Stone Sentinels Part One: The Expedition

In the shadow of the hulking stone giant they all felt rather small. With blankets of moss hanging like clothing over its shoulders and draped along its body, it would have been easy to believe the sculpture was alive. It stood as a sentinel watching over the valley for intruders, and had a pleasant second job as a perch for various mountain birds. The statue liked birds, but was never able to show it; being made of stone really cramped its ability for expressions of any kind. Cracking a smile would take far too literal of a turn to be worth trying.
                Professor Taith and her four students stood in a gaggle by the gargantuan right ankle of the statue, over-sized backpacks bulging with camping supplies, amateur archaeological gear and more than a few interesting looking rocks from the surrounding slopes. The professor had tried to explain that gathering stones of little-to-no archaeological or even geological interest on the way in was an awful idea, simply taking up space and weighing them down, but no-one would listen to her. If she wasn’t smart enough to avoid being lumbered with chaperoning duties then what could she possible know about heavy rocks making people tired. Three weeks she would have to put up with this, three long miserable weeks with the logical intersection of pretension and ignorance made manifest – her students.
                When the history professor had petitioned to be allowed a sabbatical to visit the Butine Valley, a life-long dream of hers since she’d heard about the mysterious Stone Giants, she had expected to be rebuffed. Her expectations were exceeded several times in that matter. Still, she refused to have the majesty of the Butine Valley withheld from her by anything as petty as the faculty, so every time she received a formal rejection she sent another application straight back in. After a long war of wills, a shorter war of words, and tiny war of projectile stationery, she had been granted permission to take her trip. The catch was that it had to be open to any of her students as well.
                The professor had done a marvellous job of emphasising the gruelling and dreary nature of a hike through the valley. She provided information on the likely stormy weather conditions, the lack of nearby civilisation, the utter absence of a real toilet, and even the miles of hiking through uneven terrain with loose boulders underfoot, hidden by years of moss and grass. It was marketed as a complete washout, more like a trip to a torture chamber than a holiday. No-one would be so foolish as to think this would be anything but a misery, she thought, but she had vastly underestimated the foolishness of youth. They all wanted to prove themselves, and the professor had to admit that some proof was necessary – she just couldn’t believe they wanted to come along. But she didn’t understand who they were trying to prove themselves to, or how being wet in a valley would achieve that any more than doing some actual work for once.
                “This is it; the line of this giant’s feet and the peak of Mount Wikka marks the boundary of the Butine Valley. Remember, everyone, that we have been granted a special licence to enter these grounds and examine the statues. It is critical that we show the utmost respect at all times.” A trickling sound caught her attention. “Urinating against the statues is not the utmost respect, is it?” she said with rapidly growing dismay as Robert moistened one enormous stone sandal. Three weeks was at least two months too long to spend with these animals.
                It had taken three days just to hike up to the start of the Butine Valley, jointly due to a lack of infrastructure and a generally lackadaisical pace. Nothing, it seemed, was enough to motivate these people into a sense of urgency, or even vague interest. The professor would even have taken focused disinterest over their random ambling.
                Now that they were within the bounds of the Valley, they’d have two weeks to examine the statues, search for any evidence of the people who had sculpted them, and explore for the sake of the university. If Robert didn’t literally piss it all away, that is.
                "OK, now who knows why these statues were, and in some places still are, held in fear by the people of the valley?" The silence did its best to answer but no-one could hear it. "Anyone?"

                "They're worried they might fall over?" Posed Robert, recently finished with his watering of the plants and idols.

                "Conceivably someone is but that's not the answer I was after. The answer I have lectured you about."

                The wordless pause screamed the answer.

                "Oh for God's sake, if you don't know this then why are you even here?"

                "Because they think the sorceress of Thessalus turned people to stone, and that this one was actually a giant." Said Jake matter-of-factly.

                "Yes, thank you. The valley tribes held that the Sorceress of Thessalus lived in the valley and cursed those who came too close to her home. What does that tell us about the valley tribes? Vanessa, Gerald, any ideas?”
                They both tried to look like they were remembering the answer, like it was on the tip of their tongue. They were also both terrible liars.
                “About timescales…” Professor Taith hinted.
                “That they were around long enough to develop a mythology about the area?” Counter-questioned Vanessa, not willing to give a confident answer in case it was wrong. Guessing would look far more refined.
                “Not quite, no.” The professor replied tactfully, wondering why her students still thought guesswork was an effective means of hiding their ignorance.
                “That they were scared of magic, and so weren’t very advanced.” Gerald tried.
                “No, and I’d remind you that the Western world still fears walking under ladders today, so we can’t judge the valley tribes of the middle ages too harshly for superstition can we? Nor can we draw too much of a correlation between technological advancement and not being idiots.”
                Everyone was looking at the floor.
                “Their mythology tells us that the tribes didn’t know how the statues came to be here, which in turn implies that the statues are much older than the recorded history of the valley tribes.”
                The students all nodded sagely. Except Robert.
                “Nah, it was definitely sorcery. Lifting stones that big would have been way too difficult for ancient valley tribes. And carving it would have taken generations. The only reasonable explanation is the sorceress.” Robert said matter-of-factly, although the professor suspected it was a matter of facetiousness.
                “You raise a valid point in an invalid way.” The professor conceded gracelessly. “It’s an unsolved mystery how any ancient civilisation would have transported a stone of this scale here or carved it out so magnificently. But I think we can accept that they found a way.”
                “Yeah, and that way was the Sorceress of Thessalus.” Robert said, and the others giggled.

                “Regardless of its origin, this is masterpiece of historic artistry. The detail and realism are unparalleled by any other civilisation, from the classical era right up to the modern day. Let’s get the statue fully photographed before we move on to find a place to camp.” The professor said, changing the subject before one of them suggested aliens. They always ended up suggesting aliens.

                After an hour or so of photography, improperly used adjectives and demonstrably poor knowledge of art history, the party of academic detritus moved on through the valley. They drifted in a loose formation, feet crunching in loose stones, slipping on wet grass, or both at the same time; there were no uneventful footfalls. The slopes all around them were littered with lumps of stone and small boulders, plus the occasional smaller, human-sized statue, shockingly lifelike and exquisitely detailed. Every time they reached one of them the whole group would stop and examine it all over, each of them exchanging theories as to what the subject was supposed to represent. The professor would have felt proud of them, if the theories hadn’t all been stupid.
                As they pressed further into the Butine Valley, large rocky outcrops began to disrupt the smooth profile of the earthen hills, thrusting their heads through for a breath after years of muddy smothering. In many respects, the rocks felt like it was their turn to be on the surface for a while and that the grass was hogging all the good light. From deep at the bottom of an oceanic trench, a layer of bedrock sat bitterly and seethed that the mountain rocks didn’t know how good they had it.
                It was a couple of hours before they found a patch of relatively flat ground without too many large rocks breaking the surface. It was a peculiar plateau, not seeming to fit in with the natural topology of the rest of the valley, but not really looking like it was man-made either. If it had been deliberately flattened then the professor had no ideas as to why that would have been, unless it was the work of a rogue landscape gardener. She didn’t think there were many of those around anymore. The majority of the site was covered with at least a thin layer of grass, and in some places there was even springy moss to act as nature’s soggy mattress. A few yards beyond the edge of the flattened ground, a statue stood as if in mid-stride, hiking up the slope towards them.
                “This will have to do.” Professor Taith said wearily, dropping her faithful backpack unfairly onto the ground. It had carried her belongings all this way without a peep and this was how she treated it. With satisfaction, it slowly rolled over into a puddle out of the professor’s sight and strived to absorb as much of the groundwater as it could. Smugly, it silently challenged the professor to see how she would enjoy having wet socks for the next week.

                With the usual chorus of curses and fundamental misunderstandings of spatial reasoning, a group of ramshackle tents began to form where once there had only been an untidy pile of canvas. Jake once again performed the traditional ‘whipping of the Robert’ with his tent poles, and Robert retaliated with the ‘chant of a hundred curses’ whilst hopping and clutching his buttock. Despite the ever-increasing levels of ceremony involved, however, there was soon a small encampment in the shelter of the valley. Shelter was, of course, a relative term – clouds had formed thick and dark overhead, readying themselves to continue the good work that the neglected backpack had started. The sounds of flapping canvas gave the game away as the wind picked up, however, and the party of 5 hurried inside their less-than-salubrious accommodations before the professor’s shirts could suffer a rainy fate.
               

                Professor Taith roused her burdensome companions early the next morning to make a good start for the day. A series of grunts, varying in tone and humanity, emanated from the other tents in their camp, and she lit a fire in the middle. She’d smoke the bastards out if she had to. Unfortunately for her more adventurous nature, the students tumbled out of their canvas gulags before she had a chance to put anything wet onto the flames, enticed as they were by the sounds of sizzling meats for breakfast. Every day so far they’d innocently thought that Professor Taith was going to share her own supply of preserved breakfast materials with them. Every day she denied them any such charity with a smile in her heart.

