Harlan finished all of his catch up work on the 5th day.

Though his younger self would surely beat him for having such thoughts, he found some comfort in how it reminded him of the facility.

Work work work, taking breaks to ease the mind, and then more work.

It was simple, it just made sense.

He didn’t need to care about who the people were, since they were all above him, he understood his place and what the danger was.

The more he looked over the list of people who he should avoid, the more he hated the systems at work.

The king was the king, regardless of whatever petty bullshit the nobles had against him, he had made the nation better, they should understand that, they must. But to someone who has abused the people under them, finally being told to calm down, even if it has a multiple year time limit, it seems unfair.

Sepul had even asked Harlan his opinion on slavery, with an obvious answer of hating the practice, but understanding its use if someone tries to flee from a debt that must be repaid.

The other answer for this case was death or imprisonment, which would be slavery under another name.

Each new law in regards to it seemed to give more power for the slaves to prevent abuse to themselves, perhaps it would finally be outlawed soon enough.

Harlan wasn’t technically part of the discussions on law and order, but he felt that Sepul only asked these questions in relation to policy changes as he normally disliked speaking on the subject of laws.

At this point he just outright told the teachers for his classes that they should just send him a week's worth of assignments and he would clear them as they came.

There was fury and understanding and laughter over the boy who believed himself above the curriculum.

Yet when the week passed and Harlan had all of his work done on the 3rd day, those that understood simply accepted this, those who were furious only grew moreso, and those that laughed simply laughed more.

The one class he still had to attend in person due to its very nature requiring a hands on experience, was magical creatures.

They were presently somewhere within the great desert, looking for frogs.

“Consider this somewhat of a lesson on survival along with learning of these majestic creatures. If you can find the pockets of water, then you will have found the underground ocean of the desert. Harlan, before we begin, you are not allowed to participate.”

“Of course.”

It angered his classmates to no end how confident Harlan was. What was worse is that from the 2nd to 4th years, students that were not children joined in.

Adventures and soldiers who spent years building the funds required to attend felt slighted by the boy who they thought didn’t take his studies seriously enough even if he ended up at the top of some of his classes.

Harlan formed a table and chairs from the sand and sat with his armor.

After his last real fight he was trying to test the limits of the golem armor when acting independently.

Whatever that soulsmith disrupting spell was on the bolts was, it scared Harlan.

Thus, he wished to make the armor more independent, but without giving it a proper mind.

He didn’t want another brother, he wanted a tool that did not fail him.

After 5 minutes one of the other students, a ranger, found signs of the subterranean river, yet at the same time, a shadow passed overhead.

Every student went into stances to flee or fight, except Harlan.

Sepul called out.

“Ignore the wyvern.”

One voice cried out from a distance.

“We aren’t all archmagi, we need to run or kill it.”

Harlan replied.

“It’s already dead. They are just chasing the body.”

The beast flew another thousand feet before crashing with enough might to blow a massive plume into the air.

“Wait, who’s chasing the body?”

“The only people who live in the desert.”

The Golden arrived wearing clothes over their face and light clothes that left their arms, midriff, and legs below the knees, exposed. Though oddly enough, the younger of the two women wore a heavier blanket like a cape to cover her entire body.

Sepul tried to ignore them and talk about how one should be finding desert hoppers, but they stopped their sandship, one only large enough for the three of them.

They spoke in a tongue Harlan did not know, but The Mother appeared to translate and give her thoughts, which set everyone on edge.

“That one on the left, the old woman, do not anger her. The younger girl is weak and has an injury on her side from the beast, the man is the weakest of the three. Likely this is his first hunt, and they are his wife and his grandmother.”

“Why did you give me her weakness?”

She did not answer, leaving Harlan to interpret her.

He approached the group, his hands up, and The Mother walking alongside him.

She would often simply appear as a formless shadow in these cases, but due to their company, she thought it best to appear as her motherly form.

They tilted their spears towards him, but were trying not to be overtly aggressive.

A complete failure on their part considering he could feel how they directed their anger at him.

“We are negotiating with your master, return to your group.”

“That woman is hurt, do you not have a healer in your group?”

They took combat stances, Sepul did not move an inch, wondering where this would go, but sure that if they attacked without reason he would turn them to ash in an instant.

“Calm down, I just wanted to heal her.”

“Your god is one of only tricks and lies.”

“Then keep your spears on my throat, I don’t mind. But, I worry that if you don’t, or can’t treat her, then she will just be suffering without reason.”

“She is in perfect health.”

“Do you know what a Fomorian can do? Because if not, I can feel that she is in pain, I can smell the iron in the air. I know you are hearty, and I am not saying she will die if it goes unchecked, but I would just like to prevent her from having to just live with that pain until you find a healer.”

The older woman stepped forward to take the conversation from her grandson.

“She will keep her injury, it is a failure on her part that she was hurt, and she will remember that pain.”

“Is this her choice? Or yours?”

“It is not your place to speak on our traditions.”

The Mother whispered in his ear, she had been hurt to save the life of the man.

“Did she not get hurt only to save your grandson? It doesn’t seem fair to punish her for a heroic act.”

