#3.33
TDBB: Golem Toph 3.33
The smell of roasting fat did more to restore Toph Beifong’s sanity than the fresh, uncorrupted forest air ever could.
They had pushed deep into the healthy thicket, putting a massive ridge of solid stone between themselves and the toxic perimeter of Solomon Grundy’s territory. Once Toph’s bare feet confirmed that the bedrock beneath them was clean, thick, and perfectly responsive, she had immediately dropped two heavy stone walls to create a secure, three-sided trench. Harley had vanished into the brush with her mallet and returned fifteen minutes later dragging a massive, plump wild boar by its hind legs. It hadn't been touched by the Rot; its muscles were tight, its hide was clean, and it didn't smell like a garbage dump in mid-summer.
Now, a massive fire crackled in the center of the trench. Toph had constructed a crude but highly functional spit out of solid iron ore pulled from the stone walls, and a massive chunk of pork was sizzling over the hot coals. The fat dripped down into the flames, creating a sequence of loud pops and filling the small camp with a thick, sweet aroma.
"Mine," Toph stated, leaning over the flames with a heavy stone knife she had molded from the floor. Her sightless white eyes were locked onto the meat as if she could see the juices running down the crisping skin. "I caught the signal first. My ears tracked the fat content from fifty yards away."
"Excuse me, Miss Greed-is-Good, but who did the heavy lifting?" Harley huffed, waving a long, pointed stick with a smaller chunk of meat skewered on the end. Her face was mostly clean now, though a few smudge marks of black muck still decorated her jawline. "I dragged that big piggy through the thorn bushes while you were still complaining about your toes feeling mushy! I deserve at least sixty percent of the crackling!"
"You get the tail," Toph snorted. She lunged forward with her stone knife, slicing a massive, steaming slab off the side of the roast. She didn't even wait for it to cool, shoving the entire piece into her mouth and chewing aggressively. "Oh, man. That's the stuff. Real meat. No mold. No cosmic lectures."
Harley reached out with her skewer, trying to snag a loose piece near the top of the spit, but Toph didn't even look up. With a subtle flick of her heel against the dirt, a tiny pillar of stone shot up directly beneath Harley’s wrist, knocking her arm upward and sending the skewer flying into the dark.
"Hey! Foul! Referee, she's using illegal geology!" Harley yelled, turning to Ivy for support.
Ivy was sitting cross-legged on a thick cushion of woven ferns she had coaxed out of the soil. She was sipping hot water from a hollowed-out wooden bowl she had shaped from a fallen branch, a quiet, amused smile playing on her lips as she watched the two bicker. The vibrant olive color had fully returned to her skin, and her green eyes looked bright and sharp under the firelight.
"Fight your own battles, Harley," Ivy chuckled, taking another slow sip. "But Toph, if you eat the entire flank before the fat renders down, you're going to give yourself a stomach ache that even earthbending won't fix."
"Worth it," Toph mumbled through a mouthful of pork.
Harley pouted dramatically, but she wasn't easily deterred. She dropped to her stomach, crawling underneath Toph’s blind spot -- or what she thought was a blind spot -- and managed to tear off a large rib piece with her bare hands before rolling away like a professional acrobat. Toph let out a warning grunt but didn't pursue her, too busy hacking off another massive portion for herself.
For the next half hour, the only sounds in the trench were the crackling of the logs, the sizzling of the pork, and the aggressive chewing of three very exhausted women.
Once the meal was thoroughly demolished, the exhaustion hit them like a physical wall. The sheer adrenaline of the escape had faded, leaving their muscles heavy and their minds dull.
Toph didn't say a word. She simply stamped her foot hard against the trench floor. The earth opened up, forming a hollow, coffin-sized stone box that rose three feet above the dirt. She climbed inside, and with a lazy wave of her wrist, a thick slab of solid granite slid across the top, sealing her completely inside her own private, soundproof bunker.
Harley blinked at the solid stone box. "Well, that's one way to handle room service." She trotted over, tapping the granite with the heel of her boot. "Hey! Tophy! Is there room for two in the rock hotel? I don't snore, I swear!"
A muffled, vibrating voice echoed from inside the stone. "Go away. If you touch this rock again, I’m launching you into the canopy."
