The old Novadi had been dying when they brought him to Janna. It was around noon and she had just come back from patrol. There was no lunch for her, so she had not intended to linger long, but the group of city folk that carried him on a wooden litter had been insisting to speak with her.

“The All-Forgiving blesses you, mighty giantess!” The old Novadi gestured to her, speaking in his queer accent.

His skin was coppery brown and shiny, so much so that it shun through the white stubble that covered his wobbly chin. He wore a turban around his helmet and was otherwise clad in attire so quintessentially Arab that Janna had first thought he had come from earth. Then there was his name, so eerily earthly as well.

“My name is Ali al Rachmud! I am from the Desert of Khôm! And I am dying!”

He had coughed then, so painfully that there could be no doubt as to his nearing end.

“Hello, Ali.” Janna had replied awkwardly.

She didn't quite know what he wanted to hear, this tiny, brown senior. He had a large belly and preferred black clothing, but the large cloth belt around his gut was red and the fineries beneath the outer blacks a clean, shiny white. He also wore an enormously broad sabre.

“Where is this desert you speak of?” She asked when he only smiled up to her.

“Oh!” He waved his hand. “Far, far away, it is! I was a sellsword most of my life. I ended up in Kalleth, down that eastern road on the Andergastian side. When my age did no longer permit me to fight I founded a temple for him, Rastullah, the all-powerful and one true god! It was the most northern one there was, alas, I fear brigands have burned it.”

The strange idea of the government experiment came back to Janna's mind. This had to be planted, it was so similar. But, if so, it was nearly unexplainable why most people here served queer gods, like the Twelve, while this Arabic or Turkic people clearly worshipped Allah, albeit under a different name.

“Why did you wish to speak to me, Ali?” She smiled.

He looked friendly enough, although his religious fervour made her wary. The dominant polytheism was one thing. People did not believe their gods to be all-powerful, which would logically go a long way in curbing widespread fanaticism, bar a few Praios and Rondra fanatics, maybe. The form of animism others believed in was even more mundane, practically worshipping more or less the observable reality around them.

“Oh!” He was starting fighting with his breath. “You must go! Ah! Go south to Selem! From there you must go back north-east unto Unau! Meet the Caliph! He will appreciate, seeing the wonder...that you...are! Rastullah!”

And then he died, leaving Janna puzzled. The assembled townsfolk had done the easily recognizable old man the kindness of bringing him to her as his dying wish. None of them were Novadi, and neither did anyone know how to bury him according his creed. They could not help her.

She pondered the possibility of a metaphysical meaning behind his request, but decided that, since magic was dead, that was rather out of the question. It was also what she wanted to believe, a form of confirmation bias. A warmer climate would be welcome, but desert would undoubtedly be a little too much of that. She had no urge just now to go anywhere where one could die of thirst, not so soon after the grim and unforgiving Hjaldor Mountains anyway.

“The Desert of Khôm is a place in the far south east!” Hypperio lectured after Janna summoned him and asked. “It is framed by the tallest mountains, only reachable by several, uh, passages. The Caliph Malkillah the Third, Mustafa ibn Khalid ibn Rusaimi, reigns over the Sultans and their tribes. At Unau, there is a lake of salt, bringing great riches to the city!”

There were oases in the desert where dates were grown and camels bred. Fine cloth was made from the fur of hairy goats in the mountains. Novadis did not eat pork and shunned any alcoholic drink, much like Muslims, but they also believed that if a man directly looked into the eyes of a woman then he was obliged to marry her, a feat only possible by practise of polygamy, not to mention grotesque, if not indeed macabre.

The fact that Ali had looked into right into Janna's eyes without hesitation could only mean that he had not believed her to be human. Perhaps somewhat ironically, Janna had felt like he was more human than the younger Joborners who carried him, once again because of the Earth-like appearance. That stuck with her.

Most of what Hypperio knew about the Novadis turned out to be trivia, so Janna did not place all too much heed on it. It didn't matter anyway, half a world away as their desert was.

She told the townsfolk who were still squabbling over the funeral procedures that they ought to bury the old man with his sabre and with his head pointing south-east, which was the best guess she could make. Then she went again on patrol, doing her southern route for the second time of the day.

There were no news from Laura, of course. She was likely taking her sweet time causing much more destruction than necessary. Neither had anything changed with Furio, other than that he had been heard mumbling piously again, which they said was a good sign. If it weren't for him, Janna would have gone and looked for Laura, made sure she was okay. Joborn bored her, which was why she soon came to appreciate her patrols.

The world outside the town was populated again and there were no allies of hers wagging their fingers when she played a little. There was Sir Ruckus, of course, but Janna had not seen him since they last met yesterday, and had resolved no longer to care about what he said.

She went her previous route along the river, to the village she had forgotten to ask the name of. It was cold today but the peasants were out in their fields, mostly occupied with gathering hay that they had priorly left on the fields to dry. When they saw her, they ran, hid or grouped up. Most of them were women because the men were at war.

She saw a young brunette with heavy tits trying to vanish in a haystack, pretended not to see and squashed her flat, the stack crumbling to a splotch of nothing beneath her foot, not unlike a dust bunny. Her boots were killers, but the thick soles hardly ever let her feel what she squashed. She felt it, even people, but only ever in adulterated way.

While she pondered this fact it became apparent to her that she was growing tired of her footwear. She loved her boots, had done so ever since she had bought them, but wearing them practically every day now as soon as she left her sleeping bag made the weight and enclosing sensation around her feet become bothersome.

So, she took them off. Since her socks needed washing anyway, she tried walking in them for a while instead, which made for a pleasant change and was not too cold at the same time. It really was cold, overall, by tiny people's standards anyway. She suspected it was one of the outlier days that heralded the coming of winter. It would get a little bit warmer again and then colder, warmer and cold for good, or something along those lines.

Her socks were the least of her problems, whereas washing her dirty pants was another matter. They'd take long to dry after washing and if it rained maybe they would not dry at all. Maybe she would have to carry her sleeping bag around with her while her pants dried, she pondered.

That was a rather absurd aspect of being a giantess in a tiny world, but it was a very, very real one.

The next few peasants she came across in a field got prime viewership of her soles as they rolled over them. There were seven of them and Janna crushed six of them for nothing more than a reminder of how it felt to do so without boots. It felt good.

Their bodies were mercilessly obliterated, however, resulting in them being caked into the fabric of her socks. But that was okay. Janna would have to wash them anyway. She had worn her leather boots for long. The last time she had washed any of her clothing had been at Salza.

“What does that smell like?” She asked the last little peasant, a quick young man of fighting age, which was somewhat of a rarity on the fields at this time.

It had to smell horrid.

He could not well answer her, however, because her big toe that was pressing down on him was applying too much pressure to his puny frame. That was so wonderful, to be able to do that. It was almost impossible in boots even to adjust the pressure she applied. Had she worn them, no doubt he would have ended up smushed like the others and she would not have gotten to ask him.

When she released him, he paddled backwards over the soft topsoil, scrambled to his feet and wanted to make another run for it. This time, she pressed down on his back, which wasn't optimal, so she rolled him under her toe and pressed down again.

“Wait.” She said. “I'll take whiff myself.”

To keep him from running she had her toe slide down onto his legs, pressed down hard and gave a little twist. He started screaming when she could feel some things break. Then she plopped down on his squashed, obliterated family and brought her foot to her nose.

It was awful, like overripe cheese with a hint of leather still clinging on.

“Aw, sorry about that.” She giggled. “Let's take your arms off.”

He had started to drag himself over the ground, making it easy for her to get his first arm. When he stretched it out to pull himself further she put her big toe on it and crushed it flat. Being him surely sucked, she mused, but a peasant had to be somewhat used to that.

He was in bloody agony, but awake and cunning enough to keep his other arm trapped under his torso.

“Fine.” She resolved. “Keep it then.”

Crushing him would have been a kindness, so that was rather out of the question. Instead, she pulled off her sock, picked the man up and stuck him right between her second and third little piggies, or her long toe and index toe, rather. She found those names wrong, because her big toe was her longest and the others made for a perfect sickle shape down to her baby toe.

She wriggled them a little afterwards, to see if the man would fall out, but he only screamed in agony.

On earth, Laura had had some tiny foam pads to stick between her toes when she painted the nails on them. Janna had never done that. She used to be shy. Having the man in there, squirming, felt a little weird, but not in a way she couldn't get used to. All she needed now where more peasants.

If the price of any good in economics was determined by supply and demand, a peasant's life was worth rather little. Due to lack of mechanization in agriculture and a notably unequal distribution where beasts of burden were concerned, they could only effectively provide food for rural and urban populations in their masses, meaning if two, three or ten of them went missing it would surely not be such a big deal.

Nevertheless, she went a little overboard, pulling her socks back on and trampling everyone she laid eyes on. For her toes, she selected on basis of attractiveness. Whenever she spied someone with a hint of beauty about them, she sat, pulled off her socks and stuck them in between her piggies.

The gap next to her big toe was largest and anyone she put there had too easy a time squirming their way out, so she filled that spot last, after which she could just keep her socks on and imprison her tiny adornments that way. She could see tiny hands push and claw at fabric from the inside, and felt like a menacing, evil goddess.

'A disco!' She thought in her mind. 'A fucking club! I want to go dancing and I want to see what my toes do to these tiny, little things.'

Why she did any of this she could not say. She was just playing idly, and both her actions and thoughts were remarkably childish at that. After there were four people in each sock, she started eating a few pretty ones, clothes and all. Soldiers saw her doing it, but did not dare to interfere. She did this for a while and just to still the worst of her hunger and murder lust while continuing on her patrol.

“Arr!” Travian di Faffarallo greeted her when she reached the place where the Bloody Brotherhood held the line. “We was hopin' that you would come again, ha ha!”

A section of riders was present, carrying one-handed hammers with beaks on one end. Then there were a few great swords, a group of men with maces, morning stars and shields, a section of halberds and a large group of bowmen, all on foot. Something was going on here.

“And why is that?” She asked, wondering what would happen if she did what she had done to the peasants further north to these mercenaries.

“Oh, such a heavy question, ha ha! Heavy!”

The old but lively condottiere had a wooden leg and talked like a pirate. He carried jewels and gold around his neck and fingers and had some gold teeth as well. That was a sellsword thing, she guessed. For one, carrying one's wealth about one's skin was the safest way to keep it, and a bag of gold could become cumbersome once it grew too large. The other thing was simply marketing.

'Look at me, potential client! I earned all this gold already and I am still alive. Hire me!'

“Have you been doing the things I told you?” She asked, cocking a brow at the little man.

“Aye!” He bowed and cackled. “Heh! Getting the ogre carcass out the stream, that was...ehehe, quite heavy as well, ha!”

They must have killed an ogress while she was crossing the stream and then left her to rot in the water. Likely, that was where this disease was coming from. Janna did not want to think about the stupidity.

Instead, she asked: “Why do you keep saying that word? You wouldn't imply I'm fat, now, would you?”

She wasn't really good at teasing. That had always been Laura's thing. Nonetheless she tried to present herself from her most beautiful side. Muffled shouts or grunts came from inside her socks, prompting uneasy glances on side of the assembled sell-swords and spoiling the reaction she had been gaming for.

The condottiere noted, but only cocked his head at the noise: “Why, no, ha ha! None too much! And none too little as well!”

He looked at the village and Janna finally understood. His soldiers were assembled, ready to attack the place, burn it down, get rid of the disease by murdering the hosts in cold blood.

“Did you receive orders to raze this village?” She asked.

She found it rather shocking, even though it should not have surprised her at all. Initially, she thought it was stupid because dysentery, which she still believed the Bloody Diffar actually was, was not well known for being spread from person to person. In this day and age, though, where there was little to no sanitation, dysentery could spread even from hand-to-hand contact.

“Arr, aye!” di Faffarallo bowed. “The Generalissimo believed it wiser to err on the side of, uh, health, rather than peasants.”

The grey-golden grin that followed was revolting, but if truth be told Janna had to expect nothing less from these men. It was also clear why they had waited idly at the edge of their task, biding their time in hopes she'd come back to do it for them. They were afraid to catch the disease themselves, which in light of things was probably reasonable.

“So, you want me to crush it?”

“Aye!”

“Has Sir Ruckus expressed his consent in this matter? I mean, it's his village, right?”

The condottiere stroked his white beard: “Well, let us say the eagle does not concern himself with the opinions of beetles, whether they have antlers or no.”

Janna had actually considered crushing Ruckus just for sport, and this made it sound like Scalia wouldn't even mind it. If she crossed paths with him today and spied an opportunity to do it she'd crush Ruckus to paste and shit on him, she decided. That was if there weren't too many witnesses to remove, of course.

The village was a somewhat different matter. Doing away with it was probably the safest course, but Janna was curious, eager even, to see whether or not she could apply her advanced knowledge to save it. Dysentery could be treated with lots of clean water, if the case was no very severe. In severe cases, antibiotics could help, or specific amoebicidal drugs. That meant that any such hard case was lost, however, because they had no antibiotics, let alone a laboratory to test what kind of parasite was causing this infection.

The soldiers in the weeping willow yesterday had said the people in the village were dying like flies, though, indicating that drinking boiled water might be tad too simplistic here, perhaps, if at all, useful at helping to stop the disease from spreading further.

“You should always keep your hands clean.” She told the mercenaries straight from her thoughts. “Keep extra skins with boiled water and use that to wash your hands after you've shat. Do not wash your hands in the river!”

If this disease spread south to Joborn, Furio would be in danger. She had arranged for him to only be given boiled water from now on but in his fragile state any secondary or tertiary infections would do to his immune system what Janna and Laura had done to Thorwal.

“Oh, ha ha!” di Faffarallo laughed. “One hand washes the other!”

“What do you mean? Wait...” Janna scowled at him from above.

With another grey-golden grin the tiny man had turned it into a trade. She would do their work for them and they would heed her advice on hygiene in turn, advice she had given in order to keep them alive, among other things. This man was clearly an insolent one.

All the same, Janna swallowed her pride and went to work, which meant that she had to wear her shoes again. Her socks were brown and muddy at the bottom already, and there were people caked into them, but bloody stool ridden with potentially deadly parasites was a different matter.

The muffled calls of her toe prisoners ceased immediately when they were encased in leather. Now their real torture began, as if it had been bad enough before. The gap between her middle and her ring toe was so narrow that she could feel the two women she had stuck there left and right become squishy while she had walked. She could tell that they were still alive and kicking, only that they had been made tender by the unforgiving force of her toes, which likely entailed serious traumata to their rib cages and spines.

The village had overheard Janna's part of the conversation, she guessed, because where before everything looked empty and abandoned now there were people in various stages of flight. A young woman was quickly making her way for the weeping willow before a crossbow bolt slammed into her chest, knocking her onto her back as though she had been struck by a shotgun. Other people showed unmistakable signs of disease, dragging themselves forward or carrying each other along.

“Sorry.” Janna told them when she stepped in on them. “This is for reasons of health and safety.”

The idea of methodically stomping everything was thwarted by the fear of killing the people in her shoes, so she did it softly which, in light of her weight, got the job done just as thoroughly, albeit not quite as fast. Anyone healthy and quick enough to flee from her feet was picked off by crossbow- or bowmen and the ballista fired once as well, striking a man in the head which then exploded like a watermelon, the shaft slamming through the pier of a hut, resulting in its partial collapse.

“All done.” Janna went back to Travian di Faffarallo and his sellswords, wiping her soles on the ground. “No one is to go near that place and whatever you do, do not throw any corpses in the river!”

The village was patch of trampled dirt, broken wood and straw, streaked with the occasional red smear.

“Aye!” di Faffarallo bowed yet again, visibly impressed with the easy destruction he had just witnessed. “Now, I have...eh, do not go there!”

Janna turned back around, seeing that the first sellswords from the riverbank had already gone directly on top of the flattened village. The weeping willow men had told her that afflicted mercenaries had been sent into the village as well, meaning that Janna had trampled them along with the villagers and any riches they carried on their person. Their former comrades now came to look for gold, silver and gems, rings, necklaces, perhaps even gold teeth like di Faffarallo wore them.

