Rosewell would’ve liked to stay longer but the royal dinner waited for no one, and an injured child was not reason enough to miss it too the king.

The atmosphere was tense, some of the princes and princesses were behind the fight and wanted to know what happened.

The king spoke as soon as Rosewell sat.

“My dear daughter, how did your little outing with the children go?”

“We were attacked. They are all dead.” she took note of who gained even the slightest smirk before she clarified.

“The assassins did not take a single life, though my personal guard was harmed and is recovering. Harlan is at the royal infirmary recovering as well, the assassins detonated when the last of them died causing him to suffer an injury.”

“Well, things could’ve gone better, I thought for a moment that I had overestimated your group's abilities. It would’ve been better had your guard died to drive home the point that the kingdom will give its lives for theirs. Did the boy get involved? That would throw off my calculations a small amount at least.”

Rosewell stopped for a moment, trying to figure out what she was hearing.

But that was madness, how could her father just openly admit to sending the assassins as a ploy.

“We know he did something to disrupt them, he saved my personal guard’s life. but we are not aware of what yet, I will ask him when he wakes up.”

“It is a good sign that he has now spilled blood to protect another member of the kingdom. Your report is done.”

Rosewell barely heard anything else for the rest of the dinner, she wished she could be excused so she didn’t need to look at him.

She knew her father, but she didn’t think he would’ve been the one sending the assassins, to try and push forward with the plans on endearing Harlan to her and the kingdom without asking.

But her father knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t follow the plans he had how he wanted.

When everyone had finally finished she her him speak again

“Go to the boy, he will not wake until you are there, I have made it so. You shall be the first thing he sees.”

“Yes father…” The king knew that she wouldn’t like his plans, so he just didn’t bother to ask her, he wanted the magical knowledge from Harlan. And if he could fully bring him to their side then they would learn all the more from it.

She made her way to the infirmary where a chair from her room was already sat next to the bed.

Her mind was still chaotic with her mental image of her father as harsh and uncaring but not an evil man clashed with what she now knew. What if Relly or Zella had been hurt or killed? Were the assassins not supposed to kill anyone from the start? Was he gambling with their lives without a care?

She was eventually broken out of her thoughts when she heard Harlan speak.

“Miss Rosewell… why are you here?”

“I couldn’t sleep knowing you were still here. Do you feel well enough to go back to the facility?”

She wanted him out of the castle, away from her fathers machinations until she sorted her thoughts.

She had clearly displayed on her face that Harlan should say yes.

“I’m ok, let’s go back there.”

Once she had him back in his room she put up as many anti-spying wards and arrays as she could.

Then she decided to tell Harlan what had actually happened.

He lacked the right words for how angry he was.

“I, AND THEN THAT. ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHH.”

“Yes I agree.”

“AND YOU!”

“I know.”

After another 30 minutes of angry rambling and short replies he had calmed down enough to talk.

“So what are YOU going to do then? Wait for him to cut off my limbs so you can heroically save me? Maybe he’ll just kill people I know so you can comfort me. WHAT ARE YOU DOING.”

“Harlan, please, there is a limit to what he would do he woul-”

“REALLY? HE WOULDN’T?”

They both fell into silence, Rosewell trying to fight against her image of her father being exactly the monster Harlan thought he was, and Harlan trying to not get so worked up that he went back into rambling angry nonsense.

“I think you should try acting overly affectionate towards me while others can see us, and you should help Relly. If you learn how to do what she does we could speak without speaking when we needed to.”

“Oh oh, so now you want me to play nice? You want me to help you exploit Relly too? I guess you haven’t tried the assassins plan on her ye-”

Rosewell slapped him, she knew he was angry, so was she.

But she genuinely loved Relly and couldn’t stand the idea of doing such things to her.

