The city of Chalt was a story of rivalry and bitterness. One could say it had always been at was with itself and everyone else. Yet it hard survived the human days and after that, the mana drain.
Now a fourth of it was gone.
Yet the rubbles of its collapsed tower kept rumbling. Slight tremors had the smaller debris fall further. The very beast whose strength had caused this fall was still digging its way out.
I had other problems. Somewhere under that mass of blocks and bricks was the canal and in the canal, the Parao. There was little hope of the ship having survived such a cataclysm and yet, I felt it was still possible.
I needed to check. Nasse had been onboard when it happened.
So as a monster was digging out I was pushing my way in, looking for faults to slip through and using earthworks for the rest, if only to stabilize the rocks and prevent more cave-ins.
I was a clay golem, I was crafted for this.
There was no water to find, only a thin sand in which most debris had sunk. That told me roughly that I had reached the canal's bottom. No wooden remains so far.
So I pushed forward, melted my way through another block and emerged in a cavern.
The ship was intact. One massive slab had stuck itself above and created this space. Happenstance? Or had the ship's gravity glyph somehow had an effect? Other than the masts, there was little damage.
The fire lizard was busy repairing them.
"Nasse!" I called.
"Kaele." He watched me approach. "You lost your armor again."
I had. All that was left on me were the clay plates coated with silver and my badger mask. I climbed onboard and set the beacon.
A few minutes later, the human's ritual warped the ship out and into the orcs' new camp, at the base of the collapsed tower.
Rascal whistled: "Is that luck or what?"
The orc punched the hull, watched the ramp fall in place and waited there. His peers were all equally excited. After losing everything they could not have been in higher spirits. Boarish grins all around.
That was not the case of the human. Even though both the orcs and most monsters still obeyed him, he felt like he had lost his kingdom. Most of his ornaments were gone, consumed in battle. Of them only the Adhipatya remained.
I was sit near the mast, letting the magnal masticate on my broken arm to rebuild it when the man came onboard. The menilis with him.
Nasse's mastication was way better than earthworks.
"I wanted to apologize," the human started and I cut him.
"You are the hero of the realm. Enjoy your life and let me worry about the rest."
"Still, it doesn't feel right!"
"Nasse, go fetch the seals."
The lizard stopped his mastication and left for the lower deck. While he was gone, I continued.
"From now on, carry those seals like your life depends on it."
"What is happening, sorcerer?" The humanoid cat on his side intervened. "Why won't you tell us?"
I ignored her.
"What do you want to do now?"
The human sighed: "I thought I could be someone here, but even here I am still just a fool."
"Ruthless!" Rascal was climbing the ramp as well. "Be ruthless, Varun! A proud king! You conquered a city, you tamed monsters, you resurrected Korion and beat him!"
"You don't beat Korion." I corrected. "You survive him. He will be out a couple days from now."
"So lead us, Varun!" The orc insisted. "Let's kill him once more!"
I doubted anyone had the strength to accomplish that anymore. There were beasts that defied the mana drain, each in their own way, and of them the minotaur was the worst. How could you even sustain such an illusion with just a dead skull to your name?
Regardless, I still had work to do.
Nasse was coming back with not the human armor but clothes bearing the seals as well. He offered them to the man who picked them up and, after a look, kept them under his arm.
The lizard went back to repairing my arm.
"It would be best to depart. There is a dungeon where I can keep working for the realm. The choice is yours. As you said, I am just a golem who serves humans after all."
"If you let Minette come with us, I will follow you."
He held on the monster and she let him. The wound she had sustained was fully closed now.
"Go change. We repair the ship, then leave."
"Then it is goodbye!" The orc reacted, then burst into a laugh. "The skull against the moon, and you want to miss that! I will never understand humans!"
He didn't wait, waved off and just left.
Those boars could only think of the fight ahead. The human had given them a new power through the moon. After exercising it on the city, they could not wait to see its effect on their ancient ruler. Korion would have to fight to reclaim his place.
Not that I cared.
While Nasse finished working on my arm, the human and his princess came back to work on the masts and sails. With a gravity glyph at disposal it proved easy work.
After that, I let the human take the helm and, from the bridge, steer us out of the gardens, through the rubbles and finally into the dry desert.
Three tall pyramids disappeared far behind us.
"I didn't even get to give it to him." The man thought aloud, then explained: "Adhipatya. Rascal would have more use of it than me now."
"You know this lets you control monsters?"
"Yes." He confirmed. "He could have become a king among his kin."
I pointed to the menilis: "You realize she is a monster?"
The orc would have not hesitated a second to see one more fight before letting us go. Just because they talked, just because they served didn't change their nature.
