Harlan made his way to the main building cafeteria, waving to Henick on the way. He had made some friends, walking and talking with another group.

Harlan also saw Got and Grandry, though he didn’t wave, instead opting to move out of sight. Got seemed nice enough, but with Grandry he has no desire for friendship.

As he got inside he noticed it was already half full, primarily of older students who knew when meals were served without needing to be called.

Eggs in different styles with a choice of vegetables and meats, fruits on the side, and a choice of fruit juices or teas, oatmeal or grits could be ordered but were not prepared ahead of time due to being better just after being made.

Harlan got a bowl of grits, having never tried the food before, an egg sunny side up, a few bananas, because he had heard of them before, a small pile of sausages, and a glass of apple juice.

He made his way to the same off in the corner table and waited for either somebody else or Amber’s group to show up.

Eventually they fell in one by one, starting with Tau and ending with Ibery.

Though Adelwulf wasn’t there yet, he decided to head over. Leaning on the table since he wasn’t planning to stay for long.

“Amber. Can you give this to Adelwulf when you see him next, I don’t regret my words. But they might have been misconstrued.”

“If you phrase your apology like that he is just going to dislike you.”

Before he could answer back that he wasn’t going to apologize, another boy with a crest Harlan didn’t know from the kingdom broke into the conversation.

“You shouldn’t spend too much time around her. I’ve heard she… lays with beasts, if you understand my meaning. Pleased to meet you my na-”

The wards of the academy kept his instinctual reaction from effecting anything around him but his grip on the table tightened until the wards let off a faint glow. He could feel eyes on him but couldn’t see any guards, he hated The Unseen. But that feeling brought him back for a moment, letting him loosen his grip.

“So you know my sister?”

The boy looked as if he swallowed a beehive. He looked at another group of boys with pleading eyes.

They were all older, 4th years most likely, while the boy was second year at most.

Harlan could see it was another noble test from a mile away.

So he pushed back the part telling him to challenge the boy to a duel. As much as he hated a lot of things, being used for entertainment like a caged animal only got a reaction of visceral disgust and spite.

“You are an idiot. Either because you got tricked or because you came here to get on my good side without knowing anything about me. Run along before I turn this into a problem for both of us. I’m going back to my table, see you all another time.”

On the way back someone purposely bumped into him, Harlan again saw they were trying to get a reaction.

So he ignored them.

When he sat back down with another glass of juice and more eggs, scrambled this time with onions and peppers, Zella was already there.

“Glad you didn’t crush him even if he had it coming.”

He wasn’t sure if she just didn’t get enough sleep or if she was upset on his behalf, but her hair made motions as if it was curling irons.

“Are you ok?”

“I just can’t stand idiot rumor mills.”

He connected that with her lack of our friends, with Amber not having friends outside her small group, and with the people looking to get a rise out of him.

“I try to ignore them. If someone wants to talk to me I’ll talk to them, but if they are scared away before they even try, then they probably aren’t worth talking too in the first place.”

“Easy to say now, wait until you’ve been here for 2 years.”

“Do you want to talk later? I know we had most of last month together but I still feel like we didn’t talk enough.”

“No, I don’t, it is girl stuff. I’ll calm down in a few days when my sleep gets better.”

“To a lighter topic then, how sure are you that I could’ve crushed that kid?”

She gave him a puzzled look as if he just asked where eggs came from.

“How strong do you think you are?”

“I don’t know, twice as strong as a normal person?”

“I doubt there is anyone outside of 3rd or 4th years that could take you in a straight fight. It would be one thing in an ambush, but if you know they are coming you aren’t just fast, you are strong and you’re heavy. Who are you calling a normal person?”

Harlan thought for a long minute, was Ava normal? Probably not, he thought back to those two boys he spoke with at the Blackstone party and they seemed to think fighting 5 wargs was something hard and he did that barehanded once.

Breken was way past him, but he figured everyone who got that old and was a soldier could do that.

Safira was way beyond him but he could assume some of that was magical items helping her.

Rosewell? He had no idea what the royal bloodline did and he only saw her fought once.

Hostin was a soldier with a cushy safe job, but he seemed normal enough and Harlan wasn’t sure he could beat him when he last saw him.

Redmond was a ranger, he knew rangers were elite soldiers and from their fight he toyed with Harlan as he taught him tricks.

Eventually he was pulled out of his thoughts by Zella.

“Sorry, I have no idea what a normal person is. My dad is pretty strong, but I’ve never really seen him fight anything but goblins.”

