42 loop 1 Part 22

My mana was blinking red, and I made my golems stop as an idea came to me.

Flag hadn’t followed after us and was still staring out the window. Just staring out there, cradling the battery in both stone hands like he’d forgotten it was there.

“Flag, buddy,” I said. “You okay?”

“Mhm.”

“I need you to do something for me.”

He turned from the window. “Of course.”

“Sit down.”

He looked at the floor, thought for a second, and then lowered himself down, as if he had never sat down before. He plopped onto his butt, rolled onto one hip, and propped himself up on his arms before settling with his stone legs stretched out in front of him.

“Now, close your eyes.”

He touched his face as if realizing he had one for the first time, despite the fact he’d done it about ten minutes before. “I have eyes! Oh, I’ve always wanted eyes.”

“Yes, Flag. Your golem body has eyes.”

“Oh.” He found them and closed them. “Okay, they’re closed. Now what?”

He was bobbing his head from side to side, clearly enjoying whatever it was we were doing. It was taking him a minute to get it, but I was patient.

I had given lectures to people less attentive than Flag on harder things. And it wasn’t that Flag was slow—he seemed pretty smart for what he was. Besides, it was obvious the reason Flag was struggling: He had only had a body for approximately twenty minutes.

“I want you to breathe slowly. And think about nothing.”

“Oh. But golems don’t breathe. And if I’m thinking about nothing, then how am I thinking?”

“Just pretend that you’re thinking about nothing.”

Flag was quiet for a second, and then said, “Oh. Oh, this is nice. I like this.”

“Flag, you need to not talk, otherwise you’re still thinking.”

He went quiet again, and then I felt something shift between us. Instead of the [Soul Tether] pulling me toward him, the pulse reversed, pulling toward me. And then I got an alert.

[Soul Tether] has increased ambient mana regeneration by 4%.

I stared at it. Well, that was fucking cool. Sure, I’d lost 8% of my mana to get there, but now my regeneration had increased just because I had a golem. Fuck, this was awesome.

All right. I sat back in my chair. It was time to do some meditating of my own. If I was about to fight a dragon, I needed as much mana as possible. The dragon could wait an hour or so. Probably.

An hour and a half later, Flag, my golems, and I made our way around the Green, trying to find any sign of survivors. I had to find Finn and confirm he was okay. I couldn’t deal with seeing his corpse twice in one week.

We looked in a couple of the larger buildings and the mostly intact Crucible before heading to the dining hall. It should have been the first place we checked.

The dining hall had been a grand cathedral once. Vaulted stone pillars, a ceiling that disappeared into shadow, enchanted glass overhead. I’d eaten breakfast under that ceiling a hundred times.

Eirkedross had come down through it. The glass was gone. The ceiling was open to the sky, and morning light fell wrong through the gap. It was pale and flat, landing on rubble where the serving line had been. The enchanted brickwork was still trying to repair itself, however, there was too much damage and not enough material left to work with.

The room was empty, but there was an obvious ward in place over the only exit not destroyed. The doors led down to a storage basement.

With nothing better to do, I knocked on the door and said, “Hello? Is anybody in there?”

Bain’s voice came back through the door, flat and unhurried. “Mr. Yarrow? Go away.”

“Open the door.”

“Opening this door is how people die.”

“Staying in a storage room under a dining hall is also how people die. Eirkedross can’t get to us in the library’s restricted floors. You’ll be dead before dusk if you stay here.”

“The dragon may be asleep, but it won’t remain that way.”

“Yes, that’s why it’s safest to move now before it wakes up.”

I only received silence. So I gave my golem friends a thought.

Flag beat the rest to it. He put one stone hand flat against the door and pushed. The hinges gave first, then the frame, and the whole thing leaned inward and settled against the floor with a dull thud.

There wasn’t even a ward on the door. What the hell?

Forty-odd faces looked up at me from between overturned shelving units and stacked supply crates. Finn was in the back, sitting on a box with his hands on his knees. Alive. Something in my chest unknotted without my permission.

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Bain stood in the center of the room. He looked at the door on the floor. And then at me.

“You’ve doomed us all,” he said.

“No I haven’t,” I said. “If we go now, we’re fine.”

In a blink, he’d crossed the distance between us and pressed his wand against my throat. I raised my hands, kind of shocked at the display of power I had never seen from him.

From the doorway, Thane stepped forward over the broken door. “Aldrick.” He put both hands up in a placating mirror of me. “What’s done is done. If we move now, we can sort out the rest later.”

Bain let go of me and turned toward him. Dark veins spread from around his eyes tracking up toward his temple but they were gone almost immediately. If [Wideview] hadn’t been active, I doubt I could have seen them at all.