Mr. Edward, for his part, felt utterly crushed beneath their presence. The oppressive aura that emanated from the giants was not just a figment of his imagination.
It was real, thick, and suffocating, pressing down on him with the weight of something ancient and unfathomable.
His muscles tensed, fear clawing at his core—not just at the giants, but at the suffering they imposed on the wretches beneath them.
Men and women, malnourished to the point that the hideous jut of their bones was visible through ghoulishly translucent, desiccated skin that seemed more like withered shrouds than anything mortal.
They pushed large wagons to and fro, most bearing the heavy crafting materials while the minority bore what appeared to be finished products.
Atop one of the passing wagons, Mr. Edward could swear that he had caught a glimpse of, or the silhouette of, a grotesque beast, but he could not be sure.
For one, his conjectures may have been a mere overthought, conjured up by his fevered and eldritch-addled fancy to cope with the situation.
Furthermore, the cloak used to cover the thing did not help to grant him clarity.
He was standing in a field of giants, blacksmiths of myth and nightmare, and no amount of curiosity was worth the price of staying lest his fears ate at his soul.
Unfortunately, his fate was not up to him, and Mr. Edward, fearing the worst, hoped with a pale face.
"I hope I'm not handed over to these creatures."
The men who held him seemed to share his sentiment, their footsteps firm as they advanced steadily across the unending path.
Fewer and fewer were the giant men hammering away in their workshop and, in their scarce appearance, loomed the ever-present cold that slowly crept back in.
The terrain was devoid of gloomy sloping trees giving way to what seemed to be an expanse filled with rocky paths, ropes that fell from the abysmal sky, and utter nothingness.
Mr. Edward, try as he might, could not quell his unease; his heartbeat increased and his breath rapid.
His discomfort only served as an unwholesome harbinger of his concealed fear—a fear perfectly natural.
After all, anyone who could remain unfazed in such chthonic and ineffable circumstances could scarcely be called human, no matter their mental fortitude.
His attention was drawn once again to loud, reverberating chants and war cries seemingly stemming from a crowd of young humans.
Simultaneously, Mr. Edward noticed the monstrous configuration of what seemed to be a small cluster of structures too large to call a town yet too compact to call a city if it was even appropriate to associate the art before him with such simplistic names.
As they loomed closer to another boundary of the unnameable, Mr. Edward could not help but gape at the horrific sight that could only be described as a war camp surrounding this large town with the strangest of sights.
He had finally determined the blasphemous origins of the war cries that assailed his ears.
It was not visible before; partly to blame was the nightmarish configuration of the terrain that made it appear as though he was standing atop a cliff of sorts, giving him a frenzied, idol-like view of the place.
From six thousand feet above, he witnessed the gruesome suffering of young, determined souls, spread across a desolate field.
There stood the ranks of children who bore their torment in a silence that would chill the hearts of lesser men one of which was Mr. Edward.
Each child's face was ghastly pale beneath eyes that burned with a crimson, unholy fire.
Red.
A piercing glare that held the ferocity of the hells themselves.
Their youthful skin was marked with scars both fresh and ancient, some of which so grotesquely evident that Mr. Edward, even from his distance, could trace the stories of pain etched in livid relief across their bodies, he wagered that most of them would not survive for much longer.
He wondered if such draconian measures were required for their training, was it a training or a punishment, and if so, what in the world were they training for?
His questions were not alone but accompanied by a soured face, shakey eyes, and a suppressed loss of breath.
Mr. Edward had finally begun to reach the limits of his composure, the change brought about by a single notion: if this was the threshold for training, what did these barbarians consider as punishment?
"⩯⍥٧Ԑ"
A hoarse command was barked shocking Mr. Edward.
Simultaneously, thousands of children, hardly more than ten or eleven in age, swarmed towards the ropes that dangled from unseen heights, their ends vanishing into the cavernous maw of the abyssal sky.
These ropes were different from the ones he had passed before, in the sense that each rope was slick with some oily residue, making the ascent an act of grotesque futility.
Yet, they climbed. Every muscle strained, every tendon quivered under the punishing weight of an unyielding regime.
