Chapter 1: The Golem's Wrath
The fist came down like a falling anvil.
Branna threw herself sideways, rolling over shattered flagstones as the impact sent a shockwave through the ground. Chips of ancient stone stung her cheek. She came up in a crouch, her own sword feeling stupid and light in her hand.
“Again!” she barked, springing forward.
Her blade, a notched piece of good steel that had cleaved through ogre hide, whistled in a perfect arc. It connected with the golem’s leg with a shriek of metal on metal. A bright silver dent appeared in the construct’s featureless limb. That was all.
It didn’t stagger. It didn’t roar. It simply pivoted on its trunk-like legs, a silent engine of intent, and backhanded her.
The flat of its hand caught her breastplate. The air left her lungs in a grunt. She flew backwards, skidding through dirt and dead moss, coming to a stop against the base of a cracked altar. The world swam, edges blurred with pain.
“Branna!” Lyra’s voice, usually so calm, was sharp with fear.
A warm, golden light washed over Branna, soothing the bruising, pushing the dizziness back. She blinked, her vision clearing to see Lyra with one hand outstretched, her brow furrowed in concentration. The divine energy was a balm, but it was useless against the thing that was now turning toward the source of the magic.
“Don’t!” Branna croaked, pushing herself up. “It doesn’t care. Save it for Joff.”
As if on cue, Joffrey Godwin stepped into the golem’s path, shield raised. “Hey, scrap-heap! Your finish is wearing off!” He shone in the gloomy courtyard, his polished armor a stark contrast to the blackened stones. He was smiling. He was always smiling.
The golem swung. Joffrey braced, his boots digging into the soil. The blow landed with a cathedral bell’s deep, resonating clang. Joffrey slid back a full three feet, the muscles in his arms and neck cording with strain, but he held. The shield didn’t buckle.
“See?” he yelled over his shoulder, his voice tight but triumphant. “Anchor stance. Fundamentals.”
Branna spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the ground. Her entire body ached. “Your fundamentals are about to be paste. It’s just sizing you up.”
She was right. The golem retracted its arm and struck again, same place, same angle. Another deafening clang. Joffrey’s knees bent. A third blow. A fourth. It was a machine, testing a pressure point. On the fifth impact, a hairline crack appeared in the shield’s blessed metal with a sound like ice breaking.
“Okay,” Joffrey said, the smile gone. “New plan.”
“Lyra!” Branna roared, hefting her sword again. “We need a different approach. Now!”
Lyra’s hands were clasped, her eyes wide as she watched Joffrey weather the brutal, rhythmic assault. “I have nothing!” she called back, despair creeping into her tone. “Blessings slip off it. Wards dissolve. It’s… it’s hollow. There’s nothing inside to heal or to curse.”
Branna felt a cold knot of desperation tighten in her gut. They’d fought demons that bled, cultists that screamed, beasts that could be gutted. This was just a relentless, silent presence. Her mind raced, discarding tactics—flanking, tripping, disarming. You couldn’t disarm something that was all arm.
Joffrey gave a furious shout and shoved forward, using the last of his leverage to try and upset the golem’s balance. It was like shoving a mountain. The construct ignored the physics of it, raised its fist high for a crushing overhead blow that would split Joffrey and his cracked shield down the middle.
In that frozen second, as Lyra’s healing light flared uselessly and Branna took a futile step forward, Joffrey’s gaze darted past the creature, past the temple ruins, to the rolling hills beyond the valley.
“Smoke!” he choked out, straining under the impending doom. “Village. Chimney plume. Ten miles northeast.”
The fist descended.
Branna didn’t think. She lunged, not at the golem, but at Joffrey. She crashed into him, wrapping one thick arm around his waist and hauling him bodily out of the killing zone. They tumbled together in a clatter of plate and mail as the golem’s fist obliterated the space Joffrey had occupied, punching a new crater into the temple floor.
Dust and debris rained down.
“Since when do you play the hero?” Joffrey gasped from beneath her, breathing heavily.
“Since your plan sucked,” Branna shot back, pushing off him. She could feel the solid muscle of his abdomen through the armor. Later. “A village? What about it?”
Joffrey got to his feet, retrieving his shield. The crack was worse. “Marlow’s Folly. Passed through it last season. Gossipy place. They talked about a recluse. A tinker. Lives on the edge of town. Made a clockwork owl that could catch mice. Also made a self-sharpening plough that nearly decapitated a farmer.”
The golem wrenched its fist from the earth and turned its blank, smooth face toward them.
