While I was quite some distance away, the raven I had left behind allowed me to watch the previously injured giantess rise without trouble. If not for the oddity of the situation, it would likely have been quite amusing. The giantess looked incredibly confused, her hands touching the numerous places where she had been injured, poking and prodding at her own flesh with an expression on her face that I could only describe as complete disbelief and ever-mounting confusion. The poor dear had no idea just what had happened to her and, by the looks of it, she didn’t have the experience, or maybe the mental wherewithal, to even begin to imagine the events. For her, it must have been a complete miracle for her wounds to disappear like they had.

What’s more, I saw her pause shortly after she stopped prodding and poking her body, the confusion on her face growing even further. By now, I was fairly certain that if somebody had ever wanted an image to describe a confused expression, the one this Giantess had as she stood, leaning against the tree next to her, might have been it. Her forehead was creased, her thick lips were getting worried by her teeth, and her eyes were darting back and forth, as if looking for some explanation that might tell her what had happened.

With a sudden surge of mischievous energy, I channelled a small burst of Wind Magic through the scrying construct I had left behind to watch, and used said Wind Magic to make a sound. It was a familiar call, the same cackling laughter Lenore had loved to make when performing some mischievous feat, a combination of her usual cackling laughter and the catchphrase of the poem she had been named for, Nevermore. If one didn’t know about the word within the laughter, I didn’t think one would be able to hear, but once one knew what to pay attention to, it was undeniably there, making the whole thing so wonderfully fitting.

The sound immediately caught the giantess’ attention, making her stare at the raven sitting in the tree, and, in response, I made the raven stare back, its beady, silvery eyes focusing on the giantess with sharp intensity. For a few seconds, the giantess just kept staring, her eyes widening before flickering around, as if looking for some sort of explanation. Or maybe she was just looking for enemies, I couldn’t really tell, but whatever the case may be, just observing her was quite amusing.

Then, after a few moments of her looking around the area, the Giantess started to move in a familiar fashion, following one of the movement routines I had transmitted into her mind. She was, to put it politely, clumsy as a newborn fawn, which made for a hilarious sight to see, the eight feet and weighing some three hundred, maybe three hundred and fifty, kilograms stumbling around, trying to perform these movements was just too much for me. While the majority of my mind was focused on the raven I used to observe, my physical body back at our base started to giggle helplessly, causing my daughters to look at me in confusion.

But, regardless of the clumsy start, the giantess desperately tried to make the movements work, even as she was stumbling around and occasionally tripping over her feet. She tried to make them work, and she did so without even considering that the giant she had just lost against might be coming back. Shaking my head, despite the giggles still escaping my body, I made the raven fly towards her, causing her to stop her movements and stare at the approaching construct.

With a few flaps of its wings, the construct landed on her shoulder, using the claws I had given it to slightly dig into the giantess’ flesh, giving it the grip it needed to stay attached. Then, after a brief moment to consider how to best go about telling the giantess that she needed to move, I had the construct turn around, so its head was facing the same direction as the giantess was, even if she was craning her neck to look at the raven on her shoulder. Once that was done, I simply used the raven’s wing to slap the back of her head, trying to convey just how foolish she was being.

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When the first strike didn’t help, I repeated it, but the second time, I channelled a subtle weave of Mind Magic through the construct, the image of the other giant fixed in my mind, trying to convey that the danger hadn’t passed.

The effect was as effective as I could ever have hoped, making the giantess freeze for a moment, similar to the way she had earlier, but this time, she wasn’t staring at the bird any longer. Instead, she immediately turned, her eyes flickering around the forest until she apparently decided that the danger wasn’t present right now. Then, maybe because she was confident she wouldn’t be followed, she took off at a fast jog, her long legs eating up the distance with impressive speed.

Sure, I would be able to keep up thanks to my magic, but when looking at things purely from a physical perspective? She was putting forth a monstrous pace, and it didn’t look like she was straining to do so. Amusingly, her gait was so smooth that my construct had no trouble staying atop her shoulder. However, that could have been because only some parts of it were truly physical, the rest of it being a nearly weightless conglomerate of magically conjured and congealed shadow, not something that had a lot of inertia and mass, thus putting the construct’s centre almost right between its claws, as weird as that was.

Fifteen minutes, and perhaps five kilometres of rough terrain later, the giantess began to slow her fast jog to a walk, her breathing entirely untroubled by the exertion, driving home just how physically sturdy these creatures truly were. Sure, their minds were a little underdeveloped, even compared to the Sasquatch we had encountered a while back, but this pure, physical hardiness was something I could appreciate.

Perhaps I should try to figure out how their bodies did it, because I didn’t believe it was solely due to high attributes. They likely played a role, sure, but unless these giants received some monstrous attribute bonuses somewhere, I didn’t think they had enough points to achieve such physical abilities. At least not without completely sacrificing all other attributes, which they clearly did not. Their intelligence and likely their Charisma were fairly abysmal, maybe their dexterity, too, but the rest of their attributes didn’t feel as if they were too low. Truly, this was something I should investigate, if only to get a better idea of how to turn a giant like these into a Giantblood, like Sigmir had been. That way, I might be able to figure out a way to make a body for Sigmir by working together with Luna, which would be a major step towards the eventual resurrection of my beloved.

But before that could happen, I was watching the giantess move towards a fairly well-made shelter. This one was made by tying thick branches together to create sturdy frames, and then the giantess had woven vines and brambles around the frame, creating a sealed and empty space between the original branches. That space had then been filled with leaves and clay to create something quite similar to insulated panels, which the giantess had then used to seal up a space she had cleared between a few trees that were turned into pillars holding up her house. Not a bad construction, indeed, likely able to keep in the heat fairly well, in addition to keeping out wind and rain. However, I had to critique the lack of a chimney or other means to vent smoke. Thus, her fireplace was located in front of the shelter, not within it, forcing me to deduct a few points, even as I wondered if I should help and improve her shelter a bit.

Probably not, if I did, I might bring additional scrutiny down onto her, forcing her to defend a shelter beyond her capacities or something like that. I wasn’t entirely sure how the social structure of the giants worked just yet, so I decided against taking the risk.

Unexpectedly, the giantess didn’t enter her shelter or do anything else I would have considered normal. Instead, she intently cleared up another patch of ground, removing all the twigs and stones before stamping down any unevenness. Once that was done, and by that point I had moved my scrying construct back on a nearby branch, she started to work on the same exercises she had tried earlier, clearly working to make the movements and tricks her own. Maybe I had underestimated the giants just a little, or maybe my mental package had a greater impact than I thought possible. Regardless, this was quite interesting, and I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the giantess’ progress.