Harlan was laying down in the bed across from Adina, he wondered why they were put in the same room.
Had Sepul done this? Perhaps it was Adina? It didn’t really matter, he figured she felt safer with him and he wasn’t as worried since she wasn’t alone somewhere while resting.
“How are you, Little Shadow?”
“Am I sleeping?”
“No.”
“I hope I’m not damaging the room.”
“Our connection is far stronger now, there will be no need for that anymore.”
“Then I am alright, tired, it hurts me to see these people like this. Stripped of their free will. I hate that I killed that man.”
“Good. Life is a lesson, you need to take what you believe you should learn.”
“Alright, and what do you want me to learn?”
“When is it right to kill or have mercy? These are the things you will learn, how you learn them and how you take these lessons are up to you. But, now that our relationship has expanded, I believe I can be a little more upfront. You have done well so far. You understand that you had to kill that man, and after some thought you know that those others needed to die as well.”
“What can you tell me about the spiders? Why now? Why did I even want to come here in the first place?”
“The spiders are nothing but another creature. They follow their instincts, however, how did they reach this place and stay hidden? Why now? Why not now? Anyone could’ve found them and they might ask the question of why now. Why are you here? It is your choice, I had no part in it.”
“It really is just a coincidence that I found them then?”
“I didn’t say that, just that I had no part in it.”
“I thought you would be a little more upfront.”
“I have said no lies and I have hidden no details, now that you are here because of your own choice I will reveal this. You have more enemies than just those beasts within these walls, do be careful of them.”
“Thank you, I apologize for being snappy, I am just tired.”
“And you will tire again in the days to come. You understand your limits and push them, I will not make judgment on one side or the other of this part of you.”
Her presence faded from his mind, having been outside of her small world there was no distortion of time one way or the other, though by the fact of speaking without words they could fit more in less time.
Adina rolled over and off the bed before Harlan caught her.
She nearly tried to cast something, but she somehow knew it was him.
“Harlan? When did you get back? I tried to wait for you.”
“I’m sure you needed the rest. I… I don’t think this is going to get better anytime soon. I think you should leave, I can ask Sepul, he will have you home in minutes.”
“No, he could have me at the building you are giving me to live in. Didn’t you say that home is a place where you want to be?”
He tried to think back, hadn’t he said that? There were a lot of conversations that he had probably half forgotten, that she might remember better than him.
“Please, don’t say that home is wherever I am.”
“What if I really want to say it?”
“How did we end up in the same room anyway?”
“The academy paid for every room in the hotel, one was just listed as Fomoria, I have your crest, so they put me here. They thought I was Amber under the armor and I never corrected them.”
“How has the armor been holding up?”
“I haven’t had to use it, but it is comfortable at least.”
Shame, she was lying.
“What happened?”
“Huh?”
“Who attacked you? What happened?”
She pulled in air for the words she refused to say.
She exhaled and tried again, she didn’t want to worry or disappoint Harlan.
He understood what it was to fall, he knew the consequences of failure, but he also knew that mistakes happened.
Nobody made every right choice, saved every life.
“I was walking back to the hotel, two soldiers were escorting me. I don’t remember how many there were, a group came out from an alley. The soldiers cut down a few of them, I tried to run but they pulled me back down to the ground with a rope. I tried to fight back but they just kept hitting me with hammers, I curled up and closed the armor. I don’t really remember what happened after that, I was covered in blood on the outside. But I don’t remember fighting.”
“I didn’t pick the name golem armor for no reason. You blacked out, it took over. I taught it how to fight, how to use the weight of its blows, whatever I use to kill orcs.”
“That explains why I was so sore. I’ve seen you fight Liat, normal people don’t bend like you do.”
“I… let me show you something.”
Harlan opened his helmet from the front, the earthen gray of the steel behind his head accented his black hair and pale white skin.
Yet her senses did not focus on his features which grew sharper as the signs of adulthood were coming through.
Her eyes could not see his eyes, slit like a cat.
She could tell that his teeth sharpened like a wolf.
Her senses looked at his body as his armor opened more and more, how he bent his elbow backwards at an unnatural angle.
Her hands met his flesh, following his arms down to his fingers, now tipped in claws.
“Are you alright? It doesn’t hurt, does it?”
“This is my body, since I became a champion it has changed, it suits my needs, but I can’t control it like I want.”
“You didn’t answer, does it hurt?”
“My muscles move, shift and bend, every part of me does. This is just the price of power.”
“Are you always like that under your armor?”
“Only when I fight, or when I am upset.”
“Was it because I talked about-”
“It isn’t your fault. You should get some more rest, if you want to stay here, you need to take care of yourself. Do you want me to stay for a little while? I know it must’ve been scary to be attacked like that.”
“I don’t want to be like Ximena, I hate how I used to be. I’ll be strong, I won’t be afraid to help people like you do, I can’t stay here and I am going to be mad if you try to baby me like this.”
“Do you want me to stay here until you get back to sleep?”
“Yes.”
She rolled back into bed and they both kept in full armor with the exception of their hands, which were tightly together, and their helmets.
