“Your son is making a remarkable recovery,” Retoban told Lady Moraine gleefully. “It seems the fall was not as bad as it initially appeared. Young bones bend well.”

The lady was happy that the boy was well. He was even a tad too well perhaps, constantly complaining of not being allowed to leave his bed yet. Young bones did not only bend well, but they also healed quickly.

Furio peered out through an arrow slit, observing Ilaen Albenblood in the yard. His lordship showed no signs of his own injury as he observed his men split logs into beams with axes, hammers and wedges. He was constantly interfering, demanding that each piece of wood be as straight as an arrow. But he didn’t like the way his men handled the drawknife either. His zeal had already partially ruined one log, and it appeared that errors had been made in selecting the trees that had been dragged into the castle with the help of horses.

“Forgive me for asking this, my lady,” Furio said without taking his gaze off the scene, “but would you have happened to notice any changes in your husband’s behaviour as of late?”

He could feel her eyes upon him and wondered whether she knew his thoughts.

“Well,” Lady Moraine began stiffly, “he’s always lacked in caution. Hah, this once, I remember, he tried to show Thalian how to sharpen a sword when the boy could hardly walk.”

“Has he come to see his son?” Furio interjected to continue his line of questioning.

“No,” the lady replied, a touch of regret in her voice. “No, he knows I am in here and I still hold a grudge against him.”

It had been two days since the accident. Lady Moraine had not left her son’s bedside even for a moment. Retoban thought that perhaps getting her into close proximity with her husband might reveal some clue as to his state of mind, but far as Furio could see, anything could vex Lord Ilaen, so the experiment would be unnecessarily dangerous.

“Do you plan on forgiving him, my lady?” he asked, turning his head to her.

The question did not sit right with her, he could see. It was very personal, but he didn’t feel comfortable asking whether or not Ilaen had ever before assaulted her or put a knife to her throat.

“I’m just curious,” he offered.

“Do you have a wife, Stonebreaker?” she asked in response, crossing her arms under her bosom.

Her breasts were not particularly large, but she couldn’t have been called flat-chested either. The whole family was average but for their history and connection to the Red Curse.

He smiled and shook his head. The constant lying he and Retoban had to perform had showed him that people would believe almost anything so long as it was spoken with confidence, but if he spoke untrue in this matter he would have to remember constantly hence forth so as not to contradict himself. It was important never to lie unnecessarily.

She fixed him with a patronizing stare, “Don’t you get lonely? Or is it that you two…?”

Furio looked at Retoban and laughed, even while the alchemist seemed very insulted by the suggestion.

The lady pursed her lips, “I have forgiven him before, for whatever he has done. But when he put his blade there…”

She sobbed and her voice broke off, and her hand sought her throat. Then she began to cry softly into her fist, clutching a bit of bedding.

“Did you know his lordship's lady mother?” Furio continued cautiously.

“Laille?” Moraine asked, sniffing. “She was such a sweet woman. And she had her accounts in good order, as our dear old Eris never ceases to remind me.”

He kept prodding, “Has your husband ever spoken about her or the manner of her death?”

“Why do you ask me this?” the lady demanded after a short pause, her arms once again crossed before her. “What does she have to do with anything?”

Furio held firm under her stare, “Well, I learned that before Lady Laille took her own life she fell victim to the same kind of madness as Muriadh. I was wondering whether there might be deeper reasons for your husband's demeanour, given the things we have seen.”

He could tell at once that Retoban disapproved of his honesty, but Furio couldn’t help it. The lady swallowed in search for words. He could see the fear in her eyes.

“The question is,” he tried to help her out, “if he is mad, then how would we let him know?”

Bam.

The door to the room flew open noisily and in the frame stood he, Ilaen Albenblood, wearing an unbecoming smirk and sauntering into the room with a swaggering lightness that put Furio on the edge immediately.

“Knew I'd find you here,” he declared with a look at Retoban. “One of my men cut himself. See to him at once.”

Neither Furio nor Retoban moved, not knowing how much he had heard. Then Moraine rammed a knife into their backs.

“Stonebreaker thinks you’re mad,” she told her husband at once and with a pinch of malice in her voice. “He just said so before you came in.”

She quickly wiped away her tears with the corners of her sleeve. Furio resisted the urge to give her an incredulous look, opting instead to stare deep and unwavering into Ilaen’s eyes. It was all he could do. His lordship had evidently not slept well, because the corners of his eyes were pink like raw, freshly cut chicken.

“Aye, he would think that, wouldn’t he?” Ilaen said mischievously. “Does he want to bore into my head to release the evil spirits?”

He seemed slightly out of breath.

“Have you run up here, my lord?” Furio asked instead of answering. “Why?”

“Felt an urge to see my son,” his lordship grinned over to the bed. “I see he already looks much better.”

His answer was instantaneous and complete, and still wrong.

Retoban pointed it out, “Didn’t you say one of your men injured himself, your lordship?”

“Aye, that too,” the answer came abruptly again, like springing from a crossbow’s string. “He’s bleeding downstairs. See to him.”

There was something awkward in the way he responded. He was irritable, lacking focus.

“Look to your son, my lord,” Furio urged calmly. “Aren’t you glad to see him well?”

“Father!” the boy cried out happily. “Can I come see?”

“Uh, you have to stay abed, Thalian,” Ilaen said, his eyes shifting uncomfortably around the room. “You’ll have to wait until you are fully healed.”

The boy protested, “But I’m much better!”

“Blood, my lord?” Furio asked, pushing forward. “Why is there blood, my lord?”

Ilaen looked startled, “Blood? Uh, one of my men, he cut himself. See to him at once.”

He spoke to Furio this time.

“Is it a deep cut?” he asked calmly.

Ilaen’s face twitched, “Nah...nah, he just cut his finger.”

‘And still you ran,’ Furio thought.

It was all very curious. Leaving the lady and the child alone with Ilaen was probably ill-advised, even if, given the way she had acted, the lady deserved nothing less.

“Can’t your own healer take care of him then?” Furio asked. “I have seen him at work, he is much more skilled at bandaging than we are. We make poultices and medicines, strictly, my lord.”

Ilaen laughed, “Aye, and you declare men mad! Why's that, I wonder? Why is it that I surprise you here and find you two conspiring with my wife alone in a dark room, and only Hesinde knows what else you were doing!”

This was dangerous ground to tread on. His lordship was talking himself into an ill-conceived rage and blood might be spilled as the result. Furio was well aware of the long-bladed bollock dagger Lord Ilaen carried about his person.

“There's also your son, my lord,” Furio had to point out, nodding to the boy on the bed.

“Of course!” Ilaen snapped. “You'd kill him, declare me mad and do whatever you would with my wife. Do you think you can steal my lands and title so easily?!”

Furio shook his head, ignoring the dangerous paranoia, “No, my lord. If that is what we would do then why did Thalian recover so quickly? We could have...”

“Because I prayed for him!” Ilaen cut him off, breathing heavily now. “I prayed all night, on my knees! I want you and your master out of this room, and you are never to be alone with my wife again!”

It was obvious that Lady Moraine's betrayal gave her husband sufficient justification to enforce his request, so being stubborn about it would be useless. Moraine, meanwhile, seemed not to regret her decision yet, as if she didn’t realize the danger.

At the door, Furio turned around again and asked, “Which god?”

Ilaen looked at him, not comprehending the question.

“Which god did you pray to, my lord,” Furio asked again, “to save your son?”

His lordship smirked, and mischievously at that, before slamming the door shut. Furio wondered whether the rage Ilaen had displayed before had been real or just some mummer's farce.

‘Why, though?’ he wondered. ‘Just to sow division, or something else?’

“We can't leave here yet,” Furio told Retoban as through the door they could hear Moraine and Ilaen begin arguing heatedly. “These people need our help.”

“I can pray to Rashtullah,” the Tulamid offered with a shrug. “But if he does not convene himself, only relieving the red affliction will help these men and women.”

And he was probably right, Furio conceded. In order to help the Albenbloods, they had to leave instead of staying. This meant having to get past the gates, however, which might be difficult to facilitate without Lord Ilaen’s permission. If they snuck out and ran they might be hunted down like outlaws. Also, Furio had liked the sound of that handsome reward he and Retoban had been promised. He didn’t care particularly about coin, but travelling without it would surely at some point come back to haunt them.

Making money as a wizard wasn’t particularly easy. Usually, one was paid by the guild, a school, an army or by some other master, a stipend that allowed one a comfortable existence. Working spells for coin, conversely, was outlawed by the guilds and infractions brutally punished. The only business open to a mage were alchemy and the sale or creation of enchanted objects. Furio knew the basics in these fields, but he couldn’t really be called competent in either.

“Do you do artefacts, too, or strictly alchemy?” he asked Retoban after they had climbed down from the tower and walked across the yard in search of the injured man.

It was starting to rain a little and the light had an eerie glow to it that Furio did not like.

“Runes,” Retoban replied without looking, stroking his goatish beard. “But I have made artefacts too, in the past. I do not like it. I am not one for meditation.”

Creating an artefact meant permanently binding part of one’s own arcane power into an object. Power thus spent was lost permanently and could not be regained by sleep or rest, as was the case with normal spellcasting. It had to be reclaimed by long and painstaking meditation, preferably during certain phases of the Mada cycle which were conducive to such an undertaking. Making artefacts, therefore, was not something one did often, or for a small price.

Magical runes, such as Retoban made them, were much weaker enchantments more suitable for a steady trade. There was some dispute over whether they even worked, but that might have been on account of forgery which was always rampant.

They found the injured man almost as soon as they spotted the blood upon the floor, but Eradh Talvinyr, the Peraine acolyte, had already seen to him. What Eradh couldn’t bandage, however, was the man’s anger.

“I didn’t cut myself!” he raged. “He did! He cut me, that stinking sack of shit over there!”

He pointed his bandaged hand across the room to another man fidgeting with some wood.

“Saying it five times don’t make it true!” the accused, an older man without hair and many missing teeth grumbled. “You cut yourself because you wield that axe like a girl! Milord showed you how to do it proper, but you wouldn’t.”

“Liar!” shouted the injured man, teeth gritted and a sparkle in his eyes.

“It’s been like this since I came here,” Eradh the acolyte told Retoban and Furio. “I don’t know the truth of it and I’m not certain I truly want to.”

Ignorance certainly was a wise choice with a lord like Ilaen. Furio wondered if his lordship had anything to do with this incident. It was time they were on their way.

When they were without again, the glow from before had intensified. Everything seemed pink, somehow, as if a red lantern was shining in the sky. And when they looked up they saw that it was true. The very sun was red.

-

The dragoness was a simpleton. Instead of tearing the Moorwatch’s keep apart as the spider woman had instructed her to do, she began to gingerly disassemble it from the top, lifting off the entire wooden roof of the tower in one piece only to pout like a toddler when it disintegrated.

The bowmen she found underneath were enough of a consolation to drop the fragile roof completely.

 “Oh? Oh, no you can’t get away,” she giggled like a child, her clawed, red hand surveying the tower’s battlements like a food platter.

One didn’t need to have spent any length of time with Laura and Janna to know what would happen next.

“Lissandra!” the spider woman hissed. “Do not forget your purpose! Bring me Farindel!”

Meanwhile, bowmen screamed as they were lowered into Lissandra’s elongated maw. She didn’t chew but seemed to enjoy her morsels with a exuberant amount of saliva.

Dari tried to see where the spider woman was. If she was the dragoness’ master then removing her might offer all manner of options. This was easier thought than done, however, because Dari was still on the ground playing dead and only a careless step away from being flattened. Every time the monster shifted its feet, something new squelched under its sole and there was no telling whether the victim was dead or living.

“Is she going to make your leg whole again?” The dragoness asked, lisping. “Maybe I can find the other half somewhere around here.”

Ardan Jumian Galahan had sliced one of the spider woman’s legs off with his sword earlier, preventing her from taking possession of Farindel. Dari would have liked it a lot better if he had opened her belly.

“I have seven legs left,” the unnatural creature hissed somewhere near the tower. “Bring me the fairy, now!”

But Lissandra gasped, “So many tinies! Why don’t they move?”

She had discovered the sleepers in the yard, one of whom was Dari whose neck began to tingle more violently by the minute.

The spider sighed, “Mh, they are nothing. Forget about them!”

“Then I can crush them?” the dragon asked gleefully. “I want to crush more people. It makes me feel good.”

“Lissandra” the spider woman began but broke off. “Fine, you may trample them, but then you must bring me the fairy!”

“Ooh!” the dragoness made, causing the earth to vibrate with a little happy dance.

Dari knew that she was in a bad spot.

“Squish!” the dragoness announced, putting her foot squarely into the yard.

It was so large that it buried several of the sleepers under itself, crushing them noisily as it sunk ever so slightly into the hill.

Dari didn’t need the reminder. She was on her feet and running before it even came down.

The dragoness gave a shriek before giggling delightfully, “Ooh, that one is still alive!”

“Squish it too!” ordered the spider woman.

At first, Dari only darted for the nearest wall, but then she decided her best chance would be the main building. She left the shadows no moment too soon, as a giant, clawed foot with red scales and a white sole came to flatten her like a bug.

She hoped and prayed that those who had found refuge in the keep would use this distraction and sally out, but it didn’t happen.

Instead, the dragoness giggled, “It’s trying to get away!”

It was like being at Laura and Janna’s mercy all over again, her life worthless, only good for the sport her futile efforts provided. She didn’t know what it was that made flattening things such an apparently enjoyable pastime, but then again if she saw a roach, a bug or spider in her path she used to stomp on it as well.

This gave her another idea. She felt the deadly foot approaching and jumped out from under it, but then she crouched and worked her spells, the Axxeleratus and the Spiderwalk, praying to all the gods there were to make it work.

“Aw, are you giving up?” the dragoness teased her from above, hardly able to contain her laughter. “Don’t worry, it will be quick.”

The foot rose into the air. Its owner took careful aim. Part of Dari just wanted to stay put and let it happen. But her baser instincts prevailed.

She shot out from under her doom so fast that her half-long hair felt ready to tear from her scalp. Her mouth was full of air and she was as light as a feather. Some moth smashed into her forehead and burst like an overripe grape. She was fast, faster than ever before, and hope filled her belly like a good wine.

There were oceans thundering in her ears and she couldn’t hear what the dragoness was saying. To ensure success, the giant foot came sweeping this time, swooshing over the ground and collecting everything in its path under its leathery sole.

To avoid being swept along and crushed, Dari hopped up the wall and began to crawl over the masonry like the insect she had been mistaken for. It wasn’t nearly as fast as running but her ability to crawl on the wall seemed to startle the dragoness so much that she finally got some respite.

“She’s a witch!” gasped Lissandra, the dragon woman. “Longleg, look!”

The spider woman screeched like something out of a nightmare, “Kill her!”

But then something else happened.

Dari was still irritated by the red light so when the dragoness suddenly seemed to lose all interest in her, she had to squint to see what was going on. Little dots of a different light were attacking the huge monster, hundreds of them at once. At first, Dari thought of fireflies, but these glowed in all manner of colours, green, pink and some even yellow. She felt something sticky in her hair, the moth from before, and her fingers pulled it out only to find a tiny, mangled fairy in her hand.

She shrieked and dropped the creature at once, even though it was very obviously dead. It was perhaps as tall as her hand was wide, a minuscule, puny little thing in a world increasingly inhabited by giants. But for their small size, the little fairies seemed to be able to distract the dragoness quite a lot as they appeared to be loosing little, sparkling bolts of lightning at the their giant opponent. It was the last rearing of the magical forest, the army of Farindel, or whatever was left of it. Having seen and felt the red forest upon her own skin, Dari could well imagine what battle these fairies must have done already.

She would have to join the fray.

“Kill them later!” the spider screamed at the dragon. “Bring me Farindel so I can eat her!”

That would not be well, Dari decided, for there could only be some nefarious reason to do so. She watched from her wall as the spider revealed itself, calling over the walls just like Dari but dragging a thick string of giant spider web from her rear. She was making a net, Dari saw, between the keep and the main building. A pink-lit fairy, only visible because of the light it emitted, crashed off the dragoness’ flailing hand and hit a bit of spiderweb only to remain stuck there, bouncing back and forth trying to tear loose.

