by Ian Carter
"I know. We need to find some horses!"
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Kai stood frozen in place as a nearby City Guard patrol began to ignite their Fire Stones as the four men thrust themselves into the giant's feet. Upon seeing the incoming assault, the giant raised the enormous tree in its hand and, in one fell swoop, launched each of the men flying through the air and into the side of a nearby building. Cracks appeared in the stone wall where the impacts took place as their corpses momentarily stuck to the wall before falling to the ground in crumpled heaps. Kai watched horrified as the light from their Fire Stones slowly extinguished themselves in their Blades.
Kai could only liken the scene to a make-believe story told by an envoy from a foreign land looking to regale him. He shook his head, believing his eyes were betraying him. There was no way the scene playing before him was real. Kai fell to his knees in shock as he contemplated the fate of the men. These men had participated in their tournaments and obtained Silver Blades. Even they were still dealt with in a single, violent swing. What could he hope to accomplish? Pessimism spread through his mind as one of the three guards from another patrol surveyed the scene before looking over and seeing Kai.
"Oh no, the prince is here! City Guard, form a perimeter around His Highness! Nothing is to happen to him!" The guards sprinted the 20 meters to where Kai had fallen in terror. Two of them ignited their Fire Stones and put themselves between Kai and the giant, while the guard who had given the orders bent down and gripped Kai's shoulder.
"Your Highness, are you okay? We need to get you out of here!" The yell of the man so sure of himself broke Kai's frozen body free from its paralysis.
"It doesn't matter. We're going to die—"
"We might be dying today, Your Highness, but not you. You're getting out of here alive. Follow me."
"What? You can't be serious. Have you seen that thing? Get out of here while you still can and regroup or so—"
"I'm sorry, Your Highness, but I can't do that," the guard interrupted him. "You are the prince and my future king. It's our job to keep you safe." He held out his hand to Kai to grab to escort him away as his fellow guards sent bolts of fire at the giant from their Blades.
The guards' words made Kai freeze once more. Did these guards view him as someone worthy of being their future king? He glanced at the man in front of him, and then to two other guards behind him who symbolized the purest forms of courage that Kai had ever witnessed. An immense feeling of pride and sadness washed over him. These kind and proper men were willing to throw their lives away, just so their useless prince could escape harm.
An apparition of a man stepped out from behind the guard and moved to his side. It overlapped his ghostly hand over the top of the guard's and motioned with his other hand to take hold. Kai glanced up at the translucent figure and was amazed to see it was him. The same figure he had seen time again from the corner of his eye or for a brief glimpse.
The aberration was a distorted version of himself that looked to be around 30 years older. The ghost was rather plump and owned a mischievous look in his eye with groomed facial hair on his jaw. It wore his father's crown as well as his father's robes, or at least a version several sizes larger. The eerie hand bore no blisters or scars as the guard's hand did, and its translucent face was adorned with an evil grin and a pompous air. It was a future version of Kai; A king of circumstance and gluttony. The exact type of man Kai feared becoming. Rain poured through the man as he mouthed the same words over and over: Runaway and save yourself.
The choice was his. Live to be the man who would be king that stood before him, or die, here and now, surrounded by the guards that he had quickly come to admire. The water cascaded down the hands of the aberration and the guard as Kai stared at them beckoning. What man did he wish to be? The world itself ordered Kai to make his choice.
Kai batted the guard's hand away forcefully and raised himself to his feet with a groan. The kingly version of himself scoffed began to mouth words at him, but there came forth no sound. Its plump arms began to wildly flail towards the direction the guards wished to stash him away, hoping to change Kai's mind. He looked the apparition in the eyes and solidly shook his head in defiance. The ghostly man made an exaggerated action as if to say "to hell with you." It turned its back on Kai and walked away, slowly allowing itself to be whisked away by the wind and dispersed by the rain. Kai had chosen to die and stayed steadfast in his decision. He turned to the guard, who had put his hand on Kai's shoulder.
