Yara wept into Fomoria’s chest throughout the night.

When morning came, she had been in and out of sleep, awake or not had become meaningless and unclear.

“What happened? Was it my fault? It is because-”

“No, none of it was your fault. This was…”

His voice weakly trailed off.

“Please, I’ll feel better if I know something.”

He wasn’t trying to spare her feelings, but his own. He saw it happen, but he couldn’t fix it, he couldn’t save the newly forming soul. It was his failure, he couldn’t say that there was nothing to be done, he just wasn’t good enough to solve it.

“The soul failed to latch, it started forming but then it broke off.”

“I don’t want it from you… just explain like a doctor, be someone else for a minute.”

Dissociation was not uncommon for him, healthy or not.

“When pregnancy begins, there are multiple steps. First, sperm from the male enters the egg of the female. The soul begins to see this egg as being something that must be built, so it slowly sips power down to the egg. As the egg grows into an embryo, the soul either continues to feed it, or something happens and the egg is decided to be defective, so the soul stops before something incorrect is born. What happened to you isn’t your fault, your soul simply believed that the egg was unfit for being fertilized before it even reached the embryonic state.”

“My womb is poison and I’ll never-”

“No, stop that. This is…”

“This is what? You told me so? Is that what you’re going to say?”

“I don’t want to say it, but I told you not to get so excited. I’m sorry that it didn’t work out-”

“IT DIDN’T WORK OUT? WE LOST OUR CHILD.”

She continued yelling at him for a while, and he just accepted that.

When Yara finally stopped screaming at him, she began crying.

“I’m sorry, it must just be hormones.”

“It’s fine.”

It was just grief, but that would’ve made her feel at fault for her emotions, so he let her believe that her hormones had been affected even though she hadn’t actually been pregnant long enough for that to happen.

“Do you want to try again?”

“Not now. Right now you need to take a day, process your feelings on this, and I’ll do the same.”

“You’re handling it better than me, I’m just a mess.”

“I’ve had hours before you awoke to think, to come to terms.”

The first part was true, the second, less so.

Yara went back to sleep, but Fomoria couldn’t do it, he just sat there in his torment.

Deciding it wasn’t worth doing, he left the room.

His menagerie wasn’t exactly expansive, and the most dangerous thing in it was Micheal.

“Oh? Fomoria how do you do?”

“Why… why do you talk like that? It’s not quite an older dialect, and I don’t think I’ve heard people from Reino who talk like that.”

“Why do you talk like you do?”

“Because I spent from 11 to 14 under the care of royalty and then I was made a noble and went through the classes that told me how a noble should act.”

“Oh. I don’t know, it sounds natural to me. But I know you aren’t here because you want to see these animals or because you want to know why I talk like this. You miss me in your head, yes? You want my opinion?”

“The baby’s soul failed to latch. If I couldn't see it, I wouldn’t have ever known, and I’m sure that many people go through this without knowing at all. But I saw it, I saw the threads start to unravel and I tried to fix it, but I couldn’t, I-”

“Was it your fault that this happened? No.”

“But-”

“The Lich told you that it would not be certain, that there would be complications. But if you knew years ago, would you have changed anything? Could you? That body of yours is nothing short of an affront to nature, a shattering of natural order, yet it has let you do much. Your nature as a Fomoria is no different, and if that is the issue, then the fault is as much on her as is on you because she is Golden.”

Micheals eyes gained a purple hue.

“But no, follow it down the lines, and it is the gods at fault, because they decided that the races should remain separate, that you exist as a weapon against the Fae, and the Golden as the same, and that the sword and shield should not be held by a single being.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But it sounded right. Speak with the Lich, he could surely find an answer.”

“No. Not yet. We can try again, and if this becomes a consistent problem, then I can speak to him.”

“Very well.”

Fomoria was feeling much better in his opinion and played with the cats and dogs which he owned.

His choice to buy them from the trader was not impulsive, he wished to have them so he could set up something like the beast training that took place in Ragne.

Thus far, he hadn’t seen anything like it outside the veil. Yes, some people fought alongside beasts in some cases, but there was no system of training them in large numbers.

