Bram stormed out of the house, once more rattling the walls of the cabin by slamming the heavy door, he was stressed and angry but most of all he was disappointed in himself. He took a moment to try and still himself, the adrenaline coursing through him making him breath heavily, his huge chest rising and falling causing a deep growling sound to rumble out from his throat. He lifted the lifeless body of the peasant maid up in front of himself, seeing her skirts had fallen up over her body while she hung upside down, her lower legs clenched within his fist. He moved his free hand up to sweep the little human's clothes back into place but paused when he noticed bruises on her pale legs. The castle guards had really worked her over when they had given her the beating and the realisation tugged at Bram's already heavy heart. With a sigh he moved the girls skirts back into place, shifting his grip on her so he held her with a little more dignity rather than some kind of dead animal.
He walked to the side of the house and picked a patchwork, roughly hewn sack from an iron hook and held it open with one hand while he lowered the girl into it, then headed off into the woods, the bag handing at his side. He looked down at the sack with a morbid thought of how to him, the outline of the girl's limp body looked much the same as a rabbit would have in a human's hunting bag, only a vague bulge visible to show that anything was in it at all. He hoped it would appear much the same way to anyone he may run in to, perhaps mistaking her for a deer. At the same time though he was confident no-one would come out to these parts of the woods, after-all, it wasn't safe...
This last thought left a bitter taste in his mouth as he strode along carrying the evidence of it.
After around 15 minutes the giant pushed through a thick stand of trees to a small clearing where not much grew. The opening had been made beneath the canopy of an immense Oak tree which had recently fallen, pulling a wide lump of soil from the ground with it's roots. Bram knew the exposed patch of churned up dirt wouldn't look suspicious if anyone did happen to come through this way. He knelt and used a single huge hand to begin pawing at the dirt where the tree had stood, each heavy scoop of soil ploughing deep into the earth until within only a few short minutes he was knelt over a 6ft deep trench.
Gently Bram unwrapped little Mary's body from his hunting bag, her head was still twisted to a horrifying angle on her shoulders and he grimaced seeing the thick purple band of bruising which has flourished around her broken neck. He did his best to delicately turn her face back around to the front, holding her as though he might still somehow hurt her. He knew it was a meaningless gesture of kindness but Bram felt it right to at least try to do something. He lowered her down into the hole he had dug and paused for one last moment before he cupped a single hand against the pile of dirt he had removed and pushed it back into the hole with only a few swift motions, patting the mound flat almost like he was planting a seed.
“Damn it Bram,” He angrily chastised himself “Of all the stupid things you could have done, you had to take her to Catalina.”
He was never as good as his wife at scheming and plotting and Catalina's game had become far more complex than he was comfortable with. In his confusion he had assumed taking the girl to his wife was the best course of action, hoping that maybe Catalina with her sly tongue could convince the servant girl that they both worked towards a common cause, something for the greater good. He failed to fully recognise that Catalina still had the same outlook on the humans as her Mountain-born ancestors. For her, taking little Mary's life had come as natural and as enjoyable as picking flowers. Bram stood and dusted his hands off, sighing heavily before scooping his sack up and heading home.
The Mountain giants had always been a fierce breed. They were the large, savage creatures that the human's told stories of. Grinding people into bread-flour, being snatched up for food if you strayed too far into the hills or simply being crushed flat for daring to trespass into their grim territory. They came from a race who lived in harsh, lonely conditions where food was scarce and in-fighting was constant. They were a war-like species who saw anything smaller than themselves as easy meat. Bram often wondered if there would be any humans left if it weren't for the fact that the Plains and Forest giants had aided them against their more savage cousins.
He had met Catalina during his time on the Council of Nobles. She had come with her father, a low-level king within the mountain territories, and they had hit it off almost immediately. Bram loved her fiery nature and passion for life and he had to admit there was something genuinely exciting about her somewhat savage view of the world. She was like a wolf he desperately wanted to tame but for a time during what the human's called 'The Titan War' he thought he had lost her. Their people had been on opposing sides when the mountain clans united to take the lowlands from all who lived there. The war destroyed a vast number of the Giant races but for Bram at least there was a silver lining. Catalina's family had been almost entirely wiped out, leaving only herself, her young sister and her father alive.
Catalina loved Bram but they couldn't be together while their was such fierce rivalry between the clans, though with the near destruction of the Mountain clans, it was inevitable that times needed to change. The Giantess was granted permission to marry Bram and he had promised her father she would be well taken care of. At the time he was still a Noble, which meant Catalina retained her title as a Lady, it was a step down from being a Princess, but with her Father's kingdom destroyed he was hardly the King of anything. This meant she either 'made do' as a Lady or she was nothing so the arrangement suited both her personal needs as well as her ambitions.
The trouble with humans however, is that they are short lived and incredibly petty. Eventually they forgot their long debt to the Giants who had helped them, and with the Giant race so weakened from the Titan War the Humans in control seized the opportunity to take complete power, forcing the disbanding of the giant's council and relegating their kind to mere commoners. Catalina had been furious. Bram himself wasn't exactly easily forgiving over the treacherous political decision but his anger was nothing compared to that Wild Wolf which had lain dormant within Catalina, and she was very much once more on the prowl. Humans began to disappear. At first it was just a few peasants, then merchants with their travelling caravans began to go missing, then some of the low ranking local politicians, then the town mayor.
