9 days prior.

“My my my… Now what are you? You feel… familiar? But you are not that soul. You are also not one of my children. What have you come to this place for?”

Lugh was nervous, he thought she was much nicer from what Harlan had shown him.

“Um… Ah…”

“Please, calm yourself. I can’t bite.” She burst into laughter. But Lugh could feel her, she was unhappy with her uninvited guest.

“I… I am Lugh, I am Harlan’s brother…” The void shuddered for a moment as he said his name.

“You? He has no brother by that name.”

“I, um, he made me. And our brother Balor, but Balor doesn’t want to talk to you… He thinks you are scary.” another shudder at Balor’s name.

“Oh… You are that thing. Ah, I apologize. You are that person. Brother to the lost child, I do hope you will stay by his side, keep his mind well. But what have you come here for? How did you come here?”

Lugh felt a little better, she had called him a person at least.

“Brother Harlan said I should talk with you. He said you were nice.”

She lightly chuckled.

“Well, I am glad he has such kind words for others about me. Do you wish to simply know me? Or to know yourself through me? What is the path you wish to tread?”

“I just want to help my family, brother Harlan, brother Balor, sister Autumn, sister Amber, sister Ava, papa Harlow, mama Aida.” She felt like an artist given a fresh batch of clay and told to sculpt as she pleased.

“Well, if that is all you want, I have many things I could teach you. But do you know what the most dangerous thing is?”

“What? Is it cooking? Harlan always complains about hurting himself trying to cook.”

A roaring laughter rang out in the seemingly empty space.

“Nothing so… Mundane. No, the greatest danger is the fae. Thieving conniving things. Mutilators of souls. False gods.”

“Yeah, that sounds way worse, and they hurt Harlan’s friends.” Lugh didn’t really know the children from the facility but he knew how much Harlan liked them.

“So, how would you like to help me to keep the rest of your family safe from them?‘

“Yeah, that sounds great!”

“Wonderful my child. I just need you to enter a pact with me. Become my fae slaying blade.”

“Oh… That sounds serious… I think I should talk with my brothers about that.”

“Doesn’t Harlan trust me though? Do you not trust him enough? And isn’t it better to get this done as soon as you can?”

“Well, I guess that makes sense. What do I need to do?”

“Oh not much, you must simply be here while I give you some power, and teach you some things. It will take time, and you will need to leave and help your brothers at times. So we won’t do it all at once. And I want this to be a surprise, so don’t tell them yet.”

“Oh! I like surprises.”

35 minutes prior to the killing of the woman.

“I have taught you the basics of fae slaying, but you should still be wary of them, keep any hostile intentions from being let loose. Strike at them like you are just moving past them, and I shall handle the killing. I sense something is wrong with time, something fighting against it. You should keep watch for them, but you will know them on sight.”

Back to the present.

The women was reduced to a pile of rotten meat. Killing fae was hard, but channeling a god to age them to death was the prefered method for the chosen of the dark mother. Though she never had enough of them.

“Lugh… what have you done? Why? HOW COULD YOU?”

“I was told it is always a good time for killing fae. That I should never suffer them to live. That is what she was teaching me. Now cut up her soul before she gets up… I am tired…”

Lugh fell blade down right into the body.

Balor was in shock, there was no warning for what had happened. He wanted to trust Lugh, but deep down there was still something telling him not to trust the dark mother.

That was until he saw that he was right, there was still a soul in the pile of flesh. And it was trying to stitch itself back together.

He used as much power as he could, abandoning the golem body and laying himself directly on the gore to be as efficient as he could. The soul tried to fight him, to strike directly at him. But Lugh was still stuck in it with that black still covering him reduced to only small wisps. The wisps formed a shell around both of their souls. As he struck the final blow and the soul finally faded away he felt the ground tremor. Then he too was tired, so he slept.

The fox and the ox were confused. But they were supposed to take anyone who was hurt to a safe place. And as far as they could tell Lugh and Balor were hurt. So they took them back to Harlan. The ox had Balor in its mouth, and the fox had Lugh between his teeth. So they ran, the fox matching pace with the ox.

After 15 minutes they were right back at Harlan’s land.

