Threadbare - Complete Trilogy Read online

  Awakening 1

  “Golem Animus!” Nothing became something, awareness flooded in, and suddenly, everything was. Button eyes wiggled, as they looked around at a cluttered room. A furry neck moved as a cloth-and-fur head twisted, using its newfound ability to look at things. It didn’t enjoy it, not precisely. If you asked it, and somehow gave it the ability to reply, then it could have told you that it didn’t know what joy was. It didn’t know much of anything. It didn’t know that the hard thing it was sitting on was a wooden shelf. It failed to comprehend that the brown thingies lashed around its limbs that ran down through the holes in the wood were strings binding it in place. It had absolutely no concept of books, which were the things that filled the shelves across the way. It couldn’t tell you that the oddly-shaped thing three slots down from it was a wooden hobby horse, or that the thing two slots down was a stuffed ragdoll, or that the black-and-white shape directly next to it was a taxidermied skunk. Heck, it didn’t even know it was a toy teddy bear, a very old one as they went. The other toys looked to it for answers, and it looked back, without the mental capacity to question or the vocal capacity to answer. “There we go. Four should be a good test batch.” The teddy bear swiveled its head forward again, to regard the speaker. Any human who wasn’t currently wearing diapers and had a few years of experience under their belt could have told you that this was an older man. Worn, silver-haired, and haggard, he moved with a slight limp as he paced back in forth in front of the toy shelf. A tailor would have identified the many-pocketed apron and sturdy, patched clothes that he was wearing as artisan’s gear, specifically the garb of a fellow tailor. Scissors of varying shapes, spools of thread, measuring tape, and swatches of leather and fur poked out of the neatly-kept pockets. The man rubbed his neatly-trimmed silver goatee, and considered the now-moving toys with a critical eye. He pulled a notebook from his pocket, and scribbled in it. The toys craned what necks they had to follow the sounds of the quill. “Standard reactions for toy golems. Visual tracking, responsive to sound, limited movement… here, none of that.” He reached out as the loop started to slip from the teddy bear’s arm. It was wiggling, and without hands, the bindings were more of a formality. “Feisty one. Superior animation?” He cleared his throat. “Command golem! Be Still!” The words echoed inside what passed for the teddy bear’s mind. It became still. It could not conceive of any alternative, nor could it want to, even if it had the ability to want in the first place. It could no more go against that command than it could breathe fire or turn itself into marmalade jam. But at the time it had received the command, the bear happened to be pointing at a window. Something moved beyond… a tree branch, heavy with fruit, beset by birds. The teddy bear was not the only watcher. On the windowsill, rapt and staring at the birds with the lust for excitement and an ancestral urge for predation bred into its very soul, was a fat, yellow-eyed, black cat. Its eyes darted back and forth in the reflection of the dusty glass, following the bird movements with a passion and quickness far belying its rotund frame. “Eye for Detail,” the man murmured. The teddy bear tried to look at him, but couldn’t. Be Still resonated within the core of its very being. It was a golem, and a golem could not go against the words that filled it. “Yes… Hm. Interesting… two superior qualities, good. Same craftsman? Have to ask Mordecai next time.” More scratching. More notes. Followed by a sigh. “No point in putting this off. Test seven, four subjects, two exceptional… here we go. Yorgum watch over me.” The man moved past the teddy bear’s vision, tucked away his notebook, and stretched out his hand toward the toys down the shelf. “Greater Golem Upgrade!” The room pulsed with golden light, and there came a sound like mighty gears turning. The dust motes hanging in the sunlight seemed to pause, pulled together in geometric shapes before dissipating again. The teddy bear watched the cat glance back at the movement… then yawn, because the cat had seen it all before. The flashy part went on for a bit, then died away to nothing. The man nodded, and mopped sweat from his brow, before turning a bit and repeating himself, with the same arm motions. “Greater Golem Upgrade!” Again came the lights, and the flashing, and this time the man’s eyes went wide, as his worn face stretched into a smile. “Skill up? Good, good.” He moved out of the teddy bear’s view and wood scraped on wood, then something creaked. “Getting too old for this.” Liquid splashed against metal. The cat whipped its head around and made a sort of ‘blart’ noise. “No, Pulsivar. This isn’t milk, and Celia would kill me if I fed you seventy-proof rum.” The cat yarped again, until it was certain the man would continue to ignore it. And after some time, the teddy bear found it could turn its head again. It looked at the man, and the toy didn’t have the words to say that he was sitting in a chair, scribbling notes, and muttering to himself. “Skill’s up to a nice even eight, now. Hopeful there, might finally be able to make it work. If I can