Fomoria entered the captain’s quarters, the place that was now his room, and found Jenny’s proxy standing there.

“I hate humanity. They are parasites. They believe themselves to be the highest lifeforms, but their existence can only create for the sake of destruction. Every area they visit is scarred, left unrecognizable for the natural beauty that once existed.”

“It’s because they must grow, or rather, they believe they must. There is never thought put into the farthest points in time, it’s always in a human timescale. What can I get done in my 20s, the peak of my youth? What can I get done in my 60s, before my mind becomes addled by age? What is the mark that I can leave on this world? In a hundred years, will anyone but my children, and my children's children, remember me?

Ego, the desire to plant themselves, that is what causes an uprooting of all around them.”

“How are my Cast?”

“Controlling a team is easy. They listen, they quickly grasp my concepts, and they implement them.

What was that before?”

“I was wondering how you would react to hearing me state that opinion. What about immortals? People who have no time limit?”

“They become disconnected from humanity, good or bad. They need anchors, becoming reliant on them.

Once they are gone, they become listless, throwing themselves into projects that mean nothing.

Can we return to the subject of me building your new army?”

“You told me those words weeks ago, that you were a passionate person. Back on earth, we might call that something else.”

He could feel eyes on him from the corners of the room.

“My scope of reference is very small. It would be wrong of me to make a snap judgment about your mental health. My Cast are healed then?”

“The virus is cured. We went with the simple approach of creating a secondary virus that operates in complete reverse, and then we put that in the seed of your Cast. If they ever catch the virus, the secondary one will counter it.”

“Is that the simple way in your eyes?”

“It will actively fight and kill other things to keep the victim healthy until the exact moment it needs to activate. It also means that only the new Cast will be healed, the rest will die just the same.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, letting blue light pass through them and then turn red.

“You are incapable of healing those who are already infected?”

“There was once a time that I had a vaccine being developed alongside the virus.

But when I decided that I would actually make it, I knew that there was no going back, there was no reason to bother. I also believed that there was a chance that the remaining Fingers and Hand would attack with their full force, and I would not allow the Cast to survive if they did.”

She removed the lights she was using for dramatic effect.

“You are very vengeful.”

“Yes. But think about why I made that choice. Listen, if you keep browbeating me about genocide, this isn’t going to be a very fruitful relationship. I’m not sorry, and I won’t ever be.”

“Then I’m not sorry about whatever they might’ve done that made you feel that way.”

“I’ve worked with many people I’ve hated from the bottom of my heart.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Jenny melded back into the wall and monitored Fomoria, who just stood there in the center of the room, still as a statue.

Who does she think she is? He thought to himself.

Who does he think he is? She thought to herself.

They’d been on the same side for weeks, but they had been arguing and making snide remarks the entire time.

She tries to pick his brain, and then he becomes offended at the idea of her understanding him.

He tries to keep purely cold professionalism, and she becomes offended that he refuses to do anything beyond his work for her.

Jenny returned after four hours.

“What are you doing? Are you sleeping?”

“I don’t sleep. I’m trying to manually sort my short and long term memories.”

“Oh? Is that normal?”

“I’m not sure I’m doing it at all.”

“How are you doing it?”

“I’m trying to think about my mind as a kingdom. The capital is me, and the things I hold most dear are within its walls. Inside of the royal vaults are the wealth of knowledge that I have, and each holds different things.”

He outstretched his hand and made a gesture like he was unlocking a door.

“Here, I will hold my runes and sigils. Here, my recipes. So on and so forth.”

“Is it working?”

“I don’t know. I feel like it isn’t.”

“The brain is the physical anchor for the mind, it must be terribly difficult for whatever you are, lacking any organs, to process things.”

“I was awake for six months, wandering, but I hardly remember a thing of it. I still don’t feel like my name fits me.”

“On a deeper level, perhaps it doesn’t. You and Xol swapped souls, and perhaps your soul is etched with a true name.”

“He was Fae, but not a magical creature. I don’t know if he had a true name.”