“Fomorian, I made my own choice, I will live with such a wound. It does not even bother me.”

Anyone who could hear her would be unconvinced.

He was unhappy, but moreso, he was unhappy with the solutions that came to his mind.

He could make no overt hostile action, which removed forcefully subduing the group to heal her, which he lacked any confidence to do in the first place .

Though there was no overarching organization to force him to, he was expected to maintain conduct befitting a healer, if the woman did not want to be healed, then he was supposed to do nothing, even if he knew it would kill her.

So he ran a quick test and lowered the anger of the woman.

The group didn’t seem to react, which Harlan hoped meant they could not detect his empathy.

He changed their emotions as best he could until eventually they relented, Harlan healed her without a fight and they left.

It left a bitter taste in his mouth, but it was better than letting her suffer.

The rest of the group had already found the underground river, they were often found by looking for rock formations that resembled an inverse crater. These not only acted as ways for the creatures that couldn’t swim or dig through the sand to reach them, but also to let in light while keeping the sand from pouring down into the area.

A student captured a frog, which looked like a smooth stone in the shallow waters.

It was roughly 10 inches across and 1 foot tall with a spackled brown that faded into a gray.

“Good, we can get on with the class then. These are desert hoppers, during the dry months they only come out at night and during the day they will eat whatever small fish they can catch. Though I would say there is never a good reason to visit the desert, if you do, watch for these at dusk and dawn, they will attempt to hop towards water sources which might just save your life.”

The frogs didn’t seem to mind at all as the students scoped them up.

“Sir Dust, are they really so docile?”

“They know that you are not a threat. Frogs such as these, which are in their second stage of magical evolution, are less intelligent than a mammal at such a place in their life, but they are strangely emotionally intelligent. So long as you don’t handle them roughly, you are all safe.”

“But, are they dangerous?”

“Everything in the desert is. The only places more hostile to life in all of its forms are the man eating rainforests of the deep south and the frigid wastes of the north. Though most creatures here prefer to avoid wasting excess energy on fighting. I only put the desert as less dangerous for this reason. Their struggle against the environment is less hostile, food, if one looks in the right places, is abundant, the number of predators is low, and the magical creatures are docile. Take for instance the Pygmy Mesa Toad, which is letting the ranger sit on it.”

The man panicked and got up from the rock he had been on.

With its cover blown the massive toad, 4 feet tall and 5 wide even while it was trying to stick low to the ground, opened its eyes and glared at the man who had been using it as a seat.

They were an ambush predator, and one with the intelligence to understand that it could only saunter off to another area and wait for something to come near it.

They generally hunted larger Sand Drakes or Condors which came down for water.

It was… not the brightest thing, but Harlan felt a little bad for it considering the surroundings and the slight limp he saw.

It took some gesturing and a little bit of empathic manipulation, but the toad was willing to drink down the tonic Harlan had in his hand.

The ranger was confused by his actions and approached him.

“What was that?”

“You ruined her meal, breeding months almost, and she was injured. It seemed fair to not let her suffer like that.”

“You are strange.”

“I know it must seem that way, but it could’ve gobbled you whole when you got near, instead it was afraid of us and let you take a seat. It isn’t a Hati, driven by an instinct of hate, it is just trying to survive.”

“Well, I’m sure you think that is profound.”

“Have you killed Fomorians?”

The man took a step back before answering, afraid of how Harlan was going to react.

“I’ll assume yes then. Fomorians aren’t much different to orcs in my mind. Their minds are twisted by forces outside their control, robbed of free will in a sense, a cage of their own making. If-”

It was clear to him, and to the others as words reverberated through the tunnel, that it pained Harlan to speak about this subject.

“Nevermind, I’ve said too much as it is. Just pretend I said the toad looked thirsty.”

He didn’t even know why he bothered to reply.

“Sheron really upset you, didn’t she?”

“I want to crush her.”

“No you don’t.”

“I know. I just… she mentioned how I failed to protect that boy, she wasn’t there, any reports she read, anything, would accept that I was lucky to have survived and save Charlotte and her friend. But she brought it up, for no reason other than to hurt me, she used his death as nothing but a gutpunch.

I know it isn’t my fault, that I could’ve never really saved him, it was an ambush and he died a hero’s death, but knowing that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother me. The way that The Mother answered me about why I had the urge to stop in Borden, it rubbed me the wrong way, maybe I have future sight in some form and I don’t know it yet, maybe it was nothing. Maybe if I realized it sooner, he would be alive. And I still don’t remember his name.”

“Chaud Sierra. And you are still thinking of ways that you could’ve, or should’ve, saved him. You can’t keep doing that when you fail at something.”

It was clear that Harlan was going through something in his head and was barely paying attention to the class itself. But nobody scolded him, mostly out of fear, he was known to be less than stable when something was affecting him like this and his more recent helpful and calmer self was never going to spread like when he did something wrong.

Those that followed rumors often liked to put people down and given enough time, these negative rumors became the facts of life that oft went uncorrected.

Sepul returned to his home after classes, he had a visitor after all.

“Hello, Elise.”

