There were times when Fomoria very much loved that others were not empathic.

No matter how well he could hide something, if they could feel his mind, it would be pointless.

Two weeks had passed, and in that time, Yara got pregnant every single day, but the soul always failed to form.

So, he called on Xol.

“I would think it better to bring in Yara.”

“You are certain that there is nothing wrong? That this is just normal.”

“Well. Without bringing her in and directly examining her, yes. I used your DNA and fertilized eggs from Golden, but perhaps there is something different about her.”

“Wait just a second, you have eggs from a Golden?”

“Not a Golden, several Golden. But that isn’t the-”

“How did you get them?”

“Sometimes people try to kill me and I take their bodies as trophies, pulling out their mind and soul, keeping them alive as husks to harvest from and experiment on.”

“That’s… morally I don’t think it is any worse than what I do.”

“And your commitment to morally is admirable. But as I was saying, the failure is always in the ability for the soul to really even begin to form the baby’s, perhaps you should bring in an expert.”

“That’s what you are.”

“Well, I’m certainly magically knowledgeable, but Marigold would be far better at this. She’s had children before, and she has experience looking at fertility issues in extreme cases.”

Fomoria was still unhappy with her, but he was perfectly willing to throw away any grudge to get help for Yara.

“As soon as she can, I’d like her to come here and look at her.”

“She can bring her to our home and watch her tomorrow. Anything else?”

“I was thinking about bringing Dawn and Darrath back, but now my mind is all over the place and my guts are in a knot with stress.”

“Do what you believe is best, but think about if you really want to add more people that need to be protected right now while you are expanding. Have you even finished your project?”

“No, I’ve been too busy and my Others need me to help with it since they lack the ability to create the souls we need.”

“Think of what is best for you and your nation.”

“I don’t have time for Dawn and Darrath then.”

Xol simply nodded his head, as if this wasn’t exactly what he wanted.

Fomoria explained everything to Yara, and she was giddy.

“I’m going to get to spend time with Marigold herself, Liat is going to be so jealous.

I know that I didn’t want to know whenever I was starting to get pregnant, but, how many times has it happened?”

“No. You wanted me to not tell you so I am going to hold to that request. There is nothing that can be gained by you knowing.”

“But-”

“No. Don’t ask me again.”

Yara hung her head and twiddled her thumbs; his tone was harsher than he wanted.

“I’m sorry. But I don’t want you to know, you asked that I don’t tell you, and that is final.

I don’t mean it as an insult, honestly it might be one of your best qualities, but you can be childish, you swing from emotion to emotion like I do. I just don’t want to see you depressed like you were when we lost the first one ever again. I know I can’t do that, but in this case, there is something I can do.”

“Do I need to do anything before I go?”

“Xol didn’t say anything specific, but I’d take an extra set of clothes and a few bottles of tonic just in case.

He also failed to say exactly how long you’ll be staying.”

“Are you coming with me?”

“As much as I would like to, I doubt she would want me to be learning magic from her on the creation of life and I do have things that need to be done here.”

“That’s fine, you don’t have to go.”

It was clear to him that her joy at getting to spend time with Marigold was being tempered and beaten by anxiety.

“But, I will ask.”

Fomoria’s request was denied for exactly the reason he said it would be.

She didn’t even want him learning the sigil that she used for expanding Kor into a city, learning about making new life was something she had been explicitly told not to give either Harlan the answers to.

As he began to prepare for the advancement of the project, Roland called him.

“I would like to see your city.”

“And by what method of travel will you reach here?”

“That orb that you used to leave of course. Am I right that it was some form of teleportation?”

“Yes, void gate. How many will be coming with you?”

“Just me.”

“Alright. What is the real purpose of your visit?”

“To see your measure as a man and a ruler so I can decide on some things, including killing you.”

“Very well. I can track your exact location through that amulet, if you want to come now, you can.”

“Yes, that would be fine.”

Fomoria brought the man into his office, at which point they put their amulets away and shook hands.

“You lack calluses. I’m disappointed.”

“My body regenerates too quickly for them to form or remain for long, not to mention actually damaging my skin to cause them to form is quite hard.”

“I want to cut you in half.”

“To test that I’m really unkillable? You’re spies weren’t here very long, but I suppose they at least got that.”

“Yes. In return, I want you to attempt to block Durandal at the same time.”

“Deal.”

Mercedes heard him going into his office from his bedroom and came to ask a question, only to find Roland with his blade raised and Fomoria blocking with his forearms.

Her natural reaction was to pull a gun and shoot the man.

