Dantes awoke and didn’t think anything of his wife being missing.

He didn’t bother to get dressed as he went to the bathroom, he just scanned the room quickly before he got up and revealed himself.

As he came out of the bathroom, a voice came from the corner.

“Bird brained.”

Dantes flicked his wrist and shot a handful of paralyzing bolts at the voice.

But Fomoria rapidly poked at each of the spells, causing them to vanish.

“If I was here to kill you, I would.”

“Fomoria.”

He spoke with venom.

“Get out of my home.”

He looked around again.

“Where is my wife?”

“Wife is a very strong word for a whore. And I don’t mean any disparagement to her by that, I know that you are paying her to be here and give you children. Regardless, back to what I was-”

“You didn’t tell me where she is.”

“I don’t think you understand your position here, I’ve only avoided throwing you from the window because I already used my defenestration speech and I wouldn’t want to be repetitive.

But, she is safe in the next room over. Also, she should get more iron in her diet, she’s a little pale.

Now-”

“I don’t care about whatever-”

Fomoria skipped over and slapped the man.

Dantes wasn’t a particularly weak man, but he was not close to Fomoria’s level and couldn’t even lift his arm fast enough to block.

Dantes wasn’t struck hard, but he still fell to the soft carpeting below.

“Bird, brained. You’ve never raised chickens I assume?”

“Do I look like I raised chickens?”

“There it is, that disgusting sense of pride you have, the scorn in your tone for people whose work keeps you fed.”

Fomoria sighed.

“But, finally to my point, and if you interrupt me again I am going to fuse your teeth together, the term bird brained. Some, like crows and ravens, are quite smart, but not chickens.

If you put a round waterer with a base they can drink from, the chickens will perch on it and shit right down into the base, their own drinking water. If you give them a bucket of feed, they’ll do the same, mindlessly shitting into the bucket instead of just turning around. Right now, D’if’s reports are showing that you are perched on your waterer.”

Fomoria left through a void gate, and when Dantes got up, he screamed at his guards for failing to stop Fomoria from getting inside.

He now sleeps with guards in the room; it would make little difference against Fomoria.

Back at the dining table, Fomoria sat for breakfast.

“You are late today.”

“I had to threaten Dantes using the bird brained speech.”

Mercedes slightly choked on her eggs.

“I thought we agreed that-”

“No, we spoke about me being more subtle. Dantes is a man who believes he is much smarter than he is.

I thought that it was best to show him that I can get him no matter where he is, and I could get to his wife without him even realizing she’s gone despite sleeping next to her.”

Yara raised her hand.

“This isn’t the academy. You’re going to be a queen, just ask the question.”

“Sorry. It’s just that I’m not too familiar with all of the positions of everyone yet and I-”

“Be confident. Mercedes is a friend, she knows how I operate, same with Larenzac and Joan.”

“Well… you also slept with one, and tried with the other.”

“I never tried to sleep with Larenzac.”

She didn’t find the joke as funny as he did.

“What was the question?”

“Oh, right. Why not kill this man?”

“Mercedes?”

She cleared her throat.

“Edmond Dantes is my adoptive father, or rather, his men kidnapped me as a child so I could be a body double for the real Mercedes Dantes-”

“Who is that?”

“She was the princess of Elfique.”

“That was the Dague nation on this island, yes?”

“We use the term stripe, but yes. Elfique was destroyed not long before Fomoria first came here.”

“You and him also met when he first came here as well?”

“Yes. I-”

“Yara, please, she is trying to answer your question, leave the rest until she is done.

Mercedes, it is fine to tell her off, don’t use silk gloves to handle her.”

She nodded, letting Mercedes continue.

“To make things simple, Elfique is technically still alive, Edmond Dantes is the king, and though most of the Dague would choose to remain in Kor, we don’t want to make strife by actually killing him before he does something that justifies doing so.”

“What did he do that you needed to threaten him?”

“He sent Dague over here under the guise of them returning to Kor, but really they are nothing but spies.

Larenzac, have they done anything yet?”

“No. They’ve been trying to break in here, but they’ve been unable to steal anything and nobody has been hurt.”

“Next time they try, kill one of them, capture the rest. Give a warning that we know about them being here, and we are tolerating them because we don’t believe that they or their feeble king can harm us.”

He cocked his head slightly, something he picked up from being around the Others.

“Why?”

“They are going to bring that back to Dantes, and it will push him just a little closer to the edge.”

