“ As eons passed, the Intent that begat Form, began taking on the attributes that its creators intended. They were patient, good things were not meant to be rushed. And for them, time was inconsequential, what was a few eons but a fleeting glimpse? First to be birthed from Form were the twins; their essences of their forms were aqua and turquoise. They were alike in many ways, save for a few quirks with which their progenitors could use to tell them apart- Excerpt from The Book of Realms: The Age of Elder Gods, Church of Thea.

For the female guard, watching over a child was supposed to be a simple assignment. It was the easiest thing; to sit down and play nanny instead of running around town in wet weather.

It was a reprieve because the spring rains had intensified. She’d have thought that her charge would be bored sitting in a room with measly toys all alone .Actually, the opposite could never have been more real.

It was the guard who was bored; the job was drudgery. The girl turned out to be the most well-behaved child she’d come across yet her nature was already atypical for one so young.

Like Arthur, the caretaker was worried about the girl’s mental faculties. The question on the guardswoman's was perhaps she was conditioned by whoever had raised her. If that was the case, then it would warrant an investigation into the parent’s behavior.

Initially they’d almost thought her a vampire because she was cold to the touch and didn’t breathe. A millenia and a few centuries later, the stories of night walking, blood-suckers were still enough to send chills down the spines of any full grown adult. They'd checked her then they realized she’d been in the light of day and nothing had happened to her.

As for her condition as a mute; the healer brought in remarked that there was nothing they could do for her—their inspection spells were repeatedly being repulsed by the child's body. They said that perhaps it was a psychological thing. They were wrong.

The child had very high resilience to intrusion by foreign mana even if it was the helpful kind like healing magic. As a result, they feared for her health; she didn’t even go to the loo yet all the food she was given she ate; and eat she did.

The barracks also had a nursery for some guards who were also parents. Sometimes, they were short-handed and had to pull in some of the mothers and fathers on leave.

It was not on account of crime however, but simply, Aldmoor was growing way too fast and they couldn't keep up with the number of patrols. Not that they were complaining, new recruits were due at the end of spring.

Ordinarily, the nursery was full of children. You would have thought that such a child would be amiable to making friends her age but it was not to be. Most of the time, she was isolated, again on account of her inability to speak. And it didn't seem like she knew her letters enough to communicate.

For that reason, the child would be found sitting on a corner, watching the other children play and gallivant around the nursery. Some of the guards assumed that it was just her temperament as a quiet individual.

Elsewhere her minder was counting down the days when she could foist the child on the next person who would want to adopt them; it was a complete turnaround.

They knew little of the reality of the things that went on behind the child’s intelligent eyes; [Host-Mind] was watching, analyzing, assimilating. They had awoken because the change in environment necessitated it.

In the nursery, what the adults saw as an isolated child couldn’t have been further from the truth. [Host-Mind] studied the children seeing that as an opportunity to learn. Even Spirit-Body stopped being such a handful and observed.

It allowed [Host-Mind] to steer [Spirit-Body] towards normal cognitive development even as they continued to patch up the missing parts of her spirit. It was perhaps the only way to let [Spirit-Body] recover and emulate her would be peers.

There, they could watch how their peers related to their surroundings, how they picked up words and the myriad of expressions they used depending on the circumstances. [Host-Mind] cataloged each instance, and logged it into its memory matrices for future analyses. It was learning and adapting.

Its logic and computational matrices made time a non-issue. And while at it, [Host-Mind] also sorted through [Spirit-Body]’s own buffer of memory. There was an instance of concern where [Spirit-Body] had been unable to guard against an onslaught of memories.

It was an anomaly and it had happened from the inside. [Host-Mind] had almost flagged it as an attack and isolated the subject of the occurrence but further checks yielded unintended results.

The architecture of the subject was something it had never thought to encounter and thus, it became a specimen of study.

It was then that [Host-Mind] also acquired access to the subject’s internal contents and parsed all of the storage information. It discarded the non-essential and assimilated the vital parts and its learning was boosted by leaps and bounds.

That said, [Spirit-Body] was also curious about other things. Oftentimes when no one was looking, she would go up to the barracks rooftop and peer from the crenelations to watch the guards doing their drills and sparring.

