Teo was hastily slurping up the thick chowder that had thankfully survived the stormy entrance of his new companion. Opposite him, on the other side of the large bed, sat the Golem, Goliath. Between eating the soup and eagerly biting into the small loaf of bread, Teo also managed to vocalize his thoughts somehow, most of which could even be understood.
"So, let me get that straight, you are a Golem from the Royal Golem Series, crafted by the legendary High Magus Anathor Derilion?"
"Yes, that is correct. I was originally tasked to oversee his third grandson and tend to his daily needs," Goliath hummed in his melodic voice.
"And there are others like you?" asked Teo carefully, wanting to confirm his conjecture.
"Of course! Hundreds!" Goliath stated that like common knowledge, but Teo almost spewed his soup onto the Golem's brick-face, barely suppressing the urge and resolved it with a few coughs.
After a few moments to catch his breath, Teo continued his round of questioning, "So, who is this Magus you were talking about? He must be very powerful if he could create somethi–... I mean, someone, like you."
"High Magus Anathor Derilion! You don't know him?" Goliath was audibly shocked by Teo's ignorance, his voice taking on a tinny property; the boy could only shake his head in denial though.
"He's a High Magus! The God of Arcane! The Master of Mana! He went head to head with the gods themselves! Every peasant child knows about his great accomplishments and has heard the stories about him..." The intelligent construct slowly caught on to the sheer stupor on the boy's face and began to settle down. His new master had not the slightest idea of what he was talking about. What was going on here?
"Ehh, also... what is a peasant?" Teo sheepishly asked. He had to be excused for his lack of understanding; the Council had removed the very concept of nobility from the Continent after the meteoric rise of the Magic Association around 150 years ago, and history lessons rarely covered the dark side of the system.
"Oh! Great God of Magic above; this is worse than I thought! What have I gotten myself into?!" If a Golem had any tears to cry, the room would have been flooded by now. Instead, Goliath collapsed into a pile of glowing rubble, emitting vague sobbing and grinding noises.
Not only had he been activated by a child, apparently he was even transported into another world! No one had heard of his creator, and apparently, the child in front of him lacked any shred of common knowledge...
But, maybe... maybe he was just joking around! Or he was just plain stupid! Right. A complete retard must have activated him; that would explain a lot. Thinking about these possibilities instantly calmed down Goliath's raging emotions, enough for him to control them again. He had to approach this matter logically.
Giving the small Golem a bit of room for his self-pity, Teo decided to leave him alone for a few minutes. 'Wow, this Golem is really unstable, and not just in the architectural sense,' he thought and shook his head. This ancient and powerful Artifact, apparently created by a genius Magician (or god or whatever), had proven surprisingly useless so far.
Meanwhile, the small hill of rocks on his bed had quieted down a lot, and Teo asked in a low voice, "Are you alright, Goliath?"
*Wooosh!*
Causing a sudden whirl of air, the Golem restructured himself, after a second already standing at his full height — which was still not very impressive.
"I'm fine. Sorry, I got carried away. Do you mind if I talk to your parents for a second?" Goliath's voice was melodic and charming again, not a sign left of the mess he had been only a few seconds ago.
'His parents? Was he playing the child-card now?! This son of a brick!' Even though Teo was very well tempered usually, he was still pissed, every time someone did not take him seriously because of his age — especially if that someone was a gray-blue rock supposed to be his servant! Everything else aside, he was even smaller than him!
"I'm sorry, but you will have to deal with me for the time. My parents are not here anyway, and you are supposed to be my Golem, not theirs." There was an unusually sharp undertone in Teo's voice as he took back control of the situation.
"I don't know where you came from, but we have to deal with this situation now, so please pull yourself together!"
Goliath sat down again in acceding silence. Maybe he really did cross a boundary there. His unstable and emotional personality —coupled with a few rebellious remarks— was, what had gotten him fired, deactivated, and marked as a defective product in the first place; he would better learn from his past mistakes, asap.
"Because I have never heard about anything you told me so far, I suspect that wherever you come from is either very far away... or a long time ago." Teo waited for a moment to let his brilliant conjecture sink in and then continued. Goliath could hardly object. Naturally, he had thought about that already, but he did not like the possibility very much.
"I would tip on the latter because my uncle told me that you are our most important family heirloom, passed along for centuries... The world has probably changed somewhat since you last saw it." The last part was almost whispered in a soft and understanding tone.
Naturally, he could understand part of the dilemma that the small construct was facing. He had 'lived' at least a hundred years ago, and everything and everyone he knew was probably long gone, Teo did not even want to imagine being in Goliath's shoes — not that he wore any. A Golem probably had no family, but because he had emotions, he was bound to have some friends to mourn for at the very least.
"A hundred years may be much for a mortal, but don't underestimate a sentient Artifact! I was active for over a hundred years already, and another hundred years of slumber won't make much of a difference for me. I should even be able to calculate the current year through the position of the stars! We will know more after that," Goliath responded with more vigor than Teo had expected.
The unequal pair slowly got up from the comfortable feather bed after discussing what to do and walked over to the nearby casement window. They sat on the window sill in silence for a few minutes, just staring into the star-lit night sky, as Goliath's calculations would take some time.
While he was waiting, Teo enjoyed the cooling midnight breeze caressing his skin and observed the flashing runes, squares, circles, and other geometric shapes constructed from blue light threads, that were hovering and changing in front of Goliath's 'face'. From his Enchanting practices he knew, that this was what highly compressed Mana looked like; for the function of the Magic Circles, however, he could only guess.
After around fifteen minutes, the small Magic Circles dimmed, and the floating Mana returned to the Golem's body. Shortly afterward, even the glow of the body itself seemed to grow considerably weaker.
"And? Are you done now, Goliath?"
...
"Goliath? Are you okay?"
...
Teo gave him a slight nudge, resulting in Goliaths head slowly gliding down from his body and falling into the soft earth of the flower bed in the backyard with a dampened: *Thud!*
Teo's left eye experienced a slight twitching as he thought, 'Damn it! Did I kill him?!' He quickly trashed the notion though, as a Golem could not possibly be so fragile — especially one that had managed to resist the ravages of time and was still in pristine condition after hundreds of years.
"Goliath, what's the result of your calculations?" Teo asked in a low, unsteady and very cautious voice, but got no answer.
"Goliath!" he asked much louder this time, only holding back slightly so as not to wake the rest of the house.
"7523..." a feeble and disheartened voice finally answered his inquiry, it was barely audible.
"What do you mean?" Teo looked at the large rock that stuck between the purple irises growing in the flower bed half a meter beneath his feet.
"7523 years. I have been deactivated for 7523 years..." The voice was very different from a human's, but Teo could clearly hear the mixture of regret, sadness, and helplessness it carried.
Teo was also taken aback. That was a pretty large number. He had not even known that anything could be this old. The history lessons in school only covered some basics at the moment, and they never talked about anything before 500 years ago; how could the Golem possibly be so old?!
"Maybe you got the calculations wrong?" Teo knew that this was not very consoling, but he tried anyway, for he had no better idea.
"I checked it seventeen times. I did not miscalculate. Exactly 7523 years, three moons and 20 days have passed. At least if the laws of nature did not change too much." Now, Goliath's voice was steady again, but it sounded empty, unfeeling and inhumane —what a weird thing to say about a construct, but it was what Teo felt.
It seemed like his new 'friend' came from a distant and long-forgotten era and would need to come to terms with his fate now.
Teo did not notice it yet, but this would mark the beginning of a highly unusual union.