Outside the castle, people gathered in mad droves, guardsmen standing at around 10 feet tall held halberds made from the remains of creatures far larger than them.

The city had been built around a mass grave for whales, the soil was once rich with the decayed flesh of hundreds of creatures, not just whales, but the things that fed on them, the vicious gnawing things at the very bottom of the sea.

And now, after near a thousand years, the dead things had been consumed and processed by man, used as fertilizer, unreliable medicines sold at unreasonable prices, and perfectly good fields of rot were upturned for construction.

Still, there were creatures that could be harvested yet, herded and kept in abundance, bioluminescent creatures, not bred as food, though some were; these animals were kept as totems to these human’s greatest sin.

Above pollution, above greed, even above the countless dances with death the citizens of this country, let alone the single city, had danced-

All of this is rendered as inconsequential in the face of consumerism.

Always, even in the worst of conditions, Human beings will work through sweat and blood so that they can get something, once they have it, they’ll use it in a night, or a month, and then they’ll need it again.

Food, entertainment, self-improvement, these things are sold at cheap prices, yet the consumer is always at a loss.

Most specific to the people of this low place, as low as sea-floor-cities go, is a resource in particular.

Light.

Leagues below, the workers of this city have no chance of seeing the great star in the sky, electricity is above most of them and dangerous to work with in this environment. Fire is out of the question. So, for just a small fee you can cling to the failing light; as you delve ever deeper into the dark.

Guards and men of the state are provided with a royal pigment, which they adorn their armour and weapons with.

Eighteen men as strong as horses march alongside a prisoner and a witch.

The eighteen glow purple, as they float in formation past a horde of commoners.

They scream out insults and slurs at the prisoner restrained in a magic beast. And they hail the witch with insults too.

The beast and its mistress glow green and silver by use of a bacterium, it puts on a spectacle for the bored masses, many of them aren’t aware who is kept in the creature.

The date is February 16th, 2022.

The date that Mor Isaac Cre-umha, elected king of the Free Fomorians is being interned in the heart of his most reviled enemies.

He is being interned in the Fomorian Federation’s capital city, Uaigh Miol.

Down they wound, until they are at the base of a cliff, the largest peak for miles, the holiest site in their country, the living tomb-castle of their God-King, Balor.

Bone spires erupt from the cliff side, as the great green light circled by violet, lands its self a couple kilometres left of the great obsidian doors.

Civilians are carolled away from the great metal structure by more guards, there, the numbers of lit figures increase to thirty, then forty-four.

The crowd think they understand what is going, they’ve heard the stories.

Everywhere, from the tallest spire of the castle, to the lowest step, is painted weekly, to glow brighter than the rest of the city, there mounds of stone incomparable to the greatest church of God.

Except for one building

That smoothed structure, specially fashioned from steel, a rare substance in the dregs, sat just beside the castle, unpainted. Ironically, what had made it stand out was how little it stood out.

There was only one answer they could come up with, that it was a surface dweller.

This level of security, the foul witch standing alongside them- probably one that was sent to the mother land as a scout, one of their magic beasts contained the fiend.

A few mutterings came from people who knew what they were talking about, “They’re putting it in the iron lung! That means it can’t breathe through water then.”

“The facility is a prison for em’. Built near a thermal point. So they can boil away the water for them ta breathe.”

“Most be a lively one. ‘Ar they’d have stuck it an’ been done.”

“If the thing needs air, then they’d just kill ‘em with the water. They means to torture it, interrogate it.”

“Ye foul witch! Show us yer phanny! GAHAHAH!”

She watched, the witch of water, she kept calm despite all that was going on around her.

She spoke to the guards, nearly being drowned out by the crowd.

“Keep your sound visors closed.”

The ones without their helmets on, strapped the padding around their degenerated ears.

It was a result of growing too accustomed to living in these conditions, they’d become weak to loud sounds.

The witch’s power formed a box of flesh with a cone at the end of it.

As she was about to make the announcement, the were feral, throwing rubbish, cursing her form, her life.

Her eyes traced over them one more time, she tried to get accustomed to how dark it was back down here, but ultimately failed.

