Another howl rang across the open field — the golem had found another victim.

Rikki watched as his cousins passed around a ball made of golem or dandelion juice across the field aiming for two earthen walls at the opposite of the field.

Sebas suggested the game as a form of training. The balls were a bit heavy, and his cousins were sporting bruises all over their bodies. He even saw a few of them get knocked unconscious from a solid hit to the head.

The only rules were that they were not supposed to touch the ball with their hands or purposefully hurt each other. Shoving and tripping were allowed, but punches and kicks were forbidden. There was also the bit about not calling to the Earth — but the boy could see most of his cousins strengthening and fortifying their bodies to varying degrees.

The game took on a whole different dimension when Shelby brought a golem. She told them that the golem wanted to join them. She called it Staffany and said it would just run after them while they were playing.

It was a strange request. Her cousins thought that Shelby wanted the golem to play tag while they were playing another game. Still, they agreed to Shelby’s wishes — she was their mentor after all.

At first, everyone thought the golem wouldn’t be a big deal. It didn’t move fast and getting tagged by the thing shouldn’t even matter.

Dylan was the first to go down. He didn’t even bother running, allowing the golem to freely tag him. Rikki could still remember his screams of agony.

That was the turning point. Their simple game became one of survival. Avoiding the golem became more important than scoring goals. Nobody wanted to end up like Dylan. He was still lying on the ground, frothing at the mouth, and twitching.

Warden even came to complain to Shelby. The snail just told him it was part of their training and that he should learn to deal with pain if he couldn’t avoid it.

Scoring crawled to a halt after that as his cousins prioritized their safety and sanity over scoring. Rikki could tell that Shelby was not pleased — especially after she saw the ball lying on the ground with nobody around it.

The golem went after the ball and grabbed it. It placed the ball at the center of the field, before running after the boys once more.

Rikki felt the air stir — a pulse of power so subtle he barely sensed it. He stared at the snail beside him, wondering what she did.

The golem continued towards his cousins. They turned to run but they found out that they were rooted in place — unable to escape the rushing golem.

Stuart tried to defend himself by pushing away the golem — but it was no use. Even as the golem fell from his hard shove — Stuart started to twitch in agony, barely even managing to scream.

Shelby prompted Rikki to say something to his cousins. He wondered why he was still the only one who could understand her, given that all of them were together for more than a few weeks now.

He went to his cousins and played the role of interpreter once more.

“Play the game as it is, or Shelby will let the golem touch everyone,” Rikki explained.”Oh, and she’ll know if you’re not playing the game seriously — she watched you before.”

“But the golem—“

Rikki turned to the snail and nodded.

“Find a way around it.”

He left the field afterward, sitting beside Shelby once again. The snail told her that Staffany was irritating — but he wasn’t dangerous.

The game progressed once more. This time both sides had sacrificial lambs assigned to draw away the golem or block it from reaching the ball.

No side was scoring for a while. Both sides played with renewed vigor — Shelby’s words motivating them to play hard.

The screams continued for close to an hour. Fatigue was not a factor — but Shelby said a couple of hours was enough and that they should continue their regular training.

The game ended with both teams sighing in relief. Nobody kept their wits about enough to keep score — and Rikki wasn’t about to tell them who won.

He was cheering for Staffany throughout the game — laughing as the golem caught his cousins.

His cousins were bruised all over — with more bruises hidden underneath their clothes. They looked like they were in a fight — and not the winning side.

Shelby noted her concern and said she had a solution.

Rikki was glad that his cousins could avoid the beration that would ensue if their families saw the bruises. He had them line up, saying Shelby would treat their bruises and injuries.

Of course, he failed to mention that it was Staffany who would be healing them.

***

Jeremy was once again floating in the ether. It would have been a relaxing experience if not for the multitude of voices screaming for his doom.

It was time to get more golems — and he needed the skeletons that served as their base. He was already down one since Shelby took one for her own. She seemed to have a way of controlling the golem, but she needed his staff to do so.

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She even called it Staffany — which was such a girly thing to do.

He saw Shelby using it to play some kind of tag with the farmhands. The boys seemed to take the game quite seriously — too seriously, for his taste. The screams of despair and agony were a bit too much for a children’s game.

Shelby was a dear as always, giving in to their show of emotion by opting to stay as the chaser — though the role should have passed to whoever she tagged. Then again, maybe she preferred to do the chasing — and using the golem made it a bit more challenging for her.

At least she was having fun with it — unlike the useless wemic that guarded the store. He was delighted to find out that his golems were being taken to the mines as he intended — though he needed more of them to establish a proper operation.

He also needed to keep things under wraps because the mine was far from his domain. It was probably unclaimed, but the kingdom tended to put its fingers in ventures like mining.

Jeremy approached the bone sphere — the small moon made up of skeletons. His last visit made him aware of more intelligent undead within the sphere. He didn’t encounter them, but he felt their presence.

