RCJoshua
patreon
Chapter 176: Cavalry
🕑 Added 2024-08-04 15:41:43 +0000 UTCWith his limited fishing-combat resources expended, Skal led Arthur away from the doomed wall to their last intact layer of defense. The second wall fell much like the first one did, causing widespread destruction and an empty gulf in the battlefield that was filled in almost immediately by the monster wave. There was still no end in sight.
Arthur would have almost given up his new boots for a clear slight-line to the end of the wave. Almost. He remembered what Mizu had said and wriggled his toes around in them a bit, feeling the supreme comfort before he went back to worrying about the wave. And, like magic, things really were a little bit better. The boots were nice, and so were the people who made them. It was a little easier to face the stress in front of the wall by remembering the good that was currently behind it.
After staring out at their foes for a bit longer, Arthur went to work on his morning’s tea. If he was being honest about it, his heart wasn’t exactly in tea-making for the first time. The people on the wall changed that. There wasn’t a single demon who wasn’t chucking stones with all their might, cheering and pointing as they cleared out just a little bit more of the enemy forces.
The archers had moved to platforms on the cliffside which gave them slightly better sight-lines. They worked hard as well, shooting arrows at a blistering, almost-unaimed pace meant to put as many arrows into the air as possible. Arthur saw workers carting barrel after barrel of the arrows and he was dimly aware that there was a whole team of people working to make sure the archers didn’t run out.
The town was like that. Below him, he could hear the increasingly-ragged looking enchantress shouting out updates to Karra as she dumped her majicka into the wall again, keeping it standing much longer than it otherwise would have. He could see Karra using her new class to maximum effect as she ran from group to group and optimized their efforts to keep the wall as reinforced and shored up as it possibly could be.
Arthur could see Lily productively resting and dousing the entire lot of them in majicka. That was a new thing, the product of a level up and an achievement that widened the scope of what the skill considered a project. She could now power the entire mass of people at work on the wall. It was heavily penalized in terms of efficiency, but Spiky and Leena had spent over an hour on the math verifying that it was still a net gain.
Everyone was putting their backs into the entire project, doing what they did best. In the end, all Arthur had to contribute was tea. And as he began adding the water to the tea leaves in a big pot, he found a new sense of purpose. Even tea had its place. He was going to put every single bit of effort he could into the drinks.
And then the world started to go dark. Arthur had enough presence of mind to place his finished drink on the table before he began to stumble forward. And being on the wall, he became aware that if something didn’t stop him soon, he was going to overshoot the battlements on the wall, plummet some dozens of feet, and head plant directly into the monster wave itself.
Before he could stop himself, his sight went entirely black.
When Arthur came to, he found himself propped up against the battlement and staring right at his spiky friend.
“Wow. Arthur, I think I’ve probably mentioned this before, but you have a tendency to get a little too wrapped up in your work. I can almost feel the majicka gap around you right now.” Spiky shivered a little. “It’s prickly.”
“Wha happen?” Arthur slurred. “Just made tea.”
“Yeah, about that,” Spiky said. “I’m not too familiar with how your skill works, but even I know that tea is not supposed to glow like that.”
Mizu was suddenly there, followed directly by Lily, both of whom stubbornly refused to allow him to inspect his new creation until he could form complete sentences. In his daze, he was vaguely annoyed by that.
“I’m fine.” Arthur struggled to steady the words in his mouth. “Have to tea.”
“No you don’t.” Mizu reached down to a flask on her hip, then seemed to reconsider and rooted around in her pack until she found another smaller container. “Drink this, Arthur. Or I’ll throw you over the wall myself.”
“What this?”
“It’s water. Of a particular kind. Stop talking and start drinking.” Mizu lifted the flask up to Arthur’s lips, blocking further argument by pouring a good portion of the contents directly in his mouth. “Now swallow.”
Arthur did and felt his tongue unlock a bit almost immediately. “It makes my hands tingle.”
“No, Arthur.” Lily flicked him. “It makes you recover enough to realize your hands and feet are asleep. Now, where’s that medic?”
“Here.” The medic came up from behind, kneeling by Arthur. “What did he do this time?”
“Something with tea.”
The medic held his hand up to Arthur’s forehead and concentrated for a moment.
“Yup. Checks out. He’ll be fine, just majicka deficiency. I’m assuming whatever made that tea glow is at fault.” The medic took a majicka-recovery pill out of his pack and moved it toward’s Arthur’s mouth, shoving it in before Arthur could complain. “Quiet, you. We have plenty of these left and no place to dump them. I’m guessing whatever that tea does more than makes up for the cost.”
“What else should we do? I’ve never seen him this loopy before,” Mizu asked.
“You want my professional opinion, Mizu?” the medic said.
“Yes.”
“Stop being nice to him when he does it.” The medic stood up and started going to the next place that needed him. “If I had a girlfriend and a little owl-demon who were sympathetically supportive every time I did something stupid, I’d probably get hurt all the time too.”
It was another two minutes before the girls would let him up to look at the tea. Arthur finally got a notification for it the moment his eyes settled on the glowing-gold liquid.
Our Home (Named Unique)
Most of the time, your tea-making skills work off your memory. You imagine some sensation, then try to duplicate it in the tea. In doing so, you infuse them with the power to bring that fantasy into reality, in however small a way.