She breathed in through her gills, before letting the words pass out her speaker.

“It’s Cre-umha.”

As the sound boomed through the depths, it reverberated back and forth echoing.

After an astonished moment of silence, they sung her praises.

It was a crashing wave that was twice as loud as the tiny murmur she’d made.

It came into her, and she was blown away, out of this world.

Her heart began to beat in her ears, and she struggled to place the feeling.

Relief.

She at last landed on that word for it.

Eventually, the warden of the prison came out, congratulated the witch, and begun to make a speech that he’d prepared after a messenger had brought the affair to his knowledge.

They were ushered inside, after entering a decompression room, they were once out in a highly dense concentration of oxygen.

The guards struggled to breathe without tanks of water, the witch didn’t.

“Crack it open.” said one of the guards, the one that Feoli had sized as the head.

She argued, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’ll be fine.” He said plainly. “Needs to be done for what we have planned.”

Another brought an iron nail out and a mallet. Starting to crack into the suit, little by little. He continued to strike at a point near the throat, the neck looked thinner than the rest of the strange statue before them.

“Ahhhaha…”

After a large flake had fallen away, a voice escaped it.

The witch and the guard’s captain went wide eyed.

He gave a none verbal order for his man to stand down, as a few more flakes fell away.

“Give the order captain,” said one off to the side, sounding like he was demanding it.

A voice escaped the frozen man.

“Are you really going to take that tone from your underling? If I had heard my general talk to me in such a manner, I’d like to think I am enough of a man to knock him to his knees at least.”

The captain turned ignoring the voice, “Do not underestimate the man, he’s escaped these circumstances before, and while under watch of mightier men.”

The Mor tried for a laugh, though it was hard with his head restricted in this way.

“If they were mighty, then you must be children! Speaking of the little fish spawn, is that witch-girl still here?”

She remained quiet.

“I’d say she is. Allow me to ‘psycho analyse’ you, hmm? Just something to chat about as you show me to my room.” She took a step away, freezing her glare.

“Take him deeper. Main room.” The captain ordered.

“I have a rather in-depth understanding of how you became a witch, I’d considered trying to convert one of your kind to my cause years ago. I failed, she bit me, I killed her. In the end, she was a straight forward sort like that. Prideful I suppose. Despite all the ire born from her position.”

They travelled past cells housing humans, land-dwelling humans, most of them were there as ransom, some would never be released, not even for a price. They were there for life.

“I looked into your eyes, girl. I think I caught a chill from them in fact. It surprised me to see another Fomorian, but it was a far greater surprise that you knew who I was and didn’t so much as flinch. Meaning in your life you’ve seen worse things than death, you’ve practically lived off of it, like every other scum sucking backwards idiot here.”

They marched along in silence for a second before he admitted, “That was quite rude of me, wasn’t it? I apologise. But you have to understand, it’s rather difficult for me to empathise with the people who are trying to execute me simply for seeking political and religious independence. Really, you can’t help being the way you are, it’s nature and nurture that you have to fight against to retain any civility.”

“Does he shut up?” asked a guard.

“Told you not to touch him.” replied Feoli, at last confident enough to make her presence known.

Isaac laughed a little merrily now.

“Good! Good! You are here! I was beginning to worry you weren’t! Well, not really. As I was saying, you’re a prideful character. You put on a brave face, remain cool of head, just as taught, just as indoctrinated. But it brings you a smidgen of shame that you had to ally yourself with the boy. I’ll admit, you were the one keeping him from drowning for most of that scuffle, but he was the one who broke my arm. I’d give you 40% credit.”

“I had assumed that you wouldn’t be able to face the rabble outside long, you enjoyed it when they cheered back to you, I felt their roar through my suit. It roused your ice heart, just long enough so that you could feel guilty about taking all the credit for this tremendous achievement.”

She felt like saying something, but soon realised that he wanted something out of her. He enjoyed talking too much not to be a liar.

“Hmm.” He let out the murmur of thought.