Yet her attempt at a quickdraw caused her to fumble the gun and nearly shoot herself in the leg as she grabbed it; Fomoria skipped over, returning her to a natural posture and the gun to its holster; she disliked the feeling of skip being used to affect her.

“Mercedes, calm down. Roland and I are just going to test something.”

“It looks like he intends to split you down the middle.”

“His blade can only cut the physical, so I’m in no danger. Roland, apologies for the interruption.”

Mercedes forgot what she even wanted to ask, so she just sat and watched as Durandal cleanly cut through Fomoria in his full armor with seemingly no resistance, but also with no harm being done.

“Alright then, an alliance is in order, regardless of what my king, or rather, his mother, says.”

“Glad we could work this out so quickly. Are you prepared to perform a coup if need be?”

“Yes.”

The two shook hands again.

“Excuse me, but what about what you two just did means an alliance is now needed?”

“Fomoria?”

“No, you can explain if you’d like.”

“Very well. I felt a very slight resistance as I cut through him. This means that he has some power that can resist my sword. He is too crafty to kill, and in the future may even be able to block the blade outright.

Thus, I will not fight him, since it would be a pointless endeavor.”

“You two…”

Mercedes sighed and left the room.

“Is she oft so distraught?”

“She doesn’t understand us.”

“I want to go on a hunting trip with you. Are there good prey in this area?”

“There is something I’ve been wanting to do, which would count as a hunt.”

“Then let us be off. I’ve also heard that you can colour things with magic, I want that.”

Fomoria thought that something was off about the way he said color, but he assumed it was only because of the strange accent.

“The spell is simple, if you’ve got any talent.”

“I am a primarily martial man, but I believe I am an above average mage.”

After teaching him color magic, Fomoria brought Roland to a shaft near the spire.

“What are we hunting?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“What do you call the snakemen that have adamant flesh and dwell far under the ground?”

“The Sons of Nidhogg.”

“Who is Nidhogg?”

“I don’t know, but these monsters are described as such in a book I once read about great and terrible beasts of Aarde.”

“Strange that the book would tell you that name but give no context for who Nidhogg is.”

“I believe it was written in a time when Nidhogg was simply a well known enough being that there was no need to explain it.”

“I’ve been trying to find a name for them, but nobody has a single one. This implies that Fae are involved.”

“Ah, because the word isn’t saved and spread according to Aarde, yes?”

“Oh. Do you have an interest in magical linguistics?”

“There is naught to be learned unfortunately. Aarde names things, but leaves some nameless.”

“Actually The Darkness names monsters, and this is part of her helping with the evolution of magical creatures. I believe Anu handles the names for plants however.”

“The Darkness?”

“Right, your people have a Reinoan religious background, you wouldn’t know the gods of Aarde.

Do you know the Mother of Murder? The Matron of Malice? The Tower of Flesh? The Thing of Transfiguration? The-”

“Yes, I know of her. But she is only an aspect of the High God Aarde.”

“Not technically wrong. But- No, nevermind, we are going to hunt at least one of these monsters and harvest it.”

“Whatever for?”

“Do you really need to know?”

“I suppose not.”

The shaft was 1000 feet deep, well below the quarter mile that people took as a general guideline to avoid running into the snake men.

He avoided just opening a gate down, and instead both men jumped.

When one got more than a few thousand feet under the ground, things could be… strange.

The two men landed with grace, then went to a second shaft.

“Why not just one? And how deep must we travel?”

“I was told a story by Xol, the Lich. The closer one gets to the core of Aarde, the more chaotic things become. This world is much larger than the one he came from, and everything should weigh four times as much as it does now on the surface. Maybe this is because of Gaia wanting to make the environment of the era more like her home, maybe there is some universal compulsion when making worlds inhabited by humans. So as we get deeper, space and time are going to distort in certain ways, so I want multiple shafts that can be collapsed for safety and I will not be using gate or void gate unless I absolutely need to.”

“I understood some of that.”

Fomoria explained more as they kept going farther and farther down, though he didn’t really have much time, since falling a thousand feet was much faster than one might expect.

“4000 feet, and you say that your scouts haven’t seen any of them yet?”

“Here is the point where we should be able to find them. I was told some time ago that people avoided going deeper than a quarter of a mile, but either the snakemen don’t live in this area in high population, or that assessment is erring far on the side of caution.”

“You aren’t taking me down here to kill me and steal Durandal, are you?”

“No. One of the scouts is coming this way, don’t attack it.”

The stonescaled reptilian moved with great haste towards the pair.

“What is that?”

“An Eolgi. One of the reasons I want a snakeman is to figure out if they have any connection with these creatures. What did you find?”

