Harlan was sure it was the 4th best place he had ever eaten, right behind what they served at the academy, the royal gala, and at the top of his list, his mother’s cooking.
He had 2 quail and a slightly thickened broth soup that was made with the juices from cooking said quail and a side plate of roasted potatoes, cauliflower, and onions.
“Are you sure that you don’t want something to eat?”
“Yes, Sir Fomoria, I ate before you arrived.”
“Very well.”
He didn’t care about the cost of the meal, it was nice and he could afford to eat like this every now and then without feeling like he was wasting his money.
It was a treat for him.
Lian tried to convince him, very lightly, that he should go visit the mayor’s gardens or the markets instead of the slums, but Harlan didn’t care.
“Is there a poor clinic here?”
“Yes, but you would be better served by visiting a proper doctor in the higher tiers of the city.”
“I don’t need a doctor, other people do.”
The buildings were still mostly stone, though there was not a small number of clearly hastily constructed wooden shacks.
It wasn’t as bad as Harlan expected, the people were clearly poor, but they looked reasonably clean, and while they were clearly weaker from years of not having enough to eat, nobody seemed to be starving.
The king had many social welfare programs set up, from a simple soup and bread that anyone who could barely afford to live could have twice a day, to poor clinics where so long as they provided proof of work the kingdom would pay them or at least cut taxes.
He understood that unrest turned to rebellion far too quickly.
So long as a man had work, a roof over his head, food, and some way to blow off steam with his free time, he would be content enough to not take up arms.
A content man, one who had time to use for more than just trying to survive, would hopefully use that time to improve his own life and no longer need the programs which had been set up.
They entered the small two room shack to find two men threatening the receptionist, a boy maybe 15 years of age, but poverty left him without the nutrients needed to grow as well as Harlan and his family had.
“Unless you want to become a patient, get us what you owe us.”
“I’m telling you, this is a free clinic, I’m living on donations and tax breaks, I’m paid mostly with food.”
“20%, I don’t care what you give us. Everyone pays.”
Lian moved in front of Harlan who simply moved around her, from the outside it was like a dance.
She was not a weak woman, she would beat Harlan in a fight due to sheer experience, but Harlan wanted to get around her and it was increasingly awkward to move around without actually touching him.
“Hey, bastards, if you want to pick on somebody your own size, get over here.”
The men turned around at Harlan’s taunt and noticed Lian instantly.
“Extortion is a crime, surrender or I will use force.”
They were about to take the young man as a hostage but were instead hit with powerful bolts of energy.
Instantly the two men stiffened and fell to the ground.
“Lian, please move.”
She did as asked, the threats were neutralized anyway.
“You, where is the doctor and who are these men?”
“They are following a man named Dagger, I don’t know his real name, and I am the only healer here. The one before was driven out and I used to be his assistant. Not good enough to take with when he packed up I suppose.”
“This ‘Dagger,’ do you know where to find him?”
Only now did the boy realize that Harlan had a crest, a signet ring, and was accompanied by a high ranking guard.
“Ah, um, no, I have no idea who you are talking about. Please have a nice day.”
“Sir Formoria, regardless of whatever intentions you might have, Dagger has been a thorn in our side for years. Not only do you not have the authority to act as a member of the guard, you can’t honestly expect to walk into my city and catch a man like that.”
Harlan did not look like an experienced mage, but he had been taught by a great deal of powerful mages and he had natural advantages.
Most first year students would beat most soldiers fresh from boot camp even with the average age gap being 3 years between them.
“And if I got approval from Blackstone, AND I had a plan already?”
“Even if you had approval, I am sure that no plan you could make in these last few seconds would do anything.”
Harlan got approval, though it did take 15 minutes before Blackstone answered, she was in no way beholden to him.
Now Harlan had both of the men strapped to tables and they were awake now.
“Hey there sleepyheads. Think about your boss, maybe a ring, or a cloak, something he always has on him, just think about him when you do. If not, I’m going to start digging out your eyes.”
