The fading mind saw iron and divinity.

The iron which sought to help, and the divine that was there to do nothing but her work.

This angered… him? No, it was not sure that it was him anymore.

What was? No. What?

Yes. He was.

What was he?

He was him.

He was angry.

He was betrayed.

The mind which was blowing away returned, bringing back pieces of his individuality.

He would not be lost in this place, forced to spend decades if not centuries putting himself back together.

He was here now, some of him at least. The rest should come later.

He did not remember who he was exactly, but someone had done something, they took something.

He would not forgive those that took away what was his.

He wandered in that place for some time, the landscape shifting for some time, starting as a void, then springing up trees which caught on fire.

But then the ground returned, and he held contempt for it.

What was wrong with the dirt? It didn’t matter. Burning islands of trees in an endless void, that calmed him.

“Trees…? Void? I am… Shadow? Yes. YES! NO! LITTLE SHADOW.”

He was overjoyed to know his name.

“Here? Crossroads. Not real?”

Little Shadow opened the void and saw the world which overlapped this one, so he went there.

He didn’t like the soil under his feet, it didn’t belong to him, so he floated and his feet unraveled, leaving spring-like legs cut off at the knees.

He wasn’t sure how to move, so he just watched the world around him.

Birds flew around, they were so free.

He reached his hands towards them.

Oh, that’s how he moved.

He wasn’t sure what to do with this though, since he didn’t know who he was angry at.

So he just ventured into the nearby forest.

There were many animals about, and each thing that he saw connected more of him to his memories.

Little Shadow found a lake and he peered into the water, seeing his own reflection.

He was a constantly wiggling void with white holes for eyes and long horns.

He was reminded of someone else, but he couldn't remember who.

So, he just stared at the reflection until the light in the sky dipped half under a mountain.

A thing… came near him to drink from the lake.

It was… hairy? Hair… hare? Rabbit. It was a rabbit, small four legged creatures with soft pelts.

Another connection was drawn.

He remembered being in a damp room with a woman, but he couldn’t remember her face.

Roses… the face in his memory became a purple rose.

He hurt the rabbit… it became a tree.

It made him feel bad.

He liked the rabbit.

He reached down to pet the rabbit; none of the animals were afraid of him.

Its coat turned black as void where he ran his hands, and its eyes went white, but the rabbit was still just a rabbit.

It changed… change… Changeling? Was that what he was?

Human sounded wrong, he wasn’t human.

An arrow flew at the rabbit, striking it in the side, and it stopped moving.

Why did it stop moving?

Oh, death. He remembered death.

It wasn’t scary, but it was supposed to be.

It made him feel bad, since other things told him that he shouldn’t die.

Why not? Who told him that?

From behind a tree, two shapes came, one large, one small, came out.

Their horns were shaved down.

Why weren’t they sharp like his?

Was he one of them?

No, the were Dague, but they were like him.

What was he?

“It’s dead.”

“I know, it’s unpleasant, but we must eat.”

The larger one… he was the father? Yes, he looked like a father. The smaller one must be the son.

He had a father, yes? Yes he did.

The father pulled a knife from his belt and cut the neck of the rabbit, lifting it after to drain it, but the blood was black, so he dropped the rabbit to the ground.

“Is it sick?”

“Something feels wrong here. We’re going back.”

“But we didn’t get any food, mother-”

“We can try again at first light. There is no sense in putting ourselves in danger. Without us, she wouldn’t have anyone to care for her.”

The son seemed… sad? Yes? No. Downtrodden.

He remembered being like that.

Why was he like that?

Little Shadow followed the pair back to their home.

The father stopped the sun. Sun? No, the son. He stopped the son, because he found fresh deer tracks.

He was good at tracking, right? Yes. Someone taught him this. His father? No. Someone else, another man. He was family? Yes. But what was the word?

He couldn’t remember, but he followed the tracks ahead of them and found the deer.

“You should be eaten, people eat deer.”

The deer didn’t understand the words, but the will of the shadow was stronger than the beast, and it had no choice but to follow, walking directly up to the father and son.

Back at the small cabin of the family, he watched as the father strung up the deer for butchering, but once it was hung he went inside to check on his wife.

The mother was very pale. He remembered being pale. But she seemed weak, wincing whenever her chest rose; she wasn’t like him though, he wasn’t weak, he hated being weak.

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She held a baby in her arms, what little she had to eat, most of it went to the infant, her mind forcing her body to kill itself rather than let it starve.

