The first thought that he had was to just kill them, but he looked at the man who stood there in front of the others with crossed arms, and it was like looking in a twisted mirror.
He stood slightly taller than Harlan, his features were somewhat sharper, he was also not a full blooded Fomorian, otherwise Harlan wouldn’t have reached his perfect little paradox state.
“Lower your weapons.”
That man raised his hands and walked towards Harlan.
“Stop right there and wipe that smug grin off your face.”
“Can’t a father-”
“You are not my father, you are just a seed donor.”
Harlan drew his sword, the blade fluctuated between light and dark, mercy and slaughter.
The chief knew the score, he had heard rumors, whatever he could from the outside world when the pact was broken.
“Kill me, spare the rest.”
“What game are you playing?”
“No games. My life’s work, it was all just a waste. If I had kept faith, waited, perhaps none of this would’ve happened. Tell Eliza-”
Harlan skipped over, his blade pressed to his father’s throat.
“Just tell her that I am sorry. Your youngest brother, he has a list, names, places, the victims of my generation. You may tell my victims' families that they are dead, give them that peace.”
Harlan didn’t want to believe that he could feel remorse from the man, he’d rather believe that he could fake emotions, hide his real mind.
“Why?”
“I saw the outside world. I walked past the border. I met people who offered me food and clothes for nothing, they just thought that I looked thin. I raped, murdered, cannibalized, stole. I am a monster, but don’t let that fall onto my children’s heads.”
He got down on his hands and knees.
Harlan moved to his side to cut his head off in one clean strike, but one of the children ran from the village.
She held onto her father, tears in her eyes.
Harlan could see his own features in her, he thought to himself that perhaps Viviane would look like her when she grew older.
He couldn’t do it, and in that moment, they won.
“Go back inside, I have to think.”
He stood there until Fomoria arrived.
“What are you doing here?”
He shifted into a hunched over form of laminar bone plates and teeth, like an upright drake, jet black with a mane of black flames edged with red.
Harlan stepped in front of him and took the same shape, but bright white, lacking the flames and horns; his blade of mercy still held on his hip, his form unsuited for wielding it.
Both men, now stood nearly seven feet tall, stared one another in the eyes.
They knew what was about to happen, but they also couldn’t let it be so without at least exchanging words.
“I can’t let you do this.”
“There is no letting me do anything.”
When Harlan pushed back with his hands on Fomoria's chest, he knew that he couldn’t remotely stand up to him physically.
“Remember Borden? People who are hurt, scared, they do things that they never would otherwise.”
“Setting up a multi-generational eugenics project is very different from looting during a riot.”
“If you had stayed, would you be any different? We are all products of our environment.
They can change, killing them would just take away any chance of that.
Yes, some of them need to die, but they must face a proper trial.”
Harlan’s words had angered Fomoria, but why they cut so deeply, he didn’t know.
“The Darkness warned me of this, that they had wormed their way into your mind.”
Fomoria put his hand on Harlan’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, I will save you from them as well.”
Fomoria punched Harlan, who opened a gate to redirect the strike, only for Fomoria to then use his own gate to bring it back to its intended target.
Both of Harlan’s arms were broken, nearly torn apart trying to block the attack, but he had bought enough time to jump back and soften the blow.
Fomoria looked away, disinterested, and started to move towards the village.
He found no joy in what he was going to be doing, at least, other than killing his father, but the rest was a matter of purging knowledge from the world that would be best left alone.
The Fomorians put their power together, and made him veer off course, his first strike missed, and bought time for Harlan to strike.
He flew at Fomoria under 10x gravity.
Physically, Harlan stood no chance, if he was to defeat himself, he had to fight smarter, not harder.
Fomoria flipped around, and with his hands on the ground, he leg locked Harlan and spun, using all that extra weight against him.
Harlan slipped through the move by using an anti-friction spell, and then went through a gate, landing right on Fomoria, crunching his armor and breaking even his sigil enhanced bones.
“You may know everything I’m going to do, but I know everything you’re going to do as well.”
The attack only bought Harlan a few seconds.
“Break out of it, these people deserve to die.”
“They deserve to be judged.”
“I just said that.”
“We both know how angry we are-”
“DO YOU?”
