Chapter 30: May the road rise up to meet you

We stand in a vague semi-circle at the entrance of the room as the doors grind closed behind us. Demarcus looks up at the statues, the leather palms of his gauntlets creaking against his crowbar as he grips it tight, while Izzy looks around at the purple braziers.

I explain the plan to Mato, and thankfully he actually has seen Star Wars episode V— apparently in theaters. Huh. Old people.

“I follow so far, son, but I doubt whatever those things—” Mato points up at the giant anubis statues at either side of the round rolling door to the tomb proper. “—are so flimsy that they'll break just by fallin’.”

I look around at the confines of this room. Perspective seems to warp a bit as it goes taller. It looks like there's enough headroom for the statues to jump if they needed to. It's a good hundred feet wide from door to door, and 600 feet wide from wall to wall.

I take a walk with the group to reach one of the boundary walls, and continue the discussion.

“You're probably right, Mato, but something here has to follow the square cube law. Those things have to be heavy. If it falls on its head or arm wrong, the weight of the rest of the body would probably snap it off. Besides, a crossbow bolt won't do anything, so this is all you've got.”

Demarcus takes a long stride and steps between us. “I bet I could damage ‘em. I've got [Power Strike]. Feels like I can only use it once in a while but it'd be good to take a chunk off. Maybe snap a wrist or bust an eye.”

“I don't think they actually see out of the carved eyes, Demarcus. I think it's just stone and they're enchanted to sense us somehow.” Izzy adds, ever the contrarian. Her curly hair then shifts as she tilts her head and squints upwards, at nothing, seeming to be thinking about something.

“I can try to have their feet tied up before we open the door, as opposed to makin’ a trip wire. Rope might not be strong enough if it's got momentum behind it, better to tie their ankles together.” Mato says.

“That's the spirit.” I say, clapping him on the shoulder.

I remember who I'm talking to, and what I'll have to do, and my hand shoots off his shoulder, like I touched a hot stove. Perhaps too fast, as he and Demarcus give me a short side-eye. I try to play it off as me suddenly remembering something from the binder and quickly reaching for it to reference.

I don't think it’s convincing.

We reach the boundary wall, and I hold a hand against it. It’s slightly cooler than the other walls. I reach for my shortsword and realize Izzy still has it. I think about letting her keep it, but then realize she'll just rely on it instead of doing actual [Bard] stuff, so I walk over to her.

My instinct is to snatch it from her belt, but that's a good way to accidentally slice her.

“Hey.” I say, tapping her on the shoulder and having her turn from where she stares back at the statues in the distance.

“I’m taking my sword back now.”

“C’mon, I need this more than you. You've got magic to fight with.”

“So do you.”

She scoffs at this.

“I’m serious.” I say. “You need to figure out how to fight like a [Bard]. Also, the sword is mine, I had to kill an angry flaming undead viking for it. Mine.” I say, holding out my hand.

She draws it with a roll to her eyes and moves to slap the handle into my palm. I don't take the chance with a fucking sword and yank my hand back, letting the sword fall to the ground, and pick it up from there.

I head back to the corner where the boundary wall meets the wall of the actual tomb, and I compare the bricks.

The ones used in the actual tomb look… realer. Small imperfections and differences between them, and a texture to the mortar. I take the hilt of my shortsword and begin hammering away at the tomb wall and it takes me nearly a minute to even chip it.

I do the same to the boundary wall and chip it first try. Mato picks up the chipped stone and rolls it between his fingers. We share a small look, and I look away and quickly explain to Demarcus.

“The walls closing in this room that aren't a part of the tomb look like they're made by The Great Work, this wall probably wasn't here in the original. The stone looks like it was made wholesale, formed out of thin air with the mortar already attached and dried. I think the tomb itself has some kind of protection, but this doesn't, so we can't dig into the tomb and bypass the door.”

“So… you had us walk all the way over here for nothing?” Izzy asks.

“Not nothing. I was curious. Knowledge is its own reward. Besides, nothing wrong with taking a walk.” I reply with a teasing grin as she turns around and begins walking back to the entrance.