Harley pouted, turning back toward the fire. Ivy had already busy herself creating her own sleeping quarters. With a slow, rhythmic weaving motion of her fingers, thick briars and soft ivy vines began to sprout from the base of a tree, twisting together to form a elevated, secure green fortress that looked like a large hammock enclosed by dense leaves.
"You're welcome to the lower boughs, Harley," Ivy said, her voice dropping into a sleepy murmur as she pulled herself up into the green enclosure. "The thorns are set to ignore our perimeter, but don't wander off into the dark. The woods are still listening."
"Sounds cozy, Red!" Harley cheered. She unslung her mallet, propping it against the tree trunk, and scrambled up into the lower weave of leaves, curling herself into a small ball as the fatigue finally took the wheel.
The rest of the night passed in a deep, silent void, the fire slowly dying down to a bed of glowing red embers.
BOOM!
The entire trench violently shuddered. A sharp, localized earthquake ripped through the clearing, splitting the dirt down the center and sending a shower of loose pebbles flying into the air.
Ivy was awake before the first pebble hit the ground. Years of living in the wild had trained her reflexes to respond to the slightest shift in the environment. She dropped seamlessly from her green fortress, her boots landing lightly on a bed of ferns that sprouted instantly to cushion her fall. Her eyes immediately snapped toward the center of the camp.
Toph’s stone bunker had completely shattered from the inside out, granite fragments scattered across the dirt. Toph was standing in the middle of the ruins, her face twisted into a snarl of pure irritation. Her hair was a messy, tangled bird’s nest, and she was breathing heavily through her nose.
"Stop screaming at my feet!" Toph yelled into the empty air, her voice cracking with fury as she slammed her heel down again, causing another micro-tremor to ripple through the clearing.
Harley wasn't quite as elegant as Ivy. The initial tremor had tossed her completely out of her vine hammock. She hit the dirt face-first, tumbled backward over a log, and lay sprawled out in the bush, her left leg hooked over a branch.
Yet, despite the sudden, violent awakening, chaos didn't seem to register in her brain the way it did for normal people. Her eyes remained half-closed, a lazy, lucid giggle escaping her lips as she mumbled into the leaves. "Oh, stop that, Mr. J... giggle... the kids are watching... the clown suits aren't dry-cleaned yet..."
Toph marched over to the bush, her feet stomping against the rocks. She reached down, grabbed Harley by the ankle, and gave her a violent shake. "Wake up, dummy! The whole woods are buzzing and it's making my brain itch!"
Harley blinked dully, her pigtails trailing through the dirt as she looked up at Toph’s disgruntled face. "Morning, sunshine. Did you dream about a giant rock again?"
Toph growled and dropped Harley’s leg. "What's wrong with her?"
Ivy walked over, her expression combination of concern and deep amusement as she looked down at the acrobat. "Harley lives in her own world, Toph. Her defense mechanisms against trauma usually involve a lot of colorful distractions. But more importantly..." Ivy fixed her gaze on the earthbender’s tense posture. "Bad dream?"
Toph scowled, crossing her arms tightly and looking away. Her bare feet shifted restlessly against the dirt. "I don't dream." She stamped her foot. "Which way to this swamp avatar person? The sooner we find him, the sooner I can get even with the zombie and continue with my mission."
"The Swamp Thing is everywhere," Ivy explained calmly, walking toward the edge of their trench and looking out into the misty morning forest. "Anywhere there is green, anywhere there is root and leaf, he is present. We don't need to find a specific cave or house. We just need to grab his attention."
Toph grumped, trailing behind her like a moody child. "Great. Another chore. Do I have to dig a giant hole or something? Because I'm not doing it until I get some breakfast."
"Chores can be fun," Ivy teased, a sharp, green light flaring in her eyes as she turned back to face her. "Tell me... how many more golems do you think you can create?"
Toph stopped, her sightless eyes tilting upward. "What do you mean?"
"You can mold the earth into any shape you want, correct? The stone, the iron, the deep clay," Ivy said, her voice rising with an intense, calculated energy. "If you build the frame from the earth, I can channel the residual Green straight into its core. We can build a titan, Toph. And that is exactly how we summon the protector."
Before Toph could respond, Harley suddenly snapped out of her lucid daze. She sat straight up in the bush, her eyes wide as a lightbulb went off in her head. "Oh! Oh! Like what Grundy’s doing with his zombie animals!"
Toph and Ivy both turned to look at her.
