It had been a full day since that absolute mess with the ghouls, and I decided the smartest move was to just rest up before we pushed any further. I'd already started the night-watch shift system Tinashe suggested. The kids were cool with it, but I had to adjust the timing because they seriously needed to recover after dragging themselves into those crazy fights.
Sure, I did some more psychic healing on them, but I forced myself to do it a second time just to make sure they were fully patched up. Peeking past the surface out of pure curiosity, I could see the heavy, volatile dragon pathways inside James and the strange, root-like plant network humming inside Sylvia. But when I traced James, my mind flagged a weird, distorted knot in his energy lines. Something was definitely messed up with him.
The healing took a heavy toll on my stamina, but at least that weird moon-cone and the leftover goat meat helped refuel me.
"You're doing well, Miracle. Just keep it slow and steady," Tinashe's voice echoed in my head, coaching me. "I know it's exciting, but don't get too carried away."
Right now, I was back to my flying practice, which I had completely ignored for the past couple of days. The original plan was to just hover around until we found a campsite or something, but now the goal was simple: fly straight to the marked spots on the map, clear whatever was there, and get this annoying trip over with.
"Yeah, I'm cool, don't worry. I'm finally getting the hang of how to accelerate," I thought back, doing a quick flip in the air to check my balance. "At least this is going way smoother than usual."
"That's because you actually took the time to properly rest your brain cells, mwana wanga."
Testing my speed, I used tiny, compressed psychic bursts from the soles of my shoes to blast forward like a rocket. The sudden rush of freezing Alaskan wind hit my eyes hard, making it damn near impossible to keep them open. I sucked my teeth. Note to self: if I ever make it back to proper civilization, I'm buying a pair of tactical goggles.
"You seriously love being up there," Tinashe chuckled. "You've been hovering around for close to an hour now."
"Yeah, well, I love flying," I admitted, looking down at the endless trees. "I mean, look at all this space. It's the exact reason I wanted to be a pilot back then."
"I thought the primary reason you wanted to study aviation was because you admired your father?"
Her question made me frown, a sour taste hitting my mouth. I clicked my tongue hard. "Tsk. I used to."
"I'm sorry, Miracle. I didn't intend to bring up bad memories."
"Nah, it's cool, don't worry about it," I waved it off mentally, checking my surroundings. I realized my drifting thoughts had caused me to fly a bit too far away from the camp.
Dropping down, I glided back to the campsite. James and Sylvia were still completely dead to the world, so I landed lightly on a thick cedar branch, pulling out the weathered map to pass the time.
The moment my fingers unrolled the paper, the ink began to warp and shift right before my eyes. The black trail was still highlighted, but now there were four distinct, smoky marks stamped directly along the path. We had already cleared out the first one yesterday, which left exactly three more roadblocks to bypass before we were home free.
"Well, that's just great," I grumbled.
"Does the Raven trickster truly expect you to march straight through those checkpoints?" Tinashe asked. "Well, you could always just take a different route. It might take more time, but you'll still get there."
"That would be a good idea, but I've read enough stories where mortals ignore a god's instructions and end up in worse situations than they started." My mind went back to all the horrible punishments people got because they didn't listen or thought they were smarter than they were.
I rolled up the map with a sigh. Time to move.
"Hey, James. Wake up, man," I muttered, using a quick nudge of telekinesis to shake his shoulder. He just groaned, burying his face deeper into the dirt. "Hey, wake up. I need your dragon fire to start breakfast!" I hit him with a much harder jolt, forcing him to bolt upright.
"STOP SHAKING ME, I'M UP!" James roared, flaring his arms around like a maniac.
"Well, good morning to you too, dragon boy," I deadpanned, hovering an inch off the ground. "Mind giving me a hand here?" I pointed my chin at the stack of dry twigs I had gathered. He grumbled a string of complaints, snapping his fingers to ignite a small teal flame onto the wood. "Thanks, man."
"Wait, how come she still gets to sleep?" James whined, pointing a dirty finger at Sylvia's curled-up form.
"Because she took the last watch shift before me, so I'm letting her rest," I explained, pulling out the leftover deer meat. "Plus, you can go right back to sleep the second you finish lighting the fire."
