Hereph looked at the leather-bound book on his table with glee, immersing himself in the joy of possessing it before he thought to reach for it.

‘The Book of Revenges’

It had taken Hereph a year and a half of hard work to procure it from Losheel Warren, High Arcanist of the kingdom of Greece. To earn it, for four hundred and ninety days he had run errands, collected components, copied texts and fulfilled whatever whim Losheel wished of him. It had been gruelling work but he knew he had received the book for far less than it was worth.

Losheel had been willing to give it to Hereph for services that amounted to lower than its relative value because of the fact that he was a good friend of Hereph’s mother. Additionally Hereph knew well that Losheel had always liked him. From his childhood, Hereph retained many fond memories of his eccentric ‘Uncle Loshi’ and the wonderful illusions that the wizened arcanist had dazzled Hereph and his brothers with.
When he had grown up and expressed his wishes to become an arcanist, it had been Uncle Loshi who had, despite the fact that Hereph’s arcane talents were below average, used his influence to make sure that Hereph was enrolled in one of the best academies of arcana in Europe.

Following his graduation Hereph had been hired by an enchantment company with a relatively good reputation. Within two years he had risen to a moderately well-paid position and therefore he and his long-time fiance, Nadrelle Connors, decided to stop postponing marriage. year had seen the birth of their first daughter, Maria, and two years later Tanita had followed. The next eleven years had gone relatively smoothly for Hereph, but then, in 1998, a single day had forever changed his life. While he was away at work a group of men had attacked his home and his wife and children had been severely beaten and raped. Maria had been whipped so severely that she bled to death before Hereph returned home.

The assailants were never found but the person who had hired them soon became obvious. A few months earlier Nadrelle’s father, a weapons' merchant, had supplied a duchy within the kingdom of Scandinavia that was revolting against its monarch. Nadrelle’s father had been warned not to supply the rebels but being a proud man, had therefore supplied the seditious duke at half the charge. A week after Maria’s death a single note had arrived at Nadrelle’s father’s estate.

‘Always heed the warning of King Tarik’.

The message behind it had been clear but the note was not enough to be used as evidence in any court, especially against a king. Obstructed by the justice system Hereph had vowed that he would have revenge on King Tarik even though he was protected in ways Hereph could not hope to compromise.
After a year of futile research Hereph had eventually found himself at the tower of Losheel seeking aid. Unfortunately Losheel could not aid Hereph directly because if he did, Scandinavia would interpret his actions as a Greek declaration of war. The only way Losheel could help him was with The Book of Revenges. If he did not give Hereph the book but Hereph worked a year to earn it, diplomatically, Losheel could not be accused of having foreknowledge of what Hereph wished to do with the book.

Hereph bid his family farewell and went to Crete for a year of service in Losheel’s tower. During the year that followed Losheel was not in the least bit lenient to Hereph so that he could never be accused of aiding Hereph in his pursuit of vengeance. At the end of the year, when Losheel gave Hereph The Book of Revenges, the first thing he did was get an apartment in the nearest settlement and get ready to read the book.

Now, quivering with excitement and nervousness, he reached forward and opened the large manual. The thick cover fell to the table, the compilation now opened to the table of contents.

Putting on his glasses Hereph leant forward and read. The book contained hundreds of spells of revenge; from incurable rashes, impotency spells and curses that resulted in bad breath, to incantations dooming a person to self loathing. Hereph quickly realised that the contents were arranged in order of power, with revenges that were a simple nuisance being first and the more severe revenges listed later in the book. Without hesitation he immediately flipped his way to the back of the book.

Written preceding the final listing were the words, ‘Most feared of all the possible revenges that one can cast is this, the Golem of Retribution.’

A smile came to Hereph’s face as he read that only the one who summoned the golem could stop it and even a High Arcanist would be powerless to stop it.

Hereph was given a startling surprise when he read the spell components because he saw none of the hard to come by materials that were usually part of the ingredients of powerful spells. Its material components were simple. Just a man sized statue, a necklace crafted of coral and a few other, easily attainable items such as mistletoe, candles and a young bull calf.
The next morning Hereph began collecting the items, going first to the best sculptor in Greece and asking him to sculpt a metallic statue in his likeness. He wanted King Tarik to know who was exacting his revenge when the golem came for him. In the three weeks that the artisan needed to make the statue, Hereph gathered all the other components and after collecting the completed statue, set about studying the ritual that would summon the Golem of Retribution.

It took him a few weeks to memorise all of the words, gestures, musical chants and particulars required to perform the ritual and only in mid-winter was he ready. Stripping down until he was naked apart from the coral necklace, he stood in the centre of a pentacle and slowly began the ritual. After drinking the blood from a calf he had slaughtered before the ritual began, Hereph began dancing around the lifeless metal statue, singing the lyrical cadences of the spell. Three times he circled his ferric twin and, following this, came an hour of spoken words and frenzied motions.

