Once, there was a realm, and it was rich and beautiful. Everyone was happy because humans ruled uncontested. Once, there was a lie, and then the mana drain devoured it all.
So the realm fell to decay, a dying husk.
Among its victims was the city of Shiranu.
Its once mighty spires were now hollow towers crumbling under their own weight. Ruined mansions and palaces occupied flat hills with terraces, all rocky and dead. There was little if anything left of the lower towns.
What monsters scavenged there were only shadows of their former selves.
Monsters that fought and killed to prevail over the remains.
I stopped the ship a good distance away from it all. I counted on the deadly desert to keep any beast from boarding it while I would be away.
The legged rapt jumped off with me. It usually stayed behind but this time, it would not leave me for anything. Maybe it felt that I would not come back. That the Parao, the mighty vessel that had defied the emptiness, would be swallowed by the land in time.
Me? I was going home.
That ruined city had known many rulers. One was bound to have taken over. I felt impatient to see what it looked like.
No. Not really. I had many conflicting desires in my clay head. As if the stone tablet moving me was shifting instructions by the second. Protect. Kill. Absorb. Call. Pray. Go home. Go home!
With the lower grounds so devastated, almost no monster lingered there. I passed rubbles and broken roads only disturbed by brief shadows.
I could sense vibrations from dozens of meters away.
Maybe they feared me. Maybe they cowered in the underground, the tunnels, the basements, or vied for the hills instead.
I got my answer when a group of orcs leapt from the nearby terrace to intercept me. To intercept us. The legged rapt jolted and rushed between my legs, hindering me.
Orcs. Humans were fond of them, once. Those ones were scrawny and hunched, their hands just three fingers covered in thick keratin. They still held axes and spears from rocks and bones.
For the ones who had a weapon.
"Out of my way." I warned them.
Monsters could talk. But they had no reason to. And while they could feel the threat from me, to them I was walking mana. They would not get such a good prey again, weak enough to be snatched, strong enough to feed.
Earthworks.
The first avoided my spikes, slashed where I stood and met the air. Its companion fell behind to my stone maul. A third saw its spear pulverize and reveal my actual body behind the coat.
Clay golems were just that, clay. But I was wearing an iron armor.
Another fell, then another, before they even had time to realize their mistake. Still one tried and charged me with bare hands. I punched it, cracked its ribs; it punched back with enough force to make me stagger.
Then it fell before me.
"They are fleeing!" The rapt rejoiced and quickly came back against my legs.
Orcs. They had ruled those ruins once, through the bull horde. That horde should have shattered. Yet survivors would not be so numerous. I would know soon enough, if the drums of war rumbled again.
For now, all was quiet.
Above me the towers projected their broken network of bridges long gone. A spark betrayed some monster up there, spying on me. The gleam of a glassy eye or a lens.
Soon enough, the ruins woke up. Movement on the hills that disturbed the other scavengers, causing fights that excited more fights ahead. With what energy they had left, those creatures offered their warcries.
I stopped and approached a hill's steep slope, under a terrace.
There, orc skulls were put on spikes, before a flat wall on which the beasts had engraved some clumsy words.
The oasis is a lie!
"What's the oasis?" The rapt wondered aloud.
"A lie." I let out. "A myth that attracts monsters in the desert to their death."
"Oh..."
It was disappointed, then burst with sudden optimism: "But what if it was true?! I really, really want to go there now! Let's go there, this place stinks!"
I didn't bother to answer, parried a bone javelin with my arm and turned. More orcs held the lower terraces, two dozen of them in small groups.
They counted on range to protect them.
Earthworks. The entire terrace collapsed. I should not have had nearly enough mana to even remotely shake that mass of rocks, so the survivors fled, terrorized.
Not that monsters knew fear but, what could they do?
Further ahead, another hill opened with a stair that counted three hundred steps. I stopped before it for a long time. I had frozen at that sight.
The lower part of that stair had eroded. Monster carcasses, long petrified by the mana drought, littered its path. Grotesque, distorted statues growing fewer with height.
We walked upstairs. Past those bodies. Past the broken strands that had killed them an eternity ago.
That stair led to the top of the hill, on a flat surface where, among other ruins, was a mansion. We had entered its garden, a rocky surface filled with with sharp stalagmites and rocky roots. Monsters almost swallowed in them.
I looked up, at the stone slopes rising around the mansion, then still hanging vertically on the white towers. It was all long dead.
It had been a giant mushroom and those crumbling platforms above whose remains eroded by themselves had been oyster caps. One of the monsters that had ruled those ruins had fought here, hunted, preyed.
"Sekres..." I muttered.
At my touch the root before me crumbled. The porous stone frail as sand.
I reached the mansion itself.
The mushroom had extended its stems all over its walls, on the roof and in the holes, gobbled the entire construction before turning to stone itself. Inside, in what had been a dining room, more carcasses lay in the devastation.