                Once everyone had settled down, eaten whatever they could reach in their poorly packed bags, and had a cup of tea, the professor outlined their loose agenda for the day.
                “Right, so today we’re going to be heading to the South-West, along this same slope we’re camping on, to determine the distribution of the statues. Can anyone remember how far they are supposed to go on for?” Silence and shuffles were what passed for a reply. “Anyone at all?”
                “Five miles?” Jake ventured, looking at his shoes. The professor wasn’t sure why they were so fascinating, or why she might be so boring, but let it go.
                “Correct. About five miles, maybe more by the most reliable estimates, but we’re going to check for ourselves over the next few days. For today we’ll be trying to cover this rough area here.” She traced a circle on her map with one finger. “What we’ll be doing is marking a red cross on our maps whenever we find a statue, taking a photo, making any relevant notes, and then moving on to another. Hopefully we’ll get a reliable estimate for quantities and distribution in the area by the end of the day. Any questions?”
                Predictably, there weren’t. The professor had no illusions about that meaning they understood, however.
                “Fine, let’s get going.”
                The professor and her students picked up their day-bags and set off at a brisk pace to the South-West, passing by the statue on the edge of their camp. Vanessa allowed her eyes to rest on it and gave it a suspicious squint – she would need to check the photos, but she could have sworn it hadn’t been frowning last night.

                The valley stretched away from the trudging party, a marbled landscape of grey, green and brown with a faint mist obscuring the distant reaches. Apparently frustrated by their inability to soggy Professor Taith’s backpack, the clouds had instead unleashed a campaign of extreme prejudice against the slopes of the Butine Valley, washing gravel and silt down from the mountaintops, slickening the grass and deepening the puddles; their co-conspirators against the garments of Taith. Every step was now a carefully calculated action, lest the ground slip or sink away and lead into a whole new world of saturated footwear, but there was work to do.
                Professor Taith led the way, setting the pace and forming the head of their spear formation. Vanessa and Jake were further down the slope to her right, and Gerald and Robert were up to the left. There was no real reason for them to be arranged in an arrow formation from a practical standpoint, but it meant that the professor didn’t have to deal with them all quite as directly; sweet solitude was a dream, but she did what she could to get there. Several times she heard one or another of the students let out a scream as they slipped on the uncertain footing. The sounds of the raised voices echoed ominously through the valley, disturbing the peace that years of unwelcoming weather and landscapes had carefully cultivated.
                It was only a matter of minutes before they noticed the first statue – it came upon them rather by surprise, as only its head was visible sticking out from behind a ragged bush. Jake had spotted it first, and shouted to the others.
                “This one’s kneeling down.” He correctly but perhaps redundantly observed. It wasn’t terribly likely that the others would have failed to notice the statue’s posture.
                “It looks like he’s worshipping something, I think.” Robert observed.
                “Perhaps. We know very little about the previous valley dwellers but it’s perfectly possible, probable even, that they had some form of religion. The clasped hands are a common symbol of prayer or deference across many cultures in the area.” Professor Taith evaluated.
                “It looks more like he’s begging, to me.” Said Vanessa, examining his face closely. “I’d say he looks more scared than awed.” She stepped back slightly. “Do you think so professor?”
                “I’m inclined to agree, yes. Then again, he could well be praying for mercy. It might be that the statue represents a figure from this civilisation’s folklore, someone who earned the ire of their gods and sought forgiveness. We just don’t know enough at this stage to say, sadly.” She paused reflectively, but still didn’t come close to imitating a mirror. “Anyway, let’s get this marked onto our maps and move on.”
                “Where are we, again? I’m rubbish at maps.” Robert admitted, sounding strangely proud of himself. The professor couldn’t bring herself to engage with that statement.

                Every few minutes the party would come across another stone figure on the hillside and rush over to examine it. They found that sculptures took on a wide variety of poses and expressions, but most of them centred in some way around fear, pleading or prayer. All in all, it was a strangely macabre array of idols, like a set of hysterical garden gnomes for a megalomaniac’s lawn.

                The farther they travelled along the valley, the more frequently they found the statues, until there was no longer enough time to practically examine every one in detail as a group. Professor Taith gave the order for them to separate off into pairs and mark up their maps accordingly. They could compare notes later, she said, eager to have the chance to examine the statues by herself, and be alone with her thoughts.

                An hour of examination and map-plotting passed quickly as the fascinated academic pored over every detail. The unknown sculptors must have been unbelievably well-schooled, especially for the era. Every statue would have taken years of meticulous and passionate work. They were as close to perfection as the professor had seen in her life and so great in number that only a large group of artists could have hoped to craft them all. To work to such a standard and create such a uniform result was mind-boggling.
                All five members of the archaeological expedition were so engrossed in their work that they almost failed to notice the second stone giant looming into view farther along the valley. Admittedly, this one didn’t tower over them in the same way as the first, but even from this distance it somehow seemed more impossibly massive. The giant was crouched on the South-Eastern slope of the valley, and looked as if it was peering into the hillside whilst caught short. The drizzling rain ran like tiny waterfalls from each extremity of its body.
                “Everyone!” the professor shouted excitedly “Mark where you’ve got to so far and then come straight to the second giant.” Professor Taith could barely stop herself from running over, proceeding at an awkward and unstable half-trot with her day-bag swinging uncomfortably from side-to-side. The others caught her up easily, and they continued in a party of five again at a brisk walk. The grounds on the approach to the giant were littered with statues, laying in face first in the sparse tufts of grass with moss and lichen overtaking them.
                "Why would someone make a statue laying down on the ground like this?" Jake asked no-one in particular.

                "Have they not just fallen?" Robert responded.

                "Well look at this one.” he said, pausing by a statue on his right. “There’s no way that could possibly stand up on its own and it doesn't look like anything's broken off. This was never able to stand, so it must have been designed to lay on the ground without a pedestal.”
                “Yeah, that is pretty odd.”
                “And look at the clothes. Hey professor!” he shouted across to Professor Taith “You said that the statues must pre-date the valley tribes, right? But these clothes look like they’re from the same era as the tales about the Sorceress of Thessalus. Either you’re saying there’s a sculptor who can see through time or there was a secret artist who made these without anyone in the history of the valleys noticing. And I’m pretty sure that someone would have twigged that a rock big enough to carve those giants was being chipped away at, probably over the course of a couple of centuries. What you told us doesn’t make any sense, it must be wrong.”
                The professor wanted to slap him, which was quite usual, but this time it was because he was right. The only thing she couldn’t bear more than her students not listening was them being right. Her position as an educator was a source of great discomfort.

                They looked ahead as the slope grew steeper and saw that there were more of the prostrate statues. The more they looked at, the stronger the imagery of fear and anguish seemed to be. Some cowered behind their hands, some appeared to be screaming, and some had solemn furrowed brows or angry frowns, but none of them looked terribly pleased to be a statue in the harsh cold wind.  

                Professor Taith had noticed that Vanessa had made a point of examining the fingers on each of the statues, naively taking it for a focused case study on the portrayal of phalanges among the sculptors. It was all too late, now that they had regrouped, that she noticed the bulging collection of stone fingers poking out of Vanessa’s bag.
                “What have you done!” she shrieked, rushing over and pulling the topmost finger out. “You’ve vandalised something a thousand years old; they’re literally priceless you ape!”
                “Chill out professor, there’s hundreds of these statues. They won’t miss a few fingers between them.”
                “But... but why? Why on Earth have you broken them? You’re supposed to be a historian not a chisel-fisted barbarian. These were perfectly preserved.”
                “I wanted some fingers, sue me.”
                “The government may very well do that.”
                Vanessa shrugged, unaware of the terms ‘international incident’ and ‘personal liability’.
                “No-one is to touch any of the statues anymore! You all hear me?” The professor declared to her students. “You will look only, and you will not even allow the entertainment of a thought of considering hypothetically touching the ground NEAR one of them. Do I make myself clear? I will cut this trip short, burn your plane tickets home and leave you here to rot.” It was a conservative statement, considering how the professor felt.
                “What abou-“
                “So help me God, if you urinate on one more of these things, Robert, I will end you.”
                “Got it. Thanks.” He told her, as she stormed off. She could barely think through her rage. She knew that her students were morons, and she was even willing to accept some of the blame for their poor knowledge of the local history, but vandalism! She would never have thought they’d go that far to prove their ignorance.
                They reached the second giant quickly, and gathered around its gargantuan, crouched legs. Every element, from the folds in the leather of the boots to the leg hair to uncomfortable and inexpertly tailored leggings were a perfect likeness of reality. But something else caught professor’s eye as she looked past the vast stone boot. It was the mouth a cave, leading into the hillside.
                "This cave isn't on our maps" Gerald said, puzzled. "Where did you get these from?"
                "If it doesn’t appear on this map then it doesn’t appear on any map. I didn't just doodle the valley on some scraps of paper. Shockingly, I don't want to be lost in a valley of ancient iconography either. This cave could represent a very significant find for us; new plan. We're going to take a look into this cave and see what we can find. If this was used by the previous settlers of the valley then it will be the most important discovery of the century." The professor said excitedly, expressing her subjective assessment of historical significance as fact.
                "It looks pretty dark and dangerous. What if we get lost?" Vanessa asked, concerned and forgetting the professor’s displeasure with her.
                "Right now, you’re perfectly welcome to get lost in a dark cave.” Professor Taith told her coldly. “Everyone else can just stick together. We won't go too far in for now."

                The mouth of the cave was wide and high, an archway into the darkness of the mountain. Groundwater filtering through the ground above dripped from hanging mosses and grass, leaving puddles on the undulating cave floor just deep enough to grant any visitors the gift of ruined shoes. There were far fewer statues here, but they had made up for reduced numbers with a dramatic up-scaling of the horrified expressions and biologically improbable postures. Professor Taith had never seen so many sculptures like it. Either the sculptor had lost their grasp on the limits of human physiology, or the society used as models were all incredibly fearful contortionists.

