Battle. The single thing that Sofis hated to research in her time at the Academia, yet so crucial to the formation of the world’s history. The conflicts of unnecessary deaths which brought about the selfish ambitions of a few in authority, yet so imperative for the development and destruction of society. She used to be fascinated in it, yet as she matured, she realised the egoistic glorification of many such events in various accounts, leaving her disappointed and disinterested. It was ultimately something she abandoned, turning her attention to reviving ancient societies lost by these very conflicts.

And here she was, participating in one not of her own volition, just like so many of the subjects of her research written down in literature.

Reluctantly, she picked up the smallest sword and the lightest shield, following closely behind the other three in hopes of preserving her safety. She felt weighed down by these weapons and tools, in contrast to her beloved books that she enjoyed and cherished. Every bit of her supplies and collected items was now to be lost, trapped in the chambers of the undersea boat. Exactly like much of the evidence of many ancient societies that burned to dust as a result of numerous conflicts.

Now, there was only one instinct left: to survive.

She looked as one of the golems swung its arm towards Jorn. His arm shook when the impact struck his shield, but it didn’t faze him as he drove his sword against the golem’s body. It moaned in pain, but it didn’t stop its intensity. Elsewhere, Temia and Gennai had teamed up against another golem, outmanoeuvring it with calculated steps and dodges, aiming to confuse its attacks. They had probably faced traps and battles like this before, and against golems only around two heads taller than them, it felt far less intimidating than those two gigantic creatures before.

That left two golems free to roam, and both, naturally, targeted Sofis.

She fled away from them, immediately throwing her sword which only grazed one of the golem’s torso. It was impossible for her to even put up a fight. For some reason, despite still assumed to be practically immortal, she felt something different the moment she saw those golems. It was probably just irrational unease, but she couldn’t simply shake it off with her rapidly deteriorating logical thinking. She could only run.

One of the golems eventually caught up to her, its stone feet rattling the ground beneath her. Its whip-like arms swung simultaneously towards her legs. One hit and she’d be disabled. It didn’t matter whether she wouldn’t die or not. As long as she wasn’t fatally injured yet, she wouldn’t be able to regenerate.

And she didn’t want to imagine the pain of a pair of shattered legs.

She jumped. Leapt, even. She catapulted her body high above the golems like an acrobat, landing softly just behind them. She didn’t think her body was capable of this. No one else of the four showed such sudden enhanced physical capabilities.

Just then, she felt her arm move erratically, bringing the shield up to block the second golem’s attack. It was a clean block, the golem even being knocked back a step from the recoil.

But she wasn’t controlling herself. She couldn’t have possibly reacted in time to that attack. Someone, or perhaps something, had puppetted her.

She felt her body being tossed around involuntarily, jumping, dodging, weaving, sliding, using any possible movement to evade the golems’ attacks. She was like a spectator to her own movements, unable to do anything but let her body move by itself and hope she wouldn’t receive any injuries.

It was honestly scary. She wondered if anyone had experienced this before, this separation between body and mind. It was certainly a phenomenon which she hadn’t heard of in the Academia, and at most would only originate from the mouths of street storytellers who wanted to embellish a certain tale. As her body swiftly dodged another attack, she simply resigned herself to the puppeteer who held her hostage in the shadows.

Her arm picked up the sword, and though the weight of the metal and the momentum tore at her muscles, it moved as if it had picked up a feather. Sofis couldn’t even feel the pain, or any sense for that matter save for her vision and hearing.

One of the golems suddenly jumped and appeared above her, its feet aiming for her head. She ducked and slid away, a few strands of her hair plucked away after being caught by the impact. The golem swung its arms before she steadied herself. Blocking with her shield did nothing but to mitigate the impact. Her body tumbled backwards, and Sofis thought she heard a loud ‘crack’ from her left arm. As she stood up, it was clear. The arm had dislocated, and the shield was now broken.

It didn’t matter. The dislocated arm tossed away the shield and simply reattached the joint to the body after some rough adjustments. The sword now also doubled as a shield, blocking and parrying the incoming attacks with ease. The world spun around her eyes as her body danced, stretching her limbs to unprecedented limits, hitting the golems with superior speed and precision.

The two golems charged against her. Her body jumped, letting the two crash into each other. Their stone torsos cracked from the impact and they staggered back, stunned by their own force.

A chance. Her arm stretched out as her body dove down, the tip of the sword aimed at the head of one golem. The stone split apart upon impact, the sword driving deeper and deeper until it reached past the pelvis of the golem. With a fierce slice, the golem was cut in two, and without whatever powered it within, the stone crumbled into pieces and fell into the abyss below.

There was no one to celebrate her body’s feat. Not even herself. The other golems needed to be taken down.

If Sofis was in control of her body right now, she would’ve vomited already. The motion was too sudden for her to follow, her vision extremely strained from trying to follow her own movements. As for her hearing… Every sound was blurred together into high-pitched shrieks and cries. Whether that was the result of the air or from someone’s throat, she couldn’t be bothered to know.

She was in pain. Pure mental pain.

For a moment, she thought she saw Jorn being knocked back by a golem. The next moment, her body was hurtling towards the golem, spinning like some sort of falcon to increase her speed while her sword was poised to strike the golem’s neck.

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The golem raised its foot towards a fallen Jorn—

There was a whoosh of air. The next moment, the sword had decapitated the golem, the stone scattered to many pieces.

‘Sofis, how did you—’

She couldn’t hear the rest of what Jorn said. Her body was already pulled to the next golem. Somehow, the sword didn’t go for the kill this time, instead distracting and blocking the golem while Temia and Gennai faced off the other one. Her intensity didn’t drop. In fact, she felt even more dizzy as her body did acrobatics more advanced than even the best athletes she knew.