But what would happen if you did the same thing while staring at the inspiration full in the face, present and actual? And that you, fearing nothing, added your own hopes and emotions on top of the fully visible thing you were hoping to enhance?
Well, on top of a very significant headache, you’d get this tea.
Our Home is a tea of possessive feelings, fondness, and dedication to a place. It’s the difference between living in a house that someone else erected and one you built with your hands. It’s eating vegetables you grew in soil that you turned yourself. It’s the difference between the affection you feel for your own creation and someone else’s, even if you are fond of both.
And, more importantly, it’s a tea that enhances efforts to nurture and protect that place.
Our home can only be created in a time of pivotal importance for the place you yourself call home, and only once during a particular period of that nature. It has a moderately positive effect on the drinker which varies from person to person depending on their own talents and thoughts regarding the town.
“Oh, wow. Lily, tea assistant time. Old-school style. Get me cups and trays, now.” As Lily fist pumped in joy at a rare return to her old job, Arthur started piling majicka-enhanced boba into cups, throwing ice in for good measure and dipping generous portions of the tea out. This was supposed to be the batch that lasted the entire shift, so there was plenty. “Start getting this out. Mizu, could you find Onna and tell her to figure out how to get the archers some of this? I think it’s going to be important.”
“Absolutely.” Mizu started walking away, then turned just before dropping down the ladder. “And it’s good to see you smile again, Arthur.”
Arthur hadn’t known he was smiling, but a quick feel of his own face confirmed that he was beaming, ear to ear.
—
The wildly different effects on each drinker made it hard to fully understand what effects Arthur’s tea was having. Was this archer firing faster because of the tea or because they were naturally a fast shooter? Or was a particular worker carrying heavier loads or just more excited because of the monsters? It was hard to say. But a simple glance over the wall revealed what looking at the individual people couldn’t. The cumulative effect of the drink was substantial and that was evident in the pace the attacking monsters were put out of commission.
As the hours wore on, Spiky told Arthur that the tea had probably been somewhere like a ten percent increase in the efficiency of the town’s efforts overall, something he was only able to calculate because of his own cup of tea. Arthur wasn’t sure he believed that, but he could see the kind of effect Spiky was talking about here and there. Runes were now putting off more light. Efforts to shove monster piles away from the wall were actually working.
The monsters, however, had a strength all their own. No matter how fast or how efficiently the town pushed them back, they just kept coming. There was still no end in sight that Arthur could see and they were steadily chipping away at the wall.
And somehow, in ways Arthur didn’t even think was possible, the rocks were heavier. Or at least they were acting like they were, so long as a Coldbrook-ite was throwing them.
The third wall was the hurried job, the shorter and less heavily constructed of all the walls Karra had been able to push up. The monsters did more damage when they scratched at it. The rocks accelerated less and hit lighter because they were thrown lower. The tea was helping but the third wall was never expected to last as long as the others. By the end of Arthur’s shift, the monsters were shaking the wall with every solid hit they managed.
“It’s almost over, Arthur,” Karra said. “I know it’s not what you want to hear. But it’s true. There’s a half hour left.”
“That’s all?” Arthur’s face fell. “Nothing we can do?”
“We could probably make it an hour if you wanted to risk a messier retreat. Your call.”
Arthur wanted those thirty minutes. He really did. He stared out at the treeline, where he hoped reinforcements might appear. Another thirty minutes might just give Corbin and the warriors time to get there and save the day.
But it probably won’t. Time to be the mayor.
“No, lets not,” Arthur said. “We need to be safe. Tell me when to give the order and I’ll give it.”
A wave of relief passed over Karra’s face. “Thanks, Arthur. I appreciate it.”
The town still fought on, more desperately now. They could all tell the time was coming to an end. Rocks flew. As the archers worked through the very last of their arrow stock, they came down from the cliffs and threw stones themselves. The construction crews climbed up on the scaffolding on the safe side of the wall, ready to push it over and buy a few moments of chaos if circumstances demanded it.
Arthur barely saw any of that. He was looking out over his perfect, beautiful town. It would be ruined in an hour and flattened within the day. And there was nothing to do about it anymore. Somehow, he found some peace in that. He had really tried his hardest. Everyone had. And they all knew it. They’d be back to try again one day.
He sighed.
And then his sigh was cut off by a gasp. He turned to see Lily looking wide-eyed at the forest, then to the forest itself, where he saw nothing that exceptional.
“What is it?”
“An arrow just hit a monster at the treeline.”
“Wow. What a shot. That’s… farther than I thought our archers could shoot.”
“No, Arthur. Look.” Lily grabbed Arthur’s head and cranked it at a particular spot. “It hit him from behind.”
Another monster fell, then another, each sprouting arrows out of their backs, And then steel flashed and armor shone as the monster wave finally found its end, and a group of ragged, exhausted warriors emerged from the forest and let out a simple, ferocious battle cry.
Corbin was at their head, smiling like an idiot. He had done it. The cavalry had arrived.
Comments
Darren Stalder
That's really some tea. Named Unique even.
Daniel
The walls held. Until the very end they fought and survived. Glad they didn’t have to rebuild the entire town. The experiment is vindicated
Kevin McKinney
Woot!