get at least one functional subject out of this batch, I can move on to the next stage.” Seeing nothing that made sense, the teddy bear looked back down the shelf, and saw the dead stuffed skunk looking back at it. But the other two toys, the hobby horse and the doll, were frozen, save for random tremors that rocked them every few seconds. “Well! On with it, then,” the man rose to his feet again, and the teddy bear watched him walk over, and stretch out his arm once more. But this time he could see the man’s fingers moving on the skunk, tracing glowing symbols on its ratty hide that spread to cover the grisly little toy. “Greater Golem Upgrade!” The teddy bear watched, as the light flashed again, and the dusty sunlight formed symbols to mirror those glowing on the skunk, watched them sink into the taxidermy as golden light poured forth from its every orifice. And the skunk fell still. Then the man’s hand was on the teddy bear’s face, and words thundered forth, filling its being, filling it, blending in and becoming it- “Greater Golem Upgrade!” YOU HAVE ACHIEVED A RANK UP SPECIES JOB IS NOW GREATER TOY GOLEM ALL ATTRIBUTES +2 YOU HAVE GAINED THE INTELLIGENCE ATTRIBUTE INTELLIGENCE +2 NEW SPECIES JOB UNLOCKED – BEAR DO YOU WISH TO ACCEPT THE BEAR JOB AT THIS TIME? Y/N? -and suddenly the world made a lot more sense. The teddy bear realized that it could think. But right now all it was thinking of, could be summarized by its very limited, intelligence 2 mind, was “what the heck are these squiggly things right in front of my face?” It didn’t recognize the words as words. It couldn’t read. They were just some sort of looming thing in front of it, that overlaid and blocked a good portion of its vision. And without the ability to answer the prompt, the words simply hung there, incomprehensible. “There we go.” The man mopped his brow again, leaning against the shelf. “Woof. Takes it out of you. More mana draw at this level. Greater results? No matter.” The man stepped back, and spoke again. “Eye for Detail!” The teddy bear watched as the man’s eyes flashed gold for a second, then returned to normal. “Yes, all Greater Golems. Int score successfully gained for all of them.” He frowned. “Odd that the bear’s intelligence is so low. Good wisdom though, oddly good. Form following function? Investigate later.” He flipped open his notebook and scrawled again. Not that the teddy bear noticed, it was busy looking around the room with new eyes. New thoughts filled its head. It now had the ability to question, to wonder what things were, and why they were that way. And it found itself growing rather annoyed at the way the glowy squiggles kept getting in the way of its looking at things. Snap, went the notebook. The man cracked his knuckles, eyes dropping, even more tired than he had been at the start of this whole event. “No point in putting this off. Sink or swim time.” He took a deep breath, and spoke clearly. “Form Party.” DING! The sound rang from everywhere and nowhere, and the toys looked around to see where it was coming from. The cat growled in annoyance at the high-pitched sound, and relocated under the nearby table
. “Moment of truth… let this work!” The man rubbed his hands together, and looked to the hobby horse. “Invite golem!” Golden light flared between them. The hobby horse looked back at him. It twitched slightly. “No. Nonononono… not another wasted run. Come on, it has to work. Invite Golem!” The hobby horse just stared at him, with its painted eyes. And the man’s face sunk into his hands. “Damn. Just… damn.” He looked down the row, lips pressed into a thin line. “Ah well. Three more chances with this batch. If not this one, then sooner or later I’ll crack it.” He turned back to the hobby horse. The bear turned, angling its head until it could see what he was doing relatively well, around the gaps in the glowy words. “Waste not want not,” the man said. “Disenchant!” And to the teddy bear’s utter surprise, the hobby horse evaporated into dust with a flickering yellow crystal dropping down to land in the pile. The hobby horse was gone. The man swayed, then leaned against the wall, breathing hard. “Enough for one more, I think. Mmf. Might as well get this over as fast as possible. Invite Golem!” he barked at the ragdoll, and again the golden light flared… And the teddy bear realized that if the man kept doing that, he’d eventually get to the teddy bear. INTELLIGENCE +1 To the bear, the words shifted for a second to display a much shorter, smaller bunch of squiggles, then faded away to return to the old familiar ones that had filled its vision for the last few minutes. But inside its fuzzy skull, ideas started trickling in more freely. It was still relatively stupid, but now it was stupid at about one point five times the thinking speed it had before. “You too, huh? Pity. And you’re double the intelligence, so it’s not that, “ the man mused, as the ragdoll didn’t react to his invitation. “Goodbye, my dear. Disenchant!” Again, the toy turned to dust and crystal. Though the teddy bear was new to sentience, and new to this whole concept of, well, things and existence in general, a notion formed in its newly-enlightened mind. And the first thought to cross its mind that wasn’t a question, was a pretty simple one; I don’t want to be dust. WISDOM +1 ???? Character Sheet