                The air rapidly grew colder as they entered, almost as quickly as Professor Taith’s shoulder when her students asked for help. The interior of the cave was undeniably the product of human intervention. Quite aside from the smoothed walls, levelled floors and clear doorways, there were tapestries and ornaments adorning shelfs and cubbies in the walls. Unless this cave was the habitat of an as yet undiscovered weaver-spider or idol-fabricating-finch, this was the work of humanity.

                “No touching! Especially you Vanessa. And no urinating on it Robert.” She shot a series of stern glances around the group with devastating accuracy. “This is an amazing find; evidence of previously unknown human activity in the valley. We might be the first people to see this since it was used!”
                “It doesn’t feel very old though does it?” Vanessa contested, once again dicing with the professor’s wrath.
                “You think someone bored out a new cave?” Gerald asked, alarmingly sincerely.
                “No, you twonk. I mean judging by the general conditions it doesn’t seem like it’s been abandoned. Sure the stuff looks old because it’s rustic, but it’s all clean and untarnished, like a reproduction.”
                “Who would make a museum out here?” Jake asked.
                “Dunno.”
                The conversation petered out, but Vanessa’s point stood. Only the statues positioned seemingly randomly around the entryway seemed to have fallen victim to time.

                The tunnel wound a serpentine course into the mountainside, wide enough for them all to walk alongside one another, but not scary enough to actually make them do so. Five spots of torchlight bounced and swayed ahead of them, casting a yellow light on the carved recesses in the walls and the empty torch sconces. Before long, the tunnel forked; the main wide passage continued straight ahead and a narrower path speared off to one side. The professor nosily shone her torch into the side passage and saw that it led to a small, round room.
                “In here first.” She told the students, leading them into the small chamber. They each shone their light in a different direction and illuminated the majority of the strange selection of items in the room – there was a rectangular wooden structure under a pile of animal skins which must have been the bed, a couple of basic but well-carved side-tables, and an ornate mahogany storage trunk. All five of them stared silently at the contents of the room and the lack of decay. Everything was a perfectly preserved, flawless example of 10^th century furnishing, sitting in its original environment. The professor could have wet herself with excitement, although that would have been a very ‘Robert’ thing to do. This excitement made it all the more peculiar when the feeling came over professor Taith to grab Gerald's head and snap his neck where he stood.  She could see the thought in her mind, clear as day, and hear a voice goading her into doing it. She shrugged it off like normal. These ideas must have been popping into her head a few times a day for years. It was simply the educator's lot in life. Strangely, however, the thought felt affronted this time. The professor made a mental note to take a nice relaxing break once she got back home.

                “Get photos of everything you can – I’m going to go a little further in to see what else we can find.” It was against her initial plan to not venture too far into the cave, but the professor didn’t care – there was just too much potential here to ignore.
                With her torchlight darting around the tunnel like a luminous budgie, Professor Taith jogged eagerly into the stony depths. Every time she saw another idol in a wall-recess or a torch-sconce stuck emptily to the wall she felt a renewed buzz of anticipation. Suddenly, from the darkness, solid rock appeared before her and the tunnel dog-legged to the left. The professor slowed to a walk and took the bend, finding herself in a huge vaulted chamber, almost as large as one of her lecture theatres and just as bereft of people.
                Scanning with her torch, she saw armoires and benches scattered around, each one cluttered with vials, bottles and dried plants, sometimes combined in ways which made very little sense to the veteran historian. Animal bodies were preserved and pinned up on wooden frames, many with strange runes and charms attached by unappealing piercings. Each one was a nightmare of preserved flesh, their dead eyes seeming to follow the professor around the room like a zealous sales associate on a quiet day in a clothing shop. For once, Professor Taith did need help, and she was worried that the selection of eldritch charms and idols might try to provide it themselves.
                Walking softly and slowly through the maze of arcane trinkets and coloured fluids, the professor was plagued by visions of witchcraft and necromancy from the mythology of a hundred cultures. The shapes she saw were painfully familiar, many of them represented in the ancient texts detailing ritual sacrifice and ceremonial practices found in the Butine Valley. It would have been macabre and unsettling enough if this were an abandoned site, but everything was so fresh, like a bakery of the damned.

                “Vi neniam venk talios mistrol!” A voice challenged from the corner of the room as the whole chamber was flooded with light. The professor stopped, momentarily dazzled, and then span around to confront the mysterious room-lighter. Facing her was a tall woman in a set of deep crimson robes, black flocking delicately overlaid in extravagant detail giving her the look of a passionately scribed love letter made manifest as human. Her long and impossibly straight black hair reached down to her waist, framing the furious expression on her face.
                “I don’t mean any harm!” The professor sputtered out, throwing her hands up to show her palms. Harmful people always hide their palms. “Who are you?”
                The woman’s expression muddied itself into confusion, then she rolled her eyes.
                “Komprenas mistrol nuten.” She said with a hand at her throat. A silver glow bled out from underneath her hand, as if she was trying to smother a bright light bulb. “Let’s try again. You’ll never kill me.” As she spoke her voice seemed to fill with gravel, like a difficult-to-remove shoe at a pebbled beach.
                “I don’t want to kill you! I mean no harm and I didn’t mean to intrude. I’m sorry.” The professor said in as many reassuring tones as she could muster.
                “Why are you invading my valley? How did you get past my guards” The woman in red kept a hard stare fixed on the professor, visible palms and all.
                “What guards?”
                “My stone sentinels – the previous fools who tried to destroy me. I would have thought you’d take the warning and stay away, but perhaps you wish to die by my hand that badly.”
                “Erm, the statues didn’t try to stop us, but that’s not terribly surprising is it? And I’m not invading your valley, I’m on an archaeological expedition. I didn’t know anybody lived here.”
                “Hm. It’s has been such a long time since I had visitors that I am afraid my guards must have fallen into dormancy. The magic must have seeped out… no matter. I can turn them back simply enough and then you’ll meet the welcome you deserve.”
                “Are you alright? Statues don’t wake up, they’re made of stone. How long have you been in here? Is there someone who looks after you?”
                “Disrespectful whelp!” The woman shouted, having grown even more livid at the accusation of assisted living. “You address the Sorceress of Thessalus! I need none to ‘look after’ me.”
                “Right… well, OK.” The professor said unconvincingly.
                The lady in red saw this as a challenge. “That you came here to kill me is damning enough, but to insult me in the process? You have some nerve.”
                “No-one is trying to kill you! You’re safe!”
                At that moment, Gerald appeared at the mouth of the chamber, clutching his map and notes.
                “Are you talking to someone, professor?” he asked with clear confusion.

                “He has a weapon! Invader!” the sorceress shrieked, winding her arm back in a sea of bright green flares, like embers burning and falling from a plume of smoke. She shot her arm forwards, unleashing a conjured ball of brambles at Gerald. The winding vines quickly ensnared the terrified student, pinning him against the wall of the cave and quickly taking root.
                The professor’s mouth dropped open. If it had been filled with loose change at the time, there would have been a terrible racket.  
                “How many more murderers have you brought to my home?” The sorceress screamed.
                “None! There are no murderers.” The professor said, more distractedly than the Gerard would have liked, given the circumstances. She was busy trying to process that not only was the Sorceress of Thessalus a real person, but she was standing here in a cave and summoning flora to assault people. The professor’s train of thought was interrupted by Robert entering the room at a run, rushing towards the exciting array of sounds coming from the sorceress’ chamber.
                “Liar!” the sorceress screeched, using both hands to launch jets of flame towards Robert’s shoulders. He ducked just in time for the flames to sail over him and hit Jake instead.
                “They’re not murderers! They are my students, and whilst they might be a bunch of overgrown doorstops I would thank you not to burn them!” The professor shouted, snapping back into the moment and to losing her temper with the unsociable roasting.
                “Students? You are a sorceress too then? And you have brought your apprentices to eradicate the competition. I should have known that disgusting, haggard exterior was only a disguise. You almost had me!”
                “Why is Jake on fire?!” Vanessa shouted, staring in disbelief through the doorway. Jake had dropped to the floor to try to extinguish the flames, Robert was cowering in a ball from the sorceress and Gerald was suspended by what appeared to be a bramble cage. “What the hell is going on?” she pleaded of Professor Taith, who was standing quite calmly. The instant Vanessa laid eyes on the sorceress, the red-robed woman flicked both of her wrists upwards. Vanessa was thrown to the ceiling and pinned there by a great unseen pressure from below.
                “Oh it’s been a long time since I got to use these powers. I’m glad my guards were sleeping on the job.” The sorceress announced, a glint of havoc in her eye as she considered what else she could throw at the invaders.
                “Hardly. We’re the first people to come to this piss-soaked valley in centuries.” Robert told her, subtly informing the sorceress of his lavatorial escapades over her home in the process.
                “The first to make it in, perhaps.” The sorceress replied aggressively, before unleashing a beam of ice from each of the fingers on her right hand. Where each of the beams hit Robert’s body they formed a set frozen shackle to hold him in place.
                “No seriously, this place is a total wasteland.” Gerald told her. People encased in bramble gulags scarcely talk ill of other, less constricting environments unless they mean it. He seemed relatively unconcerned by Robert’s plight or his own, which the professor filed away in her subconscious for later psychological evaluation.
                The sorceress stared darkly at him and a glow began to form in the palm of her hand. It quickly dissipated when Professor Taith slapped her across the cheek.
                “Let them all go at once! This is no way to treat other people. We’re not here to kill you and we will be quite happy to leave you alone.” The academic lectured her harshly with a frown. The sorceress’ other hand began to glow, so Professor Taith gave that wrist a slap too. “Just stop it! Let them go immediately.”
                The sorceress breathed heavily, not moving a muscle.
                ‘If this disgusting woman is a sorceress then why has she not unleashed her own magic on me? Nor any of her apprentices? Maybe she speaks the truth. Or maybe this is a trick to humiliate me.’ The sorceress tensed. ‘Why did the first one have a weapon drawn if not to attack me? The woman seeks to lower my guard and strike. She is not to be trusted.’
                “Why is he armed if you mean me no injustice?” She accused the professor, indicating towards Gerald in his new thorny home.
                “Armed? That is clearly a clipboard. Put him down!” The professor demanded with her hands on her hips, having no time for these shenanigans.
                Taken aback by the professor’s tone, and the fact that upon closer inspection the weapon was merely a thin, flat piece of wood, the sorceress stepped away with a suspicious glare and a clenched fist. The brambles and ice disappeared, and Vanessa landed heavily on the chamber floor, but the scorch-marks on Jake’s shoulders remained.
                “Thank you.” Said the professor with a nod.
                “Did you just thank her for casting spells on us?” Vanessa asked angrily.
                “No, I thanked the sorceress because she stopped it when I asked her to. You would all do well to follow her example.”
                “And I don’t take kindly to being called ‘her’.” The sorceress added.
                “Rightly so.” Professor agreed, looking from the sorceress, to Vanessa, and back again. “Now, if we can all please remain calm – what should we call you?”
                “You may call me the Sorceress of Thessalus.”
                “The Sorceress of Thessalus, like, from the legends?” Robert asked dumbfounded.
                “That’d make you over a thousand years old.” Vanessa said dismissively, ignoring the other unusual behaviour this woman had exhibited.
                “Sounds a bit cumbersome to use in conversation, doesn’t it? ‘Would you please stop shooting fire and brambles at me, the Sorceress of Thessalus?’ It doesn’t exactly flow.” Gerald observed.
                “You’ll not have another name to call me, wretch.” The sorceress told him with rising anger, fires flickering between her fingers.
                “None of that!” The professor interjected. “Gerald, I trust you may use the title ‘Lady Sorceress’.”
                The sorceress looked at the professor, then nodded begrudgingly.

