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Description
Darkening clouds let loose the occasional shower of cold rain, splattering on the windshield of the black, armored luxury car as it sped through the giant district. The colossal houses towered like accursed, black mountains in the dwindling, diffused light of the winter sunset. Greenberry gasped each time he came near a giant walking outside, which was really never very near at all, but he wasn’t used to being around the huge creatures.

“Greenberry, don’t be such a wimp!” a high-pitched voice cried behind him. “They know not to step on the road, and even if they did, they’d never hurt you. Chill out already.”

“Yes, Milord Macnia,” Greenberry said, gripping the steering wheel tightly.

His passenger, a young elvish boy, leaned back in his soft leather seat and sighed. “It’s ‘Mac,’” he whispered, and gazed out the window at the darkening world, his fringe of silver hair draping slightly over his eyes.

After only a few moments, the vehicle crested a large hill and entered a driveway next to one of the monolithic residences. Greenberry stared at the door of the house, which featured a doorbell for people his size near the ground. Protocol demanded he exit the car and introduce his young lord, but he just sat there, frozen. Mac glared at him in the rearview mirror, but then rolled his eyes.

“You don’t need to walk me to the door, Greenberry, I can handle myself,” he said. He pulled the strap of his backpack over his shoulder and grabbed his toy bow and quiver off the back seat. Greenberry weakly stuttered a protest as the boy opened his car door, but Mac held up one imperious hand.

“I won’t tell mother. Just make sure you assure her that I am wearing my rings,” he said, and the lapiz lazuli gems on his fingers briefly flashed. “I’ll be perfectly safe.”

Greenberry swallowed and nodded his head. “I will wait for your call when you are ready to return, Milord,” he said.

Mac didn’t answer as he shuffled out of the vehicle and started making his way to the massive house — it wasn’t a very long walk from the driveway and he only felt a light peppering of rain. He heard the car make its way back down the hill behind him, and he took a deep breath. ”Mother probably won’t even notice how long I’m gone,” he thought, and pushed the doorbell, which let out a low, echoing tone. Impassively, he stood in the chilly air, patiently waiting, shoulders squared like a son of nobility.

Macnia Llaw was, undoubtedly, the richest boy in the fifth grade, which was something he couldn’t control — he was born with it. For all intents and purposes, he was also the toughest kid in his grade, and that was something he had very much control over. He wasn’t mean (as far as he knew), he wasn’t brash, he was just mentally and physically hard as steel, which most people wouldn’t guess from his short, chubby build.

The 120-foot door clicked and swung inward, and a titanic figure loomed in near-silhouette in front of the house’s indoor lights. A slim 10-year-old with strawberry blond hair, wearing loose Superman pajamas, crouched down and offered the elvish boy a giant hand.

“Big Mac!” he said, his dimples showing as he smiled.

Mac took great pleasure in a 65-foot-tall kid calling him that, and he grinned as he leapt nimbly onto his friend’s palm. The huge fingers wrapped around him, bringing a welcome comfort from the outside cold.

“How’s it goin’, Charlie!” Mac said. “How come you’re dressed for bed already? It’s only seven!”

“Meh. It’s my house. I’ll wear what I want,” Charlie said as he closed the front door and padded with thundering footfalls into his living room. Standing in the portico, Mac saw two more of his friends coming up to greet him.

“What’s up Big Mac!” they both said, almost in unison, and laughed a bit. It was Finnian Shawshank, his shocking red hair framing his giant face wildly, and the little werewolf, Alaki Munro, standing up in Finnian’s shirt pocket, his bright gray ears straight up and forward.

Mac held up his toy bow and was about to explain why he brought it when we saw two other large figures, a bit taller than his other giant friends, march up to the scene. For a second, he was put at a loss for words.

They were two more giant boys, but they were completely identical, except in the colors of their clothes. Both wore basketball shorts and T-shirts, but one was dressed all in blue, and one was dressed all in white. They had long, curly, brown hair and olive skin, and they both seemed to be his age, if not a little older. One stared at him shyly, but the other, the one in blue, rushed forward.

“Are you an elf?” the giant asked, excitedly.

Mac was not amused. He turned to Charlie, and asked in a humorless voice, “Who are these guys?”

Charlie’s face held a somewhat embarrassed look. “These are my cousins, Cade and Conor,” he said. “They’re from a place where giants and littles are separated, so … they’ve never met an elf before. They’re visiting me for a few days.”

