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Boulder sat alone on the floor of the jail cell in the dungeon of the giants’ castle. His body was formed into the pose of the thinker, and being made of stone, he would easily have passed for a statue on earth. He was not on earth though; he was in a dungeon, and he was nervously waiting for either of two things to occur. He would either be rescued from his captors by Crush, or he would be extinguished by the giants. There was nothing in between.
As he sat in the corner in thought, footsteps paced by along the hallway where the barred door to his cell opened outward, and Boulder looked up from his classic pose to see who it was that passed. The wall of the hallway was lined horizontally and vertically with identical cells on both sides. Being held on the fourth and top level of the corridor, Boulder could look directly into the faces of his captors as they walked past, and he was curious to see which of the guards would march by the cell door. Over the last few hours, he had become familiar with two of the guards, and though they were holding him captive against his will, he saw no malice or wrong intent in their eyes. They were simply following their orders as all good soldiers do.
In his observations, he had also noticed a regimented regularity to their passing through the corridor, and whoever this guard was, he was coming through at an unexpected interval. The hooded giant walked past, looking into the cell as he walked by, but not bothering to stop. As the giant turned his head to face forward in his march through the hallway, Boulder caught a glimpse of a green flash in the pupils of his eyes hidden beneath the hood. The man of stone stood to his feet and ran over to the door to stick his head through the bars of the cell and watched the cloaked figure as he continued down the hall. The giant, sensing the prisoner’s gaze, turned and stared at Boulder with those bright green eyes. It was then that he saw through the shadows beneath the hood, and he discovered that the giant was a female. As their eyes made contact, Boulder could feel a presence in his mind, a force of great power invading his inner thoughts and occupying the fringes of his sanity.
“You have come for the dragon,” the voice reached out to Boulder’s mind telepathically.
“Yes,” Boulder answered out loud. “Though only for the salvation of others.”
“Then why have you killed a giant in the forest,” the giantess thought accusingly in anger, and images of the giant’s body lying lifeless on the forest floor pierced his mind. Boulder recognized the images that bounced through his mind’s eye as the giant who had terrorized the monkeys and chased them through the forest.
“It was no choice of our own. He died by his own hand,” Boulder spoke aloud, and his voice echoed in the hall.
“Our? There was another with you then,” the dreadful voice whispered in his mind. “We will find him, and together you will rot in this prison.” The metal bars to the cell began to glow in green, and a field of force pushed Boulder back away from the door so that he could no longer even touch the bars. The hooded giant turned away, and she drifted around the corner of the corridor. Boulder sat back down in the corner as the weight of the situation came pressing in upon him.