“Snake, down tunnel, right there, coming.”

“How many?”

The Eolgi looked down at its three fingers and a thumb, trying to figure out what the number would be.

“Two hands.”

“A eight then. Were you able to fight them?”

“Snake fast, only live, find if you hide.”

“Why don’t you go back to the first layer and talk with your marshall.”

“Scary scaly.”

“We will be fine.”

Roland’s mask cracked for just a moment, and he seemed to show some actual emotion.

“This is a golem?”

“No, it’s a living creature which was selectively bred to remove their ravenous hunger and aggression.

One of my Others put a great deal of effort into domesticating them, making them intelligent.”

The Eolgi was hesitant about leaving while the two of them were still talking, but once they made their way down the tunnel, it climbed up the shaft they came down from.

As they made their way through the tunnels which were lit only by their spells, the two men continued their conversation, speaking with complete honesty.

“Your father, was he a farmer or a carpenter?”

“Why do you guess either of those?”

“You talk with fake nobility. When you said oft and naught, I could feel that those aren’t the words that come to you naturally, you were taught to speak like that. Also, you commented on my lack of calluses, so I think you put some stock in physical labor.”

“My father was a blacksmith. You are right, this is how I was taught to speak, but for the first dozen years of my life, I had a peasant accent. I hadn’t realized people could notice.”

“You will never be one of them, but that isn’t bad.”

“One of them?”

“Nobles.”

“Are you not also royalty, part of the noble caste? You took so quickly to ruling that I believed you already experienced in the field. You were here outside the veil for a day before you declared yourself king, did you not?”

“I had a title, I had lands, but I was never really a noble, not like the rest of them.”

“Hmm. Your father, a farmer then? I believe one of the spies mentioned it, though we didn’t have time to really get much information due to the distance they had to travel.”

“Yes. He is. And- They’re here. Now is the last chance to back off if you’d like.”

“No, I believe that I am quite capable of fighting a few beasts.”

“I want one clean body. If I hold the rest off, can you decapitate one of them with as little damage as possible?”

Roland just scoffed.

The snakemen were as described, scales of jewels in every color of the rainbow, claws of deep iron.

They barely left tracks behind them, hovering slightly above the ground, what was left behind was really just due to the speed they moved at.

Fomoria was nearly blindsided when one coiled their body and then shot forward, a cone of air forming, yet it wasn’t fast enough to cause a sonic boom.

It tried to claw him, but Fomoria dodged and cross countered the monster.

The air filled with light devouring fragments of bone.

He wasn’t expecting his armor to nearly entirely shatter on his right arm up to the elbow or that his fingers would break.

The creature suffered what he would consider cosmetic damage, though it did seem rattled as it slithered back, matching its timing with another of them.

Fomoria went low, then used anti-friction magic to slip around the torso of the beast before using friction magic to tighten his grip on it and suplex the creature.

The tunnel shook and Roland was worried about a cave in, but what damage had been done amounted to just a cracked skull for the creature.

There was an issue when fighting like this, in that the ground was no longer hard enough to actually hurt things like these snakemen or Fomoria, that is, unless they are struck with great force and the ground under them compresses into a harder form.

When the others saw that their companion was bleeding, they descended on it, devouring even the bones in just a few moments.

At least, that is what he thought at first.

The bloody display had been a distraction, and one of the remaining 7 came at him from the side.

Its claws rent his flesh with little resistance, but Roland had been watching this entire plan happen.

He didn’t warn Fomoria of course, and instead used this as a chance to get a clean cut on the beast.

Unfortunately, rather than grabbing the writhing, but ultimately safe lower half, Fomoria grabbed the upper half of the monster and as they fled it hadn’t stopped trying to bite and claw at him.

“WHY DID YOU-”

“CLOSE YOUR EYES.”

Fomoria tossed the half of a snake man forward and then unleashed a powerful light spell back towards the others.

Their eyes were large and sensitive like those of a Pixies, which helped them to navigate with the little light let off by bioluminescent creatures which they primarily hunted.

“NOW WE CAN KEEP RUNNING.”

Fomoria grabbed the still living snakeman and continued wrestling it as he ran back towards the shaft.

When they reached it Roland tried to get up by jumping from wall to wall, but Fomoria just wrapped his legs around the waist of the man and used an extra set of arms to cast a gravity reversing spell.

When they got back up they weren’t exactly out of breath, but both men panted in excitement.

“They were so dangerous, oh that was a fascinating little trip.”

“You probably don’t run into many things that can really hurt you, right?”

“Durandal is indestructible, but most importantly, it boosts my power.”

“What if it gets knocked out of your hands? Do you lose it?”

