The Crater Tribe.  In the two years since Leon’s last visit, it appeared much the same, though as he flew over in avian form, the number of giants down amongst the basalt pillars and trap rocks seemed much higher than it had before.

He supposed this made sense—the last time he’d shown up, the giants were celebrating their unification.  The giants had been disunited, existing as numerous disparate Tribes.  The peace that Leon and Aquillius—mostly the latter—had negotiated with the Bull Kingdom had only been with the Crater Tribe, leaving the giants in the north technically still at odds with the Kingdom.

However, Rakos, the Chief of the Crater Tribe, had claimed that merely learning of Leon’s existence had been enough for the stone giants to finally unite all of their Tribes into one.  There were no more Tribes, as far as he knew; there were only the stone giants, and the Crater where Nestor’s lab once stood was about as close to a capital city as the stone giants had.

Leon’s welcome to the Crater was joyous and bombastic.  He’d left the Bull’s Horns not long before and had projected his magic power ahead of him, filling the sky above the Crater with storm clouds that flashed with silver-blue lightning, heralding his arrival.  As a result, while the number of stone giants was surprising, the fact that they were out to welcome was not.

As Leon flew above the Crater, circling it several times, the giants began to sing, much as they’d done when Leon had used the Cradle and ascended to the fifth-tier so long ago.  Long, deep rumblings filled the air, like rocks vibrating against each other, forming nothing even remotely close to recognizable human speech, yet still conveying the powerful elation the giants felt at Leon’s return.

The entire journey northward, Leon had been quietly worried that the stone giants wouldn’t honor Rakos’ promise to wait for when he had need of them, that they’d refuse his request for them to join his Kingdom.  But as he basked in their joy, the vibrations of their song shuddering through him in a most relaxing manner, he knew in his heart of hearts that they weren’t going to turn him down.

At least, none of the giants out to greet him would.  As for any others… he’d have to wait and see.

Rakos’ palace at the bottom of the Crater’s cliffs, with its imposing hexagonal pillars of black basalt surrounding the forecourt, was filled with the most powerful stone giants that Leon had ever seen.  Rakos itself stood in front, its aura surprisingly now seventh-tier, striking an imposing figure with the thousands of rubies embedded in its powerful arms glittering even when Leon’s lightning wasn’t flashing overhead.  Behind it were at least three hundred sixth-tier giants, and Leon could sense many more inside the palace.

The last time he’d visited, he’d noticed a marked increase in the number of stone giants in Rakos’ hall, but once again, they’d grown in number.

Leon made one last circle of the Crater before moving in to land in Rakos’ forecourt, right in front of the formidable giant.  His Thunderbird form had grown with his power, leaving him standing at just over twenty feet tall, allowing him to look Rakos almost directly in the ‘face’—or rather, in the headlike stone on top of the giant’s roughly human-shaped body.

“THE DIVINE ONE HAS RETURNED!!!” Rakos boomed in the rumbling language of the giants.  Its statement was punctuated by another swelling of song from its thousands of spectating kind.  The ground shook under the weight of their voices rumbling in unison, throwing great clouds of dust into the air from the black hexagonal trap rocks that made up most of the Border Mountains.

Leon projected his magic power, his tenth-tier power allowing him to easily target every giant in the Crater.  He wasn’t entirely sure if his darkness magic could touch their minds, given just how inhuman the giants were, but he felt it was worth a try.

His attempt appeared vindicated when he announced, [I have come back!] and, though he’d not thought it possible, the giants’ song intensified yet again.  He could feel his bones shaking, the very air massaging his muscles, his feathers fluttering from the sheer intensity of the giants’ song.

The song went on for a while, leading Leon to wonder just how far away they could be heard.  The Bull’s Horns weren’t far, less than ten minutes’ flight if he pushed himself, and he speculated that they could be heard there, if not from further away.

With this reaction to his words, Leon was encouraged to continue.  [Long have your people waited this day, for my Clan to return!  Long have you languished here on this plane, your creators absent!  But today, I announce that this state of affairs has changed!  I call upon all willing stone giants to join me in the Kingdom I am building down in the south!  Who will join me, in the south and beyond?!]

As Leon finished his statement, the giants’ song abruptly ended and an eerie stillness descended upon the Crater.  After the rumbling, Leon felt almost stifled, the air seeming to turn thick and heavy.

He had just enough time to begin second-guessing his course of action when Rakos raised its arms, the studded rubies glowing with arcane power.  Lighting flashed across its body, at first only in tiny arcs, but rapidly growing into thick bolts arcing first all over its body, and then up into the sky.  Rakos’ golden bolts were tiny compared to Leon’s powerful silver-blue lightning, but to Leon’s magic senses, they were eminently striking, containing a strange kind of thought and will that prevented him from easily seizing control of them despite his dominance of the sky.

The giants behind Rakos then raised their arms and did the same, their auras growing rapidly as golden lightning arced over their bodies and between individual giants before curling upward into the sky.  Following their lead, all the giants around the Crater did the same, filling the air with so much golden lightning that even Leon felt his eyes flicker slightly.