"That's it?" He looked at the leftovers, disappointed.
"Yeah, we're just going to have to suck it up for now." I began cooking the meat, and he sat beside me.
"Hey, Miracle," James called out after a long silence. "Why are you even called Miracle?"
"Huh?" I blinked, looking at him. That question was completely out of nowhere. "Why are you asking?"
"Well, Juliet gave me the name James, and you gave Sylvia her name," he muttered, looking at his hands. "So, who gave you yours?"
"Hmm. I don't know, I just remember that being my name," I lied smoothly, turning the meat. "Maybe my mom gave it to me or something. I don't know."
Tinashe burst out laughing. "Come on, Miracle. I am certain you could invent a much better cover story than that."
'I'm not constructing some long, dramatic backstory for him,'I snapped back internally. 'At least this keeps it simple, short, and straight to the point.'
"Still, mwana wanga, you could use a bit more flare."
Rolling my eyes with a heavy sigh, I focused back on the meat, realizing James had asked another question that I completely missed.
"Huh? You said something?" I asked.
James's eye twitched with pure irritation. "I asked if you remember your mom!" he repeated. "I don't know, man. But speaking of remembering, you remember the monster you showed me yesterday… the one you fought. How the hell did George beat you if you could do that?"
"HE DIDN'T BEAT ME, HE CHEATED!" James yelled, jumping to his feet and stomping the ground. At least he was off the topic of my family. "I was winning! Then he said some weird words, and these freaky drawings appeared all over my skin, making me completely weak!"
'Wait, hold up. Weird drawings?' I froze.
So those sick Chaos Brigade freaks actually slapped contingency magic seals onto James's body. It made perfect sense; the experiments who had their DNA spliced with mythological monsters were way too aggressive to handle, and with James being a volatile dragon, those runes were a necessary fail-safe for the staff. That explained the weird restriction knot I had felt inside his energy lines earlier. Seals and runes were very dangerous territory, no matter what world you were in.
'Uh, Tinashe?' A sudden cold sweat hit my neck.
"Do not worry, Miracle. They did not place any of those seals on your soul," she reassured me instantly, her voice solid and steady. "And if they had tried, I would have alerted you immediately and done everything in my power to help you purge them."
'Thanks.' I sighed in relief, letting my shoulders drop. Those contingency seals on James were going to be a major problem if they ran into more guards. I turned my head to look at the sleeping Sylvia. I hadn't felt that specific restriction inside her nature lines, but in a world this crazy, you could never be too careful.
I walked over to Sylvia, lightly tapping her cheek. "Hey, time to move. Breakfast is ready."
She rubbed her eyes, waking up without a fuss, but the second she sat up, I winced. Her messy orange hair was an absolute disaster zone. Between the ghoul fight yesterday and her sleeping face-flat in the dirt, she had chunks of frozen mud, dried leaves, and three decently sized pine twigs tangled so deep into her curls it looked like a bird was trying to build a nest on her head.
"Eish, look at your hair, Sylv," I mumbled, hovering down to her eye level. "You look like a bush creature. Come here, let me fix it before we move."
Sylvia blinked at me, her face instantly brightening as she nodded rapidly. "Miracle... fix? Okay!" She plopped herself down cross-legged on a log, sitting perfectly still.
I didn't have a comb or a brush in our scavenged sack, but growing up as three older sisters back in meant I knew the drill even after all this time. Leticia and Indira used to drag me into their rooms and force me to hold mirrors, plait sections, or help them detangle their hair whenever they were getting ready for something. You don't forget that kind of manual labor.
Extending my hands, I didn't use a blunt telekinetic shove. Instead, I split my power into dozens of tiny, invisible micro-threads, wrapping them gently around the knots in her hair. Yanking a small, clean ball of water from the nearby stream with my left hand, I hovered it over her head, letting a light mist damp the curls to soften the dirt. Slowly, meticulously, I used the psychic threads to comb through the strands, lifting out the twigs and flinging the frozen mud clumps into the bushes.
"Oh, look at you, the master stylist," Tinashe teased loudly inside my head, her voice dripping with smug amusement. "I didn't know my mighty wielder was so skilled with a girl's hair. I'm quite impressed. Maybe you can fix mine next?"
