Near Spider Rock, Canyon de Chelly, West of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, 1775

Oliver Milton walked through the red desert, close to death.

He wasn’t dying, far from it; he was actually quite healthy. It was only that the time and place of his murder drew closer with each step. Milton knew and had known this for a long while, yet he remained intent on facing it. He had accepted what would — what must — come.

The sun was finally setting, causing the shadows ahead of Milton to stretch and darken. The searing heat would start to bleed away soon and Milton was glad of it, even if it didn’t really affect him. He could, if he wanted, crawl into the very fires of a smithy’s forge and emerge unscathed. While he might not be sweating, he wasn’t immune to discomfort.

After more than a year exploring the vast desert that stretched across much of Nuevo México, Milton had begun to tire of the blistering heat. Although perhaps not as large, parts of this American desert were both hotter and less forgiving than the sandy wastes of Arabia or the Sahara.

The area of desert he’d traveled the past week was rocky; the stone had a decidedly reddish-orange tinge, as if the ground itself had been painted with the blood of some colossal god at the creation of the world. Milton was reminded of the rocky land around the ancient city of Reqmu, more commonly known as Petra.

It won’t be long now, Milton thought.

He was traversing a great canyon, or perhaps it was several canyons intersecting each other, and admiring the coarse shrubs that dotted the landscape. For all its harshness, the desert was a beautiful, even majestic place. Milton had never seen a sunset as vivid as those he’d witnessed in this arid land.

Although nominally a Spanish kingdom, Nuevo México was inhabited by more natives than Spaniards or their descendants. The peoples of this continent were unlike any of the Old World that Milton knew of, especially this far north. The supposed great thinkers of Europe thought them an uncivilized people, but that was a conclusion formed of ignorance and pride.

The people of these lands had simply developed different traditions; they had interacted with and been influenced by Creaturae and the aether in vastly different ways. It was likely to the detriment of all that the human cultures of the two hemispheres had come into contact when they did. A few centuries earlier or later and the future may have looked quite different.

That was Milton’s suspicion, at least, but he didn’t put much stock in what was possible when measured against what was likely. Probability was, in his opinion, more reliable than possibility.

For instance, he was going to die on this very day and he knew it.

If he clung to possibility, he could try to delay or deny his fate. If he did, the future he saw would become indecipherable and uncertain. Worse, acting in such a selfish manner wouldn’t just obscure his vision of what would be, it might undermine the possibility that it even could be. No, this was what had to happen. He had gone to great lengths to set his affairs — and the affairs of quite a few others — in order in anticipation of this day.

Milton rounded a wall of the canyon on his trek back east and found himself in the presence of a most unusual geological formation. Set near one of the sloping bases of a wall across the open floor of the canyon, two spires jutted upwards to the sky. Or perhaps it was only a single pillar and had been split near the base by some monumental force. One spire rose higher than the other, giving it an uneven appearance.

The orange stone pillar soared more than five hundred feet into the air, perhaps as high as a thousand, and the split made it resemble nothing so much as an immense lobster claw.

That puts some things into context, Milton mused.

Although he was gifted with foresight, the form his premonitions took varied greatly. Sometimes he could seek a vision, but other times they came unbidden, most often in his dreams. Those unsought insights were laden with symbolism and could be difficult to decipher. For instance, Milton had long wondered how he would face his death in a searing red desert and yet a giant sea monster would be present.

The bright russet pillar clarified that particular mystery. There were many other questions left unanswered and Milton hoped for more revelations, if only to satisfy his curiosity.

Too many questions about the next life, Milton thought. In a world so very different from the one I know.

A few minutes later, a campfire flickered merrily in the shadow of the stone pillar, a kettle quickly heating over the flames. The water came to a boil and Milton added some leaves to allow them to steep. He heard footsteps behind him, loud and heavy on the compact earth of the canyon scrubland.

“You’ve traveled a great distance to find me. I wonder if we might share a cup of tea before… well, I’m sure you know better than anyone what your purpose here is,” Milton said.

“Your time has ended,” a voice behind him rumbled, punctuated with nearly inaudible clicking and scraping noises.

That was a true statement, or close enough that distinctions didn’t really matter. Milton’s death was imminent and it would be at the hands of whomever or whatever was speaking behind him.

Yet it was also a falsehood; Milton’s time wasn’t limited to his own life span; he had lived before and he would live again, in a manner of speaking. He might not be precisely the same person, but he was part of a vast legacy.

Milton felt perfectly at ease; what would come would come and he had spent years coming to terms with it. His hands were steady as he set out two cups on a flat stone beside the fire, his breath smooth and even.

Now that the thing was finally upon him, what he wanted was a moment of respite and civility before the bloody work began.

“Almost,” Milton agreed, gesturing to a rock across from him. “That doesn’t mean we can’t have an amicable discussion before we resolve that matter.”

