Human rule was absolute. It had been the case since times immemorial and would remain so no matter how ruined the realm.
No matter what happened, golems would serve.
Golems were nothing more than moving matter. Animated by crystals, by wards or rituals. By fluid, by cores, by tablets. This one was made of red sand that took the shape of a heavy, hunched quadruped.
So why did it have thoughts?
It struggled to assemble its body. A golem could only do as instructed and right now, that sand golem was being misled by its stone tablet.
There could be many explanations for its dysfunction. Beginning with its awareness. My awareness. I was the one struggling to coalesce limbs.
I needed four heavy limbs and was trying to form six frailer ones.
But who said that was abnormal? It could be that the instructions were that complex. Recursive runes, rewriting symbols, multi-layered tablets... There was no end to how complex the craft could be. I would simply submit.
My senses were getting better. I could recognize a stone room where I lay on the altar.
What a waste of space for a golem? Others like me were laboring around, carrying censers made of rock in which feeble ashes still fumed.
One of them was checking my limbs as they formed.
"Get up." It ordered.
Golems had no need to speak. He had made his instructions clear simply by looking at me and just as his own body moved, the instructions flowed to me.
I tried to obey, fumbled a bit and felt the sand throbbing in shocks. That pain signaled not to try any further.
"Your tablet is repaired." The golem instructed. "When ready, go to work."
Good. The whole of them left and and I stood there wondering what ready meant. Standing on my golem belly was awkward, so I rolled on the back and realized the hunch made it untenable. Here I was on my side, wondering just how normal all of that was.
Yes. Something was missing. Something in my chest was missing and I could not tell what.
It took me a while before I could leave the altar and pace out of that room. The moment I was out, the whole wall slid down in a heavy rumble. Magical lines connected on the walls, but a lack of mana had them stay dry.
The hallway itself had decayed a bit, the ceiling peeling down, piles of debris on the ground around.
I followed the lines and crossed other golems at work. So we were in giant stone slabs and our labor was to keep them in place.
And in turn this kept the human houses standing on the surface.
What a noble task.
But everywhere was lacking mana. The energy to keep the slabs in place, the glyphs working, had to be collected and pulsed back in rituals. This was the task I would gladly join.
A rumor pushed me away from the main path. Some beast was moaning. No, not exactly. Some beast was on the verge of death.
That room had more magic than the rest. It was brimming in fact, by comparison. On top of censers we had brought sand candles drenched with oil that burned around a bench where the beast in question was struggling to breathe.
A fluffy creature with ample fur white as chalk, with pink streaks from its round head to the back and almost reaching the long flat tail at its back. It bore six small round legs plus two more that looked useless under the head.
Petrified skin in patches refused to recede.
"You are awake." A golem turned to me.
It looked no different from the others, but its instructions were nothing like. I could tell it had a more complex tablet.
"What are your instructions?" It asked.
"I must gather mana."
"Who do you serve?"
"The humans."
It insisted: "Who do you serve?"
It was only natural. Humans was as vague as it came. But, I could not think of any master. And also... weren't the humans all gone? Didn't they... leave?
The sand construct in front of me didn't wait for another answer.
"You are in Nabica. The human will come. Do you understand?"
Somehow, what it just said made sense. There was such a city I knew and somehow, even though no human should be left in the whole realm, I knew of one.
He was coming? That was a good thing. We could obey him. Wait. No. No that was bad. No, that human wanted to kill our masters.
"What should I do?" I asked.
"The moon has spoken. You will travel to Bayankam."
"No."
A golem never refused instructions, yet I could not comply. That place, Bayankam, sounded like a monster lair without value. And to reach it, there was a great expanse. Right? There was no way for me to get through.
He simply said:
"Who do you serve?"
And at that I remembered my duty: "I will travel to Bayankam."
"Good. Wait for the human. When he is there, we will collect mana. Then, you will use that mana to cross. Do not get caught, reach Bayankam."
With that he was done, I was free to go anywhere. But I stayed there, my sandy, faceless hunch of a head turned on the suffering monster.
It didn't look like a creature from Nabica. It didn't look like any creature in human knowledge. A sort of misshapen rapt...
"What is it?" The golem in front of me wondered.
"Will she live?"
"She cannot carry you anymore."
"But will she live?"
It looked at me with its faceless head in what probably meant maybe. They were certainly trying to keep that monster going.
I could take wild guesses as to what I was or I could leave it at that and go to work.
Mana.
