Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11: Disappearance

Contrary to all the worrying and stress, Kresha returned after two weeks and everything was operating just fine. No golems went berserk, the dormant volcano didn't erupt, and all the experiments were completed with no issues.

Mover golems took all the necessary ingredients she dragged into the Keep to their required caverns.

She discovered Arkyn's handwriting was not at the level of professional calligraphy, but it was legible and hardly needed much to improve. His notes described everything notable, including the taste of some results.

'Thank the gods he doesn't actually have a human tongue. The cauldron in corridor nine was practically a poison.' Kresha thought while looking over the notes.

She went back to her regular routine around the Keep, occasionally she saw Arkyn in the Livestock Cavern.

When he wasn't running maintenance, he was attempting to connect with the cows and bulls to monitor them more closely.

Her social research was just a farce to get him more integrated with living creatures, but it seemed clear the animals wanted nothing to do with him. To them, the golems that brought feed and refilled their waters were the most important thing there.

Even if was only human appearance, his attempts at trying to pet and talk to them was more of a nuisance than anything else in their eyes.

Eventually Kresha told Arkyn after a few months that he didn't need to continue the socialization project, as she didn't get the results she was hoping to find.

Arkyn was no longer progressing in human behaviour, he was at the same level of emotional expression that she saw when he severed his arm, greatly disappointing her.

A few more winters came and went, Arkyn noticed that he saw less and less of Kresha. Anytime he entered a room, she would stare at him while he worked before leaving the room without a word. At one point, she completely disappeared for over a week.

He needed to give her the results on the last project that ran its course, but could not find her. She wasn't in the labs, maintenance rooms, or even the Smelting Cavern.

Eventually Arkyn realized the situation was not going to resolve itself and had to actively look for her. The only thing out of place was the room full of breathing sponges and Fangbell containers.

All the jars were dry and only a few more of the sponge creatures were left alive, and that made him recall how she called Fangbell her own responsibility. The very first day he awoke, she called them her 'doses.'

If Arkyn could feel emotions physically tighten his chest, he would've felt just that. Doses could mean several things, and vital to health was one of them.

His usual walking pace around the Ash Keep turned into a jog, searching for Kresha one floor at a time. He found at the end of his search that the door to the Keep's top floors was still locked, so she must have been somewhere he was told he couldn't normally go.

Usually that meant one of three places, the butchering room, the hallways that had the hot spring bathroom, and the master bedroom.

Arkyn always steered clear of the hot spring bathroom and bedroom as Kresha would say intruding would be a death sentence for him. Though today he was about to break a rule at the risk of being turned into a chair built only to be tortured.

The doors to Kresha's room were made of thick pieces of stained oak, one of the few places in the Ash keep with doors made of wood instead of stone or metal.

Arkyn stopped at the entrance and waited a few moments before finally knocking, uncertain what sort of state he might find her in.

There was some rustling, confirming she was inside. No golem had been allowed to enter the room, not even Arkyn, so it must have been her.

He knocked twice more, hearing the rustling stop for a moment. After a few more seconds, Arkyn knocked his knuckles against the door for the third time.

This time something glass fell and shattered behind the door. A low hiss whined like an animal exhaling angrily.

'I don't think a human being could make such a noise.'

Unsure of what the source was, Arkyn pulled the lever on the door, opening it an inch before it swung wide from a massive force behind it.

Despite being triple the weight of a normal person, he was flung backward as the entire frame was broken from the impact.

Arkyn bounced off the opposite stone wall with the resounding gong noise that reverberated throughout his entire body. It managed to last seconds after he slumped onto the floor.

His human vision had to wait a few moments before the vibrations stopped to clearly see the creature inside Kresha's room.

It was an unhealthy pale white, like it's skin was pulled and stretched to the limits of its elasticity. Standing almost twelve feet tall, even though it was still hunched on all four of its long and jagged limbs.

The head and face resembled a strange collection of animals. The jaw and nose resembled the flattened facial features of a bat with two forward facing fangs.

The ears were almost cat-like in shape, but they emerged from the long mane of hair as little bare-flesh daggers.

Each arm and leg looked like white branches of birchwood saplings, scabbed in certain sections that seemed to peel away at the skin. They ended with ten slightly long fingers and toes, but the chipped and somewhat broken black nails were curved and seemingly twisted into claws that were nearly twice as long.

The eyes were bulging nearly out of their sockets, incredibly bloodshot with actual blood caked around the edges. The rest of its body was covered in clumps of mud from digging all around the master bedroom to escape.

The red mess of eyes were staring him down like he was the most appetizing piece of meat in existence.

'Great, Madam Kresha is missing and now we have a monster infestation. Maybe I'll get lucky and the dormant volcano will erupt today too.' Arkyn thought before the monster pounced at him.