Never had the ruins of Pelum been so peaceful and plentiful. Never had the scarred menilis living in it felt so hopeful.
How could anything go any better?!
First a human had come into their ruins and she knew too well that the trove of mana he brought would not last, but while it lasted it felt maddeningly good. She could have got used to it! She didn't want to get used to it!
She stopped her rush through the bone dens to look at the fighting pit where two beasts were savaging each other under the crowd's howls and screams.
Black blood spilled all the way to those monstrous faces that jeered.
And as the fight wound down, the greyhound crushed and broken apart on the ground, another waited impatiently to enter.
It was stopped kept at bay by two orcs whose chains covered their arms and neck. Offenders of the peace, forced to enforce it now.
Chains!
Second was the human's gift, a new art to control monsters. For her lair that forbid killing, this was a punition and a way to get guards for enforcement all at once!
The menilis was extatic! Better yet, the cat-rat thought, those chains used the monster's own potency. No matter how weak the offender got, they would survive even when mana receded!
They greyhound's shard broke between his foe's fangs and the crowd went into a frenzy. Red gems exchanged all around as new bets arose.
But she had departed again, because good news only kept coming!
And she reached the large carcass of an ancient flying fish that monsters were restoring. It would not fly but if it could swim in the ground they would have a new, better habitat.
Here was the human, wearing his feral cape and heavy mane as well as a cracked cheetah mask.
"Nzinga! Nzinga!" She came to him with pride.
"Yo! Chipie! What gives, I thought you were going to visit the suburbs?"
She vaguely understood what he meant by that but shook her head and approached, all excited. Her scarred body was breathing hard from the rush.
"Nzinga! Kaele is back!"
And that, to her, was the best news of all.
She had feared the worst when the human had said the clay golem had stayed on a wrecked ship, but of course she trusted that he would come back! And he had! And he was there looking for the human!
The only part she didn't get was why he wanted for the human to come to him, out in the wild instead of coming here himself.
Beasts around her wondered who that Kaele was but returned to their work, cleaning the bones and filling the holes with paste. The human whistled and caressed his mask.
"You hear that Muasin?"
His own chained pet, a six meters long snake looking famished, slithered up his leg, to his back and emerged from the cape onto his arm where it coiled and hissed. It wanted to bite his wrist so bad but the golden chains on its body would not permit it.
"You're impatient to see him too, he? Well let's not make him wait any longer!"
And so the human departed immediately.
There was little to distinguish the monsters' lair, the Shards, from the rest of Pelum. Just ragged bones from ancient beasts, ribs buried in soil and sand that, at their contact, turned to a kind of meaty cement. Just massive algae that struggled to float up.
Monsters harvested those algae for shards. Chained guards to escort them. And beyond were new settlements, because the Shards were expanding into the entire ruins.
But there was a space peace had not yet conquered. A hill formed from an ancient whale whose skeleton had endured the drought. And as he approached the human saw the void armor, coated in silver, sit at its highest point.
The armor stood up. It had a badger helm. He casually approached it.
"Kaele! How long as it been, days? How time flies!"
A polearm melted into shape at the armor's hand, to be pointed at his face.
"How time does, master." The indifferent voice of the golem filtered, somehow weaker than he remembered. "How have you been doing? How many monsters have you helped?"
The human had removed his cape to climb the slope, between the exposed ribs. He took off his mask next, revealing a bright smile.
"Not quite enough! And you? What's your kill count? Any dungeon you razed recently?"
"I'll need quite a few to catch up."
"Want to add Earth to the list?"
The whole hill collapsed under our first attacks.
I was going to kill him! No point in holding back, all in! Swinging at him and as he dodged tracing with the curved blade a first spell, runes on the iron plates casting the second while my chant hummed a third, and merge!
Fragments of stars plunged on the elemental snake he had conjured against me, torn and shredded before it had had time to fight.
A flurry of fists sent shockwaves crash around me! And as his second invocation fell on me he himself had to dodge earthwork spikes that trailed him, caught up and burst. Enough! I dodged his cross and let three new spells flare while on the ground earthworks cast the fourth. And merge.
The whole area turned to lava.
And now my own fire golem met the third elemental snake he was throwing at me. Because the second was already breaking down in pieces.
"Go to hell!" I yelled and plunged after him.
He had fallen into the lava, which for him was still but only a slight inconvenience. His tattoos glowed on the dark skin, protecting him well enough but not from the polearm that nearly pierced him through and through.
I blocked his jab, and the other, swung and ripped his shoulder. Too wide! His kick met my own raised leg and we locked for a second before the human pushed back and swam up.
