While the two silverplume wings moved on their own accord and pointed forward repeatedly, he was, unfortunately, already too lost in his own head to decipher what they were trying to tell him.

  It was absurd and marvelous at once. Plenty of Implement and Armament-Class relics could act on their own—the five-meter golem across the cavern currently trying to murder him was more than proof enough—but a wearable relic at Common grade that insisted upon itself?

  Absolutely ludicrous.

  So that’s what the mana mechanical core was for?

  Since the core is perpetually and technically ‘alive’ as long as it's absorbing any amount of mana from the environment, using it as a side offering gives sentience to whatever relic you obtain?

  And oh, that was an incredible discovery if he’d ever heard of one. He’d never heard of mana mechanical cores being used in garment-type relics, but if it was true and he could replicate it—

  The left wing slapped his cheek.

  He blinked, scowled at the feathered traitor… and finally registered why it’d smacked him. They’d been pointing furiously forward for the past ten seconds, but it wasn’t until the golem had already closed the distance, piston calves hissing, and drew back its knuckles for a punch that he was finally dragged back into reality.

  He jumped back on reflex—and the wings helped. They flapped twice, a quick double-beat that put extra air under him and he went skimming back higher and faster than his legs had any right to manage.

  When he landed clean on a distant boulder, heart hammering, a grin split his face despite himself.

  “Okay,” he breathed. “We’re friends… right?”

  The wings rustled, self-satisfied.

  Point-five mana regeneration an hour as a passive drain was downright robbery for a Common-4 relic, but in this situation, it was the best theft he’d ever allow. The golem quickly trudged towards him and hammered the boulder with a downwards smash again, cracking it like ice, but he kicked off a little bit to the side before flexing his wings, dodging the fist before swerving back to land on its metal fingers.

  Up we go!

  He bounced up the knuckle, to the wrist, then he sprinted up along the forearm. His wings beat in short, awkward bursts to correct his balance. The sensation was strange—like having two more arms he could almost feel—but when he willed them to steady, they steadied. When he told them to flap for extra speed, they flapped—just not too precisely. They couldn’t generate enough power for actual flight, but what they could do was already good enough.

  The golem tried to swat him off with its free hand. He hopped from its shoulder-plate as its arm scythed past, used a wing-beat to twist mid-air, and then swooped around to land on its nape.

  There—just where Orland had promised in his high-blown tales—lay the small seam between impenetrable metal plates.

  Hold me, wings!

  The wings obeyed. Their quills stiffened. He drove them like spears into the narrow plate gaps before hardening them, using them to stabilize himself. The golem reared and bucked, but with both wings stuck inside its back like nails, he rode the jolt, gritting his teeth as the whole world turned into a shaking mess.

  Gotta… get it now!

  As he whipped from left to right, he gritted his teeth and peered through the seam on its nape. Beneath, a spring-like coil pulsed with a bright amber glow: the spinal cord.

  You don’t kill the thrashing ox! You cut the harness!

  So he leveled his prosthetic at the spinal cord through the seam, grinning from ear to ear. He didn’t have a lot of mana left, but he pushed everything he had into his prosthetic, set his jaw, and—

  The windsphere ripped out of his palm uncontrolled, and it hit like a battering ram squeezed through a keyhole. The spinal cord flared, shredded, and the golem’s arms jerked wide and went slack, fingers splaying. A harsh groan rattled through its chest like a bellows tearing, and its next attempt to swat him died in a stuttering whine.

  Shit!

  It can’t move its arms anymore, but the cord’s not completely destroyed!

  The golem panicked the way machines panic: thoughtlessly. With control over its legs still, it staggered and slammed its back into the cave wall. He swore, wrenched his wings deeper to keep his anchor, and unfurled his oreblade before gripping it tight in both hands.

  Shrapnel screeched off stone as the golem’s thrashing tore up half the cavern floor. A sliver of bronze clipped his cheek, slicing a hot sting across his skin.

  “Die already!” he hissed, jamming the blade down at the cord.

  The oreblade struck the cord and skittered, sparks hopping, but it refused entry. He wasn’t strong enough. The golem smashed in another wall, and this time, rocks avalanched loose from the shaft above. He heard them falling before he saw them, but—without him asking—his left wing tore out of the golem and swept up, hardening into a shield over his head.

