She had known it was a golem from the first sound it made, but seeing really was believing. Nearly thirty feet of stone rose and moved toward her on its own, and she was beginning to believe she had angered the source on this mountain somehow.

It was a golem of the traditional type. Dumb, disproportionate, vaguely humanoid, and gigantic. Similar beings formed often at the most dangerous parts of Source Points. As the blood of fallen adventurers soaked into the land, it formed a pattern for the source magic to flow into, animating the stones themselves.

Again, she thought of the fool priests with their tales. Many of them still believed these golems were a distant relative of the Marran people. She’d spit on a priest if she heard him say that to her face though. A Marran was mana incarnate. They were the living vessels of the great Source Magic which brought about all life.

These golems were just dirt with too much power soaked into them. A talented specialist could make one, and one much more effective than the giant hulking beasts that occurred naturally.

The lumbering giant could have been drawn by either the force spell of the rodent, or the natural energy which had turned off gravity in the region, but as it moved slowly without direction, Sorynel felt confident that it wasn’t after her directly. She crouched low and began to circle around it, with the hook in hand and her magical weapon in the other.

Small pockets of force energy bubbled and burst on the body of the golem as it walked, and each time one built and bloomed the snow trickling from the sky would swirl violently away. Sorynel regretted that she didn’t feel confident in subduing the construct non-violently; the energy bursting out of it would have made excellent research material.

Her movements were tense as she closed in on it. Getting hit by just one of those bursts could have unpredictable effects. She waited until she saw energy dispersing across its body before rushing forward and throwing herself onto the golem’s back. Sorynel jammed her hook quickly into a crevice between two segments and held on tightly as the beast began to shake and roar.

“Calm down you mindless automaton!” she shouted as she empowered her weapon. The wooden rod she used as a channel now maintained a nasty-looking barbed head of mana, and she plunged it into a nearby joint, then poured mana in to stretch and expand the spikes.

Her arm cracked backwards as a burst of force launched the weapon from its body, and she almost lost her grip on the hook as she cringed in pain from her shoulder being pulled. Before she could strike again, she felt the air ripple about her and hastily pulled her climbing hook out just in time to be thrown to the ground by a wave of gravity.

If the beast had been intelligent, there’s a good chance it would have immediately crushed her under its heavy stone feet. Things as they were, though, it stomped around and ended up several feet from where she lay trapped by the weight of gravity against the snowy ground.

The flakes of snow in the air seemed to all condense at once into pockets of hail, and they rained down on her as she struggled to move. The gravity well the golem had formed was powerful, and she struck up half a dozen reinforcement and strengthening spells just to give her the freedom movement to slowly drag herself along the ground.

She grit her teeth as she moved, hoping urgently that the golem didn’t notice her energy signature through its gravity well and try to finish her off. She was glad those three travellers hadn’t come this way, now. An effect like this was enough to flatten a person by itself, and only the myriad spells Sorynel had at her disposal allowed her to withstand it.

The construct continued to trample the ground at random as Sorynel pulled herself inch by inch away from it, and she didn’t dare to even breathe for several minutes before she felt herself partially freed of the gravity well. Even then, she was hesitant, and she worked even harder to drag herself out from under its effects.

Finally free, she stood and turned. She was past the golem, and it was too dumb to know to chase her, but there were an endless number of reasons why she felt inclined to resume the fight. Most notably, she’d be coming back this way, and ending the brute now would prevent her having to fight it unaware later. But there were also many people who would reward her for any cores she could remove from the golem.

Swearing, she moved swiftly to the cliff face and began to climb. She’d have to strike it hard and quickly to prevent getting trapped in the gravity well again, but she had methods of doing so. She moved steadily up the cliff face, deftly locating hand and footholds in its icy face, and creating them whenever they were lacking by mixing concentrated fire magic with the raw strength from her spell reinforced body.

By the time she turned to check her progress, she was already three quarters of the way up the cliff face toward the next path. She looked upwards- it was awfully tempting to just keep going and bypass the golem altogether…

But she looked back down, and saw it ambling about, trampling the snow into an icy sheet, ripping up weather-worn bushes, and threatening to cause rockslides or avalanches given enough time and force magic. Handling threats like these was practically her job, she reminded herself. The Source Points were generous to her, and as a Marran, it was her responsibility to prevent magic from going awry like this.

Plus, it would be really satisfying to turn the golem into a pile of rubble.

Hanging onto the cliff face by the hook in her one hand, she held the thick wooden catalyst in her other and began shaping the mana. This time, it took the form of a gigantic, spiked mallet. It wasn’t the most mana efficient weapon, and would likely be worthless in combat with anything normal sized, but…

Here goes nothing!

She launched herself off of the cliff face with considerable alacrity and strength, and drew up the mallet with both hands. The golem’s gravity well would catch her and speed up her acceleration, and the resulting force would shatter it.

In seconds she was crashing down, and she roared as she mallet crashed into the golem’s head. Rubble began to fly everywhere and the mallet kept moving, drawn down by the gravity well even as the golem split and crumbled and exploded. But as the stone was pulverized, the force in it was freed, and the resulting energy seemed to activate another spell.

