Marigold hesitated to wear her armor.

The last time she put it on was when she killed her last son.

Hundreds of years did not truly end the pain, just dull it.

The facemask had a blank expression. As Aardes' champion, she was not to show her displeasure at certain tasks outwardly, so she and Nor came up with a compromise.

Her armor was simple, making her more like an articulated statue than an armored warrior.

The only flair was the crossed bands and skirt of black silk with gold flakes that seemed like a night sky and contrasted the gold veined white steel of her armor.

The Sands argued over which of them were the origin of Marigold, where she was born and raised.

She didn’t even honestly tell people, often changing the story to better fit who it was being told to.

But her birthplace was the Black Sands, and the black silk she wore showed that she had not forgotten her home, though her home forgot about her.

Had they supported her from the start, when she first exiled herself to try and help the humans, had they not erased her from the records, they would’ve been able to gloat that they raised Aardes’ champion.

They slept through the morning, and the afternoon, awaking only at dusk.

The idea was to have a small meal so their stomachs weren’t empty, which for the vampires meant Marigold’s blood.

“More power, but Fomoria’s has a certain flavor that I enjoy.”

“Well, I will have to ask him what he does to have such nice blood.”

“There is a rush of freedom in every drop, savory, sweet. It is like fine wine.”

“Well-”

“It’s dark and thick, but it remains consistent, like it’s still alive.”

“That’s-”

“Perhaps it is still alive. It almost squirms on the way down. Even preserved, it is always fresh.”

Carmilla brought two vials, one for herself, and one for Koschei.

“Would you like one?”

“I would.”

Both drank their shots.

“It is… everything you said. I must have more after this.”

Xol activated the spells bound to Koschei, but only lightly.

The shooting pain and the skin falling from his hands let him know that he would be mindful over how he decided to try for more of Fomoria’s blood.

The sky turned to fire as a mountain was dropped on the city.

It wasn’t that Sepul was copying Nulson, but that Nulson had copied Sepul.

Seraphallen hadn’t used as much energy as they hoped dealing with the doomed Other and the creatures, and it arguably had the opposite effect, making him ready to deal with whatever would come next.

They all felt the shift in the air even from dozens of miles away.

The beam fired by the Hand hit the mountain only a few minutes before it struck, but rather than piercing through it started spreading like a liquid, eating away at it like an acid.

But that didn’t matter, it was never meant to be the attack. As Fomoria and his Others showed before, a mountain was dangerous when it was falling because of the size of the object, but it was only stone, which was easy to destroy in parts.

For Seraphallen, who had access to so much power, it would’ve never struck, yet he couldn’t do nothing, and his something revealed his exact location.

The real attack was a thin as a hair, made from air, and fired from 35 miles away by Marigold, who would be his first opponent.

When the strand neared the Hand, he reacted fast, but yet too slow, cutting the spell with his fingers and causing it to unravel just as it entered his bloodstream and then expanded, causing some damage not quite being enough to kill him.

Marigold had some experience fighting against The Emperor, and hoped that Seraphallen wouldn’t be any good at unwriting reality.

“If he counters anything, cut your losses and move onto your next spell. He can Uncast spells he gets his hands on.”

When they first started training, mental messages were disorienting, but that was part of why they trained with one another. A squad of people with the worms transmitting their every focused thought was really the only good way to work together after a certain point, because speaking aloud would take seconds, and the time it would take to travel through the air would mean one could move across an entire battlefield before a simple yes reached an ally.

In an instant, Seraphallen reached Marigold, using both skip from one of the Fingers, and a teleport that was greatly enhanced by the general boost his powers got as he became closer to The Emperor.

He was a close quarters fighter, primarily because light lost much of its power over a distance, ironic but fair for the fastest magic.

Yet her blades could not be blocked, and Seraphallen lost the first of the fingers on his back, his extra lives, as she cut an X into his heart.

From the city, they saw several flashes on the mountain range, each only apart by moments.

And then the mountains tops were gone, and waves of dust began to spread in every direction.

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Yet before the dust clouds and flying rocks reached the city, they were pulled back, and the sky became red once more.

To prevent her from getting another slice in, Seraphallen pulled up a wall of lava, first thin, but then it stretched a hundred feet thick and a mile long.

The Hand believed that she could go through, his blood said she was strong. And so with his hands facing toward him, pointed to the sky, he turned his fists inward, then brought them together.

The wall of lava hardened from the outside first, then collapsed into itself.

Yet Marigold, while she could’ve easily passed through the wall, that wasn’t the plan.

“Next.”

And it was then that another attack came from behind.

Koschei leapt from the gate with a boom.

Yet he and the Hand clashed once before.

“I see you, bloodsucker.”

Seraphallen smiled as he met Koschei’s blade with a magnetic field spell.

Koschei was fast, that was true, but without access to various relics and tools from his home, he could be predictable in a straight fight.

When the Earthborn vampire attempted to cut, his weapons got close, but as they did, the field spells attached to both them and Seraphallen only grew stronger, and Koschei’s attack failed.

Before Seraphallen’s hand that cracked with molten metal reached Koschei’s throat, a wave hit from above, reversing his polarity.

“Thank you, my queen.”

Carmilla disliked Koschei greatly, because he acted much more civilly while he believed he had a chance with her, she thought it better that she didn’t strongly reject him anymore.

Koschei swung with his second blade and it magnetized, pulling it towards the Hand’s wrist, cleanly cutting it from him.

