Lyall dropped off the desk, papers in hand. His watch on the floor remained intent, but he strode the once glossy stone without care of the clumps of golems by the doors dispersing and beginning to meander. Cylon had put fifteen feet between him and the main cluster that peacefully swayed in place and cast upon Lyall an expression too mixed with emotion for him to read. 

“Good job with whatever you did?” Cylon took off his tight cap and rolled his fingers through his sweating hair as he, too, calmed. “Again, I’ve never met an elf, but I’ve met a few people who know the language and picked up scattered phrases. You were apologizing for something?” 

“I apologized on behalf of both of us for hitting the golems and made sure to let them know I knew how wrong that was.” 

“And why did that work?” 

“Because this isn’t so much a golem factory,” Lyall placed the papers in Cylon’s hands, “as it is a toy factory. These moving frames were to become teddy bears.” 

Cylon searched the papers and saw the same images Lyall did. The fake fur they’d found would have coupled with the other supplies to become dapper, enormous toy companions, as the first page featuring the loveable creature hugging a delighted elven child advertised. Lyall flipped the stack to the next page since Cylon froze. 

“I naturally didn’t have time to read the finer details, but they have some caregiver functions too. When a child throws a tantrum and hits the golem, for example, it is programed to give the child a ‘bear hug’ until they calm down and apologize for their behavior,” Lyall tapped the images of the girl smacking the bear before being tenderly grappled—but left unharmed—in its soft, fuzzy arms. “What else I can read explains the bears are set to greet every new person they meet with a hug as well.” 

“I apologize for striking first,” Cylon winced. 

“It’s no worry. I would have batted their arms away when they came in for their hug, not knowing the difference.” 

“You can see it now though, huh?” Cylon held up the first page and compared it to the metal skeletons. “The wide bodies, the little bit of a snout, the elongated arms—if they’d only had their ears installed it would have been easier to tell. I feel sad for the bearies. They’re stuck like this.” 

“I expect the Engineering Guild will be all too happy to take over finishing up the production. Thankfully, I only damaged the one’s wrist.” 

“Speaking of production, this looks like a draft for a customer manual. I’ve heard it’s hard enough to trade with the elves as is, but this place felt confident in having a marketing base with them to advertise directly to them?” 

“There must have been more open channels back then.” Lyall glanced to the ceiling and through the now transparent glass. “None of the doors have opened. With our new friends content to be, shall we move on downstairs?” 

“I haven’t found a key though.” 

Wordlessly, Lyall moved to the nearby wall and yanked a large lever next to a sign with an arrow pointing down over an icon of stairs. The floor slid into itself along the edge by where they first entered to reveal their way down. Cylon put on a grimacing smile, although it was more that he pulled his lips so tightly they naturally curved up. 

“Apologies again. I was so sure we needed a key that I didn’t investigate any other possibilities.” 

“The delay meant we found a way to understand what kind of place we’re in and were able to stop the ‘attack’ instead of having the bears chase and bother us into the basement. It ended up working out for the better.” 

“I don’t think the lady with the hammer would have been this patient with me,” Cylon came over and tackled Lyall’s chest with a bear hug of his own. “I’m glad I asked you instead.” 

“I’ve longed learned that anger does little in helping one see their errors. It is better to explain calmly and with consideration for what the other party was intending or feeling.” 

“Pfft! You sound like my grandma,” Cylon laughed merrily. 

“...Shall we keep going?” 

“Yes, yes.” 

They checked out the desks first and disappointingly found no key for the offices above. Next came the cargo bay at the back packed with abandoned shipments and completed bear golems—deactivated—in massive boxes with just as massive ribbons tied into bows at the top. Finally, Lyall and Cylon made their way into the basement. Cylon painstakingly kept an eye out for any further ‘traps’ like the bubbles, but the pair merely found more supply boxes, crates, unreadable papers, and tools of the trade. One space was left. Another set of steps delved perpendicular to the hallway at the very back of the basement leading to a place, if Lyall had his directions right, underneath the southern half of the work floor above. The thick door at the bottom of the steps was locked. 

“S’hill no keys for upsthairs, so we’ll hope fuhr something good in here,” Cylon expressed with a little lisp, one tension tool clenched in his mouth and out of the way while he worked on the lock. It clicked open a second later, and Cylon hurriedly packed the pieces of his kit away in its leather pouch. He whispered, “Now, what do we have?” 

Lyall glanced through the crack Cylon opened and crinkled his nose at the odd breeze of chilly, musty air escaping its long-held confines. The mixtured gust of rock and dirt would have been pleasant if not for its tinge of sour mold, and Lyall didn’t find comfort in what curled in the center of the solid stone room with a ceiling reaching thirty feet. 