Finally a Noble was found in the hills, his limbs were completely missing and his head was found wedged in the tall branches of a tree, seemingly having been thrown aside during the carnage. The remains of what people could only presume was his wife were found in a deep foot-shaped crater, but there wasn't enough left of the woman's body to identify her. The gore was spread across the impact area with such force that the only way to tell it was a female were the bloody scraps of a dress in amongst the mangled remains.
After that incident the Bear family had taken whatever valuables they could carry and left. It had lead them to their home in the forest and Bram's current job, both deliberately placed away from heavy human populations but with enough leverage and wealth that they could set themselves up comfortably. He had used his experience as a Noble to earn the trust of the King directly while he managed his forests and the people of the nearby villages and farms weren't entirely afraid of him. Even so, he tried to keep a healthy distance from them. He was content with his new life and so far it had kept Catalina out of trouble, but it was a far cry from the rich life he'd had previously.
As Bram came back into the clearing in front of his cabin he shook himself from thoughts of the past and surveyed everything he had built for himself. He enjoyed what he and his family had here, and he didn't want to risk it with this prolonged game of cat and mouse Catalina was playing. It ended soon, or he would put a stop to it himself. He hung his sack back up on the hook and headed back around to the door until he was stopped in his tracks by a pair of female voices from inside the cabin. He laid his hand on the door and listened for a moment, he recognised Catalina's voice instantly, and was relieved to find that the second voice was loud enough to be from another Giant but he was curious to know who the second voice belonged to. He pushed open the door and struggled to keep his jaw from dropping as he realised who the stranger's voice belonged to.
Stood in what could be called his living room, chatting excitedly with Catalina, was Felicia. Felicia was the younger sister of Catalina but it was rare that she would come down from the mountains to visit. If Catalina had the appearance of a human in their late 20's to mid 30's her sister had the look of a human in their late teens, though in truth from what Bram could remember she was in fact somewhere around 150 years old. He knew instantly that with everything going on, it could never be a coincidence that she should choose now to arrive.
She wore a dirty-white knee-length dress with long sleeves. It was elegant in it's own way despite being made of a heavy canvas but it was well fitted to her athletic body. The neckline was slender but deep, her cleavage just barely masked by an intricate white lace panel. The panel was matched by a pair of white lace cuffs which half covered her hands as it trailed from her wrists to her finger tips and a final lace hem which had become a worn ragged circle around the bottom of her dress. Her fiery red hair hung in twin braids but only came a little past her shoulders while an untidy fringe hung half over her large hazel eyes.
“Bram!” Felicia exclaimed brightly, a pretty smile highlighting the dimples in her freckled cheeks “Its good to see you, you're looking... brooding, as ever.” She said teasingly as she crossed the room to give him a small hug.
“It's a surprise to see you here Felicia.” Bram said as he stooped to hug the girl, his eyes locking onto Catalina's accusingly from over the shorter girl's shoulder.
Felicia came only to Bram's chest, and though it still meant she stood at around 22ft tall she seemingly appeared petite compared to him. She was in truth only marginally smaller than average for her kind, the Mountain giants were often unusually short compared to most of the Giant race. As they broke their hug Felicia stepped back and smiled wryly up at Bram, she loved him like a brother but never could resist teasing him.
“So Catalina tells me you were being a bit of a mud-heart over your problem with a certain human girl?” She asked sweetly, moving lithely back across the room with almost a dancer's steps to pick up her goblet of wine.
“Did she indeed.” Bram said stiffening up at the insult, the hairs on the back of his neck rising up like hackles, Mud-hearts were what the Mountain clans called the Plains clans as an insult, meaning they were too soft.
“And I suppose her solution was to carry out her little scheme with someone as frost-minded as her?” he asked smugly as he saw both women bristle at the comment, which described the Mountain clan's infamous trait of being hugely difficult to reason with once they had set their minds on a something.
The pair of giant women met eyes briefly and for a moment Bram wondered if he had crossed a line with his casual insult, but Catalina was quick to smile and break the tension with a small chuckle before moving towards Bram and laying a hand on his chest. Her large, emerald green eyes stared into his as he seemed to visibly melt under her affections.
“You wanted this done and finished with my dear, and my sister is here with something to help me... work... meaning it will be over all the quicker.” she said, carefully choosing her words “I had been waiting for Felicia to bring me what I needed to see this through, so now she is here we have no reason to drag this out any further..” The giantess held a hand out to her sister, who in turn took a pouch from one of the small pockets on the front of her dress and gave it to Catalina.
“What's that?” Bram asked curiously
“When you have a rodent in the house, you poison it of course!” Felicia said, giggling excitedly.
Bram simply gave a grim huff, he wasn't going to win any argument against the combined willpower of the two sisters and to try and convince them to give up on their little game seemed pointless now. If he was being honest with himself he would rather see it finished than have to face the prospect of uprooting his family yet again to try to keep them safe. It was Gwendoline or his son, possibly even his whole family. For a brief moment he even considered what was to come to be at least some form of retribution for poor little Mary, but his guilt quickly forced any notion of noble intent out of his head. He dared to hope that perhaps Gwendoline was bored of her game by now, perhaps she would never come back and perhaps this would all be over before it had to get any worse.
The next morning it got worse.