  Name: ???? Age: 12 minutes Jobs: Greater Toy Golem Level 1 Attributes: Strength: 4 Constitution: 16 Hit Points: 50 Armor: 10 Intelligence: 3 Wisdom: 11 Sanity: 14 Mental Fortitude: 0 Dexterity: 6 Agility: 3 Stamina: 19 Endurance: 20 Charisma: 2 Willpower: 10 Moxie: 12 Cool: 20 Perception: 5 Luck: 5 Fortune: 10 Fate: 0 Greater Toy Golem Skills Adorable – Level 1 Gift of Sapience – Level NA Golem Body – Level 1 Magic Resistance –Level 1

  Awakening 2

  The old man stared forlornly at the dust he’d made, shaking his head. “Such a waste. Status.”

  He glanced up, nodded. “Close screen.” With those words he moved over to a pile of glassware on a nearby shelf. Collecting a pair of empty vials, he headed back and plucked the crystals out of the dust and put them into his apron pockets. The dust went into the vials. Though the vials were pretty big, he only put one pile of dust into each vial. “Stupid godsdamned nonsensical storage requirements,” he muttered, the lines on his brow creasing.

  The teddy bear understood none of this. Neither the words, or the actions were comprehensible to its young eyes, especially with the class prompt in its way. Intelligence 3 really didn’t give it a lot to work with, there, and those words filled most of its vision in a really distracting manner. But Wisdom 11 was a bit better than the average golem, and the common sense the attribute bestowed was telling it that the break in the man’s routine meant the teddy bear wasn’t at risk of being dusted just yet. So it waited and watched.

  The man tucked the vials away, and looked back to the skunk and the bear. “Sit tight. I’ll get to you shortly.” He reached out and patted them each on the head. “If it’s any consolation your essence will save me time and trouble with batch eight.” Then he moved over to the door, opened it, and walked out into the yard. Now that was interesting! The skunk and the bear leaned forward as far as they could, to try and see the new place that the open door had revealed. But it shut before they could observe too much. Lots of green things, more brown things underneath them, and spiky green things poking out of the ground. Gray round thingies made a path leading to the door, and the man was walking up them to a really big brown bulky thing in the distance.

  “Mrp!” The cat announced with frustration as the door shut in its face, seconds before it could get out. Its pudgy legs had cost it a bid for freedom, and it consoled its bruised pride by settling back down on its haunches and grooming itself. The skunk and the teddy bear looked down at it from their post on the shelf. Then looked at each other.That grooming thing looked kind of fun. The skunk twisted, trying to copy the cat, but the strings holding it down didn’t really give it the slack it needed to raise its paws to its mouth, and the one around its tail prevented it from pushing its neck down to them. The bear, on the other hand, had been more hastily tied. And with its arms full of squishy stuffing, and no troublesome hands to get in the way, it managed to pop its paw-pads out of the string loops and touch them to its mouth.

  Which accomplished precisely nothing, because its mouth was a few sewn lines of thread. Rubbing its ears with its paws didn’t do anything either.

