Well this took shorter than I expected. Here is the prologue; please enjoy.
Prologue
Zane stared at the vacant houses, fires of outrage burning in his single eye, his fists clenching and unclenching repeatedly at his sides. He had led his army of ten-thousand gihox into the town half an hour before. But as he and his troops had entered the town, hearts racing with anticipation for the coming slaughter, the truth of it had become clear to the one-eyed general. The entire community had been abandoned, and recently. The town had been cleared of all foodstuffs, so the gihox army could not even resupply. Of course, an army of more than ten-thousand gihox was very hard to miss.
Zane bared his teeth in a vicious snarl, and his arm shot out to the side, loosing a beam of his inner kairu on a brick wall. The bricks blew apart and crumbled, and a cloud of stone dust rose into the air to be whisked away by the wind. His ire lasted only as long as it took him to realize that he and his army were not alone. An unseen spirit hovered nearby, and the hairs on the back of his neck tingled as he felt a wordless command. His discomfort subsided as he came to understand, and he grinned evilly. Malice was using that trick of hers to venture out of body, and she had apparently found the missing townsfolk.
Zane followed the command the dark spirit had given, and before long he and his troops found a cave, where a human sentry stood a guard outside. They fell upon the sentry, cutting the poor man to pieces, and his doomed cries alerted the people in the cave. Alerted them, but that mattered not, for where could the wretches run off to? Zane gleefully ordered his gihox into the cave, where the townsfolk rose up to meet them. Still, the humans were no match for the bigger, stronger and more numerous gihox. Not a man, woman or child got out of that cave alive.
It was a good day to kill.
xxxxx
The enormous fortress was at once imposing and beautiful, built as it was of obsidian blocks, and polished until the stone seemed to give off a dark glow. The main keep was surrounded by great battlements, complete with arching bridges and sweeping walkways. The gatehouse was massive enough to contain a few hundred gihox. The front gate appeared as though no amount of battering would be enough to breach its integrity. Tall, tapering spires rose from the structure, reaching toward the sky like jagged fangs.
Malice opened her lavender-colored eyes where she sat on her great throne, a wide and wicked smile spreading across her dark face. That was one human settlement down, and she knew that Karbraxis would descend upon his first shortly enough. In a month, her armies would have cut a swathe of destruction across the land. And when all of the small towns had been sacked and looted, her armies would regroup at the gates of Castle McCann. She would join them in their efforts in bringing down the fortress, and when it had fallen, she would have uncontested control over the region.
Malice closed her eyes again, thinking to venture out of body and search out any more townsfolk who had caught wind of her gihox army. But all thoughts of that flew away from her as she started to feel a burning sensation in her chest. It started small, and the dark spirit dismissed it as simple heartburn. But then the sting intensified, bloomed into a screen of white hot pain that doubled her over in agony, grabbing at her chest and gasping for air. She feared she would die then and there, but at last the pain subsided. For many minutes she just sat there, panting on her throne, feeling weak, her heart trying furiously to pound its way out of her chest.
Malice stood on wobbly legs, and she had to lean on the armrest of her great chair to prevent herself from toppling over. Many more minutes passed before she could stand by herself, and she pressed a hand against her chest. Her heart was still beating unusually fast, but she could feel it slowing down, slowly going back to normal. That is when she realized that the great doors to the throne room were open. A pair of guards stood in the door-frame, both looking up at her, their stony expressions utterly unreadable. Malice understood it all too perfectly.
She was a human, after all, and the only thing keeping the gihox on her side was the fact she held the key to their victory over the rest of humanity. It would not do to have these two telling the other giants of what had happened, for that would put her in a sorry position. She did not fear the gihox, not at all. If she wanted, she could simply turn into Fanarloki, and it would take some heavy artillery on their part to bring her down. Rather, her worries were rooted in the fact that if she appeared too weak to lead them, then they would rise up against her, and if they did that, then she would have no army. Indeed, it would not be wise to let these two leave the throne room alive.
Malice looked past the guards and into the long corridor behind them, and to the rows of obsidian statues that lined that corridor. The statues had been carved to resemble gigantic caricatures of kairu monsters. Malice felt deep within herself, finding the line of blackish purple energy that was her inner kairu. She focused that energy into the floor, and through it and into a few of the statues, standing quiet sentinel outside the room. She eyed the two guards coldly.
