The group went to the same spot Sepul had originally sent them to at 7 in the morning.

It wasn’t as restful as they had hoped it to be, but the first day was very nice at least.

When the gate opened Sepul was clearly displeased on the other side.

“Don’t go throwing yourself into swords.”

“No.”

Harlan didn’t even look at him when he answered.

Sepul just scoffed and teleported away after everyone had stepped through.

There was another group there at the gate offices however, 2 students from Reino.

Harlan didn’t know their faces, but their mental signature was clear, they had been following him for some time already.

“I’ve heard you are a helpful boy, shame that you aren’t human. We could’ve been good friends.”

“Should I know who you are?”

“I believe you met my younger brother once.”

“I’ve met a lot of people.”

“People simply call me Cato, though it can be confusing considering my brother and father are also named Cato.”

He racked his brain for a moment.

“Oh, then your brother was part of a group bothering a good friend of mine. I do hope he is here to apologize.”

“Actually, he is.”

Harlan eyed him suspiciously, it was clear that the elder Cato understood his confusion.

“Despite what you may believe, as a countryman to the girl I believe it was unacceptable how he treated her. She was allowed to live for a reason, so I cannot believe she has no purpose in her life. As soon as what happened reached my ears I knew a lesson was in order, she does not need to forgive him, but he must apologize to her from his heart.”

He patted his younger brother on the back with enough strength to force him forward.

As he mumbled an apology with his head hung low and was scolded by his older brother Harlan couldn’t see him as anything but the child he was.

“Adina, I must ask, do you forgive him?”

“I do, and I hope you continue to ensure he is kept on a righteous path.”

“Thank you, now, I do also need to ask, where are your glasses? I do hope they were not lost in Ragne.”

“I will no longer be wearing them, as such I destroyed them.”

He was displeased by her response.

“It is the duty of the citizens of Ragne to follow the law, as an invalid you are required to wear a distinguishing article of clothing. You should be glad that you are not stuck with a veil.”

Despite him being a 4th year student, he looked as if he was in his early 20s, he was 6’3 and big with a military cut for his red hair.

Harlan first assumed he had a problem putting down his fork, but after seeing him flex his arms in anger he realized that Cato was built like a Minos.

Even despite this, Adina took a step closer to the man and stared into his eyes.

“I will not be wearing them any longer. I have no desire to keep a shackle on my person to satisfy people that treat me like a scab.”

“I will be writing your father a letter, he will send another pair of glasses, and I hope you will see reason.”

Harlan wanted to step in, he felt a strong pull to do so, but he wanted to see how much fire she really had.

“I have made myself clear, I will not bend to his demands. He cannot take back the money he already spent on the academy.”

She began accenting her words by poking him in the chest.

“If he wants to push the issue I will renounce him and Reino, I will repay the love that man and that country have always given me.”

Cato wasn’t entirely sure what she meant, it sounded like a threat and a non-sequitur, but to Harlan he knew there was nothing to give back.

Cato walked back down the halls without another word.

Harlan placed a hand on her shoulder.

“I like the new you.”

“It isn’t new, I was just too scared to say anything like that before. Now, would you like to walk me to my room? I am actually scared that they are going to try and hurt me.”

“Does he have a history of that?”

“The Cato family is a long line of enforcers, I am sure that the whole show he put on was just an excuse to see you up close. They don’t care about me, they never have. I am just an excuse to hurt you, of that I am sure. I would be shocked if he hadn’t found a justifiable cause to duel you by the end of the week, they always use that tactic to shut down dissent at the academy.”

“Do you know a lot about them?”

“Yes actually, my father is an investigator, our bloodline is related to our special sight, though I never heard the full explanation of what it does because of my condition. The Cato’s on the other hand are the ones we send after my family has done its work. I think they have some kind of defensive bloodline ability, but I can’t say more than that. They all have a short temper and believe in the law without question, though they bend and twist it until you can barely say what the original letter really meant.”

He sensed a great deal of anger and resentment as she told him more about them.

