The creation nodded its head in affirmation.

  The simple motion sent the woman reeling. She yelped in alarm, jumping back as if a ghost had sprung from the shadows, and her mixing ladle clattered to the ground.

  The creation tilted its head, puzzled. The woman asked it a question, but then its response was considered anomalous and concerning. The creation categorized this woman as lacking a proper understanding of causal reaction and thus mentally lowered her assumed threat level.

  The old woman pressed a hand to her chest, her breaths coming in short gasps. "You nearly gave me a heart attack!" she muttered, glaring at the creation. Her reprimand was cut short by a loud, ominous bubbling from the giant cauldron.

  Her face fell. "Oh, no."

  In a frenzy, she dove for the fallen ladle, but it was too late. The cauldron shuddered violently before its bottom burst open with a deafening pop. Thick, steaming liquid oozed out in viscous waves, flooding the floor. Scalding steam filled the hut, curling through the air and hissing in their ears like a swarm of furious serpents.

  The woman shrieked and bounded backward with surprising agility, which the creation silently noted as impressive. She darted toward a shelf of precariously stacked elixirs in a flurry of panicked movements. Her hands trembled as she grabbed one, uncorked it with her teeth, and hurled its contents into the spreading sludge.

  The reaction was immediate. The thick concoction thinned and turned into clear water, scattering harmlessly across the floor. But the damage had already been done. Half the hut was in ruins—its walls pockmarked with dissolved patches, the drying racks wrinkled with steam. The other half was either submerged in water or at least drenched in it. Her favourite cauldron, as well, lay in tatters, warped and broken.

  The woman stood in the middle of the chaos, clutching her head. "Well, that's just fantastic," she groaned, surveying the soggy wreckage of her home.

  The creation mentally adjusted her threat level downward a few more notches.

  The woman sighed, brushing sweaty hands against her raggedy clothes as she turned back to the earthen anomaly, "Your creator wouldn't happen to have given you a collateral budget, would they?"

  The creation stared, unblinking. It had no knowledge of what a "budget" was, and therefore, it did not respond.

  Taking the silence as an answer in itself, the woman pinched the bridge of her nose. "Of course not," she muttered, more to herself than anyone else. She shook her head as though trying to shake off the earlier fiasco, straightened her posture, and forced a strained smile.

  "Right. Moving on," she said with exaggerated cheerfulness as if the ruined half of her hut didn't exist. "Do you know where your creator is?"

  The creation did know the answer to this question and nodded its head to affirm.

  She stared at it, her expression blank but expectant, as if waiting for something more. The silence stretched between them, the faint dripping of water from the ruined hut the only sound. The woman finally gave in and spoke again. "Well, where are they?"

  The creation remained still, its head tilted slightly as it pondered the woman's question. Deep within its core, it debated whether this stranger could be trusted with the master's location. The thought circled in its mind like a slow-moving current, weighed down by an instinctive protectiveness.

  The answer was clear. If this woman was to help the master, she would need to know where the master was. After a moment of deliberation, the creation ceded, deciding it would tell her.

  The red-streaked stone of the creation's chest began to shift and twist with a deep, grinding sound as the boulders scraped against one another. The motion was abrupt, forcing the woman to stumble back a step, her eyes narrowing with caution. Despite her apprehension, curiosity kept her rooted, eager to see what the construct was doing.

  Cracks spidered along the center of the creation's chest, the stones slowly peeling apart. As the gap widened, a wretched stench spilled into the room, thick and suffocating, carrying the unmistakable reek of decay. The woman gagged, pulling her shirt up to cover her nose, her face twisting in disgust.

  Finally, the stones parted entirely, revealing the grotesque contents within: the curled, compressed corpse of a pale old man, his frail body twisted into the fetal position. His skin was waxy and taut, his eyes sunken and closed, and the darkened stains of death marred his form.

  The woman let out a shriek of pure horror, stumbling backward and splashing into the cold, puddly floor. A surge of nausea welled up in her stomach, and she slapped a second hand atop the first that already bundled her clothes as if that would somehow be more helpful. With a strained gulp, she managed to swallow it back down, her face pale and clammy.

  Her wide, disbelieving eyes darted to the grotesque sight within the creation's chest. "Oh—oh goodness! What is that?!" she cried, her voice high-pitched and trembling with panic.

  She remained frozen on the floor, her back pressed against the legs of an overturned stool. The room seemed to close in around her as her shock took root, the air heavy with the putrid stench of rot.

