Fomoria awoke in a stone building, something more Ragne in style, but decorated with Golden stylings.

“Oh, you’re up. We found you wandering the desert and-”

He looked down to see the ring of light on his wrist and the man’s one eye was not the same as the other, more or less rolling around in his skull.

“Micheal. I’m not on a rampage again, am I?”

The man looked confused, then he folded into himself and transformed into the flying eye.

“You are calm.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Just a few minutes. I suggest you continue resting.”

“Thank you.”

He awoke during the earliest hours of the morning, the winter sun had not yet risen.

Fomoria looked beside him to see where he was, and saw Yara next to him in a state of undress.

He chuckled to himself; she would’ve never been so bold before.

But seeing her, he now had the chance to look at her tattoos.

He hadn’t really asked much about why the Golden sometimes had them.

Marigold had none, at least, none that he could see, but Delmet, his brother Migal, and Rosamet all had tattoos and each was different in design.

For Yara she only had a few of them, a belt of marigolds around her waist.

He tried to remember the other woman, Gilly was her name? It didn’t matter, she was just some adventurer, a curiosity, nothing more.

Not wanting to wake her, he just laid there in bed and looked around by controlling his shadow.

She awoke not long after he did; there was a large timezone difference and her biological clock hadn’t yet adjusted.

“Harlan, are you up?”

“Yes, I’m-”

“What did I do? Gods, what did I do? Should I go back? My parents must be-”

Fomoria pulled her into a kiss, and her mind went blank.

When she pulled herself back together, she laid next to him.

“My parents lost both of their daughters. I feel bad. I don’t know what I should do.”

“They did not lose them, they simply refused to allow them to make their own choices by way of threats and they went their own path. I don’t mean to second guess you, but why? You love Liat, but she couldn’t get you to stay.”

“Because I’ve loved you for years and I only found it constricting to stay there after I was engaged and I knew that I would never see all of you again.

If I tried to leave, they would toss me out of the gate with no food or water, I’m not like her, I couldn’t get across the desert. And seeing Adina and Harlan with their child, it was just… I wanted that.”

She traced between his abs with her fingers.

“Have you been with other women?”

“Yes. Mercedes, my head advisor, and Mother Lion, a leader of state from another country.

The first was an attempt at a relationship that failed,and the second was simply lust that I regret.”

“Oh. I just hoped that…”

“The first happened before I had void gate. I had no idea when I would be able to go inside the gate, and I didn’t want to ask you for a relationship because I knew that you wanted to stay in the desert, or at least you thought that you did. I’m sorry.”

“No no no. It isn’t really your fault. When we were younger, I was just too meek, and I didn’t have the connection that you and Adina had, or, have?”

“Had.”

“Really?”

“At the academy, I had the chance to sunder Harlan’s soul and steal his life, but I didn’t.”

“That was very kind of you.”

She pressed herself to him.

“I want a domestic life, away from war and fighting. I want to stay here, read books, raise a child, maybe a dozen children.”

“A dozen? We’d need to stay soon then.”

She climbed on him, but he gently pushed her off.

“I’m not being too fast, am I?”

“You know that Adina had issues with her pregnancy. I don’t want to put you in danger, so I want to get some expert advice.”

Yara’s stomach rumbled and she blushed with embarrassment.

“Do you have night chefs? You came between meals and I didn’t eat when I got here.”

“Of course. They can make the best rat roast in the city.”

She looked at him, questioningly; he just laughed.

In the morning, Xol arrived shortly after Fomoria called.

“You do work fast. I thought it would take a week before you found her.”

Marigold was also there, but he wouldn’t even spare her a glance.

“Getting a woman who already loves me is pretty easy. I wanted to know if you knew if there would be possible issues between Yara and I with pregnancy.”

“It would be better to ask Mari-”

“No, I refuse to speak with her.”

“I hid it from you just the same. Yet you will invite me into your home.”

“No. When I pressed her, she denied it, tried to make an excuse. You had enough respect for me as a friend that you just told me the truth.”

Xol sighed, Fomoria couldn’t hold a grudge forever, not for something so relatively minor.

Well, he certainly could hold the grudge, but Marigold was someone he quite liked beforehand, so it probably wouldn’t last that long.

“The child will still carry your genes, and as your flesh is chimeric, it would tear through her womb when it starts kicking if she isn’t enhanced.”

Yara rubbed her stomach and shivered.

“Don’t worry, girl. Also, your pregnancy is likely to last a short time, much like Adina’s.

But, Fomoria, you have that sigil, and it doesn’t turn off anymore. You can dull it, turn it off, but it is inside of your bones and blood. I would like a semen sample for testing.”

He put a sealed cup on the table between them.

“I expected this.”

Xol laughed, but Marigold and Yara were a little disgusted.

