Chapter 144: Fighting the Ground

Arthur’s next morning started with a pounding on his door that was slightly too earth-shattering to have come from a hand, or to even have come from his door. Jerked from a deep sleep into complete alertness in a blink of an eye, he jumped out of bed, ran to the front of his house, and threw the door fully open.

Outside, Milo was standing five or six feet away, at the end of the biggest, stupidest weapon Arthur had ever seen in his life.

“Don’t be too mad at me. I didn’t even swing it. This is from just dropping the damn thing,” Milo said, finishing his excuse before Arthur could even get a word out.

The hammer had completely cracked and cratered the Slapstone in front of Arthur’s door, close to powdering some of the stuff in the middle. Somehow, when Milo had said the hammer was like two triangles at the end of a stick, Arthur had expected the wide part of the triangle to face outward. Instead, it was the narrow part. The two business ends of the giant mass weapon were sharped to points, like the hammers he had seen jewelers use for forming. The whole thing was one solid piece of metal, welded together so well Arthur couldn’t find seams between the individual bits.

I wouldn’t think it was good for anything if it hadn’t just killed my curb.

“What the hell, Milo.” Arthur was too asleep to be fully angry yet. “I liked that rock. I use that rock every day.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Milo rolled the hammer off to the side, where it clanked off the broken section of rock without too much fuss. Sweeping the fragments of rock away with the broadside of his arm, he pulled a small bag of dirt out of his pack and dumped it on the ground, smoothing it with his hand. “See? I anticipated your protest and have solved your crater. The rock will knit itself back up by lunchtime. It’s Slapstone.”

“Okay, fine. Forgiven. Especially since you got the hammer done so quick. It looks nice, even though it just woke me up,” Arthur admitted.

“You don’t know the half of it. This thing is so heavy I’m not sure anyone but Karbo could actually use it. It doesn’t even count it as a hammer. It’s just a huge lump of stupid metal that’s just as likely to go out of control as it is to hurt the monster you are fighting. What is he planning on using it for, anyway?” Milo asked.

Arthur thought up potential lies as quickly as he could, then realized there wasn’t any point when the truth was much stranger than fiction in this case. He could tell Milo the actual purpose because his friend would never believe it anyway.

“He’s going to destroy the cliff. He apparently had a grudge-at-first-sight thing with it from the very beginning,” Arthur said. “I think the hammer is just a force multiplier so the cliff knows who’s boss in the situation.”

“Okay, fine, don’t tell your only brother,” Milo said with a smile. “I’ll just find out in the storybooks, like everyone else.”

“They write storybooks about Karbo?”

“Yup. One of his friends from his initiate days had a drawing-adjacent class he uses to make children's books. From what I understand, he has to tone them all down so they’re believable. And these are kids books, Arthur. For kids.”

“Anyway, thanks.” Arthur went to pick up the hammer, only to find he couldn’t even lift it. “How’d you get this here, anyway?”

“Karra. She just set it on my shoulder before she left. Just tell Karbo it’s here later. It’s not like anyone else is going to be able to move it.” Milo suddenly snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Remember those guards you talked about? For the guy getting… Earth-joined? I decided to have some of those. I’m thinking you, dad, and Spiky. And I want you to be the big one.”

“The… big one?” Arthur’s confusion gave way to shock. “Are you talking about groomsmen, Milo?”

“Yes,” Milo said.

“Wait. Are you asking me to be your best man?” Arthur asked.

“Yes. That. I want you to be that, and dad and Spiky to be the others, and…”

“No, no, wait.” Arthur waved his hands in a semi-panic. “I don’t think you understand, Milo. The best man thing is a big, big deal back home. It’s not just a casual sort of thing. You have to decide really carefully, you know? Like it’s important.”

“No, buddy, I get that.” Milo put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “You talked about it for like fifteen minutes. Told me that story about your brother’s friends getting in a fight over who would get that position, remember? I get that it’s a pivotal thing.”

“So treat it less casually then,” Arthur said, calming down a bit.

“I’m not treating it casually, Arthur.” Milo removed his hand from Arthur’s shoulder, turned, and waved over his shoulder as he began to walk off. “It’s just not that hard of a decision to figure out who my best friend is. Chew on that one, you super-awkward offworlder.”

Arthur was still standing in a state of semi-shock a few minutes later when Lily came by, towing a very sleepy-looking Karbo after her. As the big infernal got closer, he started to remind Arthur of someone else. Not how he looked, exactly, or how he dressed, but there was something in his expressions and movement that tracked with someone else that Arthur knew.

Oh, gods. It’s Eito. He reminds me of Eito. He’s hung over.

“Karbo, did you have too much to drink?” Arthur asked.

“No!” Karbo said, then winced at the volume of his own voice. “I didn’t. I’m fine.”

“He’s not, Arthur. He’s been like this all morning. I think Eito tricked him,” Lily said.

“He didn’t! I knew what I was doing,” Karbo proclaimed.

“Don’t believe the red fool, Arthur.” Eito came around a building at that moment, smiling like a loon. “Usually, there’s no alcohol that could even do this to Karbo. I special ordered some. I called in favors in the capital and bartered debts until I finally got connected with a master brewer.”