“A mad tinker,” Lyra whispered, joining them, her staff held low. “You think he could… something for that?”
“My sword can’t,” Branna said, her eyes fixed on the advancing construct. “Your magic can’t. His shiny shield is about to fail. So we either run towards a maybe, or we die here for a definitely.”
The three of them began backing away in unison, step by step, maintaining a wary semi-circle facing the enemy.
“It’s ten miles,” Lyra said, her healer’s mind assessing. “It will follow. It doesn’t tire.”
“Then we make it a race,” Joffrey said, a bit of his old swagger returning. “I’ll bet you a gold crown I get there first.”
Branna snorted, a harsh, ragged sound. She spared a final look at the silent golem, standing amidst the ruins it was slowly turning to powder. It was a puzzle. A frustrating, deadly puzzle made of magic-immune metal. The kind of problem a sword couldn’t solve.
She hated those.
“Fine,” she said, turning and breaking into a steady, ground-eating run. “But if this tinker’s solution is a better mouse-trap, I’m feeding you to the golem myself.”
The others fell in beside her, their boots pounding a frantic rhythm on the hard earth, leaving the humming, shattered courtyard and its relentless inhabitant behind. The column of dirty grey smoke from the distant village chimney stained the horizon, a thin line against the vast sky. It was the only thread they had to pull on.
It was the only thread they had to pull on.
Ten miles became seven, then five, then two, measured in the burn of their lungs and the slick of sweat under armor. The golem was a persistent shadow, its gait a slow, earth-shaking crunch that never quickened but never, ever stopped. It was the sound of patience, and it was worse than a roar.
Marlow’s Folly emerged from the haze of distance, a huddle of thatch and timber looking soft and terribly fragile. The chimney plume was from a bake-house, the scent of bread cutting through the smell of their own fear. As they passed the first fence-post, the rhythmic thud of the golem’s pursuit ceased. They risked a glance back.
It had stopped at the tree line, just outside a fallen boundary marker overgrown with moss. It stood, a statute of malignant industry, and simply watched.
“It won’t enter the town,” Lyra panted, leaning on her staff. “A territorial enchantment on the old marker? Or perhaps it’s programmed not to cause collateral damage.”
“Don’t care why,” Branna said, though she filed the information away. “Just care that it did.”
The main street was mud and chatter. A few locals eyed their weapons and battered armor with wary curiosity. Joffrey, already smoothing back his hair and adjusting his shield, flashed a winning smile at an old woman carrying a basket of eggs. She blushed and scurried past.
“Charm the goats later, Godwin,” Branna grumbled. “The tinker. Where?”
Joffrey pointed a finger down the lane, past a blacksmith’s whose rhythmic clanging was a normal, welcome sound. “Last building. Edge of the gravel pit. Should look like a junk heap exploded.” His pointing finger faltered, his attention snagged by a figure emerging from the tailor’s shop.
She was about Lyra’s age, with sun-bleached braids and a smudge of flour on her nose, arms laden with a bolt of bright blue cloth. She struggled with the door.
“Ahem. Allow me,” Joffrey said, his voice dropping into that smooth, earnest register he used. He was across the street in three strides, taking the weight of the cloth with ease. “That’s no burden for someone with such a… industrious look about them. Delivering for the tailor?”
The girl laughed, a bright, surprised sound. “He’s my da. And you look like you’ve delivered yourself straight from a war.”
“A minor skirmish. The day is markedly improved.”
Branna rolled her eyes so hard she saw her own brain. “We’re on a clock, Joff. A literal, stomping clock.”
He didn’t even look over. “You two go on ahead. Secure the expert. I’ll just help… I’m sorry, what was your name?”
“Elara,” the girl said, grinning.
“Joffrey. I’ll catch up with you. Promise.” He shot them a glance that was all boyish apology and zero intention of leaving soon.
Lyra watched him go, a faint, unreadable smile touching her lips before fading. Branna nudged her with an elbow. “Come on. Let the peacock preen. We’ll do the actual work.”
The shop at the end of the lane was exactly as advertised. It wasn’t a building so much as a structured collapse, with additions leaning precariously against the original core. Pipework, gears, and unidentifiable metal scraps formed a rusting garden around it. A hand-painted sign, the letters weathered away, squeaked on a single hinge.
The interior was a landscape of organized madness. Shelves bowed under the weight of components. Half-finished artifacts—a boot with tiny piston-driven legs, a kettle whistling a complex tune—covered every surface. The air smelled of oil, hot metal, and ozone.