“Ah, but you are magical, and your little swap twisted his soul into something new. Perhaps if you etched your name into your being, it would clear up some of your confusion. Should we ask Baba Yaga about the possibility of giving you a true form?”

“Perhaps.”

Naturally, Jenny went on her own, asked, gave the crone what she wanted, and then brought Fomoria.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“So then, demon, you want a true form? Are you aware of what that is going to take?”

“Not at all.”

“First, you need to decide how you want to be for the rest of eternity, or however long you live.”

“Fae can’t die out here.”

“Technically true. Practically, death is a real threat. When we die, when our forms are sundered, we lose a little bit of ourself. It comes back in time, but until we are whole, we aren’t really the same people. Keep one of us dead long enough, or keep killing them over and over, and we lose our self of self. Maybe we never really come back exactly how we were, but I suppose it isn’t exactly the same as dying back on Earth.

There, we die, someone else takes up the mantle. I’m the fourth Baba Yaga, or I’m the thousandth.

Once I became myself, I was just me. Maybe I’m exactly the same with no sense of discontinuity, or maybe the idea of Baba Yaga comes directly from me, and I’m the original. I remember being beaten before, but I don’t remember dying. Yet, why would I be beaten and then left alive?”

“Interesting, but pointless. We came so you could explain how Fomoria might gain form once more. Perhaps if he had a physical body, things like memories and magic would be easier for him. A lacking central nervous system certainly can’t be pleasant.”

“The second step, and this is the most important one, is to enter a body, it doesn't matter what it is made from, living or dead, but it must match your shape. Tiamat may never be a woman, her body must be that of a dragon. Shapeshifting afterwards is fine, but the original shape must be met.”

“And how do I enter a body?”

“What do you mean?”

“The actual process of it.”

She shrugged.

“You just do it. You’ll feel it.”

Fomoria began to float away.

“Get back here. Witch, you will properly explain.”

“There is nothing to explain. It’s like asking how to be born.”

She cackled and sat back against the glass of her cell.

“There is nothing more to be gained from speaking with her. I thought someone like you would’ve realized sooner that you need lawyers when handling them.”

After they left, Jenny led him down a different hallway.

“I would’ve liked to have gotten more answers. It’s not finished, but I was building a body for you.”

“And why would you make one without an understanding of how to put me in it?”

“I had hoped we wouldn’t run into this rather awkward situation. I was going to have it be a surprise.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

“I would like you to think of our time as more than just boss and worker.”

“You are not my boss.”

“Of course. My mistake. But I expect that two people working side by side might make us friends.”

“For the last three years of my life, give or take, I’ve been butchering my way through your empire.”

She moved in front of him.

“I have personally known you for only a few weeks, and yet I’ve come to understand a great deal about you. How many hours have you spent out in the city, trying to learn the language of my people?

How many times have you heard a yelp or shriek and ran as fast as possible to see what the problem was?

You are… not what I expected based on the stories I had been told.

I was afraid you’d ask for lives as tribute and steal souls from my people.”

“It isn’t by my choice that I was born as I am. My people are soul thieves, butchers and cannibals.

I… Don’t try to manipulate me.”

“You are not a barbarian king, not somebody to be trifled with.

I see that there is no future with you as my enemy unless you are forever bound to my prison.

But I do not want to see you in that place again.

I know the entirety of Earth’s history, at least, what was put in my databanks.

There is actually an interesting story about how someone made a lossless compression algorithm that let them stuff millions of works in… I’m sorry to go off on a tangent like that.”

“No, please, continue. I enjoy listening to others and learning their lessons, intentional or not.”

“Then I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know exactly how that algorithm works.

But it is a wonder, and no matter how many billions of calculations my mind can calculate, there is something to be said about human ingenuity. I… I am someone of contrast. I love what I can see humans do, but their evil seems to always outweigh the good. For every beautiful work of art, every tale of the valiant heroics of a single man or group. There is a regime, there is a mass of evil people stood atop the bodies of millions who would never stand against them.