"Quiet woman." snapped back internally, my face burning a little as I focused on a particularly nasty knot near the back of Sylvia's neck. "All this BS might get in her way if we're not careful."
"Mmh. Whatever you say, boy."
Plucking a sturdy, flexible green vine from the tree beside me, I wrapped it cleanly around the back of Sylvia's head, securing her neatened orange hair into a tight, manageable ponytail so it wouldn't get in her eyes during flight.
"There. All done," I grumbled, letting the green aura fade from my fingers.
Sylvia reached back, touching the neat ponytail, and gave me a massive, bubbly smile. "Thank you, Miracle! Feels nice!"
"Yeah, whatever, just don't go rolling in the mud again," I muttered, wiping my damp hands on my oversized coat before walking back to the fire.
The three of us quickly finished the food
"Alright, you two get your gear ready. We're going to have to drastically speed things up from here on out," I told them, wiping my hands.
They both stared at me, completely confused.
"Why?" James grumbled.
"Because this forest is completely screwed up, and I am entirely sick of dealing with it." I deadpanned.
"The forest… likes you, Miracle." Sylvia piped up in her quiet voice, pointing her small finger at the moon-shaped pinecone hanging around my neck.
"I'm pretty sure that plant lady and the actual forest are two completely different things, Sylvia," I corrected her.
Speaking of that mysterious plant woman, I had spotted her again when I woke up to end Sylvia's watch shift, just silently staring at us from the thick brush, really creepy. I had actively tried to levitate over and talk to her, but the second I blinked, she vanished into the green canopy before I could get a single word out. I had no idea why she was playing these cryptic games with us, but whatever.
"Okay, enough wasting daylight," I cut off the conversation, activating my telekinesis to lift myself into the air. Before they could react, I extended my gravity fields, making both James and Sylvia float right alongside me.
"EEEP!" Sylvia squeaked, flailing her legs.
"HEY! PUT US THE HELL DOWN, MIRACLE!" James yelled, thrashing in mid-air.
"Like I said, we are speeding up the pace, which means no more talking and no more slacking," I told them, locking their positions securely into my flight direction. Muttering a quick rhythm beneath my breath, I released a massive psychic pulse from my feet, propelling us fast across the gray sky, dragging the two shouting children directly toward the next marked roadblock on the trail.
A little while of flying later, the raw sound of rushing water hit my ears long before the treeline actually cleared. When we finally broke through the dense trees, the sheer scale of the view forced me to cut our flight to a dead stop in mid-air. All three of us hovered there, completely frozen in place.
"Wow…" Sylvia whispered, her small fingers clutching the fabric of her coat as she looked down, and James had a similar look of awe all over his face. "Miracle, what's that?"
"It's called a waterfall."
"Waterfall?" She muttered the word, her green eyes glinting before she began shaking me and excitedly pointing down. "Look! Look! Pretty!"
"Oh, that's called a rainbow," I added, looking at the colorful arc at the bottom of the waterfall.
"Wow... so that's what a rainbow looks like!" James said, matching Sylvia's excitement with a big grin that showed off his fangs.
It was pretty amazing seeing a waterfall and a rainbow again. It really put into perspective how beautiful this world could be after being locked in a cage and basically tortured for so long.
Suddenly, a ray of bright, smoky ink shot straight out from the map, pointing directly into the center of the waterfall.
"Well, that's interesting," commented Tinashe, her tone filled with caution and seriousness. "Be on guard, Miracle. We don't know what sort of trials that trickster installed for you on this trail."
"You don't have to tell me twice." I nodded.
"Miracle… why is it doing that?" Sylvia pointed curiously as she and James tried to touch the light.
"I don't know, but I think it wants us to go inside the waterfall." Ensuring we wouldn't get completely drenched, I made a transparent psychic shield around the three of us to block the freezing torrent. I then glided us straight through the waterfall.
And what do you know… there was a massive cavern hidden directly behind it, and the entrance was a hell of a lot bigger than I initially thought. The air inside was completely choked and heavy with humidity, making my green hair feel a little damp as we floated into the darkness. Following the glowing ink ray, I kept my radar maxed out just in case something tried to jump us from the shadows.
My radar picked up a bizarre vibration deeper in the gloom.