It was a magnificent sight, even though Leon wasn’t quite sure what it meant.  He could feel power massing above him, though—or, as he stood there watching all of this happen, above Rakos’ palace.

And then everything seemed to happen all at once.  Thousands of bolts of lightning converged upon Rakos, an ocean of power that could’ve rivaled a direct strike from Leon.  However, despite the sheer pressure of this power, the sheer destructive weight behind it, Rakos remained completely intact.  In fact, its rubies glowed even brighter, while the stones of its body shook and ground against each other.

Leon then realized: all of that power was pouring into Rakos, and Rakos was absorbing it all.  Despite this, its aura wasn’t changing in the way that Leon expected, with it growing in size though not in density, indicating that all of this power wasn’t being added to Rakos’ own, but instead simply being stored.

Or such was Leon’s guess; a moment later, the lightning ceased in sequence starting from the most distant giants and working inward.  As each giant stopped channeling this lightning, its body collapsed, the stones that made it up splintering apart and separating from each other.

‘They’re… the sapient wisps that animate their bodies; they’re all entering Rakos!’ Leon realized.  The stone giants’ were, in Leon’s view, sapient beings descended from some of Nestor’s labor golems that had been animated by lightning wisps.  The stone bodies of the giants were permanent in a way—Leon knew that leaving their bodies couldn’t be done on a whim—but the ‘real’ bodies of the giants were the evolved lightning wisps within them.  A stone giant could lose limbs and suffer physical damage, but so long as the lightning wisps within remained intact, their stone bodies could be rebuilt.

By the end, the fallen bodies of thousands of stone giants littered the Crater, with Rakos being the only one remaining on its feet.  So many fell from the cliffs that they seemed to resemble a rather morbid avalanche.  Most of Leon’s attention, however, was taken by Rakos, who stood before him with its arms still raised, its many thousands of rubies shining brightly even though no lightning was being emitted from the stone giant anymore.

After a moment of silence, Rakos’s body creaked, and as if with great effort, its outstretched fingers curled, and then its arms dropped, and the stones of its body ground together again as it strained to turn itself fully back toward Leon.

“I… DIVINE ONE…” Rakos choked out, clearly straining a great deal.  “MY PEOPLE… ARE YOURS…  THEY LIE… WITHIN ME…”

[By the Ancestors!] Leon shouted in alarm at the power he could feel rippling off the giant as it forced itself to speak.  [You couldn’t have warned me first?!  What did you even do?!  Why did you do it?!]

“THE DIVINE ONE… CALLED US… AND WE… WILL ANSWER…” Rakos rumbled.  “WE WILL FOLLOW… IN MY SHELL…”

Leon stared at the nearly-immobile giant, wondering just how in the hells it planned on doing that without him.

‘Though, I suppose it figured I’d carry it,’ Leon cynically thought.

[You seem barely capable of moving,] Leon observed.  [How do you plan on following me anywhere?]

“ADJUSTMENT… IS NEEDED.  ONE DAY…”

Leon sighed, the air making a slight whistling noise as it left his beak.  [All of the giants here…] he whispered.  [They are all in you, now?  You are carrying them?  They’re safe and can be transported this way?]

“YES…”

‘This does make it easier…’ Leon thought, quietly glad that he wouldn’t have to try and squeeze thousands of stone giants into his soul realm.  Even with his power, the larger an object, the more effort it required to pull into his soul realm.  A few stone giants would’ve been no problem, but the entire species would’ve taken him a while and no small amount of discomfort.  If what Rakos was saying was true and this was safe, then Leon supposed it was a far more convenient method of transporting the giants than his way—though he’d still need bodies made for them, the few dozen Nestor had produced being wildly inadequate.

With a mental note to call back to Nestor to drop everything he was doing, grab as many people as he needed, and get as many golem frames built as he could before Leon’s return.  They wouldn’t need to be particularly robust or advanced, they’d just need to hold the giants once Leon got back.

[How many more giants are there elsewhere in the Border Mountains?] Leon asked, wondering how many times they’d have to do this and just what Rakos’ limits were.

“NONE…” Rakos replied.

Leon’s eyes just about bulged out of their sockets.  [None?!  Every stone giant now resides… within you?]

“YES…”

Leon stared at the giant for a long moment, searching for any signs of deceit.  He then projected his magic senses over the entirety of the Border Mountains.  He saw Anzu flying with a small flock of much weaker griffins, though it was apparent that he wasn’t quite fitting in with them.  But of the stone giants, Leon could see nothing.  He could easily locate a few places where their formerly independent Tribes were once centered, but even in these places, Leon couldn’t sense a single other giant.

It was like they’d completely disappeared.

Leon turned his attention back to Rakos.  With his magic senses, the giant looked more lit up than the night sky, and he couldn’t help but ask, [How many stone giants are now within you?]