She could look him in the eyes even if her’s could not see.
“Why tell me now?”
“I’m trying to be honest, if we are going to be together in that way, I shouldn’t hide things like this. I don’t think I should at least.”
“You shouldn’t force yourself to tell me anything.”
“I wanted to tell you, nobody else knows, this is just a secret between us and us alone.”
Once the girl was off to sleep he left, back to the streets.
It had been 6 hours since the last bomb went off.
Harlan flew from the front door of the hotel so he could find where he might help the most people.
Yet he did not mean to heal, nor would he be clearing rubble.
There were maybe 300 people, they screamed at the soldiers who bore the local noble's crest, throwing stones and voices with the same violence.
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He could barely make out what was being said, it seemed like the people resented being told to stay indoors.
More than that, there were claims that the spiders did not exist, that a revolution was starting and the people should rise up.
Harlan flew closer, the man who seemed the figurehead was infested.
He stood between the man and the soldiers, both sides unsure of who he was or which side he stood.
Rocks stopped in the air, then fell to the ground.
He did not want to hurt the people, they were just lashing out, fear filled the crowd so thickly that if he had been doing this a year ago when he first came through he would’ve succumbed to it.
This was not the first time that he thought of what The Darkness had said to him, that if he did not control his empathy that he would kill a lot of people, that her hope was to simply lessen the number of dead.
Harlan grasped the man in front, pulling him forward.
He told the spider inside of him, flee now, if you do I shall spare you.
From his back the spider burst out in a bloody display which shocked both crowds.
Yet mercy was not an option, Harlan felt a deep disgust when he met them.
They were not simple beasts, they could plan, they could infest people in power.
How many would suffer and die for their ambitions? What ambitions did a beast like them have?
What would a world be if he did not kill them down to the last of their kind, if they grew to terrible new heights?
Harlan lifted the spider with telekinesis, the people’s shock only grew as they saw what looked to be bones with a monster inside of them.
Its many small eyes which were atrophied and blind after years inside of the man, its limbs uselessly flailing around in the air, shattering the illusion of bones.
“THIS IS YOUR ENEMY, PLEASE, RETURN TO YOUR HOMES UNTIL WE CAN DEAL WITH THEM.
I CAN FIND THEM, SEEK THEM WHERE THEY HIDE. PLEASE, DO NOT FIGHT. THE SOONER WE RESTORE PEACE, THIS CITY SHALL RETURN TO WHAT IT WAS BEFORE.”
Another man in the crowd tried to claim it an illusion, Harlan had to dig the spider out of this man.
Without anyone to further incite them they were rounded up and Harlan confirmed that they were safe, that under his watch at least, there would be no retribution against them.
The people were calmed, though this was not the only riot, it was not the only gathering of scared people.
Yet for now, these ones would return to their homes, Harlan had to fight with the soldiers to not have them arrested.
Another riot, more and more and more, he tore the spiders out with surgical precision that looked like savagery.
There was not a single person who could look at what was happening and not see the horror of it all, yet they were hundreds in a city of nearly 100,000.
For each one that he convinced that the soldiers were not against them, that they were restoring order, there was another hundred who were stumbling in the dark.
Dawn turned to day, the fires were all out, but there were always more ready to be started.
Thieves who would claim to be helping, killers who were trying to use what was happening as cover for dark dealing or personal grudges.
These people, who did not just take for fear of what came after, but because they saw all of the death and fear around them and thought it an opportunity.
These men would not live to see another day, Harlan could be merciful to those who thought they had no choice, those who were just trying to save themselves or others, yet these men were to be stamped out, their bodies would fill the streets if he had his way.
Instead, void ate away at them as if they never existed.
Harlan was sitting on the wall, watching the sun rise.
“You should go see Adina, Hellon, anyone really.”
“How do you think she would’ve handled this?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“I… I am sorry how I’ve been towards you sometimes. I know you are not her, but your voice, your face, it just hurts me, somewhere deep inside. Eliza, will you tell me about her? How, as the person who is not her, do you think she would’ve handled it.”
She was happy that she had her name back, but, there was a certain bitterness to it.
‘As the person who is not her.’
Was that her name? Did she deserve it? Did she even want it? She could look at the life she was based on, and she hated it. She loved Harlan, maybe some of it was from how she was made, but she earnestly believed that she had made the choice to love him now.
“She would’ve done what a good soldier does, she would follow orders, putting down people.
I hope you aren’t afraid of becoming her. You could never… She led a very different life, people tried, but they could not drag out from the pit she was in. She was a full grown woman who was stuck as that little girl begging her grandfather for answers about where her mother and father were.”
There was a pause, Harlan sensed that she wanted to say more.
The sun was half over the wall now when she spoke again.
“I don’t want to be her, I want to be something new. Something that can protect you and love you like she couldn’t. I don’t want to be Eliza, daughter of Zane and Ella. I want to be me, whatever I am.”
“A new name?”
They watched the sunrise, it seemed comical for two people who held cynicism in their hearts.
They didn’t need to say a word as they both laughed, but it was fitting..
“Dawn?”