“I’m Cade,” the twin in white said before frogging his brother in the back. The boy in blue yelped in pain and said, “I’m Conor.” He came up close to Mac and peered at the toy in the elvish boy’s hand. “What’s that thing?”

Mac chuckled. He lifted up his bow and slapped it thuggishly into his other hand. “It’s a weapon,” he said, and grinned maliciously. “It’s for taking down giants.”

~~~~~~

Soaring. Weightless. Free.

Even if it was only a small lap pool, Toby relished each stroke, each effortless glide through the water. He had moved to the mainland with his family about four years ago, and occasionally they would take short trips to the nearby Gladiator Lake for some aquatic fun, but he still missed being able to jump from the beach cliffs by his old house into the limitless blue-green ocean.

With a burst of spraying water and bubbles, he launched himself up into the air and splashed back down, treading for a while. Rivulets of water flowed down and off his sleek black hair, collecting and cascading down his muscular, tanned shoulders.

He looked at his shirt, discarded on the edge of the pool, and laughed a little bit. A tiny lump was shifting around underneath, obviously trying to make its way out. After some struggle, Nico lifted up a giant fold of cotton cloth and huffed. He was dressed in bright green swimming trunks.

“Dude, don’t forget that my other clothes are under your shirt, OK? Thanks for letting me use it for privacy,” he said.

At the same time, the door to the giant changing room flung open, and Dante came running out, his tour-bus-sized feet making the ground shake before he leapt up and, with a “Woo hoo!”, dove head-first into the pool.

The place was small enough that the kid’s dive splashed Toby in the face pretty well, so he returned his own splash when the boy surfaced, driving him back for a moment. Toby slicked his hair back with one hand and looked back at Nico as the tiny human also jumped clumsily into the water, making a splash that was, of course, much smaller. Dante floated over, a look of concern on his face.

“Um … isn’t it really dangerous for you to be in here with us?” he asked timidly.

Nico dipped down and rose up quickly in his minuscule patch of water, rubbing his eyes after he did so. “I’ll be OK. I’ve got a wicked strong protection spell on, and if I get too deep, I can use my aura to propel myself,” he said. “And anyway, I know you guys will save me, right?”

“Yeah, we can look out for you,” Dante answered, smiling with a twinkle in his eye. On the pool deck behind Nico, several meters away, sat the rest of their friends and a couple other members of the football team playing poker for cheese puffs. Toby had lost out quickly, Dante barely knew how to play, and Nico had grown tired of shrinking his cards every time they were dealt to him, so the three guys had decided to get their swimming in.

Dante moved forward and circled Nico with his arms, creating an atoll of ebony flesh. In a playful whisper, he asked, “Can you get out of my trap?”

Toby gave up a half smile at this. He was a boy of very few words, but he was a good listener and intelligent observer of people’s behavior. It gladdened him that Dante was warming up to human interaction so quickly. For a second, he imagined what it would be like to be Nico’s size, staring up at a humongous junior high athlete. At 13, Dante was a year younger than Toby, but it was easy to see that he would be just as big and good looking as his older brother in a few years.

Nico looked up at the young teen and held up one index finger. With increasing speed, he began to twirl it around, and a few feet in front of him, the water began to swirl and spiral. Then, it released a powerful jet straight into Dante’s face. The huge boy fell back, laughing and spluttering, causing a wave that made Nico founder briefly.

“Ugh! That’s a good way to escape,” he said. “It kind of scares me when you point your finger at me, though.”

“My magic won’t hurt you,” Nico assured him, and began nonchalantly floating on his back. “I’m not interested in offensive spells, really.” It was a half-truth. He closed his eyes.

Very very quietly, without so much as a ripple, Toby gazed at his tiny friend and descended beneath the waves.

When he was much smaller, living on the islands, he encountered humans and mer-people often. Unlike his giant friends at Cherrywood, he had been no stranger to the idea of making human friends. In fact, one of his best friends had been an adult human fisherman who he’d once saved when the man’s canoe capsized during a summer squall. The man, Mr. Duane, had a 9-year-old son, Toby’s age at the time, and they would play on the beach and in the crystalline waters almost daily.

It wasn’t the safest thing to do with a human child, but there was one certain game they would often enjoy playing …

Nico drifted calmly, using a gentle spread of his aura to keep the waves a little calmer around his body, especially since, just a few hundred meters away, Dante the adolescent leviathan was still goofing around. He didn’t notice the water beneath him displacing until it was too late.

His eyes went wide, and his arms flailed in shock as he was rocketed up from the water on a platform of slick flesh. Getting his bearings for just a split second, he felt the light spray from a huge nose above his head and felt giant soft lips begin to open beneath him. With a small cry, unable to react in time, he fell down into a moist, gooshy cavern of flesh, his butt bouncing slightly on a behemoth tongue, which cradled his body.

Feeling that the human was secure in his mouth, and trapping a substantial amount of air inside, Toby snapped his jaws shut and dove down deep into the pool again.

For Nico, it was a truly frightening and surreal experience. For all his magic power, he found himself completely perplexed as to what he should do next. The cramped, slimy cave of Toby’s mouth was intensely humid and totally dark. Nico guessed by how he landed inside that the giant athlete’s throat opening was almost right above his head, hopefully blocked by the muscular tongue. He could feel and faintly hear the titanic teen’s pulse, as well as the rushing sound of water outside. He tried to wriggle around and move his arms and legs, but the tongue held him in place, lightly undulating and brushing its taste buds against his skin.

“I wonder how I taste,” was a thought that flitted through Nico’s brain as he tried to relax and steady his pounding heart. Just as he was beginning to calm down, the teeth and lips ahead of his feet opened, and he slid gently down into the cool water of the pool.

A pair of huge, tan hands joined underneath him and lifted him up slowly. He turned around and stared, somewhat blurry-eyed, into Toby’s calm face.

“Killer whale gotcha,” the smiling boy softly said. “You better watch out, little fishy.”

Nico released a deep breath and a nervous chuckle, and just remained silent. Part of him wanted to to tell Toby never to do that again, but for some reason, as he was staring into the giant freshman’s soothing brown eyes, the words just wouldn’t come out.

“I’ll watch out,” he finally laughed, and fell over back into the pool. A giant putting a human in his mouth was supposed to be a major taboo, but Nico realized he felt nothing of it. No trust was lost.

Dante, however, was stiffly clinging to the pool wall, staring at Toby, totally aghast. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen, but he said nothing.