“Don’t tell him this, but if I’m kept in this environment much longer, I believe my arm will become quite infected. He seemed a sensitive lad when I spoke to him, his empathy is the making of a good king, I should say.”

She didn’t like that he was speaking about the boy so openly, not only was she embarrassed that she’d failed to defeat one challenging opponent, she also-

A curdling scream came from a cell as they passed.

Isaac Cre-umha let slip a jovial laugh, “My! That one startled me! I hope my service will be a little better, aye?”

None of the guards answered him.

“Where was I? Oh yes, the boy. Honestly it could have been a result of Sym’s tampering, but his sadistic flip was a surprise. Despite the former, you have a way with him, don’t you? You directed him quite well. Though, I’d say I can get far better use out of the young man. I said he could become a king with the right tempering, with the right guidance.”

“I’d say the two of you are similar, yet not. When that boy finally did try to do me damage, there was an underlying feeling of desperation, not the fear of water present in most humans, but that was certainly there. It was the desperation I got from you when that wave of sound returned back.”

“You both want to be loved. Desperately loved. You want to feel like you’re right. The difference is that you’ve bent your head to the world, in hopes that service to God, to the witch-mother, or perhaps society in general, that they will be glad of you. That boy possesses a tremendous will to not bend, to not bow, he will make the world love him. Whether it wants to or not. That’s what makes him like me. Thet’s why he might yet be made a king.”

It disturbed her, just this man’s voice. He spoke so flamboyantly, giving off airs with every syllable. He was imprisoned, he was going to be executed, so why didn’t he act like it?

“Do you like that boy, witch?”

She didn’t say anything.

“He chose you over me. After I acknowledged his worth. I suppose we are all enemies, but as I said, the boy is like you, he has suffered and will suffer far more. From his brutality? From that expressionless face he made as he brutalized me? I can tell, that just like you, he has been conditioned. By an entity or by a simple human, who can say, but I’d understand if you were bent to his will eventually, he’s stronger than you in every way. It’s laughable to say this, but I’m sure that human might yet keep you as a pet-”

He let out a laugh to himself,”-If you’re lucky perhaps he’ll make a concubine out of you! Ahahaha!”

Down a diverging path, the witch spotted someone they didn’t want to see.

The woman, a witch like herself, laughed with Isaac, at the expense of her compatriot.

Feoli ordered the captain, “Take him away.” As she reluctantly left the prisoner to confront the other witch.

“Wait!”

Isaac called, but she had already left.

“Blast it. I forgot to ask what the young man’s name was. It seems I’ll never learn it…”

One of the guards was contemplating to himself. He was reflecting back on his father, who served under Cre-umha before he turned traitor. Here he held a dagger at his side. It would be a quick movement, a few seconds, and his father, who had been slaughtered for his loyalty to the God-king, would at last be avenged.

One of his contemporaries noticed this, his expression half shown behind his helm.

“Don’t try it, Cologhaim.”

Cologhaim heard what he said, he understood what the outcome of attempting to end the traitor while that damned relic still clung to his flesh.

40-years ago Cre-Umha had been captured. Cologhaim wasn’t working in the iron lung at the time, the facility was rudimentary, yet was able to generate enough oxygen to stall the armour. But when they had tried to execute him normally, some sort of emergency function had been activated, saving its wearer at its own detriment.

But there it was, a thin layer of corroded metal, it seemed like one could puncture it with their nail if they had the determination.

He had the will. And he had a knife.

But it was not his superior’s will. And so it was not done.

Finally, they arrived at the cell. Out of all the rooms in the iron lung, this one had the highest concentration.

At above sea level, the air is 21% oxygen, enough for him to walk, if a little slowed.

At the average percentage in the iron lung, 50%, it would stall him completely.

Within that room the armour reacted strangely, growing crystalline structures.There would be no escape this time.

It would keep him alive, for weeks, maybe a month they hypothesised, but it would cannibalise his flesh to do so.

They would starve him out this time.

They carried his demobilised body into the room, through a decompression chamber, and at last he was centred in the middle room, with no light, no water. And once this door was closed, there would be no one coming in, and no one coming out.

