“A town?”

Despite being alone in the room, Gorren’s surprise was such that he spoke aloud.

Frowning, he closed his eyes again.

Gorren felt, a distant impression, the wind buffeting againt his flying golem. He perceived the movements of the wings, and the ribbons of Mana that kept it afloat, felt the steady thrum of its fake heart.

A pleasant landscape filled his vision. It was a verdant plain, with a river sneaking its way across. Long fields, crops ripe and colorful, formed orderly rows divided by well-kept canals and precise roads. They sorrounded a moderate expanse of houses and buildings, big and small, clustered together and circled again by a sturdy wall. The thin trails of smoke rising from many chimneys streaked the sky.

With a flick of will, Gorren sent the construct in a quick descent.

As the settlement grew closer, he saw that it wasn’t as big as he had first thought. A small city.

He saw figures on the walls, the glints of their armors and spears quickly identifying them as soldiers. Many more people, these ones in the modest clothing of peasants, walked the fields, busy with the harvest.

The doors of the town were open and before it a short line of carts waited. Those he supposed to be the owners were busy talking with the guards.

Gorren had the golem trace circles in the air while he thought. The place seemed harmless enough at first glance, but he had learnt not to rely over first impressions. In that case, if anything, it only made him more suspicious.

Still, sooner or later he needed to make contact with civilization. Nama had said that a century had passed from his escape. Apart from being eager to see the changes that time had wrought, he needed information about, well, everything.

With that in mind, he directed the golem toward the city.

Keeping high enough that whoever spotted the golem would see only a bird, he soared over the walls and into the city proper.

What he saw surprised him.

Wooden houses, many built over foundations of stone, clustered around tight, sneaking dirt paths.

The place didn’t make for a good appearance. Gorren noticed broken shutters, pieces of pottery laying in the streets, plaster peeling off walls and missing shingles.

The inhabitants didn’t look any better. They walked about, children running and laughing, adults working in shops or calling customers to their merchandise, women carrying buckets or baskets, porters struggling under heavy weights. The air felt laborious and peaceful, but it didn’t escape him how everybody seemed busy with something, and none was resting or walking for leisure. Nor that the clothes that everybody wore were modest at best, meagre at worst. Not even one of the people he saw didn’t carry at least a mending over their clothes.

That left him feeling perplexed.

“This is squalid.” He thought. “Where are the marble and stone of Truvian architecture? Where are the golems working the land? Where are the mana-powered machines?”

Truvia had been an advanced civilization, relying over magic and its products to carry over many of its activities. People still needed to work back then, since not everything could be delegated to a golem, but the extensive state-controlled use of constructs had greatly helped to shed the need for heavy labor by part of humans, while the widespread exploit of Mana in civil life had assured the citizens with high living standards.

This… wasn’t anything like that. He couldn’t even see a damn sewer.

At unease, he kept flying over the city.

Things marginally improved in the central portions of the settlement. Large marble and stone buildings, their impressive facades ornated with beautiful carvings and statues, brooded over wide streets provided with drains and walkways. Still, Gorren soon saw that even that opulence was nothing but an illusion. Many of the largest houses laid empty, all showing signs of heavy disrepair. Some were little more than gutted skeletons. The gardens, none of the houses not being provided with one, were unkempt and overgrown.

Even the few villas that seemed to be still in use showed some form of lack of maintenance and, judging by the closed shutters and the working chimneys, it was easy to guess that the families inside weren’t numerous enough to fill them completely.

Only a few people walked the streets here, their clothes a substantial jump in quality compared to the inhabitants of the poor quarters. Still, Gorren didn’t notice any wearing satin, brocade or some other precious or enchanted cloth.

Once, he met a patrol of soldiers. They wore plate armors that seemed in relative good condition, but, stretching his perceptions, Gorren found with dismay that none of the pieces or weapons they had were enchanted. Worse, none of the guards emitted any trace of being Mana-strenghtened.

That discovery concerned and puzzled him. There were many monsters that humans couldn’t hope to overcome with strenght of arms alone. How was that city supposed to face them with just that?

He kept going.

The “noble” districts ended with a large canal, its walls tall and massive. It had to be an impressive sight in its glory days, but now it was choked with rubble and the water that it had carried from the near river was nowhere to be seen, dust-choked weeds having taken its place. Even the great bridge spanning it hadn’t survived. Only two rugged stumps remained of what had to be a great throughtfare. On the closest one, Gorren saw a statue. Maybe once it pictured a man offering welcome. Now, only a broken torso remained.

A much less impressive wooden bridge made for the only mean to pass.

As he passed it, Gorren saw a knot of soldiers standing guard over a barricade. Even in them, he didn’t perceive anything that would have been obvious back in the Kingdom.

Beyond the bridge, on what it once was an artificial island, a magnificent palace made for the center of the city. It was built with an immaculate white stone that seemed to have been moulded by hands other than human. Three graceful spires rose from it, challenging the heavens.