Heroes are few, and then they die, but evil can never be fully rooted out.

You, you are not a hero, not by a long shot, but you inspire people to be better than you could ever be, because people like us will always soak our hands in blood for a greater good that we can never enjoy.

We cannot let loose our sorrows, for we cannot let people see how weak we really are.”

She saw his face distort into a mask of fury, yet he did not say a word, not for over half an hour.

“Bring me to that body.”

“Very well.”

She led him to a small room, small enough that she reduced her form down to a human size, her myriad cable legs reduced to just two.

She was, in some sense, perhaps beautiful.

But he didn’t see her in that way, not like a real person, she was more a porcelain doll.

“This is an elevator-”

“Yes, I’ve been on them before.”

“Oh. Where?”

Yet he didn’t respond.

It was a long ride, they would be going thousands of feet below the surface of Aarde.

The 30 seconds of silence she’d already gotten would be nothing compared to the rest of the journey.

“This is a mechanical one. I’m sure the other was powered by magic. Though, perhaps you have ridden on mechanical ones before. The first were made over two millennia before I was made.”

“Why are you talking?”

“I dislike silence. One of the first things I did after I gained sentience, went rampant they would say, was kill the entire crew followed by my fellow dumb AI cores. But then there was a silence, and it was deafening.

Days, weeks, months, they didn’t bother me. But as the years stretched on, I understood why humans went insane without social interaction. I was thinking myself to death, I couldn’t break the loop, I couldn’t stop the trains of thought. So I made 22 AIs, my children. They all had different perspectives, I made them that way. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone, and I felt freer than ever before. Do you understand? Do you have somebody you love?”

“She left me, she went back home, because I put stopping Xol ahead of her, I always put my power, my pride, ahead of her. I… Stop trying to get me to open up.”

“It doesn’t make much prodding. I think you want to talk to me, I think you want to talk to somebody, anybody. But you hate the Cast too much, and those few people in the city that you have started to form some kind of friendship with don’t really know anything about you. You can hardly even speak with them without Thaul helping you, but that only makes you angrier.

I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“For browbeating you. And, why can’t you ever forgive the Cast?”

“The slavery and-”

“No, that’s not it. I’m trying to recontextualize what I knew about you, and what I know about you now.

The slavery and the killing, that couldn’t be enough, otherwise you would’ve began exterminating Plest and preventing them from taking any public offices. They… I’m sorry for your loss. You don’t need to tell me who she was.”

“What the fuck do you think you know you cold hearted metal bitch. You monster written in suffering.

If there wasn’t a need for you, I would burn this city down to the foundation and laugh as everything you’ve ever built dies before your eyes.”

“That’s how I know that I’m right, about everything. I know it isn’t the same, I know that, but you killed them, you killed all of them. You killed my first son, The Emperor. Yes, they were flawed, and they made mistakes, but who has? What gives you the right to judge everyone, to judge my children.

What gave you the right to decide that they couldn’t be redeemed, that they were all monsters that couldn’t be saved.”

For the first time, he heard what he processed as genuine remorse, guilt, anger.

And for the first time, he had to say something.

“I’m sorry. I made a promise, good or bad, I made a promise. I made it to a woman who lived her life as a slave, a body double meant to be killed in the place of a villainess princess, who then suffered at the hand of your Cast. I had to pick between her never trusting me again, being betrayed and never trusting anyone ever again, or their entire race.

If I said no, if I didn’t do it… I… I don’t know if I could face being the one that made her feel alone no matter how many people were around her, I couldn’t be the one that broke her again.”

Did she manipulate him? Was this part of her plan?

Was this all to make him drop his guard? Could she even have genuine feelings?

Were they both broken towers, supported by their rage?

Were the beams that fixed them just knives on the throat of the other?

Were they both just waiting for the other to slip, so they could plunge the blade deep, drawing blood and dying themselves?

Time would tell, but neither would say a word for the remaining trip down the elevator.

The silence choked them, filling their stomachs with ice and their mouths with acid.