“I wonder what happens if she breaks a string.” I say aside to Demarcus.

“There's probably a skill for that.” He replies, and begins to walk after her.

“Huh.” I consider, and follow.

***

“Hey D?”

“Wassup C?”

“You ever play Shadow of the Colossus?”

“No. Why?”

“Nothing.” I say, staring up at the anubis head as Mato ties the 2nd statue's ankles. “Just seems relevant.”

“Alright, gimme another coil.” Mato says, holding his arm behind him like a dad working on his car.

And like the child terribly holding the flashlight, Isabella hands him our 3rd and final 50 foot coil of rope.

“My até always said, ‘if you can't tie a good knot, tie several.’ Hopef'ly that holds up. I'm also hopin’ that we get this rope back; It ain't cheap and it's too darn useful to go without.”

That doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but as he hops down from the statue's foot I take a look at his work and don't see anything necessarily wrong with it— looks like just an elaborate figure 8, tied with a loop over the top of itself in between the legs to tighten it together. I'd guess that the weak points are where he had to tie the rope coils to each other— but I don't know knots.

“So, what now?” Mato asks.

I open my mouth to respond, but Izzy steals the gravitas.

“Now,” she says, and turns to the rolling door, then looks up at the statues. “We wake them up.”

Mato winds up drawing the short straw while the rest of us stand far out of the way of where the statues could fall.

He is strong enough to budge the door by himself, won't be able to do much damage with his weapons, and despite having the body of a 63 year old— though I suspect it doesn't have the same level of wear and tear as it should— he is the fastest of us.

“Remember to only open it a crack! Giant bats!” I cup my hands and yell to him.

He gives me a far off thumbs up, and takes his stance.

“You ready?” Demarcus says to my right, and I open my mouth to respond but am cut off as Izzy responds.

“I just don't know what I'm supposed to do.” She says, and I realize Demarcus was asking her and not me.

“Iz.” He responds, and I hear him take a step behind me and see his hand rest on her shoulder.

“Isn't it obvious?” He asks, and her face twists into instinctual insult and anger, never far out of reach— and isn't that familiar?

Demarcus breaks out in a teasing grin, like the guy who gets the punchline before you, and says with a smile;

“You do your best.”

She smiles despite herself, at Demarcus’ heart. But lands back in that despairing frustration.

“But I don't even know what ‘my best’ is here.”

“Try finding the stone's resonant frequency.” I offer. “That'd shake something important loose I'd bet.”

“Gee, thanks half-baked that's…” she stops for a moment, and I smirk cuz I know it's not a terrible plan, just a bit of a [Hare-brained Scheme].

The skill has been rattling around in my head the entire time we've been putting this together. Like a coked up producer in a writing room, pitching reboots and recasts. One in a dozen of its ideas are usable.

“Not really feasible.” She finally finishes.

I shrug.

“I dunno, play some fight music or something. You'll figure something out. Or we'll die.”

I turn to look her in the eye with a shit-eating grin.

“Up to you.”

Lost in conversation as we were, we missed Mato cross the first 30 feet towards us, booking it as fast as he can. But we look up to see him running like a teenager lighting too many fireworks in a parking lot. We look up because we hear the grinding of stone.

Well, we feel the sound before we register it in our ears. The reverberation rumbling the ground beneath us, jiggling my calves and rattling the space behind my ribs.

I look up to see Mato pumping his arms and running, then I look up further as my body instinctually kicks me into fighting gear, lowering my stance.

I look up, and up, and something looks back down.

Like the guard dogs they are, the anubis heads snap to the intruders. Their stony countenances don't shift expression, but the stone jerks around their waists and shoulders with a crack, waking up to movement.

They look as though they move in slow motion, but that's just a matter of scale. It may take a second for their torsos to bend slightly down, but what would be inches for us is yards to them. They're moving incredibly fast with that in mind.

The first carved thigh shifts, smoothly for but a moment, before it meets resistance and the rate slows. The left statue continues trying to raise its leg to take that step, despite the rope, and I watch it tighten and strain under the strength of the stone giant.