But the spider was on the tiny thing at once, grasping it and dimming its pink light. Dari watched as black eyes widened and pale lips curled into a smile before a long, thin tongue licked over them in anticipation. The subsequent devouring of the fairy was done in a moment, and the spider woman moaned lustfully as she touched her throat. Dari wondered if the spider’s belly could be any worse or better than Janna’s, Laura’s or the dragoness’. She surely did not intend to share the fairy’s fate.

The spider woman was not so big as the dragoness, nowhere near so. But she had seven legs and two arms, and long, sharp teeth that had to be poisonous. She was also quick, and small she wasn’t either. Dari judged her to have the mass of approximately three men, mostly held in that ugly, black lower half of her.

Dari crawled towards the main house from where she hoped she might have the best chance of getting a stab at her victim’s throat somehow. It would not be easy, but it was the only thing that made sense in the moment.

The speed with which the net was created was quite impressive, however. It wouldn’t leave her enough time to wait for the right moment, and if she struck ill then she would surely die.

The dragoness had swatted several fairies, tumbling them like falling sparks upon the ground, extinguished under her feet a moment later. With the net getting larger, she heeded the spider’s commands and turned her attention once more upon the great pentagonal tower. She had already torn the top off and eaten the archers, and now there were only wooden floors in her way through which her hands could tear like parchment.

She reached into the tower eagerly, tearing out bits of floor and tossing them aside. She knew there were people at the bottom on whom she could enact her malice, and her long, thin tongue flicked eagerly across her pointed teeth.

The little fairies’ efforts went ignored by her, but as she peered down into the building, suddenly there was an explosion. A great thunder was heard and Dari flinched in alarm, and chunks of debris came flying out of the tower hitting the terrifying dragoness in the face. She screamed and held her eyes as she reared and stumbled backwards.

It must have been Farindel, Dari thought, as ever keeping her tricks behind her proverbial shield until it was almost too late. She herself did not have any perfect plan, no grand design for accomplishing the task she had set herself.

The spider crawled quickly across the yard now, screaming, “Lissandra!”

She was angry, not concerned, and rightfully so.

“It hurt my eyes!” the dragoness complained, sniffing but otherwise unhurt. “Just wait, now I’ll get you!”

Dari had used the time to crawl atop the wall and run towards the main building, but unfortunately she could currently not reach the spider woman from there.

The dragoness meanwhile reached blindly into the keep with her clawed hand, and after some rummaging she withdrew a handful of people. They were all pinned between her fingers, sticking out whichever way they had been caught. She opened her hand briefly to look for the fairy before dumping the entire catch into her mouth and reaching back into the tower.

“Find her!” The spider’s cold voice rasped, full of evil. “Once we have her you can do with the rest as you please.”

The dragoness’ lips curled into a terrifying smile. Dari thought of Ardan and Devona, Count Bragon and the other Fenwasians. Perhaps any or all of them were already in that giant dragon’s belly, haplessly waiting their turn to be dissolved.

The spider was still too far away for Dari and her spells had already run out again.

Another handful came out up top. The dragoness regarded them before bringing them to her mouth. But she seemed to think better of it. She crossed the yard with two steps and dumped everything atop the other tower which was still intact, grinning almost sweetly.

“No running away!” she commanded. “I want to eat you later!”

Apparently she couldn’t resist the temptation, however, for she picked up one of the people and tossed him up into the air. Her mouth was so huge that she had no trouble catching him, and she sent him down as soon as she had turned back around. Everyone was completely helpless against her.

The spider groaned in frustration, unsatisfied with her giant, childish servant. And yet, what persistence could not facilitate, neglect could. The door of the keep flew open and the remaining defenders poured outside. Dari could see Bragon, then Ardan and Devona and several others, but neither Krool nor Janna or Laura. Devona was carrying the child-sized fairy again. Between Farindel and the dragoness, Dari did not know who was the greater fool.

“There she is!” the spider screeched like a lance point on a breastplate. “Bring her to me!”

Seeing the dragoness come back, the crowd of defenders tried to reverse their course, but the dragon was quicker than them, closing off the entrance to the keep with her hand.

She was over them now, grinning wide, a sparkle in her eye that Dari knew well. They were losing this fight. Perhaps they had never stood a chance.

Dari stood up on the roof of the main house, “Hey you, dragon, have you forgotten about me?!” Her heart slipped into her britches when the giant slit of a pupil turned to her, but that was precisely what she wanted. “You tried to squish me, remember?” she went on defiantly. “You’ve failed! I’m ten times too fast for you, you’ll never catch me!”

The dragoness already turned her head when the spider started ranting again. Unfortunately for Dari, the dragoness wasn’t as vain as she had hoped, for instead of going after Dari she simply swatted at her.

Dari jumped out of harm’s way but the roof truss gave in as the wood cracked and tiles shattered noisily under the massive fingers. Dari almost slid off the roof but caught her footing just in time to avoid another slap. This one, however, was already as much as the age-old framing could withstand. There was the screaming of wood and more tiles clattering as the whole structure gave way and plummeted down.

Within the blink of an eye, Dari found herself in a somewhat lordly bedchamber, now properly ruined. Dust was everywhere, including her eyes and nose.

“Hah, serves you right, you little pest!” the dragoness giggled. “Hm, maybe I should make sure...”

The giant, grinning face of the overgrown lizard filled the sky at once. She enjoyed playing with Dari much more than serving her purpose, as the spider immediately pointed out.

“Lissandra!” she hissed. “Bring me the fairy now!”

She was closer to the building now and Dari was under pressure to leave anyway, not to mention the open window that lead out onto the yard.

“But you told me to kill her first!” the dragoness complained. “And there, I’ve got her.”

Dari had braced herself for the impact with the ground outside, preparing to roll and draw her knives out. She had practiced that move a lot in her day and used it to great effect, but on this night the impact came sooner and much softer than anticipated. And before she could even scream, the dragoness’ fingers had curled around her, closing her in and pinning her to the palm of a leathery hand.

“If I squeeze you now, you’re mush, you little rascal,” the she-dragon giggled into her.

She didn’t push particularly hard, however, and so Dari wriggled like worm, forwards, out of there. When she had gotten half way out of the dragon’s fist, the massive fingers tightened around her waist, pinning her in place. She was forced to stare at those long, pointed teeth, ready to tear into her. Some soldier had lost his sword belt and it had tangled around one such tooth, like a hanging Boron wheel, marking the entrance to the tomb that was this monster’s belly.

‘Swallow me,’ Dari thought with her own little teeth clenched so hard that they might shatter. ‘Swallow me whole and I cut myself a tunnel out of you!’

Practice was the path to mastery, and in living through even a horrifying situation like this, she had acquired plenty of expertise already, much as it haunted her in her nightmares. She felt so tired, like she hadn’t slept in years.

“Show her to me!” demanded the spider.

The dragoness obliged, crouching, and Dari could see that the others were well and truly trapped now, between the main house and the keep. The two evil monsters had all the time they needed, and no one did anything to help. Dari would get eaten at any moment now, and then it would be their turn, and whatever Longleg the evil spider could gain from devouring Farindel would be hers too.

The only question was whether Dari could cut faster than Lissandra could digest her.

“She has a knife, I can feel it,” the she-dragon said. “How can she be a witch and use wrought iron?”

The spider woman was the most uncomfortable creature Dari ever had the displeasure of seeing, worse even than Pardona’s demon. From up close, her upper body didn’t look young at all. She looked old, dead, her face clawed and sagging, just like her breasts.

“A dabbler,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “But you are not from here. You do not belong here. Why, why are you here, and who sent you?”

Her tone suggested that she did not expect an answer just yet, but the dragoness did not pick up on the subtlety.

“Answer her!” the giant beast lisped and growled and an overwhelming pain from her midriff made Dari scream.

She felt the fingers, impossibly strong, crushing her hips so hard that she felt herself bend until uncomfortable pops erupted from her joints.

“They’re here!” she screamed, her eyes full of tears. “I’ve come to save them, Janna and Laura, please! They’re in the tower! They have shrunk!”

There was no rolling, no acrobatic manoeuvring possible when the dragoness let her go. Everything hurt, even her legs even though she could not use them. She had been reduced to a little, snivelling nothing by a single squeeze.

The dragoness did not wait for the spider’s instructions. She threw her whole body against the keep and wrestled it, ultimately toppling the structure towards the outside.

“You’re lying!” she snarled, her eyes huge.

Dari didn’t know why she had expected the dragoness to know the two formerly towering titans. At this point, it had to be close to a miracle for anyone not to have heard of them, not counting giant, magical monsters, of course. But apparently even she had heard of them.

“They’re below,” Dari whimpered. “In the cellar. They’re affected by the curse!”

What that meant, the whole inconceivable horror of it, only became apparent to her when the spider started to laugh just like an evil creature should.

“Free them!” she commanded, even while the dragoness started digging.

But after a moment, the she-dragon’s head snapped around again, “They’re not here! There is only dust and empty shackles!”

Dari shook her head in disbelief before realizing what must have happened. It made her laugh and cry.

“Krool,” she said, stunned in disbelief before screaming, “Krool!”

The spider screeched, “What is the...argh!”

A young man’s grunt accompanied the slash of a sword and the crunching of the spider’s body. He was shrouded in shadow behind her, tiny and yet not forlorn. The spider’s hind part, the biggest part of her, was detached from her body, and as she thrashed forward on all her seven legs, he was revealed to be Ardan Jumian Galahan.

‘The hero,’ Dari thought, incredulous, watching him walk around the monster with his sword and shield.

“Longleg!” screeched the dragoness.

Then he beheaded the spider.

-

The red mist ascended. It was strange and confusing. For a while, all Laura had felt was hatred, an all-consuming desire to kill and destroy. It took her a while to collect her memories and put them into context with her new surroundings. It was the dead of night, all black, but the sky was filled with stars.

And she was being carried.

The man smelled like overripe cheese and from what she could feel of his body, his back under her fingers and his shoulder on her abdomen, he was as hard as stone.

She didn’t know who he was but she could tell just by the shape that on his other shoulder was Janna. They both had their hands and feet tied together with rope.

She wanted to say something to the strange man, but before she could muster the courage he already bent and unloaded them, dumping them unceremoniously upon the damp ground.

“You came back,” he said, his voice ugly. “Here they are. Stopped kicking a while ago.”

A voice from the darkness answered him, “The curse has been lifted. Was that the girl?”

Laura knew to whom the voice belonged and she felt cold. Hanging had not killed her. But this man had different tricks up his sleeve, no doubt about it. And they were still tiny.

“Was that the girl,” the stinking man echoed, sneering. “As if you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t dare look until you called for me,” answered the black wizard. “This place, it gazes right back at you. We should not linger long.”

“They’re all busy over there becoming dragon food,” the first man chuckled cruelly. “The girl was a good diversion, I give her that. Couldn’t have done it without her.”

The black wizard sighed, “I knew she would prove useful. Now, onto our giant friends.”

Janna stirred at once, deep fear and loathing in her voice, “We’re not your fucking friends!”

“Fair enough,” he chuckled. “Acquaintances then. Would you like to be big again?”

“Yes!” Laura shot at once before Janna punched her in the shoulder.

“Heh, heh,” laughed the smelly man. “Pardona is right about you. Give these two half a chance and they’ll flatten you.”

‘Correct,’ Laura thought, hardly able to bear the wait. ‘Make me big and I’ll turn you both into stains. Then the mushrooms can eat you.’

She yearned for that feeling of security, simply squishing anyone she didn’t like.

The wizard sighed, “But why? We’re all evil here, we should pull on the same rope!”

Janna protested, “I’m not evil!”

“Well, except for Janna,” the wizard concluded. “But I can get you your friends back, if you want them, Christina and Steve? I fear Varg’s hospitality is starting to wear on them, and if the ogre queen hears that you two shrank or vanished, there is no telling what she will do. If I were you, I’d worry for them.”

“What do you want?” Laura asked, feeling smart.

The shadow opened its arms, “Nothing! I only wish for us to become friends. I have ways of making you do my bidding, I can assure you, but I would rather we come to some sort of arrangement.”

“So, you give us Steve and Christina and we become your soldiers?” Janna asked before Laura could agree to the terms. “And how many innocents do you want us to slaughter before you consider the debt paid?”

“Ah,” he laughed dryly. “If you mean to trade cows then you need a cow to trade. You do not have that. All you are now is just two little girls who are somewhat difficult to kill. If you think the spell will wear off, then I must disappoint you. Fairy magic is notoriously long-lasting.”

“We want to be big again,” Laura quickly intervened before Janna could mock it up even more. “We just need to know...specifically, what do you want from us?”

“I have already told you!” he laughed, genuinely now but not without sarcasm. “If I want anything then perhaps it is a little bit of gratitude. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“Fine,” Laura agreed. “Do it then.”

She could feel him grin in the silence that followed. For a horrible moment she thought he was just playing with her, giving her hope before taking it away again.

“Now, you see, she is going to step on me as soon as I have reversed the transformation,” he said. “And that even though she has had nothing but kindness from me.” He sighed, “Well, if it must be this way, then you shall wear my necklaces.”

“Necklaces?” Janna echoed. “I’m not wearing anything you’ve touched! You only wish to control us!”

That didn’t sit well with Laura either.

“It’s not like that,” the wizard promised. “These amulets will only do to you whatever you do to me. Oh, and you can’t take them off, obviously, unless you want to die screaming.”

The smelly man gave a laugh, but Laura didn’t know what to make of it.

“They will grow with you,” the wizard continued, dangling two shiny pieces of metal at the end of some string. “Just put them on and I’ll be on my way.”

“And Steve and Christina?” Janna demanded. “You promised to give them back to us.”

“No I didn’t,” he replied. “I said I could bring them back to you, seeing as we are friends. But if we’re not, then I’m not going to. They can just stay with Varg until she kills them someday, sooner rather than later. If a human in Varg’s household dies of anything other than herself, she considers that a loss.”

“We should kill her then,” replied Janna, sounding as though she was already big, which she wasn’t. “So, you’re holding their lives over our heads? Doesn’t sound like what friends do. Sounds more like extortion.”

“She’s exhausting, isn’t she,” the wizard told Laura. “But fine, I will deliver them to you. Apparently, rescuing you and giving you back your power isn’t enough of a token of my good will. Now that sounds like extortion.”

Laura felt a little queasy in her belly, which immediately made her remember how hungry she was. She wasn’t scared anymore at least, but even worse, she saw that the black wizard was right.

“Why then,” Janna asked. “Why would someone like you be interested in our friendship?”

The wizard sighed again but said nothing, making Laura start to chew her lip. He had already answered the question, not to mention so much else.

“Give me a necklace,” she said, stretching out her hand.

Predictably, Janna snatched her hand away like a kindergarten teacher.

“Are you fucking crazy?!” she asked in English. “He’s going to...do whatever with you!”

“Beats being small,” Laura replied in a tone that brook no argument.

“Now, don’t be stupid,” Janna launched into that awful preachy tone she had acquired recently. “With great power comes great responsibility. Don’t you care about all those innocent people he is going to make you kill?!”

Laura considered for a moment before shaking her head, “No.”

There was much more she could have said, but they had been over this conversation ad nauseam already, and she didn’t want to have it another time. It was unavoidable to stare the naked truth in the face and eat it.

“Don’t you feel awfully hungry?” she asked, acting on impulse.

Janna grimaced as her hand found her belly and Laura could hear it groan.

“It’s never going to go away unless you eat as much as we used to eat when we were big,” she went on. “Tell me how you are going to do that at this size. It’s not like you can order Domino’s.”

“Ooh, what are Domino’s?” the wizard inquired in English.

“It’s not important,” Laura told him. “But what I said is true, isn’t it?”

“I must confess I do not know that,” he admitted light-heartedly. “Transformation magic is...complicated. Think of the possibilities, though! Turn your arch nemesis into a pot and give it to a trusty housekeeper. He would get burned every time you have a meal!”

“Or make him very small,” Laura suggested to Janna. “Make it so he is always hungry and thirsty and he still can’t die. Although, I suppose you would die eventually, wouldn’t you? How long can you go practically without food and water?”

“You would not perish,” the wizard intervened. “You would merely...suffer as long as it takes.”

