"Sarcen"


Java al-A'Mun stood atop the mesa, looking out over the barren landscape of her homeland - the desert of A'Mun.  She often came up here when she needed to think, or to concentrate on those complicated cooking and alchemy tasks.  The nearby menhir ring was a convenience, providing much needed mana to fuel her spells of health regeneration whilst brewing the demanding health elixirs.

It was odd, nobody had ever mentioned the ring to her, and none of the maps that she had seen of this part of Dereth had even shown them. In fact, she couldn't remember them being there when she was a child - which caused her to believe that they had been recently unearthed by the murmurs in the earth, caused by Gaerlans disruption of the geopathic flow.

She walked over to the boiling pan that hung from a tripod of crossed sticks over a small fire, and added a pinch of hyssop to the blend of herbs that would form the base of a new healing tonic that she had created.  The antiseptic vapours caused her eyes to water, so she turned away, squinting to clear them.  As she did so, she noticed a slight flicker, like distant lightning, connect between two of the standing stones, then fade.
Thinking it was just the effect of the vapour on her eyes, she blinked and rubbed them. Nothing. Must just have been imagination.

Once the fire had gone out, she settled down to sleep - the mesa was a good few miles away from home, and it would have been impractical to lug the large boiling pan through the desert, especially in the fading light with numerous Armordillos around. Instead it was safer to stay put, and camp in the ring. Creatures seemed to often stay away from them for some reason - with a few exceptions.
Something disturbed her sleep in the night, a slight tremor in the ground. As she lay feeling the vibration, the copper ring that held the tripod sticks together came loose, causing the contents of the pan to spill into the firepit - pot clanging away off the edge of the mesa. Java grimaced as she heard the precious pot dashed against the rocks below, half expecting a pack of banderlings to come scrambling up the dusty path that wound its way up the side.

She held her breath for a few minutes, not daring to move, just in case. When she was quite sure that nothing was coming up after her, she sat up.  The rumbling started again, this time much louder. Dust started to get shaken up from the ground, and the air between each of the stones started to distort and shimmer, as though great energies were being concentrated between them.  The stone nearest appeared to have lightning coruscating below the surface, somehow showing through, and giving the appearance of magical veins. She touched one, curiosity overcoming her fear momentarily, and the energy rerouted itself around the point of contact.
The ground shuddered violently, the stones appearing to tilt inward, as though drawn to one another. Suddenly, the realisation of what was happening hit Java - she grabbed the poles that were now strewn around the firepit, and braced the gap between two of the closest stones. Some smaller rocks had been drawn out of the ground and now connected with the stones farthest from her position. Two more of the stones were now rather close to the first two that had been braced, so she put the remaining poles between those and the first, now holding three large rocks away from one.
Numerous little rocks had moved into position, connecting the three widest spaced rocks.

Java observed that the first standing stone that she had spanned had two small indentations in the front of it, these appeared to be the destination of most of the energy, causing them to glow like eyes.
The granite golems parts started to compress upon the poles, putting great strain on them, threatening to shatter them completely and finish off the golem form.  Having no weapons on her person, and only one simple focus - a Gharun'dim wand, an idea struck her.  Java climbed on top of the headpiece. She crouched down as close as she could to the stone, whilst still being able to concentrate on the focus. Speaking the words of power, she drew the most powerful ward she could about herself, lightning protection. As the energies tangled into place, forming the protective weave of mana, it began do distort the barely visible electrical energies that were connecting with the head. Eventually the ward coalesced - cutting off the streamers. The golem parts collapsed to the ground, inert.

Java left the poles and supplies on the mesa, and running home, vowed never to return until she knew that the golem was gone for good.