Chapter 6: Seeking Answers
Looking at the scene before me made me feel uneasy, almost sick.
It wasn’t until Joan pointed it out that I even realized that I had been shying away from this spot. It had just seemed more sensible to use the spot behind the farmhouse rather than this area at front of it. It just felt more comfortable there, and the new white grass caused by my Awakening quickly grew to cover craters and gouges caused by my experimentations with my new powers.
I hadn’t even set foot on these fields in front of the farmhouse since the disastrous night of my failed Awakening ritual. Back when I’d been learning to fly I hadn’t gone over to this side of the farmhouse. Even when I went for short walks, just to clear my head, I’d always taken them towards and along the edge of the wood, not out onto the wide field where I could have had a splendid view of dawns and dusks. I’d always just . . . avoided it.
I supposed I could understand now, now that I was actually walking up to that burnt and blackened area. Here there was none of the white grass, all that remained was the scorched remains of the tree trunks that Joan had used, the cratered earth, and the half-melted remains of the golem. It was a desolate scene. Sort of like that time I’d gone to a war memorial on the coast of France. It was the site where British troops had landed, and there was a World War Two memorial. I’d found it both compelling and disturbing to walk through. There were huge craters there, large enough to stand at the bottom and look up to see the rim higher than your head. I’d looked at them, their sides smoothed by age and grass growing over them, and I’d tried to imagine what it would have been like at the time of that battle.
I felt something similar as I stared at the ruins of the ritual site, but this was something that I’d been there for. I could remember where the portal had opened, where Joan had been when the golem engaged her. I could remember where I had stood, where I had been dragged by those demonic creatures, where I’d fought back and jammed the feathers of my divine ancestor into its head.
It wasn’t until I felt a tickle at the back of my throat that I realized that my breathing had begun to speed up. I’d been so focused on the sight before me, and the memories they evoked, that I’d actually been ignorant of the gut reaction they were stirring within me.
Fear.
Helplessness, anger, despair, all of them had been flooding through me, but focused on my survival as I had been I’d shoved them down, burying them away. But even buried as they were, they had been there, and they had left their marks on my heart. And none had done so more than fear. As I looked at the burnt site of the ritual that should have given me the full depth of my potential I couldn’t help but feel scared, as though something was hiding just behind me and getting ready to strike.
. . . something that didn’t have a real face.
. . . something . . .
I shook my head, trying to dispel the nameless dread that seemed to be trying to creep up on me. That night, it seemed to be lingering more than I thought, and this fear, this . . . mixture of terror and despair, I didn’t like it at all. It was sensible to be scared at the time, to be afraid of the things that had come so close to dragging me away to God only knew where, but to be scared of just the place where it almost happened? No, that was irrational, and I hated that!
Intellectually I was aware that there was nothing for me to be afraid of, that this was just the site of a past event and nothing more. Still, the anxiety this field caused me wasn’t something I could just reason away.
Damn it! I hated this!
Trying to distract myself I turned my attention to the remains of the massive figure that Joan had fought, and despite my mixed feelings, I found the melted and blasted figure to be oddly compelling. Perhaps it was the sheer size of the thing, it stood more than nine feet tall. I’d always been a bit taller than average, and I’d grown up with a father who had been even taller. Since becoming a demigod I’d grown used to being taller than either Joan or Hadriel, and with my new build, I’d become used to ‘feeling’ bigger. But now, standing in the presence of this behemoth of a figure I suddenly felt small in a way I never had before.
I’d only managed to get a brief look at the massive golem that had fought Joan, as most of my attention had been focused on the demonic monsters trying to drag me away. Still, even that quick look had made it clear that this had not been a creature to be taken lightly. It had broken Joan’s wing, and I knew just how tough those could be. Likewise, it had endured her attacks with her power over light, and I also knew full well how potent those were. It had taken it all and kept on fighting, and now it stood before me, almost a ruin of the might it had once possessed.
Its surface had been melted by the forces that had been unleashed upon it, but the frame and form of it remained intact. Joan had told me what had happened that night. How the destructive power released by my failed Awakening had been enough to sear the golem and leave it immobile, but to actually see it made me feel awe for not simply the power that had been unleashed, but also for the golem that had endured it and remained mainly intact.