It was no small feat to make someone reveal the location of something through divination, since they would naturally have a desire to not reveal these things.
There were two ways around this, firstly, you needed to have the right spells that looked for what you wanted and used the other person as a relay, checking against what they knew of the thing in question.
Secondly, was what Harlan would do, make the other person so afraid of him that they would decide they wanted to find that thing just to avoid their fate.
“Really? Divinations? Is that your best plan? As if we never tried that?”
“I am not human, I made those amulets, I can do things other people can’t.”
Harlan did a little stretch and walked out.
He was constantly updating his plans for revenge, part of that was seeing what the limits of his divinations on living targets and empathy were since he joined the crossroads.
Unless the man was on the other side of the city, or outside of it, Harlan would find him.
Luckily, he was in the slums, unluckily, the man that the thugs thought was Dagger, was just another person up the ladder of leadership, so he gave the same ultimatum, think about your boss, the man they believed was Dagger, or have their eyes plucked out.
After going through 4 men, their next target was down in the sewers.
What disturbed both him and Lian however, was that each man seemed to be higher ups not only in their little gang, but within the city itself.
“We aren’t going down there, if you claim that you know exactly where he is, then we can get the guard together and sweep the area. You’ve already found other criminals, we have some proof of your uncanny ability to find people.”
“Nope, we aren’t going down. I need at least a little bit of time to prepare for this, to the markets we go.”
After 20 minutes they returned to the same spot with two half masks and a few mana gems.
“Now we don’t need to smell the sewers. Sorry about you, I didn’t realize you would be here.”
The captain got word of what Harlan was about to do and sent him a guard, just to make it look like he was actually trying to help.
They found an access point and in they went.
It was 10 minutes of wandering before Harlan found the spot.
The sewers were laid out in a square pattern with bridges between the large rivers of waste that drained from dumping wells as they called them.
The citizens didn’t have running water in their homes, but they also weren’t just dumping it in the streets and spreading disease.
The blocks were 200 feet long on each wall.
Harlan had Lian and the other guard on the corners so they could watch two lanes while he tried to find the door, since from the outside, it looked like it was all solid stone.
After a few minutes he decided he had enough, he could feel where the tunnel was, so he just opened the wall with earth magic.
A lesser man would be skewered by the darts that came out at him.
Another lesser man by the pitfalls and the axe that swung out from the ceiling.
Finally even a competent man wouldn’t have noticed the man above the doorway with a dagger in hand.
Yet he was still a person with a mind, so Harlan used more earth magic to encase the man who clung to a flat slick wall like a spider.
Finally he opened the door and found a man in a nice jacket smoking a pipe.
There was a ladder as an escape route, but Harlan could tell the man had no intention of leaving his very well furnished office, with paintings, cushioned chairs and couches, even a hidden safe behind a painting that hid a second safe behind it.
“Now, I don’t know who you are, but good work there. My man on the ceiling must be pissed that you caught him. How can I help you?”
“I would like you to surrender so my escort can come in here and arrest you properly. There is no other option”
He clicked his tongue and scratched his short and well maintained beard.
He looked to be in his 60s, clearly more of a talker, likely a merchant, judging by his only slightly blemished skin and healthy, but not muscular frame.
“How about you and me cut a deal, you pretend you didn’t find this place, maybe I have some work that you can do, Count Fomoria.”
“So you do know who I am, doesn’t matter though, I’m just going to drag you out by force.”
“Let me tell you. If you do that, then we are gonna have a problem with each other, and, now this is the important part, I’ll be out before the moon is high. Come on, you didn’t really think I don’t have people who work for me that can make this go away? You got, what, confessions from some low brow thugs, and me having an office under my home? Where is the crime.”
“I would like a clarification on that first statement, what does you and I having a problem look like?”
“Well, you have a sister who is always out with only one man guarding her, no telling what kinda accident could happen.”
