They went to his room together, another student, likely a 4th year he guessed, ribbed his friend next to him and pointed at the two.

“Harlan, stop.”

He hadn’t even realized that he started walking towards the boys.

“Thank you.”

Ximena hadn’t noticed that he even stepped away.

As soon as the two of them stepped inside he put on a kettle of water.

“Do you want some tea?”

“Ah, yes please.”

“Black or green?”

“Green, something fruity if you have it.”

“I have orange if that sounds good.”

“That sounds delightful.”

As he handed her the cup she could feel her trembling.

“How do you deal with it?”

“With what?”

“Killing, almost dying, all of it. When I saw the lich I left you all behind. How do I stop being a coward? How do I stop being so afraid?”

“Why do you think I tried to fight him?”

“Because you are strong, and you had a plan?”

“I stayed behind because I would rather die than see people I like die. I am a coward, afraid of everything around me taking away what I have. I’m not brave, I am an idiot. And guess what, I put you and Taren behind me and Adina when we went into that tunnel because I wanted you two as meat shields, you were in front of him because I like you more. I even thought of killing him before I fought the lich just to make sure you two had more air and that he wouldn’t try anything.”

She was stunned, she sat and drank her tea, ate the few cookies that Harlan set out for her.

Then it was just silence, Harlan didn’t mind, he would rather have the silence.

“Would you really?”

“Without a second thought. Delmet is an idiot, he is brash and has an ego the size of Aarde, but that makes him easy to deal with, anything he would do would be physical, his problem is with me.

Taren is different, he has been spreading rumors about me since the first day I came here, probably before then even, he has people he pays to make sure those rumors stick, to spread them about my sister, about every friend I have.

The only ones who he avoids are the twins, and that is just because their father is a duke and if he pushed too hard on them he would end up with far worse spread about him until nobody would touch him with a ten foot pole. That little argument we had? He was shocked that I wasn’t treating him like the dirt I think he is even though he deserves it, his father wanted me dead, wanted my family dead, he ended up executed because he finally got caught. I’m shocked that anyone takes anything he says seriously considering how much of a poison nobility is, a bunch of spoiled children throwing around accusations and too afraid to even ask a simple question. Putting their gold above anything but their own lives because they are the most important person in whatever room they enter.”

He had long since broken the cup he had in his hand, she tried to stop the bleeding.

“I am.. Sorry.”

She didn’t know how to react to his outpouring of hate and anger, she wasn’t even the target and she felt like she was in danger.

“No, you aren’t because it isn’t your fault, you don’t know anything that I’ve dealt with, I’m being thrown around by things and people who are just too much to handle, the king and whatever it is that he even wants from me now that I gave him what I had, after I gave them 3 years of my life, The Darkness who wants me to kill whatever she wants, I am sure the headmaster has something planned but he hasn’t had the chance to fuck me over yet. The only people it seems I can trust are inhuman monsters and my family.”

She started crying at this point, Lugh had been yelling at him to stop talking before he even mentioned the argument with Taren.

He just kept sipping his tea, he couldn’t even blame it on his empathy running out of control, he had already put that behind him, he was just… Tired.

He had fun when they were camping, sitting around the fire, telling stories.

It reminded him of when he thought he was a normal person, then he got pulled into another mess, beaten and almost killed by another being that he didn’t have the slightest chance of going against.

Free will meant nothing as long as he couldn’t stop others from enacting theirs on him, even though he didn’t have walls around him, he didn’t have guards shadowing his every move, he still never got out of the cage the royals put him in when he was 10.

“You can’t tell anyone what I just said here, any of it.”

She stopped crying and eked out a yes and a thank you, he didn’t have any idea why though.

He was alone again, well, not alone, Lugh was there.

“Lugh, is there anything you want to do?”

“I want you to be happy again.”

“Do you want to go on a walk?”

“NO, you are going to hurt somebody if you go outside, then you will just feel worse.”

