In another two weeks, Fomoria dismantled the network of merchants across both the stripe which was mostly his, and the one to the south, where Velvet resided.

In this time he had also given Ava a training regiment with aura techniques which he felt she was more likely to continue with compared to magic training, which she simply never cared for compared to physical activity.

He and Anon walked down the street hand in hand with Fomoria having taken the more Fomorian form he saw in that future.

He knew that just appearing Fomorian instead of Dague wouldn’t change anything, but he hoped to somehow manifest that better future.

Him being alive, surrounded by children, grandchildren, a kingdom that stood for at least a century or more was in all honesty more than he could hope for.

“Are you listening?”

“No, I was thinking.”

“Oh, alright. Do you think that the people will be confused when they see you like this?”

“I put out a simple message explaining that I decided to return to a more human-like form, but my Others will remain as Dague. People already know that I can shapeshift, and verifying my identity can be done by more than my face.”

Someone crashed into him.

“Watch where you’re-”

The Minos suddenly knelt.

“Apologies, your majesty.”

“Are you alright?”

“Of course, I wouldn’t be hurt hitting someone smaller.”

The Minos spoke in a boisterous tone, but the others around him saw the insult in his words.

Fomoria took the man by the hand, the Minos stood two heads taller than him, but still had bruised his shoulder when he hit Fomoria, who weighed far more than the bull man.

The Minos saw the light coalesce on his arm and the pain which he wouldn’t have admitted to faded.

Fomoria took Anon by the hand again and continued their walk.

When they were out of the city, Anon spoke.

“That was nice of you.”

“Hmm… but why?”

“Because you have the power to sentence him to death but you spared him.”

“The idea of your answer isn’t wrong, but I never considered killing him at any point during that.

What was nice of me is that I didn’t need to heal him, but did so anyway, and I tried to ensure that he wasn’t afraid of me.”

“You failed that.”

“True. But I tried.”

“If you fail to obtain results, then intent and attempts mean nothing.”

“No, they mean little, but trying never means nothing.”

“When it is life or death, then if you accomplished what you wanted is everything or nothing.

I tried to save mother, but I was too weak. I want to be enhanced.”

“After lunch then.”

They had a nice picnic in a clearing in the woods, since Anon had offhandedly mentioned feeling more comfortable being outside.

He was a little uncertain of enhancing her, and neither he nor his other half had anymore Stone Drake flesh, so they settled on a simple Dark Wyvern for the donor.

Fomoria helped her off the table and once more explained that she was going to have certain feelings, which she could handle on her own, or, if she was comfortable, with him.

“I don’t feel any different.”

“Really?”

“I said before, I have never felt the desire to have sex with anything. Feelings are enhanced for a time, but nothing multiplied by infinity would still be nothing.”

“Are you certain?”

“You are the empath. Am I lying?”

She hopped down from the table and he took her to the training room so she could get used to the new strength she had.

It took her only an hour before she was in complete control of herself, and then she just felt tired, so he carried her to their room and laid her on the bed.

The more Fomoria looked at her and taught her, he wondered if she wasn’t the better choice for the champion.

While he hated to use the term, she had a great deal of talent.

As he sat there and watched her chest rise and fall, The Darkness crept into the room, his shadow spread across the walls, and eyes became like stars in the night sky while a mouth opened near his ear.

“You’ve grown closer to her. I was worried that I might need to step in.”

“But you did.”

“It’s been weeks since we last spoke?”

“Ah, right, time.”

The eyes opened focused on him.

“Whatever do you mean by that?”

“I had a minor temporal sickness, and I viewed the future. You told me that you sent her here to make sure neither of us ended up bitter and alone, and that I didn’t love Adina when we first met.

You also said that you killed her parents. Is that a habit of yours?”

“By killing one's biological parents it becomes more likely for them to be able to imprint the idea of a parent on other people.”

“You want them to see you are their actual mother.”

“That was my intent, but I found that it was best that my champion candidate had a physical family which could be used to keep them grounded. If there is nothing to lose but their life, then they lack the conviction that I required.”

Fomoria closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, she was gone.

He felt like he should’ve been angrier, but he understood her enough to believe she received no pleasure from what she did, she was just willing to do whatever was needed to save the world, and so would he.

Fomoria was preparing for the next wave of attacks where he intended to capture the stripe to the north when his sentries told him that a fleet was approaching.

Their banner wasn’t known to him, and he had more or less memorized the surrounding stripes.