The conversation had somehow swapped into local tongue again, and Laura couldn’t help but notice the inquisitive nature of the black sorcerer. It made her trust him even more. He had told her before of his ambition to attain forbidden knowledge, which was a motive she could truly get behind. No knowledge should be forbidden, no thoughts or ideas outlawed.

These ideas had made her feel so righteous for a moment that she hadn’t noticed Janna begin to cry. Big, bitter tears were rolling down her cheeks, lit up by the starlight to sparkle like diamonds.

Laura gave her a hug.

“We have no other choice,” she said nevertheless before turning to the wizard. “Give me the damn thing before I change my mind.”

It felt just like any lump of metal at the end of a leather string should. If truth be told, it didn’t even look particularly well made from up close, all squished and squashed as though someone had listlessly grabbed a bit of clay and tossed it on a table. She didn’t know what kind of metal it was, but some parts of it looked silvery whereas others were black and dirty, like a drop of scrap spilled from the smelting.

“You want to get out of the way?” she asked the others. “I don’t want to grow over you and squish you by accident.”

“How farsighted of you,” the wizard quipped. “I will deliver your friends three days hence, provided I am not stuck under your shoe.”

‘Why would you be stuck under my shoe?’ Laura thought. ‘I’m already wearing your amulet.’

Perhaps he was afraid she would turn martyr.

‘Yeah, fat chance.’

“Oh,” the wizard added. “And it appears the Horasian Empire is falling apart. Perhaps someone should help that situation, prevent unnecessary bloodshed.”

Laura released herself from Janna and stepped back, watching the other three fade into the darkness. She was still a little bit scared that it might all be too good to be true.

And then it happened, almost all at once.

Besides the change in scenery, it was mostly the air. It was so much fresher from ninety meters high. She took a deep breath and relished it, but she did miss the smells somewhat. Her hand reached for the necklace and found that it was still there. The knot at the back seemed sturdy enough to prevent opening accidently.

Next, she noticed that the sun was already rising in the distance. Between the trees at her feet, however, nearly all was covered in black. She couldn’t see the others, but when she tried to make herself step on where she though the wizard was, she found that she had no problem doing so. But thinking about it was as far as she would go.

“Isn’t it nice?” the wizard called up to her.

“Yes,” she replied, even though she could hardly feel anything over her hunger. “Point me to the castle, I want to flatten that asshole who had me hanged.”

‘And eat all the shitty rest of the bastards.’

She couldn’t wait to fill her belly, much as she loathed eating soldiers. They had too much metal on them. She would make a feast of the first village she came across, she promised herself. Janna wouldn’t like it, and neither would the villagers, but she felt like she earned a treat after this ordeal.

“That’s unwise, Laura!” called the wizard. “If Farindel is still alive...although.”

“Although what?!” she demanded into the dark, disgruntled to hear she couldn’t have her revenge.

Already noticeable was the respect she was now shown again, however, which in turn she very much enjoyed.

“It’s fine,” said the wizard. “You can go. Just be careful.”

“Is Janna coming or not?” she asked, eager to get moving.

The reply came in the form of Janna shooting out of the forest until she was taller than Laura again. A gigantic tree caught against the tip of her boot and was pushed over, almost without effort.

“We’re not going to harm Devona,” she declared by way of greeting. “Nor Ardan. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

Laura could agree to those terms. Devona had protected them from the rapists, after all.

‘But she’s so pretty,’ she thought guiltily, her stomach rumbling. ‘I bet she would taste like heaven in Honinger honey.’

Branwyn had been pretty too. But Devona was just a bomb, the kind of woman who could become a billionaire by the age of twenty, just on photo shootings alone, and without even having to take off her bikini.

They could already see the bog in the distance, but first they had to drink. They found a rivulet, mostly just by its idyllic sound, and Laura dug her hands into the earth to make a little pond for drinking. Having been small and seeing everything from below made her truly appreciate how mighty she was. Her arms were excavators, her feet steamrollers, and her mouth a gigantic, all-consuming vacuum.

Small wonder Steve, Chris and Val had been so frightened, way back when.

“I think there’s frogs in it,” she said after letting the mud settle for a minute. “Consider it free protein.”

“No frogs, it’s winter,” Janna said. “But fish, maybe.”

Laura grinned as she put her mouth to the pond, “Sorry, fishies.”

She really wished there were people in it, but she drank it anyway, until it tasted of mud.

“This water isn’t frozen,” Janna noted as they waited for the pond to refill. “I don’t know the exact temperature, but maybe it’s magic.”

“You think it will bewitch us or something?” Laura asked.

The possibility of being turned small again frightened her deeply.

“That evil wizard said it was okay,” Janna replied, but Laura could hear the same sense of unease there.

“Wouldn’t make any sense if he got us big only to let us get shrunk again, would it?” she asked.

Janna shook her head, “Helping us in the first place doesn’t make sense. And at no cost? You better believe we’ve got another thing coming our way from that guy.”

Laura wasn’t entirely convinced, but the necklaces they both now wore were hard to ignore.

“We should go back to Honingen,” she determined before lowering her voice. “Maybe Furio can disenchant these things. Then, next time mister bad guy shows up, we can make him go splat!”

“Capital idea, captain obvious,” Janna grimaced. “Um, are we...I mean, we can’t really smush Bragon. He’s Devona’s father. The rapists, fine. Farindel too. But not him.”

Laura reared in protest, climbing to her feet before Janna had even finished, “No way! That guy had me hanged, Janna, do you even know how much that hurt?!”

“It was a perfectly logical thing to do,” Janna reasoned. “Put yourself in his position.”

It was another conversation they had had before, and Laura wasn’t going there either.

“Speak for yourself,” she said. “If I get my hands on him, I’m going to make him wish he was never born, and then I’ll kill him.”

Being big was good. She felt so strong that it made her wet down below, despite all the hardships. In fact, perhaps the suffering had an upside. From now on, she would live every day to the full, and she wouldn’t let anybody rain on her glorious comeback, especially not Janna.

“And how is that gonna look?” Janna argued. “Hey Devona, thanks for being so nice to us. By the way, I’m gonna smush your dad now? Besides, we’ve sort of trampled Albernia enough already. We should give these people time to recuperate.”

Laura did not feel the same at all.

“You do you,” she pursed her lips and smirked. “But I’m going to kill Bragon and everyone else except Ardan and Devona. And after Honingen I’ll go to Havena and have as much fun with it as I can with my pants on, except I’ll probably not be wearing any.”

She had visited the port city briefly before. It was nice, if a little windy, and most importantly it was ginormous. There were tens of thousands of people there. It was only because Albernia was such a magic- and trouble-infested shithole that she hadn’t gone there already. Any moral qualms popping up at the thought she quashed quickly.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Janna said firmly after emerging from the waterhole, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

She was starting to stand but Laura was already on her feet and had a head start.

“Race me to it!” she laughed before starting to run towards the bog, her feet crushing everything they landed on.

The causeway was easy enough to spot, a dyke reinforced with rotten stakes of wood. Her feet were not very kind to it, of course, but if she moved quickly she could avoid the muck without much trouble. Janna, heavier by a few thousand tons, struggled and fell further behind.

And then she saw it, rising out of the misty moor doused in the rising sun, the castle on the small hill.

It had suffered recently, its gates smashed and the greater of the two towers gone and toppled over, nothing but a field of rubble were it had fallen. Cadavers lay all about the gate and on the hill too, arrows sticking in them. There was some sort of congregation in the middle of the yard. She was over them all before anyone could do anything about it.

She saw the fairy at the helm of the mass of people, apparently being worshipped. She looked like a little girl with wings.

When Laura’s foot landed on her, it felt very strange for a moment. The fairy gave an “oof” and then seemingly exploded into a thick cloud of rainbow dust. The people worshipping the fairy screamed and cried out in anguish. Bragon, Ardan and Devona, along with steward Rodowan Ahawar and other Fenwasian kin or banner men were in the first row and got to witness the pitiful demise of their deity firsthand.

Laura stood over them, legs apart and grinning down full of lust.

“I’m back!” she announced. “Did you miss me?”

They didn’t, of course, which was why they started to run. She bent down and snatched up Bragon Fenwasian before Devona could embrace him. And to have her hands free, she simply tore off his sword belt with her fingernails before putting him into her mouth.

He tasted like mud, sweat and cold steel at first, so she pushed him into her cheek and let him bathe in her saliva.

Down below, the mesmerizing beauty of Devona Fenwasian threw herself to her knees, “Laura, please, spare us!”

She was practically praying.

It was an odd thing with beautiful people like her that one always felt instinctively inclined to comply with their wishes. Laura had to consciously tell her hands to leave Bragon where he was, and she felt a strong pang of guilt gnawing at her conviction.

She didn’t have time to properly torture Bragon either, because Janna was coming after her in the distance with a scowl that foretold nothing pleasant. She decided to ignore Devona and fill her belly instead, bending down and collecting men with both hands at once.

In doing so, she noticed the fat, black, ugly spider, unmoving and seemingly cut in half. She flattened it underfoot, just in case, and went on collecting. Her mouth was watering in anticipation of food, stimulated by Bragon trying his athletic best to wrestle past her tongue and get out, an effort that she greatly enjoyed to deny him.

The men were armed and armoured to varying degrees, so she would have to chew them. But that was the plan anyway. When she regarded the catch in her hand, she noticed Rodowan Ahawar, the white-haired steward who had saved many refugees from Winhall, and Conan Galahed Fenwasian, the man who had initially caught her when she had shrunk.

Settling both open scores at once brought a devilish smile to her lips.

“Please don’t do this,” Rodowan begged. “We were only following orders!”

“Shh, food doesn’t talk,” she grinned and dumped them all into her mouth.

She could hear them all scream when her lips closed, but after her teeth went to work, the only voice left was that of Bragon, now bathing in the liquefied bodies of his men. She couldn’t help a little moan escape her involuntarily.

Oh, how she had missed that flavour. It was unpleasantly adulterated by the dirty clothing and all the steel armour, of course. The armour especially made her feel like she had bitten off a tad too much from a falafel and gotten bits of tinfoil into her mouth. Men also sweated more in armour, so there was a salty, cheesy note to them. Mostly, though, they tasted the way tiny people should, absolutely delicious.

When Janna arrived at the island hill, both legs muddy up to the knees and her boots carrying small lakes worth of water, Laura felt it in good taste to take a step out of the castle so Janna would have a better view. Outside of the walls then, there was another small person on the ground, a tiny, naked girl with fiery red hair. She looked very confused and obviously out of place, so Laura decided it would probably be prudent to take her out of the picture.

Janna noticed the girl too, only just a split second too late as Laura's foot was already turning her into a particularly flat meat patty.

“No, don’t!” Janna shouted, but Laura didn’t stop until she felt the girl squelch completely and only then complied.

Janna went in for a close inspection, “Oh, Laura, that was Lissandra!”

“Um...” Laura made, trying to remember. She found it rather funny and surprising that Janna cared so much about the girl. “Sorry, I thought she might have been one of Farindel’s,” she tried deflect the blame.

Janna made a big frowny face, “You didn’t have to kill her! And what about the rest, have you spared Devona and Ardan at least?!”

“They’re over there,” Laura gestured into the yard with her fistful of people. “And here is your half of the garrison. Bon appétit! Although, if you want to let them go, that’s your choice.”

She held out her hand and dropped them unceremoniously into Janna’s possession. There were ten or eleven of them left, frantically trying to figure out where they were while the big girl looked at them with eyes as large as saucers.

“They’re so tiny,” Janna breathed. “And Bragon? Did you...”

“I’m almost finished with him,” Laura grinned before reaching into her mouth to present him. She was feeling cocky. “I can’t decide whether I should swallow him now or put him in my sock for a while.”

“Uh, Laura,” Janna corrected her awkwardly. “That’s not him, though.”

Then Laura noticed it as well.

“Aw, damn it,” she sighed. “I must have accidently chewed him.”

There had been a moment when he had managed to climb over her molars and onto her tongue, but she had been certain she had pushed him back right away. She must have gotten him confused.

“You, what’s your name?” she asked the man between her fingers. He stammered something she couldn’t understand, so she decided to involve Janna instead, “Hey, I think this is one of the rapists!”

“Really?” Janna leaned in close to get a better look at him. “Well, I guess he deserves it then.”

She looked down at the men in the cup of her hands before lowering her mouth and slurping them up, one by one. Then her jaw went into motion, slowly and methodically grinding people to minced meat and pink slime.

Laura let the man watch for a while before putting him on her back teeth and popping him like a pea. He was very delicious.

In the yard, Ardan and Devona had to watch everything, two giant monsters, devouring people for snacks. It was therefore unsurprising that they thought themselves in danger as well.

If truth be told, Laura thought it might have been a good idea to just close this chapter by eating the two of them as well. No one would ever know, after all. But Janna wouldn’t wear it.

“We should take them back to Honingen,” Janna said after looking at them, Ardan with his sword and shield ready for a fight he couldn’t win, and Devona crying rivers behind his back.

“I think Devona might be in line to inherit Winhall county,” Laura said in English. “Pretty sure I’ve killed all the other heirs.”

She hadn’t kept track of that particular family tree for a while, and she wasn’t really sure if it was true. Male children inherited before female ones, after all. But at the moment, she was simply looking for something positive.

“We won’t hurt you,” Janna tried to soothe and console the two tinies in the yard. “We will take you back to Honingen. We’re sorry for everything that has happened.”

She was being more diplomatic than Laura had expected, which was nice. Also, she couldn’t say anything, having just eaten some people.

Momentarily, the light snack made Laura’s hunger a lot worse, though. Her belly demanded more. When she looked at Ardan and Devona, her mouth ran wet with spittle. And then there was yet another person, emerging from behind them out of the shadow of a wall.

Janna saw that one too, tiny, limping girl that it was, and Ardan and Devona screamed in anguish when the massive giantess suddenly lurched over them like a collapsing mountain.

“Gotcha,” Janna announced while taking the kicking and screaming thing back up with her. “Oh my god, Laura, you’ll never believe who it is.”

Laura leaned in to see, which made Janna withdraw the girl a little. It was Dari.

“Oh, damn,” she said. “I totally forgot we sent her to save Chris and Steve! How did you end up here, little girl?”

Dari was crying and twisting left and right.

“Please,” she shouted, “I’m hurt! The dragon almost crushed my hips! Please, don’t squeeze me so hard!”

Laura tried to grab her but Janna took her hand away, smiling wickedly.

“You do you, Laura,” she mocked, her eyes sparkling. “You killed Bragon, I get to kill her. No more little assassin for you.”

She lifted Dari above her lips as she licked them. Laura could see the tiny girl panicking.

“She’s damaged goods anyway,” Janna shrugged as she lowered her morsel.

“Wait!” Laura called out. “At least let her answer the question. Don’t you care to know how she came to be here?”

Dari was looking downwards into Janna’s mouth, not liking the prospect. Tears were running down her eyes while Janna clearly enjoyed teasing her.

“Well, answer the question, little one,” Janna said. “Make it quick so I can eat you.”

Her voice was smothered by all the saliva in her mouth. Dari would get a wet grave.

Laura didn’t want Dari to die but at the same time she had to play by her own rules. The girl would be incredibly useful wherever they went, but Janna did not see that, or perhaps she did and she did not like it. Either way, Laura’s hands were tied.

Dari sniffed, cried and stammered incomprehensibly before collecting her thoughts enough to speak. Then, she was angry with despair.

“I came here to save you!” she spat into Janna’s smiling face. “The black wizard came to me, he and his fool! They told me what had happened. You wouldn’t be here without me, you would still red and mad and the red dragon would have eaten you all! You owe me your life!”

“That’s quite a story,” Janna chuckled before moving in with her lips.

She was so breathtakingly beautiful when she was evil.

“They mentioned her!” Laura piped up, remembering the conversation she had heard and piecing together the puzzle. “They called her a good distraction.”

Dari’s tiny head snapped to Laura, “Distraction?! That fool would be dead without me, and so would you! And the whole world would be dead, or red, or bloody well both! Please, you promised to let me go!”

Her situation wasn’t enviable, Laura had to agree. It was so bad that it made her smile a little. It was half sympathy and half something else, perhaps a sense of schadenfreude.