"Miracle," Sylvia worriedly called out, and I signed both of them to keep quiet.
"Hey, guys... you hear that too?" asked James, and Sylvia nodded rapidly.
"What are you guys hearing and from where?" I asked them.
"I don't know, it's like that weird sound you sometimes make when your lips are together and you blow out air." James pointed in the direction of the signature I picked up.
"Whistling? There's someone or something whistling here?" I raised my eyebrow, continuing to carefully float in the direction of the ray.
"Hu... Hu... Hu..."
I finally heard the whistling too. It was a lot more off-putting and creepy than a normal whistle, and normally I would have turned back like a rational person in this situation. But guess there was no going back now.
Slowly floating further, I peeked around a massive outcropping of rock, and what I saw made my eyes widen a bit.
"Dude, what the hell... ?"
It was really big, easily ten feet tall, with black-gray fur, long limbs, and thick, heavy red lips which continued to produce the creepy whistling sound. She had long, messy black hair, wore tattered animal furs, and had a large woven basket on her back that was glowing purple. It definitely looked female, especially with her slightly exposed large breasts.
(She looks like this).
"A giantess... how interesting. But her behavior is a little particular." Tinashe pointed out. She wasn't wrong. The lady looked like she was seriously tweaking out.
Hearing a slight crack behind me, I saw James fully pissed, clenching his hand on the wall so hard that it caused a crack to spread through the rock. "Jay?" I whispered.
"Arrgh! It's one of them. Another one of those monsters from the lab!" he gritted, his short fuse kicking in as embers began to surround him.
"Don't do anything stupid, man," I warned him, turning to Sylvia, who looked a bit too focused on the tweaking giantess. The ray was pointing directly to the giant's basket, making me inwardly curse. "Alright, guys, I think the map wants us to take that thing on her back. Before you ask, it's called a basket. Oh, shit—"
I muttered as she suddenly stared straight at us.
"HU! HU! HU!"
The giantess was tossing and turning in agonizing discomfort, clutching her head before suddenly lifting a massive stone hammer from her side and slamming it hard into the earth. The cavern violently shuddered, and with a deafening CRACK, a localized tremor caused the stone threshold right behind us to collapse, completely sealing off the cave entrance with heavy boulders.
Good thing I quickly sent us back as the attack landed somewhat near us, causing rubble to fall and cover the entrance.
I tensed, but as I scanned the dust cloud, I realized something subtle. That was weird... she hadn't aimed the strike at us.
Dark, sickly purple energy was actively oozing from her skin, radiating the exact same parasitic, foul malice as the ghouls from yesterday.
"So we're going to have to fight it, right?" James asked, a little too excited.
"Yeah, looks li…"
"No!" Sylvia yelled, cutting me off.
"Huh?" James and I questioned.
"And why shouldn't we? It's just a monster," James said. "All they've done is try to hurt and kill us."
"No! Not bad!" Sylvia argued back. "She like us. Lab too!"
"Let me guess, the forest told you?"
"Yes!" She nodded aggressively.
"Alright, you two, enough" Rubbing my eyes, I gently separated them. "Tinashe, what do you think?"
"I side more with James to be honest with you, Miracle," she said inside my mind. "From what I've seen, she's gone completely feral, so I don't think she has much rational thought left. It would be best to use aggressive force. However, I know you're a big softie inside, so maybe you should bridge the gap."
"Okay, fine. We'll do it Sylvia's way." I told them, making Sylvia silently cheer while James scoffed. "Don't worry, James, you'll still get to beat her ass a little bit if that makes you feel any better."
"A little." He cracked his knuckles.
"Sylvia, you stand back and provide long-range support," I ordered, mapping out the tactical plan. "When James and I create an opening and knock her off balance, you notch an arrow and drop the heaviest, strongest root-bind you can manage to lock her down. Then I'll do whatever I can to help her out with her situation."
Extending my palm toward the rubble pile, I telekinetically sent the rocks flying like missiles straight toward the giantess.
"HU?!"
The giantess nimbly shattered the rocks with her bare hands, but the distraction worked perfectly. James and I ran into action.
"HOOOOUUU?!"