"What is your name?" Kai's voice cracked from the pressure of the decision he had just made.
"Your Highness, we don't have time..."
"I am your prince! Tell me your name."
"I apologize, Your Highness. My name is Hayden," he answered.
Hayden was about the same height as Kai, though his upper body was much wider and well built. His low voice was gruff and was the type to command attention from anyone who heard it. His arms were massive, and his hands nearly dwarfed his Silver Blade's handle. In the torrential downpour of rain, it was hard to see what exact color of hair peeked from under Hayden's helmet.
"And them?" Kai asked, gesturing to the two men with Hayden.
"Those two are Becket and William. They are going to distract the giant while I escort you away."
"You will do no such thing," Kai said, rejecting the proposal. "Hayden, and you two! William! Beckett! Follow me!" William and Becket turned with bewildered looks on their faces before they sprinted after Hayden and Kai. They raced into an alley 50 or so meters up the road just past the giant's gaze.
"I am assuming command of your Patrol. You'll obey my every order," Kai started. "Look, I want to thank you three. I had given in to despair and had resigned myself to die without a fight. But if we're going to go out there and fight, we're going to go together. So let's make a plan!"
A wooden cart whizzed by the entrance to the alley, which caused all four men to look and gulp before continuing.
"What are you guys carrying for Stones?" The guards quickly patted themselves down and pulled out their Stones to obey.
"Fire and Ice for me," William answered.
"Fire and Water for me," Becket. "I was on my way to help out with a building fire before this damned thing showed up."
"Hayden, what about you?" Kai asked.
"Fire and Levitation. I was helping a merchant unload some stuff from a carriage when the explosion happened."
Kai acknowledged Hayden and closed his eyes. He moved his mouth silently for a few seconds before he opened his eyes and gestured for the other men to come closer.
"All right, I have a plan," Kai exclaimed. "It may not be good, but you'll have to trust me."
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The three guards stormed from the alleyway and charged towards the giant, who was now only twenty meters from the alley. They spread themselves outwards as Becket charged down the middle of the road while Becket and Hayden came down flanked on either side of him.
Becket reached fifteen meters from the giant and slid to a stop. He raised his Blade into the air and took a deep breath before expelling a massive shout, activating his Water Stone. Becket began to swirl his Blade around, and as the Blade spun above his head, a vortex of water slowly formed and circled upwards from the tip. With a loud grunt, he took his Blade and jabbed it in the direction of the giant, unleashing a massive meter-long waterspout from the tip of his Blade. The giant unleashed a deafening roar as the waterspout slammed into its face. As the attack sucked more rain into the vortex, it grew more powerful with each second.
The giant reached up with his free hand and shielded its eyes from the water, which spurred William into his role in the plan. He ran towards the giant, reached his Blade into the air to touch the waterspout, and activated his Ice Stone. The water instantly began to freeze and spread like a frozen lightning bolt until it reached the giant and froze the back of its hand to its face, blinding it and robbing it of its hand. It began to wobble wildly in shock and pain
and began to slam the tree it held into the earth.
Hayden took the slamming of the tree as his queue and ran up to the tree as the giant began to raise it upwards to make another swing. He activated his Levitation Stone and slashed his Blade into the tree. In one motion, he ripped the weightless tree away from the giant's hand and high into the sky. He ran a few steps backward from the giant, and then, with a mighty roar, Hayden directed the tree downwards and cracked the tree's full weight against the giant's head. The giant let out a pained cry and fell to its knees, reducing its height to just over 10 feet.
As the giant whimpered from the pain of the strike, a small slit slashed across the giant's chest. Blood poured out from the gash as Kai deactivated his Invisibility. He yelled a victory cry and took Initiation out of the giant's chest and thrust it back into the dark bluish grey skin before him several more times. Kai's face lit up as he realized what he and the guards had done. They had defeated the giant, and it was his plan they followed to do it.
