Fanwork#2300 words
After a fight like that, and then the dark ritual to create the ghoul, I was just about totally drained, physically and, like, spiritually or however it worked with pressure. So I just sat there, watching with morbid fascination as the ghoul digested its meal, feeling all my wounds ache, and trying to think of how I was going to explain this to Clifford when I got back. There was another dark ritual I could perform, a much easier and faster one, that would give the ghoul the blush of life, hide its undead nature, but that would still leave me with an extra big feral giant, or I guess tame giant now. I'd probably need to clothe it if I was going to bring it into town, to give it at least a semblance of civility. Hopefully I could find some that fit it around this castle. Maybe I could just say that I found it alone up here, and that it was peaceful right off the bat?
I thought about it for a while, letting myself heal. My pressure recovered in just a handful of minutes, and I started feeling better physically another half hour-ish after that, so I got up and performed the false life ritual on the ghoul. This one was mostly just chanting in tongues, but I did need to anoint the ghoul's brow with three drops of living blood, which took some climbing and a prick to my left pinky. The effect was immediate, the ghoul's black lips and gray skin returning to the red and pink they held before I'd slain it. The ghoul rumbled and watched me curiously, wiping its forehead with a finger and licking the blood off, noticing the change in its appearance and emanating an inquisitive feeling through the empathic bond.
"We're going somewhere else soon, and I need to make you presentable or else they might attack." I said, attempting to direct the same information down the bond. "I'm going to go look for some clothes for you." I felt acceptance add to the ghoul's curiosity, which was good enough for me.
The castle was big of course, but considering it was built at quadruple scale it was actually surprisingly small, and quite simple to navigate, essentially just a ring of eight rooms and hallways, plus four hallways that lead to a central courtyard that had gone totally wild. I didn't explore the yard very thoroughly, since I didn't expect to find anything clothing-like, but I did find a large (though not giant-sized) hen nesting out there, sitting on a whole clutch of solid gold eggs. I couldn't leave her behind after I saw that, but I didn't have anything to carry her or the eggs with, so I'd have to come back.
I spent more time searching the actual rooms, though, quite a while even, a lot of that just trying to open up giant-sized wardrobes and drawers and whatnot that probably haven't been used in ages. Eventually I just started cutting shit apart since my pressure blade was sharp enough to do it and it's not like anyone was going to be using this castle anymore, and that made things go a bit faster. I did find a good amount of clothes, albeit all old and moth-eaten, but given how the ghoul was even bigger than the other giants, and had a gut that was more than half as wide as it was tall with how distended it was, I realized that basically none of it would come close to fitting. The only thing that seemed like it could work was a truly enormous dress, stored alongside a bunch of giant-sized jewelry, like it was for a wedding or something. It was full of holes, but unless I wanted to try and sew together some blankets or curtains it was the only option. As I was folding up the dress to carry, the whole castle shook, and I remembered that Clifford mentioned cloudbean stalks being short-lived enough to just wait for them to die back. The one I'd climbed to get up here must be approaching the end of its life. I needed to get the hen, the ghoul, and get back down to the ground.
I snatched a couple pieces of jewelry, quickly wrapped them up in the dress, ran back out to the courtyard, grabbed the hen (who was surprisingly willing to be picked up), then ran back to where I left the ghoul. It was standing now, its abdomen much smaller than before even if it was still gigantic. Sensing my hurry, it was already standing by the hole in the floor the beanstalk dug out. The tunnel of leaves was already starting to wilt and yellow, and was progressing with visible speed, so there was no time to waste. I hopped down the hole with the gown and chicken under my arms, and the ghoul followed suit. I'd never sky-dived in my previous life, and as I fell from the cloud-portal, I thought that was probably a reasonable choice. It was pretty terrifying. Even with how much more self-control I had lately it was nearly impossible to keep calm enough to navigate towards the beanstalk and start slowing my fall. I had to let go of the clothes and the hen, though the former probably wasn't going to be especially damaged from the fall and the latter was able to glide on her wings. I did manage to get a couple pressure blades into the beanstalk and start arresting my momentum after a couple seconds, while the ghoul collided with the stalk head-on.
The ghoul tried to grab onto the stalk to slow down as well, but started a second too late, and didn't manage to come to a full stop before colliding with the ground and leaving a bit of a crater next to the stalk's base. I managed to come to a stop a couple hundred feet above the ground, then carefully slid down the rest of the way, finding where the dress had landed on top of the trees and watching the ghoul crawl out of its crater and start to heal the damage it took from the fall. By the time I reached the ground, it was fully recovered, though it'd lost some of the contents of its stomach going from how it was again significantly reduced in size, though still as bulbous as a severe beer belly. The false life I'd given it had also broken, overwhelmed by the sudden and massive bodily harm. I quickly redid the ritual, noticing that the ghoul's body seemed thicker and softer compared to the hard muscle it had when I first disguised its unlife, which I guess is where some of its meal went.