“Brewer my ass,” Karbo said. “A master distiller. And then he had Itela bless it with her damn wine spell and dared me to drink it.”

“And you did?” Arthur said.

“He did!” Eito was almost dancing with glee. “Drank the whole bottle before anyone could stop him. He would have wrecked the whole city if he could have walked.”

Karbo looked slightly guilty. “Still might have wrecked part of it.”

“Just a building, Arthur.” Lily popped in. “I checked. We can rebuild a building.”

“The point is, this man needs tea, Arthur. I am merciful, and have told him the secrets of your hangover cure. Though I took my sweet time gloating before then,” Eito laughed. It was the widest smile that Arthur had ever seen on the trainer. “Could you make him some?”

“Not only can, I pretty much have to.” Arthur waved at the others to follow him into his house. “I have to have him blow up the cliff later. There’s no way he’s going to be able to do it like that.”

“Oh, good. That’ll be easy for Karbo.” Eito nodded, still riding high on his victory over Karbo and not processing the sentence he had heard. As the others moved inside, the double take finally hit. “Could you repeat that, actually? I thought I heard ‘blowing up the cliff,’ but that can’t be right. Right?”

—

After soothing Eito’s worries down to a manageable level and dumping an obscene amount of pep and tea-based hangover cure into Karbo, Arthur got the both of them into good enough shape to get started on the day’s work. Arthur’s hangover cure was one of the most noticeable effects his tea powers could do, but the real winner was Karbo’s crazy vitality score, which had cleared out about a quarter of his visible suffering before Arthur even got a cup into his hands. By the time they got to the cliff, he was in top form and raring to go.

“Okay, so, do we all know what we are doing?” Arthur said. “Really, it’s mostly you, Karbo. Lily and I will be evacuating the village.”

“Is that something you can do?” Karbo asked.

“Mayor, remember? Lily is going to work the whole village front to back to make sure there aren’t any stragglers, order of town leadership.” Arthur nodded at Lily, who in turn nodded at her crew of loyal stampers, all of which appeared ready to die for her if she asked. “Thank you all for helping with that, by the way.”

“So send them already.” Karbo gave his massive hammer a few experimental swings, treating it as if it was as light as a poster tube. “And let’s get this going.”

“Karbo, one last thing,” Arthur said. “I know you hate this cliff. I can sense that much.”

“I really do. I don’t know why.”

“It’s fine. Just try… try not to explode it too much, okay? Leave your mark. But please don’t meteor shower my entire village into dust.”

“What’s a meteor shower?”

“Star-storm, dear.” Itela appeared behind them. “Arthur, don’t worry so much. Karbo will behave himself and, with your permission, I can probably help a little as well.”

Arthur nodded. Itela knew her business. He’d be a fool to get in her way. Pulling up his mayor powers, he once again bemoaned the lack of a public broadcast system. But he had the next best thing. Lily went forth, screaming her head off as she rode on the shoulders of an aardvark stamper.

Twenty minutes passed as the houses in town were cleared, then re-cleared. All the non-combat, less durable members of the town were moved towards the gate, as Itela brought both Arthur and Lily close to her, saying she could protect them as well as anything could. Lily looked at Arthur and nodded an all-clear, which he relayed to his big red wrecking ball.

The top of the cliffs were a jagged mess, something that would be good for a hike, but hard for anything else. Arthur hoped that Karbo understood the assignment and would flatten the top into a usable platform.

“All right, Karbo. You ready? Then go,” Arthur yelled.

Karbo didn’t need to be told twice. He lit up his auras, gripped his hammer, and exploded an impossible distance into the sky. Arthur didn’t know what he expected the infernal to do, but it definitely wasn’t landing like a cat on top of the cliff, and then run back and forth swinging the hammer in a repeating up-and-down motion. It was, from the ground, surprisingly non-violent to watch. Karbo would let the hammer drop all the way down over the edge, slamming into the side of the cliff five or six feet below him. Then he’d move several feet to the side and do it again.

The actual force in play was only shown by a constant stream of rock chips and dust falling towards them, dissipated by some sort of shield Itela called up with a few waves of her hand.

“This should stop any rock smaller than, say, me,” Itela said. “If you see anything bigger than that coming, get out of the way.”

After a few minutes, Karbo had created a long, visible crack into the top of the cliff. Leaning way over the cliff, he inspected his work, nodded, and then moved a bit back from the edge before raising the hammer up, roaring, and bringing down the middle of the hammer at the flattest angle he could manage.

The entire shelf exploded, mostly upwards. The crack Karbo had made in the cliff separated much farther back than Arthur would have thought was possible, and the accumulated force of the blow sent rocks flying upwards. Blurring, Karbo turned into a red streak that went here, there, and everywhere on the top of the cliff and batted the bigger rocks into either the distance or, in some cases, sweet oblivion.

“None of this is possible,” Arthur said. “I don’t care if there’s a system. None of this should actually be happening.”

“He’s like that, dear. Did you know he has over ten system nerf achievements? He’s an entirely unreasonable man in a dozen ways.” Itela’s eyes glittered as she watched her husband decisively win a fight with the ground. “It’s very fun.”

--- AUTHOR'S NOTE ---

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