Harlan came out of his lab holding his final pieces of jewelry.

A set of hair clips and necklaces that were able to produce a small cold flame.

A set of bracelets that had electricity traveling between links.

They were simple looking outside of their effects and a single inlaid golden line.

He then headed over to his parents farm to ride along with them to Redwall mansion.

Amber would be heading there now for a family get together that Autumn had planned.

For the entire trip Harlan was restless, Balor and Lugh were just excited to meet their middle sister.

“Honey, you can stop shaking your leg, it won’t make this any faster.” Aida lightly scolded.

“I could probably get there faster on my own.”

“And it wouldn’t change anything. Amber isn’t supposed to arrive until late afternoon.”

“Yeah… fine…”

Harlan started his test, trying to find any connection between his soul and the others around him.

He poked and prodded his own soul and tried to reach out to others farther away from him, but he couldn’t get this feeling to get past his skin, like it was blocking it.

After 30 minutes he quit and opened his box and showed his parents the jewelry.

Aida decided to take a single hairclip and placed it where she bound her hair into a ponytail.

Harlow decided against taking one of the bracelets. He wasn’t used to wearing anything like that, he didn’t even like others calling him Fomoria since he couldn’t see himself as a noble even by extension.

“I like the lights.” Lugh said.

“I am sure Harlan worked hard to make these.”

“Harlan, I want one.” He was a bit confused, but Lugh was still pretty childish and was excited by flashy things.

“Alright.”

Harlan handed a hair clip to Lugh who shifted his blade to wrap it around the clip like a steel hand.

“I like these things…” Lugh didn’t say anything for the rest of the trip. Though he didn’t have eyes, Harlan was pretty sure all of his focus was on the fire.

Finally they arrived at the mansion.

There wasn’t much for Harlan to do, he was a noble and not expected to help set up anything. So he sat and talked with Balor about their tests.

“Why do you think I can’t touch those connections?”

“Why are you so sure they exist?”

“A friend of mine, I hope you meet her someday. Her name is Esparella, but we called her Relly. She could talk right through the mind of someone even if they weren’t touching.”

“But you have talked with her and even studied her abilities yourself. If it was some kind of larger connection surely you would’ve found it already. We still don’t know how Fae magic works, maybe it is a truly unique ability.”

“I will ask The Darkness about it.”

“So you will finally forgive her for the incident in the woods.”

Harlan didn’t answer directly at first, but a feeling of annoyance came over their link stronger than any words he could string together.

“Yeah. I guess I will. I need whatever answers or hints she can give me, and things didn’t go completely horrible. But I am going to ask that she tell me before doing anything like that again.”

“You won’t get anything done here anyway. Why don’t you find Ava? Catch up a little more before Amber gets here.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I want to test something with her anyway.”

“Please don’t say that to her.”

Harlan found her eventually, he didn’t expect that she would be anywhere but the training room.

Instead she was next to Breken in the garden, Harlan had only walked here a few times, he wondered who it was for since it was immaculately kept but he only ever saw Autumn come here.

“What are you doing out here by the flowers?”

“Breken told me that I should take a break from fighting for a little bit.”

“Yep. If she had her way she would never leave the training room, but that isn’t a life. Take it from me.”

A strange silence came over the group, Breken was so often aloof and the advice he gave had that tone to it, but they could hear some genuine remorse in his voice this time.

“Come on, don’t look at me like that. Take the lesson.”

“Right. Take time to smell the roses.” Harlan felt a little awkward since he wanted to ask Ava to help him with a test originally. So instead he walked through the garden and Lugh named all the different flowers. Even Balor was a little surprised since he had rarely seen Lugh read anything before, he wasn’t sure how he knew it all.

But more shocking was that Breken knew some local folklore about many of the flowers.

They walked around the garden twice before Lugh ran out of steam talking about flowers and other plants he saw.

Then Breken spoke.

“Things are going to get bad. We are going to push into the theocracy. We as in the kingdom, you guys will all be safe. But this will end poorly, or very poorly.”

Ava thought for a moment.

“Which is poorly. Which is very poorly?”

