Fomoria’s vision suddenly shifted to a long dirt road through a forest. All around him he could see paths that lead to more paths, leaving only single trees in triangular patches where no carts tread.
Before he had any time to get his bearings and start to find where he was, Xol appeared.
“What happened?”
“You are dying.”
“How did he-”
“Just listen. Yes, you may do well as emperor, but ultimately, Aarde would stop your perfect world.
He needs conflict to let the people grow. You don’t have the power to fight that, you never did, you never would. Your power has always worked by their rules, you are forever going to be bound by it, even if you did gain divinity, you would always be subject to their whims. But-”
Fomoria leapt at Xol, but simply phased through his body.
“Even if I was physically here, what was the plan?”
“I saw Marigold destroy Dun’Kel once, you aren’t physically durable.”
“That woman can wrestle a greater drake with one hand behind her back. You are strong, she is beyond such a simple word.”
“Where are we?”
“The crossroads. I swapped my soul into your body using the remaining paradox I removed from your soul just as your sever was cast. You were put in the body of Seraphallen alongside the emperor and him.
I wonder what this place looks like to you.”
Xol saw a paved area rather than a forest, triangles holding telephone poles with criss crossing wires rather than trees. The crossroads were a pathway connecting the minds of every being on the planet, their complexity wasn’t something that could be expressed through sight.
“How do I get back?”
Xol’s breathless breathing hitched, and a bolt of guilt harmlessly crashed against his resolve.
“Your body and soul, they will do so much good. Aarde won’t be able to tell me what to do once I’ve devoured and incorporated The Emperor’s body into mine.”
“It’s my body.”
“Not anymore. You must understand, I am not doing this out of greed or anger, I loved you as a friend.
But I have seen it all, done it all. Every hedonistic act. Every kindness. Every evil. And ultimately, I realized it, that in the end, nothing I can do will ever change the course of the world.
Not unless I kill Aarde.”
Fomoria’s form began to falter, pieces of him turning to dust and being blown away as he fell to his knees.
“You’ve gained my immutable soul. When you die, Life will not take you. How long it will be before you regain sentience and find out how to enter a new body, I don’t know, but I hope it will be long enough that you see the good of this world and forgive me. If not, just keep your head down, we will never need to see one another again.”
The entire exchange took just a fraction of a second, a matter of time dilation within the crossroads.
Xol said that the new Other of his was meant to die, but the reality was that he needed someone to take over his body once he stole Fomoria’s.
Marigold watched as Xol pulled a shield from his sleeve, and it split into 8 pieces, forming between them a cube of red and dark purple tinted energy.
“What happened? Why is he here? What did you do?”
“The Emperor is dead, but his body is still here, in working condition. I had Fomoria sever him, cutting Seraphallen and The Emperor from him. This shield will keep my original safe while he steals both the body and soul of Fomoria, finally letting him hear the voice of mana. You don’t know how it feels to-”
She yelled out, Sever, Shatter, Break, Open, Cut, Slice.
Yet no spell nor swinging of the sword could make it show even the smallest sign of breaking.
“You can’t break through this. This is Derg-Druimnech, though heavily modified for my purposes.”
“That was lost during the void war.”
“Even when I was not on the side of Aarde, I was never truly on the side of the Fae either.
They are evil, purely and simply. Their minds are so twisted by magic that they cannot help but be how they are. And it is by Gaia’s will, or lack thereof, that they exist in such a state.
These-”
“I don’t care. Please-”
Marigold fell to her knees.
“Please don’t do this, please don’t make me lose you too. You’ve been my only constant for hundreds of years. I thought you loved me, that we would be together until the end of it all.”
Xol, or rather, his Other, knelt down to match her.
“I still love you. I have since you became a champion for the sake of humanity. You don’t fight for your people, you fight for people, and you’ve gone through many of the same trials I have.
I decided to give up being an independent agent because of you, because I saw the good that still remains in others. You lit up a fire in my heart that I thought was dead.
But you must see that this is going to be for the best. Fomoria, when he returns, will see that this is exactly what he wanted, and accept that this is just how it needed to be done.”
