Harlan went back inside to talk it over with Balor and Lugh.

“I kinda want to meet him. He could teach me a lot.”

“Or he could try to kill you, again. This is a pointless risk, and if anyone knew about you meeting him then you would be an enemy of the kingdom.”

“Yeah, but his birds have been watching me this entire time, if he wanted to kill me he could. I don’t think it’s that risky. Lugh, what do you think?”

“Hmm… he hurt you… but if he teaches you then you could keep our family safer… I say meet him.”

“2 to 1, Balor. I won’t make you stay here but I am sending back the white letter.”

“Of course I’m staying, I am your shield and your brother.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Harlan stepped back outside with the letters in hand and burned the black one and the envelope it came in.

The stork bowed to him and picked the white letter out of his hand before flying away.

Then it was back to work, Harlan decided that he should build a guest room.

He remembered that book he had read about druids and wanted to see if he could move wood at all.

It was an advanced element but he didn’t really know how it worked for this.

“What is wood?”

“Wood is… let me think?”

The 3 of them all thought about it.

“Well, it has to be earth related. What concepts does earth cover?”

“Force, stillness, growth, density, heaviness. If I memorized that book correctly.”

“Well… growth is what we want. Let’s get a piece of wood and start messing with it.”

4 hours passed and Harlan had made branches grow but they were all fragile and brittle.

He was not happy with this development.

“What are we missing? We can grow it but it’s just kindling.”

“Hmm… I don’t really know. What is the difference between the wood you are working with and this new branch? Cut the wood and see if we learn anything.”

So Harlan swung Lugh and the branch he was growing was cleaved in two without much effort.

Harlan looked at the cut, noticing the sap.

“It needs water. That must be it.”

Harlan used earth magic to dig a small well and pulled water from the ground. He then pushed the branch into the ground.

Then he started growing it into a tree, pumping as much water as he could muster into its newly grown roots.

By the time Harlan had exhausted nearly all of his mana, he was tired but overjoyed at his new tree.

He snapped off a branch and a veritable rush of thin watery resin game out, making his hands all stick.

Stupid tree he thought.

The next thing he noticed was how fragile it still was.

He made a tree, but one that was bad for crafting and wouldn’t make good firewood since it would need to be dried a lot before it was able to be burned. It was a waterskin shaped like a tree to him.

He was greatly annoyed.

He took Lugh and started slashing at one of the larger trees around him. Then he went back inside to sleep after it fell over.

The next morning he came out and looked at the tree he cut down, a little upset at himself for lashing out at all.

And then he cut down the tree he grow.

Then he pondered.

“Harlan, what you doing? You’ve been looking back and forth between the trees for minutes now.”

“Rings…”

“What?”

“Tree, they grow in rings, look. The one I made is just a solid piece without rings on it, and the sap is super thin, on the big tree the sap is thick. I don’t just need to grow and give it water. I also need to use that density of earth magic to make tight rings.”

It took hours, but he finally tuned his magic to the right levels and he got a tree that grew straight, had tight rings, and thick sap.

He looked over all his tests, trees that had large humps in them where he lost control and flooded the tree with water, trees that were thin in parts and looked ready to snap at a moments notice where he squeezed them too tightly. One that he actually liked which he grew into a spiral somehow.

He finally decided to start building his guest room, simply keeping a barrel of water next to him to flow into the new wood and turn into sap.

It took an hour of starting and stopping to get it shaped right with a flat floor, the walls and ceiling were rounded and gave him the feeling of being inside a flower bulb. He decided that he liked that more anyway. And he didn’t want to think how much more tinkering he would need to get a square room.

From the outside it looked closer to a very tightly knit wicker basket since he made the walls and ceiling from man smaller branches instead of trying to grow a tree sideways.

His final steps were to pull water out of the wood, he didn’t fully understand why but he knew you were supposed to pull most of it out if you are working with wood.

And then he covered it in a layer of mud to insulate the room. He wished he knew how to make glass, he thought a window on the roof to let some light in would be nice.

Instead he just made the normal shutter style window.

He was overjoyed looking at his new room.

It seemed sturdy to him, it had a unique shape to it, and it was the result of him learning a new way to use magic.

The stork was back, it had been waiting for the last 30 minutes while Harlan finished up the room.

He finally noticed the bird and it handed him a new letter before flying off again.

“I will be at your home in 2 days time. I am sure that you already know but please do not mention this to anyone in any way. Burn this letter after reading.”

Harlan burned the letter as asked and started working on making cores for his golems, he didn’t want to be working on parts since Dearil might give him a better design that makes those parts worthless.