"Think about it!" Harley cheered, scrambling out of the brush and gesturing frantically with her hands. "If we build a giant, super-duper, loud stone monster and start smashing things up, the big green plant-boss is gonna have to come down here to see who's making all the noise! It's like pulling the fire alarm at the bank so the cops show up!"
Harley paused, her brow furrowing as a sudden contradiction hit her train of thought. She tapped her chin with her finger, looking confused. "But wait... if Grundy is already making a huge mess with his zombie army, why isn't the plant-boss there already? Why is he letting the soup-pot boil?"
Toph looked at Ivy, crossing her arms. "Yeah. What she said. Why are we doing the work if the giant zombie is already acting like a public nuisance?"
Ivy’s expression sobered, her gaze turning toward the distant ridge where the Rot resided. "Because the Parliament of the Grey is clever. They're taking advantage of the static and interference caused by the Stone Parliament’s recent activity. The Green is currently under a heavy, localized attack, and the Swamp Thing’s consciousness is spread too thin. He doesn't know where to focus his energy. He's trying to fight the infection on a global scale, so he’s missing the specific root of the problem right here."
Ivy stepped closer to Toph, her voice dropping into a firm command. "That's why we will create a disturbance he cannot ignore. A massive, pure elemental construct that registers directly on his frequency. We will make enough noise to force him to focus his sight right on this valley."
A slow, dangerous grin began to break through Toph’s grumpy expression. She cracked her knuckles one by one, the sound sharp in the quiet morning air. "A massive disturbance, huh? You want noise, knuckle-head? You should have just said so from the start."
Toph took three large steps forward, moving past the trench line until she stood in a small clearing surrounded by ancient grey boulders. She dropped into a deep, incredibly wide horse-stance, her bare feet sinking an inch into the topsoil as she locked her consciousness onto the massive granite shelves buried beneath their feet.
"I’ll create the biggest, strongest golem this stupid world has ever seen," Toph roared. "I'll uproot the entire woods if I have to!"
With a violent, double-fisted upward thrust, the earth answered.
The clearing erupted. Four massive blocks of clean, solid grey granite tore through the topsoil, rising ten feet into the air. Toph didn't stop. She spun on her heel, her arms sweeping in wide, aggressive arcs as she began pulling more material from the deep bedrock -- slabs of heavy iron ore, dense blue clay, and jagged boulders of quartz.
She worked like a demon possessed, her movements fluid and brutal. She slammed her fists together, and the stone blocks fused with a loud CRUNCH. She threw her hands wide, and the iron ore melted across the surface like a protective skin, forming thick, overlapping chest plates and heavy shoulder guards.
"More!" Ivy called out. She stepped into the fray, her hands extending toward the base of the rising stone structure.
Thick, heavy roots from the surrounding hickory and oak trees began to answers her call, slithering across the dirt like giant pythons. They wrapped around the granite joints, weaving through the stone chest cavity to form a dense, flexible network of muscle fibers that could handle the immense weight of the rock. Ivy’s face paled slightly from the exertion, her forehead slick with sweat as she poured the last of her active Green energy straight into the center of the construct, creating a glowing, emerald core within the iron breastplate.
Harley stood at the edge of the clearing, her eyes wide with manic glee as she watched the construction. She jumped up and down, cheering like a spectator at a sports match. "Yeah! Make it bigger! Give it giant spikes on the elbows! Oh, oh! Give it a massive rock mallet! A super-sized one that can flatten a house! And make the head look like a giant smiley face!"
"Shut up, Circus, I'm working!" Toph yelled, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps as she forced a final, massive shelf of bedrock to rise up and form the golem’s solid, faceless head.
With a final, explosive stomp of both her feet, Toph brought her hands down, locking the entire structure into place.
The clearing fell completely silent save for the heavy panting of the two creators.
The final product was terrifying. The stone golem stood over thirty feet tall, a towering mountain of jagged grey granite, dark iron plating, and thick, pulsing green root-muscles. Its shoulders were as wide as a city bus, its arms ending in two massive, solid iron fists that looked capable of pulverizing a mountain side. Unlike the previous van-golem, which had been a crude piece of scrap metal, this construct was pure, raw elemental power -- a monument of earth and plant life combined.
