After the captain gave the directions Harlan had things to grab from his carriage, so he jumped off the wall and hit the ground like a feather.

Adina walked back and forth for about 30 seconds while breathing deeply before she decided that she loved Harlan, and what he had done was insane to normal people, but it was just a Harlan thing, so she could only be so upset about it.

After a few minutes they made their way down the wall and out to the carriage, finding Harlan had shock resistant chests full of vials out and he was picking through them.

“Sir Fomoria, please refrain from doing things like that again. I had to stop everyone who saw you from calling for healers.”

“It’s not technically a crime.”

The captain and Adina could only sigh.

He had never been great at public relations, but after so much time hunting and discovering that at the end of the day most people didn’t actually care, he had become worse.

He made decisions regarding his friends based on what was right, everything else was a matter of laws.

“Harlan, what was so important that you had to worry me like that?”

“One moment. Here.”

He pulled a box of vials marked with a skull and each was filled with a dark liquid that looked like molasses.

“What is that?”

“Concentrated poison. I plan to aerosolize it. Against the spiders which can find any number of little cracks in the ground to hide in, the only options are poisons or flooding. And I doubt the mayor would approve of the second option.”

“How many spiders are you expecting?”

“I don’t know, Captain…? What is your name.”

“Arrac. And honestly I don’t know how many spider you should expect. When my friend was there he says there were only a few dozen, but 20 years is a very long time. There could be thousands of them, the older ones are only a few inches around at most, they look like vertebrae and shape their exoskeleton to match the rest of the body after they have transplanted themselves.”

“Then I’ll take the entire box.”

“You can’t seriously think about just bombing the entire place with poisons.”

“How long did you think this was going to take?”

“I don’t know, 5, 6 hours?”

“I won’t do this in anything less than 2 days. I need seismographic spells done so I can figure out how many tunnels are down there and then I can seal them up before using the poison. What, did you think I would just run down there real quick and start throwing fireballs?”

He felt foolish, but that was exactly what he expected. The man was no mage, city guard captains were often just senior officers who were good with the people.

For real problems the army or the locals nobles army did the real work, bandits, monsters, rabid beasts.

The guard in a safe place like this was wildly ill equipped for a proper cleansing like what Harlan wanted.

“As part of my class on magical flora and fauna, I was taught how one would contain an outbreak of a sudden invasive species depending on the animal in question and the environment. For cave based non-digger beasts, you can seal the area until they only have a handful of exits, and pump the place full of toxic gas. If anything flees the gas you hit it with spells.”

“Interesting, what do you do for woodland?”

“Fire, lots and lots of fire. The invasion of a species that does not belong and might lack natural predators can do a lot of damage. You probably don’t realize how important it is that we properly clear out magical beasts.”

Harlan realized that most of what he was about to say would just go over Arrac’s head, so he stopped before he got into magical beasts pushing their non-magical kin out of areas and how much damage monster waves during spawning season actually caused.

The naturally occurring creatures were fine, but when the Fae forcibly introduced monsters to the world and brought magic to special individuals to slay them for heroic titles they had messed with the balance.

Harlan went through another crate and brought out something that he wanted to keep as a surprise, but he couldn’t really justify not giving it to her right now even though she wouldn’t be part of the cleansing.

“Adina, come here for a moment.”

She did as asked and Harlan unfolded the armor before holding it up to her.

“Looks like I got the measurements right. I hoped to make this a big event because I am proud of my work and you would be the 6th person to have an armor like this, but right now it is more important that you put this on and stay safe while I deal with the spiders.”

“Who are the other 5? And what do you mean while YOU deal with the spiders, I can help.”

“I made armor like this for Ava, mom, dad, Breken, and myself. You are not helping because I don’t think you provide a unique position in this, when dealing with something that could take over your body it is best to have only a few very powerful people. The more parts a machine has, the more there is to break. You are a good healer, you can do some warding and arrays, but between myself and Sepul, I don’t see anywhere to fit you in. Now, please, put on this armor. I’ll put a veil over the entire carriage, but put down the window covers anyway.”

She didn’t argue anymore and just put on the armor.

She let out a small eek when it sized itself on its own, she had seen Harlan take his off and put it on enough to know what to expect, but it was still an odd feeling.

