Okay no.
Where to even begin...
Monsters. Only cared about mana. They lived and died to absorb mana. Their sole motive to speak, ever! Was as a means to acquire more mana!
So why!? Was there a monste? Pretending it could single-handedly solve the mana drain that had driven the entire realm! This whole land that not even humans could save! Into oblivion!?
No! No. Just, no.
But here it was, that giant worm towering over that small starfield where the clay golem hovered. And in that golem the young woman that had crossed an entire dead kingdom to hear this was just as speechless as I was.
So the monster continued. Its massive frame, made of so many insects, was struggling against the winds.
"I know the cause." It meant the mana drain. "I learned. I will learn. Help me learn."
"Tell me the cause!" The human shouted.
As if grasping at roots.
"You have seen. The realm is merciful."
"I said tell me the cause!" She insisted.
"The realm is merciful."
That creature, no, that colony of insects was mad. I could only guess that the lack of mana had somehow mixed its shrunken heart with lost memories to create this absurdity.
It had to move, to slither around to keep the mass of interlocked caparaces going. Inside the worm the dust kept crackling, as much friction as the windy dust getting devoured.
"So that's your answer." The human, through her clay body, had regained her composure. "You don't actually know."
"You have seen."
"Then tell me what help you want! How am I supposed to help you?"
The worm moved again, forcing her to turn on herself in the patch of stars.
"Give me your essence. I will study it. I will learn."
"What do you mean, my essence?"
"I will open you. I will keep you alive. It will be painful. I will learn. Then you will die."
Yeah, it was mad.
Just a lunatic colony of vermin and yet? Yet this felt so wrong, so far beyond just a sickness.
The human had started to chuckle. Her hand still held the pendant at her neck for dear life. She could not stop this small, nervous laugh.
"How stupid..." She slipped inbetween two bursts. "Kaele was right."
And she fell into complete hilarity.
"You were really just luring your prey! This was a trap all along!"
"I will end the calamity."
"Like hell you can!" She shouted before falling back into her laugh. "You actually have no idea what you are talking about! Just a deluded monstruosity looking for food!"
Before her the worm started to wriggle. Invisible bites twisting its body, shaking it harshly. It wasn't the wind. Handfuls of insects were falling on the ground, crashing.
The whole body followed. That creature slammed against the surface in a faint, distant roar.
Then, little by little, more caparaces came to cover the wounds and the chains of shells, chitin scales, reformed. It started to move again.
"I have shown you." Is all it could utter.
"You have shown me nothing."
"I can change the balance." The worm continued in that same faint voice.
That had the human go silent. Her clay body hovered in front of that giant, immobile. Golems did not offer many clues as to what they were feeling.
Because golems were not made to feel. But I could tell the young woman inside was shaken.
No, curious.
That word, balance, had somehow hit a chord. And now she was pondering it. Even as everything told her to reject all this beast had to say, she forced herself to consider it.
Balance?
I tried to do the same. So let's consider the problem. The mana drain was exactly that: mana disappearing at a rapid rate. Had that been constant, the realm would have long vanished.
The drain slowed down the less remained, in a phenomenon that trended toward a point of equilibrium.
Essentially, there was a point under which too little was left to drain anything from it.
Was that what the beast had meant by balance?
"How." The human finally asked. "How do you change the balance."
"The realm is merciful."
"Enough with this nonsense! Answer the question!"
The worm kept slithering back and forth, to try and stay in front of her. It stayed silent a few seconds, seemingly lost.
I called her: "Ask about the singularity." That beast had mentioned it at first. "Ask what the singularity is."
"Eh, Veleter!" She reprised. "What's the singularity?"
"You are in it." It immediately answered. "Ebbs and flows. A convergence."
A point where mana converged? Those were cities. Dungeons. Not a random patch of... anything!
Wait, why not? It was magic. It could randomly accumulate.
But it would disperse again! And drain!
Unless some phenomenon kept it locked there. A kind of... singularity point.
"That beast knows way more about magic than us." I summed up. "I can't believe it but it may be right. It may know how to..."
"Who cares!" She shouted, for both me and the worm. "I'm not giving my essence to anyone! If you can solve the mana drain then so can I!"
"You can't." The monster stated.
"Watch me!"
"Your pendant will fail."
She froze. I froze. I was far away, in that small bedroom playing the pretty human princess and felt for the first time in my life that human feeling of a chill down the spine.
Like being touched by the hand of death.
"No..." The human protested, in a whisper at first. "No. No! I've run the numbers! I've seen it work! How would you even... It's working!"
"The realm is merciful. Your pendant will fail."
"Get out of there." I breathed. "Get out, Mizuki! Now!"
All her mana was in my cursed necklace! If the pendant failed, if she could not draw from it anymore, she was done for! If that happened in this forsaken place, while I was trapped so far away...
"Now!"
