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Chapter 173: Our Place
🕑 Added 2024-07-31 13:38:29 +0000 UTCEven with everything that people were doing, the monster wave was getting closer. The better climbers climbed over the worse ones, who were generally bigger, stronger, and slower builds. Arthur could see a mass of smaller, faster enemies on top of the whole shape, just about ready to leap out and get back to terrorizing the town.
But before they could do that, the monsters in the chute slipped down even further.
“The trick is carving the bottom of the tunnel in a V shape, like the end of an arrow. It makes it hard to balance in there,” Milo said happily.
“This is insanity, Milo,” Arthur said.
“Right? I love it. Not my idea, though. I only figured out how to shatter the road. The rest of the credit goes to Puka.”
“What do we do now? Cover it back up and wait?”
“No. I couldn’t figure out how to make a sliding plate big enough to do that. The monsters would wreck any mechanism like that. But it’s a terrain hazard, and I think that’s probably almost worse than keeping the element of surprise. These things aren’t exactly orderly. See? Look.”
The monsters had learned to avoid the chute and focus their attack on other parts of the wall. They’d leap or step over the chute without much trouble. But without much trouble didn’t mean no trouble at all. They were badly slowed by it and every so often a monster from the wave would get jostled into the pit and either have to climb out or else be jettisoned into the sea.
The ones that did get over the pit found themselves in the jaws of the pole-arm holes in the wall, getting stabbed as they landed before they could set themselves into a more defensive posture.
They’re getting less done at a higher cost, Arthur thought. That just might save the wall.
“Is there any reason this can’t go on forever?” Arthur was genuinely curious. The monster’s slowed pace made it seem an awful lot like that was possible. The wall was taking some damage, but he could see Karra and her crew doing mysterious things to the wall, aided by the town’s enchantress. It wouldn’t be literally forever, since they couldn’t repair the damaged side of the wall. But it seemed sustainable. “I’m not seeing how they beat this.”
“Well, for one, we can’t reset the trap. Sooner or later, they’re going to clog it. The bigger beasts are in the back,” Milo explained.
“So at some point we are reduced to just throwing rocks?”
“Something like that. But don’t think we don’t have some tricks, Arthur. There’s always a new trick.”
Over the next several hours, the monsters continued to assault the wall, getting cut down in the process. The cycle of stab-shove-watch-as-they-careen-down-a-ramp would have been beautiful if it wasn’t for the fact that there was no end in sight to the monsters, which not only stretched back behind the treeline but visibly jostled the tops of the trees for miles and miles.
And then, like all good things, the ramp’s days were suddenly numbered. A huge, lumbering creature that looked oddly like a cat made out of bones made its way to the ramp, took a look, and then attempted to jump over. It lost its footing, was shoved back by the horde of smaller threats, and fell into the ramp.
The monster snarled and tried to climb out, before being wedged in by its own exoskeleton. Other monsters were falling into the chute but half of them now footing on the bony thing’s body, and were eventually able to scramble out.
“So that’s it?” Arthur asked. “Should we evacuate to the next wall?”
“Not quite. Mizu, are you ready?”
“Yes,” Mizu said. “Whenever you say.”
“Hold off for a bit. I see another big one coming.”
Another large, less bone-clad monster did fall into the chute, fully blocking the tunnel as it struggled to climb out. Milo held up a hand indicating Mizu should wait and turned around to shout down the wall.
“Cleanout shove! We’re about to activate the spout.”
The workers and fighters at the bottom all put their backs into shoving the living monsters and corpses towards the chute. In the chaos, the chute quickly filled with living and dead monsters alike. After a few blinks, the chute was invisible, covered by a high mound of struggling monsters.
“Okay, that should do it. Any time, Mizu.”
“We did not build to last when we equipped your villages with wells,” Mizu said. “We denied the spirit of our peace-settlements, creating unlasting works that failed after only a few generations.”
Mizu reached down to the battlements and lit up a hair-thin rune. Arthur watched as the majicka-glow dove down the wall towards the ground, then arced to the sides of the chute. Once there, a brighter glow began to build. And build. And build.
“Watch this.” Mizu grabbed Arthur’s arm as she pointed to the chute. “This is the fun part.”
A loud crack sounded from the ramp. Arthur tried to remember where he had heard that exact sound before and gasped as he suddenly placed it. It was a rune-failure sound, the sound Mizu’s waterways had made when they broke down.
“You didn’t.”
“I did!” Mizu grinned maniacally. “It’s much easier to dig a big well when you don’t care about quality. I decided the monsters didn’t deserve quality.”
A massive wave of water rushed out of the broken well, washing over the monsters with tons and tons of force. At first, the monsters didn’t give at all, fighting back against the flow of the liquid with beast-strength and standing their ground in a way that was strangely admirable.
“It’s not working.” Mizu frowned at the exploding well. “They aren’t going to clear.”
