The party had but a moment to recoil away from the door before the construct smashed into it.

Despite its earlier slow movements, it could really move fast when it wanted to. Ulgrin was reminded of the rare bound Elementals titled ‘Golems’ that he’d read about. They were expensive and difficult to create. Why the Ancients had one doing menial labor, he had no idea.

Whatever the case, elementals possessed great strength due to their inanimate bodies and spiritual power. Case in point, metal shards sprayed the hallway as the door frame was dented and broken. Thankfully, the party avoided the bulk of the damage as the construct smashed into the opposite wall.

“Bash it!” Ulgrin called, stumbling back to his feet and drawing his warhammer. Coming in with a two-handed cleave, he watched as the construct ‘bent’ backwards completely from the force. Only a large dent was left in the brassy frame. Curses. Then it promptly rotated back into a standing position, hands swiping at him. Sparks flew as he raised his weapon to deflect. Gods that thing packs a punch!

Saezz darted in for a grapple, muscles quivering as he met the creature’s arms. The sphere below it spun furiously against the ground, trying to push him away. His strength held out long enough for Raelza to make a strike.

Lashing out with her glaive, the blade struck it right in the joint of an arm. “Hit it in the thinner bits!” She called, a clang filling the air. The construct rolled back a few feet, red and baleful eye staring them down. Nearby, Wreath let out a rumbling call and charged, bone meeting metal.

Both of them recoiled, but surprisingly the thornshield seemed somewhat stunned. That metal was hard stuff.

Ulgrin extended his warhammer into a polearm. “Watch out. It’s gonna charge again!”

The party leapt to the side of the hallway as the sphere began to spin up. Then it shot forwards, barreling past them all. It bounced off the wall, spun, and then charged once again.

Darting to the side, Ulgrin braced himself and swung as the construct passed. A jarring pain rang through his arms as impact was made, limbs strained from the force. “Gah!” He barely kept himself from dropping the weapon, which had survived the hit far better than he could thanks to its enchantments. Still, it did the job.

The golem’s injured left arm was now busted, twisted at an odd angle. It spun, off-balance and reeling from the blow.

Coming in like a speeding train, Saezz leapt into the air drop-kicked the creature. This, finally, seemed to knock it to the ground. Not for long, given its unique method of locomotion.

Alyss darted in, drawing a bomb from her satchel. “Eat this you pile of scrap metal!” She shoved the vial into its joint and then hit the deck, leaping away. As soon as the construct tried to move its arm the vial was smashed and promptly exploded. A sharp pinging sound filled the air as metal was overstressed.

With one arm completely shorn off and the other non functional, the construct was considerably less deadly.

Or at least, that was in theory. Ulgrin let out a mouthful of spittle as the spinning bastard crashed into him. He collapsed on the floor, breath taken away.

That was going to hurt in the morning.

“Come on!” Raelza shouted at it, drawing the construct’s attention. She darted back and away, avoiding its charging dashes. Then, reaching the doorway to the central area, lured it inside. Once it was safely on the other side, she ducked back into their hallway and shut the door.

A moment of silence filled the air as they waited for it to continue attacking. Despite all logic, the entity ceased its assault and they were left in peace. Ulgrin let out a groan, pulling himself to his feet.

Thank the ancestors for the armor. That would have hurt a lot more, but now was merely a big bruise.

“Any idea what that ball of rust was?” Alyss asked, brushing at one stain of smoke among hundreds.

“Some kind of golem, a construct. An elemental bound into an artificial shell. Typically rather difficult to do since they naturally want nothing else but to do whatever they want. Normally you need to appease them with payment and they’ll stick around for a short amount of time. A hundred or so years means nothing to an elemental. But thousands? Stuck doing the same task?” Ulgrin shook his head.

Saezz let out a grumble. “He did not sense any intelligence, did you?”

“No, which is the weirdest part. Plenty of magical energy, but no mind of any kind. Just attacked us without thought.” The dwarf replied.

From what he understood, Elementals were beings on the opposite end of the spectrum from Spirits. They were ‘Minds’ that created a ‘Body’. While they had the capability of thought, they lacked uniqueness in any way. Most elementals just considered themselves to be part of a greater presence, that being the world.