  The creation stood motionless, an unyielding sentinel amid the chaos of the woman's hysteria. It observed her with the same steady patience it used to assess its surroundings, waiting for the right moment to respond. When it was certain she would remain frozen in place—or at least confined to gagging on the floor—it finally spoke.

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  The sound that emerged was an odd, discordant whistle, as if the air was being forced through warped tubes and hollow chambers. The words carried an unnatural resonance, mechanical and hauntingly melodic. "Master is sick,"

  The woman had been bombarded with so many stimuli so close in succession that the fact that the anomaly was capable of speech the entire time hardly even registered. Her gaze darted back to the grotesque sight within the creation's chest, her mind latching onto the most immediate and glaring problem. Without thinking, she blurted out, her voice shrill and cracking with panic, "Your master is dead!"

  The creation attempted to crane its neck downward, its stone body creaking and shifting with unnatural rigidity as it tried to peer at the corpse within its chest. The motion was slow and deliberate, each movement a reminder of the rigid, inhuman form it occupied.

  Once it had scanned the still, pale body of its master, it turned its attention back to the woman, its gaze unwavering. "…Very sick,"

  The woman fumbled for stability, her hands bracing against a nearby table as she unsteadily pushed herself to her feet. Her knees wobbled, but she managed to steady herself, her breath coming in shallow, erratic gasps.

  Once the initial shock of the revelation faded, it made way for an even greater fascination with the unbelievable construct that had visited her. She eyed the creation with growing awe. Its creator was dead, yet somehow, it continued to function, meaning it was entirely self-sustaining.

  With a sigh, she wiped her brow, a strange mixture of regret and wonder in her eyes. "I'm sorry, friend, but I'm just a vvitchenbreiver. I can brew potions that cure illness, mend wounds... but death," she hesitated, searching for the right words, "death is a 'sickness' a little above my capabilities."

  The red-streaked stones at the center of the creation's body shifted and twisted, grinding together with a low, unsettling sound as its chest slowly closed, concealing the pale form of its master once more.

  "I understand," the creation intoned, its voice hollow and distant as if the words were more a mechanical response than an emotional one.

  Without another glance at the woman, the creation turned toward the exit, its movements deliberate, still carrying the pebble protectively in its hands. It stepped outside and left the woman alone in her cluttered, half-destroyed hut with nothing but the remnants of her astonishment.

  The woman stood frozen in the middle of her cluttered room as she struggled to process the insanity of the past few minutes. Her mind raced, struggling to grasp the enormity of what had just transpired—an animated construct, a dead master… a lost home. She was barely able to keep her thoughts from totally spiralling.

  Then, with a sharp intake of breath, she snapped back to reality. Her heart quickened, and her thoughts cleared—this was no time for hesitation. The creation, the earthen anomaly made of therra, was a treasure trove for research, a marvel that could redefine everything she knew about magic and the world.

  Without another moment's hesitation, she bolted for the door, her bare feet hitting the cold mud. There was no way she could let this wonder slip through her fingers. She needed to study it—unravel its secrets.

  The earthen anomaly had already made its way far down the forest path, its heavy steps echoing with every measured movement. Despite its leisurely pace, the sheer size of its legs made each stride cover distance rapidly.

  The woman, her feet stumbling over uneven ground, pushed herself to run faster, her breath ragged in her chest. She waved her arms frantically, her voice rising in desperation. "Wait! Wait!"

  Her shouts seemed to hang in the air, swallowed by the distance between them, as the creation continued on, its purpose unyielding.

  The earthen anomaly continued its steady march, unbothered by the woman's calls, its pace unwavering. It only came to a halt when the woman, breathless and determined, caught hold of its wrist, tugging against its natural momentum. The creation turned to face her, waiting patiently for her to explain what she was doing.

  The woman started her explanation by bending forward, hands planted on her knees, gasping for air as she struggled to catch her breath. Her face was flushed and she expunged an exorbitant amount of water from the pores of her skin. The creation observed her carefully, its mechanical gaze unwavering. Perhaps this was some form of communication, something the creation had not yet been programmed to understand.

  The creation instinctively raised its arms, pulling the pebble as far from the woman as possible. It couldn't afford to be careless—anyone might try to snatch the precious stone without warning. The anomaly's vigilance was unwavering, its protective instinct overriding any concern for the woman's strange display.

  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 normally, if not a little too breathy. "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 on the woman with renewed interest. "Will skilled people make master not sick?"

  The woman rubbed her neck, shifting her weight from foot to foot. The creation recognized the motion—it mirrored what it sometimes did when it struggled to convey information to 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 full-on creation. 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 and 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's just a myth. Look, I am your best chance at getting your master back, it's not like someone else will just spawn 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.