This facility had been equipped with technology beyond their society, given to them by a mysterious benefactor on the surface, one that the other witch had met in her travels.

It would allow them to monitor the prisoner’s vitals without entering the room.

As the armour began to react with the air, scholarly men rushed to equip it to the part of his neck that had been chiselled away. They waited for a signal to come through on their monitor.

It was with a jagged line on an out-of-date liquid-crystal screen, that Cologhaim left the room begrudgingly and that Mor Isaac Cre-umha was finally entombed.

.

.

.

The date is April 16th, 2022.

Isaac Cre-umha has been a prisoner without food or water for two months. He has not spoken a word, he has not seen a face, and he has not moved a muscle.

The machine pulse of his armour filtrates nutrients through his still body, powered by a small reserve of water, and the kings own excess moisture.

By this point, his entire right forearm has been repurposed, every fibre rationed to him in the smallest of morsels.

His heart rate has slowed to a near stop.

Yet his mind is as electric as when they first began to monitor him.

Though his thoughts are hidden from his keepers, his moral is still high, even if his vigour is none existent.

The warden standing at around four-foot tall sharpens his teeth, clacks his nails on his desk, and contemplates his situation.

They held a festival weeks ago, prematurely celebrating the prisoner’s death. There was a small lapse in in his heart rate, it lasted around a fortnight before he regained some regularity to it.

He was completely aware what was at stake here if he should fail in his duties. He had the prestige of working beside the castle- as an administrator. If he should fail- This is not just an average dissident, this is a matter of national security!

The barbarians to the west are nothing without their king, just a rabid militia employing guerrilla tactics to overcome greater forces. He is the only ‘Unit’ they have, the Federation has five or six counting the witch mother- and the backing of a God!

They’re just a far-removed settlement, led by one jumped-up general passed his prime!

But if this were true-

-Then how could he have survived all of this?

Did Balor not smile on their work?

Would he not yet permit Cre-umha’s decay?

The tacking of his pointed nails came to a stop, as he set himself to work. There was one man alive who could obliterate that scum from this earth, with or without that cursed casing.

He took a slate of stone, and began to scribe.

Once he was done, he walked with some trouble through the waterless halls of his prison.

With great damage to his pride, he gave the slate to a messenger.

The warden instructed the serf to deliver it to Lord-Regent Rocganimhe Glor, who had been on a campaign in the west.

That man was undoubtedly the mightiest of their people, within the federation, or free.

There was nothing else he could do. The men were becoming anxious. Against common sense, they had begun to fear that the traitor clad in copper would escape.

People like Cologhaim, who had lost family to the fiend, were especially frustrated.

For now, they would have to wait for the regent’s return before they could have even a taste of vengeance.

.

.

.

The date is June 29th, 2022.

Isaac Cre-umha’s mind is on the brink of collapse, as he is jolted back into reality by the cessation of the phenomena.

“What was that?” He thinks to himself, noticing points of decay in his body.

His fore arm which had been consumed by metal ached with a phantom pain, he felt his stomach turn in, and bloat. It was as if time itself had been cut, like his mind had just been thrown into the future.

“Was that June?” Actually, the longer he thought about the whole thing, the sooner he noticed a slowness to his mind.

“How could so much time have passed? It was- It was February when I was interred here, wasn’t it?”

A quarter of a year. A blink, compared to his three hundred years of life, but it was alarming that he’d spent so long in here.

“No, not alarming. I’m completely calm. They can’t touch me. Their spears are too thin, their egos too small to ask ‘daddy’ for help. There is nothing to be concerned about. As soon as there is a change, the slightest decrease in pressure, I’ll do something.”

But as he became reaccustomed to his new pains, he realised that nothing in his environment had changed.

The suit told him, though it was functioning at a lower capacity.

Temperature, pressure, O2 concentration, not a single variable had changed.

That either meant that the suit was displaying interior values due to it being broken, or the fanatics had finally caught up with the rest of the world.

This was worth being called a facility now.