By the time he had reached her room and helped her calm down the breakfast bell was already ringing.

Harlan walked her there as well, along the way he noticed the younger Cato moving towards him.

His hostility was clear and his plan infantile, he almost wanted to go along with it just because he knew that it would lead to a fight.

Yet Adina had spent no small amount of time ordering Harlan to avoid a fight with Cato; every male in the family had died of natural causes or illness for over 200 years.

For a people who were constantly throwing themselves into fights as enforcers and soldiers, such a thing was no small feat.

He dodged to the other end of the hallway with a smile as the younger Cato tried to bump into him.

As the day wore on more students tried to provoke Harlan, threats against his family started just before dinner.

A few weeks ago this might’ve resulted in a few broken bones, yet now he ignored it.

After dinner he decided to go and ask Hellon some questions.

“What do you want this time?”

“How does magical sterilization work and how is it reversed?”

She closed the door to her office with a burst of wind magic and glared at Harlan.

“What have you done?”

“A friend of mine was raised in an orphanage, she says that all of the children there were made to be infertile. She has been rejected by men for marriage because of this. I also want to know, was this done legally.”

“If I believe your story, which I will look into by the way, then yes, it is within the legal right of an orphanage director to do such a thing. Nobody likes it, I find it cruel and unusual, but orphans make more orphans more often than not. Suffering begets more suffering, those with nothing should not bring more children into the world which they cannot care for. Now, what do you intend to do about this? I could refer her to a doctor that could heal her assuming it wasn’t a botched spell that ruined her insides, but who is she?”

“You aren’t allowed to tell anybody about this, correct? Healers confidentiality?”

“Unless it is to save the life of that patient I have never once revealed information about them.”

“It is a maid of mine. She grew up in Yor, Blackstone County, Redwall Barony. she is 20 years old maybe 21, she never told me her birthday, she never knew her parents so I am guessing she entered the orphanage at a very young age.”

“Has she ever had issues with her periods?”

“I have no idea, we never talked about it beyond the why and what she hoped I could do. She also specified that she doesn’t want a male doctor to touch her.”

“I will give this advice for free then, you cannot be a friend when you are being a doctor, it may be uncomfortable for both parties, but you need to ask detailed questions when dealing with things like this. You aren’t the squeamish type so I am guessing your issue lies in avoiding anything that would upset her.

I could write a questionnaire for her to fill out, though you will need to be the one who sends it of course.

The question however is payment, if you want this done well, and from what I believe I know about you, you do, then you could expect to pay over 80 gold for a good doctor, maybe more if you specify a female doctor. they are always in high demand by men who don’t want other men poking around their bodies.”

“I have no issues with the cost, I would like this done as soon as possible, so I will send out the letter as soon as you have it written down.”

It took less than 30 seconds for her to write down a full three sheets of questions with a bit of penmanship magic as it was called.

“Thank you.”

“Do you want more free advice?”

“If you have any.”

“Don’t let yourself be used, doctors with bleeding hearts end up with bleeding wallets, without coin you won’t be able to move around to help people like you should, any good doctor moves by gate, either their own or someone else's.”

“I don’t think that is possible. If I let a friend suffer when I could help I wouldn’t be me anymore.”

“Give it 10 years, you’ve already seen some of the bad parts of mankind, but you don’t know how much farther things go. People will leave you penniless in the dirt, they will spit in the face of your kindness.”

As he was leaving he felt Adina was outside with somebody else, he hoped to surprise her when he went out.

Instead he found her barely conscious, blood ran from a wound in her head, another student found her laying passed out in a less used hallway, but they were no healer.

Hellon moved past Harlan like a gale to check her student.

He knew she would be fine, the wound itself was superficial, she suffered little real damage.

But that didn’t stop the fire inside him from threatening to burn him up, what stopped that was how as soon as she woke up she was afraid of what Harlan would do.

He was glad that she couldn’t see in a moment like that, his eyes had turned into black pyres, he could keep an even tone, but he could not hide the magical reaction to anger that he felt.

