Itwasthe size of an arena.
Theira immediately started walking one way, but Varius had frozen at what was on the other side.
He suddenly struggled to breathe.
“Theira,” he croaked.
“Yes?”
Varius took a deep breath, unable to tear his eyes away. “What am I looking at?”
“Hmm? Oh, that,” she said offhandedly.
“‘Oh, that’?” he echoed incredulously. “What bullshit. You brought me down to notice this, didn’t you? The hell am I looking at?”
Theira’s wild hair swirled around her as she slowly stepped back toward him, gauging his response.
“I did wonder what you’d make of it.” She finally looked away from him and toward the object of their discussion. “What do you think it is?”
“It looks,” Varius said, his voice tight, “like an army.”
And not just any army.
In the cavernous space under her home, Theira was storing what looked like hundreds of giant figures made of stone—no, clay.
Varius laughed roughly. Did she have clay in her garden. She’d built a godscursed army out of it.
They were human-like—upright, two legs and arms, a head—but proportioned differently. The head was more like a dome, the limbs enormous. If they could move, a swing from one of those fists would crush a man. It would crush adozenmen.
And there were hundreds.
“They’re called golems,” Theira said. “I started building them after I moved here, in anticipation.”
Of the war coming to her door.
She’d left the war behind, but she’d never believed she was free of it.
She played in her kitchen and made art and built space for refugees and also an entire inanimate army.
“So theydomove?“ Varius asked.
“Oh yes. Here, I’ll show you.” Theira narrowed her eyes and waved a hand.
Two glowing red dots appeared in the ‘head’ of one of the golems.
Then another.
Varius glanced at Theira, her brow furrowed in concentration, then back at the golems in awe.
The two golems took a huge step together in tandem. Then another, and another.
Varius imagined a hundred of these coming at him on a battlefield, visions of death and destruction flashing through his mind.
One of the golems raised an arm as if to swing, and Varius held his breath.
Then all of a sudden their eyes winked out and they went still.
Theira puffed out a breath and muttered something he didn’t catch but was probably profane.