~~~~~~~~~

Alaki Munro was not an alpha. He was not a beta. He was neither a runt, nor a lone wolf, nor any discernible archetype for any discernible pack role. Wearing a hearing aid in his left ear made him somewhat of an outcast among his own kind. Or, at least, that was a big part of it.

But if his brothers could see him now, he wasn’t sure if they would cheer or scoff. For one thing, he was bravely combating four powerful giants. For another, he was serving as a mount in his dire wolf cub form for a pudgy elf boy, who was sitting astride his back and clutching at his neck fur for stability.

Currently, they were staring straight ahead, watching the end of the Cooper house’s bedroom hallway. Alaki’s sharp ears and nose had detected their prey, and they were waiting for one of the giants to make a move.

“This really doesn’t seem fair,” Mac whispered. “The twins cast their soft step spell on Finny and Charlie, but you can still smell them all. They don’t stand a chance, really.”

Alaki harumphed, unable to speak in his full transformation. Stealthily, he crept forward, his nose twitching. Suddenly, he jerked his body into a pouncing stance. Mac took the cue and readied an arrow in his +1 Nerf Bow of Minor Sleep.

It happened in a flash. Finnian practically did a colossal wall-kick as he lunged around the corner and attempted to grab the little elf with his left hand. A strong wind kicked up as the huge appendage whiffed through the air, just a foot from Mac’s body, the grasp avoided by Alaki deftly springing to the side.

Mac’s arrow flew straight and true, striking Finnian in his wrist. The blow was good enough.

The huge redhead slumped to his knees, a soft step spell still muffling any noise and most of the vibration as his numerous tons of weight crashed down. However, the spell could do little to lessen the force of impact as his whole body flopped over with a massive THUD. He lay still in a deep sleep.

Alaki crept over to the mountainous prone body, and he let out a somewhat remorseful whine. Mac hopped off of his back and strode over to one of Finnian’s hands, splayed on the tile floor.

For a moment he stared at it, considering how huge and powerful it was, but also how gentle. With an air of theatricality he lifted up his foot and stepped upon the giant boy’s thumb, leaning forward in the pose of a great hunter.

“Poor, poor Finn,” he said. “He fought well, but like all giants, he must fall to our awesome skillz.”

He turned to his werewolf friend and held up his bow. “We are giant hunters!” he cried.

Alaki looked at him quizzically, gruffed, and walked up to one of Finnian’s fingers. Compassionately, he gave it a few licks with his long wolf tongue.

“Oh come on,” Mac said, as he re-mounted his lupine steed. “We’ve got three more to go. Better get on it!”

With a great leap, the boys headed toward the kitchen.

