CHAPTER 241: STONE AND WILL

The tunnels widened, opening into a natural cavern where stalactites hung like the teeth of a slumbering monster. The air was colder here, thick with a dampness that clung to the skin. The group emerged from the narrow corridor with palpable relief, freed from the suffocating embrace of the stone.

Maggie walked at the front, or at least, it seemed that way. In reality, she was following the colossus’s broad back, a moving cliff face that blocked any view of the future. Literally.

« This is absurd, » she thought, her stomach knotted with a tension that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite anger. It was a feeling of deep and irremediable incongruity. Her, Maggie, who had never had anything but her fists and her stubbornness to survive, followed by a relic of a forgotten age. The weight of the "bond" Elisa had spoken of was there, an icy presence in her mind, an invisible cable connecting her to this mountain of stone. She didn’t know how it worked, perceived no orders or emotions, only an unshakable intention: to protect. In its own way. According to its own rules.

She glanced back at the others. Elisa, pale and silent, watched the shadows with the weariness of an old huntress. Inès was still praying, her fingers clenched around a talisman. And Zirel... Zirel was staring at her with an intensity that made her shiver. It was no longer simple covetousness. It was hatred. The furious hatred of someone who feels robbed.

«I didn’t steal anything from you, » she wanted to shout at him. « It chose me, like a river chooses its bed. And it’s not an honor, it’s a fucking condemnation. »

But she kept quiet. Words were useless. Only actions mattered here, in the dark. She turned back to the colossus, her clumsy bodyguard.

"It would be an indispensable ally if it could handle itself in a fight," she thought as they advanced, her absent gaze fixed on the stone joints that groaned with every step. The thing had to weigh several tons. How could it ever be agile? It was a wall. A shield. Not a sword.

She would not have to wait long to witness its combat prowess.

It started with a sound. A dry, rapid scratching from a pile of rocks to their right. The colossus froze instantly, its helm swiveling toward the noise with disconcerting suddenness. The pale light ignited in the slit of its helmet, casting a spectral glow on the cavern walls.

Elisa held her breath. "Something’s coming."

Something burst forth. An arachnid creature the size of a dog, its body covered in a shiny black carapace, with too many eyes and mandibles that snapped with the sound of sharpening daggers. It moved in jerky, horrifically fast bursts, aiming directly for Inès, the easiest prey.

A strangled cry escaped the young woman’s lips.

Maggie didn’t even have time to clench her fists.

The colossus, which a second before had seemed a slow, ponderous statue, exploded into motion.

It didn’t just move; it almost teleported, in a surge that defied all logic. The mass of several tons became a greyish blur, crossing the cavern with the speed of a projectile. The ground shook not under its weight, but under the violence of its propulsion.

The creature had no time to understand. The giant drew no weapon. It didn’t have one anyway.

Its fist, a mass of stone and pure will, came down like a meteor.

The impact was a nauseating sound – wet and dry at once, the sound of chitin pulverized and life crushed instantly. The creature was flattened against the rocky floor, reduced to a shapeless, greasy stain. No spasm, no twitch. Just annihilated.

And then, the returning silence.

The colossus straightened up, as calm and impassive as if it had just picked a flower. The light in its helm went out. It slowly turned its head toward Maggie, tilting its helmet in a gesture that was almost questioning, as if to ensure the threat was eliminated.

Maggie’s heart was pounding, not from fear, but from pure astonishment. She stared at the stain on the floor, then at the giant. The contrast was dizzying. The ritual slowness against the brutal speed. The grating of stone against silent violence.

"The weight of a feather and the strength of a mountain."

The thought shot through her mind, icy and undeniable. This was not a shield. It was a force of nature. An avalanche under control.

Zirel had retreated, all his arrogant plans reduced to dust by this demonstration of pure power. His face was white, not from fear this time, but from terrified respect. Even Elisa seemed impressed, her assessing gaze resting on the colossus with a new light.

Maggie swallowed, her mouth suddenly very dry. She met the empty gaze of the helm. The "bond" within her seemed to tighten, becoming more tangible, heavier. It wasn’t a jailer. It was a storm on a leash. And the leash was in her hands.

"Good," she murmured, her hoarse voice echoing strangely in the silence. It was all she could find to say.

She gave a nod, a silent order.

The colossus pivoted and resumed its march, as slow and deliberate as before, as if nothing had happened. As if it hadn’t, for a fleeting instant, shattered reality to impose its law.

Maggie followed it, the taste of dust and iron on her tongue. She still felt lost, still trapped. But no longer resigned. Now, she was intrigued. And she knew, with a visceral certainty, that she had just seen the first spark of a fire that could consume everything – or save it all.

She looked at the broad back of her stone servant, and for the first time, a shiver that had nothing to do with fear ran down her spine.

It was ’her’ fire.

---

Zirel was the first she caught out of the corner of her eye. His face had lost all trace of its usual smug sneer. It oscillated between two poles—naked avarice, that predator’s flame already dreaming of seizing the living weapon, and a icy fear, the kind that makes breath short and eyes shifty. Maggie saw his eyes dart from the giant to her, then back to the giant, like a rat hesitating between lunging for a trapped cheese or retreating into the wall’s shadow.

"He’s not even hiding the fact that he wants that power anymore," she thought. "But he doesn’t have the guts to take it, or at least not yet."

She might have laughed if the situation weren’t so stifling.

Inès, for her part, had frozen. Her lips were still moving, but the prayers had fallen silent. She stared at the exploded carcass of the beast with wide eyes, then slowly raised her gaze to the colossus, as one looks at a miracle or an ancient god. Her fingers, clenched on her talisman, trembled—no longer just from fear, but from a fragile, clumsy hope. Maggie felt it: the young woman finally believed they had a chance of getting out alive.

For a moment, she almost wanted to tell her not to cling too tightly. That with allies like this, salvation always cost more than you thought.

Armin, standing a little apart, wasn’t watching the scene with the same fascination. He was clutching his wounded shoulder, every jolt of the ground wrenching him from his pain. His eyes slid toward the colossus, yes, but that wasn’t his main concern. He was fighting to stay upright, to maintain his composure despite the blood already soaking his tunic. Maggie respected that. No useless words, no exclamations. Just the mute struggle against pain.

And then there was Elisa. She hadn’t moved since the impact. She wasn’t praying, recoiling, or chattering. Her gaze, clear despite the fatigue, was fixed on the colossus with an icy intensity. She was studying it. She was dissecting the scene like an equation. Maggie could feel it—Elisa was already calculating the giant’s limits, the logic of its bond, the flaw in this silent pact. She was the only one not swept away by awe or greed. And that was both reassuring and unsettling.

Maggie then felt the weight of their collective gaze on her. All of them—Zirel, Inès, Armin, Elisa—were no longer just seeing the colossus. They were seeing Maggie through it. As if she had become the keystone of this ramshackle troupe.

She scowled, uncomfortable.

"Shit... I just wanted to get out of this damn hole. Now I’ve got a giant on my hands and eyes judging me like I asked to rule."

She placed a hand on her thigh, a reflex, as if searching for the absent haft of her halberd, which was being carried by two soldiers at the rear. Then she sighed, almost imperceptibly, and raised her chin.

"Well. Let them look. Let them think what they want. Me, I keep moving forward."

Ahead of her, the colossus resumed its heavy step, carving the path with tremors. And behind, Maggie felt their gazes weighing on her still, like invisible chains.