and beast, clattered on his hip, some still fresh.

My aether restored, I walked confidently forward, grasping the haft of Heartseeker as I walked by. I decided not to risk the valuable artifact so recklessly in the future. The shaft had bent precariously against the weight of the hill giant. I stored it, retrieving a shield instead.

The fight with the young giant was more about practice on my part. Using air shields, I was easily able to prevent the now manic creature from gaining any advantage. I wasn’t torturing the young dumb creature, but practicing fighting a much larger and stronger foe. Fighting it with magebane and a shield was probably not the best choice, as it took dozens of slashes before it started to slow from blood loss. Getting enough penetration to deal a fatal injury or even cut to the muscle was much more difficult on this species of giant.

When it did fall, I was surprised the others still had not arrived. I checked with Earth Speak, and the town was clear, but I found two buildings harboring five and four dwarves, respectively. Once the others arrived, we could let them know it was safe. Five of those dwarves appeared to be children, making me feel good about my decision.

Alhar approached cautiously, jogging into the town and glancing around at all the death. The metallic smell of blood dominated the air, overpowering the smoke. I was kneeling over one of the hill giants,  an essence with the collector. “They are all dead? All six?” he asked, visibly shocked and lowering his sword.

I looked up from my work. “There were just six,” I said dismissively, turning to hide my grin. “Now, if there had been seven, I might have been in trouble.” As if I had summoned it, the hill giant among the dead bodies rose up. It had numerous open wounds that had barely scabbed over. As it moved, those scabs cracked and bled. “Looks like there were seven after all. Well, I don’t want to hog all the fun. You can have this one.” An apex strength essence had formed, and I rolled it off the shield into my hand and moved toward the next dead hill giant as the seventh hill giant, the largest by far, started making its way toward us.

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