The meadow was dying. Where fields of flowers bloomed only brown grass remained, filling the air with their decay. Mud was drying in the ponds. Trees blackened.
In the morning the morning had dragged far longer and the spell that had kept peace in this small land broke all at once. Pacified beasts turned back to monsters in minutes. The coy hamlet woke up to roars and shrieks.
From her stranded ship the human came out in a hurry and watched her kingdom fall.
She herself was getting weaker still. Her once tanned skin turned pale, her brown hair tainted by grey strands. It wasn't age but the strain on her body.
The vertigo that made her stagger came from the loss. Still, the woman faced it all and approached the ship's edge.
"Careful." I warned.
I caught her between my clay arms. Before us the first fights had broken out. Beasts that once played together now returned to their true nature and tore into their flesh. With mana waning, they used no spell. Only their strength.
More monsters approached from the rest of the meadow. The savage, the castaway, those that once longed for this place now joined the fray.
"Kaele, where is Daichi?" She trembled. "Where is Kinako, where is Sora?"
Monsters were monsters. Little distinguished them in traits. Yet I still released one arm to point toward a hanging bridge in the trees where a surrounded menilis was fighting for its life.
"That's Kinako."
Nothing distinguished that lengthy cat-rat from the others, but for the way it fought. Claws slashed to snatch its heart, maws furious for its neck, beasts on it pressing so hard that they met each other and forgot it about it, enraged. Letting it escape.
It wasn't fighting so much as it was trying to get away and above all, it wasn't trying to harm.
Impossibly, there were monsters that even after reverting to killers still clung to their enslaved days. As if the spell that controlled them still lingered, still clutched their pride.
But the beast was outnumbered on a narrow path and could only do so much. A tail pierced its leg and rather than be torn apart it chose to leap out and fall. The human watched it tumble like a rock. She screamed his name. She stretched her arm to catch it, to cast a spell.
There was no strength left for any of that.
A greyhound snatched the body before it met the ground. Then it let it escape and turned to met more assailants. The meniles, rather than flee, chose to join it in the fight. Then another. A small group in the chaos yelped for each other.
The human wanted to jump and join them. I held her back, forced her to stay on the ship. Monsters approached the Parao all the same, from both hulls and toward the ramp. I had to protect her and her only means of escape.
"Let me go, they need me!" She childishly struggled.
They first rocky lizard to climb the side and reach the deck was met with a stone spear that cracked its metal skull. It fell back and the other beasts retreated. Retreated? They fought each other as much as they wanted to assail us.
Down in the hamlet the small group of beasts was joined three others that escaped from the large dying trunks. The magnal among them was the only one not wounded. It carried a sky lynx on its back.
They kept retreating, then turned and all rushed toward the Parao.
I had no choice but to let go of the human and meet a red beak, crush that hungry crow with a punch and send it crashing away from the deck.
She had taken that opportunity to jump. When I turned back she had already faltered in the mud below. I leaped after her.
She was hurt!
Heal! Mana was scarce but I could still afford that and I could not afford to lose her. She pushed me back and stumbled back up, trudged in the mud toward the group of monsters.
"Kinako! Sora! Hikari!" She called.
"Yuitsu!" The closest answered and threw itself in her arms. "What are you doing here, you need to flee!"
"Let's all leave together!" The woman answered.
"No."
That was the sky lynx. It pushed itself off the back of the creature that had carried it and, once on the ground, found the strength to stand. Its maw offered a devilish grin that contradicted its calm voice.
"You go. We will fight for the oasis."
"Sora!" The magnal behind it shot with fear more than anger.
A monster didn't really know fear. That reaction was more akin to hesitation, to uncertainty. When instinct failed.
"We fight! This is our nature! The realm be damned, I will fight!" And it limped toward the human.
As it did, monsters kept coming, most busy in melees all around, a few trickling to the line of beasts that defended her. The group was fighting with rage, pushing them back, but no heart for murder. Not yet, rather.
It was coming back to them. As pain and blood filled their head, it was creeping back.
The sky lynx put its head against the woman's chest.
"Leave, Yuitsu. You have to live."
"The oasis is also my home." She protested while hugging the beast. "You all gave me so much happiness, and I was so selfish! I made you suffer so much..."
"You toyed with us and I hate you for that!" The lynx roared, its eyes shut. "I hate you for that! But you gave us more than happiness! You gave me hope! And I don't care if it's false, it's hope! I will take a false hope over nothing!"
She had started to cry. It was shaking in her arms.
"False hope will keep me going! False hope is more than I ever got! So go and live for us! Pretend to be out there and I'll pretend you will come back, and when we meet the oasis will be there for you! I will fight for you!"
