Their talks finally ended when Sepul appeared, though he was a bit early.

“I do hope I have not interrupted anything.”

“No Archmage Dust, I simply wished to speak with Harlan about magic, we lost track of time. I hope I’ve not taken time away from you.”

“Students should be confident, hold your head high. If I was displeased, I would make it known.”

“Yes, Archmage Dust.”

“Sepul, you are early.”

“I did hope to have a small conversation before you began your apprenticeship.”

Liat was jealous.

“What are the requirements for an apprenticeship? Are you taking in people again?”

“My requirements have never changed, anyone who I believe I can mold into an archmage I will approach, Harlan has shown a clear talent for magic beyond what Aarde had given him as part of his heritage.”

“I coul-”

“You are of the Whitesands, are you not? What could I give you that your elders cannot?”

“What if I had a private reason why they would not teach me their secrets?”

“Then that is between you and them, I left behind the mire of politics, I have no desire to step into the internal issues of the Golden. Harlan, take the Reinoan girl to her room, she cannot stay here.”

“You know her name, don’t talk about her like that.”

“Harlan maybe it-”

“Yara, stay out of this.”

“It is best that you find the heart to remove her from yourself before it becomes a bigger problem.”

“I refuse.”

“There is a better time to argue about this, just think of finding someone of better stock.”

Liat and Yara cleared the space between the two of them, they already knew how he would react, yet he held it in.

Sepul knew exactly how much the statement had hurt Harlan, he even knew why, but his pride refused to let him apologize as soon as he realized his mistake.

Harlan woke Adina and walked her to her room, then he held her hand for a few minutes so she could get to sleep before leaving.

“Now I can go.”

The dungeon where each prisoner was held had spells in place to stop them from seeing or hearing outside of the cells.

Harlan had questions for Sepul.

“Have you found any answers for my questions?”

“You are walking a dangerous line. I do hope you’ve not crossed it already.”

“I am sure she would rather die than lose me, I’d kill to stop it from happening.”

Sepul deeply sighed, it wasn’t the first time he had to deal with a child that believed they had found true love and was ready to throw away their lives for it.

“Do you work now, gain favor, be worth enough that it would be considered a minor thing to do. Though I don’t think that is the right thing to do, she is the daughter of a high saint who is all the worst parts of my friend without the good parts. Give up the girl.”

“Let’s get to work, I need two of them at least in a cell, I need a blade to cut me without causing much real damage, I’ll be using quite a lot of blood.”

“Keep ignoring your elders and you will keep running into these problems. I can replenish your blood with tonics and spells, you should be fine.”

The first man screamed at Harlan, he wanted to tell him all about what he had done, Harlan struck him to make him quiet down, the man's lungs burned as he tried to laugh.

The second sat in his cell without saying a word, Harlan felt his eyes on him but he didn’t worry.

“We also have another person here to take note for you, simply tell him what to write down, any passing thoughts, and he will. He is also trained in soul magic.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you Harlan, I’ve hear-”

“While we are working, call me Fomoria. Get me a blood mage as well.”

When he went to be with his friend, with his family, he was Harlan, he couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t, but here, he was going to do things that Harlan wouldn’t even want to do.

Yet he couldn’t just cast aside that other part of him, the one that craved retribution, the one that discarded his own morals for the sake of violence.

For the sake of my family, for the sake of their safety, I will cast aside the parts of me that are disgusted at what I am.

These were the excuses of a boy who knew right from wrong and chose to do one while telling himself it was in the spirit of the other.

He cut down the arms of each man and then himself, pulling a thin stream of blood into the air, first he found the connection between blood, soul, and mind.

Once he could connect to them as if he had made skin contact he spread the mist outwards, he needed to know how thin he could let the life force be before it lost its connection with the soul, and thus the soul to the mind.

Harlan kept at it for an hour, pulling blood, misting it, he could feel something, it was faint, but it led to their souls, a second connection related to the first.

He didn’t hesitate, the first man was bound in hardlight and couldn’t fight back.

Harlan plunged into his soul, marking it, taking it apart, testing what he could get away with.

It took another hour before Harlan found the piece that that faint line seemed to connect to, at this point the man was a convulsing mess that had to be stopped from choking on his own vomit.

Next Harlan tried plucking out just that piece of his soul, after cutting the souls of mimic trees for years Harlan had no issue with this, he held it in a box far to large for it to keep it from fading away, the idea had been given to him by the fenrir but he hadn’t had time to train his own ability to make the spell properly so this was a very basic form.

