Two weeks had passed. Harlan was still waiting for his reply.
Shane hadn’t been beaten since the threat he made against the boys reached the ears of their parents.
Once the shoe was on the other foot and Harlan would, as the offended party, have the right to choose the rules of the duel, they all received strongly worded warnings.
He was now on a call with Balor.
“Still no degradation?”
“Yes, my man checked him in his sleep just last night.”
“Do we have a spymaster?”
“Of course.”
“I should probably meet him.”
“No, it is best that you remain disconnected from what I am doing. Plausible deniability and all that.”
“Anything else odd show up?”
“No. But… now that we have enough data, I would like you to place me in a human body.”
“You know, I should’ve thought about it more. But this is going to look bad for us, right? Do we have an excuse for how you got one?”
“You could say that it is a secret spell made by you, show it off to someone to let them confirm that you aren’t doing anything illegal.”
“I’ve already shown it, in part, to Sepul.”
“It would be best that you had someone else. His relation to you makes it less than air tight if he is the one who vouches for the existence of the spell. Why not Hirum? Could he be objective?”
“Mary might have enough separation that it doesn’t look untrustworthy.”
“Confirm or deny, don’t skip past him.”
“Could he? Maybe. Do I trust him? Not at all.”
“Fine, what about your healing teacher, Hellon, was it?”
“She is a hardass to everyone, doesn’t show that much favoritism. She should work. I’ll get back to you about Hellon, someone is outside my door.”
“Goodbye.”
A mind he didn’t expect was outside.
He opened his door, looked outside, and she slipped past him.
“Dahlia, how can I help you?”
“You’ve been making waves. Are you aware of that?”
“Bit of a vague question.”
“It seems a student under you was supposed to die.”
“Which one?”
His tone said he was dispassionate, but his eyes could not lie.
“Charlotte Vale and two of her companions. Someone inside the academy got them mission permits and set them up to do something well outside of their ability.”
“That doesn’t even sound like a good plan, the adventurer with them would- Oh, right, an adventurer.
Any chance you can find that guy who was with them?”
“Vanished into thin air. Either he is in the confederacy, the frontier, or a shallow grave.”
“Alright, then I guess that’s it?”
“No, I was sent to ask, is she feeding you information? Is that how you ended up where you did?”
“She wouldn’t tell me about something like this. It doesn’t directly affect me if my student dies, I’m sure that she would say it is an experience to learn how to handle grief.”
“Could you ask her to give you tips for things like this? Things are brewing in the background, everyone knows that the king only has a few years left.”
“I’ve been wondering about that. He seemed healthy every time I met him, but he talks about his life like he MUST die in another few years.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t know. He was hit with a soul based attack, his life will end when it activates.”
“What? Why haven’t I heard, I could try to help.”
“You don’t know him very well if you think he would ever let you get near him with a plausible story to cover up a murder.”
Harlan wished he had a real retort.
“That is fair. But please, tell him that when he is at the very edge. I would like to try helping him.”
“First, your god.”
His eyes flickered black just a moment, her message was short.
“She said no, it isn’t her place to be involved.”
“I suppose there is no way to really confirm if you are telling the truth, I will bring your message back.
Do not get involved in these political struggles.”
“Why not?”
“If you start helping one side or the other, people are going to look at you as a threat instead of an asset.”
“How am I supposed to not be involved then? I can’t pick and choose who I help by comparing a big list.”
“Don’t help people until you know what side they are on.”
“Do you have some quick guide, a book written down of who I should absolutely avoid?”
“Is not helping them just not an option for you?”
“Not picking is an opinion, one I am ignoring.”
“I’ll have a list put together, are you actually going to read it when I give it to you?”
“Of course. It would be irresponsible if I didn’t. I know we might not see eye to eye often, and it has been a while since we last spoke. But I am growing up.”
“I’ll wait until I see it to believe it. But I am warning you, you are in real danger if you get pulled into this before you are ready.”
“Come over here for a moment.”
Harlan brought her to the window.
He didn’t really know if it was even real, he couldn’t see windows from the outside.
“Is the sky still blue?”
“Yes?”
“Then I am in danger. You don’t need to warn me about it.”
She rolled her eyes and waited for him to open the door so she could leave without breaking stealth.
Harlan decided he might as well take a short walk.
While in the garden a group of girls from Reino passed by, glancing at him reading a childrens book.