It was a marvellous display of what greed did to people, giving Janna a rather satisfying feel when she marched back and right over the panicking men in their puffy, colourful attire. Horasian sellswords, it turned out, smushed just as easily beneath her as sickly peasants did. They only begged louder.

The condottiere had his hat in his hand when she came to him, scratching his head in stupid disbelief.

“You were saying?” She asked, unwilling to entertain even the thought of having to justify her actions.

“Arr, fools!” He spat. “Ugh!”

Janna shifted her foot to let it hover over him, ready to step down. She was feeling rather murderous just now and she was not giving a damn about anybody's opinions. She just had days like that sometimes, she'd noticed, even though today was particularly bad.

“I've decided I want a reward for doing your work for you.” She said, quickly but calmly. “You better come up with one if you don't want to get smashed.”

In her mind she thought about something cool, something funny, like the Maraskan cooks she had met the last time.

Some footmen started to steal off, vanishing into the woods, treading as lightly as thieves. A bunch of riders did the same, willing their horses about and galloping off in terror.

Travian di Faffarallo hobbled out from under the shadow of her sole, sword in hand and smiling.

He pointed his blade at her face: “Arr, Travian di Faffarallo has never been afraid of dying! But, hehe, why shall we haggard each other when we can both make a profit, eh? Ha ha!”

“If you mean to make me guess what it is I'm just going to stomp you.” She replied. “Shall we make a wager, perhaps, on how long it will take your men to dig your teeth out of my footprint? Anyway, good bye, little man.”

She switched her sole back over him and lowered it, wondering what sort of devil was riding her today. This would antagonize the Horasians to no end and make them think her untrustworthy, uncontrollable even, if the perfectly healthy peasants she had crushed along the way had not already accomplished that. Without Horas, she was rather aimless, though. She had no idea where she should or could go next. South would be cool, she guessed. But it would be bloody war from now on, all the time, every bloody day.

“Well!” Once more he hobbled out from under her on his wooden leg. “If crushing a little cripple such as me gives you joy, than have at it! But if you'd wish to squelch greater prey then hear me out!”

That was intriguing indeed: “Greater?”

“Aye, ha ha!” He slammed his sword into its scabbard and gestured to his left, toward the east. “My men have found ogre tracks not far from here! We meant to hunt them down for their heads once we were done here, but seeing as you are insisting upon a reward, you can have them!”

“You're a bloody clever bug, you know that?” She smiled and withdrew her foot. “Show them to me. If they are real maybe I'll not come back and finish what I started, but if you lie to me then I will hunt you instead. Deal?”

“Deal, ha ha!” He laughed before calling for his horse.

She walked behind them on the short journey to where they had spotted the tracks. Most of the horses the Bloody Brotherhood possessed were black and of medium quality, if Janna was any judge. Faffarallo's horse was white with a myriad of grey dots, like a snow storm. Quite a pretty thing, actually.

“Here,” he finally gestured when they had gotten to a small lake not connected to the Ornib, “in the mud.”

Janna could see them when she knew where to look, footprints much too large for any regular-sized human being. There were two pairs, far as she could tell, leading out of the woods to the water and then back again.

“There is a person with them. Someone with rather small feet.” di Faffarallo explained after dismounting and showing the tracks to her. “This person was being carried but set down here to get a drink. You can see broken branches and squashed ferns in there. Follow them and you will find them, sooner or later.”

He gestured into the woods.

“I can't.” Janna replied, disappointed. “I can only see trees from above!”

“Arr, you surrender rather easily!” He told her in a reproachful tone. “Remove them then! Have a try at least, would you?!”

She did. It was much harder than anything she was used to on patrol thus far, making her realize that she had been patrolling all wrong. When she stomped through the forest, crushing and kicking about trees, she wiped out any traces of enemies that might have been there. When she did it carefully, sliding her hands in before spreading open a window that allowed her to inspect forest floor, she was able to see much more.

Nevertheless, it would be tedious, but if at the end of it she would get two tiny ogresses for her enjoyment then that would be worth it still, and ideas about the things she would do with them were already playing out in her mind.

“Happy hunting, ha ha!” Travian waved his hat at her while he and his men were already in full gallop, eager to vanish from her vicinity.

She hadn't really wanted to squash him or any of his men, she thought, bar those greedy idiots who had not heeded her warning. She was just feeling a bit off balance today because of Laura and Furio and everything, making her touchy and rather liberal with tiny people's lives. Meeting the dying Novadi had rattled her as well, because of his perceived Earthliness. A small part of her felt sorry for the peasants she had crushed, but that didn't mean she would let go of her toe slaves.

In the beginning, the sensation of having things stuck between her toes had been a little uncomfortable. Now she was used to it, and found that she could even enjoy it. She wasn't alone for once, and could hardly wait to pull off her boots in the evening and laugh at her little passengers.

In truth, though, she knew it was cheesy. It was boring, even, senseless and unnecessary. But it was the most exciting thing around just now. Days without multimedia could grow dull, she had learned, and one had to do a lot of social interaction to compensate. There were not so many people she could interact with, however, now that she was separated from Laura and Furio was in his comatose state. And when she had a chance to interact with someone worthy, she blew it, as she had just done with Travian, and with Ruckus before him.

The ogresses, if she did it right, could help her remedy this. She had to find a way to simply spend time, or else she might even end up developing depression.

Treading softly, she went window for window, careful not to loose the track she was following. Sometimes it was easier, sometimes harder. Once she had lost it and had to go back after missing a seemingly random turn the ogresses had made.

They had to be ogresses, judging by the size of their feet which she judged roughly on par with that of the ogresses she and Laura had kept in Thorwal.

She knew that some ogres had crossed the border through areas the Horasians had deemed untraversable before. The question was what they were doing here, whether they had a military purpose or simply lived here. Since the farms and villages almost everywhere had been hit by the Thorwalsh incursion, their lives were probably affected as well because they could not steal any supplies.

In between two patches of forest, Janna saw that they had attacked a herd of deer and, judging from the tracks, caught a couple of them as well. On her first patrol, Janna had gotten herself some deer too, only she had squashed almost all of them under her foot. They were due to become her food this evening. The meat had been hung, giving the choice herbs and spices she had demanded a chance to marinade.

She could hardly wait for the meal, but the way her detective work went it looked like there was the possibility of having to make a choice.

-

“I'll wager your father paid dearly for your promotion, Emilio, but if you do not lower those thirteen times damned crossbows I swear that no amount of coin will save your hide!”

The spoken to was a man of mediocre stature, an archetypal Horasian officer in white britches, black boots, cuirass, morion helmet and sabre. He had an absurd little moustachio that served as his main measure of distinction, and also made him immediately hard to like.

Léon stood one foot on the railing at the bow of Thorsten's ship, the childishly-named Fishermen's End.

“Who speaks such insolence?!” The man called back from the dock, three lines of cocked and ready crossbowmen behind him. “Give me your name before I send you to Boron, wretch!”

“Léonidas Hatchet!” Léon spat, no hint of his usual grace.

The name was enough. Even from the ship Dari could see the officer pale, ere he had his men lower their crossbows and hastily arrange into an honour guard.

While the Fishermen's End slid gracefully into port, the other two ships overshot their landing, reefing their sails too late and shipping straight past the small entrance to the harbour. Thorsten shouted commands at the stern while Emilio saluted Léon on land.

“Ropes!” Thorsten bellowed then and the ship was pulled against the pier, rattling Dari to her core.

It had rained hard all the way over from Andergast and just now that they had a chance of getting a roof over their heads was Efferd's vicious pummelling dying down again to a drizzle. She was wet, clammy and cold. Ship voyages were not for her, not on Thorwalsh ships anyway where there were no cabins and comfort was a word alien to the crew.

“Dari!” Léon snapped his fingers as soon as his foot had touched dry land.

He was practically leaping onto the pier and very clearly going somewhere. What he wanted of her she did not know. It came so sudden and unexpected that she flinched, there, cowering by the railing where she still was, wondering if a hail of crossbow bolts would be last thing she'd ever get to see in this world.

“You, go.” A big, bearded Fjarninger oarsman named Bluetooth poked her in the rips.

She scrambled after the Horasian who was suddenly such a different man. The name Léonidas Hatchet did not ring any bells with her, although that meant little, in truth. With Gareth her turf and her age young yet she had not been to Horas very often and kept note of its goings on only marginally, if at all.

Joborn stood atop a plateau that they were climbing via a dirt road and the officer was all over Léon when she caught up: “My deepest apologies! Had we known that you were coming we would have made arrangements...”

“Make them now then.” Léon replied, still in his brief, brisk tone. “I want my men kept in meat and mead till I say otherwise. Is that understood?!”

“Meat and mead?” The other quivered helplessly. “B..but...”

“Feed them!” Léon barked. “And give them drink, anything but wine will serve! And, Praios preserve me, stop presuming upon my indulgence! Go!”

“Aye, Signor!”

With a meekly bow, the unlikeable officer retreated. Léon waved Dari beside him.

“Where are we going?” She asked, fearful that she might be embarking on a voyage to the gallows after all.

“To the castle.” He replied. “Major Emilio isn't the only one whom I need righten, alas this next one I cannot shoo about like a headless duck.”

She was entirely nonplussed and none too pleased with their sudden inversion of power: “What do you mean, what do you need me for and who are you?!”

He sighed and stopped, just as they had entered Joborn's market square. There were people, but they were too occupied with whatever they were doing to mind them. Some townsfolk were clobbering together a coffin for some fat man, lying in the street wrapped in cloth.

Léon shook his hair out briefly before retying it into a knot.

Then he spoke: “I am Léonidas Hatchet, constable of spies by the grace of, well...you know who. I want you to work for me. It is dangerous, the pay is awful and no one will ever show you any gratitude for what you will do. The job was practically invented for someone like you, I think.”

Now she was baffled, standing there in her wet dress with a ragged sheep skin around her shoulders.

“Um, wa-what do you want me for?”

“For now, all you know about Andergast and the ogres. You will give an exact, complete and truthful account to General Scalia, whom I will have the dubious pleasure of introducing to you in a moment. Now, you do not know how much I know, so you better stick with the truth and the whole truth and do not let anything out. If you do, our arrangement ends with your pretty, little head on a spike. Consider this a test. After, we shall see.”

This move cornered Dari too much for comfort and felt like an ambush that in hindsight she ought to have expected. She could not say 'no', outright. There was no doubt that this man, whoever he now was, believed her capable, but Dari doubted that he knew who she truly was, which in turn made his motivation for procuring her into his services all the more daunting.

“I think I'd be an awful spy.” She tried softly. “Where I go I tend to get into trouble.”

For the split second that his smile flashed across his face he looked like the Léon she had partially known, but even he had been a secretive character and 'knowing' was very much the false expression. At least now she knew why he had always seemed so well informed, for all the good that did her.

“I will keep that in mind,” He replied, “but if you think I trust any of my other agents then you are mistaken. You should not trust me either. It is all part of the game. Come along now, on to General Inaction.”

“General who?” She grasped his sleeve and pulled him back. “I am not done asking questions, Léon. If you want me to do this then you have to answer them!”

She didn't have much of a choice, but all the same he stopped, straightened himself and faced her.

“What about Lionel Logue? Was he really your brother?” She fixed him with her eyes as best she could. If he wanted her to play this role, then he had best prepare her. It stood to wonder when he had intended to tell her of his scheme anyhow. “I mean, it seems entirely unlikely that a man of your station, with the resources you no doubt have, would drop everything and go look for him in person, does it not?”

She spoke softly and hectically so as to not be overheard whereas he was entirely unperturbed by the townsfolk around them.

“It would be.” He frowned. “And in light of things it would have been more cunning not to go. Alas, I had orders. Had Lionel been my brother it would have been a bagatelle, not worth the woe and worry I endured. I judge you are clever enough to know that Logue was a cover name, chosen for save voyage. Lionel, on the other hand, was a pet name, chosen by his family. Now, can you figure out who he was?”

'Lionel.' She thought, torturing her brain. 'Lionel. Léon to Léonidas, Lionel to...Lionel...Lion. Lion.'

The lion was the animal of Rondra, goddess of war, fighting, fairness and competition. It was also found on many a noble sigil, the Stepahans of Albernia to name just a single, prominent one, but they were not Horasian. It could be a dozen hundred things and none sprang apparently to mind.

“Argelion.” Léon answered for her, looking at her as though it meant the world.

“Who?” She asked perplexed.

He sighed: “His Royal Magnificence's second son.”

“Oh! Uh, how did he end up in Andergast?”

She tried to recall what he had said, what he had been like. Nothing could have identified him as a prince of the royal Horasian blood, meaning that if it had been the same Lionel then he had taken his cover very seriously. His demeanour had struck her as highly otherworldly, though. Strange.The position he had been in, in giant country, alone and without guard, was unbelievable. Whoever had let this happen had committed a blunder of royal proportions indeed.

Léon shrugged: “Argelion was always a queer fellow, though I must say I can well understand that he became dissatisfied. He was second in line, always in his elder brother's shadow, and life at court requires one to be a rather devoted sycophant in order to find enjoyment. Unsatisfied with the rituals, the pomp, the uselessness of court life, he gave himself to Hesinde and humanity, becoming a studiosus and discoverer. He may have hoped to make a name for himself as well, but that not withstanding, his ambitions were clearly more noble than the powdered cheeks, sweet-smelling oils, deep bows and well-learned courtesies his former life entailed.”

'Phex.' Dari thought in her mind. 'Janna ate a royal Horasian prince...and spat him out again because she didn't like the taste.'

She felt like laughing but it caught in her throat when she pondered the potential gravity of this.

“I was personally tasked with bringing him back.” Léon went on darkly. “Ever since leaving the royal court we had our eye on him, making sure he was not embarking on anything too dangerous. He frequented more archives and colleges than ancient ruins and graves, so the detail must have grown lax. When word of the gigantic creatures reached me I knew he would go, but did not think that he knew he was being watched. He eluded his pursuers with an elaborate ploy and went. It was all I could do to hasten after him after telling his Royal Magnificence of what had transpired.”

“Sounds more likely its going to be your head on a spike, huh?” She tried to cheer him up, but he only frowned.

“You are forgiven for not knowing him.” He changed his mind. “Argelion was never very important. In truth, there will be many in the empire feeling blessed that he is no longer second in line. I only wish I could say that for his royal father.”

Few of Horas' nobles really were that important, Dari recalled. It was all focused on the sovereign emperor who was surrounded by most all aristocracy at his court, most of the year. The lands the aristocracy held to their names were governed by surrogates, meaning such ilk as stewards, chancellors, sheriffs and the like while the the actual nobles would be kept occupied with mindless frivolities and absurd honours at court, such as the Royal Horasian Arse-wiper that Garethians liked to jeer about.

“Any more questions?” Léonidas Hatchet pierced her with his eyes.

“Uh, yes!” She chewed her lip. “What of this general, why do you mislike him?”

He gestured all around. A double file of pikemen was marching past, out of earshot, trailed by a section of crossbowmen. Other soldiers were standing idly around, talking, some browsing the meagre wares on the scant few stands that occupied the market square at this hour. It was late in the day, but all the same there should have been more commerce if not for the war.

“These fools are sitting here, biding their time, while Varg the Impaler took Andergast unopposed. Now she is in possession of half an army of smiths, making armour for her monsters. I told you what came of this last time, didn't I? They should have marched on the ogres weeks ago!”

The was a sharp, vicious anger in voice, but he was overlooking the obvious, which Dari had believed to be unlike him.

“Um, maybe,” she replied, “but they can't, really, because Varg holds Steve and Christina. Laura and Janna will be very upset if something happens to them, or so we assume.”

“I like those two, whatever they are. I owe them my life, much as I owe it to you. But war is war, and feelings do not enter into it. Fortune has ever favoured the bold and the cautious, and sitting here is neither of these things.”

That was true, from his point of view at least. She wondered if he knew about Sly's plan to use Varg against Janna and Laura. What he thought of the alliance between his empire and the two all-crushing monsters also interested her, but this was a question she did not dare to ask.

