Harlan explained the job to his new runner.

If the blacksmith has items to enchant, bring them.

If the blacksmith has parts for Harlan, bring them.

Go to town every few hours to get food.

Night is free time, she can go to town or stay in his place.

“What’s the catch?”

“What do you mean?”

“The job is too easy, you are paying too much, you made a small fortress out here in the middle of the woods, you are a noble. And not a local one. And you are a child.”

“I’m making things, I want quiet while I work, I want to be closer to town. You are being paid because I don’t want to waste my time picking things up, and I wanted someone to pick up the job quickly.”

“So you aren’t harvesting souls out here? I’m not going to disappear in the middle of the night? Never to be seen again?”

“Yes to the first one and no to the other two.”

She immediately tried to scale the wall and flee, Harlan made it curve slightly inwards.

“Listen, it’s fine, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She looked like a cornered raccoon, not sure if she wanted to try and lash out yet or not.

“I’m not getting involved in any spooky soul harvesting thing, I won’t tell anyone, just let me go.”

Harlan reached for his pocket and she lunged, Lugh deflecting her strike. Harlan pulled his hand out to reveal a wooden chicken. She fled back to the wall.

He set the chicken on the ground and had it walk to her.

She hit it with a fireball, turning it to cinders.

Two birds that were sitting on his roof squawked angrily at the display, and Harlan agreed.

“Fine, go back to the town, but will you at least ask the guild to send someone else out here?”

“Sure.”

He opened the wall and she sprinted out as fast as he could. He realized after a time that she probably wasn’t actually going to tell the guild to send someone else.

He decided he didn’t need them too anyway, people just get scared of him and judge him.

He started work on a new design, a wooden ox, sized closer to a pony.

The mimic tree branch hadn’t made the tree he grafted it too into a mimic yet so for the next few days he was having to actually go into town himself, he decided to go to the adventurers guild first.

He was glad they only seemed to have a single person working the front desk.

“I need to cancel a request.”

“That will be 50 bronze coins, 10% of the posted reward. And I am going to ask for the reason for cancellation”

“I can make something to do the work as it turns out, and the person you sent ran away from the job.”

“My apologies, she is… superstitious, and I didn’t know what you were doing.”

“I take it she told some insane story and everyone here hates me?” He had noticed everyone avoiding eye contact with him when he walked into the guild.

“Do you have the money to cancel the request on you right now?”

“I’ll take that as a yes, and here is the money.” he gave her a silver coin, the smallest denomination he kept on him.

Then to the blacksmith.

“I got 5 parts for ya, no more. Pay me fore ya take em.”

“Thank you. And I want to put in a request for a few different things, a human shaped skeleton made of regular iron. How much time would that take?”

“Hmm… depends, how human lookin?”

“Basic shape, it will be inside something else, not a decoration.”

“I can do… 3 of em a day? But then I’ll only be makin 3 of yer fox parts.”

“That is fine, I only want a dozen of those skeletons anyway. 1 normal iron, the other 11 stonesteel.”

“I ain’t makin some army of evil am I?” he laughed before falling into a coughing fit.

“Purely for self defense.”

“Aight, I’ll get em done.”

“I am going to be here for a little while, how fast can you get one done?”

“Gimmie a few hours.”

“And a final thing, I will probably be sending someone riding a small ox to pick up and deliver things from now on.”

The old blacksmith gave him a confused look and then waved him away.

Harlan went to drop off the few toys he kept in his pockets at all times at the odds and ends store.

Then went to a jeweler to pick up a few dozen mana gems, they were what he used for an animation core. They held up to holding souls better than anything else he had used, at least for their size.

Then Harlan didn’t know what else to do, he could get a meal. But he had to burn at least 2 more hours and he couldn’t just walk back to the forest, by the time he got there he would need to walk back anyway.

Harlan went to a clothing store for the first time.

“I need a set of clothes that completely conceal a person.”

The tailor gave him an incredulous look.

“In your size or larger?”

“Probably closer to your size, I am not sure yet.”

“When you are sure, come back.”

He decided to get a meal. After asking a few guards for their opinion they sent him to the only restaurant that wasn’t also a bar.

He got thinly sliced deer meat that had been soaking in broth put between soft bread with cooked onion and some white sauce.

He decided that this was the perfect food for when he was working.

