Marbles: The Hawk Who Refused to Die a Virgin

Chapter 37. The Storm Giant Crams Them Into His Fanny Pack

This always happened to Marbles whenever he tried to get in shape. People made fun of him. The wizard certainly had. The day after Marbles had seen that smoking hot girl hawk soar past his window, he had started every morning beating his wings as hard as he could while holding onto the wrought iron perch hammered into the center of the wizard's citrus garden, a garden which grew on one of the ludicrous amount of balconies festooning the wizard's floating castle of brass.

Aloe Vera thought this was hilarious. "What are you doing, Marbles?" he had asked, laughing. "I'm trying to get in better shape so that I can impress a girl hawk I saw earlier," said Marbles.

The wizard's eyes got wider and he laughed even harder. "You'll never get laid you fat fucking hawk," said the wizard. "And if you ever do, I'll kill you." He plucked a lemon from the tree next to him and threw it, hard, at Marbles, because even though the hawk's force field would shred the lemon into harmless pieces, the wizard knew that some lemon juice would get through and splash into a startled Marbles's wide open eyes.

"What a fucking sadist," thought Marbles as he flew towards the waterfall that powered Sycamore City. When Marbles got like this, all twisted up over how the wizard enslaved him and teased him about his weight, he tried to find a waterfall and fly under it. Marbles was also still processing Languin's death. Why do dudes like Languin die in a dire bear while guys like the wizard get to scream into their cellphones at their Lamborghini dealer?

Marbles was soaring high in the moonlight towards the top of the waterfall when he noticed the Horse God statue. Water roared in twin white torrents from its nostrils and down onto the huge waterwheel that creaked beneath it. This was the power source that lit Sycamore City. This was the project Clementine had been working on right before the Owl God died.

After the Owl God died, Clementine had been reluctant to continue trying to harness the power of a god again, especially with her brother out there risking life and limb trying to destroy them, but the wizard had used the Boar God's thrall to power through her better judgement. It was

exhausting having to transdimensionally import electricity from more advanced planets just to blend their morning smoothies.

The Horse God, whose nostrils had merely been a convenient source of clean water for centuries, now found itself powering all of Sycamore City and the little towns that lined the river in the valley below. Marbles didn't know any of this, he was just so stoked to stumble onto a god without putting his friends in danger. He flew closer to the Horse God, which was a proud alabaster stallion, inanimate save for the water thundering from its nostrils.

As Marbles flew closer, the water began to pour out even harder, in a pure white froth, as if Marbles had just whispered a hilarious joke into the god's ear as it was drinking milk straight from the jug like a high school wrestler trying to move up a weight class.

The water wheel had not been engineered to account for a sudden increase in the water's volume. Why would it be? The only force that could move the wheel had been a god whose water had been flowing at a constant rate since the dawn of civilization. So when the Horse God went crazy, the wheel began to spin rapidly until it shook free from its hub and spun backwards across the soaked stony ground before sinking to the bottom of the waterfall's plunge pool.

"Uh oh," said Marbles out loud. By then the Horse God's marble had done its thing and flew from Marbles's bag and up the statue's nose, causing the torrents of water to cease immediately.

Marbles perched on the bottom rim of the now dormant god's dripping right nostril and turned around to survey the city. He knew that there would probably be consequences for him breaking the wheel, but he hadn't known that the wheel and the lights were linked until he saw the city dim, and grow dark, and begin to scream.

Without the light pollution of this world's first electrified major metropolitan area, Marbles began to notice a few very important glowing things that he had overlooked before.

The first was the full moon, whose center was obscured by the shape of a huge, spreadeagled man, looking like a rogue float from a late night parade. The second, on the outskirts of the city, was the wizard, who stood on the shoulders of a glowing golem, shouting something Marbles couldn't yet discern into the mouthpiece of his monogrammed, lacquered black megaphone.

"Ugh what a dick," thought Marbles. Why would you even put your initials on a megaphone? Like this world even knew about electronically amplified acoustics much less manufactured enough megaphones to necessitate the wizard distinguishing his in case of loss or theft.

Marbles wasn't tired anymore. He flew back, hard, towards his friends.

* * *

Back in Sycamore City, Opal found Lucy by picking out the only person walking calmly through the crowd. They had spent an entire season underground, in a mountain sized cave. Having the lights go out was not going to cause either of them to lose their shit.

The same thing could not be said for the townspeople. If this had happened just a few months ago, they would have simply shrugged and gone home and fucked the one they loved beside a crackling fire.

Now, thoroughly spoiled by modernity, they all collectively flipped out and were running around, even though the full moon was right there and they could still see everything. I guess the fact that there was now a storm giant floating over that moon, and that there was a wizard at the city gates shouting through a megaphone that he was going to kill everyone, might have also contributed to their outsize sense of unease.

"Lucy!" said Opal. Lucy kneeled down to hug Opal at the base of the Faeries wheel, which was still full of people who actually did have a great reason to scream, what with them being trapped in the gondolas of the dead mechanism.

"Opal you're awake!" said Lucy, relieved. "And you're on a date! You move fast!"

"This is my former girlfriend, current real friend," said Opal. "Her name is Sangria and she's been tearing down our wanted posters all day."

"You are a badass and you have great taste in men," said Lucy, giving Sangria a high five.

"There's a hawk in there with a bag of my magic marbles tied around its leg!" came the wizard's voice over the megaphone. "My golems have this city surrounded! If you bring me the hawk, I won't command them to kill you!"

"He's lying you know," said a panting Marbles, skidding to a stop on the cobblestones next to Opal. "He'll kill them even if he gets the marbles back."

"Marbles, my dude! We're all back together," said Opal, glad to see his friends despite the circumstances.

"It's good see you all, but we're all trapped under Fucked Mountain right now," said Marbles. "Aloe does not negotiate. He does not take hostages. To him, civilians are just enemies that are easier to kill. We need to get out of here and redirect this threat away from these people."

"Marbles!" chided the wizard into the megaphone. "I saw you kill the Horse God! And I saw you fly down in there! You know what happens when I don't get what I want. You've seen it happen on a hundred worlds."

The storm giant had floated down next to them by then. He got on his knees and unzipped the stolen hot air balloon that he had fashioned into a fanny pack for his magical drug paraphernalia during his days as an addict.

"Climb on in everyone!" said the giant, smiling. "You guys saved my life. Now it's time to return the favor."