“I do not believe the precaution is taken in order to spare anyone from tears.” She suggested to him cautiously. “I think they are afraid of the mayhem that the titanesses could unleash. You do not know them like I do.”

She tried hard not to think of the enormous glass bottle, the foul ale and the inside of Janna's gargantuan mouth, but the pictures all came back to her, as they often did. All it would have taken was a swallow and she would have become food, digested for little more than a giggle, a childish little trick, like gulping down a tadpole.

She shook her head to rid herself of the memory, which Léon took to mean that she was done.

“It might be that what you say is true.” He told her while they moved along, over the market square and up a narrow track onto another plateau and the castle. “All the same there must be better things we can do with these men.”

The castle was nothing special, not smaller or greater than most. At the gate to the largest house inside its walls stood a tall man in black boots and britches, a green doublet with the golden eagle embroidered on his chest and a golden sash slung around his midriff like a belt.

He had hard eyes, short white hair that ran backwards over his head from a widow's peak, bushy eyebrows of the same colour and a relatively broad mouth that brook no emotion at all.

“General.” Léon nodded at the man in greeting and Dari made a hasty, shy curtsy, just in case it was appropriate.

She could traverse a Horasian fancy-ball with little to no preparation, but the military was a world of its own.

“Signor Hatchet.” General Scalia said in greeting, a voice gruff and grizzly and yet utterly void of any feel. “Have you found the prince?”

“My confidant here has,” Léon nodded to Dari over his shoulder, “best take this conversation inside.”

That was utterly queer, Dari thought. A moment ago they had more or less been discussing it in the market square. Perhaps the likelihood of any enemy spies was larger here, which made sense, she supposed.

They went inside together, soon entering a feast hall with hunting and war tapestries hung upon the walls, much like in the Andergastian King's Castle. There were a few servants, preparing the tables for supper, but no one otherwise. The air smelled faintly of stew, venison, if Dari was correct. A warm meal would be welcome.

“I need fresh clothes.” Léon told a servant in passing. “And something for this young lady as well.”

The serving girl gave Léon and frightful glance, then looked Dari up and down with suspicion.

Scalia took them up a wooden flight of stairs, across a small gallery and to his chambers that he unlocked with a key. The stag beetle of Joborn was carved into the oaken door, Dari saw, meaning these were likely the local lord's chambers, if he was still alive.

Inside he went not for his lavish desk that was overflowing with parchments and maps but a small round table so fragile that its origin could be none other than Horasian. Horasians were queer, especially to a Garethian. They had a penchant for fine, filigree things, even in their blades. Scalia wore a rider's sabre, but that was already as much steel as anyone would wear for personal arms. Their foils and rapiers could be absurdly light and thin, which on the other hand was a thing Dari liked about them.

Scalia took a seat facing Dari, and Léon sat down opposite him. The younger Horasian poured a silver cup of wine from a gilded flagon, tossed it and then poured again, adding one more cup that Dari hoped would be hers. It wasn't. One for him, one for the general and none for Dari. Neither did anyone offer her a chair.

“I do not know who you are.” Scalia pierced her with his cold green-grey eyes, speaking in growling swaths that shuddered her to the bone. “But I assume you know who I am. Tell me true.”

Dari swallowed hard and nodded. Her mouth and throat were dry, she'd kill for a sip of that wine.

Nonetheless she started: “His Royal Magnificence Prince Argelion-”

“Excellency!” Scalia interrupted her gruffly. “Do you know nothing about the empire you serve?”

'Off to a great start, Léon, you measly cunt!' She cursed in her mind.

“I live and die for empire, my lord general.” She bowed to hide her face. That courtesy at least seemed to have been correct. “His Royal Excellency Prince Argelion was met by me at Andrafall, a while north of the Andergastian capital.”

Panic gripped her mind. Léon had turned around to her, watching her closely. If one stood to lose a head for not saving the bloody prince, then that fate was now sealed on her. The idea that Léon had planned this planted itself in her, festering and oozing vile resentment.

“I tried my best to dissuade him from his course, but I am just a woman.”

'Bugger yourself, Léon, you wretched rat.'

“In lack of any better option, I went with him, to a place called Ludwig's Keep. It was in ruins, and there were many dead. We stood atop the motte when Janna the giantess fell upon us. She...killed him.”

“How?” Scalia's eyes conveyed no feeling as to this news.

He may have expected it, but even still Dari found it eerie. It was also an entirely queer question, albeit one that opened another little door for her.

“We cowered behind a rock but there was an ogre with the giantess.” She gave to account truthfully. “He smelled us. His Royal Excellency was ecstatic and I could not stop him from marching out and presenting himself to Janna. I managed to kill the ogre in time, but against her, my lord general, I was helpless.”

He still stared at her, and the real reason for the question came to her mind.

'How did you get out. How is it, that you are still alive.'

Even in her head there was no emotion in his voice.

'Here you bloody bastard.' She smiled in her head. 'Let's see how you like this.'

“She ate him.” She said shortly, careful not to let any late satisfaction over this fact ooze out of her mouth and betray her. “He carried blue cheese in his provisions, however, and the taste seemed to...offend her palate. She spat him out, and his Royal Excellency rained down in bits and pieces all around me.”

The great Generalissimo was forced to ask the question aloud but this time it was she who cut off him: “How d-”

“How did I get out? By ways of magic. Janna laid waste to the motte, furious, for I had slain her ogre. A wizard by the name of Xardas saved my life. He recruited me into his service which culminated in the death of the druid Vengyr, and the ogre king Albino's banishment during a ritual, shortly after which Xardas was slain by an Andergastian knight named Sir Egon.”

'...whom I fucked for reasons I do not quite remember, my lord.'

She hated both of them, for the moment anyway. It occurred to her that she should still not spill her truths so liberally, but if her hand in killing Vengyr or banishing Albino was to get her killed then it was already too late. She could not unsay anything. It was rather absurd how often she much suffer being at the brink of death, she thought, wondering if this was her atonement for the live she had led in Gareth.

'Oh, Phex.'

If he found the account unbelievable General Scalia did not say so, neither did his expression convey any feelings about any of this.

“I went after his Royal Excellency as soon as I got word.” Léon picked up the tale. “I also extended a letter to our spy in Andergast, the exile Thion Vardeen, promising him immediate reconciliation if he got hold of his Royal Excellency. Phex did not look kindly on either of them it would seem.” He shrugged. “Personally at the capital, I learned that our prince had gone north. I joined a band of Thorwalsh under Thorsten Hafthor Olafson, son of the same late Hetman of Hetmen. We were spotted by outlaws who were in league with the ogres, and they fell upon us at Andrafall where the both of us were taken prisoner. At that time, his Royal Excellency was likely already dead.”

Dari began to understand just how the Horasian network of spies was working. It weren't highly trained, deathly devoted individuals willing to die for their empire. It were people like her, chance met and deemed able and desperate enough to be useful. Such was the case with Thion Vardeen, anyway.

Thion Vardeen was the spy she had helped compromise. By now he was likely dead, and if he wasn't then he'd probably wish he was, after what Sly had told her they would do to him. Nothing in Léon's voice suggested that he knew the man had been uncovered, which was very important for Dari's integrity if she left him out of her tale, which in turn was precisely what she intended.

“This is grievous news!” Scalia observed. “You must put a letter to his Royal Magnificence, informing him of this great tragedy.”

“Without momentary hesitation.” Léon bobbed his head. “But Dari here has gathered more intelligence on the Ogres and their ploys that are certainly militarily relevant. Dari?”

The danger had not yet passed. Léon had warned her not to leave anything out, but all the same she had to be careful not to tell them too much, lest they knew that she had been working against them, closely in league with Sly. Her life, to them, was worth rather little.

“Aye, uh, signor!” She curtsied once and closed her eyes to gather her thoughts. “The ogres have...conquered the capital. They announced that King Kraxl struck an alliance, but this is not so. The royal court in King's Castle are puppets on strings, dancing to the whims of Varg the Impaler, the ogre queen.”

She thought whether or not she should mention Sly, but decided against it for now. Officially anyway, he was rather unimportant, and in instances where Varg chose not to listen to him this was nothing but the truth. Furthermore, she liked the buck-toothed old brigand, and it would not do to betray him any more than necessary. Léon knew about him, though, so leaving him out was a dangerous game.

She felt more comfortable not to mention Thion Vardeen, because it was extremely unlikely that Léon knew about the pigeons. As for the story, it was believable that he had simply swallowed the heralds' version of it and conveyed it home. It made little matter in any case, but she was curious what sort of message the last homing pigeon in Sly's possession would bring.

She felt like she owed him this last ploy, at least.

“They keep a close eye on this front line here you have erected.” She went on. “And they mean to sabotage you wherever they can. Thorsten Olafson, the man who saved the signor and me, was tasked with raiding the river to prevent your supplies from reaching Joborn. He will not do so, but Engasal, as I assume you know, has been attacked and fallen. It now belongs to an ogress known as Ulgrosh Skinner who married Lord Uriwin Oakhard who inherited the castle after all other heirs were squashed. The castle is empty now but if they re-occupy it then your supply line is once again in danger, my Lord General.”

The story of Engasal was one she had picked up, although she couldn't quite remember from whom. It might have been Egon who told her, she reflected, but the young knight was almost all but gone from her mind now. She had seen him once or twice in Andergast, but they had not engaged with each other.

“This is very valuable information.” The general's nod was curt. “Anything else?”

“Um, aye.” Dari nodded back. “You should hang your scouts.”

Léon had not known that the Nostrian scouts had been compromised either. His face was a display of shock and horror, and there was even a hint of something on General Scalia's. His mouth twitched, just for an instant. That was all Dari needed to know that she was more valuable to them now.

“We were curious why none of them had detected the Ogres' break of camp.” The general said gruffly when she had finished that tale. “This is treason. As for hanging, we have a more memorable method of execution now. Janna the Giantess is here and we are running short of provisions. She can have the scouts for food, if she will have them, or do any other evil thing with them, if she feels so inclined.”

Dari felt herself grow weak in the knees. She had to take in a huge, loud breath of air to keep from fainting. Léon noted her terror and hastened to give her his cup of wine.

“Is your confidant faint-hearted, Signor?” Scalia asked in a tone that was not a question. “Then let her sit.”

With some very good Horasian red in her belly and a cushioned seat beneath her arse, Dari calmed down. In the meantime, though, she had not thought to think of anything else the Horasians might find valuable information.

“Well, if she is so terrifying I would like to see her for myself.” Léon proclaimed. “Have you hidden her under a rock or how come I have not seen her on my walk over from the docks? I understand she is quite huge?”

“She is patrolling the rivers.” Scalia replied shortly before taking a larger arch. “We used the giant creatures to lure Jarl Olaf away from the Nostrian coast where he was threatening our supply lines. He was killed and the Thorwalsh have been thrown back for centuries, removed as a nuisance to us. Alas, not all his fleet were destroyed and a devotee of the late Jarl crossed the river at Salza with a great host, pestering our columns ever since. But, I gather, you know this.”

“That we do.” Léon replied mildly. “I believe my man Thorsten Olafson may help us in this matter. He wishes to rebuild Thorwal, for which he needs safe passage to the sea. What he can gather of Boyfucker's men, he will. I have his assurance on that.”

“His permission is granted then.” Scalia allowed. “Three ships cannot hold enough men to repopulate a city, let alone a land as vast as Thorwal. But the raiders are scattered like leaves. I doubt he can find quite as many as he wishes. Our giantess has proved apt at laying waste to towns and villages but even she is incapable of finding any belonging to this band.”

“Where is the other,” Dari dared to ask hesitantly, “where is Laura?”

She should not have opened her mouth, she knew immediately from the look Scalia gave her, a look that was like to freeze the wine in her cup.

Léon echoed the question with his eyes, however, and so the tall, old general was forced to make a stunning confession.

“She is missing.” He said as though it was not the least bit unsettling.

“Pardon?” Léon cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

Scalia leaned back and steepled his long fingers beneath his chin.

“She is unaccounted for.” His cold, green-grey eyes never switched from Dari's face. “Can your young confidant keep secret delicate matters of state?”

His speech came so much in swaths that Dari felt inclined to liken it to a rumbling wayn on a cobbled road, halting every once in a while when a stone stood out and momentarily halted its progression.

“Let us assume she can.” Léon washed away the concern, unwilling to wait on hearing these news.

“Very well.” Scalia declared. “We received orders from his Royal Magnificence himself to send Janna and Laura to Havena for purpose of destroying the city and its inhabitants. You have heard that Havena seceded from us, yes? There is a wizard by the name of Furio Montane who could control these beasts, or at last was able to attain their confidence. He was wounded and we do not know how. Far as our spies report, the city remains unspoiled, but the giantess Laura has not returned from Albernia. We have the wizard here, but his wound is grievous. Master Hypperio tells me he may not live, putting us all in great peril. Hypperio is devoted but not as apt as I was led to believe. He cannot replace his colleague, not how much I tighten the screws.”

He gave the hint of a shrug before moving on: “During Master Furio's incapacity the giant creatures grow unruly. Janna has crushed and eaten several of Sir Ruckus small folk on patrols, and done even other, crueller things to them. I meant to send her back to Albernia to look for the other but Hypperio tells me she will not part with Master Furio for any longer than a few hours. She is fond of him but in this state this does not work to our advantage. I dare not speak to her in person, if truth be told, for the risk is too great.”

Léon gaped at the general with an open mouth, reminding Dari to keep her face a mask. He was here. Her target, the evil war wizard Furio Montane was here, likely in this very castle, and grievously wounded too. The way Scalia made it sound, this job would not require any doing on her part at all, although she might yet help ensure the outcome and hasten the process a bit.

“Gods!” Léon drove his hand through his hair, aghast. “This is worse than I feared. Are you certain of the letter's authenticity? Are you even certain of Havena's secession?!”

Scalia looked at him, as stoic as a stone.

“We know King Finnian moved into Havena unopposed, with a host at his at his hooves. You still believe the letter to be some plot?”

“Striking Havena off the map?!” Léon's eyes widened. “Even for his Royal Magnificence this course of action is excessive, wouldn't you say? How are our dukes taking it, pray tell me, this whole affair and our being in league with the culprits? What says the Sea King? What says the King of Drôl, and what of our allies, if we still have any?”

“That, I neither know nor ponder.” The general confessed gruffly. “We have orders to keep this border closed and have our hands well tied with that. Disease has broken out in the south and already the first cases are inside these walls. Thorwalsh are ravaging our supply lines with impunity and we are running low. Singular ogresses have slipped through our net before we could tighten the meshes and are now somewhere in our hinterlands.”

Léon looked sour: “And there is a one-hundred-metre-tall monster running amok somewhere, crushing Hesinde-knows-who in our name.”

“She is still in Albernia.” Scalia assured him. “But in the wrong end. Outriders of the Bloody Brotherhood have told us that Winhall lies in ruins.”

“What next?” Léon pondered painfully. “Honingen? Abilacht? Meanwhile Varg the Impaler grows stronger. She controls the smithies of Andergast now, meaning soon more of her ogres will be clad in steel. This happened once before, my Lord General, and from what I have read it was by no means-”

“Let them come.” Scalia shrugged off the concern. “Our positions are strong! Any such creature that showed its hide on the river has been killed or repelled. Where else can they go? There is only wilderness from Andergast to the Bornlands. That is unless they fall over Griffinsford.”

And into the Garethian Empire, thereby becoming someone else's problem, or even more, the future and former enemy's. The calculus was coolly made, but the chickens he meant to hatch had been brooded on by Sly already.

“As for Albernia,” Scalia went on, “Finnian ui Bennain left Havena with an even larger army, vying to bring down the scourge that has befallen his land. He will kill her, or she him. Either way.”

'Either way, we win.' Dari thought, but this was a dubious victory and, again, a milkmaid's calculation, a naïve fallacy, as Léon pointed out immediately.

“King Finnian is Empress Xaviera of Gareth's cousin!” He protested, sharp and aghast. “Have you no way to call her back?!”

“Janna will not part with Master Furio.” The general said again and very much left it at that.

