The giant known as Brakk made a sound that could only have been weeping as he regarded the corpse of Earl, the neighbours' young boy. Throwing the makeshift pack of dead animal carcasses made from his shirt over his shoulder, Brakk knelt down and picked up the boy's body. Silently he rose with it and began to walk north. He would have to tell Earl's parents -- his next-door neighbours -- the bad news.
"Earl..." Brianna cried, uncontrollably weeping over the loss of her newfound friend.
"There, there, lass," Mason Templar said as soothingly as possible as he hugged her. "There are always casualties of war."
"It's my fault," Bree said between racking sobs as she cried into Mason's broad chest. "He was just a young boy, a giant, aye, but so young. I should never have brought him here."
"Don't blame yourself, lass," Mason said tenderly. "The lad helped to end the reign of a tyrant. That's something to be proud of."
***
Epilogue: The Giants
Brakk went north over the continent, which had slowly begun to separate into several smaller continents, to Jotunheim, and he delivered Earl's body back to his parents. He found that he could say very little to them in the end.
To the rest of the giants, however, he urged them to help restore peace to the world. At first none of them were willing to listen until they heard about the young giant Earl's ruthless killing. When they were told of the countless numbers of trolls still rampaging across the world, the giants rallied themselves for the first -- and very possibly last -- time in history to put a stop to them. It took several days, but the trolls were finally subdued. Some of them were destroyed, but most of them, cowards that they were, retreated to the mountains once they realized they had no chance with Lord Godbolt now gone.
The giants soon returned to their home in Jotunheim, but they returned with a determination never to let the dark men take control of so much ever again. While they would generally keep to their own affairs, they would now intervene in order to ensure that another "Lord Godbolt" type never arose again to threaten their way of life.
Glug-Rump never returned from his trip to the South Pole. Some say he wandered into the sea and drowned. Others say that he discovered a new land and decided to stay there. In any case, the "World-Strider" was a thing of the past. No other giant would ever match his size again. Indeed, the stature of the giants would begin to become less and less as the centuries wore on, until they were virtually indistinguishable to men. All this was supposed by some to be a result of the climate change caused by the separation of the continent. Others supposed that it had something to do with Godbolt's destruction, and with that the destruction of all the magicks that he had taken into himself. No one could tell for sure, but the world seemed to have changed after Godbolt's death. Whether it was a change for the good or for the bad, or neither, no one could tell as yet. But things had changed, ever so imperceptibly.
The World of Darkness had passed away with the dark wizard. A new world, not yet named, was being born...
