While Harlan and Ava were spending their time in town, the others spoke about his nonchalance when faced with near death again, they saw how it effected him before and wanted to help him.
“I worry deeply for Harlan. He might say that he is fine, but his foolish self destruction can only go on for so long before he can’t go on.”
Tau felt some kinship between the two of them, he knew he couldn’t change what Harlan was, but he hoped to lead him to the peace he has found despite the world being as it is.
“Tau, you won’t like this, but the little beast has bared his fangs clearly and with purpose, I don’t believe there will be a problem.”
Bojana considered him to be a warrior worth respecting, she knew that even if Harlan was a weak boy he would make the same choices, his heart was full of passion, it being good or bad wasn’t entirely up to her.
“I don’t like it, there must be a limit to what he is willing to do.”
Ximena had been the one to pull the blood from his lungs, she knew full well that he didn’t get stabbed recklessly and that made it worse, intentionally jumping onto a blade was brave, but it was also incredibly stupid.
“Tau, what is the first word that comes to your mind when you think of Harlan?”
He thought it was an odd question, but he wasn’t close to the Golden girl.
“Childish. He throws tantrums at the world which he does not yet understand, he lets himself fall, to emotion, to provocation, to himself. He has a light in his eyes, he turns back into a little boy when he plays with his niece and nephew. I fear that the one who will snuff out that light in his eyes will be him.”
“I think Harlan is brave. He is scared of so much, he lashed out at me after we got back from camp, I don’t think I ever talked about it. He told me about how much of a selfish idiot he was because he would rather die than see his friends hurt. He will always rush into the fire to save people at risk to himself. I really admire that about him, so I came here to learn how he became somebody like that.”
“How long until that weight crushes him? How long until he does something he can’t take back.”
Adina had heard enough.
“He is already full of regrets and things he can’t take back, so what the hell do YOU think will be so bad that he can’t keep going? How many people does he need to kill before he is a lost cause or a monster? How much of his own blood should he spill before he becomes something else? You talk about how much you understand violence and how you can only live in peace because of war but that is bullshit.”
She slammed her small hands on the table, not even causing the wards to flicker in the slightest.
“Harlan will keep being Harlan because he is Harlan. He is going to carry all of his sins until the day he dies and if you want he is going to carry yours too, he is the only reason I can stand here and not feel that constant weight on my head because my father wanted me to wear glasses that only served to mark me as defective.
You lost your family, he lost his family, I never got one in the first place, I just have people that share my blood and stopped me from dying until they had a use for me, Harlan is everything to me, my first and only true friend. You see him from the outside as somebody that keeps fallings for his emotions but if he didn’t then he wouldn’t even be Harlan anymore.
He can tear the eyes out of a thousand people's heads and at the end of the day he would still be willing to hold my hand because he makes me feel safe. I am not going to sit aside any longer while everyone treats him like he is playing with a torch and covered in pitch. You are afraid of what he could become, I can’t wait to see what he is going to be, because he is still going to be Harlan no matter what he becomes.
You think he is putting up a front when he is just being himself, you want him to be something that isn’t Harlan because it will make you feel better to change him into a coward who pats himself on the back like you.”
Everyone was stunned into silence, Adina may have voiced her opinion, but nobody expected such a fiery defense of her friend.
The air was awkward again, Isha brought them slices of cake and refilled their tea.
It only got worse when Harlan came back, as soon as he noticed her red eyes he didn’t say a word, he just sat next to her and held her hand while she laid her head on his shoulder.
The others saw how gentle he still was with her and it didn’t really fit with the boy who gouged a man’s eyes out and willingly took a sword to the throat only a few hours ago, he was an extreme person on both ends.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“You were crying”
“I just had a little chat with the rest of them and I got heated.”
He looked at the others with questions clear in his eyes.
Tau wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer, he believed that he knew people and that he knew Harlan, but Adina believed with such conviction that he doubted himself.
“I wanted everyone to gather together and talk about your actions, we are all worried since you threw yourself on that sword so readily. You worry us all a great deal.”
“You don’t have to answer. I know you get worried about what other people think about you, that is what makes you Harlan, but I don’t want you to keep changing yourself and twisting into something you aren’t to keep other people happy.”
Harlan knew she was right, he just didn’t put it into words, it only made him feel worse that he couldn’t give back her feelings.