It was a black flag with a gold scale, on the right side a heart, and the other, heavier side, a sword.

He had little faith that this was going to be a friendly encounter, and more likely, these were the mercenaries that the merchants had threatened him with just before he executed them.

Fomoria called a friend for assistance, just in case, and then swam under the largest ship before he scaled the side.

The moment he stepped on deck, a dozen soldiers in heavy white laminated plate with what seemed to be small gold coins directly fused into the chest pointed their swords at him; they were all human.

“Greetings, I am-”

One of them thrusted forward, and Fomoria dodged before stretching his arm to grab the man by the wrist, pulling him forward while he both kicked out his legs from under him and grew another arm on his back to hold the man down.

The others hadn’t moved an inch, and he got the feeling that they were simply checking his reaction.

“I didn’t come here to fight. But I will not take another assault like this so mercifully.”

He crushed the man’s wrist, though he was surprised at how much effort he had to put in just to do so; their impressive armor was familiar.

“That’s enough. Remain where you are.”

Fomoria stood, letting go of the man.

“I will do so, but of my own will.”

The man who was leaving to get their captain rolled his eyes under his helmet.

The man whose hand he crushed had an inverted triangle of coins, this man six coins which could be traced to form a star, or perhaps there was some other meaning; the one who brought the captain had an inverted five point star of small coins marked with Xs.

The commander wore an armor not entirely unlike the others, but his right arm was noticeably larger, and instead of a chevon helmet with eyeslits, his helmet was modeled after a human face.

The lower half of the helmet was smooth, but the upper half was covered in filigree leaves.

“I must say, I didn’t expect to encounter you so quickly. I hear you are a blunt man, so I’ll be blunt, your little fit has cost my employers much. If you return the stolen assets and allow us to continue with our business, there is no need for bloodshed.”

“And if I do that, then how likely are they to worm their way into every level of governance in my nations?”

“That is just business-”

“Kings being picked by merchants, that is business. Killing children in the cradle, sowing corruption, price fixing, hiding your involvement in companies, using the Plest as a shield, those are not business, those are things that I consider to be unacceptable.”

“As I said, just business. I have a contract here, if you would look at it, perhaps-”

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He grabbed the contract before the man finished.

Fomoria sat on the railing of the ship with his leg over his knee, as if he saw none of the men on the ship as a threat at all.

When he was done reading the contract, he used color magic to underline what he couldn’t accept, and explained this to the captain.

“But that is half of the entire thing.”

“I’ve seen the contracts you make your employees sign, half of everything they make goes back to your bosses, and if they don’t meet quotas they are removed. To reach these quotas they almost invariably get into black and gray market trading, fencing, and so on. If they try to back out of the contract, they often die in what are marked as accidents, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen a man who hung himself after stabbing himself through the back with a poisoned dagger.

Slavery is unacceptable, and controlling the economy to prevent upward momentum unless one joins with you is little better. What you do is ensure that there always remains a poor class that can be abused for profit, and a rich class that abuses them. Return to your employers, tell them to write up a new contract based on what I’ve told you.”

The man drew his sword in less than the blink of an eye and vertically cleaved Fomoria in two.

Fomoria had rarely seen anyone so quick, let alone a human, and more so, one who he couldn’t gauge the strength of at all.

His body fell into the water below and was scooped up by his friend.

An Other put the two halves back together and Fomoria returned to this body.

“That sword had a white gold edge, the rest seemed to be stonesteel. It was single edged, and long with a slight curve. And that armor of theirs…”

The Other brought three heads of cattle and the Sea Drake quickly gobbled them up while Fomoria was caught up in his thoughts, thinking nothing of being cut in two.

“Thank you for your assistance.”

“The deal is done, I shall return to the island.”

Fomoria watched him swim away and then meditated to understand if there was something else he missed.

Even with his brain split in two, he should’ve been able to piece himself back together, but that white gold metal, that godtouched steel, it made him feel wrong, and his natural healing refused to work; his magic failed to follow his commands.

Even now, his armor needed help to fuse itself back together.

“Gather the Others, that fleet will not make landfall.”

Fomoria had become accustomed to ideas that seemed strange, dysfunctional, silly even.

Since he had learned how to move gates, he had thought of more applications with them, and in this case, there were solid steel spheres three feet in diameter and set on an inclined track.

When he gave the order, an Other would push one down the track and at the same time, finish the rune circuit.

It would roll down the track in five seconds, and at six seconds, the spell would activate.

