Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 5938: A Mighty Hoe! II

The shockwave reached the prisoners a moment later and threw them all backward in their chains, and Octavius felt his ribs crack against the bindings.

When he could see again, THE Farmer was already among the other Ancients, and the region around him was fighting with him. He hooked the blade of the hoe over a chain forged from a compressed Dimension and yanked, and as he pulled, the sea wall behind the Ancient on the other end of it rolled forward and slammed into the Ancient’s back, so that the Ancient came flying into the haft of the hoe, which THE Farmer drove into his face with a sound that cracked the sky!

CRACK!

He drove another Ancient straight down with a downward stroke of the blade, through the sky, through the clouds, and into the bed of the empty sea, and the seabed opened to meet him, the ground itself pulling him in, so that the impact split it across the width of a Dimension and blue water exploded upward around the crater in a wall!

A spear of white-gold Immensity came at THE Farmer from behind, and one of the three rivers of his farm rose up out of the ground and swallowed it before it reached him, while he spun and swept the hoe through two more Ancients at once. Every time the blade struck, the currents of infinity struck with it, and every collision sent a ring of white force rolling out across the Carcosa, flattening the snow, shattering the clouds, and pressing the prisoners flat against their chains, and none of the thunder of it ever stopped.

...!

Orren’s Wall came down. The whole reinforced Observable Existence burning with Half-Unfathomable Immensity fell out of the sky toward the farm with the stone titan pushing it from behind, and THE Farmer did not move out of its way. He planted his boots on the overturned air above his field, held the hoe crossways above his head in both hands, and caught it on the haft.

The impact drove him down through the sky toward his own farm, his boots tearing a long furrow through the air beneath him, his whole body shaking.

Octavius saw the muscles of his arms stand out against the sleeves of his plain work shirt, saw his teeth bared and his face red with effort!

Meanwhile the falling stars packed inside Orren’s wall burned against the handle of the hoe. For a terrible moment the wall pushed him down and down, until his boots were barely a hand’s width above the black-gold soil and the small blue-gold sapling.

Then THE Farmer roared, and the thin film of light over his skin blazed, and the whole region answered him. The soil under his boots surged upward to brace him, the rivers rose and pressed their weight against the underside of the wall, the walls of the sea leaned in from both sides to push, and every current of infinity in the Carcosa poured itself into his arms at once. Lifted on the hoe of one man in a straw hat and on all of the existence around him, the Observable Existence stopped falling and started rising, back up through the clouds and the snow, until he turned the blade upward and drove it through the floor of Orren’s wall, and the whole thing split apart along the cut and came crashing down in two halves, each one as wide as a Dimension, shattering against the sea on either side with a sound that went on for a very long time.

HUUM!

Orren Mourncrest was already flying at him. He came with both fists burning, pouring every last scrap of his Narrative into his body, a stone titan behind him swinging its own enormous fists in time with his, and THE Farmer met him in the middle of the sky with the hoe.

Fist and blade hit at the same moment, and the force of it blew a hole in the space so large that Octavius could see the dark of existence through it, and both of them were thrown backward across a Dimension of sky before they caught themselves.

They came together again, and again, too fast to see, each meeting a new crack of thunder and a new ring of fire tearing outward across the Carcosa. Orren fought alone with his titan, while THE Farmer fought with everything around him, the currents of infinity throwing their weight behind every swing, the sea rising to knock Orren off balance, and the snow itself turning hard and sharp against Orren’s face. Octavius watched THE Farmer take a blow to the face that would have ended an Ancient Immensity, his head snapping sideways and his hat flying off into the snow, and watched him turn back, spit blood, and bring the haft of the hoe around into Orren’s chest so hard that the stone titan behind him cracked from head to foot!

Oh!

THE Farmer hooked the blade behind Orren’s neck before he could fall away, flew straight down with him, and slammed him into the turned soil of the sky, and the ground rose to meet Orren as hard as THE Farmer drove him into it, so that the impact pushed a crater wide into the furrow.

Then he brought the hoe down three times, short and terrible, and with each stroke the whole region pressed down with him, until the titan behind Orren came apart into dust and Orren went still in the bottom of the crater with his arms flung out and light leaking from him everywhere. THE Farmer stood up over him, breathing hard, and looked up.

...!

