Scene opens on a cold, crisp December night. The tension is as fierce and frigid as the cold rain falling down from the black, moonless sky above. Though the air is as sharp as a maw of icy fangs and the sound is muffled by the stifling cold, the fury burning within the four men assembled upon the muddy ground is more than enough to keep them alert and rigid, their well-honed weapons clenched in their hands as they stare down the endless scene of jungle before them.
They came from all different walks of life: one a portly, grizzled redneck, another a bright-eyed atheist, a third a crude and vicious man of the mountains. All of them were bound together by a common cause and a leader with a high hopes, daring dreams and a total disregard for his own life.
The beady-eyed man, his brown mop of hair a grotesque stack of wet fur over his tightened face, sniffs and breaks the terrifyingly quiet scene with a murmur that carries over the cold night as though it had wings.
Sean: I don't like this, Zaza. You don't even know if Parcelan will show up...
Zaza: It's been fourteen years to the day since he swore revenge, Sean. He's exactly one year overdue...he's going to show up.
Karnaj: He's just saying what we're all thinking. We've been here, at this spot, every year since that tragedy happened, freezing our stones off as we wait all night for him to show up. After all this time, isn't it just possible that he's forgotten?
Zaza: He was defeated, shamed and exiled, man. Nobody just "forgets" something like that, least of all Parcelan.
Liam: Well, he can't have gotten any stronger over the years. Are all four of us really necessary?
Zaza: The four of us are all that remain. The others have long since forgotten their duties, or forsaken them, and we don't have the manpower to force them back into the circle. You three are the founding members. You swore an oath...
The stony-faced man turns and regards his companions icily.
Zaza: If you really want to leave...to go back to your lives...to your families, then alright. I can't force you to stay, but you have to know the danger Parcelan represents to all of us.
Liam: We were there, man. We saw what he did to everyone...what he did to Drysart.
The three exchange guilty looks for a moment.
Liam: You're right...I'm sorry. I was wrong to despair. So long as the danger exists, I'll be here to help stop him.
Karnaj: And I.
Sean: And I.
Zaza smiles, his teeth white against the blackness of the sky.
Zaza: You're good men, all. These are the days I longed for...but you might have a point. If Parcelan were still around, he would have showed up by now.
Sean: He always enjoyed his comforts, too...I don't see why he'd show up on a night like this.
Zaza: Yeah...maybe you're right. Maybe he's jus-HURK!
The man's chest explodes in a rosy blossom of crimson life, the jagged head of a silver spear forming its violent stamen. Zaza stares at his companions, his mouth open in a choked speech, a wordless plea, a desperate apology...whatever it is, the remaining three cannot tell. They merely stare at their leader as he teeters forward slowly, then collapses onto the ground, the long, wooden shaft of the spear quivering in his back.
A crack of lightning breaks the black scenery, illuminating the creature at the far end of the muddy field, his fat body stark against the bleak foliage of the jungle. His beady, black eyes light up with a quiet, unspoken fury as he grins, his buck teeth as sharp and jagged as the saber he now hefts up.
Sean: Mother of...
Karnaj: Non-demoninational deity!
Liam: It is as Zaza foretold! He's back! HE'S BACK!
The tall man turns and runs shrieking into the night, dropping his weapon where he stood.
Sean: Liam, you fool!
Liam: He's back! PARCELAN HAS RETURNED! ABANDON ALL-*HWAUGH!*
The sword's whistle was so piercing as it flew through the air as to even drown out the man's terror. The blade bites into his spine and he goes tumbling into a ditch, slowly bleeding out ichor as he looks up at his two remaining companions, eyes agog in their final moments of horror.
The two remaining men exchange a nervous glance.
Karnaj: This is the day we prepared for...
Sean: This is what we had been waiting for...
Karnaj: If he gets past us...
Sean: I know what will happen.
Karnaj: Good...luck!
With that, the man turns and flees, dropping his weapon behind as he sprints through the mud. His friend, shocked and terrified, shrieks after him.