Their tiny fingers clawed and scraped against the roughness of the ropes, skin splitting, blood staining the dark fibers. A misstep, a wavering limb, any faltering would not go unanswered.
Not all the children claimed ropes though, a few hundred were split up doing different tasks, unending push-ups, lifting rocks a few times their size fighting brutality almost themselves.
Most trained with sharp and bloodstained weapons all under the supervision of a bountiful amount of amour wearing trainers similar in build to the ones that forced him here.
The trainers, figures shrouded in authority, stalked along the ranks with an eerie, cruel silence.
They, too, bore the mark of crimson, firey eyes, those gleaming orbs fixed on every twitch and tremor, every breath drawn too raggedly, too loudly.
There was no pity, no sympathy of any kind leaving only the cold calculus of survival.
A child who dared falter was met not with mercy, but with swift and terrible retribution.
"Pa!"
A thorn-wreathed, blood-stained lash was unleashed at the slightest mistake by the armor-clad figure who watched the children.
Once again, Mr. Edward was forced to calm his faltering mind with the hope that he was not to be killed, hope indeed, for he had not the slightest reason or omen to warrant the likelihood of such a positive outcome.
The sight of the children stirred something in Mr. Edward—not just fear, but a flicker of indignation. Were they born to this nightmare, or dragged into it like him?
In a sudden turn of events, Mr. Edward felt the grip around his neck tighten, not in a malicious sense but to allow a more firm holding.
What came after was what Mr. Edward could only discern to his horror as a leap in an arcum down a six thousand foot drop.
A leap that laughed at the notion of human survival—that is if one were foolish enough to jump into its gaping maw without preternatural assistance.
"Oh, Lord!" Mr. Edward yelled suppressing the utterance of a barbaric curse as he felt the icy, malefic kiss of the wind on his face.
Eyes forced shut and with gritted teeth he braced for a shattering and painful impact, but it never came, at least not in the way that he imagined it.
In place of the gruesome death his earth-bound fancy had conjured up, something entirely different happened.
A thud or a forceful yank was all Mr. Edward felt; this unnatural, illogical force shook his organs, but compared to the alternative of dying from obliteration, he was perversely grateful for what he was given.
Somehow, Mr. Edward believed he had borne the full brunt of the force and survived, though it might have been mere illusion.
Upon opening his eyes, he found out, to no surprise, that he had lost his bird's eye view and instead saw things from a more grounded perspective.
The men resumed their march towards what Mr. Edward, in his cluelessness, could only hope to be the quaint-looking town and not the hellish war camp.
Staring with furrowed brows at the ever nearing beligted expanse that these beings referred to as a training ground, Mr. Edward took in breaths and balled his fist.
It reminded him of certain barbaric rites or spartan-like traditions akin to what was before him.
It did not take long for them to reach the camp, their march through it drawing furtive and uneasy glances of curiosity amidst both children and trainers alike.
Mr. Edward was starting to feel uncomfortable by how firmly his captor's grip was growing over time like an encroaching vice of malice, making it difficult to breathe.
Feeling heavy discomfort, Mr. Edward moved to pry the man's fingers, hoping to get him to lower his grip, but his actions only seemed to anger the man.
"Argh!"
Mr. Edward choked a bit as the man hardened his baleful grasp around his neck, forcing Mr. Edward to fight for his life, using everything he had to pry the unmoving digits of the man lest he perished before they reached their destination.
Whilst this was happening, the man seemed to have gotten irritated by his feeble strivings and tossed him to the ground with a thud, a low growl of annoyance escaping him, in turn alerting his companions.
Mr. Edward gasped for air before struggling to get up, a ghastly amalgam of fear and rage in his eyes as he fought the urge to flee.
It was at that moment that the red-eyed, armor-claded man that had formally held him by the neck yelled unintelligibly while pointing, not at him but at a random child doing push-ups.
"T⍥ņ, T⍥ņռᏵ Ѧᒻ⍥⍥D ⍥į ٧⩃𐑮Tņ D/Ϟጰ/թᒻ/ռԐ ጥȞ/Ϟ ⩤Ԑ⩃&ᒻ/ņᏵ ⩃ጥ ⍥ռጰԐ"
Though he could not understand the words Mr. Edward could not comprehend it to be anything good.