"Are you sure we can handle whatever you have lined up? It's just me and Cali."
She pounded her chest, "I swear on my steel heart." It was a popular saying from Stallin.
"So, you are a Stallin?"
"My Pappy was a human and my Mum was a Stallin. So I get the worst of both worlds."
"That's genetics for you."
It was hard not to ignore the influence of outworlders on culture and science. A lot of concepts from my old world had been introduced here, by opportunist Earthlings taking a page from other people's books and claiming it for themselves. Genetics being one of them. While they couldn't prove the exact mechanism behind it without real equipment, it was commonly understood that children were a mixture of their parents.
For the Stallin though, it was a different matter. Medalie scoffed, "It's a curse. A great curse cast on every family in the Kingdom."
"That's not what I read in my family's library," Cali said.
"Bah, history books are for boring people - too concerned with facts and logic to have a little fun. It's a popular folk tale back home, one that's much more interesting than that 'genetics' crap people keep trying to shove down my bloody throat."
I was intrigued, "So how does it go over there?"
She smiled, "Legend says that the Mad King Fulmar of Stallin was holding court with the noble families, when a young squire named Demy Grimley stood before him and refuted one of his statements. He was so incensed by it that he cursed every family in the land, noble and common, to only give birth to children who would never meet him eye-to-eye. The joke was on him – by giving the people a commonality he ensured his own doom. A few years later he was deposed in the revolution, and forced to kneel before a new King."
She was right, that was more exciting than genetics. But I had to doubt the viability of casting an infinite curse of shortness on children born generations after his death.
Medalie continued, "Funnily enough, noble houses take a lot of pride in being the shortest. They think it shows the purity of their blood, and their part in the defiance to the former King. Bunch of facking bootlickers – didn't do shit to stop him until it became convenient."
I tried to steer things back on topic, "Anyway, what's this job you're feeling around for?"
"You've already heard and seen the impact of all these giants, haven't you? Every two-bit mercenary from every corner of the Federation turned up to try and make some quick money. Most of them don't end up coming back."
"Uh-huh."
"When I can find someone who knows what they're doing, they don't want to hear my proposal. Those giants, they carry Stormsteel on them. When they shit lightning all over the bloody place, it strikes ore deposits above and under the ground – some of them habitually collect the stuff because it looks pretty, it has a hardened black exterior that reflects a lot of different colours under the light."
"And?"
Medalie's eye twitched, "None of those bastard mercs want to hear it. The last guy I told said he was going to grab the stuff and sell it on the open market. Some fucking noble's going to snatch it up and make a vase out of it!" She was becoming visibly flustered at the idea. "A fucking travesty that is, that metal deserves to be made into something practical - like armour."
Stallin were ever concerned with the practicalities of life. Wasting good material on something they considered superfluous was personally insulting to them.
I didn't know the ins and outs of armour crafting. "How good is Stormsteel armour?"
"It's fantastic. Offers an excellent level of protection, and it's lighter than normal steel. It's a cut above what those knights and inquisitors are using anyway. If you want anything better, you'd need to be seeking out a master smith and an artificer to enchant it."
That piqued my interest.
This old iron armour I'd stolen from a dead conscript was terrible. It offered little protection and was very heavy. If I could find some of this Stormsteel and give it to Medalie, it would be a great boon in my quest to… not die. I reached into my pouch and placed a gold bar onto the table, "If I found some of it, enough for a piece or two, would you make it for me?"
She nodded appraisingly, "That's a solid gold bar? Enough for a chest piece, maybe a helmet too, and gauntlets. I don't do precision work, you'd have to find somebody else to make chainmail out of it. But you're gonna' need a bloody lot. It gets made in small quantities."
"Sounds… cheap," I admitted. I expected armour like that to cost an arm and a leg.
"I'm giving you a discount, since you're going to be using it and all. Just remember when somebody asks where you got it from, you tell 'em that it was Medalie Fass from Pascen."
Ah, she wanted to use me as a walking talking billboard. Not a bad deal all things considered.
"Alright. I'll try and get you some of that steel."
"Thank you kindly. Don't go getting yourself killed for it."
With no better options on the table, we decided to head out of the city and into the wilderness to try and get a handle on the situation. According to Medalie, most of the giants were now hiding in the woods after rampaging over the farmland for weeks on end. Most of the farmhouses we passed by had some form of damage on the exterior. Some had been burned to the ground by their magic.
After an hour of wandering we finally found what we were looking for, a dead giant. He was three times taller than a normal human, naked, with squalid blue skin and a large underbite. A mop of messy, unwashed black hair covered his eyes. The smell was terrible, he'd been dead for some time before we found him, whoever had claimed the kill had also stolen his pouch. Medalie had been hoisted by her own petard. By telling the mercenaries how valuable Stormsteel was, they were going to take it from the bodies and sell it at the market.
"This is a powerful foe," Stigma explained, "Consuming a beast such as this will allow us live on for several months."
"That's all well and good, but how are we going to bag one for ourselves?"
