The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Six: Eddelin City]

Any number of devices could have stepped out of the scrap pile. Arkal had already seen Klaus' skill at work, his sheer imagination. There was no way to predict what he would make next.

But had Arkal made the effort, he would not have guessed that the toymaker's next creation would have been a mass of metal in the shape of a little old man with a walking stick.

"TRAITOR", the metal Klaus said, waving its stick in as menacing a way as it could. "TRAITOR!"

It was pathetic to see. The old fool wanted his humanity so desperately that he had created a mockery of it. Arkal sighed, and raised his hammer. There was little to do but put the poor thing out of its misery.

Yet before he could, the Klausbot had rushed behind him and whacked him in the knees with its stick.

"Damn, that thing moves fast!" Arkal said. "Men, seize it!"

The toy soldiers were confused at first, but ultimately they decided that it was easiest to follow an order, any order. They marched towards the Klausbot in formation.

But as each one drew near, the toymaker ripped it apart in seconds, the clockwerk ticking with every blow.

"Fall back!" Arkal shouted. But it was too late - in moments, the army was disassembled, and the metal Klaus' stick was now an enormous drill created from the remnants of its enemies.

"TRAITOR," it said, turning back to Arkal.

"Don't you know any other words?" Arkal asked, just as he put the finishing touches on a catapult and loaded a model mountain. He launched it straight at the mechanical toymaker - only to have its drill smash through the piece and craft a statue of a man on a horse.

Arkal suspected that the real Klaus was within the machine, directing its actions - but the machine could craft faster than a man, and the clockwerk granted it even more advantage.

Meanwhile, Kracht was watching nervously from behind the fallen moonrock. He wanted to lend his aid, but he also knew well what that drill could do to him.

On the other hand, as he saw the Klausbot advance on the old smith, it struck him that the machine could probably do even worse things to Arkal.

But much to his surprise, the drill stopped an inch short of Arkal, seemingly stopped by nothing at all.

Indeed, Arkal chuckled a little as he watched the machine fail to drill through the shield of Stuff. Klaus couldn't tell the Stuff was there, leaving his machine completely unable to craft with it.

But that still left the problem of actually smashing the thing. Arkal had to hold the shield steady with both hands to keep it working, which left him unable to grab one of his Stuff weapons to deal the final blow.

Kracht granted him that chance. The green man had no more idea than the Klausbot of Stuff's existence, but he could tell that Arkal was playing defense. Kracht tore a chunk off the moon and flung it at the machine, and it began to turn around.

Arkal saw his chance. He let go of the shield, and pulled out a club of Stuff. With a swift blow, he struck the Klausbot in the head, crushing it under the immense weight he couldn't feel.

The robot dropped its drill, and its hands frantically moved towards its head, rebuilding it. Arkal crushed it again, giving Kracht time to march over and pick up the drill-cane. He turned the device on its master, tearing the Klausbot into bits, aided by Arkal refashioning key components into a halberd.

As the mechanical Klaus fell to bits on the ground, however, one thing became clear - the real Klaus was nowhere inside.

His whereabouts became much clearer as the ground beneath them began to shake, clearer still as the stars in the sky above seemed to become brighter.

The workshop had taken flight.

---

Muninn remembered dying.

He remembered the pain of being crushed by Cedric's hand, of the fire that engulfed him, of being discarded and, ironically, forgotten.

For the first time in his short period of corporeality, the raven's only memories were his own. And they were, by and large, unpleasant.

To Hector, he had been nothing more than a container, a tool at best. And to Jen, he had primarily been a nuisance, a reminder of everything she wanted to forget.

Now he was just a dead raven. He might have enjoyed the freedom if he were still alive and mobile.

Instead, he could do nothing but remember. He couldn't even observe events as they happened, only find himself with a memory after the fact.

He could remember the explosion, remember plummeting through the sky, remember being swallowed by an enormous purple whale.

The last thing he would remember was King Hector's voice.

"Oh shit. Can we fix this?"

---

"I believe it would be better to delay debate on this matter until we the throne room, sire," Huginn said. "Although it does appear that the enemy's numbers are thinning."

"Throne room," Hector repeated. "That's... which way is that from the throat? I used to know this."

"Up," Emma sighed. "Your throne is on the brains. You told me that two minutes ago."

"Sorry, my memory's a little fried right now," Hector said, pointing to the saliva-covered bird in his hand. "I'll need you and Huginn to do the thinking until I can, uh, what were we talking about again?"

Emma said nothing. She merely kicked the nearest soldier down the throat, and as it rolled down the sloped pathway it knocked over its allies, creating a heap at the bottom.

Hector coughed.

Emma cast a time distortion on the heap of soldiers, and their efforts to pick themselves up slowed to a crawl.

"That should buy us time," she said, grabbing Hector by the arm. "Hopefully enough to make you functional again."

By the time they reached the base of the skull, Hector was having trouble remembering his own name. By the time they were in the throne room itself, he had forgotten how to string syllables together.

"Guh... duh? Buh," Hector said, waving vaguely at the whale's smaller brain. Emma carried him over to the throne, where he sat down and placed Muninn in his lap.

Huginn looked over the burned body of his brother sadly.

"We must halt the decline in Muninn's condition," he said.

"Uh," Hector probably agreed.

"I thought he was already dead."

"Dead, but not powerless. If we could prevent him from further decay, we might have a chance to stabilize Hector's memory with minimal damage."

Emma touched Muninn's body lightly. Her parents - her real parents - would have scolded her for touching a dead animal, didn't she know they were filthy and diseased and what was that beautiful light wait was the bird moving?

It was. Muninn groaned, and so did Hector as he started to gradually recall that particular combinations of sounds could form meaningful linguistic concepts, also known as "words".

"Ma-ma," Hector muttered. "Hec-tor." He looked down at his surroundings. "Buh-rain? Guh-ross."

"I should probably get back in there, shouldn't I," the newly-arisen Muninn said. "Get him back up to speed faster."

"That is highly advisable, yes," Huginn said. "I will join you shortly after. He will need his full mental capacity soon."

Muninn limped his way up to Hector's shoulder, walked towards his head, and vanished.

"We're, under attack," he muttered. "Thanks... Emma? Em-ma. Emma."

A few moments of analysis later, Huginn concluded it was safe to return, and Hector began to feel smarter.

Smart enough to realize what the sharp sensation of pain near his heart meant when everything started to shake.

"Fuck! Something's hit the whale!"

---

There was a barrier around the outer edges of the Place, a barrier that crossed the borders of its universe.

The Amalgam, always taking the long view while also being highly impatient, was not deterred by the barrier. It simply flung fragments into it constantly; the barrier would then change them into petunias or goats or other such hideous nonhumans, and the Amalgam would restore them to their proper human glory before throwing them at the barrier again.

Even so, the barrier hardly weakened. This was because it was powered by King Hector of the Place, and he had a telepathic whale palace to use as a conduit between himself and the Place. When the barrier started to fall, Hector could strengthen it with a thought, no matter where he was. And so the barrier held firm, despite the constant assault.

Or rather, it held firm until the sharp prow of Klaus' newly-launched workship struck the whale in the heart.

At that moment, the Amalgam hurled its fragments at the barrier once more. As before, many were transformed into nonhumans.

But this time, the barrier buckled. And a few fragments, a fraction of a percentage, made it through unchanged.

And a fraction of a percentage of trillions of fragments was still enough for a sizable invasion force.