She was trying to smile through the tears. "Make soulmate happen."
"Idiot." The beast stammered. "You greedy idiot."
I was about to snatch her back from her silly dreams. She got up first. She wanted to go hug the other beasts but the fights were getting too close and the group too pressed for that.
So she turned around and ran.
We got back on the ship. The legged rapt on it was scurrying from new invaders that I punched to submission until the clay plates on my body cracked. The human reached the bridge, held the wheels and opened all sails.
After a long slumber, the Parao broke free from the mud, slid out of that trench and crashed into the hill's grove. Those blackened trees could not resist that charge. We were unstoppable.
She steered the vessels through the dying hills and withering fields. Her eyes still filled with tears but she stayed firm until the last of that grass had turned to sand and the sand quickly to rock.
We sailed past the broken, decaying monoliths that had guarded the meadow this whole time.
After that, I carried her to her bed. The cabin was still as pristine as on her first day. Her body almost disappeared in the pillows.
"What do I do now..." The human wondered aloud. "What will you do, Kaele?"
I held her hand between my artificially warm ones.
"You still have a few days left. You can still enjoy your time. Don't worry about anything and take some rest."
"Rest. I feel like I have rested for a lifetime." She offered a meek smile. "I don't feel tired, just..."
She held back her tears once more.
The monster was looking from the bedsite. That rapt, on its cute little legs, struggled to climb on the bedsheets and went to lay its round head on her belly.
"Nobody pets Caline anymore." It muttered. "That's why everyone is sad."
I was a bit tense at that presence. A rapt's survival strategy was to use others, but it could still fight. Its mandibles could still hurt and the human was weakened.
Yet I chose to let them rest together for a while.
I brought dinner. I brought supper. The human could not get up anymore. When she tried, her whole body ached. So the rapt would tell her tall tales in its ever energetic voice, and make her cringe or laugh.
Outside the desert stretched in the infinite. Quite literally. Magic decided the time and distance. Without a direction, there was no telling if the Parao was not simply running in circles.
But the sails held, still glimmering despite the dusk. I checked the oil tanks in the hulls, then worked near the keels since nothing stopped the dust from eroding the ship's sides anymore.
At her bedside again, the human held my arm to keep me from leaving.
"You are always so busy." She smiled. She was so weak now. "Why don't you stay?"
"I am here, Yuitsu. I'm not going anywhere."
My voice was almost paternal, which amused her.
"Eh, Kaele. Let's go home. I think I'm ready to go home."
I knew what she meant. I didn't know what she meant. It could not be the human refuge, that land of exile they called Earth. It could not be the oasis. By now, even if we turned back, there would be no oasis left to greet us.
So, as the obedient golem I was, I accepted her instructions.
"Alright. I will take you home."
There was one more thing to keep me busy onboard. The armor. All the pieces held on three racks and I would take time on the lower deck to reforge each one. By now I had barely finished the second plate of an arm.
Between two hammering, I would hold my necklace. I would hold it long enough to pray in the only way golem knew, which was silence.
But we had a new bearing. And the fluffy monster was all excited to know where that was. It pestered me on the wheels, rubbed my leg with its tiny forelegs.
"Is it a place with sand? And glass? Does it have smelters and furnaces? Oh, it needs to have blue candles that burn that bright!"
We were going home.
When I came back to the bedroom, behind the wooden door the human had lain on her pillows, looking at the vast porthole through which nothing but the desert flowed.
I put the tray on the side and approached her. She did not look at me. I could hear her say:
"I'm happy..."
That wasn't her voice. She was using her thoughts to talk. Her sunken face barely blinked anymore.
I put my hand on her forehead. She felt it. She turned her eyes. Then turned them back to the window.
"Yuitsu..." I whispered.
"What's going on?" The legged rapt had followed me, as usual. "She is a bit scary."
Still, the monster approached and tried to climb the bed. I stopped it. It protested. I still pushed it back.
"Go check the oil tanks." I ordered it. "Check each one and tell me how much remains."
It got sad, but relented. By now few tanks even had oil anymore. Not that it mattered. Burning oil could only preserve a paltry amount of mana.
When it came back into the room, it asked: "Where is the human?" And it came to rub my leg: "She is not there, where is the human? We need to find her!"
I turned my badger mask on it, said nothing and got up. That made it even more panicked. It pursued me out into the hallway, then the lounge, then the deck. The dusk outside was eternal.
"It's like big brother..." That rapt wondered. "I don't understand! I don't!"
"We are going home." I let out.
I felt like going home. Yes. Home was waiting for me.