“Remember Haldren, remember what losing ourselves to anger brings. I can’t let you kill them, not because they are innocent, no, I can’t let you kill them because I know if you thought for a second longer, then you’d see that a fair judgment would do the same as us, but keep our hands clean.
You claim that I am under their control, so you must save me, but I must save you from yourself.”
Fomoria cracked his neck.
“When was I ever such a pathetic fool? At least own up to the blood we’ve spilled.”
Clash, it seemed too small a word for what happened.
Each of them feinted, double feinted, and then triple feinted, but on the forth, they cast actual spells.
Fomoria fired bolt after bolt of void, and Harlan, predicting that Fomoria would go on the offensive and use their favorite fast spell, put up a wall of radiance that ate away at them.
Then behind the void, like giant firecrackers, sound spells threatened to shatter his eardrums, which Harlan countered with a veil.
Finally ready to counter attack, both men struck with a crystal wave, turning the ground into a field of black and white shards that launched at the other.
Fomoria had no more mana than Harlan, both were technically the same age, and had grown at the same rate, but while Fomoria knew the blood gem spellwork, he hadn’t developed it himself.
In Harlan’s research, he had improved his general crystal magic abilities, and his shards were not only more numerous, but they were stronger, sharper.
When they broke through, Fomoria opened a gate, and Harlan countered with his own, raining them down on his head, but then Fomoria used his void gate.
He knew from the start that his crystals would lose, but now he had stronger crystals from two angles, since a void gate was spherical rather than a flat square.
Only a few dozen landed on him by the time he shut his gate, but that meant he had lost one arm at the shoulder, another at the elbow, and many organs that normal people would consider vital had been pierced.
Fomoria didn’t waste this opportunity, and jumped through his void gate.
The thought had occurred to draw out the fight and show Harlan that standing against him wasn’t going to work, but it seemed cruel and pointless.
His goal was to help Harlan be free of the Fomorian control and then to kill the Fomorians that he thought needed killing, that was it.
As soon as he could, he made another void gate and tossed Harlan through it.
Fomoria stepped into the tunnel hidden under some rubble which was once a small shrine of some sort, setting off every trap along the way, but none of them caused him any harm.
Even with each of the spikes, spears, and swinging blades being soulsmithed, the technique meant little if they couldn’t be loaded with spells that actually mattered.
Fomorians knew well how to destroy ones soul, but that was the case years ago, and in the time that Harlan had helped to revolutionize soul magic, what was once an attack that could kill even an archmage with no real recourse if it landed could now be blocked by even a second year student at the academy.
Humans weren't inclined to soul magic, but they were many, and when they worked towards a goal together, instead of spread out like the Fomorian villages were, they could achieve just about anything.
He came upon the Fomorians and immediately they tried to rush him, but he tossed them into the walls with telekinesis and then formed the stone over them to prevent them from moving.
“Tell me your name before I kill you.”
“Darrath, 11th of my name.”
“Very well. Darrath, 11th of your name, I hereby sentence you to death for your crimes against Eliza Dust, among many others.”
“Go then, kill me, prove yourself no better than I.”
Fomoria threw his head back and laughed.
“Did you really think that was going to work? ‘Oh, we’re not so different, you and I.’ And then I’d let you go? That I’d hesitate? Where did you get such a stupid idea?”
“It worked on the other one.”
The chief tried to strike him with a bone blade, but it shattered when Fomoria punched it, much like the chief’s chest did.
He wanted a fight, he wanted a monster, a master of dark arts that would push him to his limits.
This, this was just a scared, weak man who had spent his life deceiving and forcing himself on people, and now at the end, he could see that his strength was nothing compared to his son, compared to the very thing he had intended to make from the start; in this life, and in the other, his father would die by his hand.
“I could torture you, I could flay you alive and keep you that way for weeks, months, years even, I could rearrange your organs, I could turn you into a living statue, alive but never allowed to live.
But all you deserve is a shallow, unmarked grave.”
The man tried to crawl away.
“Wa-wait, please, I-”
Fomoria put his foot down, his weight and strength decapitated the man.
The rest of the Fomorians huddled there in the tunnel, fleeing wasn’t going to work, they had all seen how quickly he dispatched the warriors, the shades, and then their chief.
“Line up, women and girls on the left, men and boys on the right. Children go to the front, elders in the back.”
When they hesitated he punched the wall, shaking the tunnel.
