webcrawl/APGTE/Book-6/tex/Ch-105.md.tex

\hypertarget{colossal-ii}{%
\section{Colossal II}\label{colossal-ii}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Why should the world balk at returning what it cost us to break
its chains? It is not tyranny to receive our due, only the achievement
of balance. There can be no shame in this, only in allowing empty
charity to stand in the way of what can still be done.''}

-- Kreios Maker-of-Riddles, amphore for the Sublime Auspice
\end{quote}

Antigone was no longer afraid of the woods.

Barefoot, for her sandals were little more than rags and the god had not
seen fit to replace them, she walked on soft moss and rocks. Through
brush and bushes, following little rivers and climbing trees. Antigone
had dreamt of this, of knowing the world beyond the shrine without fear
in her heart. Yet in the dreams she had only ever ceased to fear the
woods when the woods came to fear \emph{her}. When she slept she wielded
the powers of the god and all the world bent as she wished, warm and
bright like firelight. Instead, the girl knelt by the river and drank of
the clear water as the great she-wolf Lykaia watched over her.

``It doesn't look the same, by day,'' Antigone told the wolf.

The great wolf whined, cocking her head to the side. She did not know
whether Lykaia was a clever as a human or a god, but Antigone knew that
the she-wolf was no simple beast. The girl could remember someone
telling her a story about a great wolf, once, a wolf that prowled the
sky and ate the sun to make it night. The great fire burned its stomach
and it spat it out, come morning, but try as she might Antigone could
not remember who had told her the story. It had been\ldots{} it had been
a man, she felt sure. Someone warm, someone she had trusted? But she
could not remember a face, or a name. It worried her, but not for long.

If she were sick the god would have healed her, so she could not be
sick.

``I thought this was a fearful place,'' Antigone told the wolf. ``That
it was\ldots{} desperate.''

The she-wolf whined in conclusion. She bit her lip.

``I thought it was a place of death,'' Antigone finally said.

That it had been filled with nothing but it, like a slaughterhouse
covered by tall branches. Lykaia snorted, then drank of the river too.
It did not look like she disagreed with the description.

``But it isn't,'' Antigone told the wolf. ``Not really. There \emph{is}
death here, but there is death everywhere. And there's so much more!''

She looked around, thirsty even though she had drunk her fill, and a
glimpsed it all. The redbirds singing, the snake coiling on the branch.
The moss in the shade of trees, the rotten carcasses where mushrooms
grew. The tall branches blotting out the sun, the deep roots seeking
water. The forest was not just life or death, it was both. Always both.
Like a snake eating its own tail, or a wolf swallowing the sun only to
spew it out. It was terrible and it was beautiful, it was loving and it
was merciless. It was, she thought, in balance. The thought shivered
within her, and Antigone stumbled. Suddenly dizzy, she had to lean down
in the grass and wait until the world ceased spinning. Lykaia nudged
her, eventually, and she leaned against the great she-wolf as they
returned home to the shrine. The strange dizziness had passed by the
time the god came to visit her but somehow he seemed to know.

``It is remarkable,'' the giant-god rumbled, gently holding her chin.

``What is?'' Antigone asked.

``You understand,'' the god said, ``better than any of your kind should.
They teach it out of you, Antigone, as you grow. The true way of seeing
things. And yet your eyes are opening.''

She shivered again.

``No matter,'' the god finally said, releasing her chin. ``Answers
always come to willing ears. We must be patient, you and I.''

``I will be,'' Antigone promised.

The god looked amused.

``The she-wolf will teach you if you are not, I think,'' he said. ``She
is wise, even for her kind.''

They ate together, and when the time came the god told her again of old
and far off things. The menace of the drakoi had been ended, the god
told her, but it was not the end of the story.

``Stories never truly end with victory,'' the god told her. ``We only
cut them there so that they might be easier to swallow.''

Antigone sagely nodded. She, too, knew the peril of taking bites that
were too large.

``It was a different world we found around us,'' the god said, rumbling
voice sounding wistful.

His power sang out, thrumming along with exhale of the once-god's
breath. Like heat mirages, thoughts and memories danced in flicked among
the raised stones.

``The Long War had lasted for a thousand years, Antigone,'' the giant
said. ``Waxing and waning between truce and strife, and while we
shattered ourselves putting an end to the tyrannies of the drakoi all
manners of creatures had sprouted underfoot.''