“Ahh, I’m proud of them. They’ve finally caught up to the surface, they know that I am a relatively large threat. Still, I think it strange that it took this long. I hate the Entropic God, but I can’t imagine life without his blessing. One of the guardsmen, said that word, ‘human’, before they stuck me in here, if I remember correctly.”

“It’s a vile word, especially when used to describe our species. It comes from ‘homo’ meaning man, and ‘humus’ meaning earth… well that’s the Latin term for a ‘person’ but… But since birth, not one of us has been of this earth, I doubt we are even of this world anymore. Bred by a God- changed by magic, we are beyond humanity now.”

“We Fomorians are above them. And I am logically above Fomorians!”

“They worship a God that does not care for them, who would see us destroyed if he had his way. Where I am a companion to J-on. The knowledge he divulges to me, is inarguable. There is a logic to this world beyond the conflicting systems of power; magic, physics, and psychological energies. Soul, mind and body. Unit, monster, and God. Everything is connected. Because everything exists.”

But his mind wandered off on its own as he philosophised.

“Well… what is a Unit really? J-on had once, quite off-handedly I admit, described one as ‘The basic outline of the human archetype with two ‘powers’. Yet that really only raises more questions than it answers, doesn’t it?”

He waited for a response, not only forgetting that he was alone, but that he hadn’t actually been speaking.

“But what is a ‘power’? I’ve been told by that league of nations and J-on, that my being a Fomorian is a single power- I understand that Sym’s abilities to project an avatar and to download an individual count as separate powers, and I understand that Red can absorb metals and increase his durability accordingly to maintain his shape… sure, if the Legs is a Unit-”

“But myself? One of my powers is shared by millions of people- so could one not say that they possess one ability? Wouldn’t that throw off J-on’s statement on how a human can only have two powers? Lest their archetypal structure crumble?”

He thought about it for a second.

“I’m sure to someone who’s lived here their entire life, a television screen is quite an exotic piece of technology- paranormal by their standards. Guns, aeroplanes, nuclear bombs, these are all examples of the mind archetype at use within human society. Though it is seen as normal by millions, it is a miraculous phenomenon, a nurtured and curious mind. Further still, to the millions of people who understand the mechanics of nuclear fission, they would say minimised nuclear fusion is fictitious. Yet I’m sure there are surface dwellers who understand it innately.”

He mused, “Perhaps I’ve spent too long in their world. Society’s that normalize the use of soul magics, I’m sure their archetypal understanding is less limited, to them, a soul is as clear as someone’s flesh.”

“Societies around the world use ‘phenomena’ daily. They are natural things, a part of the universe, or the beings beyond it. Even the devolving blood of my people is an application of this- Their ‘body’ is simply more advanced as a society.”

“Then being a Fomorian is not a power at all, it’s a gun, a runic rite- To be a Fomorian is to simply be a ‘second-worlder’. Just as one on the surface can pilot an R.O carrier equipped with miss Parker’s technology. Yet I am a Unit, I know for a fact that I have two ‘powers’.”

“This armor has functions as numerous as a Fomorian body: It adapts to its wearer, it has healing properties, pressure regulation, general durability- the list goes on, but J-on said that my secondary power wasn’t having a suit, it was that I was compatible with the suit. The two of us were on a collision course since my birth.”

“But again, I must ask myself, what is my power? It must be related to my being a Fomorian… Have I always been myself? Things are forgotten, flesh decays and new cells are grown in their place, I wonder if I’ve lost something over the years… I’ve spent near a hundred years in the Shaul of Brigid… Am I still the same man who put it on?”

He thought about it.

Has he… decayed? Simply by existing, does he serve the will of Balor? Life expends energy at an alarming rate, heat and movement waste calories away. How many thousands of creatures has he killed to sustain himself? How many has he killed to sustain his own ego?

After some time, on June 29th the vital signs from the rudimentary machine ceased.

There was a clamour from outside the cell, and in the Warden’s quarters.

Guards rushed into the room; either he’d escaped during June, or he’d died. That was the only explanation.

But when the dozen armed men squeezed their way into the cell, finding a nude man sitting at the base of a tree of blue and green, it was cracked open like a fissure.

