Harlan was knee deep in blood again.

It was the best way to feel the connection as the life left in the blood mingled and spoke nothing to each other, orders to just not mix together were what they amounted to.

14 more subjects died last week, he made working prototypes of his blood crystal design but he was told that he should still try to understand the web as it seemed the better option if it could work.

Sepul was there with a few other researchers who worked under the other brother, he tried to ask the name but they were both cagey and terrified when it came to both parties.

“Raise the temperature of the blood until it boils, even what I am sitting in and what is inside the subjects bodies, try to keep them alive as long as possible. Avoid raising mine as much as possible, I will be controlling its temperature on my own.”

Harlan added his blood to the mix and once it boiled it started turning to steam.

The blood of 20 men was filled with so much life that finally Harlan did it, for just a single moment, he connected, then that was it, he was in, the connection between him and the web went from a trail of dust to a solid link.

He was flooded with emotions that wanted to run wild in him, he wondered if this was what The Dark Mother was trying to stop.

He just barely pushed aside the thousands of voices screaming that he should just start killing everyone.

When he woke up he was covered head to toe in blood, he had apparently tore apart the test subjects and very nearly a researcher before he set his emotional state to zero.

“I connected to the web. I will begin work on the new amulet design once I return from my parents home.”

“Do you have anything else? Are you, you?”

“Yeah Sepul, I am still just Harlan. I need a shower, a really long one, I’ve not been covered in this much blood since I was 10. I used my empathic abilities to prevent the other voices inside from overwhelming me. I believe now that I am settled, whatever they are won’t be able to do that a second time.”

“Very well, I will report that you’ve made the connection and require time away to process this information into a usable prototype.”

“Thank you.”

Harlan had to be teleported directly into his shower, he decided to destroy that robe, even if he did try to let the staff clean it, such a thing would lead to questions he would rather not have to answer.

Officially he was experimenting with void as he often would and the robe was an accident.

As he washed the blood away he started raising his emotions back to what he knew was his base and wondered how he got here, two months ago he might’ve been crying to himself and breaking down.

Was justifying it by telling himself that it was to save friends and family really all it took for him to kill dozens of men?

In all honesty? It was. He had accepted that he was only as much of a monster as he let himself be, yet it wasn’t just monstrous actions that turned a man evil, it was why.

He and Sepul had this conversation more than once, both could call themselves monsters without worry or offense, both did what they did for the greater good and promised that if one of them went too far that the other would stop them.

So far they both agreed and the king did too, this was all bloody and gory, but these men were all heavily sedated and felt nothing as they died, it was no different than if they really had been executed from their perspective.

They also had their own debt to repay the country, lives lost, pain and suffering caused, they were monsters who did it for nothing but self satisfaction.

Harlan picked up Lugh and made his way to the gate office.

When he arrived he found everyone that would be going.

Ibery decided that she would copy Harlan and she would be heading home to see her family.

Adelwulf had to refuse, it fell on his birthday and his coming of age would be a weekend long ceremony.

“Has everyone double checked that they aren’t missing anything?”

“I have.”

Adina was almost a problem, though a few letters convinced her father that she was going as a spy for Reino, on the other side Sepul simply made a few offhand remarks at a party that he would be cross with people interfering with his apprentice or people who damaged relations between nations for petty little things like not letting children make friends with one another, people quickly realized that Harlan was friends with a Reinoan girl and was his apprentice.

“Why can’t I bring my weapons…”

Bojana was excited to see her best friends home, though she still wanted that fight with Harlan.

“It would be in poor taste to bring weapons to another nation beyond what you keep at your side, you are a councilor's daughter, you should know this.”

Tau hoped he could speak with Kass, from what Harlan told him they should get along quite well.

“...”

Ximena had changed her mind and wanted to come along, though she wouldn’t say why.

“When are we leaving?”

Zella was practically jumping with joy to go back, they were her family in a similar sense that they were Harlan’s family, both of them lost but then found a better family.

Sepul teleported in at exactly 7 on the dot.

“Has everyone double checked that they aren’t missing anything?”

They all answered with a polite yes and then moments later they found themselves, along with 6 Unseen, about a 5 minute walk from the farm.

“Will you hold my hand while we walk? The ground seems quite uneven.”

Adina and Harlan both knew her real reason, yet he held her hand anyway.

She had made no further advancement towards him overtly, but she kept him close.

As they drew near many things bothered Harlan, though what was the most clear were the banners hanging from the now substantially taller stone walls of his parents farm. If he didn’t know any better he would call it a fort from this distance, but the strangest thing was his banners flying on the wall.

Evendentilly, Balor had left some things out of his letters.

“Is this the right place?”

Amber was in disbelief.

“Well, it’s our crest at least.”

