Two hours passed in a similar manner. I kept myself on high alert at all times, directing Cali to cover my blind spots. He was paying us for protection, and it'd be a mark against my professional pride if a lumbering giant got through and splatted him underfoot like a bug. Adrian seemed to be getting increasingly excited with every new reading, but as a layman I wasn't positioned to understand exactly why it was so enthralling myself.
Mercifully as midday approached the heavy downpour started to ease up. I was completely soaked from head to toe. If it was any colder I would be running the risk of developing frostbite. As our employer knelt down next to another location and opened up his magic box – I pulled off my leather boots and emptied them out of water and stones. The wool socks I was wearing were a lost cause now. I'd need to find a new pair or three in town later.
There was an adage I heard from an old friend of mine years ago, 'being poor is expensive.' It was the kind of thing that always played on my mind. It was true, truer than I thought when I first heard it from him. Cheap socks, cheap boots, cheap clothes, they tore easily – didn't last for more than a week or two without having holes punched through them. I had to pay for each and every one, and that added up.
I'd long since given up on having a home to call my own. Rogues were wanderers in spirit, and out of necessity. The pay was shit. Houses were getting more expensive by the day, and storing the money needed was difficult and risky. Some of my colleagues had taken to burying their savings underground like pirates; that came with its own problems, it was difficult to relocate for work when you had to bring a chest of booty with you…
"These readings are… I can't believe them," Adrian muttered to himself, "No wonder the area has been thrown into such chaos."
I observed his work for a moment, before movement caught my attention from beyond the horizon. A big, ugly head crested over the distant rocks, followed by an arm. The giant climbed up and over, rolling onto the plateau with us. To my endless frustration, the usually dull creature locked onto us and started to approach. I tugged on Adrian's arm, dragging him and his machine into a safe spot.
"Stay down," I ordered him. He ducked into the ditch and covered his eyes and ears with his arms. "Cali, can you use your magic?"
She checked the chamber of her halberd, "I only have a small quantity of catalyst remaining. I can only cast once or twice."
That was fine by me, "Just make sure he can't keep his balance." I drew Stigma from my scabbard and found semi-firm footing on the wet stone. The giant had seen us now, gathering momentum and frothing in rage. They were aggressive and destructive. The sight of something smaller than them drove them into a murderous frenzy.
I steeled myself for his first strike. Three or four times my height, he raised his left arm high into the air and brought it down in an attempt to crush me. I slipped under the wild blow and moved in to attack his legs. Cali didn't need my permission to do her part, a lick of flame touched the top of my head as a powerful fireball struck the beast in the head. Unable to see, its body moved on instinct. I stepped back as the tree-trunk legs moved. I'd missed my shot at disabling them.
"Damn it, stay still you fat shit!" I yelled.
The fire finally died down, the sky-blue skin was charred and covered in black soot. The scarring was gruesome. There was no way the giant could see now. Just like the others that we had slain the day before, the giant lashed out in an attempt to kill the assailants. While we could have left it to suffer and moved on, Adrian wasn't finished taking his readings just yet – and with Cali spending some of her expensive catalyst powder on him, the least we could do was finish the job and steal his soul.
The giant slowed down, and I saw my window or opportunity. I charged in and swung at its knee, embedding Stigma's blade deep into his flesh. I had to scramble out of the way as the giant fell down to the left like a falling tree. It could no longer keep its balance. The ground shook and my ears rang as the full weight of its fleshy body hit the hard floor.
Dazed and no longer having the energy to strike back, I leaped onto its chest and brought Stigma down, piercing through the thick, leathery skin and breaking his ribcage. I dislodged her and did the same thing again, and again, and again. Despite their size and strength, giants were lumbering, fragile beasts. Much like a horse, a broken leg would essentially be the end of them. The mercenaries preferred to pick them off at a distance and leave them to die naturally.
"[Consume.]"
The body deflated slightly as its essence was drained into me.
My feet and legs were covered in blood. I sighed and hopped back down. Hopefully we wouldn't have to spend any more resources fighting wandering giants. Still, I was proud of myself. We successfully defeated a giant without any assistance from Adel, and I could feel myself getting stronger by the second. Not to mention the added time I had to live thanks to its soul. There was no time to relax though – we had a job to finish.
I knelt down and shook Adrian back to awareness. He unfurled and yelled aloud as if I was a giant bearing down on him from above. When he realized it was me, he shot back up to his feet and coughed into his hand.
"Ah. Well done."
