Fanaxia Bystanders: One Big Giant Mystery

"Can't we just go back to the boat, Ferd? There was food on the boat."

Shiggae was whining again, and Ferd was about one more complaint away from throwing him right off the side of the mountain. They'd brought food -- they'd brought plenty of food, enough for weeks -- but of course Shiggae and his hound Scouty had eaten every single bit of it over the course of the last two days of hiking. "Shiggae," he said, trying not to show his irritation, "the faster you and Scouty lead us to the top of the mountain, the faster we can solve the mystery and go back to the boat." 

"I wonder if there really is a titan," Valme mused absently. "That would be amazing. Just think of how much we could learn."

"I'm thinking about what walking around in the wilderness like this is doing to my boots. Just look at them! I'll never get the scuffs out." Dephna shook her head sadly and sighed, and Fred reached over and steered her around a tree that she had nearly just walked into while staring at her boots. 

"Probably just giants," Valme said. "Tales do grow in the telling." 

Shiggae stopped walking. "Cloud giants, at least," he whispered theatrically. "That one's asleep!"

Scouty whined, and Ferd shook his head. "Even cloud giants breathe when they're asleep. This one's dead. So's the guy beside him." 

"What guy?" asked Dephna. Then she focused on the second, far smaller corpse and said, "Oh." 

They were all silent for a long moment. Then Dephna asked, "Do you suppose they killed each other?"

Scouty moved cautiously forward, and Shiggae followed. "It looks like..." he bent down, studying the snowy ground as Scouty sniffed around and then made one of those grunting noises that sounded almost like words. "It looks like they were fighting, but not each other. And, like, do you see those two gargantuan daggers? And that gargantuan mace? I think the giant dropped the daggers. But the human isn't holding a weapon."

"That's strange," said Ferd. 

Valme glanced at Dephna. "Maybe he was enlarged when he was fighting." 

Dephna frowned. "But who would carry around that big a weapon just so it would be the right size when you enlarged yourself?"

"We should keep going," said Ferd. 

"Aww, do we have to?" asked Shiggae. 

"Yes," said Ferd. "Keep us on the path, guys."

Shiggae and Scouty exchanged a look, then started off again. 

By the end of the afternoon they'd found three more human bodies and two dire tigers, all of whom appeared to have been caught in some sort of rock slide, and finally arrived at a cave with two more dead tigers out front. "This isn't making me nervous at all," said Shiggae, eyeing the dark hole in the stone with a wariness that bordered on panic. Beside him, Scouty shook his head and huffed: "Uh-uh."

"Well," said Ferd, "there's only one way to find out what's in there," and then he started walking towards the cave entrance. 

"No there's not," Dephna said to Valme, quietly conversational, as they followed along behind him. "I'm a sorceress. Not the most powerful one, but still. There are plenty of ways to find out." 

"Don't tell me," said Valme, equally quiet and conversational. "Tell your boyfriend." 

"He doesn't listen," Dephna said, shaking her head sadly. 

Valme stopped and turned back to Shiggae and Scouty. "Come on, guys. Safety in numbers and all that. You don't want to be left alone out here, do you?" 

"A-alone?" asked Shiggae, immediately moving to follow them. 

Valme turned back to Dephna. "Maybe you need a better boyfriend," she said. 

"Maybe I don't need a boyfriend at all," Dephna said, and took her hand. 

They were still holding hands when they reached the cave entrance and stopped again. The two dead dire tigers were badly scorched and beginning to decay; they'd probably been dead for a full day, and they still smelled of burned hair. Ferd, however, was not looking at them. Instead, he was looking at a corpse that lay in the cave mouth. Or was it two corpses? No, this was very definitely two halves of the same corpse, a human who had been neatly bisected down the middle. 

"Something bad happened here, guys," Shiggae moaned. 

"But what was it?" asked Ferd. "That's the real mystery..." 

Valme and Dephna exchanged a glance, neither of them quite rolling their eyes; but they followed Ferd when he pulled out a glowing rod and led them into the cave. 

They stood, looking around at the large cavern beyond the entrance. There'd been a rockfall, obviously. Probably not natural, Valme thought. And under the rockfall... "Corpses," she said. "So many corpses." Humans, dire tigers... and over there, on the floor, a pair of cloud giants. They hadn't been buried by a rockfall; they'd fallen in battle. And there was a third one, collapsed at the top of a small stone cliff that had probably been little more than a step for them. 

"Welp," said Shiggae, "they aren't titans. Just cloud giants. Mystery solved. Can we go back to the boat now?"

Ferd shook his head, stubborn as always. "A titan might still be around here. We need to find out what happened to them."

"I can tell you that," said a new voice, and all four of them started. Dephna shrieked; so did Shiggae. Scouty was halfway back to the cave entrance before he realized that none of the others were following and began to slowly circle back. 

Standing on the ledge, just at the edge of the light, was an elf. His sword was sheathed, but he had a hand on its hilt; his expression as he regarded them was completely blank. There were other figures behind him -- three of them, Valme thought. A big one, with reptilian features. Another elf, slim and robed and looking unutterably bored. A rotund human in metal armor, holding a scythe. 

"We did," said the elf in front. "We happened to them." Then he raised his free hand and the entire group vanished. 

Ferd grinned maniacally. "A mystery."