Exhausted Emotions

Kies woke up to the sound of birds, chirping cheerfully and full of energy. He opened his eyes and shot out of his bed. He looked around and saw that he was inside a small room, identical to the one of the elven village, but a bit fancier.

Kies checked his core and sensed that all his magic had returned. That was good. He had narrowly escaped death again. If Haro saw how recklessly Kies was with his magic, he would definitely get a lecture from the owl right now. Instead of using magic efficiently, he was trying to brute force everything.

How much time passed? Since he was in this room, it meant that the tree was fine. He walked to the door and opened it and looked around, expecting an elf to be standing out there waiting for him. There was no one. It could be early in the morning. It could also be late in the night. With the whole place shrouded in twilight, he had to go up to the top in order to see past the leaves.

Kies made his way down from the residential floor to the ground floor where he had arrived at. There were still elves awake and taking care of matters. He was met with their gazes as he walked down the stairs. They showed no emotion on their faces so Kies had no way of telling if he was in trouble or not.

It was too late to turn back now so Kies continued down until he reached the ground floor. The moment his feet were off the stairs, one of the elves stood up and walked to him. "I have two things to say to you. Firstly, thank you for assisting us. And secondly... I don't think I need to tell you as you already know what you did wrong."

"I should have informed you all first."

The dim translucent shining on the elf's face made him all the scarier. "That, you should have," he agreed, a wrinkle of a scowl shown on his face as he said so.

This was a not good sign for Kies, but at least the elf didn't sound like he was too angry about what had happened. Either that or the elf was angry and was hiding it. But to make sure he didn't screw up big time, he needed to know just how big of a mess he made.

"How bad are the damages?" he inquired about the aftermath from the elf.

"Nothing noteworthy. The biggest concern is that the side of the hill that this tree is resting on is gone and the roots are exposed. But that can easily be fixed," the elf conveyed to him.

"What about the golem?"

"Buried. Won't be a threat for some time."

"For some time?" Kies repeated what the elf said, wanting him to elaborate on it. Was the golem not trapped indefinitely under the hill?

The elf shook his head sadly and explained to Kies, "At most, you managed to delay the golem's advances by blasting a leg off of it."

"I can take off the other three if needed," Kies pointed out.

The elf nodded his head and agreed. "Yes you could, but..." The but hung in the air and Kies waited for the elf to continue.

"But what?"

"The golem can repair itself using the earth. Its leg is already half-healed. All destroying the legs will do is delay it longer."

"It can heal itself..." Kies crossed his arms, alarmed and disgruntled by the news. Of course. The golem was born from the earth. It should have been expected that it could use the earth to heal itself.

Trying to destroy the golem bit by bit was pointless then. "So we have to destroy its whole body in one attempt," Kies grumbled. This was by no means easy to do.

"Not necessary," the elf said. "We took the broken pieces of its leg and analyzed them. It's normal rock. It is only when it is on the golem's body that the rock is hardened," the elf explained.

"So is it magic that is doing this and keeping the golem together?"

"That is the only answer," the elf confirmed Kies' theory. "And one more thing. We have no solid proof but we think that the golem's body is not actually its body."

"What do you mean?"

The elf clarified what he said and explained to Kies, "The golem is using the earth to recreate a leg for itself. The whole body may be a shell created and held together by magic." It made sense to come to that assumption after looking at that.

Kies saw that this was quite possible. He was a living example of that. But following that logic, didn't it mean that the golem was similar to him? "So you're telling me that the golem's real body is hidden somewhere deep underneath that layer of armor?"

"Yes, and if we find and destroy that, the rest of it will crumble."

"Really? Have you sent someone to check if it is the case?" If this was true then it would make defeating the golem that much easier. It would be in their best interest to check this out as soon as possible.

"No. We have no way of checking it."

"Then how are we supposed to know if this is true or not?"

"We can't." The elf didn't provide an explanation. It was just a simple no for an answer.

"Why not?" Kies wanted to know the reason why since if they couldn't confirm that then it would be too risky to try to gamble this. If they were wrong then it might have massive consequences.

"Because we can't." The answer was the same as before, providing absolutely no explanation.

"Okay..." Was it that the elves really had no way of finding out? "I going to go and check that myself then," Kies told the elf. He expected the elf to let him go but rather than doing that, the elf extended his arms and blocked him, keeping him at the base of the spiraling staircase.

"I can't let you do that."

Kies waited for the elf to give tell him why but like before, the elf kept silent and didn't explain anything.

"Can I ask why?" Kies asked, vexed by the elf's behavior. Other than Nyana, whom he actually knew, every single other elf that he has met so far was stiff and acted hostile to him. If the elves were trying to agitate him then they were doing exactly that.