“Sir, I don’t-”

“If I kill him before he does something, some Dague will riot.

If he does something and we catch him in the act, then the loyalists are still going to riot, but at least the more moderate among them will be likely to listen to reason. I don’t want to kill them for the crime of having a shit king, I want them to be able to listen to reason.”

The table went quiet. Wanting to provoke an attack was a little out of character, but with his reasoning explained, they felt a little foolish for doubting his intentions.

Xol returned in the afternoon, finding Fomoria and Yara practicing their hand signs.

‘Oh, you met with Quill then?’

‘You know him already?’

‘He’s a fine sort, but I think being alive so long and being turned into a Wizard at such a young age left him mentally stunted.’

‘Do you think he can be trusted?’

‘Well enough. When I last spoke, he held an affinity for his faith still, but he wasn’t the type to discriminate based on it any longer.’

‘When was this?’

‘500… 600? Yes, 600 years ago, since I was looking over the remaining Witches and Wizards still alive after Yggdra died.’

‘Why?’

‘Your test results are good. I’d estimate a 70% chance of no complications, but almost no chance of her dying from the child.’

He didn’t want to push Xol on his changing of the subject.

‘What are the possible complications?’

‘Miscarraige. If the child lives for a month, I believe there is almost no chance of it having any problems. Before that, as I said, 30% chance.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now, forgive my wife, or just talk to her.’

‘Another day. I need to talk with Yara, privately.’

‘Of course.’

After he left, Fomoria closed his eyes and leaned back into his chair.

“Yara, are you fine with that?”

“30% is high, but if the only issue is the chance of a miscarriage, then yes, I am willing to try.”

“My mother, she…she had a boy before me, stillborn. I don’t think she really got over that.

I just want you to really think about this, even if you might not be physically harmed, it is going to hurt.

And I don’t want to insult you, but you’re young, I’m young, and I’m not saying that-”

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She sat in his lap and wrapped his arms around her, placing his hands on her stomach.

“I know what we are, I know that if it happens, it is going to crush me, but if we get past that, we are going to have a child. I’ve thought about that a lot, I wondered what her eyes will look like, what her skin would be, if she’ll be blonde like me, or dark haired like you.”

“Already so sure of having a girl?”

“It would be nice for Viviane to have a half-sister, and Darrath too. When can I meet him?”

“I wanted to wait until this war was done to keep him out of danger, but with all of my Others, and with what power I have now. I’m not sure how much I really need to do that. If I put two of them with Darrath, each having a gate, it wouldn’t matter much if they couldn’t win, they would only need to retreat to the spire.”

“Can you enhance me today? Unless you-”

“Alright, no sense in wasting time. I’ve even got Stone Drake flesh.”

“Oh, you killed one?”

“No, Xol taught me about cultivating biological material and I’ve already tested it. Not quite as good, but it does have some of the extra strength from my sigil, so it more or less makes up the difference and adds elasticity. I also-”

She giggled.

“Huh?”

“I missed that. When you would just go off on some rant because something caught your attention.”

“Oh. I need to have another conversation first actually.”

He asked Yara to go out of the room and he closed his eyes.

“Micheal, have you decided on a body?”

“I want to be a small flying reptile. I don’t want to be human, they are too complex.”

“Are you-”

“Yes. A flying one eyed snake perhaps.”

Fomoria stifled a laugh, confusing Micheal.

Once it was explained why he shouldn’t call himself a one eyed snake, Micheal and Fomoria worked out the exact details of his body.

Micheal was to be two feet in length from tail to tip, smooth scaled like a newt, and spotted along his spine with what would look to be eyes.

On his head Fomoria convinced him that while he could make him with one large eye, it would seriously affect his depth perception, something important if he intends to fly.

So while he would have his large eye, he would also have four smaller eyes that one couldn’t see without looking very close.

His body was to be thin, somewhat frail, and while he suggested a snake, Micheal was more wyvernesque in appearance.

Micheal wanted to name his own species, even though he did understand that there would never be more of them because of rules regarding new species being made.

Flying Eye, not very original, but it was what he wanted.

Yara didn’t take nearly as well to the enhancements as most other subjects.

Being Golden was a boon, but she wasn’t a fighter, she lacked the coordination, the attunement between her body and her mind.