“Well you are way past that point, I saw you grip that table hard enough to make the wards glow, watch this.”

She used her hair to grip the table as strong as she could to make it glow brighter than Harlan had.

“I can bend cheap iron with my hair, but I can’t do it with my hands. I thought you knew you were strong, you are so gentle most of the time.”

“I guess I never thought much about it, though I did crush that guys hand pretty bad.”

“Don’t remind me, I hate seeing bones and blood like that.”

They switched to the topic of breakfast, what they liked about the meal and didn’t until the bell rang, for the first day there still wouldn’t be classes for first years since delays could cause a student to have not arrived yet, for second years the first day was more of a refresher and it wouldn’t be a big deal if a student missed it.

Though most that would take this long just ended up eating the cost of being gated.

Instead this was a free day where teachers set up lectures to draw students in since many of them either picked their extra classes without too much thought or they could find that they really liked something and switch classes at some point.

On the way to basic elements he ran into a scene that he wanted to ignore, a girl was being bullied by her countrymen, both sides were Reinoan, they had backed her into a hallway that was a dead end and no one else down it.

The boys grabbed her large black tinted glasses and tossed them between themselves.

He would’ve kept walking, her people had done enough to him already, then he thought about how letting her be punished for what instead of who she is pissed him off.

He finally stepped in when he saw her chestnut hair, it hung not far past her shoulder blades and she bore more than a passing resemblance to Ava, their faces overlapped for a moment in his mind.

“That is enough.”

“This is an internal dispute, leave us be.”

Harlan took a deep breath to calm himself before he spoke.

“I can think of no reason for 3 boys to be picking on a young girl, I would rather this was handled peacefully and we all simply go on our way.”

“As I have already said, your people have no right to be involved, scurry away little monster.”

“I will give you one more chance, give the girl her glasses or else.”

One of them had already circled behind Harlan for a sucker punch.

Harlan dodged the punch without breaking eye contact with the first boy.

“Seriously, is she worth fighting on your first day? Why not find a class, surely it is a better use of your time?”

This swing Harlan caught, overpowering the boy despite him being a few inches taller and seeming more well built.

“Do I have to be the monster? Or should I just let him go?”

He had the boy on the floor and was ready to dislocate his arm at the shoulder.

“Cato, you can’t let him, just leave it.”

Harlan kept applying pressure until he could hear the first pops and the boy held in a yelp.

“Fine, let my brother go and we will be on our way.”

Harlan let go and expected it to turn to a three on one, yet the left.

The whole thing smelled rotten, a girl who looked too much like his own sister, down a hallway with no one else around, then the 3 boys just left without doing anything else.

Each of them had even been focusing on Harlan since the start and barely let any of their emotions point towards the girl, was she even the target in the first place? Was he being tested by them?

He put these things aside for now and kept on track to visit the few classes he wanted.

The girl was cowering and wouldn’t even look at Harlan or open her eyes.

He didn’t say a word as he bend the frame of her glasses back into shape and placed them in her hand.

She wordlessly followed him, Harlan could feel the fear and confusion from her drowning out everyone else.

The first place he visited was the class room for basic elements, hoping to speak with someone and learn if he was completely off base with anything he knew.

But the lecture was… infantile. He wondered if people who’ve never learned magic at all went to the academy as a starting point,

It was all things that he learned in his first days with Breken, stances and basic workouts, make sure to stretch, make sure to not be afraid of your blade, make sure you pick a weapon sized for yourself.

He left for another class.

He was getting worried that his first year would be all of his mandatory classes being things he already knew.

Luckily wards weren’t all things he knew, though he only caught the very tail end of the lecture.

“You’ve come at a poor time. But my lecture will be starting again in just a few minutes. Do you have any questions before then?”

“Yes. I went around basic elements and basic melee weapons… Is the first year going to be so… Basic?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”

“Harlan Fomoria.”

“Ah. Well, you might not realize it, because of various factors such as having a family member in the rangers, and your location relatively close to the border with Reino. But in the safer places, closer to the capital. There aren't many threats really. I am sure that you know little of history. But they would know many events like the back of their hand. The forming of the walled cities, or tribes as they are sometimes called. The treaty of 884 which ended all hostilities with The Confederacy for a time. The replacement of the council of 13 with the monarchy. How many of these do you know?”

“I see your point.”

“I am glad you do. Apologies, I forget to say my name sometimes. I am John.”

“Do you teach any other classes?”

