March of the Thundress: Nidings, #2

By R.B. Ashton

The giantess tribe is coming. Can one hero turn the tide of war?

Young monster hunter Brat Sidik has arrived in the Clear Valley ready to do battle. The monstrous Thundress Tribe is advancing, destroying villages and devouring people as they seek to reclaim dominion over humans. It is a time where heroes will be made, and Brat believes skill can overcome size.

 

But he's never killed a giant – and is yet to find a mentor who has.

 

Brat is forced to navigate a war zone and a murderous princess in his quest to become a slayer of monsters. He faces a witch with shrinking magic, a knight twice his size and giantesses big enough to swallow men whole. Along the way, he befriends fellow adventurers, but is exposed to brutal horrors.

With the queen of the giantesses nearby, will Brat master his skills soon enough to fight back – or will he become another monster's snack?

This thrilling second part in the Nidings saga sees a new hero meeting with old favourites as the conflict between humans and giantesses escalates. Read it today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neringa Press
• Release date: Oct 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215273807

Book preview

March Of the

Thundress

R.B. Ashton

MMXXII

1

Miskof Cathedral stood broken, vast and dark as a tomb for titans. It must have been a mighty place of worship once, with uneven steeples that seemed to touch the sky itself, but now it was unlit with chunks of wall missing, doors broken and no signs of human life nearby. It looked especially haunting at night, as the holes in the empty windows dipped into total darkness and the building blotted out a massive portion of the sky. Huge as it was, though, it was the perfect shelter for a giant who preferred to rest in the Clear Valley than to hike back up through the Nidings.

And there was no mistaking that something large was in there, from the rumbling sound of breathing that shook the walls. As Brat crept closer, sticking close to his mentor, he felt it through the ground, shaking the soles of his boots. The breath of something massive.

Wolden, his trainer for five years, smiled over a shoulder, pleased where Brat felt they should be worried. The older man had a nasty smile, teeth crooked and mouth askew from an old scar; together with his ragged cloak and the uneven stubble that ran over his chin and scalp, it made him look quite deranged. His whispered comment only added to that: It’s gonna be a beauty, lad. This is it.

Brat nodded to show he was ready, adjusting his grip on the handle of his sword, his palm sweaty. He tried to quiet his own breathing, but with each step closer to the cathedral he felt that little bit more afraid.

Wolden reached the break in the wall first and his wild eyes widened to see what lay beyond. Such satisfaction meant only one thing. They’d finally found a giant. After countless hours in training grounds and tracking mid-sized beasts, this was the prize Wolden had been waiting for. A chance to demonstrate the prowess he never stopped talking about. Brat moved up alongside him and took in the sight with less enthusiasm.

Enormous as the church interior was, rising up in arching ribs of stone, it barely contained the monster inside. A female giant, lying on her side, head near them, by the open, broken space of the colossal doors. Her hair lay in rope-like braids spread across the flagstones, partly covering her face. Her shoulder rose as high as most homes, a hillock of flesh that caught the glinting moonlight. The body stretched away in rolling curves, towards the altar area where the huge legs were folded and bunched up to fit. The giantess was barely covered, with thick leather straps running from her shoulders down over her chest, and a thick fur garment around her waist.

Almost looks beautiful at rest, huh? Wolden whispered, with a chuckle in his voice. He gave Brat a game nudge. Bet you’d like to climb on that, son.

Brat shook his head, wishing he’d be quiet – but though the old man was teasing, he couldn’t deny the giantess was alluring. He’d seen a few women naked, even touched some, but he’d never known any quite as well-formed; muscular, smooth –

Shaking the thoughts off, Brat refocused. This monster was a killer, impossibly dangerous. It was surely the one that had flattened the village of Cilly, a trade post they had found in ruins that morning. The crater-like tracks had led vaguely this way, though they knew better than to follow them directly. Cilly had been one of many communities that had suffered under a rising influx of thundresses into the Clear Valley, as the monsters expanded their attacks and took people prisoner. Prisoner, of course, was a kinder way of putting it, when most were destined to be eaten. Even now, there were probably people digesting in the belly of this monster.

Yes, Brat told himself, the feminine aspect of her appearance aside, this was a beast that would kill them all. The vile Thundress Tribe all delighted in feasting on human flesh. With some as tall as two hundred feet, they were now the greatest threat to stability in the Kingdom of Claenlic, as it settled peaceful borders with the other realms.

It’s on the smaller side, Wolden said, taking off his bag and carefully laying it down. Out here alone in an area with little value, she’s probably a lesser giantess. Good practice.

It didn’t look lesser to Brat in any way. It was the first giantess they’d seen – the first thing this big that Brat had ever seen – and it looked unstoppable.

So, Wolden said, sucking at his gums. You gonna take this one?

Brat looked at him with alarm and Wolden gave him a cock-eyed stare. He suddenly didn’t know where to begin. Where to cut, exactly? Were you supposed to move with the giant’s breath or out of sync with it? Approach at the left of its vision or the right?

Relax, Wolden chuckled, giving him another small push. Joking. I’ll show you how it’s done. Quiet and gentle like. He placed his unnecessary equipment to one side and lifted a tall cylindrical jar. Hazak poison, the most deadly liquid on the market. Wolden paused to take in the giantess again, seeming to form a plan in his mind, then nodded and said, Watch my stuff.

Then he was off, creeping through the church with impressive speed considering how softly he trod. Brat had a feeling that the slightest sound would be carried to tremendous heights by this building, and held his breath in anticipation of any misstep from his mentor.