It was almost as if it was toying with the golem, using it as her body’s plaything.

Bit by bit, it chipped off the golem’s stone exterior. First it was the tips of its arms. Then it was the torso. Then the feet. Then the rest of the arms. In the end, all that was left to remove was the head.

She realised that, underneath the stone, the golems were just humanoid pillars of light, harmless and fragile. The light was more of a glowing liquid, gradually leaking and weakening without the protection of the stone. Their movements were erratic and desperate, random and slow, as if they were just trying to protect themselves from perceived danger.

It didn’t matter. As soon as the sword detached the stone head from its body, the core of the golem exploded and left nothing but shattered stone.

After a while, all four golems were defeated, the weapons that they had all dulled, dented or broken. Sofis finally felt control over her body, and surprisingly enough, she felt no pain, only mild fatigue from all the dizziness she experienced. It was as if someone had just borrowed her body and returned it to her in its original state.

‘Sofis… Just what was that?’ Gennai asked in shock. It was then that she noticed he had strapped the golden shield to his back, replacing his other shield that was now broken. Despite it being made pretty much of solid malleable gold, it did not dent a single bit.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. She didn’t even know how to explain her situation earlier to the others.

Confused and tired, the group stepped towards the door to the next hall.

Yet instead of opening the door, the entire wall just collapsed in front of them, revealing dozens of smaller golems hidden and hunched up behind, their light dimly glowing as they huddled around each other. As soon as they noticed the group, they paused and stood up, their tiny bodies defiantly facing against the supposed invaders of their hall.

It was the same thing all over again. They hadn’t broken out of the hall yet.

Despite how weak these golems looked, their sheer numbers were nothing to be scoffed at. Without some of their shields, they couldn’t possibly reliably protect themselves for long. They were about to be swarmed, and they knew it.

‘Back up against the wall,’ Gennai instructed. ‘I’ll somehow protect you all behind the shield.’

‘Your shield isn’t even big enough,’ Temia noted. ‘What do you mean somehow protecting us all?’

‘We’ll make it work somehow,’ Jorn insisted. ‘It’s our best bet right now.’

Only Sofis stopped to look at the advance of the small golems. They seemed completely harmless, lacking any sort of fatal weapon they could use. In fact, it seemed possible to just walk through them and approach the next door.

‘Conflict might be avoidable,’ she suggested. ‘They probably can’t hurt us.’

‘Sofis, don’t take this risk,’ Temia warned.

‘I want to at least give it a try. Experimenting, if you will.’ Her words were baseless. There was no evidence that the golems were indeed harmless or showed signs to be so. They were just smaller versions of the four large golems that attacked them earlier. If anything, Sofis should’ve been more cautious of their advances and prepared for any sort of attack.

But she chose not to. As she walked towards them, they didn’t show any sign of further hostility. It was working, or at least so far. Even as she entered amongst them, much to everyone else’s horror, the golems just surrounded her without any further movement. They were like little moving dolls, allowing her to pass as she pleased while they just observed.

One of them suddenly began to glow.

‘Sofis!’

Sofis felt strings attached themselves to her entire body, and in an instant, she lost control again. Her body leapt up just as one of the tiny golems emitted a bright light… and exploded.

It was a chain reaction. The debris of one hit another, leading to that golem to explode, and that debris affected more golems, and so on… Until the entire hall became engulfed in smoke and tiny craters, pieces of evidence of those stone-covered explosives.

Sofis’ eyes were tearing up from the smoke, her body disoriented from the confusion. She couldn’t see anything. Her body was just darting around aimlessly, dodging the continued explosions as it attempted to make its way back towards the other three.

A glowing golem leapt up towards her. The sword slashed it in half, immediately activating the explosion. Her body tumbled back from the shock but soon recovered itself, just in time for a second golem to attack.

The explosions were almost endless. No matter how many the sword had cut, more appeared out of nowhere to be cut once more. She heard the shouts of the others, but she couldn’t discern their location. Neither could her uncontrollable body, only able to slash or dodge every incoming golem.

But everything that was finite eventually had to come to an end. Soon, the smoke was beginning to clear. The golden shield had managed to protect the three hiding behind it, though Temia was slightly injured when a piece of stone grazed her face. Sofis’ body was still unharmed, though parts of her clothing had been scorched, and her entire body was darkened and dirtied by the smoke itself.

She breathed hard. At least it was over. With the effect of the smoke, she could see the strings around her body now. They covered her from head to toe, but particularly on her limbs. When a few strings were tugged, one of her limbs would move. It was how she could accomplish all those acrobatic moves while taking away her own agency in the matter.

Well, at the very least, she was unscathed.

‘Sofis…!’ Temia shouted her name as she came running over, her arms wide for an embrace. She had completely dropped her usual distant appearance, now approaching Sofis with genuine joy. Gennai and Jorn followed closely behind, also overjoyed at her safety.

Sofis opened her arms as well. She was just relieved that all was over, that they could progress into the next hall. Being unable to retreat, the top of the structure was the only goal they sought at this point. No one had any idea how to return after they reached the top. The fact that they were still on track and well alive was enough for them.

Sofis suddenly felt a tug on her sword arm.

‘Stop—’

The sword flew out from her hands, narrowly avoiding Temia before it landed solidly on the ground.

She felt more tugs on the rest of her body. She had lost control again.

A leap, and her body was now behind the other three. Her arm picked up the sword and pointed it directly at her companions.

‘Sofis, what are you doing?’ Gennai cautiously said as he slowly turned around.

‘Gennai, Jorn, Temia…’ Her mouth trembled, barely able to utter those words even as her lips cut at the strings and bled.

‘Save me.’