Heavy footfalls drew closer, reverberating through the hard ground. The stranger was very close to Milton. His instincts told him to tense for an attack, but he held himself steady. This wouldn’t end in a single blow and he didn’t want to risk losing this chance for a conversation.

Finally, Milton came face to face with his killer.

The stranger passed around Milton, silent as a placid sea, and took a seat across the fire. Apparently they could move quietly if they wished to. The creature’s appearance settled another of Milton’s questions.

Although human in shape, no one could mistake the thing sitting across from Milton for a human being. It was more like a clumsy sculpture of a human, with flesh the color and consistency of dark, polished stone. Its features were as sharp and angular as the red stone of the pillar beside them. Its movements were clumsy and stiff, like someone recovering from a long period bedridden.

The nature of the assassin sitting across from him certainly put the dreams where Milton died in an avalanche into perspective.

“I suspect your maker ensured you were more aptly made than you appear,” Milton observed. “Given the recent prohibition on such creations, perhaps some of the artistry has been lost.”

The creature said nothing; it simply watched him with an unblinking stare. Even its eyes were stone, a fact which might have been unnerving if Milton weren’t expecting this creature to kill before the sun finished setting.

“I won’t ask your name for obvious reasons, but I assume you know mine?”

“To give a snake your name is to give it power over you,” the stranger rumbled.

An old idea, that, and not exactly an untrue one; but for the thing sitting across from him it was likely more accurate than usual. Milton was no expert on this particular field of magic, but there was a good chance his killer was either animated or empowered by the name it had been given. Still, it was good to have confirmation his killer was a construct — that meant someone had made and sent this thing after him.

Not much to be done about that now, Milton thought. What will be, will be.

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“I can see why you might think so,” Milton said. “Am I to take it that your primary objection to my continued life is the nature of my being? That is to say, you are here to kill me because I am a drakus and nothing more?”

“Serpents are a blight, a curse on humanity. Since time immemorial your ilk has only served to worsen the condition of the world and its inhabitants. It is not my task to expunge the lot of you, but I can content myself with severing the head of the snake.”

So it comes because I am the Primus Draconis, Milton thought. At least my fellows will be free of this threat.

Lamentable as it might be, dragons had been deeply unpopular with almost every other group of Creaturae since time immemorial. Except the elves, of course, who were said to remember a time before the rise of human civilization more clearly than any other mystic creature. Perhaps it was even justified, to some extent.

“I’d like to think we’re no longer the avaricious beasts sitting on their hoards we once were,” Milton mused. “However, I’ve not been able to glean a way to smooth such ancient grudges with the other Creaturae.”

“It is not only Creaturae who oppose your kind,” the stranger said. “You have more enemies than just the lesser beasts.”

So it is a creation of a magus or an order of magi. Another question answered, while so many remain, Milton thought.

Of all the many and varied beings in the world who were not entirely in line with the mundane, only magi were known for objecting to be included as one of the Creaturae. In fact, only a particular brand of highly formalized, esoteric orders of sorcerers took issue with the de facto association being drawn between themselves and partial- or non-humans.

That narrowed the list of like creators down somewhat, but not much — if anything, the prevalent attitudes of Europeans towards those they viewed as less worthy or significant than themselves only proved that kind of thinking was all too widespread.

Milton leaned forward and lifted the lid from the kettle. Aromatic steam drifted out and he breathed it in, slowly and deeply. He knew from experience that the fragrance of the tea belied the complexities of flavor it provided. A plump pheasant might have been nice for a last meal, but a quiet tea service would do the trick.

To accompany the tea, Milton set out a small container of milk, another of sugar, and a plate with a hardshell cover. He didn’t know how his guest took their tea, if at all, but better to be over-prepared than inhospitable. He detached and removed the lid from the plate and set it aside.

“I apologize that I haven’t any cakes, but I hope you’ll enjoy an assortment of nuts, sweetmeats, and other preserved fruits.”

The living statue surveyed the impromptu tea service laid out before it, then turned its unblinking gaze back to Milton.

“I will not be foiled by magic cooked into a paltry meal nor assuaged by a hollow offering,” the stone man said.

“No magic, no tricks; I simply wish to enjoy a bit of conversation before we are forced to delve into unpleasantness.”

The tea had steeped long enough for most of the leaves to settle, so Milton lifted the kettle and poured the fragrant brew into each of the cups he’d set out. The porcelain wasn’t the finest, but it was made well enough for the sound of the pouring tea to strike a note of bittersweet nostalgia in Milton. The tea itself was a rich, honeyed brown and a healthy steam rose from the filled cups.

“I don’t know if you’re familiar; this drink is called tea,” Milton said. “It’s from the distant land of China, far in the East, where the leaves are harvested and processed by ascetics devoted to lives of utmost simplicity.”