The best way to collect mana was to kill monsters. They had a shard in them built to absorb magic and keep it in. The realm had shaped them for that very purpose. So all I needed was to best those beasts with my shaky sandy body.
Golems ruled the underground, where the slabs had retracted. We maintained what ruins were left functional while above, on the surface, red castles covered the ground.
That was were the monsters lurked and where we had to venture to get anything.
Sand golems had wind magic, but in this low-mana environment it was suicide. So we simply hardened our limbs to blades and spikes and covered ourselves with chitinous insects that agreed to cling on our bodies.
Caparaces.
This way we formed hunting groups and, despite how slow and frail we were, this gave us the edge to take down some preys. And if one of us fell? Well, it was just a stupid tablet.
I made two such trips before the air changed.
It was fairly weak, but a wind of magic had rippled through the ruins of Nabica. This meant the human was approaching.
So the golems converged to the ceremonial chambers where we formed rows and prayed to the moon before his arrival.
One of us, as priest, drew a circle at the top of an altar, then four lines crossing it, two in each direction. We repeated that symbol on our bodies, even though the sand quickly erased it.
"A human is coming. He has sided with monsters. He threatens our masters. The moon will protect us. We fight."
No one was speaking. Those were just instructions.
"Hold him here. Collect mana. Sacrifice the ruins. Nabica will disappear so humans live. Who do you serve?"
"We serve humans."
"Let none disturb their slumber."
The same instructions were being given in several other chambers. Sand golems were incommensurably weak and as such, a myriad.
We moved to break the links that kept the slabs stable. Once the battle on the surface would be lost, their chaos would offer a new fortress.
And on the rocky valley between ocher castles, line after line of sand golems formed ranks.
There was, simply put, too many of us for the caparaces, those insects and their chitinous shield, to cover us all. But it hardly made a difference.
And here it was, the human horde. Crossing the desert had left his crude ship battered, but he still carried a hundred monsters with him. The metallic plates that had served as sails fell on the sides and the hull slowed down to stop in the red sand.
"Hello everyone!"
The human voice rose, carrying not only through the ruins but deep underground as well.
"I am looking for a stone tablet! Three pieces of a tablet, actually. But given your little committee here, I suppose you already knew that!"
He jumped off ship, followed by felines, predators and batracians of all shapes.
"So let's make it quick!"
He let one of his followers remove his cheetah cape and helmet, revealing long coily hair that formed almost a mane.
"Bring him to me or I go find him myself!"
Our first line of golems paced forward, steady, and he understood that the battle was on. And of course, any illusion of balance got wiped out the moment his elemental snake burst out of a castle, crumbling it all before falling on our ranks.
I was nowhere near the surface, only felt an earthquake and the link broke.
My only duty in all this was to stay still in the mana chamber. Legions would get crushed to trickle energy through the slabs, through many detours to lose the hunter, then have it accumulate here in my body.
Those not fighting were working on that task, as well as forging armors and weapons for those heading out. And a few dozens kept activating new tablets to replace the losses.
As for me, while the underground shook and dust fell on the stone floor, I considered the odds.
Not of the battle or of being found, this was irrelevant. Our problem was having me walk all the way from Nabica to Bayankam in an environment that could not sustain my body.
Everything said that was impossible. I would turn to dust before having made a hundredth of the travel. But all those preparations were rather to trick the realm into allowing another me to appear at our destination and for that we had prepared all we could.
For each limb I had they brought two new tablet, activated them and let them sink in. They obeyed to me but, when the long walk would start, they would move by themselves, reducing the burden by that much.
A golem would come, remove an empty shard on my back and put a new one that had a red tint.
After hours of fighting, and with chained monsters joining the human on the surface, we were forced back to our tunnels.
With that the gathering of mana had ended. I got up and let my hardened body carry me through the chamber, stopping only at one of the golems able to write tablets.
"Make sure she survives."
Those weren't instructions. I had forced my body to speak. All the same to them, the sand golems moved at once and escorted me at first, then let me continue alone in the antique galleries.
When I came out, sand crumbled the tunnel I had emerged from. The ocher castles were already far away and there was not even a rumor of battle to be sensed.
I could already feel magic being sapped out of me. Yet night had fallen and in that false cold there was almost a sense of relief.
A sea of stars looked at our tribulations. With them the moon paved the path forward.
Could star golems exist? Surely a human had tried that.
Well, time to be disintegrated by the desert. My body moved practically by itself, indifferent to the threat. After all, there was no concept of death to be had. It didn't even really matter to me if my mission would succeed or not.
Rivers cared not where the realm carried them.