He knew the mind, but the face was not the same.
Fragile Peace has been at the academy since the first day under a new identity; but she never once shared a word with him.
She only knew that was aware of them because they shared a look whenever they got near.
One of the girls made some disparaging remark about his mind matching his reading material. She made no defense, nor did she laugh at the joke.
When he was done he returned to his room, finding David waiting for him, unhappily..
“We need to talk.”
“Of course.”
David didn’t bother sitting down.
“What is this?”
“A letter for your mother?”
“Why did you send this?”
“Because I don’t know what you have against me and I’ve heard that she is a good woman. I hoped she would either clear something up or ask you why you have a problem with me.”
“How do you expect her to have answered back?”
Harlan wasn’t really sure what he meant by the question.
“With a letter. Am I missing something here? You wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, Shelly wouldn’t tell me, who else could I have asked for advice?”
Anger and confusion fought across the face of the man.
“Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? Whatever is bad between us is clearly serious and Shelly is trying to fix it, but can’t.
I really don’t know if I have other options.”
“I mean, about my mother. Who told you about her?”
“Someone who knew her a while ago, but lost touch.”
David decided to take a seat and nibble on a cookie for a few minutes as he sorted his thoughts.
“Where do you think my mother is now?”
“I don’t know, probably at her home, I heard it was somewhere coastal.”
“My mother died, 10 years ago.”
Harlan froze for a moment, Dawn’s tears ran down his face.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I… I think I can believe that. Do you want to know what problem I have with you? You showed up, out of the blue, and claimed that you are the son of someone my mother was close with. My father called me about this, because Shelly’s mom, who is like an aunt to me, has been on a warpath getting every scrap of information and rumor about you ever since you talked. I don’t think she ever really got over losing her, and you opened up her wounds.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“I had no idea who Shelly’s mom even was, let alone that she knew my birth mother.”
“Small world.”
“I’m actually a little worried that it isn’t a coincidence.”
David leaned forward.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m not sure, but the woman who gave birth to me, she was tied to someone powerful, her great grandfather. I know that I am the pawn of at least one god, but I have no idea what the scope or timeframe of her plans actually is. I don’t even know the end goal other than me being her champion.”
“I’d like to give this some thought. I’ll have your answer when I have it.”
“Answer for what?”
“You want to be out there, fighting, don’t you? We both know that you love it.”
“I wish I didn’t need to fight.”
He scoffed before leaving.
A few days passed, Harlan was dragged along with Charlotte again, her father had personally sent him a letter and Harlan couldn’t help but feel for the man.
“Clear as you can, I’ll be invisible and watching out for threats.”
“Right. Thank you.”
The light bent around him with a shimmer and he was gone.
Harlan never went more than a few feet away from them despite what he would have them believe.
Goblins fell by the handful, she led her team with confidence and often contacted Harlan outside of their lessons to ask him about fighting.
A bolt hit the leader’s head and it burst like a sausage too tightly packed being tossed into boiling oil.
Harlan blocked the chunks from dirtying the clothes of the students.
“Good work. You all need to work on your spacing a little bit, your spells nearly collided a few times, but you are better than you were before. Let’s go.”
Even though he was stronger than the man, it was academy policy that an adult accompanied them, and with what had happened before, it was quietly decided that security staff would be sent in place of adventurers as a temporary measure.
The man from security flashed a wild smile as he fiddled with a stone in his hands.
Five men suddenly came from the gate, hitting Harlan with three crossbow bolts soulsmithed to let out paralyzing shocks and an unknown effect.
They were never going to pierce the armor, but they didn’t need to, their tips were flat and covered with glue.
“RUN.”
Before he could even turn back towards his attackers, warhammers struck his chest, sending him flying away from the group and cracking his ribs.
His armor was confused, whatever was hitting it scrambled the command he was trying to give telling it to go liquid so the bolts would fall out.
The men kept hitting him with the hammers to prevent him from regaining his bearings.
Eventually one of them hit a bolt loose.
Between losing a third of the shock and the other bolts starting to run out of mana Harlan grabbed the hand of one man, making a link that took some of the shock and letting him pull the other two off.
Harlan was less than pleased with how things were going.
He dodged the next swing and delivered a literal axe kick to one of the men which bisected him as his armor shifted into an edge.