Toph collapsed backward onto a rock, her arms trembling with exhaustion, her chest heaving as she wiped a thick layer of sweat and dirt from her brow. Next to her, Ivy dropped to one knee, her hand resting against the hickory tree for support, her breathing shallow but steady.
"Wow," Harley whispered, walking up to the base of the massive stone foot, looking tiny in comparison. "Now that is what I call a monster. Good job, girls! It’s beautiful!"
She didn't wait for permission. With the boundless energy of a child, Harley grabbed onto the thick vine-muscles trailing down the golem’s leg and began scrambling up its frame. She climbed past the iron kneecaps, pulled herself over the chest plates, and finally perched herself right on top of the massive, flat stone head, her legs dangling over the edge.
"Alright, Rocky!" Harley yelled, slamming her fist against the stone brow. "Wake up! Time to cause some terror! Let's start uprooting these trees and smashing some rocks! Go, go, go!"
The golem didn't move an inch. It stood completely frozen, a silent statue of stone and wood.
Harley pouted, leaning down to yell over the side. "Hey! It’s broken! The steering wheel isn't working!"
"It's... it's not a toy, Harley," Ivy panted from below, her voice weary as she tried to recover her strength. "It requires... a coordinated command. Give us... a second."
Toph let out a loud, aggressive spit into the dirt, her strength slowly returning as the deep granite beneath her seat fed energy back into her body. She stood up, her jaw setting in pure defiance. "Alright. Let's make some noise."
Together, Toph and Ivy raised their hands. Toph slammed her fist into her palm, while Ivy let out a sharp, resonant whistle.
The emerald core within the golem’s chest violently flared to life.
The massive stone titan shuddered. The gears of wood and stone within its joints ground together with a deafening, metallic screech that echoed across the entire valley. Slowly, terribly, the colossus raised its right arm, its massive iron fist drawing back before slamming straight down into the center of the clearing.
BOOM.
The impact was cataclysmic. A massive crater split the ground, sending a shockwave that tore through the trees for a quarter of a mile. The golem didn't stop; it stepped forward, its heavy stone boots crushing ancient trunks like matchsticks, its left hand reaching out to rip a massive oak straight out of the soil and tossing it aside like a weed.
"Woo-hoo!" Harley screamed from the head, gripping the stone brow like a rider on a mechanical bull as the giant rocked back and forth. "That's what I'm talking about! Smash it! Bash it! Break the whole playground!"
The golem advanced through the valley, leaving a wide, explicit trail of absolute environmental destruction in its wake. It was a localized disaster, a deliberate, screaming violation of the natural order designed to be felt by the spirit of the woods itself.
It didn't take long.
They had only cleared fifty yards of timber before the air in the valley suddenly went completely still. The wind died instantly. The loud grinding of the golem's stone joints seemed to grow muffled, as if the forest itself was absorbing the sound.
A thick, vibrant green mist began to boil rapidly out of the forest floor, rising from the grass, the moss, and the leaves in a massive, rolling wave. The grass didn't rot; it grew at a terrifying, supernatural speed, thick briars and massive vines erupting from the earth to wrap around the golem’s ankles, trying to anchor the colossus to the spot.
"He's here," Ivy whispered, her eyes wide as she felt the massive, overwhelming weight of the Green flood the valley.
From the center of the green mist, the forest floor itself seemed to rise. A gargantuan, humanoid shape began to materialize, constructed entirely of ancient, dark moss, twisting cypress roots, and heavy, compressed peat. It was massive -- easily matching the height of their stone titan -- but its movements were silent, fluid, and filled with a cold, absolute majesty.
The Swamp Thing had arrived.
"Oh," Toph swallowed, her shoulders relaxing as she felt the shape of it through the earth.
With a single, fluid stride, the elemental guardian stepped out of the mist directly in front of the stone golem. As the titan pulled its massive iron fist back to strike, the Swamp Thing’s arm shot outward like a striking tree trunk. His fingers, made of thick, interwoven cedar roots, clamped tightly around the golem’s granite wrist mid-swing.
The sheer force of the collision stopped the thirty-ton stone monster dead in its tracks.
High up on the golem's head, Harley Quinn’s manic cheering completely froze. She leaned forward, her jaw dropping open as she stared down at the massive, glowing red eyes burning within the mossy face of the green god below them.
"Holy guacamole," Harley whispered, a slow, completely terrified, yet utterly thrilled grin breaking across her face. "Now that is a big salad."
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