Marigold collapsed, Aarde left her body.

Amber and Sepul, who pulled her from the building after the first attack by Aarde, rushed in to grab her.

“WHERE IS HE, WHERE IS MY GRANDSON?”

He violently shook her until Amber dragged him off of her.

“SHE’S HURT, AND SHE CAN’T ANSWER UNLESS YOU HEAL HER.”

She sensed that Sepul still wasn’t thinking clearly, so she slapped him, and he returned the action, sending her crashing into the ground.

The sight of her body piecing itself back together much like Fomoria did brought him back to his senses.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“HELP MARIGOLD, I’M FINE.”

She was hurt, but Aarde wasn’t stupid, he didn’t push her limits beyond sense.

In a few hours, she was awake again.

And so Sepul questioned her again.

“Where is my grandson?”

“Sepul-”

“Answer me.”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“Aarde, tell me now.”

“That’s not what I meant. I know what Aarde did, but I don’t know where exactly Fomoria went.

He sent him into space, as he has done for a few select Fae in the past. For the first seven years, Aarde knew the exact path, but after that he could crash into a planet or a sun or anything else that has a manasphere. He’s not likely to die, but we shouldn’t expect to see him for a long while.”

“Bring him back.”

“You know that I can’t, and even if Aarde wanted to, he couldn’t. His reach ends not far from the manasphere. Fomoria was dangerous and unpredictable. We-”

Sepul wrapped his hands around her neck and began to squeeze.

Amber was in the room, but just watched.

Either Sepul stopped or he didn’t, she didn’t care for a moment.

But as Marigold flailed against him, still weak from Aarde; Amber couldn’t let it happen.

“Let her go.”

“She murdered your brother, my grandson. I failed him, I failed my family again.”

Seeing the tears rolling down his face, she almost reconsidered, but she needed her.

“Knowing him, he probably hit something Aarde missed and he’s already figuring out how to fly back here riding a comet. If there is anyone to hit some impossible chance and live, it’s him.

I know that what happened was fucked, but we still need Marigold to fight Xol.”

Marigold coughed as she tried to catch her breath.

Two shadows came out of the corner.

“A shame, I hoped to be allowed to fight us.”

“Sepul would kick your shit in Coroach; I’d love to tear your heart out, Anon.”

“My, what brings out so much anger?”

“I’m not going to go along with your provocations, bitch.”

Marigold took one more big breath.

“Amber, these is no need for any of this, we shouldn’t be at each other’s throats.”

“Whatever the fuck happened between you two, this bullshit.”

She took a deep breath.

“He was back, he was here, and you shot him into fucking space because Aarde had their ego bruised.”

One of Marigold’s eyes turned golden.

“Mind yourself, Champion of Darkness.”

“You kill me, you lose my army, you lose Sepul, you lose Harlan, you lose Zella.

I hope that Life lets me have a view of your godly power being raped to death by Xol before she tears my soul apart and devours it.”

Aarde was taken aback, but he could see the number of timelines where he beat Xol shrunk down considerably if he killed Amber, even if he found someone else to become the new Champion of Darkness.

He did not answer back, he simply retreated from Marigold’s body.

“What is wrong with you? All of you? Can’t you look at the bigger picture here? Xol is going to cripple Aarde and we’ll be left to fend for ourselves if he does.”

“I think we’re been fending for ourselves from the start. You’ve apparently been so out of work for decade over a decade that you’ve been spending nearly every day as a fucking counsoler and yet failed to notice that your husband had the time to set up everything in my brother’s life and that he was going to betray him.

What has Aarde actually done for any of us in who knows how long? The number of Marked we have is way below what we should’ve had because they threw a tantrum and threw my brother into the fucking sky.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Outside of the millions of Cerast, we’ve got maybe 20,000 other soldiers bearing the mark.

I’ve got people who had been waiting for the mark but couldn’t get it because they were involved in active missions. Now those rather elite soldiers can’t get it because of Aarde. So fuck off, don’t give me any shit about what’s wrong with me or any of us.”

A week passed, and Marigold hardly shared a conversation with any of her fellow champions that didn’t involve her trying to rebuild their relationships, and never did she get even an inch.

Still, none of them did anything to make the war go worse, they kept that level of professionalism.

“The marshall here says dragons are gathering, but no other units. Either Xol intends to teleport them in, the dragons are just there for hit and runs, or they are shedding scales to grow larger. Zella, anything on that last one?”

“Anu says that wyverns have long gathered there to rub against the particularly hard rocks in the valley.

It’s likely that they are simply there for shedding.”

“It’s a pretty thin place at the top, nearly a cave. Collapse it on their heads.”

“Anu says that we shouldn’t do that, because they would simply go to another location.”

“That’s the plan. Sepul can drop a rock from higher than they can see if it’s an open air location and they won’t all get out of the blast radius, but not here. Then we move to the next spot, and the next one. Either they scatter, or they get close together. We hunt them down one by one, or they get taken out in one fell swoop.”

“If they don’t shed their scales, they’ll get more and more agitated, and too many dragons in one spot is going to result in a lack of food, they’ll devour everything and everyone around them if they get hungry enough. The effects on the environment and the towns and villages-”

“We don’t have the luxury of fighting a nice war. I’ll wipe every godsdamned wyvern and dragon from the face of Aarde if I have to. I’ll poison their water sources, trap their nests, blast their mountains, turn Eolgi loose on them.”