“I think I will read then, thank you for trying to stop me earlier. Sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

“It is ok, I know you are just angry, sorry I can’t help you, brother Balor also got sad that he couldn’t help you.”

“Do you want to go home to see Ava?”

“No, I just need to stay with you.”

He ran through what he knew about the cost of gates and went to the student help desk so they could point him to their gate services.

“How much would it cost to get me to Luth in Blackstone county?”

“For how long?”

“3 days.”

“Well, let me check the rates and the map real quick.”

The desk attendant went into a back room for a few minutes and returned with a quote.

“100 gold in total, 10 paid now, the remaining when you get back. If when the time comes you don’t want to return you will still need to pay the full price. Would you like to pay in coins or from an expenses account?”

“Expense account.”

“We will come to get you when the next gate capable mage is ready to send you to your destination, thank you for your time.”

An hour passed, Harlan sat in the garden and read a book, it was something his mother read him as a child.

No, when he was younger, Harlan felt world wery, but he tried to remember that he was still just a child.

He liked the part where even after they lost their mittens and made a mess, the kittens were still forgiven because they had cleaned them.

A boy came by and tried to knock the book from his hand, Harlan broke his hands twice and then healed them twice.

Harlan returned home an hour after that, there was a slight delay because he left a note with Selen that he was leaving, he didn’t want to bother anyone else but he knew they would ask where he went after he missed dinner.

Harlan had a short visit with Brig, he questioned why he was back and then called him wasteful when he said he took a gate.

Harlan missed being given advice and or berated by the old man.

He wondered if he would still be there when he came back next time.

He sent letters to both Balor and Redwall telling him how long he would be back in case any of them wanted to talk, but he made it clear he wanted to stay on the farm.

Instead of renting a horse or a carriage Harlan ran back home on foot, when he reached the gate to his parents farm he jumped over the top, a few men tried to spear him as he landed but Harlan wasn’t one to lose out to them.

He tossed them around but didn’t hurt them, they eventually just surrounded him as he claimed to be Harlan and some of the farmhands recognized him.

Eventually Aida came out and invited him in while berating the guards for not even knowing what he looked like.

“Let me wake your father up, what are you doing here? How are you here?”

“Let him have his nap, and I took a gate here. The king apparently set me up with an expenses account so I didn’t have to pay anything.”

“Are you… Are you ok? Is this just a normal visit?”

“I just want to go back to being Harlan the farmer's son for a few days, help out around here, unwind.”

“What happened, you… You don’t just stop working, I know you don’t. Are you making friends? You aren’t too lonely there?”

“I almost died again, some lich that everyone but me seems to know about wanted to test me, I passed but... I’m not lonely either, Amber has good friends and they are my friends too, I also have my own friends. People my age.”

“Oh my little baby boy, come here.”

She checked him for wounds and kissed his forehead before pulling him into a hug; he wasn’t entirely sure how long they sat there at the table before Harlow woke up and joined them.

“School life getting you down? I tried to join the army once you know, it didn’t work out.”

“School has been fine, most of my teachers seem like good people. One of the Nightwatchers who saved me from that werewolf is a teacher there. I really like her, she is taking care of a boy younger than me who lost his family.”

“That’s nice. Are you doing ok though? How long are you staying?”

“I almost died again, I already told mom. I’ll be here for 3 days, there was a camp but my group was sent back to the academy early so I don’t have any classes and we get the weekends off to hang out or do experiments.”

“She is taking it well.”

Aida’s eyes were watery but she didn’t want to cry, thinking that if she did then Harlan would too.

“Are you making friends? Staying out of trouble?”

“I don’t go looking for trouble, and I’ve got some good people as friends.”

“Ah, so you aren’t staying out of it?”

Harlan laughed at the joke and they all split up.

Aida moved to start on lunch, she sent out a farmhand to pick up some nicer cuts of meat for them then she went to start peeling and boiling potatoes, getting the carrots ready to roast.

“So, who are your friends?”

“You already know Amber’s friends, right?”