Sean: Wait, you fool! Don't you see what you're doing?! YOU CAN'T ESCAPE HIM!
So full of wrath and terror was he, he never so much as saw the chubby little creature sprint across the field and slam his flanged mace into the back of the man's head.
His vision blurs, his head swims, his world goes black as he topples backwards into the mud, the last thing he sees being the fat, furry little prairie dog looming over him...
To be Continued?!
As he strides across the land, unaware, uncaring of those pathetically insignificant creatures that flee beneath his colossal footsteps, his mind drifts back to a time when he was loved, not reviled, when he had company other than the lonely sound of his rumbling footsteps.
But she is dead now, her grave, the size of a small hill, marks where he buried her so many years ago after she was so violently taken from him. Her slayer is gone, they have said, exiled to the far-away lands, but it will not bring her back.
Nor will the chaos he wreaks across the plains as the massive, white-haired creature strides over the grasslands, his colossal girth the ruin of any who dare get in his path.
He is not a destructive creature by nature, but he used to be far more conscious of the little people. Rare were the times when he so callously destroyed villages, so contemptuously crushed the small folk beneath his feet. She had a way of keeping him aware of those smaller than him...
He pauses his rumbling trek across the plains and lets out a sigh with such despair as to rip trees from the ground.
Ja'Deth: She had a way with a lot of things...
Suddenly, his pointed ears prick up and twitch at the sound of someone approaching. It is a sound he has not heard in quite awhile...a sound he came to dread in darker days...it was the last sound she had ever heard.
Deth: Hoofbeats...
Whirling about, he spies something that filled his massive heart with both terror and elation. Below on the plains, barely visible to his wide eyes, rides a fat little prairie dog wearing a frock atop a plain black steed, a bow on his back and a sword at his hip.
Deth: *roaring* Tiny fiend...was Lyinar not enough for your appetite for murder? Have you come this far just to send me to join her?
He lets out a great howl that causes the earth about him to tremble as he raises a great fist to the sky.
Deth: You have come so far only to find your own death, Parcelan! Today I avenge her!
The titan slams his fist against the ground, the blow driven by his years of lonely anguish, with such force as to rend the stones from the ground in an eruption of splintered earth. He is fierce, he is strong, but he is not so clever as his opponent...
The horse falls, swallowed up by the chasm left in the powerful attack's wake, but the hero presses on. Wordless, save for a tiny squeak, he lunges off of his steed and grips the colossus' hairy fist. Snarling at the little furry tumor, Deth raises his hand to pluck him from his wrist. All he needs is one hand, one hand to crush the tiny creature like a pimple, one hand to claim his vengeance.
But the prairie dog is swift and canny, and as the beast raises his titanic arm, the hero drops from his wrist and lands atop Deth's skull, entwining himself within the mass of snowy hair. The beast roars impotently, groping through his net of fur to find the tumor.
He has not long to search before the prairie dog drops down before his very eyes, holding on with one paw to the colossus' eyebrow, his mighty sword raised in the other. Deth's eyes go wide; he has seen the blade before. He knows it well, the silver sliver that took his beloved's life, the same sliver that he now knows will take his own as it comes crashing down between his eyes into his sole weak spot.
The blow is swift, but brutal, cleaving through the only vital point in the titan's thick hide. There is a gout of black blood as the colossus lets out his final roar, his final vocalization of anguish before he is sent to join his beloved.
As a tree felled, he sways briefly before crashing down upon the earth, his great weight sinking into the ground and digging his own grave. As he feels his body begin to turn to shadow, his life force leaking from him in great black rivulets, he turns his eyes, frozen wide in terror, upon the tiny creature as he hops off and sheathes his blade.
Deth: Exile...has not dulled your reflexes...old friend. *coughing* Your blade has done me a kindness...Lyinar...I come to meet you...
The titan falls dead and black, his life now completely oozed out of the fatal wound. The prairie dog hero spares him only a contemptuous glance before resting a hand upon his sword and turning to begin the long, arduous trek back to civilization...
Back to the rest of his vengeance...
To Be Continued...