“TWELVE… THOUSAND…” Rakos responded.

[That’s… incredible,] Leon silently whispered.  [I don’t…  This is something…  I’m not sure how to respond to this, whether with joy, relief, or curiosity.  How is this possible?]

“IN OUR UNITY… WE MADE OURSELVES READY… FOR WHEN THE DIVINE ONE REQUIRED US AGAIN,” Rakos explained, its voice now sounding a little more stable even with the sheer amount of concentrated magic power now contained within its stone shell. 

Leon nodded slowly.  [I’m going to need a much more in-depth explanation, but that can wait.  For now, I’ll not look a gift horse in the mouth and just accept this.  Is there anything else we need to do to facilitate your people’s move?]

Rakos slowly turned and pointed to the fallen shell of a familiar giant.  It was still much larger than the average human, but it was a little shorter and thinner than most other giants strong enough to have stood with Rakos in the palace’s forecourt.  This was the giant that had shared with Leon their language, using darkness magic contained in a gem within its hand.

“UNDERSTANDING… IS NEEDED,” Rakos stated, and Leon immediately knew what it meant.

He shifted into human form and walked over to the fallen giant while Rakos watched, still unable to move, and began inspecting its body.  While it was a bit smaller than its fellows, it was otherwise a rather typical giant, and Leon soon found what he was looking for; within the palm of its right hand, between the six equidistant fingers, sat a comparatively small pale blue gem.  It was bright and polished, its surface unmarred by even the tiniest of scratches.  However, it was quite tightly secured in the giant’s palm, to the point that Leon’s first instinct was to dig out a strong knife and try to pry it free.

But he didn’t indulge that instinct and instead fell back upon a rarely-used skill: earth magic.  The giant no longer resided within its shell, so using that magic shouldn’t be much of a problem…

Leon channeled his power, calling upon what little skill he possessed in earth magic.  His mana slowed and grew as steady and solid as stone—or so it felt; given mana was simply blood infused with magic power, his blood itself didn’t slow in his veins, only the magic power within it.  This power then flowed from his fingers with all the fluidity of molasses.  His fire and lightning magic was like an extension of his being, and even wind and water were quite easily manipulated into doing what he wanted, but earth magic, even his own, seemed to almost resist him at every turn, and it was only with a notable expenditure of effort that Leon was able to widen the notch that the gem was set in enough for the gem to fall free.

He caught the gem, not wanting it to be scratched on the ground, but once the eyeball-sized gem was in his hand and his power settled in around and even within it, to a degree, Leon knew that his caution wasn’t warranted.  The gem he held felt harder than diamond, and he couldn’t help but wonder just what in the hells it was.

So, turning back to Rakos, he asked just that.

“OUR BEDROCK,” Rakos unhelpfully explained.

Leon momentarily contemplated asking for further details, but he decided to hold off until they could return to Kataigida, and he could enlist Nestor and the Ravens’ help in studying the thing.

Just as soon as Nestor could aid Rakos in getting all of the other giants' bodies, of course, and once he knew that the giants had no further use for the gem.

Leon then transformed back into his avian form and began explaining to Rakos the specifics of just what he wanted from the giants, details that he’d thought he would be sharing with the giant Chiefs, and then the information would trickle down to the rest later.  But Rakos assured him that what he said to Rakos could be heard by all the other giants, so there wasn’t any need for that.  Furthermore, Rakos assured Leon that the giants were willing to do anything that Leon asked of them, which Leon found both terrifying and comforting in equal measure.

Comforting for the fact that he wouldn’t need to try and convince them to do anything, but terrifying in that it was a heavy responsibility to bear.  The last time he’d been in charge of a group of giants, he’d gotten all of them, including Lapis, killed.  He’d promised himself that he’d never let such a tragedy happen again, his fault or otherwise.

Once he was finished explaining his hopes for the giants, he decided it was time to try and get Rakos into his soul realm.  It wasn’t a particularly easy affair, especially since Leon was still more than a little reluctant to just bring a living being into his soul realm, the place where he was most vulnerable.  He felt like he could trust the stone giants a lot, but he wasn’t sure what having the entire population bottled up inside of Rakos might do, so was more than a little nervous about something unexpected happening.

But, reassured by Rakos’ confidence, Leon reached out with his magic and pulled the giant into his soul realm without much magical fuss.  If Rakos had been resisting, he felt like it would’ve been impossible, but the stone giant proved itself as compliant as ever.

And so, Leon rather awkwardly stood there, surrounded by the fallen shells of thousands of giants, feeling a bit lost since he’d expected to be attending to this business over the course of days, whereas it had taken less than an hour after his arrival.  Anzu wasn’t due to meet up with him for a few days yet, so after wondering how he ought to occupy himself, Leon decided to take a bit of a tour around the Crater, and once he was finished, just head back to Ariminium.

He would’ve returned immediately, but he felt like he owed it to the stone giants to witness as much of what they’d built up in the Border Mountains before it was all completely abandoned.

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