Framework of the Frontier, Sain Artwell [read me a book .TXT] 📗

adventuring business involves more plant picking than I’d have imagined,” Will said, as he crouched by the bush.

“Preserves become expensive this far out on the Frontier. I have about eleven pounds of zea flour and four and a half pounds of smoked grassmaw left.”

Will had a thoughtful look as he held a nut in his hand. “Right. No supermarkets or local farms. Makes sense. What does the map-stone say?”

“It says it’s amazing! Look, look here. It even shows which streets have been blocked by debris or disaster.” Ember tried to match the flickering swirls with the alleys around them. “We can take that one on the right, then turn left and follow it up hill, and then…”

The monolith glitched. Patterns flickered before becoming visible again, but kept on glitching. The disturbance originated from a single spot on the map.

“Uh-oh. I don’t think this is merely the magical circuitry aging. Something is interfering with the map.”

Lights flickered again. It was moving and it was close.

Ember turned to look at a dark alley between three storey high ruins. She saw a shelled badger sprint out and disappear through a hole in the wall. Something disturbed the canopy around the corner.

“Hide!” Ember whisper-shouted, gesturing wildly towards the danger alley. Will gave her a dumbfounded look. She continued, “Thing coming, big arcane signal disrupting something possibly scary.”

He shoved his nuts in the bag and stepped off the road, following her into an alcove behind a statue rendered featureless by a burkha of moss.

Heavy featureless round feet lumbered into view from behind the corner. On them stood an equally nondescript ten feet tall humanoid-ish body of smooth polished granite rock. A single crack ran down from the top of its spherical head down to its waist and in it grew a tiny pine-tree. Its pink glowing eye moved in the stone-head as if it were liquid as the golem scanned its surroundings. It blinked and the telltale pattern of Sorcerer’s Eye appeared inside the crystal sphere.

Ember pressed her back tight against the wall, hoping it had not seen them. Will kept testing his luck, peeking.

“Get back. It’s dangerous,” she hissed.

Reluctantly, he inched back a little, but kept on spying on it. “That’s a golem right?”

“It is a golem.”

“Neat.”

“Not ‘neat’,” she protested, trying to tug the dumb human back into hiding.

“Very neat. It’s what I need to find, or could be it.” Will, despite Ember’s best efforts, continued spying on the golem. “Look, there’s another one. Sweet. This must be the right place.”

“Two? What could they be doing?” Now she was curious.

Rare few scholars have had the privilege of observing feral Iram-made golem behaviour out in nature. She inched closer to the edge for a greedy peep.

“Eye fucking each other,” Will observed flatly.

The golems stared at each other with their pink eyeballs touching. After casting the Sorcerer’s Eye, Ember could see a thick near-invisible line of highly condensed magical energy flowing into the ‘little tree’-golem from its moss and mushroom covered brother. It could have been an energy transfer or perhaps some kind of secret golem language — the magic was far too intricate and condensed for her to parse raw magical energy from the arcane patterns surrounding it.

“They are talking, sort of, I think.” Ember felt a little useless for her lack of expertise on the subject.

Will’s voice gained a tinge of worry. “Are they sentient?”

“No, not exactly.” Ember took another good look to confirm that they were in fact ‘simple golems’. They were.

She wondered how to best explain the concept of arcane scripts to Will. Planet Earth sounded like a backwards realm in terms of magical advancement, so it might be difficult for him to understand how advanced automagic worked. Moreover, Ember didn’t want to make it sound like she thought he was somehow stupid. That wasn’t the case. It was simply a disadvantage of his upbringing. “Do you have puppies in your realm?”

His brows rose in confusion. “Yes.”

“Think of golems as soulless puppies on an arcane leash. They know a few tricks and can be given orders, but they’re not smart and do not feel pain.”

“So basically robots? Alright. Makes me feel slightly less guilty. How do I destroy them?”

Robots? Ah, nevermind. I’ll ask him later.

“Hmm.” Ember took another look at them. “I think those two move with some form of rock moulding magic, which means they could be capable of limited shape-shifting. However, it does not look like they can mend their own wounds, given how one is infected by a plant. If you detach the core from the rest of the body, it might grow small legs and continue to run about, but it won’t be as dangerous anymore.”

“How about I crack the core?” he suggested.

“The core is their toughest point. Who would place magic in an easy to destroy vessel?”

“Yeah, good point.”

The golems detached from the eye-to-eye kiss, turned around, and began lumbering in opposite directions. Ember and Will held still until the constructs were nearly out of sight, both heading in different directions. Will started to tail the mossy one. “Come, I have a feeling this one is heading home.”

They remained at a safe distance. Ember was more than a little curious at Will’s fascination with them. Rather than academically intrigued, he seemed driven, as if on a mission. Perhaps Letter King’s mission was finding a golem forge? That would certainly be worth twelve stamps or more.

“It’s stopped.” Will whispered.

From behind a fallen pillar, they watched the golem’s eye flicker as it faced a decrepit wall of sun bleached stone. A shimmering tremble ran across the wall. The visage of a ruined building shattered in illusory shards, revealing a square gateway built of dark leafy stone.

Ember hurried to activate Sorcerer’s Eye as the golem entered, in time to see a veritable carnival