“Hmm,” He murmured, “I can’t see you too well, but that makes since given my horrid condition.”

There was a tiny blue speck of light in the dark, opposite the purple goliaths that blazed that cell violet.

“Though I can hear just fine.” His voice was hoarse and strained, like he was about to cough blood and bile at them.

“I’d prefer that you use knives gentlemen. They’re much easier to use in a small space, and I’m actually raring for a bit of a brawl at the moment. Please, I have no tricks up my sleeve, in fact, I don’t even have sleaves! Ahaha, I’m terribly sorry for being so immodestly dressed but-”

One lunged forward, Cologhaim the avenger, he swung his halberd down at the slight, emaciated figure, guided by the blue on Cre-umha’s stumped arm.

The single blue light shot forward in a second, ricocheting off of the giant totem of dark-light, and into the avenger’s head. There was nothing about the prisoner that made him any greater than the son, nothing but experience, and hunger.

The first titan was pulled away, screaming, and the room was filled with a wet sound.

The guards, they’d trained for everything- everything but these sounds. The guttural screams came to their ears as alien, unimagined terror. They’d heard similar from the inmates, but not Cologhaim

For the seconds that they were frozen in fear, teeth were able to force fresh matter done the fiends gullet, he knew where the thinnest parts of the armour were.

The cycle was renewed with blood.

The five in the front pierce forward, and the tree was shattered.

Isaac jumped, without so much as a thought, the armour had already started to reincorporate the sustenance into the prisoner, allowing him to avoid their attacks. The speck of blue was limited to its basest functions in this environment, sustaining the wearer.

A second soldier began to scream, as claws fingered round his head, finding a soft spot to tear into.

The next, first to react to his friends pleads for help, was booted away, falling to the floor under the weight of the water tank strapped to his back.

Every one of them was trained especially for this, they had been instructed on how to change their fighting style to suit waterless environments. Day and night, they became more and more accustomed to the pull of their blade, the sluggishness.

There mistake was that none of them had adapted, and that known of them had been in live combat with anyone more experienced than their trainer.

As the third guard was teetering back, Isaac grabbed the halberd from him, with a struggle. It cost him, as one of the titan’s caught a glimpse of the prisoner, clipping the king with the metal of the stick.

It was a numbing pain, but it was a sensation, regardless of whether it did him damage.

“Splendid! Isaac thought, “It’s been years since I felt something like this!”

As he lashed the blade around him wildly, it wasn’t enough to kill any of them, but it warded them off, and it filled them with a surge of adrenaline.

Some thought to flee.

Isaac continued his musings, keeping his thoughts to himself for a change, “Within recent memory I’ve been battered by all manner of opponents, stronger than these spawnlets. It was only cool rage that filled me when that young man cost me my arm. This, this is exhilaration. It’s something that I lost when I took my position, my responsibilities.”

He changed his hold on the halberd, plunging it into the closest man.

“I must have lost something when I disowned Balor-”

He pulled the man into him, chomping down on his arm with his disfigured mouth.

“I’d forgotten what type of creature I was. I imagined myself to be like a human, or at least with similar mutations to that little witch I fought. But here I can feel and smell with my own flesh. The gnashing of my teeth on raw meat unfiltered, contaminated by disease no doubt! What a monstrous thing to do!”

After a gluttonous fill of meat, he had the strength to cleave a man’s arm from his body.

“This isn’t me in my entirety. This is an undeniable facet of my being, of course, but my being is comprised of more than barbarism. Perhaps this is the grander meaning of ‘two powers’. Whatever more there is to an individual, it must exist in a dichotomy. An order through pure chaos.”

His mind raised through such grand workings of the universe, as he snorted at the throats of people whose thoughts were only of their family, their friends.

His breathing had become stunted as he finished the first wave of men.

His ears twitched as he heard more coming from behind the decompression chamber.

He strolled into it, horsing a hand down by bending his neck back.

The door to the cell was closed, and fans allowed for the valuable oxygen to be recycled.

“I can feel it. Something that’s been with me since birth- I feel like I’m about to be born again.”

