There was something deeply satisfying about the knowledge that the current stage of our journey was almost at an end. Over the last two, maybe three, weeks, the pull I could feel from the Nexus had shifted from a heading almost directly North-West, towards one that pulled me straight north. Given that we had been going pretty much directly west during that time, following a large valley through the mountains, the river that carved the valley and, occasionally, a highway people had built through said valley, I could estimate that we had a similar distance still to go. In other words, two, maybe three, weeks until I could take over the Nexus and start digging in, fortifying my position and enjoying the nearly limitless amount of power it would give me access to.

Further west, and south for that matter, my scrying constructs were heading towards a few bays, driven by my curiosity about the ocean. What the change might have wrought in that environment, especially in the unexplored depths of it, was something I wanted to figure out at some point, even if I had no idea how to go about that just yet.

Similarly, I wanted to see if there were any Naga or other beings like them around, as unlikely as I thought that to be. The giants had been a surprise to me, so I considered it possible to find other, similar creatures in the ocean, though I currently wasn’t expecting it. Simply because I had encountered the giants so close to this place, while having only faced one similar situation before, that with the elves, and that hadn’t been quite the same; the elves used to be human, the giants? Well, I still wasn’t certain if they ever had been; everything I had seen and discovered about them, as opposed to the Sasquatch, pointed in a different direction.

But the ocean and its mysteries could wait for a while. For now, I had giants to marshall and guide, giants who I was just starting to introduce to the concepts of teamwork, division of labour and individual specialisation.

Of those, specialisation was the easiest to introduce to them. Two of the giants, a female I had dubbed Leyla and the smallest of them all, the one who had been a roaming giant before I had collected him and who was thus dubbed Runt, had demonstrated they were quite agile for their size. Agile, with strong Intuition, meaning they were prime material to be trained as trackers or hunters.

To make things even better, these two seemed to absorb the various lessons Sigmir had taught me about tracking and hunting with a sponge-like thirst, drinking it in and trying to put the lessons into practice as soon as possible. Maybe it was because they had experienced hunger in the past, or maybe it was just their talent, I wasn’t sure, but these two were incredibly eager to track down prey.

Curiously, Leyla seemed to be more interested in the tracking process, while Runt simply wanted to hunt as much food as he could. Hunt it, gorge himself on the meat and preserve as much as possible of the rest. Due to that, he also put in a lot of effort in the lessons regarding preparation and preservation of food, even if some of those lessons weren’t easy for him. Before I had pulled him into my web, he hadn’t been able to utilise fire, which might have been part of the reason why he was comparatively small and weak. A runt, as he was named, which could easily be due to a lack of sustenance. Giant bodies needed a lot of fuel, though I wasn’t sure if that was actually true when considering their size. Sure, they ate more than I ever could, but, at the same time, each giant was somewhere between four and eight times my weight, with a corresponding increase in muscle mass.

Maybe this would be the best way to introduce Runt and another giant to teamwork. I just had to find a suitable partner, maybe a giantess who was talented in the preparation and preservation of food, and point her towards Runt and vice versa. That way, I’d hopefully have a pair of giants who worked together, their individual talents and the division of labour allowing them to be far more effective than they’d normally be.

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Nodding to myself, I decided to start laying the groundwork for that already and add a few new dreams to Runt’s mind. Not the usual lessons with Sigmir showing them how to perform certain tasks, but something less structured. The Giant version of the whole white picket fence thing, images of him, coming home to a partner, allowing himself to relax while said partner expertly prepared the meat he brought home. It wasn’t something I had tried just yet, but it might work out well.

If only I knew which giantess would be the most suitable partner, so I could start seeding some traits said giantess had into his dreams, priming his mind to pursue that particular giantess who could be a suitable partner to him. Or maybe that was for the best. I hardly understood relationships between humans, and I didn’t think I would enjoy it if some higher power simply decided that I was to be joined with a particular person.

Though, in hindsight, wasn’t that slightly similar to the genesis of my relationship with Sigmir? With the whole Soulmates thing the Grandmother had talked about, did that mean I had connected to Sigmir as quickly because something had messed with me? Or had I always been that way, waiting for the right person to fit some specific mould, only for Sigmir to come along and, well, fit that mould neatly, just like I fit neatly with her?

How did people fall in love, or where did love come from in the first place? It couldn’t be solely for reproductive purposes, I was a prime example for that, so was ‘love’ a mechanism of social cohesion? Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, given that a number of supposedly cardinal sins could be considered linked to love. Lust and Envy were obviously, but spurned love could be a catalyst for Wrath, too. So, did love as a whole make society as a whole a more or less cohesive place?

It was an interesting question, but somehow, I doubted there would be answers to be found by pursuing this particular topic. It was far too complex and complicated, even with my own understanding of the Mind. After all, Love wasn’t just a mental process; there were physical, bodily processes tied to it, too and, according to the Grandmother, even the Soul played a major role. No, that would be something to research at a later date; for now, I had other things to do.

Like, try to find out which of my giants had talents in what direction? I had already stumbled across one crafter, and there were the two trackers I was working on. Naya, the giantess I had started out on, had some martial talent, but it looked like that talent was shared amongst pretty much all giants, meaning I should look for something else she was good at and could specialise in. Building, for example.

Her shelter had been quite impressive, if lacking in some respects. Maybe that was something I could have her specialise in, giving her a role beyond that of some sort of spiritual advisor or something like that. I didn’t want her to be nothing but my first point of contact, meaning I needed to funnel some suitable lessons down to her.

And maybe start making a list of what roles a group of people needed to fill so they could become a society. The obvious ones were those needed to provide food, water, shelter, clothing and some sort of medical care, going by basic needs. Though medical care might be the least important of those, I didn’t want my giants to be completely dependent on some sort of divine healing if I could help it. It could work, sure, and tie the society tightly to me, but it didn’t feel right. I certainly wouldn’t want to have somebody else hold that sort of power over me.

Water was an interesting one. From what I could tell, giants were exceedingly enduring in that regard, able to function normally for days without water, before drinking down a small stream to refill their reserves. It was, quite frankly, a little bit insane, but that was just another piece of their impressive physiques.

Meaning, clothing, and likely the production of tools to meet the other needs, were the needs I had to address to give my giants the foundation of their society, if clothing truly counted. They hadn’t needed it so far, and I wasn’t about to force them into clothes, just to spare me the sight of certain male body parts I didn’t want to see flopping about.

But before all that became relevant, I could already see something interesting through my scrying constructs.