Description
Darkening clouds let loose the occasional shower of cold rain, splattering on the windshield of the black, armored luxury car as it sped through the giant district. The colossal houses towered like accursed, black mountains in the dwindling, diffused light of the winter sunset. Greenberry gasped each time he came near a giant walking outside, which was really never very near at all, but he wasn’t used to being around the huge creatures.

“Greenberry, don’t be such a wimp!” a high-pitched voice cried behind him. “They know not to step on the road, and even if they did, they’d never hurt you. Chill out already.”

“Yes, Milord Macnia,” Greenberry said, gripping the steering wheel tightly.

His passenger, a young elvish boy, leaned back in his soft leather seat and sighed. “It’s ‘Mac,’” he whispered, and gazed out the window at the darkening world, his fringe of silver hair draping slightly over his eyes.

After only a few moments, the vehicle crested a large hill and entered a driveway next to one of the monolithic residences. Greenberry stared at the door of the house, which featured a doorbell for people his size near the ground. Protocol demanded he exit the car and introduce his young lord, but he just sat there, frozen. Mac glared at him in the rearview mirror, but then rolled his eyes.

“You don’t need to walk me to the door, Greenberry, I can handle myself,” he said. He pulled the strap of his backpack over his shoulder and grabbed his toy bow and quiver off the back seat. Greenberry weakly stuttered a protest as the boy opened his car door, but Mac held up one imperious hand.

“I won’t tell mother. Just make sure you assure her that I am wearing my rings,” he said, and the lapiz lazuli gems on his fingers briefly flashed. “I’ll be perfectly safe.”

Greenberry swallowed and nodded his head. “I will wait for your call when you are ready to return, Milord,” he said.

Mac didn’t answer as he shuffled out of the vehicle and started making his way to the massive house — it wasn’t a very long walk from the driveway and he only felt a light peppering of rain. He heard the car make its way back down the hill behind him, and he took a deep breath. ”Mother probably won’t even notice how long I’m gone,” he thought, and pushed the doorbell, which let out a low, echoing tone. Impassively, he stood in the chilly air, patiently waiting, shoulders squared like a son of nobility.

Macnia Llaw was, undoubtedly, the richest boy in the fifth grade, which was something he couldn’t control — he was born with it. For all intents and purposes, he was also the toughest kid in his grade, and that was something he had very much control over. He wasn’t mean (as far as he knew), he wasn’t brash, he was just mentally and physically hard as steel, which most people wouldn’t guess from his short, chubby build.

The 120-foot door clicked and swung inward, and a titanic figure loomed in near-silhouette in front of the house’s indoor lights. A slim 10-year-old with strawberry blond hair, wearing loose Superman pajamas, crouched down and offered the elvish boy a giant hand.

“Big Mac!” he said, his dimples showing as he smiled.

Mac took great pleasure in a 65-foot-tall kid calling him that, and he grinned as he leapt nimbly onto his friend’s palm. The huge fingers wrapped around him, bringing a welcome comfort from the outside cold.

“How’s it goin’, Charlie!” Mac said. “How come you’re dressed for bed already? It’s only seven!”

“Meh. It’s my house. I’ll wear what I want,” Charlie said as he closed the front door and padded with thundering footfalls into his living room. Standing in the portico, Mac saw two more of his friends coming up to greet him.

“What’s up Big Mac!” they both said, almost in unison, and laughed a bit. It was Finnian Shawshank, his shocking red hair framing his giant face wildly, and the little werewolf, Alaki Munro, standing up in Finnian’s shirt pocket, his bright gray ears straight up and forward.

Mac held up his toy bow and was about to explain why he brought it when we saw two other large figures, a bit taller than his other giant friends, march up to the scene. For a second, he was put at a loss for words.

They were two more giant boys, but they were completely identical, except in the colors of their clothes. Both wore basketball shorts and T-shirts, but one was dressed all in blue, and one was dressed all in white. They had long, curly, brown hair and olive skin, and they both seemed to be his age, if not a little older. One stared at him shyly, but the other, the one in blue, rushed forward.

“Are you an elf?” the giant asked, excitedly.

Mac was not amused. He turned to Charlie, and asked in a humorless voice, “Who are these guys?”

Charlie’s face held a somewhat embarrassed look. “These are my cousins, Cade and Conor,” he said. “They’re from a place where giants and littles are separated, so … they’ve never met an elf before. They’re visiting me for a few days.”