The only change in design from Harlan’s armor was that instead of a skull embossing on the face she had small feathery wings embossed on her shoulder blades.

Harlan had read of the creature that they called Ascended, one feature that was consistent on what was assuredly an abomination of some kind, was their wings, mostly they were small and useless, but rarely they would have 2 or even 3 sets of magnificent and magically powerful wings.

When she stepped outside the captain looked incredibly nervous and was holding a metal rod in his hands.

Harlan waved her over and then waved to the captain who struck her as hard as he could.

The rod bent and Adina was fine.

“WHAT THE- I mean, care to explain, Harlan?”

“He asked how strong the armor was, you are probably wondering about that too.”

The captain looked over the rod in his hands and whistled.

“What I could do with something like that.”

“What is the budget for a new guard, full set, armor, weapons, everything.”

“Well, I recall it takes us about 80 silver to suit up a guard with chainmail and a spea and an arming sword. The sword is the only soulsmithed item, but smaller places would be cheaper since they would be using all mundane gear. Then you need heraldry from the noble, shoes, socks, helmet, pants, gambeson, and other mundane items that don’t take up too much of the cost.”

“Well I spent over 1000 gold to make what she is wearing, same for mine.”

Adina froze, the captain froze, anyone else who overheard him froze.

Had his parents ever asked, they would freeze.

Ava’s had 600 gold worth of gems in it but the armor itself was free from Brig.

Only Breken’s armor cost less than 300, and that was because Harlan knew that he didn’t really need something like what everyone else had.

“I can’t wear this. This is-”

“The only set of armor worthy of my Minister of Justice.”

“How could it even cost so much?”

“Each of these are about 300 pounds of very high quality stonesteel and 2 large mana gems. I am just glad that the labor was cheap since I did most of it.”

“300…”

She moved around her arms and couldn’t understand it.

“How?”

“Hover, great spell, just a little tinkering and you can suddenly make something that is heavy, but not too heavy.”

“I never cast the spell though.”

“Well, I can’t let all of my secrets out. Don’t think too much about it. Next, grab the rod from the captain and try to bend it.”

She did as asked and the armor used a minor imbibe to give her more strength.

She felt a bit of strain on her body since no imbibing came without some backlash, but she knew she never could’ve done that without whatever the armor just did.

“Nevermind, I love the armor.”

She flared the bands a few times and made the armor a little looser.

“Thank you, I put a lot of work into making these things. Now, put your helmet up and try to punch me.

As hard as you can, do it seriously, like we're going to spar.”

She knew the basics of a good stance and how to throw a straight, so she threw one.

Harlan moved like a blur, before she fully understood what had happened she was face down in the dirt, his arm that wasn’t restraining her’s was on her head, his claws loudly scraping against her helmet.

“Damnit, let me get up.”

“I could already see that look in your eyes, remember, this armor is to protect you, but you are also a threat to other people and if somebody has more experience then they can easily kill you.

Do not let this get to your head or the armor will just be a fancy coffin.”

She rubbed her arm a little bit and the armor was already releasing a light healing spell.

Adina knew that he was like this sometimes, but she couldn’t really think of a time he was rough with her.

He hid it very well, but her hearing was closer to Harlan’s than a normal human’s, he was afraid, afraid that she would do something stupid because he made her feel invincible.

Neither of them liked what he had done, but he felt it was an important lesson, one that he learned every time he fought Breken in the past.

There would always be somebody else who was better, all the armor did was bring her physical power and a list of spells that he hadn’t had the time to explain yet.

She didn’t get techniques, muscle memory, or instinct.

She was still just Adina, but stronger.

They both had quite a bit to think about as they made their way to the mayor.

Harlan invoked a state of emergency and while nobody liked it, with support from Sepul, the city went into lockdown.

The noble, a woman by the name of Daria Welten, was very unhappy that her county would be losing face during a time when many other nobles would be passing though.

Her own son was in the city of Borden, though she had convinced Sepul to check him for spiders and then send him back.

In exchange she told them to do whatever they need to do to get the city clear as soon as possible.

The pair of killers, light and dark, made their way underground and found that while the tunnels split, they often reconverged instead of leading to dead ends.

The first day was just finding tunnels and sealing them off after mapping them out, they had to kill any spiders they saw just in case they could go back to the rest of the group and warn them.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

If even a handful of them escaped then they would never know and in another 20 years it would be just as bad.

