We were approaching the southern border of their tribe. I had expected their territory to be more expansive, but it only took us two days to reach this point. The forests were giving way to a mountainous landscape, with empty hills, green valleys, and snow-covered peaks. The temperature was dropping, a first on this planet.

My thoughts wandered to my duel with Grimfur. It reminded me once again that everything here had resistance to magic. I needed to either find a way to pierce that resistance or to empower my spells. A more powerful spell would help me against all types of enemies, so that seemed to be the best path forward.

I realized I had always been too cautious with my lightning bolt. It never did as much damage as it did when I hit that wood log the first time. Maybe, subconsciously, I was holding back. After all, spells had an intent component, and if I wasn't fully committed, they would never reach their full power.

A surprisingly small ursini approaching pulled me out of my thoughts. He scrutinized me for a moment before speaking, "I'm here with information that may help you against the golems."

I have to admit, I was surprised. I expected some thinly veiled insult followed by obstinance with every scrap of information. Instead, he was straightforward.

"Thank you. The others didn't tell me much about them. I thought it was some sort of secret."

He took a seat on the ground in front of me. "You were with many others. We didn't want to provoke panic."

"It's that bad?"

He looked at the ground, then at the horizon, thinking. "We will soon have to move if nothing can be done."

"Okay, can you elaborate?" As I said that, Alira approached us.

"We first encountered them in a valley a day from here. They are about twice our size. They don't talk or communicate in any way we've seen. All our efforts at diplomacy have been useless."

His anger was slowly rising. "They are not smart, but extremely durable to physical attacks. And while we have few with spells, they seem somewhat resistant to that as well."

"Great," I muttered under my breath, realizing I was going to need something far more powerful.

"Although they are not smart and don't talk, they can somehow communicate as they work together when needed," the ursini continued.

"Why do you think they're not smart?" I asked.

"They'll let you near them and won't attack unless provoked. They only respond when attacked," he explained.

I looked at him in confusion. "I'm guessing you've tried not attacking them?"

"From what we can tell, they act passively when not on an important mission. They get aggressive when guarding their structures."

Alira asked, "What are they building?"

"They're gathering materials. They've taken over the old quarry, the mine, and they're even cutting down trees and transporting them to the valley."

"And you don't know what they're doing in the valley?" I asked.

"No. Our scouts are attacked if they get too close, but more and more black smoke is rising from the valley," he replied.

He stood up and began pacing. "I know it's not much, but they are always spreading, always wanting more materials. There are thousands of them now, and more appear every day."

I smiled, trying to sound reassuring. "From what you've told me, I think we may have a chance."

Alira, who had been deep in thought, now eyed me curiously.

"Thank you for the information. We will be going now," I said.

As soon as Isla joined us, we set off.

"Do you really have something?" Isla asked once we were out of Ursini hearing range. "Or were you just trying to give them some hope?"

"Obviously, I could be wrong, but the golems sound a lot like robots, and robots have unique weaknesses we can exploit," I explained.

"What are robots?" Isla asked.

"They are constructs, you could say, that aren't alive," I tried to explain.

"So, undead?" she retorted.

"No" I chuckled, although it would be a fit description, "they were never alive in the first place."

They both looked more confused. "How can they not be alive?" Alira asked.

I felt a bit frustrated. Sometimes it was hard to explain things to someone without any background in technology.

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"Think of a chariot. Is it alive?"

"No," they both responded.

"Now, imagine that chariot didn't need horses to move," I continued, sensing another question. "It doesn't matter how it moves, just accept that it does for now."

Alira looked ready for more questions but stayed silent.

"The next step is somehow making the chariot do very simple things, like writing instructions on a magical paper and the chariot follows them, such as 'go forward' or 'raise a hand' if the chariot had arms," I explained with a smile.

"Then you combine these simple things: walk toward a tree, lift hand, move hand into tree, pick up tree, walk back home."

Raising my hand with palms open, I continued, "Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but by combining simple actions, you can make them perform quite complex tasks."

"So everything they do has to have some instructions written down beforehand?" Isla asked.

"Yes," I replied. "That's why they seem dumb. If they encounter something new, they can't do anything, it can never learn on its own"

"So what are their weakness?" Alira asked

"Well, first, the instructions can be written by anyone. If we somehow manage to access them, we could erase everything else and give them a command like 'sit.' Then they would sit down forever."

Alira didn't seem convinced. "That's very specific. Who knows who's giving them instructions? Maybe they already have them."

"The next weakness is power—the thing that makes them move. They need to recharge somehow. Maybe they recharge from something external, from the sun, or even from magic itself. The idea is that this recharging process can be disrupted."

