Amber stood, full of new power from the pillar of darkness around her, and then The Darkness handed her a new sword.

Time yet stood still.

“What’s this?”

“A gift. I had to argue quite harshly with Coronach to make him give it up.”

The moment Amber took hold of the plain looking broadsword, she felt invigorated, and the grip shifted slightly.

It was perfectly balanced, perfectly clean, not a knick a scratch or a dent, as though it was freshly forged.

But her new senses told her that despite all appearances, it was more ancient than anything she had ever touched before.

“Is this Durandal?”

“With Roland gone, I had it recovered. Losing such an artifact would be a terrible shame.

Now, I’ve influenced this fight enough.”

Time rushed to start again, and Amber suddenly jumped to the side, dodging the dragon fire;

Durandal didn’t like that.

It didn’t speak, but she could feel her instincts being hijacked.

They weren’t words at first, just ideas, thoughts, like when she got an idea that she could only chaulk up to being the will of Mana.

She stabbed the blade into the ground and spun around straight at the dragon, it shifting from sharp to dull and back to facilitate the action.

It wanted a head, and she agreed.

When they rushed forward at it, the world seemed to slow, the sword felt perfect in the hand, indescribably made for her yet predating the newest human race on Aarde, as though across the cosmos, everything happened to bring this moment to fruition, to bring her sword to her.

She reached it in a few strides, and when it tried to bite her with a mouthful of fire, she didn’t dodge away to try some trick, she jumped right at it, and when it tried to crane its neck she made footholds in the air and jumped down, cleaving its head cleanly at the base of the skull.

She wanted a trophy made from it once the battle was done.

But it wasn’t over yet, and so she ran to join another fight.

She didn’t dance through the battlefield, she wasn’t some dainty flower, she was a warrior.

She hacked and sliced and punched and kicked and used every trick and technique, martial and aura, that she knew, and each of the soldiers that she cut down stayed down.

Durandal didn’t need to know how the magic worked that pieced them together, it just knew that there was some critical spot which would kill its enemy, some mass of energy that felt off; the spinal spiders.

Many months later, far from that battlefield, Xol teleported back to his home and sat on the couch.

He was sweating, exhausted.

“My, what did you do?”

“Now… is not… the time… Nemain…”

“The boy is back, isn’t it?”

He looked at her with fury, but didn’t reply, instead he just waited for his energy to return to him.

And once it had, she wanted her answer.

“Well?”

“It was him, I’m certain of that. The question is how.”

“He’s Fomoria, of course he came back. The question is now why you lost.”

“I thought that my best bet to put him back down was to attack his mind, lobotomize him.”

“But he shoved the needle back in your eye.”

“He didn’t even have a mental signature. He didn’t have any signs of any defenses. Yet my attacks on his mind and soul were entirely repelled, reflected back at me like they were nothing.”

“He is a force of will, it’s always been his best trait.”

“I wish his best trait was instant recovery and a limitless pool of mana.”

“You can’t expect a boy not 20 years of age to have a wealth of mana like you’re eons of building.”

She smiled, and Xol knew she was going to insult him for a while.

“Perhaps you should’ve just worked with him instead of betraying him.”

As Nemain mocked her partner, Fomoria went to Amber’s room.

He heard her talking to someone, but when he stepped inside, she was alone, polishing her sword in her underwear.

“You did good.”

“Sepul said you should rest.”

“I’m getting ready for a bath, but it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t clean him first.”

He looked at the blade, it was nice, simple.

“It’s a nice blade.”

She smirked and shook her head.

“He is.”

“Is it a living weapon?”

“No. Did you need something?”

He looked around the room.

“One bed… but it’s small…. Something is missing. Someone… Velvet? Where is Velvet?”

She didn’t stop moving her hand up and down the blade with the cloth.

It was already a mirror sheen, but she just kept going in silence.

“When it all went down, Xol captured people around us, used them for leverage.

He tried to get me to stop getting involved, told me that Velvet and I could just live a peaceful life.