Then, I watch the statue tip.

Slowly, but at a constant rate, the giant stone humanoid begins to fall. Its massive arms shoot out to try and catch itself against the wall and find no purchase.

Demarcus immediately begins moving to get into position and I follow, until he quickly turns and shouts.

“Wait! Right!”

I whirl to face where he points, my entire body shifting so that I'm running sideways, like a crab, to fully reveal my blindspot through my good eye.

I turn and see the right statue take its second step, the rope tying its ankle together having snapped or come undone in a few key places. Its ankles are still tied, but not as tightly together, so it is able to hobble.

I look up from its ankles to see it leaned over near completely, a giant fist getting bigger by the second. The perspective of the massive thing moving comparatively slowly throws me, exacerbated by my depth perception— but I know how fast it should be, and dive immediately.

The knuckle of its thumb still clips me on my dive, and sets me spinning. I vaguely hear Demarcus shout something but that sound is smothered by another as I approach the ground.

Nearly simultaneously, just before I hit the ground, the left statue does as well. The statue's reverberating, earthquaking impact has a strange effect on my own.

I bounce.

Not high, the ground isn't shaking the same way it would if it were made of elastic. But the same principles of a trampoline apply; when pushed down, the ground wants to return to its previous shape and pushes back up.

So, as I approach the ground, the ground approaches me on its return trip. And due to those pesky laws of physics, the downward force of my impact on the sundered stone floor is added to the upward force of the cracking stone as it approaches me.

So, I bounce. Pain welding my eyes shut as I most definitely bruised a rib, so I don't know how much air time I get until I hit the ground for a second time.

The first time ‘may the road rise up to meet you’ would be a curse.

I feel myself yanked to my feet by my pits as Demarcus lifts me with ease. He gets me standing and is immediately about to turn to fight the statue behind me, but I reassess.

“No! We're the damage dealers for this one!”

“Mato! Izzy!”

I shout to the other two, standing, picking themselves up from where the massive stone-block floor was upended beneath them around the fallen statue, already attempting to right itself.

“Tag out!”

I yell, and begin running towards the subdued statue and away from the one almost definitely reaching behind me.

Mato gives me a nod as he passes.

Demarcus, though usually the stocky, husky, brick wall type not usually known for speed, quickly overtakes me, his chainmail jingling with each step. [Lessened Weight] is probably a much better skill than I'm giving it credit for, especially on him.

He reaches the statue's arm as it’s being dragged across the ground towards its chest. With a massive haymaker of an overhead, he brings his crowbar down on the back of the hand, sandy dust and fragmentation spraying from the impact. But still nothing more than a scratch comparatively.

The head of the statue shifts, digging up more floor around it. Its eye, though no pupil was carved into it, locks onto Demarcus, and the course of its arm changes, snatching out to grab him.

“Jump!” I shout.

Demarcus obliges, jumping far higher than he expected thanks to [Lessened Weight], but still not high enough to clear the full hand. The edge of the statue's palm hits his shins at speed, and he topples over the top of it before the fingers can close around him.

He'll be fine.

I painfully take my boxing stance, then peek back over my shoulder as I hear the sound of a guitar kicking up to see Mato giving the other statue the runaround and Izzy stanced up looking confused as she lets a power chord ring.

They'll be fine.

I lance out with a [Magic Missile] and nail the statue directly in the eye. It doesn't even blink. Not that I think it could, but there's no response, and not a scratch on it where the spell impacted.

I begin spouting invectives in alphabetical order as I realize my two main offensive spells, [Magic Missile] and [Firebolt], are going to be nearly useless. That leaves [Stone Dart], which I now realize I should have practiced before the fight.

Demarcus stands and hits the searching hand with a vicious backhand on the wrist, taking a chunk with it.

The sight inspires a subconscious part of myself, still stewing on [Stone Dart].

In the heat of battle, I don't have time to theorize or examine, and instead magically snatch the stone dust and shrapnel from the air, having them pause in the air a moment as their momentum shifts and they come racing towards me. A small moment of concern over whether I'll have to manually arrest their momentum before they stab me, and I begin collecting them. Like a trash compactor, I compress the dust and fragments as hard as I can. That same compressing ball of force I use in [Firebolt], but with exponentially more pressure.