The man behind a cluttered workbench had wiry figure, in his early 20s, with light black hair and goggles pushed up on his forehead. He was fitting a tiny crystalline lens into a brass beetle with alarming precision. He didn’t look up.
“We’re closed for public viewing. If you’re here to complain about the noise, the ordinance clearly states—”
“We’re not from town,” Branna said, her voice cutting through the whirring of a dozen small devices. “We need something that can break a magic-immune metal construct. A golem. About twelve feet tall. Silent.”
The tinker’s hands stilled. For a fraction of a second, a brilliant, almost hungry gleam ignited in his eyes behind the thick lenses. It was the look of a man whose life’s secret crossword puzzle had just been filled in by a stranger. He saw the solution, clear and perfect.
Then, as if a shutter dropped, it was gone. The gleam faded into wariness, then a flat, practiced neutrality. He placed the brass beetle down carefully.
“Magic-immune? That’s… a tall tale. Or a deep curse.” He shook his head, avoiding their gaze, suddenly very interested in a loose cog on his bench. “I fix clocks. I make novelty items for fairs. I don’t have anything like that. Can’t help you.”
The denial was too fast. Too clean. Branna, who’d spent years reading the tells of bandits before they drew steel, saw the lie in the tightening of his shoulders, in the way his fingers now trembled slightly.
“Nothing at all?” Lyra pressed, her tone gentle, probing. “Not even a theory? It’s very important.”
“Theories are cheap. Implementations are expensive and illegal.” He finally looked at them, his expression now one of dismissive annoyance. “You’ve wasted your time. Good day.”
They stood in the street a moment later, the door firmly shut behind them. The afternoon sun felt weak.
“He was lying,” Branna stated.
“Obviously,” Lyra agreed, chewing her lip. “That spark… he knew. He has it. Or he’s built it. Why deny it?”
“Because whatever ‘it’ is, he doesn’t want it found.” Branna’s mind worked, fitting pieces. The golem stopping at the town border. A tinker who specialized in complex mechanisms, hiding in a backwater. A solution he was terrified to admit to. “This isn’t a shopping trip. It’s an excavation.”
They found Joffrey by the well in the town square, sipping water from a ladle and looking pleased with himself. Elara was gone.
“Get her measurements?” Branna asked dryly.
“Her father’s. For a new tunic. I’m a diplomat.” He took in their expressions. “No luck?”
Branna explained in terse, clipped sentences. The gleam. The shut-down. The door in their faces.
Joffrey’s playful demeanor evaporated, replaced by the sharp focus he reserved for battle. “So he’s hiding the one thing that saves our skins, while that thing’s bigger, uglier cousin waits for us to leave town so it can finish the job.” He tossed the ladle back into the bucket. “Rude.”
“We trail him,” Lyra said quietly, her decision firm. “When his shop closes. See where he goes, what he’s protecting.”
Branna nodded. It was the only move left. “We find what he’s got, we ‘borrow’ it, we deal with the golem. Questions of morality later.”
Joffrey hefted his cracked shield. “And if he leads us right to it?”
A slow, fierce grin spread across Branna’s scarred face. “Then we thank him for his hospitality and test his invention. Vigorously.”
They melted into the shadows of a nearby alehouse, watching the crooked shop. The sun bled out behind the hills, painting the sky in streaks of orange and purple. The familiar, dreadful crunch of the golem shifting its weight at the tree line echoed faintly through the gathering dusk.
They waited.
They waited.
The last slanting rays of sun abandoned the tinker’s shop. A single lantern glowed inside for a time, casting his frantic silhouette against the grimy window as he moved back and forth. Then, with a click, it went dark. The door opened, and the young man emerged.
He’d changed. The workshop apron was gone, replaced by a heavy leather coat. A large, lumpy satchel was strapped across his back, pulling his shoulders down. He cast a long, searching look up and down the empty street, then set off at a brisk walk away from the village center, towards the scrubland and the old gravel pits.
“Go,” Branna breathed.
They shadowed him at a distance, using the deepening twilight and the scatter of outbuildings as cover. He moved with purpose, not looking back, a dark shape against the bruised purple of the evening sky. The cheerful clutter of Marlow’s Folly gave way to raw earth and straggly pines. The air grew cooler, sharper.
A hundred yards into the waste, he stopped. He unslung his bag with a grunt, pulling from it a squared-off sheet of steel, thicker than Joffrey’s shield. He hefted it, walked a few paces, and propped it against a weathered boulder. It stood like a crude, solitary door.