The girl shivered, as for an ephemeral moment every painted thought
shimmering between the stones had been a red and bloody ruin, fire and
screams and smoke. She had seen the silhouettes of great cities torn
apart, old and merciless things sleeping among the carnage. But the
wrath had passed, and beyond it the world looked\ldots{} young.

``The stouts and the stalkers we had long known as peoples cowering away
from the wrath of the drakoi in their deep caverns,'' the giant-god
said, his words reflected by the sight of short bearded folk and nimble
small green creatures. ``The cautious greys that had hidden below tall
peaks we did not often find, but they were known to us as well. Yet with
the old tyrants gone, they all crept out of their hiding places.''

Like green sprouts after winter, Antigone saw them. Walking ashen
grounds with childlike wonder as they looked up at the sky and saw
nothing.

``Yet not all children were so cautious,'' the giant rumbled. ``Out east
by the sea, we found some fresh race -- fangs, we named them, for their
ferocity -- had been birthed in the steppes and gone south, daring even
to claim the ruins of the Windless City.''

Intricate towers, Antigone glimpsed, that fire had licked and force of
arms shattered. Among them, like filth on snow, swarms of large
greenskins raised tents and banners. The fought and burned and forged,
butchering animals and each other. She was not of the once-god's people,
but even she found a deep sense of revulsion welling up in her throat at
the sight.

``Yet most astonishing of them all was your own kind, Antigone,'' the
god said. ``Humans had long been known to us, but never like this. While
our cities burned and we murdered gods, a race of hunters that had been
as much animals as horses and wolves had begun tilling at the land.''

Huts of mud, Antigone glimpsed. Fences and cattle, fields where green
things grew. And the lands they changed, but everywhere humans were
seen.

``All these ungrateful children were sinking roots into the ruins of our
great works taken from us,'' the once-god rumbled, with the faded trace
of a great and terrible anger in his voice, ``spreading like weeds
across lands we had destroyed ourselves to free. And of them all, humans
were the worst.''

The mirages flickered and for a moment Antigone wondered what it must
have been like, looking at her own kind through the eyes of a god.
Knowing that all that stood between you and the death of those fragile
things was your unwillingness to pick them up and \emph{squeeze}.

``You spread far and wide,'' the god said, ``and unlike older peoples
did not seem to shun any parts of the world. You found ways to thrive in
heat and cold, among heights and caverns. You swam lakes and crossed
rivers.''

It was not the way of the Titans, this. Antigone had learned it. A
people whose words reverberated in the world like theirs did, whose very
will was power, would not change themselves for the land. They would
change it to suit them, and never even consider there might be another
way.

``In the hundred years that followed,'' the giant quietly said,
``whenever we returned to our abandoned cities we so often found humans
scuttling in their shadows like rats it became\ldots{} expected. Always
pawing at our creations, sometimes in greed and sometimes in worship.''

A hundred ephemeral glimpses of people standing in the shadow of great
towers and temples, works that bent sunlight and soothed deserts with
rain. She understood, deep down, why the ancients would have sought to
cling to the greatness of an older people. Was Antigone's own life
really so different?

``Our children, they who called themselves the Gigantes, saw this and
knew rage,'' the god said. ``They knew fear, they knew dismay, and most
fearsomely of all some of them saw this and knew avarice.''

The once-god's tone was heavy, pained.

``No longer were the young races called children as we called ourselves,
siblings under the Makers,'' the giant said. ``They had names, from then
on. And the creatures we named we thought to have power over.''

Not, not pain, Antigone thought. Shame. And between the stones danced
lights showing three great crowds, each standing facing each other in
the backlight of a great cloudy mountaintop.

``Some called for a purge,'' the giant said. ``A thinning of the herd,
like pruning errant growths.''

The horror of that sunk in, over a long moment, and Antigone found that
in the pale light of the mirages she could almost glimpse scarlet,
bloody veins.

``They were few,'' the god said. ``We were not so far fallen. But others
desired to reclaim our ancient cities and close them to our lessers,
leaving the young races to die in the mud, and that chorus was sung by
many throats.''

Hidden cities, Antigone glimpsed, shrouded by mists and winding paths
that no mortal could pierce through no matter how arduously they tried.

``Yet there were even more who beheld the young races and spoke of
\emph{rule},'' the god said. ``Were the young races not the ones who
came to us, sleeping in the shade of our wonders and worshipping our
works? Why should we not let them serve us, let them repay us for the
freedom we had won them at so steep a cost?''

