I give my life for my country.

For God.

For freedom.

I do my duty, I will pay the price of this worthy sacrifice.

My head held high and my conscience clear, because I know that my actions will not be in vain.

I march in the war that carries the prayers of humanity.

Unique and last, there will be no repetition.Divine war.

-Letter from an anonymous soldier.

Repeat the ode aloud before continuing the reading.

Characters:

Chester: Talented pilot and muskite swordsman. Renegade for his family. Later known as "The Lancasterian".

Nadjela: Princess of the Cradle tribe. Longing to help her father and save her people. Possesses a necklace with anomalous properties given to her by her late mother.

Neddin: Leader of the Cradle tribe. His word is law.

Erika: Mercenary of the Fourth Reich. She was hired to assassinate Nadjela.

Ash: Mechanic with Swiss roots. Captured by slavers while trying to make a future for himself.

Achu: Brother of Shura, slave warlord. He controls the Thunderdome. Prefers to be known as Deathmask.

Shura: Sister of Achú, slave warlord. Controls the Thunderdome. The most feared person in the compound.

Burned Man: Former mechanic for Achú. Sacked and sent to his certain death after Lord Enslaver showed interest in his work.

The arrival: 1

In the wilderness falls a giant. It cuts the sky in half like a ball of fire, and upon impact, powerful, it traces in the earth a crack like an immense mouth. The consequent tremor unsettles the beasts, and he who would emerge from it would shake the ruling powers of the world. Let the oligarchs, the tyrants, and the cowards fear... Long live the Lancasterian...! Long live the Lancasterian!

The giant's crash releases water from the subsoil. Valuable and very scarce liquid on the surface of this decayed continent. The tribe of La Cuna, the closest settlement to the incident, sent a team of scouts equipped with bows and arrows, they discovered the sleeping giant and the fresh flowing gift. Old Zakary and the rest of the venerable elders marked the event as the arrival of the hero prophesied in the legends. Stories passed down for generations about the one who will lead them on an exodus to a paradise like no other, where food and water abound, the grass is green, and invisible death, that which devours the skin, is kept far away.

The tribals, while filling their clay vessels with water, give offerings and prayers on their knees on the boulders of the new fountain. Wake up, show us the way! They cry out to the titan, unanswered and undaunted. Only one of them was distant and suspicious: Neddin, the village leader. The reasons for his distrust? Unknown to most.

It is the fifth night since the arrival of the giant. Heated discussions continue inside the cylindrical chamber of the temple of contemplations, located at the top of the flat face of the mountain that casts its shadow over the tribe. The temple has a vague resemblance to a decapitated bird, both because of its thick wings spread diagonally, and because of its jagged, circular mouth just at the edge.

(Will the wings of the temple and the counsel of the wise be able to guide you, father?) thinks Princess Nadjela, looking out the bedroom window, her pretty brown eyes fixed on the crest, and her hands clasping the carved bone beads of the necklace gifted by her mother, with whom she shares a name.

Nadjela leaves the window and glides like a cougar across the mat of beast skins. The luminous aura coming from the sky reveals the worry in her countenance.

(I know it's wrong to antagonize you and doubt. But if the opportunity to end months of cruel lands presents itself, we must take it!)

Those were hard years. Of the counted 500 inhabitants a decade ago, there were now less than 200 left. The people struggled, fought for hope, remained faithful... But the scourge of disease, hunger, and other demons, gave no respite. Only the giant reflected a possible improvement. So why, when everything pointed to a brighter future, did her father Neddin look like a body being ripped from life?

(Dad, do you know something about the giant that others don't - a secret impossible to reveal, even to your daughters?)

The unknowns rob him of sleep. Nadjela decides to act.

She leaves the room. She walks down the stairs, mute and on tiptoe, aware that Zell, her father's most trusted warrior, would be patrolling the house. Nadjela takes the back exit. She circles the ostrich pen. Her bare feet leave footprints on the dirt road. She reaches the servant's home, and pushes aside the beads of a window to enter.

