The company of Gadalian and Suevian explorers rested that night in separate camps in the woods. The next morning, they started their march before sunrise and walked until noon. Askar had to change his gauze often and had received a burning ointment that was supposed to ward off infections. Although his wounds still brought him pain, he felt much better than the day before.

They marched close together, wary and suspicious of each other. Askar walked next to Elkas, whose piercing glance never deviated from the road.

“Askar, are you feeling well?” the decurion asked.

“Yes, Elkas. This won’t stop me from doing my duties,” he replied.

“I know, my friend.” He cleared his throat. “I just hope this promotion comes soon along with my leave. I am sure my father would be proud.”

“He’s already proud, brother,” Askar said with a smile.

“I just find it strange that no messages have arrived in so long, no information, no nothing. Sometimes I wish I could read.” He laughed.

“Ha, ha. I honestly think it’s not a bad idea to learn. It’s becoming useful.”

“People who read can only be average fighters,” Elkas explained. “I don’t know if it’s because they spend too much time focusing on things.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“I mean, have you ever seen an Itruschian evading lance thrusts with his neck?”

“It’s just that they don’t train like we do.”

“Anyway,” Elkas sighed. “I really miss Adachia.”

“Not as much as I,” Askar said. He lifted his head as well. He could not escape from his duties, but the longing for Gitara’s warm caress killed him every day. And one day he would be reunited with his child. He couldn’t wait to go back to Adachia, to taste the seasoned lamb skewers at the town square, to smoke sacred leaves with his friends and family. And how he longed to see his child. He hoped in heaven that it had survived.

“Yes, you have a wife, I only have a father. Got to make him proud.”

“Got to give him grandchildren as well.”

“Ah, yes,” Elkas chuckled. “Have yet to find a woman worthy of our seed,” he said with a laugh.

“Well, there are many from back home. Remember that blonde?”

“Ah, the artisan’s daughter. Well, she was kind of cute, but... I don’t know.”

“Askar, any woman will do. You’re almost twenty. Just find a good woman.”

“The customs have changed, Askar. Girls nowadays only know how to dance, eat barley bread, and lie.”

“That’s a sad thought. There’s plenty of good girls who are also fun to be with. How many would not love you. What are you looking for anyway? Or do you fancy men rather than women?”

“No, I would conform with anyone who was just like me. Anyone who fits.”

“That’s foolish. No woman will ever be exactly like you, and if it seems that way, you are deceiving yourself. Anyway, when you come back with that phalera over your armor, you may choose any girl from town.””You two are thinking of home too much,” Adna said from behind their backs, placing a hand over both their shoulders. “You’re gonna start feeling blue.”

“I think we already are,” said Askar.

“Anyway, if you get this phalera decoration, Elkas, you’ll be home earlier than us.”

“Yes.” Elkas raised his chin. “Let’s just be done with this.”

The march continued for hours. Elkas had to speak with the Suevian leader, reassuring him that they were not going to fight among each other, and requesting the same of him. As much as Elkas tried, they could not find many things in common, and Askar felt resentment in the Suevian man’s interactions. Soon, the forest seemed to disperse, revealing a wide pasture and a river of clear water.

Then it appeared on the horizon. At first, it looked like rock menhirs raised against the sun, but as they approached, they saw it clearly. A wooden wall, very much like the one that had guarded the Suevian village miles south, but it had been broken through, as if pierced by multiple airborne battering rams. A wide field of wheat and barley spread before it, and still, a few houses were standing. The group marched forward, feeling a sense of dread in their hearts that Elkas could see from every glance.

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And then, they saw the landing site where the beast’s feet had sunk into the earth. A man could stand in their footprints, and they would reach his waist. The tracks continued, as if the beast had run toward the village. Further up in the field, Elkas found black arrows on the ground. He picked one up. The tip had become flat, deformed, as if it had been shot at a metal wall.

The leader of the Suevian men, whose name was Alarich, pointed at a hut that stood two hundred yards before the village, still intact, and signaled to approach it. Elkas followed him to interview the inhabitants if they were still alive.

The wooden door was shut, and Alarich approached, rapping on the door from outside and calling in their own tongue.

Suddenly, a hand peeked out of the curtain and a man timidly pulled it open. He was thin, red-haired, and partly bald. His clothes were simple. He spoke to the leader, his voice breaking with emotion.

