Kara wasn’t so high up this time. She was the opposite, in fact. Crouched down amongst shrubbery, she waited for the guardsmen with the spears to walk past, carrying on with their patrol. Once they were safely beyond her, she darted out from bushes - briefly under the lamplight - and then back into shadows at the other end, at the base of a thirty-foot grey stone wall. Climbing it was easy enough; fingerholds between the blocks presented themselves regularly and she had never had any difficulty pulling herself up, light as she was. As Kara climbed, she thought about the day before.

“She will do it, because we need her to.”

Whenever she remembered one of Turner’s outbursts, a little fear always rose despite herself. Even now when he was nowhere near. She reached the top of the wall in no time and peeked her head over the embrasure. Not ten paces to her right, a guardsman stood, leaning heavily on the lip of the wall and looking out over the city. It is a lovely view, she thought. And now it served as an even lovelier distraction. She was over the lip and hanging down from the other side of the wall in a blink. She peered back up at the guardsman, at his back now, and he hadn’t shifted an inch. Her head turned to the scene below her. The courtyard was well lit and guards wandered its length and breadth; from the inside of the gate to the closed portcullis of the central keep. A man-at-arms stood outside even the stables, and the barracks across the way was obviously out of the question.

This won’t be easy. I’ll have to wait for an opening.

While she watched her mind wandered again, back to yesterday. Lo’ffen was furious, Turner’s wrath be damned. She had challenged him at every step of his pitch and he had responded the same way Turner always responded to challenges. But it wasn’t until she threatened to leave and take Kara with her that he snapped. Kara winced as she remembered the sound of the ring-leader’s fist meeting the elf’s gut, and the grunt her friend made as all the air was forced from her. But Kara’s concern in that moment was miniscule compared to when Lo’ffen started getting back up. No-one had ever done that before. It was that panic, that fear of what Turner would do, that prompted her to agree so readily.

Not as though I ever said no before.

Circumstance shifted and Kara snapped back. The two guards with the pole-arms were rounding past her once again, but this time the one who stood by the stables nearby was out of place; emptying his bladder, she could see. She dropped down onto the courtyard floor beside the stables with the same amount of noise a leaf would have made, and dashed further out into the courtyard towards her target; the wizard’s tower. Spiralling up and away from the central keep, the structure was taller than the highest watchtower of the keep by half. As she started her climb up the perfectly-scalable stone blocks, her mind wandered again.

“This one’s different” Turner had told her, while leading her with an arm away from the grounded Lo’ffen. “We’re stealing on a commission, and they only want one item; a journal.”

Kara looked back to her friend, but not for so long as to anger Turner.

“Whose journal?”

“A court wizard here in Tarwall. Apparently another – anonymous – member of the Duke’s court considers him a rival. He believes the wizard is keeping a particularly scandalous secret and the journal may be key to exposing it.”

“Why do they want to expose the wizard’s secret?”

Turner eyed her with hostility.

“You do not ask why. You ask what, where and when. The what is the journal. The where is in the wizard’s tower. The when is tonight.”

Kara gulped, her mouth always seemed to fill with cotton when she was talking to Turner.

“Sorry.”

“Water under the bridge,” Turner smiled his predator’s smile, “and while you’re in the tower, don’t feel as though you should limit yourself to the journal. If any other valuables should find their way out of the tower with you, I’d be very pleased. Maybe even pleased enough to forgive Lo’ffen her affront.”

“Of course.” Kara’s answer was rapid, she was eager to be done with the interaction.

She was nearly at the top now. There were but three means to enter the wizard’s tower; one door on the ground floor that entered directly from the inside of the keep, one large balcony at the very top and a small window maybe one level below it. To get to the door she would need to break into the keep itself, and the balcony would lead straight into the wizard’s own chambers; the room most likely to be magically warded. That left the window. Kara climbed up beside it, and found good enough foot and hand-holds that she could rest comfortably. From one of the pockets sewn into her satin breaking-and-entering suit she brought out a small vial filled with a liquid of such a bright green it almost seemed to glow. The tower was more than tall enough to be visible from outside the keep grounds, and one of the troupe had spotted the window and guessed at the thickness of the glass earlier in the day. Breaking it would be too loud, so it was decided a powerful acid to be the quietest and fastest means to gain entry through it.

Before opening the vial, Kara took an extended, longing look at the panorama before her. From nearly atop such a tower she could see every house, inn, warehouse, workshop and temple of Tarwall bathed in the twilight. Immediately beyond the old city she could see the ocean expanding outward for miles upon miles upon miles; an unbroken stretch of waves and swells, rising and falling, catching every ounce of the brilliance of the stars above and reflecting it magnificently along their crests. Up there the air took on a different quality too, it was colder and clearer, and the wind bolder. She looked at the almost infinite space between herself and the stars and meditated on the unfathomable amounts of power required to move that much air, everywhere, forever. She relished in that feeling, until the notion brought her thoughts uncomfortably close to her own lineage. Hurriedly she abandoned the trail of thought, instead narrowing her focus onto the radiant-green vial in her hand and the window in front of her.

She unfastened the straps and, oh so carefully, slid the glass stopper out of place. The vial was very well secured, and for good reason. She dripped the contents as evenly as she could down the face of the window, and the glass hissed violently as it melted into steam and water and dust. Kara watched in wonder as the thick pane fizzed away into nothing. Where glass remained around the edges it was blunted and blackened, even parts of the wooden frame at the bottom were marred and ruined where the acid had trickled down. Kara wondered how the acid didn’t melt the inside of the vial. That would be a question for Bull or Lo’ffen.

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

Between them they usually know the answers to little questions like that.