She trusted him more than he trusted himself. She loved him, but he just didn’t understand that part of life. He had his friends and his family, and he loved them, but she had nobody like he did until he appeared to her.
He thought to what Mary had told him, she was vulnerable, he shouldn’t take advantage of that, he shouldn’t let her make him take advantage of that, she had a hole that she was trying to fill and he didn’t know if he was the right person to do that yet.
“Tau, I threw myself on that sword because I know myself, I know that it wasn’t soulsmithed, it was safe. Adina is right, I don’t need to justify myself to anybody, but I want you to understand that I am not going to throw my life away. You can either trust me to do things like this or you can’t, I don’t blame you if you don’t, but I don’t want to hear more about it.”
“It is a dangerous road to ignore the words of those around you.”
Harlan shook his head.
“If I ever let somebody I love get hurt because I hesitated for a split second I could never forgive myself, so I will keep being an idiot, I’ll keep walking into those fires. I am not ignoring you because I don’t want to hear it, I will ignore you because I know you cannot change this part of me, if I didn’t do this then I wouldn’t be myself anymore, I would just be a person with my name and shape. Ava, what spells would you like in that armor? I am going to spare no expense, so there are a large number of spells that I am going to put in there already.”
She wasn’t completely comfortable with Harlan continuing as he was, but she didn’t think she could stop him at all, he held himself with absolute confidence.
Harlan took her armor to his workshop and she followed behind him, he had her look over a list he kept of spells that he knew while he went to grab some things from his vault.
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He opened the door with a drop of blood, it had a code but Harlan didn’t ever remember what it was.
Inside he opened a stone steel chest using a key that was hidden with invisibility behind a false wall panel.
Inside were two mana gems the size of his fists, he didn’t know what he was going to do with them originally, perhaps he would just use them as he expanded his home, but now they had a far greater purpose.
There was a heavy atmosphere after she checked off a large number of spells from the list and expected that he would need to pick and choose which ones would actually fit, instead he simply told her to stay perfectly still.
He looked over her soul and picked out a few pieces, what he was doing was expressly forbidden magic, yet he already did it 3 times in the past, he felt like he could smooth over the problem if it came out.
She felt a cold and heavy sensation in the pit of her stomach, as if somebody had laid an icy stone on her bare belly.
He asked Ava to leave at this point, he needed to teach it not only spells, but common sense, right and wrong.
“Soul, you know what you must do, I give these commands, reveal not yourself, harm not without purpose, protect your wearer. These are in ascending order of importance.”
The soul was still young, it was based on Ava but it was not her.
He worked feverishly until night to finish his work, her armor now had two bumps, one for each side of the hips, these held the gems and the armor shifted itself around them to keep them safe, it lived within these crystals.
Normal light steel was too limited for such a purpose, its shifting moved more as a linear up and down in size, but this living golem armor was something else.
It was also a test for him, a limited intelligence, somewhere between sapient and true sentinance, he felt wrong about making what he considered a slave soul, but this was… something else.
It had a mind, but it was only the slightest flicker to his senses, a match rather than a torch.
It would be everything it could be, it cast intelligently, illusions, healing, it would seem from the outside to be a normal armor just loaded with variants of the same spells, but he was confident that if he ever learned gate then this thing could cast it.
He walked upstairs and tossed the armor on Ava, it shifted and moved like liquid over her body.
She jumped from the couch where she had been reading, thinking he threw water on her for some reason.
Then she looked down to realize she was not only dry, but she felt great, the armor linked to her, its gems were filled with mana that would create a loop between them and her own soul, the temporary high wasn’t much different from being at the academy.
“Whoa.”
She once more twisted and turned to test its range of moment, the gems weren’t really in the way, but when she laid down they would be, so they slightly shifted to either close to her front or her back to make sure she was comfortable.
“I need to eat, I’ve put a simple soul inside so the armor can answer basic questions like my sign posts outside, but it isn’t a living being. I call it golem armor, I’ve been thinking about it for a little bit now, how could I make something better than what we already have. Dahlia, I know you are here, I will have notes on what I’ve done by tomorrow, you can have that other one look over them and decide if this is something worth making.”
These notes would be able to make something not unlike what Ava now had, but it would be very simple by comparison, it wouldn’t think, but it would have preset responses to questions.
He practically stumbled to the kitchen as Ava supported him.