“TO THE WALLS.”
He walked through, shifting the positions of some of the people, asking questions about age, if they had any children, if they had worked with the chief in his experiments.
When he was satisfied, he closed off the wall at a certain point.
“All of you, walk back to the entrance, and be mindful of the traps.”
“My father is-”
“Do not worry about the ones past this wall, worry about your own life.”
She must’ve been 15, maybe less; he didn’t meet her eyes.
When the Fomorians were out of sight, he put his hands on the wall, and it moved at high speed down the tunnel, killing the rest of them.
There wasn’t an exact science to who lived and who died, those with children were more likely to be spared, those who were younger were more likely to be spared, but it was mostly a gut feeling for him, a look in the eye that told him these people would fight back, that they couldn’t be corrected.
When he went outside, he saw how they looked at him, they knew that the others wouldn’t be coming, most were strong enough to feel their minds flicker and fade.
“All of you will be taken to my nation, Fomoria. I don’t blame you for being born Fomorian, and I hope that you will come to understand that. But there is a limit to the crimes that I will ignore, and those who aren’t coming with are those who I thought likely to attempt to repeat these crimes.
You will start in a village, away from my capital, and when I believe that you have been reformed, you may be given the choice of staying in the village, coming into the capital, assuming there is still room, or being allowed to leave and find your own way. Gather any personal belongings from your homes, and then we will leave.”
One of the young men stepped forward, and Fomoria couldn’t help but notice the resemblance, a half-brother most likely.
“Or else what?”
“Any who stay here will have to deal with the soldiers of Ragne who are surrounding this village.
I assume that my other half brought them here, but had them stay away to prevent them from dying in the crossfire.”
“We can band together, fight them back.”
“The children are all coming with me, they are blameless in your crimes and I won’t let them die in some foolish suicidal defensive mission.”
“You can’t-”
“I can, because I am strong, and you are weak. Isn’t that why you were allowed to rape and kill as you pleased? Or is it because you were persecuted by The Mother? What justification do you have against me that I won’t spit back in your face?”
The young man shrunk back, Fomoria’s anger made him seem a hundred feet tall compared to him.
“Go, gather your things, I’ll transport it all, no matter the size.”
When they arrived, a giant centipede was flattening the ground and an Other was watching from the sky.
The Fomorians couldn’t help but notice that the very first thing that the golems made was a wall.
----------------------------------------
Harlan fell from the sky outside a large tower, and Others swarmed him.
“Stand down.”
“Who are you?”
“Our progenitor tells me that you may not cause trouble. Give me your word that you won’t, and you may enter Kor until he grants you passage back into the veil.”
“Fine.”
“I don’t believe you, know that fighting within the city will lead to civilian casualties. Do not force the Others to stop you from visiting Amber or Anon.”
“Of course.”
Naturally, Harlan immediately tried to enter the mansion, only for his gate to be redirected.
“Do you think that you can stop me if-”
A dozen Others rushed at him.
Harlan assumed that they would be significantly weaker than Fomoria, which was true, but that didn’t mean that a few of them together wasn’t still significantly more powerful than him.
They each used a different element in their attacks, Harlan simply couldn’t cast his counters fast enough.
The Others were careful to not destroy his body, but rather his regenerating void bone limbs.
In a few minutes, Harlan yelled out to stop.
“Don’t cause problems in Kor, and you are a guest, otherwise we will contain you until he sends you back inside the veil.”
The Others left through their own gates.
Humbling wasn’t the right word, Harlan just felt humiliated.
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How had Fomoria left him so far in the dust since they’ve been apart that he couldn’t even hold against a few copies? That he fell for their ambush in the first place?
He used a gate to get inside Kor, and then he just wandered.
He didn’t want to say he was amazed, since that would be giving credit to Fomoria, and he wasn’t in the mood to do that, but the city was full of life.
He hadn’t seen a single beggar, the guards helped people solve their issues rather than coming in with threats to stay in line, and there were many people, some of races he didn’t even know, all working together.
A Dague woman came up to him.
“You seem lost.”
“I’m just killing time, I don’t have a destination in mind.”
“Normally if someone isn’t a local, they came here for a reason.”
“Why do you say I’m not a local?”
“Because if your clothes were in such a poor state, more would be issued to you.
Would you like to get something to eat?”