Harlan found a short book at the odds and ends store while looking for more paints. It was about some fantastical story of druids making mountain sized trees to fight off invaders. He found it funny that even in a world with magic that people would make stories that exaggerated things to such an extent.

And then Harlan was bored again, more bored than he had been before. He couldn’t find anything else worth doing so he just sat in the blacksmith’s shop and watched him work.

“What is your name?”

“Call me Brig, like the prison.”

“Well then thank you Brig, This is exactly what I wanted.‘

It was more or less shaped like a human, the skull was hollow with only indents to let him set fake eyes in it, and it was forged from a single piece of iron, the limbs were all solid rods connected with joints that let it twist much like human limbs would.

“For the stonesteel ones you can leave out the eye sockets, those ones won’t need to look human.”

“Aye, I got a few orders for enchanting ya can take with ya.”

“It’s going to take a few days to get those done, but I can take them now.”

“Fine I suppose.”

Harlan decided to hire a courier and rent a cart to bring things to his place for the day.

Trying to carry the skeleton and the items that he would be enchanting was just too cumbersome.

He got a funny look from the tailor but he was told a set of clothes would be ready by the next day.

He decided to just walk to town to pick up his things until he could make his golems.

And so Harlan went back to his little piece of the world to work.

He could only really work on designs.

He decided to start on the wooden ox first, it was fairly simple to do since he had made a smaller version as a toy before, then he had to figure out exactly how he wanted his wooden man to look.

After an hour of making small mud men he decided that it should be lightweight, with only the wood being only a fairly thin layer that is connected by rods to the skeleton just to fill out the clothes.

The 2 birds who kept on his wall had hopped down to the ground so Harlan made perches for them next to his work table.

A third bird had shown up, followed by one of them leaving. The next day this cycle repeated.

Harlan had a lot of free time, he made his ox golem very heavy with clay boxes attached to the sides for cargo and a built in seat for the human shaped golem to ride on. And yet it was still going to be at least one more day until the mimic tree was done completely.

So he started working on something new, he should’ve been working on his fox parts but he was enamored with a new idea he had.

“Alright, Balor, I need some help with this. You know how I make those cores right?”

“More or less, send over a few memories.”

And so Harlan did.

“What do you want to do with them then?”

“I want to be able to connect you to this golem and send you into town, I am still not really sure if it is safe to send one of these out.”

“Reasonable, let’s start with how your cores work then. I should be able to act as one myself, souls naturally want to saturate things and grow into their vessel, I am a powerful soul who can consciously grow out. You really don’t need anything but placing me in the right spot.”

“You can just do that?”

“Of course, though it will take me some time to fill out the entire body to avoid damaging it, a hook in the skull to anchor myself should be reasonable.”

“That sounds like it makes sense then…” Harlan was distracted by some other thoughts and Balor could tell.

“What are you really trying to do?”

“Oh uh, just making a golem, nothing else.”

“Are you intentionally not lying well?”

“No…?”

“Just tell me”

Harlan signed and walked inside, he didn’t want to talk about this in front of the birds.

“I feel bad that I made you in and Lugh in those bodies, you couldn’t really live a normal life without me here. You can’t taste, you can’t feel. It seems cruel to me what I did.”

“Do you know what it’s like to be a ring? Or a sword? To have no fingers to open things? No mouth to speak? No eyes to look?”

Harlan felt his stomach drop, he felt like everyone was right that he was doing morally reprehensible things.

“I’m sorry… I-”

“Don’t. You don’t know, and I don’t know what it is like to be human, you are looking from the perspective of yourself. But to me I have always been a ring, and I don’t mind that. I cannot taste? Fine, I also don’t need to eat. I cannot feel? That means I have no pain, I have seen you when you fail and you are hurt, That is not what I want. I can think more clearly than you, not being affected by human nature like you are. Ask Lugh how he feels about it?”

“Lugh, are you alright?”

“I am with my brothers, Helping you. That is all I want.”

It brought a tear to his eye and a calm to his heart.

He walked back outside to look over his designs and really begin working only to see a larger bird outside with a letter in its mouth. It was addressed to him and signed with a crest of a cog with a skull in the middle.

It read as such.

“Would you like to meet, little tinkerer? If so please hand the white letter within this one back to my stork, if not then send back the black letter. Please burn this letter and the letter you do not send back. Yours truly, Dearil.”