After the third hour of the spell-casting Hereph reached the apex of the ritual. As instructed he mentally relived the occurrence that had made him want to cast the spell and as he did so he spoke the three words that in the arcane tongue meant ‘Golem of Retribution’.

With the first he thought of his wife, forever scarred and emotionally devastated by what had happened. With the second he thought of Tanita, unable to sleep without having terrible nightmares. As he said the last word Hereph thought of Maria, brutally murdered before she even had the chance to explore her dreams.

His body quaked as he finished the ritual and he looked at the golem. At first he though he had failed but then he heard a titanic rumble that caused the room to vibrate. It ended as suddenly as it began and the metallic eyes of the statue gained a harsh red glow.

Hereph waited and slowly the golem’s mouth moved. From its parted jaws came a voice that chilled Hereph to the bone. It was the voice of one being but it also it seemed, the voice of thousands and its texture was imprinted with despair and desolation.

“AND WHO MUST I PUNISH NOW?” it demanded.

“Isaac Tarik, King of Scandinavia,” Hereph replied.

“I SHALL PUNISH HIM.”

The golem turned and began walking from the summoning circle.

As he had planned Hereph donned his clothing and climbed onto a flying carpet, casting a spell upon himself to grant him invisibility. He wanted to watch the golem deal its retribution. Once this was done he followed the golem that was now moving at a swift pace. When he hovered behind it, it slowed down, seeming to sense that he wanted to watch. From that point onwards, he determined their speed.

The people that the golem passed in the streets could not perceive it and those who collided with it passed right through it. It’s motion was a steady mechanical stride and even though it moved at the same speed as Hereph’s magic carpet, it appeared to be walking slowly. Hereph was titillated by how, when they reached a river, it gained the ability to fly, and when they reached a mountain, it walked through it as opposed to around it, adapting itself to conquer each obstacle put before it.
After three days they reached the Scandinavian capital in the late evening and, his anticipation peaking, Hereph followed the golem to the palace. Unobstructed, it walked to the chambers of King Tarik and Hereph felt spells being cast on him by the golem that enabled him to bypass the palace security so that he could watch.

Once in the King’s chambers, he found that the golem had been waiting for him and on seeing him, it turned to its task. King Tarik woke fitfully from his sleep. The golem’s motion was swift and its metallic finger darted forward, penetrating King Tarik’s chest, sliding in without tearing the flesh. He screamed, a look of unbridled terror contorting his visage and from his eyes Hereph saw tears of blood begin to trickle. Hereph had planned to speak, to taunt the king and tell him as he died why he was being punished, but he could not. What he saw petrified him.

Slowly King Tarik’s face began to lose colour, gaining a sickly pallor, and then his when features were totally transparent, the king's body began to implode. That was the only way it could be described. The king's features began to shrivel and collapse into themselves.

As Tarik's screams became more anguished the door burst open and the Scandinavian High Arcanist ran into the room. A cylinder of blue flames erupted from the High Arcanist’s fingers and struck the golem in the abdomen. It had no affect and its eyes, burning white hot, swivelled to arcanist. Recognition flashed in the Arcanist’s visage and he turned fearfully, fleeing the room in haste.

The golem returned to its task.

King Terek’s body progressively lost its definition until it seemed to have been crushed out of existence. Hereph felt disgusted by what he had just witnessed and a wave of revulsion coursed through him. He banished the nausea by reminding himself of the reason he had summoned the golem. Under his breath he whispered, “Now, it is done.”

He turned his carpet and prepared to fly from the room when the golem's voice thundered behind him, “AND WHO SHALL I PUNISH NOW?” Hereph nearly fell off his carpet.

“What? No...” he said rapidly as he turned. “That was the only person that you were to punish. Your task is completed. You may return to whence you came.”

Hereph’s metallic duplicate did not move and after a few moments, the perversely innocent words came again. “AND WHO SHALL I PUNISH NOW?”

Hereph quaked with fear. “No-one. No-one!”

“AND WHO SHALL I PUNISH NOW?”

Hereph’s mind went back to The Book of Revenges and tried to remember whether any instructions for banishing the golem were given. He could recall none. But the spell had not indicated that the golem would do more than one task. Hereph realised then that it had not indicated the opposite either.

Hereph concentrated and visualised in his mind the cautions that had been written in the spell’s instructions.
1.Ensure that the arcanist keeps the necklace controlling the golem on, or else the golem shall turn against and destroy its summoner.
2.Ensure that the order of who is to be punished is given within one day of the golem requesting it or else the golem shall turn against and destroy its summoner.

