Valerie rushed in at once, bringing her sword down forcefully in an attempt to strike Bargar directly where he stood. He quickly blocked her attack, however, and the shock of the impact sent her staggering backwards. Then it was his turn to attack, and, though she managed to block his sideways blow as well, she barely managed to stay standing, so powerful was the force of his strike. She quickly recovered and lifted her sword up high again, but she looked a little less sure of victory than she had before.

“What’s the matter, little girl?” Bargar taunted her. “Looks like you’re not nearly good enough to go head-to-head with a man like me, are you? If it weren’t for your size, you’d be nothing but a weak, whimpering woman, same as the rest of them!”

“If it weren’t for that armour, Bargar, you’d be nothing but a stain on the sole of my boot!” Valerie retorted. “Why don’t you come down from there, then we’ll see how much of a real man you are?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Not yet, at least. Not before I’ve had the chance to see what you look like without all of that unladylike stuff you’re wearing. Once I’ve beaten you, I’ll strip you naked and drag you through what’s left of your kingdom, and all of your little worshippers can see what you really are – a stupid girl who should’ve stayed in her castle and minded her own business!”

He charged again at full speed and Valerie immediately tried blocking him with her sword. But the supernatural strength of his armour was too much for her and he broke through her defensive stance and knocked her to the ground. Her sword was wrenched from her grip and quickly kicked away by Bargar’s foot. She tried to scramble to her feet and take it back, but Bargar was too quick for her again. He grabbed her arm and pulled her upright, then spun her around and shoved her face-first into a nearby wall. She tried to struggle free from his grip, but once again his armour’s strength was too great for her to overcome.

“I must confess, I’ve never been more disappointed in an opponent,” she heard Bargar’s voice say right behind her ear. “I had hoped you would at least make me sweat even a little bit, Princess, but you couldn’t even last a full minute against me. But no matter – now I can have some proper fun with you!”

He rammed his fist into her side, trying to make her bend over in pain, but her armour managed to protect her and she felt only a small bump. Then she realised that she’d made a grievous mistake in not wearing a helmet. She’d hoped that, by seeing her face and that she was unafraid, her opponent would think twice about attacking her and back off. But now she saw that instead she’d left her most vulnerable body part exposed and defenceless – and Bargar saw it too. He swung her around and grabbed her jaw in his hand, squeezing until she began to whimper with pain. All the while she tried to struggle against him and strike him with her fists where he stood on top of his armour, but he successfully kept her subdued and at bay.

“You’re finished, you outsized slut!” he yelled at her, giving her a slap in the face that made her scream. “I knew you never even stood a chance against me, but you didn’t even meet my very low expectations of you! Now get down on your knees before me and beg me not to kill you!”

He hit her again on the other side of her face, and this time she fell down sprawling on the ground. Bargar put his foot on the back of her head and knew that he could kill her right there just by stepping down with force. But he didn’t want it to be over so quickly. He wanted to break her first…he needed her to submit to him and acknowledge him as her superior. Perhaps another threat against her true love Alban would finally do the trick? He looked around for the prince’s body, but before he found him, he was distracted by a sound coming from underneath his foot.

To his great surprise, it sounded as if Valerie was laughing. He lifted his foot and grabbed the princess’s hair, then used it to pull her up to her feet again. She shrieked when he did so, but once she stood before him, she immediately began laughing again. Another punch from his fist against her cheek made her cry out in pain, but she continued to laugh afterwards, as though she had just been told the funniest joke she’d ever heard. Bargar began to feel himself becoming unsteady with anger. He tried to rip her armour from her body, but his hands were fumbling from his rage and all he managed to do was scratch at her ineffectively. Her face was bruised and bloody, but she didn’t seem to care as she carried on giggling hysterically at him.

“You think this is funny, do you?” he bellowed at her, giving her yet another slap that did nothing to stop her hysterics. “Your town is destroyed, your prince lies dead at my feet and your people will soon be joining him, and you think it’s all some kind of joke? I’ll pull your tongue out of your mouth, do you hear me?”

He pulled her face towards him, ready to carry out his threat, but she didn’t look afraid at all.

