Chad closed his eyes and tried to fix in his mind the one
thing he needed to defeat the giant. He worked the clay into a distinct shape,
making it long and pointed at one end, with a small grip at the other.
When he opened his eyes, Chad found exactly what he needed.
He shifted his grip on the weapon he had made and looked up at Ferristral,
heedless of the rain that stung his eyes.
“Hey!” Chad yelled up to him.
Ferristral looked down, and the shock registered before the
figurine had a chance to conceal it. Somehow, the puny human had gotten his
hands on a bright, sharp sword! The Maker had crafted a weapon!
“You want a fight?” Chad hollered, feeling his confidence
grow with each syllable. He held up the shining blade that had once been a
small wad of clay. “Ferristral, I will fight you! I am not afraid!” And to
prove that it was not mere words anymore, Chad swung the sword in a wide arc
and brought it down squarely upon the place where Ferristral’s hand connected
to his arm. The blade bit deep like metal into butter, and Ferristral roared in
pain as the appendage separated. Chad finished slicing before his rational mind
kicked in to remind him why this may not have been such a good idea. The hand,
without an arm to support it, immediately plummeted toward the rooftop below.
Chad stabbed the blade all the way through the hand and held on for dear life,
cringing and yelling all the way down.
“Yaaaaahhhhh!!!!”
He landed with a thud. The force of the halt drove his shoes
into the rain-soaked clay about up to his ankles, but it also provided enough
cushion so the boy was unscathed. He looked back up to Ferristral.
The giant was holding his stump in his one hand, yelling
angrily.
“Fool!” He bellowed, and stretched out the arm.
To Chad’s frustration, five appendages extended from it, and
in less than a minute, Ferristral had re-grown his own hand.
Now that he was back on the parking structure, the minions
soon surrounded Chad and the hand, but now Chad had a weapon to fend them off.
He hacked through their bodies as he made his way down into the garage,
swinging the sword and cutting away the grey clay to free his friends, the
heroes.
He hacked a lump of clay and saw a glimpse of red
underneath. “Marquiam!” he cried, pulling off the horrid shell around him. Once
his head was free, Marquiam was able to help by wriggling out of the mess.
“Ahh, thank you, Chad!” He shook free and tested his wings
to make sure there were no stray bits of clay in the jets. “You are a true
friend.” Marquiam saluted and went to help him free the others.
Chad found Voxx, while Marquiam freed Illuminus.
“Where did you get that?” she asked when she saw the sword.
Chad grinned. “I made it,” he said.
Voxx glanced upward. “Ferristral! He is still—“
“I know,” Chad replied as the grumbles of Chariostes
proclaimed the elemental hero’s freedom. “The best I could do was cut off his
hand with the sword, but I couldn’t defeat him—not yet.”
The minions had recovered from Chad’s initial assault and
now swarmed over the group again. They chased them over the ramps and around
pillars, till the whole group was back on the roof again.
Ferristral laughed to see them. “Oh, little Maker!” he
taunted, “I knew you wouldn’t get far! You might have outsmarted me with the
sword—but what can one sword do against so many minions?”
Chad looked around at the six heroes, all the size of grown
men. They were still much smaller than Ferristral, but they were bigger than
their original sizes, and Chad was growing more assured that there was something
they could all do to bring down Ferristral together. They fought off the
minions steadily: Chariostes used the stones from the ruined parts of the
garage and harnessed the lightning to fry the minions so that they returned to
the inanimate lumps of clay they once were; Illuminus blasted them with lasers
from his hands; Tecchon had made himself a ballistic weapon out of
who-knows-what and blasted the minions away with it; Marquiam flew around,
giving aid to whoever needed it, and dragging away minions when the crowd grew
too thick.
“What did you have in mind for defeating Ferristral?”
Illuminus asked, coming up beside Chad in the middle of the fray.
“I don’t know,” the boy answered truthfully. “I haven’t
thought that far yet.”
“Well,” rumbled Tecchon as he blasted away another knot of
minions, “there is that severed hand over there. You are the Maker; why don’t
you make something that will help us be able to attack Ferristral all at once,
instead of singly?”
Chad swung his sword and one large minion became three small
ones. “Are you sure? There’s just so many to fight—“
“Go on,” Illuminus blasted a minion about to latch itself
onto Chad. “We have this fight under control. We’ll protect you, Chad.”
Chad nodded and handed his sword to Voxx. He made his way
over to Ferristral’s former hand, and grabbed a lump of it to test its
[usability]. Sure enough, he had enough clay there to make anything he wanted,
but what did he want? Chad began forming the clay into a vehicle of some sort.
It started out vaguely boat-shaped, with a small roof over the top. Chad added
struts on the bottom, and the thick blades of a propeller at the top. The
moment he finished, the body of the machine hardened into a shell, and the
propeller blades began spinning. Chad had made a helicopter, and it was large
enough to accommodate at least four passengers. Chad looked around as Tecchon
ran up to see the finished product.
“Well done, boy!” the builder-bot clapped him on the back,
laughing to see such a marvelous invention. Eagerly, he climbed in, and began
working the controls Chad had made.
“Voxx!” Chad hollered, and the pink-suited hero vaulted over
the heads of the minions to reach his side. “Come with us!”
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