Fomoria entered one of the many rooms where his labyrinthine lab had expanded and found dozens of Others crowded around a few Cast.
“Micheal, I heard you did something special.”
His eyes were violet and his form had changed, gaining a small set of vestigial hands, and his head had extended, bringing a clear separation between neck and skull, and overall he had grown in size to nearly four feet.
“I… remembered Mindkiller, and I remembered the mind of the sigil.
What is unreal is not false, memories can be even if they were not.”
“Micheal, are you ok?”
“I did not think that I could be this again, I believed that I was only a shard, broken from the whole.
The mind is malformed, but also the body. Mindkiller knew much about the brain, for it was Fae that taught him. Others, open him back up.”
They cut open the head of the Cast and Micheal perched on his shoulders.
He pointed with his wings at a certain space of the brain.
“This here, this is the amygdala. It helps to regulate emotions, and morality. These broken Cast are developing tumors, pressing on this part, and along with the broken ethereal mind, it drives them insane.”
“That’s why they don’t show the signs until they grow a little older. Can we remove it with healing magic?”
“I believe it is a fault in their mind, and thus the soul. I had an Other remove it with magic once, but then healing magic simply regrew it.”
“Ah, so I just need to use my fleshsculpting magic to correct it.”
“Try.”
It was a simple procedure, Fomoria shifted his hands into the proper tool for the job, a simple thin needle that he could focus darkness to destroy the tumor, then fleshsculpting let him set the now tumorless brain as the new default.
“Wake him up now.”
“Shouldn’t we reattach the skull first?”
“I believe that was implied.”
The Cast didn’t wake for some time, but when he did, he simply stared for a while before he spoke.
“What… am I… I feel…”
“Normal? No longer violent?”
The Cast burst into tears.
“I feel nothing. Should that upset me?”
“Hmm… I am going to cut your head open again. Bind him with Telekinesis, and set up the fleshsculpting array.”
The Cast felt little pain as Fomoria did as he said and then began poking around.
“What do you feel now?”
“Angry?”
“Was that a question or an answer?”
“What the fuck do you think?”
Fomoria pulled his finger back just a hair.
“And now?”
“I’m… I’m calm, but I can feel it.”
“Good. I am going to test this on another dozen of you, then check the rest for tumorous growths. If all of this goes well, I can call Ur.”
Ur seemed to accept the idea, and was very happy, though he needed to finish some meeting he was in before he could leave.
Fomoria found himself at a dangerous crossroads.
Ur was reasonable enough, and Carmilla seemed to be able to hold herself back in regards to killing him.
But what of the people? So many of them had suffered at the hands of the Castian Empire that it was likely he’d have a revolt if he said that he was going to enter a truce with them.
To get an example of somebody who could represent them, who had a deep, burning hate, and who he hadn’t told about his meeting with Ur despite her position, he went to Mercedes’ office.
“Mercedes, we need to talk.”
She set aside her folders and ledgers, her arms showing signs that the ever heavier works were strengthening her.
“Of course.”
“I have spoken with Ur about a truce.”
“Perfect. If we can get them to drop their guard, we could-”
“No, I mean a real truce. The Cast-”
She looked ready to leap over the desk at him.
“You are betraying everything that I stand for, that you stood for.”
“I stand for a better world. If I don’t need to wipe a race from the face of Aarde, I will avoid it.”
“They might live, but I will not accept the empire remaining. Remember what you said…”
Mercedes began to tear up.
“When you became emperor, you told me… you told us all that you would destroy them, that in a thousand years nobody would even remember them, that they would be a mention in the creation of your empire, but the word would lose the taint that it has, that when people think of an empire they would think of Fomoria, not the Castians.”
Fomoria started to reach across the desk, to place his hand on her’s, but stopped himself.
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“This is for the good of the empire. This is a start. If they ever make a single move, if I even think that they intend to violate the truce, I will unleash the virus and make sure that not just the empire, but that the Cast are only something spoken of in a past tense. Millions, maybe even billions of slaves will be freed.”
“Promise me, promise me right now that under penalty of death, you will not betray what you’ve said here, that you will destroy them completely and utterly.”
“I promise under penalty of death that I will destroy the Cast down to the last man should they betray the spirit or letter of any truce which is decided and put in place.”
Both of them convulsed as they felt something connect the two of them.
“What did you do?”
“I think I made a pact.”
----------------------------------------
Ur was with Seraphallen, and though he took the call, he returned to him right after.
“Brother-”
“You only call me that when you want something or you’ve done something. What is it?”
“I have just received news of a breakthrough. Emperor Fomoria has seemingly solved our problem with mentally challenged Cast coming from The Nursery. I told him that I would-”
“This is perfect. We lose nearly 20% of our breeding to these problems. We could expand the army significantly, we could finally finish the various wars by throwing more people at this problem.”
“I told him that we could live in peace.”
Seraphallen cracked his fingers, those on his back, not on his hands.
“You did what?”
“If we used his Golems, we could throw away the reliance on slavery. The plan was never to keep this cruelty going forever. When we rule the world, Jenny always intended us to bring peace by any means.”
“You would have us suffer the dishonor of living with another empire.”
“I’ve already spoken with Jenny, she would accept this. She also told me that I should kill you without saying anything, because you wouldn’t accept this.”
Seraphallen sighed.
“It would hardly be fair to completely dismiss this idea without seeing the results, and if I died then the empire would suffer greatly since I have yet to mark one of my Fingers as a candidate.
So, why don’t we see the Cast, see if they are truly being healed?”
“I am glad that you could be reasonable. I can ask for a gate to-”
Ur put up a wall of fire, setting the room ablaze in an instant, stone began to drip from the ceiling as Seraphallen jumped back, forced to abandon the beam of light that would’ve taken Ur’s head off.