A few thousand pounds of steel suddenly became much more as the gravity spell activated, and these unassuming balls punched holes through the ships, which due to a layer of seasteel, remained afloat even as water poured in.

He was mildly disappointed, but he felt more foolish for having failed to realize that they would probably have seasteel.

Back in Ragne, seasteel was the most common form of magical ore, as water mana was something that naturally grew at a faster rate than the other mana.

In a forest, one would encounter more earth mana, and the same applied to mountains, though they also had plenty of wind mana if they were tall enough.

Around the desert, with the dry sand, one actually found a great deal of light mana along with the fire mana caused by the heat that reflects from the sands.

Light and dark were more or less everywhere, but almost always in a lower density, as these two mana types were based on things without the same physicality as other magic.

However, when one was near a lake, in the snow or the rain, water was everywhere.

It was in the roots of the trees, the groundwater, even human bodies were mostly water, it was the very basis and one of the most basic needs for life to exist, but it often didn’t get the respect it deserved.

Because seasteel was mostly used for naval purposes, and since the veil existed, no ship could move more than a few hundred miles out, the navy more existed to keep merchant vessels from being assaulted by monsters to and from islands.

but a gate let one instantly cover a 600 to a 1,000 miles depending on the strength of the mage, and didn’t require anyone to fight terrors from the deep that existed in a realm no mortals dared to tread.

The Others poured out their gates and dove into the water far from the ships.

They swam underneath in circles, pulling and pushing water as they did to make whirlpools.

From the sides of the ships rolled out spheres with many silver coils.

Fomoria recalled the Others, but when most were out, the sea lit up, and among the bodies of thousands of fish rose the few Others that hadn’t made it out.

He would need to recover the crystals inside of them so they could be revived.

When they attacked from the sky they knocked off the wood, which was really a facade to hide that these ships were metal in almost their entirety.

Fomoria knew of metal ships, but they were expensive to make and rarely worth it in the end.

More importantly, he knew that they were employed by the more technologically advanced Cast farther from the veil.

He became curious, and decided that he wanted to see the insides of one of these ships.

With every Other still alive at his side, they flew near to the surface of the water in groups of ten, gathering waves behind them.

As they neared the fleet of a hundred ships, all large enough to be considered galleons, they opened their sides, but they weren’t cannons being pointed at them, but rather what seemed to be a bowl.

Cautious, Fomoria recalled his Others once more.

The bowls shot fire, or so it appeared from a distance.

One of the Others rushed into the fire rather than away so that the prime could see what exactly was happening.

The air violently shook and every cell in the Other's body caught fire and exploded, barely being able to send enough information for his progenitor to understand what was happening to him.

The gem in its composite magical steel shell was left uncracked, the layer of skysteel neutralized the attack, telling Fomoria something of its nature.

The wall of water had been only minorly disrupted by them fleeing from these new weapons, and it crashed into the fleet.

Fomoria never expected to sink any of them, and as the ships neared one another, some manner of magic or machine kept them from smashing into the others.

No, what he wanted was to break their formation, and when one of them was unable to control its movement, he pounced like a wolf going after the weakest of the herd.

The gate opened and he expanded it as quickly as he could, but when the ship got partly through there was a sudden mechanical hum, and the gate snapped shut, taking only the bow to land where he wanted.

Were it not for the seasteel’s properties, the ship would immediately sink.

Anti-magic generators, at this point, the king was certain that the Cast were behind this, that their influence poisoned nations far before they became states of the empire.

Fomoria sent out an order to one of the spare Others to test out a new spell, and after another 20 minutes, he received the message back that he was successful.

Were it not for the anti-magic being currently employed, he’d return the favor, using that same cell vibrating wave against them.

Instead, he activated his sigil and dropped onto the deck of the ship from above, dodging anything they could throw at him on the way down; the Others ran interference against the other ships.

He found the mercenaries of the merchant menace to be shockingly strong, but still, their weapons were just weapons, and their flesh was just flesh… until he encountered the captain of the ship, who wore five coins on his chest in an inverted star patterns.

“Interesting.”

He said after having struck him, the man’s armor seemed almost alive, uncrinkling, and the muscles of the man felt far too solid, as if he was punching an enhanced individual.

It was much less than what the six coin commander had, but there was also a slight white gold edge on the man’s blade, really just a small amount of dust that coated it and stuck while the blade had been hot, giving it a speckled look.

Enemies surrounded him, but this was more normal than not, and having already killed a few of the people on the ship, he didn’t think anything below a four star could really even hurt him in melee combat.