Kai turned his head to the guards and saw a look of shock on their faces instead of the joy he expected to see. Before he could process their reactions, the hand of the giant swiped at Kai and took hold of him. The giant inspected Kai high above his head before the giant roared and heaved him into the ground. A sickening thud echoed against the walls of the surrounding buildings while Kai's body bounced from the impact.
Kai had never felt real pain before. He had obtained his fair share of nicks and scrapes over the years and even had a few bruised ribs. Hayleigh and Mason worked him hard in sparring sessions, and Kai took intense and full hits from both of them. However, nothing he experienced before could have prepared him for the sheer agony he now felt. The air escaped his lungs and refused to return as he struggled to breathe and move his limbs, with no response from his body. The giant slowly rose to its feet and released the most terrifying sound Kai had ever heard. The sensation and adrenaline he had when he decided to fight vacated him, replaced by his original feeling of doom.
The giant turned and attempted to grab his familiar tree club as Kai looked to the sky to focus on that instead. He had accepted his fate earlier, after all. He knew he was to die fighting the giant as soon as he rejected his future self.
Instead of spending his last moment on earth sad and afraid, he traced shapes in the clouds above to comfort himself and deal with his immense pain. The dread and fear slowly faded from his body; the fate of the kingdom, or even his other problems, no longer mattered.
His new-found peacefulness had barely begun to comfort him before a flash of lightning pierced the sky above him. It was immediately followed by a thunderclap that made the giant's roar from earlier seem like a mouse's squeak. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the giant raise its tree above its head, illuminated from surrounding lanterns that flickered in the street. Kai closed his eyes and awaited his end.
Two pairs of hands roughly pulled at Kai's legs and began to drag him away as the tree crashed down upon where his body had just laid. Kai opened his eyes to see William and Becket pulling him out of range of the giant, with each bump in the muddy road agony to his body. A smile had barely begun to cross Kai's face before a deafening whoosh filled his ears. The giant's tree connected against his saviors, sending them out of his range of vision in the blink of his eyes. A pair of faint thuds found his ears seconds later, which gave him an idea of what happened to the men under his charge.
A blurry figure approached him, and Kai focused through his pain just enough to make out Hayden tap him on the foot with a Blade, and felt a sensation of nothingness he hadn't felt before. Hayden had activated his Levitation Stone and was now sprinting away from the giant, with Kai floating slightly behind. Kai struggled to turn his head to look for William and Becket and managed to see them at the base of a far wall motionless. Kai began to weep, though the tears mixed with the downpour.
A few seconds later, a familiar sound filled the street. A piece of roofing the size of a small horse clipped Hayden on the right side of his body. He cried out in pain as he collapsed to the ground, which caused the Levitation Stone to cease functioning. Kai's body again fell to the mud, which caused him an exasperating amount of pain. After a few gasps, he found what he could of his voice.
"Hayden," Kai meekly called out. "Are you... there?"
The small impacts of the rain were the only reply he received.
"Hayden ... Hayden ... Tell me you're alive." After no reply, Kai craned his neck to see if he could discern Hayden's condition. His body lay motionless face down in the mud except for his left hand, which grabbed at the mush by his head, which filled Kai with relief. He was alive. The happy moment was short-lived, as the giant closed in thirty meters away; each step shook the ground more and more as it approached. He felt around for Initiation, but only mud found his grasp. Once more, he worked up the strength to crane his neck and look and saw it a few meters up the road. It had flown from Hayden's hand when the projectile hit him.
Kai found himself unable to move as the ground shook from the approaching giant's steps. He resolved himself to get up the road, even if it killed him. A fierce roar escaped his lips as he tried to move his legs, but they refused to respond. A deep breath filled his lungs as he prepared to try again before a brilliant flash of light illuminated the giant's silhouette. The tree above its head was ready to strike. He again gave up and allowed his head to rest on the muddy ground. No-one would save him a second time. He felt relief knowing that the excruciating pain he felt would soon be over. A roar left the giants maw before it levered down the tree.