                “We’re just going to sit around exchanging pleasantries and discussing nomenclature with a sorceress who just shot fire at me?” Jake questioned.
                “It was a misunderstanding.”
                “Oh well that’s fine then! Clearly it doesn’t make her a dangerous psychopath if it was all a big misunderstanding that she tried to BURN ME TO DEATH!” 

                The sorceress looked at the pair of them through narrowed eyes as they argued. Professor Taith felt the strangely loud thoughts again, this time encouraging her to take Jake’s head in her hands. Now, however, she recognised the voice.

                "Oh would you stop that!” she suddenly shouted, staring daggers at the sorceress. “For the last time I am not breaking his neck."

                "If this is the last time you are not breaking his neck then surely next time..." Vanessa started.

                "You can shut the hell up as well. Ugh, I'M NOT BREAKING HER NECK EITHER!"

                The sorceress chuckled darkly. "I didn't do anything that time, it was all you." She said smugly.

                "Oh, erm, well yes quite. You’re in no danger Vanessa.” The professor muttered hurriedly, looking at the ground as her face reddened.
                “That rather seals things doesn’t it? You’ve enough murder in your heart for your thoughts to turn against your own students. You came here with anger and that can only have been intended for me. My guards will return to the flesh and they shall tend to you.”
                “What guards?” Robert asked. “The statues? You really did turn people to stone?”

                “Wait, return to flesh?” Vanessa asked in a panic. “Please, please don’t. We’re not here to hurt you. Leave them as stone!” She spoke with a hurried desperation which surprised everyone.

                "No, I've made up my mind. The statues are coming back and you're being ousted as invaders. You won't convince me otherwise, girl.” The sorceress maintained stubbornly.

                  A red stain began to spread across Vanessa’s bag and she began to shriek.
                “Look what you’ve done!”
                “Why is the bag bleeding?” The sorceress asked Professor Taith with innocent confusion.
                “Because it’s full of the fingers from your statues!”
                “The girl tore my guards apart? How deliciously spiteful and wholly contrary to your message of peace, professor.”
                “She’s got a point.” Gerald said.
                “Don’t encourage her.” The professor snapped back. “Do you want to clean up a bag full of finger-blood? Hmm? Didn’t think so.”
                The sound of slapping footsteps echoed into the chamber from elsewhere in the cave. It sounded suspiciously like a strip of leather being thrashed against the stone for as-yet unknown crimes.
                “What’s that noise? Is that-“ Jake started to ask, peering around the doorway into the hallway. He quickly yanked himself back and leapt into the body of the room. “She wasn’t lying!”
                A man who looked an awful lot like one of the statues in the entrance of the cave came dashing into the room with a look of unbridled fury on his face. He also seemed to have several centuries of lichen growing on his forehead, which can only have angered him further.
                “My thralls flock back to me.” The sorceress proclaimed triumphantly. She turned to face the professor again, her back towards the un-petrified man. “You will learn what it is to captivate hearts and minds this day, woman. Your students disobey and disrespect you, but my pets, my minions, they would not dare lift a hand against me for as long as they are under my spell.”
                The peasant had locked on to the sound of the sorceress’ voice and bull-rushed towards her. The professor began to suspect that the sorceress’ compulsion was less than adequate however, since the man snatched up a ceremonial dagger from a bench on his way past.
                “They would sooner drive a blade into their own hearts than question my will.” The sorceress continued. The peasant raised his dagger above his head, still running.
                “AAAARRGGH” the peasant shouted passionately. Despite the time and language barriers, he managed to adequately convey his harmful intentions.
                The sorceress swivelled on the spot in time to see a streak of sharpened steel careening towards her face, only to be knocked violently aside by a middle-aged academic. The peasant somersaulted forwards with the force of his own uninterrupted swing, landing on his back and rolling into a table of glass vials and bone charms.
                Professor Taith and the Sorceress of Thessalus lay in a tangled pile on the ground, with folds of loose red robes wrapped around academic limbs and an inappropriate amount of physical contact  for two people who had met so recently. The sharp crick in the professor’s neck due to her head being rammed into the sorceress’ armpit was a particular high-point for the observing students.
                The sorceress thrashed herself free from the professor and scrabbled to her feet. She was already in motion towards the man on the ground, underneath his blanket of broken glass and ritual paraphernalia.
                “No it’s fine, I’ll get myself up.” The professor said loudly to the four students, as they made an impressive amount of effort not to help her.
                The sound of further breaking glass caught Professor Taith’s attention. The sorceress had her arms extended towards the man, whom she was levitating into the middle of the room like a poorly supported marionette. He struggled and writhed against the unseen force manipulating him, but it was an act of futility. The dagger was still firmly in his grasp.
                “Close” She told him “but not close enough.” Her face curled into a sneer and she clenched her fist. The man’s arm began to tense and fold towards his body, bringing the dagger point towards his chest as he tried to scream in silent fear.
                “What are you doing?!” The professor begged in the face of the aerial stabbing.
                “Tidying up.” The sorceress responded calmly with a look of cold malice in her eyes. The blade slipped neatly into the man’s chest.
                “Stop it!” the professor demanded in vain.
                “I will in a minute.” Only the handle was left outside of his body, and he twitched in mid-air. After a few seconds, the sorceress turned back to the professor and the dead peasant dropped to the floor.
                “That was totally unnecessary.”
                “He tried to kill me. That is the lot of assassins.”
                “You turned him to stone for a thousand years, I think he was justified in feeling some ill-sentiment don’t you?”

                A series of disconcerting sounds echoed through the sorceress’ home from the mouth of the cave.
                “Well that just sounds terrific doesn’t it? More of your enthralled slaves coming to pay their unique respects? I tried telling you that we weren’t trying to harm you but you wouldn’t listen. Now we have a bloodied bag of fingers and a dead farmer in here, and God only knows what out there.”
                “I know what’s out there.” Said Robert. “Does that mean I’m God? Because I’ve always suspected th-“
                “Robert, even when it’s coming out of your mouth it still counts as pissing all over everything. Shush now.” She told him without looking away.
                “No, seriously. It’s the giant. We all saw it, how do you not remember?”
                Professor Taith allowed the urge to break his neck to grow a little stronger for a moment. He was frustratingly correct again.

                At the mouth of the cave, an extremely disoriented giant was gradually regaining control of his body, after an awfully long time spent squatting in a valley. The giant staggered backwards and swept one titanic hand up to its head. It was experiencing the relatively uncommon sensation of one’s brain working for the first time after centuries of being made of stone. It’s not entirely unlike the feeling of returning to the real world after reading a good book whilst a cataclysmic head-cold suddenly clears, only without the sense of satisfaction or loss, respectively. Sadly the giant had never read a book in his life, so he was unable to appreciate that similarity.

