In the week since Fomoria forcibly recruited the pirate fleet of Eskildotter, they had taken two cities, but by the time they reached the second it was already cleared of anything actually useful.

The Castian strategy was going to be a defensive war, they were pulling everything back to the heartland.

It was ironic, the capital city of Blackship had already been purged of Cast and locked down by Jenny; not that Fomoria knew that yet.

Thus, Fomoria’s goal was to cultivate as much power as he could, to strengthen his army to the point where they could breach the Castian lands and crush what resistance they could manage through overwhelming force so as to lessen the number of dead on his side.

Fomoria began sparring with Carmilla, not that she was a physical match for him, but she was at least on par and a powerful mage.

The Others that were made after he gained the martial skills of the someday Grandmaster Dragon were strong and fast, but they were never going to be anything but weaker than him.

They were at the ruins of Ceres, somewhere far enough away that the two of them could let loose.

A wall of water came down on him, but Fomoria took a wide stance, his fists locked with one another, his eyes closed.

Fomoria felt some sense of oneness, that there was no part of his aura that remained where it was, everything touched everything, it was swirling like a typhoon across his body.

The moment before the wall of water struck him, he quickly moved his hands as if he was dusting himself off, the power of his aura movements combined with imbibing fire and earth cut deep V shaped lines in the ground behind him, then he brought his hands forward, cutting in an X pattern, breaking the tension of the water and causing a mist, a second dusting motion directed it into the V shaped cut in the ground.

Through the mist, Carmilla had used her magic to hide her presence, then further tried to hide behind the fog created by Fomoria’s attack.

He hardly had time to react, her chiropteran form shooting forward like a ballista bolt, Fomoria tried to sidestep her, but she instead stopped inches from him, spreading her wings wide and firing the jetstream caused by her at him.

Even most Goliaths would’ve been skinned alive by the force of the attack, and she was careful not to do such a thing while facing the ocean, lest she risk starting a tidal wave or hurricane.

Fomoria reacted by clapping his hands together, creating a small pocket of air that disrupted it long enough for him to properly react; he held his hands forward like a spearhead and shifted his form into something smooth and aerodynamic.

Had he caught even part of the winds, he would’ve been sent flying hundreds of feet; miles away, the forest shook and the first line of trees were bent.

Fomoria was left standing on a platform not more than three feet around as the jetstream cut around him.

When he leapt forward, the platform was turned to dust, and a flying knee strike was aimed at Carmilla’s stomach.

Had it struck her, she likely would’ve been torn in two, but when she put her hand out to stop it, she did not do so with a flat palm, but with her claws pointed forward.

The moment his knee touched her fingers, she drew blood, and this blood turned to daggers, severing the limb.

Even severed, the flying limb pushed her back, and Fomoria skipped forward, reattaching the leg.

“That was good. Remember though, Yalda and Baoth are likely to attack more closely to one another, and there is only so much I can do to prepare you for them.”

“They are also not going to have a mastery of blood magic.”

“Don’t sound sour, I have no desire to be torn in two during a training match, and if I wasn’t holding back you would’ve never gotten so close anyway.”

“A fair point.”

“What I am interested in is how you’ve changed, the ferocity is there, but it is so heavily refined that I wouldn’t know it was you if I didn’t see it myself.”

“I’ve always been defensive.”

“But it has never fit you so well until now. Before it felt like you had to play defensive and counter heavy because you had knowledge but not the extreme power that your normally much older opponents held. Now it seems more as if you want to fight defensively.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve changed.”

“Perhaps not, it isn’t like I’ve sparred with you often before.”

An Other came, but stood far away so as to not be torn apart in case they started sparring again.

“You have other business, or should I say, Other business?”

“I don’t feel much like laughing.”

“Someone is sure to enjoy it. I will offer a final piece of advice, seek Copperhead again, those movements of yours aren’t as suited for runic spells, but rituals are more like dancing, they can seamlessly flow into one another. While they are weaker in general, you could mix them into your martial arts to make getting near you even more suicidal than it already is.”

“Thank you.”

Carmilla left through a gate, and the Other got near.

“Have one of the Fingers been found?”

“No, but there are two cities that require your attention.”

“Are we being attacked?”

“No, the Cast haven’t done anything but stay inside of their territory. The two cities are both named Everfall, and I wouldn’t bring up the second if not for the fact that it shares a name with the actual problem.”

“Out with it.”

“An Other who was scouting to find suitable targets for allies or raids was killed-

“Did we recover his gem?”

“Yes. He didn’t even get the chance to get near the city itself, they attacked without warning.”

“Not unheard of, or strange. So, what requires that I handle this?”

“We gathered information from the surrounding towns and villages, and Everfall, The City of Endless Rain and Sorrow, as they call it, is a ghost town. The people inside are all long dead, a Witch cast some ritual that turned everyone into water, and that keeps a constant storm around the place.

The Cast don’t bother with it because there doesn’t seem to be anything worth stealing from the city itself, but, it is interesting, and if you got rid of the Witch or allied with her, assuming she is still alive, we’d gain a powerful ally and or a fully built city ready to be moved into.”