They got closer and Harlan felt his ring resonate with the area, the king had the wards and arrays around the area upgraded even more once Harlan had shown that his idea of a communicator wasn't based on thin ideas implied by a fickle god.

The gates opened wide for them as they drew near, he was glad to see that his parents home, much to the chagrin of Blackstone who wanted them in a bigger house, was still exactly the same simple cabin that they had added onto over the years.

The men inside were clearly soldiers, but they were wearing Harlan’s crest.

“Do you work for me?”

“I am under your brother, Balor, though in a sense I do work for you. Are there any problems?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

The others would be there for dinner, so inside the house was just his parents.

His mother was rushing back and forth getting things ready for breakfast.

She briefly froze when she saw Adina, her resemblance to Ava was uncanny.

“Hi mom, I’m home.”

“Why don’t you sit down sweetie, I have bread sitting to cool and I’ll start on the eggs and sausages as soon as I finish cleaning this mess.”

Instead of just sitting, Harlan set the table, Amber joined her mother in the kitchen to get everything ready, the others simply sat down.

Adina listened closely to their sounds, the way the family hummed the same tune as they worked, the heavy steps of Harlan compared to his mother and sister, the way they flowed with practiced ease past one another despite the size of the kitchen.

Her home was quiet, from the carpeted floors compared to the somewhat creaky planks here, to the staff who rarely spoke openly since her father thought gossiping was a waste of time.

She appreciated every crack and chop and whisk and sizzle as they got their food ready.

She was overwhelmed when she first came to the academy, it was full of life and people, yet it had been just as empty and quiet as her home in a sense, she was outcast from her own people for being born wrong and the other students hated or ignored her for where she was born, it was lonely to be invisible while surrounded by hundreds of people in crowded hallways.

She was pulled from her thoughts by the sound of her plate being put back in front of her, Harlan had served her food.

“Ah, I am very sorry, I should’ve done that myself.”

“Don’t worry about it, it looked like you were thinking about something important.”

She smiled as she answered.

“Yes, it was rather important.”

It wasn’t high class food, just egg sandwiches with sausage on the side, but Adina would hold that memory as one of her favorite meals.

Breakfast was full of life, Aida and Harlow both asked Harlan and Amber a lot of questions about what they had been up to, and while Harlan couldn’t tell them what he was working on, they trusted that it would be fine since he was in high spirits.

“So, you are Adina? Harlan had a lot to say about you last time he was here.”

“Yes, you must be Miss Aida, you sound nice.”

“Thank you. How did you meet?”

Harlan had given a very simple ‘She was getting picked on so I stopped it and she started following me’ when he told his parents how they met.

“Ah, well. I was being picked on by a few older boys from the morals committee, they had taken my glasses and were threatening to break them, then suddenly I heard heavy footsteps approaching. I thought it was the older Cato brother but then I heard one of the boys cry out in pain, Harlan had threatened to break his arm if they didn’t give my glasses back to me and leave.”

She held her cup close to her chest and blushed.

“I started following him after that, I didn’t understand why he helped me without asking anything from me. It was very heroic.”

“That does sound like something Harlan would do, though I wish he didn’t resort to violence so quickly sometimes.”

Adina shook her head.

“If Harlan hadn’t quickly disabled one of them they would’ve really tried to fight and they would’ve been hurt much worse. Harlan, is there anything else you want to add?”

“I don’t like being called a hero, I would’ve walked right past you if you didn’t look like Ava, I should’ve helped before I saw your face.”

“But in the end you did help me. Not just then, but every day after that, I don’t know what I would be doing there if I hadn’t met you.”

It didn’t take an empath to see how she looked at Harlan, nor to see how he didn’t look at her the same way.

“Miss Aida, could I talk with you after breakfast?”

“Of course, I’ve got more things I want to ask you anyway.”

Ximena didn’t say a word the entire meal, she looked around, hoping to understand what made Harlan the way that he was, she considered him brave and selfless while the others considered him a martyr.

After everyone was done Aida asked if Adina could help clean things while they talked, Ximena meanwhile wanted to go on a walk with Harlan, Adina didn’t want to talk until after they had left.

“Did you have a mother?”

“She died when I was young, it was just my brother Redmond and my father.”

“Do you remember her?”

“I don’t know what she looked like, but I remember her holding me, just a feeling of being close to her.

How is your mother?”

“She died giving birth to me, I am sure I should be more sad about her, but I never knew her as anything but a painting in the hallway.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you. Harlan gets upset when I talk about my family, so I want to ask you about them.”

Aida listened to stories of her life growing up, she understood why Harlan would react poorly to them, yet as the mother of a paranoid child it had rubbed off on her and she wondered if she could really trust what she was hearing.

However, she did remind her of having Ava at home, so she did want her to be around.

Harlan and Ximena went along as the workers took the sheep to graze.

