A strange thing was happening to the earthen anomaly. Its existence, as far as its awareness could discern, was just like all other animated masses of rock. Its function and thoughts were so common among its kind that the anomalous creation thought it wasn’t even worth being described. In all fairness it had never met another animated collective of stone such as itself but that didn’t stop it from assuming that if it were to meet another animated collective of stone then that collective would have behaved just as it did. Well just as it used to behave, the earthen anomaly was different now.

It was an indescribable change that evaded the creation’s understanding. Where once it saw the world only in how it could practically aid in its duties, now it saw the world in… some way, the creation couldn’t describe it after all. The creation wasn’t abandoning its duties no, no, no; it would never think of doing that. It just meant that it occasionally came across some minor distractions along the way.

The vitalized totem of cobblestone looked down to a small round pebble. It was a strange action whose allure the creation did not comprehend but nonetheless experienced. It never had stopped to look down at things before and it hadn’t had any plans to do so again in the future but bewildering to even itself it had stopped and was looking down presently at a pebble. There was something about the pebble that attracted the creation’s eyes. Perhaps it was that perfectly smooth body, the delicate rounded edges, maybe it was those beautiful streaks of light blue that blurred into the grain of the rock. In a way the pebble formed a perfect contrast to the creation as the center of its humanoid chest had faint red streaks blurred into the grain of its stone. Blue and red, pristine and dirty, free and trapped, the creation kept looking at the pebble.

The pebble stirred something in the creation, something that confused it. When it stared at the pebble its limbs did not seem so independent to itself anymore. The pebble sent this deep necessity within the creation to remain in some form with the pebble. The creation decided to do something it had never done before; it chose to take the pebble with it. The creation had never interacted with something that did not further its task let alone something that outright hindered it. The pebble was a second thing to protect, and the pebble did need protection. The creation had to make sure that nothing bad could possibly happen to the pebble. It did not know why the pebble could not be hurt, but the creation had this certainty from the bottom of its core that the pebble must not be hurt.

The very act of taking the pebble proved to be difficult for the creation. Once again, the difficulty came out in an incomprehensible nebulous way. As far as the creation could tell there were no physical barriers nor challenges stopping the creation from taking the pebble. When it saw that pebble surrounded by all the others and thought about separating the pebble from its kin the creation’s arm seemed to have to push through some kind of invisible restraint. There was some intangible presence fighting back against the creation. This was not a good sensation and the creation deemed ascribing the sensation to memory as a hindrance to be avoided in the future. Though the creation had to infer that their was a flaw in its threat identification and management because as the creation had deemed the sensation undesirable it ignored its own judgement and pushed through regardless picking up the pebble.

The creation walked far and wide through the land trying to find a way to complete its mission all while bringing the pebble along with it. The pebble remained gingerly caressed within the protective palms of the creation. Ever since the creation had chosen to take the pebble with it the amount of distractions from its mission had dramatically increased.

The strangest of things had occurred to the creation not too long ago. It sat at the edge of a hill with the pebble by its side and watched the sunset! It was unbelievable, The creation had to run a threat analysis to identify if a hostile plant had rooted in place. Their was no enemy holding it in place, it had held itself rooted in that position. It stayed sat next to the pebble of its own volition, it had done because… it wanted.

Objectively it could identify that sitting and watching the sunset with the pebble did not further progress the success of the mission, but somehow the action, specifically performed with the pebble, still had the same rightness to it. Even though watching the sunset was an unrelated task it felt right to do with the pebble by its side. Well everything felt right when with the pebble but their was a strange special rightness to taking the time to dedicate specifically to the pebble, a rightness similar to when it completed a mission.

The sunset was just the beginning of these odd changes in the creation’s behavior. Ever since it had felt the rightness of that moment the creation continued to feel that same rightness when looking at other things with the pebble. Things started off small at first. It continued on its mission and would raise its palm up to show the pebble the things it could see. It showed the pebble the trees, the dirt road, the screaming humans. But eventually sharing these mundane sights with the pebble no longer gave the creation that sense of rightness like the sunset.

It was then that the creation would start going out of its way to look at unique sights with the pebble almost as if it was some kind of mission. Just like a mission it ended with some sense of rightness upon completion, but this second mission was not one given by its master. The creation could not identify where the rightness came from just that it was there, and it was… right.

