#3.30
TDBB: Golem Toph 3.30
Toph's palms slapped flat against the weeping, stagnant mire of the bog. The feedback hitting her brain was a chaotic, sickening blur.
She pushed her awareness down, drilling past the surface sludge, desperate for a solid anchor. Her seismic sense traveled an inch. A foot. Three feet. Nothing but soft, decomposing mush. Layers upon layers of waterlogged rot, choked by fuzzy networks of parasitic mold that seemed to actively eat the vibration of her pulse. It was a massive, pitch-black blind spot, reminiscent of the badger-mole caves before she the bending.
Toph was effectively, terrifyingly blind.
"Gross, gross, gross!" Harley Quinn screamed, her shoes splashing a frantic rhythm as she lunged through the dark, grabbing Toph by the collar of her metal chestpiece and hoisting her upright.
"Get up, Toph! The zombie petting zoo is closing in, and I don't think they're looking for treats!"
"Get your hands off me!" Toph snarled, shaking Harley loose. She wiped a streak of black sludge from her cheek, her sightless white eyes scanning the void. "I can't feel 'em, Circus! The ground is completely dead. It’s like standing on a pile of wet sponges!"
A few paces away, Poison Ivy dropped to one knee, her fingers digging deep into the muck. She let out a ragged, whistling breath, her shoulders shuddering under the weight of the ambient drainage. The air itself felt heavy, laced with a dull, numbing pressure that actively fought the natural rhythm of her lungs.
"The frequency..." Ivy rasped, her eyes wide, staring at the shifting wall of undead fauna. "The Green is completely silent here. The Rot has built a literal wall around this clearing. It’s a vacuum."
She gritted her teeth, a fierce, desperate light flaring in her green eyes as she forced herself back up to her full height. "But I am not letting a pile of compost dictate my terms."
With a sharp, whipping motion of her wrists, thick, heavily compressed emerald vines shot outward like striking vipers. They hissed through the damp air, crackling with the remaining juice she had left.
"We fight our way out," Ivy commanded, her voice dropping into that dangerous, low register that usually meant a botanical execution. "Now."
The circle of beasts was silent.
A massive, half-decomposed boar lunged from the dark, its yellowed tusks aimed straight for Ivy.
"Not on my watch, piglet!" Harley yelled.
With a wild, manic cackle, Harley launched herself through the air. She flipped cleanly over Ivy’s shoulder, her movements flawless. In mid-air, she unslung her massive, oversized wooden mallet from her back, catching the handle with both hands.
CRACK.
The mallet struck the boar’s skull with the force of a swinging wrecking ball. The rotting bone shattered instantly into pale splinters, and the beast’s head caved inward. The momentum carried the carcass down, plowing into the mud, but Harley didn't stay still. She used the recoil of the strike to pivot, planting the head of her mallet into the muck and vaulting over a pair of snarling, skeletal wolves that snapped at her heels.
"Ha-ha! Still got the moves!" Harley cheered, landing in a low crouch, her pigtails whipping around her face. "Come on, you furry leftovers! Who wants seconds?!"
Toph wasn't watching, but she heard the snap of the bone and the trajectory of Harley's leap. Her brain, hyper-trained to map the world through sound and the lingering memory of the layout before the lights went out, went to work. She couldn't see through the earth, but she remembered exactly where the van-golem had been pulverized. She remembered the weight of its metal plates, the location of the deep bedrock she had glimpsed before the rot swallowed her senses.
"You want a piece of the Blind Bandit?!" Toph roared, her stance locking into a deep, wide horse-stance despite the slippery muck. "You’re gonna have to dig for it!"
She reached deep -- past the three feet of putrid, decaying sludge, using sheer, unadulterated willpower to hook her spiritual fingers into the stubborn, ancient stone buried five feet beneath the rot.
With a sharp, violent upward rip of both her fists, the swamp gave way.
Three massive, jagged spires of clean, uncorrupted grey granite tore through the black sludge like breaking teeth. They erupted directly beneath a charging cluster of undead deer, launching the skeletal animals into the air and snapping their moldering limbs like dry twigs.