He emerged just as our elemental destroyed each other, got welcomed by their rain of aetheral debris that he blocked with a mere barrier.
His feet held on the lava, forming dry platforms on it.
I burst after him, stopped mid-air to fall with a vengeance. Counter! He had met me with equal force, turned the attack against me. Counter-counter! Yeah two could play that game!
At that moment the chained snake could have leapt on me. But she only squirmed and hissed.
My armor took the brunt of it. I let half get blasted away, held him back with the other half while he himself endured the multiple wounds on his body. Just a few seconds and I would be back to pristine condition.
He saw behind the cuirass my fractured chest.
"Can't you see the humans caused everything?!" He screamed at me.
We were exchanging blows while he spoke, so much that his voice was almost muffled. Above us two new elementals were devouring each other.
"The only way to help the realm is to get rid of the bastards who ruined it in the first place!"
"And you think I will let you commit a mass murder of this scale?!"
He was getting the better of the exchange. Most of the mana I used was coming from him in the first place and I could not replace my armor plates fast enough to sustain his hits.
But he was feeling it as well! The exposed skin cut deep by my spell-enhanced polearm and the strain of lava and elementals were pushing him to the brink.
If it was mutually assured destruction he wanted, I was his golem!
Cast! The whole lava pool froze at once, forming seven magic squares in as many layers that all flared under his feet. He looked at me with wide eyes, realizing I was more than fine with being a collateral damage.
Death.
A cute name for a void ray that struck us both, annihilating everything that touched it. He wanted to escape but the very potency to jump away was being devoured by that attack.
It finally occurred to him that he could lose. Suddenly I didn't face the human anymore but some instinct in him that fought to survive.
The death ray broke off and dispersed under his burst.
I barely blocked his summoned sword that burned bright against the iron of my polearm.
"You are not even trying to save anything! You looked everywhere for the mana drain but Earth!"
"Killing humans won't end the mana drain!"
"You don't know that!"
His power proved overwhelming. Two more blows and I was sent flying, crashing down on the scorched ground only to have him fall on me and barely miss.
My flurry of spells only sought to keep him at bay while I recovered my armor. But he would not give me that.
"Frankly I don't give a damn!" The human still yelled. "I just hate ivory towers! And hell, Earth is nothing worth saving anyway!"
"What about your own family!?"
"My mother! Paid a doc' to have her daughter killed! Because she wanted to keep the house!"
His sword lunged and melted half of my helmet. I snatched it off before it got worse and barely blocked his new attack. Ground cracked under my feet.
Hard for me to even focus on his words because I was falling into pieces here!
And my own chest was burning mad, a pain that was at the same time so much less than my routine and far worse. This fight was unsustainable for that fragile beating construct. When it shattered, I would revert into a broken, helpless golem.
But for now, I could still fight!
I pierced his flank, got hit full force by his fist, parried his sword and struck again, four magic squares along the pole of Adhipatya. The polearm nearly tore him apart.
Next his burning blade had cut my arm and I already knew it was over.
A flurry of hits punctured my body, hardly blocked no matter my efforts. But I had cast mirror and he got bloodied in turn, forcing him back while the spell waned.
"What happened to the hero, Kaele?! Where is the savior of the realm!"
"For the humans! We save the realm for the humans!"
His sword tore me apart, but the soft clay reformed just enough to keep me from being sliced in half. I stumbled, reeling from the hit.
My chest was about to explode.
I caught his sword with both hands, watched the clay melt at its contact. It was already searing into my badger mask.
Then, he let go. I fell on my knees, out of strength, barely able to maintain my balance. The human's legs in front of my face.
"Nice necklace you have, by the way!"
His words made me want to clutch the beads, but I had no more hands to do so. My broken arms could only flail.
He crouched and pulled my head up, right in front of his smiling face.
"I guess you won't mind if I take it!"
"Don't!"
Why? The necklace devoured everything it touched. If the human tried, it would seal his fate. Yet that very idea revulsed me. Somehow, even after trying to kill him...
He put his hand on it and nothing happened.
He snatched it off my neck, played with it on his hand and then took off the amber pendant to replace it with his new prize.
"So? Impressed? You wonder how I did it, right?"
Not really. The monster shard in my chest was turning to ash. The only thought running in my golem mind was that everything was fine.
My guess was, just how his tattoos learned from how others fought, he had learned how I could somehow wear it in the first place. So, nothing impressive. Just a slight spell adjustment.
Because, at the very end, I had only been that.
A golem carrying a necklace.
His sword rose at the back of my neck, above my stone tablet and it was fine. Everything was.
Fine.