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When I said no, he put his hand through his heart and reduced him to dust.”

He sat on the bed with her.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t-”

“You want to hear something fucked up? The last thing he said to me was that I should follow my heart.

Velvet was a man that I loved well enough to live with, to fuck, maybe even marry and have kids, but I don’t think I loved him a tenth as much as he loved me. I stopped crying after a day, stopped seeing him in my dreams after a week. Three months later, I don’t think about him.”

Fomoria took a deep breath and shoved all that anger back inside of him. Velvet was a friend, a good friend, someone else that Xol took from him.

“But the really fucked up part is that sometimes when I’m out there on the battlefield, I wish you were by my side.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

Amber looked at her reflection with disgust and put the blade back in its sheath before tossing it across the room small to her desk.

“Where’s Yara?”

“She went with her mother. For a time.”

It wasn't technically a lie, but for a time really meant for the rest of her time on Aarde.

“Do you sleep?”

“I’ve not done so yet.”

“Cool. If I ever want to talk, can I come to your room whenever I want?”

“I haven’t claimed a room yet.”

“The one next to mine is empty.”

“Very well then.”

Amber got up from the bed and stretched with her towel slung over her shoulder.

“I’m gonna hit the bath, then get some sleep, might not get through the night, so be ready for me to talk your ear off.”

Something was off, but without his empathy, he didn’t know exactly what it was.

Marigold searched all over New Kor for him, and eventually found him sitting on the edge of the island, watching the monsters fly by.

“I’ve gathered up some people who want the mark, soldiers, craftsmen, each of different races.

You are lucky that the ones you’ve marked so far have shown no negative side effects, but they don’t have pacts. It’s possible that beastkin can’t take it, and I need to know before I start changing strategy based on that mark. We also need to know if you can only mark a certain number of people in a day. If so, we’re going to be making lists of who would be best to get it first.”

She sat at the edge with him.

“I know it’s hard to come back, to be thrust into this entire mess. But-”

“Did you find an assistant for me?”

“You can’t just bottle this all up.”

“I can and will. Why can’t Aarde just kill Xol? Now that he’s of this world, surely there should be something that can be done.”

“Aarde can’t just stop the heart of anyone who they want, he’s still beholden to Life, and she doesn’t want gods to just wipe out all life on them if they are turned against their people. Even if he did, Xol stores his other bodies inside of small worlds, places we can’t get access to. Ironically, we would’ve never found out how to break into the ones the Fae had without him, and he used that information to bulk up his defenses, waiting to activate them until we tried to force our way in. All we can do is keep killing him when he actively resists us and work out how to make it finally stick. Aarde or any of the gods fighting him directly would result in nothing but desolation wherever they end up fighting. At least with you, there was a chance that we could’ve killed all of your bodies.”

“Yes, I suppose. Assistant?”

“Phoebe.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Yes, the young girl, she wanted me to be her teacher.”

“Good, you remember her. She’ll be there to answer calls for you since you’ve yet to show any ability to use the communicators. If you are going somewhere, tell her, and she can find her way to you. If you leave the camp, please do so with Amber or someone else who can call back to The Spire.”

“Where are the people gathered?”

“Inside of The Spire in the… foyer? Lobby? The largest room that makes up the majority of the first floor.”

“It’s just an empty room that can be changed depending on what is needed. Presently, I suppose one could call it a chamber of anointment.”

“One shouldn’t however. Gods tend to get nervous when undying beings begin speaking about themselves or their powers as if they were divine.”

He stopped himself from replying back.

Was a god not just a mass of undying energy that made more than it used.

So far as he was concerned, he met the requirements for a god.

He lacked a body.

He seemingly made energy from nothing at all.

And he was presently impotent against the thing that he really wanted to destroy.

The main difference in his mind was that he didn’t think that he was above reproach.

He touched people of the different races, and none rejected the mark, nor did he find himself in any way fatigued by granting it.