By noon there was nothing but the desert.
After so much time living in a palace, I had expected the two passengers to find the Parao's amenities oppressingly small. But by the first meal they could not ask for more. Watermelon, lobster and minced duck, marinated sea bass and tart, they lost themselves in that paltry food.
She was eating with him and joking about the silverware.
Then outside again, as they watched the immensity and the thin sand emerging from under the keels, it really sank in the human's heart just how deprived the realm was. It sufficed for him to watch our trail vanish behind.
Come evening they still held a ceremony for the moon. Me and Nasse watched from the bridge. The magnal was taking a pause from the lower deck.
Well, I had forced him to take that pause.
"Is anyone following us?" He asked.
"Yes."
For however well he hid, I did catch the warped horizon for a moment. The skeletal wyvern was tailing us from port and probably had since our last encounter at Nabica.
I could not tell what the wyvern had in mind. Killing the human? Gathering mana? Or just gathering information for whatever scheme he had? But that warp was gone and with that, it felt like the ship was truly alone in the realm.
Night fell. There was still enough magic for the night to come. A hundred stars guided our sails and each time I looked at them, I could not help but feel a little hopeful.
With the human asleep I left the bridge and walked down to the hatch to join Nasse on the lower deck. Down the steps and then, to the prison.
I wasn't even near the bars when the black beast hissed and attacked. Her sharp legs, failing to reach me, attacked the metal and the wooden floor. She could only scratch that.
I let it assail my arm, put my palm on her head and waited.
"It has been a long time. I should have visited sooner."
She kept attacking tirelessly.
Behind me the magnal approached: "You lost an armor and I just repaired your arm. Try and conserve yourself."
"What about you Nasse? I can't remember when I saw you sleep last."
"When you tried to kill me I think." He observed. "Once your ship runs out of magic, I may take a nap."
Of course. He knew. And that truth was also starting to dawn on the passengers as well.
The menilis was more used to magic, so she could feel that slow depravation. In the morning she was redecorating the lounge and, in the middle of it, stopped to look at the pendants exposed on the wall, behind their glass.
Four pendants of different shapes and sizes, even mixed in alloys, but all bearing a single amber gem at their end.
They should have let the humans tap into a reserve of mana, extending their life for months or years. That reserve had likely evaporated since and regardless, after four attempts I had all but given up.
Could she read the inscriptions behind the pendants? Even as a priestess, the humanoid cat could not even cast a magic circle. Still, I had written them to be easily accessible. So maybe she could grasp just how dire things were.
Those thoughts took a backseat by late morning, when another warped beam cracked the air and the desert thundered.
"Are we attacked?!" The human burst out of his cabin.
He was a bit late, only a few threads remained of the ray of light.
This was the third of seven locks the humans had left behind. The third one the wyvern had broken. He wanted us to see it. His masterpiece. The fall of humanity.
"It's nothing." I lied. "Just the realm's last gaps."
I knew that monster would come and brag to me in time about his feat. And I should stop calling him a wyvern.
After working so much with anti-magic I had long concluded that such a beast could not reside in there. No monster could, or many would have already taken refuge in that slow-decaying environment. One reason he was so strong was that he had it for himself.
Which meant he was more like a ghost. A shapeless creature that had stumbled upon that corpse and had been using it as a conduit ever since.
No wonder he seemed unkillable.
Either way, without the ability to stop him all I could do was to keep going at my own pace. Before the evening, the dungeon was in sight.
First the jagged shapes of rocks emerged over the landscape, higher than hills. They looked like the teeth of a circular maw stretching for kilometers. Then those rocks got smoother, and smoother.
This had been a dream dungeon. A mess of aethereal spaces, microverses and mind-shaped dimensions. With the mana drain, it had been as good as wiped.
It should have leaved a gigantic space to work with.
But I started to have my doubts. The closer we got, the more those jagged rocks looked like the glass shards they had been when the dungeon shattered. And when I saw some glass pieces floating ahead, I forced the Parao to a halt.
The ship halted a while away from a field of broken mirrors frozen in the air.
"We have arrived." The magnal concluded.
"Not quite."
There should be almost no mana here. Yet those massive pieces were still in the air. And if they were, they should have been moving.
Time. It hit me that time had stopped. Rather than space, the entire dungeon had been deprived of time.
"So there is more than one way for the realm to end." I kept going. "It is as good as the void."
The moment we stepped in there, time would stop for us and that would be it. No spell, nothing would get us out. And because, by time, we would have never entered, there would not even be an image left of us.
I had brought us, quite literally, at the edge of time.