Harlan was furious when Fomoria arrived, he wasn’t happy that Cynthia convinced him to let her make a pot of Great Desert tea, and it was worse when she said that they weren’t allowed to say a word to one another until after she was done.

“This is quite good. I should ask Yara if she has a recipe from her tribe. Where is Sycamore?”

“Playing in the garden. I’m sure he would find your horns very funny.”

“I’m sure he would. I’m sorry that I haven’t visited as much as I would like. I was delayed in my coming here because I had to conquer a city.”

“How many people did you kill to get that city?”

Cynthia gave him a disapproving gaze and Harlan took a deep breath.

“The mayor attacked Yara and I without any reason, and it was his wife that killed him.

Less than a hundred people died, and with her on my side, I will be able to recruit other cities to my cause, for she will tell them that I am just, that I cannot be stopped by any of them.”

“You talk-”

“I talk like you without so much of your filtering. How many times have we made statements like this?

I don’t need to put on any act.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I am actually one of my sister’s contingencies against you.”

“How?”

“She figures that I can smooth things over with you if something bad happens.”

“You probably can. Harlan, I don’t do what I do lightly. I understand that I am killing people, that sometimes innocents are caught in the crossfire, but you don’t know anything about what I’m facing out there, that as unfortunate as it is, their deaths are the cost of a better world. Don’t you remember that? When we were willing to do anything?”

“I am still willing to do anything, even if it is the hard path, even if I refuse to take tens of thousands of lives in the process. You are living by the sword, you are forcing your will on others, and that is how they will remember you, that is how your empire will be shaped. What lesson are your people learning? Is it that they should be understanding and shy away from violence except as a last resort? Or are they learning that violence is the ultimate solution, that everything boils down to strength in the end.”

Fomoria finished another cup of tea.

“Let me show both of you something.”

Cynthia didn’t hesitate, but Harlan didn’t put his hand on Fomoria’s until after she did.

There was a silence in the room.

Fomoria had showed them the first encounter he ever had with a Cast, the conditions that slaves lived under, an instance where he saw a man beat his slave in a busy street with nobody batting an eye, the mass graves when the Castians abandoned cities and pulled back, not wanting to take their slaves with them.

They saw his fight with Sholl and Helik, with Yalda and Baoth.

Lastly, Fomoria showed them the battlefield, the place where Ur and Seraphallen fought.

The smoke and ash from the volcano and forest fires made black clouds that bloated out the sun for weeks.

From horizon to horizon, there was no life, the bodies of animals and people alike were left where they died, no scavengers left to eat the dead.

Yet these images were devoid of context. They could see what Fomoria did, what he said, and what the others said.

“That happened to your city?”

“No, they did it to their own people.”

“Did the city-”

“There were two combatants, Ur, and Seraphallen. I was nearly able to strike a truce with the Castians, but when Ur brought the idea to his counterpart, they fought, and Ur died. I deployed my virus because I can’t fight that, and… that’s a lie, I did it because I made a promise, I said that I would destroy the empire.

And I didn’t decide this on my own, I brought together other rulers, and I made them vote.

It was unanimous, everyone wanted them gone, even Amber agreed to-”

“BULLSHIT.”

“I could bring her here in seconds. Why would I lie about that?”

“Then do it.”

There was another long silence after Amber left.

Cynthia broke that silence.

“Harlan, Fomoria, I think that this has been great. Now we-”

“I can’t believe that you corrupted Amber like that.”

This wasn’t going how Cynthia wanted.

“Well, we can work on this.”

“No, I don’t-”

Cynthia jumped over the table, into Fomoria’s lap.

“What are you doing?”

“If you got up, you’d leave, but now you are going to stay a little longer or I will scream. People will see me on your lap, or they will see you manhandling me in an attempt to make me move, which is going to be wildly misinterpreted. Sure, you’ll explain everything later, but it is going to be a black stain on your reputation.”

“I really don’t care about that. Whatever rumors are spread here exist here, and you may have noticed, but I don’t live in Ragne anymore, and anyone that knows me won’t care about such a stupid rumor.”

Still, he sat back down.

“Good. Now, you don’t want to admit it, but Fomoria clearly cares a lot about people, he isn’t some emotionless monster, and you are really just mad that he hasn’t changed like you, because you assume that all the change you made was progress, and his change is regression into a more violent person.

