As soon as Leon and his party entered Rakos’ palatial home, it became clear that something was wrong. Piles of stone were scattered around the main hall like rubble, and dozens of giants were frozen like statues around them. Some of these stone giant corpses seemed to Leon’s eyes to have been violently destroyed.

“What happened here…?” Leon quietly wondered aloud.

“Likely a beast attack,” Lapis nonchalantly explained. “As I said before, we are not the apex species living in these mountains, though we are, perhaps, the most prosperous. However, it is also about time for reproduction, the schedule for which I assume was moved up following the casualties taken by whatever battle was fought here not too long ago.”

“You don’t sound very worried about it,” Leon observed.

“There were clearly casualties, but no catastrophic damage. The crater hasn’t suffered damage. There is nothing to be worried about unless Rakos says there is.”

Leon sighed. The sight of so many dead giants was unnerving, to say the least, and for Valeria and Alix, neither of whom spoke giant and so couldn’t understand Lapis, the feeling wasn’t exclusive to him. They unconsciously closed ranks and their hands reached for their weapons, while Anzu lowered his center of gravity until it almost looked like he was prowling rather than simply walking around.

None of the intact giants so much as looked at their group, though, which was almost as unsettling as seeing so many of their fallen kin. Leon’s group of five were the only moving figures throughout the entirety of the massive hall.

When they reached the main audience chamber, Lapis wasted no time on formal ceremony and pushed the doors open. The giants standing watch beside the doors didn’t move so much as a single pebble as the group walked into the chamber.

The spacious room was crowded with hundreds of giants, all in similar poses as those in the hall around clumps of black and grey stone. None of these piles, at least, seemed to have been torn apart in violent manners. Each clump had about four or five giants surrounding it, staring down at it as intently as a mother bird watching her eggs hatch.

The only exceptions in the entire room apart from Leon’s group were three stone giants standing in front of the throne carved from black trap rock pillars, the wall behind them sparkling with polished granite. The largest and most powerful Leon easily recognized as Rakos, with its body studded entirely with tiny rubies. Another was the short and thin giant chief that used the crystal embedded in its hand that gave Leon his understanding of giant language. The last giant was of similar size and build to Lapis, whom Leon assumed took over Lapis’ duties after Lapis itself departed the crater with Leon.

“DIVINE ONE, LAPIS, YOU TWO HAVE RETURNED,” Rakos quaked, the ground subtly vibrating beneath their feet in time with its words.

“We have,” Leon replied, “though, if this is a bad time, we can wait…”

“NONSENSE!” Rakos roared, its voice shaking the entire chamber. “IT IS FOR YOU TO MAKE US WAIT, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! TELL ME, WHY HAVE YOU RETURNED, HAVE YOU SOME NEED OF OUR POWER?”

“I do…” Leon said as he glanced over a Lapis. Rakos hadn’t acknowledged any of Leon’s other companions, and only barely did so for Lapis, which Leon found rather strange. However, those questions could come later, and right now he needed to move fast. He quickly summarized August’s request for aid as succinctly as he could.

“IS IT YOUR WISH THAT WE MARCH TO WAR AGAINST THIS ‘OCTAVIUS’?” Rakos asked.

Leon briefly considered spouting off some nonsense about how he wasn’t giving them any orders and that he merely wished to have the honor of fighting at their side against his enemy, but he ended up deciding against that.

‘These giants won’t say no, not to me. I hope,’ he thought to himself.

Out loud, he simply said, “Yes, that is my wish.”

“THEN SO IT SHALL BE,” Rakos rumbled. “FOR THE DIVINE ONE, FOR THE HEIR OF THE GODS, WE SHALL GO TO WAR.”

---

Leon and the others—save for Lapis—were shown to the same quarters that Leon and Alix stayed in during their first stay. What few pieces of furniture were there were far too big for anyone to use, but the four got settled in as best they could.

They didn’t know how long they’d be in the crater, but given what seemed to be going on, Leon wasn’t too optimistic that they’d be leaving any time soon. Rakos had explained that they were currently in the midst of reproducing, something that made Leon feel more than a bit uncomfortable, but since neither Rakos nor Lapis seemed to care, he decided to put it as out of mind as was possible and wait for them to finish up.

What was worse, though, was that monster attacks had intensified lately, leading the giants to take a significant number of casualties defending their crater. The chief culprits were griffins, who had just entered their own mating season, leading to the previous generation—Anzu’s generation, in fact—to be kicked out of their nests and sent to find their own way in the world.

This meant that the giants had been weathering griffin attacks for the better part of a year and losing a few giants every week. Fortunately, the giants didn’t seem to be taking the losses too personally, and Anzu was as welcome in Rakos’ hall as Leon was. Or perhaps it was because Anzu was Leon’s war beast, it didn’t really matter to Leon and he didn’t press too hard as to why they weren’t hostile to his griffin.

With all of that in mind, Leon didn’t think he’d be bringing nearly as many giants back to the Kingdom as he had hoped for, though Rakos had still assured him that they would honor their oath and aid him to the best of their ability. Actually, Rakos had gone further than that, claiming that every giant would be honored to give their lives in Leon’s service, but Leon wasn’t nearly as comfortable accepting that oath as they were in making it. He wanted to march their warriors to war, not to uproot their entire civilization.

Once the group was finished getting their tents and bedrolls set up in the cavernous guest room—Valeria and Alix’s were more traditional tents, while Leon’s was large and open, allowing Anzu to cuddle up next to him while they waited—Valeria and Alix walked over to join Leon.