“They will. We did the math with Spiky, remember? It’s going to be fine.”
The most water Arthur had seen Mizu channel was her runes had failed and covered half the town in water. This was the same thing, an intentionally sabotaged well, broken simply and in pursuit of just pushing a lot of water through. It could hardly not work.
There was a scraping sound as the weird bony cat thing broke loose from its wedged position and moved down the chute. The other monsters were immediately shoved that much further back and scrambled to find their footing.
The momentum of the water continued to build. Finally, it hit a breaking point, and the monsters suddenly were swept away at incredible speeds like a clog clearing out of a storm drain pipe.
“Whoa,” Milo said. “That worked better than I thought.”
“Should I do the others?”
“Oh, not yet. Wait for it, Mizu. We can get so very many more.”
Arthur was smart enough not to ask what the other wells were meant for. By now, he was sold on the whole fun-surprises-for-Arthur concept. It really was helping with his stress levels.
The monsters continued coming all day but Arthur wasn’t there for all of it. The defense went in shifts. The warriors swapped out, working the bottom before moving to the top of the wall to throw rocks themselves. Meanwhile, Arthur was sent away to rest with the rest of the first-shift fighters.
“Will the wall last overnight?” Arthur was drinking a calming tea, a rare everything-he-could-put-into-it brew meant for himself that had taken a good chunk of his majicka. “It’s taking damage now.”
“It will. I promise,” Milo said. “Karra’s work crews know their stuff, and the enchantress is refreshing the self-healing runes as fast as she can. That’s where Lily is putting her majicka right now. It will hold.”
“I feel bad eating good food while the other shift is up there fighting.”
“Don’t.” Rhodia was working on a giant monster-meat steak. The monster had been drawn up with hooks and ropes by Puka, who had wanted to see if that was even possible and had almost been pulled down from the wall for his curiosity. “The people who are up there now ate good all day. Resting is part of your job right now, Arthur.”
Arthur nodded and did his best. Everyone around him looked like they were in about the same boat. They were trying to rest and recover for their next shift, something that was only so possible amidst the sounds of the distant shrieks of monsters fall off cliffs and getting the business end of falling rocks.
“A walk, Arthur. Down to the beach.” As they finished their meals, Mizu grabbed his arm and dragged him from his seat. “It will be good. I promise.”
Arthur walked with her, gazing wistfully at his beautiful town. If he read Milo right, the first wall would hold until morning. At the same time, he was pretty sure that it wouldn’t last much longer than the morning. There were a lot of unspoken things in the air and Arthur had seen the looks on the more construction-and-defense oriented townspeople. It was a matter of time before the wall fell.
“Look.” Mizu broke Arthur out of his trance by shaking his arm. “Do you see?”
“The water?”
“Kind of. Look closer.”
Arthur did. There were a few monster bodies bobbing here and there but he assumed that wasn’t what Mizu was pointing at. It was ten seconds or so before he calmed down enough to see what she was actually pointing at, and he immediately had to admit it was beautiful. The stars and moon were in the water.
“Does it always reflect like that?”
“Not always. It has to be a pretty clear night to be this good. But the air is dry today. And cold. Cold air is even drier.”
“Is that a thing?”
“It is. I think. That’s not the point, Arthur. Isn’t it pretty?”
“It actually really is.” Arthur guided Mizu over a log someone had set near the high-tide mark. They sat a few feet from the water lapping up the beach and stared at the ocean. “You know we won’t have much time to look at things like this if all the walls fall. Rebuilding takes a lot of doing.”
“It does. But that’s not what you should be thinking about. We get to be here right now. We made this place. Right now, we have it. And you said yourself that it’ll be worth having it again, right?”
“I guess.”
“He guesses.” Mizu pinched Arthur’s arm. “You know. And next time, we will build more walls. More traps. We’ll know what we have to do and have more time. And more people. But for now, we have what we have. And it’s all good things.”
It really was all good things. One of Arthur’s favorite people in the whole world was sitting by him. But there weren’t any bad people in town, that he could tell. The demons didn’t seem to manufacture them. There weren’t bad buildings or ugly parts of town. There weren’t things that were broken that nobody had any interest in fixing. Eventually, the town would spill out of the valley and even more people would come, building the town into a city.
Eventually, though. Not necessarily now. The town might still be rubble tomorrow. But for now, Mizu was right. It was all good.
“I’m making a rule. Whenever you’re on this side of the walls, you have to think about how good the town is before you say anything. Just to focus.” Mizu clapped his knee. “Think about the water. Or the people. Or your store. Things that we won’t lose, or that we can get back. This is our place, Arthur.”
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Chapter 173 is also available on snowingpine.com for those able to log in. You can read it here.
Comments
Darren Stalder
Good rule. Good Mizu.
Lyncher98
Tftc
