The golem’s gleeful destruction had created a lot of noise and several guards came running. They arrived just as the golem burst through the other side of the storehouse with a roar, sending barrels of pickles and spices all over the manicured lawns.
The three guards that had responded were directly in the path of the golem and none of them were academy graduates. Even so, they were well trained. They recovered from their shock quickly. Two of them began shooting arrows, while the third one took after it with a longsword.
The golem grinned, the wood and vines that made up his face creaking as they stretched to make that possible, and rushed at them with arms outstretched. The sound of its heavy stomping feet promised death to all things living.
The arrows thunked into the creature without effect and it was soon upon the guard with the sword. It reached out trying to grab him with its massive hands, but the agile guard evaded its grasp. The swordsman sliced away at the monster's grasping hands while the other two guards continued to fire arrows at it. Though the arrows stuck into the creature, the sword simply bounced off of the tough bark and vines. The golem was magically fortified to resist attack.
The golem continued to try to grasp the swordsman until it tired of the game and swung one stump-like foot. There was a thud and the guard sailed through the air and crunched into the wall of another building, slumping to the ground in an odd angle.
The other guards saw how ineffective their attacks were and started backing away, still shooting as fast as they could. Luckily for them, the large golem wasn’t very fast.
Justan dragged Pympol around the building just as the guard was kicked. He quickly hiked up his robes and removed the brace of arrows that he had taken to carrying around with him. He shot the uneasy mage a stern look.
“Don’t you go anywhere, Pympol! I’ve got to get its attention.” There were six arrows in all strapped to the belt he took from around his waist. He quickly fitted one to his Jharro bow. Ever since the incident with Piledon, he had kept the golden string close to his body, but it was deep in the inner pocket of his robes. He didn’t have time to restring the bow before the golem would overtake the guards.
The golem almost had the guards in range of its fists when Justan’s shot struck its temple. Its head was rocked to the side by the blow and it paused for a moment. Slowly, it turned towards him, the guard’s arrows sticking out of its face like a sparse beard. It laughed, an eerie sound, and then started toward him.
“Run! Get help!” Justan shouted at the guards and they wisely fled the scene calling out for reinforcements. The golem approached at a steady pace and Justan looked to Pympol. “This is your chance. Command that thing to stop. I don’t care if it takes all the magical energy you’ve got. We can’t let this thing continue to rampage about!”
Pympol whimpered in response.
Justan propelled the quivering mage forward to meet the golem. The monstrous creation stormed forward and growled, declaring its intentions with great swings of its mighty fists. Pympol squirmed in Justan’s grasp as the golem advanced, but Justan would not budge.
“Now, Pympol! This is your creation, you command it!” Justan stood behind the mage and turned him to face the beast, one hand on his shoulder, lending him support.
Pympol gulped as the golem came upon him and then in a shaky voice commanded it to stop. The golem winced, but shook its head and grinned as it continued its advance. The mage backed up and tried to bolt, but Justan held him in place as the golem came dangerously close.
“Do it!” he yelled.
The golem opened its gaping maw with hideous laughter and raised a huge fist to smash the two humans. Pympol drew strength from Justan’s grip and pulled all the magical energy he could muster from deep inside himself. As the golem’s arm swung down, Pympol shouted out.
“STOP!” His voice rang with power and authority amplified by the magic he commanded. The very air seemed to pause for a moment in response.
The golem froze in mid swing, its body automatically stopping to its creator’s command. It was taken by surprise. The mage’s voice was a tone of order thrust through its chaotic and frenzied mind. This is what the creature had been fashioned to do, obey its creator’s commands. However, the intelligence that had come to possess the golem was pure chaos and would not stand any order.
Just as Justan was about to breathe a sigh of relief, the golem brought its hands up to its head and screamed in defiance. In desperation, Pympol commanded it again.
“Halt! Listen! Obey your master!”
The golem roared. With a mighty backhand, it knocked Pympol a glancing blow that sent the mage sprawling into a hedge lining the nearest building. The mage crashed to the ground broken and bleeding.
Justan staggered backwards in surprise at the attack. He fumbled an arrow onto the bow, but before he could fire, the golem rushed forward, roaring. It held its head in agony, still shaking the effects of Pympol’s command from its mind. Justan tried to leap out of the way, but the golem’s knee caught him across the legs while he was in mid leap and sent him tumbling through the grass.
Justan rolled to a stop and groaned, the wind knocked out of him. It had been almost a casual contact, but the golem’s power was immense. He felt as though he'd been kicked by a horse. Justan lifted his head expecting to see the creature bearing down on him, but it had stopped several yards away.
The golem was no longer holding its head but was looking around as if searching for something. With a chilling chuckle, it started again along its inexorable progress, its legs churning. It had seen something of order it needed to destroy.