Saelith’s road had already reached him. Her whole Observable Existence of hearths and roads bent toward him and pulled, and the lantern crane above her spread its wings to carry him away, and for a moment THE Farmer swayed on his feet, his eyes going far away.

Then he looked at Saelith and said something too quiet for Octavius to hear, and out of the dark shadows behind him came a single shape, a small stone house on a cliff above a grey sea, with a light in one window.

Saelith saw it and screamd, because it was the home she had dreamed of and never found, and it was standing in his field. Her Observable Existence of hearths drew itself in toward the stone house and went into it, every road and every window, until nothing was left of it at all!

Her lantern fell from her hand, the crane above her came apart into sparks, and she hung in the sky with both hands pressed over her mouth, staring at the house.

That left Corvin Astrael, and Corvin had been feeding his Narrative the whole time, burning his own Immensity into the Dimension in his palm until space bent toward it from every side. The white archer behind him drew the great bow all the way back, and Corvin roared with blood running from his eyes and released it, and it did not miss, because it could not!

The whole compressed Dimension struck THE Farmer full in the chest and threw him backward across the sky, through one wall of the sea and out the other side, and for an instant the farm below dimmed.

Octavius thought it was over. Then the sea wall burst outward, and THE Farmer came back through it with the star still burning in his chest, and as he flew he let it go, letting it pass through him and down into the farm, where the black-gold soil drank it in, Wheel and star and all. He did not slow down, and every current of infinity in the Carcosa came with him, so that he crossed the sky in the time it took Corvin to understand what had happened and drove the hoe into Corvin Astrael’s chest with his whole body and the whole region behind it, and the force of it carried both of them on across the sky until Corvin’s back hit the broken side of a Dimension and the Dimension split behind him.

OOOOH!

Corvin’s scream filled the whole of the Carcosa. THE Farmer did not pull the hoe back out!

He turned and dove straight down toward his farm, dragging the screaming Half-Unfathomable behind him by the blade buried in his chest, and they hit the ground beside the small blue-gold sapling so hard that the whole mile of black-gold soil jumped, and THE Farmer set his boot on Corvin’s shoulder and drove the hoe down into the earth, and the soil opened under Corvin Astrael and closed over him.

Corvin was still screaming when the ground covered his face, and Octavius could still hear him screaming under the soil afterward, muffled and terrible, while the hoe, still buried in the earth, began to work.

Octavius felt it through the infinity in the ground, the hoe breaking Corvin Astrael down slowly and steadily, his Immensity, his Narrative, his Dimension of a single star, and his dream of standing at the Shepherd’s right hand, all of it turned and turned again into the soil. Then the sapling’s roots rose up out of the ground and went down into it, blue-gold and glass, wrapping around the place where Corvin lay and tightening around his Narrative and his Immensity until the muffled screaming stopped and the black-gold soil settled flat and still.

"...!"

The snow kept falling, and a small green shoot pushed up out of the ground where Corvin Astrael had been buried.

...!

THE Farmer stood beside the sapling for a long moment with his chest rising and falling, blood drying on his knuckles and on his lip, his work shirt torn open at one shoulder and smoking where the star had gone through it.

Then he pulled his hoe out of the soil, knocked the dirt off its blade against the heel of his boot, and walked a few steps to where his straw hat had landed in the snow, and he picked it up, brushed it off, and put it back on.

He looked up at the sky, where the last Ancients and the two broken Half-Unfathomables hung frozen above a Carcosa cracked and burning for a Dimension in every direction.

"It is a shame," he said, and his calm voice carried across the whole sky, "that one of the first things to happen on my farm is violence. But in for a penny, in for a pound."

He rested the hoe on his shoulder again and looked at the rest of them, one at a time. "Come on, now. Give it all you’ve got."

...!

Nobody in the sky answered him. Octavius hung in his chains with every one of the prisoners beside him, bruised and half-deafened and staring at the man in the straw hat, and the same question was going through every one of their minds about who in existence this could possibly be.

He had to be a hidden Unfathomable Immensity, Octavius told himself, because nothing else made sense, and he had simply hidden all of his power so well that no one could feel it, while the snow fell on the farm and the green shoot grew a little taller over Corvin Astrael’s grave, and the infinity in his own body went on quietly shaking, because it did not believe him at all!