Far in the southern hemisphere, where summer was winter, Fomoria met up with Amber, Sepul, and somebody else.

It took just a few moments.

“Zella? Is that your name?”

“He’s as bad as you said. Why are you here?”

“Amber requested that I join this fight.”

“I thought that he needed to be tested. You can move faster than anyone else here, get up on the walls and start taking out the enemy artillery units. Then return.”

Nobody else seemed to have any issues with Amber commanding him like she had, or his mission.

Fomoria was strong, of course he was, he was Fomoria, and she was the commander of the Fomorian Empire’s military might.

Unless Marigold gave an order, or Sepul.

But at least she held an actual title over them.

He moved outside of site and instantly walked through all of the defenses, his vision entirely unimpeded by the heavy snowfall that was intended to hide the facility from others.

He hadn’t really thought much at all about how he was seeing things.

Everything was just always clear, whatever was a threat seemed to almost jump out at him, and while he couldn’t see the motes anymore, anything magical had a glow to it.

He pressed his finger to the chest of the first soldier that he saw and said one word.

“Pierce.”

The soldier staggered back then felt his chest.

His armor was dented, but remained fully functional.

He raised his living rifle, a scarab-like creature that was attached to his armor and used electromagnetism to launch small steel slugs at enemies.

Each slug that passed through was unable to hurt him, though his body became more solid, it still lacked organs or blood.

At most it displaced his body by breaking through the shell that kept his gaseous form together, but still, any damage was purely cosmetic.

“Pierce, pierce, pierce.”

His attempts failed over and over, hitting with enough force to leave small dents which the shifting armor healed in moments, leaving Fomoria in a stalemate.

He thought about what else he could do, so he thrust his hand into the soldier’s chest, passing through and trying to drain the armor.

But he failed at that too.

So long as the golem armor was technically a living being, Fomoria would be unable to drain it of its power, though any spells that it used would be drained of their mana.

As a last ditch effort, he put his hand through the chest of the man again, trying to cast pierce directly into his heart, but the… it wasn’t mana, energy, that he was made from just got stuck on the armor without passing through.

Dejected, Fomoria returned to the hill.

“I can’t even kill a soldier. My piercing spell just knocked the soldier over without hurting him.

I was able to hurt the Golden.”

Sepul shook his head.

“Of course. You’ve seen what they wear for armor, have you not? A chest piece, an armored skirt, maybe a helmet, but the rest is enchanted cloth. They kill most things before their defenses become a problem.

What exactly can you do?”

“When spells are fired through me, they come out stronger. And I can eat enemy spells. For the physical ones, they fall apart, lose their speed and momentum.”

“I’m not comfortable shooting you with anything, so-”

“Let me put a warspell through your chest. The nearest artillery cannon is not far from us.”

“Amber, this is reckless even for you. We need to-”

“Quiet. Amber, I accept.”

“Fomoria, don’t-”

“I am not arguing, I’ve thought this through, and I am going along with her plan. If I lack the stopping power I had before to the point where I cannot even kill a single armored soldier, I have no place on a battlefield.”

He knew that he wasn’t going to argue with him, his grandson was too hard headed for that, especially as he was now.

The facility didn’t know where the enemies were, just that a shadow had appeared suddenly, failed to kill a soldier, and then left.

On the nearby snow dune, Amber was charging a spiral warspell, fire element.

Though it would be weakened by the conditions it was being cast in, if she hit it just right, the shells of the cannon would explode with far more force than anything she could quickly cast, and for far less mana.

Her time learning how to be a proper warmage wasn't wasted.

As the fire passed through Fomoria, it blackened, and when it struck the bastion, it erupted in flames, followed by a second, much larger explosion.

The spider cannon screamed as it tried to scuttle away from the fire, but it was too late, its softer inner chitin was torn apart by the shell it was holding inside of itself.

This seemed very familiar to Fomoria, the living weapons he had seen so far were almost comforting to him.

A strange connection was drawn, and he remembered rolling balls of snow with his siblings to make figures.

They didn’t get very heavy snowfall where he was raised, so they weren’t more than a foot tall.

He would find sticks for arms, and mud for eyes, since their father didn’t want them wasting charcoal.

Without thought, he began moving his hands as if rolling the snow, and it reacted to him, making small round men that looked at him with eyes of clear ice.

It made him sad, that these things were hardly able to even walk, as though they were newborns, but surely they couldn’t be, they were just some trick that would fall apart when he left.

He was death, everywhere he had ever gone was proof of that.

