Tsaimath
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Chapter 1247
🕑 Added 2025-09-29 16:00:25 +0000 UTCSomehow, through some strange, obscure phenomenon, my internal monologue sounded like David Attenborough while I was watching the Giants through my scrying constructs. Or maybe I was simply imagining things, because the voice fit the images so incredibly well. The three different groups of giants all showed some distinctly different behaviour.
The easiest group to figure out was the pair. The female looked to be gravid and focused on working within and close to the confines of their home, mostly processing the raw materials her partner brought back from the outside world. I watched her weave birch bark into twine, while their home showed that she could also make baskets and containers from it. Additionally, there was quite a bit of processed meat, and their sleeping area was filled with clean furs. Clearly, they were using the lessons I had taught them in their dreams to great effect, making me quietly beam with pride. Collecting those bushcraft survival books a few months back, and reading them during our journey had paid off.
Her partner was working hard, too. Thanks to searching the area around their cave, I saw numerous birches largely stripped of their bark. When I spotted him, he was carrying a relatively small sheep on his back and had a simple spear with a fire-hardened tip in the other. While I wasn’t completely happy that the pair seemed to heavily focus on meat, I had a feeling that a big part of that was due to the relatively short time they had been in this area. Perhaps I could give them some guidance in the future, helping them achieve a balanced diet, if that's what a giant needed.
It was something I had to keep in mind, as the scrying constructs were distorting my sense of scale to a certain degree. I couldn’t treat them as large, blue-skinned humans. I needed to make sure to remember that they were giants, which could easily mean very different dietary needs compared to humans. It would be quite foolish if I put in the effort to teach them proper nutrition, only to realise that they were obligate carnivores or something like that. I doubted it, but even something as simple as an inability to digest certain grains could set my efforts back a great deal.
Regardless, the pair was living in a fair approximation of primitive domestic harmony, at least from what I could tell over the course of a few hours of observation. Whether that would hold out in the long run, I had no idea, especially as the weather was turning quite quickly, even with the mountains holding off the worst of the snow from this area. I might have to familiarise myself with the cave Lia and I were using at the moment, so I could step through the shadows between it and the tower, allowing me to visit the giants and keep an eye on them, even during the worst of winter.
The threesome was showing some similar patterns. One of the females was visibly gravid; they had stored large amounts of meat and were busy making stuff. However, where the pair was making baskets and twine from bark, the threesome was working with stone. I spotted a couple of fairly well-crafted tools, and the area around their home showed that he used those to significant effect. They had even chopped down a few trees, adding the wood to the construction of their home while storing some of it for the winter. Their work didn’t quite qualify as carpentry, but it was impressive nonetheless, especially as I hadn’t taught them that particular trick. Storing and drying wood for the winter, yes, but weaving branches and twigs into sturdy walls? That was their own discovery.
The group centred around Naya had a distinctly different structure, too. There, Naya was clearly at the top of the social order, directing the other giants to do her bidding. I wasn’t sure why that had happened; there was no obvious reason I could see, but it seemed to work. Just like amongst the other groups, one of the ‘lesser’ females was gravid, working to expand their home with Naya, while the other three were out, gathering supplies. Their crafting was even more diverse than that of the other two groups, with stone tools, woven baskets, cured hides and even some furniture in their shelter. However, it looked like their ability to gather and store food wasn’t as good as that of the other groups. Or rather, it was as good as theirs, but given that they needed to store food for five people, instead of for two or three, they were relatively worse off. It would be interesting to see how things turned out with them. Maybe their better shelter and the ability to work across multiple crafting disciplines would allow them to bring up their young without complications in the future, or maybe they would be forced to work with other groups, trading goods back and forth. It would be fascinating to observe, even if I had to decide on my involvement. Did I want to keep teaching and guiding them, and, if so, in which direction?
Luckily, that particular question wasn’t particularly urgent. It would take months for some of those questions to come up and years until I had to decide on a definitive answer. As long as I kept my proverbial hand in the game, I would be able to push and prod them as needed. So, for now, the name of the game was helping them increase their number, keep a subtle position of influence without making them dependent on me. Easy to say, but I had a feeling it would be pretty challenging to put into practice.
Finished by my initial observation of the giants, I blinked open my eyes, only to flinch back in surprise, smacking my head against the backrest of my seat in the process. Directly in front of my eyes, maybe two centimetres from my nose, was Lia’s grinning visage, her eyes level with mine as she was hanging from the ceiling.
“I figured it out,” she proudly crowed, glibly ignoring the glare I levelled at her in response to her antics.
“Hanging from the ceiling?” I asked, briefly looking up to see her do exactly that, standing on the ceiling as if gravity was nothing but a suggestion to her. Even her hair wasn’t hanging down as it could, the strange sight starting to give me a headache.
“Well, that, too, but I already knew how to cling to things, you know that,” she replied, the grin on her face showing off her canines. “No, this,” she boasted, only to blur into motion. It wasn’t quite fast enough to vanish from my sight. My eyes barely managed to track her for a few moments before she left my field of vision, forcing me to turn my head to follow her movement.
“Not bad,” I praised her, knowing that this would be enough to make numerous people think she was teleporting; her speed was that quick. “Can you interact with the world while moving from one point to another, or do you have to put all your focus on moving?” I asked, already considering just how powerful this could be.
“Just moving, but I might be able to change that in the future. Not sure how useful it would be though, I already know I have to be careful not to hit anything while moving like this,” she shrugged. The faint look of embarrassment on her face and a glance into the training area told me there was more to the story.
“Are you alright?” I had to ask, noticing a few stains on her clothes. If she had smacked into the wall at those speeds, even somebody as durable as Lia would get hurt.
“I’ll heal,” she assured me, and for a moment, I considered reaching out to heal her anyway. But if she wanted to tough it out, maybe to have the injuries drive the point home into her body, I wasn’t about to disregard her bodily autonomy.
“As long as you are certain there won’t be any complications,” I told her, making sure that she remembered to keep vigilant, just in case there’d be trouble later.
“Can you show me a few more times?” I then asked, curious if I would be able to figure out just how she was doing this. Lia simply nodded, flitting around the large room like a slightly demented mosquito, while I was watching, using every magical sense I had to try and see what she was doing.
Sadly, there was nothing magical I could detect. Neither Astral nor Divine Power was in evidence; it appeared to be a completely innate ability. The only thing I could find were relatively small fluctuations in her soul, but I had no idea how they were influencing the world or if there was a way to replicate what she was doing. Her ability to cling to the ceiling and to walls was similarly innate, leaving me slightly disappointed but, at the same time, proud of my daughter. She was growing into a splendid vampire, with all the mysteries that entailed.
Comments
Tsaimath
To show Jade's mindset. Gravid, as I understand it, is generally used for livestock and animals, while pregnant is for people.
Daemion
Why did you choose to use gravid instead of pregnant?