Subconsciously, the floating pile of stone drifts between my outstretched hands, and my face twists and my arms tense as I physically make the motions of squeezing it together.

With that strange sixth sense for my own magic, I can feel— in the same way your tongue instinctually knows what things would feel like if you licked them— the bubble of force squeezing the stone into a solid mass.

I quickly shift the shape into a simple cone, and feel myself lose a bit of progress as my mass breaks to fill the new shape, but quickly return to squeezing.

It's taxing, but not overly, and once I feel like any more pressure will be useless unless I'm trying to turn it into a diamond— or whatever sandstone becomes under intense pressure, quartz or something— I realize I have only a second to aim, for twisting the force cone and releasing the pressure at the front of it is what causes the dart to launch.

Quickly, I scan, and with a pointed finger on an extended arm I blast the [Stone Dart] at the divot on the wrist Demarcus’ prior hit created.

More sand and fragments cascade, and I can feel that I put a little too much juice into that one. Way too much mana expended on pressure for only minor improvements in the darts hardness and velocity.

As the hand twists to try and grab Demarcus, and he jumps over it again, I see that the divot in the wrist has widened into a gash. An idea flickers to life in my brain.

“Demarcus! The joints! Hit the joints! We can break parts off!”

He just gives me a thumbs up, taking two loping strides back towards the wrist.

I take several steps closer, increasing the range and ease with which I can collect stone, and have a thought.

If I can collect it from the air, would it be possible to tear it straight from the ground? Or the statue? Can I have unrestricted telekinesis?

Unfortunately, now is not the time to try and learn telekinesis, but to try and give stone arthritis. So instead, like every 5 year old trying to use the force for the first time, I reach out a hand and think real hard at the statue while attempting to cast [Stone Dart] using the unbroken stone.

I can feel the pull, this is theoretically possible, but the stone resists it near completely. It is probably enchanted in some way, so that makes sense— but damn, I wanted to poke it in the eye with its own finger.

The floor somehow feels even harder to steal— as if it's too perfect, formed as it is without stress fractures by The Great Work. I'm about to change tack and try to grab from the places where the statue's impact cracked it, but as Demarcus knocks off another chunk then goes sprawling from where the forearm knocked him off his feet, I remember I don't have the time.

I send dart after dart at the wrist, my aim and formation time improving with each, and I start slowly pacing to the side opposite of Demarcus so we can both attack without him getting in my line of fire.

3 more big hits from Demarcus, and 7 more darts from me, and we've whittled it down to only 3 feet thick of solid sandstone.

Demarcus baits its sweeping attack, then jumps atop it, standing on its forearm, swaying as it moves. I see him take a breath, adjust his grip on the crowbar, and raise it above his head.

The air does something… strange around the head of his crowbar, as if gravity shifts slightly. Then he swings it down, but with far more force than he normally should be able to, like his crowbar is at the end of a whipcrack. The sound of it drowns out Izzy’s playing behind us for a single beat, a single “CWAUCK” of an impact.

The wrist breaks off, no longer animated, the statue’s only reaction being its arm jerking while moving, compensating for weight that isn’t there.

I jump in half a cheer before bending over my bruised ribs. Demarcus cheers enough for both of us.

“Woo! I'm a god damn giantslayer!” He yells from atop the forearm, now riding it like a bull.

I hear a yelp behind me and twist my head to see Mato get punted by the other statue. Izzy begins to sing, loudly, trying to give Mato the time to recover and draw its attention to her.

“Come at me you stone of a bitch,

Leave you gravel lining a ditch!~”

I can appreciate the bitch pun considering the statues are dog-headed, but the quaver in her voice takes away from the piece a bit. Even in fear, she is putting her back into it though.

The sound of grinding stone in front of me reminds me that I don't have the luxury of helping them.

I turn back to find our statue abandoning its ground offense and dragging its damaged arm back towards its chest, a move I assume is mirrored by its other arm.

