Welcome to my realm. It was dead and hopeless. A miserable, merciless place that deserved its fate. And I deserved to be in it.
I was that clay golem emerging from the desert. Not a sandy, bright and smooth one. Grey and black rocks in eternal dusk. I was that misshapen golem, an ant-like laborer that had disloged its arms and straightened its back to please no one.
I was that wreck struggling to walk, my plates cracked and calcified, the clay underneath turned rigid. One arm torn by claws.
And I had a necklace on my neck. With two beads attached.
Before me lay the ruins of Shiranu. Tall white towers turned pale in the endless dusk, broken, hanging. Mansions, parks and palaces on flat hills with terraces on which a whithering jungle receded. Remains of bridges here and there, where vines turned to rock.
Moist rubbles in the valleys inbetween, walls and stones of housing, roads, wells from a time long past.
Monsters fought over the remains. Monsters tore each other to retain the waning mana.
They paid no attention to me.
I, personally, had stopped mid-street before one of the rare walls still high enough to be called that. Facing that flat surface. I picked a rock. I would write, it was a thing clay golems did apparently.
Magic is drained by an order every three days. If true, the realm would have vanished decades ago. What is K?
Yes, me. What was I even writing about.
What causes it? I think humans knew and that's why they left. Because it's not fixable. I think humans never existed and this was how the realm has always been. It's natural state. I think K divided by the realm is how low mana can go, and it's under the threshold a human needs.
That's why humans won't come back. They will never come back. They must not come back.
Humans were masters of the realm. They crafted me. They would come back and reclaim what's theirs. They would conquer, they would rebuild, they would rule unchallenged.
Once even a single human returned, the realm would be saved.
Meniles were feeding on a fallen wilhorn. The cat-rat creatures rose at my approach, hissed then kept absorbing that elephant's mana. They hadn't killed it. It had fallen by itself, under its own wounds and strength.
A couple caparaces hung on the side of terraces, camouflaged.
And further inward was the hill where the giant mushroom had receded. Its white, stringy stems still reached into the valley, touched the adjacent cliffs but no further. It too was struggling.
I walked up the stair, the three hundred steps to what remained of a garden. The fountains only offered a trickle of muddy water. Wild grass choking on the dying ground. The fungus' spores weighed all around, in the garden and the mansion.
The Amber pavilion.
I looked up, at the weakened mushroom and its faltering oyster caps still attached to the towers, the stems like muscles twitching to hold on. Then I entered the pristine building.
This was where I had been built. The mansion I had served my whole life. It was intact, rich and glorious. Brightful walls and colored tapestries, wooden doors and golden frames. It was still being renovated.
A painting, all finished, was waiting in the great hall to be framed and put on the wall. Four meters on three, of the human family that lived there.
The mushroom finally talked.
"Where is the human..." It asked.
"Not here."
"I need mana..." The parasite wasn't listening. Its low, raspy voice only trailed at the end. "I need a human..."
"There is no human!" I shouted with an energy I could not feel in me. "They are all gone! You are going to whither and die! Now leave this place, go cower back in your den, there is nothing for you here!"
An ant defying a giant.
"I promised..." It kept going, still deaf to my words. "I will guard the house..."
There was no point in talking with that wretch. There was no point in talking. There was no point.
I held my necklace in my fist, rose it to my chin and prayed. If only a human came back, if only that was possible, then... Then I had to prepare for that impossibility.
Down and into the mansion's cellar. Even with a closed door, the parasite's spores had reached even here. A circular room in relative darkness. Its wall bare, covered with illegible writing.
Two circles on the ground, made of a mad mix of alloys. The smaller one, for the caster; the central one, for something else.
Those circles were casting the faint glow that pushed back the obscurity.
I would not touch those circles. I would not approach them. The moment I saw they had magic, the moment I realized they could work I turned around and left, came back up and shut the door behind me. This room had to be sealed.
But first, I had to prepare. Just in case a human came.
Upstairs and to a bedroom, the only one with bedding. To the wardrobe to take some dresses, to rip the thread off and start sewing. It needed to be strong. It needed to be as close to the skin as possible. I would make a tunic to seal magic.
It had been hours and I was not halfway through when the parasite chimed in again.
"Golem... A monster is approaching..." I kept at my task, unbothered. "It is powerful... If it comes here... I cannot fight this..."
Then die! Then leave! Leave me alone! I could not care less whether the city burned and me with it, I had a tunic to sew.
Would a human were such simple garnments? I looked at the tunic, I looked at the seals and admitted it was ugly. Humans resented the ugliness. I had to make it look appealing.