“I see now.”
Harlan ran it through his head many times.
Ava told him that what he had done was unjust, that you can’t just kill people for what they might do.
Yet here was a man, one who clearly had power, and he had threatened her, directly.
It would be just to bring him in and hope that the courts did what was right.
Because that was the right thing, the moral thing to do, yet what if?
What if he failed? Dagger, whoever he was, got away with it and Ava got hurt?
Breken was good, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once, Harlan couldn’t either, that was why he was glad she had the golem armor.
Just one failure, one mistake, she would be gone.
It would be the unjust thing to do, it would be selfish of him to put the chance of future harm as more important than the life of a man who had dead to rights.
Harlan crushed the man in the ceiling inside the stone.
Dagger, or whatever his name might be, reached for a gun under his desk but Harlan’s telekinesis stopped him from pulling the trigger.
Harlan looked at it for a moment, normal people shouldn’t have guns, especially not so far away from the frontier.
He wondered if the man was a revolutionary, perhaps he had ties to them as a black marketeer or money launderer?
“Let’s not be hasty, I’ve got connections, powerful people who will come looking for my killer. Why not let bygones be bygones?””
Harlan didn’t want to make it clear that he killed the man in cold blood, sure, he could just say he pulled a gun and so he reacted.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
But would Ava believe that?
He forced the man’s arm to move and placed the gun with twin barrels beneath his chin.
Then Harlan felt silly, he had read of cases where people lost the front of their head and yet without damage to the brain the people still lived.
He instead moved the gun to his temples and angled it back a little bit, once the many pellets hit his brain there would be no way to save him.
“Harlan, don’t do this. This is going way too far.”
“He made his choice, he knows enough about me to know threatening our family is a mistake. One he will not have time to regret. If you tell her, and she hates me for this, that is just how things will be.”
“Don’t do this for a maybe, he could be bluffing.”
“What maybe? Even if he doesn’t have a single person who might threaten Ava he is still a menace to the slum, going after the already downtrodden people who can’t defend themselves.
If I had not a shadow of doubt in my mind about him being a complete non-threat, I would still kill him because of what he has already done and because I believe I can get away with it.”
Harlan screamed no and then pulled the trigger, hoping that Lian and the other guard would hear it and believe he tried to stop the man.
Lugh was beside himself with anger, but he just kept it bottled up, this was not the time for it.
The others rushed into the room as the shot echoed through the underground and nearly deafened Harlan who was now on the ground trying to stop the ringing and the pain.
While Harlan had seen and taken apart guns, he didn't really understand how all of it worked.
Most importantly, he had no idea how loud they would be.
The gun actually had a spell soulsmithed into it to dampen the noise, but without knowing that Harlan hadn’t activated it.
After a few minutes Harlan unruptured his eardrums and was ready to speak.
“Count Fomoria, what happened here?”
“I found the tunnel, but I couldn’t be sure there wouldn’t be any more exits so I decided not to call you. I barely dodged the traps and the assassin, who I pushed into the wall with telekinetic and stone magics before crushing him. The man tried to convince me to work for him instead, I don’t think he realized who I was. However when I made it abundantly clear that all that was waiting for him was a jail cell he grabbed a gun under his desk. I was ready to defend myself, but I did not expect him to take his own life rather than be arrested. The presence of a gun means possible ties to revolutionaries, perhaps he didn’t want to be tortured for information on his allies.”
Lian didn’t immediately think there was anything wrong with his story, just from a quick look she could tell that the man had pulled the trigger himself and the angle would mean he intended to kill himself instantly.
She believed that if Harlan wanted to kill him, he would’ve used any number of spells or even the physical force he was known for.
The idea of him rushing the man down, getting the gun pointed at him, but also without taking it out of his hands, seemed ridiculous.
“We will need to have this whole place sweeped, confirm the identity of the man, and then figure out how far his reach really was. The fact that he had a place like this underground means he had either high ranking officials who were willing to give out badges that allowed stone magic, or he had some other means of digging out such a place.”
