Enforcement and Reasoning

A tense silence spread in the air, as unprompted anger grew and Wanderer’s mind went into overload trying to think of a way of causing the people to back off.

After a moment, the whole group began to slowly shuffle forward, with their leader taking greater strides forward.

In a last ditch effort, Wanderer threw all their hands up in surrender, hoping that would reduce their agressor’s anger.

Much to their surprise, the group took almost a collective step back in shock.

The Vessel was equally shocked at the reaction, taking a good moment before they realised what had happened.

Every person in the crowd had their eyes trained on Wanderer’s lower right hand, the hand in which the flare-bow was firmly grasped.

Curious, the Golem lowered their hands and pointed the bow directly into the crowd, causing many to reel back, a few to duck and the young boy to cry.

Wanderer immediately lowered it, but found that much of the collective anger in the group had left, replaced with a mutual gaze of fear.

They didn't know what to think of that, on one hand, this was an exhibition of non-violent intimidation and it wasn't like they had any intention to hurt any of these people.

Surely, they could use this to escape without pursuit.

But on the other hand, wasn't fear just another type of pain that Wanderer was inflicting, should they really be defaulting to causing children to cry whenever they are confronted?

So the Vessel took the flare-bow and instead of guaranteeing their safety, they instead placed it on the floor.

They had expected someone to immediately scramble and take the tool, yet none came, so they decided to try and use the shock to show they were no threat.

Slowly, they sat down on the ground, legs crossed and pinched at their clay flesh, deforming it in a way no human could.

Ignoring the pain, they reached deeper and carved out a full chunk of their arm, down to where bone would rest in any being of flesh and blood, before smoothing it over like it had never been touched.

For a long while, Wanderer sat passively while the men looked on unrealising, both sides waiting for something to happen, neither getting what they were expecting.

Eventually, the leader walked forward with a great deal more amity then they had begun with.

“Keshatra rak orshrara?” They asked with confusion.

Wanderer couldn't say as to the exact wording of the question, but the idea was purveyed well enough.

They fished out their book of Orshraka words, flipping through until they found the page they were looking for.

With a long, pointed finger they highlighted a word written in bold, diagonal script with an image of a centaur-like monster of clay above it.

GORLESHA, meaning Golem.

The collective group took a step back at the proclamation, the true nature of the one they had just threatened as a war machine of death striking fear into their hearts.

Before they could begin to ask Wanderer more questions which would be considerably harder to decipher, the Vessel stated their intentions as best as they could.

Through a mixture of pictures and charades, they emphasised that they had come through the canyon to explore, and saw the child alone.

They grew curious (and scared) and followed, ending up here, in front of them, clueless as to what was happening.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The leader nodded and understood, seeming overall more reasonable now that Wanderer had proved themself.

It seems, much to their joy, the Vessel had successfully calmed the situation.

And while the threat with the flare-bow was unintentional, it only reaffirmed their belief in the power of force and intimidation.

They had not harmed those people, nor ever intended to, but their nature as a Golem and their wielding of what was perceived as a weapon had forced them out of the angered state of mind.

That in itself was no better, Wanderer did not enjoy causing fear, they were not cruel and deadly like their kin, but even they couldn't deny its use.

But the fear had given them a moment to connect, free of the anger and prejudice the group had carried, it allowed them to get through.

They wondered if it would work that way with slaves as well, if by that method the Golem could free them.

“Intimidation will serve me well”, the Vessel decided, “as long as I am careful, and do not let it become violence.”

It was around this time that Wanderer suddenly remembered that they were in the middle of a social interaction, and did not have the time to be pondering.

The lead seemed to be waiting for them to say something, an issue as the Golem had little to say.

Eventually, given the opportunity the Vessel asked to be allowed to explore the men’s mining area, never one to turn down an opportunity to discover.

Much to the Golem’s surprise, however, the men all looked at each other nervously, before the leader refused.

When questioned further he gave very little true reason, merely insisting that they were all a group, and no one else could join.

That confused Wanderer and they figured they were missing some kind of context which they could only get by learning the language.

That left the Golem at a stand still, either they could wait around and try to sneak in or they could go back to Emio and do something else.

Their first urge, driven by their nature, was to sneak in later, feeling like they deserved it for all the work they put in to calm the crowd.

But upon thinking it through they quickly came to the counter conclusion, not only would sneaking ruin all the civility they had worked to build between them and these people, but it also just didn't feel right to actively defy what they wanted.

They were not entirely sure why they felt this, they had no issue going against the wishes of a human before, but to them it felt that they had been trusted not to go in and entering anyway would defy that trust.

So, somewhat awkwardly, Wanderer picked up the flare-bow and walked away, the whole crowd of men watching intensely behind them.

The mining operation wouldn't have been that interesting anyway, though they did truly enjoy the song.

After a little while of walking away and checking behind them to make sure none of the miners followed, Wanderer found themself returning to the little bank where the child had been taking water.

It got them thinking, “Why am I so sensitive to children being harmed?”.

Wanderer, of course, took no joy from the suffering or slavery of anyone, but above anything else seeing children hurt and abused caused a far greater reaction.

The question was why, and after a little bit they came to an answer.

“Children are like me, they aren't strong and don't know much, they are carried around life because they don't have the power to take control.”

By all means, a child didn't get to decide where they got to go or what they were going to do, so seeing a child who was being abused made the Golem rush to help, because the child could not help themself.

That thought brought about another pang of longing for their parent, despite how much they had worked to nullify that part of them, and so they banished the thought.

Eventually, their mind turned to more recent matters, puzzling out what exactly had happened with the group, and why they were so hostile.

From what little Wanderer had understood, they seemed to have a fear of outside forces, in a battle or rivalry with someone else, perhaps.

The Golem had noticed that the men had continually drawn attention to the sign in the road, and feeling it a missing piece of the puzzle, the Vessel decided to decipher it from memory.

Pulling out their gift, they flicked through the pages, hoping to find a match to the symbols they saw.

As this was their first time truly trying to read the book, they found that the Orshraka language was rather different from anything they could have expected.

From the Earliag books they had, that language seemed to read left to right in nice, orderly lines on crisp, square pages..

Orshraka, however, was very different, with large landscape pages of rough papyrus and written symbols on descending diagonals, read from the largest lines, the ones in the middle, to the smallest.

What's more, the middle lines would always contain the most important information, with extraneous details spreading out from the middle on progressively smaller lines.

It was a rather odd system, but considering that they had no real knowledge of how to read any other language, Wanderer was happy with what they got.

And with that knowledge they set out on their quest to decipher the miner’s sign.