As the cart came to a stop burly fellows jumped down. With quick and expert movements, they started to unload the cargo, aided by others that had been waiting for them.

“Quick! We‘re behind schedule already!” Trich exclaimed with an autoritary tone. The girl was dressed in a pretty but still efficient outfit, made up of a white blouse, a cream-colored jacket and pants of the same color.

Krik stood at her side, dressed in the same way. The boy smiled, bouncing on his feet and nodding to what her companion was saying.

The workers didn’t regard them with a glance, but still they fastened their pace. Crates were unloaded and piled up againt the walls, where other workers opened them up and took out the components inside.

Hidden by the shadows of the stairs, Gorren observed the operation.

His eyes flickered over each component his servants extracted, his mind calculating how they would be used and where.

The need for secrecy and the difficult of trasportation into the city made him foresaw his efforts would be slow to offer sizable rewards. It didn’t matter. He was patient.

While he ran his calculations, he idly considered the workers. A few were taller and noticeably wider than the rest, their simple clothes almost straining under the mass of muscles underneath. Grim satisfaction flickered. Even under the human guise, his progresses in the process of trasmutation showed themselves. The Ur-Gremlins were a brawnier, more physically powerful version of the base Gremlin. In the city, where normal golems would only posit unwanted questions, they were a great help.

The thought was quick, an artist taking a quick moment of pride in his creations, then his attention strayed to the two overseers, especially over Trich. Differently from his companion, she showed all the marks of one that wanted to prove herself, even beyond the zeal assured by the magical oath.

Mmh.

He called, and the two flinched. Leaving what they were doing, they ran at him, and asked what his orders were.

“I have decided where we will start excavations.” He informed them, his tone brisk and to the point. “Thrax will be presiding the work. You two are to furnish him with all the manpower he needs, understood?”

“Yes, Master!” The two chirped at the unison.

Gorren nodded. “These days i will probably be present here only a little. The place will be in your care when i am absent.”

The two chirped their aknowledgements again, the female brimming with determination.

“Will you be returning home, Master?” Krik asked, beaming with excitament.

Gorren was stung by the term he used, but, unwilling to aknowledge the implications, he let it slide.

“Yes.” He just said, not feeling the need to clarify where and what his business was to his own minions.

Anyway, there was mountains of work to do back at the compound, experiments to take forward, studies to make and, more importantly, minions to keep educating. His costant teaching had produced good results, but there couldn’t be any letting up. Between his old and this new venture, his forces were starting to get stretched thin.

A guard came down the stairs in a hurry, attracting his attention.

“Master! There are guests!” He said.

Gorren frowned, while Trich and Krik exchanged a glance. Guests? The place wasn’t anywhere ready to receive guests…

“What do they want?” The mage asked.

“Well…” The guard looked embarassed. “It’s a woman and her daughter. I think they are some kind of nobles. Well-dressed and all. They said they wanted to know the new arrival in the city. They have brought a cake…” He let the words trail off, and coughed.

Gorren let out a slow, irritated sigh. Neighbors etiquette, how lovely.

“What a waste of time.” He growled. “You two, you remember what i have taught you about behaviour?”

The two flinched a bit at being addressed so suddenly, but nodded quickly.

“Good. Take care of it.” Gorren swept over the stair, the guard moving out of the way to let him pass. “I will be returning this evening. Have my tools set up by then.”

Behind him, Trich and Krik exchanged a distraught look. He felt it in their aura, but ignored it. They had worked well enough during the meeting with the seller of the mansion and the guard representatives. They would work well this time as well.

Already putting the matter out of his mind, he moved to more important affairs.

The stair brought him to one of the many lateral rooms of the mansion. Moving quickly, he climbed more stairs and moved through corridors. Everywhere his minions moved and worked, busy with restoring the place further than the basic reparations that had already been made.

Crossing a mirror fixtured in the wall, Gorren stopped to take in his appearance.

