The Parao, the last of the humans' ship, was sailing away from the jagged ruins of a dungeon long gone. Soon it was only but a dot in the vast and flat desert.
All that remained of this dying realm.
I was tracing the summoning circles on the ship's deck. Nasse followed behind to fill those etches with the right alloy. By now he was bound to have learned how to do it himself. The fire lizard, under his shells, carried many secrets.
But were the circles even necessary? A small one for the caster, touching a larger one for the spell. And what spell it was, to this day, not even I knew. I had seen an old portal work as well and yet to think it was just that was preposterous.
But portal or circles, for a human to come there needed to be a conduit. Once complete, the alloy started to glow.
"I will go hide in the cabin." Nasse informed.
What he really meant by that was how we should wait. Because I had no more armor. Because the ship was damaged. Because we could afford a couple days to prepare.
He was right. Somehow, stubbornly, against all odds the Parao defied the mana drain. Even brought to a brink and its reserves gone, there was still enough magic for it to escape the petrification. Its sails still pushed it forward.
I walked on the caster's circle.
Everything around me went black. This was the second requirement to bring a human forth. A ritual that, at its most potent, exceeded the premises of just its conduit.
"Hear me, humans." I began with a broken voice. "Masters of the realm, rulers eternal. Your land is dying, all deperish. So... will one of you come to our aid?"
What used to take hours now occurred almost at my very first words. Human presences like fireflies, buzzing and bustling erratically. Most faint only remained for seconds while others, slower, erred around. They seemed to dance as I spoke.
"Come! Come save the realm! Reclaim your place and your subjects! It is yours to take! Once free of the mana drain, it will revel in your presence!"
And the voices. For lights by the hundred there were human voices uncounted, from the whispers to the shouts. Again the loudest drifted quickly into nothingness while the moans lingered. They all berated this nuisance of mine.
What made them come was my voice. What made them stay was my allure. This human shape I had forced my clay to take, this friendly badger mask on my face.
"All your dreams, your desires, we will satisfy them! If you end the mana drain, we will offer you eternal happiness! So come! Come to the realm! Answer your servants' plea!"
What bridged the gap, that final step, always varied. The right words, the true incantation, proved as flimsy as hearts.
I fell on my knee, my arms still stretched.
"Won't you come? Come! Come be living batteries for a month, let us consume you and then... Who wants to die among us?"
For example, those words didn't work. It chased the humans away. They hated risk, they hated strife and who could blame them?
"Come watch the stars you will leave behind! The ruins you cast, the graves of your ancestors. You will marvel at them! Isn't our misery good sport?"
"Come! Come see what you have done to us! The ones you left, the ones you abandoned! At least enjoy the spectacle! Have you spent those years at rest, have you not sought a remedy to the curse you cast on us all?! Come and face us!"
It could have been going better.
"Show yourselves, you sovereigns! Prove your power to the realm! You who escaped the mana drain, how can you stand to be anything but ripples?!"
By now my words had emptied the darkness of humans, with not a dozen left afar, their voices so faint as to be unintelligible.
I had my hand on my mask. I was about to throw it away.
"You knew our fate and built your refuge around it! Counting on our agony to keep you safe! Misery shall be our servitude! Come and dare challenge the truth!"
"It's all a lie..."
One human essence had veered toward me, going brighter. They tended to do that for no reason. They tended to fade just as fast.
That one was now circling around me, falling down a bit each time.
"Then prove it!" I shouted.
It didn't really hear me. I had done this enough time to know their words were completely detached from mine.
"Come and die with us! Be another one to fall for monsters to feed on your aura! Show us, lord, the true depth of your hollow heart!"
"I am a burden..." It hovered hesitantly between the silver coat of my clay hands.
"Then come and be a savior! You were meant to be a savior! You were always meant to be our savior!"
And the voice: "Make it stop!"
I was forced to let it go, to walk back and and turn my head away. The wave of energy filled me with dread.
Magic unfurled in this deprived realm, washing over everything to the point of breaking reality. I could feel it press on my plates and could barely resist. Before me the silhouette was taking shape, of a human, of a human.
And he was young.
And he was frail.
Halfway through growth, the teenager had a light frame and little to no muscle. Freckles on his face fighting for space with his wild brown hair. He had to push them away and look around but even as the realm came back, the floorboards under our feet and the sky above, he did more.
He breathed.
A took a long, deep breath, and then another. His surprise shifted to astonishment. With a hand on his chest, he kept taking long breaths until a smile cracked on his face.
"Ah ah." There was disbelief in his eyes. "I am breathing. I am breathing!"
