Keiran

I summoned Querit out of his cage after a few minutes of discussion. It was obvious he was having trouble processing some of what I’d told him, and I thought an in-person meeting in an area completely devoid of mana might help speed things up. Not coincidentally, I didn’t want him to have access to my demesne just yet.

Instead, I flew a hundred miles northeast of the valley and summoned him there. We stood together on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean, a mountainous backdrop behind us. When he appeared, he was as naked as he’d been when I found him, a fact that didn’t seem to bother the golem at all.

“You… were not exaggerating the lack of mana in the region,” Querit said, looking around. “There’s practically nothing, just some hints of it deep into the mountains.”

“I’m surprised you can feel it from so far away,” I said. Unless I missed my guess, he was sensing the streams of mana running from the various guideposts the brakvaw had built all over the world to guide their young on their journeys. “That’s not natural ambient mana, however. It’s part of a network a group of monstrous birds developed to help them navigate.”

“And Dherevo? Or no, you said it was called Derro now,” Querit said. “Is it in this situation, too?”

“Dry as a bone,” I confirmed. “Humanity lost almost all of its magical traditions, even the basic stuff like how to ignite a core. The whole world is full of dims struggling to survive with only the mana their dormant cores can produce.”

“It all sounds so unbelievable, especially with you standing in front of me. You are obviously at least a master mage at stage five, possibly higher.”

“I’m not from this time,” I said. “Kind of like you, actually. My knowledge of magic predates the cataclysm that broke the world.”

“That sounds like a fascinating story,” Querit said. “You aren’t a golem like me, I’m sure of that. You don’t appear to be an undead, either. Some sort of stasis spell?”

“Reincarnation. I created a framework of soul invocations to carry my memories intact through the process.”

“Remarkable!” Querit’s eyes gleamed in excitement. “No one’s ever done that before. So then, when you say that you’re Keiran, you mean you’re that Keiran? Keiran of the Nightvale?”

“Yes,” I said with a soft smile. A moment later, it turned bitter. “Not that there’s a Nightvale anymore.”

“This… cataclysm you spoke of,” the golem said. “I believe this may have been the event that prompted Professor Velder to direct me into a war frame to guard the primary pylon. The royal seers were going crazy, warning of some great calamity that was to befall the city, something unstoppable. They couldn’t be sure what it was, only that it would strike like lightning and that we would not be able to stop it.”

“One of the moons broke. Amodir. Pieces of it rained down from the sky. I recovered a chunk from Derro. I can’t even imagine how big it must have been before it broke down to the size it is today.”

Querit stared at me in disbelief, once again making me marvel at the amount of effort that had gone into making the golem as human-like as possible. If I didn’t know he was a construct of magical engineering, I would have believed he was a person. Of course, the effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that he was still naked. Apparently, shame wasn’t part of his personality matrix.

“I don’t want to fall asleep again,” the golem finally said after a minute of silence. “But how can I even exist in a world without mana? I’d be forever dependent on someone else just to keep my mind active. Maybe… Maybe it’s for the best if I simply… stop.”

“Don’t get all fatalistic on me just yet,” I said. “We haven’t gotten to the part of the conversation where we talk about my goals and how I think you can help.”

“What’s the point?” Querit asked. “I know how much mana my core takes to keep running. It would take far more mana than any single person could spare. Even a stage four mage would struggle to keep me supplied. Please, I mean no offense, Keiran of the Nightvale, but this is hopeless.”

“About that,” I said. “You’re a research golem, right? You were created to be someone’s assistant. That was my read on your core.”

“I am,” he said. “But why does that matter?”

I pulled back the shield around my mana core enough to let Querit see me cast a simple light spell. The orb formed, floating next to me, as perfect as always. His brow furrowed as he considered the magic. “What did you do? The mana…”

“I call this lossless casting. It’s a technique I picked up a few years ago that allows me to cycle almost all of the mana I use back into my core instead of being released into the environment or back to the Astral Realm. I haven’t been able to adapt it to enchantments, inscriptions, or alchemy yet. Too many other things have occupied my time. But if I had a competent researcher I could pass the workload off to…”

I left unsaid that master spells were still proving tricky to adapt to this style as well. I’d had some minor successes, but not enough to allow me to freely cast my full repertoire without concern for cost. Even as I advanced my core stage after stage, I was still rationing my reserves. Perhaps if Querit was willing to work for me, I might see about a way to create an artificial mana resonance, as well. He came from a time of magical enlightenment with a thousand years of progress stacked over what the world had known at the end of my life. He might already know.