Demarcus has fallen off the dragging arm, and is quickly chasing it down.

“You can't run from me motherfucker!”

I take the time trying to form a larger dart, seeing if I can make it bigger without the same strain as harder. Already I can feel the amount of mana and focus required also increasing exponentially with every square centimeter of mass in the dart.

Demarcus reaches the fallen statue, jumping atop the forearm and using it as a step he makes it onto its back.

“De—” I begin to shout a warning, but that moment of lost focus has me lose control on the containment field around the stone, causing it to burst under pressure and unfinished fragments to explode out. Most hit my chest and my coat protects me from shrapnel—not bruises— but one nicks the side of my cheek and another I feel gets buried in the meat of my hand.

I take a shuddering breath of pain and look up to see what I feared; the colossal stone statue has pulled its arms to either side of it and— lopsidedly— is pushing itself back up to kneeling.

Demarcus is running up its back, pumping his legs as he desperately tries to outpace it. The “ground’s” gradient beneath him slowly increases its incline until it's beginning to look like he's running up a wall. His feet begin to slip, so— quickly, as fast as I can form them— I begin cooking [Stone Darts].

I fire one off barely 10 inches in front of his foot— and his flinch nearly knocks him off— but as it impacts and takes out a chunk I quickly scream, praying he'll understand without time to explain.

“Footholds!”

His foot finds easy purchase in the divot, but as he waits for the next one the angle increases, and his balance begins tipping him backwards.

“Hands!” I yell this time.

Another chunk taken out by my spell, a distance further out. I eyeballed it with a new spell on a moving target, so it's not a comfortable angle, but Demarcus shifts his weight until he falls forwards, and he grabs tight to the chunk with a hand opposite of the foothold.

The statue comes to kneeling, its tied legs underneath it as it sits upright. Its back is now nearly completely straight up, a slight angle from the natural curve of its carved shoulders. Those shoulders twist as its head turns to examine what is on its back, and I see its good arm shifting.

As fast as I can, I fire off more [Stone Darts], feeling my stomach beginning to twist.

One hand at a time, followed by a foot, I get Demarcus past the shoulder blade, and he gets back to an angled form of standing just in time for the arm to reach him and try to swat at him on its back.

I pant and slouch, but still squeeze my arms together forming the spells, and I watch as Demarcus tries to juke a colossus on its back, several stories above the ground.

The arm swats, like trying to smack a bug between your shoulder blades, and Demarcus manages to stay just outside its reach, his situational awareness having him run to the opposite shoulder, where the arm can't reach when bent behind its back.

The good arm retreats and the damaged one raises, but Demarcus is readily aware of the statue's movements, amplified as they are when he can feel it move beneath him.

The colossus’ massive head turns towards him on its shoulder, the snout of the jackal nearly knocking Demarcus off as it is about 6 times the size of him and almost reached him as it turned.

As Demarcus ducks beneath the snout and out of its sight, I fire off a [Stone Dart] into its eye, causing its head to twist wildly. Confused and searching, it seems the stone eyes do serve a similar purpose as they would if it was alive. Perhaps that stone was where its “sight” enchantments were stored. A poor tactical choice made for aesthetics.

I hear the cracking and impacts of Demarcus making hits, and I have to jog further out and around to see him hacking away at the statue's neck. Whenever an arm would reach for him, he would run to the other shoulder, across the back of its neck, and continue from there.

The statue's aesthetics are doing it a disservice. Its movements are too graceful, too intentional. Its neck doesn't clench and its head doesn’t buck when it feels something crawling on the back of its neck— if it did, Demarcus would be crushed. Its arms don't flail wildly, but reach and grasp one at a time like an artist with a paintbrush, allowing Demarcus to give them the runaround.

I fire off what [Stone Darts] I can to help chip away at the neck, but can feel myself flagging. And as I watch Demarcus jump over an incoming fist, I can't help but think:

This is the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Demarcus looks like a total beast up there. In his element, hacking away at the neck of a colossus, beheading it inch by inch as he keeps just out of reach.