“I hope I never tell anyone how I chose this name. It just seems so…”
“Blunt, like I am.”
“And I wouldn’t have it any other way. You and me, together. We are family, right?”
“Why don’t we start out as friends? After all, I’ve never met Dawn. Just that ghost of the past.”
“I promise, I will do everything I can for you, what she wouldn’t do. I will be worthy of being part of your family.”
Another bomb, the next to last one, went off.
Harlan rushed to the scene as quickly as he could, yet from a nearby rooftop he was hit by something else.
The woman who fired the round did so with perfect timing, another bomb on the other side of the city was going off, nobody even heard the round that now traveled towards his head.
Time slowed as it got closer, yet it only barely let him avoid the bullet shredding through his armor and brain.
It hardly nicked his neck, yet the large slug still hit with enough force to take a chunk with it.
Blood was filling his helmet, but he did not open it, he still needed that blood..
Had he not hit the ground and through someone's window, his would-be killer would’ve gained sight on him and put another slug through his head.
He gurgled on his own blood but he was not drowning just yet.
He had no idea if it would work, but he didn’t know how much time he had, or if he would live anyway.
The chunk of his neck was gone, and there was no regrowing that without tonics and a better healer than him.
But he did not need to heal himself, he just needed to stop from bleeding out.
He opened his helmet, spreading the blood in the same runes he used to flesh sculpt the subject.
He could tell that she was getting close, there wasn’t a lot he could do, just pull his neck together to knit it back into something that wasn’t going to fail.
He scrambled to search for organic matter, finding only mice and half rotten meat when the people either fled or were taken away.
His mind wasn’t working right, but he had little else to work with.
10 minutes passed.
The group was made up of 4 men and a woman, one of them drew the short straw and had to go inside to confirm the kill.
He stepped inside of the simple one room stone house, they had been watching it, nobody came in or out of the place and so far as anyone knew, Harlan couldn’t teleport.
Yet he was nowhere to be seen.
The man started tapping on surfaces, finding that the floor was thin in one spot.
He took a step back and raised his hammer.
A loud crack made his companions ask what happened, but they received no reply.
The woman readied her gun while two of them circled around the back to look in through a window.
A monster crushed through the stonewall of the home, its gnarled claws found purchase on the chest of one of the men.
It threw its weight forward, the man’s body distorting inwards as its power was not enough to break through another wall.
He choked and gurgled as his body went into shock, his liver and kidneys were leaking out of the bent folds of his armor after the impact turned them to mush.
They were trained killers, they knew when they were dead.
His body exploded as he activated enchantments carved into his bones that sent the scene of burning viscera throughout the area.
The partner of the man did not rush forward, instead pulling a soulsmithed dagger and tossing it at the creature, blowing a hole in its chest that still did not stop it.
When the woman removed its head from its shoulders it fell to the ground.
“Fuck. We need to leave, somebody must’ve heard that-”
Harlan’s heavy hands crashed down on the woman, her left shoulder crumpled along with her armor, but she was alive.
The quickly made monster of flesh had worked beautifully, giving Harlan the chance to deal with her.
His biggest fear was that he would be hit by that weapon he could not defend himself against again.
Scattergun pellets pitifully bounced off his armor, a wall of telekinetic force slowing them down too much to be effective, a slug would’ve at least made a dent if not broken bones.
Harlan was distracted just long enough for the woman to use telekinesis to load a final round.
He tried to push the barrel away from his head, the hunk of metal splintering his arm like a tree hit by lighting and tearing through his side, destroying large parts of his stomach in the process.
He used his good arm to toss her body at the man in front of the house, her bones detonating finished him off.
The final man saw all of this and put his hands up, understanding that he was outmatched, with the state Harlan was in, if nothing else, he just needed to wait it out.
Harlan raised his fear through the roof and gestured to him to come inside through the hole in the wall, and the man.
Once stepped into the circle on the floor Harlan subsumed him, he was biological material and mass.
He pulled on him like an animal, frantically stuffing parts inside of himself and letting Dawn, who could still act as level headed as one could be when finally being accepted and then watching the person she cared for most in the world bleeding with his organs hanging out, handle the forming of the body into a functional form.
She cast from his soul, but he was not awake, and she was very glad for that.
Even in his sleep his body reacted strongly to what she was doing.
There was more body left after she took everything she needed to completely heal him, yet what if was found out?
He was covered in her blood, the body looked like an animal had attacked and eaten part of it.
So she made his armor move according to her will and pulled the rest into Harlan until he was now 60 pounds heavier, yet he had not grown in size, but rather density.
She never missed a second of the scans Harlan had done of his body and the bodies of normal people.
She added the extra mass, bones and muscles, using it as energy for what was happening.
He awoke an hour later in a field hospital, feeling the wrongness, just as the Fenrir had told him.
She explained the why and how, and he was not upset with her.
It was a step farther away from humanity that he could not have taken on his own, yet as it was not truly her body, she did not feel that same revulsion.
An officer stepped inside to question him.
“Sir Fomoria, do you remember what happened?”
Harlan looked upward for a moment.
“I was attacked, 1 woman, 3 men.”