Problems were in the air like the scent of venison stew, creeping in faintly from beneath the heavy oaken door, making Dari's mouth water despite everything. They had eaten dried river fish, dried bread and lots of unboiled salt pork on the river, a fare barely even edible.

Léon smelled it too and cowardly buggered out of the uncomfortable considerations that had to be made, if there was even any feasible solution to them.

“We've had a long and watery voyage.” He began and Scalia was happy to oblige.

“Say no more.” He inclined. “Today's deer comes courtesy of Janna. Alas, the meat was only fit for stew.”

And so it was. When they started eating, freshly clothed and finally dry, in the great hall with Emilio and other high-ranking officers as well as the rat-faced wizard named Hypperio, Janna had not yet returned. The venison was exquisite, so much so that Dari had almost failed to hear the grave lamentations Hypperio made about Furio Montane's condition.

“He is pale as a corpse!” The wispy wizard wept. “His gut is bloated like a bellows. I fear he'll burst! Not even cuts seem to help him and all this even though he will not eat! We funnel water down his throat, but that's ought we can do!”

“Master Furio must live!” Scalia impaled the man with his eyes from the head of the table. “Our all fortunes depend on it!”

“Better to let a man die then let him live in such agony,” declared the actual owner of the castle, Sir Ruckus, way down the table with the unimportant people. “I've seen him. Oh, yes! He was mumbling and sweating feverishly. A blade, says I. Cut his throat! End his misery!”

All knew better than to take him up on that suggestion of course, even if Dari felt secretly inclined to oblige him.

In some fit of miss-comprehension or perhaps general ineptitude, the servants had decided that she and Léon should share a chamber. When they had found out, they had laughed awkwardly about it, and not thought to right it ere it was too late. They both had indulged heavily in the fine, Horasian red at table, and then it did not matter any more.

On part of Dari, that was partially on purpose. Léon was no fool who thought with his cock, but even in cunning men did the worm betwixt their legs occupy a chief seat in the council behind their eyes; and Léonidas Hatchet, whatever else he was, was no exception.

They had agreed that they were both old enough to share a bed and chamber, which she had immediately put to the test by bathing naked in his presence. Even though he wanted her to believe that he had averted his gaze she saw him stealing looks at her in the wooden tub, which in turn she did too when it was his turn to undress.

So, that night, she solidified her position. They both collapsed arm in arm upon the bed and first he did not want it. He didn't even get hard, but that was understandable. He had been wounded grievously and been kept imprisoned for a long time. Her mouth set him straight at once, but after that it was only a few thrusts until Dari's new employer spent himself between her thighs.

She sincerely hoped that he would be better on the morrow when she would fuck him again, if she could. In her current position, erring on the side of caution was the definitively better choice. She had to shield herself somehow from the possibility of being used as his shield again, which was what she tried to accomplish. Any personal preferences had to take a seat at the lower end of the table just now, and at least he was not physically repulsive. Even so, she found herself thinking of Thorsten's magnificent manliness, once Léon was done and fell asleep with his face in the downs.

The next morning was cool but dry, if a tad foggy. Thorsten's men had fed and feasted through the night and there was no room for long or emotional farewells. The event was overshadowed by a larger development, anyhow.

Janna, the gargantuan, evil monster, had not returned.

That woke bad memories with Dari. When Janna and Laura had not returned the last time it had led to Nagash's death, Xardas' death and Dari almost being crushed to brine beneath Trundle's butt cheeks, not to mention being used like a toy.

General Scalia wore a golden cuirass that day, and his golden sash over his shoulder instead of slung around his waist. He rode a white Yaquir Valley horse with a golden mane, one of the finest of fine breeds among warm bloods. His deep green cloak was fringed with gold and streamed down his mare's backside.

The splendidness he presented was not mirrored in his eyes. They were ice, watching the ragged band depart that would be his empire's staunch enemies ten or twenty years down the line.

Dari wore a plain, light-blue dress that belonged to the smallest one of Sir Ruckus' daughters, a flock girls that clung to the skirts of their corpulent mother, a scowling, stout harridan with a tongue so vicious that her husband forbade her from speaking during meals, although he himself was not much better.

“These are good men!” Ruckus declared. “Couldn't they have been hired for sellswords?! We are fools to let them sail!”

He couldn't know that with Thorsten travelled a hefty chest of gold, given in advance and with goodwill for the task of razing Engasal Castle to the ground. For this task he had been given hammers, chisels, pickaxes and shovels aplenty as well, tools he had sour need of in his quest to rebuild.

It was when the last ship was out of sight and they wanted to return to the castle that a runner arrived.

“My lord general!” He wheezed. “A bird! Nostria! Master Hypperio bid me show you at once!”

Scalia's face did not move an inch when he took the scroll and unrolled it. Then, his eyes went wide.

“Send out riders!” He called. “Find Janna and tell her to come here!”

When bellowing, he did not speak in swaths, Dari noted. This would surely come handy on a battlefield.

Léon stood beside, stretching his hand out for the scroll, and when he got it Dari leaned in unopposed.

'Capital under siege by large force from south. Defence under command of Colonel Marillio, Commodore G. Goldhammer and King Andarion II. of Nostria. Reinforcements requested. I.A. Colonel Marillio; Commodore G. Goldhammer; Captains at Sea H. t. Waat, L. Neander, A. Scaevola; signed Eolan Baroco, Ensign.'

The poor lieutenant at sea who had crafted the message had been so eager to put in the names of the noble defenders that he forgot to mention who was attacking the city. It was scribbled in a different hand, a crude, almost childish one, unseemly in a corner.

'Albernia.'

King Finnian was no fool, Dari thought. When he heard about the giant beast, or beasts, that were laying waste to his kingdom he knew who had sent them. He also knew, likely, that he did not stand to win an easy victory against such evils in the field, if he even knew where she was, which was doubtful.

So, instead, he opted to attack and hurt his real enemy. A clever move, only if Janna had been here she could have been over at Nostria within a day or two and squashed him flatter than the tiny piece of parchment, quivering in Léon's hand.

“Without Nostria we will soon have difficulty holding this position.” Scalia told Léon calmly. “The harbour capacity at Salzerhaven is yet to be restored.”

There were too few supplies coming through on land, Dari understood. That had been another subject yesterday evening at table, and today as well, when they had broken their fast on white bread and cheese, grapes, apples and watered wine. The Thorwalsh fought as though there was no tomorrow, as well they might, seeing as their lands were devastated, their people crushed or eaten and their religion guaranteeing them eternal entertainment so long as they went down in a fight.

It looked as though the Horasian's hands were tied. In the castle, a table was cleared and stacked with maps, as well as little tokens that served to show where which force approximately was or had moved from. Someone had carved a wooden likeness of Janna, so wrought looking like a girl with long hair, thick legs and broad hips, a broad, homely jaw and an enormous bosom. The figure for Laura did not do her justice, and for neither giantess did the Horasian's know where to put them.

Scalia took the tough decision of ordering the line be thinned out to allow the formation of a relief force, an undertaking that would require some time in and of itself.

It was uncertain if Janna would go and attack the besieging army at Nostria, even if they found her, so this step was necessary.

Birds were dispatched to the Horasian heartlands, urging them to send a fleet for the city's relief as well.

Dari was in the middle of it, albeit sitting on the side like a good, little woman. Léon had her serve wine and refreshments such as fresh, pickled or dried fruit, honeyed shortbreads, cheeses and the such for the officers while they talked their military talk, playing through all possible scenarios, which meant mostly talking in useless circles around each other while Scalia sat and listened with contempt.

“Having messenger pigeons is better than not having messenger pigeons.” Léon told her during a strenuous break. “But the messages they carry have to be short and leave little room for detail. Unless the writer thinks to include a date, or at least a week day, it is also hard to know when a message was sent. Remember that.”

It was advice for her new role as his confidant, she understood, although the time for giving it was utterly strange. Also, apart from knowing that today was market day, she couldn't have accurately said what month or day it was in any case.

Homing pigeons could fly slow or fast, depending on the weather, predators and other things. A time could go by until the message was discovered too. All this played into the unreliability that went with using the birds for messaging.

The bird that carried the message of the siege must have been somehow delayed, they soon found out, because in the course of the next few hours more birds arrived, sometimes merely half an hour apart. The messages were read aloud in Scalia's solar and the officers re-enacted the goings-on on the map.

It was a veritable disaster and all they could do was watch, albeit from the wrong side of the kingdom.

'Albernians have erected trebuchets. Long siege unlikely. Signed Eolan Baroco, Ensign'

Those were likely Horasian trebuchets priorly stationed at Havena, large, powerful things. They would make short work of the south-eastern tower and the Lyngwyner Gate next to it, the direction of attack the Albernians would take, it was generally agreed in the room. The battle had already begun, and now they had to wait for the outcome, or at least a report of status.

It came within two hours: 'Gate fallen. Enemy is attacking and strong in numbers. Request immediate reinforcements. Signed Eolan Baroco, Ensign'

The capital was woefully ill-defended. Most soldiers and knights were in the field, hunting Thorwalsh or guarding Horasian supplies, trying to break through to Joborn thereby moving in the entirely wrong direction. They could not receive any birds as well and riders were like to get picked off by Hjalmar Boyfucker. Perhaps riders could ride along the coast and reach whatever forces were at Salza, or beyond where they were expanding greedily into formerly Thorwalsh territory, but Dari doubted they stood any chance against the might of Albernia.

Within another hour came the next bird, dispatched roughly a day ago at the earliest. That was the cruel thing in all this. The news they got were already stale and old, even though they were coming on the fastest way possible.

'King Andarion II. has yielded the city. Albernians plunder and burn. Making our last stand at the castle. Send forces now! Commodore Gerardo Goldhammer.'

When the words were read an officer forgot himself, took a cup of wine and hauled it through the room, screaming. Another broke down in catatonic grieving against the wall. No one spoke. It was getting later and later and no one had found Janna.

'K. Finnian had Andarion's head lopped off on the bridge and catapulted his body in our direction. City is burning. They are butchering everyone. No attempt to cross. Looks like they don't give a fart about the castle. Bastards. M.'

That was it, Dari knew. The ultimate defeat. Executing a knight was a grievous thing. Executing a noble even more. Beheading a king in front of his own castle after he had yielded was downright outrageous, hinting at the hate King Finnian carried in his heart.

Dari couldn't have said that she blamed him. Had she been a queen and someone unleashed those two wanton, evil cunts upon her people she would have set the whole world alight in retaliation, if she could.

From the map it was clear that the castle was much better defended than the city. If Finnian's host was large enough he could take it all the same, but it would take more time and more cunning to breach the gates, and would cost far more lives on his side than on the opposite. Likely he'd take anything valuable from the city, burn the rest and go. Meanwhile his men would inflict rape and murder upon any Nostrian or Horasian they could get their hands on. Nostria was a city of some six thousand souls. That it had fallen so quickly was outrageous in and of itself, but to be expected with the current allocation of men at arms and knights.

“It is too late.” Major Emilio declared in his thin voice. “We must make a forced march back to the capital and see what can be saved. We must march divided and fight concentrated, my Lord General. Take all routes that lead to the capital at once. We must gather who is left on the roads and any supplies that they carry. This will make us vulnerable to attack but it's the only way if we mean to prevent chaos.”

Hypperio spoke next: “I am not a military man, esteemed Sirs and Signori, but it seems to me that we should look for the new king, Andarion the Third, who is currently hunting Thorwalsh pillagers in the woods. Until such time as the security of the capital can be provided, perhaps it would be best to bring him to Salza.”

“We should start marching the longer routes sooner.” An officer in a green sash suggested. “Elsewise we will be fodder for the Albernians, if they are still at siege.”

“We gambled,” Léon mumbled into his hands next to where Dari had stopped at the news, “and we lost.”

It was hard, though. Between Varg the Impaler to the east, the rogue monstrosities Janna and Laura somewhat in their midst and a mad force of murderous northerners in their hinterlands, this Horasian army had to be everywhere at once. Finnian and Albernia where only the final nails in the coffin, so to speak.

That made her uncomfortable. She had never imagined that ogre-infested Andergast could be a better and safer place to be than the middle of a Horasian army she was now somewhat working for. Had she known any of this beforehand, she would have told Thorsten and Léon to go bugger themselves, back at King's bloody Castle.

Scalia looked calmly into the many distraught faces in the room, leaned back in his seat and steepled his fingers beneath his chin.

“We will not go.” He said. “Nostria is lost, but this line is not. We have nothing to gain by relieving the seat of a dead king. Send out foraging parties and wait for reinforcements to arrive. They can rebuild the city far enough so that our supplies can be transferred onto the river. Forcing the ogres into Gareth is paramount, but they will not go there if we do not hold this line.”

Silence befell the room as it had so very often today.

“Forces can land at Trontsand, I reckon.” The officer with the green sash said, as if what the General had just said had been the consensus all along. “Or perhaps at Salzerhaven, although the docks there are partially destroyed.”

Trontsand was a little village on the map, somewhere between the capital and Salza on the coastal road. It did not look like it had any landing piers.

“Why are harbours necessary for supplies when an army can simply land on a beach?” Dari whispered to Léon in confusion.

“Beaching takes days.” He replied without looking. “You need to transfer everything into rowing boats and bring it ashore. This army would eat faster than the food reaches dry ground, not to mention Janna and Laura have a ferocious appetite.”

She had imagined ships such as Thorsten's which could simply row up a beach and even be carried. But that was wrong. The Horasian vessels were much larger and had considerably more draught. They could carry infinitely more cargo at a time, which also meant it took more effort to unload them, perhaps even requiring cranes.

She felt like she ought to say something that was unequivocally true: “But Janna and Laura aren't here.”

Now he looked at her: “Aye. Which is part of the bloody problem. Do we have any choices that you can see?”

Janna could sort out Nostria, she supposed, once they had found her. It was strange that it took so long. Reputedly, she went on patrol around Joborn several times a day, and very little outside Sir Ruckus' lands. She did not part with Furio Montane, only she suddenly had, and for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

'Maybe she got ill and died.' Dari dared hope. 'Maybe she got the Bloody Diffar.'

Then, an idea struck her that was so obscenely wrong that she couldn't possibly say it. It was an option, somehow, maybe, to some extent. It involved Sly's plan, only instead of allying the ogres with the Garethians would they ally them with the Horasians. His Royal thirteen-times-damned Magnificence could rule over the whole world, commanding an army of men, ogres and two murderous giantesses.

But that was absurd, not to mention not in her interest. It was hard to say what was in her interest, but she knew certainly that this was not. For now, all she wanted was killing the evil war wizard, and best if she had as much time as possible to do it her way.

“Well, what Scalia said sounds good, no?” She finally replied. “We'll all tighten our belts a little for a while and see what happens. When they find Janna, send her to Nostria and deal with the Albernians. If they aren't there, maybe she should go and pay a visit to Havena, or look for Laura in Albernia, or maybe both.”

'The farther away, the better.'

“Sending the giantesses into Albernia is what got us into this mess in the first place. They should have seen this coming. This is war now.”

She frowned at him and cocked a brow but thought better than to argue with him. In retrospect it seemed foolish to believe that the alliance of Horas and the giantesses would not plunge the world into war.

“I still haven't understood what your role in all this is.” She put to him. “In Lauraville I thought you knew everything, and here you are, on your own ground, asking me for ideas.”

“I've been away for too long.” He replied, whispering while around them the officers discussed what to do with the fleet that they wouldn't have for weeks and came with its very own command staff. “Others have taken over what I used to do and they now know more than I do. Foolish mistakes have been made, so I suppose I should work on how to set them aright. But how?” His eyes moved over the assembled heads in the room. “What a tangled web of stupidity this is.”

He was right, and not only pertaining to Scalia's solar. The whole world went mad, bit by bit edging at the abyss.

That evening, when they dined on fish soup from the river, a message arrived informing them that Nordmarken had started an incursion into Albernia, taking the city of Honingen unopposed because it was unaccountably empty, barely a soul there.

