As always, time melds and runs together when work and focus are the only costants, especially for archmages intollerant of measurements that don’t strictly concern their work and unwilling to let their minds too much off the leash.

Gorren worked hard, with little rest and even less doubts, and when he finally paused enough to take in his results, he found to have accomplished much.

The room of the Crucible was now encapsulated into a small complex of room arranged into a roughly cubic structure. The room itself, apart from the all-important source of Crux, contained Gorren’s most valuable alchemical equipment, substances and concoctions, together with his box-refuge, that he had painstakingly transported from the first room and stocked with supplies, a cot and writing materials as well as equipment and magical defenses.

Two corridors connected the room to the rest of the complex, sealed by two sets of sturdy double doors each, that Gorren had built with an enhanced alloy from his alchemical work. He expected nothing less than a minotaur charge to be able to punch a hole into them, but he had filled both corridors with traps nonetheless. He had stuffed the walls with mana-charged arrowheads, ready to shoot out at anything or anyone coming in without bearing his Mana signature. If something survived their onslaught, Mana batteries embedded into the walls and provided with fire-converters would flood the corridors with fire and brimstone fumes. Anything living would have a very bad time, he reckoned.

Apart from the corridors, the central room was divided from the complex by a large empty space. Gorren had made ample use of his dimensional magic knowledge here. He had inscribed rows of glyphs upon walls and ceilings, creating a field that distorted space. Apart from holding the chamber afloat into the empty space, the field would rip apart anything trying to cross it, no matter what it was. It repelled magical transportation, and even magical protections would have been able only to provide minimal defense against it, forcing any would-be intruder to pass by the doors and the traps. A creature able to make use of dimensional magic could be able to breach it, but from he had seen in his memory-trances, even the creature from the library would have needed time for it. He counted on its limited intelligence to dissuade it from doing so.

After each corridor, he had built two guardrooms, bare aside from a row of mid-quality Mana Batteries. Four guards were stationed there at each moment, with strict orders to defend the doors to the death. And Gorren could be more than sure that order would be obeyed.

Despite his vague hopes, the clay doll hadn’t given signs of life. Still, it had been the first prototype of a long line of trials and errors that had resulted in the guards of his compound.

The four holding guards on each door was his most advanced creations yet and those he had spent the most time and effort upon. Each was a brute carved out of gray stone, three meters tall and almost as large, with a squat body, massive arms and hands, large feet and stocky, short legs. Its head was embedded between the shoulders, showing a scowling expression and two small glass-like eyes. Its blocky, stony hide had been reinforced with magic and could withstand magical attacks as well as physical blows. A Mana Core, an energy-charged crystal that Gorren had built through alchemical means, powered each golem, safely hidden inside of their large chests.

The Golems’ formation was the same for each guardroom. Two stood at each side of the doors, never moving an inch from their positions, so much that they resembled brooding statues. The other pair faced the only corridor that led out of the room itself, ready to move to block it with their bodies at a moment‘s notice. If combat arrived, the golems would raise their giant hands to ward off blows and push away attackers, while at the same time Mana-charged blades would emerge from their palms, making them a walking metal hedgehog. Gorren had decided to call them Guardians.

Still, as strong as they were, they weren’t really thought for attack as much as for defence. Each corridor leading to the guardroom was riddled with arrows and fire traps. What was more, they were lined by a thin corridor on each side, connected to it only by a series of fissures and arrow slits. Hidden there, two rows of six golems waited for intruders. These were smaller than the Guardian, and a lot thinner, their stony forms roughly humanoids apart from their arms, that was longer than the regular human, reaching to their knees. Each of these golems had metal hands, with long, bladed fingers ending into vicious hooks. Gorren called them Snatchers.

Reaching through the fissures in the walls, the Snatchers would use their long reach to grab at any intruder that tried to make its way through the two-meters wide corridor. Altogether, they would easily fill the corridor with flailing limbs. And whoever got caught by them wasn’t going to pass a pleasant experience, that was for sure.