The decline that had taken over the city had managed to claw its mark here too. One of the spire had toppled, leaving a broken stump and a smashed wing, which was little more than a pile of rubble. Many of the elaborate decorations that had graced the facade were defaced or ruined. There and then, a slender column was broken, its place taken by a crude replacement.

Only the ample garden seemed to have been spared. The hedges were still trimmed and kept in order, even if the same couldn’t be said for the statues and busts that littered it, or the ponds that were fed by the canal.

Gorren felt more and more depressed as he kept taking in the place. Still, the true coup de grace arrived with the sight of the building that once stood beside the palace.

He recognized the style with the palace had been built. It was the same, opulent one with which the Kingdom of Truvia built its own administrative buildings, first and foremost being the glorified “castles” where their city governors had their seats. Just beside those palaces in all but names, the towers of the city mages were always erected, to show the importance and prestige of the magicians.

The same had to be done there, but, while the palace had more or less survived, the same wasn’t for its companion.

The work had been meticulous. Gorren could barely make out the thin, cilindrical shape of the tower between all the rubble and wreck that remained. It was the ruin of a ruin, like a giant hand had smashed down the building, crushed it under its palm and then crushed again whatever had remained.

Gorren directed the golem to land over a large rock that protuded by the dirt like a broken tooth.

From that perch, he watched the city with heavy heart. It was just as he had feared. With magic outlawed and its practioners banned and persecuted, Truvia had regressed down the path of civilization.

Ah, the loss, the loss! Loss of knowledge, loss of life, loss of comfort, loss of so much that had been built.

It deeply saddened him to see such a stupid regression, such a fall into barbarism. An entire civilization… lost? Was it possible? His eyes didn’t lie and, even if he still needed the complete certainty about what happened and how, he felt that the truth was only one: Truvia was gone. Truly and forever.

That realization hurt him, badly, and for some time he remained there, just watching the cityscape while hearing the golem’s heart beat.

Still, he wasn’t the type to let emotions drag him down for long. If anything, it was the opposite. Soon, pain and sadness turned to outrage. He didn’t tolerate that wilful jump into ignorance, it offended him to a primal level which words failed to explain.

To a Seeker of knowledge like him, progress wasn’t to be discarded so easily, and surely not like that. The fate of the people didn’t touch him as much as what he felt to be a desacration of what was the true aim of human life: the search for that ultimate treasure that the unveiling of truth and knowledge was.

It was more than not right, it was an offence of the highest grade, not only toward him as a scholar and a Seeker and toward all those that helped to build Truvia, but toward the essence of human nature itself.

He needed to understand how it happened, and who the responsibles were, even if the answer to that last question felt obvious.

Setting his jaw, he sent the golem flying once again.

Pennants and banners ornated the palace, swaying gently in the breeze. Gorren saw that they exhibited the image of a gray stone tower over a checker of blue and red. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t recognize the emblem.

He circled the palace a couple of times, extending his mystical senses.

He didn’t perceive a great deal of people. He guessed that, apart from the obvious decline of the city, many were out helping with the harvest, or something like that. People in servant or soldier liveries still walked about, doing whatever chore that moment of the day required of them, but Gorren regarded them only with glancing interest. He could feel something coming from deep inside the palace, something strange.

Straining his perceptions, he focused over it. He had the image of a light closed into a stone vessel, too little to contain more than a smidge of it. Like a… a pearl in a closed oyster. Or… a finger pushed into a small box.

He drew back from the vision, thinking. He had perceived something similar, a long long time ago. But back then it had been benevolent. This one filled him with repulsion. Still, whatever it was, there was power in it, enough that it was wise not to understimate it.

The discovery drove him to move with more caution.

Moving away from the palace, he made a careful descent toward the garden. He perceived only a few presence there and, surely enough, it was easy to find a spot where to land without being seen.

The golem landed on a path of beaten dirt, then dashed under a bush, elegantly trimmed to resemble a cube. It pushed its head between branches, watching left then right. No one in sight. Good.

Having it turn toward the bulky figure of the palace, Gorren focused again.

The presence he had perceived appeared to his mystical senses as a dome of white energy covering the palace. Now that he was closer, he could perceive its nature. It felt as light, but it was cold, and bleached, born from the absence of color rather than from a sum of it.

He never felt something like that, apart from a vaguely similar thing, very far in the past.

Still, whatever the nature of it, that was unmistakably a magic barrier, Mana moulded to form a layer of defence that acted as a wall and as a device to locate intruders. It was crude, but its power was undeniable.

Someone's watching in there.

The golem shifted a bit, mirroring his unease. A group of mages of medium level would be needed to raisesomething of that size. Distasteful possibilities rose to his mind, but he pushed them aside. He wasn’t going to make theories. He needed more data first.

Still, he was intrigued by the nature of the energy. It didn’t feel like Mana born by human moulding. More like some kind of machine.

“What have you been up to, you mischievious children?” He murmured.

He watched the palace for some more moments before a sound of steps had him duck back inside the bush.

