It took 2 more days before Harlan was considered minimally injured enough to get back to work but he was allowed visitors on the last day before he left. Zella showed up to apologize, but she was acting awkward and was still upset about Ky leaving so it was mostly silence.

Relly had also shown up, accompanied by Rosewell. He was pretty sure she was here to apologize but her mind was too hectic to understand. She just silently wept as he held her and told her it wasn’t her fault.

But once he got out he wasn’t being sent to the lab, he was being sent to the royal menagerie to find more souls that could be used for enchanting without taking on his personality traits. Along with 4 guards who would shadow his every movement.

Slip ants were natural dimensional mages, though it was more or less just used to get into peoples closed pantries. A unique soul that was spread across the entire colony, an oversoul made from more than the sum of its parts. Unfortunately he couldn’t just take one of the linked souls and being an ant the soul was far far too fragile to work outside of the overmind, any ant severed from it turned into a teeny tiny pile of gore.

Life Stag’s souls were diffused throughout their entire body making mapping very easy, but they were strong willed and intelligent, such creatures had to be willing in this experiment or they would counter his soul magic, and it refused to have any piece taken out, apparently the royals had paid a heavy price to have just this one stag come and trade secrets with him.

Harlan found it shockingly easy to speak with it about soul magic, it made mention of souls regrowing removed parts in some cases, such knowledge was a complete game changer in how they would research souls for enchanting, Harlan would need to try just taking out one part instead of cutting it away bit by bit.

It had also made a trade for a suggestion of other souls to look at in exchange for allowing it to map out his own soul. Harlan felt like it had tried to say something to him for a time but he couldn’t remember. He noticed the sun was in a different position and decided to go find the thing the Stag told him to try out, giving it a small bow. He had many new ideas.

He went to find the mimics.

Unlike the stories of explorers and adventurers opening and chest and it leaping to life, mimics were a species of semi intelligent trees, they knew how to hide using advanced camouflage but were far from smart enough to speak.

Before he could approach it the royal botanist had to subdue it by spraying it with some sedatives mixed into water.

15 minutes passed speaking with the botanist who was happy to have anyone who was actually interested in listening to her about magical plants.

Then he was told it was safe and he began searching for its soul.

It was a constantly changing thing, chaos in a form of energy, switching from every kind of base elemental soul at random.

Eventually Harlan found out how to force it to stay in one form, he chipped off a section of its soul after some testing to make sure it wasn’t going to die if he did it.

The souls of mimics were apparently VERY strong, as soon as he took part of it out he only needed to put half the mana he would’ve needed for a condor soul, and the soul seemed to have the ability to slowly grow into the full size of the mimic tree’s original soul.

In 20 minutes the original mimic’s soul was also naturally filled back in.

He waited with the botanist who he learned was actually the 9th Princess Cynthia, she was so far down the line for succession she had completely given up on it. She was only 20 and wanted to enjoy her time and the benefits afforded to a royal child without all the headaches of scheming, though she was being married off to a duke for their own political gains she was still to be allowed to be a botanist for him.

After another 30 minutes the tree was awake, he couldn’t really tell much of a difference but then Cynthia put a rabbit in the enclosure, when it got close a root wrapped around it and its trunk opened into a pool of acid that would dissolve even its bones for their nutrients.

Satisfied that the mimic soul had regrown without seeming to have any effect on the tree was a boon towards research, a mimic could be grown from a branch being grafted to another tree and fully replacing it with a mimic tree.

In time as enchanting gave way to using souls as fuel many enchanters would apply for mimic tree permits.

Meanwhile the mimics in the royal menagerie were all sedated and a gate was opened up so the souls could be given to researchers and enchanters, Cynthia also left shortly after to take care of the rest of the garden.

Harlan had been given the task of giving a soul of the 6 base elements in order, and every 7th he was supposed to see if he could get a soul that would shift between them, or at least trying to shift one of the souls after it had been removed.

Harlan had killed one of the trees in his attempts, leading to an “oh well” from the researchers.

Cynthia however was very upset with him and stayed nearby to make sure the rest lived.

Eventually she had to leave for dinner, as was tradition for the royal family, Harlan wouldn’t eat until well past dusk when the researchers noticed him slowing down and yelled at him, leading to the project manager to ask what the problem was.

The royal dinner was going as normal, each prince and princess would report on their own projects or duties.

An issue occured when during the 4th Princess Rosewell once again had to argue against the 7th Prince Hydran about her methods of control over the children, never enough scare tactics, never enough arrays, never allowed to beat the unruly children like he had his guards doing.

“And letting the filthy Fomorian boy off with a warning and a different colored badge for nearly killing a human child.”

“He was twice Harlan’s age and set in motion a riot, had the boy died you wouldn’t care anyway, all we could’ve possibly learned was some magic to make alcohols quickly, unless of course YOU want to take him in. Harlan has already given us a form of enchanting with souls. He is working right now in the menagerie to improve the process.”

“And that enchanted shield that killed its user?” The rest of the royal children started murmuring.

Rosewell was upset, she had made a report of it directly to her father, Hydran should not have known about it.

“Do you now send spies into my section? Or did you eavesdrop on my report to father?”

“Irrelevant, you should run a tight enough ship that I am unable to do those things. Now what defense do you have regarding the shield? Armor that kills soldiers has no value, the brat should be put down before he can do worse.”

“We have handled the situation, currently we are getting a great deal of data on how a soul enchanted piece of equipment works. The current users have taught it how to cast magic on its own. Once we get a more stable soul we won’t need to worry about it having a bad reaction.”

Hydran was about to counter when the King, His Royal Highness, Yggdra the 11th spoke.

“The boy has more value alive then dead, as he grows we can monitor how his abilities change, this will quicken our expansion in the frontier as we learn to better fight his kin. Rosewell, my dear daughter, have you run any trials on necromancy yet?”

“No father… I believe the boy is still too soft emotionally to begin with that, I also believe that it will be best to work out the issues with souls before we move him on to anything else.”

“Soft? Did he not nearly kill a boy twice his own age? You admitted this with your own words, begin on necromancy tests tomorrow once you wake, his kind do not need sleep unless put under stress for weeks, use that to its full advantage, if he does well begin removing restrictions, we want him pulled into our side. Encourage the other children to abuse him, then save him from them, done well you should have him thinking of you as another mother, is this not how you have done things before? We will speak no more on this until you have made progress.”

“Yes father… I shall do as you have asked.”

Rosewell had walked right into his trap, her father was originally the 5th Prince, but in a series of what were officially accidents he became the first prince, scheming was in his blood.

She wasn’t even shocked when he said to have the children abuse him, he was a great ruler, but he had no empathy for others, his great boon was not being greedy along with that, letting him see the people as pieces on a game board and moving them as needed to ensure the safety and well being of the kingdom as a whole.

After dinner she was beside herself, in her thoughts the possibility that the whole conversation from the start was rigged against her, he had probably told the 7th prince about the shield through some kind of proxy.

She did not overly care about Harlan, but setting children against one another was deeply wrong to her.

She would need to find a way to make him alone, having no one else to hear his worries.

Relly was already with her for much of her day, trying to soothe her chaotic mind until it was safe for her to go back into the rest of the children.

Zella could just easily be sent on a mission to do something for a time, she could make it look like punishment.

Reet was simply an idiot, she could make up any excuse she wanted and he would follow along.

As much as it sickened her she had a plan laid out before she even fell asleep for the night.