Demon World Boba Shop: A Cozy Fantasy Novel

“That’s reassuring,” Arthur said. And it was, in a way. It wasn’t the everything-will-be-all-right-starting-exactly-now statement Arthur wanted, but it was also not the situation where they were constantly rebuilding everything, time after time. As much as Arthur loved this place, it was hard to imagine living in it if every few months a wave of terrors came along and ripped everything down. The impermanence might have been something he’d get used to eventually, but it wasn’t something he thought he could live with forever. “Thanks for that.”

“You feel better then? Good. Because we are going to need a speech tonight,” Onna said.

“Specifically from me?” Arthur asked.

“Who else? Milo will talk about metal the whole time. Rhodia doesn’t like speaking on stage, Mizu flat out won’t, and I’ll just be mean.”

“Skal could do it.”

“He could, but he won’t. Doesn’t want to tip his hand on whatever he really is.”

Arthur huffed. She wasn’t wrong, which was the worst kind of right.

“All right. But we are keeping it short. And someone else needs to get the word out.”

“I’ll put Spiky and Leena on it, right after they squeeze information from Corbin.”

“Got it. I’ll start thinking about what to say.”

—

Tea was now a welcome distraction. After months and months of work building up the town and getting it read for attack, Arthur now had to get in front of everyone he knew and tell them real danger was on the way. As various people who were especially close to him came in to say hello, he thought about telling them in advance, but decided that one more day of peace wasn’t a small gift in the grand scheme of things. He’d hold off as long as he could.

During one of the lulls in the customer flow, he took a break and headed down to the docks by the beach. They had gotten much bigger in the past few weeks, growing visibly even in just the few days he was gone. They were now lined with dozens of rowboats, with more on the beach itself. If the time came that they needed them, every person in town had a seat on one of these boats, clearly marked with bright red paint for efficiency. Arthur didn’t doubt that every single demon in Coldbrook had already memorized where they were supposed to sit, probably in a thoughtful moment just like he was having now.

He imagined them all out on the water, rowing away from the wreckage of their town. They’d be safe, sure, but not a person among them would be happy. Milo and Corbin would probably pretend and tons of others would put on a strong face. But they’d all be watching their homes burn. That wasn’t a good thing no matter how much Arthur tried to think of good reasons.

“You look down, kid.” Skal looked up from his fish-roasting fire, examined Arthur’s face, then brought him a fish on a stick. He almost had to have a skill for just that kind of cooking, Arthur reflected. Nobody could make fish smell that good. “Here. Eat. Tell an old man why your world is ending.”

Arthur did. Skal had been through a lot in his life, so Arthur didn’t worry about bringing him down. He just dumped everything on the old dude. At some point, Arthur realized he had been talking for the better part of ten minutes, going in circles repeatedly as he stomped over each and every worry again and again.

“Sorry, Skal. I guess I said that already,” Arthur said.

“Once or twice.” Skal smiled from his fire. “Feel better now?”

“A little. But I really don’t know what to do about it. Everyone is working as hard as they can. We have as many resources as we are going to get. I’m making as much tea as I can, as little as that will help. What’s left?” Arthur looked at the old man hopefully. “What am I missing that I can do?”

The old man gave a half-smile in the direction of the burning coals of his fire.

“Nothin’,” Skal said.

“Nothing? Really?” Arthur asked.

“Really and actually, young man. You’ve done more than anyone thought you could just by bringing that foundry girl back. You make tea, son. Did you really think you could carry this whole thing on your back?”

“There has to be something else.”

The old man grabbed his fire-stirring stick in his gnarled hand and jabbed it generally in Arthur’s direction, complete with an accusatory manner mixed in there somewhere.

“Would you say Milo isn’t doing enough? Lily? Mizu?”

“No.” Arthur was almost angry at the suggestion. “They are working their hands raw.”

“All they are doing is class things. Maybe a bit extra here and there, but what they are good at. You are doing twice that, and every day one of those kids comes down and tries to get advice from me on how to calm down hyperactive offworlders. Like I’d know.”

“You don’t?”

“I’m old, Arthur. Not all-knowing. But I’ll tell you that you running out of things to do isn’t a bad thing. You have to get ready for what’s coming. If that means a day or two of not moving mountains, then some mountains just need to go unmoved.”

Arthur accepted what Skal was saying, at least temporarily. He wished he had a way to accept it permanently. It would take a pretty big lets-have-a-serious-talk-with-Arthur load off his friend’s backs if he could.

“So what do I do?”

“Can’t tell you that. I can tell you what I’m gonna do, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m gonna see what happens. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta sit back and see if all your preparations were enough. That’s you too, now, probably. You gotta trust your friends have done everything they can, and that the warriors will fight, and that you’ve got a way out if things go bad. And that people will come back to you, even when things are hard.”

—

“Thanks for coming out, everyone.”

