Rosewell forced Harlan to sleep by using a potion on his dinner.

Hostin watched over him as he slept, no one had tried to kill him in over 30 hours at least, the attacks started 6 days ago after someone wandered into the area where he was doing tests and saw him working.

Rumors grew in intensity from then on.

Those who feared what he could do and those who just wanted to discredit Rosewell who wasn’t even trying to be in running for next ruler both saw him as a threat, leading to a case in which 2 assassins tried at the same time and killed each other in the confusion.

When morning came Harlan had already been awake for hours, doing whatever exercises he could to spend the time.

Hostin was only relieved of duty when Rosewell walked in, flanked by a single royal guardsmen.

Not to be confused with a castle guard who are more often sons of nobles who want a prestigious but safe job, the royal guards were only selected from the best and could be directly tasked only by the royal family.

Today this mountain of a woman, with deep black hair streaked brown was tasked with guarding Harlan and his friends as he was sent on a mandated vacation by Rosewell.

She was going to be there, she was worried about Harlan snapping still and didn’t want him left with Relly.

“Good morning Harlan. I hope you rested well. Hostin you may rest for a time before we leave.”

“You said no manipulation, you drugged me to get me into bed AGAIN.” Rosewell noticed the look on the faces of the others in the room.

“I will not explain my actions, and the boy just has a poor way of phrasing me forcing him to rest. Now, Harlan, we are not going to the dungeon today, you need to unwind before you break, you will not solve all your problems by simply throwing yourself at it until something clicks for you. You will be seeing your friends today for a picnic. This woman next to me is Safira Efren, she is a royal guard and will be protecting us while we are out today. She is far more powerful than anyone you have met before so you do not need to worry about safety today. We will be leaving as soon as you are ready. ”

“I’m fine, I just need a little more time, I am almost there.”

Rosewell used a sound spell to make a loud bang behind him, Harlan responded with a wave of fire that would’ve turned any unwarded furniture into little more than cinders.

It didn’t take much more than that to make Harlan see how tightly wound he really was.

Harlan walked through a gate leading to a cleaning in a forest with large shading trees.

Relly was chasing around a butterfly, Zella was climbing trees, Reet was racing her.

A large blanket was set on the ground with baskets of food on it.

But Harlan didn’t see all this first, he first saw that there is no cover in the case of an attack, that the butterfly Relly was chasing was faintly magical, and that the person who was supposedly Reet didn’t have a cap on, he was on edge over every single detail.

“Harlan, where have you been, it’s been so long!” Relly hugged him, but what he noticed was that her speech was also faintly touching his soul.

“Can you repeat that? I want to test something.”

“No. Miss Rosewell said you need to stop testing things and relax.” She stood defiantly with her arms crossed, Harlan still got what he wanted though. He made a connection using the power of his soul directly to her, bypassing her mind.

“You, Harlan, testing, Rosewell.”

Relly shivered, she didn’t know what it was like when someone poked around their head until now, even when others spoke to her it was a 1 one way connection with her just picking up their thoughts.

“You’re scaring me…”

He broke the connection and returned to using her connection to speak with her.

“Sorry, I just realized how your speaking works a bit, I think I might be able to help you some. But I’ll need to speak with Miss Rosewell about it.”

“Really…?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you Relly.” he finally returned her hug, he was just starting to calm down, slowly.

“Harlan, when you are speaking with Relly I ask that you please use your voice so you don’t leave others out of your conversation.” Rosewell was standing closer than Harlan was comfortable with.

“Yes. sorry Miss Rosewell, I guess all that soul training made me sensitive to people contacting mine. I could speak words into Relly’s soul instead of her just picking up my words, I don’t know what the language of signals is though, I could only speak the words she taught me.” Rosewell put on a bright smile for Relly to try and hide her severe annoyance that the first thing he did was try and research Relly.

“Harlan… I think we should eat so you may speak of things other than research and testing.”

Eventually they sat on the blanket, Zella had handily won the tree climbing race using her hair to pull herself up, she ignored Reet’s comments about cheating and unfair advantages.

Zella hugged Harlan when she came down. things had been tense since Ky left, she needed someone who was more mature than Reet to talk to.

“We thought something bad had really happened this time. Rosewell told us it was fine. But…” Zella finally thought about how much she should be saying in front of her.

“It’s been completely fine, I’ve never slept on a better bed, and I get around the clock protection.”

“HA, what could you need protection from? I was already out of the room but I heard you knocked a guy twice your size pretty good.” Reet suddenly felt Rosewell’s eye burrowing into the back of his head,

“Don’t worry about it, it’s just in case, nothing bad has happened.” Harlan had already decided to lie to them as soon as he survived his first attack.

“But enough about me, I see you aren’t wearing a hat anymore?”

