The sun beat down pale and grey and hot, bleaching the land beneath it. Dust swirled half-heartedly along the white sand, accumulating on pillars of rocks and piles of bones. In the distance, dunes stretched like mountain peaks, their slopes littered with eviscerated corpses long ago picked clean. Upon one such slope, a donkey lay sprawled, one leg snapped and bent under its flank. The creature’s breaths were slow and hoarse, and with each it inhaled as much dust as air. Its grey pelt was mangey and dotted with wounds, some still fresh, others faded to white scars. A shadow passed over the donkey, then another. It blinked, but blinking brought its eyes no respite from the endless dryness. It could only imagine what dark shapes swept down towards it from the sky above and dug sharp talons into its leathery body.
The vultures descended like a cloud, ripping and tearing at the quivering beast’s flesh as it clung to the last threads of life. They squawked and fussed as their claws and beaks ripped back the flesh of its wounds and began to tear at what little meat was left inside. The donkey tried to cry out in pain, but it could barely lift its head and only dust welled up from its throat. A vulture looked towards the donkey’s face. It cocked its head, and then with a swift peck, the donkey’s vision went black.
Nearby, the sand shifted. There came a great pounding, a boom that made the layer of dust that coated the desert jump. A second later there came another thump, then another. One of the vultures lifted its blood-soaked face from its meal and cried out in fear. The others turned instinctively and spread their black wings in intimidation, perhaps expecting some jackal or other desert beast had come to scare them off their kill. When the creatures saw what was coming, though, they all cried out as one and leapt from their feast to save themselves. One lone vulture, its face too deep into the donkey’s guts to hear, did not move, and soon it felt a great weight rest between the wings of its back. The weight clamped down on it with an unstoppable certainty. Before the creature could cry out, it felt itself lifted and it soared through the air under a foreign power. It cried out as it crashed face-up into the sand.
As the vulture blinked the blood from its eyes, it saw the form of its assailant. Before it stood a gargantuan man, if you could even call it a man. It was taller than any man the vulture had ever seen, taller than most of the great beasts that made their home amongst the dunes of the Bone Sea. Its hand was the size of the vulture’s entire body, and its body was so large it blocked out the sun from several paces away. From beneath a brown hood, a face of stone stared down at the vulture. It was round and slightly lopsided, with a firm, square jaw and two glowing round eyes. The massive man took a step towards the vulture. The entire desert seemed to shake with its weight. Before it could take another step, the vulture absconded, half-flying, half-running away until it took off into the empty sky.
Number Fourteen looked down at the beast before it. Having been sufficiently tortured, the creature had finally died, dust coating its snout and blood coating the rest of it. Seeing macabre things like this made Fourteen feel grateful he was not made of organic material. At least when he died, if he ever did, his remains would be left unscavenged. Such cruelty living things had for one another. Slowly, Number Fourteen scooped handfuls of white sand from the dune and covered the donkey, hiding the torment that had been wrought upon it. Number Fourteen knew his actions were futile. Something else would find this creature, and something else would reduce it to bone like everything else around here. But, as Fourteen saw it, everything was futile in the Bone Sea, and doing something felt better than letting the vultures have their way. Soon, the beast was covered, and Number Fourteen moved on, trudging across the dead landscape towards the south, where the Bone Waters glittered on the horizon like a desert mirage.
Slowly, Fourteen made his way across the landscape, encountering nothing but skeletons and sand. Occasionally, he would stop to admire a succulent, some shriveled agave or thorny cactus that managed to somehow eek life out within this blasted landscape. Fourteen felt no kinship with life— whether he was even alive to begin with was a question best left to philosophers. But having seen such suffering in this expanse of the damned, Fourteen couldn’t help but find any life at all curious. He knew not to touch the plants; he had learned from experience that even his lightest touch would break them. He traveled slowly, each step looking like a labor and accompanied by a tremendous thud that made the coating of dust upon the sand jump.
