Fomoria disappeared into the crowds, dark imbibing made others want to look away from him, he didn’t want to be the king right now, he didn’t want to be bothered.
He felt tired, he had known for the last three days that Anon was gone, she just hadn’t physically left yet.
He thought about beating her, imprisoning her, trying to take back the sigil, since that was what she clearly wanted, not him.
But, Fomoria was more angry that he let himself be fooled than about her fooling him, it was his fault, that is what kept repeating in his head.
He didn’t think much as he wandered through the city, he just waited until some outside force made him react.
He was in the entertainment district when he heard the shattering of glass and then screens.
Yet when he arrived, he found Bly and Mosley already there.
It took just a moment to see what had happened, Mosley had jumped out the window, breaking his fall with this man’s body.
Mosley bound the man with shifting metal cuffs and Bly began to carry him away; Fomoria had nothing to do here.
He ran into other cases like this, by the time he arrived at every event the guards had already solved the problem.
This should’ve lightened his heart, he had made the city so safe that it didn’t need him to keep the peace, but instead he had found himself greatly annoyed that he couldn’t help anyone himself.
Fomoria wandered until he was asked by Larenzac to come to the north gate, where an animal trader was being denied entry.
“What is the issue here?”
“Magical creatures, ones which I would think you might want, but that I won’t risk being set free in the city..”
The merchant, with his many pieces of jingling jewelry and layers of fabric which covered his rotund form, waddled over to Fomoria.
“What good is a menagerie without dangerous creatures? My king, I come here as a humble merchant seeking only to sell my wares.”
“Very well, I could use the distraction. But the creatures are to remain outside until I have had a chance to look them over.”
Fomoria looked down the line, mostly domestic animals old enough to have evolved into something else.
A cat with a long body and almost jelly like bones, certainly a variant of a rat catcher, designed to clear out tunnels.
A dog with a heavy coat of fur, but with it being so thick, it still didn’t hide the strong muscle underneath. It must’ve been from an area with no other beasts of burden, so the dogs were bred to be them, likely somewhere northern, cold, a sled dog perhaps.
But halfway down the line, there was a covered cage, and when Fomoria reached for it, the merchant became tense.
“King Fo-”
“It is now Emperor Fomoria.”
“Your highness, that cage has an animal that isn’t yet trained.”
Fomoria lifted the cover, finding what seemed to be a hummingbird with a stinger, not more than nine inches tall from tip to talon.
He then opened the door, causing the merchant to flee.
The hummingbird gently hopped from the rod it sat on to Fomoria’s hand.
Both of them cooed and chittered at one another, and Fomoria rubbed under its beak.
The merchant got closer, and the hummingbird screeched, but Fomoria held it back.
“He isn’t worth it. I’d like to buy this.”
“Ah, yes. 50 gold coins of fair weight for the Barbed Hoverbird.”
It narrowed its eyes at him while it stepped in place on Fomoria’s hand; it wanted to attack.
“But I should warn you, it is a quite violent bird.”
“It’s not a bird, it also isn’t a Barbed Hoverbird.”
Fomoria hadn’t heard the term hoverbird, but he quickly understood it to be no different than a hummingbird, or that perhaps specific species of the bird had the name.
The man puffed his chest out with offense.
“I have been gathering these creatures for decades, I think that I would notice if it wasn’t a Barbed Hoverbird.”
“This is an insect, part of the rather expansive mimic categorization. Please, raise your wings.”
It spread them wide, and underneath one could see the pearlescent shine like that of a dragonfly.
“I don’t know the name of the species, but it will come to me assuming that The Darkness has granted it a name. But for now, it is a Hornet Bird. I will pay the 50 gold for it.”
“Now now now. You’ve told me that this is clearly a rarer species, maybe we can-”
The hummingbird screeched and Fomoria had to hold it by the legs to prevent it from clawing the merchant’s eyes out.
It quickly realized it wasn’t going to get away, so as it swung upside down, staring hatefully, it went limp.
“I told you before, it isn’t worth it.”
“Why are you talking to the beast like that?”
“Because it is smart, smarter than you I suspect. I will pay the 50 gold, which will save your life, and is more than you thought you would get in the first place, since 50 was your opening offer before we haggled and I paid 20.”
“Knowing that it is something special, I think that-”
“Look at the lock from the inside.”
When the merchant saw signs of damage, that it had been trying to pick the lock, he decided to accept the 50 gold; Fomoria also bought a few variant rat catchers and an ox with smoldering tips on its horns
Night fell, and Amber returned with Velvet, both had been drinking rather merrily, and they went to Fomoria’s room rather than her’s.
She saw her brother sitting in a rocking chair, just staring out the window with his new pet.
“Where’s Anon?”
“Gone.”
“Ah…”
“You can go to sleep, it’s fine.”