He had to push back the meeting with Quill to another week, and Quill seemed to be fine with this after Fomoria said he would be giving them some extra food, something Quill’s people desperately wanted since they had a limited amount of space for growing crops and what little excess they produced was kept back just in case.

It was a week after her enhancement that Yara was finally in control of her strength, but she and he had been trying for a child for three days already.

The bed broke, and it also turned out that Yara was a loud person who required arrays being turned on which was very embarrassing for her, but other than that there were no issues with their trying.

Fomoria went alone to meet with Quill, and found the Cast there, preparing another attack outside of the range of the mages inside the city.

The weapons they used weren’t standard, and the more he thought about it, the more strange it was to him.

Quill may be strong, but he didn’t come out to fight anyone.

The Cast fought a set number of people, matching those from the city, then retreated shortly after like clockwork.

At least, so says the reports from the Other who discovered the city.

Sleet began to fall, and Fomoria knew how he would break into the fight once it began.

A beast of black bone beset the belligerents.

Fomoria’s form flashed from flesh to fulmin.

Rushing from raindrop to raindrop.

He was thunder, trembling and terrifying.

He was lightning, lithe and lifestealing.

Fomoria was disoriented, he never used lightning imbibing for so long and never with so many twists and turns.

It was bad enough when he used it against the Fingers to rush them down without the downsides of skip, and he still failed to exit exactly where he intended to, turning killing blows into maiming strikes.

He vomited on the ground, the rain washing away this act of weakness.

Goliaths approached him.

‘I was supposed to meet Quill today, I decided to help you in this fight. Apologies if I was not wanted.’

They seemed put off by his ability to use sign.

One of them stood watch over Fomoria and blocked him from seeing their hands as they spoke.

‘Don’t move, we will verify this.’

Quill came out not soon after, looking a little pale.

‘Are you alright?’

He began to shake his head, then nodded in a lie.

‘Is this a bad time to have come?’

‘No, but…’

His hands fell to his sides and Quill wasn’t willing to meet Fomoria’s eyes.

‘You shouldn’t have killed those men.’

‘Any Castian soldier is another cog in the Castian…’

He had to switch to signing the individual letters, his book wasn’t a full dictionary, more intended to give him enough to be able to understand the people of the city and figure out more from just context and possible future teaching.

‘Warmachine which is a threat to all free life outside the veil.’

‘We… let us speak inside.’

Fomoria asked to walk through the city so he could get a feeling for the place, and Quill had no issue for this.

It wasn’t quite as dreary as Fomoria believed it would be even with the cloudy weather and sleet.

The architecture wasn’t that different from what he would expect from a Ragnite military base, blocky buildings, but the houses were all painted with mud.

‘What are they sketching?’

Quill had no issue reading Fomoria’s hands with a side glance, and Fomoria could do the same.

‘Everything will return to what it was before, but we still paint when we can.

Since we can’t leave, we must do what we can to deal with the monotony of it all.’

‘I know magic that lets me color things. I could teach you.’

Everyone who looked at his hands became excited.

‘Show me, show me.’

He mimed clearing his throat.

‘Please.’

‘Of course.’

He turned the stones beneath them red and most everyone was clearly trying their hardest to not rush over and beg to be taught.

‘Amazing…’

Quill seemed ready to cry.

‘Can I teach everyone?’

He nodded strongly and Fomoria put the instructions on one of the homes.

Quickly the spell would spread across the city, turning it into vibrant shades that changed by the day.

Quill showed little of the city to Fomoria.

It was not that he didn’t want to show him anything, but that there wasn’t much to see.

‘The city is hollow.’

This angered Quill.

‘Do not mock the efforts of these people, we had to turn everything into more places to grow food or make items to support ourselves.’

‘No. I mean that I can feel it under my feet, you’ve heavily mined everything beneath the city.’

He felt foolish.

‘Sorry.’

‘It is no problem. Surely you must be reaching the limits of this place however. Once you dig too deeply you get to the adamant beasts. What do you call them? Because nobody can agree on a single name.’

‘We just call them Iron Serpantmen. But yes, they are a danger, and we ran out of resources long ago.’

Fomoria cocked his head, and Quill mimicked him.

‘What?’

‘If you ran out of resources, how do you make new items? Do you recycle them?’

‘No. We… why don’t we wait until we are inside.’

The city was quite large, and Fomoria didn’t like the awkward silence as they walked, so he broke it once more.

There was something here, and whatever it was he felt like he needed to help.

These people, they seemed so normal, but it was clear that the war was wearing them down.