“I have to admit, I didn’t think this would go so smoothly, regardless of what you claimed,” Valeria confessed to Leon as she sat down on the thick fur rugs that made up the floor of Leon’s tent.

“I… had my doubts as well,” Alix admitted.

“I don’t blame either one of you,” Leon said, “I wasn’t too confident that they’d join us, either. I mean, Lapis’ loyalty is one thing, but their entire tribe? I’m still a little bit in shock that they’re willing to go so far.”

“I am, too,” Valeria said. “Is there some reason why they’re so loyal to you?”

Leon hesitated to explain, given who he was talking to. He trusted Valeria to watch his back in battle, but that didn’t mean he trusted her with his secrets. He didn’t even think that they were close enough yet for him to start trying to get more information about her family out of her.

Alix wasn’t too clear on the details either, at least as far as he was aware, but she did know enough to make Leon nervous about her speaking up first, and certainly enough to call him on any egregious lies he might try to tell. Hells, he hadn’t even told her what was and wasn’t important to keep secret about that day, given just how many other people had been witnesses to it, and he wasn’t even sure if he should bring it up with her in private or not.

‘I probably should…’ Leon thought to himself as he fought the urge to scowl in annoyance. He knew that having Valeria near him would be risky, so he could hardly complain at this point.

“I’m not too sure,” Leon answered. “I just broke one of their buildings, and I guess it endeared me to them somehow…?”

“You did also spar with Lapis,” Alix reminded him. “I always thought that they appreciated your strength?”

“If strength was all they were after, then they wouldn’t have followed me back then,” Leon mused aloud. “In the end, it doesn’t matter too much; they follow me, and that’s enough.”

“I… will keep my eyes open anyway,” Valeria said as she cast her eyes back toward the door of their guest room. Just as she said this, Leon felt a huge rush of magic in the air wash through the entirety of the palatial cave.

Seizing on the chance to change the subject, Leon pointedly stared at the door with a curious look on his face. A moment later, a confused and curious Valeria felt the same wave of power, and Alix only a moment after her.

Leon rose to his feet, wanting to see what was happening. He could hear the sounds of the giants beginning to move as he approached the door, and the sounds of Valeria and Alix following him. Anzu remained in the tent, fast asleep, only moving enough to take more room now that the humans were gone.

To Leon, and only to Leon, what the three found outside was something akin to a horror show. Every giant corpse in the hall had been surrounded by no less than four giants, each of whom had extended their massive hands toward the corpses. Lightning erupted from their hands, sinking deep into the stone of the corpses, and as the three watched, the corpses began to move.

These movements were small at first, but as the surging magic power in the room began to concentrate above them and flow into the corpses, their movements became faster, smoother, and more powerful. Only five minutes after Leon first detected a change in the air, the first giant corpse stood up, looking little different from any other giant. And then the second rose, and then a third.

In all, about thirty percent of the giant corpses rose to their feet, while the rest simply stopped moving as the magic in the air became exhausted.

“Are they… bringing their dead back to life…?” Alix wondered aloud.

[Heh. Not a chance,] said Xaphan from Leon’s soul realm.

[What’s wrong, demon? Get bored?] Leon sarcastically asked.

Ignoring Leon’s question, Xaphan said, [It looks like these stone giants are animated with lightning wisps. Funny, I would never have thought that just from looking at them. I had thought they were earth wisps or simply something that I’d never seen before…]

This sounded somewhat familiar to Leon; as Xaphan had explained to him before, a wisp was essentially an autonomous ‘chunk’ of magic power that a terrifically powerful mage could use to animate otherwise inanimate objects, like the golems in the archives beneath Teira. The stone giants had been around so long they became self-aware and more alive than those golems, though.

[See anything else interesting?] Leon asked.

[Those aren’t risen giants,] Xaphan answered, [the giants don’t really depend on their stony forms to live, which is why your little Bull buddies have so much trouble killing them. Those ‘corpses’ are the equivalent of discarded clothing for the giants. They’re making new giants to fill those shells.]

[Ah,] Leon said. [And for those that aren’t rising, I’m guessing there simply isn’t enough power in the air to create more wisps?]

[Now there’s a surprise, you said something mildly intelligent that I don’t feel terrible about agreeing with,] Xaphan replied, his tone smug and provocative.

Leon bitterly smiled and turned his attention back to the rest of the giants, though they didn’t seem to be doing much. Then again, he didn’t think he should expect much of the ‘newborns’, even if they were the same size as their ‘parents’—assuming those terms even applied in this situation. Those around the lifeless corpses went right back to standing motionless over them, apparently waiting for enough ambient magic to gather in the crater for them to try again.

The giants gathered around their newborns and seemed to freeze in place, trapping the new giants between themselves. They didn’t move again, and neither did the newborns, so after a couple seconds, Leon’s attention turned back to the ladies at his side. More specifically, he turned to the source of his initial horror at seeing the giants using lightning: Valeria. He wanted to see her reaction, and whether or not he ought to be concerned.

Valeria seemed somewhat interested, but not too engaged with what was happening. She didn’t have nearly as much investment as Leon did with the giants, and so she observed her surroundings with the usual detachment that she did everything else.

Or, at least that’s how it seemed to Leon. It didn’t seem like any of this seemed suspicious to her, so after a few seconds, he turned his gaze away as relief coursed through him.

He didn’t see Valeria’s eyes momentarily turn in his direction a second later full of curiosity, wonder, and a hint of suspicion.