“Behind that painting he ruined, there is a safe, behind that safe is another safe. I saw it with the delver magic I used to find the tunnel in the first place.”
“Oh I could kiss you.”
Her joy had overcome her manners and she quickly corrected herself.
“I mean, I greatly appreciate your help and you may well have saved us a lot of work.”
Lian threatened the guard to stay silent about her slip up which only made Harlan laugh.
Harlan went back to the free clinic and helped the boy heal a few people who had nowhere else to go and then he went to the courthouse for the actual reason he came here.
As he sat in the waiting room he wondered, how had nobody caught him?
Even beyond corruption in the city, any competent divinationist should’ve been able to get the ball rolling.
Any torturer would’ve broken the men, any delver mage who searched the sewers would notice the disturbance.
Even the presence of the tunnel meant that the person who made that room had to be a noble, normal mages got a badge to lessen the effects of the array, but they were completely blocked from earth magic.
Harlan asked Lian about it.
“We asked for help from mages who passed through, we didn’t exactly have a large enough issue at hand that it was worth putting out big money for bounty hunters. He mostly kept his business in the slums where barely any eyes were on him, when he tried to do business in the nicer parts of the city we dealt with his men. But that was the limit of what we could do. The mayor could’ve asked for support from Countess Blackstone, but he declined to do it, I can’t speak for why exactly however. Perhaps it was budget related, maybe it was because we couldn’t be sure that this person named Dagger even existed since new people would pop up and claim to be him.”
“Whatever, it’s done. Anyway, what is taking so long?”
“The mayor was supposed to greet you before the trial began. He is normally very punctual.”
Harlan didn’t let it show on his face, but he tried to retrace his path from the sewers back up here.
He didn’t have a perfect memory, nor did he have perfect spatial awareness, but that path might’ve ended up right around the mayor’s office.
After 10 minutes the judge declared that the trial must start now, with the approval of Harlan as the noble party.
“I take no issue with a lack of greeting from the mayor.”
There was a lot of preamble, but Balor was there representing Harlan.
He and the witnesses arrived late, which made the delay caused by the mayor not really a big deal.
After everything was said and done the other party closed with a statement that it was clearly the work of one healer and the director had no idea, and that the accusation that he had pushed any of the girls towards brothels was purely hearsay.
Now it was time for Balor to actually start.
First it was files showing that there was no healer employed there, that the personal file and payments were nothing but a coverup for his embezzlement of funds and the mage never existed if one simply looked at the census from the surrounding counties.
Mages made up around 30% of the population if the definition was stretched to anyone who could sense and therefore cast magic, the large military accounted for most of this 30%.
Healers made 8% of that 30%, it was not overly difficult to find out how many healers were in the area, and the files matched not a single one of them.
The director, on the other hand, was not only a mage, and not only a healer, but he had gone for a month-long course on healing, with a specialization in reproductive magic some 40 years ago.
Second, he brought out documents showing that orphans who were in the orphanage before and after the time when this alleged healer also had the exact same damage to their bodies.
Lastly, he brought out these people as witnesses that the director had in fact, done the spell himself.
Sara was in the courtroom, though she wasn’t acting as a witness.
He brought out witnesses who worked at the orphanage and had their suspicions of what was happening but no proof, and he brought out those who handled the records but didn’t understand what was actually happening until it was pointed out to them.
The director had intentionally hired people who were just barely competent enough to pass the tests required to work there, but couldn’t really decipher the way he was moving the money around.
After arguments back and forth and confirmations on the information, the judge was ready to make his decision.
Not every case would end the day, or even the week that it happened.
Sometimes the judge would look over the information for days and check sources to ensure his ruling was correct.
Yet this day, the evidence was so overwhelmingly one sided that he had not a doubt of what had happened.