The creation and the pebble went to see many unique sights, the passage of time leading to ever more unique ones. Waterfalls, mountaintops, dank caves, and the more time the creation spent with the pebble the more right everything felt. The creation hypothesized that perhaps the pebble itself was right. Sort of similar to how the master was right but in a different way. The pebble’s rightness appeared to be purer in a vague fashion. Whereas the master really was only right because it was master, the pebble was right because it was… the pebble. The creation’s thought process could not pinpoint the difference in rightness between master and the pebble, but it still knew that there definitely was a difference. The creation could only describe this certainty of the difference in rightness without empirical proof as a new never before qualified sensation that the creation called feelings.

There was rightness in that nomenclature. The master was right because it was right, and the pebble was right because of the feelings. When the creation was with the pebble there were these feelings things all over the place. These feelings were like an ever-swarming prickling sensation that often felt physical at times but upon inspecting its own surfaces the creation never found any wounds or inflictions.

The creation would have never imagined that it could be the case, but master was no longer the only thing of absolute reverence to the creation. The pebble had slowly climbed its way up the creation’s list of priorities. Pebble and master were both equally important but unlike the pebble master needed help now.

The creation and the pebble both found themselves at a small rundown clay hut far out from any other village. The hut could not have contained any more than three rooms within it. A rack of dried meat stood nearby the entranceway and a thick overrun garden began climbing the right side of the hut. The building seemed fine to the creation but from its prior experience it understood that no usual human would consider these living conditions acceptable. Luckily for the creation, it was not looking for a usual human.

The creation walked up to the single entranceway of the building and found that the door was already opened. It entered without a second thought and scanned the first room for any humans. The room itself was a cluttered mess of plants, tools, and elixirs. The creation felt an almost instinctual need to begin tidying the room with how much it reminded the creation of its master’s old rooms. In fairness, the plants in master’s room tended to have already been transformed into writing implements rather than remaining as the raw ingredients which were currently present.

Next to a large cast iron cauldron was a short round woman with scraggily grey hair struggling to mix the viscous substance within. The woman turned to see her new guests and her eyes widened threefold at the sight. The creation had initially guessed that she too had those feelings of rightness at the sight of the pebble, so the creation partly covered the pebble to protect it. The creation had begun to feel protective of the pebble. It was right, but it was right for the creation alone. Once the woman spoke the creation realized it had merely misunderstood her intentions. “Is that an animated pile of therra!? Amazing! Truly amazing!”

The woman looked down to her cauldron and back to the creation. “This potion kind of requires my constant attention so I can’t come up to greet you or your construct but feel free to come in. As long as I get to witness that awesome construct, I’ll happily play host for you.”

The woman chuckled looking back down to analyze her concoction. After forming some sort of conclusion she threw some thorny herbs by her side into the cauldron and continued mixing. “As you can probably tell by where I live, I’m not one that’s much for socializing, as soon as I sensed you enter, I can tell you my guard was up. But hey, even if you are an enemy, I would be honored to have my back snapped in two by that outstanding magic. Is it even magic? Or is it truly pure therra? Couldn’t be, how would you manipulate it then?”

After a while of silence, the woman looked back towards the entrance where she only saw the creation protectively holding on to a pebble. Confusion mixed with mild worry blanketed the woman’s face. “Hello? You can come in; I wouldn’t even be able to cause you any harm rock guard or not. I’m no wizard, though you probably knew that. You’re probably here because you found out I was one of the lost vvitchenbreivers. You’ll have to tell me how you found that out before you leave by the way. I like to keep that fact a secret for pretty obvious reasons. White Witch hysteria and all that, that crazy hag gives all the rest of us slightly less crazy hags a bad name you know!”

She didn’t receive any response. The woman gave out a tired sigh and fixed her gaze on the creation. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this. Hello, can you understand me?” The creation nodded its head in affirmation.

The woman immediately jumped back letting out a slightly panicked yelp. The action seemed strange to the creation since she had posed the creation a question but the creation answering said question appeared unexpected to the woman. “Um, do you know where your creator is?”

The woman had quickly regained her composure trying to act as if she had never been surprised to begin with. The creation nodded its head again to affirm the woman’s question. The woman blankly stared at the creation seemingly waiting for something. A few seconds passed in silence before the woman finally gave in and spoke again. “Well, where are they?”

The creation didn’t react for a while pondering in its mind if this woman could be trusted with the master’s location. Eventually the creation ceded, if it were to get this woman to help master then it would have to know where master was.