“I certainly wish I had your confidence at your age.”

“Did you have a wife back on earth?”

“It always fell to the wayside, it was second to the revolution, but no, I was just coping with my lack of ability. I fought behind a desk with words and paintings.”

“Thank you for your time.”

“I will start running tests as soon as I get back. Oh, and Micheal must go, purge him or give him a body, either one works.”

Fomoria decided to remain in his room and explain the various relationships and factions at play here outside the veil; he also introduced her to Micheal, who didn’t seem comfortable speaking with other people.

Yara was more than a little excited to see these races that simply didn’t exist inside the veil.

At breakfast, she sat on his right hand, forcing Mercedes to sit on the left.

“Did you two meet yesterday while I was resting.”

“Yes, I met with her.”

Mercedes seemed happy that Fomoria seemed happy.

“You and Formoria, you were-”

“Oh, he told you that?”

“Yes, he said that it failed. I would like to know why.”

“I would’ve been happy if he intended to marry me and be queen, or even just if we continued to sleep together, but he wants children, and I don’t. I am a little surprised however that you would ask me outright.”

“I’ve been jealous of another woman for years, but I don’t see you as a threat to our relationship.”

Mercedes sipped her tea, wondering if she had the same obliviousness which he used to have, or if she was actually making a rather spiteful statement.

“Honey.”

She couldn’t help but giggle to herself, and he did the same as he placed his hand on hers; Mercedes found herself a little confused.

“You said that Amber is here, does she wake up later?”

“No, she’s with her fiance. Not sure how that is going to work out, since I’m thinking that she might be trying to make it work to spite Anon. Amber tends to get bored of men after a while, or at least my information says that is the case.”

“Liat and her almost worked, shame about them both being women.”

Fomoria just shrugged his shoulders.

He cared if Amber found someone good, but his concern was primarily that she didn’t settle for someone who wasn’t good enough for her.

He showed Yara around town, getting a laugh when they neared Rekur’s home and she recognized what she was before he even opened the door.

It was… Comforting? No, he wasn’t sure that was the right word exactly, it didn’t feel impactful enough, but he had never been able to share that kind of experience with someone else, to be together with another mental mage and them both to understand that feeling. Whatever the word was that would feel right but yet couldn’t express, it felt good.

Still, reality was reality, and this couldn’t last forever.

“Rosen, you’ve been following us for a while, what do you think of my city?”

The man jolted back, he intended this to be a recon mission.

Fomoria waved his hand and his invisibility was shattered.

“Thought about immigrating? I can promise a large home, space for your family. I don’t even need you to fight, I have other projects that need help.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Rosen tried to teleport away, but through holding hands he had told Yara to help him seal the space in advance.

“Answer my question and I’ll let you leave, no harm even if you say no.”

“I’m… not staying.”

He hesitated, but Fomoria was sure that it wasn’t a matter of thinking he would kill him, Rosen was considering it.

“Very well.”

As he said he would, the spatial lock dissipated, and the man was allowed to leave.

“I never asked, what classes did you take?”

“Wards, arrays, enchanting, and spatial magic in my last year. I wish soulsmithing had been open to other people, but it is closed to everyone else for at least 10 years.”

“Useful skills to have for someone who avoids the battlefield.”

“Thank you.”

“How good at enchanting are you? I’m… good at it, but I never took the classes myself.”

“I was top of my class.”

“Did you ever… tell me that?”

“Yes. But you were always so busy that I guess it must’ve just gone over your head.”

“Sorry.”

The thought came to him, where best to take her next.

He didn’t tell her what the building was and he put his hands over her eyes.

“Sign in here.”

He put the pen in her hand and at the start of the line.

“Oh.”

She signed as Yara Fomoria.

That she could do so while blinded was… odd. He began to think about how often she had likely written in and how she may have been far more into him than he believed.

“Sir Fomoria, it has been time since you last visited the-”

He shushed the woman.

“This is a surprise for her.”

The woman smiled and nodded her head.

He took his hands off of her and Yara was surprised.

“Is this? It can’t be. This is… beautiful.”

There was a sense of deja vu, but he put it out of his mind.

“The library is open all night. There are few books here that are in the academy library, but the veil was put up over 1500 years ago.”

“I don’t even know where to start. Do they have a map?”

“Ma’am?”

“I can provide you with a map. If I may ask, what is her relation to you?”

He wasn’t surprised, the woman was likely going to directly report anything he said.

“She’s going to be my wife as soon as we decide on a date and if she wants a large wedding or something more personal.”

Yara naturally went right to the romance sections, reading the first few pages of each book, finding the bad ones.

