Soren Boarspear was not very highly praised in his community, that is, the magic-using community. He was covered up by magic-users much greater than himself, the kind of magic-users that could generate tornadoes of fire, or cause the harvest to double. Those magic-users would always overshadow the poor fellow, but it wasn’t only them.

  The town that Soren had been appointed to, Buzzard’s Call, also was not very fond of the man. He mostly kept to himself and his experiments, making sure of the townsfolk’s wellbeing and safety was a secondary task to him. His magics came first.

  If there was one thing Soren was an expert of, it was crafting new spells, ones that no one had ever heard of! Typically they were somewhat pointless, but nevertheless, he could make thousands.

  One day, Soren stumbled on a particularly interesting spell while experimenting with rocks. When he used this spell, he expected it to give the rock levitation, but was surprised when it did something much more exciting.

  The rock on which he’d cast his spell wiggled around on his desk, attempting to remove itself from it. The rock moved on its own, it behaved like a creature capable of making its own decisions. Soren immediately wrote this spell down on his list of useful spells, a very short list.

  “This must be tested with something of greater structure!” Soren shouted in his echoey workshop.

  ***

  The following days, Soren called for multiple sculptors to come into his workshop, presenting their finest sculptures of small animals, most were made of stone, but some other materials were presented as well. Soren went through multiple experiments, first discovering that his spell only worked on stone, not other things. Later, he discovered that if the stone shared a structure similar to that of an animal, it would behave similarly to said animal in its movements.

  “Highly intriguing,” he mumbled to himself, “I suppose I should figure out how to control the animated stone before bringing larger creatures to life.”

  And that, he did.

  After months of study and experimentation, Soren had created a pack of stone wolves, a leopard-bull, a one-horned bison, and a giant bee, which all followed his commands. However, even with all that, the creatures were still simply rocks. They did not eat, nor sleep, but that wasn’t the issue. They were not truly alive without one thing.

  Mana.

  “But how do I go about giving them such a thing? It’s not like I can just give them mana without any way to store it. Ah, but that’s just it. A storage system. I need to give them mana gems! It’s so simple!”

  Mana gems were a priceless resource, Soren only carried two, but he knew where some more were stored.

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  ***

  The camouflaged wolf returned from its task. It had stolen three more mana gems from the town reserve. Now Soren was equipped with five total, enough to bring around half of his creations to life. As a reward for completing the mission, the wolf became the first to receive a gem, but it didn’t quite turn out right.

  As the mana-filled gem was infused with the wolf, a radiant glow erupted from its eyes. The glow continued to grow and a loud hum began. The wolf clawed at its face, taking off chunks. Finally, the wolf exploded into hundreds of pieces of charred stone. Soren was able to hide before the blast, but both the wolf and the mana gem were completely destroyed.

  Soren tried most of the remaining mana gems on every creature he hadn't tried. Some had higher tolerance than others, but all of them ended in the same way. Soren would’ve been beside himself if he cared much for his lifeless creations. Instead, he was ignited with a desire to find the right mate to the mana gem. Problem was, he only had one gem remaining, so he’d have to choose wisely.

  Over another set of months, Soren had perfected a new model. Based on a human structure, his new creature was ready to receive animation, and afterward, life. “Animated stone” was no longer enough to describe it; Soren decided on calling it a “golem”.

  A crashing sound met with Soren’s workshop door. The villagers had come to kill Soren and retrieve their mana gems. Soon after the first noise, the door flew down to the ground, kicking up a cloud of stone-dust. Soren’s remaining wolves immediately came to his defense, ripping into the intruders.

  The villagers' swords couldn’t do anything to the wolves, but their greathammers were a different story. Before all three of Soren’s wolves were smashed to bits, Soren raised the humanoid golem to animation. Next, he filled the mana gem with his own magic. Before he could merge the two, however, he was met with a sharp steel object piercing through his spine and internal organs.

  Soren’s mana-rich blood spilt all over the golem in front of him as he fell to the ground. His vision went black.

  ***

  He opened his eyes and looked down toward his feet in front of him. On the ground lay a body, his body. He raised his hand toward his face, revealing a stone palm that had been created with delicate care. He noticed movement in his peripheral vision.

  The greathammer-wielding villagers were creeping ever closer to him, he would be smashed to bits if he didn’t act now. He grabbed the glowing mana gem next to him and opened his jaw, shoving the gem down his small semblance of a throat cavity.

  It burned.

  An orange glow shot out from his eyes, then dimming into a faded white. As the white color took hold, the burning pain that he felt also became lessened. He felt the surge of mana flow through him, but there was one other thing that came to him, a brand new spell.

  He grabbed a swordsman by the wrist, doing away with the incantation, he sent his mana into the man’s arm. Quickly, the man’s flesh was turned to stone, leaving him frozen in place.

  The lack of motion didn’t last long, however, as he was soon turned into animated stone, stone that obeyed Soren.

  The swordsman turned toward his former allies, but stayed close to Soren, guarding him. One of the greathammer-wielders, Soren believed it was the swordsman’s brother, dropped his weapon and ran to the man. He called out the man’s name, but the only answer he received was a sword to his gut, it was twisted for extra internal damage.

  As the body hit the floor, the other men looked in fear as Soren reached down and touched the body, turning it to stone and animating it. Most of the men were turned to Soren’s side that fateful night, but the ones who lived to tell the tale gave Soren a new name.

  They called him “Karathuum”, the name was comprised of two words. “Karak”, meaning “stone”, and “Inthuum”, a type of beast that duplicates by feeding on the flesh of humans.

  Karathuum attempted to rule the surface, an army of animated stone behind him. After taking multiple settlements, Karathuum was subdued by the Grand Sorcerer, Roansphere. Roansphere sealed Karathuum, and what remained of his army, in the catacombs.

  Even thousands of years later, in a world where magic is hardly practiced, Karathuum's story told as a fairy tale. Yet, in the dark of the catacombs, he still lurks, awaiting his revenge...