Then, sound.

I'm not sure what sound it actually was, but it was somewhere between a nail delivery truck exploding through the walls of a chalkboard factory and a cat being waterboarded.

I turn my head to try and see what the hell is making that noise, and realize I'm on my knees. But I look up to see Izzy going absolutely rip-shit on her guitar as she screams. The effect it has on her target is far more pronounced as I watch her statue stumble, fall backwards, and catch itself with a hand behind it.

I decide that earplugs would be a wise investment.

My head snaps back to my statue as I realize what would happen if Demarcus lost his balance up there, and find him hanging by two of the carved footholds, one held with a bare hand and the other by the hook of his crowbar.

A fist slowly approaches him from the side, and I try to scream “look out!” But it's lost in the noise.

Thankfully, he was already in the process of pulling himself back up, and instead of a full impact on his side it clips him from beneath. Probably badly hurting his legs but pushing him upwards and to the side as his legs are punched from under him.

He manages to hug the side of the shoulder and pull himself back atop it. I watch as he takes several panicked breaths, then as the wail ends behind us, I see him set his jaw and stand back up.

He flips his crowbar around, and begins using the prying end of it like a chisel, as dust and stones cascade over the side of the statue's shoulders. He hammers incessantly, and I take a few steps back to see his progress, and I see how flimsy the neck has become.

He dodges the good arm, racing to the other side, and I see the damaged arm already racing towards him. The statue has moved from swatting and grabbing to just straight punching.

The fist misses, grazing the snout of the Anubis, and I get an idea.

“D!” I yell.

He looks down to me before jumping onto the back to avoid the damaged arm, and I pantomime with exaggerated movements so he can see it from up there.

Like a shitty game of charades I pull my fist back and punch myself in the side of the head— gently.

“Why are you hitting yourself?!” I yell.

“What?!” He yells back.

In the heat of the moment, my brain shortcircuits a bit. There are several better ways to have explained my plan, but all I could think of was the childish teasing game, where you grab a smaller person's hands and make them hit themselves in the face.

“Bait its punch, then make it hit itself in the face!” I clarify.

“Oh! Got it!” Demarcus responds, giving a nod and a shaky thumbs up.

He takes his wide stance on the shoulders of the giant, looking back to see the snout just barely missing him by mere feet, and he begins hesitantly smacking the snout while making eye contact with that lone stone eye.

His voice raises in fear, shouting down at me.

“Hey! Maybe we shouldn't—!”

And then came a giant fist.

I hear his scream of surprise followed by the jingle of his chainmail thwapping against stone as he hits the deck at breakneck speeds. He hugs tight, clutching the stone shoulder like a life-preserver, and with a woosh of displaced air the 6-fridge-fist sails above him.

The sound it makes when that fist collides with the snout of the colossal kneeling anubis statue is delicious— every sound that stone can make is mixed somewhere in that cacophony. It pairs especially well with the sound of the flimsy neck snapping as the head is tilted too far upwards. I think the added leverage of the fist hitting the end of the snout really helped.

The head hits the ground with thunder, and I look back up to find Demarcus as the statue's body with whatever power animating it gone, beginning to collapse.

I look up to find him sliding down the back of the statue on his front, crowbar extended and dragging behind him, catching on footholds, and crevices to slow his descent— doing the 2nd most piratey thing I've ever seen.

His slide just barely outpaces the statue's collapse, and by the end of it he is back to standing and has to run the last few yards to jump off its back. Rolling when he hits the ground, coming back to standing, then falling once more as the ground quakes from the crumbling giant behind him, Demarcus runs up to me panting.

“Th— that— ho man I'm tired. That's one.”

He says, leaning over and supporting himself with his hands on his knees. But he stands at the last of it and pats me on the shoulder. I grin a big, stupid grin as my stomach twists, and we turn back to the other statue in time to see Izzy limping towards us as a far away Mato runs, taking a wide arc to meet us, his foe hobbling along behind him.

“Shit, you hurt?” I ask.

“Twisted my ankle. Mato's coming around, how'd you take down that one?” she responds.