All things considered, they were strange entities, and generally difficult to negotiate with. Wants and needs were hard to convey when you lacked the motus to act on instinct. Typically they only accepted gifts in the form of rare materials to make themselves stronger, or copious amounts of mana.

Ulgrin felt the creature they had fought was something else. An automaton?

He paused to heft the large arm that had been blown off. Made of a tough material, at least for the steel alloy. One elbow joint, a wrist joint, and two joints on each of the three fingers to allow for grasping. Quite the ingenious design, too.

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Being no artisan himself, he had but a layman’s perspective, but the tolerances on each position were precise. It would have taken a master craftsman to build something like this. Years of work to be spent on a construct that was designed merely for sorting and maintaining a library?

It didn’t make much sense. From an economics standpoint this was a complete waste of time and funds. Had the Ancients not cared about expense? Had they lived lives of excess and richness? It was unclear.

Setting the arm aside and reminding himself to return for it, he gestured for them all to look inside the library.

Though the room had been sealed from the elements, that had still left the contents to slowly degrade. Much of the paper had desiccated and turned extremely fragile. To make matters worse, none of them could read the contents.

Ulgrin painstakingly opened a book only to find the words ineligible. Most of the ink had long since evaporated, leaving only smudges and symbols. “That’s going to be a problem. I can’t translate any of the words if I can’t read them.” He grunted, slowly closing the book and placing it back on a shelf.

Alyss shrugged. “Perhaps there will be more sealed compartments in a back room? Or magical books. Those would have lasted longer.”

“Perhaps,” he replied, starting to search.

The four of them, one still surprised thornshield, and an excited not-dog began to look through the library. Shelves lined the walls, some stretching at least two stories. Compared to the rest of the rooms, this one was an anomaly and felt like the rest of the complex had been built around it rather than the other way around.

Much of it was fairly mundane stuff. Seating areas for comfortably reading. Nooks and crannies for studying inside. Somewhat strange looking wheeled ladders for accessing higher books.

Once again they found expertly crafted mechanisms. Even with so much neglect and time, they still turned smooth as butter.

He surmised that it would require some serious magic to make this. Only the best of smiths utilized such things, but the precision necessary far surpassed what one could do with mere swings of a hammer or chisel. After a bit of finagling, he managed to get the wheel off and tossed it into his bag.

Continuing onwards, they encountered several more rooms. Private areas of study, likely.

Searching around in one of the desks, Ulgrin sensed a magical source. Gently, he cautioned everyone to stay away as he studied the jarringly pastel-colored tome.

From what he could tell, it was a minor evocation bound to the book. While unsure of what exactly it did, he felt that it likely wouldn’t hurt them very much. Still, he very hesitantly reached out and opened the book. Everyone held their breaths as he flipped open the first page.

Only to discover rainbow colored words. That was it? A pinnacle of magical enchantment used for… decor?

Feeling somewhat humbled, he withdrew his grandfather’s notes and began studying. It wasn’t a complete lexicon, but Halik had figured out a fair bit. He scanned the color-shifting words that held every hue of a rainbow, searching for something he could figure out.

“Hmm… It seems to be some kind of personal record,” he mused. “A journal, I think.” The original author had used the term ‘myself’ and the pronoun referring to them alone. “A researcher? They were studying here, long ago. Curse their handwriting. It’s a bit of a mess.”

Alyss peered over his shoulder, being the more scholarly type. “They were probably a woman.”

“How can you tell?” He grunted, confused.

“They wrote in a flowery style. That, or they were a feminine man. Might be either, but my bet is a lady wrote this. Young, probably. Some things are universal, Ulgrin. I’ve got a girl’s intuition on that.”

Now interested, Raelza wandered over and nodded. “Yep. That sounds about right. Oh, they added little flourishes too. Cute.”

He waved a hand. “I’ll take your word for it.” With the journal being written in the first person he had no other evidence to suggest otherwise. Moving along, he examined the rest of the writing. “I believe this place was some kind of school. Like a university, or a mage’s college. No clue what they were learning about. The word isn’t translated.”