“COME ON, KEEP THEIR SPELLS OFF US IF YOU CAN.”

He wasn’t part of the plans, so they wouldn’t be thrown off if he wasn’t useful, but he had to come along to prove his worth in this new form.

The dozen snow people left behind waved at him before wandering off.

They moved with fury, or rather, Sepul and Amber did, Zella plunged into the ground.

He thought it odd, but then at the collapsed wall a large mammoth-like monster climbed over and was torn in half by a suddenly appearing root.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Naturally, the enemy forces focused on the collapsed segment of the wall, and a massive beam of void came through once they saw the first of their attackers fly through.

Sepul expected this, since he sensed the pulling of the dark mana, and put up a wedge of radiance that would split the spell; he wanted to save his space bending magic just in case.

But, Fomoria simply stood in the way and put forth several arms, absorbing the attack with seemingly no strain.

He tried to pierce the enemy soldiers armor again, but still found it no more effective than before.

It boggled his mind that he held so much power within himself, but was hardly able to unleash anything.

Still, he found a use.

Fomoria turned around and flashed a toothy smile.

“I am your shield and focus. Don’t fight around me, I’m faster than anything you can do. Just fight.”

Sepul and Amber both held the same devilish smirk.

This was the Fomoria that they wanted to watch their backs.

They quickly developed a rhythm as they razed the facility to the ground.

Fomoria moved in front of any spells they cast to boost their power, and anything mana reliant was absorbed by him.

Zella with her roots was able to crush the enemy forces much more easily by only needing to find and destroy the ones that used heavy ordinance that couldn’t be simply drained.

Even the magnetic scarab rifles weren’t fast enough to make it past Fomoria.

In all, they were stronger by a third with him there.

“THAT’S THE KIND OF FUCKING FIGHT I WANT, EAT SHIT YOU LICH FUCKER.”

Sepul laughed at Amber’s victory cries.

“We need to clear out before he has a chance to realize where we are and launch an attack somewhere else.”

“Yes, it would be terrible if I realized where you were.”

Fomoria’s form grew tenfold with rage and turned to a mass of fire without any discernible features aside from his eyes.

“I am impressed that you came back so quickly. But not surprised, you were always-”

Fomoria breathed fire at Xol, to no effect.

Yet the others just grouped up and remained ready to defend themselves after they placed a call to Marigold.

If Xol so much as began to cast a spell at them, she’d be there.

“So, you can’t even use your magic.”

“I WILL MELT MY FLESH FROM YOUR BONES AND DRINK YOU.”

“There really isn’t any need for that.”

Fomoria tried to slam his hands down, but he wasn’t a fully physical entity, and he simply phased through Xol.

After a few minutes, Xol got tired of it and punched Fomoria in the chest, sending him flying back.

He looked down at his body and wondered how.

It wasn’t like Marigold, who touched him, but he felt nothing, this hurt.

“Oh, you look shocked. I might as well just say it. Aura. You are something, not mana, not mind, not soul.

Aura is life energy, something far more… universal. I wonder if my mental spells work on you as well?”

Xol lifted his hand to focus himself and then recoiled in pain before fleeing.

The group let out a sigh of relief that they didn’t need to fight against him again.

“NOT ONE OF YOU FOUGHT BESIDE ME.”

“Calm yourself. Killing Xol is nothing but wasted effort. He can move to another body that ends up just as powerful in a matter of hours. He knows it, we know it. Now, what did you do to him?”

“I felt him reach into my memories, so I fought him there.”

“That explains almost less than nothing at all.”

“He was in my head, so I tore him apart. It is my head, I am the master.”

Sepul thought for a few minutes; Fomoria calmed back down to a human shape and size.

“It’s what he said. You are not mana, you aren’t a mind, and you aren’t a soul.

We haven’t really figured out what you are, but I have another theory.

You are an entity without any division. It’s very possible that you are as strong as you were before, but you just lack the physical body to take advantage of that fact. But in your mind, there isn’t a difference between the physical and the mental, so you are at your peak inside of there. You can walk through the world faster than what most people could teleport and without any downtime because you are walking through both worlds at the same time, we already know this. You were also able to make contact with The Darkness despite her not really being there.”

“That doesn’t tell me what I am. I’m still just a thing.”

“It tells us a great deal actually. I think we can get a step closer by talking with the gods and figuring out how to confirm this. In the meanwhile, you saved us from having to fight against Xol again, meaning we’ve got the energy to rest.”

“You don’t need energy to rest.”