“We got a deer. I’ll start on some stew. You’re-”

“She’s so beautiful. Can I… I want to name her, so she has something to remember me by.”

The father’s eyes became veiled with tears, but he held back, not wanting to scare his son anymore than he already had.

“You don’t need to do that, you’ll have plenty of time to-”

“I don’t think I’m going to make it. Don’t hate her, it isn’t her fault.”

That was stupid. Why would she die? The rabbit died because of the arrow. But she wasn’t shot with an arrow.

He leaned over the bed, watching the woman and the infant as the son used a flint and steel to light the fire in the single room home.

As the sparks flew, his shadow appeared on the wall, yet went unnoticed; the parents couldn’t take their eyes off of the child, whose heart was slowing down.

Her head dipped back.

They panicked, the father terrified about the idea of losing both his wife and daughter, the mother, having accepted that she wasn’t going to live long, only cared about the life of her daughter.

“Please, if there are any gods, take me, don’t make me outlive another child.”

Gods? That… that was familiar. But what good have they ever done. Useless prideful things.

The fires of rage burned in him, and the flames of the fire began to burn black, scaring the son away from it.

“WHAT DEVIL HAS CURSED US!”

He remembered that word. He read it before, they were evil, and they lived in the darkness, and they had horns.

Was he a devil? That made sense to him. Hurting things was bad, but he knew that he did it a lot.

The heart of the infant finally stopped, and he felt drawn to the void which remained, just as on some level he recalled always being drawn to the lowest parts in people’s lives.

It was instinct, to take the body which no longer had a host.

But when he reached, he remembered that someone took something from him, and he hated that.

He didn’t want to be evil, that would make him feel bad.

And these people, they weren’t devils, but they had horns, and deer had horns.

He wasn’t a devil.

Rather than taking the body, he reached for the soul that was floating, waiting for something.

A woman appeared in the room, and she also reached for the soul.

He screamed at her, shaking the cabin.

The woman was unafraid of the shadow, but she pulled her hand back and watched.

He felt like a hero, he felt good, because he was saving the child, and the child was the son’s sister.

Sister? Yes, he had those, he loved those a lot.

If he died, he wanted it to be for them.

The thought of wanting to die was confusing to him, wasn’t being alive always better than being dead?

He put the soul back in the infant, but it kept floating away, for the body was dead, an unfit host.

He was a healer, he remembered that. And he worked with souls all the time.

But he didn’t remember how magic was made.

He pressed the soul back into the body, remembering that it belonged in the stomach, and he held it there.

Magic was thought, so he thought that the soul was supposed to stay inside and the baby should be healthy.

And so it was.

But magic still had to have a cost, he remembered that.

So he left a little bit of himself with her, and a large black handprint that covered most of her torso appeared on the infant, the fingers, long and boney, split into a V, wrapping around her shoulders, the edges inconsistent and wavy because of his own wavering form.

He hadn’t realized until now how small she was, how fragile.

Casting the spell, using magic, caused a rush of memories.

Of the pillars that were Fomoria, magic was nearly the strongest, the one which held most others.

For he could protect no one, he could gain nothing, without this power.

Then, why did he also become sad towards himself when he thought of magic?

He didn’t like that feeling, the self unlike.

His form became more solid, though his edges were still gaseous.

“Woman, don’t take her away from her child. That would make me feel bad.”

“That is not my choice. If-‘

“Oh, yes, of course. I love choices. I should just choose to save her.”

He put his hand on the mother’s chest, leaving a black mark over her heart.

“The mother’s will fade in time, and I will take that power back. But the daughter, she will keep my power.”

“Why?”

“I want her to have a better childhood than mine.”

A million more thoughts connected one after another the words left his mind, and another name came to him.

Yet as these connections were drawn, they didn’t always reach where they should, filling in the gaps with guesses.

His memories were like a pile of pages strewn across a room from dozens of books, and the 12th page from one might link to the 13th page of another book, the wrong book.

He left the family and began to wander and wonder, his head hurting, not liking all of the memories from before he was an adult, and that thought caused more from his adult life to come back, and he hated them even more.

Yet as before, he wasn’t sure which were even his memories, he felt like an observer, they didn’t feel like him.

Each mountain, each forest, each animal, they drew more and more connections in his mind.

But most importantly, he began to remember what had been taken.

He loved a few women, but he lost them.

One to another.

One to death.

And the last, he didn’t lose, he lost something else.

It took time before remembering that he had a son of his own, and another that wasn’t allowed to exist.

