Cadence’s breath burned in her throat and chest as she slid behind the gnarled shape of a fallen tree, dirt and dead leaves flying up around her. She did her best to suppress a little whimper, and curled up to hide in the twisted boughs of the downed tree even as the ground shook underneath her. Through the dim light of the barrens, she could see the hulking shape of the monster that was chasing her. She could hear its breathing, like a great bellows heaving the smell of rotten eggs into the surrounding air. And she could hear the little snorts that interrupted those breaths.
It knew she was hiding nearby. It was trying to sniff out her scent.
Cadence clamped her hands over her mouth to smother another whimper, and she heard the giant monster take a couple more steps forward as it searched for her. One of those steps brought it within view of her hiding place, and she had to choke down a scream before she gave away her position.
Easily twelve feet tall, it was built only vaguely like a human, with two arms and two legs, its proportions all wrong. It was like an unbaked clay statue that had been left in the sun and started to melt before it hardened. It was corpulent, its gross grayish-pink skin stretched over fat that didn’t quite move right, like it was made of mud instead of flesh. Its torso was too long and its legs too short, giving it an almost bell-like silhouette ruined by its two giant arms, which were so long they practically dragged on the ground, and were thicker around than most of the trees in the barrens. Most horrifying of all was its face. Somewhere between a boar and a person, two massive teeth protruded from its deformed lower jaw, almost high enough to interfere with its beady eyes.
In all her life, Cadence had never heard of anything like this monster. Her mother had told her about all sorts of magical creatures she had fought in the forest, but they had all borne a resemblance to the animals they had been before some quirk in the ambient magic had transformed them. Bears that wore blizzards as fur, wolves that raced through the woods and breathed wildfires, boars whose bristles were rigid thorns. But whatever this thing was, it looked nothing like any animal.
Was this what happened to people who stayed immersed in dark magic of the grove for too long? Cadence didn’t know, but for once, she didn’t care. She could deal with wondering about the monster for the rest of her life if it would just go away and let her keep running! She felt as much as saw the giant take a couple more rumbling steps, and she prayed to any archetype that was paying attention that it would just go a little farther. If she could just get behind it, she could run back the way she came, and hope she made it out of the barrens before it caught up.
It wouldn’t follow her out of the barrens, right? She had to hope not. There was no way such a massive monster would be a mystery if it could leave the darkened grove.
The giant took a couple more steps past her hiding place, and Cadence started to relax. Any moment now, she’d be able to bolt for freedo-
“Found you.” The brutish voice was barely intelligible, pitched so deep that Cadence felt it in her bones more than her ears. A massive, four fingered hand reached down and grabbed one of the larger branches of the dead tree, and in a casual motion, tossed aside the teenager’s hiding place like it weighed little more than a bale of hay.
Now exposed, Cadence just curled up tighter. It felt like every muscle in her body had seized up. Tears streaked her cheeks. She knew she couldn’t run, not anymore. Those freakishly long arms would snatch her up as soon as she moved. “P-please… please…” she whimpered, knowing the begging didn’t make any difference, knowing she was about to die.
“I’m hungry,” the same tectonic voice rumbled, the tone almost lazy. “Little snack sound good.” Another of those plow-sized hands reached down towards her, and Cadence closed her eyes tight, refusing to look the monster in the eye as it killed her.
And then… nothing happened. Cadence whimpered in fear.
And still, nothing happened.
“Hrrrgh… whuh?”
At the sound of the monster’s confusion, Cadence couldn’t help but slowly peek through her eyelids, feeling like a child trying to hide from a nightmare but unable to force herself to do anything more.
She saw the hand, four thick fingers spread towards her, but it was still a few feet away. Instead of moving forward to grab her, the massive, inhuman hand was struggling against a rope looped around its wrist. She had no idea where it had come from, or how anyone could have bound the giant so quickly. The rope fully circled the thing’s thick wrist twice over, and was tied back neatly on itself, so that the giant’s struggle just pulled the rope tighter.
