We all walk through life, get hurt, make friends, and lose them. It is a testament to life and living. The races of man need companionship, and the greatest treasure is a companion that takes that journey with us. It is only a shame that most of us don’t gain this wisdom until we are much too old to appreciate it.

~Cailleach, the Veiled Hag of Winter

Caorthannach was practically the arch-nemesis of Mother Danu. One was the mother of the worlds—which became the gods. The gods were the Tuatha De Danann or loosely translated, ‘Children of the goddess Danu.’ The other was the Mother of Daemons, and she was an Oillipheist.

Oillipheists have an obscure history, but they may have once been dragons. Some books referred to them as sea-serpents who were guardians of the underworld. However, the only one known to still exist was Caorthannach—the Mother of Daemons. It was her blood that corrupted and was why the Fire Spitters had a dragonoid appearance. They were truly her children and not a corrupted child she stole from another race.

The Mother of Daemons didn’t come up with the idea of corrupting others and forcing them to acknowledge her as their mother. It was something she learned from the Fomoiri, the nether phantoms that existed almost as long as the primordials. These beings weren’t gods but were hostile toward any beings of order. The best way to describe them was malevolent spirits that would invade hosts by latching their Spirit. Slowly, they converted their victims and turned them into their slaves.

It was the Fomoiri that turned the Caorthannach into the Mother of Daemons. It might be their most significant attack against the races of order and their crowning achievement. It wasn’t long after that they faded from history. Crow felt these beings were still around but used their own creation to obscure their own actions.

Hunting these bastards was something he should do, but while he slaughtered the nest, he found himself in an extensive cave system. Crow couldn’t help wonder why he was here. Many of the things in this world were some kind of projection from his Soulscape, just more… alive. So why were these Daemons here?

Flames covered half the cave system because those damned things had a lot of saliva. Crow knew his clothes were half burned away at this point, and the heat was powerful enough to cause a few blisters to appear on his flesh. He welcomed these kinds of attacks because it only further strengthened his resistance to fire.

Entering the last chamber, he spotted a fat Fire Spitter. It wasn’t looking toward him but faced the side and absently rubbed its belly. Seeing its saggy tits and lack of penis, he found the entire thing appalling—grotesque, even. There was no record of a female Fire Spitter, and he was pretty sure this one was pregnant. It was written that Daemons were created—not birthed, but the book on Rootless claimed the Rootless could give birth or seed new Rootless without conversion. Could the Daemon do the same?

It was a stupid question because the answer was right in front of him. This mother-to-be didn’t have horns either, as if it was a way to soften her appearance, but no one in their right mind would find her attractive. Then again, if she was the only woman among their race—Crow shuddered thinking about it. Hell, he felt sorry for this woman.

It finally registered that he might have read what the books on Daemons said incorrectly. Call it a translation error. It wasn’t that the lesser Daemons couldn’t breed, but that the greater ones, like the Gray Men, were created. It was a fact already known, but races like Goblins and Imps could mutate, further taking them down a path of evil they couldn’t escape. The thing he wasn’t sure about was if the woman in front of him was normal or a freak mutation. Fire Spitters were definitely an evolution of an imp, and the implication was that even the mutated could breed. They weren’t sterile, as the books seemed to believe, or it was a fluke mutation.

Finally, she looked up with bleary eyes and frowned. Her red hair was dull and lacked the flame-like appearance of the others.

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“Kill. Brothers?” Her halting speech shocked him, and after spending time with Otto, he understood what she wanted. More, he picked up on an inflection he wished he hadn’t. The way she used ‘brother’ wasn’t asking about friends but actual blood-related family. Fuck, these things are nasty.

“Yes. Some may have escaped, but not many.”

“Kill. Me?”

Crow paused and felt conflicted. Killing her was what he should do, but he told himself before that he had a bottom line. Even his enemies deserved some respect. And the question that had nagged him for some time finally reappeared in his mind—Who am I?