“If things go poorly, we get pushed back and the battlelines stay at the true border for the theocracy. If things go very poorly, then we will push past the border. And a lot of people die on both sides.”

“That doesn’t sound very patriotic… They are the ones that started it anyway. Why shouldn’t we just get rid of them?”

“Because we aren’t…. we shouldn’t be monsters. Harlan, I… I want to have a better conversation later. Maybe before you leave for the academy. Ava, I forbid you from training your swordsmanship for the duration of your sisters stay here. Learn some magic from her maybe. I am a man with a lot of tricks, but magic can give you even more than I could ever have if you use it right. Harlan, do whatever you came here for originally. I am going to be gone for a little while.”

“That is bullshit! I don’t need that stuff, I just need to train like yo-”

“No. no you don’t. I am not arguing with you. I have been lenient, but when I come back, you are going to choose to either actually learn everything, and it will be harsher than anything else I have taught you. or you can just live a normal life, using what you already have to keep yourself and others safe. Sorry to dump this on you two on a happy day, but I must be going. Hopefully I will be back.”

Breken walked away from the pair and towards the side of the house with the stable.

“The hell was that about? FINE I’LL LEARN SOME NEW TRICKS.” A few guards on patrol came along to see what the yelling was, only to find Ava fuming mad and Harlan and Lugh trying to calm her down.

“Sister Ava… please don’t yell anymore…”

She took a deep breath to calm herself just like Breken taught her, but since he taught her she ended up even madder.

“Harlan, what were you going to do? I need a distraction.” Her only other way to relieve stress for a long time was to start swinging a sword, but now she was banned. She thought about doing it anyway but the idea that Breken had been lenient before sent a shiver up her spine and stopped that thought.

“Well, I wanted to try and feel you. I can’t get the feeling past my skin, so just sit still and meditate next to me.”

“Work on your wording, if you said that to anyone at the academy you would be beaten or they would rush off beet red.”

“Noted. We can do it out here if you want. I don’t think it really matters.”

“Mom wouldn’t want me to sit down on the stone and get my clothes dirty. Training room is a better spot. Nice and quiet.”

Harlan took off his jacket and overshirt, Ava did the same. They sat back to back with Balor telling them to scoot closer to one another until they were just barely apart. Then they breathed deep and entered a meditative state, Harlan had noticed that his soul felt less constrained whenever he did this, then he began his soul searching spell, trying to find out if he could feel anything between them, or if both of their souls were sealed completely in their bodies without any leaks, however small.

After 10 minutes Harlan was getting annoyed. He KNEW he just KNEW that he had the right idea, but he couldn’t feel anything at all, just below the skin he felt his soul, but it just couldn’t get out. Then it struck him.

He pulled his shirt off entirely, Telling Ava not to get up.

“Make sure I don’t cut too deep, I just want to get past the skin.”

“If you say so…”

And after just 5 minutes Harlan could feel it, his blood that now flowed down his back and onto the floor carried a very faint trace of his own soul that faded into energy and flowed back towards him, but he pushed it away, sending thoughts with it.

“Can y– –er m-?” Ava shot up from her spot on the floor.

“Never do that again. That was just weird. It didn’t feel like you were talking at all. It was like there was someone else.”

“Hmm… I will have to run tests on this. Thank you for helping.”

“Harlan, I am serious. Don’t do that with anyone without telling them exactly what you are doing and that it is going to be weird.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, I got it.”

Harlan used a little bit of blood magic to clean off the drying flake of blood and put them in a vial he kept on him just in case. Then he knitted the shallow cut shut, after really feeling exactly what a doctor’s healing should feel like he could do these small things without causing any harm to himself. He really wanted to get a bunch of rabbits for testing again. It would make the trial and error of healing magic far easier.

“I’m going to see the doctor, do you want to come with?”

She poked at his back.

“Are you ok? I mean really? That is… that is a lot of scars.”

“Yep, I feel great. Just never seen a reason to go into the village and get them healed up.”

“Are you going to ask the doctor to fix them?”

“No, how many people are even going to see these anyway? Just a waste of time for both of us.”

“Sorry, back on topic, I don’t want to see the doctor. Can I take Lugh to look at animals in the woods? I don’t like being all pent up, I need to move before we do all this sitting around with Amber.”