The Duchy of Nordmarken was a reliable, powerful force in the Garethian Empire, and marching into neighbouring Albernia, a kingdom hounded by strange outbreaks, evil-worship and treachery, was one of its penchants. The duchy had been levying troops for a while to ward itself against the ogres, and those two monumental things they heard rumours of. The war in the east against the various nefarious evil-doers of the haunted lands had just recently cooled down again, so there were plenty of men to draw from. All in all, its involvement in the whole thing did not really come as a surprise, just adding another thing for them all to keep in mind.

Likely, Nordmarkener soldiers had started walking west the very moment they heard of Finnian taking Havena, thinking that something ought to have gone awry and they, as always, had to set it right. It stood to wonder if they knew what they were marching into and what would happen then, if they found Laura, or Laura found them.

That night, Léon was hard to get into the mood, but once Dari succeeded he took out all his frustrations on her. It was better than the night before, but not the least bit gentle. This time, he took so long that she feared he'd never stop, not to mention that he left her no time to put herself into the mood as well, something that she found terribly difficult after having to suck on his limp cock for what seemed to her an eternity.

Raw, hurting and used, with this dubious man's seed between her legs, she fell into an uneasy sleep. Then, suddenly, she found herself in a great hall, not unlike the Hall of Light in Gareth. Far above her, where the ceiling should be, was nought but starlight sky.

A moot was going on, twelve towering judges sitting in half-circle around the accused, a minuscule man with brown hair violently growing white. He wore wizards' robes, white but stained, nowhere as clean as Master Hypperio's were at any given time.

“Daria of Gareth!” The chief-justice boomed, a golden-clad male figure with the head of an eagle and wings with feathers for hands. “Do you know this man?”

She looked at the accused as he turned around to her. His eyes were hollow pits of glass, his mouth twisted grotesquely and his jaw quivering. Tears ran down his face, and had done so for so long that there were traces of salt over his cheeks down into his crusty beard.

“No.” She replied, biting her lip.

“Why did you call this one here in the first place?!” A female judge to the griffin's left roared. “She has as much reason to sit here as does he; more so, even!”

Only then did Dari saw that she was a lion.

“Eh.” The fox judge to the eagle's right wing's side spoke up. “She's been rather unblessed is part of what's to blame for that...my apologies.”

A lizard woman at one end of the circle lisped and tittered at that.

They were the gods, the Twelve, and they were holding judgement.

“Her time has not yet come.” Praios, the eagle, declared as he held a scale, eyeing it closely. It was perilously tipped, making Dari shudder. “She is not on trial here.”

“She's not all bad.” Lisped Hesinde, the snake. “She has as much averted evil as caused it. But she speaks untrue to us. She knows this man.”

Dari looked again at the hollow creature staring back at her. Then she noticed it. His robes were slashed at the middle, drenched in black blood and puss, and his gut was bloating.

'Like a bellows,' Hypperio had said.

“Furio Montane?” She asked, incredulous.

He gave only a whimper, more tears running down his cheeks.

“Yes, I know him!” Dari proclaimed. “He's the evil war wizard! He sent Janna and Laura, the monstrous, gigantic creatures to Thorwal and they destroyed it, my friend Thorsten's homeland! Then he had them go to Albernia and because of him the whole world is descending into war!”

Her screaming voice echoed eerily against the pillars, lasting long in the heavy silence that followed.

“He maintains he had no choice.” Peraine, the stork, offered from her long, pointy beak. “Can you speak to that?”

They were huge, Dari noticed only now, larger than ogres, perhaps as large as Albino had been. She was larger than life as well, only the wizard cowering down at his pathetic, human size. The rest was absurd, the way in which they were both animals and people at the same time especially. But they were gods.

“N...no. Not with much certainty,” she confessed meekly.

It was probably wise not to antagonize them for the time that she would find herself here.

“There is always a choice.” The dark voice of Boron said from the other end of the circle, opposite Tsa, the lizard woman.

Boron was a raven in robes, so black that the light seemed to shroud about him, as if the colour drank it. Dari's heart stopped for a moment and she almost broke down.

“This is true.” Efferd confirmed grimly, a cold, glassy-eyed fish holding a trident.

There was an empty seat next to Boron, Dari saw and knew what it meant. The Nameless, evil god, banished ad eternum into the Aether.

“Mmhh.” Praios made from his seat, eyeing her just as General Scalia had. “She is not as helpful as I had hoped. We must make a decision. I shall put this to the vote. Guilty.”

He raised a wing and looked at the other gods around.

“Guilty.” Boron breathed, his eyes black pits of nothing.

“Abstain!” Phex blurted out, grinning apologetically.

“Abstain.” Firun, the white wolf, echoed.

“Guilty!” Rondra the lioness roared at them in turn, the voices echoing in the hall and in Dari's head.

Was this right? What if the wizard had spoken truly?

Hesinde's tongue flapped outside her mouth ere she hissed: “Innocent!”

“Innocent.” Peraine the stork and Travia the goose said in unison side by side.

Eight votes were cast and it was tied. Four to go.

“Innocent!” Tsa lisped, giggling merrily. “Give him a rebirth!”

Furio Montane moaned.

“He is guilty!” Efferd rose and shouted like a thunderstorm ere Praios' gaze put him back in his place.

“Hmm, guilty.” Echoed Ingerimm, a mountainous, bearded smith, carrying a hammer.

He was the only god who was not part animal, Dari saw to her amazement, causing her to come to the conclusion that even in its absurdity this divine panel was absurd. When she looked at him again, he was burning, but that did not perturb in the least.

It came down to Rahya, the most beautiful horse that Dari had ever seen. Her fur was light brown and her mane a fiery red so deep that it appeared to be burning. She was the goddess of lust, love, wine and peace and her eyes did not spell anything good for Master Furio. She was crying.

“Oh!” She wept bitter tears. “He has lost so much, endured such hardship! And yet, it was he who brought this coming war. He facilitated it. He did not object. Well...he did object, but...”

She covered her eyes with her hands, or hooves or whatever they were, man and beast constantly blurred as in all of them.

Travia, the stout goose, whispered softly: “He was only the tool. Can you blame the hammer for the murder that is committed with its edge?”

Dari wasn't so sure any more.

“Silence!” Praios bellowed, but Rahya looked at the other goddess through her tears.

“Innocent.” The beautiful horse woman said and the Eagle scowled at everyone around.

“The vote is tied!” He announced. “Send him back. The paths of evil are paved with good intentions, indeed!”

“Eh, we should send her back first.” Phex gestured at Dari before fixing his foxy eyes on her, giving her a grin and a wink. “You know what to do, girl.”

'Do I?' Dari thought perplexed.

She felt like nothing could be further from the truth.

'I must seek the truth!' She realized in that instant, when Praios fixed his stern gaze once more upon her.

“What are you still doing here?! Out, and wait your turn!”

She awoke suddenly, remembering everything. It was nice not to dream of gargantuan monsters of a night for once, but this had been almost as disturbing. Léon lay sprawled in the bed next to her, his face buried in the pillows.

She got up, silently, and started to dress herself in haste. She had roughly figured out where Master Furio's room was from the coming and going of Hypperio and the several doctori. She went there at once, barefoot beneath her dress and careful not to make a sound. In a small sheath on her leg she still carried the dagger.

There was always someone with the wizard which was why she had not bothered to attempt to murder him until now. The dream had changed that. She wanted to go to him, now, more than anything else in the world.

No one guarded the door to the wizard's chamber and so she shoved it open with as little noise as the cast iron hinges allowed. They only complained mildly.

An old, half-bold man sat on a chair in the corner, a book and a glass lens in his lap. He was sleeping.

Death was in the air, a foul stench. A bucket with excrements and puss stood by the bed and all manner of soiled cloth that they had used for wiping. It was almost worse than Léon's room in Andergast, but at least this one had an arrow slit.

A candle flickered on a desk next to the doctore, guttering at its last remnants of wax. It was early in the morning, roughly the time when bakers rose to make the daily bread, Dari judged.

A wheeze came from the bed and she snuck over, finding herself face to face with Furio Montane.

He was awake, and much taller than in her dream although he was barely more than a skeleton, judging from his bony face.

“Water!” He breathed, almost too hoarse and soft to comprehend.

Dari sat by his side and helped herself to one of his pillows. There was a scaffold beneath the blanket that covered him, to stop the cloth from crusting into his wound. She took a look.

The stitches were finely made, but the gut was bloated from inside. It was all green and yellow and black down there, but she thought she knew how to relieve it. An assassin worth their salt had to have a basic understanding of the human body, so much the better to sabotage it. There were a thousand and one ways to kill someone, but that same knowledge could oft serve to heal as well, although that was harder.

“Water!” Master Furio croaked again as she regarded him.

She took the pillow.

“I should ease your way out of this world, you monster.” She told him softly.

Praios would certainly appreciate that. Or would he? And what would the other gods think?

She found herself looking down on him much like Janna or Laura would look down on people. What either of them would do here was crystal-clear, only this was Furio, so they would not step down, as it were. Perhaps this was precisely what made this sorcerer so evil.

“I am...our only hope!” He tried to argue, his voice failing.

Dari could barely hear it. The pillow moved in her hand towards his face. She wanted it. And yet...

It occurred to her mind then that it was not for her to cast judgement. The gods had spoken in her dream, and the verdict was postponed. Furio Montane had earned more time.

'Strike a balance,' as Léon had said in Andergast.

Only what that meant was dubious. Sly wanted Dari to remove this man from life. But Montane was a eunuch, incapacitated to do anything, especially without his magics. With a heavy heart, she took the knife from beneath her skirts instead.

The wizard's eyes widened.

“No!” He wheezed, little tears tumbling down into the mess where his hair had turned grey, seemingly all at once.

Hatefully, Dari thrust the blade into his gut where the swelling was worst, closing her mouth and nose at the foul wind that escaped him. They had cut him in hopes of relieving the pressure, and probably leeched him half a hundred times. But it didn't go deep enough. To live, Master Furio had to die, almost.

“You will live.” She said, drawing the blade out and wiping it upon the covers.

It was only a small prick into his gut. She had not hurt anything substantial. She found a wet cloth soaking in vinegar and pressed it onto the wound she had made. The vile puss oozed out of him when she squeezed his belly.

Finally, she gave him some water.

“Who?” He asked, his terrified eyes following her every move.

“A witness.” She replied, wondering if he recognized her. “Do not prove me false.”

Then she left him, a queasy feeling in her tummy. She went straight for Master Hypperio's chambers, adjacent to Master Furio's cell. Someone else could take care of the wizard from now on, do the rest that needed to be done. He'd live. She just knew it, somehow. Unless he proved false, in which case she would yet have to kill him.

The door was only leaning against its lock and there was no one inside, just a number of alchemist apparatuses and books. Light shun into the great hall from General Scalia's chambers, however, and voices drifted through the door when she came close.

“Bring me Constable Hatchet.” The general's rough voice said. “I must speak to him. It seems our empire is on the brink of civil war.”

He held a small piece of parchment in his hand, the kind brought by pigeons, those damned, innocuous birds that of late seemed to bring only bad news.

“But why? How, my lord general?” Hypperio's voice answered in distress.

“The wretch was right.” The general growled in response. “The nobility have not taken it kindly. They have departed the royal court and issued letters of demands. Bring the monsters to peace, they say. How, matters not. You, I need to fill Master Furio's role. You will find the giantesses, both of them, and bring them to heel. We must dispatch them to the Meadows Lovely to teach the Dukes a lesson in humility.”

“B-but...but...” The weaselly wizard stammered. “I...I can't, my lord general, my colleague's shoes, if you will, are utterly too large, and I...how...where would I look? She...she would kill me, both of them, I mean...the magic...there is no way...”

Dari shoved open the door and stepped inside.

“My lords.” She curtsied at their perplexed faces. “Uh, a miracle. Master Furio lives!”

Her dream had spoken loudly and clearly. She remembered it vividly. All the same, if it had been just a dream and the man was as evil as Sly said, then she killing him when he was awake was at least slightly better sport.

Only a short time later they were all at his bedside, Léon, the General, Master Hypperio and Dari. Also in the room were a few of the doctori.

“I stabbed him to life, so to speak.” Dari answered when the question was put to her how it had come that she was in Furio's chamber. “I had a suspicion and it proved to be true. The stitches...”

“The stitches were exquisite!” The doctore who had been asleep on his watch protested with his fists stemmed upon his small, portly gut. “I examined them myself!”

Dari pressed her lips together. It was best to tread humbly here.

“It was the work of a barber surgeon, likely some soldier, was it not?” She asked softly.

He spat back at her: “That, I do not know!”

“Those who close wounds on battlefields always get the stitches too tight. In this case, they were so exquisitely done, they almost killed the patient. With nowhere for the puss and secretions to go, the corruption upon his gut swelled and swelled, and your cuts did not go deep enough to relieve it.”

'And the gods were not yet done weighing his soul.'

The doctore wrinkled his nose at her but Léon padded her on the back with a smile that read: 'Well done.'

All the while, Furio Montane's haunted, hollow eyes watched her. He attempted to speak once but it turned out that he was too weak. His healing had only just begun and he was in a lot of pain, now that he had woken. It was determined that he had best sleep and not waste his strength wheezing and coughing, so they made him a draft of hot wine and herbs to help with that.

Even the ever-scowling Generalissimo looked pleased, vaguely anyway, in the correct light.

Afterwards, Scalia bid Léon to his solar to tell him of what was happening in the empire, and Dari followed as inevitably as did his new clothes. It was rather strange. He'd purported not to trust her, but at the same time did she feel like she was already an integral part of whatever it was he was doing. Now, all he was doing was talking and observing, giving his opinions on things that seemed to prove wrong more often than not, outclassed by superior information, except maybe in this instance. Other than that, she could not see that he was up to anything at all.

Besides what the general had told Hypperio there was little more information other than that the dukes were each procuring sell-swords of their own, all the while withholding their taxes and putting pressure on the throne. In Garethia, this was not all too uncommon when there was strife between some royal and the imperial throne, or any vassal and his liege for that matter. But in Horasia, this was virtually unheard of.

Amazingly, Léon could name precisely who among the nobles had religious or moral concerns, who was most likely to flip back at the slightest hint of trouble and who sought to gain more power for themselves through participating in the betrayal.

“Do we have orders to go back?” He asked when he was done, almost with a hint of hope in his voice.

He was rather lost here, Dari understood. Politics was practically over, and the military men reigned supreme.

“Ah, yes.” Scalia told him bluntly, some hint of pleasure in his eyes. “A fleet has been dispatched. We must go to the capital to make the appropriate preparations.”

Léon exhaled in relief.

“That is good to hear.” He nodded, looking at nothing, nowhere. “Does this mean then the integrity of our homeland takes precedent over this border and Nostria, yes?”

“No.” Scalia replied, raising his hand in which were not one but two messages, Dari saw only now. “The unfolding of events has made a fortunate turn, it would seem.”

That had to make twelve pigeons or so, Dari pondered, all in a very short time. The world was truly going mad.

“Vardeen tells us the ogre force has departed Andergast for Griffinsford, so our presence here is no longer essential.”

The blood in Dari's veins froze solid. Sly had written that message, or rather he had someone write it for him, since he couldn't write himself. He would not bother to tell the Horasians if he was really moving against Griffinsford. And he would never move against Griffinsford, ever, if he still stuck to his original plan.

This letter could only mean that he banked on Dari not telling the Horasians about both his plot and the demise of T.V., the spy. He was clever, and Dari had been dumb enough to lie. She could not correct her error now without losing everything she had accomplished here, making a reasonable standing for herself on Léon's side.

There was only one direction the ogre army could march, and its intended victims would no longer be dug in, likely already on the march, thinly spread and their deadliest machines packed up for travel.

This would be bad and she was still in the middle of it.

“The man has struck me as inapt.” She threw in quickly in an attempt to caution them. “He could not get a hold of his Royal Excellency when they were in the same city, and he swallowed the lie about the Ogre-Andergastian alliance without so much as a doubt. Finnian meant to march at Laura but sacked Nostria instead. What if Varg means to do the same, lure us away, and crush Joborn in our absence? Without this army Nostria will be much easier for her to take than Griffinsford, no?”