It was a question loaded with a profundity that couldn’t be answered easily. Every answer Crow gave himself opened up more questions, more concerns, and more doubt. Like now… he didn’t know why he was hesitating. Excuses surfaced. Statements once uttered would have some rationality, but in the end, they only hid the truth of his thoughts.

While he was deliberating and lost in his thoughts, he ignored Nin’s arrival.

“Abomination!” she growled, and Dragonfire filled the chamber, turning the female Fire Spitter to ash.

Crow said nothing about her actions. The current situation did not upset him, and he was sort of grateful he didn’t have to answer the question of whether or not he could kill the thing.

“You don’t have to question your morality,” Nin said softly from beside him. “I know you are a good man, and I’ll take care of the things like this. Caorthannach is the mortal enemy of dragons. We hate her more than any other being in existence and won’t hesitate to eradicate every spawn of hers.”

“I’m not upset, just confused,” Crow finally told her. “I am supposed to find out who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. On the surface, these seem like simple questions, but they’ve put doubt in my soul. I saw that pregnant Daemon, and I know deep down she and her get are so corrupted and twisted that it’d be a mercy to kill them all. Yet, she was a mother, and facing those questions…”

Crow sighed.

“Stop using your Three-Headed Crow ability,” Nin said. Lily flew in front of Crow and pointed at Nin while nodding.

“Why?”

“None of what you see can answer those questions,” Nin said while Lily tapped Crow on the chest above his heart. “Your answers are in there.”

“Huh,” Crow replied.

Lily put her tiny finger on Crow’s chin and lifted his head up. Then walked across the air with her head down, looking all mopey before looking back at him and shaking her head angrily. She looked toward the sky and raised a shaking fist toward it. Her finger pointed back at Crow, and then she drew a heart in the air before covering with her hands.

“She’s right,” Nin said while Crow was still figuring out what Lily was saying. “You are an existence that defies the heavens. That is who you are right now. Everyone around you sees who you are because you are mostly an open book. If you want my opinion, the truth about the tower is that no one can climb it alone. Who you were is that boy trying to fight the heavens alone. Who you are now is a man seeing that without family, love, and trust, your fight is pointless. You are becoming a champion, choosing to go against everything he knows to redefine righteousness and justice. You’d destroy the very heavens if it meant keeping just one of us alive.”

Lily mimed again and floated on her knees as if giving obeisance to something and pointed at Crow.

“She says you are our hope and our future. Personally, I just think you are a dumb ass because you haven’t realized you aren’t the only one that would put their life on the line to protect. We’d do the same for you, fool.”

Nin grabbed his hands and turned them over, revealing the hideous scars on his palms. She kissed one while Lily kissed the other. It was a strange sort of collaboration between the two, and they worked together almost instinctively.

“These scars hurt us, too, and we are willing to bear them with you.”

Crow felt the tears burn in his eyes and let them fall without shame in his heart. He had his answer—he always knew the answer.

Who am I? Crow understood now that he was the vanguard—a trail breaker. The one that goes before all others. It wasn’t out of obligation that he and his people were attempting the impossible, but rather, it was because he had no choice. The only way to end the oppression and stop himself from being the target of endless attacks, he had to defy the heavens until the very end. It was that or suffer, and watch those he loved suffer. That was unacceptable.

Power was his shield. Only with power could he be the vanguard, to stand in front of his people without fear. And it was because he had people that he lacked fear—another paradox.

Why did the Sluagh convince me to look at my past? Crow had asked himself that question thousands of times by now. But now he had his answer—selfishness. Crow knew his circumstance and was afraid of being alone and abandoned, so he refused to push his people away. It was a selfish act, and it had been eating at him all this time. It was a truth he ignored, didn’t want to see, and let the guilt build up inside him.

It was a truth he didn’t have to bury because it was only in his mind that it was an issue. Nin, Lily, Mara, Otto, and the Song sisters all knew his circumstance. They knew Crow wouldn’t hold it against them if they left but stayed anyway. They walked this path with him of their own volition. He was undoubtedly selfish, but they followed him out of love, care, and a willingness to bear his scars.