"If there are thousands already, that idea would not scale very well" Isla commented.

"Then there is the communications angle. If they are to execute tasks together, they have to communicate with each other. And that communication can also be disrupted"

"But I thought they didn't communicate?" Alira asked.

"They do but not by words, in my world they communicated by light, well light you can't see" I said trying to keep it simple.

"Light that you cannot see?" Alira laughed but then stopped when she saw my confusion, "I keep forgetting you're serious when explaining your world."

It clicked a few seconds later that without the context it sounded utterly ridiculous.

"Yes, it may not be my best comparison, but that's the gist of it." I was not going into details about electromagnetic waves.

The questions didn't stop until we saw the first golem. We were still far away, but it seemed to be busy cutting up a tree, it had massive arms using a magic base plasma torch, not unlike what I had for starting fires but obviously on a larger scale. The power requirements must have been enormous to maintain that spell. Interestingly, it didn’t even burn the wood, indicating it was more magic-based than heat-based.

We kept getting closer, but the golem didn’t react, continuing its task. Around it, there were many logs, each neatly stacked and stripped of branches. So far, the robot theory seemed to hold up.

I wanted to get closer since I had a few ideas to confirm the robot theory. Maybe a spell to disrupt radio waves like an RF jammer, or even an EMP wave, though that would be much harder to reproduce with magic.

Alira kept us at a sensible distance from them. They made a lot of noise when walking, so it was easy to stay clear of them. As we approached their territory, their numbers increased accordingly. What had been solitary individuals were now teams constructing buildings.

The buildings were entirely utilitarian, devoid of decorations. They seemed to be processing something, with rail lines leading into them. This explained how they moved all the resources without a nearby river. While the tracks spread in various directions, most appeared to lead to a single destination, presumably their main base.

Following the main tracks, we kept a safe distance. The first problem we encountered was the valley entrance. Until now, the terrain had been wide enough to avoid risks, but that was no longer the case. The wide terrain funneled into a narrow pass flanked by massive rock formations. To make matters worse, a checkpoint had been constructed with walls blocking any possible entry point. We had two options: scale the rocks or the walls, or try to pass through the makeshift rail line down the middle.

"Think you can create an illusion to make us appear as golems?" I asked Isla.

"I can, but it won't hold up close," she replied.

"It just has to be passable. They shouldn’t be that smart; the real challenge will be their security measures," I said.

She thought about it for a moment. "If we all stay close, it should be passable. They're not as complicated to copy as other things."

Indeed, the golems barely had faces, just two eye-like features covering most of the face area. Their uniform brown coloring made copying easier since they had no distinctive features. We huddled together and waited as Isla worked her magic. At her signal, we started moving forward. It was awkward at first, as we had to maintain a roughly triangular formation. We often had to stop to regroup, but perhaps our clumsy movements weren't too suspicious since the golems also moved with little grace.

The moment of truth came when we had to get onto the tracks. Most golems were pushing carts or carrying something, but a few were just walking, so our group shouldn’t have seemed too out of place. As we reached the checkpoint, I held my breath, uncertain of their detection methods.

Inside the checkpoint, there was absolutely nothing. I had expected to see some new type of golem, but perhaps the checkpoint's purpose was simply to force any intruder into close proximity with the golems. If that was true, their aggro range, so to speak, was very small, giving us a narrow margin of safety.

With the checkpoint behind us, we saw more of the valley below. Not a single tree stood; the terrain had been leveled and filled with long, thin buildings resembling factories. The most concerning sight was the hundreds of golems parked like cars in endless lines. They were clearly preparing for an invasion. We all looked at the scene with varying degrees of shock.

If they got even one more year to develop, they could become a serious problem and potentially take over the continent. It made sense why they started in the middle of nowhere, to avoid early detection. Even now, a medium-sized army could crush them based on what Alira had told me, but give it a few months, and the odds would drop significantly.

From this vantage point, we also noticed a large, central building with a unique design—it had a dome-like structure with spires that seemed to crackle with energy. “That must be their command center,” Alira whispered. “If we can get in there, we might find a way to disable them.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Isla replied. “We need to gather more intel before making a move, though.”

Suddenly, a series of explosions echoed from the far end of the valley. “What was that?” Alira asked, her voice tense.

“Looks like someone else is attacking them,” Isla said, straining to see through the smoke and debris. “We might have allies here.”

“I doubt it. My money is on some kind of accident," I said. "When you combine so much new technology with magic, accidents are bound to happen sooner rather than later."

"Still, we won't get a better opportunity to avoid detection, let's try to get to that creepy building in the middle" Alira said.