I think I was shouting, but I wasn’t sure. Every cell in my body was in a rage. This was my last stand, and I wasn’t about to let the fight end without having my say.
We were on each other in an instant. He took a swipe at me as if he were more tiger than man, but I managed to duck in time. The force of air that followed in his arm’s wake was itself almost enough to knock me down. Without being consciously told to do so, my arms thrust the spear as far as they could reach. I felt no resistance in return, so I thought my hit did not land, but was forced to reconsider when my weapon was yanked from my grasp and I dropped backward to the dirt.
I got my bearings as quickly as I could and saw the giant thumping away from me as if I were some afterthought, my spear jutting from the inside of his leg, right below the groin. During the exchange from one moment to the next, it was as if the monster had forgotten I existed. I had to wonder if it thought it hit me or if maybe it really did not even notice me and the fight as I understood it had all been in my head. I was both frightened and a little insulted that it either did not seem to realize or care that I just carved a deep wound into its leg.
This is your reprieve! Run! My mind urged me away. My curiosity held me still.
I banished the thoughts and charged forward. I was going to have my say. Me and him.
I caught up in a flash, ripped my spear from the underside of his thigh, and roared, demanding to be heard. One, two, three times I struck home all along the same leg I had already cut. With each blow, it slowly dawned on me that this creature’s tissue might be more different than I realized. Each jab felt like I was attacking loose mud. My tip went in with astounding ease and seemed to be fine with going as deep as my reach would allow. Never once did I feel any resistance that made me think I’d struck bone. Crazier still, no blood—or anything—poured from the fresh wounds, and it gave me no sign that it felt the pain I had intended to inflict.
After my third strike, it reached out and backhanded me across my entire torso. My spear went flying out of sight. By the time I hit the ground, the Cyclops had already turned its attention back to whatever it was heading toward before.
“Fuck! You!” I willed it to come back around, but it showed no sign that it heard. There was a stabbing pain at my side. A broken rib, no doubt. Maybe more. It wasn’t my first and wouldn’t be my last.
I took in a sharp breath and thought maybe it would be best to just leave it and be thankful it decided not to brutally murder me on the spot. But then I realized something.
“Troy!”
It wasn’t just me and him this whole time. Helen, who I had practically forgotten in my fight for survival, was a bigger part of the equation than I assumed. It was then, when she cried my name in desperation, that I realized the giant had been heading for her the whole time. After a few more lumbering lurches forward, she would be within his reach.
I bolted up, ignoring the pain at my side, and scrambled around in search of my spear, never before feeling so powerless. It felt like days, but I finally found my weapon at the edge of the stream, thanking God it didn’t get carried away in the water. A moment later I was surging ahead again, covered in sweat and muck.
Its foot slammed into the ground within a yard of where Helen lay terrified. I was there to meet it when it touched down, the only obstacle between the beast and its target. I didn’t set out planning to die that day, but it was as good a day as any—a far better ending than most people ever dreamed of. I had resigned to giving it everything I had in defending her, knowing that was likely not going to be anywhere near enough.
There I stood, feeling like a defiant toddler with a stick, trying my best to show nothing but courage in the face of this lumbering nightmare, this certain demise of mine. As it slowly reached for us, I stood firm, bracing myself for the punishment that Daddy’s belt was about to sling my way, but resolved to have my say in the argument.
I thought to stab the eye at the first chance I got, but I realized it might never come, so as the Cyclops leaned close, I lunged my very essence into its heart, determined to burst through to the other side or die in the attempt.
Helen screamed. I roared and kept digging, expecting to be crushed by multiple tons of Cyclops raining down upon me. But it never happened. My arms stabbed the spear as far as they could reach, and then a fog overwhelmed me. I kept stabbing, soon realizing I wasn’t even meeting the weak resistance I had the other times my blows struck. I was only attacking the air, and my enemy was no longer in my limited field of view.
Oh my God, this better not be some fucking planeswalker-teleporting-wizard-Cyclops bullshit, I thought. I jerked around, expecting to be taken by surprise from anywhere—to my left, my right, above, below, the past, the future, some alternate present timeline. Nothing made sense.
It was gone, as best I could tell. Just gone. The smoke—or fog, or whatever—cleared, and it was just me and Helen. Both of use were covered in some kind of powder. I brushed myself off and helped her to her feet, wary of any surprises but not letting my caution slow my actions. She seemed fine. Not even a scratch—not that I knew whether or not robot-people’s skin could get cut as easily as mine. She was certainly breathing hard. I remembered our row with the Thirians and noticed the similarities between the outcomes of both fights—the foe vanquished, us gasping for air, a sense of camaraderie—and the differences in the chain of events leading up to those outcomes. She didn’t handle herself so well this time around. In a twisted way, I was more satisfied at being able to come to my maiden’s aide.
“Are you okay?” I asked, inspecting her closer for any injuries.
“I’m well. The same cannot be said of our friend here.” She waved her arm around in what I took to be a gesture toward something behind me.
I jerked around. “What?” There was still no Cyclops anywhere, dead or alive.