“Amber, I think that you’re-”

“Upset? Angry? No, not at all. My brother got shot into space and might not be back for my hundredth birthday. Or maybe Xol takes over, and we all get turned into puppets for his perfect world. I’m feeling fucking fantastic.”

“Anu-”

“Anu can get hogfucked. All of the gods can, this is my war now.

Sepul, I’ve got Sandsea stonecutters preparing rocks and carving the runes into them. Whenever I tell you to hit a target, I don't want any arguments, you drop it where I say when I say it.”

“Very well.”

Zella easily moved to the valley and closed it.

Anu thought to protest, but they had been trying to kill Xol for six months without success, so she decided to at least try Amber’s plan.

In the next six weeks, the dragon population was cut in half, the wyverns down to third.

Sepul laid waste to mountains, valleys, lakes, forests, day and night.

But for the ones that scattered, once Amber started offering a bounty of gold, food, even citizenship, the heads rolled in. Anu hated to see the biodiversity lowered as it had, but she couldn’t argue that it was working.

Killing the dragons meant that every city under Xol’s command was conquered far more easily, and also due in no small part to the Cerast, who could descend on the cities fully armored and strike with great precision.

They had him really on the back foot, they weren’t losing any land, but they also hadn’t yet gained anything, returning to a status quo at best.

“Anu would like you to stop the dragon hunts.”

“I’m not going to rescind the bounty, but I’ll stop wiping out the breeding grounds and other gathering spots.

We’re tracking the remaining ones and using them to get reinforcements to counter them before they are seen on a battlefield.”

Amber was looking at a large globe that floated in the middle of her war room.

“What’s that?”

“A world map. The Darkness gave it to me since we don’t have a proper world table.”

“I hope you didn’t-”

“No strings attached. She’s not exactly happy about what Aarde did and she knows I’m going to need something like this.”

She swiped it, then stopped, grabbing hold of a large point sticking up.

“This volcano, is it active?”

Zella closed her eyes for a moment.

“She isn’t going to answer until she knows why.”

“Xol has six cities in the area, many towns, all of them are factories or mining towns. He’s making more and more mechanical threats, but they’ve taken time to set up. We could hit the six of them, but setting off the volcano would bury these four under magma, and the other two would probably die due to the poisonous air.”

Zella asked again, and got her answer, but hesitated to give it.

“What about the civilian population?”

“They’re all being mind controlled by spinal spiders, no towers in the entire area since they’re cities.

Anyone too young or weak to work got moved out already, don’t worry about it.”

“I just think that-”

“We don’t have an unlimited number of people who can extract the spiders and heal the people. Most of them are so far out that the Fomorian Empire has been nothing but a name, they have no loyalty. If he was here… We don’t have the time to bother. We’ll wipe them off the map like the rest.”

“Not like the rest. These aren’t secret factories out in the wilds, you’re talking about-”

“I know exactly what I’m talking about. Either we take those factories out, or we keep losing men to the new guns and vehicles that we’re seeing. Enemy workers vs my soldiers isn’t even a question.”

Zella questioned, but Anu told her to say it.

“The volcano is active.”

Zella moved to the globe and tapped, trying to make it zoom in.

“Like this. Pinch your fingers, then expand out. Do the opposite to zoom back out.”

“Oh.”

It was kinda fun.

“Here, here, and here, these are major junctions. Seal them off with earth magic and the volcano will build up magma. Anu says the peak will be reached in 12 hours.”

“Perfect. That gives my men time to set charges around the volcano itself. When it’s ready to overflow, we’ll pop it and flood the area with lava.”

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

Xol went to a certain cliff.

“You should return to the house.”

“Not until Cu is finished. There is a certain magic that I need, and this place is where I find it.”

“Your crows can finish it without you.”

“That would be quite unfair to them.”

Xol slammed down his staff.

“There are things that you could do to help me rather than sitting here.”

“Oh? And what might that be?”

“I can’t get into Blackship.”

“The great and might Xol, brought low by a simple barrier?”

“Whatever it is, it isn’t powered by anything from Aarde, and when I was nearly through, everything changed and put me back to the start. Some new energy source being used, an energy recalibration, I don’t know. Two months of work just turned to dust.

I need another mind, another perspective.”

“Why not ask your wife, or better, Fomoria. Oh, right.”

“I can put you back in your cage, Fae.”

“You are still just as foreign as any of us, Fae.”

“I’ve had enough of your nonchalance, they’ve changed their tactics, they’ve thrown caution to the wind, they’ve stopped trying for capture and have turned to simple razings.”

“I imagine Fomoria’s influence?”

“No, Amber, his sister. She’s far more brutal than I expected, but I don’t know why she’s leading as she is now. I thought she was a figurehead being used by Marigold, but there was a sudden shift.”

“What has Fomoria been doing since we last saw him?”

“There was an attack on New Kor by somebody other than me, and my spies haven’t seen anything since.”

“That is quite odd. He will be ready in six days, after that, I can go to Blackship and help you find a way to our parasite.”