Dinner had long since passed but Isha and Sara had stayed up to talk with Adina and wait for Harlan to finish his work.
The moment he entered the room she pulled a leftover chicken from a box Harlan made to keep foods warm.
He gorged on it like a wild animal, cracking bones open for marrow and drinking whatever fat was there.
Then he walked to the sink and cleaned himself before sitting back down.
“I don’t know if I am ever going to get that sound of you slurping marrow out of my head.”
Adina said with a giggle.
“Sara, we need to talk when you are ready.”
She was confused and a little afraid, Harlan took no harsh tone, but she didn’t understand what he wanted.
“Of course, Sir.”
“You aren’t in trouble.”
“Yeah… I knew that.”
“Should you be in trouble for something?”
“Well then, let's talk, should we head to your office?”
He instead took her to his bedroom, it was likely a more private matter that was bothering her before he left for the academy, she had never had a problem asking for things related to work before.
Harlan picked up his kettle, suddenly realizing he probably had one for every room in the house, the thought made him chuckle as he prepared the water for tea.
“I am going to cut right to the chase. Before I left for the academy, you had something bothering you and you paced back and forth outside my room until midnight but never asked me. I want you to understand that I want to help you with whatever issue you have. You are a worker, but you are a friend as well.”
She had a grim look on her face and paced around the room for 15 minutes before she decided that she was ready to talk.
“Do I have to tell you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then that means I can tell you. Why do you think I am not married?”
“Do you want me to answer honestly?”
She hesitated a bit, but agreed.
“I think you are a pretty young woman but you have issues with gambling, you are childish and petty, I think most men would be worried about spending their lives with you.”
She cringed as his words cut deeply into her.
“Is that how you see me?”
“I am just saying how I think others see you. I think you are fun and your betting habit has never really been a problem, but people who don’t know you might think it is something worse.”
“Well that isn’t the reason. I can’t have children. The director of the orphanage I was raised at had all the children made infertile and the doctor in Luth can’t fix it. Nobody wants a barren woman.”
“Are they allowed to do that?”
Shadows darkened and candles burned more brightly, his eyes turned to a violent torrent.
“I don’t know, probably? It isn’t like I could do anything about it anyway.”
“We are going to move past that for a moment. I don’t know anything about reproductive systems, currently in classes we are working on clear and relatively easy to fix issues like burns and scarring and broken bones,complex organs are outside of my skillset as it stands. But, I will ask my teacher about this, if I don’t have a letter sent by the next time I am here then I am still looking into it, I will find a doctor who can heal you.”
“Just make sure it is a woman, I don’t like men touching me.”
He agreed and didn’t go in for a hug, it was one of the ways he knew to comfort people, but it was clearly not the right call here.
He kept his anger inside, but he could tell that her cheery shell had cracked somewhat as she talked about it.
Tau had spoken of Harlan losing his light, but Sara was already out, she lit candles to pretend that it was still there.
Then he decided to go into the library and go over the law books to see if they really had the right to sterilize children, the thought made his blood boil.
Predictably, he didn’t find anything one way or the other, he didn’t have a book on laws regarding children and orphans, most of what he had were about magic and taxes and so on and so forth.
He spoke to Balor who also didn’t know.
Then he went into town, somebody had answers, and by this time tomorrow he wanted a head on a pike or he would be filled with rage at what that person was allowed to do.
They didn’t have a library in town, only cities had them, and even then they were anemic compared to what any respectable noble had, filled with old and outdated books that were originally thrown away.
First he spoke to the guard captain, he did not know.
Then he spoke to the healer, she did not know.
Lastly he spoke to Zachery, he did not know, but he promised to look into it, he was a good man and legal or not it was monstrous to him.
Harlan wondered how far Yor was from Luth, he could make it, but he wouldn’t be back before dawn.
That fire inside him begged him to go, but he didn’t listen, it didn’t control him, he kept it smoldering but didn’t put it out.
There wasn’t anything to be done yet anyway.
When he returned home he continued experiments alongside Balor.
He never made more than a single abomination at once, which did slow down research, but they both agreed that even the slightest risk of such things leaving the lab with a mate would be unacceptable.
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The Darkness looked over the boy, she saw his path was right, he was becoming what she wanted.
Neither did he drown himself in the ichor of rage or fall to pieces in apathy, he found his sense of right held it firmly, not letting it be tossed by the waves around him and yet still tempering it as needed.