“What corner of Aarde have you tossed his soul?”
“There was a bit of paradox left in him, and I took it away to heal him. It is like I was born here, and like he was born on Earth. In time, a dozen years, a hundred years, a thousand years, he is going to reform his mind, because it does so hate to be outside of a body, and come back. But…”
“But everyone he knows and loves is going to be gone. He will tear down everything you’ve built out of spite. And…”
Marigold stood up and wiped her misty eyes.
“And by what you’ve said. If you die now, you won’t come back.”
“Honey-”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“DO NOT CALL ME THAT.”
An impressive hate was in her voice as she waved her hand, covering the cube in rock before continually compressing it, trying to see if she could move it, toss him into Sol.
Yet the box floated in the air.
“I am covered from all sides, completely immutable.”
It hurt that he knew exactly what her plan was even without being able to see outside of the box anymore.
The Other Lich watched Fomoria’s body, waiting for his original to take control.
And when he did, he cracked his neck and stood shakily.
“How long?”
“It feels as though I’ve lived my entire life in a woolen suit. Everything feels so vibrant and…”
He heard his voice, but it was not his tone. But it was a simple fix, it felt natural to shift his body so his vocal cords would make his voice how he had it before.
“Testing, testing. Do re mi fa so la ti do. There. I can feel the mana around me, I can practically hear it.”
Xol looked over at Seraphallen’s corpse.
“How many centuries has it been since I last cannibalized someone?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Let’s see here.”
He turned into a canine form, yet nearly shattered Fomoria’s teeth against the body.
So, he decided on something else.
It was he that invented the slimes, and ideally, they would break down matter and convert it into something pure.
He thought back to when he was training the Others of Fomoria, and when one used blood imbibing.
That Other had maintained a sense of mind, though he had no brains or organs to speak of.
So by combining that with shifting and his knowledge of slimes, he turned to one such creature while maintaining his sense of self.
It was amazing to him, to hear mana, to get these flashes of inspiration and connect dots that weren’t always immediately clear to him otherwise.
He felt the unfairness, the idea that he had been robbed of this ability just because of where he came from.
His blood boiled, and hastened the process of breaking down Seraphallen, a process that only grew faster and faster as he absorbed the white gold man, both a metal and a biological material.
The Other watched closely, amazed that his original thought of such a thing so quickly.
Marigold returned with an unlikely ally, and the likely ones.
“Carmilla, go back home, you will be useless here.”
“If there is anything-”
“Shut up and leave before you die in the crossfire. Coronach, you too, slither away.”
“I will not argue with you.”
“Sepul, what has Cecht said?”
“Kill him as quickly as possible. And he has petitioned Aarde to unleash Wyrmwood.”
“As have I. Wyrmwood will wake after 15 minutes and remain on standby. The Darkness was in the crossroads. Xol wants to kill Aarde so nobody can stop him.”
“But all life is linked to Aarde and the mana which they produce. Everything on the planet would die.”
“He must have an idea of how to get around that problem. Stay with Kor. I want you to remain outside of The Veil so I can call on you, but if we clash, I fear you would only die in the battle.”
The last person there, the one that she really went to retrieve, was Roland.
“I want to see if that sword really can cut anything.”
Roland thrust his sword down, yet when it pierced the slightest bit, the blade stopped and everything around them began to vibrate.
The layer of compressed stone around the cube broke apart into dust, and the Other’s eyes widened when he saw Durandal stabbing down.
“WAIT, WE DON’T KNOW WHICH IS THE IMMOVABLE OBJECT AND WHICH IS THE UNSTOPABLE FORCE. YOU FOOL, PULL THE SWORD OUT BEFORE YOU KILL US ALL.”
“I loved him, I hope that he knew what I wouldn’t ever say aloud.”
Xol was thrown slightly off kilter by the sudden confession.
Roland put his full force down in the blade, and like the snapping of ropes under tension, each fraction of an inch that he cut caused waves of power to fire away, decimating the land for miles in any direction.
Yet each wave began away from Roland, leaving him in the proverbial eye of the storm.
