The first thing Selen did was end the class and disperse the crowd that had gathered, the second thing was send Harlan away.

He found himself in a hallway he didn’t recognize, the door in front of him had a nameplate reading

‘Mary, guidance counselor.’

He knocked on the door and she told him to come in.

She stood 5’7, not an uncommon height for a human woman, but uncommonly short for a Golden woman.

She wore a simple yellow sundress with a small spot of red where she had spilled tomato sauce from her lunch without realizing.

He guessed her as being early 20s, 25 at the very most.

What Harlan found striking however, was that she didn’t have a single tattoo.

He inferred from those he had seen that it was something the Golden all got at one point or another, even the boys aged the same as him had a sizable amount of their body covered by them.

She spoke in a kind tone, without judgment for his actions.

“Please, sit on the couch across from me. Have a cookie if you like.”

Harlan instantly felt remorse for what he had done, it hadn’t sunk in that he nearly did to Delmet what Gilly had done to him.

“Do you understand why you are here?”

“I reacted to a taunt before my mind caught up with my body. I harmed someone who I didn’t mean to who didn’t deserve it at the time.”

“That is some troubling phrasing, at what time would he have deserved it?”

“If we had been fighting and I didn’t hold back it would’ve just been an accident, but his own pride and insults against me would’ve been enough cause to let me not feel bad about it.”

“Do you feel bad about what you did?”

“Yes.”

“Why? It seems you dislike this boy quite a bit if you believe there is a time when doing what you did would’ve been acceptable.”

“I shouldn’t use what I know, what I am, to hurt others who can’t defend themselves from me.”

“What do you believe that you are?”

He nearly called himself a monster but the words caught in his throat, it was the first thought he had, he felt bad about hurting Delmet, and on some level he went back to thinking he was a monster.

“You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to.”

“I am just a person.”

“That is close, but you are you, Harlan Fomoria, found on the road, raised by a nice family, taken from them by your kingdom to invent things. Do you agree?”

“That sounds right.”

“I want you to come back to me sometimes, talk about why you are angry, I know from reading over your file and seeing what you’ve done that you want to be good. I want you to understand that anger is just part of everyone, you aren’t uniquely bad for giving in sometimes. Everyone has a bad day, everyone does something they regret without thinking it through, harsh words or thrown hands. What matters is what you do after that, don’t let it fester, give it a day, find Delmet, and just apologize to him. He doesn’t have to accept it, but you need to let him know that you really mean it.”

He didn’t understand it fully, but he teared up.

Her words knocked something loose, the gate to the things he still kept locked away cracked just a fraction.

He ruminated on this as he walked through the gate leading to his next class, politics, a vague name, but he figured the teacher would explain it.

The students looked at him and whispered to one another before the teacher slammed his book closed.

The man standing at the front of the class was the Vowren, the Blackwall Archmage.

Yet Harlan could still feel their emotions burrowing into his skull like foxes digging beneath trees, he tried to turn down his emotions, to force shut his emotional feeding, but nothing was fully blocking it, he had to just ride it out and try to fight all the focus on him by trial and error.

“I will be starting now, you all know me already, but you can call me Vowren here. Politics? What does this class mean to you?”

Harlan was somewhat shocked by the change in demeanor, he had a fire in his eyes and an energetic voice as he spoke, here he was not The Blackwall Archmage, he was Vowren, a man who loved the history of the nations.

“No takers? Come now, this is a place of learning, but it is also a place of teaching, if you don’t ask questions you might as well stay at the library all day reading words from things which cannot answer many of your questions.”

He went on with how the class was to explain political structures of the nations, but Harlan heard little of this.

“Anyway, now we can move onto Reino. In a sense, they are very much like Ragne if you think about it, a grand saint instead of a king, great saints are dukes, high saints are counts, and saints are barons. This is a very simple view of it, but should work as a starting point. Now, unlike Ragne, the title of grand saint isn’t passed down by blood and the will of the former king, but rather by a method which is unknown to most people. The grand saint will then demote or promote any saints of any ranks and this will generally happen without much strife, Ragne cannot do this because human nature abhors the loss of power, but a nation based on faith can do this by saying it is the will of the gods. I won’t give my own opinion on good or bad, that is for you to decide, but Reino has grown much faster than the kingdom in nearly every way and if it wasn’t for some of their magic being landlocked they would’ve likely rolled over the entire continent by now. But, and I know there will be a lot of those in this class, that has also led to a sense of misplaced security, they have been structured since their inception to conquer other lands and they believed their own incapable of being invaded, this is profoundly foolish.”

Students who were already holding their tongues spoke up, but after a few classes they were learning how forceful they could be in asserting their opinion.

Vowren welcomed this, open and honest debate was how he hoped to change their minds and hearts, he wasn’t a man who wanted fighting, he had seen enough war, done enough killing.