  The rockfall hammered his wing and broke around him, though the lack of one more stabilizing wing meant his balance was cut in half.

  “You’re still very clever, though!” he told the wing, genuinely impressed, and shoved all his weight behind his oreblade.

  He drove his blade down harder, harder, and with one last shove, the silver split the top of the spinal cord in half.

  The coil gave with a wet, bright bronze pop—and then it went dark.

  Everything inside the golem died at once.

  Its legs forgot themselves and bucked. Its torso pitched forward. Its head, already cracked, smashed into the floor face-first with a horrific clang that rang in his teeth. He held on through the fall, rode the slide, and then there was only stillness as the five-meter brute sprawled like a fallen statue in the center of the cave.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He stayed where he was for a moment, half-kneeling, oreblade buried where its neck ought to be. His lungs scraped for breath, and he coughed once before he let himself laugh.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered. “Now let’s see Orland take down a golem on day… five or six or seven of his seeker’s journey.”

  Both of his wings crept forward like nosy snakes until their feathered tips could ‘stare’ at his face.

  He blinked at them.

  They tilted their tips back, expectant.

  “... Oh, alright.”

  He let go of his oreblade, sat down on the golem’s head, and stroked his wings like they were housecats.

  “Good job,” he said. The feathers immediately bristled in something very close to pleased preening.

  I could get used to this cursed effect.

  Why is this considered ‘cursed’, anyways?

  If it weren’t for him catching two pairs of familiar footfalls heading his way from outside the cave, he would’ve kept stroking his wings. Alas, he could only groan as he snapped his head up, cursing under his breath.

  “Chisel me blind,” he mumbled. “Why the fuck are you coming back here?”

  Then he looked frantically around the cave. The last thing he needed was the ladies seeing his prosthetic, so he ripped it off his shoulder, tossed it behind a tumble of boulders nearby, and hissed back at his wingcloak. “Play dead.”

  His wings went limp at once, falling behind him in docile folds, and then he made himself as relaxed as possible as Anisa and Yasmin burst into the cave.

  The lanterns at their hips were turned down low, but they were bright enough to paint their faces: Anisa flushed and panting, hair sticking to her forehead and crossbow clutched white-knuckled, while Yasmin—with her swordstaff in hand—scanned the cave everywhere all at once like a trained hawk.

  They stopped as one.

  Then both their heads tilted up at him, and their expressions—at least for a precious heartbeat—were a perfect mirror: shock tripping into awe, awe tripping into bewilderment.

  He lifted one hand and gave them a small, lazy wave from his throne of dented bronze.

  “Evening,” he said, forcing casualness into his voice. “I thought I told you two to run, but now that you’re here anyways, help me harvest some of this golem’s parts.”

  He levered himself off the golem’s head with a tired grunt and slid down to its dented chestplate. The thing felt even bigger up close, and every metal plate hummed with a faint residue of mana that prickled his skin.

  The whole thing’s a giant relic, anyways.

  So he braced a boot against a ridge, dug his oreblade under a loosened plate, and wrenched until the rivets squealed. Bronze gave with a protesting snap—

  “Who are you, Dain Sorowyn?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Yasmin stood between him and Anisa as if expecting the golem to stand up again, but looking at how sharp her amber eyes were, one could easily mistake her animosity as being directed towards him instead.

  … Wait.

  Anisa still looked stunned—lips parted, eyes bright as moonstones—but Yasmin’s glare was fixed on him instead.

  “You didn’t have that cloak before,” Yasmin said slowly. “Nor did you have the… ability to defeat a Molkhara golem.”

  He turned away, jammed his oreblade under the next plate, and popped it free. “Told you I had experience with silverplume owls,” he said casually. “Their feathers make for good offerings. I kept the wingcloak tucked in my satchel because I didn’t fancy prancing around town looking like a silver peacock.”

  “And experience with golems?” Yasmin’s eyes narrowed. “Does a ‘relic merchant’ simply know how to break the spine of a golem?”

  “Carpentry keeps a man fit,” he said, shrugging. “And I am a bit obsessed with relics. Patterns are patterns. You stare at enough plates and pins and magical leylines not worth a damn, and you’ll figure out where to stick the knife, too.”