[Host-Mind], ever the analyst picked apart their fighting styles, just in case they would come in handy one day. [Host-Mind] the pragmatist was not averse to letting Spirit-Body become combat capable; it seemed like the right thing to do

The collective entity of [Host-Mind] and [Spirit-Body], the child sometimes walked around the hallways of the female quarters and barracks that had become her home. There was nothing interesting in there she realized; not like the big house she’d been in briefly.

Somehow, that place called to her; like a tether running from the nape of their neck constantly tugging them to move towards that direction. Naturally, [Host-Mind] was curious as to what that phenomenon meant for them.

As for [Spirit-Body], their interest lay in the three, no four interesting occupants under the same roof too. They really longed to go there but she didn’t know where the place was and therein lay her dilemma; she couldn’t voice her wishes.

At least not yet. Finding a voice had been a long time project that had already been initiated when [Host-Mind] was mapping out the template to hold [Spirit-Body]’s structural integrity.

The child could, however, think about what she wanted to convey; it took a chance meeting with the most unlikely of beings to realize that the one holding her back was herself.

After her previous minder had left her with the Guard she’d been rather surly, a concept which they had no explanation for when on one of her explorations, she passed near a golem on patrol.

She’d almost gotten squashed under the mass of lumbering sentient rock when she collided with it. Except for the scuff marks and a tear on the dress she’d worn that day, she was unharmed. It turned out, she was made of sterner stuff.

//[Startled] Owie…

// [Shocked]By Eog’s great beard! The golem’s ocular crystals flashed and blinked in the way all golems communicated.

The golem’s ocular crystals were of telepsychic nature, etched with old rune craft that supported an equally esoteric complex [Far Speak] matrix. The very same matrix that enabled telecry communication. It was something only an old elven mage who saw the war would know, or something the dwarves would hoard for themselves to command the armies of golems they used for mining in their underground cities.

While humans had the bulk of the golems in their cities, towns and villages, their methods of communication were rudimentary—they could issue directions to the golems. However the responses they got from the domed crystals were at best, informed guesses that had been documented over the entirety of centuries of interaction with the golems .

The only way they learnt to respond to the hulking beings was through the flashing colors and not the underlying telepsychic connection that was virtually undetectable even to mana sense.There was no auto-translating an unspoken language and so much was lost in translation when only visual cues from flashing crystals was all they had to go on.

// [Curious] Who said that?

said the little girl, picking herself up from the floor as her eyes darted around her field of vision. She missed the two pillars standing in front of her mistaking them for part of the building that magically spawned on her path.

// I did…

a voice, deep and not unlike the rumbling of a boulder tumbling down a hill, answered. The child regarded the giant made of rock…the golem. Seeing no one around to chastise her because she wanted to know more, she squinted at the golem.

[ War Golem | Threat Level: High]

She stumbled back. That was the first time she’d gotten a reading from a non-hominid entity that didn’t say unknown. The same skill was also directed towards her however; her magical resistance was too high and as a consequence it failed.

//[Surprised] Ah. That has never happened before

//[Curious] What’s never happened before?

The girl questioned the titan, cocking her head to the side. Now this was interesting and naturally, it got her curious. It was the first time she was talking to someone and that someone could understand them. From a third party’s point of view, you would have seen a girl having a staring contest with a being made of stone.

[Farspeak] did not need one to move their mouths just like [Telepathy]. One could even say that [Farspeak] was a downgrade of the skill, stripped of everything except for the audio component. [Telepathy] could send thoughts and emotions; [Farspeak] sent no emotions; only the tone of voice could be used to gauge such a thing if one were so inclined. It was then that [Host-Mind] took notice of the occurrence and subtly nudged [Spirit-Body] to see what they could gain from the interaction.

// [Astonishment] By Eog’s great beard; you truly do not understand do you? You just used Identify. Tell me—what did it say?

//[Confusion] Mmh, it said War Golem; threat level high. The child replied.

//[Wonder] Use it on yourself; tell me what it says.

//Okay ,the child chirped. [Host-Mind] recalled the instance where the child had executed [Identify] and supplied the matrix to [Spirit-Body]. But one of the matrix vectors was tweaked to reorient the target of the skill to self; the child remembered the feeling of activating the skill and used it on herself.

[ Unknown Progeny | Unknown Class Level 2]

The girl looked to the golem who’d just gotten down on their knee; she barely came up to their shoulder.