A sharp crack drew Cadence’s gaze to the other end of the rope, which was apparently tied to one of the larger trees nearby. Somehow, despite the rope's ordinary appearance, the massive monster was unable to snap it, and instead, his struggles had begun to crack the tree it was tied to. The giant paused for a moment, and Cadence could practically hear the monster trying to figure out what was happening. Despite its terrifying size and appearance, Cadence suspected it was a bit dull, but it had at least managed to puzzle out that further attempts to pull its hand free would send a tree collapsing down onto itself.
Eyes wide, Cadence slowly uncurled, getting to her knees. The giant was distracted now and seemed to have forgotten about her while it tried to break the rope binding its arm. She knew she should run, but she just… couldn’t. Fear had stolen all of her energy, and her legs trembled even as she tried to rise onto them.
“Well, that was a close one. Sorry about that.”
Cadence jumped in place and fell back to the ground as she tried to spin around towards the voice that had suddenly spoken behind her.
Instead of another monster, she saw a startlingly plain-looking man. His skin was a couple shades darker than Cadence’s own, as much from the sun as his blood. His hair and eyes were the same muddy shade of unremarkable brown common to those in the heartlands, and his clothing was simple and functional, similar to Cadence’s own, with a ragged cloak pulled over his shoulders. The only exceptional thing about him was his height. Even had she been standing, he would've towered over her.
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Despite his ordinary looks, the man looked up at the increasingly angry monster without a flicker of fear. “Ogres…” he muttered to himself derisively.
His eyes never quite seemed to focus anywhere, drifting over her, then the monster, then the barrens surrounding them, then the tree the rope was tied to. It was disconcerting when he spoke, still not bothering to look at her. “Would you mind just getting behind me a little bit?” His words were still casual and conversational, as if they were talking in the middle of town. “I’d understand if you tried to run, but I would ask you not to. The magic around here is fond of getting people lost.”
“Magic can do that?” Cadence asked, wide eyed.
“Magic can do anything. It’s magic.” The giant roared again, and the man’s eyes flicked back to Cadence for a moment. “Behind me? Please?”
Cadence blinked and nodded shakily. Her legs still felt weak when she got to her feet, but she managed to scamper behind the man.
Once she was securely behind him, he nodded. “Thanks. Just keep your distance.This shouldn’t take long.”
His steps were as casual as his voice as the man started towards the monster. He made a small gesture with one hand, and the ropes binding the giant’s arm suddenly released it, the tidy knot simply coming undone like a trick rope. The giant staggered with an earth shaking step, then lifted a finger to scratch the back of its head. It examined its wrist suspiciously, then shrugged and turned back around, only to see the strange man standing between it and Cadence.
That only seemed to confuse it more, but it eventually growled approval. “Good. ‘Nother snack. Bigger too. Heh heh.”
The man watched the giant’s performance placidly. “Sorry big guy,” he finally responded, sounding oddly cheerful. “Unfortunately, my story will have a grander end than some ogre’s maw.”
Cadence had never heard of an ogre before, but she could see the giant’s face slowly darken as it processed that response. It didn’t bother with another word and simply bellowed in rage and rumbled towards the man.
Cadence’s heart leaped into her throat as the man didn’t even try to dodge away from the charge. Only once the monster was only a few feet away did one hand finally move, throwing something Cadence couldn’t see at the ground, and she was suddenly blinded by a brilliant flash of light. She made a noise of discomfort and lifted a hand to her eyes–but based on the rumbling around her, the attack had been significantly more discomforting for the ogre.
The monster hadn’t fully recovered from the shocking flash before the man darted forward. Though she was sure such a weapon hadn’t been anywhere on his person earlier, he now held a massive sword. It was unlike the short swords she had seen around town, or even the dangerous brass swords many of the caravan guards that came through twice a year carried. It was nearly as long as Cadence was tall, though the last foot of the blade was wrapped in leather and boasted a curved crossguard, like a second hilt. Spaced along the remainder of the blade were three bright blue gems, perfect matches to the icy shade of his eyes.