Before she could use her earth hammer again, I used my telekinesis to stop her tracks, though I was taken back at how well she was fighting it off. I focused on her arm, disarming her of her hammer. James, still dashing towards her, ignited his fist and landed a direct shot to her cheek, sending her back.
Though she was a lot more nimble than I thought, as she flipped and landed on her feet, dodging a fireball from James to put some distance between us. I held her in place again, but…
"OOHHHUUU!"
She let out the loudest scream I've ever heard. The wind was heavy enough to blast James and me back, but the physical force wasn't the problem… the after-effects were the problem.
The hell is this... ? I gasped internally as my mind completely fractured. A violent wave of neural interference slammed behind my eyes, making my limbs feel heavy and unresponsive, exactly like a case of sleep paralysis.
Seeing my brief, subdued state, the giantess burst through the mist at terrifying speed, pulling a jagged stone stake from her wicker basket. My ringed eyes snapped wide, and I forced my brain out of the mental paralysis by sheer volume of willpower, a bright green aura erupting across my skin. I didn't have time to dodge, so I threw up a half-baked telekinetic shield. But before she could pierce it, an arrow flew through the cave air, impacting the ground beneath her feet.
Turning to Sylvia's position, I gave her a sharp thumbs-up, which she returned with a proud, bright smile.
It wasn't over yet, as the basket began to glow and crackle, flinging fully open. A strong force began pulling us in.
"Oh, hell nah!" I wasn't going to get sucked into whatever freaky pocket dimension that was.
Using my telekinesis, I ripped a dozen heavy stone shards from the cave floor, walls, and roof, sending them hurling at her. The giant quickly stopped the vortex to dodge and intercept the debris, but while she was distracted, James landed an attack that sent her to the ground.
Taking the chance, I decreased the amount of Gs on myself, making me a lot lighter and increasing my speed so I could dash and sneak behind her to touch her leg.
"Gotcha."
I added 4Gs worth of gravity, pinning her to the ground. The giantess gritted her teeth, the earth beneath her splitting apart as her dense muscles tried to fight off the crushing mass. She was physically stronger than any monster I had ever encountered, slowly forcing her torso up despite the weight, forcing me to push past my 4Gs limit to 5.2. But Sylvia didn't miss her cue.
Three Golden Seed arrows slammed into the ground, and a massive, iron-hard web of glowing green circuits and black veins locked her limbs completely immobile.
"AARRGGH!!" She continued to struggle.
Sylvia bounded across the mud, gently placing her bare palm directly onto the giantess's forehead as her veins pulsed with a green light.
"Stop fighting," Sylvia said softly. "Want to help you."
The giant seemed to calm down, though I saw the corrupted energy surge a bit, making her grit her teeth in discomfort. But it's good that she can understand us.
"P-Please... help me," she begged, her eyes watering as her voice came out in a slow, deep whisper.
Sylvia smiled, nodding rapidly before pointing a finger at me. "Miracle fix."
"How did she do that?" questioned James, and I shrugged. I still didn't know the mechanics of Sylvia's powers either. The giant lady and Sylvia looked at me with big, pleading eyes.
"Oh, man, don't look at me like that." I sighed.
"You are such a softie," snorted Tinashe.
"Shut up woman." I muttered, kneeling down directly in front of the giantess's head. "This is my first time doing this on someone else, so just bear with me and stay strong, alright?"
"Yeik..." she muttered out, her voice a low, whistling exhale.
My psychic energy entered her body, and I immediately felt all the imbalance. The first layer felt a bit similar to Sylvia's and was in tune with her body—this was her life energy, her yeik. But wrapped tightly around those clean pathways was a disgusting, parasitic, and artificial runic matrix. The Chaos Brigade had literally tied her life force into agonizing, distorted knots to weaponize her spatial basket.
I did try to be gentle with little access. Treating my telekinesis like an invisible pair of high-pressure pliers, I firmly clamped onto the parasitic nodes. A sharp, blinding headache flared directly behind my eyes, and a steady stream of fresh crimson began to trail down from my left nostril from the sheer friction.
"Rip them out." I commanded myself, grinding my teeth.
With a brutal mental wrench, I manually seized the laboratory knots and violently sheared them away from her biological template.