“Yes, she has told us all about them.”

“Alright, then I’ll start with the ones you don’t know. The first person who approached me was Adina.

She is a spy from Reino but I don’t mind. She is nice but I think I am probably her first real friend.

People over there think people who have soul damage are cursed, so with her blindness it has been hard on her but they also won’t fix her eyes.”

“You say she is a spy? How do you know, has she tried to do anything to you?”

“Nah, she told me when we thought we were going to die. She didn’t even know what her mission was, she thinks she is cursed because people who get close to her die in accidents or through odd coincidences. She is also in love with me, but I think she just needs to know what a friend is before she starts thinking about that.”

“Well, that is very mature of you, I met your mother when I was 14, married her at 17. She didn’t give me the time of day at first since I worked on her father’s farm, actually it is this one right here since it transferred to her when he passed away; but over time I eventually broke down her walls and she decided that I wasn’t just after her for anything but her heart.”

She gave him a peck on the cheek, Harlow had skipped out on a lot of details that Harlan wasn’t old enough to hear, nor did they ever want him to hear it either.

Autumn avoided being born a bastard child by about a month.

“Anyway, next I met with Claude and Claudia, did you ever meet the investigators after that wolf golem attacked me?”

“They gave us the creeps.”

Harlow got goosebumps just thinking about them.

“Well, they are the younger brother and sister of those two. Yes, they are strange, but they seem… Genuine. They met me because I turned the baked potato from dinner into a twice baked potato. Claude likes cooking, Claudia likes dresses and accessories. She complained to me when she saw that I got this healer's pin because she wasn’t allowed to put anything on her clothes.”

“Well, I am sure that their brother and sister are nicer to talk with when they aren’t working too then.”

“Nope, Alan and Alice are sticks in the mud who spend their freetime preparing for whatever their next case is. Even they think their siblings are weird.”

His parents laughed and waited for Harlan to keep going, they shared a look as they realized he really only had 3 friends his own age, and one of them was a spy.

“Do you have any other friends? I mean, I am sure they are nice, but I think you should look for as many friends as you can. Not that there's anything wrong with just a few close friends.”

“Well, I kinda blew up at her earlier so I don’t know if we are friends or not, but there is also Ximena. I met her on that camping trip I mentioned. She is a healer like me, she likes helping people, doesn’t like conflict, headstrong but cowardly when it comes down to it. She was upset when I didn’t wake her up because the camp was attacked by a pack of wolves on the first night, but then she was glad she wasn’t there when I killed some direwolves.”

“Well, if she grew up as a noble she probably only faced stuff like that in a fighting pit where she wasn’t in any real danger.”

“She didn’t talk about her childhood much, but she isn’t a noble, I don’t even know if The Golden have nobles.”

“Oh, I think I know this one, those are the desert people? Right?”

“Yeah, I should’ve asked her if it was offensive to call them that, but I only know two of them there and the other is a real prick.”

“Watch your language.”

“Calm down honey, we both know you said worse when-”

Harlow didn’t get away with just words as Aida smacked his hand with a wood spoon.

“Don’t start bringing up the past now.”

Harlan acted like he was having a good time, they ate their steak and vegetables and then Harlan went and stood guard outside.

He spoke to the guards he tossed around earlier on to make sure there weren't any hard feelings and they just seemed embarrassed to be tossed around by someone half their age, they felt like they should’ve realized something was up when none of the golems reacted to him.

There was a scramble when Harlan got back, for assassins and mercenaries it was a time to be afraid, anyone who was thinking about accepting a contract on him or his family got slaughtered right in their bases, nothing bigger than a hand was ever found.

For neighboring nobles they wanted to introduce themselves, Balor’s efforts with Tole didn’t go unnoticed and they hoped they could get those magical items sold in their own stores through the boy who wasn’t as shrewd a businessman.

Redwall stopped the second group however, he knew that Harlan wasn’t the type to come back for a simple visit, and the vague details of the letter proved that to him.