//[Curious] It says unknown progeny; unknown class level 2

//[Surprised] Verily, that indeed astonishing, the being made of rock said, surprise showing from the way the tone of their voice sounded.

// I have Identified many beings; yet none have ever hidden from my sight.

// I sense the answer lies within your genesis. Come with me progeny, the golem added as it held out its massive hand for the girl to get onto.

The child looked from the golem to the hand whose three fingers and opposable thumbs resembled articulated bricks like a small animal receiving handouts.

// [Sincere] I will not harm you; I swear on my heart of Ter, progeny, the golem’s crystals flashed in softer hues almost placating. The girl acquiesced and clambered onto the giant hand and the golem rose.

A few guards on duty gawked at the scene of a young girl riding a golem; it had never been done. They simply wrote that off as collective hallucination on account of being exhausted from their jobs and reminded themselves to have a stiff one that evening.

In the room that could be regarded as the golems' maintenance bay; two beings conversed. They were more alike in many ways than they knew; they just hadn’t realized it yet. With the golem hunched over like a little hill while the child sat on its hand, they talked about monsters, the history of the wars the golems fought and their abilities.

//[Realization]You were born from a place of nothingness and you have the masters’ body yet you are not like the masters. What happened after you gained awareness?

//[Conflicted] I think I ate some things. One of them gave me memories and knowledge and some made me feel better—I was empty…I just felt like eating.

// Strange… a consumable artifact that gives memories. Do you have skills?

// Mmh? hummed the girl, not comprehending.

//Identify, the golem paused as its crystals twinkled as if in thought.

//Think of what skills you have.

// Okay… Identify; Skills! As was their wont, [Host-Mind] was faithfully working in the background. Again, they tweaked the target of [Identify] for a deeper dive aimed at other skill matrices.

[Matter Transmutation]

[Affinity Augmentation]

[Arcis Numen Protocol]

[Gestalt]

[Scan]

[Identify]

[Farspeak]

[Mapping]

[Channeling]

And she read them out for the sake of her earthen companion. Her blue, gold flecked orbs gazed at the golem’s dome shaped face to see what it would say next. It seemed to be in thought.

//[Understanding] Of more than half, I have no knowledge of what they do.

// Identify and Farspeak are familiar enough. Have you attempted to use any of the others?

//No... she shook her head

//And you said you took something that gave you memories and knowledge? Mayhap you should make use of them

//[Realization] Mmh, I didn't think of that before. The thing spoke sometimes! I remember...

//Assimilation

//Hmm?

//To Assimilate is to become like, to acquire and to learn.

The child looked at the being of earth and rock. Though they couldn't show it; the slight dimming of its crystals and colors flashed melancholic colors exhibited its pensive state.

//[Confusion]Why are you sad?

//[Realization] We are tools made for war...were tools made for war. Unlike you, there is nothing more for me to learn except that which I already know.

//Oh...

//Yes little one. Your maker; whoever created you saw it fit to give you the ability to learn. If the golem had a face, it would have been smiling for the girl's sake.

// Tell me; do you have a place you want to go?

// Hmm; the big house...with Arthur, pa— she grew sad. The emotion bled through. But she couldn't cry, she didn't know how. Even [Host-Mind] was stumped; at an impasse on how to decipher such a concept; sadness.

// You should go to them

// They left me here...

// Perhaps they had a reason for it

// They said they were going to look for the people who raised me.

// And who raised you?

// I don't know...they don’t even know what I am... nobody raised me,

// Is that so? How peculiar...maybe the place that birthed you may hold the answers.

//…

// Mayhap his house. I would help if I could Progeny but I am compelled by routine to stay around this place. The golem’s crystals twinkled, flashes of light illuminating the girl’s face and bouncing off the walls. Time had passed; it was evening.

// [Unsure] Should I go?

// The question you should ask Progeny, is why do you stay? The golem said, motioning its humongous hand at the drab surroundings.

It was inevitable that the story would spread. A group of guards drinking away the rigors of the day’s work at a bar let slip that there was an unclaimed child that was a golem-whisperer at their place of work.