“He’s a farmer. He’s crying because one son is dead,” the Suevian translator explained.

The farmer opened the curtain wide and revealed two small children, a boy and a girl, their hair pumpkin-colored, their faces stained with freckles. He wiped their tears with his fingers.”They were afraid, they cried,” the translator said in a coarse accent, as Elkas became overwhelmed by the terror in the man’s eyes. The man’s bony fists clenched, his mouth morphed into an expression of despair as he told the tale. “A big man from the sky landed, made from iron or ore, big teeth, like swords. He tore through the wall, I could see. He says that he could see the giant stomp the houses with his feet; he saw little men and women thrown into the air; he saw bodies crashing against stone. His son was in the village’s defense. The monster left, then, this man went to the city, to see what was left. His son could not be found. All dead, all dead. Now, Alarich asked if the entire militia fought.” The translator relayed his question and listened to the man’s response. “He...He says they are all dead, some now have no legs, no arms, still in the village. Not dead. He could not help them.”

Elkas nodded. Alarich touched the man’s shoulder, as if comforting him, and the man sobbed like a soldier’s widow.

Alarich signaled the men to march on and commanded some of his men to donate provisions to that family. They advanced through the fields, this time, more attentive. Elkas called on his company to walk aligned, on the outside, ready to form a Phalanx if necessary. As they approached the broken walls, they saw the lifeless bodies, some torn in two, their guts split open, their entrails scattered across the field. The putrid smell of human insides filled the air, and Elkas covered his nose and mouth.

The creature was strong, and Elkas started thinking of possible scenarios. If it emerged from the ground, he had thought the best idea was to shoot it, aiming at the eyes, but the hundreds of arrows he saw on the ground were bad signs. If arrows were not useful, probably lances and swords were out of the question.

Maybe they would have had to use different weapons, such as a catapult, explosives, or battering rams. In any case, he would try any resource he could find, including resorting to fire.

And then, they entered the village. If the sight of the torn bodies outside was gruesome, inside it was a vision of Hades. The roofs of thatched houses had been crushed, some of their walls torn down. The insides were scattered with the remains of entire families, their bones crushed under pressure making the soldiers and barbarians grimace in fear. Brains, intestines, arms, and legs hung from walls and roofs, staining the streets with thick blood. Some barbarians fell to their knees and cried in loud voices, weeping for their relatives. Elkas noticed one unsheathing a bronze sword and screaming to the four winds, as if challenging the giant to battle. But the question remained: why them? What had those innocent people done to deserve the wrath of a Titan?Elkas prayed in his mind, even though those barbarians were his enemies. He did not fathom seeing a fellow human being torn apart by a creature from the abyss, and that could happen in any town, no matter if Itruschian, Gadalian, Suevian, or even the men of Habash, beyond the southern sea.

The soldiers found a few survivors who had hidden in the sewers, and some broken families whose members had not fallen into those unmerciful hands. They confirmed the tale, their faces deformed into expressions of madness and fear, eyes fixed in the distance as if trying to erase what they had been through.

One of them begged them to go back if they wanted to live. He said there was no weapon that could harm him. He himself had fired dozens of arrows, which had hit him but were as paper birds thrown against a boy’s chest.

“Why did he attack the town?” Alarich asked one of those scarred men.

“He went to the center, to the center.”

“What’s in the center?”

“Menhir . . .”

Thus, they set their course to the mound in the very heart of the village. As they passed and Elkas made sense of the distance and proportions of the place, he realized the city was a perfect circle. And in the center where the creature was headed was a circular mound protected by twelve pillars, half of which had tumbled to the ground.

Black earth filled the place, as if something had exploded out of the earth and spread debris all over. The radius of the place was about fifty meters. Around it, the company saw the priests of mercury, their white robes stained in blood, their bodies split like fish in open markets. As they walked up to the center, overlooked by a tumbled menhir, they found a hole large enough to serve as a common burial. It had been carved in haste, like a fifty-foot-long dog digging a hole, but beneath, there was nothing.

Alarich looked for priests left alive, but there was none.

“What was held in here?” he had asked one of the survivors.

“There was a legend, but we did not know if it was true . . .” he responded.

“What legend?” Alarich inquired, frowning at the man.

“The head of a great king was buried here, from before the oceans drank the great capital of the world. A great king, a king of giants.”