“D and I chipped away at its joints, he climbed up to its neck when it fell over. Like a badass. But that thing ain't laying down.” I say pointing at the other one, growing ever closer.

“Can you climb it standing?” Izzy asks.

“No way. Barely made it out of there when we had it down.” Demarcus replies.

“Maybe we could get the rope from the dead one and make a grapple…” I say, gears whirling in my head.

“Well, whatever your plan is, make it fast. It only looks slow.” Izzy remarks, checking over her guitar, fingers tracing up the varnished wood neck and the deep red body.

I think back to the binder, but all it said was to have Mato tie up their legs and not to open the door fully. Maybe Mato needs to tie up the legs again?

I look over to the fallen statue, then say to the two of them “Start running for the far wall, if we want to keep ahead of it we need to run now. Demarcus, carry her.”

He does so, hauling her over one shoulder despite her yelping protests, he gives me a nod and starts running for the far wall, smiling despite the dire situation at how easy it is with [Lessened Weight].

I book towards the fallen giant, jumping over uprooted stones and a severed hand. Tossing stones aside with far too much effort, scraping my hand and putting painful pressure on the one that still has a chunk of stone embedded in it, I find the rope.

Yanking and pulling as much as possible on what's not wedged under rock, I eventually cut my losses and shoot a [Magic Missile] at it— which does nothing cuz that spell is essentially a magic punch and this is a rope— so I follow it with a [Firebolt] as well as a groan and a churning gut.

I stomp out the flames, collect the rope, and start running back.

“Mato! Can you tie up its legs again?!” I shout back at him.

“What?! No!” He yells, still taking his wide arc of a path, trying to buy us time.

“Can you try?!” I shout back.

“Fine! Get me a rock too!”

I snatch a fist sized rock, then angle myself so that his path will intersect with mine, and drop the tangle of rope alongside the rock on the floor and keep running.

I turn around, running backwards long enough to see him scoop up the rope and stone, hastily tie the rope around the rock, then huck that rock and pull on the rope to loop it around the center between the giant's legs. It is quickly yanked from his hands with the giant's next thundering step.

All he gets for his trouble is swiped at by the gaining statue.

“Shit.” I mutter to myself, and quickly start wracking my brain trying to come up with an alternative plan.

Can we leave this chamber? Up ahead is giant bats, and the doors back closed behind us, so that’s a no.

Can I use [Tripping Roots]? I mean, that is what the spell is for, but this is a giant. I go searching for roots and find none, cuz we’re in a Desert— sort of.

Mato and the giant hobbled statue slowly gain on me, I am so incredibly thankful that it at least doesn’t have its full stride or we’d be dead by now. As we get closer to the far wall I see Demarcus and Izzy set up at the end, and I yell to them.

“Do either of you have anything that can trip it?!”

Izzy and Demarcus talk amongst themselves as I can feel the ground quaking beneath my feet stronger and stronger as that thing gets closer. Then, Isabella half-shouts something, before committing to it.

“I— I think I can make a wall!”

My shout is cut off by Mato’s, as he yells from just behind me.

“Do it!”

I chance a look behind me to see Mato overtake me, and the shadow of a giant foot casts over me.

From just up ahead, I hear Izzy play an arpeggiated chord, 3 notes ascending one by one, then come crashing down several octaves as the notes progress to a deep, resounding tonal chord. I feel the vibration pass over me, like walking through a waterfall, and I stumble slightly, turning just in time to see that raised foot, mid-step, collide against something.

Her [Wall of Sound] shatters after only a second of the foot hitting it, but it's enough.

The foot hits it, causing the statue to tip forward slightly. It tries to raise that foot higher but the remaining rope catches and pulls taught, and momentum does the rest.

That shadow grows and now eclipses us, and I feel Mato grab my coat and yank me, running to the side as the colossal statue falls. I look up, catching my feet beneath me and now hauling ass in a desperate run to not be squished, and see Demarcus and Izzy waving us forward from mere feet away, at the side of the room.

I dive out of the way, prematurely, and look back up to see the statue, taller than the distance remaining to the boundary wall, cave its head into the stone.