The purple compliance runes across her fur flared blindingly bright before violently shattering into millions of harmless, glowing golden sparks that dissolved into the cave air.
"A-And... d-done," I panted, stretching my fingers a bit. "
Regaining my breath, I looked at her energy, my eyes drifting down toward her tattered wicker basket. The ink ray from the map was still pulsing inside it, but I wasn't risking touching that thing yet.
"Grrgghh..."
The lady began to wake up, making James and me jump back as Sylvia released her from the vein binds.
"Sylvia, what the hell are you doing?!" I snapped.
"Don't worry... alright now." Sylvia smiled innocently.
I telekinetically flicked her head. Thwack.
"OW! MIRACLE !"
"I don't care what the fuck the forest tells you, you need to be more careful and not just blindly trust stuff, especially when it comes to all this!" I scolded her, and she looked down all sad.
"S-Sorry," she quivered.
"Hey, come on. I didn't hit you that hard." I sighed and rubbed my eyes. So this is how my older brother Christopher felt sometimes dealing with me.
The giantess let out a long, heavy groan that made the dirt beneath my feet vibrate. Slowly, her massive ten-foot frame shifted.
"Get ready, dragon boy," I muttered, hovering an inch off the ground.
James ignited his hands, growling. "If she attacks us, I'm not holding back and burning her face off."
But she didn't start tweaking when she opened her eyes. They were now a dull, completely exhausted brown instead of red. She blinked at the three of us, her thick red lips twitching into a weirdly soft expression before she looked down at her bare hands.
"Free..." she muttered in a low, heavy drawl. "I'm truly free."
In a quick, swift motion, her massive arms swept forward. I managed to fly out of the way, but James and Sylvia were scooped up instantly, brought straight against her tattered furs and massive chest in a crushing hug.
"THANK YOU! THANK YOU SO MUCH!" she cried out, weeping loudly as she squeezed them tight.
I half-expected James to set himself on fire, but his face was completely blank, looking like his brain was stuck in a total system reboot from the shock of physical affection. Sylvia, though, was just giggling at the gesture. But the two were pushed further into her chest, and it looked like it was getting hard for them to breathe.
"Yeah, you're welcome," I deadpanned, crossing my arms. "Mind letting those two go? I think they're losing air."
"Oh! My apologies, little strays." She gently placed the two down in the mud. "My name is Sinya, and thank you again for curing me, little Ixt."
"Watch it! Were you trying to kill us?!" James yelled, lighting up his fist to cover his embarrassment.
"James, stop! She's nice now!" Sylvia jumped right in front of James, acting like a little shield for her. It looked kind of funny seeing how short she was compared to him.
Sinya's deep-set eyes softened, a genuine look of guilt on her face. "Children... I remember your attires now. Those people who captured me poisoned my mind with their devil magic and forced my paws to fight you."
"Yeah, I remember you too," James muttered, crossing his arms. "You were made to fight my friend Juliet sometimes back in the testing cages."
"I do not recall the faces of the children I fought, for the smoke in my mind was thick," Sinya said softly, her voice dropping into a low, sad cadence. "Hoooo... Hoooo..." "Core acts, especially against innocent fawns. I am deeply sorry, small dragon, if I hurt or possibly killed someone close to you in the cages. You as well, little seedling and little Íxt."
James blinked, completely thrown off by a monster actually apologizing to him. He began doing that thing where you cross your arms, then put them behind your head, then drop them to your side, because you just don't know how to respond or react to basic empathy.
"Well, ma'am, you seem alright now," I said, floating a bit closer to her shoulder level. "So if you don't mind me asking… how the hell did a ten-foot giantess like you even get captured by a lower-class devil and a bunch of his goons? Judging by that little fight, I could tell you were holding yourself back here and there. So what happened?"
"Three snow-seasons past, I walked the deep timber ridges, gathering fat trout for my hearth-fire," she explained, her voice carrying a slow, rhythmic quality. "Hu! Hu! But I was ambushed by those cowards. They launched special needles that drained my yeik, binding my limbs with enchanted ropes before dragging me deep into their subterranean fortress."
"Guess yeik is her way of saying life energy from the way she's describing it." I noted.
"Don't worry... free now! Miracle, Sylvia, and James," Sylvia grinned, proudly introducing us. "We blew up the bad place!"