Hastily, she was flung back up into the air, almost as fast as she had fallen, and she deactivated the mallet as she flailed to balance herself in the air, trying to orient herself for a proper fall, hoping desperately that she would find a soft bank of snow to catch her fall.

But as she rose, she realized that her momentum was slowing, but not at quite the right speed. There was no curve of her ascent, and it began to look like she was drifting. Like gravity had been turned off again. Which it had.

That sent her into a worse panic than being launched had. If she floated too high she was good as dead. She might not even land back on the mountain. She released her mana desperately behind her into a series of fire blasts, trying to create a propelling force enough to reverse her momentum and bring her back to the ground, but it was hardly enough.

The hook.

She reached back and unlatched it from where she had secured it to her bag and hastily tethered a cord of mana to it before launching it as hard as she could toward a wooden plant. There was a chill in her then that was not from the weather. From the multiple defensive spells to the unwieldy mallet and fireblasts and now a thirty foot mana tether, she was running low on her easily drawn on reserves.

Panic kept her focused though despite the wave of weakness, and she willed the hook to reach its mark. It latched onto a delicate looking branch on a tall shrub and she cheered internally. A sharp jerk secured the hook, but she could feel the branch ready to give way and knew that finesse was a requirement now.

Sorynel was still drifting, up and away from the mountain, but with this hook she had a chance to fix that. But should she try to reel herself in gently, or pull hard and try and adjust her momentum? Something shifted in the air, and her instincts kicked in. She pulled hard and felt the hook snap just after she began moving back toward the mountain pass, and only a moment later gravity seemed to restore.

Instinct seemed to be on her side. The adventurer crashed to the ground and barely managed to catch at the edge of a rounded drop on the side of the mountain, and she gasped and shuddered as the force of the fall knocked the wind out of her. She was in a great deal of pain, but hardly safe, so despite it she pulled herself up through the snow and onto the path, then rolled onto her back and took a deep breath.

She was alive, she reminded herself. And then she grinned. What an experience! How many Fundamental Force Golems of that caliber had been taken down single-handedly, without even basic force rune mastery? It was possible she was the only adventurer to be able to boast of that feat.

And she had basically flown! Or levitated? Either way, it had been exhilarating.

She closed her eyes to pull more mana from her deep reserves, restoring her wounds and washing away the exhaustion. This was what being an adventurer was about. This was why she did it. For the sheer thrill of the challenge.

And then something furry bit her nose and she screamed in fury.

It took most of an hour to salvage the golem cores from the disparate pieces of wreckage left from the fight. If it hadn’t exploded, she might have been able to gather them all at once. But such were the costs of a good battle.

The next several hours saw her dealing with a variety of traps. There were plenty more Immovable Eyes, and another weaker golem which she dealt with through ranged attacks and a well placed rockslide. She had moved deftly through a stretch of terrain which saw bursts of force launching her back and forth, chased off at least half a dozen of the furry rodents, and even navigated a break in the path which required her to leap from suspended boulder to suspended boulder over a drop of several hundred feet.

All said and done, it was a rather enjoyable journey.

But as much as she enjoyed the raw an unexpected challenges of the journey itself, the destination was what made the effort worthwhile. In time, she summited the mountain, and was treated to a sight of what looked like a tremendous black and blue rupture suspended in the sky, sealed through powerful barriers, and housed in an ornate temple of carved marble.

Enchantments kept the snow from sticking to the marble steps before the temple, and she walked them reverently, basking in the intensity of the power of the source point, even subdued as it was by the heavy magical barriers.

She looked to see tablets on pedestals lining each side of the path. They were embellished with complex runes that invoked images of the bravery of the old heroes to first conquer the source point, of the difficulties and costs of bringing up a priesthood to build the temple. Names on each tablet spoke of those who had died bringing honor to the point, and though she would not remember them, she made sure to read each one, sounding them out quietly.

In the middle of the path was a final tablet with an embellishment that could have been seen from a hundred feet away if looked at directly. It invoked a sense of gold lettering on black, and she could almost see the rune shift into the images it described.

This was a shrine to the Fundamental Source of Indiscriminate Force. A power mighty enough to shift gravity itself, to pull and repel any object. The god the priests claimed created this source point had mastered Force so mightily that he could even draw mana from the stars themselves, and it was that gift which empowered him to leave this mark on the world.

She knelt then and bowed her head, feeling the Source speaking in her mind. She loosed her mana into a veil around her, and felt it mingling with the raw magic, observed the way it transformed under its effects. Already she knew she’d be able to replicate some of those effects. Given a few days with one of the golem cores, she would have been able to draft up a simple rune to work from.

But to kneel before the Source Point itself was a treasure unto her very soul itself.

Sorynel sat, unmoving, contemplative, before the Source for nearly an hour. Her wounds had been healed, her body, mind, and soul felt enriched by the power she nearly worshipped. It would be no challenge to stay here, immobile, for days.

But a roar, a screeching, jarring roar that grated on the ears and would unsettle even the most stalwart drew her from her reverie. She immediately stood and pivoted, heavy wooden catalyst in hand, and began to curse her luck.