Harlan and Mercedes laid in bed.
“Was that good?”
“I don’t know, I have no frame of reference.”
“You’ve never been with a woman? Really? I thought you were just lying before.”
“I see what others see in this, it does relieve stress, it takes my mind off of things.
There is a certain… clarity to my mind now.”
“Well, it was good to me.”
“Do you have much experience?”
“It was my first time consenting to sex at least.”
Harlan made an ugly face, shame and anger.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”
“I’m just joking.”
The shame was gone, yet the anger remained.
“Don’t you ever dare to make such a vile joke again.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think that you-”
“That what? I have been exceedingly clear about what angers me.”
“I’m sorry, thought you were… I didn’t think you actually had those things.”
“What things?”
“Morals.”
“Unlike you I’m not doing this out of a desire to have power, I’m doing this to do the right thing, as I have always said.”
“I’ve met many men who’ve said many things.”
“My actions have always shown who I am.”
“I’ve known many man who’ve done things without really believing.”
“Do you hold such a low opinion of me?”
“The number of honest men I’ve known I can count on one hand. It might really just be you.”
“Being a noble’s plaything, growing up around them, worried about dying, I know that all too well.”
“Why don’t we restart this, tell me your story, and I will believe it this time.”
By the time Harlan was done, Mercedes was nodding off, the sun was rising.
So he let her sleep as he left the bed.
Today new work was required of him, setting things right wasn’t an option, but cleaning up his mess was.
As the sun rose over the sea, one of the coastal towns that was ravaged by the wave was clearing up, sorting their dead.
Harlan came in from the air and then gated in golems.
The people panicked of course, but Harlan blocked any and all spells before he raised his voice and backed it with empathy and mana.
“Stop. Calm. I am here to help.”
It was clear that he was powerful, and even if they wanted to fight back it was pointless, so they laid down their arms and bowed to the dark god which floated above them with a flowing jacket and shining white horns.
Harlan touched down and sent the golems to start safely rebuilding the homes without having to tear them down first.
“Who is your leader?”
“The mayor, he died, the empire will-”
“The empire will do nothing, by the end of the week there will be no nations on this stripe which are not under my control or the control of my allies. You are now members of the nation of Fomoria.”
“The empire will-”
“I did this.”
The entire town began to murmur.
“I made the bomb which caused the wave which destroyed much of your town. There will be no more empire here, I am sorry that it came to this, so I will not charge taxes for a time and my golems will rebuild this town at no cost to you. But you will not fly imperial colors any longer, any slaves will be freed of their servitude, and they will be free to bring complaints against any citizen. You will all be interviewed, one by one, or by the family, and depending on your answers, you may be granted full, or partial citizenship.
If you resist, my men will kill you, if you flee, my men will kill you, if you are found to have been irredeemably evil towards your slaves, my men will kill you.
This is the dawn of a new era for Fomoria, I will not allow anyone to think that they can undermine me.”
He saw a few Cast try to stealthily flee through the crowd.
Harlan opened a gate and dragged them through.
“Why are you fleeing? Did you not hear me?”
“The empire shall take back what is rightfully-”
Harlan killed the man by coating his hand in void and punching through his chest, pulling his still beating metal heart from his body as he staggered back in disbelief before collapsing.
“You two? Why are you fleeing? Because I can be forgiving, or…”
Harlan boosted the sound of the heart as it slowed its beating.
“You are a butcher, we are dead if we stay.”
“If you can follow my laws, and no complaints are brought forth and decided to be truthful, then you will live. I will stomp out the ideology of suffering which is brought into this world by your people, I will make a mountain of corpses in pursuit of that, but I will not kill you just for being Cast.”
Harlan opened another gate.
“I will continue to take over these coastal towns, do not get in the way of my golems, and if they ask you questions, answer them to the best of your ability. I am a butcher, but I am not unreasonable.”
He came in, made his demands, and one of two things happened.
Either people attacked him and he made an example of them, or they recognized Harlan as he was and bowed down.
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Harlan was right, the Cast ruled through fear, and through fear they would turn on them just as easily.
He only hoped that he was also right in that he could eventually inspire loyalty by treating them better than the Cast ever would.
By the noon, the coast western was under his control, each town only took a few minutes,
The farther south he went, the less construction golems he had to gate in, and the more soldiers he had to gate in.
Each town was to be appointed a marshal to keep the peace, and then once the time came, the marshal would step down and an elected mayor would take control, with the marshal remaining to keep command over military and defensive positions while the mayor controls the more civil matters.
Then there was a town, much larger, but not quite a city, and it would rather fight.
Harlan waited for the first barrage and then used a gate to move behind enemy lines.
By flying at high speed and with simple telekinesis he pushed men from the walls.
Then he rushed through the streets, anyone who tried to kill him was killed in turn, soldier or otherwise.
When he reached the mayor's home however, he did not go inside, and instead he charged up an odd warspell.
He floated downward on a disc of void which cut a perfect hole through the building until he reached the vault.
The mayoral mansion wasn’t the same as Harlan’s, but still he could find the vault with ease as it wasn’t cloaked and put off a unique signature.
Harlan could’ve just asked it to open, but instead he wanted to see if his beam would pierce the door.
He saw only one mind inside, and he fired, the sigil’s power cut through without needing to cut anything, and the mind inside blinked out of existence.
“Obey, open.”
And the door did, where Harlan found a Gold Cast with a hole where he once had a heart.
Yet now he was left rather drained, and returned home for a time, listening to the clock tick and tock as he ate a midday meal.
