Leandro, imbuements in full display, his body covered in blue-glowing runes, burst around a corner, kicking at the ground and redirecting himself towards David's location, only to skid to a stop a few paces away, having noticed David's raised hand motioning for him to wait.

  He kept his legs spread, his fists raised, as he surveyed the scene.

  David returned his attention to the golem. “I'm not an imperial scion.” He told it.

  The golem's eye blinked; was it surprised? Could it be surprised? As imposing as its body was, its singular eye hinted at an actual personality. He had never seen anything like it.

  “Sir, I must disagree; the mana signature I am sensing from you very clearly matches my internal database of recognized imperial bloodlines.” It said with its warbled gentleman's voice.

  Leandro quirked an eyebrow at the golem's claim, glancing at David, who met his gaze and shook his head.

  Niala walked up to David, standing behind him and poking her head out to look at the Golem.

  The imposing machine turned its red eye toward the catkin, its pupil rapidly changing in size, before blinking, appearing surprised once more.

  It bent at the waist in Niala's direction. “Oh! Madam! This unit is truly fortunate! To be in the presence of both an imperial scion and a manifested soul!”

  It straightened itself, coming to attention. “This lowly unit is at both of your services!”

  Niala blinked in confusion as David ran a hand down his face, giving the golem an exasperated look. “What even are you? How did you track me down? When I found you in the forest, you were just a moss-covered wreck.”

  “Ah! Pardon me, sir! I am a majordomo unit, model type Curator, second revision, serial number B3-3-782. I have unfortunately no active memory of the encounter you speak of; I believe I might have been in preservation mode, and my automated systems must have detected your unique mana signature, triggering several subroutines to have me seek you out.”

  The golem brought his hand to point at David's pouch. “As for finding your location, my logs show that the same automated systems locked onto the piece of me that was in close proximity to the sought-after mana signature.”

  David furrowed his brow, looking down at his pouch, before remembering how he had picked up a small, bronze-red metal part in the clearing he had found the dormant golem in.

  He looked up, wide-eyed. “Seriously?”

  The golem nodded. “Indeed, Sir. Curator models were meant for the imperial family and nationally important individuals. Appropriately, we were built out of blood metal. To ensure that none of this metal's secrets would fall into unwanted hands, every fleck of it is mana-imprinted and connected to the world-weave, so that they can be tracked down no matter what.” It finished explaining, with a certain amount of pride in its voice.

  David held his jaw as he tried to join the pieces together, when he spotted a few guards who had come back to investigate the relative silence. He turned his head at Ma-Ke-Lo, who had noticed them as well and nodded, moving in their direction and calling for a general stand down, the current crisis having seemingly been resolved.

  The courier then addressed the golem. “To be certain, you have no ill intention towards me or mine?”

  The golem flinched back, its eye wide in indignation. “By the graces, no! Even if by some cruel twist of fate I had any desire to, my programming would not allow me! Sir, I am a Curator. I exist to serve and protect the imperial family! To do anything else would be as asking a man to stop breathing!”

  David slowly nodded, taken aback by the golem's vehement denial. He turned his sight to Leandro, who dipped his head in agreement.

  “Follow me then. We're going to talk this out in a more private locale.”

  “A splendid idea, sir!” The golem jubilantly agreed, before following David, Niala, and Leandro with its rhythmic mechanical gait, its head swivelling around, its eye surveying its surroundings with analytical intensity.

  Back in their living room, they took turns asking questions to the Golem, which answered everything promptly except for Leandro's questions, to which it had invariably asked permission from David before answering.

  From what they could gather, David's mana signature somehow matched the imperial family of something called the Luminous Reign. The golem's answer to whether that meant David's family was a descendant of that imperial family surprised everyone.

  “Oh no, sir. While it is called the imperial family, its members were very rarely related by blood. Rather, anyone who displayed the appropriate mana signature was simply adopted into its fold. It held paupers and nobles alike, and stood above all, with only the Council of Lights occupying higher stations.”

  And the answer to what the specific mana signature meant made everyone's brows furrow.

  “It is simple, sir. Members of the imperial family all display an unfathomable reserve of mana; some were even rumoured to be infinite, although there were never any ways to confirm this, due to the limits of the soul-mana barrier.”

  “And what's the soul-mana barrier?” David had asked.

  The golem locked its eye onto David. “The point at which one's soul erodes from the overuse of mana.”

  David's stomach dropped, while Niala sucked in a breath, gripping and squeezing one of his hands.

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  The golem focused on their intertwined hands before moving its gaze up at David. “Do not overly worry, Sir. The limit has very rarely been breached, even by the more impressively gifted individuals, and you will reportedly feel very sick when you approach the limit, signalling for you to stop.”

  Niala released the breath she'd been holding as David gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her hand back, before returning his attention to the golem.

  And then it spoke once more.

  “Besides, imperial scions are much more likely to fall to mana corruption.”

  Niala gripped his hand once more as he let his head hang. He dragged it back up. “And what is that?”

  The golem blinked in the way David had come to associate with surprise. “Do you not have corrupted ones?” It asked.

  David shook his head. The golem looked at Niala and Leandro in turn, both replying in the negative.