Milton added milk to his cup and a fair amount of sugar; he was perfectly happy to take his tea plain, but if there was ever a time for indulgence, this was it.

The stone man copied Milton’s actions, pouring some milk into the tea then adding sugar, albeit somewhat clumsily. The construct may have been hesitant because it wasn’t familiar with the process or, more likely, since its fingers were as roughly hewn as the rest of it, being rather wide and ending with squared tips.

“We were talking of history,” Milton said. “You want me and those who follow to die; you and your maker think my people have influenced the course of history for the worse. Is that more or less accurate?”

Following Milton’s lead, the assassin lifted the porcelain cup to its stone lips and tipped some of the steaming liquid into its mouth.

“As it has been, so it shall ever be; wyrms fester and corrupt the world wherever they dwell,” the construct said.

“The history of dragons is longer than either of us know, I think, but what I would like to talk about is the future.”

“You have no future, wyrm.”

“Perhaps,” Milton said, picking up and chewing on some sweetmeats, savoring the sugary morsel for a moment. “But you do and I worry for you.”

“You worry for me,” the creature said, incredulous.

Milton nodded. “You have taken a grudge — a hatred — into your heart and let it define you. I fear this will taint your every experience of the world, leading you to see the worst in all things.”

“The world is irrelevant, only my duty matters.”

A sadder existence I couldn’t imagine, Milton thought.

Milton knew — or had a pretty good idea, at least — that this creature would endure a mindset poisoned by this prejudice for years to come before there was any hope for reprieve. His visions of that distant future were confusing and sometimes overwhelming, yet Milton was confident it would be years before the opportunity for change came.

A century at least, he thought. The wonders of the future I have seen could not come to pass in any less a time.

The buildings he had seen — things made of metal and glass, soaring into the very sky itself, taller than the greatest pyramids, higher even than the spire of red stone behind him — were enough to guarantee that. How such structures could be built or stand, Milton didn’t know, but they were the least of the marvelous things his essence would witness next. A part of him wondered if magic might have a resurgence and reach new heights.

Milton refused to yield the topic. It didn’t matter whether the creature sitting across from him was worthy of the effort or if there was little hope of reducing the blood spilled in the coming years. He could at least plant seeds in that pessimistic soil and hope a weed of hope would take root and strangle the harvest of nihilism. But it would have to be presented in terms the creature would understand; a perspective inherited from his creator.

“Perhaps your duty is the only thing that matters to you, but surely you have opinions. Would you agree, at least, that serfdom and slavery are abhorrent institutions which violate the most basic tenets of natural law?”

The golem — or would it be a gargoyle? — considered the question, awkwardly placing a small pile of sugared nuts into the slot in its face that crudely resembled a mouth and crunching them into pulp. Its face was otherwise still throughout, giving no sign of whether it took anything from the experience.

“Nature is filled with hierarchies of power; recognizing one group is more advantaged than another is not innately wrong,” the golem said. “The subjugation and exploitation of others to the excess humans have reached is, however, unconscionable and grotesque. Something learned from your kind, most likely.”

“Let us say a day comes when such institutions have been torn down. Do you believe the state should still be judged as if it were continuing to uphold it?”

“The stain of such a practice would endure, even if the practice itself had ceased.”

Milton frowned. “A black mark on their history and one that should never be forgotten lest humility and vigilance against such abuses lapse, but surely you wouldn’t argue it’s the same as if the policy were ongoing?”

“An unforgivable act is, by its very nature, unforgivable,” the golem said.

“Judging anyone, be it individual or state, solely by the lowest point in their history — regardless of how they might have progressed — seems a rather melancholic perspective.”

The golem offered no response to that, only taking another sip from its cup of tea. Another approach was needed — one that might also offer insight into the construct’s makers.

“Would you agree the Rome or Greece of antiquity were laudable civilizations known for scholarship and great thinkers?” Milton asked.

“Of course; they brought light to the darkness of a largely uncivilized world.”

“So you don’t judge them solely for engaging in slavery? Pederasty? Imperialism?”

The corners of the golem’s mouth turned down ever so slightly, perhaps the extent of expression it was capable of.

After a long silence, Milton continued. “In the years to come, as you hunt down and kill those who would be my successors, I believe you will see that societies and individuals are capable of great change and growth. You might even find you are capable of the same.”

“My duty is eternal.”

“Perhaps,” Milton said, draining the last of his tea with a sigh. “Well, I believe we have come to the point where there is little more to discuss other than the execution of that duty.”

Although Milton was well more than a century old, the drakus didn’t look it — his body was more hale and healthy than a soldier in the prime of their life. He rose to his feet smoothly and the golem did the same.

“I hope you’ll accept my apologies if I don’t offer my surrender and quietly accept my own death.”

“Your cooperation was not anticipated,” the golem said, and lunged across the firepit.