She reaches the bed where, suspended in hammocks, the servant girls of her family sleep. Nadjela gently shakes the tanned shoulders of one: Majani. Young like her, but with short hair, and beautiful features accompanied by pearl earrings that she did not even take off to sleep. Majani opens her eyes first slowly, then wide as she recognizes her majesty's profile.

"Princess? "She asks quietly, nervous to meet her mistress and friend at this time of night and without warning. "What is she doing wandering around? If her father finds out, he'll scold me. He'll scold us all"

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"There's no time to lose," the princess whispers in return. "Tonight I will go down into the crevice, and find out what good or evil the giant hides. I trust you to guide me. You have gone and carried water these days, you know the best way to reach the fountain and the fallen one"

"What about your father's prohibition? He gathered us together and ordered it. He doesn't want to see you or your sisters in the crevice. If he finds out I took you, he may punish me, or worse, exile me"

The princess with one hand encircles Majani's fingers, and with the other she quiets her trembling lips. The gesture and the closeness with someone she loves and admires, calms Majani's inner turbulence.

"I know, but it is necessary," says Nadjela. "Maybe I will get an answer that will dispel my father's anxieties. He is a strong man... But even the strong need support. Yesterday I found him staring for long minutes into the fire in the fireplace, unblinking, looking desolate. I'm afraid he'll collapse."

To Majani, the latter sounds like a fantasy. Neddin, the one who shares his name with the founder, is the foundation of the tribe, an unquestionable and indestructible pillar, just like his predecessors. But as she appreciates Nadjela and does not want to see her sad, Majani finally nods and gives in.

"I will take you"

"A thousand thanks, Majani"

They exchange smiles.

Throwing leafy black hoods of Tasmanian devil fur over their shoulders, and acting like shadows of the night, they march. They leap across the meter-high clay walls that enclose the residential area. They blend into the plantings of El-nido-de-todas-las-plantas, with stalks as big as people. They walk along the bank of the dry river, which Nadjela watches with a heavy face.

Ahead they glimpse a dozen glass peaks, reflecting the glow of the tightly packed, moving, colorful stars in the gray firmament. The spikes mark the beginning of the opening where the giant landed. The crack is a kilometer-long, irregular cut, as if produced by a rusty scimitar of impossible grandeur. The entrance intimidates, first with its tall crystals and then with its dark mouth. Nadjela takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and gathers momentum to overcome her fear. Before diving in, she touches one of the hard-angled panes, her fingertips freezing. Majani blurts out a piece of information.

"Days ago the entrance was hotter than the mountain hot springs. It was some time before we could approach and check it out. No doubt it is a divine power such as we have never seen before"

"And it is what will save our future," says Nadjela, convinced.

They descend.

The ceiling of the passage is open and jagged. To penetrate these devouring shadows, Nadjela takes off her necklace and lifts it up. The gem dangling from the beads, a perfect sphere, alien and white, sparkles with the mental desire for clarity. It casts a pure, warm light like the embrace of a loved one, intense enough to disperse the darkness. Majani gawks at it, until Nadjela passes her hand in front of her face and snaps her out of her reverie.

"It will never cease to impress me," Majani says with parted lips.

"Neither will I. As long as I keep her, I'll be safe," Nadjela repeats the words her mother passed down to her.

They hear the water running before they see it, and soon the cool touch slips like a cloth between their feet. The height of the water passes from heel to knee. It's time to go skipping over the wet rocks, an activity in which they show an animal-like ease. Each new step accelerates the heart of the princess, whose lively imagination draws giants in the distances, until the real one is revealed.

Majani jumps onto the rock in the center of the spring, and Nadjela lands next, bending her knees to absorb the impact. They stare dumbly and solemnly at the being capable of crushing a grown man with his hand. Solid in appearance and sapphire-colored body, crossed by lines that, depending on the angle of view, change hue between red, yellow, and orange. The lines go up and end in the pointed areas of the body: elbows, knees, thighs, wrists, forearms, shoulders. Such details give him a resemblance to a knight dressed in lightning. His face is hidden for the moment by the shadows cast by the rock wall. Nadjela imagines him handsome. With her eyes anchored on the idol, she clasps her hands together and implores.