“Of course, Lugh, do you want to go?”

“I like sister Ava.”

Harlan waved them off and put his clothes back on, then it was a short walk to the doctor, a polite knock on the door and he was called in.

The man was not happy to see him.

“What have you done now?”

Harlan feigned ignorance.

“Whatever do you mean? I have always been a perfect patient!”

“Because most of the time you are comatose.”

“I want to know about blood.” The doctor put up a privacy shield the moment he heard him.

“Pick your words very carefully.”

Harlan opened his mouth and closed it, actually thinking about how to avoid sounding like he was about to do something horrible.

“I need to know about preservation and transfer of blood. I also want to know if you know anything about the connection between souls and blood. I have noticed that the soul slightly leaks with blood and then returns to the body, but I sent that energy away and implanted thoughts in it, with mild success.”

“Well, that is not as bad as I thought. Preservation of blood is normally done by having a mage who can turn the blood into crystals that any other skilled doctor can turn back into regular easy to use blood. Though unless your patient doesn’t have the nutrients in their body to sustain themselves through the healing magic then it just isn’t worth doing. You will find blood crystals mostly used by battlefield medic, healing limbs takes a lot out of a person, more so if you are also having to worry about them bleeding out. I have a box of such crystals here for emergencies. For your other question, I am not a soul doctor but It makes sense for it to carry some of the soul since its energy permeates the body to an extent. But I have no real experience with it.”

“Well, that is quite interesting information. Can I turn this into a crystal?” He pulled out the flask of blood, but it was already quite dried out.

“No. You need wet, undiluted blood for a good crystal.” Let me show you.

The doctor dropped the privacy spell and went to a cabinet, pulling out a box a foot long, half that in depth, and three fourths that in width.

He grabbed a crystal, no bigger than his eye and tossed it to Harlan before placing the box back in its place.

Harlan didn’t speak, instead he looked at it from every angle, then he tried to use some earth magic to map out its structure but he was getting weird feedback from the spell.

“Try with water. This is blood and not a naturally formed crystal.”

“Right, thanks.”

It was normally structured, at least Harlan thought it was, he wasn’t really an expert on the subject. He didn’t really learn anything from his spell. Then he tried soul searching it, he was blown away by how much of the energy remained stuck inside of the crystal. He was absolutely sure that he could send messages in such a format if the other person knew what it was. He kept poking and prodding at the energy inside the blood crystal until he was interrupted by the door to the office being swung open.

“Doc… Help…” The guard was scratching all around his body, he had already stripped his armor off and his skin was red where he was itching.

The doctor cast a spell to deaden the man’s sense of feeling and led him over to a bed.

Harlan wanted to test something, he poked at the energy inside the crystal.

The man immediately started to scratch himself again.

Harlan stopped and the man seemed normal again. Then he put up a privacy veil and explained what he thought was happening.

“Don’t tell anyone. I will say that the man had some kind of odd reaction and I fixed it. I took an oath to help people in pain and that thing is a torture device. Do not do this ever again, or I will report it to the crown.”

“I am very sorry. I had no idea this would happen.”

“Yeah. I know. Listen, you are getting into some dark stuff here. Just think a little about the implications of what you are doing before you do something like this again.”

“Thank you. I will keep that in mind.”

“And don’t kill yourself doing this stuff. I always heard that teleportation magic was quite literally built on a giant pile of bodies. Don’t be in the pile of blood mages who made a mistake.”

Harlan bowed to the man and walked back to the foyer to wait for Amber.

After another 30 minutes he heard a distant clopping sound, he saw the crest as it got closer. It was the academy sun eye, Amber was finally back. Harlan could barely keep himself still, he ran over and found his family, even the extended ones, and rushed back to the foyer.

He checked himself for blood or dust and asked a maid if he was presentable, she confirmed he had nothing wrong with his clothes.

Then finally he stood straight as an arrow with the rest of his family, he was in Front of Harlow, Ava was in front of Aida, with Jaramis holding Jarrik, and Autumn Holding Alana.

What Harlan didn’t expect was 4 people to step out from the carriage.