                “Why would you wake literally all of them up?!” The professor bellowed.
                “To keep people like you off my lawn. Once the area is clear I’ll turn them back to stone.”
                “This has ruined our statue map. Thanks very much.” Gerald told her, unimpressed.
                “You were mapping my defences? It is for the best then that I have chan-“
                “Shut. Up. About. Defences.” The professor told her. The sorceress looked embarrassed but complied. “You don’t even need them, look at what you did to that poor man.”
                “He nearly managed to kill me!”
                “Only because your genius plan to turn hundreds of people to stone and keep them as slaves didn’t work out; the only thing that has come close to killing you is your own paranoia. No wonder the valley tribes wanted you dead if you’re this much of a threat to them and yourself. You are going to march out there, right now, and tell them all you are sorry! Lord knows what we’re going to do with them once they’ve settled down. They’ve just been dropped a millennium into the future after being transformed into a horrifying set of gargoyles, a circumstance for which the rehabilitation prospects are somewhat poor.”
                “And some of them have had their fingers ripped off.” Jake said. Vanessa punched him.
                “Shut up!” she said, aggrieved by him reminding the professor.
                “Oh yeah, I’m the bad guy, little miss amputator.”
                “That was a very cruel thing to do.” The sorceress weighed in, sounding a little too impressed for Professor Taith’s liking.
                “I don’t need morality lessons from a slaver, thank you very much.”
                “Considering she’s right I think you probably do…” Robert pointed out.
                “That’s enough, all of you. Sorceress, you get outside. Vanessa, try to keep those fingers preserved. Robert, the sorceress has a toilet in here somewhere, please use it before we leave.”

                The Sorceress of Thessalus stood facing out from the entrance to her home, the gateway to the world outside which had shunned her, and shook her head. She’d fallen victim to a home invasion for the first time in hundreds of years and now she was taking orders from the impossibly haggard woman. What a shameful turn of events. Then again, the old one had saved her life from the mad farmer, and none of the invaders had tried to bring harm to her beyond a slap, even when she’d been unleashing her terrible powers upon them. The sorceress smiled, remembering her flawless bramble constriction. Time hadn’t taken that away from her. In any case, she supposed that the woman had earned safe passage back out of the valley.
                A hand of catastrophic proportions had been thrust into the cave, and it was fumbling around blindly to grab at anything it could find. She supposed that the giant was simply continuing where it had left off, just like the peasant man.
                “Step back!” She shouted in her most commanding voice. If any semblance of her control remained, then the giant would move away immediately. The continued presence of a fumbling hand indicated that she was not perhaps exercising as much power over hearts and minds as she had hoped. The magic had definitely all worn off, or washed away in the rain. Sometimes magic was like water-soluble paint in that regard. The sorceress’ lack of command was fine though – her altercation with the students had reminded her of just how much she had enjoyed solving these problems the old-fashioned way.
                She stepped forwards, until she was within a breath of being caught by one of the huge meaty fingers. Raising one hand to her face, palm flat upwards, she pursed her lips and softly exhaled, blowing a kiss to the giant. This particular kiss was more aggressive than most, characterised as it was by a gout of flame billowing forwards. The giant’s hand was sharply snatched away, flooding the cave mouth with light from outside.
                The air crackled around the sorceress as she took slow calculated steps into the valley. Flickering sparks of blue-white electricity swam in random paths like fireflies leaving a trail behind her; a wedding-dress train of raw power. Her hair stood on end as a bolt of energy built up in her hands, growing from a faint glow to a blinding flare of white light, outshining the overcast light of the sun in a feat of luminous one-upmanship. Slowly the sorceress raised her arms in front of herself, showing them to the bemused giant like a proud mother displaying a highly charged baby. In a distinctly non-maternal way, however, she then threw her hands forwards, unleashing a torrent of electricity directly into the giant’s chest. A deafening thunderclap rang out through the Butine Valley, echoing off the slopes and generally disrupting the peace. The neighbourhood watch would never have stood for this.
                The giant flew backwards through the air, landing hard on the slope many metres below and tumbling down to the river. He finally came to rest in the water below with a heavy, satisfying crash. The sorceress stood at the entrance to her cave, hands on her hips and looking dreadfully proud of herself for lightning-assisted common assault.
                With a pattering sound coming from all sides, the rain started to fall again on the Butine Valley. Large droplets of water fell pounded all over the earth, as if shaken down by the impact of the giant against the ground.
                The recently un-transfigured farmers around the cave mouth ran in a panic from the sorceress and her display of might. She laughed maniacally, drinking in their fear and launching streaks of green flame into the air from both hands. 

                “Oh will you stop scaring them like that. It doesn't make you big, it just makes you mean. No wonder they were all trying to kill you if all you ever did is shoot fire at them. Try saying hello!” Came the professor’s stern, joy-killing voice from the cave.

                “You think this is my fault? As if they never tried to burn me?”

                “You're definitely not helping yourself are you? You're a thousand years old for God's sake, act your age and be the bigger person, rather than expecting illiterate farmers to understand critical thinking and empathy.”

                “What would you have me do, invite them in and hand them a murder weapon?”
                “I think that stopping short of torturing or killing them might be a good start.”
                “Humph.” The sorceress huffed, crossing her arms grumpily.
                “I’m sorry to interrupt professor,” Jake started.
                “No you aren’t.” The professor counter-interrupted.
                “Accurate.” He continued. “Anyway, what about the other giants? I can’t imagine they’re going to do too much good to the Butine Valley.”
                “It’s ok, they’ll be distracted fighting my other thralls.” The sorceress reassured him.
                “Oh you mean the partially disfigured, recently de-petrified, 11^th Century farmers. Yeah, I’m sure they’re doing a great job at fending off a GIANT.” Robert mocked.
                “Well they thought they were a match for me so they shouldn’t be lacking in confidence.”
                “Fair point.” Jake conceded.
                “Yep.” Gerald agreed.
                “Well confident or not, they’re all going to be killed and then you’ll still have the giants to pacify, so it doesn’t solve much. Besides which, that one looks fairly well set on getting to us.” Robert persisted, pointing along the valley.
                “Oh I can deal with him – no problem at all.” The familiar glint in the sorceress’ eye indicated that the professor may not enjoy what she was about to see.

                                In the distance, back towards the mouth of the valley, the first stone sentinel they’d passed was clearly visible. No longer made of stone, its gait and its choice to travel directly up the river implied a certain urgency to its mind-set. The puddles had always been made to feel quite inadequate by comparison to the flowing water in the middle of the valley, but even the river was struggling to give the giant as thorough a saturating as it deserved.
                The giant focused itself on where the flash of light had come from. He swayed from side to side as he ran, still struggling to regain his balance and composure, and grappling with the memory of his name and why he was in the valley. All he really knew was that he liked birds, and was pleased to finally have a mouth stretchy enough to convey that. He had no idea why.
                The giant had felt a deep and unaccountable sadness when he saw the other giant fall after the flash had come. He felt something that he couldn’t remember the name of properly, but he was sure it rhymed with ‘brief’. He possibly felt something like ‘cage’ too. He pondered this as he bowled his way upstream, huge footfalls causing walls of water to erupt from the river whilst shaking loose rocks down the slopes of the valley.

                Jake scratched his head and said “He doesn’t look very happy, does he?”
                The others all faced the sprinting giant, and were forced to agree that ‘joy’ was far from the first thing that sprang to mind. Murder was much more the ticket.
                “Don’t worry, child. They’ve not managed to get past me yet.”
                “They were pretty well stuck in place though, so it wasn’t that hard was it.” Gerard mocked.
                “Only because I stuck them there, and I’ll do the same to you if you don’t mind that flapping tongue of yours.” Flares of blue flashed in her eyes as she chastised him, and Gerard accepted that he should remain silent.
                “Are you going to electrocute this one as well?” Robert asked excitedly, enjoying the magic now that it wasn’t directed at him.
                “In this rain? It would kill us all. Not a bad alternative if I was cornered by true foes but you worms could never hope to best me.” The sorceress looked for Professor Taith’s frown and found it just where it should have been. “Oh cheer up and enjoy the show.”
                The sorceress strode forwards from the group into the direction of the giant and lifted one hand to her throat.
                “YOU DARE TO TURN ON ME? I PROTECTED YOU FROM THE LITTLE MEN OF THE VALLEY AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME?” Her voice rang like a peal of thunder, seeming to descend from the clouds and fill the valley with her words.
                “What on earth is she talking about?” Jake asked.
                “I don’t know.” Vanessa replied.

                The giant kept on running, desperately trying to remember why he’d come here in the first place and why that voice sounded familiar. He felt something else, something like ‘dear’ but just couldn’t put his finger on it. He balled his fists with the effort of concentrating whilst moving.

                “YOU WILL PAY FOR TRESPASSING IN MY HOME. YOU WILL PAY FOR BETRAYING ME.”

                The reason he was here was on the tip of his tongue. ‘Girder’ wasn’t right, ‘Herder’ didn’t feel like it either.

                “NONE HAVE KILLED ME IN A MILLENIUM OF TRYING. WHAT CHANCE DO YOU HAVE?”