You, you need to stop trying to run away from this conversation. Is Harlan’s constant moral busybody attitude really so grating for you that you can’t even try?”

“Yes. He pretends like he is above me, but he hasn’t had to make the choices that I have, he hasn’t made the hard calls. I won’t act like I don’t understand him, that I didn’t make concessions, but he looks at me like I did these things with glee. If I could take back deploying the virus, I wouldn’t, and at the same time, I wouldn’t take back the time and resources that I spent trying to fix the Cast.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I tried to help them, I really did, and I was left with no choice.”

“You always have a choice. You chose to destroy an entire race.”

“And if I didn’t, if I hadn’t so harshly disrupted the empire and made them afraid of fighting me?”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean, you just don’t want to get it. If Seraphallen attacked, how many cities would be destroyed? How many millions would die? Right now, the reason why Wyrmwood hasn’t blast the cities where Seraphallen and the Fingers probably are, the reason why Xol and Marigold aren’t razing the empire to the ground now that The Machine God has decided to join our side, is that it isn’t worth the cost in lives.

If Seraphallen gets sick and dies, we would have prevented him from ever even getting the chance to fight us head on. If the cost of those millions is the entirety of a race that is fundamentally broken, then that is just the cost of finally saving the world from them.”

Fomoria tossed Cynthia off of him, letting her cast the air cushions that softened her landing.

“I am going to go now, I’ve said my piece, and I will not justify myself to you again. Hate me, accept me, or just be apathetic, this is our family, not your family, and I will continue to be a part of it no matter how big of a tantrum you throw.”

“WAIT. Sit back down, I want to think.”

Cynthia, after getting back up, sat in her chair and rubbed her chin.

“What else happened at breakfast?”

“I already told you. I talked with my parents-”

“Our parents.”

“And they talked about having dinner with Balor and him.”

“There is something else. What else were you doing?”

“Our father was reading a newspaper about a man found turned into a crystal statue and-”

“I know the story, and Balor did that.”

“How?”

“Well, I’m the one that told Rosewell that Balor was The Shade.”

“But-”

“I’m not stupid. I mean, The Shade? Of course it was Balor, since you weren’t going to be so violent or capable in setting up a criminal organization. He started out in Blackstone, where Redwall and Fomoria are, and he has your flare for the dramatic. That and the cat incident was recreated in one of the killings.”

“He killed a cat?”

“No, he left poison needles in a chair. When his target sat down, they poked through the fabric and killed the man. Just like what we tried to do.”

“That wasn’t exactly the same.”

“Sure, we didn’t poison the needles or want her to be really hurt, but the method was there. Then he used the flour bomb, but replaced flour with toxin powder. He used the living statue prank with a golem to kill a merchant. The more I saw, the more I realized how I should’ve tried to teach this to the Unseen.

Nulson, he knew how to use tricks like these, and he used them to great effect. So many assassins just don’t have a comedic bone in their body.”

“I didn’t think about it like that.”

“Now shush. I think I’m almost there, and then everything will be solved.”

Fomoria called Mercedes and explained that he might be gone for a little while longer, and that a few Others could take his place in one of the fights currently ongoing.

Suddenly Cynthia clapped.

“It’s about control.”

Fomoria leaned forward, interested in where she was taking this.

“Harlan, you feel like you can’t control your family, and Fomoria, you refuse to be controlled.

You went into his home, the place that he built with his own hands, and you taught his daughter a lesson in discipline. Harlan, you don’t agree with how he did this, yes?”

“I told Adina that we needed to talk about how Viviane was acting. I know she is young, but my-”

“Our.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Our niece and nephew were much better behaved at their stage of development. But the thing is that you can’t really base her on them. Vivi is physically and mentally closer to five then two, but she has so few experiences with life despite her enhanced cognitive abilities. She can’t learn fast enough to get an understanding of the world, but as she gets older, she will calm down.”

“You don’t know that.”

“My son, Darrath, is only about a year and a half older than Vivi, but he was born with a fully formed body and a not yet fully formed mind. Now, from last I saw him, he is mentally in his late teens. When I first met him, he was violent, he didn’t understand anything but strength. But, in just months, I taught him so much, and he is a respectable man now. Viviane probably isn’t going to grow up so quickly, and I expect that she will slow down in her aging as she gets into childhood, but mentally she is going to keep getting smarter, faster.”

