
NOW OR NEVER
The eyes of Jared Sykes flutter open, face against the dirt. Ears ringing. Vision clouded.
He rolls to his side, fighting back the awful headache. His shining armor blood-stained and dented.
With a few more blinks, his hearing returns, and his vision focuses.
And he physically deflates.
The giant. Stomping at the earth, swiping at the defending armies, sending them into the air with screams of horror.
The Dragonslayer takes a breath, clambers to his feet, while “Apocalypse” by Any Given Day offers the soundtrack, pounding away with heavy guitar and beautiful melody.
The camera rushes in, and flies up the giant’s shins. Clinging to its’ left knee, The Anglo Luchador, waving an immaculate sword and howling with glee behind his mask, hacking and slashing with the weapon he’s searched for after all this time
On the other knee, Tony Gamble, in fancy leather armor, stabbing incessantly with a pair of knives into the giant’s leg meat, cackling all the way.
The giant groans in pain. The camera moves up, finding Coral Avalon clutching at the behemoth’s belt. He swings his sword, cutting at the beast’s loin cloth, and leaps to grab the loose fabric. He swings like Tarzan as the fabric rips, gliding in an arc around its legs.
And what’s that in the sky? Bird? Plane?
No. GREAT SCOTT. Mullet flowing and careening headlong into the monster’s cranium. It knocks the giant off balance, and Cancer clutches to hang on to its shoulder as it tilts. SCOTT then plummets to the ground with an explosive crater of dirt and grass.
From the ground, Dusk hollers to a collection of tired soldiers, shouting orders and pointing to a massive ballista on wooden wheels. “FIRE!” he shouts, the machine launching its payload attached to a long rope, landing deep in the giant’s shoulder and tugging it back.
To his surprise, a second harpoon finds its mark on the other side. Dusk looks across the field to find Lindsay Troy in golden arbor, smirking back at The Lost Soul.
As the monster stumbles back, Vickie Hall screams bloody murder with arms waving to escape the massive feet. Further up on the giant’s oblique, Darin Zion and Jonathan-Christopher Hall frantically hold on for dear life, and hurriedly fashion some sort of explosive. JC Hall slices the skin open with a dagger, and Zion shoves the make-shift bomb inside. They leap away, a contraption unfolding from Zion’s back, forming into a hang glider to float away to safety, JC Hall taking hold as well.
Jared Sykes has made his way to the giant’s chest. He unsheathes a sword, and battles for balance, though an image above gives him pause.
Justine Calvin, flying in with bow and arrow, launches a volley into the behemoth’s chest, peppering it with arrows. She lands on its pectoral, pushes off, and turns 180, shooting another grouping as she floats back. Sykes then, with grit teeth, plunges his blade deep into the giant’s heart.
The bomb explodes. The harpoons pull tight. The fabric wraps fully around the ankles, and the monster falls back with a heavy groan.
Upon the shoulders, Cancer Jiles seethes.
Across, Hayes Hanlon. Stumbling as the giant tips.
Now or never.
He runs forward, charging Jiles with his shield, knocking him loose. They fall through the air, Hayes with his mace swinging overhead, Cancer gripping tight to Hanlon’s pauldron, teeth grit and hissing.
The camera shifts to ground level, the giant’s back falling into it with a thundering crash.
And then the logos.
PRIME.
COLOSSUS.
NIGHT TWO.