That would come later, though. For now, dangling lossless casting in front of him would be enough. If he could learn it and figure out how to make it work with his own golem core, he would essentially never run out of mana. That was a danger in its own right, especially if someone like Ammun discovered the technique and then further adapted it to support his own undead existence. As long as I could keep the knowledge contained for my own use, however, it would be a huge boost to my capabilities.

Querit wasn’t stupid. He understood what I was baiting him with immediately. This task was directly relevant to his own wellbeing, meaning he’d be extremely motivated to get results. I’d keep him functioning until then. If our working relationship was good enough, perhaps I could keep him on for other purposes. If not, well, I’d get something important out of it, and he’d go back to Derro or whatever. As long as he didn’t end up in Ammun’s clutches, I didn’t much care what he did.

Truthfully, I didn’t want a research assistant. I preferred to do it myself. But I had other problems to deal with and not enough hours in the day. The looming threat of whatever the old lich was working on needed to be addressed, and golem crafting was far too advanced to delegate to a mage of Tetrin’s skill. Though, perhaps Querit could help with that, too. I’d need to question him about his capabilities soon.

“I understand,” the golem said. “I’m willing to work with you for the time being. I do have a request, before we get started.”

“What’s that?”

“More mana. I assumed this form to use the war frame, and my mana reserves are too low for me to change my shape into something more familiar.”

“That I think I can help with,” I said with a laugh. I pulled a storage crystal out of my phantom space and tossed it to him.

He examined it briefly, nodded to me, and pulled the mana out of it. A second later, he shot up two feet in height and his limbs thickened with muscle. His hair remained the same, short, brown, and wavy, but his cheekbones grew more pronounced and eyes were deeper set. It gave him a handsome brooding loner appearance.

Clothes also sprouted from his bare flesh, or at least something that looked like clothing. It was actually the same inorganic material the rest of him was made of, just modified in texture and weight to mimic cloth. The outfit was an unusual one, not at all like the loose, flowing clothes the desert-dwellers of the island normally wore.

Instead, it had wide pants that tapered down at the ankle, soft slippers, and a sash looped around his waist. His chest and arms were bare and well-muscled, but a thin, blue scarf hung from his neck, thrown back so that it trailed down behind him.

“That was the style back when you were last active?” I asked as I eyed up the outfit.

“One of them, yes. I suppose people dress more like you these days.”

“Some of them. The poorer ones. The family I was reborn into were farmers and I don’t have an eye for high fashion. Maybe you can bring the style back,” I said, though I didn’t have the faintest clue why anyone would want to wear a scarf in this heat. Maybe if he’d wrapped it over his head to keep the sun off, it would have made sense.

The slippers didn’t seem practical to me, either, but I really couldn’t be bothered to pretend to care about that. Querit could wear whatever he wanted, so long as he brought me results. If he wanted to spend his spare time researching modern fashion senses, I wished him all the best.

Shrugging his shoulders and stretching his newly lengthened limbs, the morphic golem said, “Do you have a lab set up for me to work in? Oh, and were you able to recover any of my other frames?”

“I have a few unoccupied workshops. I’m sure one could be refurbished to meet your needs. I’ve also got some documentation on the lossless technique I’ve compiled that you should review before we begin lessons. And no, I only found the one frame you were in.”

But I’d be going back to look around for others.

“That sounds perfect,” Querit said. “I’ll be up to speed and ready to assist in no time. Pardon me if I’m overstepping, but what will you be doing in the meantime? You mentioned you had some goals of your own you were attempting to achieve.”

“Yes, that,” I said. “It’s a bit of a story. Essentially, one of my former apprentices built a tower that digs all the way through Manoch to reach the world core. He ruptured the mysteel shell and killed off the core itself. That’s what’s caused all the mana to dry up. I need to pry his dusty, bony ass out of his tower and tear it down so I can get access to the core and shell to repair them.”

Querit’s eyed widened slightly as he thought that over. “It’s… certainly an ambitious plan. I take it from your explanation that your apprentice transitioned to lichhood as a form of immortality.”

“Correct.”

“How did he manage to keep himself going without any mana?” the golem asked. “Perhaps if we could replicate that-”

“No. He just woke up a few years ago. He’s been gone practically since he broke things, locked up in his phylactery in a sealed box to wait out what he thought was going to be a short-term drought. Things would have been a lot simpler if he’d never woken back up.”

That was at least partially my fault. Without my help, the guy who’d unlocked Ammun’s box never would have gotten anywhere near it. The lich probably would have slept on decades more, probably only waking back up after I’d fixed the problems he’d caused.

“Oh. I see then. His method of keeping himself alive is irrelevant to what you’re trying to achieve,” Querit said. “And I assume you’ll be taking an active hand in foiling his plans, thrashing his minions, and breaking his toys?”

I grinned. “Something like that, yes.”