The elf looked at Kies like he was a fool for not knowing why and it only got on his nerves more. But to his surprise, the elf opened his mouth and provided an explanation this time around. "Because we can't have you doing anything rash. You did almost destroy the tree!" the elf sharply reminded him.

"You have a point..." Yeah, that did happen. "I'll be more careful this time. I won't do anything dangerous."

The glare didn't respond and just glared at Kies. After a short while, the elf behind him sighed and said, "Just let him. No one else here can do anything anyway."

"Are you crazy?" The first elf started to protest but the elf behind him stopped him.

"Go with him and keep an eye on him. The faster we solve this problem, the faster he gets out of here," he reasoned, also bluntly telling Kies that he wasn't welcomed here. The elves wanted to leave after he resolved this predicament they found themselves in. Talk about being stuck up. If it weren't for the deal that he made with Nyana and the fragment on the golem, Kies wouldn't have bothered helping them. Well, he was at fault for the previous incident, but they were treating him quite nastily even before that.

The first elf didn't look pleased about it but ultimately listened to the other elf. "Fine, follow me." The elf stormed out of the tree, each of his footsteps loud and clear, crunched the dirt and pebbles under his heels.

Kies followed behind the elf, matching his pace, and kept quiet so as to not sour the mood even more. While the elves did treat him with a bit of contempt, things would have been fine if Kies actually tried to get on their good side. He knew that he was the one being the jerk here, but there really wasn't much he could do.

Kies acted with no emotion for a good decade and rarely encountered anyone else during that time. And it wasn't that long ago that he regained his emotions after having them taken away, and it wasn't like before when he could feel everything and understand how to act. It was the same with fighting and everything else. If a warrior put down their sword and picked it back up years later, even they will need time to relearn it.

Maybe one day, he will go back to his old self, or maybe never. It all depended on if he had the time and effort to. Right now, he couldn't really spare either as he had an important mission to do. At least he was clear about that. Whenever he thinks of it, a burning passion ignites in his core, a determination to stop another bloody conflict from breaking out, but even this, he knew was not really his own. It was the will that the Stormcaller imparted on him before vanishing for good.

Even now, these were not what Kies wanted to do and he knew it. But what other choice did he have other than to blindly follow and finish what his predecessor set out to do? There was nothing for him to go back to. There was only a dark lonely road ahead of him. The emotions that he felt that day were temporary. Were all other Aeos this way or was it him? He would never know.

"Where are you going? We're here."

"Hm?" Kies stopped walking and looked around. They were at the location of the golem and he was about to walk past it if not for the elf calling out to him.

They were on the edge of the hill, or rather it was a cliff now, with the side of it gone and all. Kies jumped down onto a giant vine that pinned the golem. He looked up and spotted the elf watching him intensively to make sure that he wouldn't do anything that would endanger the tree again.

Kies went over to a part of the golem that was jutting out of the dirt and placed his hand on it. The rock was cold and smooth, not rough or jagged like he would have thought. It looked almost the same as Aeronite, but this rock was pitch black in contrast to his sword's glassy, slightly less pitch black. He wanted to test his sword against the black material to see which was stronger, but he knew that he could incur the wrath of the elf behind him if he did.

Kies closed his eyes channeled his magic into the golem and instantly ran into resistance. The outer shell of the golem was coated all around the body with a layer of magic like the elf had anticipated. It was tough but Kies broke through with his magic after a hard battle. His magic poured in and the first thing he felt was a vast empty space under the shell.

Kies explored the alien space with his magic and encountered magic flowing around the space like tiny streams or veins. Before he could continue any further, the gap in the outer shell suddenly tightened and it forced itself close, cutting off the flow of his magic. His magic that was still inside the golem's body was surrounded and expelled back out. The reaction was quick, but not quick enough because Kies got all the information he needed already.

The golem's anatomy was exactly like his. He didn't find the core, but there was no doubt that the golem had something similar to like hidden deep inside of its body. All the veins in its body that were transporting the flow of magic were like his magic circuits, just on a larger scale.

A jolt out of the blue went through Kies' hand as he found magic forcing itself into his body. He opened his eyes and saw that he still had his hand on the golem's body and it was using this opportunity to counterattack. Kies tried to pull his hand away but it was stuck to the golem, like glue.

No, it wasn't stuck, Kies just lost control of his hand. The golem's magic had already invaded and taken control of his arm. Kies attempted to back away but his feet wouldn't budge either. He looked down and saw that they were trapped in stone. The golem had him in its grasp. This was problematic.

Kies used his other hand to free his hand that was glued to the golem but when he tried to, the magic quickly surged into that arm as well and took control of it, seizing both of his arms. The golem was not fooling around. It knew what it was doing.

If he didn't do something fast then the golem's magic would compromise his whole body.

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