He looked over to the felled beast with curiosity in his eyes, "So this is a giant? I've never seen one in the flesh before. To think that they can be found here of all places…"
"They're not meant to be," I reminded him, "So let's hurry up with this last measurement and get out of here before more of them show up. We're out of magic and I don't want to fight another unsighted."
Adrian reached into his pocket and retired a small glass vial. He scooped up some of the blood running down the giant's body and slipped it into his pocket. When he met my gaze, he decided to explain.
"Master would probably like to take a reading of the magical signature in his fluids. It can help correlate our ambient readings."
"In his blood?"
"Yes. Magical energy can enter the body in different concentrations. Areas with high ambient ether levels make it easier to cast magic without catalyst assistance."
"I did sense something different when we arrived here," Cali said, "Though, to cast a high-power offensive spell alone is still impossible."
"Just one more to go," Adrian declared, "Let's finish this."
Adrian went ahead of us when we returned to town. He wanted to make sure that nobody was watching the house he and Dora were living in. He returned with a face that spoke to his relief, "Thankfully, the Amendment have not occupied our dwelling." That dwelling was a small, stone house on the edge of the city.
"Excuse us." I ducked down under the low hanging doorway and entered into the front room. It was a messy research chamber, covered in paper, parchment and books.
"Ah. They've… vandalized everything…"
He ducked down onto his knees and gathered the papers into his arms, dumping them out onto the wooden table stood in the centre. When he was happy that he had the things he needed, he placed his new data next to them and started to cross-reference the figures.
"We just put these here and here, and we should have a complete set. Master Benadora should be able to reach a conclusion easily enough."
My gaze wandered to a heatmap hung from the left wall. Red and green splotches swirled around the landscape of the surrounding area. These must be the winds that they were talking about. Adrian hurried over and painted over the areas we'd visited during our research expedition. You didn't need to be an expert to see how bad things were getting. There was a large, empty patch to the north.
"Do you really think a person is responsible for this?" I asked, "Or is it just natural that this kind of thing happens every now and then?"
He stared at the map with a pensive look, "Hm. I can't say for certain. This is an unprecedented event. Something has occurred to disrupt the natural concentration of ether in this area. Either by man or by nature."
"How are you going to get to Dora?"
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"If they've arrested her, how are you going to get to her?"
His face faltered, "Ah. I have an idea, I don't know if it's a good one but… they'll likely present her to the Duke as the cause of his problems. Such sessions of the court are open to the public. If we attend and find a way to get this information to her, she will be able to defend herself from the Amendment's accusations."
Idealistic to a fault.
There was no guarantee that the Duke was going to listen to logic and reason. He was a ruler; his primary interest was 'solving problems' in a quick and painless way – even if it didn't actually fix the problem. He might just be a profound idiot. All of this effort could be for nothing. Who was he to believe Benadora over the Amendment, if he was the one who asked them to show up in the first place?
"So what, you're going to throw the paper at her? Jump the railing? Try and shout it over whatever else is going on?"
"…I'm not sure."
I didn't mean to deflate his expectations, but things weren't so simple in the real world. I was interested in finding out what her conclusions were myself, but I didn't see how I'd hear them short of organizing a jailbreak from the town's keep. I wasn't willing to go that far just to sate my curiosity, but maybe that was why I wasn't a scholar like Adrian or Dora.
"But until I figure something out, I'm going to do as much as I can with the information we have. Master Benadora was always insistent that I learn to handle such matters for myself without her assistance after all."
I took a seat across from him and picked up the nearest tome. My reading wasn't the best – this land didn't use Japanese for speaking and writing. I was never formerly educated. The kind women who ran the orphanage I grew up in did their best to go that far for us, but they didn't have the resources to match what a real school could do.
That was an experience shared by a lot of people. Some places understood the importance of education – but they were wealthy and affluent, and had the heavy hand of outworlder logic to guide them down that path. From what I could understand from the easiest language in the book, it had something to do with the magic winds that Dora and Adrian were studying.
"Can I ask you two to do one more thing? I don't know when the court session will be called. The public ones are posted on the notice board outside of the keep. Could you go there and find out when it will be?"
I shrugged and slammed the book shut, "Sure. I don't have anything better to do."
Cali followed me through the front door, "Are you sure that this will work?"
The idealistic part of my brain wanted to say yes, or to even project the idea that I cared about justice and the right thing being done. The words just wouldn't escape my mouth.
"I don't know. If it doesn't, no big deal, it's just another missed job opportunity. They come and go. Let's find this schedule for him and cross our fingers."
I hoped she was half as rich as Adrian let on…