“I’m not that easy to kill. I am its only real owner, so long as I draw breath, it is part of me.

Well, or I give it willingly to another.”

“How many Fingers have you killed?”

“Me? None. I’ve come close, but they know better than to engage me in close quarters combat, and I’m not a powerful long range fighter. That slash I sent your way lacks the infinite cutting power of the blade itself, and it loses a lot of power over a distance.”

“I killed one of them, technically.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“I injected him with a powerful disease, his body was turning to rust. He could survive it, but to stop it from spreading to other Cast, the Castians killed him and gave his finger to someone else.”

“Interesting, but a victory nonetheless. What did you want that monster for? And why did you not take the tail?”

“The nicest looking gem is in the forehead, and the only parts that are adamant are the claws, and at least I so, the bones.”

“I had not thought you so vain that you cared about a sparkling bauble.”

“I wanted to make a ring, and I want it to be something really special.”

Roland looked him in the eyes, and Fomoria did the same.

It was there, that spark, that ephemeral feeling that told Fomoria he should find a reason to like the man.

“I’m sure she is going to love it.”

“That sounded bitter. Why?”

“I think it’s time that I return to my home and report to my king.”

“Do you want another amulet? One for him?”

“Had I not found out that these things are so easy for you to manufacture, I would think it a priceless artifact and refuse.”

“I want an alliance, but if it doesn’t work out, can we still be friends?”

Roland scoffed.

“You are quite a child.”

“I’m 19, so I’m an adult.”

Both of them laughed.

Fomoria and his Others spent some time examining the body before he would take it apart to make a ring for Yara.

Even with the one who knew the most of the Eolgi there, there wasn’t any conclusive evidence about what they were.

What he did find out as he tried to pry pieces of it off, was that the claws were fused directly to the bones, and the skeleton was in fact made from adamant.

More importantly, he couldn’t work the adamant at all.

If he melted it, then what solidified wasn’t adamant anymore.

Either adamant was a naturally occurring alloy that broke down when heated, or the snakemen being adamant is more folklore than actual fact.

As he had never seen real adamant, despite his pilfering of many vaults in conquered cities, he couldn’t be sure which was the truth.

He would’ve called Carmilla, before surely someone as old as her would have some to compare it to, yet instead it was Xol that contacted him.

He met with the Lich in his office.

“So, it’s fixed already?”

“Marigold is going to tell Yara, since she thought it best to hear it from her. But I wanted to be the one to tell you. You and Yara, can never have children together.”

Fomoria’s face began to twitch, that deep anger he kept pushing down bubbled to the surface.

“Why not?”

“I can’t-”

“Why?”

Xol went quiet, then he brought out a few cubes from his sleeves.

The cubes flouted around the room, forming a veil.

The world seemed to be completely gone, Fomoria couldn’t sense anything even though he could see out of it.

“I wish that I could help, I really do. But there is something fundamental to both Fomorians and the Golden which is not allowed to exist in a single being. Even if I were to try, one would need the power of a god to force Aarde’s will out of the soul so you could make a child.”

“What is this veil?”

“Aarde can’t see us in here, they can’t hear us, but we seem to still be having a normal conversation from the outside. I can’t help, and you can’t ever tell anyone that I can even do this. But I thought that you should know, that you deserve that. You could adopt a child, or you could-”

“No. Just… just leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry. I would’ve never given you this hope if I had realized that Aarde had implanted such a failsafe.

So long as you are a being of Aarde, so long as you share a connection to the world, it can’t be changed.”

The cubes returned to Xol; Fomoria felt a soul in each.

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

After the capture of Nemain, Marigold gave first aid to the very few survivors, making sure that they would survive.

It was heartbreaking to see Liat there, tightly grasping a set of armor.

There was only so much that could be done, they were severed, their bodies rejected the majority of magic that held a trace of Aarde inside of it, but she was sure that they would live.

When she returned to her home, she didn’t say a word to her husband until after they had Nemain’s body and soul bound together and then caged.

“What was that?”

“Nemain is crafty and has remain uncaptured for so long because of her sensitivity to magic.

It’s not like I have something that can perfectly hide the magic required to trap her, crash two mountains together, and block the effects of a reality warping spell like that. I had to make a concession somewhere, and if it had to be done, I thought that the barrier was the thing I’d rather have give. Harlan survived, the royal guard survived, Liat did as well. All that was lost were a few thousand humans destined to die in that frozen shithole from the start.”

She didn’t reply back.

“I know you hate it, but the gamble on the barrier was worth the cost.”

“I know.”

He pulled her into a hug; guilt was something he rarely felt.