Quest for the Silver Cleric Chapter 23: A Giant problem.

“Took you long enough to wake up. Thought I might have to knock your tent down before you’d notice you had a visitor,” he said.

Delrack pushed past me, axe at the ready, but the giant said, “Peace, Dwarf. If I wanted to fight, I could have knocked down your tent before you even knew I was here.”

“He’s got a point.”

“Of course I have a point. Now, how fast can you pack up and follow me? The other giants are looking for you.”

“Lady?”

“Do it.”

So we struck camp quickly, all the time with the Giant watching the horizon nervously.

Once we were finished, the giant said, “Lets go. The other giants were misdirected to search for you in the old Dwarf tunnels that connected the mountains. But they may have decided to cover their bets and come above ground as well.”

“Give me your name, Giant. And your promise you’re on my side.”

“My name is Waden. And by the power of the Oldest of Dragons, I will save you if I can.”

“Good enough for me. Lead on.”

“We moved as quickly as we could, and pretty soon I could see that we were headed for one mountain that seemed somehow separated from the others, although I wasn’t sure how. We’d been going for about an hour before the nervousness of our guide proved to be based in truth, as we could hear the shouts of giants and we broke into a gallop on the horses.

We made it to the bottom of the mountain, and our guide pressed his hand against one outcropping rock, and a portion of the mountain vanished. We hustled in, and as soon as we were all inside, the giant pressed his hand against a rock on the side of the entrance, and just like that the mountain closed behind us.

It was very dark, but our guide pulled out a torch and lit it.

“That will hold the pursuit. Come this way.”

We wound into the mountain for a while, and finally had to take a rest. I went up to our guide and asked, “What’s your story?”

Many, many years ago, we Giants had lost a war to the Dwarves. We retreated into the Ice Plains beyond the mountains to the north to lick our wounds.

We stayed there for years, and then one day one of our members wondered north, and when he came back he was ... different. He had a presence, a power like we had never seen before. He used this spear, that he claimed came from another world, and with it and this new attitude he rallied most of our race behind him. He spoke of regaining our honor, of expanding our territory. And he called the source of his new power, the Void.”

He took a breath, and continued, “Soon, we attacked the Dwarves with new weapons, new tactics, and for a while, things were great. Until we not only beat the Dwarves, we started slaughtering them. Men, women, even children. Some of us objected to that, saying it was not the way of a warrior culture like ours to kill innocents.

We were beaten, some of us killed, and the rest driven out, and then hunted down. Finally, I was alone, and wondered lost and purposeless. and then the Oldest of the Dragons found me, and gave me a purpose again.

“And a chance to redeem the honor of my people.”

“This new leader of yours. ..” I started

“He renamed himself Titanic,” He interrupted.

“Interesting choice. What had he been like before he came back with the staff?”

“A good warrior, a leader of men. But not one who would have ordered such things.”

“And the staff changed him into a Giant version of Hitler. Nice.”

“Hitler?” Aeneas asked.

“A dictator from my world. Not a nice guy.”

I went to get up, assuming we were going to move on, but Waden said, “No need to go further, human. The oldest of the Dragons is going to come to us.”

“How long will we have to wait?’

“Hours, perhaps. The Oldest of Dragons gave me a device that would summon her, and I’ve now activated it, but she warned me it would take some time for her to respond and make it to this spot.. Perhaps we should make a meal, to pass the time?”

As he said the last, my stomach rumbled in agreement about the idea of food since we had skipped breakfast, and from the look of the others, they were in favor of this idea as well. So we got out our cooking supplies, and soon had made as good a meal of things as was possible under the circumstances.

Once we ate and cleaned up, we made ourselves comfortable to wait. Sitting there in the dim light, I found myself thinking about Hitler, having mentioned his name. Somehow, he had turned a decent, hardworking people into maniacs who could applaud stuffing their enemies into ovens. And he had looked for a magic spear as well, if the stories were true.
Was it possible that the Void had been active on my world? Or more frightening, did we each have a little Void inside of us, waiting to come out?

I shook my head. I had enough to think about at the moment, so let go of that train of thought.

It felt like a long wait, but eventually Waden.stood up, and said, “She approaches.”

“She?” I said, but moments later I could see for myself.

She was not as large as I would have thought, her scales looked golden yellow, and there was an definite femininity to her, but there was also no question she was a dragon.

“Welcome, Lady Danica and company. I’ve been waiting a long time for you,” she said.

I stepped forward nervously. “You know who we are?”

“I was the one who summoned you from your own world. And centuries before that, I was the one who whispered the prophesy to the original Silver Cleric. so you would have a proper welcome when you arrived.”

“But ... how?”

“Time inbetween worlds does not exist the way you think of it. To me, that was not very long ago.”

“So what happens now?”

“I can send you to the place between worlds where the Void has set up shop, as it were. It will be very dangerous, but its the only place where it is vulnerable. Once there, if you can destroy its connection to this world, it will take it millions of years before it will be able to re-establish a link here. “

“Then that’s what I’ll do if its possible.”

“We will do, Lady,” Aeneas said. “None of us will stay behind while you face such a threat alone.”

“I would like to come as well,” Waden said firmly.

“I’m afraid I have a different task for you,” the dragon said. “You must go to your kin, and try and get the staff away from Titanic. “

“Hmm,” Orien interjected. “Perhaps I would do more good helping here then. If you don’t mind, my Lady.”

“Stealing a staff sounds up your alley, my friend.”

He bowed.

Tesmi grabbed him, gave him a huge kiss, and said, “Be safe. Or when I come back, we will have words.”

“You come back safely yourself. I may be a thief, but you’ve stolen my heart. So keep it beating until we meet again.”

They kissed again, and it took a cough from me to break them up. Each of us said goodbye to him and the Giant, and then the dragon spoke.

“Its time,” she said. Then, she shimmered, and transformed into a human woman.

She then started chanting, and soon the cave seemed to fade from my sight.

When my eyes cleared, we were standing on a hill, and the surroundings looked like a war zone. Trees had been knocked over, the grass had been blasted, and huge piles of what looked like bodies could be seen in the distance.

Then we heard a sound, and turned in that direction.

We saw these creatures come toward us, and I could tell their intentions were not friendly....