Without breaking her rhythm, Toph flicked her left wrist. A jagged sheet of torn metal -- the crumpled hood of their destroyed van-golem -- sliced through the mud, answering her call. She spun on her heel, sending the iron plate spinning through the air like a massive, razor-sharp buzzsaw. It sheared cleanly through the legs of a decaying black bear that had been rearing up behind Ivy, sending the massive torso crashing heavily into the swamp.
"Yeah! How's that for unseasoned?!" Toph shouted, a feral, triumphant grin breaking through the mud on her face.
"Don't get cocky, Toph!" Ivy shouted back.
Ivy was working overtime. Her emerald vines lashed out in a blurring cyclone of green, wrapping around the necks of three skeletal wolves at once. With a brutal twist of her torso, she snapped them together, the pure green energy in her vines causing the necrotic flesh of the beasts to blister and dissolve into ash upon contact.
But the strain was visible. Sweat beaded on Ivy’s forehead, and the vibrant green of her vines was visibly dulling with every strike, the parasitic air of the clearing eating away at her magic like acid.
And the worst part was the wall.
Every time Harley shattered a skull, every time Toph’s granite spires pulverized a torso, the pieces didn't stay down. The broken bones, the sloughed flesh, the weeping moss -- it all slithered across the mud like liquid mercury, reassembling, fusing, and knitting back together within seconds. The destroyed circle simply shifted and reformed, tighter and denser than before.
"Uh, guys?" Harley called out, her voice losing a bit of its manic cheer as she swung her mallet through the ribs of a skeletal stag, only for the bones to instantly reform around the wooden head of her weapon. "The buffet keeps refilling! And the big guy is moving!"
Through the thick, toxic curtain of mist, Solomon Grundy took a massive, heavy step forward.
His jaw had snapped back into place, and his muddy-olive eyes were fixed entirely on the three intruders. He didn't look angry. He looked absolute. Like a walking cliffside that had decided to slide into the valley.
"Solomon Grundy... born on a Monday..." he rumbled, his deep, robotic voice completely drowning out the wet sloshing of the beasts around them.
"Out of the way, big and ugly!" Toph yelled.
She stomped both feet, pulling the metal frame of the golem's engine block straight out of the muck and launching the chunk of solid iron directly at Grundy’s chest.
Grundy didn't even flinch. He simply raised one massive, pale-fleshed arm and swatted the engine block aside like an annoying insect. The iron dented against his forearm and flew into the trees, shattering a trunk. He didn't stop marching.
Ivy surged forward, sending her final two main vines shooting straight for his legs, wrapping around his ankles in an attempt to root him to the spot. "Toph, smash him now!" she cried.
Toph brought her hands down in a double-axe handle motion, dropping a five-ton boulder of buried granite straight onto Grundy’s head. The rock smashed against his skull with a deafening CRACK, splitting into a dozen fragments.
But Grundy didn't fall. He didn't even bend his knees.
The thick, black roots and calcified stone woven into his flesh simply absorbed the impact, glowing with that sickening olive light. With a casual, almost lazy flick of his legs, he snapped Ivy's vines like old threads. The magical backlash hit Ivy like a physical blow, sending her stumbling backward into the mud, gasping for air as the last of her uncorrupted energy was instantly siphoned into the swamp.
"It's... it's no use," Ivy whispered, her fingers sinking into the mire as she tried to find a spark, any spark of the Green. "The territory... we walked straight into the heart of his ritual. He’s completely indestructible here."
"I don't care how tough he is!" Toph yelled, her fists trembling as she tried to pull another rock spire from the deep bedrock. But her arms felt like lead. The numbing, cold rot of the surface was finally soaking through her bare sores, deadening her muscles, severing her tenuous connection to the clean stone below. "I'm not... I'm not stopping..."
Before she could finish the strike, Grundy closed the distance with terrifying, supernatural speed and reached out with his massive, shovel-like hands and scooped them up.
"Hey! Let go of the jacket, you oversized cabbage!" Harley shrieked as Grundy’s left hand clamped around her waist and Ivy’s shoulders at the same time, pinning them together like a pair of dolls.