“Poor choice of words,” Janna chuckled, her mouth right beneath Dari’s legs.

Laura loved to see her friend get carried away like that. She didn’t want to interrupt it, much as she would miss Dari. She was torn.

“She’s right!” the clear, beautiful voice of Devona Fenwasian called up from below. “If she hadn’t distracted the dragon, Ardan would never have been able to slay the spider!”

“Um, that would be that one,” Laura pointed to the ground where the now flattened remains of the big, black spider were.

Janna’s mouth twitched when she saw, and one could see her mood change in real time.

“And once the spider was dead, the dragon disappeared,” Ardan added. “We do not know what happened to it.”

Laura looked at her feet. She had shifted absentmindedly and trodden on the red-haired girl a few more times, squishing her further. She didn’t feel bad about it even though another piece of the puzzle came into her mind.

“That must have been Caira Herlogan,” she said, thinking. “Maybe, anyway.”

Janna shook her head, “Who?”

“Ordhan Herlogan’s daughter?” Laura replied. “He asked me to look for her, way back when. Whoops. Oh, well.”

She bent and picked her up between her fingernails, a flattened sheet of person. She doubted Devona would be able to identify her, so she dropped her again.

Devona looked up at Laura with tears in her eyes, “You have killed Farindel. You have taken everything we had. You have eaten my father. Can you please leave us alone?”

She was shaking, which made Laura feel bad and ashamed. The normal punishment for making her feel this way was death, but for Devona she would make an exception.

“We will,” she promised. “We will take you back to Honingen and then we will leave you after three days. I promise I’ll try not to kill any more of your family.”

Far as she could see there weren’t all that many Fenwasians left to begin with, so it should be an easy one to keep. And if she broke it, it wasn’t as if Devona had any recourse.

She turned to Janna, “So, are you going to eat Dari or not? If you ask me I think she deserves living, after all she’s done for us. And remember, she got us Mibeltube too, so if we wanna get high she might come in handy.”

Contrary to what Laura had hoped, however, Janna gave back only a pitiful smile and a pat of her belly.

“Aw, you’ve already eaten her?” Laura pouted.

It was such a waste.

Nevertheless, Laura had butterflies in her stomach. She was big again, the Red Curse was over…even the nasty black wizard seemed not so bad after all. Until now, anyway. There was no telling what the future would bring. For now, all she wanted was eat, sleep and maybe have a little lone time with a village. She remembered the ogresses at Honingen and how she and Janna had had sex with them. That was even better. Life was good.

“But…my horse!” Ardan protested when Janna bent down to allow him and Devona to climb onto her hand.

There was a whole stable full of steeds which had somehow survived through the whole battle. And quite a battle that was, it became clear now. Laura put her own foot next to one of the dragon’s footprints, finding it slightly more than half as large as her own. It would have made an opponent she could do well without. Much easier just to smush a tiny girl. They had dodged quite a bullet.

They shared the horses in spite of Ardan’s protests, eating them swiftly and without fanfare. The huge, beautiful animals were even easier food than people, all penned up like that. Laura liked the taste of them as well.

Then, it was finally back to Honingen.

-

They held a market almost every day now. And it was a dire disappointment. Many stalls in the market hall were empty, and those traders that were there had scarcely any wares. Prices were absurd, which the council of guildsmen promptly counteracted with setting fixed prices, much to Bran’s approval.

The situation, however, did not improve. The day after the price controls were instituted, there were hardly any traders.

“I don’t understand,” he confessed at one point when he was discussing the issue with Linbirg. “The countess often set prices when the times were grim, but she never faced such shortages.”

The food shortage was worst, quickly followed by a shortage of wood and other raw materials. Lin’s ogresses no longer dragged logs into the city, patrolling the streets instead to enforce laws they did not understand upon a populace with whom they couldn’t communicate.

Theft of firewood was particularly rampant, but so far the council was being lenient. The times were rough, after all, and Linbirg had been harshly admonished for allowing her ogresses to crush the hands of thieves in the beginning.

She had not forced her will upon the council for fear that Bran might be displeased. Every night she went to bed yearning for his touch, his tongue in her mouth and perhaps even more. But all he cared about were his laws.

The council, meanwhile, was stubborn and often divided. They suffered under the circumstances too. The soap makers could not procure fat, the candle makers wax, nor Bran’s own father meat to make sausages. Old linen was easier to come by, because there were so many dead people no longer needing their clothes. This was good for the paper layers, except that no one had any coin to buy their wares now, and scarcely any reason to write while no business was being conducted.

“Didn’t the countess own the woods as well as the villages around Honingen?” Linbirg had asked.

It was the beginning of a solution, although they hadn’t known it at the time. Bran had agreed to allow her to sell firewood, which was easily set up. All she had to do was have Mara command ogresses to collect wood from the nearby forest, smash it to proportion and hire first one and soon three orphans to sell it off.

She didn’t have any coin to pay her workers at first, but when Mara threatened to eat them, they agreed quickly to work for free. Her competitors were then discretely removed as well, leaving the city to stock up on supplies and tragically never coming back. Within two days, Linbirg was the sole provider of firewood in the city.

Such success did not go unnoticed by the council, of course. Karjelin of the paper layers led the charge against her.

“By rights, all trees growing on Honinger land belong to us now,” he argued. “It is up to us to decide who may take wood and who may sell it!”

But the other guildsmen still remembered Vialligh the beekeeper, and they did not dare decide against Linbirg when Bran the Elder put the issue to a vote. So, Karjelin changed tactics.

“If that is your will,” he argued, “at least make it work to our benefit. I call for another vote! Let the expenses for the ogres’ feed and other needs no longer be borne by the city! Pay them instead from those proceeds attained through the sale of firewood.”

Not even Bran the Younger could argue with it, which left Linbirg alone and bereft. The decision was unanimous. Making coin was unexpectedly intoxicating, even though she hardly spent any of it, hoarding it instead where she and her ogres were sleeping, in the great tent made from a giantess’ sleeping bag which they had moved back next to the walls. Having to pay for her expenses, and with the current prices no less, was a great setback.

But food was scarce in the city anyway, even though Honingen was surrounded by arable farmland. The solution was obvious. Hence, Linbirg took Mara and several of her ogresses to different farmsteads and took their food. Anyone who dared to object to the mistreatment became food so as to further save on coin.

Hitting the villages belonging to the city wasn’t a far step up from there, of course. But again, the council intervened soon as they heard of it. Bran was angry with her this time as well.

“They say you killed someone!” he accused her. “That you murdered them!”

She didn’t know who he was talking about. Mara and the others had flattened an old woman and eaten five more people, tearing them apart at the joints and sharing them after their fashion. It had happened at Honeyfield and Jorilsgrave, two villages down the southern road from Honingen.

“I have brought in a lot of food,” she argued. “Do you want your people to continue to starve?”

It had been mostly cheese and grain she seized, still available there in somewhat good quantities. The bulk of her haul were milk cows, however. They weren’t meant for butchering, originally, but they were made of meat and each ogress could comfortably carry two or three of the mooing creatures.

And she was holding back some of the meat for Bran’s father, Bran the Elder, so their family could profit too. She had expected to be showered with praise for her ingenuity, instead Bran seemed to have tears in his eyes.

“They were right about you,” he said, breathless, “Karjelin and the others. We should never have freed you!”

She was near the southern gate at the time, the urgency driving the customers to her even before she could reach the market. But word of her deeds must have overtaken her. She had spent a lot of time auctioning off each bit of food to the highest bidder.

“Then you would be under the countess’ boot and my ogres would still be crushing you!” she snapped.

Hot Sausage was there, barking profusely. He wasn’t a big dog but Lin didn’t want to get bitten.

“Mara, kill the dog and seize Bran,” she commanded. “Leave him whole.”

Bran looked at his dog and screamed as Mara’s foot stomped upon the animal, snuffing it out with a whimper. Then the ogress took him, handling him easier than if he were a child.

Getting him to love her was too much work, she decided. It was the one thing on which she hadn’t made any progress thus far.

“Take us to our tent,” she said next. “And tell the others to kill the council. I suppose they are waiting for us in the usual spot.”

If she couldn’t make Bran love her, she could still make him make a woman of her. She would have him now and afterwards Mara could get rid of him, just like his stupid dog which was now a squashed fur ball on the ground. A voice in the back of her head screamed that she was doing it again, the same thing she had done to her knights and everyone who loved her. She had come to regret those decisions. She even started to regret having had the villagers killed as well.

“Would it help if I went to neighbouring baronies?” she asked Bran who was kicking and screaming in Mara’s other hand. “Or do these laws of yours apply there too?”

She had already made inquiries. The distances weren’t so far as that the ogresses couldn’t make them easily, and the further away from Honingen, the more food there would be.

But Bran only looked completely aghast at her, as though he presumed she wasn’t even serious. She shouldn’t have killed his dog, she reflected. Now, she couldn’t go back.

It wasn’t at all the way she had imagined it either. In her mind, he had always participated willingly, even if Mara had forced him, taking the initiative and getting it done. When they were in the huge ogre tent, however, he did not move a muscle.

“What do you want with him?” Mara asked after setting him down.

Bran remained standing but not by very much. He was shaking like leaves.

Linbirg sighed, “Undress him.”

She disrobed as well. It wasn’t as awkward for her as she had feared, herself already being familiar with nakedness around Mara, and with Bran so thoroughly disempowered. He cried and whimpered when the ogress pulled off his clothes one by one. But seeing his lean, sinewy body made Linbirg’s breath grow shorter. He was very handsome.

Her first gaze upon his manhood was irritating, however. Linbirg thought that it had something of a plucked, raw goose neck, the way it hung there, sprouting from a bush of red hair. And yet it had a certain appeal. She knew she had to somehow make him harden, but that seemed more difficult now than she had imagined. She didn’t know whether to touch it or look at it or what else to do.

“Wa-what do you want from me?” he stammered.

She was looking right at it, even while it was still staring at the floor.

“I want you to make a woman of me,” she determined. “If you do it right, maybe I’ll let you live.”

She had overheard conversations of proper women about this sort of thing and knew that men could be disappointing at times. She didn’t want her first time to be that way, even though it seemed like it might not even happen.

But then Bran gave the hint of a nod and his face hardened. He looked at her breasts and between her legs as she stood there, and began to stroke his shaft which eventually responded. Seeing it stiffen made her squirm in the hips. It was big to begin with, but soon it reminded her of what she had seen on stallions. Perhaps she had sensed it before, without knowing it, and had been drawn to him particularly for this reason.

He swallowed and stepped up to her, shoving one hand down the small of her back and putting her other over her breast, his thumb playing with her nipple. His manhood poked her in the belly, standing between them like a plank she could have walked on had she tried.

Then he pushed her down, gently, and began to nimble at her neck. The hand from her breast went behind her head and cradled it while the other started kneading her buttocks. A shudder of fear and waves of second thoughts went through her when she felt his tip upon her lower lips.

“Stop!” she cried out, despite wanting it.

He seized immediately and Mara was there in an instant, shoving him off.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her, alarm and discontent in his voice.

She had to order her mind and subdue her fear, half wishing he had just pressed on with it and Mara had left them.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I’m…it’s so fast, is all.”

She was afraid of having his thick, veiny shaft inside of her. She couldn’t comprehend how it would fit.

“Do you want me to or not?” he demanded. “Because if you don’t then you must let me go. That’s only fair.”

“I…I do want you,” she said. “I…just do it! Leave him to it, Mara.”

He was getting soft again, she saw, and so he had to repeat what he did before. When finally he entered her, she felt a sharp pain. He shoved himself in, further and further, and at every moment she felt like she might burst. It was a blissful feeling too, however, a blessed kind of pain that became more blessed and less painful the longer it lasted.

He went in and out of her, time and again, her wetness drenching them both where their bodies conjoined. He pulled up her head and entered her with his tongue as well, flooding her mind with sensations and emotion.

He was perfect, she thought with every thrust, such a magnificent man, so handsome and good, every little thing about him was godly. She had heard that reaching a peak would take a very long time for a woman but not for a man, often leading to disagreement. This time, however, it happened much too quickly for her. A wave of relief washed over her and her whole body went limp and weak at once.

Bran noticed, but kept going anyway. He started to thrust harder, cupping her arse with both his hands and shoving himself so relentlessly into her helpless little body that she feared he might tear her skin. He started grunting after another short while, and then she could feel the hot sensation of his seed between her thighs. And she knew she was a woman.

He collapsed on top of her, breathing into her ear. Her heart was still pounding madly, mad with love for him. She could never kill him. She regretted everything she had done. She would do what he said from now on, whatever that may be, only praying that he might love her like this forever.

After pulling out and scrambling off of her, he sat on the soft ground of the sleeping back breathing like after a long run. Above him, then, Lin could see Mara watching.

The ogress had that look in her eye, her lower lip tugged under her teeth. And her hand was under her loin cloth. Linbirg knew what would happen.

“No!” she squealed when Mara’s long, groping fingers came for her. “No, not now! Use him!”

She felt too weak and blissful to be put through the torture now. It was a tad unfair on Bran, but then again it was a man’s duty to take these heavy burdens off his woman. That was what men were for.

Mara looked perplexed for a moment, like the idea of using him in the way she used Linbirg was incomprehensible to her, as though they weren’t even the same kind.

Perhaps she objected to using a man, Linbirg thought, or perhaps that ancient pact her forebears made ran deeper even than reason.

“Just do with him what you would do with me, please!” she pleaded.

Mara remained unconvinced but seemed to take Lin’s words for a command. Bran’s complaints fell on deaf ears.

“No, no,” he struggled and shouted, “I did what you asked, please, make her stop!”

The ogress dragged him over the floor away from Linbirg until she had him where she wanted him. She put one of her feet on either side before lowering herself. Seeing it was horrid, but Lin knew his perspective as well and had to concede that it was a lot better not to be involved.

Mara put her arse on his hips to pin him, and her sex where his mouth could reach it. Her knees held the brunt of her weight or else he wouldn’t have long to live.

Her cunt was wet and swollen, a cave of lust. He wouldn’t go to it, so the ogress leaned forward to smother it upon his face. When she rocked herself forward to adjust her position, Linbirg could only see Bran’s hair anymore, red as rust, contrasted against the slick, dark hair between Mara’s legs.

Provided with such power, Linbirg would probably do the same, she thought. Part of her regretted not having given herself to a man earlier, but she was also glad to have waited for Bran.

Mara grunted as she moved back and forth upon him, her knees pushing out to lower herself more. It was hard to believe a small body like his could sustain such a gargantuan one like Mara’s.

She slid her hips in front and leaned back now, clawing one of her own breasts and twisting the big, dark nipple between her fingers. It was an imposing sight as grunts turned into moans.

Their eyes met and Linbirg awkwardly looked away, but she could see Mara smile. Then the ogress leaned back forward and shoved both her knees as far out as they would go.

Linbirg started to get worried but the situation escalated much too quickly for her. First, Mara started to go much faster, bunching up her mane with her hands and wrapping it around her head. She let out a cry of lust then, and suddenly her hips lifted off the ground before slamming down with full force, once, twice, thrice, before she finally moaned and stopped moving altogether.

Linbirg had stood up but she hadn’t said anything. Mara lifted herself off her tiny toy in a way that said she cared little for whether it was still breathing, a superior smile on her lips that she often displayed when killing weaker things.

When Lin saw what the ogress had left of Bran she screamed, “No!”

His head had burst open on one side with blood and brains leaking out and pooling on the grey fabric. His face was pushed so flat that one could hardly recognize him anymore, and it was covered in slime. One of his arms had broken and must have come under her cheek. It looked completely pulped at the elbow, a strange tangle of skin.

Mara had evidently not used the same restraint she employed with Linbirg, treating Bran like something to be used once, thrown away and swept out with the old rushes. The ogress looked surprised at Linbirg’s reaction.

“I thought you did not want him anymore,” she said, much too leisurely for Linbirg’s liking.

Mara enjoyed killing. And she enjoyed fucking. In retrospect, Linbirg should have known Mara would combine the two if given the opportunity.

But still, Linbirg was devastated.

“How could you!” she screamed at the ogress. “You killed him!”

Mara seemed ashamed, trying to look away. But then she seemed to realize something.