He was disappointed in their arguments against him which were little more than thinly veiled insinuations that he simply didn’t know their people and couldn’t really speak for their nation like he did.

But, this was a start, he wasn’t arguing with children, he was talking to them while knowing far more than they ever could.

“Now, back to the topic at hand. Reino was first ruled directly by their gods, note, I said their gods, not the gods. As part of the new curriculum I will be speaking about the truth of the world, we will not be arguing about whose gods are real or false, I will be only speaking of what I have seen, what I have read, no nation shall be coddled because we wish to avoid conflict, a time of understanding is now, a time where we can know other peoples without bloodshed is now.

Back on topic, after their gods were gone, and I am using uncertain terms here since that topic is too much to get into here, the people started making their saints more than the soldiers of the gods of Reino, there was a period of 50 years post age of the gods where it was chaos and Reino as we know it today was a single city of hundreds and much like the walled cities of Ragne they were besieged by beasts who bred out of control since saints couldn’t go out in the world and cull them as they could, some kept a part of their power but most people didn’t.

Don’t take for granted the simple existence of a healer, diseases ran rampant, killing cities before any beast set foot inside, other cities with only healers fared slightly better since their magic was potent, more so than modern healing magic, they could take half a man, cast a spell, and he was whole again, it was a meat grinder of people fighting, being torn limb from limb, being healed, and going right back into it. I want to really make this clear, even 500 years ago, things were very bad. The last wizard was killed some 600 years ago, the last witch? 160 years ago. I want this to be known because it is important for us to understand why things were so bad, why we have formed nations for combat, and not for peace, Reino, Ragne, the states of The Confederacy, all of them are built by and for bloodshed, either against beasts or against other people. Some of you here will be leaders some day, either a city, or a town, maybe even a village, and you need to know about the leaders of the past so you can know how to be a leader of the future. I had another section planned, but our rousing conversation earlier ran a bit long. Is there anything which I could quickly clarify before I end this for today?”

Harlan had won, the feelings were calming down, part from his efforts, part from something else.

But he was still barely there, his mind was wandering, he was focused more on keeping the people around him from noticing how weak he felt than anything.

It was Lugh who slipped inside his robe and raised his hand, spoke in his voice.

“What were the wizard and witches then? Why did one die out so much later than the other?”

“An excellent question Fomoria. The wizards of old were those who held power through power, they had some vestiges of godly magic which they wielded against the beast hordes, they didn’t age, they didn’t sleep, they killed many, man and beast. They were mostly put down by Marigold”

A smile crept across his face for just a moment as he said her name.

“She hated those who abused their power, so when she came to teach normal people how to use magic as we know it today many of them tried to stop her, fearing their own loss of power. Their heads ended up on pikes as an example, some of them allowed this and learned modern magic from here, including the first King Yggdra. He died at the ripe age of 840 years old in a battle against the other last wizard, a man who fled from Marigold and led an army against The Kingdom of Ragne. witches are a less clear thing, but they were, in a sense, anyone who ruled through things like seduction or gifts, healers could fall into this category because they seduced people with promises of eternal lives, which, for the record, they couldn’t do, they could only make them seem young until they died, these were the ones who lived the longest since they tended to simply be around powerful people instead of being the powerful people. But make no mistake, they could be just as cruel and vile as the darkest of wizards, sometimes death is the better option. King Yggdra the 13th, the grandfather of the current king, put down the last witch, a man who tried to flee into the frontier after he was discovered to have been manipulating and stealing from noblewomen whenever he ran out of money from the last time he did such a thing. This is also the fight which killed him, I will not be going into detail.”

The man pulled out a watch and made an odd face when he saw the time.

“I must apologize, I’ve gone over time once again. You have 4 minutes to reach the next class so I will just open a gate.”

It barely took 30 seconds until 4 gates opened to take the children to the next class, Harlan waited until they were mostly cleared out before he made his move, physically nothing was wrong, but mentally he was haggard and needed sleep, without asking his opinion Lugh had spoken to Adina who was sat next to him to help him keep steady as they went to the next class, Harlan hated economics so he wouldn’t miss anything if he simply slept through it.

Harlan would wake up in his seat as the professor, a balding man who looked like any tax collector he had ever seen, clapped his hands and told them to get to their next class.

He couldn’t remember what he dreamed of, but he felt it was something awful.

The Darkness asked her siblings who scoffed at her prophecies of doom that never panned out in the past, They believed it was just another bout of minor madness caused by living too much in times unknown instead of the present.

Even her parent gave little stock to her fears, but wouldn’t stand in the way of whatever her plans were.

The Darkness was confident that this was a very real threat even if she didn’t know the why the how or the when, so she looked for those who might be champions.