“No, I don’t hear you,” she said suddenly, and Bargar froze. “All I hear is the squeaking and tittering of a tiny insect – a tiny, puny, worthless insect that thinks it’s a man. You’re not a man, Bargar…you’re not even human…you’re as cruel and callous cold-blooded as the giants who once stood here long ago, and now you’ll be just as dead as they are!”

She didn’t move a muscle, but puckered her mouth and spat at him. A lump of saliva mixed with blood, almost as large as he was, flew through the air and hit Bargar dead on, covering his whole body. He yelled in disgust and lifted his hands to his face to wipe off her spit, letting go of Valerie. It was the last thing he ever did.

Valerie watched as the arms of the gigantic suit of armour copied his movements. Its hands mimicked the action of a man trying to wipe his face clean, but there was no face for them to wipe. Instead, they moved straight towards the platform where Bargar was standing and knocked him off without any effort. Not showing any emotion, Valerie kept on watching as the villain fell from his high platform 150 feet above the ground. Before he had even stopped falling, the suit of armour, now masterless, began to come apart. It broke apart into its various components, all of them clattering down upon the ground and making a great racket. For a brief moment, Valerie thought she saw Bargar’s body move ever so slightly where he lay upon the floor, before a breastplate the size of a large house crashed down on top of him, crushing him flat beneath it.

Without wasting another second, she ran over to where Alban was still lying on the ground. He hadn’t moved at all during the fight and Valerie feared the worst. She fell to her knees next to him and ever so gently lifted him up in her hand, taking care not to hurt him with her metal gauntlets. He was bleeding all over and he still didn’t move a muscle, but she could just about see his chest rising and falling, showing he was still breathing and still alive.

“Alban!” she called out softly as she began to cry. “Please wake up, my dearest. Please don’t leave me now! It’s all over – we’ve won! You can wake up now, the danger is gone!”

He didn’t wake up, no matter how often she said his name, and eventually she stopped and just carried on weeping. But she was no longer alone. From within the safety of the castle, people were beginning to emerge into the outer courtyard. They had heard the dreadful sounds of the giants fighting, and also the crashing noise of Bargar’s armour falling in on itself, but when the silence that followed became too much to bear, a few of the soldiers had decided to see what had happened. Even though, they ordered the townsfolk to remain behind, many came with them anyways. No-one wanted to be left in the dark, not knowing whether their brave princes had vanquished her foe or whether she herself had been killed.

Valerie barely noticed as people began to crowd around the heap of metal that lay where Bargar had fallen, or when several of the soldiers and villagers cautiously approached her to see if she was alright. She remained kneeling, holding Alban up against her lips and tenderly kissing him, hoping it would work. Only after what felt like hours, during which his condition didn’t improve at all, did she finally hear a voice calling up to her from somewhere next to her knees. She looked down and saw that it was her friend Alenia who was calling her name, surrounded by a dozen other men and women from Rismark. Valerie blinked in surprise, and her dinner plate-sized tears fell onto the heads of the people below, drenching them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice sounding strained. “I didn’t see you down there.”

“That’s all right, Your Highness,” Alenia replied. She was shocked to see how bruised and beaten Valerie’s face looked, but she realised that Alban was in greater need of care at that moment. “Let me have a look at Prince Alban, please. His life can still be saved.”

“Yes, of course,” Valerie said. She quickly composed herself, before lowering her hand, with Alban in it, to the ground. Alenia stepped into her palm and briefly examined the unconscious prince, before summoning three men of the village to her and ordering them to take Alban into the castle.

“His wounds are serious, Your Highness, but if they are treated at once, he will live,” she said. “Don’t worry about him; I will use all of my skill to make sure he is healed. But you yourself have been hurt, Princess Valerie. If you lie down on the ground, I can take a look at your face and make sure no serious harm has been done.”

Valerie brushed her cheek with her hand and winced from the pain. She would have liked nothing more than to lie down and drift off into a restful sleep, but her work was not yet over. She remembered the damage that Bargar had done to the town and realised that not all of the townsfolk could have made it out of there before the attack began. So, she stood up and placed her friend down by her feet, then took a few steps back and surveyed the scene.

