Teagan won the first couple games with ease, given that none of them had ever played before, and so opted to stop playing herself, instead letting Sihil, Hassan, and Aaliyah play among themselves. Hassan had an early advantage in his first game against Sihil, but ultimately found himself soundly defeated when Sihil took half of his pieces off of the board in a single move, much to her delight. Similarly, when she went against Aaliyah, Sihil was able to stall until she turned the tide with a single fruitful turn. When Hassan rematched her, however, he made a point of playing far more aggressively instead of advancing his whole board gradually, and found himself crowning his second piece before Sihil got her first, letting him win with ease. Teagan, satisfied that they had a grasp on the game's strategy and tired of observing, dove back into playing against them. Time flew by, and Teagan could tell that even the normally moody Hassan was having fun, not to mention both Sihil and Aaliyah. For the first time in what felt like forever, Teagan was at ease. She felt happier than she'd been in days just looking at Sihil smile, cheeks flushed and chin held high. By the time the last game had finished, it was pitch black out, and the final score had long been forgotten. Teagan gently placed Aaliyah and Hassan back in the bag, making sure to close it tight, but decided to leave Sihil out, letting the girl clamber once more onto her palm. Teagan splayed herself out on the ground and placed the girl on her stomach, hoping to finally win Sihil over with this absolute display of trust. Sihil could leave at any point in the night and Teagan would be none the wiser until morning.
Six. She'd killed six people in Sihil's defense now, and she was still not sure if the girl even liked her in the slightest. Teagan briefly wondered whether she was justified in her actions, but decided not to think about it at all when she felt Sihil lie down, breathing in rhythm with the rising and falling of Teagan's own chest. To know that it was the warmth of her body that kept Sihil from bearing the brunt of the cold night was relaxing. To know that she'd saved the girl from human and tomkin alike was comforting. To know that she had killed thousands just like Sihil was terrifying. A creeping sense of dread crawled Teagan's spine as she felt her loneliness and confusion grow ever tighter, constricting her mind. She was a certainly a murderer now if she wasn't one before.
Teagan's skin crawled as flashbacks ran through her mind. The cathedral at the mountaintop was just as memorable in her reverie as it was the day she set eyes on it. While it was perhaps true that the tomkins attacked first, there was a clear difference in strength. Even the firemage that singed her could inflict no serious harm - a fact that Teagan found surprising given the tales told by her father of the dangers of tomkin mages - and in retaliation for an injury that was more of an inconvenience than anything else, Teagan slaughtered indiscriminately, killing those responsible and those not all the same. Her heart quickened as she remembered carving into the helpless monk with her knife, slowly exsanguinating him for the sake of her own sadistic pleasure. It quickened further as she felt the crunch of a body as she squeezed it in her hand so vividly that it almost felt like more than a flashback. Her rampage in the lakeside village. Her slaughter in the forest village. Her murder of Sihil's comrades all the way back in Dunnehain.
By the time it was over, Teagan's heart felt ready to explode, its beat filling her ears. The heartbeat of a killer. Teagan reached out with her mind, delving into her own chest, and felt each pump as if her hand was laid across her own bare heart. Blood coursed through her body with sickening intensity, and part of her wanted it to stop. She could crush her own heart, ending her miserable existence in a painless instant. The world would be a safer place for tomkin and human alike, and Sihil, at this point the only object of her affection, would finally be freed. What was there to lose? The life of a pitiful murderer, no longer even human? Teagan held her breath as she prepared to kill one last person. As her gaze settled on Sihil, however, she hesitated. The girl was curled up under her sternum, a smile on her face. A truly genuine smile. Teagan gently laid a hand over her and closed her eyes. If she died out here, so would Sihil. Teagan would make it to Whitebreeze Keep before she judged herself. The journey couldn't be that much longer... she had read the old man's note to the last. She was on the last step.
"Good night, Sihil."
At the mention of her name, Sihil stirred from her sleep just long enough to see Teagan lay her head down on the soft grass.
"Good night." she replied in her own language, before burying her head in Teagan's soft skin and dreaming of a delicious meal.
~
Icaria silently sneered as she watched the giantess drift off to sleep. Firkon hadn't been lying: she really had a human companion. Icaria was disappointed at the idea someone would stray so far from the First Emperor's teachings as to befriend one of the sworn enemy, but figured that she would be able to make an example of the girl soon enough. Icaria was alone, having tracked the giantess to see exactly what she was dealing with. She was tempted to go and kill them both while they were asleep, but her orders were to explicitly let Firkon take credit, and she wasn't about to defy an order any time soon. That being said, if Firkon wasn't up to the task... Icaria would savor a chance to go up against such a foe. It would be a glorious fight, but not one that Icaria would lose. Not by a longshot.
She could clearly tell that the giantess wasn't normal. If the pile of dead giants only a few leagues back was any indication, this one was a mage indeed, and a powerful one at that. Icaria felt disgust well up in her heart as she continued looking at the person under the giantess' bosom, sleeping soundly as if there was nothing wrong. Such a vile relationship needed to be ended, or better, exploited, before word spread beyond Firkon's men. Once people started humanizing the giants, the First Emperor's decade-spanning plan would go up in flames. Icaria figured that the situation was perhaps more serious than she originally thought, and briefly pondered reporting back to Agopolis to consult her liege about these developments. Icaria thought about assassinating the human and leaving the giantess alive, but it would be too risky to attempt such without killing the giantess as well. Perhaps she would be granted a reprieve from following orders in such a dire situation...