Every word grew more mocking than the last, though by the last one
Antigone felt there was as much bitterness as mockery to be found.

``And so the last of the Titans met,'' the giant said, ``we last few of
the few, so that a path might be found that would not further sunder an
already sundered people.''

One by one the mirages died, like candles snuffed out, until only the
last fading embers of the fire remained.

``We would fail in this,'' the god simply said.

He spoke no more that night, and Antigone did not ask.

---

Antigone was growing.

Her clothes were getting too small, and the god often brought new ones.
He taught her and showed her the stars, how they moved and how they
sang, and by day while he was gone she studied her lessons and walked
the forest. The woods were as a second home to her now, even without
Lykaia at her side. She knew other beasts now, cats with shining eyes
and snakes that talked like humans without a mind. She had sung with
three-colour birds until the rain came and nestles deep in the heart of
old trees with affectionate foxes in her lap. She had even glimpsed
strange creatures, at times, that looked like humans but sang with the
world in the way that the god told her humans did not. Beautiful and
terrible the creatures had been, wicked in a way that beasts were not.

Of those and the thin places from which they came, Antigone steered
clear.

She had thought herself in a place beyond the reach of humans, so it was
with utter startlement that she learned otherwise. Come a sunny morning,
she found a band of them moving through a clearing. They wore steel and
leather, were armed with hooks and swords. Their steps were the steps of
hunters and they eyes moved without pause, but they chattered like
songbirds. Antigone, seated in a tree, eyed them curiously. Lykaia had
gone to hunt, she was waiting for the she-wolf to return with red fangs
before heading back to the shrine.

``Alas, I do not see the promised riches,'' a man said. ``Just a lot of
fucking things trying to kill us very hard. Are you sure of the tale,
Almera?''

``It was one of the Binder's Blood that told it,'' a woman replied.
``They do not err in such things.''

Some of them did a sign with the hands after that, to Antigone's
wonderment. She felt like she might have seen it before, but she was not
sure where. After all, she knew nothing of her life before she had found
the shrine. She mulled over the matter, and decided that this might be a
hint as to where she had come from. It was worth speaking with these,
and perhaps trading.

``What are you looking for?'' Antigone asked from the tree.

Several jumped or cursed, and all brought up weapons. She crawled
forward on a branch, head popping out from between the leaves, and asked
the question again. Some loosened their grip on their steel when they
saw her, but not all.

``What manner of spirit are you?'' a man asked.

``I am a girl,'' Antigone patiently said. ``And I know things.''

``Do you?'' a woman smiled. ``How lucky for us, darling. We are looking
for an old place, made of stone.''

``The bald barrow?'' she asked. ``I know where it is.''

``No,'' another woman cut in, tone curt. ``It would be a temple. Answer
us, spirit, where is it?''

She blinked.

``The shrine?'' she skeptically asked.

``\emph{Yes},'' the woman hissed, excited. ``The temple to the Maker of
Riddles. You know where it is?''

Antigone frowned.

``Why do you want to know?''

She must have said something both wrong and right, as several of them
looked excited as well but all five raised their weapons.

``I asked you a question, spirit,'' the same woman said. ``Answer it or
suffer the consequences.''

``You don't have good intentions,'' Antigone said, cocking her head to
the side. ``That won't go well for you.''

Several laughed.

``If you were mighty among the Splendid, you would not have tried such a
feeble bargain,'' a man mocked. ``We have cold iron, creature, do not
try our patience.''

Antigone's fingers clenched.

``\emph{Leave},'' Antigone said, and the world heard.

There was a ripple in the air and the humans screamed in fear. One of
them, who had a spear raised, began bleeding from the ears. The girl
drew back in shock and horror. She'd not meant to\ldots{}

``You little witch,'' the woman who had called her darling earlier
screamed. ``\emph{What are you}?''

One of them threw a javelin at her and it sunk into the wood next to her
calf after nicking it, but Antigone let out a breath of relief when she
saw a streak of grey move at the corner of her eye. Lykaia fell onto the
humans without pity, smashing one into a tree and ripping open another's
throat in the blink of an eye. It was too much: the rest fled. Lykaia,
red in tooth and claw, wanted to pursue. Antigone felt exhausted and
strangely sad, however, and so she insisted they return home instead.
The she-wolf reluctantly agreed, leaving the bodies for the scavengers.
She told the god everything when he came that night, though as she had
expected he already knew it all. He did not seem angry that deaths had
happened, instead patting her head comfortingly.