“Thank you for the offer, Alenia, but it’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,” she said. “There may be many others still in Rismark who need your healing skills more than I do. I’ll go and have a look around, and bring back anyone I find. In the meantime, please take care of Alban – he risked his life for me, and I would give anything that I have for him to return to his full strength.”

“Of course, Princess,” Alenia called up to her. “I’ll make sure he’s comfortable at once. With your permission, we’ll continue to use your throne room as an infirmary. There’s plenty of space, and many people still there who can help take care of the wounded.”

“Permission granted. Go at once, and save him if you can!”

As Alenia and her helpers took Alban away, Valerie looked down at the rest of the people standing at her feet. They were just milling around, unsure of what to do, and most of them looked up to her for guidance and reassurance.

“People of Rismark,” she said to them, managing to sound commanding in spite of the pain she was in. “The enemy who attacked us today has been defeated, but the harm caused by his actions remains. Please, if there are any of you who wish to help, follow me to Rismark and help me to look for survivors. There may be many of your fellow citizens out there who are injured or trapped beneath what remains of their houses. Also…and I know this will not be easy…but those who died today…they need to be given a proper burial, and their families told of their deaths, as difficult as that will be. Is there anyone who’d be willing to help me with this?”

At least twenty people, both men and women, raised their hands and promised their assistance, as well as all of the soldiers whom Alban had asked for help earlier. Valerie thanked them all, then knelt down and let them climb into her open hands. She didn’t scold those who weren’t interested in helping, but told them to head back to the throne room and help and comfort those who were there. Then she headed off towards Rismark. Despite the devastation that had hit them, she took comfort in knowing that it was all over now. They had begun with nothing here, and she knew with confidence that Rismark could be rebuilt and restored to what it had been.

In the depths of the castle’s cellars, Shalmat was searching desperately for the object he was after. He had left Bargar just before the latter had begun wrecking the town, using his craft to slip down the side of the giant armour and make his way unseen to the vast castle of Vandan. Climbing down the steps to what he presumed to be the cellars, he had only narrowly missed being stepped on by Valerie as she came striding up the stairs, having just put on her own armour. She was heading off to fight Bargar, Shalmat knew that, but he scarcely cared who would win or lose up there. What he was after, once he had obtained it, would make him more powerful than either the princess or his unhinged bandit companion.

So, he began to climb over piles of old, dusty and decaying scrolls, some of them the size of houses, searching for the one he knew must be here. A scroll, spoken of in many mystical texts, written long ago by a giant who had been a fellow mage. Supposedly, reciting the words written on the scroll would give whoever uttered them the power to increase or decrease his own size and that of others, however he wished. Many believed it to be only a legend, but Shalmat knew better. Princess Valerie herself was proof of this. Had she herself not been shrunk down to human size, many centuries ago, before being put into her ageless sleep? Shalmat had seen her himself, many years ago, while she still lay and slept, waiting for her ‘true love’ to awaken her with a kiss. He had had an opportunity then to search through the castle’s rooms for the scroll, but other concerns had forced him to leave before he could do so.

Now, however, there were no obstacles to his search. He knew the first word of the spell that was written on the scroll, but not the rest of it, it being written in the ancient language of the giants, whose script he could read but not understand. But if it was truly here…

“There!” he suddenly cried out, his voice echoing through the huge, dimly lit chambers. “What’s that sticking out from beneath those books? It has to be…it is! The word of power!”

His eyes lit up as he saw, written on a scrap of paper that stuck out between two ship-sized tomes, the letters of the very word he was looking for. With a blaze of magical energy from his fingertips, he sent the book that lay on top flying off. Then he approached the paper, hoping his eyes had not deceived him and that it was indeed the spell he sought. But there it was: the unmistakable initial word of power which so many of his own books spoke of, followed by several more lines of easily-readable script – the full text of the spell that would grant him supreme power.

“After all these years…” he said to himself as he took the twenty-foot-long piece of paper and folded it up as best as he could. “My search is at an end. I will finally be given the power that the giant sorcerers possessed once, the power that made them unstoppable! I will rule where they once ruled, and beyond…but first, let’s go back upstairs and see who won that little scuffle in the courtyard. I rather hope it’s dear Princess Valerie who’s emerged triumphant. Poor girl…just when she thought her troubles were at an end…”