A trio of soldiers marched by, their armors looking better quality than the ones he had seen. The leading one, in particular, seemed some kind of high officer. He didn’t wear a helmet, showing a mop of scraggly blond hair with more than a few gray lines. His face seemed carved out of wood, all sharp features and sun-baked skin, with a very prominent jawline.

The man looked angry as he stomped ahead of his subordinates. His bushy eyebrows were furrowed and his lip curled, showing more than one golden tooth.

That was an old warhorse alright, if Gorren had ever seen one. He noticed the emblem embroiderd over the surcoat he wore over his armor: a golden lighting bolt smashing a skull in half. He didn’t recognize it, again, unsurprisingly, but the image gave him a bad impression all the same. The skull was the chief emblem of necromancy and black magic…

The grizzled officer was growling something to the soldier following on the right, to which the man replied with quick, nervous answers. As they marched by, Gorren tried to eavesdrop. It was a wasted effort. Their voices were too low and quick for him to understand. Still, he caught some words. They were heavily accented and a bit different from his own language, but he distinctly understood the words “foolish” and “enemy”.

Then, the trio passed his hiding spot, and the soldiers were on their way.

Gorren heard them go, thinking. He had expected the language to have changed in a century, but it was a relief to find proof that it hadn’t changed to the point he couldn’t understand it anymore. Finally, a good new. That would make trying to blend in far more easier.

Still, he wondered what those three military-types were doing in a garden like this. He had always hated politics, with all its schemes and backstabbing and whatnot, but he could almost smell it when such business was being conducted. Right now, his nose was telling him that he had crossed ways with something like that. He wouldn’t have minded having an ear in stuff like that. You never knew when it could come in handy Also, he was quite curious…

He took a look around and, after making sure than nobody was there to see, snuck out of the bush and made his way in the direction the trio of soldiers had come from.

It was quite awkward to walk with the flying golem. In the air, it was as good as a falcon, but on the earth a toddler would have moved better.

Thankfully, the path didn’t last for long.

After what had to be an elegant stone arch, the bushes opened to give way to a clearing. Long time ago, it was probably used as a place where to relax and gaze upon the waters. But now, the pond was empty and one of the walls of the small canal that fed it had given way, filling the riverbed with rubble. Stone benches, broken and chipped, littered the place. On a side, brooded the twisted wreckage of a former playground for kids.

Still, despite all of this, the place retained some measure of tranquillity. The hedges made for nice walls, shielding whoever entered from the pains of the world. If you tried, you could very imagine to be in another place completely, away from whatever collapse the Kingdom had been taken into.

The birds sang, and a couple of trees, leaning against each other like lovers confiding a secret, swayed gently in the breeze.

Through the eyes of the golem, Gorren took in the place. He liked it, but he wasn’t there for sightseeing. Instead, carefully, he searched for…

He froze. What was that sound?

He strained his borrowed senses, trying to… yes, it was… it was crying. Someone was crying.

Frowning, he stood still for a moment, watching the closest tree.

It was the matter of a couple of seconds to bound to it, jump and disappear between the leaves.

Hugging a branch, he tried to hear noises that would announce his discovery. Nothing came, apart from that soft sobbing again.

Cautiously, he moved a branch aside to look.

Seated on a bench looking over the dried pond, shielded by sight by a tree, a woman was crying. She wore heavy, black garments that reached down to her ankles. Raven hair cascaded down her shoulders and back, framing the hands with which she covered her face. She cried quietly, the reason why he had had to strain to hear her. Sobs shook her slender frame.

Gorren felt a pinprick of pity, but was quick to repress it. He wasn’t there for that.

As he watched, the woman lowered her hands, revealing her face. It had to be beautiful once, but now that beauty was marred. Deep lines traced her features, marks left by worry and adversity. Her eyes, of a brilliant reddish color, shimmered with tears.

The unknown woman raised a small object she held with trembling hands. Gorren saw that it was a handkerchief. Between the wet stains left by tears, he could see letters embroidered in elegant golden thread, but couldn‘t make out what they said.

The woman mournfully watched them for a moment, her lip trembling. With a broken sob, she clutched the object to her chest, reclining her head over it.

Gorren observed silently. There was no need to be a genius to understand that some terrible tragedy had hit that unknown woman.

Rubble and widows. This is the world you destroyers have built from my ashes?

He felt sick.

After some time, the woman straightened up, her breath coming out slow as she attempted to reassert control. She still trembled all over, but now her eyes were lit with a new spark.

With an angry gesture, she wiped the tears from her face, and stood up. She glanced a last time at the handkerchief, before thrusting it in a pocket of her dress.

After taking a moment to straighten her appearance, she huffed, set her expression into something resembling decision, and walked away, the hem of her dress trailing behind her.

Gorren watched her go. A small part of him was ashamed to have spied on someone during what had to be a difficult and deeply personal moment. The rest was just slightly irritated for not having foung nothing useful while doing it.

It didn’t matter. He had seen enough.

After sending the golem flying into the sky, he drew back his coscience, returning to the body waiting for him at his base.

He had preparations to make.