Snatchers, traps and Guardians would act together, with the Guardians boxing the enemies in while the Snatchers and the traps rained their attacks over them. If push came to shove, the Snatchers could open hidden trapdoors and jump into the corridors themselves, trapping the intruders between them and the Guardians. To optimize the tactics, Gorren had connected the activations of traps and golems with roughly half of the corridor. An intruder would be right in the middle of it when everything activated, all at once. The defense was completed by two pairs of Sentries, one at the doors’ sides and one at the sides of the corridor’s entrance so that they could support the Guardians. The Batteries in the guardrooms provided energy for everything.

Gorren wasn’t going to sugarcoat his work’s result by calling it anything more than a crude defense. He just hoped that it would be worth the effort. Until he saw actual results, he wasn’t going to let satisfaction lower his guard.

The trapped corridors led into another room, this one smaller and bare, with three other corridors, a hole in the floor to allow descent through a rope ladder and one in the ceiling to allow for ascent through the same mean. The actual workspace part of the compound began there, the place extending up and down as much as it did horizontally.

Gorren had tried to exploit the space as much as possible. He had built a larger laboratory, cramming it with all the substances and equipment he felt he could risk. He had even used the larger space to build a larger apparatus, the largest of which was a fermentation tank as tall as a man.

He had also chosen a room for storage to keep substances and supplies of all kinds, from those that didn’t need much in the way of conservation like dried foods to the more delicate ones, that instead needed to be conservated in warm honey or under layers of pressed snow or other means.

A room, larger than the others, he had designed to be his Golem Laboratory. There, amidst piles of cut stones, quartz and minerals, he worked to make his guards, scampering up and down wooden frames built around half-formed statues, overseeing the growth of Mana Cores in their crystalline baths, mixing just the right kind of reagents into metal bowls so that the final product could be imbued with the right abilities or another of the hundred things one needed to do to make a working warrior golem. Each chisel blow was accompanied by a burst of magic; and his statues, even if rough, carried a spark of his angry determination, and that made them powerful and tough. That was what it mattered.

Next came a room he had assigned to be his training grounds. He had covered the floor with soil and accurately packed it. For motivation, he had hung the tapestry with the still moving creature on one of the walls, putting weapons racks against the others.

He trained with his staff, exercising to use it as a club or a spear. There really wasn’t a reason to try any other weapon. He had summoned some more weapons, just to have some back-ups, but eventually had to settle for a short sword and a dagger, enchanting both to cut deeper and more fiercely. His little body didn’t have what it took to master weapons, and he wasn’t going to waste time on it if eventually, he was going to get rid of it. For the same reasons, he tried martial forms only a little each day, while trying not to think what would happen if those meager forces of his were to be called in action.

The bulk of his training came with offensive spells. The last time he had had formal training was almost three hundred years before, but the memory was as fresh as it had happened yesterday. Soon, his capacity for destruction started to grow.

Much time he passed instead into the room he had fitted to be his meditation chamber; and if it had depended from him, he would have passed even much time in it.

He had molded the ceiling into a dome, painting it with a dark blue and then drawing all the constellations with a white so white that sparkled in the dark. The resulting night sky was but a paltry imitation of the real deal, but he had entwined Mana and Kor to let part of the Crux shine through it. Sitting under that sky, he could feel part of the feeling of silent eternity watching he had felt back on the material realm when he closed his eyes under the full moon.

Apart from that, the room was empty, just bare rock and nothing else, apart from a great open eye painted haphazardly on the floor. Seating on it, Gorren allowed his mind to shed the fetters of the body. When unbound, his thoughts ran quick like a torrent, and his perceptions and comprehension reached very far. He would have loved to seal that chamber with a heavy door, shut down the world outside and let his mind wander into the mysteries of the Crux, but danger kept him from allowing himself to do so. Instead, he wondered over new paths that the Mana could take to make his constructs better and his magic stronger or puzzled over his body and the changes he felt in it. The only conclusion he had reached was that whatever was happening, it wasn’t positive. His body seemed to be reacting in a negative way, but he still couldn’t exactly pinpoint it how. It was concerning, but he wasn’t going to let it affect his efficiency. There was too much on the line. Thankfully, he was too busy to think.