Perhaps had she been more sober, she would’ve stopped herself from leaving, or she would’ve seen how he was hiding a letter from her.
‘I have rarely told you the truth. I am an assassin, this is true. I was raised by a void panther, this is true. But she is still alive; there was no parasite attack. I am quite disappointed in you, that you let me come into your home, roam freely, sleep in your bed, and all it took was acting strangely, putting on the face of a scared lonely woman. But this is what was detailed in my notes on you, a lonely, overly committed man.’
The simple message that Anon left behind didn’t anger Fomoria, he was just done, he was tired, annoyed.
The hummingbird brushed up against him, he had lost mates before, and it understood his pain in its own way.
In the morning, Fomoria ate breakfast with Mercedes and Larenzac.
“I have a meeting inside the veil.”
“With who?”
“Hirum, Academy Headmaster.”
“What about?”
“I intend to construct another spire so I can connect the crossroads from inside and outside the veil through the use of my quantum genetic bridge on a grander scale.”
“Oh.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“It is fine to not understand my magic.”
“Yes.”
Mercedes sipped her water and was less than subtle about avoiding the topic of Anon, or the hummingbird he kept on his shoulder.
Amber and Velvet came into the dining room, and while he had no hangover, the same could not be said about Amber.
“Do you need healing?”
“If I drink, I should feel the consequences so that I can not fall into drinking too much.
That’s what Sam said at least.”
“I think that’s fair. I avoid drinking because if I like it, I’d fall into it and it would interrupt my work.”
She looked around the table.
“Where is Anon?”
Mercedes and Larenzac nearly dropped their silverware, then began to get up.
“It’s fine, both of you can stay. Anon is gone, she used me for my sigil, then she left. She admitted that she lied to me many times, that little of what I knew about her was true, and that she was disappointed in me for letting myself be tricked.”
“That fucking rancid bitch. I never liked her.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“We should-”
“No. I’m letting her go.”
“Bullshit. You should find her and-”
“I’m not arguing. If you want revenge in my place, you’ll need to find her yourself. But considering that she has void gate, she could leave to quite literally anywhere on the planet in an instant if your first attack doesn’t kill her.”
“I didn’t say I was going to kill her.”
“Capture isn’t an option for the reasons I’ve already said. I’m sure a void gate can be blocked, but I have no idea how, since it isn’t actually a spatial spell.”
“Wait wait wait, put aside that bitch for a second, what do you mean it isn’t a spatial spell?”
“Darkness has no spatial aspect, it is the element of time, chaos, change.”
“How does it teleport then?”
“I never asked, and I gained no understanding of the spell when it was given to me. Perhaps it reaches into different timelines in which I was already somewhere and I am swapping my location with this alternative self.”
Amber groaned.
“Fuck it, I’m too hungover for this.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive Anon, but I’d like you to put her out of your mind, since I doubt we will see her again.”
“Whatever.”
They ate with little else being said.
It was nostalgic to be back here, to look at the shining white stone that towered into the sky.
“King Fomoria, you are early.”
“It’s emperor now, and I know. May I walk around?”
“Right now we don’t have any free archmagi to guide you.”
“I know my way around, I don’t need a guide.”
She looked at her clipboard as she tried to come up with an excuse.
“Ah, I see, you don’t want me going around without a guide that could fight me if needed.
I understand.”
He sat down at a nearby bench and watched the golems work on the rebuilding.
He saw John a few times, it wasn’t a shock that he was overseeing the construction, he was after all an engineering teacher.
When the time came, the secretary had him follow her to a new elevator.
The academy had never come under attack at such a scale before, thus there was never a chance to change anything old.
So part of this new design was that most of the staircases were replaced by elevators that could move through a rail system that let the boxes move past one another.
He could feel only the slightest bits of motion, subtle enough that he suspected no normal human would notice the movement at all.
He sat down in the chair he had sat in more than once before, and he took in that the headmaster’s office hadn’t changed a bit.
“Did the battle not reach this room?”
“This is one of the most secure places in the academy.”
“More so than the vault I suppose.”
“Is that why you are here?”
“No. I’d like archmage land here.”
“Having both you and your… whatever he is, being granted land, would lead to debates on expansion and if either of you are really allowed to claim to be different people.”
“And what if I gave research which would justify being granted a second archmage title and thus reasonably be granted land separate from Harlan?”
“Theoretically, I see no reason not to, and if your magic is worth being granted a title, I would be able to use it to shut down any archmagi requesting extra land. How much do you need?”
“Just a one mile by one mile square would be enough.”
“What exactly do you want with it?”
“A spire of bone and flesh that reaches to the sky and uses quantum genetic tunnels to breach the crossroads at a mass scale.”
“Hmm… quantum genetics is interesting. I assume this is the same issue which you had to overcome when you created the Reinoan communication boxes?”
