Chapter 2: Fight against the Forgotten

The Golem’s crystal ball identified the being as a demi-elemental spirit of the forgotten.

It was a faceless being, with no feet. It was pale blue. All over its featureless body were great chipped chains, on the ends of the chains, which dangled below it, were wilted brown flowers, they continually shed rusted petals. Its fingers stretched out into long thin claws. Parts of it flickered in and out of existence.

-Insolent remnant… the memories… will be… locked here… forever… as will… you…-

Shackles on chains burst forth from the elemental’s body, binding the golem, but the it was having none of it, and broke the chains with a chop of its pincer. The elemental hissed in pain as the shackles wilted off.

“Wonder; Is this one a warrior?”

-You are… nothing… mo…-

The elemental talked so slowly, the golem just ran up to it, and put its neck between its pincers, hoping to lop it off. Sadly, the elemental’s neck flickered out of existence, and it flew away from the golem, flailing more chains at it.

The golem however simply swatted them out of the air.

“Cutting observation; You are weak”

The elemental screeched at the golem, and many chains burst from its body lashing at the golem. The golem could not block them all and was whipped into a wall by the chains. The chains gathered together to form great clawed hands, and began to pound against the golem.

“WARNING!; Shell integrity in danger, activating automatic laws” the golem proclaimed, losing control for a moment.

The golem unconsciously drew upon the shadow bound inside itself.

“Connection: //core/power/umbra. Execute; Function; Armament enchantment, power output 50%, Timer; single use. Directive; Perseverance of unit.”

Its pincer grew dark and shadows dripped off it like oil. It became like great dark scissors. The golem plunged its shadowy scissors into the shadow of the elemental’s chain fists, it cut one off.

The elemental flailed in pain as its’ chain claws wilted and one of its actual hands burst into rusted petals which vanished. The golem’s pincer returned to normal, and it was a bit weaker.

The elemental surrounded the golem with a spinning ring of chains, and it disappeared. The ring of chains flung shackles out, but the golem deftly dodged and crushed them with its mighty pincer. From every angle they flew at it, but it destroyed them all, only sometimes did its metal body get hit.

Then, the golem felt a presence behind it, fortunately it could turn its cone head all the way around, if it hadn’t, then it would surely have been dismantled. There behind it was the elemental, just a few chains hanging off it. Its remaining hand was around the golem’s head, ready to slice it to ribbons.

“Connection: //core/memory/doors. Execute; Visual Playback. Directive; Perseverance of unit” The golem quickly rattled this off, and a stream of images of the memories from the doors flew from its crystal eyeball.

It almost wasn’t quick enough, but the stream of memories caused the elemental pain and it reared back, trying to avoid the golem’s projections. Making use of the elemental momentary pause, the golem rotated its body round, and it remembered what had happened when it had been getting hit by the chain claws.

“Connection: //core/power/umbra. Execute; Function; Armament enhancement”

Then it tried something a bit different.

“Mode; spear. Power output 80%, Timer; burst. Directive; Elimination of threat, unable to retrieve limiters or qualifiers”

The golem then thrust its pincer towards the elemental, a shadowy image of a long large blade flashed in-between the pincers. The Elemental managed to avoid being impaled, yanking itself out of the way with its chains. The shadow spear still sliced off the elemental’s other arm, the one that had a hand still. The limb wilted into rusted petals which crumbled to nothing.

The Elemental screeched and its chains lashed all about, the golem was battered this way and that, while the elemental howled in fury.

-If… only… you… were… not… a remnant… I could… just devour… your memories…-

The golem however was at its limit for this, and grabbed a bunch of the chains with its non-pincer hand. Pulling on them it brought the elemental towards itself, then caught its body in its pincers. One snip, and the elemental was cut in half!

-No… I failed… master… I couldn’t… keep… them-

The elemental burst into rusted petals, which crumbled to nothing before they touched the ground.

With the elemental’s death, the memories came rushing out, there was such a volume, but the golem experienced only one final memory…

“Well, that was interesting, I wasn’t expecting her to die, I guess I underestimated Boskail. Oh well, I got what I wanted, such a lovely shade of crimson to it… hmm… I guess it could be problematic if I let anyone discover what I did here, well… time to give this lovely bauble a test run…”

A being is made by the power of the red jewel.

-What… is your… will… master?-

“Rip all the memories from this place, I don’t care if it is the memories of rats, let no remnant leave here, though if you come across any shades of the dead, just devour their memories and kick them out”

-Your will… is my… command-

It leaves the deceiver alone.

“Well, that is one problem dealt with, though, I’m in a bit of a spot with her being dead, her body would have worked well for me… huh I really should stop talking to myself, could go mad like that”

A being that had never known sanity and never would laughed to itself.

The golem’s emotions were still weak, and in some cases, not yet present. So the golem was not saddened by the tale behind the memories, but it did feel that something was wrong with the events it had witnessed. It did however feel as if a small gap had opened in itself.

The memories had gone. Looking about, the golem saw that it was in an pale blue earthen pit, from which many tunnels went, above was impenetrable crawling darkness, which ate away at the light from the golem’s crystal eyeball. Such was the nature of darkness in Awarth, it would always feed hungrily on light. This generally made it lethargic and heavy.

The golem stood for a time, and thought of itself. In this case, it meant it did a systems check. It found out that it had no unit designation, that before the fall into Awarth, it had no logs. Checking its laws, it found that most of its directives had eroded from the main plate. It had no idea of who it was, or what its purpose was. It postulated that, since it was made with scrap, someone, or thing had recently assembled it. The shadow inside of it, and the enchantment of motion and function were the work of this maker, or makers.

The golem was not quite sure what to do. Though… it noted that it really wasn’t in good shape, even before the battle, its shell was in poor form. The mechanism in its torso was not functioning, indeed it could not access what the device’s function was.

The golem calculated a list of priorities.

Repair of Unit.

Contact with manufacturer.

Discovery of Unit’s function.

Investigation of Events surrounding the Crimson Watcher, Yullris and Tavarn.

The golem did not know what to feel about having total control of it own systems. It decided, that it would not gain any answers about its existence by standing about, so randomly choosing one of the earthen passages it walked away.

The golem soon realized that it was in some manner of maze. Mazes, and of course labyrinths naturally form in Awarth, what with it being a world of shadows and dreams. It wouldn’t be that unusual for the inside of a mountain to turn out to be a maze in Awarth. Unlike the underworld, the Urlbris, Awarth just has mazes and such in it. The Urlbris is one huge labyrinth.

The golem quickly assembled a map in its mind, storing and updating in its logs as it went about. Fortunately for the golem, it managed to get out of the maze without encountering anything else.

Unfortunately, the exit was a drop down the side of a glass mountain.

It lost a few gears and crashed in a heap at the bottom.