The remaining chambers were a ritual room, a warehouse for spare parts and finished products he still had to find a use for, a mechanical laboratory he had barely started to work on, a greenhouse, waiting for plants, a menagerie, waiting for animals, a testing room, cluttered with broken debris of failed golems, a supposed archive with just a table and a chair and nothing else, a chapel, and… a laundry room. It turned out that cloth tended to get dirty easily in there. Thankfully, he could summon soap without problems; and even more, thankfully, his body didn’t need the bathroom. He could still chuck what he didn’t need back into the Crucible, but there was a limit…

Still, in a gruff way, he was satisfied. That place couldn’t hold a candle to what his old tower had been, but it was shaping up nicely enough. And there was an energy in there, something that his tower, with his centuries of dust and work and solemn intensity had lost: the smell of new beginnings, of blossoming possibilities.

It felt good on the heart.

The entire compound was enclosed into a massive sphere of Kor attached to the cube itself by long beams of the dark substance. In the non-reality of the Crux, the laws of the material plane didn’t apply, or they applied, all the same, depending on where you looked, but as soon as space was encompassed by the Kor, those same laws reasserted themselves. Gorren had exploited that fact: each side of the cube was carved with dimensional sigils that allowed for one to walk upon each side like it was a flat plain. He had studded each surface with Sentries, each provided with charged Batteries buried into the Kor. They weren’t nearly as many as he would have liked, but there was a limit to how many Batteries could be held together safely. He didn’t want to have a Manastorm ravaging his compound and so had to space them appropriately.

Still, apart from Snatchers, another variant of Golems added to this layer of defense. These ones were half a man’s height and hunched forward, with thick legs built for speed and short arms with hooked fingers meant for grabbing. They had large rock jaws provided with two sharp, metal incisors they could bite hard with, and a large single eye planted in narrow heads. Their jobs was to scurry quickly over intruders, bite them and drag them down with their weight, so that others golems could pile in and land their attacks while the Sentries worked their own assaults. Even less resistant than Snatchers, but quicker, more nimble and with a nasty bite, Gorren called them the Jaws. It felt appropriate.

All in all, between the three variants, he counted to have sixty-four golems in his compound. Each was a construct lacking in intelligence and only able to follow certain patterns of orders that he had inscribed into bands of metal alloy wrought in their frames. Their glass-like eyes, each a mineral crystal polished to a sheen, gave them the ability to see and the magic in their core the sense of touch, but they lacked all the others.

He’d wished to have even more, but the more he had extended his home the more a big problem had presented itself: maintenance. It had become more and more demanding, and he had been forced to slow down his expansion to face it. He could only do so much alone after all, and despite his vast pool of Mana, he still needed time to recharge it. He had programmed every golem to go and recharge itself at the nearest Battery when its internal energy reached a low level, but he still needed to recharge each Battery personally.

It was a big drag, and it would only get bigger in the future. He was squeezing his brain for solutions just then, seated on the only chair of his supposed archive, with an elbow over the only table while stroking his beard.

Strings of calculations ran across his mind as he mumbled to himself. Really, he had rushed again. Tiredness dragged at his thoughts, but irritation at the obstacle kept him going. The possibilities were few, really. He needed a Mana Generator and a Cultivation Chamber. Problem was, both were hazardous places that were supposed to be kept secure at all times. If you wanted to avoid destructive leaks, that is. And since he liked himself without gills and one of those creatures could come and wreck the place anytime, that was a problem.

Quite the conundrum. He couldn’t expand without taking big risks, but those big risks could easily come back to bite him in the ass, in a fairly lethal way. What to do what to do. Did he feel bold enough to take the risks? The more he thought about it the more he felt that he lacked the choice. He couldn’t just remain a sitting duck. Also, he wanted to add a Thaumaturgic Wing to his lab and that didn’t go easy with the volatile stuff either. Ack, how was he supposed to work like that? Ah, and the Mechanic Lab needed expanding too.