Then, the pants. Outside the monsters kept fighting and with the mana the mansion still contained, I could perceive them. But I didn't need to. Even as they attacked, even as they besieged this place, only fearing the mushroom's enslaving spores, I looked away.
Those rumors stopped. The monsters were in flight.
"Golem..." The parasite's voice came back. "It is a monster I had never seen... It is terrifying... Only a human can stand to it..."
"Get lost already! Can't you see I'm busy?!"
Busy sewing clothes for no one, but that miserable parasite went silent again.
I had not finished my work, I would need to rework some parts but left it all for a more important duty. Sealing the human? Yes, but I had thought too small. I would seal the entire mansion.
Why didn't I think of it before? If I cut off the pavilion from the rest of the realm, not only would my masters be safe but no monster could get them! No monster would even notice their presence!
Sealing wards had been the solution all along! A way for the strong to weaken themselves and endure the drain, to deny the curse and thrive! And none had tried it! Those fools! It would protect the mansion and my masters would not have to leave... they would not have to leave...
And when I would be done, I would need ornaments for myself! A new mask. A badger mask. Nice and pleasing. And my masters would praise me for my looks.
"Golem..." Fear in the parasite's voice.
I had my two hands on the wall, still trying to figure out the right pattern to choke this entire place and starve it of the outside.
"Will you never shut up?! Let death come, I welcome it!"
"I cannot stay... You need to flee..."
"I am not going anywhere! Why would you even care, you don't! All you know is betrayal and fear! Let go of your prize and scram!"
"If that monster comes... You too will die..." It was talking in vain. "If that monster comes... your masters' mansion will be destroyed..."
Those words hit.
I let go of my task. Walked outside, into the garden, to see the realm almost warped ahead, in the valley. Where that monster approached, the air and ground bent for it. No way there was enough magic anywhere for a creature to have such an effect.
Yes, that creature was coming here, going straight for the mansion, for this hill. Its paw emerged, bone claws bathed in a fiendish blue fire that tore and moved it. The skeletic body of a wyvern dragged iself in the warped valley.
I was facing it from the edge. I had nothing to stop it. I would try.
I could not even tell what insane magic that monster was made of. Not even the orcs' dying lights had this uncanny, almost forbidden feel.
But the creature had stopped. Its massive ribs filled half of the space between the hills. Its tail still lingered at the end, hidden partly.
It had seen me. With its two empty orbits, it was looking at me. Then, it exhaled. Then, it rose. It slowly rose from the valley, straightened itself and its neck emerged above the hills. Its heavy head the size of a house.
Finally, having sit in front of me it opened its only wing, brought it before its skull and spoke.
A mocking, refined voice that echoed in nothingness.
"Welcome, my dear friend. Welcome! Rest assured, I did not intend to intrude on your hunting ground. I had mistakenly believed a human still lived! How could I have possibly conceived of this delicious scheme that is surely your doing?"
Sorry, what?
"Ah! Silence. Very well, and befitting such a remarkable assassin. No need for words, we think alike you and me. The realm yearns for the fall of humanity! You did more by killing one than this paltry, waning reward could make you think. I will not let the drake's gift deprive us of you. Yes... When another wretched soul enters your domain, you are sure to snuff it!"
Was that thing not finished?! I was tense, still expecting a fight. Paralyzed by its presence as much as by its words.
"The day will come when you will open to me. Until then, let us work together for the humans' demise. Let us snatch them from their haven and devour them to the last! Goodbye, dear friend! Stay well."
With that, the gigantic creature tried to get up. Its back legs rose, struggled against an invisible ceiling. The skull, the spine, shoulders and ribs, all cracked and started to crumble.
The realm warping madly around it.
Bones crashing to the ground, bursting into dust. The air got filled with that plume but for a few seconds before settling down. It seemed for a moment that the valley had been turned into a void, annihilated, before coming back before my golem eyes.
Everywhere the dust had touched, mana was gone. no grass, no life, not even the ruins of houses or mold. I was facing a patch of desert in the middle of the city.
I fell to my knees.
I had clothes to finish, a mansion to seal, a mask to forge. I had plans to make and answers to find and could not move at all. A statue facing death valley.
The white, fibrous stems of that insufferable parasite approached my body. It was dropping the pretense now. This was how it fed. This was how it survived.
They crept up to my legs, up to the hips.
"Golem..." The mushroom called.
I was shaking.
"You brought a human here..." It was almost whispering.
Its stems spread up, along my malformed back, up to the shoulders. I touched my shoulders and held there, stopped there. It had a firm hold on me.
I could not care less.
"You brought a human here..." It repeated. "You can bring another..."
"Bring another human... golem... bring another..."