Dripping Away

Chapter 9: The First Giant

        She led me to the large castle-like structure that just sat in the empty, waterless center, and she sat me down in a room that mimicked an office. There were detailed pictures on the wall, old ad machines that seemed to half-work as they spliced images in between each other. Grevie was delicate to herself as she sat down in the patched chair, and she focused in on me with an almost sympathetic frown. I could hear every prickle of electricity as it passed us both by, the sounds of each other's breaths as if it had take the air by storm. Grevie noticed my distance almost immediately, and she decided to speak.
     "What you did was foolish on all accounts, Lostin," Grevie criticized. "You caused a calamity, of course, and your body is permanently damaged."
     I closed my eyes. "I'm not the smartest person-"
     "No, but you are an important person. Would Lekereianale have council with you in your time of distance otherwise?"
     "How do you-"
      I opened my eyes to stare at her, and she was looking deep into her desk as she cut me off again. "The answers your looking for are here in the real world. You must do as Lekereianale asks."
     "W-wait, I don't think I get it." I held my head. "How do you know all of this?"
     Grevie handed me a folder with words on it I did understand. She didn't know I was unable to read, I bet, but I tried to understand it the best I could. the best I could figure out was the word GIANT that made no sense if I couldn't read the rest. Shaking my head, I returned the folder to Grevie's aged desk, where it had kept itself slightly open from all of the papers stuffed inside.  Grevie didn't pick it back up, but I could tell from her cat-like eyes that she understood.
     "Let me explain how I know through my voice," she sighed. "Close your eyes and imagine."
     I shut my eyes to the thumping of the walls and the rain and the physicalness of myself into the darkness of my head. How long had it been since I imagined something without the help of sleep? The last time I remembered was when Mom got sick, when she put her thumbs over my eyes and told me to stay silent and imagine good things. It had been so long since then, I wasn't even sure there were good things in my eyes.
     "There were ten Giants that existed, and nine died. In their death, Lekereianale made sure that they would live on somehow," she told me. I imagined the other Giants, just as patched as her, just as cryptic. "So their conscious is inside of human bodies, feeding away on the living of them."
     "Ew," I commented.
     "Shush, you dimwit. You're a part of the problem." She sighed again. "Open your eyes and explain it to you."
     I did.
     "You are one of five. The five of you are supposed to stop the rain and wake the Giants from slumber. This would've been a lot easier if you hadn't touched that large electrical current in the center of the Church, you see. You fucked yourself."
     I gulped. "I told you I'm not very smart."
    "But she chose you to fix this. You to wake the Giants. You are supposed to attract yourself to the humans inhabiting the Giant's conscious by the currents in the air, and now all of those currents are scrambled inside of you. Like a broken magnet."
     I closed my eyes. "It was the best idea at the time."
     "You could have snuck around! You had so many options before you ruined yourself like this."        She stood up quickly from her chair and grabbed my wrist. I gritted my teeth together as pain from the scars reached through every inch of my arms. Opening my eyes, I realized there was another reason why I had felt a sudden shot of pain. Grevie had a syringe filled of a pale yellow liquid she had shot into my veins, something that had no label, and I pushed her away immediately. The needle, still in my arm, seemed to amplify the electricity in my soul.
     "What are you-"
     "I have to fix you," she gasped, recuperating from my shove. "You're filled with too much electricity to function properly."
     The world around started to get blurry. "Grevie, I'm fine."
     "You're sick." 
     "No!"
     The walls became electrified by my mouth, making Grevie jump with fear. "Lostin, it's just going to make you fall asleep so I can fix you. You need to find the Giant's to wake them up."
My vision was fading and my mind was becoming numb. The electricity would not cease, however, and it was only getting stronger by the second.
     "Go to sleep."
     I glared. "You can't fix this."
     And then the world faded into darkness.

     It was a nudge, but it was familiar to me. The warmth of the hand had been comfortable, but then it was gone a second later. Had I known that this was going to happen, I would have stayed asleep in my dreams for a moment longer. Except that wasn't the case, and I wasn't dreaming. I pushed myself off of the ground, hitting my head on whatever was above me. The world around was pitch black, like I was stuck in a box. I think I was.
     It came to me slowly, the syringe and Grevie's lust for fixing what I did, and I sighed greatly at the thought. The scars were as bright as ever, but the sound of electricity was dim. Too dim. I could feel Grevie hadn't done anything to me yet, because my body felt relatively the same.
      "I refuse to die to some rogue man with no sense of purpose now!"
     I could hear Grevie through the box at a distance form me, and it pissed me off. She was talking to someone.
     "He's a loose cannon, but he can be stopped."
     Lascish. No fucking way was he alive right now.
     "We have the Giants marked, you and I included. If we can just extract the Forever Spark from his inner body, we'll be golden. We could even rid of him of all of Lekereianale's powers," Grevie mused.
     Lascish chuckled. "With him here in unconsciousness and Abers and those twins distracted for the night, we're going to end this world faster than expected."
     I could hear their footsteps electrify the ground as they walked towards the box. I shut my eyes to pretend I was still unaware of them or their cause. Whatever it was. y mind was still distracted by the fact Lascish was here. In the sewers. I Thought the sewers were the good place to be, the good place to hide. Maybe it was, but maybe it was because I was Lostin Rotsitt, the man wanted for so many things that it was more than a list.
     "Who died?" Grevie asked Lascish. "During his brilliant plan, I mean."
     Lascish seemed hesitant to answer, so they began moving the box I was in with some... cart.     "The whole of us. It was a smart idea if you thing about it. All of us... gathered in the same place."
     "And you?"
     "Well, you know I had to use the Giant's immunity. Isn't that what you did a few hours ago?"
     Grevie stuttered. "I-in my defense, he was hell-bent on killing me there."
     I wondered why.
     "Ranll's lab is the best place to do this," Lascish grunted. "Think we can cart him all that way?"
     No. Not Ranll's. Not again.
    "We'll get there," Grevie sighed. "The medicine should last long enough."
    It didn't.
     Suddenly, I could hear the rain pounding against the box. his was going to be a long journey.