Vesma paused in her carefully coordinated whirl through the golems and sent a blast of Untamed Torch at the face of the nearest one. It was one of the best Torches I’d seen her throw, an intense and focused ball of searing heat. I thought it would simply leave a scorch mark as the others had done, but she targeted it with pinpoint accuracy at the joint between the golem’s head and neck. The creature was decapitated from the blast, and she went on to use the same tactic on another golem.
Tahlis raised a Sandstorm around him. Instead of forming a wild, whirling cloud, the grains drew together, coalescing into solid projectiles the size of ball bearings. They knocked chunks from the arms and faces of golems before aiming purposefully for their heads. In moments, the lizardman’s attack had pulverized the heads of a half dozen golems. He proceeded to add the remnants of the fallen golems to his Sandstorm and use them to destroy even more of the creatures.
I summoned an Acidic Cloud around the nearest pair of golems. Their outer layer of stone started to dissolve and drip in trickles of green liquid and gray goo. A golem tried to rid the acid from its face, but instead wiped away half its nose and filled in an eye socket. With the creatures softened up in the most literal way possible, I lunged in to finish them off with blows from the Depthless Dream.
“That’s good,” Yono said within my mind, feminine and bubbling with delight. “These creatures don’t stand a chance against you, do they? I have found the right wielder!”
Tahlis appeared in the midst of the last three golems, a grin splitting his scaly face.
“I’m surprised to see the Depthless Dream has left the Qihin Clan,” he said.
“How can you even tell what I’m fighting with?” I asked as I stabbed a golem through the hip and broke the joint that held on its leg. “You’re blind.”
“Ah, but my other senses are powerful. I can hear the difference between clattering blades and ringing prongs, hoof beats and footfalls, the pouring of wine and milk.” He vanished into the ground, then sprung up again beside me. “Also, your friends told me.”
His leg shot out to kick a golem in the chest. As it stumbled back, I hooked its leg from behind with the trident, and it fell. Immediately, Kegohr jumped over me and smashed its head into dust.
The final golem made a desperate leap toward Vesma and Kumi. As its arms swung down, Vesma grabbed its wrists. She grunted and strained, holding back the descent of the golem’s twin blades, while Kumi climbed up on its back. She flicked a knife from a sheath on her back, plunged it into the golem’s neck, and twisted. The creature growled, staggered, and finally collapsed face forward.
Kumi tugged her knife free and sheathed it. “I much prefer sea monsters to stone monsters.”
I slung the trident onto my back, where it hung by a strap of woven seaweed, and pulled out a knife of my own.
“Fighting alongside a master like this,” I said, “tackling strange creatures and learning new ways of fighting. . . it kind of reminds me of being back at our guild.”
“It doesn’t have the nice bits, like food and beds,” Vesma said.
Kegohr wiped dust from his mace. “No, no, no, but at least it’s got the fun bits, yeah?”
We went around the stone bodies, extracting their magical cores. Some could be pried out from weakened stone using knives and fingers. For others, the rock bodies had to be smashed open using Kegohr’s mace. By the end, another 20 earth cores lay gently glowing in a heap on the sand, to go with the half dozen already in my bag.
“Not bad going,” Tahlis said.
Kegohr hefted his mace and glared at the blind lizardman. “Not bad?”
“Should we divide the cores up?” I asked.
“You have them,” Tahlis said. “I mastered Ground Strike technique while you were still leaving toddler-shaped trails in the sand.” He shot me a needle-toothed smile, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The lizardman reminded me a little of Tolin. The temple caretaker had taken to mocking me, but I always knew he never held any ill-intent.
Once again, I stuffed the cores into my bag. I’d always gone near a Vigorous Zone Core when I’d entered the spirit world to learn a new element, but if the core was no longer present in this desert, I might run into some problems.
Leaving behind a pile of golem corpses, we carried on along the road down the dried-out valley. We walked more cautiously than before, weapons constantly at the ready, our eyes darting back and forth as we watched for more attacks. Twice, we stopped to face a sudden movement only to see a hyena loping away into the wilderness.
The sky was turning to gray as we finally approached the Sunstone Temple. It had been an impressive building to see from far away, but up close, it was even more imposing. The approach led up a sunbaked mountain path, with stairs cut into the solid rock. It was a steep ascent past craggy outcroppings, and Kegohr and I entertained ourselves by trying to decide what animal each rock most looked like.
“That one’s a sheep.” Kegohr declared as he pointed at a rounded lump.
“No, it’s more like a coiled snake,” I said.
“Have you even seen a snake?”
“If