He threw a longing glance in the direction of the Meditation Room and sighed. It looked like that returning to his research was still very out of reach. Bah! To work!

Freshly summoned, the necessary to write beckoned to him. He grabbed one of the feathers held by the small wooden stand, delicately touched the ink in the pot with the point and regarded the sheet of paper extended before him.

So, a project. But of what? What did he feel was more useful? Mmh…

A drop of ink stained the paper, as he suddenly stiffened. He watched the paper, fingers trembling. He could feel it, a worm wriggling its way just inside the confines of his mind; rustling away in the dirt, getting closer.

The feather smacked against the paper, ruining it completely. Gorren was out of the chamber in the blink of an eye, running away quickly. His heart thumped in his chest. Why right now? How many? And the tapestry? Was it still where he had put it? And what about the golems? Were they ready? Had he…?

In his rush, he clipped a shoulder against the frame of a door. Hissing, he stumbled, hand shooting out to grab at the black stone, just in time that he didn’t tumble down. Pain brought him clarity. Why the hell was he panicking now? Hadn’t he been preparing just for this event? Bah! Pathetic!

He gave himself a good slap for good measure and then, calmer and with a stinging cheek, he jogged down the chambers. The need to stop by the laboratory and cram his arms with all he could carry gnawed at him, but he smothered it with ruthless efficiency. He had already chosen what was vital and what was not, and he had done it with calm and attention. Now it wasn’t the time to make decisions on the spur of the moment.

He made a beeline for the guardrooms, the Guardians shambling to grab the doors’ handles. They opened them just the time for him to slip inside, before slamming them shut. He heard the enchanted mechanisms lock the doors, but his mind was already running with a last-minute check of his defenses.

The glyphs he had carved on the hides of each golem lit in response as he brushed them with his extended consciousness, like soldiers rising into salutes. The traps thrummed with energy, ready to spring. Everything was in order. Everything was ready. He still felt a surge of tensed relief when the doors of the box snapped shut behind him, the cut portions melding with the walls of the bunker.

Despite being dark inside, he could see just if it was midday. He needed just a brief gaze to see that everything was in order. Supplies, check. Wooden frames holding the most precious reagents, check. Reserve of completed Mana Cores, check. Bars of rare alloys, check. The prototype of Mana Battery, check. His first clay doll, check. Everything checked. Everything in order, thank goodness.

Almost hopping out of excitement, he quickly went to the center of the refuge and flopped down, sitting cross-legged. Throwing out his mind, he extended his sense to encompass all the compound.

The intruder seemed to have been hesitating since it was just starting to try and pierce a hole into the outer sphere. Gorren recognized with a shudder the same Mana signature of the creature of the library. No mistake. It was exactly the same… and not at the same time. The complexity of the aura of this one made his head swirl. It felt like facing a flying mountain made of jabbering mouths. Still, he had his theories and wasn’t afraid.

Was it also the same creature? Bah! Who cared! He perceived only one creature, that was what it mattered.

A burst of fierce joy and fear set his guts fluttering. Now it was the time to see if his defenses could match up.

Focusing, he willed the outer shell to weaken, the Kor shifting aside to make a portion of it thinner. The creature didn’t notice or didn’t care, as it continued its attack. As always, Gorren could barely believe what those things could do. The Kor was able to keep the Crux itself at bay. That creature was… tunneling in it? Moving it aside? Begging it to death? Counteracting the non-potential with sheer creative force? He couldn’t understand, and his head started to pound as he tried.

With a snarl, he tore his attention away from it and back into his focus. Really, there was something those things couldn’t do? Concerning, but Ur curse him if he was going to give ground without fighting.

Under his coaxing, the outer shell weakened slowly and then all at once. With no more resistance, the creature pierced the sphere and barreled inside. Gorren felt it impact the walls of the cube in a tangle of limbs, but his efforts went all to repair the outer sphere before the Crux could flood in. He did his homework. The outer sphere snapped shut like an angry clam, with not a wisp of Crux entering.