One of the guards lurched with a cry as a twenty foot tall statue of a magnox crunched its stony fist into his back, hurling him into a wall. The gihox slid down the wall, and scarlet blood started to pool around his slumped form. The other guard spun about to face the stone monster, sword clenched in a white-knuckled grip. But then a huge likeness of a harrier, its eyes glowing with a purple light, raked a hand down over his face. The gihox fell to the ground, with the front half of his skull torn right off. The stone monsters moved back into the corridor, where they became inanimate statues once again.
Malice sighed and sent more of her inner kairu into the floor, and the stone beneath the two gihox corpses turned into a puddle of black sludge. The corpses disappeared into the sludge, and then the floor turned hard and solid again, leaving no evidence of what had just been perpetrated there. Malice thought it highly unlikely that anyone would notice the two missing guards, for gihox were ultimately a selfish lot. It was not likely that the rest of them would care enough to start investigating what had happened to the guards.
Malice plopped back down in her throne, her mind racing.
xxxxx
Truly master Boddai appeared a shell of the man that he had once been, with deep wrinkles creasing a face that had long appeared to be in its early fifties. His hair had turned dull gray, but its coloring had previously held more black than gray. His eyes were dull and glazed, and sunken deep in their sockets, a look that was only heightened by his bushy eyebrows. The process of his body trying to catch up with its true age had initially begun with Lokar taking Palladion. But with the death of Maya, the young woman who had been as a grand daughter to the tired old man, the aging had started to ravage him at an even quicker rate.
He sat on a yoga mat in his room, legs crossed and hands resting palm-up on his knees, eyes closed deep in concentration. He was not aware of the rain outside his window, nor the occasional flash of lightning that streaked the sky. His senses were turned entirely inward, as he used the ancient kairu technique referred to as Gleipnir. The technique had many uses, and the one he now used was for achieving the deepest form of meditation. He used this trance to seek enlightenment, to achieve a complete harmony with the kairu and the universe itself. If he managed to achieve enlightenment, then the aging process would be reversed, and he would also become incredibly powerful.
The chances of him achieving this elevated state of consciousness were slim to the point of being nearly nonexistent. No one had managed to accomplished the feat for many thousands of years, and countless warriors had indeed tried. His chances were defeated altogether by the fact that his heart was no longer wholly in the effort. After this latest tragedy, the death of the young woman whom he had adopted and raised as his own, the old master had had trouble summoning the motivation to go on. A part of him simply wanted to lie down and waste away.
Yet he knew rationally that he must not allow himself to surrender, not until Malice had been defeated. Not until her gihox army had been scattered, and the evil giants driven from the human lands, and back to their distant mountain holes. He had his duties, both to his students and to his fellow Redakai. He was determined that he would not shirk those duties because of his selfish apathy. Master Boddai came out of the trance then, opening his tired, old eyes and letting out a long and profound sigh. As if through some prearranged signal, there came a rap on the door.
''You may enter,'' the old man rasped.
The door opened a crack and Boomer peeked into the room, his hazel-colored eyes wide in an expression of the sheerest incredulity. The stocky warrior found his composure and stepped into the room, dipping a respectful bow to his mentor. ''The Redakai told me to come and find you,'' Boomer said, his expression intense and never changing. ''Your are going to want to see this.'' The old master gave a nod, and Boomer was at his side in an instant, helping him to his feet. Master Boddai grimaced through the pain as every bone and muscle in his body protested the treatment, but before long he was on his feet again. He appeared shorter than he actually was, for he stood hunched over his cane, his back bent nearly double. His hands trembled from the effort of clutching the cane, and his breath was labored.
Boomer supported Master Boddai as he slowly made his way out into the monastery courtyard, where the other masters were gathered. They stood in a semicircle around one of the gates that led out of the monastery, the heavy rain plastering their clothing to their skin. They all stood in a fighting crouch, all tense and ready for battle. The occasional rumble of thunder was an appropriate tune for the tense atmosphere in the courtyard. Master Boddai noticed that Boomer grew more tentative as they neared, more tense, as if he were ready to leap in front of him if the need arose. The old man could not see past the masters, but then they parted a step, revealing a familiar figure, standing in the door frame.
The figure was an incredibly tall man, he must have been over seven feet in height, and he had a slight slouch to his posture. His muscles had been strong once, but now they were limp and deflated, and he had to supported his weight on a walking cane. His skin was the color of lavender, and hung loosely upon his frame, and it was cracked in various places by grotesque, black fissures. The figure had a black scar running diagonally across his gaunt face, but his sunken, amber colored eyes still retained their sharp edge.
''Lokar,'' master Boddai growled.
To be continued...