Stigma smiled, "I could use some of my power, like I did when the inquisitors attacked you; though there is a realistic prospect of it killing you before you can consume them…"
I didn't like how excited she sounded about that.
Cali also had something to say, "It appears that this giant is a juvenile, how odd."
"Why?"
"Young giants rarely pass the northern range, and you certainly should not expect to see them this far south. This 'disbalance' that Danton spoke of must be very severe. For you, it means that they're less powerful than a fully grown adult."
"Maybe that's for the best. Taking on a real giant is too much for us."
Our investigation was interrupted by the ground shaking. I immediately grabbed Cali by the arm and dragged her away from the location of the body and hid behind a small ditch. This was why I hated working out here, no trees. Giants were dumb – they'd ignore me if I was just out of sight. I could see the great head of one of the beasts peering over the horizon. Each footfall sent another tremor through the earth.
There were three of them walking in a group. They were all a similar size to the dead giant we had just gotten up close and personal with. I held my breath as they approached the corpse, rumbling wails of anger emerging from their man-sized lungs.
It was agonizing.
We were as still as statues. My heart skipped a beat as the one closest to us turned, and his head slowly, painfully, tilted downwards until our eyes met. Before I knew it, I grabbed holding Cali by the back of her cloak and pulling her up into a running position. The ground beneath our feet shattered and cracked, causing us to lose our footing and tumble backwards back into the ditch.
"Shit!"
This was a terrible damn idea! We scrambled to regain our footing and clambered out the other side. The unsteady ground, covered with wet rocks and shifting sands were terrible for movement. Each step had to be preceded by immense care lest you shatter your ankle by placing a foot wrong. I ducked to the side as a bolt of lightning shot past us and annihilated a rock formation, sending debris and shrapnel everywhere.
My breath was becoming scant as the weight of Stigma and my armour started to get to me. My legs burned, but I knew that if we stopped, the giants would catch us and crush us to death. This was why I hated these dumb sacks of crap. We kept running and running and running until we finally saw the walls of the town approaching once more.
Their thunderous footsteps had faded, but my paranoia demanded that I keep pushing myself past my limits. We came out onto the main road and collapsed onto our hands and knees, desperate to catch a breath.
"What the hell was I thinking? Next time I come up with a stupid fucking idea like that, slap me."
"I will," Cali agreed – I couldn't tell if she was red-faced because of the exercise or danger-induced arousal, "But it was very exciting."
After taking a long moment to rest, we decided to call it there and return to the safety of the city. I was beating myself up the entire way there. We settled outside a tavern, ordering some drinks to replenish ourselves.
"That was a complete failure," I griped. The giants were going to be even harder to handle than my most pessimistic predictions. We were lucky to walk away with our lives. After licking our wounds and finding a place to sit, me and Cali were wracking our brains for another way to find a dead giant.
Fate had a different idea.
A familiar set of red-tinged armour came into my downcast view. I looked up and met the smiling façade of one Inquisitor Adelbern Weiss. He was the very last person I expected to see here.
"You again?"
"Indeed, it is I," he spoke with an exaggerated, mocking noble accent. "Hunting giants are we? If so, I'd like to help," he declared gleefully. Adelbern was strong, that much I could tell from his position within the Inquisition – but what would he get out of helping me kill a giant? His true motives were still a complete mystery to me.
"Why?"
"Consider it an experiment."
I stood up and turned away, "I'm not a lab rat for you to play with Adel." He continued to follow me as I tried to open a gap between us.
"I don't mean it in such a… diminishing way, my friend. I merely want to see you succeed and thrive, to witness the upper limits of human strength - explored through Stigma. If you're having trouble downing one of those meddlesome giants on your own, I can offer you my assistance."
I stopped, "You already know I don't mess with inquisitors."
"Is that so? I find it rather curious that a certain someone turned up dead a few days after I met you and mentioned his location, or does that not count?" He had me there. I'd taken a chance on his information about Bell's whereabouts, and of course he knew that Bell was dead.
He stood in front of me and blocked my way, "If your concern is that this is some kind of elaborate trick at your expense, I'd like to reassure you that I'm the only inquisitor here on the East coast."
"You guys usually travel in packs."
"Not me. I've… played a few political games myself – and convinced the leadership that having 'investigators' searching for cursed items, in their own way, would be beneficial to that end. I endure less oversight and have complete freedom of movement."
"And your boss doesn't mind you getting Bell killed?"
Adel shrugged, "What he doesn't know won't hurt him, even if he did – Bell was merely a means to an end. As soon as his role was expended he had no further use for him." Maybe we were more similar than I'd first given him credit for.
I was about to turn him away. No matter his motivation, I didn't trust inquisitors. Taking a hint from him was one thing – but having him watch my back? I'd be asking for it if he decided to kill me on the spot. But Cali saw fit to step in once more.
"Ren, I believe he can help us."
"Really?"
"Yes, and if not, it will be interesting."
For Cali, interesting meant 'overly dangerous.'
"If Cali says so, I'll let you in. But you do anything to fuck me over, and this temporary partnership is over."
He nodded, "Crystal clear."
I was going to regret this later…