“He felt just like you,” she said, her face snapping around.

Linbirg didn’t realize the gravity of her situation at first. But then it hit her.

“Ironman,” the ogress contemplated aloud. “You are just...some girl. We do not need you.”

Linbirg tried to intervene, “No, don’t say it like that. We’ve done great things together and you have nothing but the utmost love for me!”

“We don’t have to do what you say,” Mara went on as if she couldn’t hear. “We can do whatever we want.”

A huge, toothy smile crept across her lips, and with her mane she looked very much like a lion. Then, however, it soured and something dark replaced it, a n eerie shadow of rage.

“So many of my sisters are dead now because of you,” she growled. “Don’t worry, you’ll feel what they felt, and so much more! I will flatten you bit by bit, and when I’m done we will do to Honingen what I did to your body!”

Lin turned and ran, but Mara only laughed. The floor was soft and awkward to run on, and the ogress’ legs were so much longer.

“It wasn’t my fault!” she cried as her feet left the ground.

“Not your fault?” Mara echoed, sneering. “Oh, then this isn’t my fault either!”

Lin was lowered to the ground and pushed into it. When she shoved out a hand to pull herself out of the vice, suddenly there was a sharp pain and her elbow ended were Mara’s foot began.

“Mh, I could enjoy one last time,” the ogress husked on above, accompanied by a squishy sound that wasn’t Lin’s hand.

When she twisted her head, she could see Mara spread herself open with two fingers, and she shuddered at the sight.

“Heh, heh,” Mara chuckled evilly. “Mh, perhaps this time, I put you in me whole. Try not to die too early. It would spoil what comes after.”

-

“Ho-ro, the whisp’ring moor, the moor down by Farindel wood! Ho-ro, the whisp’ring moor in the moor down near Farindel wood! And in that moor there was a keep, a rare keep, a whisp’ring keep. Keep in the moor and the moor down by Farindel wood! Ho-ro...”

The children had been crying again, so Lady Moraine sang to them. Despite her mediocre looks, she possessed quite a nice voice when singing.

“And in that keep there was a tower, a rare tower, a whisp’ring tower. Tower in the keep and the keep in the moor and the moor down by Farindel wood! Ho-ro...”

The children clapped and smiled. Seeing them happy was the only upside to the situation, Furio found. He and Retoban were now effectively prisoners, held against their will. They had tried to escape the castle when the strange light appeared. After bewitching Reodred Ardwain, the leathery castellan, a second time, they were out, only to be run down and caught by Lord Ilaen and his men shortly after.

They couldn’t leave now. His lordship had made that more than plain.

“And in that tower there was a shield, a rare shield, a whisp’ring shield! Shield in the tower and the tower in the keep and the keep in the moor and the moor down by Farindel wood! Ho-ro...”

The strange light had lasted for three days. Then it had gone away. People in the castle said that the Red Curse was retreating again. Furio wondered what that meant for Ilaen.

“And on that shield there was a horse, a rare horse, a whisp’ring horse! Horse on the shield and the shield in the tower and the tower in the keep and the keep in the moor,” Lady Moraine had to pause for an exaggerated breather, making the children laugh, “And the moor down by Farindel wood!”

“How can a horse be on a shield?” the oldest boy asked, interrupting her. “Horses are bigger than shields!”

The other boy snapped at him, “It’s a coat of arms, stupid!”

The first boy took offense and defended his honour with his fists, prompting the lady to shout, “Now, now, boys! Keep the fighting in the yard. Elvar is right, it is a coat of arms! Now, do you want to hear the rest of the song or not?”

Elvar was the son of some strange, manly woman and a lowly singer. He and his sister Eara were being fostered at Feyrenwall while their father had died and their mother was apparently missing. Ilaen and Lady Moraine’s children were named Thalian and Thara. It was easy to get confused with the names here, Furio had found. There were so many that sounded similar to each other.

“And on that horse there was a knight, a rare knight, a whisp’ring knight! Knight on the horse and the horse on the shield and the shield in the tower and the tower in the keep and the keep in the moor and the moor down by Farindel wood! Ho-ro...”

It was a long song, so long that it made one forget the time. Of course, that knight had a sword. And in that sword was a nick in which a flea was sitting that had a hair on it on which again a fairy sat. Now that fairy had a wing, which in turn had some gold stuck to it. The song did not have much of a point other than being milked longer and longer until the singer required bellows for lungs to rattle off the whole damnable list in one go. But it kept the children from crying.

Retoban had tried acquiring ingredients for a sleeping draft to put to sleep all the family and hopefully some of their men at arms. Furio did not like the idea, however. There were simply too many soldiers in the castle, and they did not all eat from the same pot.

Lord Ilaen was still behaving himself somewhat erratically, but not as bad as before. The repairs to the fire damage were going on and kept him occupied, at least, and his son whom he had so callously injured was up and about again.

Everyone was back to using the main building again, too. Living in the keep was simply too crammed for so many people.

A soldier entered the hall with urgency written on his face, “My lady! Your husband bids you make yourself and the children ready at once! The giantesses have been spotted!”

Furio and Retoban, languishing in the shadows, sat up tight.

“We have to go!” Furio told the lady. “Let us gather our belongings!”

But Lady Moraine shook her head and smiled, “We have nothing to fear from them. They have come to our castle many times before and while I may wish they stopped doing so, they have not hurt us.”

“You do not understand,” Furio pressed on quickly. “We mean to go with them!”

Retoban’s kick against his shin came too late and did not go unnoticed by the lady. But Furio did not care. It was time to put an end to this.

“Go with them?” the lady echoed. “Master Stonebreaker, you are not making sense.”

“Yes, I am!” Furio pleaded. “We, uh...that is, I have befriended them. They will be looking for me at Honingen and be greatly distraught when they do not find me. Please, you must let us go!”

“I suppose we could aske them?” the soldier offered when his lady’s confused look prompted him.

That was good enough for Furio.

And so they went, first to get their things and then to the battlements to meet Laura and Janna. Retoban was understandably nervous and kept stumbling on the stairs. Furio prayed Laura and Janna would accept the alchemist. Otherwise, he was like a lamb being led to the slaughter.

But when they were going up the walls, relaxed and laughing soldiers were already coming their way.

“They’re not coming!” the soldiers cheered. “Walked right past us, they did. Never even looked!”

Furio sprinted up the stairs and saw that it was true. Laura and Janna were walking away, unaware of his predicament. Despair filled him, up to the brim. He could not reach them, not even if he had thrown a fireball. They were too far away and moving with such speed that it was hard to even imagine.

“Lucky, eh?” the sentry next to him said. “Every time they come I think it’s my last. But not today, looks like.”

‘Aye, just my luck,’ Furio thought, glooming.

Then Ilaen was there, angry to boot, ordering him back inside. Furio tried to explain the situation, but unlike the lady, his lordship could not be reasoned with, nor would he send a rider.

“My lord, your son is back on his feet,” Furio pleaded. “There is no more we can do for him! When will you let us go?”

Ilaen looked at him darkly for a moment before curling his lips into a tight smile, “When you have mended your manners.”

Furio sighed. Only Hesinde would know when that was. It was probably more likely for Laura and Janna to come looking for him here.

But when he mentioned as much to Retoban later when they were going to sleep, the alchemist shook his head.

“If they ask for you at Honingen, they’ll hear that you are a dead man,” Retoban said softly. “They will see your grave with one of these half wheels on it, as per your custom. And they may mourn you, if they do. But they will not look for you. I am sorry.”

-

“I don’t even know what you liked so much about him,” Laura said coldly.

Janna knelt in the muck, her heart heavy. Furio had been poisoned, she had been informed, by that little girl who had come with the ogres. Linbirg was her name, and nobody knew where she was. The countess was also dead, both Galahan Palace and Honingen in ruins. During Laura’s and Janna’s absence, the ogres had gone rogue, killing everyone they could get their hands on. The city streets ran red with blood and squashed corpses.

Ardan and Devona had lost quite a lot in very little time even though they only wanted to do good. It was sad all around.

Janna looked at the little grave where her friend was buried. It appeared still somewhat fresh. If only she had made it back a little faster, perhaps she could have saved him. The thought was torturing her. She shoved a hand in her pocket to push Dari back down. The little assassin would die later when Janna would have more time and privacy to enjoy it. Just now, she wasn’t in the mood.

“We gotta find food,” Laura observed. “There’s hardly enough survivors around here to get one of us full.”

Laura had already eaten the larger part of a village north of Honingen, wolfing down the helpless people so fast that Janna couldn’t stop her. If truth be told, Janna was so hungry, she had half a mind to join in. But that was wrong.

“We’re not eating any survivors,” she said through gritted teeth. “We have to go find something else.”

‘Cows, probably,’ she thought, and her belly rumbled as she imagined them screaming in her mouth as she chewed them, bones, hide and all.

She stood and stuffed Dari back down another time. The tiny, athletic girl kept climbing back up, no doubt frantically afraid of what awaited her.

When turning to go, she saw Laura casually step on Furio’s grave, lingering just a moment and twisting her foot. She sighed and let it slide. Furio was dead anyway, and she did not have the strength to fight.

They went to different villages as they found them on the landscape. Laura was absolutely merciless. The people pleaded with her, saying they had hardly enough to feed themselves after having first been robbed by the countess’ soldiers and then by the ogresses. But if Laura thought that what the people gave up was insufficient, she simply started eating them. To be fair, in some cases, the yield could be considerably improved that way. And where it wasn’t, the villagers were probably dead whether they got eaten or not, starving as they were.

At one point, Janna didn’t watch her step and suddenly heard screaming from below. Some unlucky girl had gotten caught underneath and was wailing at the top of her lungs, half sticking out from the sole that crushed her. She looked to be about Janna’s age, and a young man, presumably her lover, rushed to pull her out. As Janna did not move, they both looked up at her, pleading for mercy. She quickly flattened the cute little couple before Laura could notice, rubbing her foot back and forth a few times to mush the bodies and blend them with the mud so as to get rid of the evidence. Making people disappear was easy, thankfully.

The food was largely raw grain and vegetables. In winter, rye was a common crop as well as turnips and whatever was left over from the autumn. Those turnips were very earthy, however, and raw rye was nothing short of disgusting. It was a challenge to keep down, which was probably why Laura sweetened her intake with the blood and flesh of innocents. For these unfortunate souls, it had to be especially insulting to die in such a way, being little more than a spice, an ingredient to make the disagreeable mush of grain, turnip and mud more palatable. Nevertheless, Janna was envious.

It was later in the year than when they had made their way to the Farindel woods to folly with the Red Curse. Time was different there, as was the climate. In the Honinger Lands, now, it was much colder, everything was misty and covered in hoarfrost if not outright snow.

When they had eaten enough, they went back to the ruins of Honingen to sleep.

This could have been their life for three days, but of course it didn’t go that way. First of all, Arvo Lovgold, the captain of Abilachter Riders at Honingen, showed up with a reasonably large force of his light cavalry. This was good because Ardan and Devona needed a fighting force to protect them just now. Arvo also seemed to indicate that what had happened to Honingen was Devona’s fault for having run away and distracting the city from the danger the ogres posed.

Janna felt she had to jump to the girl’s defence, “That’s horse shit! She had to go fight the curse. Without her and Ardan, we would never have escaped it. It was all that other girl’s fault, that bitch who poisoned Furio.”

Lovgold submitted, obviously, affirming Janna’s opinion without compromise. The man was a lickspittle and an opportunist.

Dari wasn’t, much to Janna’s surprise. The girl was begging but not in a way that belittled herself.

“I saved you!” she spat. “I distracted the spider! The black wizard told me to do it! You’re in danger! You need me more than you know, please!”

Janna had waited for Laura to fall asleep, keeping Dari trapped in her fist the entire time. Then she went as if to make water, planning instead to pleasure herself quickly and getting rid of Dari in the process. She already knew she would have second thoughts before she started having them, but the sweet relief she anticipated would help her get over those.

Dari was injured at the hip and not very quick afoot just now, putting her completely at Janna’s mercy but also impairing her with regards to the task at hand. Still, her begging and reasoning made Janna wetter and wetter until she had to bite her lip and take her pants off for fear she might burst.

Dari resounded herself to her fate, falsely hoping she might be left alive if she performed well. The result of this impolite lie worked well to the benefit of Janna. It was breath-taking, if not outright magical.

Dari was stimulating her clitoris with sheer superhuman speed.

Because of this, Janna neared climax much sooner than she wanted and decided to punish Dari for the rush. She took the tiny, broken girl and pushed her deeply into her most intimate place, all the way, as deep as she could.

Dari went frantic, panicking in the dark, wet and quickly closing tunnel. Janna squealed with delight when she felt the struggles. Something had gone into the little girl, clearly. She was moving so fast that Janna found it difficult to contain herself.

The moment she came, Janna felt as though she was perched atop a cloud. She kept Dari imprisoned after the frantic struggles ceased, and only eventually allowed the girl to free herself. Then, Janna stood, pulled her pants up and slipped into her boots.

“Janna, please, we can talk about this!” Dari broke out between fits of coughing, hacking up clear slime. “I can serve you! I can do it again if you want, however often you want it!”

She clearly understood that she was about to be bulldozed and Janna found herself enjoying it even more. Power was as addictive as a drug. Of course, keeping Dari wasn’t an option. She would escape, or Laura would notice. Plus, a decision was a decision.

“Please!” Dari whined at the top of her lungs before the tip of Janna’s shoe snuffed her life out like the glow of a cigarette.

‘Mush, mush, mush,’ Janna thought, playing with the body.

Dari had been a petite beauty. Now she was but a small amount of red pâté. And Janna felt strangely happy with herself, like after a job well done, although that may have been just the afterglow of her orgasm. She smeared Dari across the length of her footprint and went to sleep.

The next morning, she and Laura had to find food again. Honingen wasn’t itself anymore. It felt like there was hardly anything left of it even though it still looked mostly like they had left it. Laura tried to salvage the situation by organizing the remaining city folk, but it was clear that it was a futile effort.

So, they went to Abilacht. This walled town had between one and two thousand souls in it but appeared to be quite defensible and in good shape. The rebellion had left some traces here and there like soot upon walls and gates and a few burned buildings but overall and compared to Honingen it seemed to be in rather good shape. Its banners were flapping proudly everywhere, a gated tower halved in red on blue and blue on red respectively.

What was most surprising was its closeness to the larger city of Honingen. It took hardly twenty minutes to get there, raising the question why Janna hadn’t stumbled upon it before while taking a walk.

In the middle of the town was a formidable castle, not huge but with double walls and many towers both round and square. The two girls walked straight up to the nearest town gate and were surprised when they found that bells were being rung, there was commotion in the streets and men were given weapons for defence.

“Don’t they know I’m their queen?” Laura asked, half joking.

Her smile faded when the first arrows started hissing up at her from the battlements.

“What are you doing?!” she demanded in the local tongue. “You’re my subjects, you stupid little insects, bow down to me!”

There were only a few watches on the walls and while their number was increasing with every new arriving pair of hands, it wasn’t exactly a dangerous situation by any means, only confusing. Then, over at the castle where more defenders flocked, a new banner was hoisted, the red griffin in front of the golden sun on a blue field.

“That’s the Garethian banner!” Laura spread her arms in disbelief, almost shrugging the blanket off her shoulders.

“Another rebellion?” Janna suggested in English, wondering what she might do if Laura started to trample the town to rubble.

She didn’t have the stomach for more mass murder just now. Sure, Dari had been sweet, but it wouldn’t do to flatten anybody that got a little scared when Godzilla-sized giantesses showed up.

“Answer me, shit heads!” Laura leaned down a little bit too close and immediately winced back when an arrow hit her in the eyeball.

Janna almost laughed. The scene was so absurd, her gigantic friend leaning over the filigree model of a medieval gatehouse and becoming increasingly wroth with its defenders like unruly toys.

“Fuck you!” Laura spat and raised her foot ready to pulverize the structure, but Janna was already on hand to pull her away.

Laura’s shoe harmlessly stomped the road, leaving only a minor dent there.

“Don’t do anything we’ll later regret, okay?” Janna reasoned. “Let’s find out why they are so riled up.”

When Laura did not attempt to fight her, she turned around and crouched, ignoring the needle sting of an arrow hitting her in the cheek that immediately greeted her.