                Murder! That was it! He was going to murder the sorceress. Now if only he could remember exactly why…

                The sorceress stood her ground as the raging giant rapidly closed the distance between them. His footfalls shook the ground and the small group of academics alike, and each step was punctuated by small shrieks from the previously stone peasants. They scattered in front of him as he charged at the woman in red, fist raised high in the air.
                “I feel like we should retreat into the cave.” Said Vanessa, quite sensibly for a woman with a bag full of disembodied fingers.
                “Go if you want, I’m not missing a second of this.” Robert told her.
                The giant had covered the ground with alarming haste. He ran at them like a charging post office about to ram-raid a small hatchback. The sorceress stood motionless, save for the wind flapping her robes and the rain dripping from her sleeves. She was still smirking with that untrustworthy glint in her eye; it spoke of mischief and injustices waiting to happen.
                “NIGHT NIGHT.” Her voice boomed from outside of her body. The giant was practically on top of her and prepared to swing his fist down. The sorceress quickly flicked one hand upwards and levelled it at the giant’s face. The giant certainly seemed taken with it, or more accurately taken by it; his feet suddenly felt incredibly heavy, burdensome to the point that he was incapable of taking another step. It soon transpired that this was largely due to them once again being made of stone, and sinking into ground like a solid foundation. The stone bubbled up his body, taking over his flesh and petrifying him in as many ways as it is possible to be petrified. Uselessly, the giant flailed his arms and tried to shake his body free, but with every passing second his body grew more rigid. Soon, only his head remained in flesh, and there was just enough time to glimpse the confusion in his eyes as he tried to remember exactly why he had a terrible feeling of déjà vu.
                They all stood in silence, staring at the new statue looming over them. The sorceress span around to face the academics, her robes twirling around her body like a ball gown.
                “There, now he’ll make a fine guard dog for another few centuries. It would have been a great shame to waste two giants in one day.”
                No-one knew quite how to respond to that; they just didn’t find it very relatable. Jake finally broke the silence with a poorly stifled laugh.
                “Your- your magic words were ‘Night night’?” he let the laugh out with full force. “I’m terrified that you might make me ‘sleep tight’ next and summon me some ill-fitting pyjamas.” The other students joined in with his laughter, and the sorceress wore a sour expression.
                “You come into my home and insult how I use my power?”
                “What was it you said about cheering up?” Professor Taith asked her with a wry smile.
                The sorceress pursed her lips, and then seemed to relax. All gazes once again turned to the stone giant, its arms now held out at rather undignified angles.
                “Hey, you know what this means prof? You were wrong and I was right! It was the sorceress and not some ancient civilisation. I mean humans lifting and carving stones that huge? Ridiculous. Only sorcery could have done it.” Robert said proudly.
                “Very good, Robert.” The professor responded sarcastically.
                “How much of your lectures does this make redundant, by the way?” Gerard asked.
                “And will the wrong stuff still be on the exam paper?” Vanessa added, practically.
                “Some of it and none of it, respectively.” The professor said through gritted teeth. “But we’re going to have a whole lot more to write about regarding the Sorceress of Thessalus and her attitude towards the recently non-mythical giants.” She gestured towards the stone titan casting its shadow over them.
                “Speaking of which, there are still four giants roaming around here, right? Are you going to turn them back to stone as well?”
                “If it pleases me to, then yes.” The sorceress said with exaggerated grandeur, flicking her hair over her shoulders as she spoke. “And then I may very well do the same to you.”
                “No you won’t.” The professor told her. “You’re going to break up this nonsense between the giants and the farmers and then you’re going to stop burning people. Or turning them into statues.”
                “And what makes you so sure?”
                “Because I told you so!” It was a bold gambit from the unimposing academic. The sorceress’ countenance was stormier than the clouds smothering the sky above. She stared silently into the professor’s eyes for some time, not saying a word and not blinking. The rain grew harder, and seemed to be directing itself squarely onto Professor Taith’s head, which she suspected was something to do with the sorceress, but she didn’t mention it.

                “Fine. No burning or petrifying.” She said finally, but to make a point she froze the professor’s feet in place.
                “Wha- set me free immediately!”
                “The rest of you are free to wait in my cave whilst I gather supplies for our giant hunt. Enjoy the rain, professor – see if it washes away that attitude.” The sorceress said with a haughty laugh.

                The storm didn’t let up. Professor Taith drew her coat closer around herself and pulled the toggles of her hood until only her eyes and nose protruded from the aperture. She was brimming with anger at being punished like this for trying to make the sorceress do the right thing, but also shaking with excitement at what could be learned from the ancient woman. There was so much history to be extracted first hand, so many questions that could finally be answered from someone who had seen events unfolding. It was a peculiar mixture of emotions. That mixture became even more difficult to characterise when she heard voices drifting up the valley.
                The voices were gruff and angry, as if the throats were recovering from a long period of being made from an igneous rock. Stuck facing the cave mouth because of the ice, the professor was unable to turn around and see what the source was, but she had a disconcerting suspicion about it. The words couldn’t make it to her ears unscathed due to the sounds of the rain, but there was a purposeful rage behind them and a lilting dialect which she didn’t recognise.
                “Lady Sorceress!? Help!” she screamed. No-one appeared in the mouth of the cave. “Anyone, please! The peasants are back, don’t leave me out here!” she cried with desperation.
                Robert appeared at the entrance to the cave, wearing a quizzical look. “Were you talking to us professor?”
                “Get the sorceress out here and free me! The peasants are back, I can hear them!”
                “Maybe they’ll set you free instead?” Robert suggested.
                “JUST GO AND GET HER!”
                He shrugged and ambled back into the cave, hands in his pockets and without a care in the world.
                Minutes passed with no sign of activity from the cave mouth. The shouts and cries from further up the valley were growing louder, and she fancied that they were growing more violent and fanatical. The language barrier was insurmountable, but there was a universality to fury which made itself perfectly clear. The professor had no desire to be in the vicinity when that fury passed through.

                At last, the sorceress returned from the cave. The air around her shimmered like a softly contoured glass window, and although she wore a heavy cloak it was immediately clear that the rain was politely avoiding her. Extending one hand, a rope of golden fire harpooned out of her forefinger and struck the ice block around the professor’s legs, shattering it and releasing her.
                “I am very grateful that you saved me from that madman, but you’re going to speak to me with a little more respect now. Otherwise, I shall find myself far less inclined to accept the modes of behaviour you’re dictating to me.” The sorceress spoke with a flat, inflectionless authority as the professor stumbled forwards. Professor Taith had been thinking about giving the sorceress an earful, but decided against it now that there were peasants to flee. In silence, she looked up at the sorceress, nodded, and ran for the cave mouth.

                “I see that the tribes have managed quite well without my interference.” The sorceress said from outside, surveying the marching band of angry farmers. In the short time since their revival, they seemed to have organised themselves into a bona fide angry mob, and were descending on the cave with rocks, improvised torches and more than a little ill-will.
                “Get back in here, for God’s sake!” The professor instructed her, hastily adding “Please.” When the sorceress lifted a finger and an eyebrow.

                Calmly and casually the sorceress paced back into the shelter and brushed past the professor, heading back towards the bedroom. Torches had now appeared in the sconces on the walls, and there were hitherto unseen candelabras hanging from the ceiling, casting a warm yellow light throughout the winding cavern. All-in-all the cave seemed far more inviting now, but it did make the professor wonder quietly why the Sorceress of Thessalus, a legendary magic-wielder of ancient times, had been sitting silently in a dark cave earlier. It didn’t feel like the right time to ask, however.