Why she had such an affinity for poorly written and contrived books, he wasn’t sure, but he did find them funny. It also likely explained why she was the way she was, clearly obsessive, perhaps expecting him to wake up one day and choose her over Adina.

They read together, both being quite fast, but Yara scanned the pages with her fingers so she and him both held pace with the other.

It was… fun, relaxing.

Tension that he held for a long time started to fade away.

Adina was good for him, she calmed him.

Amber, she was good, but there was still a separation between them because she was, regardless of blood, his sister, and he couldn’t feel about her the same way he could feel about Adina or Yara, that mental block just never went away.

Their reading was interrupted by Camilla.

“Hmm…”

He put a veil around the table they were sitting at.

“Yara, meet Camilla.”

He went back to reading.

“Don’t you have more to say?”

“If one has nothing nice to say, then they should be quiet unless there is a reason to say unkind things.

Would you rather I mention how when we first met-”

“Shut up.”

“Why are you here?”

“I heard that you were here and I thought to see you.”

“I’ve been here many times without you coming to see me. You are here because she is here.”

“A silly-”

He closed the book, the loud clap blocked by the veil.

“You are not your mother. You lack her subtlety, you lack her presence. You are better off being blunt if you can’t lie well.”

Camilla got up and left, staring daggers at him.

“Who was that?”

“She’s the princess of this nation. We have disagreements.”

“Oh. Why?”

“Out of respect for Carmilla, her mother, I won’t say more. I just seemed like I would bring up something because I knew it would upset her and she would leave before doing something worse.”

They spent a few hours reading, and when he had to leave, she asked if it was safe for her to stay, to which he said yes.

Fomoria nearly forgot to make her an amulet.

Unlike many others, she didn’t seem disgusted by his using his own blood and flesh to create one in front of her, rather, she enjoyed the personal nature of it.

He had to go to a city one of the scouting Others had found on a different stripe which was quite small and held only this city and Castian military bases.

In theory, the Cast had conquered everything but small pockets, but the more the Others went out, taking little more than passing glances around, the more entire stripes they found that were free of them.

Granted, these were smaller, and the one which Kor was one was abnormally large, but still, the fact that so many existed was going to be helpful.

It made sense to him, if they really had conquered everything, and if there was no real resistance but cities with singular powerful entities, then the Fingers and Hands could just band together and wipe them out one at a time.

The fact that they hadn’t come to Fomoria and attacked was a sign that something more was going on that required their attention.

“Why this city specifically?”

“I saw a Castian army being beaten, and when I got near the city to scout it, they fired on me despite my invisibility. These people seem strong, and as an Other, I think it would be seen as disrespectful if I went in without you to meet their leader.”

“What is the racial make up of the city?”

“Goliaths and Dague, not sure about the mix. The Dague are mages, the Goliaths the warriors.

I saw the fight, and the Castians suffered few losses, but the same could be said for these people. I believe the strategy is to wear them down with numbers, getting just a few kills and then retreating. Give it a decade, time that the Castians have, and they might weaken the city enough that only the powerful people are left and then clean them up with Hands or Fingers depending on how strong they are.

There is something else, I’ve not heard a word during the attacks, either their plans are rigid enough that they don’t need to be explained, or the soldiers are given enough freedom that the commanders don’t need to say anything.”

Fomoria thought on this, and decided to go inside.

He approached uncloaked with his hands raised.

The wall hummed with magic, and he stopped.

“I COME IN PEACE, I AM THE EMPEROR OF-”

They cast their spells at him.

Fomoria waited until he was out of sight, quickly entered a void gate to move out of the way, then once they ceased fire and the smoke cloud had yet to clear, he went back to where he was originally standing.

It was a simple trick, but quite effective at setting a tone.

“I’M NOT CASTIAN.”

He snapped his fingers and the cloud was pushed away, leaving not even dust on Fomoria.

Goliaths jumped from the wall, but they remained close.

When they were about 20 feet from the ground, they kicked off the wall, it springing back and giving the men more speed.

Fomoria turned off his hover, since what he was about to do was best done with his full weight.

He fully armored himself, then used throws to toss the men without causing much harm.

They tumbled on the ground, but quickly found themselves upright again by proper falling and rolling techniques.

“Don’t fight me. I come in peace, I am not related to the Castian Empire, my goal is the complete removal of them.”

Even before they moved an inch, Fomoria knew by the looks in their eyes that these men weren’t going to stand down for a moment.

Their armor was closer to what would be considered New Path, being full plate rather than the bones of one's enemies and pelts from vicious beasts they defeated.

It wasn’t that the Old Path Goliaths were wrong to do this, since once they became older and stronger, their skin and bones were more than likely stronger than most metals and didn’t need to be replaced or reworked when broken.

There were three of them, and they moved their hands to formulate a plan without words.

