At the moment, Tali’s best plan was to try and sit down to cut the stone. She didn’t have the tools to measure or complete a gem that was symmetrical, so she would have to find some other beauty worthy of her god’s name. Not that she had much of a spark of inspiration for even a single stone. It was hard to think of anything except how much she needed rest, just one blissful night of sleeping soundly back in her bed in Dhuldarim. With the threat of demons over her head, she worked and moved until she absolutely had to crash down onto her bedroll, then was up again in just a few hours to carry on. 

Tali took a seat on a rock low on the bank of the river, submerging the tube half of the artificer’s knife. A quick tap on the small lever on the side, graven with runes, sent a tiny jet of water pulsing out of the pen-like tip. Tali beamed and adjusted the flow of water, sculpting its shape by adjusting the many rings on the small rod. It took little to cut, so long as there was a smooth intake of water. There was a brief resistance when she turned the rings, but it seemed almost pristine. 

The young dwarf looked up at Rhesis. “Where on earth did you find this?”

“In a tomb!” Prideep chirped, skidding to a stop beside the siren. 

Rhesis rubbed at the base of her left horn. “He is correct,” she said with a sigh. “Indelicate, but correct.” 

“A tomb?” Tali didn’t understand. “Dwarves give their bodies to their heartforges.” 

The siren shrugged at that. “The dead seldom elaborate on even their most unusual surroundings. Perhaps the creators were dwarves away from their heartforge who wished to put their companion to rest.” 

Tali shuddered slightly at that. “They must have hated him, to knock him off like a lump of slag.” 

Prideep moistened one of his eyes with his long tongue before making a sound. Sometimes it was unnerving how quiet their goblin could be. “Does it work?” 

“Let me test it,” Tali said. “I need something harder than quartz.” 

“The emeralds?” 

The young dwarf shook her head at the siren’s question. “Harder. I want to be sure I can cut them without resistance before I start. We can’t afford to waste the emeralds without more.” She’d told the group that the stones could be carved into the hearts of golems, but she hadn’t elaborated much on the how. 

Stone grating announced Eiv’s arrival. The golem took up a sentry position behind Tali before speaking in a voice of gravel and steel. “The diamond you once carried would serve the purpose.” 

Tali’s heart sank at the thought of altering the little spiral-cut gem that she was so proud of. “I’ll have to ask Lekt. It’s his diamond now.”

Rhesis patted her gently on the shoulder. “I doubt he will mind. Come, creature, let us find him.” The second sentence came with a glare that should have burned a hole in the back of Prideep’s skull. 

If the goblin noticed the intensity, he said nothing of it. “We will find,” he promised before wrapping suction-cupped fingers around Rhesis’s forearm. He led the siren off in the direction of more deep dwarves. For having been terrified of one of their kind, he now seemed quite comfortable with the multitude. Perhaps it was because they were so quickly fond of him in turn. Tali trailed after them with a head buzzing from the thoughts of future.

In a few minutes, she found Lekt in the midst of his people, helping plan their next move. Tali tapped him on the shoulder.

The bulky deep dwarf turned. “Is there wrong, Tali?” His accent was still much thicker than the others, a sign he was from much deeper than the deep dwarves of Lagarra.

“May I please borrow the diamond?” she asked. She hesitated a moment and then explained, “We need to test the artificer’s knife before I make the golem’s heart, to be certain it will work. I was planning on cutting our test piece in half.”

“Of course,” Lekt said, pulling the stone out of the pouch hanging from a cord around his neck. “Two gems are better than one. I go to scout the paths around Kuldath, though. I will not be back until late.”

The response made Tali feel immensely better about their plan. “I’ll bring them back when you return.”

Lekt gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze, careful not to dig in his claws. “Good carving, Tali.”

The young dwarf returned the gesture before scurrying back to the river’s edge, parting ways with Rhesis and Prideep. She again started the artificer’s knife, the familiar hiss sending a flood of warmth through her chest. She ran fingers across the diamond before wedging it into a crevice of rock. Shaping the water knife was easily achieved again through the use of the rings around its handle.

It sliced through the diamond slowly, creating a perfectly smooth plane on each side. Tali grinned fiercely, the expression faltering when she realized she had no ideas for her design.

Tali looked up at Eiv, trying to imagine creating something with the animus of life inside it, the glow that lit the golem’s eyes imparted onto her own art. “Do you know how golems are created, Eiv?” 