“The principle is similar, yes.”
“I would deny that it is enough to be granted a title. We already know quantum genetic magic exists, though we don’t use that term for it, and right now we consider it common knowledge rather than specialized knowledge.”
“But I would be using it to specifically breach the veil through use of paradoxical energy as well, which would differentiate it heavily from…”
Hirum enjoyed the next hour of Fomoria explaining how everything works with math and runes and sigils that could actually be understood.
Too often in Fomoria’s schooling, he could pass tests by feeling out his magic, but it would take much more effort from him to explain in scientific terms how he arrived at his conclusion.
By his third year it wasn’t much of an issue, but it was still something of a weak spot for him.
“I will grant the land. But I also want something in return, namely, more of your construction golems and magical materials. When you come to me, I am not going to treat you as an archmage, but as a national leader. I’m told you call yourself an emperor now?”
“I am an emperor now, so I call myself one now. I control dozens of cities and semi-independent nations through the required adoption of my charter.”
Fomoria handed a copy to Hirum.
“I conquer the land, put a marshall in charge of overseeing their transition over the course of three to six months, and if it is clear that there isn’t intent to follow my charter in spirit or letter, the marshall kills the king or queen and appoints a new leader. These places then pay some tax to me either in gold or other materials.”
“What manner of place even requires that you put such rules in effect? Rape must be outlawed. Murder must be outlawed. Slavery must be abolished except in the cases of debt repayment.
Then you go over a list of ways that slavery isn’t allowed even if they change the name or try to slip it past you.”
“That isn’t my first charter, each of those examples are things that people tried to use to trick me into letting them keep their slaves. I must give it to them, they really did try to follow the exact letter of the charter.
This didn’t stop me from publicly executing them, but they made a good attempt.
Anyhow. I control a large mining company, and I do have an excess of metals, both mundane and magical.”
How long until the academy reopens?”
“Right now, we believe we will miss the summer open date. It isn’t just a matter of replacing the building, but building back the trust that was lost. We just don’t have enough teachers, and the ones we do have want more and more materials and coin to be willing to teach.”
“You would open at the end of the 7th month then? Assuming that you had everything you needed?”
“Is there where you say that you have a list of archmagi outside the veil who would teach?”
Fomoria grinned, and the second round of debate and negotiation began; Mercedes would handle the final round.
----------------------------------------
“LIFT WITH YOUR WINGS.”
The sound of their beating filled the air.
“WATCH OUT BELOW.”
Darrath launched himself like a bullet at the Pixies in the way of the falling bundle of wood.
One of his legs was crushed under the pile, and he shouted orders to get them off.
Thyst came to heal him.
“Darrath, we should stop for the night, we-”
“We’re behind schedule.”
“You are the only one who cares about the schedule.”
“The schedule matters, because I have plans.”
From tree to tree one could see rope bridges and proper homes being built so the Pixies weren’t just living inside of hollows.
Each home had no nails, because the Pixies couldn’t mine or refine metals yet, and instead they would transfer boards up into the trees and then fuse them with nature magic.
When Dawn heard what happened, she came out and put a stop to the construction.
“Darrath, you are grounded.”
“By grandma…”
“No. I was excited when you gathered everyone together and you built the bathhouse, but you let that power go to your head, and people are getting hurt. What if you died? Or someone else? Would your father consider them to just be collateral? Or would he do everything he could to make sure that they did their work at a safe pace with precautions in place?”
Darrath looked down and twiddled his thumbs, his wings guiltily beat with a soft and slow pattern.
“I’m sorry. Father would’ve made golems, and nobody would need to be in danger.
I just wish that everyone could live in bigger houses, and it's been so cold this winter that the Pixies are getting sick because they live in drafty holes.”
He began to tear up.
“I was just trying to help them feel better.”
Dawn hugged him.
“Oh, honey. I’m sorry, but you should’ve asked me for help.”
“Papa wouldn’t ask for help, he knew how to do everything right.”
“Harlan wasn’t perfect, he just hid all of his flaws as best he could, especially from you.”
“Why me?”
He said through sniffles.
“He wanted to be strong for you, to be the father he thought was best. But your father, he is a man who has trouble asking for help if he thinks that he can do it on his own, because he doesn’t want to bother people.
Why don’t you go to the bathhouse and apologize to everyone? I’m sure that they aren’t happy with you, but they will forgive you.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Then that is a lesson as well. You can’t push people too far, because that is going to breed resentment.”
Dawn went with him, and helped him to apologize.
Most of them accepted him back with open arms, their empathic feelers let them know he was being genuine, but not all of them.
Some of them had lost fingertips and ended the last few days very sore.
The Pixies weren’t mentally fully grown, not yet, and children held grudges and then gave them up quite easily, or very difficultly, with little explanation for why.