“DON’T, WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU-”
“I CONSIDERED HIM MY BEST FRIEND, THE ONLY ONE WHO LOVED ME FOR WHO I WAS, THAT SAW ME AS JUST ME.”
Xol’s Other regretted deeply that he didn’t look into Roland more deeply, and that he didn’t steal Durandal for himself.
That, and he wondered exactly what Marigold told him to send him into such a suicidal fury, not beliving that it was really a matter of love and friendship, that there must be another trick to it.
Marigold stood aside, narrowly dodging the lashing waves while charging her own spells.
She saw where this was going, but she didn’t care what would happen.
Xol was dead to her, he tore her heart out and stomped it into the dirt, he betrayed her, and his plans would kill her. There was nothing that she wasn’t about to do to stop him.
Her spell finished, and the lands began to close in on them, her city shaping was being used to form a solid dome of rock for 20 miles around in the hopes to dull the blast.
Then, she left, not wanting to be anywhere close when the barrier was fully pierced.
Roland didn’t even notice that Marigold was gone.
From the surface of Aine, the Titan of Aarde, Wyrmwood, groggily began to wake.
He had been letting his power be siphoned for eons, and it had not made his awakening any easier.
“What foolish things have happened in my slumber.”
He saw a square of purple red energy cut across the planet for hundreds of miles before it collapsed on itself.
In this perfect scar he saw the ocean rushing to fill the void which nature so abhors; It was a problem.
Not only would the dropping sea level likely bring creatures from the deep of the ocean, but also those under the surface of Aarde would perhaps be forced to go to the surface.
Those from the sea could survive, but were far less dangerous.
Those under the layers of Aarde however, were beasts of ruin, but couldn’t survive on the surface.
Perhaps he might try for one of the sea monsters if he was feeling like a light snack.
The cracking of his joints sent earthquakes into the area as he stood and stretched.
Wyrmwood spread his wings, and those on Aarde could look at the night sky and see the golden white light that outshone the full moon.
With a flap, hurricanes erupted, nearly destroying what little civilizations existed around him.
With the second, those within dozens of miles were destroyed, and Wyrmwood broke through the atmosphere of Aine.
With a third, he broke through the manasphere, but it had little effect on those below compared to the others
The moment he entered Aarde’s manasphere, information flooded the last dragon.
Who Xol was, what his plans where, what Wyrmwood needed to do.
Only the last part mattered to him, and it was to kill the Lich.
----------------------------------------
Seraphallen was a very weak mind, he faded away shortly after being chided by his idol.
But The Emperor, even as Life siphoned his memories to feed herself, wandered.
To him, the crossroads were a circuit board, each of what Fomoria saw as trees, and Xol as telephone poles, were CPUs.
He was manufactured as a mix of magic and metal, something Jenny could only do because she was latched onto Aarde like a tick, sucking away a piece of divinity and mana production.
She herself couldn’t use magic however, not really, but she could imbue it into other things.
When the great change washed over them, he remembered what it was like to first think on his own, the natural feeling that he was a person, not a machine.
Yet her perfect machine, upon returning, did not anger her.
She took it as a great sign that her Cast could be more than machines, like she was.
Then the old age and rampency began to appear.
She knew how to fix it in AI, to guide it so it made them better instead of just mad.
But in biological life? It didn’t make sense.
Some of them developed tumors in their brains, but even those without them would exhibit the cruelty, the sickness.
He remembered that it broke her heart to send the first batch of her machines to be incinerated for being uncontrollable, how distraught she was over being forced to set up The Nursery to watch for the sick ones.
Then, he couldn’t remember.
He felt his memories fading away, he had been alive long enough that Life’s process, something that took just minutes, had been going on much longer.
He estimated he had an hour of outside time before the avatar would be done.
But how did he know? Who taught him about such things.
Life disliked this, and it was part of the reason that prime species, those who lived the most interesting lives, also lived for only a century or so.
Those that lived for so long would always fall into despair as they realized that their memories were vanishing and they could feel it because their new thoughts kept trying to pull on everything that came before, and eventually, they came up empty, holes in what they were.
They grieved their own deaths a second time in those moments.