“Promise me that you aren’t going to turn this isn’t an issue.”

“It is already an issue, you were hurt.”

“I am fine, even if somebody didn’t find me I wouldn’t have bled out.”

“Harlan, about that advice I just gave you, have another piece, don’t fall for an obvious provocation. I don’t know what you and her are getting into, but it sounds like you already have an idea of who did this. Let us handle it, we will not overlook an assault on a student and we also can’t overlook what you intend to do to them.”

Before he could say anything Adina explained what she believed happened and why.

He had lost his chance to find his prey and tear them apart, now the academy staff would be investigating the brothers and he couldn’t get close.

“I will call a guard to get you back to your room, you should be able to walk without issue, it was just a flesh wound.”

“No, Harlan can walk me back.”

“I am not sending you off with this boy who is clearly ready to kill somebody, he may tag along, but you will be guided by another guard.”

Little happened on the way back to her room, though he etched each and every face that he saw along the way inside his memories, he made special notes of which ones seemed happy at the scene of Adina walking the halls under guard with flecks of blood still in her hair.

After she exited the shower Harlan held her hand and used sleeping air on her.

She hid it well enough, but she couldn’t hide how afraid she really was from his empathy.

His work that night suffered as a result of his lack of focus, he would find himself drifting off mid sentence as he tried to explain the process he had already created for making buffer spells so the gems didn’t break when they received messages.

Sepul knew the look he had in his eyes, focused rage, he wasn’t just angry, he was planning, and that was what was truly dangerous.

“We are ending our work early tonight, clearly Harlan is not in a well state of mind. I will return you to your own facilities.”

The researchers there already had what they needed anyway, the rest of the night would’ve been them all working together to refine Harlan’s work and hopefully make prototypes.

When it was just the two of them Sepul led Harlan though his house.

Up the stairs from the dungeon led to a cellar with a hidden door and then finally up to the entryway.

He went down the hallways, not towards Sepul’s room, but rather towards the kitchen.

Along the way there was a hall full of paintings, each one bore a plaque beneath it with the date of birth and date of death, it was like walking through a cemetery.

Each person bore the last name Dust, after their father, grandfather, great grandfather, Sepul.

Some died in their old age, some as young infants.

It filled Harlan with a deep grief for these people he had never known.

Sepul changed from the floating husk of a man into a younger self, his hair was white with only the faintest flecks of black from his youth spread throughout it.

He stood on his own two legs and cracked his joints with a loud pop.

They ended up in a study, though Harlan remembered that this door was supposed to lead to the kitchen, he also remembered that the hallway of paintings shouldn’t have been after that turn before.

“Why do you think I have brought you here?”

“To tell me that revenge is bad and I should let go whatever is bothering me.”

“Revenge is a terrible thing, they say to dig two graves, but that is never enough. What you desire is retribution, to send a message, to let others know that should they sow wind that you shall be a whirlwind. Revenge is the game of children who fall too quickly to their anger, a patient man should always follow a plan to cause the most harm with the least backlash. I do hope you didn’t intend to simply find the one who has upset you for whatever reason and simply beat him to death like an animal.”

Harlan shouldn’t have been surprised, he knew what Sepul had done in the past, and he knew he didn’t regret it, he just expected everyone involved with so much killing would end up as a tortured soul driven away from violence.

They spoke of what Harlan should do, how to keep his base impulses from flaring up when they shouldn’t and how to focus them on the right targets.

He did not ask how Sepul had shifted his body like he had, he didn’t know why exactly he didn’t ask, it just didn’t seem right at the time.

He dreamt that night, he saw the woman in the ballroom again.

Her face was clear, her voice was harsh.

She could not forgive.

When Harlan awoke he realized his thrashing around in his sleep had caused him to break a toe kicking his bed frame.

Lugh peaked up from the edge in his childlike form.

“Are you safe now?”

“What did I do last night?”

“You were really scared of something. You kept trying to fight something, did you win?”

“I don’t… I just don’t know.”

He found his voice was hoarse, he was glad the rooms were all soundproof.