They stepped through the portal, the final man closing it, Harlan had never heard much about teleportation, nor did he hear its effects on the body.

Roswell had a bucket ready and handed it to him, he looked confused until he felt a sudden rush of nausea wash over him. Once he was done dry heaving he spoke.

“Thank you very much, Miss Rosewell.”

“That is your highness 4th Princess Rosewell you are speaking too welp, you shall address her prope-”

Rosewell struck her younger brother.

“He’s just a boy, not some cadet. My apologies for my younger brother, he hasn’t realized how little being the 7th son of the king really means.”

“How dare you!” Rosewell placed a field of silence around him, letting him yell into the void.

“Come, I will give you the tour after our interview.” Harlan followed, some of his tension relieved by her motherly demeanor and childish antics.

They exited the small room used for when they have to gate someone into a smaller adjoining room with little more than a table and 2 chairs.

“Please sit, I am going to interview you about your abilities. First off, alignments?”

“Fire is my first, then light and dark secondary. Someone told me that because my soul looks like a flame that flickers white and black sometimes.”

“Perfect. Bloodline?”

“I don’t sleep, my skin is always pale, my body heals faster, I’m stronger, but I still had to train to get stronger, I have never been sick.”

“Now when you say my body heals faster how quickly exactly, we do have tests for such things but those are… unpleasant.”

“Small cuts like if my hand catches on a stuck out nail don’t scab over, they just heal in a few hours, I never thought much about it so I never counted.”

“Alright, we will be doing tests but that sounds like a minor healing factor, speeds up the bodies own healing but isn’t actually pulling in light mana by instinct,”

“Great, now where do you come from? Do you know?”

“I… I was found as a baby, I don’t know, but I had a nightmare the first time I slept, a week ago. It might’ve been something, but I couldn’t really make out much, a woman holding something, setting it down and being chased by shadows.” Rosewell knew what shadows were, and did not like the idea that he was worth sending shadows after.

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

“It… he was a werewolf, he had me, and I killed him…”

“Did you hear a voice when this happened?”

“The voice told me to let it out, I think it meant my mana.”

“What mana type did you use at the time?”

“Dark, I just… flooded my hands with it and his body rotted when I touched him. What is the voice?”

“That’s an answer scholars have been asking since well before my time, we don’t know yet, but it's not directly malevolent, it cannot make people do anything, but we are absolutely sure that it's something and not just a sort of mass hallucination caused by dark mana.”

“Alright, now, I knew most of the answers to those questions minus your nightmare, we were told most of this by the letter sent by Count Redwall and a letter intercepted by an Ibexian, named Kass, a slave on your farm, he was going to tell his people about you so they could study you. This was more of an honesty test. We do not consider you a threat at the moment. All that’s left is a medical examination to check for the presence of any contraband or geas that might be binding you. And getting you dressed in your uniform.”

Rosewell placed her hand on his chest and chanted something, her lips barely moved, he couldn’t make out the words, she furrowed her brows as the light seemed to catch something inside him.

“Are you aware of the geas you are under?”

“What?”

“The geas”

Harlan stared at her blankly, not in a pretending to not know way, but as if he couldn’t hear her whenever she tried to ask about it, more bad news.

“Alright, you are cleared, we can do more testing of your abilities later.” she pulled a white badge and a white jumpsuit out of a spatial bag

“You need to put these one, you will change in front of me to ensure that you have no physical markings that could provide us with clues of your abilities, do you have any issue with this?”

They left the interview room back into the gate room bright red from embarrassment, then left from the only other door into what seemed to be the main room, the ceiling stretched up 40 feet, 3 floors with numbered door where the facility workers lived, on the ground floor there was 4 doors in each direction leading to other large rooms where the children would have their rooms. As well as many single unmarked doors leading who knows where. The architecture was brutalist, looking more like a very nice prison than anything else, the walls were a simple gray stone, faintly shining under Harlan’s vision due to plates of enchanted metal in the walls preventing the massive structure from being found or disturbed.

“This is the royal facility made for talented or otherwise odd children, those who have some distant relation to a noble and their bloodline awakens mostly, the noble families very much do not like bastards to inherit their bloodlines, so they are brought here to prevent them from being killed, and if there was to be a need for a noble house to be replaced these children have a provable birthright. You will be studied and your abilities will be recorded, we will also look for skills which you have that are unique or can be replicated for use by normal mages. You will not be with the noble bastards though, you will be with the… odd children, unknown bloodlines that seem to have come from nowhere, those who were cursed or blessed by a Fae and we cannot tell which yet.

We will be going through this door, you won’t see the sun or the moon here so try to remember this way is south.”

They passed through a hallway, maybe 20 feet long, it had alcoves on each side that a soldier could hide in if something happened and they needed to force their way into the other large chamber.

“This is… nicer than I thought it would be. I didn’t know what I was thinking it would be.”

“Just because we dragged you here against your will doesn’t mean we’re all that bad, some threats don’t know they are threats yet, many of the children in our section were only found after accidentally killing someone.”

“Our section?”

“We only have 2 currently occupied sections, the nobles are under the watch of my younger brother, I have been charged with keeping watch of the odd ones, that is your unofficial name. Now. Before we step through this door there are some rules you must know, 1. do not antagonize the other children, some are in a rather fragile state, as I mentioned some of them killed others by accident, if they were lucky it was a natural reaction to being harmed, if they were unlucky it was a loved one turning a corner too quickly and spooking them, 2. No fighting, even if you are attacked first you are to defend yourself and if you can others, but never strike back, this ties into the first rule, they may not mean to attack you, 3. Pay attention to badge color, I gave you a white badge, you have no violent record and your ability to fight is in your full control. A red badge is for someone who has hurt others intentionally, yellow for unintentionally, green for those who are unable to fully control their powers but are unlikely to lose control.”

“Is there a black badge?”

“Alright let me show you to your room, then you may have dinner.”

she dodged the question without blinking, Harlan tried not to think of why she would ignore the question instead of just denying it existed.

They entered into the odd ones area, he had been taken at dinner time, yet it was just starting here, Harlan didn’t know much of time zones but he knew enough to realize he was far away from home.

“The stairs are right here, your room is 221, so second flood, 21st on your right, once you have found your room and imprinted your mana signature you may come back down to eat.”

She went back through the door, she would be gated back to the royal palace to eat dinner and engage in awkward conversation.

Harlan found his room, maybe 15x15 with a 10 foot ceiling, a small bathroom separated by a sliding door. it was larger than his room back home, and he didn’t need to share it. Harlan tried to look at the bright side but was very homesick already, he didn’t mind sharing a room with his sisters. He started to sob lightly before he went out to eat dinner and mingle with the other children. It finally set in, he might never see them again, he might never leave this place, he started crying heavily.

Then he heard a knock on his door.