Topside the guards were rounding people up so the entire city and the people passing through could be checked for spiders.

Adina was helping to find the spiders, a simple healing spell directed at the entire spine would reveal them as long as the healer paid very close attention to any inconsistencies with how the spell reacted.

If any spots either drained more energy than normal or actively rejected the energy, then they were spiders hiding in their spines.

The unfortunate part was that all they could do was put the people in jail and wait for Sepul, none of the healers and very few of the students who passed through were good enough to first safely extract the spiders and then heal the spine.

Things almost got very ugly very quickly as paranoia ran through the people once they realized it was not just a lockdown to prevent the spread of a disease, which didn’t happen often, but many people who lived here had gone through it at least once before.

Luckily Arrac was put in place for a reason, he calmed the people down and those who tried to flee were almost always spider infested and so they were sent down to the jail.

It was the first time in centuries that it was actually nearing full capacity in just 2 days.

Nobody, not Skit, not Arrac, knew how widespread it was.

Were it not for his empathizing with a frantic mother when many would ignore her as crazy just because she was from the slums things wouldn’t have taken 10 or 15 years before they started spreading outside the city, it would’ve been just three or four.

Harlan was tired, his armor was covered in dirt and grime from the cave and its adjoining sewers, and he was placing down a box of poisons with all the corks off of the vials.

“If I never spend another second mapping out caves like this, it will be too much.”

“Welcome to the real world, where all of the prep before an operation wasn’t done by someone else a few days ahead of time so you can rush in and start crushing skulls as soon as you arrive. I am happy that you had the sense to call me and you actually remembered the procedures for something like this.”

“I know what it would mean if something I made actually got out, so it is important that I can fix my mistakes.”

Harlan began forming the poison into a ball in the air.

“The weight of what a man does falls on his shoulders, if he cannot bear his own burdens, he has no right to take those of his neighbors.”

“Harlan, was that-”

“Those Reinoans sure know how to write a dramatic statement. I will give them that.”

He pulled his arms back and the poison ball destabilized, when he pushed his arms forward the ball turned to a fast moving cloud.

If a man were to be inside of it, he would have 30 seconds to leave, if he didn’t, then he had about 30 seconds to live.

The spiders would die almost instantly, but by their estimates, it would take about 45 minutes to have the gas reach every nook and cranny of the cave with the aid of air magic.

It was appropriately named 30/30 poison and it was designed to be used as Harlan was using it.

Upon reflection, he was just glad that everyone was more worried about the spiders than they were about the fact Harlan was carrying boxes of chemical weapons in his carriage.

He didn’t really have an ill intent with it, he just didn’t want to safely dispose of it after he spent all this time making it as Sepul directed him to.

It was a preferred beginner poison since once stored it was very safe, unlike others that might aerosolize by themselves, this would only let off a safe amount into the air even if the vials shattered.

The two of them walked towards the deadly miasma but made very certain that they didn’t get close enough that they risked breathing any of it in.

Even if they did have other spells that cleaned the air around them it was still considered best practices to act as if the spells would fail at any second.

“This is a very nice poison you made. Color is right, it hangs in the air very well. Sometimes a beginner will make it too heavy and it leaves a waxy residue on surfaces. This should be thin enough that it will slowly evaporate if it were to be left alone.”

“Thank you, I had a good teacher afterall.”

“You’ll not make an old man blush with such compliments.”

“But you can’t hide your mind, I know it makes you happy to hear.”

“I never said it didn’t, but don’t mistake it for being more than it is. It always warms the heart of a teacher to see a student grow. I take it this isn’t how you intended to spend your time?”

“Very subtle topic change, but no, I didn’t come here for this. I could’ve just driven right through had the captain not asked to see me and then a lot of people would be hurting. I actually wanted to ride home slowly because I wanted some time to talk with Adina. I…”

“It might be best if you did speak with me. I know you like to speak with Mary and your family about things, but I am not a golem, I am still a man who has lived a long life and I have much advice to give out.”

“Do you really want that?”

“I am your master, you are my apprentice. I could teach anybody about magic, but to help you understand yourself and grow into a better man is worth far more.”

Harlan used turned a shadow into void and killed some hiding spiders.