Despite having done so many times, he still felt a flicker of satisfaction. No more stupid goblin face, at least in that form. He finally looked a little more like his old self. If he he had to voice a complaint, it was for the short beard, but since the nobles of that city escheved long facial hair, and he aimed to curb favor in their settings, he had to adequate himself. Well, it didn’t matter in the end.

He wore black pants, a white shirt with buttons on front and ample sleeves, and a jacket, black as well, closed on the front. They were elegant but practical, exactly like he liked it.

In a moment of vanity, he adjusted the silver brooch that held his cloak. It passed quickly, and he showed his teeth at the image in the mirror, then stalked away.

The form of the body was but an ornament, a shell to be changed as easily as one changed clothes. In his case, that was literal. He had built that body by projecting himself out of the original and then using a mixture of Soul, Dimensional and Mind magic. It was the same process he had used during his first excursion in the Material World, and held the same limitations and freedoms. His manipolated Mana frequence allowed him to remain indefinitely in tha Plane, and he could easily modify his form through his will. In exchange, he could exert only a part of his powers, as part of them had to be sacrificed to keep his form stable. Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as when he had come to take his Goblins. There was no dimensional rift he was forced to project himself into this time, and that made the needed sacrifice far lighter.

Apart from that, the body was just the same of a normal human, even if its being a mental projection made so that it was much sturdier. A stab in the chest wouldn’t kill him, even if it would hurt him just as much as he took it in his original body. Death of that form would destroy his mind just the same as true death, but he could quickly undo the projection and escape back to his real body if the need truly arose.

He hoped to never be forced to that. It would be such a waste of time.

As he pondered that, he reached the rear exit of the mansion.

The two guards stationed there jumped at attention, but he ignored them. Passing through the door, he emerged in the back garden of the mansion. A tall wall shielded the place from prying eyes, while dividing it from the rubble-choked, vegetation-infested wasteland sorrounding the opposite villa.

After making sure that nobody was around, Gorren willed the Mana structure of his form to change. The bearded gentleman disappeared into a flash of light, from which a hawk came flying out.

Taking flight in his new form, Gorren emitted a low screech of disdain. The Flaming Light’s detection force was a barely perceptible presence at the edge of his senses. Despite its power, it remained a crude tool. Evading its attention was but a simple exercise of discretion.

The hawk circled the sky above the mansion, taking in the once-elegant structure and the grounds that sorrounded it. Sure enough, there was a couple of gaudily dressed women before the gate of the garden, what it looked to be the younger carrying a small box. Gorren saw with approvation that Trich and Krik were already there, and were entertaining the unwanted guests. As he watched, they led them inside, toward the small gazebo that adorned the garden.

With a mental snort, he veered away from the mansion.

The cityscape ran under him as he flew, and soon it was replaced by the farmlands first and the forest after that.

Gorren was once again dismayed by the level of regression than the world had gone through. Where was the well-organized countryside? The great roads? The caravans that traveled from city to city? There and then he could pick up the leftover energies of the Mana dispensers that were used to recharge vehicles and golems, but that seemed the only thing left in that region of the past.

Eventually, the forest gave way to farmed land once again, at the center of which another settlement stood.

The village was small, a hundreds of wooden huts at best, huddled around a larger construction. Gorren narrowed his eyes at noticing the blazing star, the emblem of the Flaming Light, standing at the top of it.

He flapped his wings, and veered into a descending course.

The villagers were assembled before the modest church. Dirty, disheveled, they made for a truly sorry sight.

They listened with rapt attention while a man swathed in sacerdotal vestments ranted.

“… and so it was that the Old Kingdom, whose name we are forbidden to utter, fell into corruption.” He preached with a heated tone. “They gave themselves to the worship of false Gods and dabbled in the forbidden arts! They made a mockery of the precepts of Our Blazing Light and covered the earth with their abominations!” The priest’s bald head was covered with a sheen of sweat. Apart from the large, white robe he didn’t seem to wear anything else, his bare feet stained with dirt. “That is why, my flock! That is why they have been punished! The Immortal Light has struck them, wiped them out from the face of the land! Their works have been undone, their own name has been erased! Now, only ruins remain of those that would dare to dabble with magic!”