  Well, they did do one thing. The bear didn’t exactly have much fine motor control yet, so it was pushing pretty hard. This jiggled it in place… and made the loose strings on the knots holding its legs wiggle under the shelf.

  The cat immediately stopped washing, and peered at the motion. Slowly, it crept forward, acting as nonchalantly as it dared. Then, when the string least suspected, it struck! A mighty leap, right onto the lower shelf-

  -which, as it turned out, was just a plank of wood suspended atop three metal prongs nailed into the wall.

  The cat’s twenty-five pound body hit the shelf at an angle, slid as the cat flailed widely, and whipped right off the prongs, taking about fifty pounds of books, various tailoring tools, piles of fabric, yarn, and spools of thread with it.

  In a supreme act of agility, the sort that it hadn’t managed in four years, the cat twisted in midair, claws fully out, legs flailing, and one paw caught the dangling strings securing the teddy bear.

  The lower shelf crashed to the ground, sending damn near everything flying in heaps across the workshop. And for a bizarre, timeless moment, Pulsivar the cat hung suspended, eyes wide open, as a sort of existential dread crept over the feline.

  Because at intelligence 8, he knew pretty damn well what was gonna happen here.

  And it did.

  His weight pulled the strings down, causing the vastly underweighted top shelf to flip up on its prongs, then come crashing down to the tiled floor below.

  Pulsivar gained a level in feline agility that day, and managed to avoid being crushed under the plank.

  With a crash and a crunch, the shelf hit the ground, slamming into the two toy golems, before bouncing, rebounding, and ending up on its side. With a burst of something that wasn’t pain, but was definitely odd and unpleasant, the teddy bear watched a red number ‘4’ float past its vision.

  The workshop fell silent again, save for the sound of feline slurping and frantic grooming. Pulsivar’s excuse was that nobody had seen it, nobody could prove nothing, and it didn’t matter anyway because the room was more interesting this way.

  The teddy bear, now at a very awkward angle, pushed and shoved at the floor. And for some reason, there was a lot less resistance than last time. With one final heave it managed to clear out from under the shelf, turning back as it got loose to see the knots holding its legs in place entirely undone by Pulsivar’s little display of chaos.

  LUCK +1

  Not that it understood string, but it realized it could move now. And looking around at the mess, something told it that it might want to not be here when the old man found the state of affairs in the workshop.

  But if it couldn’t be here, what did that leave?

  There was a much bigger place through that moving part in the wall, it recalled that. Yes, it should probably go that way. That sounded good.

  INT +1

  So the l
ittle bear wobbled to its feet—

  —and promptly fell over.

  That didn’t work.

  So it tried again, and fell over again. Finally, after about the eighth or ninth try, it managed to stay upright.

  AGL + 1

  Well, for all of two seconds, anyway.

  Fifty-two tries later it had gained two more points of agility and the ability to stand upright and move around without going head over keister. Then the teddy bear turned to the door, and tried to amble that way.

  But before it could get there, a racket nearby caught the teddy bear’s attention.

  The skunk had evidently had a worse time of it. The poor thing was still caught by some of its toys, but its paws and part of its body were twisted out of joint. Though the teddy bear didn’t know it, the skunk had a sort of internal skeleton to it, a few sticks of wood and some wires binding them together. The force of the plank falling hadn’t been enough to break the sticks, but it had torn free a few wires. The effect was similar to what broken bones would be on a living creature.

  And though the impact had at least gotten its upper body paws free, the string looped around its tail and waist was still intact, and that kept it from escaping the plank.

  The skunk shifted, trying to look at the teddy bear. It had squiggly letters filling its vision too, asking it if it wanted to accept the Skunk job at this time. But like the bear, it had no idea what they meant, and no way of answering the Y/N prompt one way or another. Finally the skunk managed to get the teddy bear focused in the gaps between its words. Its glass eyes sparkled with mute appeal.

  And now came a moment that would have send the old man into a dance of whooping joy if he’d been there to see it. Lesser golems were unintelligent golems, incapable of sentience, empathy, or even the smallest awareness that anything existed that wasn’t them. And even if they had those things, lesser golems didn’t have the slightest speck of free will. They couldn’t act of their own accord, only react to their master’s commands.