Chapter 103 - Hunting Party

Really quick, I just wanted to announce that I'm changing the posting schedule a little bit.  Instead of posting three chapters a week (on Mon., Wed., and Fri.), I'll now be posting four chapters a week (on Mon., Tue., Thurs., and Fri.).  Hopefully, it won't be too long before I get to the point where I can comfortably post five times a week.  Anyway, I hope you'll all enjoy the extra chapter each week from here on out.  Now, onto why you're all here:

Abby knelt on the precipice of the cliff, hidden by a scraggly bush as she watched the group of frost giants traverse the well-worn path below. The Jotuns definitely lived up to the hype, with the shortest of the bunch standing over fifteen feet tall. Judging by the deep impressions they left in the muddy trail, they were at least three times as heavy as a big man as well. The troop was comprised of three males and two females. One and all, they had broad, blunt features, beady eyes, and prominent noses. The men sported thick, white beards that stood in stark contrast to their blue skin. The women’s faces were hairless and a bit more delicately featured, but no one in their right mind would call them beautiful. No one outside of the giant race, at least. Either way, male or female, they were a wholly intimidating race of monsters.

The giants passed beneath her hiding spot, completely unaware of her observation, and slowly followed the trail out of sight. Abby stood from her concealment and followed, leaping from one precarious rock to another. The traversal of the various cliffs wasn’t without danger, but most of it was mitigated by her high dexterity. So, Abby only had to spare a little concentration to keep on the monsters’ tail. Her efforts were rewarded when she saw a smaller, lither giant return to the group.

The new arrival – a female, if the lack of a beard was to be trusted – was still huge, at least by human standards, but she was a few feet shorter than even the smallest of her kin. More, where the others wore heavy furs over chainmail, with steel helmets over their heads, she was attired in green-and-brown leathers. Furthering the differences, while each of the others carried huge spears, she was armed with a mammoth crossbow that looked like it belonged on a castle wall, with daggers the size of shortswords at her hips. A scout, unless Abby missed her guess. She used her inspection skill, [Keen Eye], just to be sure.

Gerd – Level 19

Abby suppressed a gasp of surprise. Not at the creature’s level. That was expected. And even if she’d helped kill monsters with even more impressive levels, giants were built differently. Everything she’d ever heard suggested that they were more than the sum of their levels, and after seeing Zeke in action, she found it plausible. After all, he was far more powerful than he should be. Was it really so surprising if some monsters were built along those same lines?

Regardless, that wasn’t what surprised her. Instead, her use of [Keen Eye]suggested that the creature was, at least according to the Framework, on par with a human. Even if a monster was named, like the drachnid queen, it was followed by its designation. However, when she inspected people, the result was a simple name and a level. Gerd, the giantess scout, had fallen into the latter category, at least as far as her inspection skill was concerned.

But what did that mean? Were they sapient? Probably. Everything suggested that they’d built a fully functioning, complex society within their mountain city of Hvitgard. And that realization brought with it a host of problems, not least of which whether it was immoral to kill one just for a quest.

It wasn’t just a quest, though, was it? Never mind the stakes of the quest itself. A second evolution was a powerful motivator, for sure, but even if she discounted that reward, the Jotuns had been raiding the northernmost villages in the Red Wastes for years. Striking back at them was entirely justified.

Then again, that wasn’t what they were considering. Killing one Jotun would do nothing to mitigate the threat posed by the giants. Even if they managed to take out the entire group she’d been following, there was an entire city of them in Hvitgard. A few dead giants wouldn’t make a dent in their ability to make war.

These thoughts and more hung over Abby’s mind as she continued to stalk the giants. Gerd, the scout, had reported something to the biggest of the creatures, then had proceeded to lead them off the path and to the northwest. Clearly, she had found something interesting.

Abby nimbly climbed down a cliff face, and using the sparse vegetation as cover, followed the party of giants. She made certain to keep a good distance away, just in case they were possessed of some sort of perception skills. Abby was confident in her abilities, but she didn’t like her chances in a fight against a group of giants. More, she knew that they would easily outpace her in pursuit, if only because of their longer limbs and familiarity with the territory. Knowing the stakes, she took every effort to remain hidden as she followed the group of lumbering giants.

Eventually, the giants came to a shallow valley with a half-frozen mountain stream cutting through it. She circled around for a better look, as well as to remove herself from the path of the giants’ retreat. When she finally reached a suitable spot, she climbed an evergreen tree and perched atop one of the branches. A couple of hundred yards away, she watched the giants for any sign that they might have detected her presence, but she needn’t have worried. Their attention was solely focused on the herd of mammoths that were gathered close to the stream.

Giant, shaggy-furred, and with wickedly long tusks, the mammoths looked every bit the prehistoric beasts from Earth. A quick inspection told Abby that the entire, forty-strong herd were level fifteen or greater, with a scattering of animals past level twenty. Abby focused on the biggest of the bunch, using [Keen Eye] to identify it.