The Hands were both forced to leave the room by crashing through the walls in their path, and once outside they could see the castle roof sagged due to Ur’s flames spreading.
“BROTHER, DO NOT DO THIS. OUR GOD-”
“OUR EMPEROR WOULDN’T ACCEPT ANYTHING LESS THAN BRINGING THESE SAVAGES UNDER OUR HEEL.”
“IT IS NOT OUR PLACE, IT IS HER’S.”
Seraphallen placed his hands together as if though to pray, then turned spun his left hand, bringing it upside down.
Ur had hoped to avoid something like this, but this city was already dead, and there would be no sense in holding back just to die himself.
He interlocked his hands, his palms facing up, and lifted as if a great weight was on him.
It wasn’t instant, but even if he had tried to stop Seraphallen, getting close to a man like him was little better than jumping into the maw of a wyvern.
Both attacks clashed, Seraphallen had turned half of the city into a spiraling tornado that launched towards his brother, and Ur melted half of the city, splashing the molten wall upwards before hardening it.
The wall of solid stone halted the advance of the drilling wind.
Ur rotated his hands, putting his palms away from himself, then pushed, and with it, the wall turned back to molten stone and rushed forward.
Seraphallen returned his palms to a prayer position, then pointed them at the wall headed toward him and pushed forward like a spearhead, splitting it in two.
The splattering stone spread far, setting everything it touched on fire.
A minute had passed, and a hundred thousand were already gone.
Seraphallen’s thoughts were not on the dead, but on the power which he held, and that the emperor held.
It took a great deal from him to launch his opening attack, but from the stories he heard, the emperor could’ve not only thrown up the wall, but mixed it with the horizontal tornado, spitting molten stone for miles.
By playing defensive on the second attack, he had already lost his advantage, and both sides knew.
Ur weaved the sigil of beam, and the air ignited, sending a firestorm that hid where the source of it was.
Seraphallen could not weave a shield of sigil in response, for his fingers were his shield, so he used rune magic, flipping the heat to cold, which he could more easily handle; melting was more a fear than the brittleness of freezing.
He could not move his body, but he could breath, and that was enough to thaw himself out, though any race other than the Cast would’ve died from such a thing.
Just as Ur didn’t want this to turn into a close encounter, Seraphallen didn’t want a long range fight.
Dozens of miles from where the fight started, towns and villages fled or tried to fight the fire, a pointless endeavor.
Two figures flew through the sky, trailing fire and storms behind them.
Those that fled had a better chance of survival depending on where they were, but those who had foolishly chosen to flee through the mountain pass suffered a short death as Ur plunged into the heart of it, awakening a long dormant volcano.
For hundreds of miles the sky darkened and the ash trapped the heat but blocked the sunlight, causing spots of hot and cold.
The ground cracked, and Seraphallen found himself engulfed in a cloudburst of hot ash from above, and a geyser of lava from below, losing two of his fingers.
He slammed his knuckles together, letting out a burst of air that cleared a mile of ash and formed a bowl of volcanic glass where the geyser was.
Both sides panted, and Seraphallen had to use a third finger to replenish himself fully, and Ur knew that his brother had no idea how to properly control his power, for he never tried. If he just managed to fight defensively for long enough, Seraphallen would wear himself out on suicidal attacks because he knew that he had more than one life, but he failed to understand he didn’t have an unlimited number of them.
Ur braced his right arm with his left hand and pointed at the ground; Seraphallen did the same.
The volcano below Ur filled with magma, pulling it from all around him.
Seraphallen formed a ball of wind in the bowl below him, scraping it away until he turned the ball into a sphere of black sand suspended in it.
Then to Ur’s surprise, he waited.
The sphere grew no larger, but Ur on the other hand had a limit before the volcano would explode.
Finally, Ur had to make his move, what was supposed to be defensive was now offensive.
The wave of magma reached to the clouds, and Seraphallen held his sphere in front of him, sucking the magma around him in, then launching it back to Ur.
But that magma, even as it cooled into stone, was his, as was the wave that was all around Seraphallen.
Ur thrust his palm forward and the cooling lava was in turned white hot, the sudden updraft disrupted the ball of air, dispersing it as the magma rushed toward Seraphallen.
Then Ur closed his hand, the strain of it nearly breaking his fingers, and the wave that was moving past Seraphallen changed directions, coming at him from all sides.
A mountain of black glass with a helix top where Seraphallen tried to break his way out before it hardened was left on the ruined plain where all plant life had been burned or otherwise uprooted.
Ur dropped to the ground, but landed on his feet, his white gold hand melted due to overuse and his fingers were fused together.
The side of the mountain burst, and Seraphallen’s emaciated form rolled down.
He tried to crawl away, and Ur began walking towards him.
Ur saw no more fingers on his back, and believed the fight was over, that he was too weak to do anything more.
“Brother…”
Ur took a deep breath.
“While I do not believe Emperor Fomoria will go back on this deal, I would be more comfortable if both Hands were alive.”
“Come… closer.”
“I am not getting within arms length of you, but my hearing is good.”
“I… will… never… let you… destroy… my empire…”
Seraphallen’s fingers were good for one life, it didn’t matter if he lost his arms or if he had been turned into a single atom, a life was a life, and Seraphallen was light and wind, sound and illusion.
He suddenly appeared next to Ur, fully healed, and the Seraphallen on the ground vanished.
The Left Hand of The Emperor thrust his hand into the right’s mouth, letting out as much wind as he could.
Ur was reduced to molten slag spread across a great distance, and his hand was the only part of him which was larger than a raindrop.
Now was time to rest, and so Seraphallen went back to the mountain cave where he burst from with the hand in hand.