Awed whispers passed through the crowds. Many nodded with resolution, others huddled together, awed terror for the power of their Gods passing through them.

The priest spread his arms wide. “And that is why we must ever strive to conduct pious lives! We are the Chosen, my children. Those that have been judged worthy to inherit the world! Always we must conduct ourselves in the right way! So, work, obey, deny the warlock and the witch and don’t indulge in which doesn’t concern you! Keep to the known path, don’t search where the shadows are deep! Do this and prosper, my children, prosper! Because if you do this, the favor of Our Everlasting Light will always shine upon you!”

Gorren kept listening, but the man just kept repeating the same thing again and again, and so he veered away from the village.

Do fear and ignorance rule these lands now?, he thought with grim dismay. No, it couldn’t be. Something HAD to have survived of the old Kingdom.

He kept flying in the vicinity of the village, pursuing a vague idea. With such a complete shift in values, it was expected that the inhabitants would abandon their old cities altogether. Still, Truvian settlements were always built in favorable positions, so it stood to reason that the new ones wouldn’t be much distant…

His suspects found confirm soon after.

At some distance from the village, a tangle of ruins emerged from the forest. Gorren wasn’t surprised to have not noticed it right away: the vegetation had grown all over it, hiding it from view.

As he flew in that direction, structures built in the style of Old Truvia became more and more visible. He saw ruins of great stone buildings and paved roads, choked and covered under root and moss and tree. Whatever destruction had hit them had to have been incredibly powerful. Tall walls and sturdy columns had been smashed to pieces, some of the buildings were razed to the ground, with only the foundations remaining.

Gorren felt lingering energies cling to the ruins, remnants of whatever catastrophe had befallen the place. They were too vague, though, too dissipated in the ambient Mana for him to retain anything apart from the impression of a devastating magical explosion.

Whatever had happened there, it had been powerful, incredibly so.

Descending, he came to a rest over a broken wall.

“How are you faring?”

Gorren flinched, and held himself. He narrowed his eyes at the black figure that had seemingly been waiting for him at the base of the wall. He wouldn’t ever get used at Nama’s sudden appearances.

“How does it feel to see your world turned upside down?” The Goddess asked with mild curiosity. “Terrible? Horrible?”

“Slightly disorientating.” Gorren grumbled, and took off once again.

The paved road, choked with roots and trees, flew under him as he focused. Pinpricks of light appeared before his mind’s eye, each signalling a life’s presence. He saw many animals, and not all natural, but also human mana signatures.

Why are they here?

The place looked abandoned by decades. He doubted they could be inhabitants clinging to their ancestral home.

As he thought that, he noticed a strange sight.

Curious, he flew in that direction.

He reached a large space that once had to be a plaza, but that rampant vegetation had reduced it to a clearing with a broken paved floor. The devastation had been particularly thorough there, with what little ruins remained barely visible under the growth.

Srill, a trio of statues remained standing. Carved out of red granite, they were two times the height of a man, massive graven images of old Gods. Gorren recognized the two side statues as Talari, Goddess of Births, with her maternal expression and newborn held to her chest, and Aktur, God of Smiths and Craftmen, broad and tall, with the tools of his trade crowding his belt. The central statue had no face; where that was supposed to be there was only a large hollow. A long skeletal hand extended from underneath a cape that suggested hidden deformities, the upside down palm asking to be taken.

Gorren noticed the offerings at the feet of the statues: candles and some kind of small pastries.

“You seem to be still worshipped.” He commented, feeling the presence this time.

Nama looked up at her own image carved in stone. “Of course.” She said in an even tone. She poked at the knee of the statues with a long finger. “But only as a boogeyman to be kept at bay. And the same is for these other two. The Flaming Light make for a jealous Master, or Mistress, or whatever.” She turned her faceless visage toward him. “So? What do you think of what has become of the world?”

Gorren didn’t answer. There was rage in the pit of his soul, a rumbling conflagration that he was unwilling to give voice to.

Opening his wings, he took to the skies once again, leaving the Goddess.