In this whithering realm the worst place of all was the kingdom of Wekel. If elsewhere the humans had tried to preserve magic, here the opposite had happened.
Everything had been done to deprive it as much as the realm would allow.
Wekel was dead.
And there, afar, lay the town of Bayankam that marked the entrance to its land. Ruins so broken as to barely etch a dry rocky landscape.
The ship had stopped at that distance and yet, even from there the human's presence breathed some magic all the way. Under the keels, rock turned to sand; for hundreds of meters before drying out.
Weak gusts pretended to bring some life back in the empty plains.
And the human planned to go there! Willingly!
Using the body of a clay golem no less. My body.
From a mansion far away, all I could do was watch as she prepared her folly.
Only the tiniest portal linked us over a massive distance and yet I could feel how weakened her aura had already become. She had finished mooring the ship and was checking the pendant at her neck, one last time.
Then, she got back to the portal, in the middle of the deck, rose her hand and called.
"Kaele."
I got up, approached the portal on my end, near the windows, and answered.
"I refuse." Were my first words. "I can feel it, your plan will backfire."
With the distance, no matter her control over me, she could not force my movements well enough anymore. I could deny her now.
Still, she was pushing for me to remove the necklace from my neck and approach a bead to the portal.
She wanted her very life devoured by this artifact.
"There is no choice." The human said, from within the clay body. She wanted to sound calm but the pressure was getting to her. "This is my best chance at survival."
"What if it doesn't conserve mana? What if you can't take it back?"
"Then I'll fail!" She nearly snapped. "Life is made of failures, you just keep trying!"
I could feel her pulling my arm toward the portal. I didn't want to! But she was right. At this point, all I wanted was for her to be right.
Please be right!
She endured the pain. The moment her finger got in contact, everything she was started being pulled out of her. Her eyes first closed, then fixed a point in mid-air.
Her system.
She said her system displayed the amount of mana she had. She was likely looking at that number. It was likely dropping fast.
Stop it. Stop it! That was enough! Each second was killing her!
I had to stop it!
She finally pulled out and rested there, a knee on the wooden deck, panting as much as a golem frame could. There was no way for me to tell just how much she had lost.
"I have to go..." She caught her breath, sort of. "I meet Veleter and come back. If I don't..."
"You will!"
"Make another pendant for the next one. Don't ever stop, Kaele. The world would not forgive you."
She smiled a bit, I could tell. Her clay hands started painting seals on the plates.
"I would not forgive you."
She covered herself in sealing patterns, then dropped of the ship, told the furry monster onboard to stay there until it was done being cute.
She started to walk toward the town of Bayankam.
I walked back to my table, in that cramped bedroom of mine. While the human got to play clay golem out there, I was stuck being a human playing dolls with herself. I had already sewn two gowns.
Not out of boredom, no. They had magical patterns for camouflage.
And now, as dinner time approached and a monster would come to escort me, I had prepared a third attire.
There was the mist, forming behind the door, filling the hallway and then bursting in when it opened. The humanoid bird entered, as chirpy and excited as ever.
"There is my mistress!" It rejoiced. "Are you hungry? You must be hungry, you must!"
"Nadjal", I approached her with my work, "this is for you."
It stopped its routine to look at me, as if for the first time, then lowered its beak to the clothes I held. I unfolded them to show it the new priestess robe.
The human had ordered that I help that beast and so I would. This would reduce the strain on its hideous humanoid body.
It was speechless. "I... for... wh..." And then: "Oh, my mistress is so generous! A golden heart, a diamond, a star!"
It snatched the clothes and started dancing with them.
"So happy! So happy so happy so happy! I will wear it for the rest of my life!"
I helped that stupid bird change into the new robe, had it preen in front of the dressing table and prune its colorful feathers.
It let me hold its scepter. That monster was truly oblivious.
Then it escorted me to the same dilapidated dining room as ever. I sat at the table, thanked it for the burnt entrails and started to it. The bird was watching me with excitement.
Then, it hesitated.
"Mistress..." It tried. "Your bird may be away for a while... Nothing bad, nothing bad! Please don't be distressed! Oh, it pains me to see you without the master! So, for a while..."
It was asking for permission?
"Must you?" I pretended to be concerned. "But if he could come back, then for a while..."
"Just for a while!"
"Just for a while."
I had noticed that one of the two humanoid cats assisting her was gone.
Without the human's presence - other than the body she left behind - magic was draining. Maybe the first consequences of that were being felt. Or maybe that beast had been unworthy of something.
After the meal, it would escort me back to the room and, since it would be away for a while, I played some harp for it.
That bird loved hearing it and I had learned to play in earnest.