“Resting when you’ve worn yourself ragged is not the same as being tired and waking up well rested.

Zella, Amber, we’re going back to New Kor.”

“Is that what you are calling the land around The Spire?”

“I am. It sounds better than the land around The Spire. We don’t live in the spire itself, we’re just using it as an anchor until the day comes when we can drop the camp down to the surface and turn it into a proper city.”

Each of the champions returned with their own gate, other than Zella, who had to use the void gate because New Kor was above the ground.

Fomoria walked, arriving nearly as they did.

He knocked on the door, but it wasn’t latched, and he couldn’t knock anyway.

He stepped inside, finding it empty of decorations, whatever she had salvaged from Kor.

Instead of his wife, he found Marigold.

“She’s gone. I’m sorry that it ended this way.”

He just froze there for a while.

“It was for the best.”

Fomoria tried to close the door and leave, but Marigold stopped him.

“You want to talk about this.”

“No, I don’t think that I do.”

“Don’t you at least want to know what her last message to you was?”

Marigold held a letter in her hands, and Fomoria reached for it before remembering that he couldn’t even hold it.

“Read it to me.”

“Come in.”

She closed the door behind them.

“I need to preface this by saying that she was still very upset about Liat, and-”

His hands twitched with anger and the flames inside of him leapt from his mouth.

“I have no need for a softened blow.”

Marigold took a deep breath and prepared herself.

“Dear Fomoria, I thought that I might be able to stay, to try to love you even as you are.

But I was blind to what you are. You will always choose to fight, to get something that you want, and you will always ignore what you have. Nothing is ever enough, you just keep reaching for more.

Once I loved that about you, that you had ambition, but I realized that I was your trophy, not your wife, that you need somebody to be there for you so you can pretend that you truly love something other than avarice.

You wanted a child, a legacy, an object, but I couldn’t give that to you.

You lied to me every day from when we first had problems to the day when I denied being impregnated and kept in a tank just to have your child. It was eating you up inside, and no matter how many times you tried telling me that I was enough, I felt it each day, you were forcing yourself to be closer to me and accept it.

Then you died, and I couldn’t understand, then I heard what you were trying to do, and it all made sense.

You would rather fight a god than accept anything about the way the world works.

You aren’t ambitious, you are stupid, prideful, and angry.

You are a child, you never grew up. When you see something that you want, you take it, then justify yourself afterwards.

I thought it was romantic when you said that you would destroy the world for your family, but now I see that you weren’t being hyperbolic at all, you have done it, you doomed the world, killed my sister, because you couldn’t get what you wanted.

You look at so many people like family, you say that blood doesn’t matter, but you ruined everything because you couldn’t bear the idea of not being allowed to have your perfect family with a child born from both of us.

Never come to see me, never darken my doorstep, I never want to be around someone like you again.”

Marigold folded the letter up.

“I’m sure she doesn’t mean it. She’s upset that you left to fight, leaving her alone again.”

“I can help with whatever is needed. Just assign me someone who has an amulet to relay messages.”

“That’s it? You aren’t going to try to say anything?”

“She’s right. There, I said something. Send me wherever we have forces stationed so I can give them the mark.”

“You know that it’s not healthy to bottle things up.”

“I do know that. But I don’t have the luxury of processing that. Xol is my fault, I doomed the world so I could get her pregnant, whatever else happened along the way be damned. I suspected that there was something else happening, but I ignored it because I was more interested in the power of having a Godtouched body, of being powerful enough that I could force a deal with Aarde.

Don’t bother with me, I’m just as much of a selfish piece of shit as she said.”

“If you were selfish, you wouldn’t have-”

“I am driven by trying to correct my mistakes by solving other people's problems.

This conversation is over. If I fall apart, it will not be a moment before I sunder Xol’s mind, body, and soul.”

She tried to put up an array to stop him, but it failed.

Whatever he was, he was hard to pin down.

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

The small snow creatures made of three balls and ice found themselves confused on what to do, or what they were.

So they just went too and fro, picking apart anything they could find to gain knowledge.

There was something, a voice, it told them that they existed to exist.

They didn’t know what that meant, but they would exist as best they could.

Being made of balls and rolling around was awkward.

The rabbit they took apart had the stuff inside that wasn’t ice, so they made their own.

Their maker had arms, and a head, but not legs.

So they made their skeletons, shaped their bodies around them, but then it was hard to walk without feet.

Their maker floated, so they should do it too.

It took some time, but they began moving the snow into little tornadoes to support their bodies.