“On the case of Count Harlan Fomoria Vs Vilen of Yor. I hereby rule in favor of Count Harlan Fomoria. The original recommended punishment was restitutions for the victims, and the removal of Vilen from his position accompanied by no less than 10 years of labor, which the man was unlikely to survive considering his age. However, in light of new evidence, I will be changing this sentence to death, all of his wealth shall be distributed to those who we can confirm are victims. And he is to be questioned about any possible conspirators to his crimes. Does the effected have a preference on method?”
“Hanging. So long as I know justice has been carried out against him I do not ask that he suffer more than the court has decided.”
“Very well, in one week's time, unless the criminal can provide evidence that could bring doubt on my ruling, his punishment will be carried out.”
Harlan looked at the people in the stands, they looked relieved, but also they were upset.
He had spoken to them all at least once, two of them were men who would never father their own children, the last was a woman who had lost her marriage over being barren, she had never even been told what had happened to her and thought herself cursed to never conceive.
The man who had done this to them would be transferred to death row, but what had been taken from them could not be returned.
Harlan thought, for just a moment, that he should ask if he could change the method of death to something worse.
But he knew just from the look in their eyes, they didn’t care, they had a hole and it wouldn’t be filled by pain and suffering.
He decided that he should keep the list they made of all the people who were victims, maybe someday he would be a good enough healer to do the procedure on his own, maybe he could do it for free.
These were the things he told himself to avoid the aura of crushing despair that he felt from these people.
Sara looked the happiest of them, but she had still dropped her cheery exterior.
Her best years to get married were behind her, most people were wed before 20, if they weren’t they probably had something wrong with them.
Sometimes it was just bad luck, maybe there were just more men than women in the area or vice versa, but it often felt to those people like they were just picking up the scraps left behind by others.
Harlan took her to the restaurant he had gone to earlier in the day, Balor left with the 3 witnesses to make sure they all got home and to reassure them that they could be healed.
Not many people wanted to be caught between the people under the royals and a noble, so Harlan agreed to pay for them to be healed in exchange.
He got a laugh when her eyes bugged out at the prices and she asked more than once if it was really ok to order anything she wanted.
It brightened her mood a little to have a nice meal.
The restaurant had veils up on each table by default, many important business deals would happen in a place like this.
“Sara, how do you feel?”
“I thought it would feel better.”
“I know. All of it just leaves you empty, either wanting more or wanting to find something else to fill it.”
“All of what exactly? I’m not sure you really get what I’m dealing with here. Ah, no offense.”
“I mean revenge; I’m sure that you wanted him dead, and I made sure that he got what he had coming to him, but that doesn’t fix anything. I can pay for you to be healed, but I can’t give you back the time you lost.”
“You are going to try though, I am sure you will.”
“I can’t turn back time, but, when you want to leave, either because you found somebody you love or just because you feel like you need to go. I’ll make sure you can do that without worrying about money, even if you want to take a long break from work.”
“I think I should keep working, not really sure what else to do right now. I’ll never find a better place to be at anyway. Maybe I should go to a maiden festival in a bigger place, somewhere else where nobody knows me. Even if I explained I was healed I don’t know who all would believe me.”
“This place should have one in summer, some places have more than one per year. I’ll ask around.”
“You mean you’ll ask Balor to find out who he needs to ask and then he will find somebody to ask that person.”
They both laughed, and it was real this time.
“Same thing.”
They walked around for a very brief time, she didn’t really want to stay there any longer than she needed to.
Isha was her closest friend, and while she could’ve talked to Harlan and he would try his best, she needed another woman to speak to.
The carriage ride back was awkward, so she pretended that she was sleeping and Harlan did the same.
He wanted to call Blackstone, ask about the mayor, but it would look very suspicious.
More importantly, Harlan didn’t want to look like he cared about anything else but Sara.
He would just need to call Lian in the morning.
She tried to refuse the hastily made communication amulet he made, but Harlan basically used his noble title to make her take it, though he did stress that it was still a personal item and she didn’t need to rush to answer it if he called.