Hereph blanched as this second warning came to his mind and he panicked. He had to get back to his study and reread The Book of Revenges. He directed his carpet out of the palace and waited till morning. At dawn, he entered the first arcanist’s shop that he could find. Because it would take him three days to reach home using the carpet he was forced to purchase a highly expensive teleportation spell sending him straight to his library. The teleportation spell would allow him to make the journey in four hours.

When he reached his study, with a berserker’s desperation he read every word written about the Golem of Retribution in the Book of Revenges, reading each sentence again and again and again. As he was in his second hour of studying the volume he realised that the golem was standing in the room, patiently watching him. He trembled.

“AND WHO MUST I PUNISH NOW?”

Hereph pulled a self-turning hourglass from his pocket and looked at it. He had two hours until the day was over. Diligently he read all the parts of The Book of Revenges he had ignored before. He could find nothing. As the last ten minutes were reached he looked at the golem and spoke the name of King Terek’s High Arcanist.

“I WILL PUNISH HIM.”

When the golem was gone Hereph collapsed with fatigue, falling to sleep with the hope that perhaps this time, because he did not watch it, the golem would not return.

He was awakened ten hours later by the words, “AND WHO SHALL I PUNISH NOW?”

Desperate, Hereph immersed himself in study, looking for anything to aid him. He could find nothing tangible and he was forced to formulate a theory. In the study of arcana, certain numbers are shown to hold great power. Three, seven, thirteen and forty being the most potent; three being the number of the divine; seven that of repose; thirteen of undoing; and forty, the number of punishment. God after all, is the ‘three’ in one, had rested on the ‘seventh’ day and the supernatural links of the number thirteen had been repeatedly proved.

Hereph hypothesised that the number that would aid him was forty, the number of punishment; with forty days and nights being the length of Noah’s flood and also, the amount of time the wizardess Pandora had been punished when she had foolishly released the powers of evil sorcery from Prometheus' box.

After forty punishments, surely the golem would stop. What Hereph did now was make a list of thirty-eight people that had done him wrong at some point in his life and then told the golem the first of these. A month passed with each day, Hereph sentencing another to the revenge of the golem. His conscience wracked him with guilt and he cursed himself for being so possessed of hatred that he had not thought. All things had a price and the fact that the golem’s spell-casting components had been so easy to acquire should have warned him before he cast the spell.

On the fortieth day Hereph did not sleep and waited to see if his theory was correct. In the morning the golem did not return and he danced with joy, tears filling his eyes. He was interrupted.

“AND WHO SHALL I PUNISH NOW?”

Pusillanimous, it was only now that Hereph realised that he should have sought out Losheel for advise. But he could not do this now. To do so he would have to admit to his beloved uncle Loshi the monster he had become. He had ordered the death of forty people, some of whom had done little more to him than refuse to lend him money and other inconsequential trivialities.

That night he could not help himself and he did it again, sentencing yet another to be the victim of his mistake. After the golem was gone Hereph did what he had not done since he was nineteen years old and he had decided to become an arcanist who used both black and white magic. He prayed. For eleven hours he prostrated himself on the floor, praying to the Christian God, praying to the force that Buddhist arcanists drew their force from, praying to Sango, god of the African Spirit Speakers... Whether it be Celtic, Hindu, Pagan or Wiccan, he prayed to every form of the divine he had ever heard of.
The next day the golem did not return in the morning but he did not rejoice, waiting and praying still. One hour passed. Another. Another. Just as he accepted his success, almost in mockery of him the golem strode into the room, asking its dread request and Hereph noticed that this time, a smile played across its metallic lips.

At that moment he gave up. He collapsed and decided that he would not give it a target today and let it turn on him. It was what he should have done a long time earlier. Resigned he waited, the sand of his hourglass falling slowly, each second seemingly stretched chronologically.

Finally the hour before his death arrived he looked at the golem and saw that it was now watching him hungrily. Hereph found himself wondering which of the two of them was more monstrous. It at least, only followed orders.

The final minute arrived and the golem's lips twisted into patient smile. A play he had studied at the academy came into his mind and Hereph found himself wondering if this is how Doctor Faustus had felt when Mephistopheles came for his soul. The Golem stepped forward. As it reached for him Hereph's fear was too great and his lips sputtered the first name that came to his mind. That of a cobbler that had once serviced him.
It turned and Hereph realised that he had finally doomed himself irreversibly. He had just targeted a man who had never done him wrong and would be punished unjustly.

Tonight, he would have to die.

That night however, when he was faced with the reality of death’s scythe hanging over his head, the previous night’s occurrences repeated themselves. This time he targeted a court bard whose music he had once admired.