Harlan nearly sent a lightning bolt at them before he realized who it was. Then the panic set in. he could only see what the golems saw in their memories, only hear what they heard. But he couldn’t understand any of it. He could only let them rest.

After some time he was pulled into pure darkness. He burst out light mana, trying to find his way around.

“You don’t need to worry about those two. They have done something wonderful.”

“They killed an innocent woman. What the hell kind of game are you playing?”

“You should mind your tone. Allow me to explain. They have taken the first step to the path I hope you do not reject. The fae are not of this world. They are interlopers who bring true chaos to us, to any people with whom they meet. You have seen their workings first hand.”

“Explain, as far as I could tell she was a normal woman.”

“Your dolls lack the means to see past their faces. A fae can distort the mind, you would never know if you passed one on the street or in the forest if it does not want you to notice them. They will also cover themselves in cloaks, hiding from even the sights of gods. We can only have an idea of where they are, but they must reveal themselves so we can strike at them fully. All I have done is tell little Lugh what they feel like, and how to kill them. And this information shall help you in many other ways. There are limits to what I can teach, even if I would like to tell everyone who can see me the exact ways to fight them. Too many people start hunting and they flee so far outside of our sight that no one could ever find them. Even turning every living being on Aarde to dust would not catch them all.”

“So that is your game? You want to turn us into your hunters? Why not just tell me?”

“The term is chosen. We would use paladin but those fae have used the term so much for their own puppets that it is tainted. They would gain an upper hand against any who bore the name. Fae magic is dangerous and unpredictable even to us. They do not play by our rules, but they are bound by some of them. Hence we can kill them. This is the duty of any who hold well the pacts of gods. I have said my peace, this conversation is over for now.”

Harlan was back in his room, no time seemed to have passed for him.

So he sat, then he became bored and kept working while keeping an eye on his brothers for any signs of them waking up.

It was 3 hours before they were up again.

“Hey.”

“Harlan? How did we get back here…”

“Golems brought you back. I understand what happened. It’s fine.”

“I think we should go to the village. Check if there is someone missing, we don’t know who that was other than them being fae.”

“Alright. Are you ok to leave now?”

“I think I should be fine, being nearer to you might even be helpful. Lugh, are you alright?”

“Yep. let’s go.”

Nothing happened while they were away, there was no missing person in the village. Though the guards were sent to make absolutely sure of that after Harlan left.

There were a dozen men now buried on Harlan’s land, only their heads were above ground.

“So anyway. I wonder if I should try and get the golems to mak-”

“EXCUSE ME. COULD YOU GET US OUT FROM HERE PLEASE.”

“Why?”

The man was completely dumbfounded, he couldn’t even conceive of someone answering him like that.

“I am an architect. The barron sent us.”

“Prove it.”

“I have papers in my bag. But it is in our cart which is under us.”

The other men were silent, clearly scared stiff over suddenly being nearly buried alive.

Harlan placed his hand on a nearby tree and gave it a command to show it what had happened so far. The man’s story checked out, they had come in a group, and as soon as they got too close to his land it shaped the earth around them. Pulling the cart underground and then pulling them out before they died. Harlan still wasn’t confident that his golems would just go mad in some way and just start killing any random people, so for the time being they would only be allowed to capture and contain people.

One thing that Harlan was getting used to was seeing the way soul enchanted objects viewed the world, they could see the men from every angle as their minds evenly split the spellwork between the lot of them, working like a dozen mages as a perfectly synced group.

Then he commanded the tree oversoul to shift the earth and set them all free.

“My apologies. I do hope no harm has come to your men.”

The men all rushed to answer at once.

“Oh no sir.” “forgive our intrusion.” “I won’t tell a soul.”

The boss quieted them all down with a loud clap.

“Thomas Goodwall. Branch family of the Greatwall family.” He gave a curt bow, not being overly upset about the near death experience. But still giving a shallower bow than what was proper, at least if Balor calculated the angle correctly.

Harlan gave a bow deeper than was needed, he realized that something had gone wrong and it was his fault. He would need to make sure to check the roots on the trees next time. The trees had incorrectly decided that the land beyond the wall was also to be protected since they stretched under it and had roots tangled with a tree outside.