Chapter 3: The Hollow child

“Notice; Reassembly via shadow complete, commencing reboot”

The golem was whole, standing at the foot of a glass mountain, in black snow that fell up into the distant sky of blackened leafless branches, with a strange swirling crawling space of red and black behind. There was nothing near the golem but one single tree, teal in colour and soft of bark. Its leaves were little mirrors.

The first thing the golem saw when its crystal eyeball activated again, was a figure on a tree.

It seemed at first an orange skeleton, wearing a short leather jacket that had a large furry ruff on it. The leather was grey and worn, it was from some kind of lizard. The ruff was pale as bone, and seemed as much like dust as fur. Under this the figure wore nothing. It wore heavy blue cloth trousers, held up by grey leather strips. On its feet were black boots that seemed to be made from shadow.

On closer inspection, it was clear that the figure was not a skeleton of a person, rather it was some kind of humanoid insect, which had an exoskeleton in the shape of a long thin humanoid skeleton. The Golem’s crystal eyeball logged it as being a loughin, one of the hollow children.

Not only are the loughin some kind of insect-person in the shape of a skeleton, there is one extremely curious thing about them. The inside of a loughin is completely hollow. They have no insides, and no eyes in their deep empty sockets. It is perhaps unsurprising that the greater amount of these beings live in Awarth, considering their odd state. They also cast no shadow, since their shadow resides inside their empty body. For this reason, there is many dark magicians among their numbers. The loughin are just one of the races that call Awarth home, and think of Kigan as a strange world of blinding light.

The loughin looked down at the golem, smoke rolling out its eyesockets.

“Yo” He greeted, mouth opening and the words just floating out, as well as a lot of black smoke.

“Greetings” The golem responded.

There was an awkward silence, in which the golem checked that yes, smoke coming out the head was not a feature of loughin. It was kind of glad that a certain amount of core information was intact.

“So uh, you come from an oubliette inside that mountain?”

“Query; Why is there smoke coming out of your head, Concern; is your frame damaged”

They both asked at the same time. The loughin shook his head and sighed, letting smoke out.

“A’right, I’ll go first, the name’s Bab-Lin Goldshadow, you can call me Babs if you want, doesn’t matter, as for the smoke…” Bab-Lin said in a rough voice.

Bab-Lin stayed on the tree, but the golem noticed that he was holding something that looked like the forbidden child of a walking stick and a club. It was made of some kind of creamy green bone.

“Some time ago, in a city, quite far from here, there was a liar, this liar made a lot of money, and piled up riches. One day however, this liar gave false witness, this lead to a great tragedy, and the liar for his troubles had his riches taken away, but further than that, a magical fire was set to burn in his throat and he was bound to always tell the truth. The liar was, of course, me.” Bab-Lin explained badly.

Bab-Lin belched out smoke.

“This fire does not wound me, but I feel pain as if it did, the taste of ashes is always in my mouth”

“Observation; That sounds every bad, Wonder; was your crime that bad”

Bab-Lin laughed, smoke slipping out with the laughter.

“Whatever about how ‘bad’ my crime was, I think I got off very lightly, even got a way out of this fix, now, I’ve told you about the smoke, what about you, you come from an oubliette inside that mountain?”

The golem supposed that a pit with a demi-elemental spirit of the forgotten counted as an oubliette. It wasn’t a bad place to throw stuff you wanted to forget about. The spirit had seemed very weak though… perhaps that was due to the strength of the memories it was holding back.

“Affirmative: This unit has escaped from the mountain. Curiosity: Why do you wish to know”

Bab-Lin tapped the back of his head, there was the clacking sound of carapace on carapace.

“An oracle told me that if I waited on this tree…” Bab-Lin stamped a foot on the tree, making a few leaves spiral skywards. “At the base of this mountain, I could meet a person who escaped from an oubliette, the oracle said that if I followed that person and helped them reach their desires, the spell on me could be broken”

The golem was not sure what it was supposed to say. The idea that somebody required its existence, brought forth a small amount of joy, a new experience. This overwhelmed the golem.

Bab-Lin sighed, smoke and sparks escaping from him, and continued speaking.

“Well, I guess I have two choices, I could wait here and pretend you aren’t a person, and pretend that the oracle wasn’t talking about you, this would be stupid, and more to the point, I’m getting bored and hungry on this tree. So, pleased to meet you…”

Bab-Lin trailed off, and looked expectantly at the golem, though how the golem could tell is anyone’s guess, what with Bab-Lin having no physical eyes. The golem had no idea what was expected.

Bab-Lin, saw that if he didn’t say something, he’d be waiting a long time.

“Your name, tell me your name, basic interaction between beings that are people and not things”

“Oh” embarrassment was another new one for the golem, one it did not like. If it had been capable it would have blushed.