She slipped out of a dimensional pocket.

“I thought I was better hidden.”

“You will simply never catch up, it isn’t possible.”

“And I am certain many mages have died with those same thoughts running across their mind.”

She hugged him once he no longer looked like a dead man.

“To what do I owe the pleasure? You don’t visit often enough, my dearest granddaughter.”

He returned the hug.

“Magic is changing, I think I should attend the academy again, for at least a year. All of this soulsmithing work is quite something, but I feel like I should meet its maker.”

“I don’t think that is such a good idea.”

“Why? Do you not want me to visit your new apprentice? Or should I say, my half-brother?

A half-Fomorian, aged just right, then you come out of retirement and take him as an apprentice?”

Sepul was immediately unamused, she had always been a bit too perceptive for her own good.

The question he hoped she would ignore had caught her eye, she had, by chance, been between projects and paid full attention to what he wrote to her.

“You can’t meet him. He is rude, and dangerous, and violent, and-”

“You haven’t told him about your relation to him.”

“That is also a factor to consider. If he learns it now, after I tricked him once with blood that wasn’t mine, I'll lose his trust. You also can’t go back to the academy, not openly.”

“Oh, maybe I should ask him for a scholarship. Or even private lessons, I hear that he loves his sisters, though I hope not that much.”

“He would see through you in an instant. He is sometimes poor with people, but he will be very cross with you if you try to trick him with false kindness.”

“He is still just a puppy, so I take that as a challenge.”

“You will not meet him, not yet, I need to make sure that he is safe for you.”

“I’m not a glass doll, I’ve spent enough of my life locked up. I want to live publicly. While I am at it, why doesn’t mom have a painting?”

“We’ve been over this, just let me make the world a little safer, then I will announce you to the world from the mountaintops if you want, and your mother… I’ll tell you when you are older.”

“I’m 21. If you won’t answer, I will find him, because he is easy to track and I know he is going to spill everything after a blood test because he is soft hearted and soft headed.”

It stirred his heart, boiling over with pain, to hear her voice, see her face; all he could see was one of the myriad arguments he had with Eliza about her life.

“Your mother, she was not a good woman. I don’t want to talk about her, please. Just, give me time.”

“By the end of the year.”

“Teaching year or calendar year?”

“You will find out when it happens. Now, please, I want to hear you tell me about him. Foods and colors, what makes him tick, weaknesses.”

“He is fond of savory foods, roasted meats, fried things. He likes white and black, but in general I think dark colors are suited to him. He is driven by a fear of loss so great that I fear it is hereditary. I am not telling you his weaknesses.”

“You already did, but whatever.”

“If you threaten his family and he believes you can carry through with it, being related by blood will mean nothing, he would kill you.”

“I doubt that very much.”

Sepul spent the night telling her all about Harlan, and the parts that scared him, hoping that she would accept that anything less than honesty would poison the well so much that she might not ever connect with him on a deeper level.

He spoke of Claudia and how the Dyad family had made requests of him and Balor, yet they were denied with barely even a reason given.

Thousands of gold potentially, tossed in a shallow grave, for not even being overtly hostile towards him, just for, in his eyes, tainting the idea of friendship that Harlan held.

And, while it was something only added as an addendum to the case regarding Dullen’s mayor, Sepul was someone who looked over everything Harlan had done. When he heard what had happened, it was one thing, but hearing that Harlan had intentionally blamed revolutionaries and instead of claiming self defense, staged a suicide, that was another thing.

Someone who reacts poorly to threats and flies off the handle is one thing, but to even attempt, let alone succeed in doing what he did, showed a deeper level of malice.

Someone who would do such a thing, and so easily justify it as protecting his image in the mind of his younger sister, that was a person able to commit the worst evils one could think of, with just the simplest of reasons.

Elise listened intently, deciding that she simply must meet him, having a private chat was sure to spice up her life.

“I’ve decided, I must attend, just one year. I trust that you can get me into some 3rd year classes with him?”

“You must behave yourself, attend under an assumed identity, and possibly undergo some cosmetic surgery. But, yes, I could make sure you and him share classes.”

“We can finalize all those other little details later.”

She yawned.

“Does Jane still make those little sugar cookies? What about the marmalade?”

“You have the recipes, she must be sleeping by now.”

“They aren’t the same when I make them.”

“Fine, first thing tomorrow I will have her make some cookies, I have persevered with jars of marmalade. How is Walter doing?”

“Sheron came over, Cecil was with her.”

She broke eye contact for the first time in their chat.

“He was upset over something, I know what it is, but he refused to tell me. I don’t want to go back home for a few days.”

“You should be honest with him.”

“He could try it for a change. I’m still upset over my ‘Aunt Eliza.’ I don’t remember her face, I might’ve if I realized who she was.”

“He tried his best with you, and with her. And he has kept trying as hard as he could since she left.

I’ll let you stay, but please, go back, talk with him. You aren’t a child anymore, he just hasn’t realized it yet. How is Shallot doing?”

“Well, it’s time to get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Maybe you are still a child.”

She stuck her tongue out at him while she walked to her room.