Was it strange? In the middle of the desolation and looming death, to be thinking about how ancient humans killed each other?
What warfare looked like for all powerful sorcerers.
The war of Wekel had been decided in minutes, lasted hours and dragged on for a few days. Minutes for the powerful to impose a result. Hours for the defenders to survive.
Days to remove anything of the kingdom, almost to the name and the land itself.
Beings of such power didn't need an airship. Yet the carcass lay in the scorched land they had devastated. Be it vanity, power or caution, they had used this platform to rain death and then let it lie where it had been bested.
Abandoned there, with everyone else.
The human had reached its insides, or what passed for that now: shapeless masses of stone with small caves. She had found refuge as the wind gained in strength.
Her presence, even in the body of a clay golem, and even as weakened, seemed to stir new life in a dead kingdom.
She huddled inside, saw creatures move, a dozen insects with their heavy shells. The caparaces seemed worn down and sick, barely capable to move. Dust covered some of them.
The dead looked like the living and maybe moved with them.
"A relay?" She moaned and fell against a stone wall.
Her head throbbed. Yes, a clay golem's head could throb. The soft clay inside was not impervious to outside conditions like, say, a severe lack of magic.
She clutched the pendant at her neck.
"It's warm." She whispered. "It's working."
Or it was just her imagination. She was trying to draw mana through a tiny trinklet, from a place so far away, a dungeon two days removed from her. I held that source and could see her struggle.
"The longer you stay the worse it will get. You need to move."
"Just let me rest, okay?" The human answered in her clay body.
She looked to the side and saw them. Stelae. The caparaces were straining themselves to bring those plates to her.
At her presence, their empty surfaces recovered some words. Then some more. Ancient texts clutched from the jaws of time.
We said: Why attack us? What have we done? The kingdoms said: We know you cast a curse on us all. You will never pay enough for that.
Minutes. Even if they had seen the armies come, even when predicting the attack, the kingdom of Wekel was the weakest. And it sounded like it had faced a coalition.
To call it a war was a farce.
We said: The calamity affects us as well! The kingdoms said: We will not stop until the last of you has perished.
We said: We will help! We surrender! Spare us! The kingdoms said: Not even the ground you stand on can be allowed to remain.
"None of that is helpful." The human groaned.
"Mh." I wasn't so sure. "They mentioned a curse."
So far away, in the cramped bedroom, I stopped chiseling the next pendant.
Could a curse have caused the mana drain? In theory, yes. In practice, it was almost the only explanation. A realm-scale spell, even for humans, was a bit much. Casting through circles or relics would have shattered under the pressure.
Curses had this uncanny ability to be terrifyingly potent, numbingly cheap and extremely unreliable.
They also required a source and if the source was destroyed, they would vanish.
"If the mana drain is a curse, all we have to do is find the source." I surmised. "Break it and save the realm."
"If it was so simple, humanity would have done it already. Or monsters after them."
Or just the mana drain itself.
We said: May the realm has pity on us.
That was all the airship recorded before crashing. Maybe it hadn't served in battle. Maybe it came later, to salt the land and deprive it to the core.
And had fallen prey to its own task.
The caparaces were done transferring mana to one of them. That one, steady as it could, came to rub its tiny legs in front of the clay body. She got up and followed it outside.
On the other side, it seemed the realm had ended. No cliff, no clear line, just... a kilometer or so from her... just nothing anymore.
Winds had picked up, gushing and raising clouds of dust.
This was not normal. In such a dead place, with so little mana to work with there should be no weather. That was no storm.
She guessed as much, plunged to dodge and watched as the shape of an arm dissolved in the growing storm.
A strange, absent bellow rumbled in the gusts.
"Don't fight!" I reminded her. Any ounce of mana was too precious to waste.
She looked at her pendant, probably believing that it would let her refill at will; mercifully wisdom took the better of her.
Wind crashed where she had stood a second before. She didn't run, simply walked, felt something on her shoulder.
The caparace had gripped it and was holding onto her side.
Her first reflex was to push it away, grossed out by those tiny insect legs, but she let it do. It was armor. It was welcome, cheap armor.
Another caparace came and did the same on her other side, covering her decently enough.
She could now discern the vague silhouettes of massive giants. Memories of golems past, probably, or of extinct beasts whose trace lingered in the realm. They were slow, weak, lumbering husks.
Another arm swinged and smashed the ground, breaking off on it without a single trace.
"I can't dodge them forever!"
"They can't last forever!" I retorted.
I could not speak too loudly, but the situation was getting at me too. How could monsters even be there?!
There was practically no mana!
It could not be the human's presence? She had weakened herself too much to be able to spawn all of this.
One dust beast crumbled before her, but before she could run in that direction she saw another giant take shape, just as vague, with a ghostly face that was looking at her for a moment.