"Blue lightning that sleeps in the earth, on a throne of stone that you yourself created by touching. I beg you, fulfill my request for help!"

She repeats the prayer several times, each attempt with greater passion than the last. But the giant sleeps on. The water, flowing. Majani, just as tense. But Nadjela is determined to leave with her hands full.

"What are you doing, princess?!" Majani's frightened eyes follow Nadjela. The princess climbs the rock wall near the giant's right leg. The tail of the fur hood catches on the rough surface of the rock, and she unhooks it to continue.

Nadjela reaches a ledge ten feet up, where she holds herself up with one hand. She swings her body back and forth. She leaps, and glides with the momentum, perching on the angled ledge formed by the titan's nearest leg, just at the edge facing the knee. His toes suffer light cuts, and his thin abdomen clashes against a smooth, sturdy touch, like the less eroded areas of the temple of contemplations. The blue area of the armor is so icy that by natural reaction it erects her nipples under the fabric. In contrast, the incandescent lines possessed a certain warmth.

Majani below cries out for her to return, but Nadjela adheres to her mission with the same impetus with which she adheres to the giant. Applying force with her arms, the princess invades the joints behind the breastplate, pounding her forehead a little as she falls. Rubbing her head, she lifts and faces a series of connectors, tubes, and ascending hoses, made of a shiny black material like the metal supports where she stands. He had to step carefully so as not to slip through the spaces in the skeleton that, he sees, support the armor.

Soon the attention of his eyes is stolen by how bright, almost blinding, the gem on his necklace becomes. Before she can mumble any sound of surprise, the target forces her eyes closed. Nadjela hugs the metal trunk in front of her. Everything around her trembles. She screams, but her voice is lost in the roar of the engines.

The sapphire color changes from lethargy to a vivid tinge of meteor or comet. The face above lights up to reveal a vaguely human face, which, where it should have a mouth and nose, instead bears two metal plates joined together. The being's eyes glow red. Boulders tumble down, causing a chain reaction of rolling boulders. Majani steps back to avoid being crushed to death.

The bulky figure straightens, creaks in the mold. First she releases her arms. The huge hands come up and bury themselves in the walls of the crevice. Behind the titan's back, a blast of atomic fire pushes him away. In a second he releases the rest of his body and ascends, bursting the mouth of the crevice with a bang.

(I'll die!) thinks Nadjela without daring to open her eyes. She endures a shower of pebbles that bruises her back and shoulders. (I woke up something incomprehensible! Forgive me, everyone!)

An impulse from above presses her brutally, snatches her breath, and pulverizes her ideas. She is left with her face pressed against the pillar, now hot. She grits her teeth, endures the punishment of the noise and the wind....

Until the pressure that pushes her loses strength.

The giant reaches a certain stability, and the gale becomes a breeze. Nadjela needs a few seconds to lift her face. When she does, shivering, she observes with reddened eyes and bated breath a landscape that places her higher than ever.

The mountain, the tribe, the temple. Beyond: The forbidden zones, where there is only death and demons. Beyond: A horde of iron horse riders raising a curtain of dust and smog behind them. Beyond: A garden of craters and metal spikes. Beyond: Infinity... Since when did the world become so limitless? Under this new perspective, and with the tribe looking tiny, almost a dot, Nadjela feels the earth capable of competing on equal terms with the sky.

A rattling shakes her out of her astonishment. The giant loses stability and the shaking resumes. The glow on the surface of the being is extinguished, and the heat of its entrails dissipates. Nadjela clings again with arms and legs to the skeleton. They lose altitude, first slowly, then with vertigo. The plunging ground is the last thing Nadjela sees before she loses consciousness from the excessive stress.