                After a few moments, which the professor filled with careful examination of the hallway’s ornamentation, the sorceress swept in, imposing and commanding with an excited smirk on her face.
                “They come in force; this promises to be quite exciting. Tell me, professor, what you know of why there were so very many statues in my valley. I hear you’re quite the authority on me.”
                “Well, erm, I don’t honestly know. I had assumed that the valley was of great significance, but that was also when I had assumed the statues to be carved. I suppose it means that you intercepted many men from the tribes who entered your valley.”
                The sorceress chuckled. “Oh if only they had been carved. My statues were not merely trespassers, they were those who entered my valley with murder in their hearts. Do you know how long it took me to gather my whole collection?”
                The guessing game wasn’t fun when you didn’t have the answers, the professor decided. “Years, I should imagine.” She responded.
                “Two days.” The sorceress allowed a silence to hang in the air after she said it. The professor’s expression morphed from interest, to shock, to comprehension. “Yes, two days.” The sorceress repeated for her. “That was the last time they marched on me in force, after I stopped them from killing the giants. Once I’d shown their leaders what an attack on me would earn them the rest tried to flee. But they’d had their chance, I offered them their freedom and they thought that numbers would protect them. I hunted every last one of them down and froze them in place as my sentinels. I would say that you should have seen them begging me for mercy, but I think you already did. It seems that the years of stone have failed to teach them their lesson and so they march against me again. Am I still a child for rescinding my restraint and executing those who make yet another attempt on my life, dear professor?”
                “If you kill a murderer, then the number of murderers in the world stays the same.”
                “Not so if I kill hundreds however. But it’s a nice thought.” She said with a wink. “Regardless, I’d like to introduce you to my new guards. Come along, children!” she shouted into the depths of the cave.
                Clattering sounds echoed out of the winding passageway, along with excited giggles and voices. Into view marched the professor’s students, not clad in waterproof hiking clothes as they had been before, but sporting ridiculous suits of bramble plate mail. They rattled and creaked as they moved, vines and thorns scraping against one another but somehow not against the bodies inside. The professor didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or flee from the madness which had clearly overtaken them all.
                “What in God’s name…” she started, but found herself unable to articulate an ending. The closer the four weed-knights got, the more obvious it became that they were waddling more than marching. The brambles, whilst pliable, weren’t soft enough to allow natural and easy articulation; it was like an aggressively floral form of arthritis taking over their bodies from the outside.
                “The sorceress said we’d need protection from the farmers if they tried to attack us while we were out hunting the giants.” Robert told her.
                “She said that metal plate would be too heavy, but this would do the job for now.” Vanessa added.
                “I still don’t like the sound of ‘for now’. Kind of implies that there’ll be something more dangerous before we’re done.” Gerald assessed with a slight frown.
                “That’ll be the giant.” Jake informed him.
                “Fair.” Robert confirmed.
                “It would be terrible form to let another’s apprentices die under my custody.” The sorceress told Professor Taith with a smirk.
                “You… you all look like idiots.” The professor told her students, shaking her head.
                “You’re just jealous. We got sweet thorny armour and you got to stand outside in the rain. Actually that’s a point – where are those massed peasants you were so worried about?”
                “The one’s I asked you to help me away from a quarter of an hour ago? They’re still on the way.”
                “And they aren’t very far off.” The sorceress finished for her. She was standing with a look of mischievous eagerness on her face. “Come along, all of you. I insist that we all meet them together.”
                The mob was audible now that the sorceress had stopped speaking. Hundreds of footsteps and voices converged on the cave mouth with spiteful intentions and poor education. Together, the sorceress, the professor and the bramble-clad students walked to the cave entrance and stood in a line across it. The students formed a wall, or more accurately a hedge, across the width of the tunnel, but the sorceress stopped short of standing alongside them.
                “Since I’m disallowed from playing any of my favourite games with these savages, why don’t you see if you can convince them to leave? I’ll cast a spell so that you can all understand each other and see how far you get.” There was a patronising passive-aggression to the sorceress’ voice as she addressed the professor, making the challenge into an order.
                “Maybe they’ll surprise you.” The professor maintained, telling it to herself as much as the sorceress. Professor Taith gingerly stepped around the prickly form of Jake and stood in front of her students, facing down the advancing crowd of angry tribesmen. As they came within a few dozen paces, they stopped as one and stared across at the professor. A silver glow briefly filled the air around and between the two groups of people, and the angry voices became intelligible all at once.
                “Burn the witch!”
                “Kill her!”
                “Tear her apart!”
                “Turn her into stone, see how she likes it!”
                “Not much probably!” There were murmurs of assent from many of the present peasants.
                “Please, stop!” The professor said loudly. “The sorceress will not harm you, please stop this nonsense.”
                “Who the hell are you?”
                “The sorceress has disguised herself as a wretched old crone!”
                “Must be her that stole our fingers!”
                “Burn her twice!”
                “HEDGE FOLK!” Came a particularly loud and terrified shriek, as one of the mob noticed that the bushel behind the professor was filled with human faces.
                “They’re not, uh, hedge-folk, they’re my students. They won’t harm you either.”
                “Silence with your lies!”
                “She’s trying to deceive us.”
                “Being in disguise is deceitful too. That’s two lies in one, right there.”
                “Burn her for lying!”
                “I’m not the sorceress and I’m not going to be burned, thank you very much. Please just calm down so we can talk. This doesn’t have to come to bloodshed or conflict.” As if to prove her immediately wrong, a rock came flying past her head and made a rustling thud against Vanessa’ bramble armour.
                “Now that was just uncalled for. There has been injustice and misunderstanding on both sides here, but it needn’t continue.” The professor persisted, determined to save the lives of the remaining farmers. The volley of rocks which followed made that dream all the harder to realise.
                “You see what I mean, professor? They’re set on violence, like rabid dogs baying for their own destruction. I have a right to defend my home.”
                “Give me a minute, I’ve got a lifetime of fear to convince them out of.”
                “I heard her! The sorceress is behind the hedge-folk! I’ll bet she crafted those abominations with her own sick magic.”
                “Hey, I’m not an abomination!” Gerald shouted back, not prepared to be insulted by a man who was missing a finger and hadn’t showered in a thousand years.
                “Silence, hedge demon.”
                “Stop arguing, it isn’t helping anyone. The sorceress wishes to make amends for the torment, but you must agree to end your campaign of hate against her too.”
                “To hell with that, and to hell with you!” Cried a tall, blonde man with shaggy hair and an unkempt beard. He sprinted from the crowd, makeshift club in hand, screaming a deafening and nonsensical war cry, centring mostly on the professor’s assumed promiscuity. The professor shook in fear, but her feet stayed planted as if the sorceress’ ice shackles had been reformed. The peasant closed quickly, his rotting teeth and greasy skin clearly visible and extremely off-putting. Before he could reach her, however, Robert lunged forwards, in so far as his armour would allow, and tackled the aggressor.
                “For the Professor!” he shouted as thorns dug into skin and the pair collapsed onto the wet ground. The angry farmer flailed and struggled, tearing through his own flesh on the barbs of the brambles as he strived to free himself. The thorny armour was so impractically wide that it rendered his club arm all but useless, completely unable to wrap around and strike the invasive-weed-menace.  “Robert?! Be careful, they’re armed!”
                “It’s alright professor, I’ve got-“ he started, but another of the peasants had found some courage and charged at the tussling pair. He brought a heavy log-club down onto Robert’s head in a crunching spray of brambles.
                “No!” Jake cried. He and Gerald rushed over to help their friend, Gerald shoulder barging into the second farmer and Jake attempting to drag Robert away from the jeering mob. Inspired by the actions of their recently hedged brethren, great cheers rose up from the mob and they charged. Gerald turned back to help Jake with Robert while Vanessa backed away into the cave. Thundering feet echoed around the cave mouth, and the professor stood terrified like a deer in headlights.
                “Please! Stop!” She shouted at them in a futile plea for calm, but her words were lost in the screams and war cries. All she could see was a sea of angry, snarling faces. They were blind to reason, dead to logic and in no mood to be merciful. Years of fearing the sorceress had broken their capacity to trust any who associated with her, and seeing fear in the sorceresses new companion spurred them on all the more.
                Time slowed down for Professor Taith. One of them men with whom she had argued was no more than a foot away, staring at her with a murderous rage and clutching a short, crude dagger in his fist. It was angled straight towards her face, slowly converging on her. She had heard of things appearing to move slowly when warriors were in battle and their attention was focused, but she never thought it would seem so… natural. Her reflexes finally kicked in and she dodged away with a burst of what must have been lightning speed. That was when she noticed the strange shimmering effect in the air, and saw that the students were still moving normally. The professor looked back to the mob and saw them all moving through time like treacle, casually yet passionately charging her down.
                “Are you having a good time professor? How’s giving them the benefit of the doubt going for you?” The sorceress asked antagonistically. She could see perfectly well for herself that it had gone less than admirably. Her arms were held out in front of herself, pointed towards the mob in stasis.
                “Is Robert OK?” The professor asked, close to tears and ignoring the sorceress’ goading.
                “I think so.” Gerald said, looking at Robert’s still form, face down on the floor. “He’s a bit quiet but I, for one, welcome that development.” He added in his blasé way.

                “That guy hit him pretty hard. I think he really thought that he was one of the hedge-folk.” Jake said.
                “What even are hedge-folk?” asked Vanessa.
                “They aren’t anything. I’m sure that peasant just made it up on the spot.” The professor told her.

                “Quite so. They’ll latch on to anything if it gives them grounds for fear and hatred.” The sorceress chimed in.
                Professor Taith looked back to the shimmering air holding the angry mob in their molasses-thick time. Their fear and loathing was plainly worn on their faces, a pitiful display of ignorance and guardedness. In her heart she had known that they would be this way, a thousand years of human progress had to stand for something after all, but it still saddened her.
                “May I deal with them in the manner I see fit now, professor?” The sorceress asked, although her tone didn’t leave much option to say no. The professor nodded numbly, still looking at Robert. He wasn’t doing anything terribly exciting, but that was scarcely the point.
                “Be ready.” The sorceress told them all, before dropping her arms back to her sides. The shimmering faded away and the mass of raging farmers returned to their full speed. Just as quickly, a rope of golden fire lashed in front of them with a thunderous cracking sound. It stopped many in their tracks, but not all of them. The farthest ahead was caught across the cheek, scorching a blackened line across his face, and the next found a large burnt welt forming across his chest as he fell to the ground in agony. Shrieks of terror and agony began to combine with the chorus of jeers and war cries.
                “You have all had your chance at forgiveness.” The Sorceress of Thessalus told them coldly. She stamped on the ground in a flash of white light, sending a wave rippling across the stone surface of the cave as if it were a blanket. Bodies were thrown violently off their feet, cast into the air or slamming to the ground in an undignified heap of flesh.
                The sorceress strode angrily and purposefully towards the nearest of her attackers and grabbed him by the throat. Into the air he rose, choking and grasping uselessly at the fingers wrapped like an iron manacle around his neck. A feeling of regret burst unannounced into his mind as he looked into the merciless gaze fixed back upon him. Maybe leading a small army of farmhands to murder this woman wasn’t a good idea after all. Maybe reforming that army immediately after they’d recovered from the sorceress’ curse was foolhardly. Maybe, just maybe, ignoring the repeated pleas for peace was the wrong thing to do. Hindsight truly is twenty-twenty.
                The sorceress allowed rage to build and flow as her grip tightened. The magic felt wonderful in her veins and the vengeance even more so. The choking would-be murderer had a satisfying weight in her hand, and the more she focused on the injustice of what he was trying to do the harder she squeezed. But the professor’s words nagged at the back of her mind, almost as much as her grotesque appearance nagged in front of her eyes. Before the man passed out, the sorceress allowed the magic she held in her hand to change, and opened up her fingers as his flesh became stony and solid. He dropped to the floor with a resonating crash.
                Much of the mob was struggling to find its feet again, piled up and bruised. The sorceress quickly and clinically darted between the stragglers and outliers, petrifying them and leaving them where they fell as she darted to her next target. By the time she was done with those who had fractured away from the main group, the mob was standing again and packed tightly together. Many stood with their weapons raised in front of them in a vain attempt to ward off the sorceress, but more had tried to turn around and flee back into the valley. They found their way blocked by a wall of brambles which burst from the ground and weaved itself into a solid barrier.
                The sorceress stood in front of the penned-in mass, one side of her lip curled up into a sickened sneer. Like frightened cattle they pushed against one another and thrashed against the wall, clubbing and cutting at the brambles in a misguided attempt to flee. Those closest to the sorceress either raised their improvised weapons defensively or attempted to climb over the crowd, to press themselves against the thorns on the other side.
                “You wanted to get to me so badly – don’t run away now.”
                Many of them were too scared to make a sound in response to her, having seen her power first hand again.
                “I insist that you stay.” She said, her voice hollowing as the magic surged out of her on a grand scale. The mob found their voices again when they felt their bodies changing back to stone. The cries of anguish and horror were amplified by the enclosed cave, but the sorceress looked on impassively as clean stone-greys overtook the browns of muddy flesh and beige of tattered clothing. Men pushed away from their neighbours as if they would catch more petrification from them, sending them toppling over, unable to catch themselves with frozen limbs. A chorus of crashes and impacts rang out as a staccato accompaniment to the human wailing. A few with the presence of mind to take what little action was possible threw their rocks and weapons at the sorceress, surprising her as she watched her magic unfold. She narrowly avoided a rusted knife blade aimed at her heart, but wasn’t so lucky with the thick wooden branch which slammed heavily into her stomach. The impact folded her in two at the waist and carried her to the floor with a painful wheeze, where her back crashed onto the stone and drove the air out of her lungs. As she lay there, desperately trying to draw a breath, feeling as if she were suffocating, she vaguely registered one last volley of rocks soaring over her. Then, with a final few stony crashes and cracks, silence reigned again.
                A heaving breath brought the sorceress back into the moment, and she rolled onto her hands and knees, panting. Looking up, she saw the professor and her students still gathered around Robert’s still form on the floor, attempting to strip away his bramble-plate amid a sea of cursing. The sorceress strained against the protestations of pain in her stomach and stood herself back up.
                “How is he?” She asked.
                “We don’t know if he’s dead or unconscious; can’t take his pulse or check his bleeding because of the armour.”
                The sorceress clenched a fist and the armour disappeared from all of them. Robert dropped a few inches to the floor now that his bramble buffer was gone, an additional impact which was quite unnecessary for a clubbing victim. Immediately Jake rolled Robert onto his back and placed two fingers on his throat, then sat back with a relieved sigh. Robert had also relieved himself, as attested by the wet patch on the front of his trousers. The professor silently wondered how the boy could have anything left in him after his urine-soaked adventure through the valley, but didn’t think that giving voice to her thoughts would be respectful at a time like this.
                “Bring him through to the bedroom. We can tend to him there.” The sorceress told them, hunched forward awkwardly with a bruised abdomen. If she ever found out which of the statues had thrown that branch, it would not remain perfectly preserved for long.