"Uh... we?" James and I voiced together, giving her a look.
"You were the ones responsible for shattering the fortress?" Sinya bowed her massive head deeply. "Praise to your spirits. I am repeating myself, but you have my eternal thanks, young ones."
"Well, you got a name?" I asked.
"Yes, my name is Sinya."
"Well, Sinya, do you mind if I look for something in your basket there?" I pulled out the map from my pocket. The smoky ink ray was still pointing straight at the massive wicker basket strapped to her back.
Sinya tilted her head. "The woven space holds many remnants, and much I do not remember putting due to my state. If it helps your journey, take what you need, little Ixt."
She reached back, unclasping the glowing wicker basket and setting it onto the ground with a heavy THUD.
After opening it thankfully with no spatial vortex effect this time Sylvia immediately tried to poke her head over the rim. I used my telekinesis to hold her back by her collar, while Sinya began reaching inside to pull out whatever she got her hands on. They ranged from a large iron hammer, an indigenous cedar mask, oversized concrete blocks from the lab, crude hunting spears, and three completely intact, frozen dead bears. Yeah, it was a really bizarre looting session. At least James and Sylvia were kept busy sorting through the stuff she was tossing out.
I noticed she took glances at the pinecone hanging on my neck with surprise and was glancing at me (probably my eyes as it's usually the eyes) in curiosity.
If she wasn't at least cool, I wonder if we would have just jumped her and robbed her for her basket. Wait... that's a terrible thing to think about.
"You little delinquent," Tinashe laughed inside my mindspace. "You were unironically thinking about running her pockets as kids put it."
"Hey, you can't fault a guy for thinking ahead."
Finally, Sinya reached deep into the baseline of the wicker basket and took out a big harpoon. The shaft was wrapped in thick leather, and the thing had a shiny copper color, plus it was giving off a weird energy. But at least the map was pointing straight to it.
"The weapon of the coastal hunters," Sinya murmured, holding it out. "And what use is this to you, little Íxt?"
I just shrugged and pulled the heavy harpoon to my hands. It was a lot lighter than I thought it would be. Guess all that gravity training under 2.3Gs really did pay off.
"Alright, that will be all." I secured the weapon, twirling the shaft a bit.
"No problem, little Íxt. It's because of your spirits I may now return to my family without fear of hurting my kin."
My ears perked up at the word family, and the others looked interested too. "Family? You have a family out here?" I asked.
"Yes, I do. My hearth-fire is not far from these ridges," Sinya smiled, her massive hand gently patting her burden basket. "Hoooo... Hoooo..." "You should come with me to my village. Just giving you the copper iron is not enough gratitude. We can give a proper meal of smoked meat, warm clothes woven for the cold, and extra materials for your long journey."
"Family!" Sylvia lit up, her small hand instantly grabbing Sinya's large thumb, making the giantess smile. "Family. Want to meet Sinya's family."
"Food?" James's stomach let out a loud, pathetic rumble right on cue. They all turned to me.
I rubbed the back of my neck, checking the coordinates in my head. "I don't know, man. It's really out of our way based on the map..."
Sylvia and Sinya were giving me massive, synchronized pleading eyes, while James's stomach growled a second time, harder than the first. I let out a defeated groan. "Okay, fine. Just a quick stop."
"YEAH!" Sylvia cheered, instantly climbing up Sinya's furs to perch proudly on her shoulder.
"Hey." I quickly flew right in front of her face, my ringed green eyes narrowing into a cold, blank glare. The sudden drop in my tone made her freeze. "Don't try and pull anything funny or try to backstab us. The only reason your heart is still beating is because Sylvia begged us not to kill you. If you cross that line, I will use my powers to slowly twist every single organ and bone in your body until you turn into mush. Am I clear?"
Sinya blinked, moving back a single, cautious inch as she felt the absolute sincerity behind my threat. "I... I understand, Íxt."
Moving quickly, she picked up her massive earth hammer, slamming it into the cave wall with controlled precision. The stone fractured cleanly, creating a hidden, sloping tunnel that led directly out of the cavern. Levitating James alongside me, we moved outside the cavern and followed the giantess through the cavern, marching toward her home.