Fomoria closed his eyes and took a boxing stance, making his profile smaller and being ready to dodge.

The Goliaths being here was not just them as frontline fighters, but also the hide that there were several more people around him, hidden, waiting to strike.

When they came, the Goliaths first, Fomoria didn’t dodge away from the first attack, and instead threw a straight that shouldn’t have hit, but he opened a small gate for the extra range, and the first man’s chest caved inward, his thick bones cracking like a roaring fire.

The next was from the side, and Fomoria kicked like his leg had no bones, the whipping action cleaving his armor and several inches into the man.

The last Goliath kept moving forward despite all indications that it wouldn’t go well for him, and Fomoria wanted to see what void flames did against anti-magic.

The answer was… not what he hoped.

Before they even reached the man, the void flames were extinguished.

While they were a greedy fire which devoured magic, the opposite was true as well, and anti-magic starved them out far too quickly to see a real effect.

So instead Fomoria dodged the flying axe kick that split the ground, quickly moving to the man’s side and punching him several times in the blink of an eye.

All of this happened in only a second, the speed and slower combat time perception abilities of powerful people made it a blur to anyone normal.

He spoke without turning to the Dague.

“Stop charging that spell, it won’t work you know.”

The Dague still launched it, a sound spell, nearly invisible, only showing up as distorted air.

He sealed up his armor, plugging his ears.

It was a good spell, his organs shook and he vomited inside of his helmet, but they likely expected him to die outright.

He staggered and shivered, but their cover was now blown, or rather, it never existed in the first place.

Strangely enough, they seemed to have no clear protection for their hearing, but were not affected by the spell.

The Goliaths got back up, ready for another round.

It was another ten minutes before someone else came out to meet him.

Yet he was not Goliath, nor was he Dague, but rather just a human; he made Fomoria’s skin crawl, though why wasn’t clear to him.

He made hand signs at the Dague, and Fomoria thought he was going to kill them, but nothing happened, and they signed back to the man.

Once the flurry of motion was finished, the Dague and Goliath went back inside, and the man pulled out a wooden plate that Fomoria could tell was enchanted.

The man used a pen that burned the wood, and then he showed the plate to him.

‘Welcome to my city. What are you?’

“I am Harlan Fomoria, Emperor of Fomoria. I-”

The man shook his head and activated the enchantment on the plate, causing the burns to fade so he could write again.

‘I can’t read your lips, only human-like races.’

“Oh.”

Fomoria removed his armor, returning to human form; the man’s eyes widened.

“My name is Harlan Fomoria, I am the leader of the Fomorian Empire. I came here because one of my scouts saw your men repel a Castian attack and wanted me to speak with the leaders of the city so I could ally with them.”

When the man first saw the word empire, he was worried, and the brief flash of power as he readied to defend himself was nearly enough to make Fomoria want to flee.

But, as he heard the rest of it, he calmed.

There was a delay as he thought of a response, but the man nodded and wrote again.

‘I cannot let you in today, but if you waited one week so we could get ready, I would let you inside to talk.’

“Thank you. I will return in seven days then. Around this time, or what did you have in mind?”

Morning would work best.’

“I will be here an hour after dawn.”

‘Perfect.’

It was hidden deep inside the man, but Fomoria saw what was wrong with the man.

“Does the word Reino-”

The instant he saw it, the man furiously scribbled on his plate.

‘SPELL OUT WHAT YOU SAID.’

Fomoria carved the word Reino into the ground.

The man was clearly excited by this, and he thought about bringing Fomoria in right then and there.

‘I am going to bring you something, wait here.’

Almost an hour passed before the man came out again with a book in his hand.

It had no title, clearly it was made from a blank.

“Did you just write this?”

The man nodded his head.

Fomoria flipped through a few pages, and the large manual was how to translate words from Godgiven into sign language.

Though he only just skimmed those few pages, clearly it had been written with basic phrases at the start and then more advanced things near the end.

‘Thank you, I will…’

He hadn’t actually seen the word for learn, and got a bit ahead of himself.

“I will spend time to learn this before I visit next.”

The man was ecstatic, showing a flurry of sign that Fomoria couldn’t translate more than a few words of.

“I only got a little of what you said.”

The man just shook his head and went back to the wood plate and hot pen.

‘You are welcome, and I hope you will be able to have a complete conversation when next we meet.

My name is Quill, Wordless Saint.’

Fomoria didn’t hesitate to shake his hand before he left.

Back home, Yara and him both used the book, helping each other to learn the language.

“You are looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“How you looked at Adina.”

“This is fun. You and I… honestly I think we share more genuine hobbies with one another.

We like reading, and learning everything we can, magic or otherwise. And… I guess that’s it.

I don’t have that many hobbies.”

“But they are such nice hobbies.”