There was no way that body was actually human. For one thing, it was far too small to properly fit the body of the armor, if that’s what the golem truly was. For another, it was perfectly preserved after what had no doubt been centuries of isolation trapped in a closet. There were plenty of spells that could do exactly that in the short term, but not for a thousand years without being refreshed, not in this manaless hellhole we were all living in.

I got to work analyzing it immediately. My first step was to remove it from the shell, which required a bit of finesse to pull off. After that, I set the body aside on a new table and took a moment to confirm that the ‘golem’ didn’t have an actual core. Weirdly, it had almost everything I’d expect on the inside of a golem, things like joint articulation, mana channels, and rune constructs in all four limbs and the head. It was just missing the power source in the chest.

One strange thing about the armor was that there were clearly mechanical parts on the inside that made me think it was designed to split open. I just hadn’t been able to find a way to activate them. Perhaps if I’d known the interior layout ahead of time and had managed to slip some force magic inside, I could have forced it to open without resorting to cutting through. But since neither of those things were true, I’d been left with brute force.

The body was more interesting than the shell it had been stuck in. By all appearances, it was a human corpse. Or maybe ‘corpse’ wasn’t the correct term for it. It was more like a living person, except one who didn’t breathe or have a heartbeat. There was no trace of rigor mortis. The skin hadn’t even lost its color. It was like a body that had just died a few minutes ago, at most, easily confused for someone who was asleep.

When I looked deeper, however, I discovered that the appearance was only skin-deep. Beneath that fleshy exterior, there were no bones or muscles or organs. No veins or arteries carried blood through the body. Instead, it looked more like a shapeshifter did. It had a rigid, spongy material – strong enough to support its own weight, but soft enough that prodding the body produced a realistic response. Without the actual anatomy of a living creature, however, it would be unable to move except by magic.

That meant there were only two options. It either grabbed mana from the environment, which didn’t work anymore, or it had a power source that had long since dried up. Most likely, it did both. I moved my scan up to the corpse’s chest and nodded to myself in satisfaction. Here was what I’d been searching for this whole time: a golem core.

Why this child-sized body was the golem and not the gigantic metal construct was a mystery to me. Presumably, it was some sort of versatility thing. I certainly hadn’t discovered any shells specialized for various tasks, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t existed in the distant past. If that wasn’t the reason for this unusual configuration, then I was out of guesses. It didn’t really matter anyway. I didn’t need the golem to fight for me. I needed it as a coordination hub to control all the other, dumber golems I was going to build.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the golem core was built from mysteel. Once again, I was both astounded and annoyed by whoever it was that thought doing delicate rune work on a metal famously resistant to magic was a good idea. Yes, it made it practically indestructible, which was an important trait to have for something that was both fragile and likely to see combat, but there were other options that were significantly less annoying to work with.

However, I’d spent weeks and weeks prying the secrets out of those mysteel pillars. There was no way a compact little golem core barely eight inches across was going to defeat me now that I finally had access to it. And judging by how complicated it was, I was starting to think it could do exactly what I needed.

Rubbing my hands together eagerly, I started casting the diagnostic spells I’d developed specifically to work with mysteel.

* * *

“This is dumb,” I complained as I sat in a chair I’d conjured up and considered my findings. “Nobody is stupid enough to have built this.”

It would have taken thousands of hours to construct this thing. Thousands of hours, at least. As far as I could tell, the vast, vast majority of the layers inside the golem core were devoted not to allowing it to move correctly, or to cast spells, or to do anything remotely useful. No, whatever mad genius had built this thing had invested years of effort into making something akin to a homunculus’s personality matrix, except completely artificial.

If I fed this thing enough mana, it would wake up and act like a living, breathing person with hopes and wants and fears. More than that, it definitely could and would change its shape whenever it wanted. The kid-sized body was probably something it had taken on specifically to fit inside that shell it had run out of mana inside of.

It was a morphic golem with a fully integrated personality. And I couldn’t think of a single rational reason anybody would have wanted to build it.

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The thing was essentially worthless to me. A golem I couldn’t control was a golem I had no need of, and the best use I could put its mysteel core to was to use it as a chunk of scrap metal.

And yet…

What secrets were locked away in this golem’s memory? Could I persuade it to give them to me? It would be a drain to keep it fully powered, but that was a good thing, in a way. That made it dependent on me if it wanted to stay awake, which gave me a handle to control it. It wasn’t as good as a mindless golem that would obey my every order, but it was a start.

I needed to secure the golem before I brought it to life, but that was a bit more difficult to do when it could reform its body’s shape at will. Simple restraints would do nothing to hinder it. I needed a box, completely sealed and magically reinforced to stand against the strength of a giant.