“I don’t want to waste time listing everything that I teach but the answer is yes. Does your friend here have any questions?”

The girl who followed him shook her head and kept with him as he made his way out.

He couldn’t read minds but he didn’t need to, he could tell she wanted to ask why he helped her but couldn’t get over her fear of seemingly everything.

He wondered why someone like that was even at the academy unless she was one of those expected to drop out.

The next class on his list was warding.

He didn’t find anymore damsels in distress but people kept bumping into him and when he didn’t react they tried bumping into the girl making him stand in the way.

People filed in and out of the class, checking maps and watches, some in groups, most alone.

Harlan listened intently, hoping to eke out anything worth learning.

The teacher was an Archmage named Vowren, though his title was Blackwall.

First was a personal story of why Vowren decided to be a warder. He lived in a town which was sacked by Reino when he was a child. He saw how some buildings after the fire stood strong, while his own home burned like many others. He spoke of types of warding, most worked by making a shell around an item, filtering all magic but what it allowed. He spoke of how specialized wards worked by disrupting their spellwork when it enters an area, defending very well against those specific banned spells but generally sacrificing either physical or general spell defense in the process, though this could be overcome by casting a larger spell to make up the difference it is generally accepted that the highest levels of warding is stacking wards, the task takes a great deal of effort to make sure the layers never disrupt the ones above and below them.

Lastly he spoke on the other high level technique, the one which he personally uses. Imbuing a ward into an item, unlike enchanting which has an item holding a spellform to make casting faster for the user or a rather simple passive effect, a ward that became fully fused with an item had nearly limitless versatility and let him set up wards that would take minutes of vigorous casting in seconds.

He never went into detail on how to do anything he talked about, but for a short lecture which would be repeated over the day it was enough to have some students more interested in the subject.

Once it was over Harlan bowed goodbye.

Harlan passed by Fae law and caught a glimpse at the teacher.

She was a youthful woman with bright eyes and a kind smile, with her hair dyed a very light pink in places she gave off an aura of childlike innocence. The world almost glowed in her presence, but Harlan couldn’t see any of that. He wondered if she had any relation to the grand saint considering how bright she was to his mindsense, though it was like comparing the sun to a torch.

He thought it seemed fitting that someone who might be Fae would teach such a class, but he hated to think what the cost was.

Ironically he could actually learn that if he took the class.

Harlan went to the nearby enchanting lecture, the girl still next to him.

As soon as he entered the room he could feel the hate directed at him. Though it was only from 2 individuals, a boy his age and the teacher.

He briefly thought about leaving, but no, he refused to be moved by their stares.

He sat in the front row, next to the boy.

The teacher could do nothing but start his lecture.

“The first thing to learn about enchantments is that they are not, like many of you have surely heard, a redundant art. For many people enchanted items are still far better not only for their safety but for certain effects such as spatial items, which have yet to be recreated with soulsmithing. Are there any questions yet?”

Harlan raised his hand, getting a mean glare from the teacher.

“Yes, Fomoria.”

“By safer what exactly do you mean? I know of a few issues but all of them are user error. I am also ignorant of enchanting.”

“First, with soulsmithed items they are not your spells anymore. This isn’t any issue most times, but in the case of a spreading spell, such as one which causes the growth of crystals. These spells burn out, but, if they need to be stopped before this point they require as much mana as was used to cast them. Part of this is how mana is, in a sense, marked by the caster, making it easier to grab a hold of and break the structure of it. You lose such a mark with soulsmithed items, within the last two years there has been 30 cases of someone getting ahold of such items and dying as a result, generally they are untrained mages or adventurers who fail to understand the dangers of such things. Secondly, Because of the long history of enchanting, many safety precautions are in place. This means any trained enchanter has the means to, for instance, cancel castings which would be overly powerful and damage the item, or that would drain their user beyond a safe point. There has been 8 cases in the last year of spells placed in soulsmithed items in such a way that they kill the users. Do you have any retorts for me, Fomoria?”

“So could those safeties be removed on enchanting? Making an item that drains its user completely for a large attack which kills them? How many died before those safeties were invented? You have given me some things to think about to improve soulsmithing, because those are clearly flaws. But those are also mostly user error, I’ve taught one person and because of their spellforms having safeties as part of them the soulsmithed items simply failed to cast instead of exploding.”

They spent the rest of the lecture arguing from a place of ignorance of the others' work.

Harlan found it somewhat fun and was seriously considering adding enchanting to his classes.