She waited until long after the last of the hissing had subsided, and she slid herself deftly inside the portal, being extremely wary not to touch its edges. Once through, she found herself inside a small room, standing atop a desk, seeing only by the light of the stars outside. Bookcases and shelves stuffed with scrolls lined every wall; and after some laborious searching she concluded none of them were a journal. Her attention was turned to a lone wooden door across from her window. Light was creeping under the door, and the colour of it gave her pause.

I’ve never seen a candle glow green before.

With equal parts excitement and fright, she edged the door open.

Peering though, there was no sign of any wizard.

So far, so good.

Two torches upon one of the walls burned in a green flame, though the room felt colder somehow than the unlit one she had come from. Between the two flames a massive, rough humanoid shape stood, made entirely of stone. It made for a poor carving; it didn’t even have a face, and the proportions were all out of place. Truthfully it seemed closer to a number of small boulders hewn together somehow into a shape vaguely resembling a man. Letters were carved onto the rocks that made up the statue, but not from any alphabet Kara could read. There were more shelves in this room, these ones carved into the stone of the walls. Upon some sat vials, potions and bottles, all glinting under the eerie green light. Upon others were bundles of herbs, heads of mushrooms, glass bottles containing leaves or roots. A tray full of hair. A glass container with a liver inside. An eye in a jar. A larger jar with a human head, most of the skin peeling away from the face. Kara’s skin crawled as her eyes fell upon things no good person would ever consider having.

The journal, she re-affirmed. She would find the journal and be gone from this awful place. Unfortunately, there were no books to be found in this room, amongst the grotesquery on display. There were two doors, which she reckoned must head up and down stairs respectfully. Upstairs, in the wizard’s chambers, would be a safer bet for finding the journal, but also a safer bet for finding the wizard. She tried the door on the right, which she judged would lead down.

Locked. Damn.

Resigned she tried the other door, which was also locked.

Guess I’ll have to pick one of them.

Then another thought came to Kara. She had no more of the acid, but she knew what it looked like, and she was in a wizard’s laboratory.

If I can find more acid among the wizard’s things, I can melt the locks.

Quickly, she began rifling through shelves of potions for a vial the same green as the one Turner had given her. A heavy step to her left caused her to jump. To her disbelief, the stone man had taken a step away from the wall. The rock that was supposed to be its head turned towards her. The symbols carved into the rocks were dimly glowing now, the same shade of green as the torches. Worse still, he stood firmly between her and the window.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Her heart racing, she took a potion from the shelf in front of her and hurled it at the stone man. The glass smashed and a liquid - yellow even under the green light - splashed over the thing’s stone chest, and trickled down harmlessly onto the floor. Nothing. As the stone man took a long, lumbering stride towards her she grabbed another potion and threw it. This time splashing over its head, a viscous orange substance ran down its face. But still the stone man lumbered closer, his great footsteps crashing down. It felt as though the entire tower was rumbling. She was forced to back away from the potion shelf. She backed all the way to the locked doors, cornered. She was out of options.

Only one thing for it. Lo’ffen, I’m sorry.

Using her softest voice - as if that would lessen the repercussions - she spoke.

“I wish it were destroyed.”

For an instant, nothing happened. For a fraction of a second she felt eyes, far away and across oceans, staring at her. Judging her. Seeing all. The moment passed, and a bright-white flash was emitted from the torso of the stone man. Faceless as it was, she could sense its alarm. The flash grew into a blinding light and the stone man’s body erupted into a thousand fragments. Shrapnel from the thing shot into almost every corner of the room, breaking pots and shattering glass, with enough force to become lodged into the stone of the walls. Kara - and nothing else - was unscathed by the explosion. But at the exact moment the light had come to be, the moment the judgement had ended, she felt every cell in her body light up in unison. Every fibre of muscle was strained to the brink of snapping, every inch of skin singed to the point of burning. And once the stone man had finished erupting, every last part of her was exhausted beyond recovery. She fell to a crawl. In front of her; the window.

If I could just get to the…

The thought lingered, but her muscles failed, a great ache began in her head and her eyes could no longer stay open. Limp, she collapsed onto the cold stone floor.

The first step is - rather tediously - collecting the raw materials. It sounds dull, but an average sized stone golem will require perhaps 10 tons of stone. And naturally it does not come out of the ground in the desired shape. You must either acquire the services of a stonemason to carve one for you, or learn the magics necessary to form the shape yourself. (An interesting fact; studying sorcery does not a gifted artist make. This is why the majority of stone golems in existence look – to put it gently – something like a child’s first foray into making a doll out of wet clay.)

Once you have your 10 ton mass of rock in a rudimentary humanoid shape, then you can begin the real work. The runes required to animate a being such as this are as intricate as they are extensive. If there are not enough, or there are even small mistakes in the rune-work, the golem will not activate. Or, more troublingly, it will activate but will behave unpredictably or uncontrollably. You would not be the first nor the last wizard to be murdered by his own creation. As these runes must be carved by hand (and small errors here can have very serious consequences) it can take weeks for even an experienced wizard to finish carving the runes.

Hence I would advise any aspiring golem owners to question their own position extremely closely before attempting to create a golem. If you do not have the resources to afford tons of stone, if you do not have a large space available for work, if you do not have plenty of time ready to be set aside or if you do not have the patience for immaculate, tedious rune-work then I would strongly advise you to set this volume down and find a new project. If your answer to all of the above questions was a resounding yes; then congratulations on your embarking into a new and exciting hobby. I myself have had three golems for a number of years now (I have six currently, thanks to my research into this very volume) designed for different purposes and I have been most pleased with the results from each one. I hope that by following this tome you, too, will have a successful venture into the enjoyable and exciting world of golem-making.

On the Creation of Golems – Saul Obaris