One of them, a pale newt person… Plest? Yes, a pale Plest. She came up to him after the ceremony.

“Do you remember me?”

He cocked his head to the side, and noticed that he did, so he straightened himself out again.

“You are Nana, yes? You were to be one of my students. No… yes? I taught you, but you were supposed to go away to the academy.”

“We’re away for the summer, but I’ve been living inside of The Veil. Marigold brought us here.”

“Us?”

Two others came up to him, led by Phoebe, who then walked away with a young boy.

“Son, it’s-”

“Been a while.”

“Sorry it’s taken us so long to visit. Your mother and I… we were worried about being used against you.

Is Amber around?”

Aida gained a fierce look.

“Probably avoiding us still. Who does she think she is just ignoring us for months on end while she risks her life? Can't the gods do something about that bag of bones? You know, I never liked him from the first moment I saw him. You can’t trust a man without skin.”

“Mom, how have you been? And… are we missing somebody?”

“James went with the little girl you have as an assistant. You know, you need somebody older. I just-”

“James… Oh, right.”

Her sharp eyes were now directed at him.

“You forgot about your little brother? I-”

His father put his hand up, signaling her to calm down.

“Honey, he’s not got all of his memories back. How much did he ever interact with James even before he ended up out here?”

Even though they were in his defense, his father’s words stung much more than his mother’s.

“That’s not the point. He’s your brother, he’s family.”

“He’s a burden that I passed off to ease my guilt because his brother died under my watch.”

“She said that you were being mopey and mean. I just didn’t think you would be so open about that.”

“Mom, I’m really not in the mood.”

“That’s why you need to hear this. If you won’t talk with Marigold, you need to talk with us.”

Fomoria laughed loudly.

“Oh, so that’s why she’s done this. It’s best not to get mixed up in whatever this is. You-”

“Son, don’t do that. Your mother and I are worried. We heard that you died, then we heard you’d be back anyway, that Xol stole your body and soul. You’ve always been mixed up, since you were 11 at least, and you’ve always needed to just talk out your problems.”

His laughing grew louder.

“And what good has that really done? I’ve committed genocide, a race wiped from the world forever, a virus of my creation. And despite everything, what have I gotten out of it? My wife is gone, my son is locked away on an island alongside my birth mother to protect them from the man who stole my life.My empire has all but collapsed. I don’t even have a body anymore.

I talked things out with everyone, and when I did, I got better before I got much worse, always one step forward two steps back. In fact, it was talking with Xol that convinced me that I could get the one thing that the gods refused to even acknowledge that they were denying me.

Even now, this talk right here is to bend me to the will of those same gods who told me to go fuck myself.”

“It can’t be all bad, you-”

“You have no idea. You truly can’t, because you are ignorant. I wish that I could be that way, that I could just not know what I do. But I do know, I understand more than ever and I hate more than ever.

I’m not going to have some conversation about any of this, not now, maybe not ever. I’m going to just keep it inside, and then probably go insane, but not before I peel my own flesh from my stolen bones, not before I get my vengeance.”

Fomoria stepped once and he was gone.

Marigold found him, not through any tracking, but just by knowing him.

He was there, looking at the ruined garden of the home that was once his.

“You loved this place. It was your mansion, it was your capital.”

“If you try to use my family against me-”

“Against you? The only person you are fighting is yourself. But fine, you want to pretend that you’re fine, sure, let’s go through that. And when you break down, I’ll be here waiting. I’m not going to say I told you so when it happens, I’m going to say that I wish we didn’t have to do this, that you just faced what is eating you up instead of getting angry and throwing a tantrum.”

“I noticed something, you didn’t bring any Cerast or Goliaths.”

“By and large the Goliaths sided with Nemain, cutting us off from them outside of a few outliers like Dantevius who doesn’t seem to do anything. As for the Cerast, they aren’t a prime species, they are advanced animals. We don’t know the what the ramifications of-”

And he was gone, again.

This time, she didn’t have to guess for a second about where Fomoria went.