Mammoth Alpha – Level 25 (E)

The giants were strong, but none of them were powerful enough to fight an elite, especially when it was surrounded by two score of its brethren. So, unless they had a way to deal with that alpha, they had come all this way for nothing. The giants remained motionless at the edge of the clearing, their eyes trained on the herd of mammoths. Even to them, the wooly creatures were huge and likely extremely intimidating.

As she watched, Abby mentally urged the giants to leave the herd alone. It was a fight they couldn’t win, a sentiment that they seemed to share, because after about twenty minutes, a few of them backed away.

Whether it was a shift in the wind or the movement that alerted the mammoths, Abby couldn’t know, but in a split second, the monsters turned as one. The alpha stepped forward, stamping its feet and trumpeting a challenging roar as its eyes locked onto the distant giants.

“Run,” she whispered. “They won’t follow through the trees.”

But the giants weren’t made for flight, a fact made clear when the biggest of the bunch roared his own wordless challenge, the cry echoing through the mountains. He strode forward, one step at a time that soon became a jog, then a sprint. Behind him, his hunting party followed, their spears glinting in the sun.

“No…”

But Abby’s protests were unheard and unheeded, and the giants – all save the scout, who remained behind, raising her crossbow to her shoulder – crashed into the mammoth alpha. Their spears sank deep into the animal’s hide, and it let out another roar. With speed belying its size, it sprang forward, trampling two of the giants in the process. But the giants were all experienced warriors, and their spears continued their barrage of thrusts. Soon, mammoth blood coated the ground, turning the snow red.

Still, the alpha wasn’t going to go down without a fight, and it swept its tusks back and forth, scything through the giants’ ranks. It was a massacre, and before thirty seconds had passed, there wasn’t a single one of the frontline giants who’d escaped unscathed. But the myriad wounds had taken their toll on the monster, and, with a last heave, it crashed to the ground, where the remaining trio of giants repeatedly stabbed the thing until it had breathed its last breath.

The entire affair, as far as Abby was concerned, was idiotic. It would’ve been smarter to have attacked with crossbows, like the one carried by Gerd, the giantess scout. It would’ve taken a while, but it would have been infinitely safer. But something told her that the giants were unaccustomed to taking the safer route. From everything she knew, they were a warlike race that never left a challenge unmet. In that way, they were more like monsters than the people her inspection skill had implied they were.

However, it did present a significant opportunity – especially when the rest of the herd let out a collective roar and surged toward the remaining giants. In seconds, the already-wounded Jotuns had been trampled by the herd. It was one thing to fight a lone alpha, even if it was an elite, but it was something else entirely to come up against an entire herd of giant monsters, especially when you’re already wounded. The lone survivor was the giantess scout, who hovered at the edge of the clearing.

Abby watched as Gerd sank back into the forest. The giantess didn’t run, though. Instead, she waited. For over an hour, Abby’s attention shifted between the poorly concealed Jotun female and the herd of murderous mammoths, but it wasn’t until the sun began to set that the monsters, as a group, wandered off. That’s when Gerd emerged from her hiding place and approached her fallen kin.

The giantess knelt beside the fallen leader, her hand on his caved-in chest, and bowed her head. She was so distracted that she didn’t even see the herd’s lone straggler that had lagged behind. The runt of the mammoth herd charged into Gerd, impaling her with its six-foot tusk. Gerd bunched her legs against the monster’s trunk and pushed, ripping herself free. Ignoring her wound, she scampered toward her crossbow, and with a roll, retrieved it. She brought the stock to her shoulder, firing an arrow directly into the infuriated monster’s eye. Backpedaling, she reloaded and fired again; this time, the bolt embedded itself in the mammoth’s face. Another found the fleshiest part of its trunk. And yet another punctured the monster’s other eye.

It wailed in pain, but the rest of the herd was long gone. It was all alone, blind, and facing down an extremely motivated giantess. The mammoth never had a chance. Retrieving one of the spears that had been wielded by her fallen kin, Gerd charged forward, thrusting it into the monster’s side. It gurgled and tried to turn, but its strength failed, and it crumpled to the snowy, blood-covered ground.

Abby let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Had she actually been rooting for the giantess? A monster she and her party had specifically come to this part of the mountains to kill? She wanted to deny it, but the similarities between herself and the giantess were clear. She was sympathetic to Gerd’s plight.

But that didn’t mean she had forgotten her mission. Seeing Gerd sink to the ground, it was clear that the scout wasn’t going to make it. And that meant that whatever moral conundrum she had about hunting the Jotuns for their quest was moot. There were plenty of giant toes down there, and they didn’t have to kill a thing.

So, as soon as she saw Gerd’s eyes close, Abby turned away from the scene of the massacre and sprinted back toward where she’d left her comrades. She could’ve gone down there and cut the toes off herself, but that was a little too gruesome, even for her. Zeke’s looting ability would be much more convenient. And besides, it wasn’t like the giants were going anywhere.

Now that she was able to move freely, it only took a little over half an hour for her to reach the clearing where Zeke had placed the cottage. Unsurprisingly, she saw him sparring with Talia, which brought a smile to her face. Not only was it good for Zeke to work on his combat technique, but those sparring sessions obviously helped Talia as well. After each one, the undead girl was calmer and more focused than at any other time, likely because it let her focus on something besides what had been done to her.