``Most of your kind are petty creatures, Antigone,'' the god said. ``Do
not expect much of them.''

She solemnly nodded, and after a moment the god softly laughed.

``Not that my kind are of superior make,'' the giant said. ``The Gods
abhor perfection, child. It leaves nothing for us to seek.''

``Were they really looking for the shrine?'' Antigone asked.

``It has happened before,'' the god rumbled. ``This place was once known
to others of my kind, and the knowledge will have trickled down to some
of those they taught.''

The god watched her with a smile.

``It seems you learned the name I was once known by,'' he said. ``You
had some gain from the bargain.''

``Maker-of-Riddles,'' Antigone murmured, speaking the words correctly.

He nodded.

``It has been long since I last heard those words,'' the god said. ``It
is a strange thing.''

He sounded almost sad again, as he had often been since the night he'd
told her that the council of the Titans would fail. He'd not continued
the story since, speaking only of older matters and strange legends.

``Grief, but not so sharp as I had thought,'' the god murmured. ``So
perhaps I will speak, after all.''

``Of after the Long War?'' Antigone quietly asked.

After a long moment, the giant-god nodded.

``When the Titans met that night,'' the god said, ``among us, seven
spoke of dominion and only one disagreed.''

There were no mirages this time, not swirls of colour. Only soft words
by starlight, with the tall stones circling around them like a mother's
embrace.

``It was not that we shared the avarice of the children,'' the god said.
``It was that were was so much to do, Antigone, and so few of us left to
do it. We thought -- I thought, for that night my voice was foremost
among the follies -- that it would be\ldots{} transitory. We had
connived a way to return all we had lost. Service need only last until
we had returned to our old glory, and then the bonds could be
released.''

The giant sadly smiled.

``One would not brook this,'' the god said. ``And you bear her name. In
her fury she cursed us all fools and monsters, drakoi in children's
flesh, and to neither argument nor censure did she bow her head.''

The god looked up at the stars, wistful.

``Seven of us against one, and she did not bend an inch,'' the giant
said. ``And so compromise was struck. She would have leave to go west
and found cities as she wished, where it would be her gentle hands that
set the laws, and in our old cities instead it would be avarice that
held the reins.''

He looked back down at the earth, and Antigone somehow felt like
weeping. There was sorrow in the retelling, sorrow that was older than
stone or wind.

``I was fool twice over, child, for it was my foolish conniving that we
attempted,'' the god said. ``Even as she went west and founded eighteen
cities, we built atop mountains of broken backs until I had crafted a
riddle I could ask of all the world.''

The god shook with anger.

``And even though she despised the entire bloodsoaked altar, when I
called she returned,'' the giant said. ``And the Titans met one last
time, that together we might move the Pattern itself.''

A long, desolate silence followed.

``The Fall broke many things,'' the god softly said. ``Places and
peoples, cities gone in the blink of an eye or never made at all. So
much was lost, in that moment of utter folly. And the worst will always
be that of the seven and one that stood together that night, the sole
who survived was the least worthy.''

Antigone's throat tightened as the colossal silhouette turned to look
down at her.

``I am Kreios Maker-of-Riddles,'' the giant said. ``I was once a god
among many, and our demise broke this land in ways that echo still. My
children thought me a god still, in the wake of our ruin, and so I left
them to find their own way, their own choruses to sing.''

She swallowed.

``So why did you come here?'' Antigone heard herself ask.

``There was a city not far from here, once,'' Kreios softly smiled.
``One of eighteen. And when the moon was kind, and our prides allowed, I
sat among these stones to speak with a dear friend.''

``I cannot be her,'' the girl murmured, terrified of disappointing him.
``I never knew her.''

``Be who you are, Antigone,'' the Maker-of-Riddles spoke in a rumbling
voice. ``Without lie or apology. Without fear or regret. Of you I will
never ask more nor less.''

He laughed again, bathed in starlight.

``Do this, my child, and you will have done more in the span of your
short years to honour her than I did in the crawling eternity of mine,''
Kreios said. ``I never understood it before, you see. That was it always
about learning when the torch must be passed.''

``I don't know who I want to be,'' Antigone confessed.

The old god smiled, heartbreakingly gentle.

``Let us learn, then,'' Kreios said. ``Together.''

---

Over the many seasons that followed, sometimes humans came to the
clearing again.

Seeking, it is said, a witch of the woods.