“I will check it out. What of the other Everfall?”

“Everfall, The City in the Bottomless Pit. Every now and then horrible monsters crawl from it and assault the area.”

“And they want me to kill them?”

“No, the creatures can’t actually leave the hole, likely because their bodies are designed for the high pressure that exists deep underground. The hole is just interesting.”

“Why do they stay?”

“Because the hole is deep enough that you can mine adamant and mythril without having to actually dig a massive hole for yourself, and the ore veins seem to replenish over time. Why the Other wanted you to visit, but he put it as low priority, is that the hole wasn’t always there, and according to local legends, of which there are many, a weapon was used to cut the hole down, and it still remains at the bottom.”

“Sounds like just a myth, but if there is a weapon of such magnitude, we should recover it.”

“Exactly.”

“Has he tried going down the hole?”

“Yes, but eventually he encountered creatures whose shells couldn’t be harmed by even the void flames, and he was forced to flee, which he barely did.”

“Has he tried tossing an eye down the hole to scout?”

“The heat and pressure make that nearly impossible.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“The bottomless pit is interesting, but that’s it. Bring that Other back, have him design a shell that can go over an eye he can see through, then test how far down the hole actually goes. If it goes down to the core then there isn’t really any point in trying, since we’d never get anywhere close before being squeezed into balls of gore. Give me the location of the city of rain, then you are dismissed.”

It seemed like a normal city from the outside, barring the giant palm shaped hole in the wall.

The moment Fomoria got close enough he could feel the mana shift.

The downpour became torentual within the city itself, and shapes formed at the walls, as if the water remembered what a person was supposed to be.

He watched closely as they seemed to dance, but there was no magic coming from the shapes, it was all something deeper inside of the city.

From over the wall a great ball of water began to crest, then it grew small, not from losing any water, but from being under pressure.

Fomoria had seen the memories of the Other who came here originally, in a matter of moments, that ball would have a single dot open, no larger than the tip of one’s finger.

From this opening a stream of water would come, strong enough that it split the Other in two.

That the Other’s gem was not harmed could’ve been called luck, but Fomoria would rather believe that it was the fact that it was covered in a hard shell of void bone and the Other made the smart choice of feigning death rather than trying to put up any other defense.

Fomoria put his right hand on his left shoulder, waiting with earth imbibing at the ready.

When the jet came at him, Fomoria slapped it aside, adding a spell to for a diversion in the water and prevent it from taking another path, something he learned from Amber.

He reminisced for just a moment, that most of what he learned from her was not warmagic, but to shape rivers and carve out trenches.

The things on the wall were confused, and they seemed panicked, yet so far as Fomoria could tell, they were like how a chicken without a head, they reacted to stimuli without real thought.

Suddenly an idea came to mind about what this was.

Fomoria held the water back until the sky dried up, then he walked toward the city, for a field blocked his gates over it.

Once he was at the wall, he walked up.

The shapes tried pouring pots of boiling oil, but the pots had long since been emptied; they were just going through the motions.

Once he was at the top, he found a skeleton, the flesh long since devoured by the elements, but the armor was still whole.

The moment he changed the shape of his own armor, the shapes motioned as if giving orders.

Fomoria ignored them, but it did prove something of his theory.

What he needed to find was the source of it.

Down in the streets, people moved in a panic, and the feeling of dread, hopeless, fear, rose.

But after a time, it all stopped, and like actors in a play, they changed back to a normal city.

Liquid children played in the streets, men and women of water bought and traded and gossiped wordlessly.

He found it funny, no, ironic was the better word, that despite all of his time dealing with souls and tragedy, that this would be his first encounter with a real ghost.

If he was right, this was a Poltergeist, the spirit of a place trapped in the worst day ever experienced, a tragedy experienced by so many at once, so many bound in it, that the entire area became trapped in time, and tried to destroy all that would disrupt this stasis.

By looking like a soldier, the city did not realize he was an outsider, since it assumed him to just be on patrol.

Had he tried to pass as a trader, the city would watch him, and if he failed to set up a cart and try to sell to the shapes, it would turn on him again.

When he reached the castle at the center of the city, the shapes stopped him.

They moved as if speaking, holding their hands out and crossing blobby spears of water.

“I need to see the commander, I bring news from the front.”

The shapes moved out of the way and brought him to the castle gate, waving up at the other shapes who motioned as if they were pulling levers to open the gate which had long since fallen to rust.

Once inside, he was brought to the war room, where many corpses still in their armor laid on the table.

Clearly they had been planning even as the ritual took place, their deaths likely instantaneous.

The shapes looked up, standing inside of their own bodies, and waited.

Fomoria simply looked at each of the armors and found which seemed to be the most ceremonial, since that was likely to be the general, then he changed the shape of his armor to match the general’s.

The moment he did this, the shape that stood where the skeleton of the general was, turned into lifeless water, soaking the rotten carpet over the stone floor.

Now he was certain to have free reign to move as he liked, and that meant he was going to find the source of the Poltergeist.

A ghost of any kind was a mass of living energy, technically, Fomoria was as well.