“Stop shooting,” she cooed, “we only want to talk. Is this not Abilacht? Are we not in Honingen?”

She didn’t receive a reply, only more arrows. Some plants had barely visible pricks that were very short and touching them hurt superficially but didn’t cause any injury. She judged the arrows to be somewhat similar even though she could see the shafts with her naked eye. It was an irritation, little more.

In lack of any lords, knights or distinct leaders, she reached out with her hand and attempted to pluck a man she deemed literate from the battlements to interrogate him, but as soon as her finger was in range the defenders hacked and stabbed at her with spears, swords and axes. These could break her skin and she withdrew.

She had to think for a moment.

“Fuck this,” Laura stirred behind her. “If they don’t want to hear, let them feel it. Get out of the way. I’ll mush them up for you and then we can eat. I’m starving.”

Janna shook her head. She didn’t want another city wiped out just so she wouldn’t feel hungry anymore.

“Let’s play a game,” she suggested instead. “We go past them and into the town and we try to figure out what’s going on. The catch is that you’re not allowed to kill anyone or torture or hurt them in any way.”

She would’ve said more, but Laura already agreed enthusiastically, “hell, yeah! But…what are the stakes?”

“Well, I guess if you win, I’ll have sex with you,” Janna looked up at Laura, seeing if it would work.

Laura chewed her lip, “with as many tines as I want?”

“Up to…twenty-five,” Janna allowed.

Initially she wanted to say ten, but then she felt how awkward it would be if they ran out during the act, and guilty or not, she wanted to enjoy herself also.

“Fifty,” Laura countered, waiting for a reply.

‘Fifty people,’ Janna thought. ‘When did we become such monsters.’

But she nodded anyway.

“Deal!” Laura pronounced happily. “But what if you win?”

Janna grimaced, “Then I don’t have sex with you, and you don’t kill anybody for fifty days.”

“Pfff!” Laura made, objecting. “Fifty days! Screw you, I’m mashing them!”

“Okay!” Janna yelled to make her stop, an arrow striking her earlobe in a particularly sensitive way. “Ten! Ten days without killing. Can you do that?”

Laura crossed her arms, “I give you three and only because I love you. Take it or leave it, Janna.”

Janna sighed, “Alright, three. And remember, no killing or torturing or you lose the game.”

Said and done. They fanned out, leaving the bowmen without a target to shoot at, Janna going right and Laura left around the town walls. It was almost comical, the ease with which they could avoid the defenders. They both stepped in at roughly forty-five degrees from the first gate they had seen and Janna paid close attention to Laura’s feet, trying to see if she was crushing anybody.

There were too many houses in the way, but if there were red splotches later, then she would claim her reward and at least get Laura to stop killing for three days. The castle stood on a hill that was about fifteen metres high and Janna made as straight a line for it as she could because she thought to find an authority figure there.

The streets were quite narrow but there were green patches with trees, grazing grounds and even some fields, especially where the ground was too steep to build on. The landscape here was far hillier than the flatlands they had seen at Honingen. The livestock was similar, though, making her mouth water with the thought of cheese. She had heard that one of Abilacht’s delicacies was a particularly stinky cheese that was supposedly even more delicious than the cheddar-like stuff they made at Honingen.

People scurried out of her path. Market stands and carts crunched under her feet and she hoped that nobody had been hiding underneath or she would lose the bet.

All seemed to be going well until Laura exclaimed from the other side of the town, “I got it!”

She was holding some female figure by the leg, dangling her upside down, exposing a pair of puffy white undergarments.

Laura smirked wide, “It’s an imperial town. It belongs to the Empress of Gareth directly. Like they pay her taxes and such. They were with us after the rebellion but thought I was gone so they just went back to the status quo.”

“And then they stuck with it even with your foot hovering over them?” Janna asked, incredulous.

It was so stupid, Janna almost felt bad for not letting Laura stomp into the town and level it, even if that meant picking through rubble to find edibles.

“Have to stand on some principle, I guess,” Laura replied with a shrug. She tossed the tiny female over her shoulder and over the walls before rubbing her hands. “Guess that means it’s breakfast. And sex later,” she winked at Janna before switching to the local tongue. “Hello, Abilacht! You’ve chosen treachery, but I’m willing to forgive you! I won’t kill all of you, ha, ha, yet! For now, I want food! Bring me all you’ve got!”

Janna looked down in defeat and saw that a group of armed men had just approached her boots with weapons. Upon Laura’s words echoing over their rooftops and seeing Janna’s gaze upon them they all froze.”

“Do what she says,” Janna whispered in annoyance, feeling her foot twitch with the urge to punish them for their stupidity even as they finally had the wits to run away from her.

Stupidity and bravery were close cousins, clearly. Seen in another light, one might have called it admirable what they did.

“Oh thank the Gods!” And old man at her feet came on, huffing and puffing, wearing elegant clothing in blue and red and some gold jewellery. “I thought you might kill us all!”

“Let me guess,” Janna replied. “Your troops at the gate didn’t receive the order to turn coats again?”

He coughed, “Uh, just so! I, uh, I apologise for any insult or injury you may have suffered! I am truly deeply sorry about this misunderstanding! I am the Master of Abilacht, my name is-”

Splat. He didn’t get to finish because Janna instantly crushed him under her shoe when she took a step forward. He was clearly a rich man and had to have been going on seventy years so she didn’t feel too bad about it. It was just that someone had to pay for what almost happened – and still would happen because she lost the bet.

His absence wasn’t much noted, it turned out, because the Abilachters were crafty people perfectly capable of organizing themselves. Under Laura’s supervision they brought food and livestock to the central square overshadowed by six large trees neatly arranged like the eyes of a die. These trees were very much in the way, of course, and so Laura removed them root and stem and tossed them out of the city.

It was a real shame for that lovely square. And Janna shuddered at the thought of what her and Laura’s presence would mean besides that. To enlarge the square, Laura had already sat down on and flattened two beautifully whitewashed houses, some of the nicest ones around. With those little foothills, it was quite idyllic here and the snow made Janna think of Christmas.

“Just sit on a house,” Laura gestured when Janna gingerly manoeuvred her boots around buildings and people, a thing that wasn’t exactly easy in the small town. “You’ll get a wet butt otherwise.”

She’d get a red one too, with all those people carrying things. Many of them were crying, the women especially. This made Janna feel guilty while Laura obviously didn’t seem to mind.

“You, you and you,” she pointed at three cheese carriers and then the building closest to her, “make sure this house is empty. Be absolutely thorough or I will make you regret it.”

She looked over to the rubble beneath Laura’s ass and wondered whether a similar precaution had been undertaken. Probably not, which meant there were at least a few smushed corpses in there, still being compressed by the enormous weight.

“So, when do you want to fuck?” Laura asked casually as she started eating. She took a stack of cheese, at least ten wheels worth, and dumped it into her mouth before grimacing. It was lighter in colour than the produce at Honingen, milkier and less yellow with a bit of an unhealthy taint to it. “Urgh, tastes like it smells,” was Laura’s verdict. “Yucky!”

She looked around for something to get the taste out of her mouth and her eyes fell upon three young women who had just delivered some fruit baskets. Apples, pears and plums tumbled all about into the muck as she nonchalantly took all three of them and dumped them into her pie whole where she mashed them brutally and coated her tongue with them.

“So?” she made expectingly with a mouth full of pulped women.

Janna had to force herself to look away and gather her thoughts. The last time they had done it had been good, but that had been because of the ogresses. The memory lit Janna’s loins on fire.

“You want to find Mara and her clan?” she asked directly. “Maybe we can find their trail. They’re a large group and they’re big and heavy, right? I kind of want to do that again…”

“Mhh,” Laura licked her lips, her eyes glued to Janna’s. “Capital idea but the snow will have covered their tracks, I guess. Fucking snow…”

After what looked like three whole families were evacuated from the building that was to serve as Janna’s seat, she could finally sit down. She winced guiltily as the structure caved in to her rear, well aware that she was crushing the work and wealth of generations just for a ten-minute sit down. But then again, it also made her feel proud on some level, like she was important.

She saw a younger male with appealing physique stand carelessly between two stacks of cheese and part of her wanted to grip him with it and make him hers entirely by ingesting him. He reminded her of Steve.

She thought a lot about how they had sat in the pond behind the spaceship that one time. If only that moment could have lasted forever.

The young man did not go into her stomach, hurrying on his way instead after being called out for slagging off. Neither of the giant girls exchanged so much as a word with the locals and Janna liked it that way because she didn’t want to get involved with another settlement. She had her head full and did not want to learn any new names, issues, facts or problems. If truth be told, she had seen just about enough of Albernia.

‘I’d still want to see Havena, maybe,’ she thought. ‘Nothing more.’

Most of all, though, she wanted Steve. It would be so good to have him back. Perhaps her sombre mood would fade then. She’d lost a friend but she would regain a lover. Admittedly, she didn't know whether she could make him love her back, but that was part of the intrigue. She wanted to spend time with him most of all.

“You think they’re gonna be traumatized?” Laura wondered aloud, yanking Janna from her thinking.

“Who?”

Laura fished for some food in her cheek with her tongue before answering, “Steve and Christina. I mean, even if the ogres treated them well they must have seen some bad things and been afraid for their lives like the entire time. Maybe they got PTSD or something.”

It was Laura’s singular talent to constantly shit on any glimmer of hope that Janna conjured up in her mind. She sighed. The notion wasn’t farfetched, but she didn’t want to think about it. She wanted everything to be the way it was, way back when.

“Well, if they are, we gotta help them,” she agreed. “From now on, we have to protect them from all evil. That means no more squishing or eating people.”

Laura grumbled something and went straight for two men who were standing around, sucking them off her fingers before sealing them in the darkness of her mouth.

“What?” she complained after feeling Janna's stare. “If I can't do it anymore when they're back I gotta get in what I can now, don't I?”

“Pa! Pa!” some young voice called out from behind somewhere that Janna couldn't see.

“Oh, shut up,” Laura flared and ended the screaming with a finger, smearing a mangled figure across the cobblestones.

“And what if we're attacked?” she asked, wiping her bloody digit on her jeans.

Janna did not want to have this conversation again for the millionth time. Shrinking had not taught Laura humility, and so nothing Janna could say would do otherwise.

To save as many people from Laura's appetite as she could, she sped up her eating and urged Laura on as well.

“We have until Steve and Chris are back to find those ogresses,” she explained after being prompted. “And I for one would like to have as much quality time with them as I can.”

She had to quench her lust or else she was liable to sit on Steve's face and crush him flat when she got him into her hands. Besides, it worked as a wonderful motivator on Laura who only devoured a further seven people she could easily reach.

Janna missed the taste herself and her mouth ran wet when she looked at all those helpless, little locals. But she stayed strong. The cheese helped her, because it was actually delicious. Laura was just too uncultured for it.

In their quest for the ogres, they were united, however, and Janna felt giddy in her stomach and excited to boot. They were predators, huge and horny, and finally hunting a prey that deserved everything they had coming.

“I can't wait to see you sit on Mara,” Laura giggled into her fist as they all but skipped through the landscape. “Maybe she can tell you where that little girl went that killed Furio.”

“Maybe she's with them,” Janna realized darkly and hastened her step a little.

She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it before. Villages and all kinds of settlements were easy to find by the black smoke of their fires, and they went to all kinds of places asking for ogresses.

Sometimes, they got a positive response but these reports were all from the time the ogresses had come to Honingen rather than leaving.

“So they came from the south,” Laura surmised after a while. “Aren't we going the wrong way?”

They had been walking north-westerly, mostly because it looked wide and open there. Janna had once heard a political joke about the War on Terror on Earth, the longest war in history, that was beating somewhat in the same vein.

“But they didn’t come by here,” she reasoned. “They must have gone west from Honingen…if they’re going back, that is. What if they decided to go somewhere else, like north across that river, or even east into Nordmarken? Who would stop them?”

“Hagrobald might,” Laura screwed up her face but ended up agreeing.

They decided to check out the area west of Honingen first and were well rewarded for their effort when a village they wanted question turned out to be ransacked and burned and all inhabitants missing.

“The ogres ate them, sure as shit,” Laura gleamed.

They had their trace. And once they had their first one, they found another, and another. They ice on a large puddle nearby had been broken spectacularly and frozen back over all crooked. Trampled young trees could be seen, and the frozen carcass of half a cow.

The two girls hurried along further, following the signs. Janna found that for creatures so big, the ogres were able to move with remarkable secrecy. But they were still many and huge and heavy.

The beasts had bypassed villages and farms and completely obliterated others, leaving no survivors. After apparently not being able to eat anymore, they had started to have their fun with the helpless human villagers and peasants. There was a frozen man with blood and guts spilling out of his mouth, his arms and legs smashed to bloody mincemeat and splintered bones.

Flattened corpses were in evidence as well, and some naked women who had clearly been used sexually.

“They did that!” the first survivor they encountered confirmed. “They sat on them like a rider, and they rode them dead and moaned all the while! And who was not dead when they left off them, they took forth to use another time!”

He was some farmer who professed to have survived by the mercy of Farindel and hiding in a haystack. He was in bad shape, though.

“They could smell me!” he wined. “And they smelled me out and they sat on me! And they laughed!”

The laughing seemed to unnerve him the most because he started to cry as he said it.

“Shhh,” Laura made warmly and snuffed out his suffering with the tip of her sneaker. “Nice, so we know we’re on the right track!”

It was well into the afternoon then, and food became a concern once more. Eating people would be quicker but Janna threatened to call off the hunt. Robbing peasants was tedious and of course Laura had to be a pouty little bitch about it, but it was still the lesser of two evils.

“Great, now it’s almost nightfall, it’s getting dark!” Laura voiced her displeasure. “I didn’t want to sleep out here but oh no, god forbid Janna has to eat a few peasants!”

She marched straight through the settlement they had just foraged in with no regard for anyone or anything in her path. Straw, wood and a screaming person were catapulted through the air, and undoubtedly many died or were injured. Janna waited a small moment trying to empathise, to feel what it was like to be trampled on so easily and for no good reason. She could feel it somewhat, but somehow it also turned her on.

She had to take her mind off it.

“You know,” she said, “we’re always out here. We haven’t slept indoors since we left the ship, not counting dungeons. So what the fuck are you on about? What fucking difference does it make?”

Laura did not have a response. In the rapidly descending twilight, they spotted a wooded area that had a hill formation looking somewhat like a gigantic bed, and with the snow quite a soft one at that.

Unfortunately, it was already occupied. When Janna was thinking about yelling a warning in case there were hapless people living between the trees, Laura suddenly cried out and all hell broke loose at once.

Janna stood there like an idiot while the trees seemed to start moving. And they screamed as well. There were flashes between the trees and dark shadows far too big to be people.

“Fucking help me!” Laura cried and fell lengthwise into the grove. The shadows were on top of her at once and as they reached the fading light Janna could see that they were ogres.

She was astonished more than anything.

Laura screamed as if a tarantula had bitten her, twisting and wreathing there on the ground with the wild ogresses all over her body.

Janna finally fell forward, kneeling over Laura’s back and whisking the barbie-doll-sized assailants off her friend until she felt sharp, stinging pains like needles and razorblades in her hands and legs. They had weapons.

“Fucking…shit!” she heard herself exclaim when they focused all their attention on her knees and legs after she withdrew her hands.

“Get off me!” screamed Laura, now pinned by Janna and an even easier target for the ogresses.

They had spears and blades, but human-sized ones, looking ridiculous, as if they were playing with toys. But those toys hurt, and they ran red with Janna’s and Laura’s blood.

There was no time to think or plan or weigh her options, so Janna first tried to lift herself with her hands. They hacked at her fingers immediately, cutting through her skin, so she had to give up almost right away.

Rolling worked far better. She hunkered down on Laura’s back and rolled to her right, fighting her way through trees and ogres simultaneously. This got Laura free, but she was already so badly battered that she only wailed and screamed for the moment.

Janna had rolled over a bunch of ogresses but she had clearly failed to crush them properly because they were after her within a moment’s notice. She could not roll over the trees as quickly as they could run over the clear ground she left behind, so now she was getting cuts on her arms also.