That, I could make. The only question was where to put it.

I opted to do things right and carved out a whole new room just for this golem. It was deep underground, fifty miles north of the valley, lined with enchanted steel, and without any kind of exit. I put the golem’s body in there and flooded the room with enough mana to awaken a dormant core a hundred times over, then settled back to watch through my magic.

It took about thirty seconds for the golem’s eyes to flicker. When it woke, it did so immediately, jumping to its feet and peering about in the darkness. I hadn’t bothered to provide a light, having seen its rune scripts. I knew it didn’t need one.

“H-hello?” it called out in a voice surprisingly deep for its child-like appearance. “Is anyone out there?”

“Hello,” I said. An audible illusion carried my voice to its prison. “I imagine you’re a bit confused.”

“I am,” the golem told me. “Who are you, and what have you done with me?”

“I am a mage. I discovered you deep underground, sealed inside a suit of armor and without a drop of mana running through your core. After a thorough examination, I concluded that you would react unpredictably if awoken and decided to take some… precautions.”

“That’s understandable,” the golem said. It was a bit shaky, but that was a perfectly natural reaction to this situation. It – no, ‘he’ was more appropriate for now. Depending on his shapeshifting proclivities, it was difficult to refer to something that looked and acted human now that he was awake as an ‘it.’ He was taking the situation pretty well, despite having a full matrix of runes designed to mimic a human personality.

“What are you going to do with me?” the golem asked.

“I haven’t decided,” I told him honestly. “You are a… very unusual creation. I’m sure you already know that. Unfortunately, you also take quite a bit of mana just to keep going, and that’s not a cost I can justify just as charity.”

“I would not ask you to,” the golem said politely. “If you could just let me go and point me towards Dherevo, I will make my own way.”

“You wouldn’t last thirty minutes,” I told him bluntly. “You have been… asleep… for a long time and many, many things have changed. There is no mana left in this world. At my best guess, you’ve been gone for about a thousand years.”

“A t-t-thousand years?” the golem stuttered. “No. No, that’s impossible. I have work to do. Professor Velder needs me. Please, let me go. I need to go.”

I considered for a moment. The golem didn’t appear dangerous, but looks could be deceiving. I hadn’t been lying when I said I’d thoroughly investigated his core. Almost all of it was devoted to his personality matrix, but that did not mean he was defenseless. There were rune constructs for several dozen spells built into his body, though they were mostly benign.

It did seem clear that he’d been built as a researcher’s aide, but I couldn’t ignore the framework I’d pulled him out of. That thing was a weapon, one that I was convinced this golem kid could use simply by hopping into it. His own core would interact with the frame, granting him a hundred new offensive spells. The fact that it was missing a chest plate would make him vulnerable, yes, but he would still be a threat.

Fortunately, the shell was still sitting safely in my workshop, nowhere near the golem’s humanoid body. Right now, I was in no danger. Much as I doubted the golem would be able to find a big enough source of mana before he ran out of his own were I to let him go, it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take – not without some sort of reason.

“I think you’ve skipped over the part where I said there’s no mana out there,” I projected through my magic. “I know how much it takes to keep you up and functioning. You’re not going to find that. You’re going to walk a mile or two and then fall over dead again.”

“Please, sir mage. I won’t trouble you. Thank you for waking me up. I’d like to be on my way now.”

“You’re rather single-minded, aren’t you? Do you think that I’m lying to you?”

“Of course not. I wouldn’t dare cast such aspersions on the character of a man I’ve only just met.”

“That’s remarkably naïve of you. Plenty of people are liars who are just out for themselves.”

“Are you?” the golem asked quietly.

“A liar? Not generally. Out for myself? Most certainly.”

“Then why did you wake me up at all?” he demanded.

“Curiosity. I suspect you were there the day the moon fell from the sky. You probably remember it like it just happened, don’t you?”

“I do, yes. Is that what you want? A story from me?”

“To start,” I said. “I don’t know who created you. I don’t know why. I can tell you were some sort of assistant. The spell selection you’ve been inscribed with gives that away.”

“A family,” the golem said. “The professor, he got… lonely.”

And crazy, from the sounds of it. What kind of nutjob went and built himself a kid?

“I’m not your family,” I said. “But let me tell you a little bit about what I’m trying to accomplish, what I think you can do to help, and what I’m willing to offer you in exchange.”

“You’ve got me at a disadvantage, sir mage,” the golem said. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Keiran,” I told him.

His eyes flickered at that, but whatever he was thinking, he didn’t comment. “Mine is Querit,” was all he said. Then he settled back to listen, and I began to explain what he’d missed.