Yet this was cut short by an Other who found a nation that seemed quite well suited for alignment rather than being a charter nation, but needed his approval; another in a backlog of cities and nations.

Officially there was no difference, as every nation under the Fomorian Empire would maintain a certain level of autonomy, but everyone could tell that those who accepted the charter because they were afraid of him were not the same as the ones who accepted the charter because they believed in a real alliance.

The difference was mostly in how or even if an Other was stationed within the capital to watch the leaders.

It really was just one man, but the presence that they exuded was significant.

Yara woke at noon.

She wanted to stay in bed with the curtains drawn, but that wouldn’t do.

“Get up.”

He pulled the blankets off of her.

“I just want to sleep.”

“There is a nation that might make a good ally, I want you to come with me to check it out. See the sights, the shops, restaurants, they even have a port and merchants show off their ships.”

“I don’t want to go.”

He crawled into bed and held her.

“I know that isn’t going to help anything. I’m not saying that you can’t be upset, I’m not saying you have to come with me, but I think it is better than staying in bed all day, even if I know how much you want to just stay there and pretend that you can avoid what happened.”

“I… how often do you want to do this?”

“Most days I need to drag myself out of bed, pretend that I want to get up, distract myself with work.

I’ve been betrayed, I’ve lost people, I’ve had to make moral concessions, and it all weighs on me.

But I keep going because I need to keep going, for all of them.”

“That sounds like a sunk cost fallacy.”

“I won’t deny that is part of it.”

“What is the worst thing that’s happened out here?”

“The day that I sent Dawn and Darrath away for their own safety.”

“Because it made you feel weak?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but instead just nodded his head.

It was never enough, he grew and grew, but there was always somebody that made him feel like a child who couldn’t break the grip of that Werewolf.

“Alright, let’s… I’ll try.”

Once they were both dressed he used a void gate to bring them to the Other in charge of scouting the area.

“Setrep.”

“The kingdom of Duran. The claim to fame is the blade Durendal, said to be completely indestructible and with the ability to cleave anything. I’ve seen it in action, since it is currently in possession of the Paladin by the name of Roland, which is the name which all of the wielders are required to have.

The blade is rather plain, but the legends seem to have some weight to them.”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“Paladin, meaning that they are related to the old Reinoan Empire?”

“Yes. I don’t think they believe in the gods anymore, but the king was supposedly given the title by divine right and the people believe that he is a demi-god.”

“A Wizard?”

“No. Information is scarce and I haven’t gone into the city itself more than a few times, but it may have been established by a Wizard once. Right now the king is a 12 year old boy, his father dying to poison, presumably from the boy’s mother. He had Seven siblings, each dying to poison as well. And he’s a bastard, but calling him one is likely to get you killed.”

“Seven siblings, multiple wives?”

“Polygamy is common here, and though women outnumber men here nearly two to one they hold little to no real power.”

“Everything I’m hearing makes me question why you thought I would want to be allied with them.”

“Holding no power doesn’t mean that they are treated poorly, and this respect would allow them to transition into a more equal culture in a few generations. And if that blade could fell a Hand by a lucky strike, we should either get it or ally ourselves with the one who can use it.”

“Could we block it?”

The Other held his hand flat and then tilted it side to side, meaning a maybe, but leaning towards not.

“Thank you. Anything else important?”

“The king is named Magne, but they don’t count which number of them they are when the new king takes the name. Oh, and they are racists. Not so bad that they won’t let you in, but when I had my horns and Dague features most people turned their nose up at me and shops would scam me.”

“Hmm.”

The Other chuckled, knowing full well Fomoria’s thoughts on the matter.

Fomoria and Yara were in regal garb, all the colors of Fomoria, red, white, and black, but with the addition of gold woven into them.

Fomoria had his normal black pants, a white shirt, and his red coat.

The gold was inlaid into his white shirt’s collar, cuffs, and he had a golden skull broach.

It was simple, but that was what he liked.

Yara had something more extravagant.

Her dress was black and rather form fitting. The sleeves were layered to make a series of chevrons going the length of her arms not unlike the laminar armor which Fomoria so enjoyed; the sleeves ended where they attached to a ring around her middle finger with a triangle of fabric; each chevron was trimmed with gold and had a thin white chevon in the center.