It was truly dreadful, but in her first moment of clarity Janna realized that it was outright dangerous too.

“Get them!” Laura cried like a baby. “Get them off my eyes, please!”

Janna felt sick to the stomach imagining Laura with gauged out eyes, blinded and useless from now on. Perhaps it wouldn’t be undeserved, but it sure as heck would be annoying.

“Bitches!” she cursed, and then she stopped suddenly, ignoring the pain, before rolling the other way.

A mad laugh escaped her when she could feel the squirming under body. Her butt was too large as if her lower back could have touched the ground, so she still received cuts there, but multiple others were well trapped, two under her shoulders, one in her hair, at least one under her rump and three or four under her legs.

She sat up immediately and whatever was caught under her rear end was crushed. She tried pushing her legs down but found that taking too long to do damage. Furthermore, the one in her hair was still holding on and now tried to get on top of her head and gauge her eyes out. She grabbed that one with her hand and threw it away into the forest.

“Little shits,” she sneered as she got up trampling for the ones by her legs.

She got one or two, she wasn’t sure and there was no time to check because she had to rush over to Laura immediately.

“Get off her, you creatures!” she shouted, forgetting that only Mara could understand.

She savagely beat away any of the attackers at Laura’s head, and then grabbed her friend by the shoulders and bodily pulled her out of the grove.

She thought that might give her sone respite, but she was wrong.

“Get up!” she had to shout. “Get to your feet or they will fucking kill you!”

They were still coming. In fact. many had held on to Laura’s body and were still hacking and stabbing like butchers with their spears and blades. Janna beat them off next while helping Laura up.

In a strange moment, after the last one was off, her eyes locked with those of a spear-wielding ogress at her feet. She saw the bloodlust fade. And she saw the fear that replaced it.

“Bye-bye!” she grinned and stomped on the little pest like she had never stomped on anything else before.

The crunching sound echoed in the hilly grove and for a split second all ogresses stayed their hands. Then, they roared.

“Look at my fucking eye!” Laura wailed and turned around.

It was smeared with blood but there was no time for any further assessment.

“Fuck them up!” Janna screamed instead and turned back towards the coming onslaught.

She kicked one ogress like a soccer ball and sent her flying, and then she stomped for another one but missed.

It was rather remarkable, she could trample an army of human beings like walking through leaves, but these little shits actually fought back.

“Fuck you!” she spat and tried again to get the one that had dodged, but the tiny monster once again evaded her almost completely.

Almost, because she managed to pin the tiny ogress' foot under the tip of her shoe.

“Heh, heh,” she chuckled and tried to snuff the creature out with her other foot, but this failed because that foot was so beleaguered with so many ogresses that she tripped and fell on to her knee.

She had never pushed half a dozen pin needles straight into her thigh before but now she knew what that felt like. It was awful. Worse yet, went she tried to push herself up with her hands, they were cut as well and she almost fell face-first into the muck.

“I’m scared!” Laura cried from behind, still shocked and useless.

“You fucking insects!” Janna roared. “I will crush you all, just wait!”

Instead of getting up, she let herself fall onto her buttocks, first burying another ogress and then using her hands to grasp whatever else she could, bouncing on her rear end all the while. Whatever she caught, she tossed beneath herself to be flattened further with every bounce she made. It must have looked quite ridiculous, and it was certainly an exhausting workout, but within a few seconds the ogresses started to back away from her.

She lashed out and caught a straggler by the arm, pulling the tiny woman onto her lap and prying the minuscule blade from her fingers. It looked so pathetically small and was capable of little more than needle pricks und superficial cuts. Nevertheless, Janna could feel the pain and the blood on her skin.

Laura had to be more affected because of her footwear, she thought. Perhaps the ogres had even tried to hack through her Achilles tendon. They had clearly planned this ambush ahead of time, but now it was no longer going as planned.

“I will fuck you flat, you little cunt,” Janna told the struggling mini-beast in her lap before calling out. “What’s the matter, Mara? Can’t handle me, or what?”

There was no reply, at least not in words. Instead, the ogrish war cry returned once again. Janna realized that Mara and her band had only been catching their breaths.

She jumped to her feet at once, “Laura, some fucking help would be appreciated!”

But support was not forthcoming.

“We gotta leave!” Laura called out instead.

It had become so dark already. It was winter, aye, but Janna started to wonder for how long they had fought at this point.

She decided that offense was the best defence here. The ogresses could only scratch her leather boots, after all. So, she stormed forward, stomping and screaming.

It was hard to aim her feet in the fading light. Sometimes she thought she might have crushed a bone, but it may just as well have been a tree. She couldn’t tell anymore.

Furthermore, ogresses clung to her jeans when they could and started to climb up her leg or wrap themselves around it to continue stabbing. And there were so many of them.

“They’re coming for me!” Laura wailed. “No, no, get away!”

She performed a pretty impressive kick that sent an ogress flying past Janna’s head, but it didn’t give her courage. Instead, Laura tugged tail and ran.

“Wait!” Janna called, desperate not to lose her friend again.

To her absolute horror she discovered that both of them had shrugged off their blankets in the chaos, which meant an incredibly uncomfortable time from now on, if not death by hypothermia.

She started running with ogresses still on her legs, grabbing the blankets and following Laura’s shadow as quickly as she could. One by one, the ogresses were thrown off, and when she felt a little safer she pulled the last two off by hand and disarmed them.

She found Laura crying and out of breath next to some farmstead, a considerable distance away from the battlefield.

“My eye!” she sniffed. “Look at it! I can’t see!”

“Hold these” Janna told her and shoved the two disarmed ogresses into her arms while dropping the blankets.

She needed a light source to examine the severity of those wounds, and while she felt sorry for it, it was the farmstead that would have to serve. She felt a hunger and so the farmer and his many-headed family became her meal. Then she shoved the straw from the roof into their fireplace before piling on the dry wood of the walls.

It had started to snow, she saw, when the flames roared up like an inferno under her breath. Laura’s face looked pretty bad at first glance, the blood from all those tiny cuts. Her left eye was crusted shut with red.

“Let me see,” she beckoned and Laura gave an uncomfortable groan.

There was a cut on the eyelid. That was all. The blood had seeped into Laura’s eye and made her believe all manner of horrible things.

She sniffed, “How bad is it?”

“Terrible,” Janna sighed. “You’re officially a wuss, Laura. They cut you pretty good but your eyeball is perfectly fine, just wash the blood out.”

They could have won that fight. None of the cuts on Laura’s face looked deep enough to even leave a scar.

“Really?” Laura was relieved. “Wow, I really thought they had taken the eye out! What do we do now?”

Janna replied by examining her own wounds. Her hands were the worst, looking as if though she had crawled through razor wire. Her tight jeans had fended off all cuts, but some of those spears had gone through and were still stuck in her like wooden splinters. She pulled them out one by one while gritting her teeth, sighing whenever one came out snapped and without the tip.

“You gotta get those out or you’ll get an infection,” Laura stated the blatantly obvious. “Would probably be good if we had human help for that.”

Janna looked at the farmstead she had turned into a bonfire and licked the last bits of its inhabitants from her teeth.

“You think we could get them to do it?” Laura lifted the two terrified ogresses into the light. “Not exactly medical professionals, are they.”

‘No,’ Janna wanted to say when her eyes trailed off into the darkness and she saw movement there.

“They’re back!” she warned at once, yanking Laura with her. “The fire, they must have followed us!”

A new war cry answered her, the rawness, size and sex of those who emitted it making it sound like some Eastern European feminist ensemble. It was impressive, aye, but also very terrifying and Janna was beginning to feel exhausted at this point.

So, they ran away again. Janna cursed herself, thinking that maybe they would have stood a much better chance with the light of the fire, but by then it was already too late. She hated to admit it, but it felt like they had been beaten at their own game.

“Did you take the-” she started but stopped when she saw. “Aw, why did you drop them?!”

She had wanted to vent her frustrations at least, on those two hapless ogresses she had disarmed.  

“I didn’t want them to slow me down!” Laura defended herself without the hint of regret.

Janna raised the much larger and more cumbersome sleeping bags she carried, but the argument fell on deaf ears.

Instead Laura  had a look around. Nightfall had come and gone and there wasn’t much light to be had.

“Where the fuck are we?” she asked, looking for landmarks.

They had run until they were out of breath, and jogged for a while longer.

“All I know is we have to go on,” Janna said. “If they attack us in our sleep...”

Laura agreed, but finding directions on a cloudy night was especially difficult. During the day, they always went by the position of the sun coupled with the approximate time of day. At their height, they could almost always make out were the sun was, even on cloudy days. They also had a pretty good sense of direction by now, but this didn’t work after having lost their bearings.

“Do you think they can still follow us even if we don’t light a fire?” Laura asked while pulling her blanket from Janna to wrap herself in against the cold.

There was no knowing such things, only hope and an uneasy feeling in the belly. They decided to ask for directions but couldn’t really see who to ask. The snow had grown a bit thicker yet, falling like powdered sugar from the sky, almost invisible in the darkness and still obscuring the distance to them.

This was solved when Laura’s foot inadvertently crashed through someone’s roof, flattening half the building in the process.

“Could you stop screaming and stay still, please?!” she scolded the surprisingly plentiful occupants who were now running for their lives while howling as though the sky had fallen in on their heads.

Janna could see the building and the adjacent structures as slightly darker shadows only now that she knew something was there. It seemed to be yet another farmstead.

“Try to catch one!” Laura exclaimed while running her fingers over and through everything before her. “Where are we?!”

She had caught some figure already, but it didn’t turn out to be human as it started to squeal like only a sow could.

“Damn, I’m almost blind!”

She ran her fingers over and through everything in her path, first comically questioning two pigs and a lamb before finally raising a tiny human being between her fingers.

He was a young man in the beginnings of adulthood and he did not know where Abilacht was, which Janna found alarming. When asked about Honingen, he said he had never been there either but he said he might have gone there had it been closer to his home than Havena.

The realization that they were more than half way to the great city shocked both giant girls somewhat.

“I’m a journeyman,” the young man professed further. “My master sent me to the big place to learn some new ways!”

He also said that he didn’t want to die, a thing that Laura seemed to take as a queue to eat him. Janna stayed her hand with the little craftsman mere inches from her lips.

“What’s your trade?” she asked, trying to soothe his nerves.

He yelled out, “Carpenter!”

“Want to keep him for furniture?” Laura chuckled cruelly and simply sucked him off her fingers and into her mouth.

Janna could hear him screaming until two molars ground him to mush between them.

“You didn’t ask him for directions,” Janna noted. “Don’t we need to know which way to turn?”

Laura gestured around, “How would he have known? I can hardly see you anymore.”

It was true, and worse yet, a nasty wind came up, driving the snow before itself in thick walls of grey that were absolutely impenetrable to the eye. The decision to continue on the next day was virtually inevitable.

“So,” Janna asked once they had made their night camp as best as they could muster behind a hill they found with their feet while holding hands, “Do we hunt those ogres tomorrow or do we go to Havena?”

“I kind of want to go to Havena,” Laura replied. “It’s safe and it’s big and they got loads of food and we can get those spear tips removed there.”

Janna could not really feel them because they were so small but she had no doubt that they were there. Perhaps they would grow out on their own, though. And if those wounds would get infected, she was wasn’t certain anymore either, because she had never gotten one before from any wound she took.

“We could’ve taken that journeyman with us,” Janna said with the wind howling over the hill. “That would have been the right thing to do.”

Laura laughed, “We are taking him with us, though. Well, if I don’t shit him out along the way.”

Janna dreamt of ogresses and Steve. He was sitting upon a throne high over them all, and ogresses beautiful and ugly came to have sex with him. The actual act didn’t last very long in her dream, but it was nevertheless lewd and steamy. She was one of the ogresses, the same size as them, but when her turn came, he rejected her. An ice-cold feeling spread in her then, so strong that it was giving her a headache and threatened to freeze the tears streaming down her cheeks.

She awoke to find that she had unwrapped herself from her sleeping bag cocoon in her sleep, exposing herself to the weather.

‘What if he doesn’t want me?’ she thought, feeling a million tiny snowflakes melt onto her face, wetting it. ‘What do I do then?’

She realized that she was stupid for having the feelings she had. But she couldn’t help it.

Her next sleep was mercifully dreamless, and the next morning saw almost clear skies, great weather and a landscape that was as pristine as anything she had ever seen. Little gingerbread houses dotted the scenery along stick fences, hedgerows and low stone walls. Every spruce looked like a Christmas tree with branches weighed down by the thick blanket of snow that looked almost warm.

“Oof!” Laura made when she finally sat up. “Merry fucking Christmas, yo. I didn’t get homesick before but this is something else.”

Janna felt the same way but on this problem as well there was no helping it. Those lovely houses, of course, were also not covered in frosting but snow, and they weren’t made of gingerbread either, and her stomach was churning anew with hunger.

“Phlegh!” Laura made, spitting out a shower of branches, leaves and dirt. “Word to the wise, don’t try to suck snow from the ground for water!”

“Duly noted,” Janna giggle a little.

“I should have waited till we are closer to Havena,” Laura went on. “There are so many lakes there and they are so huge we could actually bathe in them!”

“All the lakes you can drink,” Janna smirked. “But let’s put off that bathing thing till next summer, shall we?”

Half an hour later, the upbeat atmosphere of the morning had already flown past.

“You can’t fucking not eat till we’re there, that’s mad, Janna!” Laura shouted while shuffling after her with a mouth full of helpless innocent people.

The problem was a lack of large settlements. Shaving off surpluses as Janna had wanted would take too long as they were already pressed for time if they wanted to make it back to Honingen for the promised return of Steve and Christina. But Janna didn’t want to eat anymore people. She felt sorry enough already for the family the night before.

‘Well, not really,’ she thought. ‘But I should! Surely, a conscious decision is worth more than a vague feeling, right?’

If only she hadn’t been in the presence of a sadistic nihilist, then maybe she may have broached the subject again, but she had been over this with Laura far too often, and in her own head, too.

She made it till lunchtime before her stomach triumphed over her moral compass. She was simply too hungry by that point, doing this forced, heavy march for the second day in a row right after those exhausting horrors in the Farindel.

“Okay, you fucking win,” she turned and snapped at Laura. “But just so you know, this is an exception, I’ll never do it again and if I hear so much as one word out of your fucking mouth, I swear I will slap you!”

Laura grinned and spoke anyway, “Wanna make it fun?”

Her idea was not sex but rather a silly party game. No hands. It sounded annoying and unnecessary at first, but Janna agreed so as not to be judged.

They had found the imperial road and it was taking them through the marshes towards Havena. The playground, or rather the buffet, was a town called Thurhag that had about nine hundred souls and lived off of the traffic to and from the great metropolis.

The inhabitants knew Laura from when she had briefly visited Havena before and reminded her of a promise not to eat of them the next time she came through.

“I don’t remember promising that,” Laura simply shrugged. “Besides, I’m practically a politician now.”

Janna was too hungry to care. They knelt, put their hands behind their backs and leaned faces-first into the settlement. It was very close and personal that way, the fear on those tiny faces even more visible than usual.

Janna mumbled a half-hearted apology before she started eating. To her surprise, the method proved hilarious and intoxicating.

The first few were easy as people were just standing around, not knowing what was about to happen. Janna simply dashed at her prey with her lips and sucked the people into her mouth, wolfing them down almost instantly. They never stood a chance.

In the ensuing panic it became trickier, but therein laid the real sport of the exercise. No hands meant what it said, and of course everyone tried to get a roof over their heads as quickly as possible.

“Are we eating houses now?” Laura giggled in her brightest, most gleeful way when Janna tried to dismantle a building bit by bit with her teeth.

It was like munching on age-old crackers and not very pleasurable.

“Come on, use your head, Janna!”

She demonstrated it by barging face-first into a house and wiggling a bit before coming out victoriously with three struggling townsfolk betwixt her lips.

For the people, it was clearly horrible, but Janna was experiencing real fun. She showed Laura that she was capable of emulating the technique and soon dozens of townsfolk went down into her belly.

She trapped a young woman against a wall and played with her, poking her with her nose and cutting off her escape routes with her tongue. The tiny female became so aggravated that she started to fling pottery at Janna’s face which of course was futile. When she broke down and cried, Janna grinned and offered her open mouth, but the woman still would not hop in.

