BECMI Chapter 290 – Training of the Giant Slayers
Eshauna’s Spear Armz glimmered and flowed as it Morphed in length, ki moving along it and with some effort knocking the much heavier giant’s club aside and down into the ground, where it smashed heavily into the stones.
Much to the giant’s surprise, the tall blonde woman immediately stepped on a projecting gnurl on the club, so he couldn’t easily haul it back.
That surprised pause was enough for Jace to scamper-run on up that club, up along the thick arm of the giant, and then dive along its shoulder and neck as the brute grabbed instinctively at him, spinning as it did so.
This did two things: turning the giant’s twelve-foot frame so its weapon-free side was facing Eshauna, and raising its arm up for a fast strike under its armpit, even as it dragged its club away from stopping her.
At the same time, Jace used the giant’s stiff body hairs and badly-tanned hides to stop his own momentum, hooking his foot up against that raised arm, and brought his knife around into the throat of the giant once, twice with savage speed.
The instant gargling and spray of rich red blood assured him that it had worked, and he felt the lurch as Eshauna slammed into the side of the giant, the head of Armz punching in deep into the knot of arteries there.
Then Eshauna was spinning away, using the momentum to pull out her Spear. Her hand found Jace’s foot and guided it to her shoulder as she retreated, and he dropped off the giant, landed on and hopped off her shoulder, caught her upraised arm in a one-armed hold on the fall, and smoothly fell to the ground, bouncing and rolling backwards, again finding her hand to jump even further back as he came to his feet.
The giant stumbled back and around to look at them, its hand clasped over its neck, which was gouting thick gushes of crimson that were trying to clot and not having much luck. What it thought was a poke in the side was also gushing crimson, a mortal wound of itself, ensuring this brute was going to bleed out even if they didn’t manage to kill it straight off.
But sitting around while it died was not the goal. The two of them braced, Jace drawing his short Sword Toze, and charged in together.
The club was raised up and brought down again, but their weaving advance had it splitting the ground between them impotently. Jace went between the thing’s legs, Eshauna picking on the weak side, and both of them stabbed and sliced to the left, biting into the knee and the hamstrings respectively, feeling the snap as the powerful tendons were cut through.
The imbalanced hillgiant promptly collapsed, knees unable to hold him, instinctively using the club to prop himself up. He started to turn back, but Jace had run right up Eshauna’s side as she ground to a halt, and was on her shoulders again as she came back in. Toze was extended out before him as she drove him forward, and the bright steel went into the back of the giant’s head, up and under the edge of the skull, into the spinal cortex rooted there like a tough knot of wood and severing it from life.
The pained bellows of the giant stopped abruptly, and it hung there for a moment, as if in disbelief that it had died to something so small. Then it slowly began to slump and fell over, nearly a ton of meat and bone that no longer had any motivating force behind it, its thick club falling from its grasp as it did so.
The hyn and woman blinked in some surprise at the fight suddenly being over, looking at one another in mixed surprise and relief, stunned by how much it had resembled some of their training.
“Weren’t no surprises,” Jace murmured, stepping forward to wipe off Toze on that travesty of a black-bear hide, imitated by Eshauna. “Always say to watch for surprises. The ones that judge the situation right, and react like they know how to fight.”
“A young giant, then, only knew how to fight stuff that isn’t trained,” Eshauna nodded. “An easy kill, then. Overconfident and all-alone, as if there was nothing out here to be afraid of.”
Bestie trotted up from where he’d been watching from the side, the big war-Hound aware that this was a test for the two of them. He politely slobbered Jace’s face, earning a squawk of good-natured protest, while Eshauna reflexively scratched his ears.
“First Baneskull of our own,” Eshauna noted, watching the corpse continue to bleed out, and sighed. The next part was always a bit squicky, but if they wanted the benefits, they had to put in the work.
Toze lit up with vivic flames, the better to clean out brains and blood, the bone being the last to go, and what they wanted to keep. “You get the hair and tendons, I’ll clean out the skull?” he asked rhetorically. “Bestie, on watch. There’s plenty of buzzards who’re going to be coming to get a taste of the kill.”
Some of whom would be much larger than the ones doing the butchering.
The skull was needed for a Baneskull of their own. The hair and tendons could be woven together for a Girdle of Giant Strength, which would be enormously helpful in any combat situation and give them a huge boost in carrying capacity. The blood was useful in Scribing certain magical spells and formulae down, and could be used in some Potions for strength and toughness and the like.
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Bestie had the small barrels and Exsanguinating Tube needed to extract the blood that hadn’t leaked out of the carcass strapped to her saddle. Soon enough the cutting and processing of their kill was under way, the bloodiness of it ignored, and they moved with the quick assurance of people who had done this a dozen times in illusionary and extremely realistic simulations before.
