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Gigas had been
sleeping.
It had not been aware that it was sleeping, not until it was jerked roughshod from a dream; needled trees, fresh rain and rot, and the touch of mist yanking at its skin and giving way to the slide and scratch of rocks
To earth which was shaking in a way that no animals weight or strength could shift it to.
It scrabbled. It climbed and it tore and it ran and it kept itself ahead of the slide, just barely. Just enough that by the time the dirt and rock and gravity brought it the valley floor, it had sustained no more damage than the scrapes on its palms, and the balls of its feet. And nails. Broken. Here and there.
No longer in peril, it listened.
The human was quiet.
The human had not been quiet when it had awoken. Had screamed in fact. Short and off-cut by a sudden, staticy, darkness. Only as it was waking, and that would have been unusual except that this time there were no words to accompany this off-cut shout.
Usually, the human told it what they were facing. Usually, the human had the time to do so.
It looked around. The side of the mountain was no longer moving. The sky looked clear and bright. Spring maybe. Certainly not winter. The earth beneath its feet was rock, jagged in places, covered by a thin layer of dirt and disturbed by the motion that had come before.
It could see nothing that threatened it.
Next, it sniffed. It smelled blood. Smelled it’s own in fact but that told it almost nothing. The human had hit it’s head while screaming. Even through the dream, it had felt that. It held a clawed hand up, ginger, not to break it’s own skin.
Indeed, there was a wound. Drying. Not deep. The thickness of its own skull popping solid where the human’s had briefly caved.
Absurd human. Never acted with any respect for the rest of them.
It would see to this mess.
It looked around. Again. Nothing had changed.
The sky was bright. The earth was still. The air was cold. The human was...still quiet.
It could, it supposed, if it had too, climb the remnants of the slide.
That would hurt its scratched hands. And its scratched feet. It rather wouldn’t.
It would watch the sun, and it would wait for the human to tell it if they needed to move quickly.
If the human did not speak to it again, then that was just as well.
Gigas looked at the sky again. It ran its hands along the side of the mountain and the slide of dirt and rock until it found a place that felt right. It licked its wounds, shallow though they were. It slept. This time it did not dream.
_
It woke.
It woke with an instinctive roar, hands balling to fists and voice growing in it’s throat as it hurled itself from its hole. Hurled itself into the open space where the peaks of the mountain lowered to one.
It breathed.
Something had woken it.
Something.
Above it, lightning pierced the now-dark sky and thunder echoed.
Was that what had woken it?
It could see nothing else that could have.
It was cold, but not distressingly so.
There were rocks where it had been sleeping. But that was nothing terribly abnormal.
It had slept well. It could feel that the human had too.
Still, the human said nothing.
It considered that it should worry about the human. After all, the human handled most of the navigation for them. The human carried them through the world, when they happened to be traveling.
But the human was quiet, and it was awake. So maybe. Maybe. It didn’t need the human after all.
_
The earth shook again.
Three suns, two moons, not nearly enough hours between this shake and when it first woke.
It knew that if it faltered, if it fell, some other creature, bubbling already in the back-and-narrow spaces of its mind would spring to the fore.
It scrambled and it leaped and it ran and it climbed.
It dug its claws into the cold, wet earth. It felt rocks and pebbles drag their skins against its hands.
It smelled wet.
Not rain wet.
Snow melt.
It should have been colder.
It should have been warmer.
There were any number of things it should have been. How long since it had last been awake for more than moments?
But it had clawed out enough in the side of the slope. It had found a steady place. The earth smelled close to fresh. It could rest here.
It could rest.
_
The human stirred, rolled over. The human mewed like a cub. Lost and sore.
In the back of its mind, Gigas reached out. It kept its pressure light. It smoothed the humans hair. It tucked the red fabric the human wore around it’s shoulders. The human.
Quieted.
Gigas, unknowing if this meant they were recovering, drifted back to sleep.
_
It woke again, and it woke in fury.
It was hungry, hungry, hungry.
It was scared. Scared. Scared.
It had seen, it had seen, it had seen;
Itself,
and
the human
In the distance, inside its head. Gigas heard a mechanical, tearing whir, and
Masker smelled chill on the air, tasted new-grown things on the same, and
Heard wings, and darkness, darkness
darkness
Chaos doesn’t sleep
or eat
or smell
there is nothing here with which Chaos can occupy it’s time
Chaos breathes
and
Folds itself back into the under, slips itself back into the space behind Gigas, and Masker and the human
_
A cold and radiant gray filtered through the mountainside -hole. Through cracks in the walls it hadn’t been aware of. It heard sounds that reminded it of morning. It realized,
It was hungry.
The human was hungry too
Grumbling somewhere, in the depths of it’s injured sleep.
It could crawl out of its hole, and see the sky, smell the air. It could not smell anything that it could eat.
It clawed and crawled until it could feel both the sun and the warm mountain air against its skin.
It breathed
and smelled
and breathed
and smelled
and started to climb.
It was easier to climb today than it had been yesterday.
_
Hunting wasn’t hard.
There were no wolves here. No big cats, and only little monsters.
Everything that lived here had forgotten how to fear. How to hide, what to run from.
Goats, it found. And no sign of a shepherd. Goats that ran and jumped and bleated. Goats that either had forgotten that things had once hunted them, or who had forgotten how to flee from those that did.
And that was good. When their shepherd next counted these goats, they would count three times to be sure one was really gone.
Full, it was tired again. It could not remember if it was supposed to do anything other than recuperate. For the human.
The human would wake soon. This time it was more certain. It would keep them safe and fed until then.
As it slept, it dreamt.
It dreamt of the human.
It dreamt of long-fingered hands and a red cape. Of teeth that slit themselves into a smile and the smell of gunpowder. It dreamt of those long fingers trigger-pulling. Of those teeth white at its throat.
It stayed sleeping.
Vincent
woke.
_
He woke with a gasping start. Dirt in his hair, in his eyes. Caked beneath his nails.
The familiar pain of tired neurons, not used to being used. The emptiness of a had-been-there tuned not-been.
He looked at the sky.
He counted backward from ten, and he breathed so deep his ribcage started to ache.
His name was Vincent. Vincent Valentine. He was older than he was sure how to say, as he hadn’t seen another human in at least ten years. It looked like he was in the mountains. He had at least, a dim memory of the surface giving way beneath his feet. Of a roaring sound. He thinks he could not have climbed here himself, and maybe-