It took a week for him to admit to himself that he would never have the courage to let the golem take him and he decided he would have to hire a person to kill him. That was his only choice. Sighing, his mind strayed to Nadrelle and Tanita, his wife and child. He wondered how they were and if Tanita had resumed speaking. He remembered their laughs. Their smiles. Now he would never see them again.

“I WILL PUNISH THEM!”

Hereph gasped. “What?!”

The golem was already gone.

He had not named anyone. He had been silent. Quietly thinking about his wife and daughter...

Realisation hit him and he immediately rose. The golem had plucked his wife’s and daughter’s names from his mind! He ran, leaping onto his carpet and following the golem.
It was walking very slowly.

“NO!” he shouted. “Nathaniel Delaney, Susan Areb, Erith

Magellan or Jonas Roan!”

The golem ignored him, picking up its pace slightly. Although he knew that it was futile Hereph cast spells at it; summoning vines and walls to hold it in place, bombarding it with missiles of fire and ice. None of these things slowed it down.

In an hour the golem was approaching Hereph’s villa. Outside it he saw Tanita, riding a bicycle that a simple cantrip allowed to keep upright even though she could not ride.

Hereph shouted that Tanita should run but she could not hear him. Tears drenching his cheeks Hereph threw himself in front of the golem. It ignored him. Looking at the playing form of Tanita, Hereph found within himself the strength to tear of the necklace that controlled the golem.

It turned.

Whenever he had seen it before, the golem had always walked. Now, it ran. It’s body met his and lifted him from the floor, its fingers embedding themselves into his torso. He learnt for the first time of the pain that he had sentenced fifty-four people to. The agony penetrated his being, enveloping his entirety and he felt as though heated blades were stabbing him from every side. His vocal chords burst with the scream he let out and blood welled into his mouth. At the same time his limbs began to implode and every nerve of his body experienced a searing scald. The life drained rapidly from his body.

As he died Hereph saw the golem too begin to implode. With his final breath he thought to himself, at least the golem is destroyed.

* * * * *

His death however, was the beginning not the end of his true torment. Pain suffused him, going beyond the bounds of the physical and into the emotional. He felt the torment of a broken heart, the torture of losing a friend and the mindless agony he had felt after his family’s rape; all of these emotions tearing through him simultaneously.

And then came the guilt. The souls of every person he had wronged filled him and in every person that he had sentenced to the golem’s retribution, he saw the good. He felt their compassion, their loves, their hopes. In a single second he dreamt the dreams they had once had and in an instant he lived the lives that had caused them to commit the crimes they had against him. Now that he understood them, he could not hate any of them. Even his hatred for King Terek dissipated and as his hatred dissipated, so too did his only armour against the pain.

Colossal rivulets of anguish permeated him and he felt his spirit being wrenched. He struggled to gain some control but his efforts were futile. He was trapped and could do nothing. And he was not merely in pain or externally wounded, he now existed within pain.

Around him he could vaguely hear, or rather feel, the screams of thousands of others sharing his fate. The fact that he had caused some of them to come here intensified his guilt.
Time passed. Hereph had no sense of whether it was seconds, hours or decades. He no longer had thought, he no longer saw meaning in the word ‘time’. There was only the pain.

Abruptly it vanished. The pain disseminated, the unseen manacles losing their hold on him and he rejoiced in his impossible freedom. He felt himself soaring, his spirit rising towards a blazing light above him. If he still had eyes he would have wept tears of unfettered gratitude. Around him he could sense thousands of others, now free, all rejoicing and floating toward the light. Hope, love, forgiveness, compassion, laughter and every feeling he had forgotten filled him. His entity resonated with elation.

But then brutally, suddenly, he was pulled back. He struggled against the recoil but it was too strong. He saw the light above disappear and as he lost sight of it, the torrent of pain and solitude once more flooded over him. The memory of the great joy he had felt only heightened his pain.

But he was not being pulled back to where he had been, but to somewhere else. He felt his soul whirling within a vast vortex and then felt himself and the thousands of others with him fill a vessel. Instantly he himself gain fingers, feet, a chest and, a head. All made of granite.

He was a statue.

He forced open his eyelids and saw before him the naked form of a black haired woman. Behind her on the floor lay the black and purple garments of an arcanist. Nine sigils on her sleeve indicated that she was an Arcanist Prime, just two grades away of being a High Arcanist. Near her discarded clothes, on a marble pedestal, lay the open black tome titled, The Book of Revenges.

She was giggling ecstatically, her eyes alight with thoughts of the revenge she would have on the man who had laughed at her when she asked him to marry her. Hereph felt his mouth moving, directed by unseen puppet strings and concurrently with the thousands of tortured souls he shared the stone idol with, he said the words;

“AND WHO SHALL I PUNISH NOW?”