The clay golem pushed herself out of the pocket of stars and back into the dusty ground. Wind welcomed her all around.
The giant figures were forming again.
She started to run. Behind her the worm had started to fight the misshapen silhouettes. Wind was breaking down the beast, throwing it in tatters. One more roar and it collapsed entirely.
There was nowhere to run to, only the dusty winds and rocky ground. Nothing visible past a few meters.
For a place so deprived, there may really have been nothing just a few meters away.
She was panicking now. I was panicking too. But the pendant was still warm in her hand. Still drawing that slight thread of mana, still keeping her going.
A giant flew in front of her, reformed and opened a malformed mouth to scream in pure silence. The head shred off at this effort. It tumbled, then crashed its arm where the golem stood.
She was drawing more mana to run, to avoid it, but yet another of those windy masses blocked her path.
"Barrier!" She called, and cast the magic circle.
The wind smashed against it, cracked the frail magical protection. She pushed through and kept running, fell on the ground. Got up again.
"Kaele!" She yelled.
"I'm with you! Keep going!"
I could not guide her. There was not even a direction to take. A teleportation! There was a portal back on her ship, if she could use it! If she could find the mana for that!
"Just keep running!" I shouted.
And, as she did, as she dashed forward with all the strength her clay body could have, the winds finally broke off. She staggered a moment, caught herself and saw the horizon.
Far away, in the dusk, was the silhouette of a crashed airship.
I watched her stop, I watched her run, I watched her press on desperately and cross that infinite distance. She threw herself inside, rolled on the rocky ground and started to sob.
Not that a golem could sob but her voice did.
"You're doing great." I encouraged her. "You can do it, you are almost out."
From there, on the other side, she would see the ruins of Bayankam. And from the town of Bayankam she would find her ship.
"Come on, Mizuki! You're almost there!"
"I can't do it!" She curled up. "The pendant will fail! I have screwed everything up!"
"It's working!" I punched the wall in front of me, for her to hear me. "You can't give up now! Don't give up on me!"
"I should have listened to you! I should have done what you said!"
"You have been right the whole time! At every turn! You have been nothing short of amazing! So get up! Please get up!"
Crazy how vibrant a desperate human voice could be.
I could also feel my arms ache as I kept slamming the wall in front of me. Like it could do anything.
"Okay..." She said, and pushed herself up.
"That's it! Get back to the ship! And if the pendant fails, we'll just make a better one! The design is sound, the numbers work!"
"Yeah. The numbers check out. I just panicked. That's all."
"You are going to make it. I am counting on you."
She was smiling again. That meek smile I hated so much.
Her clay hand was clutching the pendant to the point of trembling. She took a moment to fake breathing. To calm down.
She opened that hand.
The amber diamond was damaged.
A sick joke under the drilled holes that served her as eyes.
How long had it been deteriorating? Probably the moment she stepped into the kingdom of Wekel. The distance, the stress, the mana-deprived environment, the spells. It had been too much for such a small trinklet.
I could not even hear myself scream anymore.
She could still make it! Back to the ship! Even without the pendant, she could still make it!
I could barely perceive her trying to get up, stumbling, falling back down. The amber diamond in that slot craking further, losing pieces. And pieces of my vision with it.
Someone! Anyone! Save her!
The insects were surrounding her. Falling one by one after lending what mana they had. It made no difference. A realm across, all I could do was bloody my arms with helplessness.
The portal! I did not even know how to do it but tried anyway, turned to the portal linked to the ship and cast to redirect it to her. Using the synch. Anything. It had to work, it had to!
It did. It was frail, it was unstable but miraculously: it did.
My human arms seized her clay body. My human body against hers. She felt my warmth and all the mana I brought with it. I had saved her!
The portal immediately collapsed behind me.
But I didn't care. Because before I could even realize, the bead was against her neck.
I walked all the way back to Bayankam. Me, the miserable clay golem. The winds around me barely lifted dust up to the knee.
I reached the ruined town and crossed it without a gaze for the red beaks. I could not tell if any of them even attacked me. I was not trying to avoid them anymore.
On the other side, the ground under me was sandy. Sand a few meters ahead before it turned into rock. There, in the eternal dusk, I kept walking.
The Parao was waiting, pristine in the middle of that dry desert. As I approached, before I even reached the nets the stupid rapt onboard showed up and chimed.
"Big brother! You're... oh. But uhm, welcome back! I have cleaned the desk super hard!"
I pushed it away. Walked to the tiny speck of a portal that crackled above the deck. My hand seized it and squeezed until the spell died out.
The patterns drawn on the deck, all around and on the masts, and down in the lower deck as well, the most complex craft I had ever devised.
All peeled off and vanished.
My hand had started counting the beads. Three. four. As I walked to the bridge. There were two left. I did not want to count them. I did not want to count the beads on my necklace ever again.
I picked up the badger mask that lay in front of the wheels.
A merciful realm?
... This?