The fake and unenchanted stone crumbles and cracks, the too-perfect mortar giving way easily as the top half of the statue slowly grinds the wall down to the floor.

Above it, in the gap revealing what lies beyond the boundary wall, is an eerie sight. That same absolute nothingness— the one from my introduction to the afterlife— lies beyond. That staticy, not truly there, absent of dark and light, nothingness— like what the things behind you, the things you can’t see, look like.

We watch as the top half of the statue… disappears into that nothing. Every interpretation of the word “Disappear” simultaneously.

It vanishes out of sight as it grows smaller in the distance.

The stone slowly dissolves away.

It begins to fade; translucent, transparent, then gone.

It simply— disappears.

The bottom half of the statue lies on the floor, dead as the stone it should be.

Our group is tense, now looking between us, not sure if it’s really all over. Then we slowly creep out from where we hug the adjacent wall.

The statue seems to stop existing cleanly past the boundaries of the wall, which means its hips still block the ground level.

Izzy kicks the stone, and after it truly sinks in for us that it’s dead, Demarcus’ arms shoot up as he shouts a “Woo!” He high-fives me too hard with his metal gauntlet and I let out a pained shriek as he smacks the rock embedded in my hand.

Mato waves me over and takes a look at my hand. Painfully, he pulls the skin back from the wound with one hand, then he nods up at the broken wall.

“Take a look at that. Isn’t that freaky?” He says.

“Yeah it looks almos— GAH! You motherFUCKER!” I shout as he uses the opportunity of my distraction to dig into my hand with his meaty fingers, pinch the stone splinter and pull it out.

“Got it.”

I clutch at my hand and shoot him the dirtiest look I can find.

I am so letting him die later.

Even joking, the thought doesn’t sit right, so I quickly distract myself by asking Demarcus for a boost and climbing atop the back of the statue.

I peer into that nothingness from beyond the boundaries of this stolen place, and it is hypnotizing. I pick up a bit of rock and huck it at it, watching that static almost ripple as the stone quickly disappears. I feel something tickling me, in the back of my mind, saying ‘poke it. Wait no, don’t poke it. It kills things. Maybe use it to kill things…’

“I wouldn’t be messing with that too much.” Mato says.

“Yeah, I know. I’m not stupid.” I wave him off. Then quickly follow with a “not a word.” As I point at Izzy, pre-empting her slight.

That tickle in my mind becomes an itch as I get in close to that nothingness, and can see it’s almost like a slimy liquid film just past the stones. That itch grows as I pull out a half-used healing potion, dab it on my hand, my ribs, and hand it down to Izzy for her ankle. When the empty bottle is handed back, I remove the leather cord from my Pokin’ Stick and tie the bottle off to the end of it. The itch is scratched as I slowly, carefully, like a forge crucible, stick that bottle into the nothingness— and pull back out half a bottle.

I pout slightly and then feel the ripcord of a dingy lightbulb go off in my head, a [Hare-brained Scheme.] I pull out one of my bottles of Spider-queen venom. Specifically one in a weirdly fancy bottle; Swirled, with a tint almost like uranium glass.

With my [Perfect Memory] I recall that it held “Liquid dark,” which seems cool, but my future self says we can replace it easily enough.

Reluctantly, I pour out the venom, and wash it out with my water skin. I have more.

I stop for a second to wonder if I should be doing this. After all, the journal didn't tell me to do it.

The part of my busted brain that comes up with [Hare-brained Schemes] reminds me that it also didn’t tell me not to.

I tie the special bottle to the end of my stick, hoping that if it can contain the physical embodiment of darkness, it can do the same for nothingness. I slowly insert the bottle, ever so slightly, making sure not to get any on my favorite stick.

I pull out an empty bottle.

Well, not an empty bottle. Just… one with nothing in it.

I quickly close the custom stopper and stash the bottle, turn back around and see Izzy’s face hovering above my shoulder.

“Cool. What are ya gonna do with it?” She asks.

My favorite shiteating grin spreads across my face.

“Nothing.”