Jack the Giant Killer RP

Part One

The trial of Jack Horner was attended by all who lived within the kingdom. The tiny human trembled in the center of the chamber. He was standing on a massive podium that was as tall as a tree. He was pale and small against the polished wood. Light from the strange and impossible twin moons filtered down upon him from an even more strange and impossible the tangerine sky. The light was a gentle intertwining of amethyst and gold where it struck his shuddering form.

Jack Horner clung to his sanity by a very thin thread. The horror of it all was too much. He was losing his mind and he was actually grateful. Last week, the beanstalks had appeared in every town and village for miles—maybe every town and village in the world. And the giants had begun to climb down from the sky.

Men and boys had been recruited to battle these terrible creatures, but the first day was slaughter. Children as young as twelve had been drafted into the army in his own small town of Hamelin after the initial onslaught. The giants were fast. They moved with preternatural speed and velocity. Sometimes they ran on all fours like wolves. A single giant had decimated Hamelin in that first day, devouring people by the handfuls. The creature had been frenzied, like it was starving, stuffing people into its razor like maw and raining blood down on the horrified denizens below trying desperately to get out of its way—to seek escape, somewhere, anywhere.  

Those that managed to escape the initial onslaught hid in the surrounding forest for a time. Jack Horner had met the King there. And cringing in the dark, the surviving populace of the kingdom’s villages told tales of similar horror—a beanstalk, and the giants climbing down to devour them. What scattered military was left was mobilized in that forest, and villagers added to the ranks. The weak, maimed, mauled, and elderly were left behind, so that those who could fight could move away from their decimated landscape. There was strength in numbers, was the consideration of the noble king. His army would destroy this ravenous monstrosity and bring peace again to the land.  Clockwork messenger owls had been dispatched, and silver metal emergency ravens. The king rode a fast horse of meat and gold, and copper wire. His words and his noble bearing were soothing to those who followed.

The giant that crashed, gibbering and salivating, from the forest devoured both the kind and his horse. It was blood and metal and wire that rained from that thing’s mouth. And, even as it ate him, it reached for more with greedy hands, grasping men women and children at once and stuffing them into its mouth behind him.

Running for his life, Jack Horner had come to the conclusion that this giant was different from the one that had destroyed Hamelin—that there was more than one of these terrible things. He heard gunfire and the shrieks of the dying. He just ran, like a coward, like a thoughtless mindless animal that just wanted to be safe and away.

Another giant loomed in the immediate distance. Upright, it carried a gargantuan cudgel. Spying them or its hideous kindred, he did not know, but its demeanor changed. The illusion of gargantuan humanity dropped from it. It hunched in on itself, cudgel gripped tight, and sprang the distance between them like an animal. The ground shook when its monstrous boots touched the ground.

It’s wearing silks, Jack thought macabrely, and rings of gold and glittering jewels. And then he gave up thinking all together as trees toppled beneath the push of the monster, and it … came.

*

He felt a touch—a bare soft caress and heard the world “Alive,” a moment later.

His eyes opened to a sky that had gone jet black and sprinkled with silver stars. There was a girl standing over him, and it took him a moment to realize that she was whole but for her left arm. That place on her body was void. Her torso was all bandages but for the absence of that limb. Hair so blonde it was silver in the starlight cascaded down her shoulders. Her face was dirty, and her eyes were a vibrant blue. He knew her.