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The stone giants were a considerable step up from hill giants. Not only were they a bit taller and stronger, they were quite a bit smarter, if not swift thinkers. They also had hides that looked like and were nearly as tough as rock, and they preferred to throw stones larger than human heads at their enemies, not charge into melee with them.
All those hours and hours of archery practice were suddenly paying off. Yes, yes, the both of them were annoyed that they couldn’t use vastly more powerful technological weapons, particularly the lasers with their beautiful beams of light and precision targeting, but those had been firmly nixed by high command.
Technology was only to be used to defend the homeland, not to conquer, not to attack. This was repeated quietly by all the priests of the kingdom, with the same intensity as not wielding dark magic or apocalyptic spellcasting against their foes, lest such be unleashed upon them in turn!
If the giants fell to skill and steel, who were the Immortals to complain? They were being bested with their own weapons!
Stone giants tossing rocks that could crush a man in full armor from three hundred yards away, like living catapults? Not so easy to deal with, especially when fighting in rocky terrain and generally uphill. It was not a range even the best of elven archers wanted to have a duel of arrows at, at least not without magical Bows, and so their only recourse was to close the distance.
Unlike hill giants, it was actually safer to engage stone giants up close and personal, rather than endure the barrage of massive stones coming their way with uncanny accuracy. That meant sneaking closer in the face of keen stone giant eyes and noses, who were often watching over nervous herds of giant sheep or goats, sometimes with massive cave bears treated as the family pets.
At least they didn’t use dire wolves as hounds, like the smarter of the hill giants did.
Eshauna’s Ranger training was very helpful with the No Scent magic to cover them, but using Invisibility was frowned on without extreme need. They didn’t practice stealth for no reason, after all!
Bestie, saddle and bags unloaded earlier, was hanging back carefully, creeping up on her belly to minimize her profile, her fur Colored to darker browns and grays to better blend in to the rough terrain here.
The higher profile of giants made it harder to hide from them, reducing the amount of shadows and cover available. On the other side, giants were often surprised by how well things could hide from them down low, and the simple power of an alchemically-treated Camo Cloak’s ability to match its surroundings meant a hooded and cloaked Adventurer and Ranger could simply crouch low in the lee of a rock, completely covered. They’d had giants walk right on by them in arm’s reach.
Slowly and carefully, the two of them looked through a crack in the rock at the giant sentry there, absently scratching a massive cave bear there keeping him company. The sentry was looking down the valley, an odd combination of stoic vigilance and boredom keeping him on task, but he had no idea two infiltrators had come this close to him and the settlement of stone giants occupying the slopes of the mountains beyond them.
They couldn’t have a sentry sounding the alarm every time they wanted to pass through stone giant lands, and the stone giants were as territorial as any other giants to intruders, if not anywhere near as interested in expanding their territory.
However, most giants’ first reaction to the intrusion of little folk was normally to attempt to kill them, and it was returned in kind.
“What do you think?” Eshauna whispered calmly to jace. They’d worked together too long to be frightened of the large opponents in front of them, even if their skills were more oriented towards giants than bears.
“I can probably take out the giant if I can get behind him. He’s relying on his nose to spot intruders,” Jace murmured back, their heads right next to one another. “The bear is more of a problem, but we can probably outrun it over broken terrain. If we have to kill it, Bestie working its back feet should be all we need once its handler is dead.”
It was a given her Spear Armz would be used to handle it. Neither of them wanted to get into range of a cave bear’s hug. If it could be tricked into impaling itself, that would be for the best.
The fur was worth a lot of money, too. There weren’t many cave bears left in the lands of Darkmoor, although both elves and dwarves were known to adopt them.
Jace scuttled away, deft and not too quickly, a leaf moving over the ground towards his unsuspecting target. The best way to approach looked to be up and over that wall behind the sentry, who certainly wasn’t expecting a hyn to be able to scale the thing.
Shadow Stalking techniques made anyone an excellent wall climber...
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The stone giant shaman Okrespur sat down across from the little ones. His limbs were thinner and more stony, connected at odd angles compared to a human and most other stone giants, looking more like a stone puppet than another humanoid. The awkwardness of the transformation belied the strength needed to carry himself like that, and also gave him a dangerous range of motion and reach that Eshauna and Jace were both aware of, but not frightened by.
If matters came to melee, they were both confident that this shaman and the two guards hanging back were going to die. Eshauna wouldn’t hold back with the magic, and they’d cut the giants down to size quickly enough.
“What do the small ones want?” the shaman ground out in his deep Jotun’s voice, grindy and rough, like it wasn’t used often, with definite Geoic accents to his words. His flinty eyes glared at them warily.
Little raiders from the east had cut through the hill clans and were now in the mountains. Clan after tribe had fallen to them, and the shamans of the stone wanted to minimize the losses to their people.