  “Intriguing... Mana corruption, or more correctly, mana polarity inversion syndrome, was the most widespread affliction that marred the Luminous Reign. It is when the mana within someone inverts, going from a flowing source of power to a devouring pit.”

  The golem went silent, as its eye flashed rapidly for a few seconds, before it refocused on David. “My last active records indicate that the affliction was still poorly understood, and that prevention was the most effective method of control as no cure or treatment had yet been devised.”

  David's brows furrowed, afraid to ask his next question. “And what happens when someone's mana corrupts?”

  “Ah, well, the first symptom is a hunger which grows insatiable within a few days, before driving its victim mad. They then manifest the ability to absorb mana foreign to their body, and thus attack any source of it, most usually other living things. At this point, they are referred to as the Corrupted, although the proper term is a magivore.”

  He didn't like where this was going. “And the corrupted, what do they look like?”

  “At first, like normal humanoids, but if they are allowed to feed, they will grow in size, their skin becoming leathery and taut, and their limbs growing longer, especially the arms. They will often display mutations of an offensive nature, and, perhaps most poignant, their eyes will bulge out, the sclera turning a sickly yellow, their irises disappearing, and their pupils becoming pitch-black pinpricks.”

  Leandro and Niala's faces dropped, while David's hardened.

  A Fel. The corrupted were the Fels.

  And the golem had just said David was susceptible to turning into one.

  Their discussions continued late into the day, with the golem's answers eliciting just as many questions.

  David's fears of Fel-ification were somewhat mollified when the golem told him that mana reversal only occurred when someone's mana went “stagnant” for too long. Regular drainage of one's mana pool, as close to exhaustion as possible, was a proven and effective method of preventing mana stagnation. This also explained why scions were more prone to mana reversal, being generally unable to properly “drain” their pool regularly.

  In David's case, he was too young to begin experiencing stagnation, such affliction only showing up later in life, with the youngest cases seen at around 30 years of age.

  So he was on a timer. Great.

  The golem had no long-term solutions to offer him, seeing as it had been dormant for such a long time and had most probably missed quite a bit of the Luminous Reign's history. Most likely, its luminaries had found some way for the scions to inure themselves from mana stagnation. One only had to go look for this knowledge in one of the Reign's repositories.

  As to where these might be, the golem only knew of one, although its directions and landmarks meant nothing to them.

  They resorted to bringing up a map of the region, and attempting to point on it the only landmark they did know of; the underground preserve, with its sun-collecting spires overhead.

  The golem had informed them that this was most assuredly the Living Vault, a collection of most known lifeforms from all possible biomes, collected and preserved in a sealed and controlled environment as both a tourist attraction and insurance for the future, to have a stock of fauna and flora to reintroduce after ecological disasters or widespread diseases.

  From this, the golem was able to point at the most probable location of the repository it knew of; a subterranean complex built into the foot of the Sunspear mountain, the tallest peak among the Sentinels. They figured it was the Reign's name for the Brokenjaw; the mountain range to the north-west of Riverwall, which marked the upper limit of the known Ruinlands.

  This piece of knowledge helped David to find solid ground for his agitated mind. He had a looming and dangerous problem, but now he also had a potential solution.

  His expression hardened, gazing into the distance. Time to start walking toward the solution.

  He jolted when he felt a hand squeeze his. Snapping out of his inner turmoil, he stared at Niala's hand, then up to her.

  She had the same serious face he had, but her focus was on him, her eyes ensnaring his attention, reminding him of something important that he'd forgotten just now.

  He wouldn't be going there alone.

  And suddenly, the world that had begun darkening after the golem's revelation had a warming light return to it, the darkness being nothing more than a distant storm.

  You aren't alone anymore, her eyes told him.

  Thank you, I love you, his eyes answered.

  Her features mellowed, smiling, as she snuggled up to him, laying her head on his shoulder, before turning her sight to the golem and asking a very Niala question.

  “Do you have a name? We've just been calling you golem, but you have a personality and everything, it feels wrong to do that.”

  The golem's eye blinked, focusing on Niala, and then mellowed. “Ah! This lowly unit is not worth such consideration, kind mistress! But no, I never received a name. My last charge simply referred to this unit as Golem, Idiot, or Useless Junk.” It turned its head toward David. “Would the scion wish to assign this unit a name?”

  David cocked an eyebrow. “Me? But she's the one who asked.”

  “Indeed, but you are a scion, and thus above the mistress in sta-”

  “No, stop,” David said, his voice hard.

  The golem went silent, sustaining David's glare with impassivity.

  The courier sighed, realizing his anger had no basis. The machine had simply been programmed this way.

  But, if it followed his orders, maybe he could...?

  “Golem, this is an order. Niala, the person next to me right now, is to be considered my equal in all things.”

  The golem alternated its focus between the two individuals, the red light in its eye zooming in and out.

  “Order received, sir. Mistress Niala is now recognized as your spouse, and thus a scion by alliance.”

  “What? No-wa-” David blurted.

  “Spo-Spouse?! Me!? But it's too soon!” Niala exclaimed, turning red.

  They both stared at each other, like mice that had rounded a corner to find a cat waiting for them.

  Leandro burst out laughing, drawing both of their glares.

  The golem tilted its head.