The red streaked stone that made up the body of the creation began to shift and twirl. The sudden movement put the woman on her backfoot, but she still stayed to see what exactly it was doing. The rocks in the creation’s body began to crack along the middle and slowly peeled apart. As the stones moved further apart the room began to fill with a wretched odor of rot. The creation’s chest completely opened to reveal the compressed corpse of a pale old man curled into fetal position.

The woman shouted out in horror tumbling down to the floor a ball of her digested breakfast surfacing to her mouth. The woman covered her face with her hands as a feeble attempt to protect herself from the aroma. She swallowed her breakfast for the second time and cried out to the creation. “Oh dear what is that!!” The woman remained sat on the floor frozen in shock, the cauldron having been left abandoned began to boil and sputter slowly shifting colors as the ingredients started to separate.

The creation remained perfectly still throughout the woman’s panic waiting for her to give it the chance to act. Once the creation confirmed that the woman would stay frozen in place, or at least wouldn’t do more than gag where she sat, the creation spoke. “Master is sick.”

The woman had been bombarded with so many stimuli so close in succession that she didn’t know on where to start. The first thing that came to mind was to shout out in abject terror “Your creator’s dead!”

The creation tried to crane its neck down as much as the stone would allow so it could look at master within its body. It then turned to the woman again. “Very sick.”

The woman inelegantly lifted herself off the floor using a nearby table to support her wobbling knees. Her initial shock receded and made way for an even greater fascination to the construct in front of her. Its creator was dead but somehow it continued to function which meant it was entirely self-sustaining.

“I’m sorry friend, but I’m just a vvitchenbreiver. I can make potions that cure illness and heal wounds. But death is… a ‘sickness’ a little above my capabilities.”

The red stained stones at the center of the creation’s body began to squirm and shift once more closing up its chest hiding master once again within its body. “I understand.” The creation turned towards the exit and left with the pebble.

The woman stood still in her room alone only with her thoughts struggling to process the last few minutes of her life. She quickly snapped out of her trance and ran out of her hut. There was no way she could leave such a valuable piece of research leave just like that, she had to study this wonderous existence.

The creation had already made its way far down the forest path, its large legs making even its casual walk very expedient. The woman rushed towards the creation as fast as her stumpy legs could carry her. She pointlessly waved over to the creation trying to get its attention while she yelled out. “Wait! Wait!”

The creation continued its march undeterred by the woman’s voice only stopping once she had actually grabbed its wrist tugging against the creation’s momentum. The creation turned to the woman and waited for her explanation. The woman started her explanation by placing her hands on her knees and heaving out large gasps of air while simultaneously expunging exorbitant amounts of water from the pores of her skin. Perhaps this was some unique form of communication that the creation had yet to learn.

The creation raised its arms up to keep the pebble as far from the woman as possible without actually moving away, the creation could never be too careful, anyone could try to go for its precious pebble without warning. After a few more moments of that frankly gross form of communication the woman seemed to realize that the creation was not fluent because she finally wiped the spilling water off her brow and spoke. “I can’t bring your master back to life but maybe I can help you find a way. I know a lot of very skilled people that might have some clues.”

The creation looked down to the woman with renewed interest. “Will skilled people make master not sick?”

The woman massaged her neck shuffling in place, the creation recognized this action as the same one it used when it had difficulty sharing information with the pebble. “Weeeelll, not right away. There’s no way to bring someone back to life yet, but you are obviously proof that life can be created. Surely creating a body to house a soul would be easier than that. I’m sure if I waved you around in front of them, they would be plenty motivated to cooperate on a joint research project.”

The creation’s excitement greatly dwindled. This all sounded very time consuming. Master never liked being sick, the creation thought it would be ideal to cure master as quickly as possible. “So skilled people can’t help master?”

“They can, just not now. No matter how hard you search you won’t find anyone that can bring your master back to life. Maybe a unicorn horn could do the trick but I’m pretty sure that is just a myth. Look, I am your best chance at getting your master back, it’s not like someone else will just jump out of nowhere uninvited with the ability to save your master.”

A bell chimed right next to the creation. The creation immediately jumped back making sure to keep its body between the source of the sound and the pebble. Where the bell had chimed a small pink rhombus grew out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards the creation holding a glowing parchment: It read.

You have been invited to The Tournament You are The Golem