It was quite late when they returned, Sara went to her cabin and went to sleep.
Harlan didn’t really know what to do with his time, the only one still up was Balor, but he left a sign on the door to the bunker saying he didn’t want to be disturbed.
Harlan thought about putting himself to sleep, just to pass the time.
Lugh however, wanted to talk.
“Harlan. You keep scaring me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What you did today, and the day before, was that evil? You didn’t need to kill him, but you did anyway.”
“For the bandit, maybe. But that man? I cannot let somebody like him live..”
“That is an excuse. You are lying to me again.”
Harlan thought for a short time and realized where he went wrong.
“When Adina was in danger, you were ready to help me with that, this is no different to me.
I am being preemptive instead of reacting to threats, I want to put them down before they turn into something worse.
If that man truly was the mayor, then he would be out of jail in hours, if he even ended up in a cell at all.
People like him, people like the director, they use their positions of power to abuse those beneath them and because they attack the people who have no connections, they get away with it. He had been running that orphanage for 26 years, hundreds of victims were left in his wake, did the law stop him?
Only barely, we won that battle because Balor used his spies and thieves and I happened to actually give a shit about a maid, which is odd for most nobles.
What use is justice when it would require that I let somebody like that go?”
“What if you become as bad as them? Could you look Ava in the eyes if she hated you for what you were doing.”
“I said it before, I would accept her hating me. But more than that, If I become that evil, kill me.”
“What? No, I could nev-”
“I believe that evil people should be killed because they do nothing but cause more harm. If you think I am going to do these things, truly and completely, they kill me right now. I give my life to you, because I can change, but I refuse to do so. I am Harlan, your brother, murderer, healer. If I believe it is right, I will do whatever needs to be done, if you cannot match my resolve then stay here.”
Harlan raised his arms to and closed his eyes.
Both of them read the same books, they saw the same things, but both of them had a clear divide in how they viewed the world, one which they might never reconcile.
Lugh opened the door and went down to the bunker.
Harlan sat outside and watched the sunrise.
Then he felt the sigil, pulses of energy threatened to split his head open, he fell from his chair and The Unseen rushed to aid him, they too fell to the ground when they made contact.
Sepul had arrived early, hoping for an excuse to have a cup of tea with him before they teleported back, he felt the wrongness in the air instantly.
Every shadow around the area grew dark and stretched far beyond what they should’ve.
A tree took a vaguely womanly shape, one could make out a face and body, its trunk split and turned to legs, its branches fused to arms, Anu had come to watch.
From the reservoir pond Lir formed and walked to her siblings.
A morning bird burst and reformed to a sphere of light and feathers as Cecht watched.
The sky turned to a massive stormeye as Calli came to see.
It was difficult to manifest in such a minor way without an element, so Cecht burned a tree to give form an opening for Brigid, lest she burn far more to appear in a real body.
Of the gods, she was the most human in appearance.
Her hair was fire, her body was clay, she rearranged herself until she seemed like she had clothes.
Finally, the shadows of the forest pulled back into their source and from them a pillar of darkness that stretched into the sky was atop of Harlan.
“I have waited for this moment, 15 years, 3 months, 18 days, 7 hours, 18 minutes, 43 seconds. You are what I need you to be, and you have not become this because I have told you to be this, you have become this because it has been your choice.
You would stake your life on your morals, your justice.
You would not crush this world under your heel, but you understand that it must change.
You would help those who would help others, rippling kindness through their lives.
You would kill those who ripple only more pain.
You are not my vengeance.
You are not my mercy.
You are a being which will represent change, and I shall hope this to be for the better.
You are my champion.
I grant you no power but the power to change yourself and those around you, you must guide your own path with this gift.”
The pillar of darkness devoured the light as miles turned pitch black, the towns of Tole and Luth both suffered, people froze in fear as they were suddenly blind, and then things were normal.
The blackness lasted only 15 seconds.