“Given what we’ve experienced so far, I’m not going to panic,” Cylon declared dryly. 

It was a dragon. A wooden one, but still a dragon the size of a bear nestled underneath its wings of man-made leather. 

“HELLO, DRAGON!” Cylon blew out Lyall’s eardrum. Lyall barely restrained himself from smacking the back of his companion’s head. 

“Maybe I should have yelled at you earlier,” he hissed softly. 

“Is it not better to see if it’s awake while we can easily close the door it’s far away from and can’t fit through instead of being next to it?” Cylon rebutted confidently. “It’s not moving anyway.” 

“The bears didn’t move either until we were deeper into the room.” 

“What did we learn from that and from the obvious joke the bubbles are supposed to be? This ‘dragon’ is sure to be party entertainment or the equivalent of a flying pony ride for children. It’s probably in this space to be tested. No matter what, we’ll have to check it out to get our full payment. I don’t mind going first again.” 

“Lead on then,” Lyall accepted. 

“Yes, sir!” 

Lyall didn’t know whether to judge Cylon a fool or an optimist. His countering of the dragon being harmless did align with everything else they uncovered, so it wasn’t like he acted without merit. However, Lyall strapped on his shield again and hung fifteen feet back as Cylon gingerly tip-toed closer to the created beast’s form. It’s green-edged joints and limbs proved the source of the sour scent, sections of the wood seemed soft and squishy, and it was only due to the Artifex era’s superior skills in technology and craft that the dragon didn’t rest as an unrecognizable hunk of rotten scrap wood from a millennium of neglect. Cylon stood right next to it to poke its wing and pet its snout. Nothing happened. 

“Poor thing,” Cylon stroked its head. “You would have made an excellent flying pony. I’ll at least give you a name to honor your memory—Oaken Will. Because you are strong like oak and showed exceptional will to hold on so long through all these years.” 

“It’s actually made of yew—” 

“Dah!” Cylon cut Lyall off with a snapped-up finger. “Don’t ruin the moment with specifics.” 

“Shall I take a look at the walls instead? There seems to be something carved into them.” 

“Please do.” 

Lyall left Cylon to speak kind words to the clump of wood and squinted his eyes approaching the long wall. What could be mistaken from a distance as natural veins in the rock were, in fact, a repeating arcane circle carved into the stone continuing as far as Lyall walked. He reached the back wall before finding one in better condition to take out his work journal and copy the circle down as best he could. Feeling proud of his drawing, his fingers gripped the pencil until they hurt from the three-feet-wide rune flaring with shimmering purple hue. 

“Cylon?!” Lyall dropped the journal and pencil to find the same purple glow underneath Cylon’s hands where he scratched the dragon’s back. Before either of them could blink, an eye-watering flash of magic consumed the construct entirely and put it on its rotting feet. 

“Uh, hello,” Cylon greeted, taking a step back. “I guess you’re not dead. Are you nice—” A metal claw swung fiercely at his head, and Cylon barely rolled back in time to keep it. “Bad, Oakey!” 

“It’s not nice!” Lyall yelled, charging. 

“Maybe there’s some trick to it like with the bears!” Cylon dug a gold coin from his pocket. “Oakey, an offering?” 

The thus-dubbed Oakey snapped at Cylon’s chest, serrated teeth an inch from cutting clean through his minimal armor. Cylon brought out his short sword and dagger once more while Lyall drew his own weapon. Lyall no longer felt awe in Oakey’s creators’ abilities to ensure its longevity, for all his effort bounding the great distance, wrenching his shoulder, and slamming his blade down clean between a mold-crumbled crack gained him nothing but a hairline fracture and the dragon’s wrath. A solid kick of his heels avoided Lyall the slash of Oakey’s back foot thrusting his direction, but Lyall’s feet hadn’t yet connected with the ground when the lashing tail pummeled his stomach. 

He flew several feet. His lungs as useful as deflated balloons, that Lyall rolled into the slamming collapse and sucked in a squeaking inhale as he wobbled to his hands and knees came from one important lesson. Pain didn’t matter. Thorne warned when Lyall came under his tutelage that any foray into the world of combat meant muddling the boundaries of expected safety and care. Thorne was not an abusive teacher nor one who forced Lyall to his limits. However, it was not a bully or clear-cut enemy like the dragon why his mother needed to apply so much medicine to his face and soothe bruises with ice. 

And this was hardly the first time Lyall took a hard hit. He demanded his legs to cooperate, and they got him standing despite the burn in his chest. Lyall gripped his hilt tightly as Oakey turned, roared with the force of a dozen grand trees simultaneously collapsing, and leapt.