The Sectlands sent word, the shapeshifter who many months back impersonated him was back.

Fomoria came with fury on his heels, yet despite the dead, the flames, the Other who ran the Sect of the Dragon knelt, bloodied, clutching his side, his eyes drooping, with the man who was like a strange mirror.

“Is this the one who would challenge me?”

“He is my master.”

The man looked at Fomoria, and in an instant his face and body became a perfect reflection.

“He is the true one. Single combat, best me, and this shall end. But if I win, your soul will become mine.”

“Why would I not just rush you with my Others? You’ve killed dozens, you’ve burned out children and the elderly.”

The man opened his coat and revealed a spot of rust, he had hours to live.

“I wish for a good fight before I die.”

“You are a Finger, aren’t you?”

The illusion over his hand vanished, showing him as the index of the right hand; Rak.

“Yes, I-”

“Answer the question, why wouldn’t I just rush you? Why do you think I would give you a good death?”

The Finger laughed.

“Hostages.”

“He has my wife and all of the students that they haven’t already killed.”

“Oh, and I wasn’t invited to the wedding?”

“They don’t have weddings here, and this is no time for jokes.”

“Very well, Rak, shall we move elsewhere so as to not destroy more of this place?”

“Go to the shore. My men must see us fight, if they believe that you are just dumping me somewhere else, they will kill all of the hostages.”

“What are the other sects doing?”

“We are not a Great Sect, so they will do nothing but watch, and Rak took care to not spread the damage beyond our little area.”

“Then we fight.”

Fomoria opened a gate, letting Rak see the city through it.

Rak went through first and took a combat stance.

“I hate to disappoint, but what damage we could do to that city by a simple live and death duel shouldn’t be your worry.”

“When people like us fight, maps need to be redrawn.”

“That applies to Hands, not Fingers.”

Fomoria cracked his neck and took his stance.

Rak jumped back, conjuring a mist.

There seemed to be a dozen of him moving through, displacing the mist, yet each held a mind, and each mind seemed to be no different than any other.

Fomoria let out a strong gust of wind, but the mist would not move.

He breathed it in, and felt the intoxicating effects in a moment.

His body became dull, his eyes grew hazy, his throat did not feel under his control, forcing him to pull in more and more of the mist.

Rak wielded two bladed whips made from light, and he cracked them from inside of the mist, sending radiant discs towards Fomoria, who could hardly dodge them.

Each of the illusions that went through the mist were strong enough to confuse any natural or magical sense, and each burned hot, cutting through Fomoria, who was losing more and more control over himself.

If his breath disobeyed him, then he had no use for it, so he removed his mouth and nose.

If his eyes could not be trusted, then they were cast off.

If his mind did not reveal the truth, then it was to be ignored.

His body was now fully self contained.

The air he breathed was from his own imbibing, and not a patch of skin was left bare.

What he was left with, deaf, dumb, blind, was his sense of danger.

He would be as the shapes, reacting without knowing why.

Fomoria stood still, no longer having any sense of time, just the reaction, and it told him to run.

He felt a hand on his chest.

“Wake up.”

His smooth head regained its features; his first sight was of Xol.

“You should be glad that I came for that finger instead of your Other.”

Fomoria looked around, the beach had turned to black glass, and the grass was all but gone, yet it hadn’t even had the chance to burn, the void flames had consumed even the smoke.

“How did I win? I… I started breathing in his mist and my mind just… I don’t remember it.”

“Well, I saw the whole thing, and it was a beautiful fight.”

“Did you kill him?”

Xol just laughed.

“No. You danced like a Dervish and… right, that doesn’t make sense to you. You countered his every move, and Rak was always one that liked his close combat. If he had just switched to ranged spells, you would’ve kept dancing around his attacks, but he would’ve lasted longer than ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?”

“You ate the skin of the Nidhogger, and it became your skin, their flesh, became your flesh.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Adamant is hard, not the hardest, but it is a very hard metal. All Fingers are true mythril ranked, and the Hands are all unique entities, like the Ascended, thus they fall outside of the normal ranking of metals.”

“What does that mean? Is that the same as the Sons of Nidhogg?”

“In the mythology of one region of my world, they believe the world is like an apple on a tree, and at the base of this tree there is a dragon, Nidhogg, who chews on the roots. The details are a little fuzzy, but I believe when the world ends he devours the tree, or something like that; I majored in literature, not mythology.”

“So these snakes are the children of that dragon?”

“No. Not really. Like Tiamat, the Nidhogg of this world is just the idea of a dragon deep underground. If you cut Aarde into layers, you could consider them worlds, and about two levels down, Nidhogg lives. These snakes that you fight are offspring, hatchlings, Nidhogger, too weak to handle life so far down, so they go to the higher level and eat what they can, because all of the really dangerous creatures can’t go that high without their bodies shutting down.”

“Interesting. It sounds like you’ve been deep down?”

“Deeper than anyone else. Sepul tried going underground, and he got deep, deep enough that the influence of The Darkness grew too much, deep enough that things stopped making sense.”

Xol, closed his eyes, or, Fomoria assumed that’s what it meant, since the fire in them went out.

“Alright, there, you got a story in exchange for the finger.”

“Wait, I didn’t know that I was even asking for something. Now that I know, can I-”

“No. I indulged you, now I will be going. See you after you kill another one.”

Fomoria wasn’t entirely sure that he believed he had beaten Rak, it didn’t make much sense to him.

However strong adamant was, it shouldn’t make him able to beat a Finger so easily.

Yes, he was a close range fighter, and he was sick, and Fomoria almost always had the advantage against others physically, but it still felt wrong.

Xol had told him that he should be able to kill a Hand in ten years, but any of the Fingers in three to five.