“Fine. When I showed you the memory of the woman in my dreams, you reacted like you knew her. Why?”

Sepul seemed startled, but he had already known what he would say.

“I knew her father and I was involved in her training as a debt to him after he passed away.”

“Is that really it?”

“Yes. I was shocked to see her in your dreams, did you find out anything more about her?”

“Don’t tell him about me, I don’t want to speak with him. Please.”

“She still appears in my dreams, but no.”

Radiant rays cutdown spiders that tried to rush out, Harlan adjusted the wind so it would get low enough to catch the hatchlings.

“It is very strange, she died some time ago, having gone missing in the frontier. What relation would she have with you?”

“If she was taken by Fomorians perhaps I saw her face as an infant and it stuck with me.”

They reached the main hall and Sepul began to close the path behind them.

Now they needed to go down each of the 7 paths and make sure they didn’t miss anyone.

The cloud of poison stayed in the main room, Harlan hoped that the other spider who had taken the bodies of children went down the paths, he found no signs of them in the cavern so far.

They waved to one another and started clearing, Harlan would go counter clockwise, Sepul would take the reverse.

First path, no spiders, no other animals.

If there was something else, moles or bats, he needed to kill them all as well, the spiders could take over more than just humans.

Once a path was cleared they would close off that tunnel so the other didn’t try to clear it a second time.

For Harlan this was all quite easy, anything that attacked from ambush ended up obliterated with void or crushed in his hands.

His mental senses without all of the other minds to distract him, were quite sharp.

Sepul relied on his lightform which made him immune to the effects of his radiant aura which blackened the cave as he floated down the tunnels and charred everything in his path, heating the air to the point that most people would be unable to breath without their lungs burning.

In the third path Harlan found the children, huddled in a corner of a clearly manmade room.

“Mister, please, save us.”

“Of course.”

Harlan splashed acid around the other corners of the room, exoskeletons had no chance of standing up to his magic.

The children cried and called him a monster before Harlan used sleeping air to sedate them.

The spiders hijacked the nervous system and controlled the body through primarily physical means, only minor mental magics took hold over the victims.

While the bodies slept Harlan tried out the teachings of Sepul, first he needed to find which vertebrae the spider had taken over, then he needed to kill the spider while leaving the body inside.

A thin tendril of void destroyed the internal organs with minimal damage to the rest of the structure.

The Spinal spiders ate away at and completely replaced part of the spine, but their bodies would not be considered an invader by the host body so they could actually be left inside.

Harlan considered it horrifying, but if it didn’t hurt anyone and if nobody told them, it should be fine.

He wanted to just remove the spider entirely and regrow the bone, but there were thousands of victims and it would be much easier to leave most of the exoskeleton inside and just grow bone into the hollowed out shell.

By the time he dragged the children out Sepul was done with the 4th path and was sealing it up.

“Let me check them first, the spine is quite sensitive.”

It took only a few seconds per child.

“You could’ve done better, but you cause no serious damage, the nerves are unharmed, just a small amount more bone will need to be regrown. Can you find your way out with them?”

“Yes, my mental mapping is quite good.”

“Very well, I will stay behind, open the tunnels again, boil every living creature inside of this place just in case we missed anything, and then seal it up once again. In a month a team will check for survivors, eggs buried in the ground, things like that. If it is clear at that time then we can consider this a resounding success.”

“Thank you for taking the time to help me with this, I will start removing the spiders from the people topside and I’ll leave the healing for you since it isn’t just putting bones back together.”

“I will teach you as I do it, no reason to not turn this into a learning experience.”

Harlan was back at the cave entrance and had to answer some questions to verify that he didn’t end up with a spider inside him.

Then they made him get out of his armor to check his back.

What had happened with the mother who chased down a peeper was that he had seen the still red wound from the spider entering her body so she needed to get rid of the witness.

Once he was topside he went to the center of town to find Adina.

Along the way he found some familiar faces, Hellon was treating the afflicted who had been caged after the jail was full.

“I didn’t expect to see you here.”

She downed another bottle of tonic before speaking.

“What fresh hell did you find here? You’ve ruined my summer off already.”

“I didn’t call you here, I just stumbled into this.”

“You could trip over a rock and it would end up being a Wyvern snout. You didn’t need to call me, Sepul gave us a rundown of what happened and the academy posted a job for anyone with the certifications needed.”