“I am not my father, you can toss around your insults but I would NEVER hurt Relly like that. Now sit down, I am going to tell you what to do and you will do it. You WILL help Relly because if it looks like you are too useful then he won’t try anymore risky things like this. You WILL keep up your necromancy for the same reason. You WILL pretend that you don’t hate me and most importantly you WILL never speak a word of this because if he heard you hated him you wouldn’t live through the day. Harlan… Please, I am not evil, but I can’t help you. You are almost an enemy of the state just by existing, so don’t give him any reason to make him think you are going to do something bad, and one day I am sure you can go back home. Deal?” she put her hand out, and they shook.

This is how their days were spent for the next 2 years and 3 months, necromancy had slowed down severely, he was upto a half a day before the undead burst, and they could follow most instructions as long as their plan wasn’t changed in any way.

He found out what was the cause of some oversoul crystal not functioning, he simply lacked the finesse to fill them properly, he would need to find a gem shaper to make each one an exact copy of a base crystal and then fill them with souls in the exact same way every single time.

He had a full vocabulary in what he called soul speak, just needing to say a word out loud and then have Relly repeat it in his mind, allowing him to learn them. He also found out how to make it so her hair and eyes didn’t change colors if she didn’t want them too.

The kingdom had started full scale production of soul enchanted items to replace the old enchanted items for the last 6 months as their own mages became able to work a soul like Harlan could, each was less efficient than him but quantity is its own quality.

He had realized more about how souls worked than any single mage in the kingdom had in their entire lives.

The kingdom got most of this, but some of it was known only to Harlan and Rosewell.

They restricted how much they actually gave away, bursts of innovation weren’t as impressive in her reports as months of consistent improvement.

But for Harlan the most fun he had was spreading rumors and sending some people into an uproar with the right words, he had “accidentally” called Rosewell mother once and the look on the maids faces was priceless to him, when he saw that Rosewell had a slight blush he felt like he was finally done being bitter about her, she had been helping him and hadn’t broken his trust since their new deal.

She really was starting to remind him of a second mother, Zella and Relly almost like sisters.

Though Zella had been gone for over 6 months already, she was sent to the grand academy in the neutral zone. They had found out how the Fae changed her soul and would sell this information to a newer noble house for their bloodline eventually.

Relly started living in the royal castle as well, under the excuse of her learning to better socialize with normal people and learn sound magic to be able to speak from Rosewell.

Really Rosewell just couldn’t bear to see her alone day after day in the facility, no new children came in around her age, and none of the other new children liked her poking around in their heads.

After another day of work in necromancy was done, Harlan slept. He was seeing if adding a bloodline to the souls would have positive benefits towards longevity of the body.

He awoke to find Safira was waiting there, with 3 more of the royal guard, fully armored.

“You will come with us. The king wishes to speak to you and Rosewell.”

Harlan had found some manner of peace, he knew he had done everything right and unless Rosewell had told him they were withholding information then nothing bad was likely to happen.

“Thank you for coming to get me then.”

They moved out in a square formation with Harlan in the center through the castle, it was a small city in itself in some ways, and without using a gate it took 30 minutes of casual walking to get to the throne room where the king and every royal child was waiting.

Harlan kneeled deeply towards the king as soon as his escort had stopped, Rosewell gave him books to read at night when he wasn’t allowed to experiment and working out was getting overly tedious to him, smaller and smaller gains over time, he was peaking in what his child body could do.

“You are Harlan, the Fomorian child then?.”

“Yes, your grace”

“And are you aware of why you are before us now?”

“No, your grace.”

“You have been with us now for nearly 3 years, in that time we have gone through many improvements in how we research and understand souls. you have granted us the basics of necromancy at least, temporary shock troopers to hold the line against the theocracy. Why do you think we are gathered here now?”

“I would not mean to imply anything, your grace.” Harlan found proper speech to the king annoying at best, but he had been preparing for the worst case where he actually had to speak with him for a long time.

“We did not gather here for you to not answer the question. I will not repeat it.”

