Marbles: The Hawk Who Refused to Die a Virgin

Chapter 39. Fox God Forever

The storm giant was flying the party towards Fox Mountain. "I'm taking you to the Fox God now!" said the giant. The giant knew exactly where the next marble was. Even though he had kicked his crippling magic habit, he could still pinpoint the location of the good stuff, and had told them as much when he zipped up his silk hot air ballon fanny pack and began floating up towards the moon.

Wisely, Sangria had elected not to follow her fugitive ex-boyfriend into a giant ex-addict's fanny pack. She waved up to the party politely from the cobblestones below.

They had to fly over the wizard first, who was just starting to tear down the city with his army of rogue golems. Lucy had saved Sycamore City by unzipping the corner of the giant's fanny pack from the inside and shouting down at Aloe.

"We're going to kill the Fox God, you asshole!" shouted Lucy. "Catch us if you can!"

This really scared the wizard, seeing as the Fox God's marble allowed him to manifest and control all modern technology. He stood to lose his Spotify® account. He would have to fall back on printed pornography. He motioned the golems to abandon their attack and sprint after the flying giant.

Even though they seemed to be floating slowly, the party soon left the wizard far behind, the lava golem only a pinprick of light visible on the ground below.

The party felt surprisingly secure, their knees nestled in the slack of the fanny pack's pouch, their heads peeking down at the moonlit river below. They followed the river past the waterfall where the Horse God sat dead and dormant at its top, its nose finally dry after a long illness.

"There's the Horse God!" shouted Lucy, over the whipping wind and crackling fanny pack. "Nice work, Marbles! That's the third one down."

"I saw your hawk kill the Horse God on the top of Turtle Mountain," said the giant. "We storm giants know all about the god statues. I figured this one was next on your list."

"Hey!" continued Lucy, shouting up at the giant. "What do we call you, besides giant?" "I go by Buster," said the giant.

"Thank you for rescuing us Buster!" said Lucy. "And for helping us to continue our quest!"

"That's definitely not a problem guys!" said Buster. Like a lot of recently recovering addicts, he was polite and enthusiastic to a fault.

"How did you know we were down there?" asked Opal.

"I didn't! I was trying to get a better look at that wheel!" said the Giant. Since kicking his addiction to magic, the storm giant's mind had lit up and spun like the very Faeries wheel had he had just tried to be nearer. It had been a long time since he had been fascinated by anything that couldn't get him high, and he was reveling in being clean.

After the lamp had its wishes wrung from it, the despondent giant had shivered in withdrawal, born aloft only by the famed updrafts of Hawk Mountain. He spent a week like this, hunched over on his side--a wispy, fiending, cirrus fetus-- before a spring wind had blown him over Sycamore City.

There he had seen these humans toiling over this wonderful truss of technology. Buster needed to see it completed, and he pulled a total 180 from the time when he had made that winter- long hurricane. Finally past the worst of his thaumaturgic withdrawals, he kept the weather completely clear over the city so that the wheel could be worked on night and day. Just this evening, he had woken up feeling better than he ever had as an addict and BAM, whom did he see but that same brave gnome who had performed that lamppendectomy on him months before, sparing him from becoming a giant shaped lump of overdosed diamond. And now he was able to save the very same adventurers who had saved him! He was checking off all the boxes.