Tucker, who’d for once come out of his makeshift laboratory, looked up from where he sat on a nearby rock. “What did you find?” he asked, shedding any trace of the accent he’d had when they had first met. Abby was familiar with code shifting, but she’d never met anyone who could do it so flawlessly. “Are the giants close?”

“I found what appeared to be a hunting party,” she stated. “They found a herd of mammoths, which they inexplicably attacked. It didn’t make any sense, either. There were only seven Jotuns and more than forty mammoths, including an alpha that was on the elite-tier. They had to know they didn’t stand a chance.”

“Frost giants aren’t like us,” the big man said, idly toying with one of his thick dreadlocks. “They’re insanely territorial, and they don’t back down from challenges.”

Abby shrugged. It was as good an explanation as any, but she didn’t like how it implied that the Jotuns were any less sapient than any other people. They might be more primitive, but that didn’t change the fact that the Framework seemed to put them on the same level as humans.

“Sounds like you have some experience with them,” Abby said, remembering that Tucker hadn’t been a part of their previous conversations concerning the Jotuns.

“A little,” he said. “I had a run-in with them a few years back. It didn’t end well.”

“Seems to be a pattern with you and your ‘run-ins’,” she said, walking past him. When she drew a little closer to Zeke, she said, “Wind it down, you two. We’ve got work to do.”

Zeke relaxed a little, a fact which Talia took full advantage of. In an instant, she was on him, her claws raking across his chest until he dropped his shield and grabbed her wrists. “It’s over,” he whispered. “Calm down. You’re stronger than this.”

For a few seconds, the undead girl struggled against him, a feral look in her eyes. However, it was soon replaced with realization, and she said, “I’m fine. I’ve got it under control.”

“You sure?”

“I…I am,” she said. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

Zeke let her go, then examined the shallow cuts across his chest. He hadn’t been wearing his armor, likely because it still hadn’t completely repaired itself. “This? It’s fine. I’ll be okay in a few hours,” he said. Then, he turned to Abby, asking, “You found them?”

Abby confirmed that she had found a group of Jotuns, then recounted the day’s events. She ended with, “And if we hurry back, we can get the toes we need without having to kill anything.”

“I kind of want to kill them, though,” Zeke muttered. “They’ve been raiding villages, and –”

“The actions of a few don’t represent the whole,” Abby said. “For all you know, that’s a different group of giants altogether. Until we see them doing something horrible, I don’t think we can justify killing them in cold blood.”

“But the quest…”

“Will be satisfied by whatever toes we can get from the group that’s already dead,” Abby stated. “Table your bloodthirst for just a second, and you’ll see that I’m right.”

For a moment, Zeke looked as if he was going to argue. However, after a few seconds, his shoulders sagged, and his face took on an entirely different expression. “You’re right,” he said. “This world…it seems like its whole purpose is to drive me towards slaughter. I don’t want to be that way.”

“Sometimes, slaughter is necessary,” she said, placing her hand on his wounded chest. “Everything you’ve done since I’ve known you falls into that category. You’re not a monster. Sometimes, we all need to be reminded of that.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said.

It was something that Zeke had thought about more than she’d originally expected. Ever since they’d started sleeping together, he’d begun to open up, and she had discovered that he wasn’t the stoic killing machine she’d thought him to be. Instead, he often considered the morality of his actions. Certainly, he thought of them as mostly justified, and so long as that remained true, he was guilt free. But still, he worried that one day, he would act according to his more savage instincts and do something that he would regret. He’d even intimated that he considered the fact that it hadn’t happened yet to be pure luck.

“Let’s get going, then,” he said. Then, to Talia, he asked, “You want to come?”

Talia said, “May as well.”

Then, without any more discussion, the trio set off. Abby noticed that Pudge hadn’t followed, and when she asked, Zeke said, “He’s off trying to catch rabbits. Failing, too. But he seems convinced that he can sneak up on them.”

“Pudge, sneaking?” Abby asked. “He does know that’s not really what bears do, doesn’t he?”

Zeke chuckled. “I tried to tell him that, but he’s been enamored with those snow leopards we saw last week,” he said. “And he thinks he can imitate them. It’s actually kind of funny, you know? As big as he is, he’s not going to sneak up on anything. But who am I to get in the way of his dreams of growing up and being a snow leopard?”

“It would be kind of terrifying, though,” Abby said, remembering the cats in question. They were about the size of a mountain lion, and they were equipped with some sort of skill that allowed them to blend almost perfectly into the snow-covered mountains. If they’d been any higher than level thirteen, they would’ve posed a serious threat.

Sighing, Zeke said, “Yeah. But I don’t think it’s in the cards. Either way, he’s having a great time, so I figured it was fine.”

“Yeah,” Abby said, leading them through the sparsely wooded mountain forest. “I’m going to pick up the pace a little. Let me know if you can’t keep up.”

A second later, she did just that, and the three of them made their way through the forest in hunt of frost giant toes.