When the Others, and strangely, Roland, found him in the tunnels, his skin had a clear metallic sheen and his form had distorted.

His lithe frame had only become thinner, seeming to be nothing but flesh and bones, his hands were heavily clawed and his teeth had been replaced with needlepoints of adamant, his eyes were entirely gone, for his senses were sharper than just his sight.

“Fo-Fomoria, are you… in there?”

He stood, up, his back cracking, then he seemed to convulse as his shape changed to something more human.

“Of course. I’ve been down here for what, a week?”

“Three.”

“Oh. I suppose I did lose track of time. They’ve begun dying off then?”

“Yes, but they haven’t decided on a course of action yet. We sent messages that the deaths would stop in two weeks, that the virus would just burn itself out, that this was only a warning. But I doubt they are going to buy that for long.”

One of them stepped forward, his armor replaced with a flowing robe like one would expect from the Sectlands, his horns more like antlers without points.

“Fomoria, it is good to see you again.”

“You seem… different from the other… Others.”

“I have taken the philosophy of the sects to heart, and become one of them. I have also grown my martial skills well beyond what we knew, and I am here to pass that knowledge on.”

“Don’t you-”

“When you make the next Other, they will know all that I know.”

“Right, I guess I just… forgot that.”

“You are wary about killing me to gain my knowledge?”

“You’ve been separate from me for months and months, you’ve changed, you are your own person in a way that most Others simply aren’t. I’m not comfortable with you giving up your life for me.”

The Other shook his head.

“I would not be alive without that reason, and I would not really be dead. There would just be a… disruption to the continuity of my life.”

Fomoria devoured the Other once he returned home, and he saw his entire life since he had been made laid out before him.

But there was on memory that raged forth like… well, like when he fought others.

“You don’t need to do this?”

“It’s not like I will be dead. All life belongs within a cycle, my life will go to the Ki, then I shall return as if nothing had happened.”

“But something will have happened, you will have died, the you that will come back isn’t going to be you, it will just be someone who-”

“Who has every memory between us, every secret, every intimate moment. What is a person if not what they have done?”

“But I didn’t do those things with that man, I did them with you.”

Fomoria began to weep.

This was the exact reason why he tried to refuse, because if the Others were him, and they desired to make a new life, they would find love, it was pathological for him.

He saw both sides of the argument, and he should’ve agreed with himself, but the emotional part of his mind told him that he was wrong.

He meditated on this problem for almost an hour before he realized how strange that was, before he realized that subsuming the Other had changed him in a way that he wasn’t sure he could ever quantify.

The next day, he made another Other, and sent him back to the Sectlands.

Hours later, he received word that Sholl was looking for a meeting.

The Fingers fell into two camps, those that believed Seraphallen had lost betrayed the empire by killing Ur, and those that saw Ur as being too soft, that his recent reforms were proof that he had in fact been conspiring with the enemy to weaken the empire for invasion.

Sholl had complete faith in Ur, and was headed to Fomoria under the assumption that Ur’s deal could still be accepted.

So, when Fomoria replied back that he wished to meet in an out of the way location because of discontent about a possible truth, he thought little of it.

“Fomoria, it’s terrible, Seraphallen has-”

“I know, Ur is dead. What are you doing here?”

“I hoped that I could say that I could recruit other Fingers, or that there is a force within the empire that is on your side, that would maintain Ur’s will… But there is nothing of the sort. The other Fingers would sooner turn to warlords, but if I used my power, perhaps I could-”

Fomoria placed his fist against Sholl’s chest, right over his heart, and a burst of power from his aura tore through him, shredding the vital organ tearing a hole through him.

Fomoria learned this from his Other, the one inch second skin punch, focusing power into his fingers between the first and second knuckle, then letting it out at just the right distance so that it was inside of the enemy aura.

Sholl had a look of confusion and betrayal, he didn’t understand, he couldn’t understand.

Ur had vouched for Fomoria, and Fomoria was the one who was supposed to unite their people, to peacefully end the war on terms that both sides could accept.

It was so close, they were inches away from ending it all, so why? Why would he kill him like this?

Sholl would never know.

Fomoria looked down on him, and wished that there was another way, but Sholl needed to die, since that power to rewrite reality with rhyme was too risky to let remain, and he had already said that there was no group on his side.

Fomoria severed the white gold finger, but before he had the chance to grab it, Xol appeared.

“I will be taking that.”

“According to who?”

“Right now Seraphallen is recovering, but if he was to realize that you had a finger, that you might be able to absorb its power, then he would come anyway, and you are not ready for him.”

“But if he came, then Carmilla could fight him while he is in a weakened state.”