He had never tested using his empathy to actually affect other people, so he figured with his new ability he should finally start really training beyond blocking out other people.

Harlan moved his hand and tried to force his way into the mind of the animal.

“Grass, grass, walking, grass grass.”

He thought for a moment how it was talking, but then he thought of how the soul was protected but Relly could talk though the mind even if she didn’t understand how she had done it.

“Go left.”

The sheep didn’t reply, it just followed his commands as if it was its own thoughts.

He moved the sheep back and forth, he didn’t need to use his hands exactly, but it helped him focus.

He thought it should’ve been harder, but it simply worked.

He connected with more than a single sheep, two, three, ten, fifteen.

The more he connected with the more jumbled his thoughts became, it wasn’t like the Slip Ants exactly; these were self-sufficient beings that weren’t asking questions, but they also didn’t block out any thoughts, so whatever came across their minds flowed across the connection back to Harlan.

“Ximena, can I try something with you? It shouldn’t cause any harm, but I thought I should ask anyway.”

“I trust you.”

“Thank you.”

She could feel how glad he was to hear her response.

Unlike with soulspeak, he was having issues keeping his emotions off of the connection, it was like swapping between two swords with slightly different weight, even if both of them were almost the same it still had a slight adjustment period.

“So, you figured out how to connect to the crossroads of the mind.”

His confusion came across without any words.

“I just call it the web, could you already do this? Is this what Rosamet did to me before?”

“Yes, we don’t have empathy like Fomorians but we have the basic mental magics.”

He was annoyed, but more than that guilt was coming over the connection.

He wondered if he had included her, would he have needed to spill blood like he did? He could handle the weight of the lives he had taken, but knowing there might’ve been another option led to strong feelings of regret.

“Harlan, are you ok?”

Then she realized what she believed had happened.

“Oh no, I’m sorry, if I had known I would’ve warned you about your first time.”

“No, there is nothing to be sorry about, this is just the path I am on. I made my choices, not seeing if you knew anything was just another one of my failures.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t think she knew how to console people, but she had some idea of what she should do.

“You’re right, even If you asked me about the connection I wouldn’t have told you anyway. It is an old secret of our people and one that isn’t learned without a cost.”

It was clear just from looking at him how tired he seemed at the moment, he looked at his hands, the flecks of blood he saw on his hands that weren’t there returned for a moment before fading away.

“Then I have paid my cost, and don’t try to put any blame on yourself. ”

“I wouldn’t have done that anyway, you are the one that needs to not think of my feelings when you are clearly so upset over whatever cost you paid.”

When they returned Harlan noticed one of his carriages had arrived.

Kass and Tau were sitting outside and drinking tea as they exchanged advice that they hoped could help Harlan.

Bojana and Sara seemed to be getting along quite well on account of both of them liking little games and betting.

Balor was sitting on the step for the carriage waiting for Harlan.

“Hey, long time no see.”

“So, you found out how to connect with others over a distance? I am glad to see you in person, hearing that you have friends and seeing them are two different things. Which of them is Adina?”

“She is probably still inside with mom. She wanted to talk with her about something, I hope that went well.”

They had been having their conversation by just standing near one another, Ximena knew what was happening, but to some of the others it seemed like they were upset at one another.

Isha wanted to defuse the situation.

“Good morning Harlan, would you like to talk inside?“

“Of course.”

Ximena followed the three of them.

Adina and Aida were sitting in the living room with Harlow and talking about the rest of the family, warning her that Ava isn’t going to like her at first.

Isha had Balor and Harlan sit across from one another in the kitchen.

“I think you two should deal with the silence between one another, I don’t know why, but you should get it out in the open.”

Both of them reacted with confusion before they realized what had happened.

Isha was embarrassed at her fumble, after time with Kass she was trying to be better at dealing with people when she would normally just leave things alone.

“Well, anyway. With that out of the way, how have things been at home? I noticed that all the guards here are wearing our crest now and they have new weapons and armor.”

“I've cut a deal with a blacksmith in Tole, he supplies what I ask for, either raw materials or made items, and I soulsmith the items for him at a reduced cost. I know there isn’t any level of security that will be enough for you, but now each soldier here is under our banner which carries a heavier cost should someone harm them compared to unaffiliated mercenaries.

I keep them constantly updated with new spells as I try to develop styles to take advantage of what we can do now. And… I have hired more people to help around the house. I know you don’t approve, but I can’t send Isha and Sarah everywhere and I don’t want to rely on the couriers for everything.”

Harlan sat back in his seat, he looked at the ceiling, and he spoke.

