My mistress was a bit of a headache to deal with.
The young lady liked to fight but refused to get healed. She liked to rest but didn't want to get pampered. After killing a minotaur, while her body was recovering, she spent two days in training. Human training.
The kind of training a clay golem like me could not even hope to understand.
Me? I would work in the mansion. Then during the night I would stand guard on the roof. Because the ruined city around us was full of monsters. And because the giant mushroom surrounding the mansion could not be trusted.
The city had been at peace for a while but now, here and there, I could feel the clamors of a fight. Monsters remembering they were monsters, despite the parasite's spores, devouring each other in search of mana. Scavengers of the realm.
Each night I looked at the three sole stars that survived the darkness.
None had appeared since. They seemed to dim instead.
In the morning, I would go back to the mansion's great hall and work on my painting. Another day and the portrait would be finished. The whole human family was already on it.
I stopped. My mistress was not moving.
She was in her bedroom, out of bed and in front of her mirror. And she was not moving. The only vibrations were from her breath and beating heart.
Not a minute later I was at her door, knocking and asking to enter. She was moving again, thankfully. A bit frantic. To her wardrobe and then mirror again, twice.
"Mistress." I pleaded. "Is everything okay?"
"Yes!" She shouted in a tone that meant no. "Don't come in, okay?"
I patiently waited for however many minutes she needed, until she opened. Her pale rugged face, crooked nose and brown eyes were a pleasure to see. Her short black hair suited her well.
She looked distressed.
"Is there anything troubling you?" I asked.
"No, nothing! Thanks for asking!" Her eyes were fleeing.
"Your new hairstyle makes you look younger."
She bit her lip: "So you noticed. Kaele, what happened to my hair?!"
Was that all?
Yes, the hair were short, rough and unruly, a noticeable shift from the long smooth ones she used to bear but nothing worth her dismay. I accompanied her to the dining room, let her eat and kept reassuring her.
"If magic does not work, surely they will grow with time."
"But I..." She tried, then sighed. "Why would I be reverting back to... this?! Of all things!"
Still, the young lady calmed down, drank some wine, ate her breakfast. By the end of it her emotion had passed, replaced by an annoyed sulk.
"You seem to have recovered." I encouraged her. "Maybe a walk in the countryside?"
"Sure." She groaned. "Let's make islands float."
"You should stay..." The parasite cut off our conversation.
That invading mushroom had taken the bad habit of doing that. Getting bolder with time, now that it ruled the ruined city.
My mistress felt frustrated: "Why?" And since it would not answer: "Kaele, what does gramps mean?"
"He pretends that you are getting weaker." I explained.
"You should stay... You are running out of mana... The outside will kill you..."
"Silence, parasite!" I lost it. "You know nothing of humans! All you want is to feed on her, leech all you can!"
"You see it too... You see it too..."
See what? What was there to see? My mistress was a human! She was invincible!
"Mana here, mana there, I have no idea what you two are talking about!" She exploded. "No clue at all! How about you start by explaining how your world even works!? What even is mana!?"
I had rarely seen here this agitated. Almost panicked.
But mana? She had to know! How could a human not know what mana is? It was... mana! Magic, aether, life force, come on! Mana was mana!
The parasite would not answer, so it fell on me.
"Well, as you know..."
"No! I don't know! Stop assuming I do! I could not even enter high school for crying out loud!" Her voice trembled. "So treat me as the last of the degenerates and just tell me!"
Okay. No, never, but okay.
Everything was magic. Her, me, everything. A realm without magic did not exist. Mana was just a unit of measure for it. Back when humans ruled the realm, the amount of mana was so high as to be meaningless. Then mana started to deplete.
At a rate of zero point zero, zero, zero... zero... zero height seven seven and some per second. It didn't sound like a lot but within six months, the humans were leaving. By the seventh month, the whole realm had starved.
Then my mistress came back. As a human, she was overflowing with more mana by herself than the entire realm contained.
"This flow is normal. Warmth spreads around, wine fills the glass, magic does the same. It's natural, if anything the realm is incapable of absorbing your infinite mana fast enough."
"She does not have infinite mana..." The parasite cut off.
"Yeah, I don't see why I would have infinite mana." She agreed with that fiend. "Maybe I produce a lot of it?"
"One cannot create mana..." The parasite would not shut up. "You are getting weaker... You must stay... where there is mana..."
"Are you treating a human like a mere monster?!" I accused.
She slammed the table to silence me.
"Sekres. How long do I have?" It would not answer so the young lady insisted: "How long before I die?!"
"Weeks..."