Sly would send scouts though, of which he had many and perhaps the most skilled ones fielded by any of the factions at war in this part of the world. They would tell him if the Horasians had taken his bait or not, and whether or not Dari had betrayed him. Now she would look stupid either way, because if the general headed her advice then Varg would likely not come.

Thankfully or not, though, that was not an option for the tall, old Generalissimo.

“It is equally far less valuable.” He replied, looking at her as though she was a pimple on his arse. “Its two major cities have been devastated, the villages and farms abandoned or burned. With the Thorwalsh making their mischief in the forests one might even have to pay to be rid of it. The ogre queen is rash but not a feeble mind. What is left in Nostria she could want?”

More land, Dari thought, more slaves, an easy war, plunder, and most importantly a port, as well as control over the river that led to her capital city. She was building a kingdom, not trying to accomplish maximum disunion in the world. Perhaps that made her slightly less bad after all, as far as tyrants went. In her own huge person she was a monster, a flaw no half-well-intentioned governance could set aright.

“I will make sure she knows this,” Léon countered to that, “for which I will have to write to Thion Vardeen now. If anything the man is still fit to spread rumours, I hope. Now, do we have word of Janna? If truth be told I am still doubtful that letting her loose against our own people is a clever course of action at all.”

Dari concurred with his sentiment but kept her face a mask. Scalia's mind seemed already made up on the matter and Léon seemed more eager to go than anything else. And if the Horasians wanted to have their empire laid waste to, which was the most likely outcome of this, then they certainly got what they deserved.

The question was where Dari would be in the meantime. Fleeing increasingly became an impossibility, with war and destruction going on everywhere. Nostria was out of the question, as was Andergast. Only the gods new what was going on in Thorwal now and Laura had likely put the torch to Albernia, turning it arguably into a too dangerous place to venture as well. A single, young girl like herself might slip and muddle though, somehow, but every move away from this army was risky. But staying with it was risky too, depending on whether Varg and Sly would wait for the Horasians to depart Nostria before taking it or not.

This was not an insignificant Horasian force, and the ogres considered the Horasians their enemies. Trying to catch this army with its britches tied around its knees had to be tempting for them, not to mention that it would go a long way to establish their reputation as well as set them up in a favourable position when negotiating with Gareth. After what Finnian had done to Nostria, the new and the resurrected empire were bound by treaty to go to war. There was a chance that they would not honour their commitments for one reason or another, but Dari did not judge this likely.

“His Royal Magnificence has ordered their presence for a show of force.” The general replied. “Meanwhile, Janna appears to be hunting ogres. We have found her trail in the south. That wretch Travian di Faffarallo set her to it, well-meaning as though he might have been.”

But now that they had the trail they would almost inevitably find her, he left unsaid. It was rather astounding that they had so many troubles communicating with Janna, Dari felt. At Lauraville, things had been easier, but had she had the choice there she too would not have spoken with either of the giant monsters directly.

“I will task Hypperio with bringing her back.” The general went on. “These news of Master Furio, we hope, will persuade her to follow. We expect she will take a ship for his transportation, as she did last time. Either way, she will arrive in the Meadows Lovely long before we do.”

“Then we must go with her.” Léon turned to Dari. “I am sorry.”

Dari's mouth turned dry and her gut felt as though she had been kicked all over again. Phex was playing one cruel jape upon her after another. Now, after seeing him in her dream, she could even picture him laughing.

-

Lissandra washed her fiery red hair in the clean water of the small pond they had found. Strands of duckweed grew in its waters, much like it had hair of its own, only green and slimy. Hers was slimy too, the wet darkening it, like dark fire if such a thing was real.

It used to be real once, probably, she thought, trying to get the sticky bodily secretions from her curls. But the world had changed.

Lissandra had spent all of her living memory in the little witch's cottage atop the lonely hill, guarding the ancient, all but forgotten holy site as she had to. A stone circle had been there around a stone altar where the devout once sacrificed to Sumu, the Earth Giantess.

Around the hill had been another stone circle, and amongst living things only the grass and mushrooms were permitted to encroach or leave from it when the moon was not full.

There, Lissandra had lived for many summers and winters with only her spider, Longleg, to keep her company. Only the odd witch or druid seeking the ancient site for ritual ever disturbed their peace in those days.

“Wash faster, Liss! Time to go!” A monstrously sweet voice sang behind her.

She could feel the heavy steps pounding the ground.

One day, Lissandra had been yanked from her cottage by an enormous hand, the same enormous hand now wrapped around her midriff once again. She was raised above the water and plunged inside before being shoved left and right and back and forth violently in an effort to get her clean.

She had been wet, naked and shivering to begin with, so it might have been worse. Even so, she came out coughing and wheezing. It was cold.

“Nice and clean!” Gundmalm's young, frighteningly happy face appeared before Lissandra's eyes.

Then she received a kiss that covered more than her entire face at once. The huge tongue tried to prod and invade her tiny mouth and Lissandra opened wide to let it happen. She had learned not to resist soon after being yanked from her hut, the day Gundmalm and Ogarag had their way with her for the first time. She had been powerless to stop them and calling Longleg to help resulted only in the tiny spider being inadvertently flattened under Gundmalm's foot.

The ogress never even noticed.

Longleg had been Lissandra's soul animal, the only friend she ever had. She was snuffed out in an instant and without any consequence whatsoever.

Gundmalm was over eleven metres tall. Her face was rather plain and ordinary, far as Lissandra could tell, but her hair was wrought in thick, long snakes that ran backwards from her head and were bound together in a rope-like bundle thicker than some trees.

This was achieved through an alchemist trick Lissandra found quite fascinating. Gundmalm washed her hair regularly in lime and water, which turned it lighter than it was and made it into a thick, stubborn mane. Then, every once in a while, she used clay to form it into the long snakes. The clay would dry and fall out in time, but the shape remained.

She did so because she pleased, and it pleased her female lover, Ogarag, too.

Ogarag was just under ten meters tall, had pale, white skin and black hair. She may have been a tad comelier of face, but had the colder, more mistrusting temperament. Gundmalm, or Gun, as she preferred to be called, was a lively dandelion seed upon the wind, constantly uplifted and drifting this way or that way and oft as not getting carried away as well.

The two ogresses had no interest in ogrish males, or even men of the human variety. They loved each other, but they also loved to incorporate any other sentient female thing into their love play at which often three were alive in the beginning and only Gundmalm and Ogarag by the end of it.

Lissandra they kept alive for times of want, when they could not find any poor human female to play with.

“Dress!” The ogress commanded happily after giving Lissandra a rough rub with a shaggy, smelling fur.

She was dropped by her clothes, bundled where she had left them in haste.

It was on the battlefield again, only the word 'battle' seemed to imply too much of a desperate contest in what had transpired. 'Field of slaughter', or 'killing field' was the more accurate description. The bodies of the slain, in so far as they could still be identified, were as flat as hides or crushed to brutal gore, sometimes only wet smears on the packed ground remaining of them. Even the grass seemed to have been crushed out of existence.

Lissandra understood that these were boatmen, towering northerners in britches, lengthwise striped blue or red and white. Their fearsome axes, spears and swords had been as little use to them as their round wooden shields with the polished, bulgy bucklers upon them.

This was new, of course. Gundmalm and Ogarag fretted of the glinty things men carried to protect their own, the things wrought from the shiny blood of mountains. The change had been brought by the newcomer.

When Lissandra first laid eyes on Janna she thought the Earth Giantess had arisen once again. But that was wrong. Even though Janna was enormous and larger than any creature had a right to be, Sumu was as large as the world, for it was her decomposing body the world was made of. Los, the ancient god, had slaughtered her and wept bitter tears over what he had done.

Janna did not fear large groups of humans as Gun and Oga had.

“I crush them like bugs.” She had said and shrugged when the question had been put to her by Gundmalm.

She ate them as well. On some days, they were her only food.

The three of them now formed a triangle that Lissandra found herself trapped inside of, which now not only meant having to please the two violent ogresses that had assumed ownership of her, but also being used to please the vastly more enormous Janna.

After falling on the lot of men who's bodies covered the ground like blankets, the mighty giantess had been wanton, and it had pleased Gundmalm and Ogarag to please her while shoving Lissandra inside the enormous womanhood of their new friend.

In a sense, Gundmalm and Ogarag were to Janna what Lissandra was to the two ogresses. It was not beyond the giantess to use either ogress against their will when she felt so inclined, or to remind them of how easily she could crush the life from them. They had found a male ogre the day before, and Janna had demonstrated what that meant. She had subdued him easily with her hands, wrestling him down and holding him, before her body rolled over his, crushing him to death with frightening ease.

But Gundmalm and Ogarag seemed to enjoy Janna more than they feared her, which in Lissandra's mind was foolish. The giantess had been hunting them, following their trail. Instead of fleeing and covering their tracks the two ogresses had greeted her, given her of their deer and ultimately helped her make a huge fire in the night to keep warm.

Gundmalm especially was enthusiastic whereas Ogarag, on occasion, still showed some reservations about the rearrangement of things.

Lissandra felt that Janna had been reluctant at first too, but had ultimately given in. After the three played for the first time her enthusiasm for the relationship seemed to have grown immensely. She was hunting boatmen, she professed, simply for the purpose of killing them, upon which she did not elaborate any further.

As soon as Lissandra was dressed did pounding and crashing noises herald the coming of Janna. Her feet were forces of nature and neither wood nor rock could withstand them. She even honoured them, by sacrificing humans to her toes, or something like that. It was the only explanation Lissandra could see for why the giantess kept people imprisoned in her huge, smelly socks.

Janna's light blue eyes found Lissandra's fiery red hair.

She chuckled: “I hope I wasn't too rough on you, little one, was I?”

Lissandra quickly shook her head.

The enormous might that coursed through Janna's being frightened her, but the inside of her cunt had not been more horrible than Gundmalm's or Ogarag's, both of which Liss had found herself getting shoved into before. If anything, Janna's was a tad more comfortable, because it was more spacious. The flesh pressed in on all side, but it gave in, spongy as it was.

The only problem was breathing. One could well drown in Janna's cunt, it was so large.

“She's wet and cold!” Gundmalm called up. “Can you put her some place warm?”

Janna grinned: “Certainly.”

They watched out for their little Liss. They did not want her to die. They likened her to a pet but Lissandra found that wrong too. She had certainly never treated Longleg in any of the ways the ogresses treated her.

'Oh, please, no.' She thought when realizing what the giantess' amused facial expression meant.

The enormous young woman bent down and gingerly picked her up between thumb and index finger, each large and strong enough to squish her like a fly. Warmth emitted from her skin and when one put an ear to her body one could ear the blood rush and her heart pound somewhere in her chest.

Janna was considerate in how much pressure she applied, but never with the speed at which she made Lissandra move. It always made her head dizzy, and this time was no exception.

“You have a shit life, don't you.” The giantess mused, suddenly a gargantuan face that encompassed all that Lissandra could see.

Liss only had her former life for comparison, which had been markedly less eventful. Without visitors she had done chores, gathered mushrooms and cooked them, helped the ants find their way home when they were running in circles again and so forth. Or she had played with Longleg, which she had liked most. The spider had been very, very intelligent, showing her spots in her cottage that she would never have thought to clean on her own.

“Maybe I should just put you out of your misery.”

Janna's mouth was a huge, wet cave. Her teeth were almost as large as the stones of the inner circle on Lissandra's hill. With this mouth she could eat people with as much ease as Gundmalm could devour a beaver. Or maybe more.

“No, don't eat her!” The ogress' voice rang from below. “She's our little friend!”

“Shut up.” Janna gave Gun a kick that sent her sprawling with an 'oof'.

Ogarag was still lying on the ground naked. Janna had sat upon her during the final stages of their love play, grinding her sex on the smaller monster for stimulation. Oga and Gun sometimes killed the girls they played with that way, but when Janna did it to them they seemed to find it normal, as was to be expected from a creature so large.

Liss shook her head again and smiled, trying to lean over and give Janna's nearing lips a kiss.

She had learned to do that. Oga and Gun were less violent when she smiled prettily and acted as though she enjoyed being with them. It wasn't all so very horrid, in truth. She just had to remember to do what she was told and do her best when her owners demanded pleasure.

“I think I have a leg stuck between my teeth.” Janna smiled. “You should help me get it out.”

The wind that struck her when she entered the cave was as warm and wet as summer rain. The warmth might even have come welcome, had it not smelled like raw flesh and blood. She was dropped upon a huge back tooth, white but for a few pinkish smears. Janna had not trampled all the humans Gundmalm and Ogarag had found for her today. She had eaten a sizeable portion of them as well, and chewed them.

Lissandra knew what a regular tooth looked like because she had once have to remove one of her own when it started to suddenly hurt abominably. Janna's had been altered. At the top surface where lots of ridges should be, culminating in a bit of a cleft in the centre, it looked as though someone had poured liquid, white stone to fill it up before letting it harden.

To the edges of the tooth's surface the ridges re-emerged, and Liss saw the first thing stuck there immediately. It was tiny, a piece of skin with a piece of upper lip and a hole for an eye. It just stuck there, adhering to the white, hard tooth.

Liss peeled it off and tossed it onto Janna's tongue, in doing so making the giantess wait.

“Mhng, 'ere.” A huge index finger entered the mouth and pointed roughly in between two molars.

Liss saw it then, the raw stump of a knee emerging slightly from between the two teeth. Grasping and pulling did not bring any results, however, because the thing was lodged in there too deeply, no doubt driven by the all-crushing strength of Janna's jaw. The flesh was slimy and slippery to the touch.

Worse yet, pools of saliva started to ooze from Janna's gums, thinking Lissandra just another morsel. The sounds were stomach-churning. Suddenly, the mouth closed and a thunder roared from the back of the mouth where the throat was, instantly filling the cavern with a foul, evil stench.

For a moment, Liss thought she could hear screams and lamentations, but she was too occupied keeping her balance atop the tooth while trying not to breathe.

Then the mouth opened again, echoing loudly: “Horry.”

It meant either 'sorry' or 'hurry'. Liss didn't really mind which. She worked the leg back and forth, loosening it, but it was still lodged tightly.

“I will hold onto it and you can pull me out!” She shouted, hoping that Janna would hear.

Also yesterday, when Janna had eaten a number of people hiding in the forest from the boatmen, Janna had a dozen naked women clean her teeth for her. When they were done, she had closed her mouth and swallowed, despite her earlier promise to let them go.

Liss hoped that this was not what she was going to do this time.

“Mhgkay!”

Liss took that to mean the affirmative. She had little other choice anyway. Her fingernails dug deeply into the leg and Janna's fingers took her at the waist, pulling. For a moment it felt like her arms were being wrenched off her shoulders but then the piece of human flesh came loose.

She dropped it on her way out for Janna to swallow.

“Thank you.” The giantess smiled. “As a reward, I'll stick you where you want today.”

That was especially new, as fresh as butterfly that had just squeezed itself from its cocoon. Liss did not know how to answer. The choices she knew were each one more unpleasant than the other. The queer sort of britches Janna wore, made from some rough yet soft, otherworldly material, featured four pockets. Travelling in the ones on her legs was half so bad. The ones on the rear were tight, suffocating and perilous, since when Janna sat down she did so on what- or whomever was inside.

“Could...could I...” She tried, but the words would quite come out. “Mh, could you put me some place with air? I like air.”

She breathed deeply for emphasis, producing menacing laughter from the towering woman.

“Ha ha, yes, that's, uh...that's doable.”

So, that day, Liss travelled on Janna's shoulder, just beyond a bone that from her shoulder to the front of her neck. For security the giantess insisted Lissandra hold on to and wrap around her body a strand of hair, which was alright. It was significantly better than being squished in between her legs down in her smallclothes.

Liss had no knowledge of this land. She had lived somewhere behind them, but they were marching ahead. Once they came across a line of packed earth over the landscape and Janna had to explain to her that this was a road, made so by wooden boxes that rolled on round things called wheels. The boxes were dragged by animals, making a cart, or carriage. There was no such thing present, unfortunately, so all Lissandra could do was imagine it in her mind.