Even the day after, the guardswoman had to check the nursery to ascertain that they were just the ramblings of colleagues who had one too many drinks. But [Host-Mind] was smart, the child gave her minder an innocent disarming smile as she’d seen when other children were covering up their mischief. [Host-Mind] had been prudent in evaluating all the iterations of facial expressions they had logged in their observations.

However, [Host-Mind] was playing a longer game than that. The pull on that tether had grown stronger and every time, whenever the collective entity that was the child slept, it pulled, beckoning them towards that mansion.[ Host-Mind] had gathered enough information and now that [ Spirit-Body] and their goals were in agreement, it was time.

But first, the child had to learn to speak. [Host-Mind]’s analysis inferred that without communication, they would never accomplish their goals. They looked towards their template; it was complete. Faux-lungs woven from impenetrable aer-attuned silk lay flaccid in the child’s chest cavity.

An inanimate heart, like a small mini reactor pulsed slightly to the left of her breast. And surrounding the replicated pseudo-organs was an invincible impenetrable shield made of reconstituted dungeon core material. Mana conduits from assimilated crystals flared like a neural system.

The essence of the dungeon shard powered it all. The pseudo brain was an amalgamation of the arcane and the technological. It wasn’t required since the dungeon shard was an all-in-one control center and mana well but that was dangerous. Again, for a while, [Host-Mind] would have to go into hibernation to move the consciousness into the new construct residing in a skull made from the same metal that made up the dungeon shard.

But before that, it would serve as a sub-consciousness for the child’s extrasensory and intra-sensory system until [Spirit-Body] acclimated to the new features. It was time to learn how to talk.

Learning speech was harder than it seemed; but it wasn't as impossible as teaching the blind colors. The combined trove of information from the man’s world and this one was a boon however.

With magic and mundane means sound was about to be made. Though the child could not form spell matrices outside of [Spirit-Body], inside themselves was a different matter altogether; [Spirit-Body]’s vessel was mutable to a degree of freedom.

At first, the sound came out in squeaks and grating...like a radio whose modulator was broken—noise. Then came the squeals that were far beyond the frequency of human hearing but it spooked owlcats and hunds within a radius of a few paces. The collective entity known as the child determined that something was wrong and [Host-Mind] accounted for the occurrences.

It took time just to get it right; sometimes the sounds came out muffled because she didn't time her lips movements right. But the moving pictures in her memories taught her; she even learned a new language. Since she barely needed sleep; she'd learnt a lot about her abilities; well some of them. If more answers were to be had, she wouldn’t find them at the Guard’s barracks.

Away from prying eyes, there were trials the next day and then next—and the child finally did it. That was the fifth day; the last day of the grace period. Someone would come and the child’s stay would end. And that's when she chose to break the ice; with one word, one question when they brought her before the guard sergeant.

“Papa?”

“Hmm, you can speak?” Gary Grizzlythorn’s eyebrows almost flew off his face. Meanwhile, their female minder, as was another jobber dealing with her paperwork, was picking their jaws off the floor.

There was an almost mischievous glint in the child’s eyes, her less mature side was almost showing. [Host-Mind] reined in the impulse before the expression could manifest outwardly. Skin made of Celestial quartzite was more than just defensive shielding for [Spirit-Body]. Its fluidity would be manipulated at a microscopic level otherwise, the child’s features would’ve bordered on the uncanny.

The child nodded in response. [Host-Mind] was going to keep up the facade of a quiet child to keep them on the backfoot.

“ Sorry kiddo, the man who brought you hasn't come back yet. I hear he might be busy.”

Of course [Host-Mind] accounted for that scenario and several other deviations. Adults wouldn't just give the child something they wanted just because they wanted it. There were two courses of action; throwing a tantrum which had a very low degree of success. The other option was to run.

[Host-Mind] calculated the latter's odds of success at eight parts in ten. The route was already planned and confirmed to be conducive for the next course of action. In the child’s days trying to learn speech, [Host-Mind] had been busy testing out the limits of the skills. As of then, they were piggybacking on the Guard golem’s psychic link-net. The escape route was already secured. Now to keep up the ruse of a petulant child before the grand exit,

“I want to go…” She said, her expression was sincere and doe-eyed, chosen for the most impact. The sergeant was stunned by her first demand. The child had never made one before; he looked out the window of his office.