‘You were quick to let me inside, why is that?’

“You have a gentleness to you.”

Fomoria simply laughed.

‘I know you understand it, and yes, you did toss my men around like they were made of paper, but you did nothing that couldn’t be healed.

Deep down, you don’t want to hurt anyone.’

Fomoria stood still and looked up at the sky, sleet turning to water and running down his face as its pace picked up.

‘I was once locked inside of my own mind. What was shown to me as my perfect world was that I never learned magic, that I was a farmer. I had a daughter, a wife. I was well liked in the town. I never had to hurt another person. I broke from this, back to this world of nightmares, partly with help, but also because no matter what, I couldn’t accept a perfect world. My nature may have been gentle once, it could still be, but I cannot be a gentle man.’

‘Do you tell this to everyone who asks?’

‘No, you just have a feeling about you, I want to trust you.’

Fomoria spent a minute casting a spell to clear the clouds from overhead, he wanted to feel the winter sun on his skin for the rest of the walk.

Quill’s home was an old castle in Reinoan style, which is to say, like every other castle he had ever seen.

While many things in Ragne and beyond had moved on from the days of the Reinoan empire, architecture wasn’t something that saw much changes over the centuries.

Inside of the tea room, there was no tea, for they had run out of it long ago and were unable to cultivate more.

‘Fomoria, why did you want to come here? We have no resources, we cannot give you men for your war, which I presume you are fighting. You aren’t just a traveler looking for a curiosity, so why?’

‘Are you a good man? Because my friend tells me that you are.’

‘I believe that I am a good man, I’ve given up much of myself to maintain this city and those that reside within, I’ve made moral concessions for their sake.’

‘Such as?’

‘That is rather personal, is it not?’

‘I understand, as a ruler I have had to do things I would never before for their sake.

I am here because I cannot bear to see good people suffer. I don’t want anything from you, my lands produce a great excess of foods. Fight the Castians here, be another thorn in their side, that is all I would ask.’

Quill couldn’t look Fomoria in the eye.

‘Can you defeat a Hand?’

‘No, my teacher tells me that it would take 10 years before I could, and I’ve been with him for only months.’

‘Then I cannot do more than what I am now.’

‘Explain, please.’

Fomoria’s tone was warm and caring, which only made it harder to refuse him.

‘The empire uses us as a training ground. My people cannot die while I am here, while I am bound to this city. In exchange for my people dying over and over again just to fight against them, we are given certain assurances. If I fought a Hand, I might be able to win, or I could die. If I die, the city will die, my people are all tied to it.’

‘Fae magic?’

‘They gave up their ability to hear and their voices, in exchange, they are linked to this place.

When they die, they are brought inside, and they regenerate. We couldn’t survive without the empire, and I would not subject my people to a cycle of death by starving over and over again, I would sooner break my immortality and have them all die with me.’

‘I could-’

Quill grabbed Fomoria’s hands, pushing them down as he shook his head.

‘I appreciate what you gave us, the color magic alone will keep them saner until the reset happens.

If you can kill a hand, then you may return, but I am sorry, I cannot accept anything more from you.

It is likely that even those that you killed today could lead to some punishment which must be accepted.’

‘You’re a Wizard at least as old as 1500 years, how can’t you defeat a Hand?’

‘I was never a fighter, my power is that of deals, and I lack the guile that would be required to trick one of them with such a deal that would grant us sovereignty.’

‘Surely you’ve learned modern magic to-’

‘We are trapped in time. We can’t leave it, and if the city dies, we return. I don’t know if I’ve died before, I don’t know if the Cast have won before. Everything here returns to a former state if left alone.’

‘That’s the real reason you let me inside, didn’t you? If I can kill a Hand, you’ll try to convince me of that, if not, even if I destroy the city, it will just come back as it was before. That’s why you can mine enough materials to support the city with only what exists beneath it, everything returns to what it was.’

Quill hung his head, the accusation in Fomoria’s tone stung at him.

‘This was pointless. In a month, the city will reset, and I will not have a single memory of you.’

Fomoria had to sign each letter.

‘Fuck that.’

Quill furrowed his brows.

‘I-’

‘It doesn’t matter that you won’t remember me, because I will remember you. One day, I will kill a Hand, I will be that strong, and then I can come here, I can save you, save this city.’

‘Why?’

‘I give a shit. Now, what actually stays behind after the reset?’