“I’m Cade,” the twin in white said before frogging his brother in the back. The boy in blue yelped in pain and said, “I’m Conor.” He came up close to Mac and peered at the toy in the elvish boy’s hand. “What’s that thing?”

Mac chuckled. He lifted up his bow and slapped it thuggishly into his other hand. “It’s a weapon,” he said, and grinned maliciously. “It’s for taking down giants.”

~~~~~~

Soaring. Weightless. Free.

Even if it was only a small lap pool, Toby relished each stroke, each effortless glide through the water. He had moved to the mainland with his family about four years ago, and occasionally they would take short trips to the nearby Gladiator Lake for some aquatic fun, but he still missed being able to jump from the beach cliffs by his old house into the limitless blue-green ocean.

With a burst of spraying water and bubbles, he launched himself up into the air and splashed back down, treading for a while. Rivulets of water flowed down and off his sleek black hair, collecting and cascading down his muscular, tanned shoulders.

He looked at his shirt, discarded on the edge of the pool, and laughed a little bit. A tiny lump was shifting around underneath, obviously trying to make its way out. After some struggle, Nico lifted up a giant fold of cotton cloth and huffed. He was dressed in bright green swimming trunks.

“Dude, don’t forget that my other clothes are under your shirt, OK? Thanks for letting me use it for privacy,” he said.

At the same time, the door to the giant changing room flung open, and Dante came running out, his tour-bus-sized feet making the ground shake before he leapt up and, with a “Woo hoo!”, dove head-first into the pool.

The place was small enough that the kid’s dive splashed Toby in the face pretty well, so he returned his own splash when the boy surfaced, driving him back for a moment. Toby slicked his hair back with one hand and looked back at Nico as the tiny human also jumped clumsily into the water, making a splash that was, of course, much smaller. Dante floated over, a look of concern on his face.

“Um … isn’t it really dangerous for you to be in here with us?” he asked timidly.

Nico dipped down and rose up quickly in his minuscule patch of water, rubbing his eyes after he did so. “I’ll be OK. I’ve got a wicked strong protection spell on, and if I get too deep, I can use my aura to propel myself,” he said. “And anyway, I know you guys will save me, right?”

“Yeah, we can look out for you,” Dante answered, smiling with a twinkle in his eye. On the pool deck behind Nico, several meters away, sat the rest of their friends and a couple other members of the football team playing poker for cheese puffs. Toby had lost out quickly, Dante barely knew how to play, and Nico had grown tired of shrinking his cards every time they were dealt to him, so the three guys had decided to get their swimming in.

Dante moved forward and circled Nico with his arms, creating an atoll of ebony flesh. In a playful whisper, he asked, “Can you get out of my trap?”

Toby gave up a half smile at this. He was a boy of very few words, but he was a good listener and intelligent observer of people’s behavior. It gladdened him that Dante was warming up to human interaction so quickly. For a second, he imagined what it would be like to be Nico’s size, staring up at a humongous junior high athlete. At 13, Dante was a year younger than Toby, but it was easy to see that he would be just as big and good looking as his older brother in a few years.

Nico looked up at the young teen and held up one index finger. With increasing speed, he began to twirl it around, and a few feet in front of him, the water began to swirl and spiral. Then, it released a powerful jet straight into Dante’s face. The huge boy fell back, laughing and spluttering, causing a wave that made Nico founder briefly.

“Ugh! That’s a good way to escape,” he said. “It kind of scares me when you point your finger at me, though.”

“My magic won’t hurt you,” Nico assured him, and began nonchalantly floating on his back. “I’m not interested in offensive spells, really.” It was a half-truth. He closed his eyes.

Very very quietly, without so much as a ripple, Toby gazed at his tiny friend and descended beneath the waves.

When he was much smaller, living on the islands, he encountered humans and mer-people often. Unlike his giant friends at Cherrywood, he had been no stranger to the idea of making human friends. In fact, one of his best friends had been an adult human fisherman who he’d once saved when the man’s canoe capsized during a summer squall. The man, Mr. Duane, had a 9-year-old son, Toby’s age at the time, and they would play on the beach and in the crystalline waters almost daily.

It wasn’t the safest thing to do with a human child, but there was one certain game they would often enjoy playing …

Nico drifted calmly, using a gentle spread of his aura to keep the waves a little calmer around his body, especially since, just a few hundred meters away, Dante the adolescent leviathan was still goofing around. He didn’t notice the water beneath him displacing until it was too late.

His eyes went wide, and his arms flailed in shock as he was rocketed up from the water on a platform of slick flesh. Getting his bearings for just a split second, he felt the light spray from a huge nose above his head and felt giant soft lips begin to open beneath him. With a small cry, unable to react in time, he fell down into a moist, gooshy cavern of flesh, his butt bouncing slightly on a behemoth tongue, which cradled his body.

Feeling that the human was secure in his mouth, and trapping a substantial amount of air inside, Toby snapped his jaws shut and dove down deep into the pool again.

For Nico, it was a truly frightening and surreal experience. For all his magic power, he found himself completely perplexed as to what he should do next. The cramped, slimy cave of Toby’s mouth was intensely humid and totally dark. Nico guessed by how he landed inside that the giant athlete’s throat opening was almost right above his head, hopefully blocked by the muscular tongue. He could feel and faintly hear the titanic teen’s pulse, as well as the rushing sound of water outside. He tried to wriggle around and move his arms and legs, but the tongue held him in place, lightly undulating and brushing its taste buds against his skin.

“I wonder how I taste,” was a thought that flitted through Nico’s brain as he tried to relax and steady his pounding heart. Just as he was beginning to calm down, the teeth and lips ahead of his feet opened, and he slid gently down into the cool water of the pool.

A pair of huge, tan hands joined underneath him and lifted him up slowly. He turned around and stared, somewhat blurry-eyed, into Toby’s calm face.

“Killer whale gotcha,” the smiling boy softly said. “You better watch out, little fishy.”

Nico released a deep breath and a nervous chuckle, and just remained silent. Part of him wanted to to tell Toby never to do that again, but for some reason, as he was staring into the giant freshman’s soothing brown eyes, the words just wouldn’t come out.

“I’ll watch out,” he finally laughed, and fell over back into the pool. A giant putting a human in his mouth was supposed to be a major taboo, but Nico realized he felt nothing of it. No trust was lost.

Dante, however, was stiffly clinging to the pool wall, staring at Toby, totally aghast. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen, but he said nothing.