It was raining. The [Guard Sergeant] hesitated. His thoughts on the matter were, if the child had had the ability to talk, why did they keep to themselves all that time? He wanted to keep them a day longer so that they could get what her story was.

“Maybe tomorrow... it's too stormy outsi— hey where are you going?”

“Home…” the child yelled. Her carer tried to grab at her—and she ducked under her grasp so fast they were left pawing at air.

“Hey little girl...come back!” they yelled but she’d already ran through the open door. Her pitter patter of little feet in a child's moccasins rang out in the hallway as she sprinted . She wasn't used to moving so fast in her body yet; she skidded around corners.

Then the town guards were chasing her like hunters after a fox kit. [ Host-Mind] plotted the route most likely to be devoid of human traffic. With the golem link-net they’d cast surveillance around the areas they patrolled; it was a valuable tool to see where they were going.

It was supposed to be a function of [Mapping] but there was no time to delve into most of the skills. Instead [Host-Mind] had been examining and dissecting the multi-layered matrix structure of [Farspeak] because it seemed to share the properties of [Mapping] Though [Mapping] worked on the same principle as [Farspeak], its structure was too complex and would need [Host-Mind] to devote resources which it did not have.

Conveniently, the guards were bad at it; catching a little blur of silver hair as it dove between their legs wasn’t something they had trained for. They were used to shoulder charging into toughs on the streets and wrestling thugs to the ground during arrests but for a child? They were leery of hurting her.

Unlike a normal child though, [Host-Mind] knew the vessel could risk the scrapes and bruises. Tucking into rolls and tumbles, it was easy to squeeze in between the many hands that got each other’s way. On the other hand, the golems let her have the right of way almost as if they'd been told beforehand.

Following [Host-Mind]’s prompts, she made it down the stairs, in a battered and dirtied dress. The main door was wide open, a straight shot world of pounding rains towards where the tether called to her. Towards home.

Meanwhile, in the Sturmdrache estate, Arthur was busy with a quandary—he simply didn’t know how to put a limiter on the new engine. He hadn't tested it yet and was rather hesitant to slot in the two canisters containing Aertherite and synthesized Pyrtherite.

Even then, the would-be superyacht was still behind in development; perhaps he was way in over his head. The shipbuilding was too slow for his tastes. There was virtually no automation and everything had to be done with skills and by hand.

Just setting up the airframe had taken him weeks after making the acquisition for materials through the Lalilabs. Another thing that stumped him was where his phone had gone; that and besides two slates of magestone and half a barrel of charged crystals had disappeared overnight.

‘The girl’s appearance; my phone and the telecry’s disappearance. Could she have been a spy all along? She pretended not to talk so that we could buy the lost child persona?’ was one of Arthur’s speculations. ‘

‘No,’ he relaxed, ‘that’s too convoluted; they would have known we’d give them to the Guard. If only I could explain the disappearances.’ He looked towards the tellusphere’s containment box.

‘The tellusphere also looks untampered; that would have drawn attention alright…its right up there on the list of top three things to steal in the lab.’

Elsewhere both Nora and Elena were busy planning for the private party. Part of Wyvern’s Woe would be in attendance because they shared some camaraderie as people who’d survived having the dungeon dropped on top of them. There were three days until the party and it was invite-only. None of the other merchant families were interested where there was no business to be had.

And then the day arrived. While the rest were in the billiard’s room having the party, Arthur, guild master Orhill and Edel Lalilab the [Alchemist] were in the study on the first floor. The guild master posted Nevine as a watch outside the study’s door with an excuse that he was just poring over the library since it was just around the corner. Then the trio went through the false door into the lift.

As the lift rattled down the shaft,

“Arthur; need I say that this was simply ingenious, to have the lab under the ground? Orhill did you know this?” Edel inquired, wonder obvious in his voice.

“Ha-ha,” Orhill guffawed, “I am as surprised as you are Edel. This lad always pulls out surprise after surprise.”

“Ooh? Tell me what did he show you??” Edel asked with slitted eyes.

“Hmm,” the guild master hummed as the lift descended. He looked at the mildew covered walls and felt the humidity rising with the air around them. “I think that is part of what he wants to show us that he brought us down here today.”

The lift came to a stop and their host slid back the doors; then the lights lit up—

“Gentlemen...” Arthur smiled. “Welcome… to my lab.”