He walked a few steps out of the summoning circle that had turned inert.
"Mom! Dad! I can!"
His words stopped there. Reality had caught up to him, the ship whose deck he stood on, the crossed masts above his head with massive orange sails filtering the evening light and beyond the two hulls a sea of clouds.
What had been a dry desert was now just white clouds painted by winds in smooth and rolling shapes. Rocks cracked under the keels, flew around in a trail and just evaporated into mist.
For however strong the shock, it was drowned by a sudden glee.
"Amazing!" He let out.
His steps brought him to the ship's edge, so close as to risk slipping. He could not reach the clouds but could feel the wind that should have battered his face and instead just flowed almost gently.
Then, he noticed it, turned his eyes to the air and got startled.
His hand touched the sky on his side, tapped emptily. The teenager was interacting with that famed, and cursed, human system.
"It's not happening. It... can't be happening." Was all he found to say.
Finally, his eyes fell on me.
The clay golem coated in silver that had waited patiently.
"Ah!"
Well at least he didn't fall off the ship. I had featherweight at my fingertip.
"You are... Kaele? You are a golem?"
I wanted to say humans were that good at guessing but something told me it was the system giving him that information. And the system hated my soft clay guts.
"Welcome, human. You are on the Parao, a ship that will carry you anywhere in the realm."
"No, wait." He gestured with his hands. "I mean, I am... Min-Seok... something Min-Seok, nice to meet you but... no. No, I shouldn't be here, I need to go back."
He could not.
"I don't mean to be rude, all of this is amazing but my parents will... my parents will..."
His eyes had trailed back to the system. He tapped again and then stood silent, tetanized.
"I can go back."
No he really could not. But whatever delusion the system was playing on him had calmed him down.
"Okay. Okay then! Forgive me for earlier, let's start again!"
And he came to greet me with a small nod.
"I am Min-Seok, I am a student at... at..."
"You are a human, master of the realm." I cut through his blur. "You have been called to save the realm from the mana drain."
"Ah. Uhm, Sure! What do you need me to do?"
"Nothing."
I had clutched my necklace. It was another bad habit of mine.
"Please enjoy the realm while I tackle the saving part." And seeing he was about to protest: "Just you being there is already helping more than you can imagine. I will explain more in time but for now, you should take time for yourself."
The teenager was still confused, and bothered by his hair. Still, he seemed to accept my compact. So far so good.
His eyes opened. He turned them to his invisible system, stood there a second then poked the air and started to stress.
When the human looked at me again, it was with fear.
"Excuse me..." He tried. "It may sound out of place but... you don't hurt humans... right?"
"I am a golem. I have been crafted by humans to serve."
"Yeah..."
He had started to pace around me, cautiously. His gaze fell first on the hatch near the bow, then on the infrastructure at the stern, with the wooden door to the lounge. I watched him slowly fall back in that direction.
"And this ship... it's yours, right?"
"It's yours. You can take it wherever you want."
"Okay but, before me, whose ship was it?"
Oh.
Oh I was not going to answer that one.
"I suppose I should start there. You are the only human left in the realm." He was still retreating to the door. "This land used to be filled with mana, but it dried out and the humans left. This ship, the Parao, was used by the last humans to explore the realm."
"And where are they?"
"They died." I seriously had to spell it out?! "You are the only human left in the realm."
The door slammed on me.
He probably didn't know I could walk through the walls.
But I also saw no need to go after him. I could track him just fine through the vibrations and I wanted for him to enjoy the accommodations. He could explore just fine without me. Also, he had just trapped himself.
"You didn't kill them?! Right?" The teenager yelled from behind the door.
I would not answer that as well.
I listened as he pushed the divan to form a barricade. That human system was getting on my non-existing nerves. Luckily, his attempt at survival was cut short and he screamed.
The fire lizard had felt safe enough to come out and was now into the lounge.
"I see things are going great." Nasse told the teenager. "Please leave the furniture alone."
"Wait... you are friendly?" The human reacted.
"Kaele! What did you do to the master?"
"Nothing!" I answered from the deck. "Just show him the bedroom while I prepare supper!"
Even without really seeing the human, I could tell he was utterly lost.
He followed the monster away and I pushed his little barricade with one hand.
But really, I too was taken by those clouds.
It had taken me time to figure out that this wasn't the ground. When the human had come, we had been lifted up and into the sky. In the falling darkness those white masses filled with small lights from all the warmth they had accumulated.
The power of a human, to reshape the realm.
What kind of human dreamed of riding the clouds?