Professor Beehn lay on his bed in his tidy bedroom trying unsuccessfully to clear his mind. As his headaches had become progressively worse, the wizard found that if he could empty his mind of all errant thought, it took the edge off of the pain. He even began to chant mathematical equations in his mind in an effort to put his thoughts in order. But today, no matter how much he tried to relax, his headache seemed to get worse. It felt like there was something inside of his head trying to force its way out.
The pulsing, stabbing pain increased until he found himself sobbing. At that point, he knew that he had been wrong in coming back to the house. There had to be something seriously wrong with him. He needed to see the Matron immediately.
Professor Beehn cursed himself for his stubbornness. Here he was in a place where the best healers in the kingdom were gathered and he had been too proud to get this problem taken care of sooner.
He forced his body to its feet. As he stood on wobbly legs, he was almost sure that he heard a loud crashing noise, but his head was pounding so fiercely, that he dismissed it as a side effect of his headache.
The wizard put his robes on and tied his sturdy shoes back onto his feet. Sparkling lights haunted the edges of his vision. One particularly painful surge hit and his vision began shifting back and forth uncontrollably, in and out of mage sight.
Wincing with every step, he walked towards the front of his home. As he approached the door, something drew the professor’s attention back towards the rear of his house. A rhythmic pounding pulsed in discord with the throbbing of his head.
Out of curiosity, he stumbled back through his bedroom to look out the one tiny window in his home. What he saw while phasing in and out of mage sight shocked him to the core. A great monster approached, pulsing deep black with earth magic. He felt the chaos exuding from it and the air seemed to shimmer with its evil presence. Professor Beehn clenched his fists in fear and rage.
It was the antithesis of all that Professor Beehn had ever stood for. As a wizard, he was a proponent of order in all things. But more than that, Beehn had always been sensitive to things of a disorderly nature. He was obsessive about it. Everything in his life was clean and tidy. His home was a perfect example of that obsession. He could not comprehend how such a thing had gotten within the walls of the MageSchool. The very existence of this being was unacceptable.
Quickly, the wizard
chanted, using what small ability he had to strengthen the walls of his home. His powers were weak, but he had always taken pride in his small house. He cast spells every night, using his powers to strengthen the walls and bind it together until he could open his mage sight at night and see it positively glow with strength.
The golem seemed to react to the magical energies being released and through his tiny window, the professor saw it pick up speed. He gasped and used the last bit of energy he had in a web of air along the back wall of his home. As the creature was close to hitting the web, he sensed the extent of its power. His weak magic would not stop it. Panic took over and the professor ran to the front of his house in an effort to escape.
The golem laughed at the pathetic orderly web of magic encircling the house. With joy at the destruction it was about to cause, it opened its arms out wide, threw back its head, and grinned as it ran face first into the building. There was a loud popping noise as the enchantments broke. The house caved in around the golem.
The professor was almost to the door when the golem came crashing through his home. The world went dark. Rubble crashed on top of him and he felt his back snap. Strangely, it didn’t hurt.
He waited to die. He was wondering what the afterlife would be like, when a calm came over him. The place where his headache had been gathered seemed to burst open. He felt a warmth travel along his body.
Wizard Beehn could hear distant crashing noises and realized that the golem was still in the ruins of his home thrashing about. The rubble that pressed on him was lifted. He saw the evil creature standing above him as it threw the wall aside.
The golem stood over the wizard laughing at the weakness of his broken body. With an evil grin, it bent over and reached out to crush what life was left out of him.
The sneering visage of the monster shook the haze from the professor’s mind and suddenly he saw with great clarity what he must do. He pulled the warmth that flooded his body and gave it shape. Though he did not know where the power was coming from, he pulled in energy from that broken part inside of his head and focused it. He pulled and pulled until he held more power than he had ever thought possible. As the reaching hands of the golem were about to touch him, he released the power in a torrent of air.
The force of the blast blew the golem upward and out of the rubble of the professor’s home. Wizard Beehn gasped as the torrent of power left him. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his cheeks. The creature was gone. He smiled in satisfaction and his last conscious thought was that at least his head didn’t hurt any more.
Chapter Nine
Justan struggled to his feet. The glancing blow his body had taken from the golem had twisted something in his hip. His mind searched frantically for a way to stop the creature, but nothing he could think of would work. He limped after the golem as fast as he could.
He was about to turn and head towards the center square of the school when the golem ran straight towards Professor Beehn’s house. Justan wasn’t overly concerned until he saw movement from behind the tiny window in the back of the house. Someone was inside the house despite the events in the center square.
“Professor!” he yelled and hurriedly pulled the golden bowstring from the inner pocked of his robes. He restrung his bow, hoping to be able to distract the golem long enough to give the wizard time to escape. But he didn’t have time to get a shot off before the creature hit the back wall of the house.