The front portion of the metal and stone construct resembled a wax figurine that had been exposed to heat for just too long. Perhaps the golem had once possessed features and intricate details upon its face and chest. But if it did they were gone now, buried beneath stone and metal that had melted, run, and then hardened again. Its arms were in an even worse state, though they’d somehow retained their general shape. What had once been hands and forearms had been reduced to indistinct lumps, as though someone had reached that point upon a sculpture and instead of true limbs had just welded on lumps of semi-dripping slag. Even the knees and feet that had been facing the direction of the heat were slightly distorted. They drooped in places, the material that made them having melted and run just like the larger portions. Imposing as the golem was there was something almost sad about it, as though it were slumping in defeat.
I don’t know why, but something about that seemed wrong to me. When I’d first seen it, the giant of metal and stone had been terrifying. A monster that could stand up to my protector’s angelic form. Now though . . . it was strange. The monsters were the demon things that had tried to drag me away, they were the things that haunted my nightmares. The Golem. . . it was more akin to a part of the background, absurd as it might sound.
I held no fear or animosity to it, instead seeing it like this was depressing. It had been strong, mighty, magnificent even, and now it was just this, a melted wreck of its former glory, a proud lion that was now blinded and crippled. This thing had been my enemy, part of the forces that sought to drag me through their portal! I shouldn’t be feeling any sort of compassion for it, no sympathy, no regret!
And yet . . .
I stood in front of the melted form staring up at the ruin that had once been its face. It was caved in, the once hollow space behind the face plate having collapsed upon itself. I found myself trying to remember what I knew about golems. They were meant to have a word carved into their heads, that was what I remembered. I couldn’t remember what that word was meant to be, but I could remember that a traditional way to beat a golem was to scrub out the first letter. That would cause the golem to stop, or so I thought.
Was that why this golem had stopped? Because the word in its head had been reduced to illegible slag?
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I don’t know what impulse took me, but I reached out to to poke at the drooping features of what had once been its face. It was just a casual gesture, nothing important. But as I touched the metal of its face something happened.
“Oww!”
I snatched my hand back, startled by the sudden shock. It wasn’t the first one that I’d had to deal with lately, not with the way my wings seemed to accumulate static in this hot weather, worse than my hair did. But this shock had been a bit more potent than normal, but I had been standing here for a bit, and flexing my wings unconsciously probably hadn’t helped.
With a sigh, and a quick shake of my hand to dispel the slight numbness from the shock, I turned and took off into the air. Enough introspection, I had to get back to training, or else Hadriel was going to kick my ass even harder than normal in our next sparing session.
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The remains of the golem did not move. It remained as still as any statue, but such an appearance belied what was happening beneath the surface.
The construct was old, crafted before the reign of Solomon, created more than a thousand years before a star rose over the village of Bethlehem. It had been forged with lore long lost, using the stolen hair of one of the champions of the Abrahamic God as the core component in its empowerment. The weapons of warriors from other religions had been melted down and used as part of the metal to form its body. At the time of its creation, the golem had been one of the pinnacles of mortal magical achievement in the whole world, the masterpiece of its creators.
They had known that they were creating a weapon, a guardian for the kingdom they served. Such a being would know battle, but for all its strength and durability the construct they had made was not invulnerable to harm. It was able to endure much, more than any mortal being could hope to, but in time the damage it would suffer would accumulate, wearing it down, slowly crippling it. So, they had done what seemed logical, they had granted the metal and stone giant the ability to heal.
It had been a monumental task. They had granted a being without flesh the ability to recover from wounds and damage. That small cabal of sorcerers and alchemists, whose names were lost to the sands of time, would have been held in the same regard as Solomon and Merlin. But before they could make other great works the king they served had them all murdered. It was a petty and small-minded decision, simply his way of ensuring that the golem that now served him would never be surpassed by another work of theirs. Also, with them dead none save he knew the secrets of how to control the golem.
The king did not rule for long though, not as intoxicated as he was with the power that the seemingly invincible golem gave him. Secure in the knowledge that none could go against him he had indulged in the worst excesses. He flaunted his power over the laws that he was meant to abide by and enforce, carelessly demanded tribute without mercy, and punished those who could not meet his demands. In the end, his death was fittingly petty and ignoble. No great hero killed him, no angel of the Lord was sent to dispatch him. Instead, he died alone in the gutter of a back alley after a wild night in the slums of his kingdom, choking on his own vomit without a friend to help him. The golem had heard no order, so it took no action to save him as he flailed and drowned in his own bile. A fitting end for one that denied the world of so much.