“Ah, but-”

Xol put up his artifacts, cutting off Aarde’s ability to spy on them.

“The finger has a spark of divinity in it, the same reason why you and Yara are unable to have a child together.”

“What?”

“Fomorians have half of that spark, and Golden have the other. If you and her had a child, they would be born as a champion with room for expansion, like you.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I ask again, what?”

“When… right, you weren’t told this. Cali has tried to recruit Harlan as her champion, but-”

“That doesn't make sense, a pact couldn’t-”

Xol loudly snapped his fingers.

“He rejected her, and before Cali had chance to explain that you and he aren’t champions in the normal sense of the word, The Darkness stopped her. You already contain a nearly full spark inside of yourself, it is why she wants you.”

“She who? Nemain? The Darkness? Cali?”

“All of the above, if I had to imagine. I must admit, I honestly don’t know what she has planned, but with the right push, the right training, the right conditions, you could become a god. But the moment you start that process, they will come for you, they cannot accept another god… And I must admit, that I was also manipulating you, I intentionally let my barrier break so that Nemain’s attack would sever Yara and Har-”

Fomoria struck Xol, who used both hands to block the punch; the flash of black cored red lightning chipping part of his bone.

“You killed all of them, you killed… Sam.”

“You really had to think about what her name was, didn’t you? How long would she live? A hundred years? But what did you get out of her death and Harlan’s severing? It gave you the information that you needed to sever David, and it saved tens if not hundreds of thousands more lives than were lost. People like us, we can’t become caught up on the small lives, we need to look at the bigger picture. And that is why I am going to keep the pieces of The Emperor until the time when you need them.”

Xol vanished as suddenly as he appeared, and Fomoria went to recover the rest of Sholl’s body.

When he returned to the lab, he informed his allies about the death of the first Finger and then performed an autopsy.

Unfortunately, Sholl’s body was normal, or rather, as normal as a Cast could be.

When night came, Fomoria laid down to rest, and Yara was with him.

“It scares me when you disappear like that.”

“I’m… I had to do that.”

“You were going to apologize, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but I see that there is no point; I feel no shame for what I did. I wish that things didn’t need to go on like this, I wish that genocide wasn’t happening under my command, that it wasn’t my hands that made that virus. I called leaders together, and each of them voted, even their guests voted, Amber voted to wipe them all out.”

“Amber was ready to be a warmage, she understood, or thought she understood, the weight of being directly responsible for killing many.”

“There is an order of magnitude between what she would’ve done and what I have done.”

“After a certain point, does the number matter? Surely they all just blend together?”

“They shouldn’t. They… I’ve changed. I think it’s really setting in, what I am, what I am willing to do, and I don’t mind it as much. I should be freaking out, I should be in tears, I should reject your touch, I should reject anything that brings me joy, I should be torturing myself.”

“But you aren’t, you don’t want to do any of that. I’m sure it’s hard to hear that any people have done things so terrible that the consensus across the world, even among people you consider good, is that they should be destroyed down to the last man. It’s because you’re Fomorian, isn’t it?”

“I don’t… maybe.”

“If the Fomorians weren’t locked away, would they have an empire like the Cast? Would they have raped and killed and enslaved and-”

“Yes, yes they would’ve.”

“And in that case, wouldn’t you feel that they needed to be wiped out?”

“You’re right. How are you so right?”

“The first night that we met, I played devil’s advocate and we debated back and forth, and I’ve always been a more intellectual equal. That’s why you should’ve picked me over- I’m sorry, I-”

“You didn’t mean for that to slip out?”

“I meant that… I’m jealous, or I was, and it felt good to admit that you were wrong.”

“I… maybe I was, maybe I should’ve just been a friend to Adina, maybe you and I would’ve been the better pairing for everyone. There were a lot of shared feelings between her and I, and I even tried to reject the relationship. You and I, we were just friendly, we got along, we shared more interests, but I… I thought you were more shallow, I mistook being traumatized by a fucked up life for some bond. Not that we didn’t have a bond, but, I just remembered referring to the two of us as two towers leaning against each other for support. At the time it was romantic and beautiful, but now I’m beginning to see how it may have been very unhealthy for both of us. But also I think if I got together with you it would’ve torn apart any chance of Adina being friendly, and-”

“I get it. There were a lot of things happening, and none of us were old enough or wise enough to be able to reasonably work through that. I wonder how things are going back in the desert? A Golden leaving after saying that they’d stay is not unheard of, but it doesn’t happen often. I think they probably issued a kill order against me.”

