Questions, Combat and A Conundrum

            And not a moment too soon.  The giant’s arm had fully re-grown, and it was on the offensive once more.  It approached the young warrior slowly - a drawback of its incredible girth and earthen attachment.  The young man kept his eyes on it, even as he addressed the dwarf.

         “Can you at least tell me what this thing is,” he asked of the deity.

         “An earf giant.  I thought that would’a been obvious.  Name’s Alteus, son of the very earth itself.  He’s got brothers all over the world.  It’s been a while since I’ve named’em all, but I can try…”

         “Why are his legs growing out of the ground?” the warrior said hurriedly, cutting the dwarf off from an hours-long genealogy.  That was the way to the dwarf’s heart, he suspected: lecturing.  The knight rolled past Alteus making his way closer to the tree behind the giant, where the god sat answering his questions.  He knew that turning wasn’t something the giant did easily, and it could buy him some more time to ask questions.

         “He loves his mother,” the old man said in an injured tone.  He seemed to take the hint that the knight fighting a battle for his life underneath him didn’t have time to hear about the history of earth giants. 

         The beast had turned fully around now, facing the young warrior and the dwarf.  Suddenly, vines shot out from its body, writhing toward the hero at incredible speed.  Like a jungle snake, the vines wrapped themselves around the body of the warrior, who was so stunned with the speed at which they reached him that he didn’t have time to act. 

         Having the warrior secure in his grasp, the giant pulled the young man back toward it.  He dropped his sword by the massive tree where the dwarf sat.  He hit the body of the giant with a force that knocked the wind out of him.  Immediately, he felt the heat from the giant’s middle pulsating outward.  It didn’t burn him, but he had a feeling that if it wanted to, this creature could easily incinerate the young man by exposing him to the flames.

         No, instead the vines served to strap his top half tightly against the body of the giant.  It was as if the thing was trying to make the man a part of itself by growing into him. 

         The young knight was kicking desperately at Alteus’s body, trying to do anything he could to loosen the grip it had on him.  The vines were getting tighter by the second, and as it was, the warrior could only move his hands.  His foot caught a branch jutting out of Alteus’s leg.  He put weight on it, in an effort to wiggle his body out of the vice grip, but it snapped as he stepped down upon it.

         The vines suddenly loosened a bit as the leg immediately reacted to the branch being broken off.  The young knight remembered slicing off the giant’s arm, and how it had become frustrated.  Could this collection of twigs and earth feel pain? 

         The knight began feeling around with his hand.  On the torso of the beast he found he could reach at least three or four branches like the one he’d broken.  He pulled at them one by one, snapping them off the body of Alteus.  The vines became slacker with each broken branch, and after the fourth one the warrior was dropped to the ground as the vines receded back into Alteus’s body completely.

         The warrior ran back to the tree where the dwarf sat.  He grabbed his sword from the ground, always watching the giant.  Alteus again threw back his head and the earth shook with his frustration at losing his prey.  The pain he seemed to have felt was only momentary, however, and he began advancing slowly on the knight. 

         “How do I beat it?!” that was all there was time to think about now.  Under different circumstances the warrior would have never asked the dwarf for help so directly.  He would have plied him with questions, playing to the god’s vanity to get the answers he needed.  But elegant strategy was out of the question at this point.  The knight needed to kill this thing.

         An enigmatic smile spread across the dwarf’s face.  “A mother’s love, burns hotter than flame.  Sever the ties, and the son will be tamed.”

         The earth shook again, more violently than it had before.  The young knight couldn’t help falling to the ground.  He just barely avoided the point of his sword in the clumsy topple.  He quickly got up and regained himself, pointing his sword out toward the giant who was close, but still slowly approaching. 

         The warrior quickly glanced over to the branch where the Dwarf was sitting.  Unsurprisingly, the god had vanished. 

         “Very well then,” the young man thought to himself, “if it’s got to be through riddles then so be it.”  He couldn’t suppress a small smirk, even given all that he’d suffered at the hands of this beast.  He loved riddles.