Awakening 1 (1/2)
“Golem Animus!”
Nothing became something, awareness flooded in, and suddenly, everything was.
Button eyes wiggled, as they looked around at a cluttered room. A furry neck moved as a cloth-and-fur head twisted, using its newfound ability to look at things. It didn’t enjoy it, not precisely. If you asked it, and somehow gave it the ability to reply, then it could have told you that it didn’t know what joy was. It didn’t know much of anything.
It didn’t know that the hard thing it was sitting on was a wooden shelf. It failed to comprehend that the brown thingies lashed around its limbs that ran down through the holes in the wood were strings binding it in place. It had absolutely no concept of books, which were the things that filled the shelves across the way. It couldn’t tell you that the oddly-shaped thing three slots down from it was a wooden hobby horse, or that the thing two slots down was a stuffed ragdoll, or that the black-and-white shape directly next to it was a taxidermied skunk.
Heck, it didn’t even know it was a toy teddy bear, a very old one as they went.
The other toys looked to it for answers, and it looked back, without the mental capacity to question or the vocal capacity to answer.
“There we go. Four should be a good test batch.”
The teddy bear swiveled its head forward again, to regard the speaker.
Any human who wasn’t currently wearing diapers and had a few years of experience under their belt could have told you that this was an older man. Worn, silver-haired, and haggard, he moved with a slight limp as he paced back in forth in front of the toy shelf. A tailor would have identified the many-pocketed apron and sturdy, patched clothes that he was wearing as artisan’s gear, specifically the garb of a fellow tailor. Scissors of varying shapes, spools of thread, measuring tape, and swatches of leather and fur poked out of the neatly-kept pockets. The man rubbed his neatly-trimmed silver goatee, and considered the now-moving toys with a critical eye.
He pulled a notebook from his pocket, and scribbled in it. The toys craned what necks they had to follow the sounds of the quill.
“Standard reactions for toy golems. Visual tracking, responsive to sound, limited movement… here, none of that.” He reached out as the loop started to slip from the teddy bear’s arm. It was wiggling, and without hands, the bindings were more of a formality. “Feisty one. Superior animation?” He cleared his throat. “Command golem! Be Still!”
The words echoed inside what passed for the teddy bear’s mind. It became still. It could not conceive of any alternative, nor could it want to, even if it had the ability to want in the first place. It could no more go against that command than it could breathe fire or turn itself into marmalade jam.
But at the time it had received the command, the bear happened to be pointing at a window. Something moved beyond… a tree branch, heavy with fruit, beset by birds.
The teddy bear was not the only watcher.
On the windowsill, rapt and staring at the birds with the lust for excitement and an ancestral urge for predation bred into its very soul, was a fat, yellow-eyed, black cat. Its eyes darted back and forth in the reflection of the dusty glass, following the bird movements with a passion and quickness far belying its rotund frame.
“Eye for Detail,” the man murmured. The teddy bear tried to look at him, but couldn’t. Be Still resonated within the core of its very being. It was a golem, and a golem could not go against the words that filled it.
“Yes… Hm. Interesting… two superior qualities, good. Same craftsman? Have to ask Mordecai next time.” More scratching. More notes.
Followed by a sigh. “No point in putting this off. Test seven, four subjects, two exceptional… here we go. Yorgum watch over me.” The man moved past the teddy bear’s vision, tucked away his notebook, and stretched out his hand toward the toys down the shelf. “Greater Golem Upgrade!”
The room pulsed with golden light, and there came a sound like mighty gears turning. The dust motes hanging in the sunlight seemed to pause, pulled together in geometric shapes before dissipating again. The teddy bear watched the cat glance back at the movement… then yawn, because the cat had seen it all before.
The flashy part went on for a bit, then died away to nothing. The man nodded, and mopped sweat from his brow, before turning a bit and repeating himself, with the same arm motions. “Greater Golem Upgrade!”
Again came the lights, and the flashing, and this time the man’s eyes went wide, as his worn face stretched into a smile. “Skill up? Good, good.” He moved out of the teddy bear’s view and wood scraped on wood, then something creaked.
“Getting too old for this.” Liquid splashed against metal.
The cat whipped its head around and made a sort of ‘blart’ noise.
“No, Pulsivar. This isn’t milk, and Celia would kill me if I fed you seventy-proof rum.”
The cat yarped again, until it was certain the man would continue to ignore it.
And after some time, the teddy bear found it could turn its head again. It looked at the man, and the toy didn’t have the words to say that he was sitting in a chair, scribbling notes, and muttering to himself. “Skill’s up to a nice even eight, now. Hopeful there, might finally be able to make it work. If I can get at least one functional subject out of this batch, I can move on to the next stage.”
Seeing nothing that made sense, the teddy bear looked back down the shelf, and saw the dead stuffed skunk looking back at it. But the other two toys, the hobby horse and the doll, were frozen, save for random tremors that rocked them every few seconds.
“Well! On with it, then,” the man rose to his feet again, and the teddy bear watched him walk over, and stretch out his arm once more. But this time he could see the man’s fingers moving on the skunk, tracing glowing symbols on its ratty hide that spread to cover the grisly little toy. “Greater Golem Upgrade!”
The teddy bear watched, as the light flashed again, and the dusty sunlight formed symbols to mirror those glowing on the skunk, watched them sink into the taxidermy as golden light poured forth from its every orifice.
And the skunk fell still.
Then the man’s hand was on the teddy bear’s face, and words thundered forth, filling its being, filling it, blending in and becoming it-
“Greater Golem Upgrade!”
YOU HAVE ACHIEVED A RANK UP
SPECIES JOB IS NOW GREATER TOY GOLEM
ALL ATTRIBUTES +2
YOU HAVE GAINED THE INTELLIGENCE ATTRIBUTE
INTELLIGENCE +2
NEW SPECIES JOB UNLOCKED – BEAR
DO YOU WISH TO ACCEPT THE BEAR JOB AT THIS TIME? Y/N?
-and suddenly the world made a lot more sense.