                “You’ll be able to carry him between you. Careful you don’t snap him.” The students were standing in a circle around the statue of the man who had clubbed Robert, and hadn’t heard the sorceress approach.

                “Where should we put him?”
                “Wherever you like as long as it’s outside of my cave. I don’t think I’d like any surprises the next time they wake up.”
                Gerald looked over the mass of stone peasants in the cave mouth, like a poor man’s terracotta army.
                “You’re seriously going to make us carry all of these back out into the valley? Some of them came from miles away!”
                “I can help with some of them, but I think you’ve earned the right to get rid of this one personally.” The sorceress said sincerely. “Make me proud.” She added with a wink to Robert.

                Jake and Vanessa took the arms whilst Gerald and Robert held the feet. As four they marched the statue out of the cave and made their way onto the slopes. Vanessa was proud to notice that there was a finger missing from the man’s right hand. Whilst they could manage the weight between them, as the sorceress had said, it was still exhausting work; the slippery ground only made the going harder and more dangerous.
                “Hang on, put him down, put him down.” Robert said, and the others agreed without argument. Bandages were wrapped around his head to hold pressure onto his club-wound, giving him the look of a distinctly half-hearted mummy. “This grass is pretty slippery, I think this will work.” He said in deep thought. Robert motioned with his arms that the others should stand aside, then pushed the statue away from himself with one foot. Like a poorly made snowboard, the statue began to slide bumpily down the hillside, towards the river below.
                “Sweet.” Jake affirmed. “Think it’ll break?”
                “Dunno, don’t care.” Robert evaluated.

                “Cool.” Vanessa agreed.

                The statue came to a halt a few times on its journey, and each of the students took turns in punting it down the slopes. Occasionally they were forced to lift it over a rocky lip, or flip it into a more favourable orientation for sliding, but the going was made much easier by abandoning respect for the stone man. In fa less time than it would have taken to carry him, they reached the banks of the river, and propped the man back up onto his feet.
                “Well, lady and gents, the time of the ceremony is now at hand. If you would all please look away.” Robert said with mock grandeur. With grave bows of their heads, the others turned their backs on Robert and his frozen aggressor.
                The sound of the traditional unzipping reached the other students’ ears, giving way to the time-honoured and indeed hallowed trickling sound of Robert anointing the statue in the most sacrosanct and personal stream. When the ancestral ‘aah’ was uttered, the others turned back to face the statue, now with a suspicious, darkly-wet stain over its face.
                “Do we have any other takers to honour the statue?” Robert asked with a sombre expression. Jake stepped forwards with great solemnity. 
                Once again, backs were turned and the necessary motions were enacted. Jake had chosen to honour the man’s own crotch, and so Gerald proceeded to venerate his arms and bottom. Even Vanessa chose to take part in the proceedings, showing her own respects to the man’s legs and feet with a surprising amount of skill and dexterity. Once the whole party had sanctified the statue, they turned back to face it as one. They noticed that several more fingers were missing, and nodded sagely to the divine wisdom of the lady Vanessa.
                The four priests of his most-holy-soaking stood in a line, facing the statue in the setting sun.
                “We now condemn you to the depths, in the hope that the river water can wash clean the stain of your crimes.” Jake told the stone man. Despite the rigours and emotional intensity of the ceremony, the peasant had not allowed his expression to falter, nor reacted to any aspect of the ceremony, as was traditional.
                “Robert, if you would do the honours.” Gerald told him.
                Robert stepped forwards until he was almost touching the statue. “You were a prick. Drown you bastard.” Came the litany of soaking, spoken with perfect precision. With the sole of his foot, Robert pushed on the man’s wet stomach and sent him toppling backwards into the river. The others rushed to the bank to watch the statue disappear beneath the water.
                “That was beautiful.” Jake congratulated Robert, patting him on the back.
                “I nearly shed a tear.” Agreed Gerald.
                “Thanks, thanks.” Robert said nodding. “Shall we get back to the cave?”
                “Hang on.” Vanessa told them. She was crouched down at the water’s edge and fiddling with her bag.
                “What are you doing?” Gerald asked.
                Vanessa tipped her bag upside down, pouring a horrifying collection of severed fingers into the river. “Responsibly disposing of the fingers like the professor asked.”
                “I’m not sure she’ll like your choice of bin.” Robert said with a smile.
                “Well she’s welcome to fish them out if she cares that much.”

                When the students returned, they found that the rest of the statues had disappeared, presumably scattered throughout the valley by the sorceress. They found Professor Taith in the laboratory, poring over papers and trinkets from the sorceress’ collection, hastily scribbling notes and excitingly taking in every detail, whilst the Sorceress of Thessalus sat back in deep thought.
                “Ah, you have returned. I trust the sentinel has been suitably positioned?” The sorceress asked with a grin. The smile returned by Robert told her all she needed to know.
                “I’ve been thinking about the rest of this expedition.” The professor announced. “The artefacts here go beyond my wildest dreams, but the existence of both magic and a living, millennium-old user of it eclipses any archaeological find we could have made. I’ve spoken to the sorceress, and she has agreed to allow us to spend the time learning from her.”
                “Weren’t you trying to throw us out of your home, not invite us to stay?” Gerald asked, puzzled.
                “You proved to be somewhat more effective guard dogs than my sentinels did. I still had to deal with the attackers myself of course, but your modest efforts came with the right intentions.” It was as much of a thank you as the sorceress was prepared to give.
                “So we’re what, taking first-hand accounts of history?”
                “In part, but I’m more concerned with taking first-hand accounts of magic. This is a revolutionary discovery and it would make my career as an academic. I’ll be the woman who brought magic back to the world.”
                The students didn’t know how to react. What little they knew of the professor pointed to her being a dedicated, almost obsessive historian. If anyone was going to ignore a life-changing revelation in favour of talking about a piece of a broken pot, they would have all suspected Professor Taith, yet here they were.

                “But first we have another job to do.” The professor said, standing up from her papers. She had a faintly distant look about her, which either meant that she hadn’t been sleeping enough or was distracted by something.
                “The giant hunts must go ahead.” The sorceress said with the familiar glint and hungry smile.
                “Not to sound negative, but Robert was nearly killed by a normal-sized man. What use are we going to be hunting giants?”
                “I haven’t been sitting idly on my hands for the last thousand years. I have been crafting new magic, altering old spells, forging a new path for sorcery. When the time comes I shall be able to make use of you all.”
                “And you’re OK with this professor?”
                “Every study has to start somewhere.” Professor Taith replied with a shrug. “Taking an account of newly crafted magic alongside ancient spells would make a fantastic debut paper.”
                “Besides which, if you don’t help me defeat the giants and I should fail, then how will you ever leave?” The sorceress counter-pointed. The students could formulate no adequate response, and declined their usual alternative of formulating an inadequate one instead.
                “Now go and get some sleep. We leave at dawn.” The professor told them, before returning to her papers.
                The students stood silently, exchanging uncertain glances; none of them was sure of what was about to happen, nor how they felt about it. Whatever the future held, they agreed that it was probably best approached after some rest. The giant hunts awaited.

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