Apparently, people used carts to bring food and other things from one place to another. This was probably necessary because there were nowhere near as many mushrooms around here as there had been on the hill on which she had lived. In fact, they were rather hard to find.

Therein lay the tricky bit of the food problem, the primary thing, Liss judged, that kept both Janna and the ogresses going. They were always hunting. Gun and Oga sniffed out people that Janna then subdued, but sometimes even they couldn't find any, so they followed game trails instead, hunting deer or similar large animals for eating, like the ogresses had done before the giantess joined them.

“It's so good I found you.” Janna said later when Ogarag had picked up the smell of humans again and Gundmalm confirmed it. “Without you, I'd never find anybody. You can't imagine how useless I was walking around before I met you.”

“What did you do before you were walking around?” Lissandra asked.

She had found that Janna liked speaking every once in while. She did not enjoy certain topics, but others she seemed to talk about just for the sake of it.

“I was waiting for a friend to wake up.” She replied. “He is very, very ill, if you know what that means. And I fear it was all for naught, as in, I think he will die, live no more. The worry over him was making me sick as well, among other things. Do you know what a Novadi is?”

Lissandra shook her head before remembering that Janna could not see her: “No. What is a Novadi, Janna?”

“A desert dweller.” She explained. “Now, a desert is a place that's sand and no water and the sun burns very hot there. And it seems to me that the Novadis you have here are very similar to the Novadis where I come from, which...I found unsettling, still do.”

Lissandra sensed that this another one of the uncomfortable topics and she would do good not to dwell on it. Janna decided over life and death of any living thing surrounding her. If she wanted something dead she could make it so at a whim. With regards to Novadis that was rather strange, because it stood to reason that a Novadi was a Novadi, no matter where they were.

Suddenly there was shouting ahead and Gundmalm and Ogarag stopped walking and pointed instead: “They're right in front of us!”

“Ogres!” A man screamed somewhere in the brown, yellow and black confusion beneath.

A little ahead, colours flashed here or there, the colour of blue clearly dominating, but there was white too and glinty things.

“Liss, hold on to me tight. I don't want you to fall.” Janna cautioned and moved to surpass the ogresses.

Janna always walked behind Gundmalm and Ogarag because her large feet broke or uprooted the trees in the forest, presenting a source for danger, especially when large trees fell or were flying through the air, as if she was walking through a field of mushrooms.

“Bows! Form line! Notch arrows!” The cries of battle rang as Lissandra had heard them before.

Men cried such in anticipation of a fight, their voices raw and strained, full of violent disquiet or, sometimes in cases of boatmen about to be trampled, eager anticipation.

Suddenly there was far more movement than before, or else it became better visible when Janna moved closer. Some things started hissing on the ground like snakes and Janna's hand came up to shield but moved away again as soon as it had come.

Things seemed to go the same way they had before, just two steps and Janna was right in front of them. This was the first time Lissandra had such a good vantage point, however, displaying just how easy a time Janna had killing humans.

“Stay your arrows friends!” A cocksure voice declared loudly on the ground. “That is not an ogr-”

Something blue, white and golden shun through in between the overlapping branches of two trees before it was suddenly replaced with Janna's leather-clad foot, snuffing out the voice in an instant, accompanied by a horse's frightened scream. Liss had leaned forward far, eager to see things. She held the ropes of Janna's dark golden hair a little tighter, assuming it would be alright.

The rest of the men were another length of giant foot beyond, huddled together with their wooden bows in their hands. Their garb was mostly blue and white, far as Lissandra could see, and there were a few more horses, large animals that were very quick and very strong but likewise afraid of almost everything, including their own shadows. Gun and Oga particularly liked horses' legs to eat sometimes, but most men on horses also carried steel.

“No!” Several men screamed at once before a singular voice elaborated. “My prince! My prince! What have you done?!”

Janna cursed, but in a tongue that Liss could not understand.

“Are you Nostrians?”

She removed her foot. The branches were gone, but so was the blue golden man. There was not even so much as a hint of him, just a mess of white horse hide, red blood and pink, brutal gore. Then Lissandra saw the blue cloak of the man that had been there, drenched and darkening. He must have gotten beneath his horse, she thought, a terrifying prospect in and of its own, but with Janna's foot pressing down care- and mercilessly atop that heavy, big animal0, there was surely little left of him to be saved.

“My prince!” A grey, grizzled man rushed forth. “Andarion, where are you?”

“Damn it.” Janna sighed and crouched a little, in a way that Lissandra had often crouched down to Longleg. “I thought you were Thorwalsh. I really did. I am sorry.”

“No!”

-

Prince Andarion had enough of his Horasian allies. His father, the king, had called upon them for help against the developments in wretched, neighbouring Andergast but they had already been on their way and arrived shortly after the message was dispatched, meaning long before it could have possibly arrived. This meant they would have landed in the capital with their army no matter what the Nostrians said, which was a thing Prince Andarion had found unacceptable to begin with.

Nostria was a protectorate, not a vassal kingdom, although judging from their behaviour the Horasians seemed to have misread something in the written and sealed agreement to that effect. The Horasian actions with regards to the fabled, towering monsters whom they had through some witchcraft brought under their control had summoned the unrelenting hatred of the remaining Thorwalsh on the Nostrian kingdom, greatly to the suffering of its people, and more importantly to the headache of its prince.

Before the Thorwalsh, things had been fine, but now the Nostrian people were tied up in unpaid serfdom, providing protection for the Horasian supply columns.

That had all still been somewhat bearable, though. For one thing, Prince Andarion enjoyed being able to carve out a name for himself and hone his skill at arms by fighting the murderous wretches. His father, King Andarion the Second of Nostria, was also pleased to now claim the lands north of Salza for his own, even styling himself Andarion the Conqueror, while Andarion the Settler would have been more accurate since the land was unpossessed.

That had been before this giant, one-hundred-metre-tall beast had stepped on the prince, however. Her foot had appeared out of nowhere and landed square on top of him. Andarion heard the scream of his trusty white stallion for a last time before hearing its body give in to the unholy might of the titanic wench.

The young, handsome prince had been involved in fights before and had seen horses die several times, only never quite like this.

But Lord Praios looked after his own, it would seem. Andarion would still have preferred if the giantess had simply noticed him, but it was better than getting crushed, surely. Her foot squeezed him, but it did not kill him. There was a deep profile in the sole of her gigantic footwear, large enough for the prince to fit in. His spurs had dug into the material of the boot that had so nearly ended his life, as had his sword, bent and crushed out of its scabbard as it was. So not to fall inadvertently, he had rammed his dagger into the material too, another thing for him to hold onto while he was stuck there. Mud and gore caked him in from the waist down, leaving doubts over whether or not he'd be able to free himself, even if such a venture had not been certain death while she was unaware of him.

Now, she simply stood, drenching Andarion in dirt that pressed so hard on him it became strenuous to breathe. He hoped she would notice him soon, but judging from the muddled voices he heard, mostly her own vibrating through her body, they thought him to be somewhere in the obliterated mess of flesh that had been his horse.

Ornibion Bidemarket, Andarion's mentor, chief bodyguard and the oldest knight in the band, was distraught.

“No!” Andarion could hear him cry out in despair.

As well they might despair, the prince thought, pleased. He was the hope of the kingdom. His father would not live forever and was far less well liked amongst the commons and nobles, not to mention a lesser bow- and swordsman, and nowhere near as handsome as the prince.

King Andarion was good at counting coppers, whereas Prince Andarion was good at taking them. It was obvious that since the amount of wealth in the world was finite one could only become more fortunate by diminishing the wealth of someone else. Therefore, any wealth expended, left or untaken was to be counted a loss. And since the amount of wealth in any kingdom was directly associated with its soil, it was also obvious that to truly aggrandize ones wealth one had to get more land under control, and not just southern Thorwal.

“What can I say?” The giantess boomed. “What's done is done, I guess. I mean, his father has other sons, right? He's a cunt, anyway, and if this prince is anything like the king then you should be glad he's porridge.”

“Treason!” Andarion snapped angrily, his voice echoing in the thread of the mighty boot as it probably might in a coffin. “Let me out of here, you gargantuan wench!”

As he spoke, her foot shifted, however, and it was all drowned out by the scraping of boot over rock and the breaking of roots in the ground. A piece of wood, or a stone or some such pierced Andarion painfully in his flank. His crown, a thick silver ring sitting atop his long golden hair, had fallen off when he had initially been trodden upon already, greatly to his displeasure.

He hoped it was intact and unbent, or else he might have to figure out a way to chastise this gargantuan fool, as he might anyway, for her insolent talk.

“No!” Ornibion yammered again. “This is not well! The other prince is a bookworm and a craven! He barely even leaves the castle, reading of battles instead of honing his skill at them, training with longsword and bow! This is a catastrophe!”

Andarion's younger brother was a grave disappointment indeed. Rakorius was so much of a book worm that he did not even pursue a wife, as he should have if he meant to ever have any station in life. Once Nostria was his, Andarion would certainly not suffer his foolishness to persist, meaning Rakorius would need to find a new place for himself and his shelves of foolish folios.

Andarion would make sure of that, if only they would notice him soon.

“Heh!” He called. “I am alive! It takes more to kill a prince such as me than just a single footstep!”

The giantess did not hear him, though: “To be honest, I think a prudent ruler should first make sure he's read a lot of books before ever picking up any weapons. War only destroys, don't you know, and there's little worse than perpetual war under an inapt government.”

Anger pulsed through Andarion's veins once more. Who did this wretched creature think she was? She was speaking treason, while standing on the body of a prince, and even more so a handsome and skilful prince who was a shining beacon of pride and example to his people.

With a crash, once more the weight of the giantess shifted, wrenching Andarion with her and filling his little cave with earth and rocks, enclosing him in darkness. The very ease with which she did this to him was unnerving.

'I might yet die here.' He realized with dread. 'If this wretched fool is not careful she will crush me as she thought she already did.'

And likely she wouldn't even notice, which was far more insolent than anything else.

“I cannot find his body here!” Ornibion, the good, old knight proclaimed. “Only his cloak and his crown! You squashed but three quarters of his horse, mayhaps he's, uh...”

“I'm pretty sure he's somewhere in there.” The giantess said with a giggle that made Andarion's blood boil. “He's probably one with his horse. You're not suggesting he's somehow alive under my foot, are you? No way he survived this, sorry to say.”

As if for emphasis, Andarion's world started spinning violently. Left and right, left and right the forest floor went, his tiny tunnel filling up with more rocks, roots and dirt as the giantess carelessly twisted her foot on the ground.

'Does she think me a roach?!' He thought. 'Who does she think she is?!'

She was being negligent with his life and did not even look to disprove the old knight's wise suggestion. Something in her voice told the prince that if she discovered him now she was more like to finish the deed rather than relent.

“Look, I did not mean to do this, but this is certainly a crisis.” She went on to explain. “I work for the Horasians, but I'm not supposed to be here, really, I think. Anyhow, we can't let this little tale leave this place. It would make me look bad.”

The foot rose and Andarion with it. Seeing his chance he screamed and shouted as much as his lungs would give. But to no avail, because in that instant everyone else was shouting and screaming too. He saw the forest floor rush by under him ones more, from higher on this time, travelling in the direction of Ornibion's voice. Then he found himself face to face with the man, white-eyed, mouth agape and about to be trampled.

The sound of bones, flesh and armour crunching was stirring up the rations and ale in the prince's belly. And he wretched, seasick from the shaking as well. The men below were packed tightly. More shouting filled Andarion's cave. Ornibion's body was a flattened, pink line under the tread, but young squire Orasilas Tront's upper body poked out from under it just two arm's lengths yonder, his arms flailing and beating futilely while his lower half was crushed beyond recognition.

Then the foot lifted again, allowing his body to fall, and Andarion lost the boy from his sight.

Up and and down and up and down, he was getting dizzy, watching the knights and men at arms of his band disappear in droves under the mighty Horasian monster. First they were there, beneath him, then the world went dark, and only broken, flattened things remained were men had been before. This was all to a song of shrieks and horror that could only belong in the freezing Nether Hells, the birthplace of evil creatures such as this. It took a whole of five steps before the giantess' foot rested once more which could only mean that every member of Andarion's warband was gone.

But it was not so. It were only the bulk of them she had flattened while giggling thunderously above. Singular men were running and it now pleased her to run them down, only to do so she required merely a few more steps.

The last man was Anden Hagensen, a young freeman who boasted to be the second best archer in all of Nostria, after Andarion. Unlike the others, the giantess did him slowly, pinning him with her weight before transferring ever more on him. He begged first. Then he screamed. And finally he died with a crunch.

The prince shuddered. Amongst his band had been many men at arms as well as several peasants in the beginning. They had been tracking and fighting the dispersed Thorwalsh raiding parties in the woods. The peasants were mainly cover from arrows and throwing axes, as well as a flesh cushion by which to brunt a charge. By now they had been all but used up, either dead or, if they had proved themselves, made into freemen and given better arms, as well as the promise of land leases.

The core of Andarion's force had been the spawn of splendid Nostrian nobility, sons of knights and lords and many a hopeful heir among them, equipped with fine armour to ensure they would not die, even if they were struck down in a fight. Their undoing was a tragedy of monumental proportions, not to mention an outrage that demanded recompense.

It occurred to the prince that he now stood alone, where before there had been more than fifty devoted men in his company.

“Are you alright?” The giantess asked someone.

There was no reply Andarion could hear, but there must have been one because she laughed at something.

Still, the prince dared not to loose his grasp. The monster was standing idly again, but if he let go and she shifted her foot he would still be killed like all the others, overrun by the all-mauling tread of her boot. The ease with which she did it frightened him to the core, but he told himself as well that he should not discount the gods yet. He should have been dead, surely. But the foremost of the Twelve was holding his hand protectively above the heir and hope of Nostria. Andarion could barely wait to tell his father, and all the rest of Nostria about this incident, tragic for the other families though it might be.

The foot moved again, one step, two, before it stopping.

“Here, you little rascal. See if you can find some food you like.” Then she shouted. “Gun, Oga! You can come, I'm done with them!”

Andarion wondered who these companions with the queer names were. Witches, warlocks and such, he suspected, evil worshippers only fit for burning at the stake. At least, their names were not Horasian, but the Horasians kept warlocks in their army as well, often bearing queer names such as normal folk did not use.

“Bread!” The voice of a young woman exclaimed outside the foot a moment later. “And something long and hard and salty-smelling!”

It was high pitched, innocent and foolish, like a child's.

“A pork sausage.” The giantess explained warmly.

“Mh-hm, a sausage! Do you want some, Janna?”

Whatever strange companion was travelling with this treacherous beast was clearly non too bright, but that was hardly surprising, given their simpler sex.

“Ha, that is rather too small for me, thank you.”

The simple woman waited a while, then changed the subject: “Janna, what were you saying to these men before you killed them? I...I heard the words, but I do not know what they mean.”

“Well,” the giant foot shifted, casually and without warning, “do you know what a prince is, or a king?”

No reply.

“A king is a really bad man who is really bad to his people, taking their things, killing them and so on. The prince is his son, meaning he will become king after the old king is dead. Now, these people were sort of the friends of my friends, the friends I had before I met you, understand? And they had a prince and I accidentally stepped on him. If someone knew this, this would make their king very mad, and he would go to my friends and tell them and then they would get mad too. So, I had to make them all nice and flat so that they couldn't tell, see?”

“Mh-hm!”

'Aha!' Andarion thought in his mind. 'Just you wait, wretched beast. With Praios' help, I shall be your undoing!'

“Get over here, dolls.” The giantess commanded someone else.

“These look different.” A rough yet feminine voice said after a moment, while another only laughed.

“I think they look exactly the same!”

“No, look!” The first one cautioned. “There this white thing on their clothes.”

Out of nowhere the giantess raised her foot but just as quickly settled it somewhere else, just adjusting the way she stood or crouched, the way she did every now and then, presenting grave danger to Andarion and closing off any opportunity to rest his aching arms. The prince found himself staring into the blank, broken face of Valpo Reeper, formerly a knight's son, a knight himself and a remarkable horseman, the terror of the lists, a real dread to joust against even though Andarion had unhorsed him one more time than he himself had been unhorsed by Valpo.