Wolden reached the giantess’s head in no time, though, and turned to give Brat another grin and a thumbs up. Then he trod carefully between the nest of thick braided hair to reach the monster’s face. With the giantess lying on her side, her mouth was titled down towards the ground, chest-height to Wolden as he approached. He paused, steadying himself as the huge woman’s torso rose and fell like massive bellows.

Slowly, very carefully, Wolden twisted the lid on the jar of poison, one small turn at a time. The lid finally came free with a light pop and Wolden froze, watching the giantess’s face. Brat’s hand tightened on the sword, which he held up uselessly, as if he could run in and stab her if anything went wrong. It was futile, but it gave him some very slight sense of security.

He was trained to fight, after all. Wolden was a seasoned professional who had tracked and killed just about every known species in the Eight Realms, and the man had taught Brat all he knew. Giants were easy, he said – big targets, dumb brutes. You just had to get close enough that they couldn’t focus on you, then there were all manner of ways to climb them. There were three dozen points you could stab them that were fatal. The skin was tough, but you just needed to get the blade tip in at the right angle. Or, of course, you could just use technology against them, as Wolden was doing now. A simple yet devastating concoction that would kill even a monster this size.

Another minute of tension and it’d be over, Brat told himself, watching Wolden creep closer, towards lips big enough to crawl through. Wolden was almost in arms’ reach now, and Brat cringed on his behalf. But the old man was totally calm, unblinkingly focused, and Brat was finally convinced he might be as good as he always claimed to be, this heavy-drinking, grizzled old man.

But Wolden moved the jar up on his left side and Brat saw the mistake at once – with a sleeping beast, Hazak poison should always be held away from scent receptors. In this case, nowhere near the nose. As the training screamed in Brat’s mind, sure enough the giantess sniffed, stirred from sleep by the poison’s arresting smell.

There was about a two-second window for Wolden to thrust the poison into the massive mouth and dive for cover, before she managed to focus. He wasted it standing frozen in surprise as the monster stirred. The head drew up, out of his reach, pulling braids up in pillars that dangled around Wolden, as the giantess’s vast torso rose up off the ground. In the shadowy confines of the cathedral, the movement was that of a goddess stirring to life, filling the place of worship as she climbed towards a seating position. The braids were still trailing up, Brat saw – a chance for Wolden to grab hold, climb, strike – but another second had passed and all the old veteran did was take a dumbfounded step back.

Brat gritted his teeth, biting down the urge to shout at Wolden to move. He shifted his feet, bracing to charge. Don’t think about her as a monster, but as a climbable object, an obstacle course. He could get up a knee and climb the fur skirt for a belly strike. Or skirt around the side and jab at a heel. Brat switched his sword to the other hand to wipe his palm, willing Wolden to attack first, but his mentor was only edging away, gibbering in fear. The giantess stared at Wolden, only slowly gaining consciousness.

Monster hunter, she murmured, and even in her softest, sleepiest voice the sound carried enormously through the building, bouncing off the walls. The scale of the voice locked Brat’s legs in place. He saw her move and internally shouted at himself to get out there, take her on! But as the giantess lifted an arm, none of his muscles would respond.

Wolden finally regained his senses, seeing the massive woman’s hand opening towards him, and he fumbled to draw his short sword. He dropped the jar and it shattered on the floor, making him cough on the fumes and let go of the sword, too. That was all the time he had – giant fingers closed around his chest, trapping his arms, and he was lifted off the ground, wailing.

Now, Brat’s brain railed, he had to move now! But he was captivated by the raw power of the giantess holding Wolden in a fist as he kicked about uselessly. She regarded him like a person might an insect, and tightened her fingers, making Wolden roar in pain as his bones crunched. His movements and shouts weakened, leaving him gasping, and the giantess shrugged, unimpressed. She opened her mouth and Wolden was barely able to protest as he was pushed inside.

Brat wanted to look away but couldn’t even persuade his body to do that as the giantess chewed on his mentor. Wolden kept struggling, lightly, as he was pulled into her mouth. The only blessing in the horror was how dark it was under the cathedral’s broken roof, so his disappearance was masked in shadow, mostly visible through the movements of the giant woman’s silhouetted head. She swallowed and let out a breath that whistled through the eaves, and that finally triggered Brat into action.

He darted around the wall and into the open night. Hiding there, breathing fast, he heard the giantess move inside, a hand taking her weight with a great creak against the cathedral floor. She made a thoughtful noise, scanning the room, and Brat found his legs were suddenly working again, running through the weeds and tall grass to take him well away. He stumbled down a slope and threw himself through a small copse of trees before looking back.

The tremendous shadow of the giantess emerged from the crumbled arch of Miskof Cathedral, and she rose to stand statuesque against the night sky. Her big white eyes shone like moons up above as she scanned from side to side, and Brat shrank into the cover of the trees. She made the cathedral look toy-like, immense as it was. How could anyone face such a monster as this?

Brat fell back against a tree trunk and slid to the ground, trying to compose himself. He knew how, dammit. He had trained for this. The monsters had been driven from the Clear Valley before and they could be driven back again. Size did not matter when you had knowledge, strategy and skill. Even a two-foot blade could take down a giant.

But as Brat stared at the weapon in his hands, the thought of venturing back out there, with the giantess looming, was sheer madness. He sat waiting, shaking, as the monster completed her scan, then the earth groaned as she ducked back down into the cathedral.

Damn