“No, I’m fine.”
His stomach voiced its disagreement.
He was worn down, using his sigil and then failing to get any results, he deactivated it and the toll wasn’t small after all of the flesh he had to regenerate.
“Please, my treat.”
“I’ve got money.”
He reached into his jacket pocket, only to find a hole where it had been.
“It must’ve been destroyed in the fight.”
“Were you mugged? The guards can-”
“That isn’t what happened.”
“Please, come with me, eat, I’ll pay for your story in exchange for food.”
“Good trick, make me feel like I’m not taking your money by making a simple trade.”
“You aren’t taking anything, I’m giving it to you. I get the feeling that you don’t trust easy, but please, let me do this for you.”
“Fine.”
“My name is Fluer, and you are?”
“Harlan.”
She brought him to a human restaurant.
He wouldn’t call it high class, but it wasn’t just a tavern, it had a proper dining area and what looked to be a large kitchen.
They walked up to a counter where a man stood with a notepad.
“Pick whatever you want from the menu.”
“Just stew and bread is fine.”
“He’ll have two servings of stew, half a loaf of bread, and a platter of meats and cheeses, and sauces, whatever pairs well with them.”
“You don’t-”
“Please, I have no children, no family, nothing to spend my money on. And I think that your story will be worth it. I’ll have a bowl of onion soup, a roast chicken, half a ham, half a loaf of bread, and a spread of sauces that pair with them. Bring a pitcher of water and two glasses. We’ll sit at table six.”
The man behind the counter wrote everything down and sent it back to the kitchen.
She led him to their table.
“Odd set up.”
“The king said that he spoke with the Lich, idle conversation about how eating establishments were different between their homes. It got back to the people somehow and a few places decided to change things up. It is certainly faster than waiting for a waiter.”
“Xol?”
“Yes. I am surprised that you know that.”
“I know him. You ordered quite a meal for yourself.”
He hadn’t wanted to say it, but she was pudgy for a Dague, who naturally packed on weight with difficulty.
“I know what starving is like, perhaps I’m just trying to prepare for the next lean period.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s nothing that most people here haven’t experienced. I guess that is what happens when you live in a city of mostly former slaves. But you, how did you get here?”
“A gate.”
“From which direction?”
“I mean the spell.”
“Ah, then you are a fairly powerful mage.”
“Yet weaker than I realized. I stagnated, I fell behind, I spent too much time with my wife and daughter.”
“No such thing. The king would surely agree with that.”
“Do you know him?”
“We met, once, not long after he took the city. I was stealing clothes for the freed slaves and he caught me, saved me from the owner of said clothes.”
“What do you do for work?”
“You first.”
“Research and development of magical and technological items.”
“Neat. I run the central slave processing center.”
“And that means?”
“If you’ve been a slave your entire life, you just don’t know what being free is like. They are almost always meek, trying to avoid being seen, since that is what a slave is supposed to do, drawing attention only leads to suffering. My job is to sort these people, find the ones who need the most help, and give it to them.
I suggest work to them and I see that they are given a proper home based on their past, such as some women who can’t see a man without panicking, and thus need to be put in an apartment with only other women and given counseling. Some may be unable to work for a time, so they are given an allowance to keep them from going without until they are ready to leave.”
“Does it work?”
“I try my best, we all do.”
Their food arrived, and Harlan danced around why exactly he was there, but Fleur was used to these kinds of answers, and didn’t push him.
“It was a good meal, do you think?”
“Yes, I enjoyed the food.”
“Are you planning to stay long?”
“I want to leave as soon as possible.”
“Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t show you to one of the city's bathhouses. Why don’t we get you cleaned up.”
“I prefer to bathe alone.”
“They can accommodate that as well. But you seem like someone who would like to see more of the city, and people are at their most comfortable naked.”
“I am not.”
He barely held back from yelling at her and slamming his hand.
“Alright, I didn’t mean to offend, I’m sorry that I pushed.”
He knew that she was telling the truth, and it made him feel like a prick, but he really had no desire to bathe with other people.
“No, I’m sorry, I have just had a poor day. Thank you for the meal.”
“I hope things get better for you, and that you can make up with your brother.”
As he got up to leave, Fomoria exited through a void gate.
“Fluer, good to see you again.”
“You remember me?”
