Nikalia was deeply asleep when Taramo woke in the morning with Mask sticking it's head out the door and taking the bowl of porridge with raspberries through a small hole in the webs across the doorframe.

  Ariwyn wanted to rest for the whole day and insisted that Taramo not try to get himself killed if at all possible. Gerolf insisted that he had to work with his father to learn the logistics and planning necessary to run a city.

  With no important task to complete Taramo decided to see what he could make of animating creations using the text that Nikalia had shared.

  'An Introduction to Golemancy' was a simple enough text that went over the basics necessary to make golems as well as some edge cases that could interfere with function. When enchantments move relative to each other in the same creation there can be explosively destructive results if the different enchantments match up poorly.

  So he would find out exactly how many of these edge cases were actually dangerous. He told the guards on duty that he would be going out for a bit and would return in a few hours and it might get noisy.

  He took all his wisps, Spot and the three nameless butterflies, a few blocks away to a small circular plaza with a nice statue of a soldier holding a sword aloft while he stood on a vaguely reptilian monster he slew. It turned out to be a fountain as Taramo ripped the statue out of it's place so he could move it outside of the incoming blast zone. A shopfront down one of the six streets leading to the plaza had a barn door that could contain it so he shunted it there, including the base of the statue that had all the parts necessary to pump the water.

  The first golems he made were out of wood from some discarded furniture and crates that were down an alleyway. He made the 'starter golem' that could walk, salute, and had no proper hands.

  Golemancy was something Taramo didn't get into much since having a wisp possess something gave you all the benefits of the golem with very few of the downsides, but the modern golem seems to have some innovations. And it would help to understand Niki's passion on some deeper level. Even a useless magic practice could be helpful at the highest levels. He imagined having a mass produced army of golems under the command of Spot being able to act in perfect unison. He might want to try that out.

  The 'starter golem' was simple when you were able to bypass the spoken spells that had to be used while painting the instructional glyphs, each requiring a single continuous line or else the whole thing would be useless. Using heat to brand the glyphs was mostly effective despite needing an extra ward to dampen the immediate immolation that came upon the golems. Two were burnt and exploded through thermal shock when his cooling ward froze the outside while the inside was still burning.

  He preemptively set up the protection wards now.

  He'd managed to get a golem that could last a whole five minutes before exploding, which he counted as a win. Work fast and break things as long as he didn't have to pay too much for materials.

  Deciding that he should be skilled enough to test the edge cases now he also decided to dig a pit so the damage to the buildings would be minimized. It's not like anyone was living in them, he'd checked, but if they weren't burnt and collapsed he'd get more materials out of them.

  So he dug a pit, finding that the sewers were a bit deeper than he'd thought. There would be room for three stories of basements if this was the norm across the city. He set Spot and company to disassemble the paving stone wards so he could build a wall to hide behind.

  The first big mistake that could be made by a golemancer whose golems didn't explode just by existing was to have functional glyphs that would pair themselves on one moving part and another. They would fuse the two together like extreme powered magnets and make the result as useful as a statue.

  His first test of that was a little twig-golem in the shape of an ant that could walk only with the tiniest steps, if the legs moved the tiniest bit beyond thirty degrees from the position it started in the leg segment would be fused to the other segment or the body. Siphoning power from the leg would make it be able to move again, but it would need to be re-glyphed, impossible with the small twig.

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  Taramo let them burn in the pit while he worked on making an example of the big problem of golemancy, That using attacking and defensive spells on the same golem interfered with each other.

  A defensive ward mixed with an attacking ward would either have one win out or both be voided. The text made some examples of 'keys' that could be integrated in the spell so that the wards would ignore the attack but even it mentioned that a keen attacker could use this to make their attacks bypass the wards, making a lot of effort useless.

  Without the unhelpful keying system Taramo found a method to have the protective ward automatically fire the flamethrower spell he was using to test, setting the golem on fire even before it was expected to. Because of this he tested some little golem-grenades that would, when they land, set up a protective ward and burn everything in the area to ash. The ward made sure that those inside couldn't get out, so it might pair well with paralysis if he wasn't intent on destroying the enemy utterly.

  Another failed test was to have the shield turn off before the spell was fired. It wasn't a failure in that it wouldn't work, but that with the time it took to send off the attacking spell so the wards didn't pick it up gave someone a full second and a quarter to send their own attack before the golem could begin their own volley.

  The only two viable methods that Taramo found were to have a telescopic arm that would project a full eight feet away from the ward before setting the attack off, or having the attacking ward be used in a projectile that would have it's own little schema for deciding when to attack. Like having the golem throw a tiny golem to send off the attack. That would be a good use for his temporarily uncharcoaled golems.

  After that Taramo decided to make little groups of golems and have them fight with the wierd methods that he was practicing, being aware of and intentionally ignoring the Silver Chain spy who was horrified looking at his practice. If they tried anything he'd let Spot eat them.

  When he got back Nikalia was awake and willing to talk about her beloved craft.

  When she'd started she had made her own two golems just to speak the spells and perfectly write the glyphs, having a felt-tipped paintbrush that could extrude the paint as needed. As long as you gave them the right glyphs and the accompanying spell wording it was perfect, though you couldn't speak while it worked.

  Having the wards fuse was less of an issue for Niki since she used different materials and if the wards on the cloth that adorned her marionette adhered together they would still act in a similar manner to two spells separately.

  She also posited that when making something animated having the creation mirror biology more made the need for glyphs much lower so they could be properly spaced. That made Iron able to work much easier since he had a working exoskeleton and muscle system. She even had ant-sized spider golems to attach the muscles in the body and do necessary repairs.

  For the problem of keying glyphs Nikalia had made all the different wards on Iron have a central connection that would generate a new key every two minutes, as well as a decrypter that was connected to the warding to attempt to decypher the encryption key.

  For all her attention to detail she hadn't competed against other golemancers for four hundred years, meaning it was possible that there were other innovations that would go far past what she was capable of.

  They had managed to talk so long and Niki (her new nickname was very popular) that noon had turned to afternoon and evening and the chef Carina had brought soup for the both of them. She'd also asked when Taramo would get the time to start teaching her, which got Nikalia's attention and made Carina flee with her knees knocking.

  "I'd like to join when you have magic classes." Niki said, "It would help for me to round out my skills. I would like to be at least as good as you."

  "It'll take a thousand years, but you'll still be catching up." and he noisily slurped his soup, burning his tongue for good measure.

  The scout had hidden in the corner of the building until dark. He thought that the wraith that madman had tamed had seen him but he wasn't dead, unless the thing was waiting outside. He'd have to get back to the fort soon.

  That man was mad and very powerful. That he would waste so much mana to play around with golems, one of the harder disciplines, and breaking all of them just so no-one would be able to see what he was tinkering with.

  As well as testing his shields with an actual threat to his life. Once he had decided that the Silver Chain was a problem then he'd probably burn his lifeforce and become a lich to get the power to blast the whole fort apart. Or maybe he knows how to burn the soul out of people's bodies since he can destroy the god's system of growth and protection.

  They'd have to kill him as soon as they were able, or else he'd take the city and destroy everything in it. They just need to find where he's hiding most of the time, the beetles have to be more sensible than to let him in their midst.

  The scout finally left, once night had truly fallen, and ran back like a whipped dog.

  Out of sight the other half of a wisp of a dog followed. The men with extra stuff on their souls were the tastiest and he'd need to find where they live so master can deal with them. Master doesn't like souls so he, the great Spot, can have his fill.

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