Yet the difference between him and a ghost was that one maintained their sense of self, and the other maintained only a copy of it.

A ghost could never change, they could never be more than they were locked in their death.

The death of a loved one, a famine, a terrible storm that wipes out a village.

Fomoria just needed to follow the streams of power, find where the mana was most dense, then he had two options.

Neither was wrong, but one required a great deal of power, more than Fomoria believed he possessed, so he was quite hopeful that he had the ability to handle this the second way.

Deep below the castle, he found it, them.

Two bodies, one a woman, the other a child, frozen in time and ice, as lively as the day they died.

“Miss.”

The eyes of the woman followed him, her was face distended; she died screaming.

The body of the child had a white print on his chest, a palm.

“This is your son, right?”

She looked at him with fury.

“I mean him no harm.”

Her gaze softened, but was still wary.

“You’ve been here for a long time, haven’t you? And it was The Emperor that took your child, that forced your hand like this? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

She blinked once.

“The emperor is dead. But that doesn’t matter.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“The only thing that matters, is that I can feel it, your son is lingering between life and death.”

She blinked once.

“Is that any life though? Is there any peace? Any joy in such a thing?”

Her face twitched, she could not answer.

Fomoria placed his hand on hers, the cold was so great that his skin began to blacken in moments.

“You need to let him go, you need to let go.”

He began to tear up.

“My mother died trying to save me from a life that I, the man I am now, would’ve despised.

But I couldn’t let go, I tried to keep her spirit, but I didn’t know what I was doing, it was just a reaction from my childish mind. I hurt her, she suffered in my grasp, her mind tore itself apart and she didn’t even know who she was. Please, your son, don’t do that to him, don’t make him live with the pain of a life that he can never live.”

There were few methods to dealing with ghosts, erasing them by flooding an area with magic to the point that they became lost, the magic holding them together overwhelmed, that was the preferred method, for it was simple.

But with some ghosts, they could be reasoned with, if they got what they wanted, they could pass on of their own will, for they only remained for a reason.

The woman looked at her son, his eyes had gone dull, but he had just the faintest spark still in him.

“You see it, this is no life, it’s just being alive, you must let him go, not for you, but for him.”

The ice melted, and the ghost of the Witch passed, then, the son thawed, and that last spark was gone.

Fomoria discarded the arm, for it was blackened up to the elbow holding the cold dead hand of the Witch.

As he stepped outside, he saw that the streets had flooded, water poured from every building as the shapes returned to mundane water.

Then, he began casting a spell, drawing a new storm.

Nobody yet knew that the city was free from the Poltergeist.

The Cast had long since discarded the possibility that there was anything worth taking.

The locals all believed it cursed land; It was the perfect place for D’if’s home.

A fully intact city with a castle that could be used for training spies on entry and exit, dungeons underneath that could easily be outfitted for holding more powerful prisoners, and all of it under the cover of a cursed city, a place where they could hide in plain sight.

Fomoria brought in D’if and some Others to put up illusions.

The clouds above would make it seem that the curse was still in place, but if they intended to light fires, for cooking, for forging, for warmth, then others might see the smoke and begin to wonder where it comes from, since a city where the people were water had no need for fire.

Fomoria found the throne room and sat down.

The room had suffered the centuries of rain, the windows which once held great works of art were now just shards on the floor, the many fabrics, banners, carpets, all reduced to mold and dust, eaten away by insects and weather.

He wondered, was this what the Castian towns would look like? Empty streets? Whatever left in a state of disrepair, left only for the animals?

He ran through these thoughts many times, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

The guilt should be destroying him, he should be crushed, he shouldn’t be allowed to just accept it.

But he did.

It was done.

He couldn’t change it.

It was done.

He did it.

It was his fault.

But they brought it on themselves.

Their greed.

Their pride.

Their refusals of peace.

It was his fault, but they were not blameless.

They were now the weak one, but that did not make them victims.

He was a victim.

If he was in this place three hundred or so years ago, he would just be a shape, a fragment of a trauma.

He was… still, just a fragment of a trauma.

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

After several dozen miles, the shell was crushed, not by the pressure of the pit, but by something so fast and so powerful that the Other could not catch even a glimpse.

It was decided that there was nothing of value down the pit, for he saw nothing resembling a bottom, nor did he see any narrowing that would imply that the bottom was getting closer.

The people of the city were less than happy about the Other, and thought he was trying to steal the ore, so they attacked.

Over the course of many weeks, diplomacy, misunderstanding, pride, then much killing, the city became occupied by Imperial Fomorian forces.

It really wasn’t the intent of the Other, but when Fomoria heard what was happening, things escalated very fast, and it was by his orders that communications ceased and the merchant leaders of the city were tossed into the pit.

The Other thought for quite some time on what had happened, what he could’ve changed, if Fomoria was right to do what he did.

There had been no bloodshed until Fomoria shed it himself, and that only happened after a meeting between Fomoria and the ruler of the city where the Other wasn’t present.

Maybe something happened that justified the killings after, and maybe not.

The Other couldn’t let his mind sway towards treasonous thoughts.