She began to run.
As fast as she could, which was not much in this weakened part of the realm, she pushed forward almost blindly.
Another gust of wind nearly broke her but the caparace on her side took the brunt of it. She watched it fall lifeless. In seconds it had vanished.
Then, she saw ghosts.
There really was no other words. Ghosts. Silhouettes in the storming dust all around her. Human figures appearing and vanishing, hazy, moving or snapshots, dead presences that filled the area with their silence.
One passed through her and she screamed.
Her clay fist tightened on the pendant. Even I felt the surge from it. Mana! It worked? It worked! She felt that power she had so desired fill her with renewed strength.
Light!
There was hardly any simpler spell than that, but in a place so deprived it was akin to an armaggedon. The dust lit up, the gusts broke off, the whole storm vanished.
Instead, bright particles floated all around her. There was no ground under her feet anymore. Just a sea of brighter light in the bright air.
So little mana that her simple spell had rewritten the landscape around.
And in that light the ghosts still moved. Figures past running away, ghastly faces misshapen by terror. This wasn't just a haze. Their bodies were burning.
Around the ghosts were shimmering ruins of buildings ablaze. The flames flowing horizontally, almost licking the ground. Buildings stuck in eternal destruction.
"Why..." The human muttered.
"Calm down. It's just an image of the past, nothing more."
"I can feel it..."
"Okay it's a vivid image, now get a grip."
The remaining insect, on her shoulder, fell to the ground, the last of its strength exhausted. She got a jolt, then crouched to touch it. It had brought her back somewhat to reality.
So, without any more direction, she progressed in that sea of ghosts.
It slowly receded. The lights slowly dimmed, the particles fell like snowflakes. The buildings, the streets, the trees, everything the light spell had brought back from the dead kept fading around her.
We said: We didn't want any of this!
There was no stele. No record. This was just memories from the dead emerging from the land itself.
We said: Anyone, help us!
As the most insignificant detail, I had noticed how back then the humans probably formed crowds to fight or flee, but here each ghost was isolated.
Not that it mattered. They were almost gone. Dust had come back, blowing slowly all around. Only a matter of time before the giants showed up again.
She was ready to use her pendant again. Despite her fear, the clay golem seemed more firm now.
But she stopped fast.
Before her was the impossible.
Stars. Whole constellations of them. A sky so filled I did not know it was even possible. A portion of the cosmic ceiling lying before her.
Just two more steps and the clay golem started to float.
"Mizuki!" I screamed. "I am losing you!"
For a moment it felt like the connection between us had weakened to a breaking point. All had become hazy and delayed, so distant. It was coming back slowly but for that second, it was as if I had lost her.
Never do that again!
She had turned around, expecting me behind her maybe, but there was only the dust storm. She was in that little bubble of blackness filled with stars, cast impossibly into the realm.
"Mana." She finally said. "This place has mana."
"The singularity." A distant voice answered her.
It had been so faint as to feel like a thought, but clearly foreign. She looked around, still floating in this starfield, saw nothing and approached a star with her finger.
While she did, all I cared about was the monsters forming on the sides. New caparaces taking shape, getting born, confused, then seemingly picking pace to get out and group in the dust. Dozens already and growing more numerous.
But the human cared for none of that. As her clay finger approached the star, it grew bigger. And bigger. And bigger. Until it was a vast wall of fire. Until it was so overwhelming as to engulf her entire figure.
She fell back and the star was only just a speck in the darkness again.
"Incredible."
"You have seen." The distant voice came back.
The chitinous insects now numbered in the hundreds. They were holding on each other to form a pattern, links of a chain that started to roll on itself, in circles.
Slowly forming a tube where the dust crackled.
I was at a loss. None of it made sense. None of it! There should not be mana in the heart of Wekel! There should not be a creature living without mana!
And why would a creature form outside the pocket of mana so easily in reach?!
The tube grew in size, slowly turning into a large worm meters high. Insects forming it in the hundreds, in the thousand and more. And when one fell from that linked mass, exhausted, as those peeled off others climbed to take their place.
A colony forming the body of a monster!
Form the beginning, Veleter had been a hive mind.
"Human." The distant voice had become clearer. "I am Veleter."
She stood there floating before the massive body in formation. The crackling magic inside it fought against a deprived air, a dead land. A thin steam escaped from the colony, quickly blown by the storm.
"I am here!" The clay golem finally reacted. She had found some calm again. "Let us talk!"
"You have seen. The realm is merciful. It answers all desires. It fulfills all wishes. It is warm and caring."
Was that a joke?!?
"You wanted to talk!" The human repeated, exasperated. "Why did you want to see me?!"
"Human. The realm is dying. Help me save it. I can end the calamity."