“I put in the good word that put you in charge of the processing center.”
She blushed.
“Thank you very much, your majesty.”
He held her hands in his.
“No, thank you for your work, your gentle soul and ability to do the right thing even at risk to yourself is the reason you got the job, all I did was see it. Harlan, it’s time to go.”
“What did you do?”
“Killed that man, killed more of the village, took the rest here and set them up outside of Kor so they can be deradicalized.”
“How did you turn so cold?”
“We were always cold, you just couldn’t stomach what we are anymore, so you pretend that you are above me. Get off your high horse, go hide in your castle, I have a nation to protect and an empire to crush beneath my boot.”
“What if I wanted to stay, to help temper you into-”
“If we fought again, would the results change? Go through the gate, go back to your wife and child.”
----------------------------------------
Fomoria down with Fluer.
“Are you going to be here long?”
“I’m not working today, so I’ve been finding ways to fill my time. I would love to have lunch with you.”
“Then I will place an order.”
His shadow stood up and went to the counter.
It was a mostly useless spell in his opinion, it couldn’t cast magic or interact with anything, but it could speak.
“What did you and him talk about?”
“He asked me questions about Kor, and about Fomoria, you and the nation.”
“I regret giving it my last name. It was fine when I went by Harlan, but now it's annoying.
What specifically?”
“He asked about the poor district, about my work at the processing center, generally how well liked you were, and if I thought you were a good king.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“I know you were honest with him, and I respect that.”
“How do you know I was honest?”
“Because you are you. I might not see you often, but I keep tabs on people in power within the nation, reports are consolidated by my Others and I read those.”
“Am I in power?”
“You have the final say on the housing, food, clothes, and how long the slaves who come in will be allowed to live freely before they are expected to work. If you wanted to sow resentment, you could change the terms of people’s benefits, tell them that I was behind it.”
“I never thought about it like that.”
“I know, that is why you are perfect for the job, you care about helping people, not about whatever power and money you can get out of it.”
His amulet began to shine.
“I will be back shortly.”
He gated into the sky and then answered.
“Hello?”
“Warships are coming out from the east, they will make landfall in half a day.”
“It is nice to speak to you as well, Carmilla. I will send my forces now, destroy them before they get here.”
We should meet first in the south east, there is a small port town of Felfish.”
“An ill name for a port.”
“A fair place to prepare for a killing.”
“I shall meet you there with a dozen of my best men, the rest will stay on shore, ready for a surprise attack.”
“I already have my Others sweeping my cities for bombs, enemy soldiers, anything out of place. I suggest you give the same order.”
“I did so before I called you.”
“Good woman. I will use a gate to pick you and your men up, how long do you need to prepare?”
“10 minutes.”
“Perfect, I will eat and then go to you.”
He arrived in Felfish.
“We are looking at 80 ships, probably 1000 men per ship. That is not counting crew or the Fingers.”
“Any confirmation on which ones we are dealing with?”
“Yalda and Baoth it seems.”
“What do you know?”
“Yalda is the newest Finger, Helik’s replacement. Baoth is older. Now that we know who we are dealing with, fighting at sea isn’t going to work.”
“Why?”
“Baoth is the master of the sea, Yalda, from what little I know, controls the winds. They are gathering a seastorm powerful enough to wipe us out.”
“I will send some golems, preemptively strike. Do you know about magnesium?”
Three hours from shore, a Cast seaman looked over the rail at a pod of dolphins headed this way.
“DOLPHINS INBOUND.”
The whales dove and the men looked down, marveling at the agile creatures; an odd sight considering they were Cast.
Then the men noticed that the water was bubbling.
“The hell is that?”
“The sea is boiling?”
“Fire dolphins?”
“The hell is a fire dolphin?”
“I don’t know, but why else would-”
A bubble of hydrogen rose to the surface, and when it breached, it sprayed the men with the scalding water from the magnesium reaction.
The second bubble rose not far from the first, between more of the ships.
A second dolphin jumped into each of the bubbles.
Xol was teaching Fomoria about the natural elements of the world, and their reactions.
When one was casting magic, an understanding of the natural world was a boon, and if one could create and then boost a natural reaction, it was far more mana efficient, getting a large effect for the cost.
When the second dolphin hit the bubble, it popped, and a spell charged in their bodies multiplied the gas in the air.