No, no, no! she thought, repressing the urge to curse aloud. She had gotten this far following instructions to an exact, and knew that she invited misfortune if she took such a brazen risk. The time would come, but now was not it. Icaria had come, she had witnessed, and now it was time for her to go before she gave into this irrational impulse. She knew that when she returned, the giantess would be gone. While she alone might be able to travel here and back in only a few hours, the same could not be said for Firkon's army, laden with cumbersome giant-slaying tools and weapons as it was. If she just killed the giantess now, surely nobody else would find it before they returned, right? She just had to talk Firkon into accepting the credit, and surely that couldn't be too difficult. The man wasn't exactly a glory hound, but Icaria had faith that she could spin the story in a way that would make him think that he was partially responsible for helping Icaria kill the giantess enough, responsible enough to share in the glory.
"Shit!" Icaria cursed as quietly as she could. She was losing focus. She wasn't going to disobey her command. She was going to follow through with the objective, and that was to let Firkon lead the hunt, not to take matters into her own hands. Icaria growled to herself as she jogged back towards the town Firkon was still camped in. Even if she couldn't see the giantess dead just yet, she still had to deal with the pompous whelp Selceus and his slave giants, who would no doubt want to see Firkon dead. While it was true that Icaria's primary objective was to see Firkon rise to fame, she was also instructed to strike at the Selcenians with every opportunity she had. Their foolish boy king, Selceus III, had the audacity to proclaim himself successor to the First Emperor just as his predecessors did. Worse still, he incorporated mindquelled giants in his armies, something that would prove problematic to seeing the First Emperor's plan through.
Icaria found herself thinking of the scene she arrived to when she came to visit Firkon. Corpses and wounded still littered the battlefield nearly a day after the giantess had departed, and countless bloodstains signalled where more bodies were once strewn, now laid to rest in unmarked graves. While she had immediately recognized that the Selcenian army was composed of ill-equipped recruits, Icaria still knew that this would be a devastating blow to Selcenian morale. If she could get the giantess to attack the Selcenians again, this time with Volkhard out of the way and Firkon ready to mop up whichever side survived... she might just be able to kill two birds with one stone.
~
Andronikos winced as Selceus hurled a goblet at him, striking him in the arm and splattering him with fragrant wine.
"You are a fool and a milksop, you bastard child of a whore and an ass! You attack a diplomatically neutral force instead of consulting me? You send one of our mindquelled giants in alone, without a controller? Very troubling! What concerns me most, however, is the fact that you somehow STILL LOST! What manner of cretin are you, capable as you are of making such an imbecilic blunder?"
"Your Lordship, there was nothing I could do! They had two giant-" Andronikos pleaded.
"Maybe if you didn't send yours in to die like the blasted fool you are, you'd have a chance to see yourself victorious, hmm? Perhaps you were not beaten enough as a child, given you are a fatherless bastard! I should have your head on a pike for this! You had best be thankful for the rest of your days that I am as merciful as I am to a cowardly dimwit such as yourself."
"Thank you for your mercy towards this undeserving lout, your Lordship." Andronikos capitulated, bowing as low as he could manage, "I will not fail you again, I swear it upon my life, no matter how worthless it may be." He was in no position to contest the words of the Basileus, no matter how harshly they were put.
"We will see about that, Andronikos, but you had best be right for your own sake. I am revoking your status as one of my Ten Generals, and formally relegating you under the command of Strategos Komnas. Perhaps serving under the command of another general will help you learn what it takes to hold such a venerable position."
"W-wait, what?!" Andronikos exclaimed, caught by surprise, "My Lordship, that position among the Ten was granted to me by your father! I have faithfully served your line for too many winters to count!"
"I am not my father, and you would do well to remember that. I will give you a chance to redeem yourself, however. The Orestians, the ones you attacked - I want you to keep them silent. I don't care how you do it, I just want an absolute guarantee that they won't report our, no, your attack on them back to someone who might raise issue. You are extremely lucky, Andronikos: I have been in contact with the Satrap of the province their force comes from, and I have received word that all Orestian forces in the area have been called back. That means that as far as the Orestians know, this army is already miles away from here, marching back towards Orestion... so if you get rid of our problem here, they'll never suspect us. I will be granting you a sizeable force of hardened veterans, some drawn from among my own hetairoi, to accomplish this goal. I already feel as if this is a mistake, but I will put my faith in you one last time."
"Yes, your Lordship. It will be done." Andronikos answered.
"Good. If it isn't, and Orestion gets wind of this, I will make no effort to protect you from whatever fate they deem appropriate for a halfwit such as yourself. Am I clear?"
"Yes, your lordship."
"Very good! Now get out of my sight, you ignoramus. I'd find a pile of bird droppings more appealing to look at than your vacuous head."
Andronikos scurried out of the Basileus' tent, eager to drown his frustrations in wine. Selceus was harsh with his words, perhaps, but he had given Andronikos a chance to redeem himself, a chance Andronikos had no expectation of receiving after hearing of his demotion. He was determined to succeed, and he knew that there was only one way to be sure that the Orestians stayed silent.