Justan gasped with horror as the place caved in and hoped that whoever was in the house had been able to get out in time.
The golem quickly rose up out of the rubble, busting through the roof with a hail of tiles, and began to throw things aside as if searching for something. Justan ran towards it. He was almost to the house when a deep thud shook the ground and a surge of wind blasted him onto his back.
The air rushed from Justan lungs as he hit the ground. His mouth gaped in awe as the golem arced through the air high above him. Justan rolled on to his side and turned his head to follow the flight of the golem as it was hurled hundreds of feet through the air.
It crashed through the roof of one of the three-story class buildings where the cadets were taught the basics of magic. Luckily, there were no classes in session that day. Justan hoped no one remained behind to be hurt.
Who could have brought forth enough power to do that to the golem? He looked back to the crumbled remains of the Professor’s house and as he stood, saw two familiar looking apprentices standing nearby slack jawed, staring towards the class building where the golem had crashed.
“Hey!” Justan yelled. “Wilmont! Rubert! Come here!” The two students rushed over, and both of them began asking questions at once. Justan quieted them quickly.
“I can’t explain! Listen, Rubert, I need you to run to the infirmary and tell Matron Guernfeldt that there are injured men about. There is a guard and a mage back there by that building that might be dead and there may be someone buried in this house.” The student stood for a moment as if uncertain. “Go!” Justan shouted and Rubert ran off in the direction of the infirmary.
He grabbed Wilmont and pulled him into the rubble of the house with him, searching for a survivor inside. They fumbled about and after a few moments, the apprentice called out. Justan climbed over a large piece of roof to see Professor Beehn crumpled on the ground. He rushed over and saw that the man was still breathing, but shallowly. From his twisted frame, Justan could tell that he was badly hurt.
“Wilmont, do you have any healing ability?” he asked.
The apprentice grimaced. “A little. But I haven’t learned very much, I’ve only been an apprentice for a year.”
“Just do whatever you can!” Justan urged.
The young student concentrated, muttering and hovering his hands over the professor’s body. “I don’t think I can do anything. It looks like his back is broken.”
Justan pictured Professor Beehn in his mind, smiling and enjoying the morning run. His blood boiled with anger.
“Stay here with him until the Matron comes. I need you to do everything you can to keep him alive.” He ran from the rubble that used to be the professor’s home with a flame in his eyes and blaring purpose in his stride. He had an arrow notched and ready.
“I’m going to kill that thing.”
Master Latva was just beginning his speech when the sound of the explosion reached the crowd of wizards, students, and new cadets gathered in the main square. All eyes were looking in that direction, but no one was really alarmed. Explosions were not all that uncommon in the MageSchool. After all it was a place where young people were being trained to handle dangerous powers.
A couple of breathless guards ran past. Moments later every guard at the school except for a skeleton crew left on the wall came running into the square armed to the teeth.
There was another explosion echoed in the distance and the leader of the guards, a BattleAcademy graduate and veteran of many battles named Alphonze, jogged over to Master Latva and whispered in his ear. The two conferred for a moment and then Alphonze ran back to his men, issuing orders. There was a murmur in the crowd as the students made suppositions about what was happening.
Master Latva was stunned by the news brought by the guard. How could a monster invade the school with all of their defensive preparations? With a stony gaze, he raised his hand to call the crowd to silence.
“Everyone, there is a situation. All students must report to the RuneTower at once and gather in the library. Apprentices, escort the cadets. Mages, make sure that no one remains behind. Faculty, half of you search the buildings outside of the tower to make sure that all students are cleared out, the rest of you, remain with me. The guards may need our assistance. Be quick, but orderly.”
There were startled gasps from the assembled students as the announcement was made, but Master Latva carried such respect and authority that no one questioned his orders. The students started to file out of the square in a semi-orderly fashion, when a scream
pierced the air.
Latva turned to see the massive golem come around a building bordering the square. Its evil presence sent a shiver of fear through the students. Panic erupted through the crowd.
The golem saw the chaos its appearance fostered and roared in delight. It reached into the nearest building and tore out large chunks of masonry to hurl into the milling mass of people. The chunks of stone and brick crashed through the square, laying students low. Everywhere, people were yelling and running, jumping into fountains or leaping behind buildings, diving for cover. The hideous laughter of the golem hung over the square.
Despite the commotion, it was only seconds before a regrouping effort began. A fireball erupted from the crowd to engulf the golem and a lightning bolt echoed from the heavens, striking the thing dead center. This would have killed most living things, but this creature was built of elemental magic and shrugged off the attacks. Though singed, the golem continued to pelt the square with pieces of the building.
Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) Page 9