The man tapped the bottom most gem, which began glowing with its own light, before he pivoted in place, bracing the blade with his second arm on that odd extended hilt. A smooth, economical motion swung the blade of the massive sword at the monster’s leg with all the force of the man’s body–which should’ve still been entirely insufficient against the corpulent giant’s thick skin and massive limbs. Despite that, the sword buried itself deeply into the monster's leg, like an axe being swung into a tree, and Cadence swore she could hear the grind of the steel against bone as the man smoothly pulled the sword free and dodged back from the roaring ogre’s swinging arm.
Cadence knew that the power of gifts, once they leveled up, could allow someone to break the limits of a normal person. Her mother was an Initiate, having leveled up both her gift of the hunter and gift of the bear twice. Despite being little taller than Cadence, she had seen Ryme lift bales of hay with little effort, hit a bramble-spawn with an arrow from across the town square, and catch sight of troublesome children in complete darkness. Still, Cadence had never seen anything like the display the mysterious man put on as he fought the hungry giant.
Every swing of his elaborate sword cut another furrow in the monster’s grayish-pink skin, each cut bleeding with thick, off-red blood that ran slowly, like molasses. The giant’s own attacks were sluggish in comparison, and never seemed to get close to the man. In fact, more often than not, they just gave him another chance to punish the horrifying monster.
Cadence only knew of one person in the region who was higher level than her mother–a woman a few villages away who had visited following a ferocious storm that had knocked over several homes and a barn and left a dozen people injured. She had been an Adept with the gifts of the animist, the carpenter, and the rancher. She had the energy of vague power that was supposed to be unique to higher leveled people, but her gifts had been meant to help people, not to hurt them.
The man who had saved her lacked the same feeling of almost humming magic that had hung around that Adept, but there was no doubt he was as far beyond Ryme as Ryme was above Cadence, and his gifts were clearly specialized into this sort of combat. Was he a sentinel from Elliven? The bastion-city was weeks away from Felisen, but where else could he have come from?
Still, even his amazing speed and skill had limits. Either that, or he had underestimated the ogre. The man dodged a clumsy swipe and took a risk on an overhead chop that looked like it could cleave completely through the giant’s arm, only to realize at the last moment that the ogre had feinted. Its other fist shot through the air after he had committed to the attack and slammed straight into the swordsman, sending him flying through the air. He hit a twisted tree trunk with a whoof of expelled air, his magnificent sword flying through the air.
Cadence let out a cry as the man fell to the ground, clearly dazed. The giant gave a grunt and chuckled, the sound only made more sinister by the ominous woods, then lowered his head and rumbled forward in a charge at the fallen stranger. The massive figure was hunched forward, beady eyes focused hungrily on the fallen man, and had no chance to see the sudden movement of the rope from the opening moments of the fight when it suddenly moved once more. This time, the enchanted line didn’t go for an arm. It wrapped itself around the monster’s thick neck three times before tying itself off in a noose large enough for even the corpulent monstrosity.
The monster had too much momentum to stop its charge, and the rope immediately reached its limit. It stretched with a quivering tension, but proved to be as implausibly durable as before. The darkened grove echoed with a pair of loud cracks–one as the giant’s own momentum snapped its neck, and another as the tree the rope was anchored to finally gave out. Cadence looked on, stunned, as half of the tree fell onto the already dying giant, crushing even its massive bulk to the ground.
The falling tree broke the imposing ceiling of entangled foliage overhead, and a shaft of startlingly bright sunlight shined down on the tableau of the fallen giant. It let Cadence see with perfect clarity as the man staggered to his feet, and she could swear his eyes were a deep yellow now. He surveyed the giant, then made a pair of sharp gestures. The first made the rope untie itself from the giant’s neck, and Cadence was horrified to see the monster still moving weakly as the rope slid away like an oversized snake to curl up at the man’s side. What would it take to kill the thing?
The second motion answered Cadence’s unspoken question with a pillar of brilliant lightning. It crashed into the ogre out of nowhere, shattering the canopy overhead with a booming flash. The violent explosion of sound and light was finally too much for Cadence. The force of it threw her back in a tumble, and everything went black.