He walked back, his steps measured. One hundred precise yards from the plate, he knelt. From the bag, he drew the larger object. It was all brutal, functional angles, a length of darkened metal tubing mounted on a heavy wooden stock, trailing coils of thin copper wire to a separate, box-like mechanism. It didn’t look like any crossbow or ballista they’d ever seen.
For five minutes, the only sounds were the wind and the faint, precise clicks and scrapes of his tinkering. He turned ratchets, peered through a small crystal lens mounted on top. His focus was absolute.
Branna shared a glance with Lyra and Joffrey. Their faces were pale ovals in the gloom. This was it.
The tinker settled behind the device, his eye pressed to the crystal. He took a breath, held it.
The world cracked.
The boom was a physical thing—a fist of sound that punched the air from Branna’s lungs and made her teeth vibrate. A tongue of orange-white fire lanced from the metal tube for an instant, blinding. Before the echo could even start, a shriek of tearing metal split the night from the direction of the target.
Silence, ringing and thick.
They rushed forward. The tinker was scrambling to his feet, frantically disconnecting wires, his hands shaking.
The steel plate was no longer a plate. A hole the size of a grapefruit, edges melted and splayed outward like a grotesque flower, pierced its center. The back of the boulder was shattered, as if a giant had taken a hammer to it.
“That,” Joffrey said, his voice full of awe. “That is profoundly disrespectful to solid objects.”
The tinker spun, wild-eyed, trying to shield his device with his body. “You! You followed me! Get away!”
“That’s exactly what we need,” Branna said, stepping closer, her eyes locked on the strange rifle. “Name your price. Gold. Gems. Political favor. We’ll pay it.”
“You don’t understand! It’s not for sale!” he spat, clutching the warm metal to his chest. “It’s volatile. The ignition sequence is handwritten in my own code. The focusing lens needs recalibration after every third shot based on atmospheric humidity. The reactant vials have to be loaded in a specific counter-sequential order or the whole chamber back-blasts! Unless you know it inside and out, you’d just blow your own hands off trying to fire it!”
Branna stared at him. At his passionate, terrified face. At the intricate, dangerous machine in his arms. A slow, tectonic idea shifted into place in her mind.
She smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
“Well,” she said, her voice dangerously calm. “I know someone who does.”
He blinked, thrown. “Who? There is no one else. I built it. I designed it.”
“Yeah.” She took the last two steps in a rush. Her hand, calloused and strong as a rootsnare, clamped around his upper arm. “You dummy.”
She yanked. He was a wisp of a thing compared to her, all nerve and clever fingers. His feet left the ground as she pivoted, slinging him around like a sack of grain. The heavy rifle tumbled into the dirt.
“Hey! Let go! That’s assault! That’s kidnapping!” His protests were high-pitched, frantic. He kicked at her armored shin, a useless clang. He might as well have been hitting a cliff face.
“Branna, what’s the plan?” Lyra asked, her eyes wide, already stooping to carefully gather the strange weapon and its components into the satchel.
“The plan is he comes with us. He points his noisemaker at the golem, and he pulls the trigger.” She began marching, dragging the sputtering tinker behind her. “Joffrey, get the bag.”
Joffrey scooped up the satchel, hefting its surprising weight. “Direct. I like it. He did say ‘inside and out.’ This qualifies.”
“You can’t do this!” the tinker yelled, his heels dragging twin furrows in the dirt. “It’s not calibrated for a mobile target! The golem—is it the one at the old temple? That’s a Class-Five Autonomous Sentry! My rifle is a prototype! The metallurgical stress alone from a—”
Branna stopped, leaned down so her face was inches from his. Her breath fogged in the cool air. “You can either walk and help us carry your toys, or I can knock you unconscious and carry you. Your project, your choice.”
He gaped at her, at the sheer, unanswerable physical reality of her. The fight drained from him, replaced by a dawning, horrified realization. He was going to the golem. These maniacs were actually going to do it.
“Fine,” he whispered, defeated. “I’ll walk. Just… please don’t drop the resonator coil. It’s very delicate.”
Branna released his arm. “Good. What’s your name, tinker?”
He rubbed his bruised arm, glaring up at her with a mix of hatred and terrified fascination. “Richard. My name is Richard.”
“Fine, Richard.” Branna turned and started back towards the village, the tree line, and the waiting silence beyond it. “Start talking. Tell us everything your rifle does, and everything that can go wrong. We’ve got ten miles to walk, and you’re giving the lecture.”