And it was there that he met Xol once more.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of you lately, yet I didn’t see you for months before.”
“I give a shit, but I am also a busy man.”
“How is Marigold?”
“Much better.”
“And…”
“Adina is giving birth soon.”
“What?”
“She is enhanced, the baby got benefits from this and grew much faster than normal.”
Harlan leaned back and tapped on the table.
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“They don’t want to know. But, it is-”
“Don’t tell me. Would you like something to eat? Drink?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Thank you for coming. Without Dawn and Darrath, things are… quiet.”
“The hardest choices require the strongest minds. They are better off with Periwinkle, they are safe.”
Harlan sat and ate for a few minutes more before he spoke again, as Xol didn’t seem to be very conversational without questions being asked.
“I don’t mean to sound… like myself, but is there another reason you came?”
“Three months.”
“Alright.”
“Come on, guess.”
“In three months, more Fingers will come?”
“Well, that seems like a shot in the dark, yet you’ve hit it out of the park.”
“I know the first metaphor, but not the second.”
“A sport from Earth, if you hit the ball out of the arena you get points without the other team being able to prevent it. To hit it out of the park is a good thing.”
“So I am right.”
“Helik and Sholl both survived.”
“WHAT?”
Harlan slammed the table, sending cracks through it that Xol fixed with a tap.
“Sholl was washed away into the forest and-”
“I DIVINED FOR HIM.”
“As I as saying, when he was washed inland he healed himself and flew away. By the time you divined for him he was already out of range. When fighting a healer, especially one proficient in self-healing, always confirm the kill.”
“I needed to help Dawn and D’if.”
“I doubt it, but your need to control things, your fear that everyone else is weaker than you, that fear caused you to make the wrong choice.”
“Fine, how is Helik alive, that virus should be turning his entire body to rust.”
“Weak to cold, as long as Helik maintains a constant body of ice around himself, the virus cannot encroach farther than it has, but it cannot be killed either, since it feeds on his mana and is targeting his soul.
The plus side is that he is asymptomatic. So he is still spreading it. They will be back, and in three months, I can train you to be able to handle them, in six, any of the other fingers, up to the middle finger, nine, you can kill any of them and perhaps more than one at a time, three years, you can kill the hands.”
“That short of a timeframe?”
Xol explained everything that Harlan needed to do, and suddenly it was clear, well, clear to Xol at least.
“I tried that once, it blew my soul apart.”
“I can assure you, multi-body training works wonders, it will cut the time you need to learn things down to a third. You just lacked the right spells to filter the information properly. Your soul is already a dozen times stronger than it was as a baseline back then.”
“I didn’t say when I did this before.”
“Minor details.”
“How long have you been watching me?”
“The Darkness told me about this.”
“She sent you?”
“Timelines need to be moved up. All of her vague mystical bullshit will be the death of us, so while she won’t teach you directly, however, because I am making the choice to do so I am allowed. Whatever coping she wants to use to get me here, I’m here now.”
“Well, for the time being, I need to finish conquering this stripe. Do you know why they call them that? Because when I heard it, it seemed like the world was covered in rings, but these are more like tiger stripes.”
“Some places on Aarde still do have actual full rings.”
The flames that were Xol’s eyes dimmed slightly.
“The Fae, fighting them, it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t without cost. The term stripe is a remnant of a different world.”
“All of that land was lost then?”
“Wyrmwood burned holes miles deep, he destroyed major cities and sights of relevance to the Fae, broke their power. Then we came in to clean things up without destroying the entire world, put those souls in the cage, Fomorians, Golden, they couldn’t fight major gods, only gods could.
Zeus, Odin, Titania, Oberon, Ra, Amaterasu, those six were directly fought by the six gods you know now. Those gods which remained nameless until they stole them from others, specifically gods that were associated with a people known as the Celts.
Lir was a sea god, Cecht was a god of healing, Brigid was a goddess of smithing, Calli comes from Caillech, a storm god, no idea why she decided to change the name so much, but that is Calli for you, and Anu, a goddess of fertility and earth.”
“Why did they steal names?”
“To the Fae, names had power, and so by stealing names they stole that power.
Champions used to be called paladins, it was an approximate word loaned from Earth, a sort of holy warrior, but when the Fae called their champions paladins, it corrupted the concept, and it gave the Fae some manner of protection or power over these champions due to widefield egregoric magic.
Linguistic warfare was harsh.”
“The Darkness, is that why she refuses to have a single name?”
“It is useful, sure you lose a bonus of sorts, but you can also inherit the weakness of a god and- We’ve gone far off track, finish your conquering, and then contact me, when I am next available, I will return.”
“Thank you, it is very interesting for me to learn these ancient histories.”
“Perhaps someday I will need to tell you the old myths from back home, it might inspire your work, but, try not to be too inspired.”
“Because if I ever met these gods then they would have some manner of power over my magic if the thoughts that they are based on come from these stories.”
“I find it very refreshing that you can take this information in stride and put it to use.
I gave up teaching many- No, I really do need to go.”
Harlan was reinvigorated by Xol’s offer, and at the same time greatly disheartened that he had failed to kill two of the Fingers, which, in itself was perhaps for the best, as killing Fingers led to Hands cracking down.
Which was still probably going to happen, beating two Fingers at once meant that someone was a real threat, even if they were the two weakest Fingers.
----------------------------------------
A week passed, and Seraphallen got away from the battlefield long enough to appear in physical form in the ruins of Portal.
Yet before he could catch Harlan’s scent so to speak, The Jailed arrived.
The City of Portal has been reduced to glass and ashes.