“I could always-”

“No need to turn them into a sea of glass, to challenge them for my honor, to send a body double to face judgment as a test, no-”

“I wasn’t thinking of anything but the second option. But I wonder how they would react if you came back suddenly one day.”

They spoke long into the night, and neither rested until dawn came, whereupon they slept into the evening.

Fomoria rolled out of bed and onto the floor, hoping to strike down whoever was banging on the door.

“COME IN.”

It was Joan.

“What do you want?”

She didn’t even react to his being on the floor.

“A pirate fleet is anchored off shore. They ducked in and out of The Veil, we didn’t realize they were here until they were.”

“And?”

“Well, they want to negotiate.”

“Do I seem like the sort that negotiates with pirates? Those rapists and plunderers?”

“They want to be hired, and Mercedes made the call that we should hear them out since they could help with the Cast then be discarded if they refuse to settle down.”

“Very well.”

He had not expected the size of the fleet.

When he heard pirates, he thought a few dozen ships at most, but they numbered nearly a thousand.

And at the end was a Goliath vessel, a galleon the size of a small village; the Goliaths were once masters of the sea, but with the Cast’s technological advantage, they were just massive targets.

Fomoria entered the flagship under the cover of a fog he made, then he crawled through a crack in the hull, hid on the ceiling, and found the largest Goliath onboard, who was certainly the captain.

She had thick red hair, braided more loosely than some other Goliath’s he’d seen. Her skin was a darker complexion, though he could tell that she began lighter, and had been heavily tanned by her time at sea.

He found Goliath women ugly even by the standards of monsters, not that he’d ever admit such a thing to one of them, because either he’d hurt their feelings or they’d take their rage out on him.

“I know you’re here.”

A shadow peeled from the wall and floated above the floor, since he was trying to avoid seasickness by not actually stepping on the swaying ship.

“I must admit, I’ve never met a pirate, but I believe that sneaking aboard your ship should be seen as a positive, since I’ve proven myself crafty in a way that a pirate can appreciate.”

She furrowed her very pronounced brow.

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, there was an attempt. And you are?”

“Eskildotter.”

“That name seems more New Path than Old.”

“I follow the sea, don’t care about the kings and disputes of the land dwellers.

You’ve fucked up my fucking trade, you fucking-”

“Get to your point.”

“Everything is in chaos.”

“And that is a problem for a pirate?”

“YES.”

Her voice reverberated through the ship, and the nearest guard quickly entered the room and pointed his cutlass at Fomoria, who took a bite off of it and spit it back at the man, cutting his face.

“We are having a conversation, be mindful of that. Eskildotter, continue.”

She waved the man away, his bleeding face quickly healed by his Goliath physiology.

“Chaos means no trade, no trade means no traders, no traders means we have to raid towns, but they’ve been locked up tighter than a clams pussy-”

Fomoria made a displeased face.

“What? Ya never heard someone say pussy?”

“I find it vulgar, and the idiom still works if you leave that part out.”

“Don’t you eat people?”

“What of it?”

She scoffed.

“They’ve been sending resources into the heartland, so even when we get into the ports, they’ve got shit leftover.”

“And how do you want me to solve that?”

“That little sneaking trick was fine enough. Let’s say you get your people into the river cities farther inland, open them up, let us do our work. You get a cut, and we destroy cities that belong to your enemies.”

“So you can kill inno-”

She laughed before he time to finish her sentence, and Fomoria slapped her, the thunderous blow sending her flying through two walls.

She got to her feet as quickly as she could, and Fomoria floated near.

“There is a level of respect which I expect between us. The reason I haven’t sunk your fleet already is that I will it, do remember that. Now unfortunately I’ve had to play my hand as it were, and I’ve had to make you understand the difference in power between us.”

“Fuck you.”

“Never in a million years. I will give you communicator amulets, and when you or your people run into a Finger, you will call me. You may raid any lands not owned by me or my allies, but if you lay one hand on a citizen of my empire, I will swallow your fleet whole. I am going to send a group of my people, spies and assassins, they will assist in your raiding of the cities, but there will be civility to it, I will not have you taking slaves, I will not have you raping men, women, or children, you will be my privateers, not pirates. If you refuse my gracious offer, well, I don’t really need to explain, do I?”

Eskildotter had recovered from the blow already, but very few people were able to strike her so hard that her brain rattled like that.

“We’ll… hammer out the details later.”

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

The Dread Pirate Dun’Kel felt that his time of relevance would be nearing its end.

But in the meanwhile, Jenny had given explicit permission to kill any Cast, including the Fingers and Hands.

She believed that everything could still work out in her favor, that the deal made with the Gods of Aarde would ensure her safety.