It was the third and final dolphins that set the gas off.
From a bird flying overhead, Fomoria confirmed the detonation.
“It was a good attack, but perhaps detonations underwater would’ve been better.”
“What are the casualties?”
“12 ships were left unable to continue, and the sails of all the ships are damaged, they are going to be delayed by hours at least.”
“The closer to night, the better.”
“Still, this is a moonless night, they expect you.”
“Full moon or no moon, we will be stronger in the dark, and we can strike without being seen.”
“I’ll give you all the cover you need. Are you sure you haven’t seen a Hand yet?”
“Ur and Seraphallen are too noticeable, but they could be below deck.”
“Alright. My birds haven’t seen anything either, but I’d like you to stay high and be ready to strike.”
The town had been moved, not evacuated, moved.
Golems dug it up by the foundations, and dragged it through a large gate.
Fomoria wanted a proper staging area, and the people wanted their homes and businesses to be unharmed.
It was also a good test for something else he had planned.
----------------------------------------
The Cast landed and began to unpack their equipment and soldiers.
But they knew that something was wrong.
All along their path, they had been gathering as many clouds as they could for Yalda, but for the last two hours, they hadn’t seen a single cloud in the sky.
“Finger Yalda, will that be enough?”
The Cast wasn’t entirely used to his title yet, but he was well aware of the authority it granted him.
“Just keep the ship moving. Baoth, what do you think?”
The clouds above him rumbled, lightning flashed within.
“They attacked us along the way, they knew we were coming, but I don’t see anything here. In fact, our map says that we should be able to see a fishing village in the distance to the south of us. Would he have destroyed it for some reason?”
“It wouldn’t make sense. How recently were the maps updated?”
“29 hours ago. Captain, are you sure that we landed at the right spot?”
“Yes, the guidance systems say that we are exactly where we intended to land.”
“Send two scouts south, see if there are ruins.”
One more Finger stepped out of the ship, he bore a large burn across his face, Ur’s handprint.
“He wouldn’t leave ruins. This is wrong, I say that we wait until first light, fighting in the dark will be our downfall.”
“Sholl, how nice of you to suggest, but no. They will prepare the entire night, but we can confirm them as having noticed us part of the way through the day.”
“If you gave him an hour, he would be prepared. An extra night won’t matter.”
“You have a rather high opinion of him.”
“Don’t underestimate him. He defeated me, got Helik killed, and destroyed the fleet of states, causing a revolt.”
“Tell the men to be ready to move out.”
“Relaying messages now.”
Sholl mouthed words and entered a trance, his unique powers were always his heightened sixth sense and his support skills, but as he grew, he managed to claw his way into the crossroads.
He couldn’t act as a communicator on the level of a real mental mage, but he could connect with others who were already open to him, sending them simple signals and receiving them back.
Baoth continued looking at the maps, and it was starting to concern his companions.
“What is the issue?”
“There is a town and six villages that we should’ve encountered. The waterways are also missing.”
“Captain, confirm our coordinates.”
The man knelt down and pulled off his backpack, extending the antennae.
After a minute, he had double checked the numbers and recalibrated the device.
“Position confirmed.”
“Sholl, what do you feel?”
“Stop the march, I will check.”
Sholl sat with his legs crossed and his head swayed.
After a short time, he got up again.
Baoth found it odd, since normally his readings took more than a few seconds.
“There is something dangerous up ahead.”
“Is it Fomoria? An ambush?”
“Right now, I feel a single creature, it is not a golem, but it isn’t a person. There is a darkness inside of it, a consuming hunger that cannot be filled.”
“We will continue for now.”
They came upon the creature, though it was hard for most to see under the moonless night.
It stood a little under five feet in height if stretched out, but it preferred to remain slightly hunched, and was covered in rocky black formations.
It let out a loud reptilian bark, it had seen, or more accurately, heard them well before they knew where it was.
“Sholl, is that the creature?”
“Something is wrong, it should’ve been much larger.”
“Did you sense improperly? You didn’t exactly look for long.”
“I didn’t need to look for long because it was such a clear threat.”
Baoth cast his beam sigil, and a high pressure water jet formed in the air.
It was only the size of a pinhead, but he could move it after it had been cast, the downside was that it lost strength exponentially across distance and the longer he maintained a single casting.