Yet Seraphallen saw this coming the moment he felt the polarity change, and the instant it was detached from his body, rather than let the magnetism pull it back together, he reversed the polarity of his body, shooting the hand into Koschei’s chest, and then an ability from a Finger let him retain control of the severed hand.

Koschei became the inward point of a small singularity spell.

Seraphallen had no issue with sacrificing a hand to create something of the sort, he had five extra lives left.

Koschei didn’t think anything of it at first, but then Xol’s spells activated, preventing him from leaving the false black hole or sending out a warning that it was not Seraphallen’s spell which was killing him.

“Koschei is dead. Until his soul forms a new body we can’t expect anymore help. The careless fool.

Sepul, planetarium. Honey, fall back a moment.”

Seraphallen saw the moon go dark, and then the stars, one by one.

Then a new light was thrust upon the sky, a man who burned like the sun, a ring behind his head, and another behind his back, both with the wavy flames of Sol.

Then the stars returned, but each was drawn onto a void black dome.

Sepul had not used any dark magic, he, much the like Radiant Orcs, had absorbed all the light in the area for himself.

“You’ve been very rude to my grandson.”

The staff in his hand was powered by the four fingers that Fomoria fought for.

Sholl’s shot forth a beam of light, focussing a spell cast by Sepul.

The Hand showed worry, but was inwardly thinking Sepul was another fool like Koschei.

Xol did not kill the Earthborn vampire just because it meant that he couldn’t get in the way later, but also to increase Seraphallen’s ego.

He presently believed that he had killed his first assailant, since Marigold had not returned to the fight, and that he killed his second, who he saw far apart before his eyes.

So, when this beam of light, which was one of the two elements he had been controlling ever since he became a hand, came towards him, he assumed to take control over it.

Yet the instant before he could make content, it stopped, or rather, Sepul had used gate mixed with illusions in order to hide that it had moved behind him.

The beam seared his flesh, causing it to bubble.

And when he tried to flee, the beam went through another invisible gate.

Again and again.

The Hand tried to grasp the beam, yet his arm would bend strangely if he got close to it.

After losing another of the fingers on his back, Seraphallen thrust both hands into the dirt.

Sepul was not blind to this move, yet he didn’t shift an inch.

When Seraphallen lifted the earth, it became a storm of stone and magma and wind for a mile around, yet when the dust settled and the smoke rose, Sepul was unharmed.

He fired another of the beams from his staff, and one more the Hand was unable to dodge.

Yet as his skin sizzled and the blisters boiled, Sepul stopped, just an inch from death.

“I’m sure you can’t speak anymore, on account of your roasted lungs. Yet if you grovel, I will let you die, and we can continue this fight.”

Seraphallen dryly wheezed, yet had ferocity and determination in his eyes.

Sepul lifted the staff, casting spells to turn the bottom white hot.

He plunged it into the head of the Hand, killing him once more.

Yet when he reformed, Sepul was unable to pull the staff from his head.

“Oh.”

The blood gem was enough to bridge the connection between Seraphallen and the fingers on the staff.

The Hand was not just a Hand any longer, he was The Emperor.

His body brimmed with power and he let out the first burst of it, reducing Sepul to dust.

From a great distance away, Sepul closed the gate he was using to spy on the fight.

“Even for an illusion, it is unpleasant to watch oneself die. Are you sure that this is the best plan?”

“If we work this out today, Fomoria won’t need to risk himself against the next Emperor. Or worse, if we kill every last Cast, can his mind control other species? You’ve just gone through this with Nulson, you know the dangers.”

“I still dislike the idea of reforming a god just to kill them.”

“And it is small minds like that which led this world to where it is now. Clear the area, we just need to stop him from moving away and destroying cities, but if he stays, then leave him be.”

Xol’s plan had everyone far apart from one another so they could most easily see where Seraphallen was going. Yet the reality was that he wanted them far enough away that they couldn’t immediately realize what was wrong.

Xol contacted Fomoria and told him that it was time, that he would burn up a few ancient artifacts to lock down Seraphallen and give him time to cut the connection between the Hand and The Emperor.

“This cube is connected with an array around him. Hold it to your stomach and you can charge a sever like Marigold’s.”

He next handed Fomoria the blade stolen from Thash.

“The only way to sever a god of Godtouched steel is to use more Godtouched steel.”

Fomoria had some apprehensions still, but this was happening, and it didn’t make sense to go so far only to betray him.

He began to mutter to himself as he fused the shiny black cube with his skin to hold it in place while he lifted the blade to the sky.

Marigold was the first to notice what was happening, the feeling of sharpness that spread in the area, the sudden stilling of reality out of fear.

But Xol’s wards and arrays prevented her from getting close.

She got near enough to hear two words.

“Sever.”

“Swap.”

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

The Hand was locked in his own mind, the sudden presence of another mind, one stronger than himself, upset the balance within

“Your majesty… I have long dreamed to see you-”

“FOOL.”

“What? But I’ve-”

“Killed me. Ur should’ve won. Our goal, my goal, was to save this world from itself. Jenny, she made me as her champion so I might do that. You have placed the empire above the world itself.

We could’ve wiped them out with more time, we could’ve ruled this world from the inside. This sickness that has plagued us all, you are the worst of it. It was not Fomoria’s disease that has killed us, it was you.”

Seraphallen hardly had time to let his embarrassment turn to a seething rage before Fomoria killed his severed his soul and mind from his body.