He supposed the mindless undead served as their shield against the radiant energy that permeated the ether. Something inside the sphere should be sustaining the skeletons — a connection to a negative plane or perhaps an evil god’s corpse.

The wizard sighed. There was also Warden’s conversation with whatever he connected to — something about bringing back the stone turtle.

A dead god’s stone corpse would certainly be a great addition to the Corner Shop™. At the least, it could serve as a place for children to climb and play around.

There should be consequences for desecrating — much more, taking out — a god’s corpse from its place of rest. There should be some kind of deity or entity that governed the sanctity of the divine corpses, but Jeremy believed the turtle god would be overlooked.

It was already in bad shape when he found it — floating around aimlessly in the ether. He even locked it in place to ensure it wouldn’t stray towards the sphere of bone.

The turtle was a forgotten god in a world with little to no magic. Life was not created. Instead, it sprung up from jerms and eventually became men. Such a world was unthinkable.

It also made the dead god quite useless. How could it attend to its faithful without divine messengers or miracles? He was pretty sure those factors marked the turtle god as inferior to the other gods — if it could even be considered a god at all.

Jeremy smiled. Even if the god was useless to its faithful — he could put it to good use.

The wizard made a few calculations. He was going to attempt something drastic and the act might rile up the stronger undead within the sphere.

He was expecting to net more than a dozen skeletons with his plan. Lying low for the next couple of months shouldn’t be a problem. It would also allow him to come up with better plans to rob the bone sphere of its denizens.

“Come on, turtle. You’re up.”

Jeremy grabbed the stone turtle as best he could. There was no gravity in the ether — but things that moved tended to keep moving and things that were still required effort to move.

The stone turtle was larger than a house. It was bigger than Shelby — even in her original form — and almost ten times her weight. But that wasn’t a problem for the wizard — not in the ethereal plane.

Will was strength in the ether. In this place, the weakest mage could manhandle the mightiest warrior. The speed of one’s flight was also related to one’s will.

Still, the turtle was too heavy for the will of a single wizard — even if that wizard held off hordes of demons through sheer will and stubbornness.

However, Jeremy was no single wizard to the ether. The plane responded to the will of the multitude of demons linked to him through his infernal conduit. He was probably the strongest creature on the plane.

But not the toughest.

As strong as he was, he could still get injured — especially when swarmed by a horde of undead bunched together in a sphere the size of a mountain.

The turtle started to move away from the sphere. Time was essential when facing unknown enemies, and he needed time to open his portals if things went south.

He flew with the turtle for close to an hour. Moving faster would have cut the travel time, but it would also made stopping the statue more difficult. Slow but steady wins the race — which seemed apt considering he was lugging a giant turtle.

It was time.

Jeremy let go of the turtle and flew past it, trying to stop it in its track. It was a mistake. The weight of the stone behemoth smashing into him felt like being rammed by a charging rhino. He berated himself for not matching its speed and slowly making it stop — but getting squished by the thing, though painful and possibly fatal, hastened the process.

The wizard turned the stone turtle back towards the bone sphere. He was aiming for the edge, hoping to dislodge a dozen or so skeletons to bring home. He picked up speed, going faster than before. He needed a hasty exit and he didn’t want the forgotten god to become fuel for whatever was sustaining the undead sphere.

Satisfied with the turtle’s trajectory, he let go of the stone missile. Overtaking it was easy. He was getting used to flying at high speeds — though it was a bit uncomfortable to the eyes.

Jeremy only slowed down when he neared the bone sphere. He flew past it, noting the probable trajectories of the dislodged skeletons as well as the best location to open his gate. There was probably a game there somewhere involving trajectories and hitting things to make them go where you wanted — something that involved whips and screaming sentient creatures.

Jeremy shook his head — though he appreciated the humor. It was easier to laugh at the thoughts the demons were sending into his mind. Some of them were even amusing.

His eyes turned to follow a cloud of debris flying across the ether. It looked like they were circling the bone sphere — maintaining a circular trajectory as if both attracted and repelled by the strange moon.

No.

The wizard’s eyes widened as one of the smaller pieces of debris collided with the speeding turtle, minutely changing its direction.

Jeremy could see the stone turtle hurtling closer to the bone sphere. Its trajectory veered closer to the sphere’s center — not straight to the middle, but not as close to its fringes as he wanted.

The turtle crashed like a cannonball to a poorly built wall, sending dozens of skeletons flying and exposing another layer of the sphere. Inside was darkness and a pair of glowing eyes.

“Sorry about that.”

Jeremy scrambled to grab as many skeletons as he could with his magic and bare hands. He couldn’t help but smile as he started to look like a small sphere of bone himself.

He sped to the flying turtle. The impact somewhat slowed it down — but it was still flying pretty fast. Hopefully, the screaming being behind him wouldn’t be too inclined to give chase. There was no way he was willing to tangle with an undead dragon — especially one that size — or its master.

The dragon was some kind of lich — but it wasn’t the malevolent yet calculating intelligence he sensed within the sphere.