"Strength!" Mason's voice filled his ears. Kai opened his eyes to see Mason bat the tree up into the air with a mighty swing. The recoil forced the giant to lose its balance and fall backward onto the ground. It struggled to get to its feet and took the tree and jabbed it into the ground just before Hayleigh launched herself forward.
"Heat!" Hayleigh's Blade began to glow a bright Orange as she took her Blade and cleaved a chuck from the tree as she yelled her battle cry. She used the momentum of her first swing to do a quick spin and again swiped with her Blade, this time slicing off the giant's right hand with a clean cut. Thanks to her super-heated Blade, the stump where its hand had just been cauterized. The giant roared and fell forward onto its behind as Hayleigh leaped back and regrouped with Mason standing between the giant and Kai.
"Your Highness," Mason's voice called out. "Are you okay?"
"I'll live. I thi... think I'm a little hurt."
"You idiot, you're more than just a little hurt," Hayleigh answered as her voice cracked with emotion. "You are not allowed to go off on your own again without me."
"We can save... this talk for-"
"Do you understand?" She turned to look at Kai with a worried look he had never seen before. He resigned himself to his fate and allowed the back of his head to rest on the ground again.
"Okay. You win," Kai answered with a brief groan. The expression caused him to break into a small cough and wince in pain. "Can you ... fight a giant? How?"
"You hack at it until it dies, I guess," Mason replied. "It only has one hand now so that will def ... in ... it ..." Mason's voice trailed off before he reaffirmed the grip on his Blade.
"What's wrong?" Kai couldn't bear to open his eyes, so he asked again from his personal darkness.
"We're not fighting a giant, Prince Kai. We're fighting a half-giant."
"Okay... what does that mean?"
"It just ate the hand Hayleigh chopped off, and it's slowly regenerating its hand back."
"What!?" Kai exclaimed in pain as he opened his eyes and raised his head. Everyone
looked on in disbelief as the giant continued to chomp down on its old hand as a new one continued to form at the stump Hayleigh had given it. Kai couldn't believe it.
"I think its other half must be troll," Mason stated. "We might be screwed."
"I'll do my best to think of something," Hayleigh stated. "The first thing we need to go is to get Kai to
Elder Liliana to see if anyone here can heal Kai. Take him, Mason. I'll stay here and keep an eye on it and keep it from tearing the city apart. Go!"
"You got it. Stay safe, Hayleigh," Mason confirmed as he picked up Kai and heaved him onto his shoulder, ignoring Kai's cry of pain out of necessity. "Synth!"
All three Stones placed in Mason's Blade began to glow as Mason sprinted down the street at an incredible pace. Kai had always known Mason had a Speed Stone in addition to his Strength Stone, but this is the first time he had seen Mason use his Synth Stone. The effect was incredible, as Mason was running around twice as fast as a normal armor-less man. The constant impact from Mason's shoulder jostling into his ribs caused Kai pain, but he didn't care as he watched Hayleigh keep the giant busy with support from some guards. She became smaller and smaller until she eventually disappeared from his view as Mason rounded behind a house.
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"You're lucky, Your Highness. I have a top tier healing Stone with me."
Elder Liliana held out her Silver Blade and touched it to Kai's chest. It was an incredibly weird feeling as he could feel his broken ribs and other internal injuries slowly heal themselves without any physical application. A tremendous amount of pain coursed through him during the healing before Liliana lifted her Blade, work completed. Kai was shocked how much better he felt once the pain from his treatment had faded, but even though his injuries were healed, he still had quite a bit of discomfort. Kai attempted to sit up in his bed, and after some struggle, he finally managed to with Mason's help. He tested his extremities and flexibility, and even though it was painful, Kai figured he could realistically fight again.