“You do not understand, Troy.” I turned back to face her. She had grabbed a handful of powder from the ground and grinned. “This is our friend.” She blew some of her handful at me and tossed the rest around. “Or . . . it is his dust.”
I watched her dance in what she claimed to be the monster’s remains while I tried to get a firmer grasp on what she was telling me. I could still barely hear anything but the blood in my ear and the constant screaming of my internal monologue telling me kill, kill, kill.
“Do you know what that was?” I asked.
“It was a golem—a clay creature that feeds on flesh. We have many such creatures in Egypt. Since one is here, this means that there is likely someone controlling it close by.”
“What, you mean like they’re watching us?”
“Oh, no, they may not be watching us or even aware of what the golem is doing in a given moment. What I mean to say is that golems are created for a purpose, so since one is roaming here, its creator, or someone working on the creator’s behalf, is sure to check its status from time to time.” She dusted off her tunic, leaving grey stains that would need a good washing. “We should leave before we meet this person. I think it would be good to assume there are more golems on this island, too.”
14
The average Joe probably would have been long gone, but something told me to march on. To me, if someone thought it necessary to put a giant magic hunk of clay on an island that killed everything it came into contact with, it would stand to reason that there was something pretty damn important on that island. Some may call me crazy, but I think it was just my soldier’s intuition.
So, against my damsel’s mindful advice, we went in deeper. I walked at a brisker pace this time around, despite the pain at my side. Along the way, I picked Helen’s brain for more information on golems. My fear of those idiot mud-men dissipated as she went into more detail on how they operated.
“And how big is that soft spot exactly?” I asked, holding a low-hanging branch high enough for her to walk under.
“It depends on the individual golem. Creating them is more art than science. Such weaknesses are often a
t the mercy of the arcane whims of the magical forces used to create them.”
“That just sounds like someone fucked up to me. Where did you hear that?”
“I have heard this from many priests in Egypt. What do you mean by ‘fucked up’, Troy?”
“The way you described it just now—‘weaknesses at the mercy of arcane whims’ or whatever—sounds like someone trying to cover their ass. If someone, like a plumber, came up to me after I called him to fix my toilet and said some shit like that as an explanation for why water was still leaking from under the toilet seat every time I flushed, I’d get a new plumber. I’d probably kick his ass, too, because you don’t mess with a man’s throne like that.”
“I am sorry, Troy, I do not understand. What is a ‘plumber’?”
“Never mind all that, Helen. The main point I’m trying to make is that I find it hard to believe it was up to some random chance that our Cyclops had such a big weak spot. You know what I mean? I either had to have hit it right on the mark, striking gold the first time this spear went into its chest, or its weak spot was a lot larger than it should have been.”
“I think I am beginning to understand now.”
“Awesome. So, have you seen the weak points on any other golems back in Egypt? Are they always near where the heart should be?”
“I have never seen someone engage with a golem before, but yes, I have always been told that their weaknesses are their hearts.”
“Well that’s dumb, too. If that’s true, killing these things just got a hell of a lot easier. Hell, I could probably kill one at a distance if I just chucked this bad boy at it.” I patted my trusty spear resting at my back. “So, what are golems? I get that they’re made of clay and have a purpose and all that, but do they think or anything? The whole time me and that guy were going at it back there, I thought he looked like he was in some sort of rage. He just looked really fucking angry. I don’t know if it was the way that bloodshot eye was moving around or how I expected it to rip me in half and smear my insides all over its face, but it looked mad. Although, other times I got the impression it was acting on impulse. A couple times it seemed like it knocked me away only because I was inconveniencing it.”
“How observant you are, Troy. It is wise to want to learn more about your enemy. It is my understanding that golems have less sentience than I did before my transformation, if such a claim can be made.”
“Yeah, how’s that?”
“I could imitate a person—reason, argue, deceive, plan, remember, converse. A golem can do none of those things. Every move it makes is toward achieving its purpose for creation. A golem does not eat, sleep, or drink. It only needs to soak in water every so often to prevent from drying out.” I made sure to bookmark that little tidbit. “If they are made to kill, they kill. If their purpose is to construct, they construct. They do these things and nothing else. They are hardly more deserving of respect than Greeks, but they are more deserving than Greeks because their essence is without vanity and pettiness.” Damn.
“That really puts it in perspective, and it also makes me wonder . . .”
“What is it, Troy?”
“He seemed a hell of a lot more interested in you than he was in me. Do you have any idea why?”
“I have not the slightest idea, Troy, except for the obvious; I am who I am. Though I do not understand why a Cyclops would be on this island looking for me.”
“Yeah, that’s a good point. I’m going to have to think on that one.”
We hadn’t walked for more than an hour before we came across a cave.
Bingo, soldier’s intuition, I thought.
Two pillars sat at the entryway, one on each side. They stood about twelve feet high, each covered with different sets of hieroglyphs.
I looked to Helen. “This is your area of expertise, I believe.”