When Laura wasn’t looking Janna swiftly took her prize and shoved her down into her panties. The game was making her wet and drunk with power.

“Ey, no hands, okay?” Laura reminded her. “Play by the rules!”

A young man who was swift on his feet was chased by Janna through three buildings before she finally caught him. He begged her for his life but she took it anyway, quenching her hunger and lust. She sent him down hole as she had done with several others. They were so helpless, all hers to toy with. She didn’t even need hands.

In her panties, the tiny woman had somehow managed to wedge herself deeper and deeper into her sex and appeared to be drowning, thrashing around as much as her little body could, unwillingly providing her with the pleasure she so desired.

She caught another young, lanky male with her teeth and made it her objective to break as many of his bones as she could without killing him. He probably didn’t feel much after she crushed his spine against her incisors, but swallowing his limp, crying form almost made her orgasm. She pictured him drowning in the acid of her stomach amongst the multitudes she had crushed and pulped or ripped to pieces, and a myriad of clothing items as well. It was all organic so she wouldn’t have too much trouble digesting it.

Finally, she spread her legs and sat so that she could grind on a pile of rubble as if on a hard pillow. When a shuddering orgasm overcame her, the little woman down below finally died.

“Phew, that was fun,” Laura giggled. She slushed around her last mouthful of Thurhager inhabitants with her tongue before sensually sending them down. “I’m pretty full, how about you?”

Janna stood and dusted herself off. She had crawled into the town while giving chase, and a number of people had gotten crushed under her knees, legs and buttocks, she realized.

She fished the dead woman out of her vagina and flicked her away, “Let’s go to Havena.”

She was giving Laura the perfect opportunity to just let it go and move on, but of course that was too much to ask.

Laura’s face turned sceptical, “So, are you cured now, or what?”

“No,” Janna snapped. “This was a one-off thing because of necessity. And I only agreed to it because you agreed to shut the hell up about it, so do me a favour and stick to your word at least this fucking once.”

Laura could ruin everything, even a bloody cheat day. It was just like her to frame doing the right thing as some sort of disease. If it were the other way around, however, then Janna clearly wasn’t cured either. She still enjoyed it, frightfully so.

The river delta in which Havena lay was a landscape Janna had not seen before from a hundred meters tall. There were more streams than she could count. It was notably warmer somehow, perhaps due to the gigantic ocean ahead or perhaps due to some underground volcanic activity. Havena had once been much larger, supposedly. But a great part of the city had sunk into the sea.

Though, what was left of it, still, was nothing short of breath-taking.

“Thirty thousand people,” Laura said. “It’s a shame we only have like half a day with it.”

It was roundish, completely full of rivers, harbours and little islands and perhaps thirty-six paces in diameter, meaning it occupied roughly a third of a football field. Given how small it’s inhabitants were, describing the city as an anthill didn’t even begin to do it justice.

Laura was right, there just wasn’t enough time to explore it all. They had to go back to Honingen or risk missing Steve and Christina. Laura had visited briefly before. But it seemed she had not caused any destruction. A few scaffolds stood here or there but they seemed not to be out of the ordinary. The outer walls were grey stone but red bring at the top, which reminded Janna of Honingen, as did the whitewash on many of the buildings inside. But this was simply on a wholly different scale and there appeared to be some things she had never seen before outside of a documentary on ancient Rome.

-

“She’s still hungry,” City Magistrate Ardach Herlogan said, half to himself and half to the wetnurse.

The woman was standing in the shadow by the window, scowling at him for some reason, as if he was doing the baby harm. He was offering one of his finger stumps to the infant girl on his arm and she started to suck on it immediately and with great delight. It tickled him a little.

“Er, where did I lose this one again?” he wondered aloud.

He had forgotten. Some servant of the law had chopped it off in some harbour town somewhere. For smuggling. He used to remember where, for every one of his stumps. But life had been too good to him recently.

The young princess in his arms finally understood that the stump she was suckling on had no milk to offer, so she spat it out and started to cry.

“Feed her,” he sighed and offered the baby away.

The woman took the girl and stormed out of the room as though she had witnessed some sort of perverted cruelty. Ardach wondered whether he should hire a different one.

‘One more warm-hearted, perhaps,’ he thought. ‘Elsewise, what if the child turns out like her, some scowling, mean spinster?’

His king would hate that.

‘Although, not king anymore,’ Ardach mused with a look to his counting table.

It was a bad habit of his to stack his parchments among the myriad of different tokens he used to do his calculations, but he did this on purpose as well because he had never actually quit smuggling. Many of the ships coming to or leaving from Havena carried certain irregular, hidden goods, and it would neither do to lose a profit due to losing track of them or being discovered.

He found the small note and unfolded it again, bending the stubborn parchment in his hands. Prince Finnian ui Bennain, of Albernia, by the grace of His Royal Magnificence Horasio the Third. That was all it said. It had come by messenger pigeon, meaning there might be other messages older than this one that still had not reached their destination.

He had one such example here as well, from Honingen. The giant Queen Laura had agreed to minting new coins. There were some stipulations about getting her face on the coins but Ardach did not really care about those. He was debasing the currency with every new coin that was minted, and this parchment meant another huge amount of gold for his personal coffers.

Life really had been too good to him recently.

And now, just as recently, several messages had arrived saying that the two giantesses who had occupied Albernia were gone. It was on everyone’s lips already as the rumours spread. Ardach hadn’t believed them before a final message from Turon Taladan put all doubts aside.

‘And what irony!’ he laughed in his head.

When receiving the Horasian message that confirmed Finnian as the ruler of Albernia, now as a prince rather than a king, he had been deeply sceptical. Albernia was ruled by at least one gargantuan all-crushing, man-eating monster, he had believed.

And then the message arrived saying that Albernia was free again.

The preparations for a citywide celebration were already well under way and no expense would be spared. And of course, Ardach received a personal benefit from those who were overpaid by the city. It was all running like a well-built mill and neither the Council of Captains nor the Elders were any the wiser.

King Finnian...no, Prince Finnian could not really fault him for the whole reminting of coins. If Albernia, now in its totality, was to be part of the Horasian Empire then the minting of Horasian coinage was only proper, surely.

While Havena had been Horasian and the rest of the kingdom Garethian, Ardach had secretly kept faith with Finnian as well. He had orchestrated the continuing Garethian flow of goods to and from Havena’s harbours right under the Horasians’ prominent noses. Finnian still owed him for that, so even if the debasing, thieving, the forging of the ledgers or the ongoing smuggling were to be discovered, Ardach would never face any consequences. He had set everything up so well that it was almost boring.

He laughed right as a familiar voice could be heard, booming over the city like thunder. Ardach’s secretary, Scibor Stewir, came barging through the door at once, looking as though he had seen the Nameless in person.

He stammered and shouted at the same time, “The, the, the Queen!”

He wasn’t speaking of Talena of Draustone, that pretty, young Stepahan girl who had given birth to the child that had suckled on Ardach’s knuckle. Not unless Queen Laura had found either mother or child and eaten them.

But it wasn’t only one giantess. This time, there were two.

The giant queen’s last visit had been brief and jovial by all accounts, but Ardach still remembered the body of the man in the street she had crushed as if he were nothing. The clothing had indicated that he had been poor, which was only a small consolation. The cobbles had caved in to her sheer enormity and the corpse was flattened almost as thin as parchment but for the thread of her sole.

“It’s a reckoning!” his wife was pacing up and down downstairs. “It’s a reckoning for all we have stolen, all that gold, oh, what have we done!?”

“Hush now!” Ardach reminded her. “I invited her here, have you forgotten?”

She put her fist in her mouth and bit on it, strangely reminding him of the little princess.

“Make certain our guests are well guarded and hidden,” he said. “I will go to meet our giant visitors. All will be well.”

The whole city was on the move, it seemed, all bracing themselves in their own way for what they thought was about to happen. And as ever when push came to shove, the chaff separated from the wheat in an altogether very exemplary fashion. Ardach knew that he had to be strong and not succumb to panic. His position did not afford him that luxury.  

While most wealthier people of the city shunned the harbour, he had his house and offices right by the water’s edge. He liked it this way, but it always meant a bit of an obstacle when having to receive notable visitors at the gates or going to the palace or any other event he had to attend. He was usually the last to arrive at meetings or gatherings, and today was no exception.

When he went to his barge, he could hear singing, “Yo-ho! Stand together! Hoist the black sails high! Yo-ho! Stand together! We will never die!”

The boatmen had heard what was coming and had started their cups a bit early, so much so that they were now singing pirate songs. When they saw Ardach, they stopped, all but the one who had his back turned to him. The young man misinterpreted his comrades’ silence as admiration for his admittedly enviable voice and blared out another verse so that it echoed all across the harbour.

Ardach stepped onto the barge and shoved the drunkard into the water with his boot and a laugh before starting to join into the song. Smugglers weren’t pirates, and he despised those who engaged in piracy most of all for their cruelty, but he couldn’t claim that he hadn’t thought about taking a particularly fat cog now and again when it was floundering from lack of wind and left pitifully unguarded.

The giantesses took their time before entering the city, and Ardach arrived at the main harbour just in time to line up with the Council of Elders and the Council of Captains. These were meant to protect the interests of the city against that of its lord, whose interests Ardach nominally represented. In truth, however, one was as corrupt and self-serving as the other, and despite their mighty names, neither council was particularly large or representative.

The Council of Elders comprised of four, Finian Borotraen the guildmaster of tanners, Elwene Aranol the guild mistress of courtesans, and two wealthy merchants, Isidra Smallbeach and Cumal Ongswin. The Council of Captains was made up of two wharf owners, Fann Sourdough and Mislara ni Maraiche, and Caerwyn ui Merodin, who had never sat foot upon a real ship.

“You are late,” Elwene Aranol scolded him when he arrived.

Ardach smiled back at her, “The boatmen were drunk.”

At six-and-sixty she was ten years older than him, but still somehow beautiful.

While the giantesses took their horrible procession, crushing the streets under their heels, she said, “I’m surprised you didn’t take it all in yourself. You grew up at the harbour, didn’t you? Phex protect you.”

He laughed, “Thanks!”

And then Queen Laura was upon them.

When he came home that evening after the giantesses had left again, he was so tired that he could hardly stand. His wife brought him wine and put one of his cats in his lap so he could stroke it while warming his feet on the fire.

“So?” his wife demanded. “How was she?”

“Who?” he asked. “Queen Laura or Janna, the other one?”

What exactly Janna was, he wasn’t quite sure. At her size, she could be queen of anything she wanted, but she had never mentioned any titles. If anything, she was only interested in those old, magnificent buildings from Bospharan times that still stood in Havena and were still in use, such as the racing track and the fighting arena. Both giantesses had spent a long time marvelling at those.

“Well, either of them,” his wife said in a tone that betrayed some sort of disapproval. “I heard they put men in their...hmph, parts. Did they do that to you? I saw them take off their britches.”

The cat in his lap started to purr as he scratched it under the chin.

“I can assure you, they did not put me anywhere,” he said. “They needed some wounds taken care of, is all.”

He would spare her the bloody details of red-armed barber surgeons pulling spear and halberd tips out of their flesh. Their blood was as thick as black tar.

“Well, they didn’t crush you either, I’m glad,” his wife conceded. “Did they kill anyone?”

He took a sip of wine, pondering how far he wanted to go into detail in this matter, “Not in Havena. There were a number of near misses, broken pottery, stalls and wagons flattened, someone’s dog, I think, and I’m sure an untold number of rats, but not people.”

“And outside the city?”

He could almost hear her bite her lip.

“At Thurhag,” he sighed. “At Thurhag, they...”

They went onto their knees and demolished half the town while giggling and chasing people with their mouths before devouring them as some sick game, killing hundreds.

“They ate a few people there, I heard,” he concluded meekly.

It was absurd, start to finish. He had reports and stories of what these giant women did and had done, but when they studied the old Bospharan architecture they had almost seemed like students, acolytes of Hesinde or Nandus, perhaps, or any of those discoverers or young scholars who sought out Havena to see with their own eyes what they had read in books. And yet they were capable of such unspeakable horrors, eating whole villages or sacrificing them to their insatiable sexual desires, as if their sheer size wasn’t bad enough.

“Thurhag?” his wife asked. “Why?”

She had had a sister in Thurhag once, but she had died many years ago while giving birth to a dead child.

“Well,” he stared into the black wine in his cup, shaking it to make little waves. “I suppose they got hungry.”

His wife didn’t believe it, “But why not us? Why did they spare our city?”

“Perhaps they fear us?” he smiled. “A king may burn a village just for sport, but if he tries the same upon a town, the townsfolk may hang him and start a rebellion.”

‘Not Prince Finnian, though,’ he thought. ‘Our prince is not like that.’

In truth, it were more likely those Bospharan buildings that saved Havena, as well as the beautiful sea, the fresh, salty air and a healthy dose of Phexen luck. Also, the entertainment. All those preparations for celebrating the monsters’ disappearance had come in most handy when having to provide distractions with singers, actors, dancers, jugglers, stilt-walkers and acrobats all ready to perform at a moment’s notice, albeit with shaking knees. The giantesses had witnessed an ad-hoc horse race and a bloody, dramatic show fight, several plays of drama and countless songs, all to their amazement. Thurhag, of course, could not provide any such things, not that they were given a chance.

His wife shook her head, “I thought they would stomp us all like dormice.”

It would be like her to think that, of course, did she not stomp everything small enough to fit under her shoe if it crossed her threshold. Once she had killed one of Ardach’s kittens in the night, thinking it was a rat.

He always felt for the little creatures, oft even sprinkling cheese and breadcrumbs for them onto the rushes. But, of course, that also made it easier for the cats.

“Where are they going next?” his wife asked, sounding worried.

“I am not certain,” he replied. “They did not say. But they left rather in a hurry when they saw the hour.”

It had been a regretful farewell on their part, strangely so. And they had even offered apologies. Once the first few artists had performed their craft without being harmed unnecessarily, more and more of them had come forward, even wrangling with each other for a chance.

This was not to say that it wasn’t dangerous or daunting, of course. Laura in particular enjoyed playing with the acrobats, having them climb and perform stunts upon her enormous body. But no one was hurt, save a few bruises. Now they all demanded handsome pay that was not going to be forthcoming.

‘Well, not unless the giantesses come back,’ Ardach smiled to himself.

He had anyone who complained jailed, mostly so that they could not leave the city and be let out to perform again should the necessity arise. The two councils had already praised his wisdom in this decision.

“There was a letter for you,” his wife changed the subject, drawing a sealed scroll of parchment from her skirts. “Came with a rider. I offered him ale and bread before he left but he didn’t want it.”

He held out his hand to receive the message, already seeing the colour of the seal. It was green, and sure enough, the seal was an eagle.

“A message from the emperor,” he said as he unrolled it, his tired eyes flying over the Horasian-styled Kusliker writing. “He is ordering the giantesses again to go south and intervene in the war on his behalf. It seems he is not amused that they have ignored his request thus far. Argh, I should send this after them, but it may make them angry.”

He considered briefly, then tossed the letter into the fire.

Laura wasn’t queen, in truth. She and Janna served the Horasian emperor – or so the Horasians claimed – but that same emperor had just affirmed Finnian as ruler of Albernia. Of course, nobody in their right mind had the guts to say so to Laura’s face. Or maybe the Horasians were lying.

“Oh, and there was another one,” his wife said. “By pigeon.”

He sighed, took it and unfolded it, finding the writing so small that he had to hold it closer to the fire to see its meaning.

“The Emperor of Horas, His Royal Magnificence, misspelled, Horasio the Third, is dead. Long live the Emperor,” he read.

His wife gasped while he had to stifle a mean laugh. It was the nature of messenger pigeons to cause confusion due to them travelling so much faster than traditional messages.

“Who is the new emperor?” his wife asked, trying to put her eyes on the writing.

She couldn’t read, so he let her see it.

“It doesn’t say,” he said, looking between the small parchment and the burning one in the hearth, trying to figure out what they meant in conjunction.

‘Chaos and madness,’ he thought. ‘Thank Phex we’re in Havena. Although...’

“Bring me quill and paper,” he said. “I’ve just had an idea.”