The young man had awaited a splendid, glorious future of great honour, daring so much as vowing to even the score with Andarion upon the next tourney. With his brains outside of his head, congealing on the forest floor, that would never happen, however. The giantess had crushed him like a beetle, never knowing who he had been.

“Rest assured,” Andarion swore under his breath, “I shall avenge you!”

The question was only how.

“That's a flat fish.” The giantess explained to whoever the others were. “It means these are Nostrian men. No Thorwalsh, and no small folk either. Urgh, if someone finds this battlefield I will be in trouble. Help me pile them up. I have to make them disappear.”

“No women or girls.” One of the new voices complained. “I think I don't like Nostrians.”

“I think the ones in the normal clothes yesterday,” the other replied, “you know, the helpless ones? I think those were Nostrians too.”

Valpo Reeper was staring at Andarion accusingly, so the prince had to move his head to avoid his gaze. It was no use. By now, since the ground was hard and packed from the trampling, there was more room in the gap where he was clinging. He reached out with his free hand, the one pushing against the side, and shoved the horrid, empty face aside.

“Why will you be in trouble Janna?” The first new voice asked stupidly.

Suddenly, one of the spurs came lose and Andarion's leg fell down. When he tried to kick the sharp metal spike back inside the other leg came loose as well and before he knew it the prince was face down in Valpo Reeper's remains.

The giantess sighed: “Lissandra?”

The prince lay still as a mouse. It seemed no one had not heard the sound of his armour rattling. In his mind he prayed to all the twelve that the giantess would not shift her foot now, the way she had done before. If he had hoped their talk would lay out more of the giantess' treachery he seemed to be mistaken, however.

“Because, um, because they had a prince who got really mad!”

That made the monster giggle and she shifted, alas only by the breadth of two hands. It was clear however that more movement could not be too far away. He had to move, and only saw now that he had an opportunity. There was only forward and backward in the tread of the giant boot, but air and sound suggested that there was a way out. The ground was earth, hard-packed and drenched in blood. Corpses were here and there, partially under the sole they were still being compressed.

'Praios help me.' Andarion prayed in his mind, crawling, scuffling, kicking.

It was so much of a miracle that he was still alive.

Sometimes the way was barred by earth and he had to shovel. It clung everywhere amongst broken roots, remnants of plants or quite simply matter that had once been a human body. It was possible that beyond one or many of these earth clumps lay the outside world, but he couldn't risk it for lack of time.

Outside there was activity, the gathering of corpses in an effort to make vanish the evidence of this crime. It made no matter. Andarion would tell everyone. He would gather a great host with the consent of his father. United, with Praios' help, they would overcome both the Horasians and this wretched beast. All the prince had to do was stay alive, for which he must find a way out.

The tread of the unnaturally gargantuan boot was a veritable labyrinth such as the Horasians pleased to create from hedges, he had heard. Everything looked the same, so he went by fallen friends and faces or garb of people he had fought with, eaten and drank with, side by side for so long. Showing him the way was their last service to him, even if they only served to tell him where he had already crawled.

He had to be quick, the responsibility weighing heavily on his shoulders. He was the hope of his people, the hope of his father, the future of the kingdom. It would all be his if only he made it out of here alive.

Finally, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. But while he crawled at it desperately the giant foot suddenly lifted into the air, vanishing from his sight and dousing him in daylight, blinding to his eyes.

The giantess had turned her back on him. This was his chance. But what else was there, the voices of the others, two of them clearly larger than human beings.

And indeed, two ogresses, each over ten metres tall at the least, were gathering crushed men and horses before throwing them onto a pile. One had black hair and pale skin, the other was darker and had hair that was queerly wrought to long brown sausages that ran straight backwards from her brow all the way down to her hindquarters.

At the pack horses with the supplies was a tiny woman with fiery red hair, a wretched, young witch if Andarion had ever seen one. She was helping herself to his food.

All the forces of evil had assembled here, it seemed. Bar the Thorwalsh. But from what he had heard he gathered that he and his men had been initially mistaken for the wretched men with their long hair, round shields and love for axes, so in a way it was them he had to thank for the misfortune he was in.

And misfortune it was. There was no cover, no brush, not even so much as grass that dared stand high enough to hide in the presence of this gargantuan traitor. Trees lay about, like slain, crushed to pieces and partially driven into the ground by her might.

The giantess was a young woman in tight, blue britches and a ragged green tunic-like piece of clothing stained with dirt. She had a broad, homely jaw like some peasant wench, but an eerie, stoic beauty, stemming from her strength. She had broad hips too, and an enormous bosom. Each of the teats beneath her shirt had to be the equivalent of a small hill, whereas she herself was a small, living mountain.

It was a mystery to Andarion how he had survived this long. Praios was good. He would not let him die. And yet fortune in battle stood with the best archers, seldom the most devout, lest any pious insurrection be successful, no matter how foolish or insolent it was.

His legs were as wobbly as a toddler's when he picked himself up and tried to walk. The ogresses were occupied with the dead men, thinking all the proud Nostrian force begone.

'But they are wrong!' He thought. 'I, the most important one, the handsome prince, hope of my people, shining beacon of...I live! Praios help me, I live! I am walking! I am walking away as if never-'

With a clatter of his plate he fell to the ground and the larger one of the ogresses, the sausage-haired one, snapped up her head.

“Hm?!” She made curiously, stomping over slowly and menacingly on her gargantuan naked feet.

She was nowhere comparable to the giantess, but against an unarmed prince a deadly threat nonetheless, even such a remarkable one as Andarion. He weighed his options, quickly concluding that neither running nor fighting would do. Panic gripped him as it had never before.

If this one decided to step on him he'd be as dead as with the larger one, and worse yet this one did not wear any footwear with a tread in which he might hide. He played dead, like a wounded fawn, feeling a menacing stab of pride in his chest.

“Janna, you missed one!” She shouted, never taking her curious eyes off him.

“Is he dead?”

The ogress' foot protruded gingerly, carefully, frightfully even, until she prodded him with her big toe. Then, she jumped back, stomping her giant feet each almost as long as Andarion was tall.

“I don't know!” She proclaimed, uncertain. “I think he's hurt, though!”

'In another life, I might have been a mummer.' The prince thought proudly. 'One of the best, no doubt.'

“Toss him on the pile.” The giantess said dismissively. “If he's still alive he won't be any more in a moment. Crush his head if you want to make sure.”

The giant ogress eyes him uncertainly from above, frowning, looking for signs of life. Then she shrugged and pulled Andarion off the ground by a leg. His humours grew ice-cold when he realized where she was taking him, holding him out at arms length as if he were a stinky, rotten carcass. There was no doubt in him that the giantess was going to crush the pile to an unrecognizable mess, and him with it.

As cautiously as possible, he fingered for his sword, finding it gone. His dagger too. This was bad.

“Urgh!” The ogress made when she tossed him into the pile of crushed flesh and steel.

And there he lay, carefully looking around. He was somewhat upside down which didn't make it very easy, but even in that condition did he not see any route of escape.

'Boron, please do not meet me yet.'

He noted that he was sweating, his heart beating wild. His hand was shivering and he closed it to a fist. Meanwhile more bodies were flung on to the pyre, the ogresses sometimes making most inappropriate jests about the state in which the corpses were.

“Ha ha, look at this one!” The smaller one cackled evilly. “A sheet of man!”

“No, this one,” giggled the other. “Pink mush! Urgh, I hate touching them.”

Finally the giantess made a step over and dumped a large handful of crushed men from above. A small, narrow-shouldered and headless one landed square on top of Andarion's face. Thankfully, though, the man, whoever he was, had been squished out of his armour and quilts, like squeezing the meat from the skin of a raw sausage.

It was unbearable, and caution be damned, Andarion shoved the corpse aside. It was replaced with that giant, monumental sole, lowering down on him and them all, his lifeless brothers in arms. He screamed, turned and tried to dig into the pile of flattened meat. Beneath him, unfortunately, he found the body of Storko from Fiolbar, a bastard but remarkably strong and broad-shouldered man with a bull of a lordly father.

Fiolbar was a few dozen miles to the south, sitting on the bank of the Urfan river that mouthed into the Tommel. Andarion's band had come by there a few days ago, and Storko had wept bitter tears to see his mother's home burned and destroyed. A couple of smallfolk had been hiding out in the holdfast, and Andarion had relieved them of the thirty or so Thorwalsh that beleaguered them.

That had been a glorious battle indeed and Storko had won the black plate he now wore, formerly belonging to his father who had perished trying to fight the raiders off.

The big man cast in steel proved too heavy to move even though it was as flat as the average goose down pillow. The crushing had made the burly man even broader, it seemed, much to the prince's displeasure. A glance over his shoulder told Andarion anyway that it was too late. He would die after all.

The sole came down, unrelenting. Scrunching and cracking noises emitted all about. The prince was pressed into his former brother in arms until he could no longer breathe. It was dark again, smelly, sticky and deadly. Still he moved down. He recognized the walls to his either side. He was in a cleft again. Storko's body pressed against his, and the broad man became stuck in the cleft beneath the giantess' shoe.

All around, things squelched. It was pitch-dark and the air was so foul Andarion might have wretched if there was anything left. Finally, the descent ended at the ground. The giantess had pulped everything in her wake.

She laughed, then commented: “Mhhh.”

She twisted her foot, then slushed it around in the pulp. It was maddening. Then she repeated the procedure. Like a cook would mash turnips in a pot so did she mush men upon the forest floor. At one point Andarion was sure he would drown in the disgusting filth. She did not stop until everything was a black, unrecognizable pulp.

Amazingly, when she was done, Storko from Fiolbar was still there, shielding his prince with his body and his father's plate. It struck the prince like lightning that he was still alive. He cried. Luckily, there was no one there to see.

-

Janna gave former pile of bodies a last inspection. It was veritable smoothie, but rather than pineapple and banana this one was made from men and mud. The thought itself was disgusting, but the display of what she could do turned her on.

She was often horny as of late, and the situation could not have been more convenient. She had wanted to capture the ogresses who's trail had been shown to her by Travian di Faffarallo. But she didn't have to. They were captivated with her from the first moment they met. Gundmalm, the dread-locked one, was especially smitten, whereas Ogarag, the smaller one with smooth, black hair, had been a little more mistrusting and was still a tiny but significant bit more distant.

It was a lesbian wonderland she had entered and it came with lots of sex, given mostly voluntarily. It was the last thing she had expected, but then again, lesbians were weird. Even the little witch, a red-haired, otherworldly rug of a human being, was a lesbian, or at least that was what Gundmalm and Ogarag swore.

“Gun, Oga, I want you.” She commanded without even so much as looking. “Bring Liss.”

She chose a cleaner spot, one without so much grime on the ground but a nice little hill to lean against. She cleared the trees with her hands and sat down, thinking of what she had just done. Killing the prince was probably bad, but it seemed that no one had escaped to tell the tale. They'd all believe he was killed by Thorwallers, and if not then she'd simply blame the ogres.

Taking her new prizes back to Joborn with her would be tricky, however. She postponed it and postponed it, pushing it away from her for now. The ogres had good noses and were just the perfect size to find humans. And Janna ate, crushed or fucked them all to death, be they warriors or peasants gone into hiding.

That way, at least, she was useful, she thought. Also, if Furio ever woke, it would surely be weeks if not months until he was back to his strength. A part of her had already said farewell to him, if truth be told. It gnawed her soul to ribbons just to think about him.

Surely, he would not want her to wait idly by his side but apply herself. Patrolling Joborn and its surrounding lands had been a rather fruitless affair. This was better, and the sex was too good to stop even if it meant having to walk all day, drinking from small streams, eating nothing but people, cattle or deer and having to sleep without a blanket, next to an enormous fire that she built every night.

Gundmalm was giddy when she came on while Ogarag followed more cautiously. Janna had been rough on her when they fucked earlier. She pulled off her boots and tossed them into the trees. Then she pulled down her britches.

“You are so strong and gigantic.” Gun purred, walking toward Janna's panty-covered crotch. She put her hand just on the right spot and began massaging. “Where do you want Liss?”

“You know where.”

Ogarag walked beneath the arch of Janna's leg and presented the girl to Gundmalm. No one knew how old the witch was. She looked like twenty, talked like she was ten and seemed to have so little of an understanding of time that Janna wouldn't have been surprised to hear she was a hundred. It didn't matter. She was a practical little toy.

The ogress shoved Janna's panties aside and plunged the red-haired girl inside. The struggles in her most inner spot made goose prickles rise on her arms immediately.

“Mh, just there, Gun.” She approved when the massaging commenced. “Ogarag, I want you to kiss my toes.”

The black-haired ogress objected: “Urgh, no! Why do you want that?”

Janna smiled: “Because you are smaller than me and I'm going to sit on you again if you don't do it.”

Gundmalm gave the other a nudge and a sharp look. They knew not to fuck with Janna.

“But there are humans between your toes!”

'Oh, yeah.'

Janna had all but forgotten about them. After starting with the practise that day when she had set out, it amused her to continue with it. Walking often proved deadly to the little things, but she replaced them regularly once her toes were done with them. It was a remarkably vain and evil thing to do. Sweet. Morals had gone overboard again for now, taking a back seat to her entertainment.

“Eat them then.” She said. “The men you can throw away.”

Ogarag and Gundmalm harboured a deep disdain for anything male, even stags. They shuddered when they had to touch them and, when avoidable, would not eat them. They liked playing with human girls and pretty women well enough, but they would eat them as well, sometimes raw and sometimes charred grotesquely over a fire, like gigantic cannibals.

“But...”

Ogarag clearly had some issues. Her face was full of dread and something else. Janna wouldn't have it.

“Go lick my toes right now or I swear I'll make you wish you had!”

Chastising the ogresses was fun, as it had been up in Thorwal. The best had been when Furio was able to heal them after Janna had broken them. Therein lay the problem, because if Janna broke even so much as a bone on these two she would have a huge problem, standing to lose her willing little dolls.

Lissandra kicked and struggled inside her, sending shivers up and down her spine. Ogarag looked rebellious for a moment longer. Then she went. It was just more mobbing, soft chastisement for Janna's feeling that there was still some reluctance in the smaller ogress' demeanour. She did not give herself quite as willingly and enthusiastically as Gundmalm did.

A moment later she could see the pale, black-haired Barbie doll toss two men one after the other on the ground before stomping them. Then she tore into a young woman with auburn hair, ripping her torso in two with her teeth. It was all a cruel, sexual manifestation of the Darwinian food chain, and Janna was unequivocally on top.

When she saw Ogarag's blood-smeared mouth reluctantly delve into the gap next to her big toe everything was in order, and she was driven violently over the edge within only a few minutes more. She screamed loudly and moaned as much as she pleased. There was no one to stop her. She could accidentally smush a prince and get away with it. She had two murderous monsters as her little serfs.

The ogresses knew not to stop, however. They were females themselves and had in mutual experimentation discovered the ways and maximums of sexual pleasure. That was scary, even for Janna. If driven too far, her body broke down until she could only wheeze and twitch, all sensitive and red up and above her tits.

She didn't want that now, so she gave Gundmalm a tap on the head to heed her stop.

“Mhh, yeah.” She let her minions know that she had enjoyed.

She didn't care. She was unstoppable, had never felt more control in her entire life.

“We should go.” She declared, breathing. “It will get dark soon and I want some struggling little people for my supper.”

Her belly digested up to around three hundred every day, if they were at hand. Three hundred, gone, wiped off the face of the planet because Janna was hungry.

“Aren't you going to get Lissandra out?” Gundmalm asked when Janna pulled on her jeans to go.

“Nah, I don't think so.” She said. “She'll come out eventually and she can travel in there just fine. I don't care.”

She didn't have to care. She was gigantic. And everyone else, bar Laura, was just her little toy.

'Aw, shit.' Her heart skipped a beat. 'Laura...'

She should really go back...only she really didn't want to.