“I wish it were so, Troy. You have a good eye. These are indeed Egyptian carvings, but this particular set is known by few, and I am not one of them. Though, I have to say, I cannot see why the Pharaohs would have any designs placed here on this empty island so far away from Egypt. I know it for a fact that sometimes priests sneak away from the homeland to practice magic for their own purposes without interference from the Masters. This place could be home to such a priest.”
“How about we find out?” I approached the entrance, but stopped short. “Is there any chance I’m going to get zapped or something walking through here?”
“Zapped?”
“Hurt. Is there some magic or tech that’s going to hurt either of us when we try to walk in?”
Helen grabbed a nearby stick and tossed it into the cave. She shrugged after the stick hit the ground and said, grinning, “I do not know a better way to test at the moment than that. I have the ability to see such things, but if this is the home of a rogue priest, I do not know if they have constructed traps which I cannot detect.”
“Fair enough.” I looked into the darkness of the cavern and stuck my arm in. “So far, so good.” I put one foot forward, and the rest of me followed. “Seems like the coast is clear. Come on . . . and stay close.”
Once again, I held my spear out, ready to engage at a moment’s notice. Helen held my arm as we went.
The cave was nothing more than a single hallway for the longest time. Progress would have been much slower had I not thought to bring a flashlight. We still proceeded with caution, because I wasn’t about to step into an Egyptian booby trap.
After a time, the hall opened into a large space with a ceiling around twenty feet out of my reach. Massive stalactites hung over us, some of them still dripping into pools below, bathing their earthbound brothers.
I returned my flashlight to my back pocket. There was light here. Soft blue light that belonged outside. After intense scanning, I was able to pick out the light’s source—a handful of tiny blue orbs suspended overhead, scattered at apparently random intervals around the stalactites. I assumed they were hanging by some sort of cords, but the shadows cast by the unevenness of the ceiling made it difficult to tell.
Surely there was more to be seen. I looked around, Helen keeping close. There did not seem to be any other paths branching off from the huge room, and no amenities were anywhere in sight. If this was a rogue priest we were dealing with, he lived a very simple life. As could be expected from a priest, I supposed.
It wasn’t until I passed a stalagmite near the back of the chamber that I saw it. There was someone spread out on the ground. The shock prompted me to grab my spear and ask questions after the fact, but I quickly reassessed and dropped my weapon instead.
I was looking at the body of a young woman, close in age to Helen. She wore a loosely fitted lavender tunic. Her arm had come out of one of the sleeveless shoulder straps, leaving her chest partially exposed. The half below the waist was ruffled in a chaotic way that I would not have expected to come about from the simple tossing and turning that comes with fitful sleep.
I rushed to her, putting my fingers to her wrist.
“Her pulse is weak, but it’s there.” I pulled her shoulder strap back up and smoothed out the lower half of her tunic. “It looks like she might have been attacked. There’s a bruise on her head.”
“This could be a trap, Troy. I have heard of such things. We should exercise caution.”
“I don’t think that’s what this. I’m going to try and wake her up.” I lightly tapped her cheek and snapped my fingers in her face several times. Nothing. There was a wooden bucket nearby. I grabbed it and made sure it wasn’t a makeshift toilet. Only water was inside, so I reasoned it was safe to dump a little on her.
She abruptly woke up and started screaming while turning over and wiping her eyes.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay,” I said, patting her on the back. She either didn’t hear or understand and continued to wail.
“We must kill her, Troy!” Helen shouted. “This is not safe. She will lead danger our way!” I had grown accustomed to her mechanical tic and usually did
not notice it anymore, but in that moment, it seemed louder than before. She came forward with one of her crude daggers in hand.
“Are you serious, Helen?” I asked, my voice cracking with authority. She stopped approaching as I held my hand up to her. “That’s ridiculous; she’s an innocent girl.”
Helen sheathed the blade. The girl began to quiet down soon after.
“Hey, it’s all right,” I said, rubbing the girl’s shoulder. “We’re here to help. Let’s save introductions until we get you out of here.”
She nodded in agreement, tears rolling down her cheek.
I lifted her in my arms, and she wrapped hers around my neck for support. Helen stood to the side with her arms crossed. “Helen, grab that bucket. We’ll all hydrate once we get out of here.”
I walked out with the girl, hesitant to leave so soon without exploring the site, but in a world filled with wonders, a few coins or small treasures held little sway. Out we walked, her in my arms and Helen at my side, a mix of anger and resentment on her beautiful features. They did not belong there, and I turned away as we left the cave.
I gently set her on the ground when we made it out into the bright light of day. Her eyes fluttered, and she looked up at me expectantly. I took the bucket from Helen and sniffed the water to see if it seemed off. It smelled fine, so I tasted a little. Still fine, as far as I could tell.
“Were you drinking this?” I asked.
She nodded, and I held the bucket to her mouth, allowing her to drink a little at a time. I had not noticed how beautiful she was until then, with peaches-and-cream skin, long wavy brown hair, wide hips, and blue eyes. I knew it was not the best time to admire such things about this delicate creature, but I was a guy, after all, and could only ignore so much.
“What’s your name?” I asked, still hearing Helen’s tics behind us.
The girl blinked, her mouth working slowly. “I’m Cressida. Thank you for saving me.”
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