What took the other? Why weren’t they allowed to be? Was it because he wasn’t human?

That sounded right, and he hated it.

He hated that he hated so much, it made him feel bad.

The wandering soul found its way to a dead city.

Bodies lined the streets, many had horns, and their faces caused another surge of memories and emotions.

He did this.

This city was dead because of him.

Why did he do this?

Maybe he was a devil.

He looked for anyone still alive, and finally heard a noise.

“Watch it.”

“We aren’t going to break them.”

“You’ll break the box, then it’s going to be annoying to carry them.”

They were two men of darker skin.

The larger of the two was lighter in tone, and bore scars.

He looked down at his own body, and he remembered his scars as he ran his fingers across his form.

“What are you carrying?”

“What kind of stupid question is that?”

“I didn’t say anything. You said it.”

“I didn’t say it.”

“Then who-”

The two men looked in the direction of the voice and saw a horned monster cast a shadow on the wall.

Little Shadow was happy that someone could finally hear him, and smiled, revealing his rows of sharp teeth.

The men fled, dropping their boxes.

He was curious, and looked at them.

They were full of dark red gems, each etched with a symbol of a skull and a broken chain.

The crest drew many memories of an emperor, and he began to think that he must’ve lived in this city.

After three days of trying every building in the city, and some, such as a large warehouse, caused a connection to form, he decided to enter the ruined mansion in the center of the city, which he had unconsciously been avoiding, afraid of what he would see there after seeing so much other death in this place.

It was strange, the rest of the city had signs of death, but not really much fighting, yet this place had suffered greatly.

One could hardly find a single wall that held no scars, a hall without some bone scattered here or there.

It made him sad, but he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps he had been a servant? Maybe he knew the faces of the people who were dead; why did so many have the same face?

He found a door that felt right, yet when he opened it, the room itself was gone, a gaping hole where there was once a wall, a ceiling, and a floor.

He was terrified, but of what? It scared him a lot that he didn’t understand, so he left, fleeing back down the hall, then phasing through the walls until he found the garden.

There were two graves, and both made even his immaterial form shed tears uncontrollably.

A day and a night passed there, he couldn’t leave, these were his fault somehow.

The more he grieved the people buried here, the more he blamed himself, and then the pillar which held up even his magic, became clear to him, and it was guilt, self-loathing, hate.

Why didn’t he save these people? Was he not strong enough? Was it all of the evil he had done catching up to him? Why couldn't he remember them?

One morning, he heard footsteps, rushed, panicking, two people headed right for him.

He turned around and through the doorway without doors, he saw a woman of olive complexion, with yellow eyes that became full of tears like his.

The woman collapsed on the ground, her tears mixed with his shadow.

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t know why he said that.

“Who are you?”

Her body tensed.

Another being came from the doorway and froze in her tracks.

“Is that you?”

“I am me.”

In the time he mourned over the graves, he didn’t become wholly physical, but he wasn’t just a shadow anymore.

He was a mass of energy that couldn’t touch, couldn’t feel, but was now visible to the naked eye, like a dark fire, a stain in the air.

The second woman rushed forward, trying to grab him, but she passed through.

“Hug me back.”

He wrapped his hands around her, and a flood of memories not felt since he cast the spell to save the mother and child washed over him.

“You are… my… friend? No, wrong word. Best friend. No, stronger. Sister. Hello, sister.”

The lighter skinned woman had remained dry eyed until then, but the dams were broken.

“It’s Amber, I’m your second sister, Amber.”

“Amber. A dark yellow resin that has been hardened over a long period of time. I like that name.

My name is Little Shadow.”

“You are Harlan, Harlan Fomoria, and this is Yara, she’s your wife, you love her.”

“I like that name better. I love you both very much. Can I hug her?”

When Fomoria took his hands off of Amber, a black stain was left on her armor and clothes.

Yara backed away from his attempts to hug her, though the stain had no bearing on her choice.

“You left me, you left us all behind. And Marigold-”

“Marigolds are flowers.”

“Amber, call her, maybe she knows how to put him back together.”

Yara began to walk away, her grief wasn’t helped by him being there.

She hadn’t had time to accept that he was dead, now more would be needed to accept that he might still be even as he stood in front of her.

“I shouldn’t touch her, she wouldn’t like that, I don’t want to touch women who don’t want to be touched, bad people do that. Am I a devil?”

Amber wiped her tears and sniffled before answering.

“You couldn’t ever figure out what you were, don’t go asking me.”

“Why is she angry with me? What did I do?”

“You died.”