Through the years, then centuries, then millennia, the golem had served many masters, those who had managed to use magic to determine the words that would bind it to their service. It had fought demons and angels, gods and monsters, heroes and villains, sometimes it had been victorious, sometimes it had been defeated. Yet always it had endured, always recovering from the damage and waiting for a new master. The golem, no, the Golem was not alive in the same way that mortals and immortals were. During its creation, it had been imbued with a certain degree of intelligence and reasoning, all so that it might be a more effective warrior in battle. It possessed the ability to learn, to remember its past experiences and derive knowledge from them. It was even aware of itself, that it existed and that it thought, but for all that, it had not true will of its own. That had been a deliberate decision by its creators. After all, a weapon should not be able to contest how it was wielded.
However, that was not to say that the Golem was without drives. As a weapon, one that knew what it was, it required an owner, a user. It did not want one, nor did it seek one, such was beyond the scope of its function. But even so, it knew it was ‘incomplete’ without a user. It could even be said that it had some preferences regarding whom it served, even though it would always serve those who knew the Words with equal force regardless of how it felt towards them.
The battle with the resurrected saint and getting cvaught in the blast of the failed Awakening ritual had inflicted a whole new level of damage. One that was changing things for the first time in millennia. The eruption of energy had been a mixture of different forces, some of which should have been inimical to each other, but which somehow were co-existing.
In the past, the Golem had endured much. The fires of hell, the thunder of heaven, the weapons of gods, the bile of monsters, so many things that had left it cracked, splintered and even broken. But always its core had endured and the damage had been overcome with time and energy.
This time it had been different, though. Never before had the Golem faced energies that tore at it so deeply. The construct’s vital components could be found in two locations, its chest and its head. The chest housed the core that served as the source of its power, an alchemical organ that was all but unique in the world. One that constantly generated a steady and continuous stream of raw mana, that which let stone and metal move as though they were flesh. By contrast, the head housed the spell words that gave the Golem the ability to think, to store experiences and to learn from them. Both of these were heavily armoured, protected enough so that only forces that would have destroyed the Golem outright could reach them.
And yet, the force of the demigod’s failed Awakening had somehow passed through those defences, impacting the core and the spell words, halting them, freezing them even as the external surface of the construct was scoured by heat and force that melted it. Had the core components been frozen then the main body would have drawn in ambient mana so that the recovery abilities could fix them. Had it been the main body that was damaged beyond function then it would have been the components that worked to repair it from the inside out. However, in this case, both had been rendered inoperable together, and neither of them was able to work to repair the other.
That was why the construct had been frozen in place for weeks. That was why it had not recovered in the slightest. That was why the Golem had been, to all intents and purposes, dead.
Until now.
At the touch of the demigod mere moments ago something had happened, a spark of power had jumped between them. It had been a small thing, a mere mote that he probably didn’t even notice was gone, but for the Golem’s body, it was the difference between existence and oblivion.
Its components had stilled, the damage dealt to them too much to continue. The core in the chest was now smothered in material that had partly melted, then hardened in the wrong shape. The reactions that sustained the power generation of the alchemical organ had been halted, paused until they were restarted. The spell words that governed the Golem’s consciousness could have restarted the core, but they were in even worse shape.
The spell words were housed in the head of the Golem, directly at the centre where it was hardest to reach. The art of golems and homunculi was the art of emulating God’s creation of mankind, and as such it needed to follow the basic form that they were trying to copy. Thought was the crown of life, therefore it had to be housed in the head and brow, as such there was no other location the spell words could be written.
The force that had left the golem a ruin had reached the very place where the spell words had been carved. With any other golem that would have been the end of it, their words were their life. But this construct was somewhat more complex. The spell words went beyond simple marks cut into stone and metal, rather they were carved into the construct’s conceptual framework. As long as the concept of the Golem continued in a physical vessel then so too would the spell words that were tied to it, a means for those words to endure even if its ‘brain’ were to be destroyed.
Of course, this was merely a final safety measure, a way for its experience and knowledge to be saved in the event of a crushing defeat. As things stood, without the core and with the main spell words all but lost, the ancient construct might have remained like that forever, trapped in a state of eternal limbo
All that had just changed though, and all it had taken was a tiny spark to get things going.
The power that had jumped from the demigod to the Golem, though almost insignificant, had been the perfect type that the construct needed. Exactly why it had been drawn to the ambient mana in his aura was complex, but that was hardly of any importance. What was of significance was that the deadlock had been broken. It was a tiny thing, like a single snowflake falling upon the side of a mountain, but that one flake had moved another, and then the two of them moved two more, and then those moved more in turn. It would be a slow process, but from small things could mighty avalanches be born.
Slowly but surely the Golem began to repair itself.