Still, at 600 feet, it punched a hole clean through the Eolgi, and then he moved the jet and cut it into pieces.
“Sholl, I believe your senses are distorted by your past loss. That creature was-”
“It’s still here, that presence I felt.”
Baoth pointed at one of the soldiers.
“You, check the body.”
The man saluted and then ran.
They barely saw it happen, the soldier didn’t have the chance to scream before he was pulled under the ground.
“Yalda, grant flight to 200 men.”
As they neared where the soldier was pulled under, everyone noticed Sholl tense up.
“What do you sense now?”
“It isn’t one creature, there are hundreds of those things down there.”
“Yalda, Sholl, open a hole in the ground and we’ll destroy them.”
Baoth used his weapon sigil to summon a whip, then his shield sigil to make spheres of water.
“SOLDIERS, MOVE UP, FIRE INTO THE HOLE. FIRE PAST US.”
The 200 that had been granted flight moved up into an inverted cone formation; the Fingers had the abilities needed to avoid serious harm if they did manage to be hit by a stray spell, and the soldiers the skill to avoid needlessly striking their commanders.
The moment the hole was blasted open, they saw a giant cavern.; the creatures lined the walls and more of their bright, nearly blind eyes poked out from other holes.
They fired down, kicking up a cloud of dust, nearly blinding them before Yalda blew the cloud away.
Everyone was so preoccupied looking down, that they failed to notice the instant a dozen gates opened above them.
Eolgi rained down from above, the weapon sigil enhanced claws and teeth easily tearing through the flesh of the soldiers.
Yalda, not Sholl, was the first to notice; he felt the shift in the air as they moved.
When they got nearer, Baoth quickly assessed the situation, the men were already dead, so he twirled his whip, creating a vortex of rushing water, tearing the men apart first, and then the Eolgi.
The gates closed, only to open the 600 feet away, over the rest of the soldiers.
Against Fingers, the Eolgi, if given the chance, could slice most of them in two, but they were generally too slow, too stupid, and too magically weak, to do so. Against the normal soldiers however, they could rush through most everything that could be thrown at them.
When the Eolgi struck, they dragged the men under the ground which turned liquid around them.
In just the short time that they took to reach their men, half of the army was gone.
Sholl put his hands together.
“Oh great emperor, grant stability to these lands, even the trees and stone, shall answer to your commands.”
Eolgi ended up half stuck in the ground, no manner of magic could now affect it.
So they switched to their claws to dig, barely slowing them down, and they just killed their victims by digging through them rather than dragging them down.
But still, Sholl’s spell had scared the creatures off.
“Grand and merciful emperor, health to your creation, loves affirmation.”
The remaining soldiers who were alive but injured were suddenly mended, entire limbs regrown in an instant; this as not free to the men.
“Baoth, I warned you about him, I warned you that bringing these men was nothing but a death sentence. Even we may not walk out of here whole if you don’t-”
Baoth backhanded Sholl, knocking him into the dirt below.
He made no argument, Sholl simply got back up and wiped away the blood from his busted lip.
“MEN, RETRACE YOUR STEPS BACK TO THE COAST. REPAIR THE SHIPS, HAVE THEM READY FOR A QUICK EXTRACTION WHEN OUR WORK IS DONE. Yalda, how many can you grant flight right now?”
“Two, three thousand at the most.”
“Those are the men we will bring with us then.”
Yalda was beginning to question their mission as well, but he didn’t care about the men who were lost, just that he was personally at risk; he had to sense to not voice this worry.
----------------------------------------
Carmilla and Fomoria sat in front of a pulsating brain that projected images directly from a bird he was controlling; they were in the Spire of Other.
They couldn’t hear much, but they could both see exactly what had happened.
“Amazing. These golems-”
“They aren’t golems.”
“Really?”
“Golems may be implanted with my weapon sigil, but the effects are more powerful in living creatures.
We keep them under control by a combination of training from birth, inherited knowledge, and a spell that turns them into a hivemind. The Other which made them they way they are now is the only one who can control them with such finesse, but they are still simple minded things that any mental mage worth their graymatter could control.”
“Your sigil, tell me, how does it interact with a vampire?”
“Is Felblood still alive?”
“She is; she doesn’t deserve a quick death.”
“Then why not put this to the test?”