The warriors, their blood dulled by time, though their form didn’t show their humanity, it was clear now, that’s all they were. Their place in this universe is below him. Below the Unit. Below God.

The warriors waited just outside the door as it was slowly opened with a great effort from their machines. They were half sure that their comrades had taken care of the fiend- No, they were certain, as the seven of them filed into the room.

They waited. They tried to listen, but as mentioned, their ears were unaccustomed to sounds traveling through air. They waited for an eternity, waiting for their enemy to reveal themselves- for their brothers to hold his head high.

Head held high.

He hung above in the corner behind them as they walked in. The drop in oxygen allowed for the sliver of his armour left to carry out more simple functions.

He hid the expanding network of blue at his side.

“Decay. Entropy after death. Time before birth. None-existence goes both ways. These men are a blip. Are you happy, Balor? Don’t I do your work well?”

His body had grown, with little help from the shaul by this point. His form had regressed, degraded, but with it came a barbaric strength.

His neck widened, growing thicker than his head, his body just about accommodating his changes. Where once he had been lanky, even while he was well-fed, the muscles had now knotted in great bunches.

His lips remained thin, his gums receding, his teeth were on-show, though in the dark none of them saw his head–long smile.

He waited for the door to open, for them to gaze upon the mess of purple, and if they squinted, red.

As he tore them apart, he thought, “It’s always been so simple! Here, a path to something greater has been laid out in front of me! A plan crafted by a God, to benefit me!”

Once he was done with the septet, he ruminated, bathing and gorging himself on fathers and brothers like a beast.

“Yes… to obey his plan. Too bend to his totalitarian will… No, I don’t think so.”

Under the layers of iron, the enormous amount of moisture, at last, the blue light had grown into a rudimentary hand.

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.

.

“Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.”

The warden, tried to call, to struggle even a little against the man with the angler-fish helmet.

Isaac continued, “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll,”

He would have started to cry were he able, the warden squeaked to the single man- the single Unit laced with an electric blue glow all over. Except the faux teeth born on that helm’s visor. It was a maw of darkness, trapped, kept in check by the light.

“I am the master of my own fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

The insignificant man, nearly half the height of his captor, prayed that his children wouldn’t have to see what this thing was going to do to him.

He was lowered to the ground slowly, floating out of Isaac’s hand.

“There you are my fellow.”

He patted him on the head.

“Now you see that I’m not a monster at all. Just like you, I am capable of great fury and empathy. And that, is the making of a good king.”

As the warden watched him rise away, he uneasily turned back to his prison, his prestigious position. Lines were drawn through the steel, sections had collapsed in, and the entirety of the iron lung was flooded with water.

Suddenly, Isaac called down to him, “I should like to tell you that it was a rather worthwhile stay- for the most part. I should like to give you… three-and-a-half stars, sir.”

He looked to the mists of blood rising from captor and captive alike, and wondered to himself, “Now what would be done with me?”

As he wondered his mind turned to fear, as he remembered that he had sent for the Lord Regent, who never found the time to check in before June.

Now, June had come and gone. The Regent wouldn’t neglect the capitol any longer

Now, the warden wasn’t afraid for his life, nor what his children would think. Now he was afraid for his family’s lives.

It is still June 29th, 2022.

Mor Isaac Cre-Umha is from a distance visible as a tiny blue light, set against the painted mountain behind him. The corpse of a living God.

As he drifts away from the dark, he has two thoughts on his mind:

“Ah what to do next… I suppose I could go looking for the young man and his little witch. Yes, I’d like to repay him for that arm; in a coy way, I should prefer. Although… I suppose I’m ‘on the lamb’ now…”

“Well, there’s really only one place to go. Westward: To friends and company!”

And with that, he darted back to me.

To my plan.

He follows the Circuit Board by his own will-

Not because it is a purpose he was bred for, not because a superior being commanded it of him-

But because an ally asked. A friend in the dark to ward away the night.

And because he ironically hates arrogance, a sin which the maker of machines is terribly guilty of.

A producer that would seek to harm his people.

A man who pedals the greatest consumable-

Minds.