The one he already had a hand on passed out from a white noise attack, so Harlan just released a burst of sleeping air that would put him in another coma if he managed to wake up before this was over.
The men with crossbows tried their bolts again to slow him down while the traitor from security finished the students off.
He didn’t know who the younger boy was, but he took a hit meant for Charlotte.
Harlan would not let his sacrifice be in vain, though the cut really wasn’t that bad, Harlan could stabilize him if he was quick.
The bolts did not meet their target as Harlan brought the upper half of the man he killed and used it as a shield.
They barely had time to draw their daggers before Harlan plunged his hands into the chest of the first man, crushing his heart before using the blood and life force that was now free to slice the other men into ribbons.
With them out of the way Harlan met the traitor from security.
While his skills were not even on par with a 4th year student, his equipment was top of the line.
It was no golem armor, but it was not going to be pierced and shredded by what Harlan had.
Between that and the potions he drank before contacting the other assassins he was at least on par with Harlan.
Well, if Harlan had never become a champion and made dozens of subtle and less subtle changes to his body he would’ve been.
And if the man was actually from security.
The first clash was an attempt at a block that quickly shifted into a deflection as Harlan let out the weight of the rod in his hand.
“Why don’t you just let this happen, nobody else needs to die today.”
Harlan snarled and let out a lightning bolt that the man deflected.
He found that people became wary regarding his animalistic traits
“You could’ve been on the winning side.”
“I’m going to eat your liver.”
Harlan was glad that the others would be too shocked to remember him making that statement.
The man’s blade bit steel as he moved with grace and speed beyond what a man of his station should be capable of with such a youthful face.
Harlan couldn’t get a single move in after minutes, the boy was bleeding out and he could hear the others scrambling to save him, to stop the bleeding in any way they could.
“Do you have any advice? He just deflects everything I throw at him and I have no idea what that blade will do if he hits me with it directly.”
“Fight smarter, or harder. Change the ground, hit him with warmagic. Stop being so focused on what you are doing and think more about what you can do. You can tear men in two with telekinesis, do something.”
“Thank you.”
15 seconds, that is how long a nova would take, in the meantime he softened and hardened the ground in waves.
The man stepped through without issue, feeling the pattern Harlan was using without realizing.
True randomness took some thought, Harlan was just throwing the spells out.
Upon this realization he tried to just tear out the man’s eyes from a distance, finding that his power simply clashed against the man’s.
Telekinesis was unfortunately not actually useful against others that knew how to use it.
Even a large gap in power made little difference as the effective strength had harsh drop offs and if it was pulled back against the skin through the right technique, cracking it was nearly impossible.
Whoever the man was, he had clearly been trained to avoid exactly what Harlan was trying to do.
The first stab of the fight met its mark, severing Harlan’s arm, though the armor fused itself back together to stop it from falling to the ground.
The shock and pain let a second hit nearly land, though Harlan slung the loose arm to block it.
With a jump he forced the blade to remain stuck in his arm and got behind the man, letting free the freezing nova.
It passed through the man and froze his body, though letting the effect activate, even in a lower state, at such close range was giving Harlan frostbite.
Harlan shivered and could only move his body by making the armor walk for him.
He raised his boot above the man’s head and turned off the hover effect.
He spent as much time as he could afford to healing his body before he staggered over to the boy; he already knew.
Harlan closed the boy’s eye, hiding their lack of light.
Charlotte pulled his arm.
“Why did you do that? Heal him, please.”
“Ch-charlotte…”
Her face twisted into an ugly shape as tears ran down.
“That can’t… bring him back. Please…”
“I can't.”
“You’re supposed to be able to bring back the dead. That’s what people say, I don't care about the cost. Just do it.”
“His soul is gone.”
“Just do it, please, try.”
He couldn’t look her in the eye as he slouched down against a tree and used as much power as he could to heat his body back up and heal the damage he had done to himself
“K-kill the other man, back there… they are stunned, I can’t call for help, something is wrong, don’t let him wake up.”
She didn’t hesitate, it was too late for that now. She walked over and just kept stabbing him, over and over, well past when Harlan felt their minds fade.
After an hour Harlan woke up, his nerves were still damaged, he couldn’t close his hand tightly and had to force the armor to move to grab his amulet.
No signal went through, none came back.
Every answer that Harlan could think of was worse than the last.
Golden was bad news, he had made a few enemies among them for sure.