After I fixed it up, I directed it through the bond to go and collect the dress and jewelry while I looked for the hen. It took a while, with the cloud-portal closing, the cloud dissipating, and the stalk yellowing and collapsing to the ground in the meantime. In the end it was more so the hen who found me, fluttering down from a tree I walked under while searching. I made my way with the hen back to the westward road and tugged on the ghoul through the bond, guiding it towards me. When it emerged from the woods, it was wearing the dress, which hung down to the middles of its thighs, as well as the jewelry, an unadorned golden chain and ring. It gave the surprisingly effective impression of some kind of desperate refugee, which might help once we're in sight of the west gate. It was sometime in the early afternoon by now, though the road was still empty, presumably since the gate was still closed or else only just now reopened, and as the three of us walked towards the city, I considered what I would call the ghoul and the hen. Maybe I didn't strictly need a name for either, but it was starting to bother me that I didn't. "I think I will call you...Kwiat." I said to the hen, since it was the name of a chicken in a story I had been reading before I ended up in this place. "And you...hm." I turned to the ghoul, who was looking at me with that ever-curious gaze, "How about Lambent?" The ghoul giggled at that and I could feel acceptance and even some excitement through the bond. I wasn't totally sure why I felt the word worked, but I did.
Just as Lambent looked back up at the road ahead of us, I got a sense of apprehension from it, which kept up as we continued walking, until we encountered some riders coming westward, long guns at the ready. I could feel their pressure brush against mine, and see them feel it as well. If it came to blows, despite being evokers, it wouldn't end well for them, but I hoped it wouldn't escalate to that. "Halt! Halt! By the command of the Countess Dogectina, halt!" One of the two shouted.
I stopped, reaching down to grab a hold of Kwiat, while Lambent quickly dropped to its knees with an earthshaking thud, then lowered its head to the ground in supplication. "Alright, we've halted."
The two riders, guardsmen presumably, seemed surprised that we had acquiesced so easily. "Uh, a giant-- this giant, was spotted approaching Albucole from the walls. Her-- Its exceptional size and demeanor called for us to investigate. You're Hatty, right? The lieutenant mentioned during shift change that you had gone to check out the cloudbean early this morning. What's going on with..." He gestured sweepingly to indicate Lambent as a whole. "This?"
I shrugged "Well, honestly I'm not entirely sure? I went up, fought some giants, and then there she was, standing over the portal. She's not hostile as you can see, and she seems to have taken a liking to me. I've dubbed her Lambent, since she seems to lack the malice of the other giants. I wonder if she might be some kind of atavistic throwback, to when the giants weren't feral? I don't know if there was ever such a time."
The two guards looked at each other for a moment, then to Lambent, then back to each other, then back to me, before the other responded. "Fair enough. Still, this is a pretty big anomaly--"
"Literally!" The other added with a chuckle.
"Literally. The Countess will want to talk to this 'Lambent', and to you too probably. Will you follow us to the keep?"
"I, uh, don't actually know if she can talk?" I looked over to Lambent, which raised its head to look back.
"Luh-lombuunt...n-nooo taalk," It croaked out with some difficulty, struggling to form the right phonemes and find the correct timing.
"Yeah, I don't think conversation is feasible. Not yet at least. But yeah, we'll go with you. How are we getting her into the city? She's too big to fit through the gate, even lying down, and the wall is too tall for her to safely climb over."
"That is a good question." The one guard said, looking at the other again.
"He won't like it, but Earthshaker will probably have to get off his lazy ass and make some stairs for her." The other replies with a shrug.
With that, the five of us continued back to the city. The guards, who I learned were named Gerold and Brandon, left us to wait at the west gate while they went and got Earthshaker, or Marse as he was properly named. They returned with him about an hour later, as the Sun was falling from late afternoon to early evening, and it took the evoker another hour-ish to build up the momentum to raise up a Lambent-sized set of marble stairs from the ground. After a rather tense crossing-over, with Marse holding the marble together with his evocation all the way through just to make sure nothing went wrong, he escorted us to the keep while Gerry and Brandon stayed at the gate, much to our new guide's chagrin.
The walk to the keep was quiet, Marse evidently not being in the mood to make friends, which I could understand. Lambent obviously couldn't fit inside the keep, so instead we waited another long while outside the inner walls, until a little after sunset, when the Countess and her attendants came out to greet us. I was a bit tired by now, probably on account of having not slept even a little last night, getting into an intense 1-versus-4 fight to the death, and then falling several hundred feet, so I didn't pay too much attention. I did feel the Countess's pressure and judged it about equal to mine, though there was a quality to it which I realized Gerry, Brandon, and Marse's possessed as well that was distinct from mine, which was probably because they were evokers rather than accretionists.
She could probably tell that I was having trouble focusing, since she didn't talk for too long before telling me that with the Season of War coming soon she'd be preparing her levy to send to join Duke Sablegard's army, and that I and Lambent would be part of that. That seemed reasonable to me, at least in my semi-somnolent state, so I agreed as long as I could keep Kwiat with me as well, which the Countess obliged me. I also asked if she could find a place for the three of us to stay in the meantime, which she again provided, having Marse open up a cave into the side of the hill on which the keep sat. It was a bit weird, camping next to Lambent, but the false life ritual gave it an amount of body warmth and a reasonably realistic heartbeat, so I was still able to eventually fall asleep.