Not even pausing to feel relief, he quickly focused back on the creature. His chest fluttered with exultation.

The creature was stranded on the cube’s surface, the strange mass that was his aura exuding confusion. But what it was more important, it was limited! It wasn’t the all-mighty mass that he had felt outside the sphere. Now it was just a Mana phenomenon, powerful without a doubt, but manageable, just like the creature in the library.

Gorren pumped a fist in the air. Yes! His theories had been correct!

Through the memory-trance, he had relived again and again his meeting in the library, and between that and his growing experience at shaping the Crux had come to a single conclusion: those creatures experimented some kind of metamorphosis as they entered solid space. They lost their massive ability to shape their sorroundings and became far closer to a material creature. Gorren excitedly jotted down a mental note: those creatures were so powerful not per se, but depending on their sorroundings.

He smirked. Now, to more pleasant experiments.

The Sentries in the area had already started to attack the creature, bolts of lighting making it switch and trash. Gorren felt its overwhelming confusion. Not used to pain, eh? You should have thought about it before coming here!

With fierce satisfaction, he launched a mental shout, putting all the golems of the area in action. Snatchers and Jaws raced across the surface of the cube, converging upon the intruder. The creature thrashed, trying to make a sense of its alien surrounding. Gorren surveilled with academic interest as it changed shape, from an amorphous blob to the same form he had faced into the library. Was it an instinctive reaction? Or maybe that was the form it would take in the material realm?

The golems didn’t care about that. With jaws and claws, they went to work, piling over the creature. The Jaws clamped their teeth on it, keeping it still even as they scratched and kicked, while the Snatchers methodically ripped at gray flesh.

Gorren almost recoiled under the wave of pain and confusion exploding from the creature. Wow, it really had to be the first time.

The creature’s aura pulsed. An arrow of magic shot from it, striking a golem that was ripping at a sheet of squirming flesh. The Snatcher started to fizzle and melt like a candle left over a fire. Its head slumped by a side and an arm fell off, then its form stabilized once again, the golem not having stopped its assault even for a moment.

Gorren’s chest lit with satisfaction. Wonderful! The shielding worked!

He would have loved to provide each golem with a Kor shield, but the strange material reacted catastrophically with the Mana Cores, shutting them down. Still, he had found a solution: mixing a pinch of powdered Kor with the substance that would make the rock of the golem. Like that, he hoped to give them some measure of resistance against the pitiful use of Crux-enhanced magic of the creatures. The result was even better than he hoped for!

With avid eyes, making sure to not lose even a particular, he kept observing the fight. The creature kept trashing and, once the mouth was completed, screeching, and a bunch of golems was crushed under its bulk. More were incapacitated by the random bursts of magic it launched. But the golems kept their methodical assault, ignoring fellows falling apart and crushed or their own bodies sloughing away.

Eventually, their stubborness won the day.

The creature, launching confusion and fear and pain like a furnace heat, suddenly reached a tipping point. It thrashed again, then launched itself upwards. Gorren was quick to weaken the section of the sphere once again, allowing the creature to burst through it and disappear into the Crux beyond. The last sign Gorren had of it was of a welcoming acceptance and joy so pure and deep that he felt his heart being squeezed.

He remained vigilant for some heartbeats more, before letting out a relieved sigh. Phew, he did it. Boy, did he feel stiff. His neck hurt like crazy, and both of his legs tingled hard.

Ignoring it, he examined the damage. A dozen golems laid in pieces, alongside a bunch of Sentries and Batteries.

Gorren clenched his teeth. The cost had been high, especially the lost golems, but he had obtained precious knowledge and data. Maybe it was his pride speaking, but he wasn’t going to let himself be discouraged. Of course, he had to put into account that another attack could come anytime, and it could count more than a single creature, but that meant only one thing.

“More! I need more! More golems! More power! More!”

To hell with hesitation. He was going to build really nasty stuff now.