A mushroom monster attracted others with its spores, then let them feed themselves to its stems. As its power weakened, the preys had struggled. This entire hill had become a battlefield.
As its power weakened, the parasite became prey itself.
Fibrous roots blocked the door. I only had to put my hand against them to see them fall to dust. The hallway was dark, broken, collapsed sections mixing with the petrified corpses.
"Let's leave..." The legged rapt complained behind me. "This place is scary."
"This is home. This... used to be home."
We had reached the main hall. Its former glory was all but gone. Walls broken, overgrown with stems that themselves had deperished. Monsters strewed from the entrance to the stairs and beyond. The first floor had become inaccessible.
And above it all, against the wall the stems had joined in thick strands to cover the wall. As if the monster's heart itself had found there its last refuge.
I walked up and to the wall, touched those stems but they resisted. They remained solid in spite of it all.
So I tore them out, force the rock to crack without even using earthworks. Under the strength of my armor, the entire wall of fungus roots finally shattered.
And behind them, in the dust, stood a painting.
The faces of the human family that had lived there.
"Sekres..." I muttered. "Sekres, where are you?! Show yourself!"
It wasn't gone, not that parasite, not that coward! It would have found a place to hide and recover! That was its habit, that was how the mushroom had survived it all! A creature from beyond the human days, adapted to the mana drain!
It was still there! It had to!
Those stems were the sturdiest. If there was anything left of it, I could try and contact it that way. It would respond to mana. It always thirsted for mana.
The legged rapt joined me.
"Come on, you parasite! I know you are still here!"
And finally, a low, raspy voice awakaned: "Golem..."
It was so faint, from far beyond, that the mushroom was likely far below in the city depths. Of course it had survived. After hunting all it could, of course it had retreated!
It would not answer anymore. I was wasting mana by trying to conduct it from so far away. So I left and rushed downstairs. The rapt stayed behind, still trying with its tiny forelegs.
Outside, the orcs were attacking again.
Here was the simple truth of such a deprived realm. Kill all you want, your enemies would come back. I would exhaust myself trying to stem the tide and now, there were a good forty of them.
That was... fine.
As they approached from all sides, I walked through the main doors, past the corpses of ancient beasts to crack a sharp piece of rock for myself. It reshaped into a mace.
The first wave crashed on me with a rage only scavengers knew. They fell one by one to my swings and then, when overwhelmed, before they could even scratch my armor I impaled them, forced them back just as the second wave came to bear.
How miserable a fight, but the lack of magic really was just that.
Their weapons broke on my iron plates, hammering me time and again. They were falling like flies, their weak bodies unable to survive just one hit. Their wounds to grave for them to get back up.
I was weakening already, forced to use earthworks again just to get some breathing room. The third group came with a vengeance.
And then, pale stems darted from the ground to meet them, pierced their flanks and legs. Weak fibrous strands blocked an axe meant for me.
What were you doing!?!
Still the orcs attacked and still I met them, this time with equal rage. And when my mace broke I went with bare fists and when those fists started to crack, the iron still too brittle I covered them in stone and kept hitting.
The last ones could have fled, pointed their weapons on me again, as the last challenge of those standing and charged. I met them with the fury of the realm.
And once I realized I was still standing in the middle of black blood and dust I rushed to the dying stems.
"Sekres! Sekres I am here!"
I was pouring mana again. All I had, all I could. The legged rapt joined me again.
"Golem..." The raspy voice emerged again, so weak. "Bring... a human..."
"You're still saying that, after everything?! Is all you think truly just mana?!"
The legged rapt was starting to panic.
"It's not working!" Its high-pitched voice was full of distress. "It's not working, why?!"
"What's wrong with living?..." The faint voice was choking. "All I wanted was to live... and not be called a coward..."
I stepped back. Pulled the rapt back, even as it struggled to continue. Before us the stems were turning to stone.
Sekres was not answering me. Sekres could not answer.
"I was not a coward... I never was a coward..." His voice continued. "I fought for you... I died for you... So say it..." Almost inaudible now. "Say I am not... say I am not... say..."
He had never left. He hadn't been there to meet us. Those stems, that voice, like the ruins around us, were only memories long gone. The last spasms of a giant.
Once the rapt understood, I let her go, approached the petrified roots and took out my necklace. I let the bead touch that stone. I did not know what to expect.
It immediately turned to dust. All the stems, all around, the entire body evaporated briefly into spores that scattered in instants. All the way to the towers, all that remained, all went into a white powder, a plume of seconds.
I was clutching the beads in my hand.
"I think... I understand now." The rapt said behind me.
I turned to look at her. She was rubbing her tiny forelegs.
"I think... I know where big brother is." And she approached me. "Will you help me meet him again?"
I stepped back. She kept approaching.
"I really want to be with big brother." She continued, her chirpy voice now made of steel. "Won't you help me? You will help me."
And the monster attacked.