~~~~~~~~~

Alaki Munro was not an alpha. He was not a beta. He was neither a runt, nor a lone wolf, nor any discernible archetype for any discernible pack role. Wearing a hearing aid in his left ear made him somewhat of an outcast among his own kind. Or, at least, that was a big part of it.

But if his brothers could see him now, he wasn’t sure if they would cheer or scoff. For one thing, he was bravely combating four powerful giants. For another, he was serving as a mount in his dire wolf cub form for a pudgy elf boy, who was sitting astride his back and clutching at his neck fur for stability.

Currently, they were staring straight ahead, watching the end of the Cooper house’s bedroom hallway. Alaki’s sharp ears and nose had detected their prey, and they were waiting for one of the giants to make a move.

“This really doesn’t seem fair,” Mac whispered. “The twins cast their soft step spell on Finny and Charlie, but you can still smell them all. They don’t stand a chance, really.”

Alaki harumphed, unable to speak in his full transformation. Stealthily, he crept forward, his nose twitching. Suddenly, he jerked his body into a pouncing stance. Mac took the cue and readied an arrow in his +1 Nerf Bow of Minor Sleep.

It happened in a flash. Finnian practically did a colossal wall-kick as he lunged around the corner and attempted to grab the little elf with his left hand. A strong wind kicked up as the huge appendage whiffed through the air, just a foot from Mac’s body, the grasp avoided by Alaki deftly springing to the side.

Mac’s arrow flew straight and true, striking Finnian in his wrist. The blow was good enough.

The huge redhead slumped to his knees, a soft step spell still muffling any noise and most of the vibration as his numerous tons of weight crashed down. However, the spell could do little to lessen the force of impact as his whole body flopped over with a massive THUD. He lay still in a deep sleep.

Alaki crept over to the mountainous prone body, and he let out a somewhat remorseful whine. Mac hopped off of his back and strode over to one of Finnian’s hands, splayed on the tile floor.

For a moment he stared at it, considering how huge and powerful it was, but also how gentle. With an air of theatricality he lifted up his foot and stepped upon the giant boy’s thumb, leaning forward in the pose of a great hunter.

“Poor, poor Finn,” he said. “He fought well, but like all giants, he must fall to our awesome skillz.”

He turned to his werewolf friend and held up his bow. “We are giant hunters!” he cried.

Alaki looked at him quizzically, gruffed, and walked up to one of Finnian’s fingers. Compassionately, he gave it a few licks with his long wolf tongue.

“Oh come on,” Mac said, as he re-mounted his lupine steed. “We’ve got three more to go. Better get on it!”

With a great leap, the boys headed toward the kitchen.