On her head she wore a red veil so thin one could see through it which was speckled with gold dust, like the night sky full of stars during a blood moon.

Her shoulders were left bare so as to show off her olive colored skin, a thin piece of fabric kept it connected to the body of the dress. And she wore her blonde hair so it draped down her front, not quite long enough to cover her breasts.

All of this was really just shifting suits, two of them for each of them.

Fomoria was loath to use real gold in anything because it was so soft and it conducted electricity so well on top of just being plainly wasteful.

Yet as they approached the gate, the guards crossed their spears.

“Non-human fee, 50 bronze.”

Fomoria flicked a coin at both of them.

“Sorry, I don’t carry anything smaller than silver.”

The men chuckled at their fortune and let the couple through.

As they got a closer look at her, they gave scornful glares to Yara, a new experience.

The Golden were the beautiful race, you couldn’t find any of them that classed as ugly unless they had been mutilated in a fight and simply refused to have it healed.

She had also been looked at like this when people were angry with her, but never because they disliked how she looked.

That sting took her mind off of more important matters.

They wandered through the city, getting a new perspective, and deciding that they hated the place.

Any attempt at striking up a conversation was met with a rebuke, any attempt at buying food was met with prices clearly higher than what they charged the people before them, and the guards followed them around like they were known criminals the entire time.

It really was a great way to take their minds off the first failure to have a child, but the emotions that replaced the grief were far from positive.

They saw the people start moving towards the main street, but once they tried to leave the alley, citizens and guards both stopped them.

“Our lord, holy is his name, King Magne is making his egress though the main road. Non-humans are not to be seen on the sidelines. Go back.”

Fomoria just started to laugh.

Roland saw two guards fly 30 feet across the street, landing on the roof of a single story home.

“Your majesty, stay down.”

The congregation stopped and other Paladins encircled their ruler.

Towards them came a man and a woman.

“THAT’S CLOSE ENOUGH.”

Fomoria whispered to Yara, and she left through a void gate.

“YOUR CITY IS SHIT, YOUR PEOPLE ARE ALL PRICKS, AND YOUR SWORD STINKS OF FAE.”

Roland held his sword, still in its sheath, in his left hand, then in a movement so fast none of the other Paladins could even see the sword was drawn and horizontal.

A deep seem, hardly perceptible to the eye, was cut through the length of the main street, and one of Fomoria’s fingertips was lost despite his sidestepping of the attack.

“I’M NOT IMPRESSED.”

Fomoria performed a cleaving axe kick using his aura technique that left a gash not unlike Durandal’s, stopping right at Roland’s feet.

Roland sighed, put his sword away, and walked up to Fomoria.

“What do you want?”

“I was hoping to find a civil city that is holding off Castian advances, and instead I’ve been treated as less than a person because I’ve got horns. These people are lucky I haven’t started putting their legs on backwards.”

Roland shook his head.

“Why must powerful people be so petty? Do you have no better way to spend your time?”

“You seem rather relaxed.”

“It is clear by your attitude and actions that you don’t mean any real harm, but you are clearly upset.

So I ask again, what do you actually want?”

Fomoria reached into his sleeve and pulled out a charter.

“This will explain everything.”

Roland scoffed.

“You can’t be serious. This is, this is just droll rubbish, worth not even the paper with which you’ve scribbled it on.”

“And you people talk differently too, always with an air of smug superiority.”

“So I ask again, do you not have anything better to do? For a man who claims to be an emperor, you seem to have much free time.”

“I am here on a diplomatic mission.”

“Then you certainly have a strange way of showing it.”

“There is no better way to judge a nation than to look around for a few hours before meeting the ruler or rulers. I’ve had quite a bit of experience with this.”

“Well we’ve never heard a thing about you.”

“Of course not, the Castian information blockades make it seem as though there is nobody left but their current enemy. But I control three stripes and once my forces are ready I will begin expanding to a fourth.

My empire has a population in the millions, my capital in the hundreds of thousands.”

“Fine, will you leave now?”

Fomoria reached into his pocket and handed Roland a communicator, one made of metal and mana gem rather than his flesh and blood.