“No, master.” Eiv tilted its head to show it was listening, leaving her room to elaborate if she wished. 

The dwarf fiddled with a ring. “It’s harder than I thought it would be.” 

“What do you need?” 

Tali sighed. “Something beautiful. I suppose…” An idea struck her like a plunging boulder. “I think I have an idea. Stay here and I’ll find Jarek.” 

A few minutes of scurrying around located the mage at the center of the area for the wounded. The necromancer’s grasp on life and death allowed his magic to heal, though it was not where he excelled. He couldn’t restore life, but he could mend flesh and knit bone, which was more than enough as far as the deep dwarves were concerned. He looked up at her approach. “Yes, Tali?” 

The dwarf caught him by his sleeve and tugged him away, since his task at the moment was just rolling up clean bandages. “I need inspiration.” 

“For the golem?” 

“Precisely.” She pulled him over to the river’s shore and cleared her throat, not sure how to explain. “When Geim was first teaching me how to sketch for patterns in jewelry, he told me to imagine shapes and patterns, things of beauty. I want you to tell me about something beautiful from the world above.” 

Jarek cleared his throat as he took a seat next to her. “How personal?” 

Tali offered him a small smile. “I won’t push.” 

“And this is going to be in the heart of a golem, living forever?” 

“That’s the theory.” As she spoke, Tali pulled an emerald out of the bag. It would be slightly smaller than the size of her fist when she finished it. She’d made plenty of sandpaper at different grains before she started and several files, but it was going to be an exhausting amount of work without the rest of an artificer’s tools. Still, it was something and she could sand or file away on it every rest. 

The human rubbed at his stubbled chin thoughtfully, studying the lump of stone still occluded with scraps of extra stone. “I like to think that Evženi will endure long after I am gone,” he said quietly, thoughts quickly turning to the wife he’d lost. “Perhaps this is how.”

Tali listened to him as she worked, allowing his stories of roses and rainy days, songs and laughter, to fire her imagination. She started by carefully cutting the emerald free of the dull stone still touching it. The facets started larger, but quickly became small and precise as she poured her heart and soul into the geometric shapes inspired by Jarek’s love. She chased the stone where it wished to go, and as she worked, she felt the burn of power seep from her hands into the emerald.

Jarek seemed utterly oblivious to the voice of Tek, some echoed memory of the days when the God of Artifice actually turned his attention to the dwarves he had created. Tali felt her sense of magnetic north intensify, her connection to the rock that she sat on suddenly shifting into an overpowering sensation of being grounded in the world around her. Her own pulse was audible to her as her clever fingers spun the gem. It gave her images in her mind that she had never seen: graceful creatures on wing, soaring through summer caverns without a roof, strange mushrooms growing in blades all around her feet.

Slowly, black and white vision became something else, so vibrant that she heard it like music. This was the green that Jarek described, life pulsing everywhere around her. Even in the stone sitting in one hand, she heard a sudden shimmer of the shade, there one moment and gone the next.

Tali heard it through Jarek’s voice, his comforting low tones becoming a sound-scape worthy of the largest symphony that had ever existed.

By the time the connection faded, her furious cutting finished, Tali was so exhausted that she almost face-planted onto bare stone.

Jarek took the stone from her palm, a little sound of disbelief in his voice. “It’s a songbird,” he said, running fingers over the edge of one wing. “How did you make such a thing?”

“I don’t know.” Tali sagged as the strange electric energy subsided in her body, leaving only an ache in its place. She rubbed at her temple. She sensed the power in the heart, and a sudden feeling of age. How much it had taken, she didn’t know.

Someday, she would find out.

The necromancer turned the delicate bird sculpture this way and that, examining it for any hint of flaw. “A breathtaking little piece you’ve made. Will it work?”

Tali shrugged at that. “We won’t really know until we take it to Bar. We can copy the external runes on Eiv for the rest.” 

Jarek nodded at that and handed her back the emerald songbird. “You have never seen a bird before, Tali. You said yourself that this is your first time away from Dhuldarim.” Concern mixed with awe in his voice. “It seems miraculous, that you would know their form.” 

Tali took a deep breath. “Tek remembers,” she explained. “Building a golem taps into the echoes he left behind.”