The ranking of the Fingers was not which finger they were, the index was not always going to be stronger than the ring finger, yet they were based on an order given by the Hand.

The thumb was the first to be ranked, and then index, middle, and so on.

The pinkie would be the last picked, and most often the weakest, same as the thumb was most often the strongest, for he was the first to be granted a finger.

When he returned to the island, the Cast turned over the hostages, then fell on their own swords rather than suffer Fomoria’s punishment.

He could’ve stopped them, but he would’ve given the same to them anyway, a quick death, a reward for holding up their end of the bargain.

A woman hugged him tightly.

“I am not the one that you want.”

She stepped back and bowed, tears in her eyes.

“I am very sorry, I thought that you were mine.”

“Has he chosen a name?”

“He is just Harlan to me.”

“When you return to him, tell him this, tell him that he does not need to be me any longer, and he needs to choose a name for himself.”

Fomoria opened a gate for the hostages, and when the last of them were through, he opened a void gate for himself.

Thus, that day was born another Shade of Fomoria, Darion, one day Grandmaster Dragon.

Fomoria wanted to visit an old friend, someone disconnected from this fight.

Tracking him was a little harder than he expected, but he found him.

From the brush an eyeless scaled beast leapt, but its claws found no purchase in him.

Fomoria grabbed it by the wrists.

“Ky, good to see you again.”

He stopped struggling and slowly the beastly features faded back to humanity.

“What are you doing here?”

“Can’t a friend just want a chat? I brought a meal for you.”

“A meal, or some exotic animal?”

“Both.”

“I heard you got split and-”

“For the record, I’m Fomoria, not Harlan.”

“I don’t really-”

“I’m the one that left, that Ragne has a kill order out for. So, I’d avoid mentioning this in your reports.”

“I heard you killed a lot of people for just about no reason.”

“I had to uphold my end of a bargain, such is the work of a champion.”

“Come, let’s make a fire, cook this up.”

Ky explained a little of what he had been doing as a Ranger, and that he hadn’t been called into the war, instead his job had been to deal with wild beasts so that more troops could be deployed outside of The Frontier. And Fomoria explained in very truncated terms what he was up to.

“What are you really here for?”

“I am committing genocide, but it doesn’t bother me. I know that I’ve changed, but I don’t know how to handle that.”

“Not sure what you want me to say.”

“Neither do I. I’ve just been doing things to keep my mind off of it, figured I’d eventually visit Reet as well.

Have you ever thought about being a noble? I could give you a city.”

“I don’t think I want anything to do with that, Emperor Fomoria.”

“Please, don’t call me that here. I just wanted to sit under the stars and talk for a bit.”

“Alright, why are you committing genocide? Because you sound far too calm for someone doing that.”

“I unleashed a biological threat that will wipe out the entire population. Even if it doesn’t, I will hunt down those that remain, I will ensure that they cannot continue.”

“Alright, why?”

“Because I made a promise, and their actions have made it necessary that I fulfill it. A deal was made, and then broken. Turn the meat.”

Ky did as asked.

“What is this anyway? Looks like snake, but it’s red.”

“Nidhogger, the Sons of Nidhogg.”

“Ahuh, so is it snake?”

“Yes.”

Fomoria held out his hand and his flesh turned to adamant scales.

“They live outside the veil, under the ground. Some Fae dragon gives birth to them, and they go up to a few thousand feet underground. Their scales are harder than stonesteel, but lighter than skysteel. It exists only in purity, and cannot be adulterated to improvement that I know.”

“Can you make a sword from it?”

“My attempts at working it have… not been great.”

Fomoria pulled out a knife made of wood, but around the edge it was serrated with the adamant scales.

“Paradoxically, I think I need to make a forge out of adamant before I can properly work it.”

“Do you ever get the feeling that you are just the luckiest man ever born?”

“Never.”

“I might know a place.”

“You might know a place? Really?”

“I never told the kingdom about it, it felt wrong. But more than that, I never want to go back. You got stronger since you left?”

“I can do things that I only imagined before.”

“It will take a few days. I want to report in before we leave.”

“That’s fine.”

Ky took his piece of meat off of the fire and took a bite.

“What kind of shit is this? It’s like chewing steel.”

“And it is going to make you able to chew steel like jelly. But I also brought this.”

It was a very well marbled steak.

“This is for after.”

Ky was able to enjoy the steak much more after having eaten Nidhogger.

The two of them sat under the stars, and Fomoria explained more of his life.

Ky wouldn’t say it, but he was glad that he had drifted away from Harlan, that he hadn’t gotten tied up in his mess.

And from what he said about Amber, he felt that he dodged a fireball not pursuing her too strongly.

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

He would not die by someone else’s poison, he was an alchemist, he was the maker of sicknesses, he wouldn’t be bested in that way.

So he went where he knew his enemy could find him, and he brought his men.

He fought against the other, he believed that this man was comparable to his progenitor.

And so he fought on that beach, he put up his mist, and he felt his enemy’s strength sapped by it.

He whipped and whipped, the discs of light slicing through the man who healed almost as soon as he was hurt.

That man then dodged.

It was strange to the Finger, that someone could become faster in the mist rather than slower.

Then he saw his face, it was blank, no mouth, no nose, no ears, no eyes.

But while those things were gone, he could’ve sworn that he saw where the face was, and it was smiling.

His instincts told him that he couldn’t run, that he could only slow it down.

As it punched forward, he crossed the whips that moved like living things, yet it became shrouded with black fire, and when the whips touched its arms, they did not cut.

It struck hard, and the fight was over.

That single hit rattled the brain of the Finger, and when it put its hands around his throat, he felt his life fade.

At least there was little pain, the squeezing decapitated him quickly.