The golem was going to speak, but then it realised, it had no name, it didn’t even have a designation number. Bab-Lin’s cunning mind however was of such a level that he could pick up even the near invisible body language of a rogue golem. In truth, Bab-Lin was surprised at how he could read the golem.

“You don’t have a name do you?” Bab-Lin sighed, he got the feeling he was going to do a lot of that.

The golem shook its head.

“Come on, can’t you name yourself?”

The golem thought about it, the elemental of the forgotten had called it a remnant, that could do well enough as a name, the golem was about to speak, when Bab-Lin cut it off again.

“You were about to just name yourself something literal, like remainder or some stupid thing like that”

The golem felt embarrassment again, how had Bab-Lin pegged it so easily?

“Seriously a body of metal with no face should not be this easy to read, huh, maybe my ability went ascendant without me noticing, anyway, names are important kid…”

Bab-Lin explained that, even names that were not true names had a certain weight to them, and the chance to choose a name was a pretty good one.

“Well, that said, since you are a golem, tis natural you’d be awful at making or choosing a name, thankfully old Bab-Lin here is an ex-liar, none better to give you a new name, kid!”

The golem wondered whether it should object, but it had been drawn in by Bab-Lin’s fast talking.

Bab-Lin pondered a time, tapping his forehead with his walking-club, making a hollow ringing sound. He occasionally glanced at the golem. The golem felt cold, the look Bab-Lin gave pierced right through.

Then he laughed, a full warm laugh like the crackle of flames, sparks included.

“Perfect, In the manner of the people of land of my birth, Adibh-Ur, your name is none other than Cyh-Aira!, by which you can be called Cyh, Aira or Cyira. It means something along the line of ‘friend in the shadows’ or ‘one that aids in the dark’ that kind of thing”

Aira was surprised it could no longer think of itself as anything other than Cyh-Aira. Its designation had been decided, the name fit.

“Astonishment; what magic is this, this unit cannot be anything other than Cyh-Aira, what strange power you have, Bab-Lin”

Bab-Lin snorted, smoke firing out his nose-hole.

“Told you, none better to give you a name kid, why over the years I’ve had a more than forty names, some of them fit so well I could still call myself by them even under this spell.”

“Admittion; This unit is forced under evidence to observe that you are correct” Aira responded.

Bab-Lin grinned, though having a head in the shape of skull meant he was to a certain extent always grinning, it could be said that he grinned harder.

He pulled a small fuzzy bag from among the branches and slinging it on his shoulder, he leapt from the tree. He stepped down to the ground on little discs of blackness that appeared beneath his shadowy boots.

“So then Kid, where are we headed? Where ever you go, I shall follow, please don’t say somewhere dangerous” Bab-Lin asked.

Aira was not sure. Aira did have 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.

But none of those pointed in any particular direction.

Then however Cyh-Aira was struck by a thought, Bab-Lin had come by way of an oracle, oracles were always handy, if cryptic, for those seeking something but who have no idea where to go.

“Idea; We could go to the oracle you spoke of, Admittion; this unit does not know where to go in furtherance of its priorities”

Bab-Lin idly tapped his orange dome.

“Ah, yes well, there’s just a small little problem with that Kid, see on the way here I, uh, kinda got lost.”

The light in Aira’s crystal ball grew a little dim.

“Disbelief; Really”

Aira on the whole should not have been so surprised, oracles were notorious for being hard to get hold of, it seemed at times as if the world lined itself up against anyone who was seeking the guidance of an oracle. Not that finding an oracle was any guarantee of actually getting an audience with one. Usually one had to go on a quest for something the oracle wanted, or the city the oracle was in gets sacked, that kind of thing.

“Hey, Lay off kid, see how well you navigate when your locusfinder gets eaten by a shadowy beast, anyway standing about here won’t do us any good, on top of that tree I saw something, some kind of tower or something, you should be able to see it with your eye, Kid”

Aira followed the direction Bab-Lin pointed, and saw far in the distance, amid the rising black snow, the vague shape of a tower.

“Uncertainty; This seems as good a course of action as any.”

With that, they headed off in the direction of the tower, whatever it was.

“Irritation; This one notes that although you have given this one the designation; Cyh-Aira, you call this one Kid”

“Well, yeah, just cause you have a name now doesn’t mean I have to call you by it Kid”

“Error; your actions are illogical”

“Besides, you are younger than me, you can’t be older than a day or so, thus you are Kid, Kid”

“Annoyed; My body parts were made far before you were born, this unit is sure.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t Kid”

“Calm; You are just doing this to annoy me, are you not”

“You don’t say?”

So did Bab-Lin the Hollowchild and Cyh-Aira the rogue golem headed toward a tower standing tall in the gloomy skies of Awarth.