“None of that gave you any right to do what you did.”

“I’m not sorry. Adina seemed frustrated because Viviane heard her curse and then repeated it even when asked to stop, so I offered my advice.”

“Alright, let’s move past that now. Harlan, you lost control of your life when you were split from him.

Since then, you’ve had to deal with the fact that you are a copy, and he is the original, and you never chose to be that.”

“I didn’t know the entire time. The Darkness, she wiped the memories of everyone who knew.”

“That doesn’t sound like her.”

“Adina and I, we agreed. I could never be happy, I would always feel like I stole her from him, so she offered to do it, and Fomoria asked her to do it.”

“That explains quite a bit. Now that you know, how do you feel?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve been apart for so long that we aren’t the same person.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s true. But moving past that. You lost control at Saltlick, something happened entirely out of your control, and you were only there in the first place because you lost a fight with Fomoria and you felt like you lost control as a result of that. The academy? You weren’t in control, you were reacting again, and even then, it was Fomoria who saved Adina, did he not? Ever since he came back into your life, he has been one upping you over and over, and maybe that was fine but caused a rift when it was just power, but now he did a fatherly duty, and you are horrified that you are going to lose control of them too.”

Fomoria clapped.

“You are terrifyingly perceptive. Harlan, I’m sorry, I really am. I didn’t think about how it must’ve made you feel, and I want you to know that I understand now why you are so upset at me. I didn’t take Amber away from you, I brought her to a place where she didn’t feel tied down by the politics and the threat of Nulson and where she has a man who she… likes enough to stay. And now I feel that I need to tell you, I intend to bring the entire family outside the veil for a few days, maybe a week, but not until the war is over.

I haven’t told this to anyone, I haven’t asked, but I want to do it, bring everyone together, let mom and dad meet Darrath, see what I’ve done, good and bad.”

“Fine. Thank you for telling me.”

Fomoria’s amulet glowed.

“Excuse me a moment.”

When Fomoria came out of his veil, he opened a void gate and left without a word.

Harlan leaned back in his seat and thought long and hard about what Cynthia said.

Meanwhile, she got up to go get Sycamore.

As she picked her son up, finding him hiding inside of a hedge, a sudden storm began to form, and the eye looked directly at her home.

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

At the gate of the second capital wall, It was standard to check everything going in and out.

“Sir, pull your cart forward, through the first gate.”

It was unlikely that Nulson would be stupid enough to try to come in, but the same arrays that checked for him also checked for anti-magic crystals and certain other illegal enchanted or soulsmithed materials.

“Sir, remove your hood, now. If you refuse, we will seize your cart until it has been searched.”

When the man lifted his hood, he was smiling, then he blew his own head off with a spell in his ring, releasing Nulson from his body, and the man from the torture of being witness to his actions.

The cart exploded, packed full of anti-magic bombs, no magic could be used for hundreds of feet as the crystal dust blew inside of the city, steel plates reinforce the back of the cart to force more of the explosion forward through the inner gate which was made of crisscrossing steel slats rather than a solid door.

The massive array that blocked magic within the city was also connected with the monitoring arrays, and the damage done by the bomb caused a fluctuation just for a few moments, long enough for a series of gates which were already prepared to open, have a payload tossed through, then close.

For the first time in several centuries, the city wide magic suppression array was brought down, and putting it back up was no small feat.

As soon as the bombs went off in an airburst, dealing little real damage, but denying magic across the city, including the communicators, the royal guards gathered around Rosewell, forcing her to make the choice between hiding in the castle with all of them, or sending some out some of them so they could help control the situation.

Leaving was technically an option, but Rosewell couldn’t risk Relly being hurt.

Her other siblings, well, she wasn’t that worried.

Back before Harlan, the choice would’ve been simple, they would stay to protect the castle, since their magic wouldn’t work anyway. But, with all of their enhancements, they could wrestle a wyvern even without their magic.

Half of the royal guard left, half stayed.

The only one that was going to stay inside of the safe room with the royals would be Safira, the others would remain outside to keep everyone away from the area.