Fomorians would be worse, it would mean either someone captured and turned one of them, which would be unprecedented, or there was more like him running around; he knew that he had brothers, but he didn’t know if they were actually able to leave or not.
Fae could’ve been better or worse depending on the context. If they only traded for an item or spell that could do such a thing, that would be one thing, but if Fae actually wanted him dead, then that was something else.
He staggered over to the traitor’s body, searching for anything with an odd magical feeling.
Inside was the stone that he saw him with just before the attack.
It was etched with an odd symbol that Harlan memorized before he shattered it.
The amulets worked again, instead of contacting the handler inside the academy like was now protocol, he called Sepul and explained what happened.
The next few days were a blur.
Classes got canceled, Harlan was in and out of interrogations far too often for his taste.
There hadn’t been a murder in the academy in over a decade, but there hadn’t been a case like this, where someone from the staff murdered a student, in over a century.
Sepul wouldn’t leave Harlan alone for more than a moment, he brought him to and from the security section and stood in on every interrogation.
The academy wasn’t mourning, just looking from the outside, most of them either didn’t care or were actively happy that the boy had died.
He was sitting with Mary in her office, he didn’t want the others around right now.
“How do you feel?”
“They gathered their information, bodies, names, they checked alibis and cross referenced our stories.
I don’t need to go back in.”
“Are you ok?”
Harlan dropped his clinical, cold facade, one that he had been holding onto for days now. It disturbed him how he could do it, shut himself down, without even using his empathy.
“I didn’t even know his name.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that.”
No tears rolled down his face, he was just angry.
“I should’ve seen it, I should’ve felt some killing intent in that man, I should’ve been faster, stronger. If I took a stab earlier I could’ve killed him faster. If I started charging that nova preemptively.”
“That is just survivor's guilt, you know deep down that you couldn’t have changed it.
Nobody can stop every death, that you managed to save those girls is enough.”
“I could’ve been stronger, I’ve just been too scared of how it makes me, of hurting someone when I don’t mean to. I can be stronger.”
She placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Is changing your body going to heal your mind? Or is it just a rash choice, one that you are going to regret? As a friend, we both know that you are just doing this to find fault in yourself, something to change that will make you feel worse, because once you make yourself think that you could’ve changed it, then it really was your fault in your own mind.”
She leaned back into her seat and let out a longsuffering sigh.
“Harlan, I hope that by saying this you don’t misunderstand, because I am trying to help you, I’m not judging you. Do you actually care about the boy who died? Or is this an excuse to throw yourself into work?”
“What? Of course I care.”
“What was his name? Surely they said it when they were asking you what happened.”
“Dawn, what was his name? I know it, I’ve just forgotten.”
“You kept hearing his name, in one ear, and out the other. You aren’t evil for not caring. It looks worse if you keep pretending. Look at it objectively, think of how you can stop the same thing from happening next time, you don’t need to justify what you are doing if you are trying to make the world safer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. You are upset, and it is easier to point that anger at something that you know upsets people. Would you like to talk about this from the start? See if we can’t find a healthier way to handle the way you feel?”
----------------------------------------
Sepul could trust that Mary would keep him safe.
He had other work that needed to be done.
Within a large mountain range, charred corpses, locked in screams and pitiful attempts at guarding themselves filled the assassins' lair.
“I would like an answer to my question.”
The man spit towards his captor.
Sepul pulled a handful of thick needles from his sleeve and started putting them into nerve clusters in the man’s spine.
Each needle had a mana gem on its end. It was something that Harlan had actually originally made, though he had it in the form of a dagger.
The spell within was one that restored the nerves along with another spell that directly assaulted them with either heat, cold, or acid.
It sapped the victims strength, and the pain never got better.
After 10 minutes of this the man still refused to answer, so Sepul took his needles back and filled the air with the scent of carbonization.
By the fifth man he got the answers he wanted. He knew who hired these men, though it was an intermediary and it would take a few more jobs like this to get what he was after.
An orb of void appeared suddenly and out stepped Coronach.
“Oh. It seems I am late.”
“Monster, your god has never once been late without an agenda behind it, what are you doing here?”
“Well, it seems these men have some other information that Harlan will need eventually. No need for us to bother one another.”
As much as he wanted to fight the voidling, he simply left him to his work.
The few men alive wished that death could come for them as the shadow stretched seconds to hours while stabbing the men.