“I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all, but, I trust you; you were right that I can’t just sit in the woods and hope everything works out. I need power, personal and political. If I am to keep everyone safe, I am going to make a lot of enemies, I already have enough as it is. I’ve done something again that is likely to change a lot about normal life. In 10 years I expect golems are going to start being just another normal part of life for people, did you ever get the guard in Luth to accept working with golem.”

“I have a meeting with the guard captain later today, Redwall said he could just force the issue and it wouldn’t be a problem, but I want them to want golems.”

“Good. Now, let's get out of business.”

Harlan got started on applesauce and Isha quickly joined him.

Adina wanted to help cook as well, so Aida tried showing her how, in the end they had sauce and pies and cookies and dumplings, the entire home smelled of apples and spices, and they ended up giving some to the workers.

Harlan could feel how happy she was to be doing it, he wanted to jump in when she cut herself, but mom just gave her a kiss and Adina healed herself without crying.

The Redwall family showed up for dinner.

Ava locked eyes with Adina as soon as she stepped inside, Balor had kept the rest of the family updated on almost everything Harlan had told him in his letters, he did try to keep their worries down by not mentioning his fight with Liat at least, nor did he tell them Harlan’s worries over the people he sometimes felt following him.

“You must be the Reinoan girl.”

She might’ve been a little over 5’4, but she sat at the table with the presence of a full grown man, yet Adina wouldn’t be intimidated by her.

“Yes, you must be Ava, Harlan has told me a lot about you. I hope we can get along.”

“Harlan, you need to stop being friends with spies, I think people are going to think something is up if you find a third one.”

“I am not a spy, though I was sent to be friends with Harlan, I didn’t know it at the time and I have never given anything important to my father, nor would I ever.”

“How about we spar? I can’t let you be deadweigh-”

Harlan pulled on her ear.

“Don’t pick on Adina.”

“Fine, whatever.”

Adina laughed at the display, only further antagonizing Ava.

Yet the dinner was still peaceful.

Everyone was settling around the house after the meal was finished, cleaning could happen later.

She heard a sound she hadn’t gotten the chance to hear in a long time, Jarrik was cooing and babbling as he grabbed Autumn's hair.

Harlan made his way over to his oldest sister and gave her a hug before asking her a question.

“Adina, can you come here for a moment?”

She sat next to him on the couch that was moved out of the way for a second table so there was enough room for everyone around the table.

“Hold him, you looked like you wanted to.”

“I don’t think that is a go-”

Harlan forced him into her hands, Adina had never gotten the chance to hold a baby before now.

Superstition meant she was never allowed near them, and since her mother had passed giving birth to her she had no siblings younger than her.

Jarrik grabbed at her glasses until they finally came off, the little boy seemed to be enamored by her eyes and kept trying to stand up and poke at them.

Adina meanwhile tried to put them back on and apologize for showing her eyes.

“I think he liked your eyes, and I think you look good without your glasses anyway.”

“No, they are unsightly, I shouldn’t be showing them to normal people.”

“Then I am glad there aren’t any normal people around. Don’t worry for a second about them.”

She fumbled with them for a moment as she decided if she wanted to put them back on or not, she had never been allowed to take them off at home and at the academy she didn’t want to make herself a bigger target by showing herself as abnormal.

“I don’t know, will you hold them for me while I decide.”

She moved her head and felt the weight that was now gone, they had been made with a stonesteel frame to be a constant reminder of her disability, she never took them off for long enough to really remember what it was like to not have them on.

The only time they ever came off was when she slept.

“I don’t think I can just throw them away, I should just-”

A wave of void turned the glasses into little more than dust.

“Whoops.”

She could see them as they crumbled into nothing and Harlan blew the dust out the window and she wasn’t sure how she felt just yet, she couldn’t comprehend that he had done it out of malice or as an accident so she sat in stunned silence for a time.

“Those things served no use but to make you remember you were born wrong, I have no idea what sick bastard made them but I can’t believe for a second those were comfortable for you to wear.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder and enjoyed that the frame didn’t dig into her skin, she didn’t feel that weight bothering her when she didn’t sit perfectly straight, she understood Harlan’s reasons for destroying them, she could’ve never brought herself to break her own chains.

Autumn nearly pinched his neck and scolded him until she noticed that despite her tears, Adina was still smiling.

Adina wiped her tears, not realizing what she was doing until now.

“Sorry for my display, it won’t happen again.”

“You should already know you can always cry on my shoulder if you need to.”

It was a little uncomfortable for the others to witness the touching moment between the two of them

Harlan ended up between Ava and Adina on the couch, only making their resemblance all the more clear.

“Adina, I want you to spar with me, I won’t hurt you, but I can’t have you dragging my brother down.

I know he’d get himself killed over something stupid if you were involved.”

“I think that would be good, I’ve been working with Zella to try and get stronger. Maybe I should have Harlan train me when we get back to the academy. I won’t drag him down.”

She still didn’t like her.