He saw that there were only a few dozen more people waiting to be healed.

“At least you are almost done, right?”

She looked like she was about to start throwing empty bottles at him.

“I am just dealing with the overflow at the moment, the jail is full. ”

“What?”

“You didn’t realize how bad it was, did you? Over 10% of the population so far has been found out. That jail can only hold 10,000 people. We are expecting at least twice that many before this is done. Other mages and archmagi are handing the riots, Adina is doing what she can to suss them out, but she is only one mage.”

“What do you need me to do, we just finished clearing out the colony under the city and Sepul is double checking everything.”

“You are also just one person, clean your armor, take a bath, rest for a little bit. I am sure that as soon as word gets out that you are finished they will find you and give you more work. Did you even negotiate a price for this kinda work? Scratch that, whatever you said was too low, Hirum negotiated for all of us and you are getting that pay on top of anything else.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he never once asked for anything, since he thought it was just clearing them before it actually became an issue instead of something bigger so he considered it a public service to save a handful of children.

“Alright, I’ll find a place to get cleaned up.”

“Go that way, big white building, the mayor has all participating mages in the nicest hotel in the city. You are welcome by the way.”

On the way there a large boom rocked the city and Halran rushed over to find that other mages had the fire out and were digging bodies out of the rubble already.

He began lifting stones where he felt minds, becoming frantic as they began fading from his senses.

Then more bombs went off, someone who recognized him by his armor said he would be more useful out there, they had mages working the area already.

Riots, looting, people who weren’t even infested took advantage of the chaos.

“Stop, please. I know what you want to do, but you are tired, covered in filth, and they are not worth it.”

He often felt that she was a bad influence on him, but, she knew what warzones were like.

Once the smoke was clear Harlan would feel awful for what he would’ve done, some of these people were just scared and desperate to have enough wealth to leave this place once the lockdown ended.

Harlan began to shift stone and leave the people tied to the buildings or on the ground.

As a noble he could do things like this, but any mage who wasn’t given privileges already would be unable to reverse his magic.

More bombs, the spiders were not stupid, they knew the net was closing on them and if they could make enough chaos they had a chance to leave, if not, then they would still have some form of revenge.

Harlan’s eyes were tired, his body was staggering, then a warhammer came down on his head from behind.

He was slower, and the blow, while stopped by his armor, had still rattled him.

But he was not so slow that he couldn’t turn around and turn the man’s head into paste with his rod morphed into a hammer.

He felt more minds, people were afraid, angry.

The spiders had long since taken over the blacksmiths in the area and the equipment the people wore represented that.

Harlan tried to dodge them, he knew they didn’t want to be doing this, that they were just prisoners along for the ride.

He felt bad for the first man he killed.

Blows started to land as they came at him from every angle while he tried to disable them.

Mages flying overhead saw what was happening and cut the people down without hesitation.

They came down to check on Harlan, finding him weeping.

“The fuck was that? I was trying to save them, they were infested.”

“The jails are already full, we don’t have anywhere to put them and the healers are already overwhelmed.

Whoever you are, get some damn rest, if you continue to wander around like you are just going to get killed.”

“Fine.”

Harlan found that his body didn’t want to get up anymore, he had a concussion and when two of them hammered his knee from both sides they had broken his leg.

“Give me a minute, my leg isn’t working.”

The men just sighed and carried Harlan to the hotel.

Hellon was sleeping on a couch in the lobby, she couldn’t wait for them to assign her a room and it was comfortable enough for her.

Better than the old cots she spent far too much time with on rescue missions.

Another healer got Harlan’s leg fixed and demanded that he get some sleep and clean himself up.

He reached the front desk and the worker looked like she hadn’t properly slept in a day or more, which was very possible.

“ID, please.”

Harlan’s gauntlet opened up a finger to reveal his ring.

“Room 221, stairs are on your right.”

As soon as she handed the key to Harlan she put her head back down on a pillow on the desk.

Harlan dragged himself to the room and found that Adina was passed out on one of the two beds, still in her armor.

He got into the bathroom and filled the tub with hot water, he didn’t even bother removing his armor, he would just clean that first, strip, change the water, and take another bath and clean his clothes.

The man in the chest was moved by Sepul back to his dungeon and his only maid, Jane, handled him.