Arthur looked out over the whole town, sharply aware that they had already figured out what this meeting was about. To the extent anyone was waiting to hear the topic of the meeting, it was for confirmation, not to get new information.

“I know you’ve probably already guessed this, but the monster wave is coming. Starting tomorrow morning, we have two, maybe three days before they get here. As you know, I don’t like doing the whole speech thing. Onna is making me, so I can’t avoid it.”

Arthur was gratified that even with the heaviness of the situation, the picture of Onna browbeating him into public speaking was enough for a small laugh.

“I wanted to start out not by telling you a lot of things you already know, but by asking questions.” Arthur pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket and pretended to reference it. “Did anybody here not do their best? I mean, was anyone being lazy or not working their jobs? Raise your hand if that’s you.”

No hands went up. The majority of the audience looked confused at the suggestion.

“Good. Does anyone have any good ideas they haven’t started to get into motion? Defenses they could build but aren’t trying to make, and that sort of thing?”

Zero hands rose.

“Good. And one last one. Is anyone done trying? I mean that. Is anyone giving up on their jobs and or planning on not doing every single thing they can before the wave hits? Nobody? Good.”

Arthur sat down heavily in a chair someone had dragged up beforehand for him.

“Look, guys. I know the answer to all of that without asking, but I wanted to ask to make something clear. I was talking to Skal today, and he was telling me that I had already done everything I could do, besides just doing my job and waiting to see if it’s enough. I think there are some big changes we can get into play in the next few days, and we’re all going to work hard doing them. But he’s right. At some point, we have to trust that everything we’ve done is enough.”

“Is it?” A paper-maker in the back yelled up. He was a pretty new arrival to the town, someone Arthur knew but didn’t know well. “Enough, I mean. I’m a stationer. There’s only so much I can do myself.”

“Honestly? No idea.” Arthur rubbed his temples. “I want to think that it is, but it’s unpredictable. And after I talked to Skal, I spent some more time thinking about that. The part where it’s unpredictable. And the only thing I know is that if the monsters do get through and ruin everything, if they break everything we’ve built, I’m coming back. I can promise you that much. I’ll be the first one back, breaking up Slapstone and building my house and garden again. I’ll be here, day one.”

“Me too.” Lily stood up. “If it comes down to it, I’m coming back with Arthur.”

“You know I’m coming back,” Milo said. “I can reforge whatever needs reforged. It’s easier to work from scrap than ore.”

Mizu moved to Arthur’s side, put her hand on his shoulder, and nodded. One by one, the rest of the council confirmed they had no plans to abandon this place. And then, in a confused jumble, the crowd did too. Arthur could see it wasn’t all of them, but it was the vast majority. They were almost all committed to this place, even if the situation changed to one where most of the parts that made it a physical location were torn down.

“That’s all I have for you tonight. We are going to talk about plans for a bit now, but enjoy the food and get ready for work tomorrow. It’s going to be a busy couple of days. We’ll do all we can and then see what happens. To try our best. That’s all anyone can ask for.”

After a short cheer for Arthur, the town got down to business. Milo and Puka were still hard at work with traps, and some of the miners and stampers had been requisitioned to help them with something called the ramps. Mizu had the water supplies about as secure as she could get them, and was in the process of installing some iron plates Milo had poured for her that might keep the monsters from ruining the most important of her runes.

Every crafter in town had some crazy idea they were going to try, something that might either make a wall hold up a bit longer or clear out some portion of the monster wave. Not everything would work, of course, but it was all worth a try and no danger to attempt. The only people who would be seeing a real, physical risks to their persons were the hunters and dungeon fighters, who were all going on a trip starting early the next morning.

“So you trim off the wave ahead of time? It’s hard to believe that could work. There’s so many of them.”

“It’s not about numbers.” Onna shook her head. “It’s about composition. We will work around the edges of the wave, where it’s thin, trying to take out flyers and diggers. If we can get a fair amount of those, it makes everything we do easier.”

“It doesn’t sound safe.”

“It’s not safe,” Corbin said. “It’s a thing we have to be really, really careful with. It doesn’t mean it’s the most dangerous thing ever either. We’ve picked up a lot of levels. That’s one of the reasons we hunted for you and the rest of the town before. It was to make sure we could run if we needed to. Everyone’s fast enough. Trust us.”

And he would. The town would be mostly without defense for the next couple of days, besides a few hunters who would stay to bulk up the town’s meat supply. And, now that he thought about it, the Pratas.

“Has anyone seen Daisy lately? Or Rumble?” Arthur looked out over the crowd. “I haven’t. Do we know where they are?”

“No,” Lith said. “Ever since the last day Rumble went with us to a dungeon, we haven’t seen them. But that happens. Sometimes beasts hole up when danger is on the way. Or when they hit certain points in their development. Rumble ate a lot of monsters that last run. It could really be either.”