He looked positively fascinated by that answer. “I must admit, I am quite curious. Though perhaps the interrogation can wait until you are more rested. You look...drained. Much as I am after a spell.” 

The dwarf sighed as she padded towards Bar’s forge at the skyborn mage’s lanky side. Eiv followed behind them, stone feet thumping against the floor. “Maybe it’s the same sort of thing? Mostly it’s my hands cramping up from holding the knife so long.” 

Jarek smiled. “Well, thank you for allowing me to speak of her for some hours. It feels...better...to remember in that way.” The genuine fondness in his tone eased some of Tali’s strain. 

This would be worth it. 

Bar looked up from his forge as they approached. He had made a surprising amount of steel over the course of the past few days, giving it the rough shape of limbs and working ingot after ingot into the same skeleton. It was imperative that there be no weaknesses to be exploited by the demons. Beside his workstation, carved granite was laid out in neat rows, each piece carved to be part of the body. 

“How do we fix it together?” the burly smith asked, setting aside his hammer. 

“I don’t know,” Tali admitted. “I think it’s the runes. Can you copy the ones on Eiv?” 

Bar grunted in response, picking up a stray chisel and his hammer. “Think so.” He strode over to the assortment of pieces and chiseled the intricate runes with Eiv’s body as his guide. 

It took them almost an hour to chisel everything in. Tali helped where she was able, but for the most part she just tried to stay out of the way. Bar struck the last blow on the future golem’s forehead, now that everything else was shaped and engraved. He rolled each piece over to the steel skeleton. It probably weighed a thousand pounds altogether, maybe more. It was as large as Eiv and would hopefully be just as powerful when it awoke. 

“It does nothing,” Bar observed, pushing the head into place. “Put the heart in. We will see what that does.” 

Tali nodded and stepped forward, placing the emerald bird against the backbone, where the golem’s throat would be. She wasn’t strong enough to shift the stones that would create its body. 

Nothing happened. 

“Maybe I did something wrong,” Tali murmured. “It could be too delicate.” She was distinctly disappointed. Everything in her soul insisted that she had transferred the powers of Tek into the stone, but she had no proof of it. “I don’t really know anything about this.” 

Jarek put a hand on her shoulder. “I feel something. A change in the ambient magic.” 

“What do you mean?” Bar’s question came sharply, springing from unease. The smith shifted his weight back away from the golem and took a few steps in retreat. 

Tali almost slapped herself on the forehead. “The writings said that golems draw from the world around them, once their heart is sparked. It can take them time to animate. Sorry, I completely forgot.” 

The deep dwarf smith eyed it with definite suspicion. “And is it sparked?”

“I think so.” Tali edged closer, looking for the heart that she had placed. 

Stone had grown over it like moss on a rock, concealing the carved emerald from view. It was so gradual that she almost didn’t notice it. Looking for it now, she could see traces of movement from the granite, moving like a thing alive. 

Bar let out a hiss of breath. Clearly he had noticed it as well. “It will need a name, if it is to be a thing that lives.” 

“Normally we number golems,” Tali said, a small smile forming. She was particularly proud of the carvings she had done on the golem’s forehead. Instead of placing Dhuldarim’s rune on it, the young dwarf carved the sigil that the little group of resistance used as a rallying symbol to mark what was theirs: the dwarven word for victory. 

Bar reached down and put a hand on the golem’s head like he was taking its temperature. “Not numbers,” he said. “They steal what a thing is. We will call it after the names of feelings. Things we are, things we wish to be.” 

Tali nodded thoughtfully. “What is this one?” 

“Let us meet it first.” 

The stone kept growing, wrapping itself around the bones of steel. Runes took on a golden glow as it did so and slowly a light formed in the golem’s eyes. The head rotated to look at Bar. 

“I am awake,” the golem said, voice even and measured despite being a growl of rock and metal. 

Bar’s expression softened slightly. “Welcome to awake, Tranquil.”

“A good name.” Jarek reached out, putting a hand on the golem. “Let’s get you up and moving a bit sooner than usual, Tranquil.” 

Tali felt the world distort slightly as the mage let power flow into the golem. After a few minutes, Jarek slumped over. She caught him in time to stop him from crumpling to the floor, though she was barely better after the strain of starting the flow of power into the heart. “I think we need to rest.” 

Bar nodded. “Eiv and I will take care of Tranquil. Go sleep.” 

The dwarf couldn’t find it in herself to disagree.