“With this you can contact me any time and almost anywhere in the world. I have already linked to it.”

“My, if this works, then it certainly is something of note.”

“Now I’m done. If you would like to schedule a proper meeting, you can.”

Fomoria stepped through a void gate and Roland returned to his king to explain what had happened.

Back home, Yara stewed in anger.

“I want to go back and dump pigshit into the homes of everyone who called me dirty skinned.”

“Tonight then? I remembered all of their minds, we can slip into the city in an instant, the anti-spatial arrays don’t effect my void gate.”

“Why not?”

“Void gate isn’t spatial, technically.”

“Really? Then how does it work?”

Fomoria shrugged his shoulders.

“When magic is gained normally it imparts some kind of understanding, but I never gained this spell, it doesn’t feel like it’s mind at all, just something she is loaning out.”

Yara laid down on the couch.

“This was…”

“I’m sorry that it wasn’t-”

“No, it’s fine, really. I was so angry at them that I almost forgot about what happened.

Can you really say with complete certainty that this isn’t my fault?”

“If you want to blame something, blame Aarde for making the Golden the way they are, for letting the Fomorians exist as pawns, shock troopers, lives to be thrown into the Fae grinder so the Golden can be kept safe. They didn’t need to fuck with your souls, they didn’t need to do the same to the Fomorians.

I find the idea of a pact to be evil, a limit on what a person is allowed to be, no gift can be worth that.”

“Keep going.”

“The Dague are a failed project to make Fomorians, and it was The Darkness that did it.

I don’t know the details, but the Fae found out and corrupted them in some way, but then Xol helped with making the Fomorians.”

“It’s strange, he’s almost like a father to you then, right? And Marigold is the Mother of Magic, so she’s like a mother to the Golden. So if we have a child, it’s almost like-”

“No, it’s really not. And Xol isn’t like a father to me, I don’t know if he has a fatherly bone in him, and I’d know since sometimes his robes don’t cover much.”

Yara laughed, but Fomoria lowered his sitting stance, his eyes warmly reminiscing.

“But he’s a good man, he’s a good friend. I’m happy that he is willing to be friends with me, even though I’m like an infant compared to him.”

Yara grabbed his hand and brought him to the bed.

“Why don’t we try again? And don’t tell me when the process starts, I don’t know if it will survive, but I don’t want to feel like I did last night ever again.”

“Are you doing this for you, or is it because you feel compelled to give me a child since you know how much Harlan having Viviane makes me green with envy?”

“I don’t care about anyone else. I want a child with you, someone that I can raise, someone that I know we will both be proud of, that will leave the world better than when they entered it, just like their father.”

“That sounds like… No, it sounds like something from one of the good romance novels you’ve read.”

“You’re just saying that because you are in bed with me, your blood isn’t flowing to your brain anymore.”

“I could recite the entire student handbook if you'd like me to prove I’m in a clear state of mind.”

She pulled him into a kiss, trying her best to wash away all the terrible feelings of the day.

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

“So, what did you think of him?”

“Hmm?”

“Harlan.”

“Yes… he seems nice.”

Liat poked her sister with her elbow.

“Come on, you and him got along great and now your head is in the clouds fantasizing like you love to do.”

Yara blushed.

“I don’t do that, I just… I like to think about situations from many angles. But I don’t know much about him, so any suggestion that I would be attracted to him and his lithe form, pale as the snow…”

“You just spent three hours going over moral arguments and talking about magic, that does give you something, right?”

“He’s not like the boys in the Whitesands. He seemed genuine, and when we talked he was really happy.

But when he was angry…

What about you? He seems like he’d like someone strong like you.”

“HA, no, he’s… not my type. I’m pretty shocked that he’s completely unfazed by my seduction. I wonder if he’s like me?”

“Like you how?”

Liat just laughed.

“Anyway, you should keep an eye on him.”

“But he has the Reinoan, Adina, and I couldn’t… No, I shouldn’t, I will return home once this is done and-”

“You’re going to regret it, I know you are. But whatever.”

Liat yawned.

“Do you want me to walk you to your room?”

“Ha ha ha.”

Yara’s tone was one of mockery, since she was just next door to her sister.