Eventually, the camp came into focus on the horizon. Above it by some distance, Fourteen saw the city of Exusia for the first time, its tremendous spires and steeples apparent even from the ground. When he saw it for the first time, Fourteen stopped atop the dune he was climbing and stared for a long time. This was it, the place Henrich had told him about. This place, this city in the sky, was where Fourteen had come from, at least according to the old man he had met on the road outside Orthos. Here, Fourteen could find out all he had wanted to know. He could finally find out how he came to be and, even more importantly, his purpose for being in this world. Within his chest, a dullness ached. It was ever-present, a thump like a heart of dread that left Fourteen drained and deeply unhappy. Maybe now, he thought, the thumping could finally go away.
Fourteen approached Hope Passage from the north, trekking across the desert at his own leisurely pace. As he walked a field or so away from the road where pilgrims gathered, he could feel eyes on him. None of those creatures on the road had ever seen something like him— Fourteen had traveled long enough to be sure of that. With each thud of his footsteps, he heard people gasp and saw them point. He made no effort to communicate with them. People...didn’t like Fourteen. They thought he was one of the monsters that lurked in the desert and ate men whole and alive. Looking down at his massive, rugged form, Fourteen supposed it was a logical conclusion.
The crowd parted as Fourteen lumbered to the front gates of Hope Passage. As people moved out of his way, Fourteen could hear them mumble to one another. “What
is that thing?” One mumbled. “Should we run?” Said another. Fourteen ignored them. The guards at the gate to the small tent city stood with their legs quivering and their spears pointed forwards. All around them, folk clad in rags knelt and held out their hands in desperation. Some cried out for entrance to the town, others simply for bread and water. As the guards’ attention focused on Fourteen, a shriveled old woman in a shawl tried to slip through the gate inside. She was met swiftly by the boot of another armed guard who rounded the corner. As the guard glowered down at her, the woman hissed and spat blood from her now-bleeding mouth. This guard had a sword at his hip and a pretentious look on his face.
“You there,” he shouted. “Golem.”
“You know... what I am?” Fourteen replied. His voice was slow and impossibly deep, like if the crunching of gravel was made into phonetic sounds.
“Yes, you,” the guard replied. “No one comes in without an invitation. Show yours or be on your way elsewhere.” The crowd watched on, fear and fascination mixed into one. They mumbled to themselves once more. “A golem? I didn’t think they existed!”, “Now how are they going to keep
that from getting in? It’s HUGE!” Fourteen nodded and reached for the sack slung around his left shoulder. He untied the top of it and gingerly pulled a crumpled-up piece of paper out of it. The paper had been given to him by Henrich. It was the only thing the old man had given him in their brief time together, in fact. The guard with the sword took a look at the paper and nodded. The other two, legs still shaking, stepped aside, and Fourteen placed the paper back into his sack.
“Thank you,” Fourteen said as he passed through. He walked towards the center of the camp, receiving the same looks as he had from the crowd outside. The soldiers and travelers stopped their chatter and stepped aside as Fourteen loped past. He knew not to make eye contact— people got...uncomfortable when Fourteen made eye contact with them. Fourteen wondered about that a lot. Perhaps it was his lack of a smile, for try as he might his grim stone face would not change expression. Eventually, Fourteen arrived at the main tent and pulled back the curtain.
He had to duck to enter, and when he did he saw almost a dozen others were already inside. Fourteen towered over the rest of the folk inside, so much that his head brushed the roof of the tent and he had to slouch to avoid scraping against it. The folk inside were of many races, most of which Fourteen had never seen. A man with tanned skin and blonde hair stood in one corner next to a horse and a small girl. Near the entrance a large man with a disturbingly large axe laughed with a bug half Fourteen’s height. Fourteen shuffled into the room, stepping carefully to avoid any chairs or people or tables. The indoors were not made for Fourteen— he always bumped into things and sent people flying and objects falling. He was able to move into the corner to the left of the tent opening without causing any harm. For a moment, he eyed a wooden chair, but Fourteen knew no chair in all of Deadwood could hold his weight. Instead, he squatted down, resting his elbows on his knees and trying to look inconspicuous. He was silent for a long beat, expecting everyone to turn and look as they always did. He looked down at the sand beneath them, not making eye contact with anyone.
“Um, hello.” he mumbled.
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