“Hold this.”

Harlan had Sepul sit across the room from him and tried to speak, the line between them seemed thicker than between the two prisoners but still he couldn’t just hook onto it, he spilled his blood and put it into the air, coiling around the line he could see but it refused to listen to him.

Eventually Sepul had to stop him from going too far, he had already lost a lot of blood as it was.

“Stop. Have you even made any progress or are you just beating yourself?”

“I can see them, the lines of intent. Hang faintly in the air.

“Good, but you need to rest, drink these tonics and let them naturally metabolize to replenish your blood.”

“Can’t you just use spells?”

“Yes, I could, but clearly you are too tied up in that girl to care about yourself right now, so sit there and think, I will be back.”

Sepul returned after 20 minutes.

“Have you had time to think?”

“Yeah.”

“You still intend to go down that path?”

“There isn't that path or this path, I’ve just got my path.”

“You are an idiot.”

“I get that a lot.”

“If there is anything I can do to help, ask, if not return to your work.”

“First guy isn’t going to make it, what exactly did he do?”

“Killed a family on their farm with a hatchet, then he vanished and did it again every few months. Fae gave the man invisibility, eventually he was captured, the mage had lost his family to him, so he intended to torture him to death. I convinced him that it wouldn’t get rid of that pain, the better thing was to let him suffer his last few days in this world before his execution. You are not the first to take a crack at his soul.”

Harlan took and poked and prodded at the soul, forcing the connection through blood, trying to grab that line of thought that connected him to that other part of the world.

Harlan watched the blood and he remembered something he had done quite some time ago.

“Sepul, can you make crystals from this man’s blood?”

“Of course, why though?”

“Doctor said I should never do it again and I should never tell others how to do it, but you keep a little piece of your soul, your life, in blood. Liquid blood makes it fade away and it finds its way back to you, crystal is still connected, I can’t believe I tortured this man for over an hour before I realized it. I once looked into a crystal of blood that came from a soldier working for Redwall, the man then came to the doctor to talk about an itchy feeling that wouldn’t go away. Maybe that is the answer, make blood crystals and then try talking to them. Can you use soulspeak?”

“Of course.”

“Then make one of my blood, try talking to me through it.”

He told Sepul to hold the crystal while he tried speaking through the man, then he spilled some small amount of blood in the air to try and sense that connection between the blood and the blood crystal.

Sepul did as asked, it didn’t work at first, and it didn’t work the tenth time, Harlan felt ill but he could see that something was happening so he kept going.

By the 15 try Sepul was actually worried for Harlan, and that bond allowed it to pass through.

“That boy is going to kill himself, what a fool, taking abuse for hours for nothing.”

“It isn’t for nothing.”

It caused him a great deal of pain and suffering, but it was a start.

“I am impressed, I’ve gone through some experiments that took weeks to get a working prototype.”

“I didn’t just start today, I’ve been thinking about this and trying for months, I just didn’t want to pay the cost for progress yet.”

“Well, it is a start. What are the biggest dangers that you can immediately think of?”

“Hand me the crystal from subject 1 and I will see if my worst fear is real.”

Harlan screamed through the crystal and the man convulsed.

“If anyone got hold of my crystal and then also knew how to purposely attack through soulspeak there isn’t a lot to do about it. I can protect myself, but if I don’t see it coming I’d still get staggered for a moment and that is too long.”

“Very well, we still have a new way to control prisoners now. I will destroy your crystal and make two of them for each prisoner, keep one on you.”

“Is this worth anything as far as favor goes?”

“Maybe. We will need more testing, but for now, avoid spilling your own blood, if you do, destroy it immediately. I recall 40 years ago an archmage died as a result of making a new spell that, once leaked to the rest of the world, bypassed his shielding spells. He had tied objects to his own mana signature and so anything enchanted by him could use that spell to cut through every defense he put up due to his shields believing that they were pieces of clothing that shouldn’t clash. He dressed well, and he took that to the grave at least.”

“Understood, can I get that spell to make blood crystals?”

“Of course.”

A quick moment to tell Lugh that he was ok and would be taking a long shower.

5 minutes of vomiting up everything he had.

15 minutes seeing the blood that had long since washed away covering his hands.

1 minute to dry off, another to get dressed.

3 minutes to compartmentalize those memories so Lugh couldn’t see them even if Harlan thought about them.

This went on for a few more nights, Amber would be back soon, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to meet her yet, either his will would crumble as he thought of what she might think of him, or it would harden as he saw who he was using to justify his work.