"You don't need to listen to it, mistress," I reminded her, "it lies like it breathes!" Quite literally, given its spores. "All it wants is to scare you so you stay and feed it."
"Get real!" She shouted. "How blind can you be?! Even I can tell I'm... I am going to my room! Don't follow me!"
I could not disobey her. I still followed her all the way upstairs, and into the hallway, and to her bedroom door where I froze. She had thrown herself on the bed, head first into a pillow. Per the vibrations, she was screaming into it.
I had already raised my hand to knock, stopped again, watched that laborer's hand of mine that I had decorated with marble and silver. A clay golem could not shake like that.
Why would I accept the lies of a parasite!
If she was running out of mana, how could I help her?
And that question burst the dam. Because math had no feeling. Yes, steadily, the amount of mana around my mistress had diminished. Yes, the city, the stars, her hair, everything had been telling me that. Yes, I knew. I had known all along.
And I had chosen to ignore it?
My back against the door, hands on my mask, I was desperately looking for a way to help her.
"I'm sorry." I let out. "It's my fault, I failed you. I should have realized. It's unforgiveable, there is no telling how much mana you lost because of me."
Those were not the words she needed to hear. She needed a solution.
"I will find mana for you. It's what I have always done. I will get all the mana you need, so... it will be fine."
"How?" She called from her bed, through the door. Her voice strangled.
There were ways to absorb mana. To store mana. I would kill every single monster in the realm and bring her magic back! And then... and then the drain would take it from her anyway.
"I will find a way."
"The system says to make the island float." She still struggled to talk. "It's a quest, it has to be the answer."
"M..." I stopped myself. Calling her mistress was the last thing she wanted to hear. "I think your system was built for another era, back when magic was plentiful. It is like me. It does not understand that you need mana."
I only heard her laugh, a broken laugh in response. In some twisted way, she had put her faith in that human system most than all.
No, wasting incommensurate amounts of mana to make a rock float was not going to help. Was there even enough magic in the whole city of Shiranu to try?
"Maybe that system has the answer. If it doesn't, I will find one. I will not let anything happen to you, I promise."
Above all, I would not let that abomination of a mushroom endanger her. That deceitful coward had to be salivating at its weakening prey. She could not stay here. She could not stay.
She wasn't answering anymore. Her head back in the cushion.
I got up. Nothing gained by staying at her door. My clay mind, whatever it was, kept crashing against the idea of hunting monsters for mana. The most natural course of action. Scraping a pittance for a human.
I had come back to the great hall. From the stairs my eyes fell on the painting. The thought of continuing it disgusted me.
At the same time, there was an urge to do so.
My eyes lingered on the unfinished human figures on it. The whole family. They looked so stern and wise. The perfect portrait of humanity.
Humanity!
Why did I not think about it why did I not think about it rushing downstairs and downstairs again into the cellar why did I not think about it?!
I had renovated every single room of the Amber pavilion, except that cellar. I had not touched the engraved walls, not displaced the broken golem in the stairs, not disturbed the two more in the circular room. Not touched the circles.
Two magic circles, drawn in a mad mix of alloys by some crazy alchemist. One smaller on the side, for the caster; the other bigger, at the center, to call on humanity.
I entered the caster's circle. I would call. I would spend as long as it took for someone else to listen, to come help my mistress.
Or to...
The circles were inert. I crouched, put my hand on their metallic streams and nothing happened. The mana would surge in and just, vanish. How? Why? Why?! Why now!
An illusion, I reassured myself. It had to be. Magic circles answered magic, they were built for that! Reacting to magic was their very purpose! So it was fine. They were not inert. They were brimming with magic. Everything was so it was fine.
"Anyone? Please answer." I started to beg.
And I kept begging. And I kept begging. Talking to an empty cellar. I tried sitting, I tried standing, I tried muttering and raising my voice. I tried shouting. The walls were full of the only answer. Written by wretched hands from a time past.
They were not answering.
"Can't you see she needs help?!" I was losing it. "She is a human like you, not the broken toys you abandoned! No one? No one will come for her?! What kind of humanity are you to abandon your own! Answer me!"
They were not answering.
I was getting weak. I had been pouring mana into those circles the whole time, to the point that the lights had started to dim around me. The stones unable to sustain it. Carved letters shaded, going madder by the minute.
"Can't you see she will die if she... If she..."
My body stopped obeying me. I had picked a stone, I had started to write on the circular wall, over the previous text. I would write until the soft clay in my arm hurt. I would keep writing after that.
She must leave. Repeated dozens of times, a hundred, two hundred times.
When finally my arm failed me and the rock fell on the ground, I fell with it, on my knees screaming.
I had condemned her the moment I had brought that human here.