Finally alone! Done with the chores, back to the human.
She had reached the ruins of the hanging town. Only crumbling pillars remained among the debris and rubbles. With her presence faded to nothing, dusk had fallen.
I could feel the clay golem holding the pendant in her hand. No way to tell if her craft was working. Was she getting magic back? She looked weak and tired.
Red beaks above were waiting for her to get close to attack. From their perches they looked like small gargoyles.
To avoid the worst of it, she wanted to go back to what had been the main street. But that was too close to underground creatures lurking as well. I had learned that, and her through me.
So she was carefully progressing through the piles of broken rocks.
Ahead of her a red beak plunged. Then another. She first assumed that it was normal but as more happened, it became clear that something had changed.
Caparaces.
The insects, with their massive chitin shells, had awakened. They now roamed the remnants of ruins in search of flat surfaces or used their own back to write on them.
A few could not even begin before being snatched and killed. Most could not finish before meeting the same fate. But she found one complete message.
Human. You have come. Help me end the calamity. I will show you.
Even as she tried to decipher what the monster had meant, she found another message the caparaces were frantically writing, with what little energy they had.
Human. You are hiding in plain sight. Only the realm can trick the realm. This is the answer.
"More riddles..." She got anxious. "But I think I... maybe."
And she approached the wounded caparace near the message.
"Don't!" I nearly screamed.
She got up, startled, looked around and nearly tripped.
"Kaele?!"
"Don't give those monsters any mana." I continued. "You could kill them."
"But th... How are you even here?"
"Never mind that." The human synch. "Those crows that attack, the red beaks, they die trying to fetch a prey too weak to feed them. Every move you make..."
"I know!" She stopped me. "I know. I can see the numbers."
"Then act like it. Don't waste efforts. Better yet, you read what the monster had to say so come back."
She shook her head. It was a bit of an uncanny gesture coming from a golem.
"It's not done telling us what he knows. Also stop following me, however you do it it's bound to be taxing."
Well I could not prevent it even if I wanted to!
The portal, back on the ship, was taxing. That one was, definitely. But I would not let it lapse.
There was this slight chance that I could use it somehow to pull the human back if anything back happened in the cursed kingdom.
"There is nothing beyond Bayankam. Just come back."
As if to answer me, even though nothing in the ruins could hear, a new caparace showed up. They had stopped writing and had gone back into hiding.
Only this one remained, fretting to be followed.
So she did. The clay golem passed by the old town pillars and approached the other side.
Past the remains, not even the antique road was left. Just dry rock as far as the eye could see. Dusk itself died out further ahead, collapsing not into night, more like... nothingness.
Yet the caparace moved forth, without hesitation.
And the golem followed.
"I thought a war-torn kingdom would look more... war-torn." She mused.
But really, she was just talking to try and reassure herself. Even with as rigid a body as she had, I could see the fear in her steps. The realm weighing on her.
Especially now that her mana had shriveled. The weakness had probably become painful for her.
"Cracks, faults, craters?" Back at the mansion, I was playing the harp for myself. Or to cover my voice. "That's magic. Any shape is magic."
"So even destruction is magical."
"If the legend was true, Bayankam should not even be there. There should not even be a ground where it stood. Only the void. But even the void, if you think about it..."
"... because we can perceive it, is still magic."
"You haven't told me your name."
She rubbed her arms, made sure to keep pace with the caparace. But the monster was actually slower than her.
"I really don't need you yelling my name when I die."
"You are..." Even she must have been sick of hearing my denial. "I just... Everyone pestered me about it and you are the only one who treated me for what I am. It's like you understand tools better than any other human."
There was nothing in the beyond. Not even really a horizon.
And yet, as they walked, a shape appeared ahead. Hard to tell what it was, but it was large. Maybe a small hamlet.
Too tall. Like ribs of a fallen giant.
The carcass of a fallen beast in the distance, big enough to carry several houses. Maybe the cousin of that wyvern skeleton that had fallen there, on its back, and crumbled.
She had started to chuckle. Again, fairly uncanny when a clay golem tried to laugh.
I was slowly realizing why humans could not stand the sight of us.
Of course, it was no beast. None from the past could have had its corpse endure the drain. None new could have made it that far. Yet it was no set of buildings either.
For travel and for war, humans of old also used airships.
This was the carcass she was now approaching. The remains of a giant, a loyal servant of humans long felled. The ribs were petrified remains of the sails that had kept it afloat.
The one hovering bulwark had probably crash and since then, somehow subsisted through the worst of the drain.
"Mizuki." She whispered. "My name is Mizuki."
The caparace was leading her to the airship, amidst the weakest winds of a dead kingdom.