“Yep, if I can keep it under control for another week without any help then I will be put on a 1 month wait time, if I get through that then I can go home. My mom will love it, easiest way to light a fire in the entire north I bet. And with what they learned you might see a few more hotheads some day.” Zella shuddered at the thought of more people like Reet.

“Then it will just be me and Zella left.” Relly held her legs tight to her chest.

“I won’t be leaving any time soon I think, don’t worry too much. And you can still make new friends.” Harlan almost admired how easy it was for her to brush off her problems with just a couple of nice words.

They spent the rest of the day until dusk doing the things a normal child should do, they played hide and seek, tag, tested their aim by throwing things at tree branches. Relly was nearly silent because of her curse and she used it to great effect in hide and seek. Harlan hadn’t felt so normal in months, since he found out he wasn’t really human, and yet the thought no longer bothered him.

“I think it is time that we head back now, you will all be training to make up for this little outing.”

Harlan had a fire in his eyes, it was nice to unwind, but he still wanted to find answers to every new question he asked.

“You will be forced on more breaks if you cannot find when it’s right to rest on your own, this is your only warning. Now, I will help Safira to open a gate back to the facility and then one to the castle.”

Rosewell was the first to notice things weren’t right, she was a very talented wind and sound mage.

A stick changed air currents by breaking, but there was no one there, someone was invisible.

They were also far too competent to be anything but an assassin, they used subtle winds to make it seem like it was flowing unimpeded. They hid their sounds and let others through.

She didn’t immediately attack, instead making code signs with her hands while pretending to open the gate.

Then she felt a larger less subtle change in the air, an arrow headed towards Harlan.

She made a twisting gale force, the arrow was reduced to splinters and the would be assassin into chunks no larger than her fist.

Then the rest dropped their cloaks.

6 assassins left. She summoned her weapon, an elegant thing, a rapier with many gems throughout its guard. Each one allowing bursts of air in different directions to make her swordsmanship more unpredictable and attack from impossible angles.

Safira held off 3 more shots through sheer physical might, moving faster than the arrows.

Hostin nearly died trying to repeat her feats against a single arrow.

At that point it became a matter of close range combat.

Safira held off 3 of them but couldn’t get anything more than flesh wounds.

Rosewell was barely holding back 2 of them but burning through mana far too quickly, having to constantly resort to the gems on her sword to attack and defend at impossible angles.

Hostin was being pushed back far too quickly, the assassin wasn’t trying to kill him, just use him as a shield while he moved towards the children. Couldn’t risk one of them using an area of effect spell and disrupting them.

Then the assassin tripped and fell onto Hostin’s blade. He would never forget the look on his face, the assassin has perfectly memorized every twig and stone in his path, it just didn’t make sense.

Harlan knew full well that anything big wouldn’t work, if the assassins could hold off the others there probably wasn’t anything he could really do in a straight fight,

But Harlan didn’t want or need a straight fight. He subtly shifted leaves on the ground to hide that he had made a small hole in the ground, the assassin stepped right into it falling onto Hostin’s blade, a far greater success than he thought he would get.

“HOSTIN, COME HERE BEFORE YOU GO TO HELP THE OTHERS.”

Then came his other plan, he linked Hostin’s soul to his own, not an oversoul but rather a relay.

“Just get as close as you can to the other assassins. I'll do the rest.”

He was really starting to hate this job, a 7 year old should be running around, not telling him to throw himself into a group of warriors far above his level.

But he was still on the job.

He ran right at the assassin with heavily enchanted gauntlets first.

He never stood a chance against him.

Hostin never even saw the strike, but it clashed with his shield, the assassin would’ve finished him off.

But he suddenly fell on the ground screaming, Hostin froze, Rosewell did not.

With only 4 left the assassins used up a variety of items, smoke bombs and normal bombs and exploding knifes, but it didn’t matter.

For Safira was a wall, great and sturdy.

And then, Rosewell blew away any smoke or light items.

Hostin just tried to get close again once they stopped throwing things.

Harlan had made contact with everyone at this point, further boosting the relay, from 3 inches to a whooping 5 inches.

As Rosewell linked blades with one of them she too fell onto the ground screaming.

The last 3 tried to run before it was too late.

But it was already too late minutes ago.

Safira had turned the ground they planned to run on into a honeycomb pattern, the unstable footing only made it easier for Rosewell to put the last of them down while flying while Safira simply closed the holes around limbs, the unstable footing not bothering her in the slightest.

Then the bodies exploded, Safira had to guard Rosewell, meanwhile the body next to the children was barely blocked by Harlan using nearly every drop of mana he had to make a gale to counteract the explosion, they were still tossed back a distance, Zella wrapping herself and Relly in hair to break their fall.

Reet was lucky to have missed a tree and instead just rolled on the ground, broken limbs instead of a broken skull.

Harlan was not so lucky, the last thing he heard was yelling, the last thing he saw was the edges of the gate stabilize into a location he didn’t recognize.