Two rushed from the sides while the captain moved in front of him.

The anti-magic generators had never stopped, leaving Fomoria with whatever he had done before landing.

He jumped backward, which was certainly what the enemy wanted him to do.

But rather than panicking at the lack of magic and ending up skewered on dozens of swords from the staggered line of sailors, the blades mostly skid across the surface of his armor, and the first man who was struck suddenly realized that the king really was over two tons.

He didn’t punch, or kick, he simply rammed into one of the knights and killed him on impact.

The others tried to flee, and the High Coins tried to join in, but Fomoria had to just dodge towards the Low Coins and grab them to use as bludgeons.

In a few minutes, there were only a handful of sailors left alive on the deck, and the High Coin had fled inside.

Fomoria pounded on what at first appeared to be a simple wooden door, but was really a thick slab of metal with locking teeth.

He wondered why they would go to such lengths to hide that the ships were more advanced than they seemed.

It took nearly a minute to break down the door, only for him to try going down the stairs and finding another door.

After 10 minutes, he reached what he assumed was the engine room, and found white blocks with blinking red lights.

They seemed familiar.

It was strange when one's perception could be slowed.

He watched the explosion form and had the time to step outside and grab the thick door he had broken down to use as a shield.

His insides were greatly harmed, but that could be fixed rather easily now that the anti-magic generator was gone.

More explosions went off across the ship, the captain was scuttling it.

If this was to foolishly try to hurt him or if it was to just prevent him from studying the machines inside, he didn’t know.

Water rushed in, but Fomoria just went back up the stairs.

If they dropped more of those electric weapons in the water he didn’t want to be out there.

When he got outside again he could see the seawall, they had delayed the fleet long enough for the golems to finish closing them.

The large stone formations were like claws to prevent them from being easily scales, they were solid.

Because Fomoria didn’t want people on these walls firing down on account of his other methods of fighting; he made them for maximum defense and no offense.

When the fleet reached the wall the port had already been evacuated.

The ships unleashed their vibration weapons on the solid stone that reached 60 feet in the air.

If there had been bolts they would’ve rattled out, if there had been halls inside the echo would’ve bounced and liquified any living being.

Instead, the stone shook and was chipped, but ultimately they had little effect.

The Other in charge of analyzing and recreating the spell sent the knowledge back to Fomoria and the Others.

Ten of them cast the spell itself, and then ten more put up a shaped sound spell to ensure that it didn’t blow back on them.

The sky turned to fire and a sound like a bellowing whale could be heard for dozens of miles; the ship that was struck shook apart and its crew was killed.

One might expect such a spell to be greatly affected by the anti-magic on the ships, but this was not fire magic which existed more or less as pure energy, much like how one could throw rocks with magic and have them pierce anti-magic, this spell had enough physicality to it by generating a shockwave that its effect continued after the magic reached the field of reality.

The fleet tried to fight back, and it worked for the most part, but where as the ships had to get past a large wall, the Others just had to delay them long enough for the attack was should’ve ended this farce of an attack.

A gate had been opened some time ago already, but it was above the clouds, outside of the sights of his enemies.

The construction golems had finished their jobs, and the mountain top had been cleaved.

On the side with the mountain, Fomoria moved his gate down, and once the center of gravity changed, the mountaintop seemed to float upward into the portal.

Fomoria rode the mountaintop, steering it with magic and also increasing the gravity.

They hadn’t noticed the red spot in the sky at first on account of the other vibration magic already setting so much of the air on fire that both sides were finding it hard to breathe.

Moments before it struck, he hopped through another gate, and his Others did the same.

The seawall existed for more than just keeping out enemy forces, but also, so that when he next did something of this magnitude, he wouldn’t destroy the port towns.

The fleet had been decimated, a dozen ships were fully functional.

When they turned around, Fomoria didn’t go after them, he wanted it to be known what happened here.

As he sent the Others into the water to get the ships and bodies that were worth recovering, not to mention the metal shells that held the crystals that the souls of the Others resided, he heard a voice from behind him.

The six coin commander.

“You are one of only a handful of people I’ve seen come back from an attack like that.”

“How’d you get inside?”

“After we talked I took a boat down the coast and slipped past your wall.”

The man unsheathed his blade, the gray steel contrasted with the white and gold edge.

“Let’s see if you can do that little survival trick again.”

----------------------------------------

Xol and The Darkness watched and waited.

The Lich had his second thoughts, but it wasn’t quite the time to voice them.