  “Is there anything else you’re hiding, then? Maybe—”

  “Oh, sure,” he snapped, glancing over his shoulder again. “You wanna trade secrets? You want me to keep pressing who you two really are and what you really want with Corvalenne? Because I can. Or we can enjoy the miracle of not being dead, go back to camp, and return to town next morning with ten owl heads. You decide.”

  Yasmin’s jaw worked, teeth gritted tight. Her silence was heavier than her words had been. She wasn’t satisfied with his deflection—obviously—but Dain had neither the time nor the patience to peel through her suspicion.

  He straightened, dusted bronze dust off his palm, and forced his tone back into something brisk.

  “Help me strip this heap already,” he said, waving Anisa over. “Mana mechanical core first, then its four eyes, and then… I want five metal plates we can actually carry back to town. Those parts hold the most mana. The rest we can leave here for the Guild once we report the golems.”

  Anisa slipped past Yasmin with a little nod. “Very well. Show me how.”

  So they set to it. Bronze echoed under their tools, and the cavern filled with the clang of pried plates and the crack of loosened rivets. For long stretches, they worked in silence, but here and there, Dain would cut through it with a little tidbit.

  “Don’t just pick random plates,” he said, glancing over at the plate Anisa was struggling with. “When you’re harvesting materials from a carcass, make sure to focus and sense where the mana’s densest. Typically speaking, the denser the mana, the more valuable the material when it comes to offering, so be careful when you cut those parts out. You don’t wanna disturb the mana by damaging the parts.”

  The rhythm of proper carcass dismantling settled in. Ten minutes passed; twenty minutes passed; half an hour later, they had the mana mechanical core ripped out, the eyes stuffed in Dain’s satchel, and four metal plates sitting on the ground.

  As they worked on the final metal plate, Anisa glanced around the cavern.

  “A golem hideout,” she murmured. “I can hardly believe it. They must be remnants from the war—Molkhara’s legions sent across the sea to harry Auraline and Obric both. When the recall order came, they must have been trapped here, dormant… until the owls woke them?”

  Dain shrugged. “Could be. Relics are weird. That’s the one thing I know best.”

  But Anisa’s frown only deepened. “It is strange, though. Molkhara golems never move in groups less than three in number. Each golem in a group serves a specific function. One is typically animal-shaped, which is built for rugged terrain traversal and carrying repair supplies on its back. The second is typically humanoid-shaped, which has fine and dextrous fingers so it can carry out field repairs on the other two golems.”

  “And the last?”

  “The last golem can look like anything, but it is typically the leader of the group, and that golem alone is built for battle.”

  Dain paused as he yanked out his final metal plate. His gaze slid from the hound-golem slumped against the wall, and then to the humanoid-golem he was still standing on.

  The hound-golem’s built for carrying supplies, and this one’s built for maintenance.

  So it almost killed all of us in its damaged state, and it wasn’t even built for battle?

  Anisa’s lips curved into a careful, nervous smile. “Perhaps that third one was destroyed somewhere along the way. Who can say? In any case, are we finished here?”

  Dain studied her for a beat, then nodded. “Fair enough. We’ve only got nine owl heads, though, so we still need one more. We’ll hunt it quickly and then head back to camp.”

  They gathered their bundles and started towards the mouth of the cave, but Dain alone lingered behind, waving the ladies ahead. “Go look for the owls first. I think I dropped something, so I’ll follow you later.”

  Yasmin’s eyes narrowed, suspicion burning brighter than ever, but Anisa’s hand on her shoulder smoothed her tension.

  Once the ladies’ lanterns dwindled to embers in the distance, he waited a few more seconds—just to confirm they weren’t going to turn around—before circling around the cave to look for his Altar and prosthetic. He found both within a minute, wrapped them back up, and straightened slowly.

  His gaze tipped up.

  The shaft in the ceiling letting moonlight spill in didn’t look natural at all. It was almost as if something massive had torn its way through—or forced its way out.

  His gut gave a slow, uneasy twist. He knew a bad feeling when he felt it, but… what could he do about it now?

  He had another mechanical core, a bunch of mana-infused plates, and four golem eyes humming with faint mana. Core and eyes aside, he already knew what he wanted to do with the metal plates, so he should just be happy with his unexpected haul, get back to town safely, and not think too much about the third golem.

  … It’s dead somewhere, right?