His right hand descended upon Toph. She tried to metalbend the braces on his tattered suit sleeves, but the rot on his skin was too thick, dampening her vibrations before they could reach the iron.
The massive fingers closed around her torso, lifting her completely off the ground.
"Let me down, you giant pile of manure!" Toph screamed, kicking her legs wildly, her fists slamming uselessly against his rock-hard knuckles. "I'll turn you into gravel! I swear to gods I'll melt you down to a puddle!"
Grundy ignored the thrashing, holding them effortlessly against his massive, broad chest. The stench radiating from him was a suffocating, thick cloud of stagnant bog-water, dead leaves, and turning meat that made Harley’s eyes water instantly.
"Oh, great! Wonderful! We're the main course!" Harley yelled, her voice straining as she tried to wiggle her arms free. "He’s gonna eat us! I know it! He’s gonna pop us in his mouth like those little popcorn shrimps! Ivy, tell him I'm stringy! Tell him I'm mostly artificial sugars and bad decisions!"
Ivy let out a weak, breathy groan, her head resting against Harley’s shoulder as the cosmic drainage kept her pinned. "He’s... he’s not going to eat us, Harley..."
"He's not? Oh, thank god--"
"I don't think that's his taste," Ivy muttered, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at the churning, muddy-olive light burning in Grundy’s glare. She could feel the pulse of the swamp now, the true, dark intent radiating from the Parliament through the zombie’s flesh. "Look at the animals... look at the circle. He doesn't want food. He’s building an inner circle. He’s going to turn us into zombies."
Toph stopped kicking for a fraction of a second, her face contorting into an expression of disgust. "Zombies? Like... rotting? No way. No way! My skin is pristine, you big ugly freak! I am the greatest earthbender in the world, I am not turning into a moldy potato!" She began to thrash even harder, trying to bite his thumb, but it was like chewing on solid oak. "Ivy, do something! Plant a tree in his ear!"
"I can't..." Ivy whispered, her eyes closing. "The Green is... gone."
But right next to her, Harley’s panicked expression suddenly stuttered. Her wide, terrified eyes blinked once. Twice. Then, a slow, completely inappropriate, hysterical grin began to spread across her face. Her voice completely shifted from frantic terror into a bizarre, high-pitched eagerness.
"Wait... zombies?" Harley giggled, her shoulders twitching. "Like... dead-dead? No rules, no skin-care routines, no paying taxes? Just wandering around the woods, looking spooky, and doing choreography like in that one music video?"
She looked up at Grundy, her eyes sparkling with a manic, terrifyingly genuine curiosity. "Hey, Grundy-bear! Do we get to pick our own outfits, or do we have to wear the tattered rags? Because I have a look that would kill in the undead community! Literally!"
"Shut up Circus!" Toph yelled, her voice cracking with pure frustration. "Don't encourage the monster! He's trying to rot us!"
"I'm just saying, Tophy, look at the bright side! No more road trips in a cramped van!" Harley cackled, her laugh echoing off the twisted trees.
Grundy didn't answer Harley's fashion queries. Instead, he bind them with black roots that wrapped around their bodies, binding Toph's arms tightly to her sides and pinning Harley and Ivy together in an unbreakable, heavy cocoon of calcified stone and necrotic vine. The rot within the roots began to hum, a cold, numbing sensation that began to slowly crawl up their limbs, creeping toward their chests to dull their heartbeats.
With his prize secured against his torso, Solomon Grundy turned his back on the pulverized remains of the van-golem. The wall of undead beasts silently parted, creating a path through the weeping fog as the titan began his slow, lumbering march deeper into the dark, uncharted heart of the swamp.
As his massive boots sloshed through the black mud, his hollow, robotic voice picked up the rhythm of the nursery rhyme once more, his deep chant echoing through the dead forest like a funeral knell:
"Solomon Grundy... born on a Monday... choked on the vine on a Tuesday... rotted away on a Wednesday... buried in mold on a Thursday... grew a new bone on a Friday... woke up the dead on a Saturday..."
He paused, the muddy-olive light in his eyes flaring with a dark, triumphant purpose as the roots tightened around them, sealing their fate in the dark.
"...And that is the curse of Solomon Grundy."
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