There was a lot to take in.

  I stepped through the DOOR from the relative peace of the square beneath the Tower. I stepped into a tempest of the senses. Initially there was nothing but blinding white and cascading greys. It took me a moment to realize that smoke was billowing over me, hiding the world behind its curtains. My throat didn’t constrict and choke as a mortal throat would, my eyes did not sting. But I could scent it. I could discern it.

  As I strode forward out of the smoke, I used SIGHT to penetrate the masking clouds. I had a glimpse of Castle Bloodsword. Or the frames that would have been Castle Bloodsword. The scaffolds were ablaze. Every combustible component of the building site was burning. The first courses of the walls that had been set were in ruin, smashed and toppled.

  I was scanning, looking for the source of the devastation, seeking Harold, seeking the attackers, when the blow took me from the side.

  I was a Griidlord. By this point a truly powerful Griidlord. The impact to my side, coming through the veil of billowing smoke, shocked the air from my lungs and sent me reeling, hurtling across the scene. I hit a stack of stone blocks, striking it hard. Heavy stones were jostled loose, others cracked. I wheezed in surprised pain.

  I found my feet immediately and spun to face the attacker. Through the smoke it came, its skin grey and hard to distinguish from the screen around it. It came, hulking, towering, huge and familiar.

  A Golem.

  The skin crackled with energy and the titanic arm swung for me again. I skipped back, parrying with CUT, letting the kinetic energy that ran from the blow and through my weapon carry me further back.

  It had taken Olaf and I combined to defeat this creature before. Even then it had been a close fight.

  But that had also been ten levels ago.

  An anxiety had clung to me from the moment Austin had spoken. The anxiety had followed me through the DOOR, clinging to me like slime. It had pushed me forward, made me less aware, allowed the first blow to land. My thoughts had been of Harold, here without me to face whatever demon had descended on the site.

  The anxiety transformed as the Golem trudged towards me again. It crystallized in my heart, becoming something pointed and jagged. Something I could aim.

  The arm crackled with energy and swung for me again. I surged to meet it, CUT blazing with the deific power. My blade met the descending arm and the world exploded. I was sent hurtling away, skipping and twisting as my feet dragged on the ground, tearing furrows in the earth. The Golem staggered back, its arm flailing.

  There was a moment of pause. The expressionless face stared at me, as though seeing me for the first time. The head tilted slightly, an oddly human gesture, considering. I hadn’t hurt it, but I’d matched it head on. We both knew what would happen when I took reign of my emotions.

  Still it came. Trudging and wordless, the only noises the sounds of its titanic footfalls, set against the canvas of the crackling flames and rushing air.

  I roared and charged again.

  Again the arm glowed and fell. I leapt aside and passed it. The kinetic explosion as the arm impacted the ground pulsed out, driving me back. When last we’d met those impacts set me flying. It still shook me, still sent me skidding, but I kept my proximity. I lashed out like a snake in the moment after the offensive energies dissipated, carving a terrible wound in the grey flesh of its tree-trunk thick leg.

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  It spun and slashed again. I cursed, wishing I still had DOOR to use, wishing I could step through it and be on top of the thing in its moment of weakness. Instead I rolled, BEAM lashing from my blade and scoring its skin. BEAM didn’t tear its surface as CUT had, but there were ugly divots in its wake.

  I rolled free of the smoke and saw more of my surroundings. Bodies scattered everywhere. Many of the corpses, the remains of the workers, were badly mangled. A hand here, a leg there, lying in lonesome pools of blood. But some were intact. Intact and crushed by stones or squashed by Golem’s fists.

  Austin had been right to flee.

  My heart pounded. I needed to face the Golem, but my mind was distracted, my eyes seeking Harold’s body amongst this wreckage of human flesh.

  I pulsed SHIELD and dove as the next blow came. I avoided contact, but the explosion of the fist striking the ground so close to me made SHIELD flicker. The forces of the explosion felt like they would shred my armor from me. I was tossed in the air, tumbling, but finding the ground with my feet instead of my head. I planted, driving from the balls of my feet, swinging CUT and roaring.

  I hit it just before its refractory period had expired, the tip of my sword carving deep and shredding the surface of the chest. Black liquids spilled to the earth and the creature sagged.

  I wasn’t yet asking where it had come from, why it had come here. Was it drawing me out? This was an agent of F’ael, an entity within the Oracle, like Enki. F’ael was set on my destruction, on foiling Enki by ending me. Had F’ael known I could be drawn here? Did it think it could defeat me with a single Golem? Enki had said that F’ael was smart. That F’ael plotted and marshalled its resources. Why would it throw one away like this when I had grown so strong?

  The battle lasted ten more minutes. I was never in real danger. But it was a slow process, timing the blows, waiting my opportunities. Death by score of cuts.

  In the end the Golem fell to its knees, practically offering me its head. It dripped with black liquid, its body a stagehow of smarks and foul-smelling smoke. Its head dipped as its giant knees crushed the earth and I slit it in two like a melon.

  After that it collapsed, twitching and spasming, but very much beyond being a concern to me.

  I wasted no time in seeking Harold. When I confirmed his body was not among the murdered workmen I began to consider a very real and worrying possibility. What if he had been taken?

  Could F’ael have used another Golem, or some other agent in its control, to seize the old man? How would I respond if he was taken hostage? He was the only part of my childhood that I loved. He had been the only source of care and affection I had truly known for the greatest part of my life. What would I give up for him? Could F’ael use his life as a bargaining chip that would lead to my own defeat?

  Even as I rushed from the building site to the wooden longhouse I knew, sadly enough, that it wouldn’t be so. I had a city to live for. Racquel. My new and consuming purpose. No. I would find a way to snatch him back from the claws of this entity I had never met.

  The longhouse was a wreck. It was still upright, but the wall facing me had been almost completely ripped away, the roof sagged over the gaping hole and flames licked at the edges of the building.

  I dove into the opening, my last gasp.

  And there he was.

  Lying on his back, the interior of the longhouse filling with smoke.

  I froze, chilled for a moment in the certainty that he was slain. I could see blood. His old body seemed so frail and small in that instant.

  Then a choking cough wracked him, shaking his body, and I rushed to him.

  I lifted him wordlessly. With the strength of the suit I could have lifted a cow, but still I could sense just how light and frail he had become. When had that happened? Had I burdened him too much with the weight of my business, with the project of the castle?

  Outside in the light of day, the air clean and breathable, I lay him gently on the ground.

  “Harold, what happened?”

  His eyes raked the air, nearly blind, red and weeping from the smoke. His skin was deathly pale. I looked down at my arms, the arms that had carried them and they were painted completely in his blood. A new shout rose from me, this one broken with fear, “Harold? HAROLD!”

  I shook him, maybe harder than I should have, desperate to provoke some movement, some recognition. He groaned, his head lolling to the side. My arms were so wet with his blood. The ground beneath was growing wet, saturated.

  His eyes seemed to settle on me. I couldn’t tell for sure if he saw me. I thought maybe he was blind. But I desperately hoped he saw me.

  He coughed. It might have been supposed to be words. It might have been a spasm as his heart beat its last.

  A moment later he was dead.

  Harold was dead.