It proved rather difficult to understand the contents of such things when he only knew every fifth word.

Tucking the book away in his bag once it proved to shed no more details, he moved along. They arrived at a small closet and were briefly confused at the contents. “What is this?” He asked, hefting a long metal rod with a collection of fibrous sheets attached to the end. “How would this be useful?” He wriggled it around.

Saezz thought about it for a moment. “More ritualistic tools. Our ancestors were likely very spiritually inclined, even in their places of learning.”

Without any other objections, they set it aside and continued on.

The largest chamber in this library seemed magically charged. Even just approaching had the hairs on his arms stick up. After brief study, it proved to be a mainly illusory enchantment.

Entering, they found a curved roof. The space was bare save for several pedestals that supported strange green orbs. Crystalline in nature, he couldn’t tell what gems they’d been made of. Each was about the size of his fist and there were three. Still amazed at how this place had remained solid for so long, he reached out a hand and touched the first.

The room went black. For a moment he thought it a trap, but then pinpricks of light emerged from the walls. Confusion hit him until he realized they were stars.

Constellations surrounded them. He was no astrologist, but he could recognize the most popular formations. Directly above them were the three moons. Just to the north of that was a small group called the Scales. South of that was the somewhat oddly shaped Trident formation. More could be seen, but something felt off about it all.

Alyss was the first to speak, “These aren’t our stars. Well, they are. But this is a representation of a time before the current era. The celestial bodies are in different positions, and there are new ones. How strange.” She gestured to a circular group. “That’s where we should be seeing the Crown, but it’s shifted down out of the way.”

Shocking to think their ancestors could capture a glimpse of the heavens and keep it intact for so long. The Shattering had claimed much, but failed to prevent the heaven’s infinite dance. While the world was breaking, they had continued their performance for all this time.

And now a glimpse into the past could be seen. A gift to the new world.

He and his fellow companions sat down for a few minutes and rested. Staring up, craning their necks to watch the stars glitter and twinkle. It was a peaceful moment, one that needed few words.

Ulgrin felt satisfied, but no moment could last forever. His inquisitive nature took hold, and he started examining the pedestals once again. The second pedestal proved to change the tapestry. They were left in the dark, save for Alyss’ lantern, and then visited again with another view of the heavens.

This time they knew it to be the modern sky. So the magic could ‘see’ the changes that had taken place. How interesting. Now that he was examining more closely, he could see that the inscriptions had somehow been written both outside and inside the orbs. Together they overlapped and allowed for a magic of great complexity.

Turning his attention to the third, he placed a hand on it. For a moment it appeared as if nothing happened, but then he looked up. The stars were moving, the moons setting and the suns rising. They moved quickly, at speed. Almost as if someone had cast a haste spell upon the heavens.

A cycle repeated for some time, before he jerked his hand away in shock. What? He squinted his eyes at a patch of the stars that had turned pitch black. A large one, too. It was no simple void that had appeared. No, a great rip in the sky had formed. It was no mere darkness, but an emptiness. His eyes hurt to stare at it. “Do ye all see that?” He hesitated, suddenly afraid.

“Saezz does.” The lizardfolk said grimly, hands balling into fists.

Ulgrin hesitantly reached out to the pedestal once again and just tapped it. The void seemed to grow, consuming more of the stars, before a final change occurred. The haste spell ended as a hand tore its way free from the void, spilling a prismatic spray of colors into the dark sky.

The hand was massive and seemed less a solid object and more a lack of anything else, breaking the sky as it reached towards the planet below. It almost seemed aimed directly at him and his companions. Then the image went black. They were left in darkness, the lantern having gone out.

The party was left in silence, staring at a blank ceiling. Whatever the hell they had just seen had no explanation.

Ulgrin felt cold. Sick to his stomach. And all too small.

A glimpse at something far beyond them. Anyways, when you think about it cleaning is a ritual in and of itself. A repetitive task we perform daily. All hail the Holy Mop! May their bristles bless our day. Have a happy Thanksgiving, you all! I'll have to dedicate this entire endeavor to my friends and family who support me in these trying times. Thank you very much, from the bottom of my heart.

Nothing for Lexicon today. Poor thing is starving.