Marbles: The Hawk Who Refused to Die a Virgin

Chapter 28. Apeshit Wizard

It had not been ten minutes since Brutus had informed the wizard about Languin's resurrection when Destroyer crested the top of Hawk Mountain, breathing hard, and sweating, for what might have been the first time in the horse's life.

It was pretty hard to cruelly push the very incarnation of domesticated equine excellence to its limit but this shithead wizard had somehow found a way. The wizard had manifested a set of particularly cruel steel spurs around his boots before he had hopped on Destroyer and shouted for him to run. He had even managed to get a few drops of blood to run down from the poor horse's sides.

The wizard was just as callous to animals as he was to people. Just last week, when he wasn't chuckling to himself during marathon sessions of leaving cruel comments in /r/progresspics, he had grown obsessed with these croissants that were baked at a small stall in town. He would ride Destroyer into the market square every morning and, without dismounting, would push his way to the front of the long line of townspeople patiently waiting for a pastry.

Destroyer tried to make the best of it, deftly using his muzzle to gently scooch the people in line to the side, but one chilly morning, with a low thick mist still filling the market, Destroyer had surprised an old woman and caused her to drop her basket of apples.

Destroyer had been mortified, whinnying apologetically (the wizard had forbidden him from talking in public) and lowering his head to stop stray apples from rolling away over the frost covered cobblestones. But the wizard had reached down and grabbed a handful of Destroyer's mane and yanked back with all his might.

"I said forward horse!", the wizard had screamed into Destroyer's ears. And Destroyer had obeyed.

And now the wizard was just laying into Brutus. Screaming. Just really being an absolute dick wagon.

"What do you mean he's gone, you dumb fucking gnome!" said the wizard, glaring down at a calmly defiant Brutus. "Why didn't you stop him?!"

"I was too slow," admitted Brutus, waiting for the wizard's tantrum to subside. "I wasn't prepared to stop anyone, just to look for them, like we talked about."

"Oh my fucking God," said the wizard, his bald head tomato red with fury. "Why did I even bother hiring on the strongest gnome?! What good is that even?! That's like, I don't know, hiring the merman who knows the most about NASCAR."

"You didn't hire me," said Brutus, squinting up at the wizard, speaking evenly, though with great effort. "I'm doing this as a favor to Clementine."

"Clementine's mine now, gnome," screamed the wizard. "She's totally under my control. She's been in my magical thrall ever since I stepped off that horse in front of her, swinging around this big wizard dick. I forced her to fall in love with me. You're doing this because I told her to tell you to do it."

"All right that's enough," said Brutus. He held up the walkie-talkie. He had his thumb on its talk button. He'd had it there the entire time. "It's over. Over." Brutus removed his thumb and unleashed the furious screams of a crying Clementine.

"I knew it!" said Clementine, her hoarse voice crackling out of the walkie-talkie. "I knew I was sick, that something was twisting me! Twisting my thoughts."

The wizard's eyes shot open in surprise. Being this far from Clementine had dampened the power of love that he channeled through the Boar God's marble. He could feel Clementine's rage, feel the jilted rasp of her prodigious intellect working its way through the black shackles of enchantment that he had snapped around her mind.

"I think we're done here, wizard," said Brutus. "I think that anything Opal is doing to take power away from you is the right thing to do."

"I don't give a hot buttered fuck what you think!" said the wizard. Frankly, the wizard had had immeasurable magical power for centuries and to have things not go his way? And this many times in a row? He was not taking it well.

"I'm out of here," said Brutus. Brutus was leaving Opal, that drunken little fuckup, to dismantle this cruel wizard's power marble by marble. He would let the wizard chase after his dumb fucking marbles himself. If he could get to Clementine, maybe they could break the spell together.

"Fine!" shouted the wizard. "Allow me to help you down this goddamn mountain then!" With a wave of his hand, the wizard sent a bright blue teardrop of concussive faerie fire roaring towards Brutus.

The magic cracked into the gnome's chest and sent him flying backwards over the side of the mountain, where he landed on a ledge hundreds of feet below, the fall breaking his back in three places and causing him to reflexively cough up a thick mist of dark blood, which dripped down his chin and settled like death's dew onto his chest hair. He let out a long groan and died.

"Whoa," said Destroyer, who yes, since being conjured into existence by Aloe's Horse God marble, had seen the wizard behave in a lot of flippant, indecent, entitled, and sometimes very cruel ways. But he had never seen him kill someone. And for a horse to use the "W" word on himself? Very taboo. It was a pretty big deal.

"Sir Vera, I as your horse am beholden to obey you, but this kind of behavior...it's unconscionable," spluttered the shocked avatar of all equine kind.

"Oh wow a talking horse!" shouted Aloe, before closing his eyes to connect to the Mole God marble. The marble granted him total control over the earth, allowing him to move almost unhindered through solid rock. He floated down into the mountain, to take back what was his.