Harlan felt a strong force press down on his soul, the king wanted his game to be played, not sidestepped with flowery language.

“I… am I done with this? May I return home now?”

“A very good guess, but no, we will decide your fate now. Release and an honorary noble title, or execution.”

Harlan nearly detonated his soul on the spot, from his testing soul detonations could kill nearly anything, he had never seen even a heavily warded table or chair that could escape its short but violent destructive range, but Rosewell looked calm to him still, he thought this might not just be an execution after all.

“As you will, your grace.”

Harlan had never been given leave to stand, after 2 hours of arguments from both sides his legs were locked up like steel, but he didn’t dare move.

He had only met Safira once before but he knew she would cut him down without issue if she thought it was the right call.

“You may stand.” his legs made a popping noise as he rose.

“I will allow one final argument from the chosen representative of both sides.”

On the right was the 7th prince, still a scheming snake like when they first met, and on the left was… A man who Harlan didn’t know, his 30s most likely, so one of the older princes.

“You may speak first.” he pointed at the older prince

“Thank you father. I will start with the obvious of how much he has already helped us, if he was an enemy he could've sabotaged our work, instead he has performed an untold number of experiments even those which had a chance of killing himself. the new soul enchanted items have caused a rather sizeable revolution in the magical field, even our own castle has used that research to set up recharging wards and arrays to defend us. in his time at the facility he has only 1 incident against him, one which was 3 years ago and against someone who had clearly harmed him as well as others. And we have also seen some outcry from counts to dukes about the boy, the more that comes out about him the more they want him to be set free, to become a vanguard of our kingdom, they might not directly have a voice in this place, but it would be foolish to ignore the possible fallout from them. We should also take into account the other members of his family, his middle sister is in the grand academy right now, and shows talent, as well as being friends of beastkin of several clans. If word got out that we took a non-human child, exploited him for all we could and then killed him, it would reflect poorly on our prospects of a formal alliance with the confederation.”

“You are right that those nobles do not have a voice here in this and should be ignored, the greatest risk the boy poses is granting more knowledge about elemental magic to fomorian tribes, they have always lagged behind and we have been successful at routing them many times because they have their soul magic and physical strength to rely on, but still very simple elemental magic. With even the small knowledge the boy has they could learn to repel us, costing lives that would be better served at the borderlands. We have enough from him already to do so much, so much that could be torn down, we do not know if he has sabotaged our works already without us realizing it. He could raise to be a far greater threat than anyone else, especially if he defected. The boy should be put down.”

“I shall deliberate for a time, you are all to stand and wait for my word.”

“Both sides have good reasons for their choices, as such a compromise will be reached. The boy is to be set free for 9 months, staying at the Redwall estate during this time, at which point he is then to attend the grand academy, and depending on how he progresses we shall judge him once more in the future. He will receive a name, but no lands or tribute. This shall mark him as a noble for the sake of honor duels and not to be abused or used in political games of other nobles. And nothing more. This is final, and no arguments are to be held regarding this decision. You may now step forward, fomorian child.”

After so long it felt like a dream, like he would wake up tomorrow and go back to the dungeon to make more undead.

The king unsheathed a sword, clearly ceremonial as far as he could tell. It was a bright white with gold veins and gems of the 6 elemental colors on its guard and hilt. It looked sized to a man 7 feet tall at least.

“Henceforth you shall be known as Harlan Fomoria, your name coming from what you are, but also that you are not your blood, and that some day the word formoiran might be forgotten, but your name shall not be. This title grants you no real power, and it shall not be passed to your family or your children unless you are instated as a full noble through acts of valor or otherwise worth to Regna.”

Harlan knelt once more, he felt the weight of the flat side of the blade touch on both his shoulders and then he rose.

“Thank you very much your grace. I shall do great things with this name you have granted me.”

“I suppose there is only one more matter of business. A quick question really, do you want to kill me?”