After the giant first spoke to Mason Templar upon the latter's fall, it ceased to speak to him again for several hours. Templar spent the time nursing his bird, cooing in her ear as if she were a baby (an elephant-sized baby, naturally) as he used a few scraps of fabric the giant left on the ground as a wrap to enable the bird's wing to heal. It was not a serious wound, thank God, but Erasmus was in no condition to do any more long-distance flying for a while.
The giant scarcely seemed to notice Mason Templar, though he took the occasional long glance over at Erasmus. Templar didn't like it one bit. Yet he was here for a reason and needed the help of the giants.
And so Mason Templar trailed the giant as he wandered along his vast tract of land, scavenging upon the wild game as well as the unique, edible trees the giant farmed. Templar, as he had stated so often and ironically in his long life, was not a patient man, but he put himself in places the giant was forced to see him. He didn't step in the giant's way -- that would have been suicide -- but he made certain that the giant knew he was there and wasn't about to leave until he had an audience with him. Templar also realized after some time that the neighboring property was owned by a small family of three giants, one of whom was obviously the child whose slingshot had taken them down.
One evening, late at night, he snuck over to the immensely-sized building of the giant family and spied Brianna a prisoner of the child. Yet she was treated royally, as if she were a pet. She was in no need of rescue, as yet. And Mason Templar was not eager to bring a young girl into the delicate negotiations he was attempting with his own giant.
On the fifth day of that week, the giant tossed Mason Templar a deer it had plucked from the ground and tossed another one over to Erasmus. He slowly sat down in front of them (causing a minor earthquake as he did so), and he spoke in the language of men with a slow, baritone voice, each word sounded out as if in slow motion:
"Y'are a stubborn one, ain't you?"
This was Mason Templar's moment. The tall, barrel-chested man rose up, his full 250-plus pounds, and addressed the giant in as loud and slow a voice he could manage -- the loud part wasn't difficult, but it was not easy to keep his patience in check long enough to sound out sentences that the giant could understand. If he spoke too quickly, the giant would not be able to understand his words.
"Ho, gentle sir!" he began, waving his arm in what he hoped would be taken as a friendly gesture.
The giant merely blinked out of boredom. It was clear that he didn't see the tiny man as any kind of threat.
"Your land is vast and bountiful," Mason Templar said, and he continued to compliment the giant's property for several minutes. It would not do to rush too quickly into the subject he wanted to broach eventually. He spoke of many other things with the giant, and within hours a lengthy conversation began to take place between them. Templar learned that the giant's name was Brakk.
At one point Mason Templar mentioned the extremely-large giant that Vanguard International had seen when they had first arrived -- the one which had flattened and destroyed the Stormloader as it traveled north (presumably back to Jotunheim) and almost flattened the team itself, as if they were nothing more than ants tread carelessly underfoot by a being too large to notice their existence.
Templar mentioned that the townspeople he had spoken with called the giant "The World-Strider" and paid homage and reverence bordering on worship to it.
Brakk's face slowly scrunched up moments after hearing this, and a low bellowing sound issued from the giant's mouth that was almost certainly laughter. "They're callin' him the 'World-Strider' now, are they?" he said with an amused (and still very slow) voice. "Old Glug-Rump may be the biggest of us, but he can'na hold his drink. Whene'er ol' Glug-Rump drinks himself blind he gets an urge to see the other end o' the world and starts wanderin' south. It's no wonder he couldn'a see you -- we're allays surprised the ol' boy can even make his way back home after each trek. Now there's a giant who can't hold his drink." After explaining this, Brakk began to laugh once again, not stopping for about five minutes due to his laughter being as slow as his speech.
Mason Templar laughed along with the giant, and upon hearing Templar's laughter, Brakk laughed still harder. Templar realized that the sound of his own laughing to the giant's ears must have sounded squirrelly, something like a voice on a vinyl record played at thrice the normal speed. Like Alvin and the Chipmunks, no less. He then realized that the only reason Brakk was talking with him at all was for entertainment purposes. Giants were lonely creatures who rarely saw each other and had few occasions to hold a conversation once they matured to adulthood. They certainly had no social life as humans saw it.
Finally, Templar decided to broach the subject. He told the giant Brakk about the situation in Darkworld and that enslaved humanity -- both the alive and the dead -- were crying out for freedom. He finally asked the giant for help.
Brakk remained silent for more than half an hour, as if considering Mason Templar's words carefully. Up until this time the man had been an entertainment to the giant, similar to a puppet show, but now the man was requesting a boon for his entertainment. Had Templar asked him outright for help, the giant would more likely had caught him up and ground him up for meat as a light breakfast side-dish, but the man had entertained him. Brakk was nothing if not honourable -- he would give the man the payment he deserved for his entertainment.
He spoke in a low voice that sounded like the rumble of thunder: "Man, you ask much of old Brakk. Too much, I fear. It is true that the giants have no love of the dark men who rule your kind, but it seems t'me that there was some kind'a treaty a while back that ensured that men keep outta Jotunheim, and the giants keep outta men's affairs. And now you ask me, ask us, to break that treaty. It's true that you've brought a smile to my old lips and reminded me that I'm still able to laugh, but that's hardly enough to warrant me takin' the trouble to squash a few dark men and their armies."
Mason Templar knew this would probably be the giant's response, so he said, "And will you, giant, wait until the dark men grow powerful enough to destroy even the giants themselves?"
The giant began to laugh again, but Templar stopped him and continued, "Don't you know that the dark men have made alliances with the mountain trolls of Vryngård?"
Brakk stopped laughing. The mountain trolls were the giants' only true enemies, the only race capable of matching the giants' brute force with their own rocky strength. And while the giants were very large and strong, their hides were, ultimately, made of flesh. The trolls, on the other hand, had stone-like hides, for they had been born of the earth directly out of the mountains themselves.
"Are your words true?" Brakk asked.
"They are," Mason Templar said, "and I am willing to prove it to you. If I can show you and your fellow giants proof that the mountain trolls are gathering for war against your kind on the dark men's behalf, will you agree to help us overthrow the dark men?"
Brakk was silent for several minutes once more. Finally, he began to nod his head and said, "Aye. Brakk will stand with you..."
Templar smiled broadly.
"...on one condition." Brakk paused for a great deal of time and bent down to Templar, finally speaking in a low, rumbling voice: "Let me eat your bird."
Mason Templar found himself completely speechless for the first time in a long while.
